In this episode I talk with Hana Abaza, Head of Marketing for Shopify Plus. We discuss the range of channels and strategies she used at Uberflip, a fast growing marketing startup, and Shopify Plus, a 3,000 person ecommerce powerhouse. We discuss the differences in marketing at both companies, what’s worked, what strategies generated the best ROI and what they are focused on in 2018. This is a super interesting episode.
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Last 5 questions:
What’s your best piece of marketing advice?
don’t be super myopically focused on marketing, and the reason I say that is because I actually think other domains will really inform your ability to be a better marketer better than marketing would. So, how does this manifest itself? Well don’t read marketing books right? Read other things. Learn about statistics, learn about decision making, read psychology books. Or, if you’re going to read marketing books read the ones from the ’60’s that are the old school copywriting books, or Ogilvy on Advertising. I find a lot of times marketers get really focused on learning about marketing, and obviously there needs to be some level of that, but I would say creativity thrives most at the intersection of different domains. So, feed your mind with much broader things because you will be better at your job as a marketer if you do that.
Can you recommend a book to our listeners?
I love Ogilvy on Advertising if you haven’t read it. Actually, an interesting one that I read a little while back is a book called Ogilvy Unpublished, I apparently am on this Ogilvy kick right now, but Ogilvy Unpublished is interesting because it’s literally a book full of his memos, and letters to people, and these manifestos that he has written for the company, and very behind the scenes-ish, but it’s fascinating to read.
What software tool couldn’t you live without?
Bear Notes
What’s your favourite example of a marketing campaign?
MailChimp did one recently, maybe not that recently. It was something, the brain? MailChimp brain? Something like that. It was excellent. It was more of a product marketing type focus. They did a really great job with it. The other company that does a great marketing, just great marketing in general is Wealthsimple. They did a great campaign. If you’re not familiar with Wealthsimple it’s based in Canada. It’s essentially like managing your investments and your finances, very much like Wealthfront in the US, I’m sure there’s some sort of UK version.
Which other podcasts do you listen to?
So, lately I’m getting into The Daily, which is by The New York Times. It just gives you a 30 minute here’s what’s happening in the world kind of thing. I’m really liking Hidden Brain by NPR. Intercom’s podcast is fantastic, Inside Intercom. Recode Decode is another really great one.
Transcription:
Matt Byrom:
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Marketing Strategies Podcast. Today, I’m joined by Hana Abaza. Who is head of Marketing for Shopify Plus. Before that, she was VP of Marketing for Uberflip. I’m excited to speak with Hana about her time at Uberflip, where they grew a small team to over 75 people. Then how the culture tactics and strategies are different at a large company like Shopify. So, as well as being the head of marketing for one of the worlds biggest ecommerce platforms Hana contributes to sites like Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, and she also shares her expertise in the form of webinars, presentations, and she’s a self confessed podcast junky, which I’m glad she’s with us today. So, let’s dive right in. How are you today Hana?
Hana Abaza:
I’m great Matt, how are you?
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, I’m fantastic today. It’s lovely to have you with me today.
Hana Abaza:
Well thanks for having me. I’m excited to chat.
Matt Byrom:
So, we first met when you were at Uberflip, and it says online on your bio and things that Uberflip was a small business at the time, I just wanted to know what position was the business in when you joined?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, it’s actually a really interesting story. So, when I first joined Uberflip it was actually a small team. I think I was employee number 20. And they were really on the precipice of a pretty fundamental change in their, their market, who they were going after. I hate using the term pivot because it wasn’t even a pivot it was like a “We’re going to stop doing this thing for this market and we’re going to do a different thing for a different market.”
Matt Byrom:
Well that’s all part of business growth really isn’t it? Actually finding your way, so that’s just part of it.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, for people who might not be familiar with Uberflip at the time they were really focused on this tool that they had built called Flipbooks, which really was a tool that took PDF’s and converted it to this online, digital sort of flip book experience. You might remember those magazines that you would see online and you literally “flip” them online, quote/unquote.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, absolutely.
Hana Abaza:
So, that was really what they were focused on, and they saw some good success with that, but then they saw a really big opportunity in the content marketing space as they started to see less publishers and magazines and more marketers, and content marketers, and B2B marketers start to use the tools for things like eBook’s and white paper.
Hana Abaza:
Now, this was years ago and there’s a lot of hype around content marketing, and I think it’s one of those things that it existed before the hype, it continuous to exist after the hype, although I don’t know that the hype is over, and it’s one of those areas where marketers didn’t always have the infrastructure and the foundation to be able to execute on content in the way that they wanted to right?
Hana Abaza:
And that’s really where Uberflip started to play around in the content marketing space and really started to build the foundation of what would eventually be that Uberflip platform that really helped marketers manage content at scale, and use it for things like sales enablement across various stages of the buyer journey in a way that was much more conducive to speed of execution, and to creating a really great experience, and to lead gen, and to growth.
Hana Abaza:
So, I joined, as I said, employee number 20, and I think on my website it does say 75, but I think when I left Uberflip, I was there for about three and a half years, we were over 100 people I believe at that point.
Matt Byrom:
Oh really?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. So, really great growth on those few years, but it was really interesting because in the early stages we were really trying to figure out product market fit right? And initially we actually thought it was going to be for a small business. The model was very different. It was online, self serve, free trial, and for marketers listening you know that is a very different funnel and it’s actually much closer to B2C than it is B2B and you’re going to be using different growth mechanisms to actually get people to sign up, and upgrade, and activate, and it’s often very product led.
Hana Abaza:
Turns out we were totally wrong and we shifted way up market, which completely changed the business model right? So, instead of being free trial, online, self serve, it’s like “Oh, we need to build a sales team.” And we were actually getting a ton of traction in the enterprise space, and really interestingly in B2B companies specifically. And like any startup for a while it’s like “Oh, we can do both? Can’t we do both where you still have the free trial, but then let’s experiment with an enterprise option on the pricing page and see how many people click on that.”
Hana Abaza:
So, the reality is, I mean for most startups, doing both is usually in my opinion not always a great idea because it splits your focus and it splits your resources. I think there are some instances where a self serve model actually is conducive and can be a feeder to that enterprise path, but we just weren’t seeing that and we had to make a decision to go all in on up market, and it made a ton of sense and I think Uberflip has really seen the success from that.
Hana Abaza:
So, you know, when I started the marketing team I think it was three people including me, when I left it had grown pretty significantly, and as is evident by the fact that the company grew significantly.
Hana Abaza:
So, yeah, it was a great time and it’s a lot of fun marketing to marketers, which is what I spent a lot of time doing there.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah. Well, they keep you on your toes definitely.
Hana Abaza:
Oh yeah, there is zero room for error for sure. Zero room for error, and zero room for bullshit. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to swear on this podcast, but definite BS detectors for sure.
Matt Byrom:
I mean, it’s interesting isn’t it? So, Uberflip really started as a flip book, and then realized actually there’s a whole world out here, not just in content marketing for example, not just books, or actually presenting content, but actually being the platform for people to actually present content, generate leads, it’s almost like a whole customer journey platform really, and I guess that pivot that you mention wasn’t necessarily a pivot it was really actually broadening out the whole aspect of the business really.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, absolutely, and we started seeing really interested companies, big companies. I think at the time, and I can’t speak to the customer base now, but at the time we were seeing Microsoft, and Schneider Electric, and Salesforce, and come in and actually build these really great content hubs and experiences through Uberflip because despite the fact that those companies had lots of tools, and lots of infrastructure, and they were using different types of CMS’s, often times those weren’t cutting it from the perspective of actually building out that experience for their customers.
Matt Byrom:
So, talk to me about the strategies that you actually employed to get the Uberflip brand in front of these companies. How did they hear about you in the main at that particular time? You know, once you had actually realized the direction that you were going in and you had actually had a proper direction, how did these companies find out about Uberflip and what were the early stages of you understanding your growth story?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, I mean, it really did come down to a whole lot of experimentation. Initially I think, you know, the tactics are the tactics. I think everybody would, you know, no major surprises there in terms of like, yeah, we tried certain paid channels. We tried SEO as a focus. Content was a huge focus. Call marketing and partner marketing was actually a really big focus as well, and as we were trying all of these different tactics what we did see was one of the specific things that worked really for us in terms of generating net new leads, but also really highly qualified leads was actually webinars.
Matt Byrom:
Okay.
Hana Abaza:
Which to be honest surprised me at the time. I’m like “Oh, webinars, everybody does webinars.” But nobody was really doing it for that segment of the market in the way that we were doing it, and I think that sort of speaks also to quality content right?
Hana Abaza:
So, that was probably one of the biggest growth leaders, at least initially, and that sort of got built out into a full fledged, sustainable funnel in and of itself.
Matt Byrom:
Sorry, I was going to say, so you saw a bit of growth in webinars, and then did you effectively double down and double down in that area and think “We’ve got to build a whole plan around webinars to make sure that we’re doing as many quality webinars as possible.”?
Hana Abaza:
Exactly. And that’s a thing that it’s almost, you know, once you operationally figure it out it’s easy to build a sustainable program around that, what gets trickier then is the distribution of it right? So, really getting creative in terms of how we would continue to distribute those webinars because, I mean, putting on the webinar is one thing, but getting people to register for the webinar is a different thing.
Hana Abaza:
So, where we would see some really good success there is variability in the types of partners that we were actually leveraging for those webinars. So, for something like partner marketing, and webinars, and stuff like that, for it to be really working and impactful from a bottom line perspective I think it’s all about the approach.
Hana Abaza:
So, I think you have to put volume [inaudible 00:10:49] metric in terms of the actual number of registrants and really need to focus on quality and intent, and that intent piece I think comes in from the topic right? So, for example, there were typically two buckets of webinars that we would do. One would be really sort of very focused topic, very high intent. So, for example, how to use predictive analytics for content marketing. Unless you’re really qualified you’re probably not going to sign up for that right? That’s probably not going to happen.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah. That’s pretty specific.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, it’s very, very specific, so we would get maybe 500 people signing up for a webinar like that, and that would be something that we would do with maybe a partner like one of the predictive analytics platforms.
Matt Byrom:
Well that’s great numbers.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. I mean, that was sort of the consistent once we built it up, but the very first few we did was maybe 150 people maybe right?
Matt Byrom:
And is that how many people show up or is that how many people register?
Hana Abaza:
That’s typically how many people register. At the time we were seeing about a 30 to 40% attendee rate, and then we would see a pretty significant replay rate as well, it would vary a little bit from webinar to webinar.
Hana Abaza:
So, those were decent for net new, those were actually also great for driving pipe further down the funnel right? So, we would see those types of things actually influence and kick somebody over into a sales conversation. So, it was really interesting to see those types of webinars and the actual direct impact on MMR.
Hana Abaza:
And then the other type of webinar that we would do would be more that audience growth type thing where it was still on topic, but a little higher in the funnel, and also a little bit more geared towards a bit of a broader topic or audience. So, one great example of that is I think we did a webinar with I think it was Hubspot at the time, and the topic was something around how to create conversion centered content or something like that. Something to do with conversion and content.
Hana Abaza:
So, yeah, that was much broader because who doesn’t want to write content that converts?
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, absolutely.
Hana Abaza:
Exactly. So, for us, I mean, that type of thing would get into the thousands of registrants. Or, when we did things with an AMA with a sort of senior executive at a really prominent company, those kinds of things would also get lots and lots of registrants, but not always heavy on intent right? Not necessarily ready to buy.
Hana Abaza:
So, I think a healthy mix of both of those makes for a really good program. I mean, I’m using webinars as an example, but I think that approach across many channels could potentially be effective.
Matt Byrom:
And did you then use the webinars on demand afterwards to carry on generating leads into the future?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s where Uberflip as a platform came up. So, with Uberflip it integrated with our video hosting and we literally were able to just automatically pull in those webinars to a content hub using Uberflip, and we would gate them right away. The forms that we would gate them with were integrated with a marketing automation tool that we were using, and all of this was done really quickly and easily in a matter of clicks via the marketing team right? So there wasn’t a heavy load in terms of developers. I mean, that was the thing that the Uberflip platform was really great for.
Matt Byrom:
And would a see a higher watch to customer conversion from somebody actually attending the webinar to actually somebody watching it on demand later? Is there a lot more success with a webinar when people watch it live?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, I think what happens, if I’m remembering correctly, velocity was better for people to watch it live, and what I mean by that is they would convert faster, not necessarily at a much higher percentage because those webinars lived on an ongoing basis right? So, somebody could come in and watch a webinar from a year ago and convert right?
Hana Abaza:
So, it was a little bit less about a much higher conversion rate, but typically we would see those people actually convert much faster, and I suspect it’s because they are actively engaged in finding a solution to the thing they watched a webinar for because they actually watched the webinar right? So they’re probably-
Matt Byrom:
And that’s a big commitment really.
Hana Abaza:
It is, yeah. It really, really is.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, to actually spend an hour out of your day, which I guess is unplanned really. It just fits in where you’ve not asked for it to be, but that’s where it is, and to actually spend time out of the day to learn something is this big commitment. Would you say that webinars are one of your biggest drivers of new leads and new business?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. There was a period in time where they definitely were. I’m trying to think now if we had any channel sort of overtake. The one channel that actually I was surprised by that actually performed quite well, both from net new leads as well as an influencing pipeline standpoint was actually events, and I was at the time one of those super skeptical “Oh really? You want me to go to a trade show?” Kind of marketers, and they are trickier to track for sure, but we were seeing a really significant ROI on those, and that’s much easier when you’re up market because it doesn’t actually take that many deals to number one cover your costs, and number two see a really great ROI, particularly if your LTB is relatively high. But I know that that was pretty successful.
Hana Abaza:
The tricky part with online channels for a much more niche audience is they’re only so scalable right? So, when you look at a B2C play, or when you look at people that are going after small business where it is still a self serve funnel right? And often times small business funnels are just very similar to consumer right? It’s easier to use some of these broader channels and just go for volume because there’s not a huge cost to running more of those people through your funnel right?
Hana Abaza:
Whereas if you have a sales team there’s a heavy lift there if you’re pushing more and more unqualified people through that funnel. So, on the B2C side when you’ve got a self serve you usually have a lot more room to scale big channels, like paid search, and potentially even paid social, and generally you’re going to get more volume on SEO initiatives, generally you’re going to get more volume on a lot of things right? Generally the topics from content are just broader topics that attract more people. So, it is very much a volume play, obviously quality comes into account.
Hana Abaza:
Whereas with a B2B funnel you have to more quickly add additional channels and layers of growth because there’s a cap on how scalable they are before you start just getting bad leads right? So, it’s interesting, the approach I think for both is a bit different.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, and it’s interesting because I’ve followed Uberflip for a long time and I’ve known you for a while, but Uberflip creates, I do realize that you’ve moved on to Shopify now and we’ll move on to that, but I’m still very interested in the back story and Uberflip scaled content creation to a large scale and you guys created a lot of content really. How did that come about, did you create it in house or did you put together a plan and use some freelancers, some agencies, and things like that? How did you decide to actually scale content while keeping quality high?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. I mean, part of the reason content was the direction we did go in is because Uberflip is a content platform, and what we really wanted to do was we wanted to be the best example of how to use it, which is, again, part of the reason why we really doubled down on content.
Hana Abaza:
Here’s the thing though, I don’t think we created as much content as people thought we did. I think we were just really good at making it seem like we were bigger than we were.
Matt Byrom:
Like repurposing content?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. So, part of it was repurposing content, part of it was being really efficient, part of it was actually focusing a lot on distribution so our content was everywhere. So, it was all of those tactics. So, the content team at Uberflip when I was there was never more than I would say two and a half or three people right?
Matt Byrom:
Okay.
Hana Abaza:
Everything was done in house. Like everything was done in house. We did take guest blog posts. We did take guest contributors, but all of what we did was in house, and it’s funny because I hear that a lot. Like, “Oh my god, you guys scaled. You must have 10 people on your content team, or use a massive network of freelancers.” Et cetera, et cetera, and we didn’t. We were just smart in how we approached it right?
Hana Abaza:
For example, every webinar is turned into a blog post right?
Matt Byrom:
Yeah.
Hana Abaza:
That’s relatively easy to do because the content’s there and it’s not like you have to come up with it from thin air.
Hana Abaza:
So, those were the types of just tactics we used in terms of being able to really get the most bang for our buck, and after a while we actually focused a lot less on creation, a lot more on distribution, a lot more on republishing. We actually ran an experiment where we took a two week content hiatus where we actually created zero net new content.
Matt Byrom:
Okay.
Hana Abaza:
What we did was we actually … So, here’s what’s funny. So, we actually used to send a daily email to our blog subscribers, and we always went back and forth on daily, not daily, weekly, bi-weekly, like what’s the frequency right? And as much as we don’t want to spam people’s inboxes I find that marketers actually often underestimate how much actual email you can send somebody and they have a tolerance for it, especially if it’s good stuff.
Hana Abaza:
So, what we actually did was we took a two week hiatus from creating new blog posts, which means “Okay, what are we going to do with those daily emails?” Because the email would include the new blog post for the day right? So, what we actually did was we went back through our analytics, we actually took the top performing posts and we experimented a little bit with that. So, we kind of took top performing just from an engagement perspective, so traffic and actual engagement like time on the actual post just indicative as to whether or not they read it, also any clicks.
Hana Abaza:
And then we also looked at conversion on them as well and we actually created a really tailored email campaign for those two weeks and actually resent those top performing blog posts and click through rates went up, engagement went up, open rates went up.
Hana Abaza:
So, we actually used that as an opportunity to change our strategy when somebody new signs up for the blog in the first place, because what happens at most companies when somebody new signs up for the blog is they will actually just be thrown into an email nurture that will just start whenever they sign up so they’ll just get the next post right?
Matt Byrom:
Yes, correct.
Hana Abaza:
Whereas what we did is we almost created a two blog subscribe onboarding email campaign where they would get not just the next post that’s published but actually the highest performing posts right?
Matt Byrom:
That makes sense.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. And then they would get rolled over into the more regular drip.
Hana Abaza:
So, that was actually really interesting. We actually I think saw a lift in traffic over those two weeks, which I couldn’t fully explain. I don’t think that could be explained through just the email campaigns.
Hana Abaza:
So, yeah, it was really interesting. So, I mean, all of that to say I think most content teams over emphasize the content creation side of it, and don’t get me wrong, that’s still really important, but don’t do it at the expense of making sure that your distribution side is covered.
Matt Byrom:
And it totally makes sense really doesn’t it when you think about it? That sending people not just the next piece of content that comes along will be the best strategy, but actually sending people the top performing content. We actually do the same thing. So, people enter our funnel for example and then based now hat they’ve downloaded, or viewed, or done, the action that they’ve taken, they’ll actually receive our top content in that area, and then like you said, then they’ll go onto receiving some other general more recent stuff.
Matt Byrom:
But we also found the same thing that that totally works as a strategy for us to find the best content and turn that to people first.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. I think in general just being a little bit more intentional about what we send people. You know, it doesn’t have to be complicated, and maybe it’s not the best performing content, maybe you actually know a little bit about your subscribers and you can send them things that are relevant to their job, or their interests, or their topic depending on how much data you have right?
Matt Byrom:
Yeah. I think relevancy is just really key. The more relevant that you can make things the better.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah.
Matt Byrom:
For each person.
Hana Abaza:
I agree.
Matt Byrom:
And so when you created content then did you have a mini content promotion strategy in terms of, say for example you did a webinar, write that up as a blog, would you then send that out as an email so that people watch if they didn’t watch?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah.
Matt Byrom:
Put it on social media, these sorts of things, and any paid promotion there as well? Did you have a strategy that you followed, like every piece of content had the same promotion strategy?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. We definitely did have a strategy that would change a little bit based on what we learned from the last time, and also based on who we were partnered with and what the topic would be. So, some of them we put some paid juice behind, some of them we didn’t. At the time actually LinkedIn was working quite well from a paid perspective. I find in my experience if you’re in B2B LinkedIn can be potentially really powerful, but it works best in the context of sponsoring content right? I’ve never seen it work well for direct response, sign up now, request a demo type of ad, but it does work I think really well from a content perspective and it’s also great in terms of targeting.
Hana Abaza:
So, we would do that a lot for a lot of the content. I mean webinars is the thing we’re talking about, but we would do similar things around guides, or eBook’s, or white papers. So, that was a lot of what we would do, and how we promoted it also sort of came down to whether or not we were partnering with somebody on the webinar, and I’m a really huge advocate of doing home marketing and partner marketing, but I think there’s a few caveat’s there. So, I think a lot of people want to do it, I think most people don’t do it in a way that’s actually beneficial, particularly startup’s actually.
Hana Abaza:
I always laugh when I see startups trying to do partner marketing or co-marketing with other startups when nobody has any customers in the first place so what’s the point. So, that’s one pet peeve of mine.
Hana Abaza:
But I think if you have audience fit, so if you both have a very similar audience I think that’s a good approach to do it. And if you are working in an industry or providing tools or platforms that are complimentary and sort of adjacent to each other I think that could work really well, and then that also just becomes a part of your promotion strategy right?
Matt Byrom:
Yeah.
Hana Abaza:
It’s like literally you’re just mixing and mingling your databases. So, yeah, that works well.
Matt Byrom:
We did an interesting thing through our brand publisher actually which was we did a day called publish growth day, and I think we had eight or nine different presentations, and then three interviews as well. So, it was let’s say 11 to 12 people, different companies, different audiences, and everybody got exposure to each others audiences so it was like you were 10 timesing your audience exposure by being part of the day, and for the customers, or say for the people that were joining the day and watching the presentations they got to view lots of different things during the day and also got all of the different things to watch on demand afterwards.
Matt Byrom:
So, it’s kind of like a webinar is like a sharing of two audiences, well we were like sharing 10 to 12 different audiences. It was very, very interesting for a range of all the partners really.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, that’s interesting. I remember we used to do similar things with some of the partners in the content space where one partner would host an AMA with the CMO of Slack, or whatever it might be, and then there would literally be a group of about half a dozen companies that would co-promote, and kind of I guess co-sponsor. So, you’re literally getting a mix and mingle of all of those databases.
Hana Abaza:
Now, one thing I will say is there is a bit of a decay there in terms of net new right? Because if you keep doing that every quarter with the same partners, I mean they only build up their databases so fast right? And also if you’re all playing in the same space you already have a lot of overlap in your databases.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah, there’s going to be crossover.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. So, again, we’re back to the whole point of in B2B where the audience is much more niche and much more focused every channel, every tactic is only so scalable right?
Hana Abaza:
The other thing we used to do that we saw some success with is we used to work a lot with publishers. So, for example MarketingProfs, Content Marketing Institute, those types of things where you almost get the same effect where we work with them on sort of a legion campaign around a piece of content like an ebook, or a webinar, or a white paper, and we saw good results from that, but what we did see if we did it too frequently is a pretty sharp decline in net new leads because, again, it takes them time to build up their own databases.
Hana Abaza:
So, if you’re working with a publisher we couldn’t really work with the same publisher for more than a couple of months at a time, and then we would have to give it a quarter before we went back to them in order to really see an advantage in net new leads because it’s just going to go to the same people.
Hana Abaza:
And there is a little bit of I guess nurture side to that, and a little bit of an awareness and influence side to that, but I would much rather nurture them with our own emails and content once I have them versus trying to do that through a third party publisher right?
Matt Byrom:
Yeah. You give away a little bit of control really I guess.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, for sure.
Matt Byrom:
So, now you’re at Shopify and obviously you’re going from a small startup, fast growing, found its niche, scaled well, but now Shopify which is a much larger company, a much bigger scale, and I guess you fit into Shopify in a slightly different way, and how are things different in a bigger more established company like Shopify as compared to Uberflip?
Hana Abaza:
Oh man, a lot of things are different, a lot of things are the same. So, let me provide some context into what it is that I do at Shopify and how Shopify has evolved over the years.
Hana Abaza:
So, Shopify historically, and for those of you that may not be familiar, it started off as an ecommerce platform and historically Shopify has been focused on entrepreneurs and really small business. So, that B2C type funnel that we talked about earlier where it’s online, it’s self serve, you sign up for a free trial, you upgrade, you activate, you start using the platform, et cetera. So, the growth mechanisms for that, again as we discussed earlier, are a little bit different from B2B.
Hana Abaza:
But as Shopify grew, and is it really started to see scale, and success, and sort of moved towards IPO the team here saw an opportunity to really start to cater to big merchants because what we were seeing was customers on Shopify would actually grow and they were no longer small businesses or small entrepreneurs, they were actually really big, really successful companies doing really, really well.
Hana Abaza:
And one of two things would happen. They would either leave and go to what they thought they needed as a quote/unquote “enterprise platform”, or they would just stay on Shopify and they would just make it work right? And we were seeing more and more of these people stay on Shopify and we were like “Hey, what can we actually do for them to make this better? What plan can we offer? What product adjustments can we make? What services need to be there?”
Hana Abaza:
So, until we started considering this there was no such thing as customer success at Shopify right? It was literally touchless. Like, people would buy without talking to anybody. Obviously we talked to customers from a research UX standpoint, but in terms of the actual commercialization side that never really existed.
Hana Abaza:
So, in true startup fashion basically I’m pretty sure what happened was, and this was before my time, but I think they just threw enterprise on the pricing page much like we did at Uberflip and it was like “Let’s see what happens!”
Matt Byrom:
Let’s give it a go.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, exactly. Which, I mean, really speaks to the sort of growth mindset here at Shopify that’s really sort of sustained through its scale as a company.
Hana Abaza:
And what initially started off as a mechanism to keep people on Shopify actually evolved into, “Hey, wait a minute, there’s like a huge white space in this quote/unquote ‘enterprise ecommerce’ area.” Right? So, as we started to dig into that we saw that, “Hey, wait a minute.” The solutions that are available right now for enterprise are either A, not very good, very clunky, very high total cost of ownership, a lot of the solutions are on premise, and they’re actually still on premise, which coming from the marketing tech space I was shocked by. I was like, “How is this not SAS? Why are people scared of Cloud? I don’t understand.”
Hana Abaza:
But that really was the perspective of a lot of people in this industry, and it was actually really interesting and fascinating to see. And, you know, other enterprise ecommerce solutions were incredibly expensive, hugely expensive. So, for people that maybe were not small businesses, but weren’t billion dollar plus big CPG’s there wasn’t a whole lot of options for them, and the options that were there were frankly just not strong from a technology standpoint, and not a good experience, required a lot of developers, required you to have servers, which is crazy right?
Hana Abaza:
So, Shopify started experimenting with like “Hey, maybe there’s actually play for us to come in” and as much as I hate this term, for lack of a better one, “disrupt that space a little bit.”
Matt Byrom:
Yeah.
Hana Abaza:
And really that’s what we started to do, and more and more we’re actually seeing the majority of our business start to come not from people staying on Shopify and upgrading to plus, but actually from the market itself.
Matt Byrom:
Oh okay.
Hana Abaza:
And people moving over from competitive platforms, which is really interesting to see.
Hana Abaza:
So, now if you step back and you look at Shopify as a whole it’s like “Oh, there’s Shopify, and then there’s Shopify plus, which is a completely different business model.” Now we have a sales team. Now we have a customer success team. Now growth and marketing means a different thing in that context right?
Hana Abaza:
So, when I actually came it was a really unique opportunity for me. So, just background, I have known Shopify for years. I grew up in Ottawa where Shopify was headquartered. I remember going to meetups in Shopify’s office when they were a 40 person startup right? So, it was really amazing to actually watch their trajectory, and then be here, and I think when I was starting to explore what my next step would be I met with Craig Miller, who at the time was the CMO of Shopify, he’s not the Chief Product Officer, and we were just chatting through the space, and some of our options, and at the time it was like “Oh, maybe I’ll move to San Francisco. I don’t know what there is in Toronto, I’m not sure.” And he’s like “Well, before you move, you should explore Shopify.” And I was like “Shopify? What am I going to do at Shopify?” Because I really wanted to stay sort of at market, and he’s like “No, no. There’s this thing called Shopify Plus, it’s a thing, and it’s big, and it’s going to scale, and it’s going to be amazing.”
Hana Abaza:
So, yeah, I mean, it was introduced to Loren Padelford, who is the GM for Shopify Plus, and just everything happened from there. So, I lead marketing for Plus, which is basically a product line within Shopify, and we focus on that up market, that’s our audience. Plus is about 300 people I believe.
Matt Byrom:
Right, wow.
Hana Abaza:
Within Shopify, and Shopify I think is probably, I should know this by now, probably around 3,000 people, something like that.
Hana Abaza:
So, while a lot of things are different, when I look at just Plus, not that different, except for the scale at which we’re doing things, right?
Matt Byrom:
Yeah. And is it run like a startup inside a big company then? Or is it actually like it’s ingrained within the business?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. I mean, it sort of is, or it definitely was when it initially started. I think because its gotten to the size and scale that it has it is a little bit more ingrained into the business. I will say that Shopify as a whole, and this was one of the things I was a little worried about coming in because it’s kind of that, “Oh, it’s a big company. Is it going to be hard to get stuff done?” Shopify moves at a phenomenal pace and speed still even though it’s a publicly traded company, and that’s something that I really hope we’re able to preserve as we move forward.
Matt Byrom:
Amazing. And you can tell by the amount of things that they’ve put out, and the freshness, and the quality and things like that that actually there is innovation going on in there constantly as well.
Hana Abaza:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Byrom:
And when you come into Shopify Plus for example is there there’s channels in place, you just keep working those channels, we know what works, you keep working at this? Or is there actually a chance to test, and experiment, and innovate within those channels, new channels, and make a stamp on the roll yourself?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, I mean, there definitely is that opportunity, and it’s also really exciting because you can think about not just optimizing existing channels, but there’s also like, “How else can we think about growth?” Right? “How do we go beyond these typical channels that any SAS company would use in order to drive growth?” And, you know, “What does growth even mean?” Right? And at the same time that Shopify has expanded up market and focused on a bigger audience, we’ve kind of also moved the other direction as well and we’re building tools for people that aren’t necessarily even ready to sell things from ecommerce. It’s almost like a pre-ecommerce sort of realm.
Hana Abaza:
So, really thinking about growth in a much, much broader way, which is the thing that really excited me.
Hana Abaza:
And the thing to remember to is for any company you’re going to figure out a channel, you’re going to scale it, and you’re going to double down on it, but years go by, or even months go by and there’s oftentimes you go back and “Oh, this onboarding email campaign hasn’t been touched in a year and it was working really well, but things have changed now so do we actually go back and tweak it?” And we did, and we saw a really great up tick from it. So, there’s always opportunities to go back because things are always changing right?
Matt Byrom:
And which strategies are currently bringing you the most users at the moment? What are your best channels for say acquisition?
Hana Abaza:
Our best channels for acquisition? I don’t know that I’m actually allowed to share that, but I will say there’s not huge surprises right? I mean, there are only so many acquisition channels. There’s paid social, there’s paid search, there’s SEO, there’s content. You know, content is actually a big one for Shopify as well.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah.
Hana Abaza:
You know, I don’t think any of the channels will be super revolutionary for you. We have a really robust partner ecosystem, that’s another way. I think the trick though is in the execution and in the approach, and that’s the piece that a lot of people gloss over. It’s not really about the channel it’s about channel audience fit, and it’s about your approach, and the execution on the channel in and of itself.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah. Okay. Well, I appreciate that. I know you can’t share some data, I appreciate the vagueness.
Hana Abaza:
We can’t give away all of the secrets, come on.
Matt Byrom:
The secrets yeah. That’s what you’re here for surely, that’s what people want to know.
Hana Abaza:
I’ll give you my secrets, I can’t give you Shopify.
Matt Byrom:
In that case, which metrics are you really focusing on, what are the core metrics for you guys to hit? Do you have a North Star metric that you’re all working towards?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. I mean, it’s again a little bit different for every product line, I can speak specifically to Plus. You know, for us, we definitely have targets around how many customers we want to get, how many leads we want to get. When we look at our funnel my team is very focused on optimizing for the bottom of the funnel. So, really how many opportunities are created for sales right? And that totally changes your approach at the top of the funnel because then it becomes less about volume and more about intent across every single channel and tactic you’re experimenting with.
Hana Abaza:
So, to give you an example, we recently actually tightened up some of the lead qualification parameters from one of the channels that was bringing in leads. So, we actually saw a pretty significant dip in volume, but we saw a significant increase in the number of opportunities created.
Hana Abaza:
So, those are the types of things that my team is really focused on in the context of Plus. And things like on the Contact Us page we added an extra field. Did we see a drop in conversion? Yeah, we totally did. Did we see an increase in deal creation? Yeah, we totally did. So, a big part of it is knowing what you’re optimizing for, and also a big part of it too is making sure that you’re communicating that to everybody because on the surface people will be like “Oh no, lead volume dropped. Oh no, everything is on fire.” But you really have to make sure everybody else understands what the actual goal is.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah. Absolutely. So, obviously you’re tracking not just the initial metrics such as traffic or actual leads, but how are you then actually tracking further down the funnel in terms of opportunities to a lead source, because you mentioned that traffic has dropped, but opportunities have increased, which totally means that you’re getting less leads but of a much higher quality and it’s much better, so that’s actually a win really. How are you figuring that out in the whole marketing landscape and for different funnels and different lead sources?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah, and that’s the thing is with certain lead sources it’s almost there’s a whole bunch of micro funnels right? So, certain lead sources coming in we’ll see that drop in actual lead volume but an increase in actual opportunities and deal creation, other lead sources we’re seeing an increase in volume, and sometimes also an increase in deal creation, sometimes a decrease, in which case we know we need to fix that right?
Hana Abaza:
So, it really for us is an amalgamation of essentially a whole bunch of tools that help us track this stuff. That’s something that is hard for everybody I think, and it’s really tricky tracking a lot of that. Multitouch is a thing that we’re thinking about a lot as well, and I know that’s always a thing that I think every single company is thinking about multitouch attribution.
Hana Abaza:
So, we track a lot of that through a combination of we use marketing automation, we use a CRM, we use Google Analytics, we use just a business intelligence tool that pulls from our data warehouse. We use Mode, but that’s similar to something like Tableau.
Hana Abaza:
So, those are the different that we use to actually pull some of those metrics, but we’re constantly looking at how do we improve that infrastructure right? How do we make it easier to provide visibility? How do we make it quicker to dashboard all of these experiments that we’re doing? So, that’s sort of how we’re approaching it.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah. It’s fantastic having digital marketing being able to track people from first touch all the way through to after sales and things like that, but there’s so many touches, and so many tools, and so many different metrics that can be tracked along the way it’s actually making that happen, and there’s always ways to improve that flow right the way through. So, I can feel your pain.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a company that’s fully solved it right?
Matt Byrom:
No, who has done that?
Hana Abaza:
No.
Matt Byrom:
So, what are the strategies that you’re focusing on in 2018? What’s important for you and your team?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. I think this is going to be a little bit less of an executional tactical answer. You know, my team has grown a ton in the last year. I think when I started at Shopify I had two people. We went from two to 20 in 12 months, and we’re still hiring a bunch more so if anybody is listening to this and they’re interested in Shopify find me online. Shopify in general is hiring so go look at our careers page. My TA person, my talents acquisition team will be very happy that I just gave that shout out.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah.
Hana Abaza:
But honestly a big thing for us is because things are just moving at such a rapid pace and growing so quickly a big task is making sure nothing breaks in our workflows, and how we work together, and our infrastructure, and our efficiency because as you can imagine if you go from two to 20 people in 12 months stuff breaks every time you double the team right?
Matt Byrom:
Yeah.
Hana Abaza:
The tooling, how you do stuff, “Oh, wait, do other people need eyes on something before it actually ships?” So, that’s actually a big part of what we’re focused on.
Hana Abaza:
Beyond that, from a marketing perspective it’s a lot of the stuff that I talked about right? It’s how do we make sure that we’re super efficient sort of at the bottom of the funnel, mid to bottom funnel? How do we make sure that we help sales be super efficient as well? So, a big focus on product marketing, positioning, and operationalizing all of that stuff. You know, we’ve opened up offices in London and Melbourne so we are hiring also internationally, and that’s also going to require us to think a little bit more critically about localizing messaging and positioning for those markets.
Hana Abaza:
So, a lot is happening and lots of balls up in the air.
Matt Byrom:
Amazing. And the reason for opening different offices in different countries for yourself as Shopify, is that so that you can actually be a closer part of that market and that you can actually get into more regular events and actually meet with the customer more often? What were the reasons for that?
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. So, for Plus absolutely it’s all of those things. I mean, Shopify by default is global already right? I mean, we have customers in all of the countries, and we also have teams internationally as well. I mean, we have a small team in India, we have a team in Japan, we have teams already sitting internationally. For Plus teams specifically our first intentional step into expanding internationally for right now is English speaking companies, I’m sure that will evolve moving forward, and it’s in areas where we already have traction so London, and more broadly the UK, and Ireland, and parts of Europe. Melbourne, so more broadly Australia, New Zealand, English speaking Hong Kong and Singapore, and it is largely logistically let’s all be in the same timezone, particularly when it comes to the higher touch model right? You want a sales person who is in the same timezone. You want a customer success person who is in the same timezone ideally.
Hana Abaza:
You know, ramping up our market presence, events, that kind of stuff, and also being a little bit more in touch with what’s happening in that market. Every region has slight variations that require us to position the product a little bit different, and the actual product might be a bit different in certain regions right? So, I’m thinking of things like payments might be a bit different in Australia than it is in the UK.
Hana Abaza:
And then just also thinking a little bit more around being in better touch with the actual customer. So, all of those things I think come into play.
Matt Byrom:
That’s great. Thank you. Well, I’m going to take us to our last five, which is five quick fire questions. So, number one, what’s your best piece of marketing advice?
Hana Abaza:
My best piece of marketing advice? Funnily you are the second person to ask me that in two days.
Matt Byrom:
Okay.
Hana Abaza:
So, I would say my best piece of marketing advice is don’t be super myopically focused on marketing, and the reason I say that is because I actually think other domains will really inform your ability to be a better marketer better than marketing would. So, how does this manifest itself? Well don’t read marketing books right? Read other things. Learn about statistics, learn about decision making, read psychology books. Or, if you’re going to read marketing books read the ones from the ’60’s that are the old school copywriting books, or Ogilvy on Advertising. I find a lot of times marketers get really focused on learning about marketing, and obviously there needs to be some level of that, but I would say creativity thrives most at the intersection of different domains. So, feed your mind with much broader things because you will be better at your job as a marketer if you do that.
Matt Byrom:
I think that leads us nicely on to our second question which is can you recommend a book for our listeners?
Hana Abaza:
Oh man. Like I said, any of the copywriting books from the ’60’s or ’70’s. I love Ogilvy on Advertising if you haven’t read it. Actually, an interesting one that I read a little while back is a book called Ogilvy Unpublished, I apparently am on this Ogilvy kick right now, but Ogilvy Unpublished is interesting because it’s literally a book full of his memos, and letters to people, and these manifestos that he has written for the company, and very behind the scenes-ish, but it’s fascinating to read.
Hana Abaza:
And actually one of the manifestos or guides that he wrote, in order to help guide the advertising for this kitchen product that they were trying to sell, actually literally reads like a modern sales manual. It’s super fascinating to read. So, I would check that out.
Matt Byrom:
Yeah. I’ll definitely check that out, it sounds interesting, and I’ll put that in the show notes as well so other people can click and download and take a look at that as well.
Matt Byrom:
And what software tool couldn’t you live without?
Hana Abaza:
What software tool couldn’t I live without? Oh man. I just started using this app called Bear Notes and I’m actually not sure, its become my go to app. Or maybe it’s Bear App. It’s Bear. It’s just like a note taking app, that’s it, but I just for whatever reason it’s one that I’m actually using, which in the past when I’ve tried to use these it hasn’t always worked so well.
Matt Byrom:
But that one works for you? That’s cool.
Hana Abaza:
It does.
Matt Byrom:
Well we’ll try and get the link for that as well. Bear App maybe? Or Bear Notes? We’ll find that out and we’ll get the link.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah. Message me if you have an issue. It’s like the icon is red with a white bear.
Matt Byrom:
Okay. We’ll check that out and put a link in the show notes as well.
Hana Abaza:
Cool.
Matt Byrom:
So, number four, what’s your favorite example of a marketing campaign?
Hana Abaza:
MailChimp did one recently, maybe not that recently. It was something, the brain? MailChimp brain? Something like that. It was excellent. It was more of a product marketing type focus. They did a really great job with it.
Hana Abaza:
The other company that does a great marketing, just great marketing in general is Wealthsimple. They did a great campaign. If you’re not familiar with Wealthsimple it’s based in Canada. It’s essentially like managing your investments and your finances, very much like Wealthfront in the US, I’m sure there’s some sort of UK version, [inaudible 00:52:14] is huge right now.
Hana Abaza:
And they did a campaign around what’s essentially a gift card that they were releasing that you could giveaway over the holidays, but they actually did an excellent job in terms of execution there so those are some interesting ones that I’ve seen in the past.
Matt Byrom:
Oh cool. Okay. And I know you’re a podcast junky so this final question should be right up your street. What other podcasts do you listen to?
Hana Abaza:
Oh man. I’m literally just opening up my podcast app. So, lately I’m getting into The Daily, which is by The New York Times. It just gives you a 30 minute here’s what’s happening in the world kind of thing. I’m really liking Hidden Brain by MPR. Intercom’s podcast is fantastic, Inside Intercom. Recode Decode is another really great one. I’m going to stop there otherwise I will continue to read all of the podcasts that I’m into right now.
Matt Byrom:
All of your list.
Hana Abaza:
Yeah.
Matt Byrom:
Well that’s a good few. There’s a couple on there that I’ll certainly check out as well that I’ve not had a look at yet like the Intercom one.
Hana Abaza:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That’s a good one.
Matt Byrom:
Well thank you very much Hana. Its been absolutely a pleasure talking to you today and I really appreciate your time. I know we’ve given a lot to our listeners to take away from today as well so thanks very much for your time and giving us your advice on marketing strategies.
Hana Abaza:
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me Matt.
