Better Banking for Humans

Today on The Future of Fandom, we bank for humans. You’re a human, right? Well, then you’re going to love this.

In this episode, we explore how Dave is creating an ecosystem for, and inspired by, those facing economic hardship, through the lens of their CMO, Michael Goodbody.

Ever notice how most fin-techs or financial apps you see gain popularity, target investing and other actions frequented by high earners or high net worth individuals. Well, guess what? Most people aren’t in that position and the team at Dave noticed. It inspired Michael to join and build a community to serve a different set of needs. It also brings up interesting brand questions like, how do you create an enthusiastic community around financial topics, which people don’t love to talk about? How, even if you empower them to better their finances, do you retain that base?

Connect with Michael Goodbody on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgoodbody/

Read more about Ladder: https://dave.com/

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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Adam Conner (01:17):

Michael, how are you? Thank you for joining me.

Michael Goodbody (01:19):

I’m great, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Adam Conner (01:22):

I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me here. I’m super curious about a few things around how you build community in your corner of the fintech world, but before we get into the nitty gritty, I just want to know what about Dave specifically, compelled you to join their ranks? And also, we should probably tell the folks what the heck Dave is. But I would love to know more about both of those things.

Michael Goodbody (01:46):

Yeah, absolutely. For anyone that isn’t familiar specifically with Dave, we are an app first, financial service’s product, founded in 2017, 2018, so four, five years old. And we really started out in the financial service’s ecosystem by offering people a way to avoid overdraft fees by effectively closing that gap, in terms of short term credit. If somebody needs up to, in terms of the original time that we launched it, up to $75, in an emergency. And so from my personal perspective, Dave’s again, been around for three or four years, but really came on strong in the ecosystem a few years ago.

Michael Goodbody (02:39):

And I think anyone that was in fintech took a lot of… Final technology, for those don’t know that, the shorthand for fintech. But for anyone that was in the space a few years ago, Dave just came out of nowhere with a really interesting value prop, really interesting and different way of thinking about brand and thinking about relationship with the consumer from a financial service’s perspective.

Michael Goodbody (03:03):

And so, it’s always been really heavily on my mind, as somebody that’s been in this space for a while as a brand and as a company, that’s just pushing the edges of things. And so when the opportunity came up, for me, it was a no brainer because of the heritage they’d already built in that three or four years that they’d been around, but also their willingness to push the boundary and do something different. And so for me, it’s a combination of that, a combination of the fact that they have a really significant data advantage within the financial services space, and we can talk to that, but also just from a brand and marketing perspective, it’s just heavily differentiated and just a really interesting challenge to solve with the consumer, but also, they’re solving it in a really interesting way. So it was super interesting to me as a challenge and as an opportunity.

Adam Conner (03:52):

The opportunity is where I want to go here, because you’re specifically creating community and serving, well, humans, as it says right on the front page of Dave.com. But in the fintech landscape, and let’s call a spade a spade here, most of the services that we see, or at least that I see, are catered to young, high net worth, or HENRY, high earners not rich yet, types of folks, people who can spend money, invest. Not typically the community that is first thinking, “How am I going to pay for X, Y, Z when my paycheck doesn’t come in until Friday?” And so, that obviously is one thing that you do a little bit differently in terms of who you target, but I guess my first question is, why don’t more people focus on the type of people that Dave does? And maybe within that, you can help us elaborate on how you differentiate. But I noticed that right off the bat, and it’s good.

Michael Goodbody (04:53):

Yeah. I mean, I think that the assumption, and certainly when fintech first started come coming around, 4, 5, 6, 7 years ago, and it was really… I think the origination of fintech in its first instant was in coming out of the financial crisis, and it was more of a trust thing opportunity for technology companies to come in and play a role in financial services, than it was maybe about mass market opportunity. It was just there were a large set of consumers that had lost trust in existing financial services brands. And so there was this opportunity for new entrants to come in and win. But in that moment, I think everyone globally in the U.S… Obviously you can probably tell, I’m from the UK, so there’s a lot of that heritage in terms of how I think about things as well. But everyone came in and was like, “Okay, we’re going to solve problems for people at the higher end of the income spectrum, at the higher end of the credit spectrum.”

Michael Goodbody (05:55):

And because I think, the assumption there is that they are, I guess, a more profitable customer base if you’re trying to build a new business.

“What is really important to understand when you think about how fintech has taken off in the U.S, Is that there isn’t the same level of problems to solve for people who are, to your point, high income, high earning, high net worth. If you have a good income, if you have a high net worth, if you have good credit in America, you’re okay.”

— Michael Goodbody (05:55)

Michael Goodbody (06:32)

There’s plenty of great opportunities out there for you and most of the big, even what I consider to be main street banks, do a really pretty good job at servicing that user base. But it’s really, if you’re in that lower income, high paycheck to paycheck, lower credit cohort, which the majority of Americans are, that the financial system actually tends to give you a really poor product experience.

Michael Goodbody (06:59):

So, I remember when I first moved over from the UK seven or eight years ago, and I went and opened an account with a main street bank, and one of the things that really struck me was that it was fee free, provided I had more than $2,000 in my checking account at any given time. And if I didn’t, I had to pay a maintenance fee and I had to pay overdraft fees and all that sort of stuff. And it struck me as this, even then, it struck me as very strange that if I have less money, I pay more fees, but that’s the way that the system is built here. And so, when you look at fintech, most of the companies actually that I’ve seen come to scale in the last three or four years, have really done so by solving problems for the lower income paycheck to paycheck, lower credit score users, rather than for the high credit score users.

Michael Goodbody (07:50):

I think there were some early entrance into that space that did really well there, continue to build a brand there, but recently it’s been much more about how do you solve problems? How do you give a great product to people that are constantly being hit by fees and poor experiences? Because there’s a lot more friction in their experience, and so there’s a lot more opportunities to convince them to shift over, than there are with higher income banking experiences.

Adam Conner (08:17):

Yeah. I immediately think, growing up, obviously, even 10 years ago, there were weren’t apps out there in even the fintech world that could access any audience. But I think about this world of lower income where these financial hardships are a real problem, and I think about predatory payday loans, you go… There were physical locations and they were always built in low income areas and it just didn’t carry the, well, experience that you are hoping to grow and to have people thrive in. And I find it incredibly important that those exist, because it’s fair. It’s equity. It’s access to that experience. I feel very strongly that actually, by large numbers, been discriminatory against economic classes with regard to how our experiences and [inaudible 00:09:15] after made. And with that carries a lot of emotion, specifically for those who are subject to those circumstances.

Adam Conner (09:26):

And so I’m really curious, because we talk about fandom a lot here, financial hardship, all of these things, that these stereotypically carry a reluctance to share about that. People don’t. They feel ashamed. Poor credit, things like that. You don’t have the same access everybody else does. How do you build a passionate fan base around that though? I mean if Dave is the solution, part of that’s got to be word of mouth, and it could be within those small communities, but ideally, you want people to shout into the rafters. How do you build one when it’s a topic that people are reluctant to explore vocally?

Michael Goodbody (09:59):

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s not just reluctance. I think it’s also just… I mean, you’re layering on that reluctance, which comes from talking about our product, which shows that you are, from a financial service’s perspective, potentially not thriving, I guess would be the right way of putting it. But on top of that, who talks about their financial services partner anyway? Do you?

Adam Conner (10:26):

Right, exactly. Even the folks that are making a ton, unless they’re bragging and [crosstalk 00:10:31]. They’re not going to-

Michael Goodbody (10:31):

Who else have you talked to about how great your bank is? Your primary banking insurance. It’s just not something that we are naturally [inaudible 00:10:37] to talk about. I think take a step back. So 65% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and that’s self-defined, they define themselves as living paycheck to paycheck. And then of that, a very significant proportion of them say they are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck. So even 12% of people that earn a $100,000 or more, actually say that they’re struggling to live paycheck to paycheck. So, I think the important thing when you really try and drill into this is, a, there’s a lot of people in this situation.

Michael Goodbody (11:12):

We started off here talking about high income, high net worth. There’s a lot of people, even in that category that are struggling to maintain their own personal liquidity through a month, through a two week period, as they pay bills, pay rent, pay whatever’s expected of them.

Michael Goodbody (11:29):

So, first off, I think it’s important to understand that there’s a lot of people in this situation, where they actually have to figure out how they’re going to pay a bill this week, pay a bill next week, before their paycheck comes in. On the other side of it, I think the important thing to think about is that the existing systems that are set up are… And we talked about this at the beginning

‘If you don’t have enough money that the banks can effectively lend your money to make a return on that money, you’re going to be paying for your financial services or your banking experience in the form of fees. And the lower down the income spectrum you go, the more that becomes about fees and interest, because that’s the only way that the banks can get the money back that they incur from providing you services or lending you money.”

— Michael Goodbody (11:55)

Michael Goodbody (12:21):

And so, the downside of that is that, to your point, the lower income you are, the worse your experience is. And so the people that pay the most fees are the ones for whom it is the biggest burden. And it’s a natural tension and it’s a natural imperfection of the system that exists right now. So for us, as we think about, to your point around fandom, one of the first things that I did when I got up today, we did a big brand study to try and understand, what is it about this brand, has led to the growth that we’ve had? And we’ve had phenomenal growth. We’ve given out more than 50 million advances, about 3.7 billion of origination. We’ve got six million total members.

Michael Goodbody (13:03):

And when you look at just downloads of the Dave app, since 2018, since we really scaled up, you’ve had more downloads on iOS and Google than you have of American Express, of Discover, of a lot of these other credit products. So they’ve done something amazing at Dave, and I really wanted to dig in to try and understand what it was. And what we found was that, against all of these other brands that we think about, top 10 banks, all the other digital banks, all the other fin-techs, Dave actually had a higher quality score amongst people familiar with the brand than anyone else. And it really blew me away, because I didn’t expect to see that coming back. And when you dig into it, the root of it is a couple things, right?

Michael Goodbody (13:44):

When somebody is going through a tough time and pretty much, you turn to Dave when you are going through a tough time. The way that we bring people into our ecosystem is through this idea of like, “Hey, we’ll lend you up to $250. You can get it the same day. We’re not going to… It’s free if you don’t want to…” We actually work on a tip basis, so about half of our users tip us and that’s where a large portion of our revenue comes from. And so in that situation, we are helping people out at a time when they’re struggling with something. And so we found that both that ability to solve a short term problem that’s pretty significant for somebody, that leads to a lot of, to your point, fandom.

Michael Goodbody (14:27):

I think the other side of it is the how we do it and how we represent ourselves.

“So if anyone’s listening to this and wants to go and look, Dave.com, you’ll see, from a brand perspective, we are very different to what you would expect from a financial services brand. Our tagline is “Banking for humans”, but ironically, our persona is this bear, this cuddly teddy bear type creature, that’s all across our app, it’s the icon for our app and is in all of our media services.“

— Michael Goodbody (14:35)

Michael Goodbody (14:51)

And what we find when we talk to consumers is the idea of being confronted with a tough financial moment and then having to deal with or steer a financial brand that can come across as judgey, it doubles down on that pain and that discomfort.

Michael Goodbody (15:22):

So what we do is, we completely shift that experience to people, and we’re literally a cuddly brand. We’re a happy, friendly face that people can turn to when they need that help. And it’s just a really interesting difference in how you build that relationship. You take away the intimidation factor of financial services and you just make it into a partnership, into being someone’s friend, and being approachable, even to the point that we’ve personified the brand as a name. Our name is Dave, and again, it comes across, Dave is like, Dave’s your friend, Dave’s a brother, an uncle, whatever it is. But we’re personifying, we’re making it less intimidating. And that just works really, really well in terms of building that relationship with our core user because they’re going through something difficult.

Adam Conner (16:15):

Yeah. I couldn’t help, but notice, and I assumed actually, that Dave was the name of the turtlenecked bear.

Michael Goodbody (16:22):

That’s right.

Adam Conner (16:23):

Okay. So there we go. But yeah, it’s an interesting way to put it. A cuddly presence, or a friendly presence, which certainly is, well, I would not describe that. That would not be an adjective to describe what I’ve seen in other solutions, gosh, even over the last 20, 30 years, for this financial class.

Michael Goodbody (16:42):

And there’s a reason for that, which is that most financial services brands make money, most financial services companies make money by convincing you that you haven’t got this, you can’t do this yourself. So even the investment firms, there’ll be some guy in a suit standing next to you being like, “Hey, we’ll help you out” but it’s all about convincing you that you can’t do this yourself and you need to pay them to do it.

Adam Conner (17:10):

Right. Exactly. And that’s just not the case, is it? I mean, it’s not. Everybody has the power to do it and they should, and so I’m glad that there are services like Dave that are there to do it. Now, let me ask you this, because this is an interesting tidbit of it for me. Obviously, you are helping these financial classes, these communities, grow themselves financially. You want to empower them to elevated positions of maybe not needing that, I don’t know, the advance on the payday. They might graduate from that specific offering. I’m curious how to maintain a fan base though. And we can assume, as a baseline, that no finance community is really shouting to the rafters, except maybe somebody invested in a meme stock, about what they do. But at the same time, if somebody engages with Dave in the best way possible, given that specific service, they get beyond the point to which they need Dave. Now, I’m guessing you guys thought about that, but I’m curious as to how you’re maintaining the fan base going forward.

Michael Goodbody (18:20):

Yeah. And I think that’s the important way to think about our business model as much as anything else, which is that, Dave is a neo bank so, or just a bank, I guess, if you don’t want to use the technology term or-

Adam Conner (18:36):

Yeah, the futuristic prefixes.

Michael Goodbody (18:38):

Yeah. So that’s what we are.

“We have a debit card, we offer cashback rewards on the card. There’s a host of other products that we attach right now, and that we will attach in the future to that banking experience. But the way to think about it is that yeah, what we are doing is bringing users into our financial service’s ecosystem, which just a traditional. We offer debit products, you can put your paycheck in Dave, you can pay your bills on Dave, you can go spend the money on our Dave spend account. But we acquire people by solving their biggest point of need, and then we push them through that ecosystem.“

— Michael Goodbody (18:40)

Michael Goodbody (19:28):

We acquire them, you build a relationship with them by helping them in that initial time of discomfort, if you were, or creating an opportunity for them. And then from there, our job is to retain them in the Dave financial ecosystem. And so, that becomes about, okay, so first off, you take the advance, second off, we try and encourage you to put it on your Dave spender card and then we want you to spend that money and enjoy spending that money. So our big challenge is really, how do you delight users as they’re going through that process, and give them something heavily differentiated from what they’re doing right now. And again, it comes back to things like what we offer is cashback rewards on purchase that are made on the Dave card.

Michael Goodbody (20:11):

Now for most of the people that are probably listening to this, for you and me, cashback rewards don’t sound particularly differentiated. But again, if you are a lower income, lower credit user, you don’t have access to the same sort of… or often you don’t have access to the same financial products that higher income, higher credit score users will have. And so, even just giving somebody a free debit card, no maintenance fees, no overdraft fees, the ability to get cash back, all of these things are heavily differentiated in that situation for this user. And our fandom experiences is, bring somebody in through that tip of the spear value prop, which is you’re solving that biggest point of need for them, and then retain them and offer them the sort of banking experience that you get if you’re earning a $100,000 a year and have your paycheck going into a chase account or into a Bank of America account.

Michael Goodbody (21:14):

Offer them that sort of experience, for free. And that’s effectively how we’re winning them over, by giving them premium banking, which for a lot of people, just isn’t accessible, unless you have a certain amount of money, unless you meet the threshold of income that’s required, going into a certain account.

Adam Conner (21:32):

Right. And hey, free is the best price out there, right?

Michael Goodbody (21:34):

Yeah.

Michael Goodbody (21:34):

Free plus. So it’s free plus benefits. Free plus. And we are constantly looking at, how do we solve the problems that exist within the ecosystem, and gradually build that relationship with you and solve your point of need. So we start off up with that short term credit. How do we close that gap? If you need 250 bucks, up to 250 bucks in a situation. And then the next part of it is, we offer you the spend account, cash back rewards. We also have a side hustle feature where you can go and look for Uber or DoorDash or jobs like that, that are available in your area. So you can go from, “Okay, how do I close this liquidity gap that exists for me?” to, “How do I actually make sure that doesn’t happen again by helping to build up my emergency fund? Helping to build up what I’ve got.”

Michael Goodbody (22:19):

So again, it’s like, how do we solve all of these problems for people, build that relationship with them and then graduate them through the financial ecosystem?

Adam Conner (22:26):

Now that’s interesting, having a whole side of the offering, which allows people to quickly and easily, if they need to, find those stop gap things, which are often all that folks need. You just need a little bit, right? That’s the whole point.

Michael Goodbody (22:43):

Right.

Adam Conner (22:43):

And to be able to provide that quickly and in the same space. Yeah. That’s definitely a value add. It makes me wonder actually two things, a, why more… Or maybe people do that, I just don’t see it, or maybe they don’t. Hopefully for you guys, they don’t, and you guys are first. But then secondly, more broadly speaking and to that other F word, the future that we talk about here, I’m curious what you think, and let’s just take these app based services, or maybe the world of fintech. Looking a couple years down the line, obviously you’ve been with Dave now for a couple years and the offering has grown. What do you see for a best in class community building portfolio of things, that an app might do to build its community? What other elements of their economic life do you think would be included in that? If you could get everything you wanted, because somebody in the future will, what would it be?

Michael Goodbody (23:37):

Well, I think that what we are… We’re growing with our users. So again, we’re three or four years old, and by our estimate, there’s about 160, 170 million people in America that are either in what we call the financially vulnerable or the financially coping space. And that means anyone in that group is going to be over drafting several times a year, maybe up to 20, 30 times a year, depending on where they fit within that spectrum. And they’re building credit and looking for access to short and long term credit to get them through their financial needs. And so, for us, again, we solve that biggest pain point for the biggest set of users. We do it in a friendly and approachable way, memorable way.

Michael Goodbody (24:29):

And then what we try and do from there, is grow with them. So we’re trying to solve the problems that that user has as they grow. The majority of our users are in that gen Z, millennial group. They’re young, they’re under 30, and so they are almost growing their relationship with Dave as they hit the needs that they have within their financial services journey, for the first time. So, we close that gap, in terms of short term credit. Once you have come Dave, we help you pay the bills, keep the lights on, get groceries, maybe make a car payment, maybe go up market from that.

Michael Goodbody (25:10):

Maybe it’s about paying for a trip, something like that, that we’re trying to help you do. So what we do is we close that liquidity gap for you. And then from there, we help you make progress. And I think that’s the right way of thinking about it, is that generally, people fall into these different categories. They start out with, “I’m living paycheck to paycheck and I’m not coping with it. I’m not actually being able to take my income and spread it across all of my outgoings.” So we solve that problem first. Once that problem has been at least solved or temporarily alleviated, then it’s about, “Okay, how do I keep my head above water?” And so that’s about building a cushion. That’s about, once you’ve stopped having to worry about, “Do I have enough money to pay the bills?” Then it’s about, “Okay, how do I start building a cushion and how do I start making progress?”

Michael Goodbody (25:58):

So for us, that’s about things like side hustle, where we are really showing people the opportunities that are out there to earn a little bit more money, if you need to start building that cushion, as well as things like building your credit. So we have credit building options on the site, because we know that’s going to be a big part of this moving forward, is that people maybe want to start building an emergency fund.

“Everyone basically has the same, or has a similar set of needs, where it goes from stopping the bleeding to then making progress, and do you want to buy a car, get a house? That’s the journey that everyone wants to go on. And so for us, it’s about following that journey.”

— Michael Goodbody (26:11)

Michael Goodbody (26:38):

So right now, we’re in that vulnerable coping space where we’re solving the short term problem, then we are moving up and we’re starting to help people get ahead. Start getting into the point where they’re making progress, and then from there it’s going to be about, how do we help them once they’ve got past, they’ve built the emergency fund, then they’ve saved for a down payment on something that they want to get. And so then it becomes about that piece. It’s about how do you get somebody access to the credit they need, to make progress even further or change their lifestyle? And then from there, after that, it’s obviously about investing, it’s about building out those pieces.

Michael Goodbody (27:13):

But for us, for our user base, primarily right now, we’re focusing on solving the short term problem of how do I have enough liquidity, and then moving on to that next step, which is how do I just build that cushion, that emergency fund, and how do I make sure that if I want to borrow money, that I can help improve my credit to make that available to me and affordable to me?

Michael Goodbody (27:33):

But we certainly see in the future, buy a home with Dave, something like that, being something that we could do as we grow with these users.

Adam Conner (27:40):

Wouldn’t that be a cool one stop shop? Well, for explaining and speculating on the long term, in the short term, right here with me on the mic, Michael, thank you so much for joining us.

Michael Goodbody (27:52):

Thank you.

Adam Conner (27:56):

It’s worth noting that Dave’s got a hold of something pretty amazing, most recently marked by a 100 million investment at the hands of FTX. Thanks again to Michael Goodbody for joining us. And thanks to you, the listener, for exploring the Future of Fandom with us. I’d encourage you to stay connected. So subscribe to the Future of Fandom, wherever you’re listening to your podcast, and you can also find all of our content at livelike.com/podcast and on socials like LinkedIn @livelike and Twitter @livelikeinc. I look forward to predicting the future again with you real soon. And until then, I’m Adam Conner saying so long, and thanks for being a fan.

As a business, the best people you can hire to your team are the ones who truly believe in the product or service you’re offering. And who better to represent this truth than our very own Financial Analyst Paige Honeycomb?

This week on Get to Know LiveLike, we’re featuring someone who has a passion for learning, and who understands the importance of transforming the digital experience through fan engagement. We’re happy to introduce you to Paige and give you a chance to hear about her career journey into finance, her experience working at a Big Four versus a startup, and more. We’re proud to have someone like Paige on our team, and excited to get to share a bit about her!

Tell us a little bit about your career path. How did you get into finance?

In college I earned my Bachelor’s Degree in both Finance and Accounting, and then got my Master’s of Science in Accounting. After graduating, I began my career with a Big Four accounting firm as an auditor. While the experience was invaluable, I learned that auditing wasn’t the career I wanted long-term, so I chose to pivot into finance. Upon learning about LiveLike during my job search, I was immediately hooked!

My initial thought was that audience engagement is the type of thing a consumer expects, and that it’s just a matter of time before all companies realize audience engagement is not just a “want”, but a “must have.”

I truly believe in what LiveLike represents, and I wanted to be a part of it from the beginning. As timing and good fortune would have it, LiveLike was hiring to fill a position at the time that would support both my experience and the career change that I was looking for!

Can you describe what a financial analyst does and what your typical workday looks like?

This would be a relatively boring response if I was a financial analyst anywhere other than LiveLike! As the Company’s financial analyst, I am responsible for financial planning, reporting, and analysis. But what I enjoy the most is that there are no “typical days” at LiveLike, and that I am able to do so much more.

Every day presents new and exciting opportunities for me within the Company. For instance, I’ve played an important role in the formation of LiveLike’s Canadian subsidiary, I’ve had the opportunity to work on RFPs for major sports and media companies, and I act as co-product owner for our Analytics Dashboard.

I have a passion to learn and continuously grow my career, and this role allows me to do so. It’s exhilarating to be able to see the holistic view of our Company, and to have actual influence at this stage in my career.

Did you always want to work in a finance role?

Yes, I always knew I wanted to go into finance. I’ve always looked up to my mom, who has held several prominent roles within the finance world. As I continue to make my own path, I am confident finance allows me to be my “best self” professionally.

What have you learned about LiveLike (as both a business and a team) since you joined?

Since joining LiveLike, I quickly learned that everyone here has a voice, and that everyone’s opinions matter. Having the opportunity to work closely with our CFO Lawrence on a daily basis has been tremendous. It feels great to be part of a team where everyone has the opportunity to collaborate, even if it is cross-functionally.

The global nature of the Company is exciting as well, and provides a learning environment that is hard to find in larger companies. Having come from a Big Four firm, where hierarchy dictates how you interact with others, being part of a company like LiveLike has been exciting, empowering, and invaluable to my career!

Is there anything else you’d want to share with aspiring financial analysts?

I would say this is advice that is geared towards any young professional that is seeking to enter the business world, not just those who are trying to go into finance or become a financial analyst: There is not one clear path to success. Keep an open mind. Work hard, and continuously try to work smarter. The constantly evolving workplace has created new ways for you to bring value to your company. And don’t let your age fool you—there is always something powerful that you can bring to the table.

Thank you, Paige!

We’re so excited to announce the most recent update to our CMS: The LiveLike Analytics Dashboard is ready!

Before the launch, we utilized an external solution to gather usage data and share it with clients on an ad-hoc and manual basis. While this was a fine solution in the interim, our dedicated LiveLike Analytics Dashboard means that usage data can now be easily accessed by clients directly on our CMS!

Besides convenience, this also has some other major advantages:

• Apps integrated with LiveLike will be smaller in storage size on devices
• The LiveLike SDK installation process is easier because the project structure is simplified

So, How Does It Work?

For now, our Analytics Dashboard is composed of three tabs: Applications, Programs, and Widgets.

To see an overview of your application’s performance, simply click on the Applications Tab. You will then be able to access information on Profiles (Total & Unique), Impressions (Total & Unique), Interactions (Total & Unique), and overall Engagement Rate. Unique figures are on top and in white, while Total figures are on the bottom and in grey.  

In this example, we are checking the monthly performance of the application “LiveLike Website”. At first, the months are sorted in chronological order but we can rearrange this order to showcase the best months in terms of impressions, interactions, or engagement rates.

If you want to know how a program or widget performed, you simply need to go to these tabs and sort them (programs or widgets) by the number of impressions, interactions, or by engagement rate (depending on your objectives). This will allow you to understand more about your end-users’ expectations. Note that within each of the tabs, you will have several filtering options that will enable you to get to the specific data that matters the most.

What’s Next?

In the coming weeks, we will be integrating Chat Rooms Analytics with metrics such as Total and Unique Messages, Reactions, and an Audience segmentation tab to see which platforms and devices your audience members are using to enjoy your LiveLike features!

If you already have an Analytics Dashboard, you can continue to use Analytics Hooks to send analytics from LiveLike into your own systems.

Still have questions about how you can utilize the Analytics Dashboard to improve fan engagement on your platform? Get in touch today to learn more about how the LiveLike Dashboard can help enhance your user experience.

Ensuring Your Customers Are Set For Life

Today on the Future of Fandom, get a life, or at least some insurance for it. On this week’s episode, we’re talking to Ladder’s VP of Marketing, Olivia Borsje.

Ladder is a flexible insurance startup that combines the power of innovative technology and world-class financial expertise to make it easy for anyone to access life insurance. Olivia has been with Ladder for over three years and brings with her a wealth of marketing knowledge and expertise.

Connect with Olivia Borsje on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-borsje/

Read more about Ladder: https://www.ladderlife.com/

Full episode here:

Back to All Episodes

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Adam Conner (00:09):

Today on The Future of Fandom, get a life, or at least some insurance for it. My name’s Adam Conner, I’m your host, and on this episode we learn about some terms of digital engagement as a startup with Ladder and their VP of marketing, Olivia Borsje. Ladder lets you get a life insurance policy in as little as five minutes, which is obviously a great pull, but it got me thinking.

If you can get your customer to make a lifelong decision in such little time, how do you build community from minute six onwards? Olivia does a great job explaining that, as well as, how to set yourself apart as a startup via a little shock value, and all together, what a best in class digital insurance experience of the future looks like. So let’s stake a claim of our own and predict the future with Ladder and Olivia Borsje.

Adam Conner (01:06):

Hey Olivia, how are you?

Olivia Borsje (01:06):

I’m doing great. Sunny California today.

Adam Conner (01:10):

Oh, you know what? It’s been more frequent than not here to not be sunny. I’m on the East Coast, on the other side and we have just been back. I feel like every six hours it snows, so jealous already, but I’m hoping to get there quickly and I’m glad you’re here with us today to talk about, well, the sunny side of insurance, let’s say-

Olivia Borsje (01:28):

Yeah.

Adam Conner (01:28):

… and how you are building a community that sticks, and this will be a first for our podcast to talk about the insurance base specifically, and it carries with it maybe a few stereotypes that you can help me break apart.

Olivia Borsje (01:43):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (01:44):

But first, just for those who don’t know, obviously people know what insurance is and life insurance is, but why don’t you give us your spin on what Ladder is, and how it differentiates, and we’ll go from there.

Olivia Borsje (01:54):

Sounds good. So Ladder was created in response to a problem, which is the fact that over a hundred million underinsured and uninsured Americans know that they need to buy life insurance. 46% of them will tell you that they’ll suffer really harsh financial troubles within just six months of losing a primary breadwinner and yet those people still don’t have the coverage that they need. And that’s due to the fact that the barriers to buying life insurance have been so high.

You know, if you think about you and I in this day and age, we can pretty much buy anything we want directly on our phone, but when it comes to life insurance, it’s still very common for it to take weeks, six to eight weeks is what we typically see. It involves a ton of middlemen, it involves paperwork and involves medicals, so it’s just really fallen behind modern consumer expectations.

“You know, you’re talking about busting some myths, another common barrier is the cost of life insurance. Millennials in particular will overestimate the cost of life insurance by almost 10X. Whereas simple term life insurance for a young, healthy person, depending on level of coverage, can just be one to $2 a day.”

— Olivia Borsje (2:49)

Olivia Borsje (03:09):

And then the last point is almost this paralysis if you will, life insurance at its core is just this very simple promise for a company to step in if the worst happens, to take care of your family, but there’s been a proliferation of just very complex offerings, bundled with investment type of products, and so consumers don’t even really know where to start. They don’t know if they need term life, or whole life, or any kind of other life, they don’t know how much coverage they should get, they’re worried about being stuck with more coverage than they need, they’re worried about hidden fees.

Olivia Borsje (03:43):

And so there’s kind of this paralysis and all these three factors, right? The time it takes, how expensive people think it takes, how confusing it is, all of these three factors just contribute to this huge coverage gap that we see in the US today, that’s amounting to 16 trillion with a T. So what Ladder did, was invest in technology that would allow us to underwrite people in real time digitally. And this underwriting innovation is really what underpins everything else.

We still have upwards of 60% of employees today that are focused on underwriting in one way or the other, and it’s this ability to underwrite people in real time that powers our consumer experience. You know, the fact that you can get, if you’re approved with Ladder, you can get life insurance, it’s just five minutes on your phone from start to finish.

Olivia Borsje (04:36):

It’s also what underpins our ability to give you our best pricing adjusted for the risk. And it’s really… You know risk is really something that we need to be wise about if we want to make a lasting promise to our consumers. And so we have to remember that Insurtech is part tech, but part insurance, and insurance is about again, being smart on the risks. So that’s a little bit about Ladder. We’ve been growing very, very fast. We’ve been investing in a ton of fun stuff on the product and brand side, so we can keep talking about it if you want, but I’ll pause there.

Adam Conner (05:09):

Yeah. I really want to know, I mean the biggest thing that stuck out to me, which I want to jump on, is the real time aspect of the business which is highly valuable for the end consumer-

Olivia Borsje (05:21):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (05:22): …

but I hear five minutes. Is that right? So you’re telling me, somebody wants to get a life insurance policy, and I’m dumbing it down for, well, people like me. So if I want to get a life insurance policy and I’m like, well, I need to do it fast. I can get it done in five minutes with you guys. Huh?

Olivia Borsje (05:34):

That was, yeah. That five minutes was our fastest application ever from-

Adam Conner (05:38):

Wow.

Olivia Borsje (05:39):

… you landing on our website, filling out our application, you getting an instant offer from us saying, yes, and walking away. We actually have consumer testimonials that tell us, I got my life insurance policy while waiting in line at the grocery store, or in the security line at the airport. Those-

Adam Conner (05:57):

How about that.

Olivia Borsje (05:57):

… are true customer stories that we hear every day.

Adam Conner (06:00):

Well, and you know, to me, I have seen this as a trend, but not in insurance-

Olivia Borsje (06:07):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (06:08):

… it’s been in other areas, the financial sector, where a big selling point has been, set this thing up quickly.

Olivia Borsje (06:16):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (06:16):

I’ve seen it in banking mostly. And-

Olivia Borsje (06:18):

Yeah.

Adam Conner (06:18):

… that speed has been the message with which others have built an entire brand identity, you know-

Olivia Borsje (06:25):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (06:25):

… get this done quickly and boom, how easy is that? Yeah, sure, you can get it in line at the grocery store. And it’s so popular, and I don’t mean to pander to the rest of the industry, but why doesn’t everybody do that?

Olivia Borsje (06:41):

Because it’s very difficult to do, and that’s what can be deceiving about life insurance, and that’s what’s been at times almost controversial for us as far as the strategy that we’ve taken to focus on underwriting first, is because it doesn’t bear fruit until you’ve invested in it for a little bit.

So it doesn’t look… It’s not obvious on the surface what you’re actually working on, but figuring out how to find alternate data sources, to accurately underwrite people to the standards of underwriting that have existed in the industry for a very long time today, so have machines replicates what humans and decades of data have done, is a very difficult problem and you get better at it over time, as you have more data, as you learn, as you do your post issue audits, and so we’ve been incredibly disciplined in investing in that.

Olivia Borsje (07:33):

And again, once you get that right, then you can confidently make an offer to a consumer, at a great price, in five minutes, and you can feel confident about your risk, but that is, it’s a lot of hard work. It’s not just about propping a pretty website and then throwing people back into an old school application, which has happened elsewhere.

Adam Conner (07:55):

Yeah, I was… I’m guessing that it takes a lot more than a polished front end to figure out-.

Olivia Borsje (08:00):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (08:00):

… how to do that well, and [in scale 00:08:02] there are a bunch of interesting business growth questions I could ask here, but I want to focus instead on, well, the word that we focus on for this show, which mostly starts with the Fandom, because-

Olivia Borsje (08:13):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (08:14):

… of course there are many ways in which organizations and insurance, or otherwise, seek to build passionate consumers and fans. If the process is so quick, I get it done in five minutes, or let’s say that I’m a slow guy and I get it done in 10, all right?

Adam Conner (08:30):

I go through that process and I wring my hands together and say, “Okay, great, it’s done check,” because this is a big life check mark, isn’t it? I mean, at least it’s what-

Olivia Borsje (08:37):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (08:38):

… I’ve been told. You got to have life insurance, okay. I come through Ladder, boom, I get it done in five, 10 minutes. How easy is that? But my biggest question here, is that assuming that you are building a community of people who are, well, fans of Ladder, how do you build community beyond that, when the-

Olivia Borsje (08:53):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (08:54):

… whole plug is to say, well, we’re going to get it done quick, and then you got it, what comes next?

‘Yeah. It’s such a great question. So yeah, life insurance traditionally has been kind of this one and done purchase, or this eight week and done purchase if you look at the traditional way of getting it, and indeed we really want to help you get through that painful part really fast, and actually make the painful part not painful. We have really high NPSs, it’s a pretty delightful experience, but when you think about it, then we’re entering into a relationship with the consumer that’s going to last 10, 20, 30 years.”

— Olivia Borsje (8:38)

Olivia Borsje (09:28):

So there’s an incredible opportunity for life insurance brands to expand on that relationship and add value to the consumer and vice versa. And it’s not just an opportunity, it’s also very legitimate if you think about our category, we just ensured your life, so we have a lot of credibility and a lot of aligned incentives in helping you live your longest, healthiest, best life.

Olivia Borsje (10:01):

So you can imagine how broad the types of innovations and cross sales opportunities might be in this category. So at Ladder, we thought about that two vectors, one being product, one being brand, of course the two are very intricately linked. On the product side, I think a quintessential example is our Laddering feature. So, we give users the ability to modify their coverage over time.

So if you imagine you’re sending off your kids to college, or you’re paying off your mortgage, well, you don’t need as much life insurance as you used to, and so we allow you to just decrease that coverage and decrease your premiums and save money in the same proportion. That’s particularly popular when we work with partners.

So for example, a [inaudible 00:10:50] which has Ladder pretty deeply integrated, not only will they be able to offer life insurance right from that platform, but as they continue to give you financial advice and help you manage your entire financial life, you can manage your life insurance dynamically right there, so decrease it or apply for more.

Olivia Borsje (11:06):

So that’s kind of one examples of product innovation that build on that one and done relationship. There are other things that I can’t quite talk about, but that you can imagine around health and general wellness and kind of the integrations that could add on to our product today.

“On the brand side, I really think of this category less as a financial category, but more as a lifestyle one, because of what I just said, the fact that we’re ensuring your life and that there’s so much heart and emotion in this category that we can engage with consumers beyond just talking about money and their finances.”

— Olivia Borsje (11:28)

Olivia Borsje (11:51):

And so if you look at how we’ve developed the Ladder brand, the type of content that we put out there, our look and feel, it looks a lot closer to a lifestyle or almost fashion brand than it would your traditional kind of financial institution, which is also something that we’ve seen built trust with consumers and in some cases, especially younger generations, can be a little weary of the old established financial company and they’re really looking for brands that get them, that they can relate to, that look like all the other products that they consume.

And that’s really the direction we’re trying to take our brand than just a life insurance category in general.

Adam Conner (12:30):

It brings up a number of interesting dynamic levers to one’s life and some of which we can talk and some of which we won’t, but yes, it becomes easier to me when I think about, well, how should staying healthy reward you in other ways? And we’ve talked about this-

Olivia Borsje (12:44):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (12:44):

… on the podcast and in other measures, mostly within the world of credit and rewards with retail partners and things like that, obviously-

Olivia Borsje (12:51):

Yeah.

Adam Conner (12:52):

… life insurance have other implications, particularly in the B2B World. But again, we’re here mostly to talk about the Fandom and here’s another aspect of that, which I find to be prevalent in insurance more than anywhere else, and that is, there are a ton, a ton, and you mostly see it on a television of ad campaigns which seek to use humor, in some cases to use shock, to use gimmicks to hook a consumer, for example, well, I might not know everything that Progressive does, to throw a name out there, but God, don’t I know their characters from their TV commercials.

Adam Conner (13:33):

And in your case, you took the tact of using a bit of shock value. So I want to focus on this part next and listeners, you may be familiar with this, but we’ll describe it a little more. You had a campaign to market yourself that was called, The So Good Campaign, and So Good dot dot dot, I’ll let you finish the sentence, and created quite a bit of shock about you, I would say, in the marketing for a life insurance product, and I’d like to use that lens to get your perspective on how to use shock value in marketing to build awareness, no matter who you are, because that’s always the foundation of Fandom.

Olivia Borsje (14:09):

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for bringing up this campaign. We’ve been very proud of it. It’s been working really nicely for us. So I’ll just take a big step back and talk about really the opportunity behind a campaign, which is the fact that there is no, beloved consumer, life insurance brand today. You know, if you go to a party today and you ask someone outside of the industry, what’s your favorite life insurance brand, they’ll look at you with a blank stare because the question doesn’t even make sense.

And again, we’ve talked about that this is a category that’s about the most selfless expression of love that you could possibly have. It’s about your family, it’s about your home, it’s about who you are as a person. So it’s crazy to me that in a world where we can love our shoes, or our thermostat, with a brand like Nest for example, we have at best, indifference for life insurance companies.

Olivia Borsje (15:00):

So we see an incredible opportunity as Ladder, to establish yourself as the beloved life insurance brand. On the other hand of that, we also recognize that building brand, is very expensive, and takes a lot of time. You mentioned Progressive, Progressive spends north of two billion dollars on ads every year. So as a startup, we know that if we want to pierce through, if we want to compete, we can’t compete with media dollars and sheer power of repetition, we have to compete with outstanding creative that’s really going to grab people’s attention.

So I’ll talk about the campaign a little more. So it is born out of a consumer insight, which is the fact that almost one in two couples that get life insurance will joke about taking each other out for the life insurance money. So we’ve designed those spots that is essentially about this dad that keeps coming home to his house that has been booby trapped by the entire family, including the dog, even the dog’s on it.

“You find out at the end that it’s because he has great life insurance with Ladder and the tagline is, Life insurance so good, they’re gonna want you dead. So, that’s kind of the shock value that you’re referring to, but what really works for me about this campaign is number one, just the memorability.

The memorability that comes through the humor, and the memorability that comes through having this inside joke that people make, be played out externally. You kind of… Good humor plays on that tension and that release, right, when that tagline kind of drops. The second thing is that it carries a true consumer promise, right? It’s not humor for the sake of humor, it’s telling you there’s something new there. It’s telling you this is not any kind of old life insurance, this is life insurance, so good, your family might come after you.”

— Olivia Borsje (16:05)

Olivia Borsje (16:54):

And then third, as I mentioned, it is grounded in a consumer insight. I think great ads resonate when there’s a real truth at their core and this is a truth, this is a joke that people actually make. So we loved the idea, I also love the fact that it had legs creatively. Right? You can imagine a whole series of these spots and we launched it at the beginning of last year.

As I mentioned before, brand advertising and awareness building is a different tactic than the traditional direct acquisition performance marketing, which we’re very used to at startups. And so it’s measured on a different time horizon with different metrics, but that said, I can already say that it’s been quite successful for us and it’s been resonating really well with our target market. So I’m looking forward to hopefully continue to build on it.

Adam Conner (17:46):

The first time I saw that ad, I was like, hang on, what, let me, what was that? And so I had to go back and rewind it again because I thought there’s no way that somebody would put out an ad like that, but that is the shock value, isn’t it? And I have found for the newest generation of consumers, no matter what they’re consuming, that this sort of, shall we say memeable message-

Olivia Borsje (18:06):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (18:06):

… is like jet fuel. I mean, it is some of the highest octane optics you could put out as a business and it sticks. I mean, who else does this really well outside of insurance? I mean, there are some tech players that do it, for sure. I think of like, well, somebody close to where I am just down the street, do a lingo, they use their mascot, an owl, to be just generally rambunctious on social media, completely separate from what the business actually does. And they have some of the highest social engagement out there. And so it-

Olivia Borsje (18:40):

Yeah.

Adam Conner (18:40):

… makes me wonder, as a startup, what are some things that startups need to be thinking about when doing brand building, when this sort of shock value marketing or nonsense meme messaging… Yeah, it sometimes makes for better messaging than anything relating to the offering. I’m curious because it’s not just that your startup will quickly grow, but you’re also within an industry, which is well, well grounded and has been for hundreds of years, you got to break through somehow, so I’m-

Olivia Borsje (19:14):

Yeah.

Adam Conner (19:14):

… just curious to get your thoughts on that.

Olivia Borsje (19:16):

Yeah, of course, it is a hard balance to strike. I think traditionally, if you look at the traditional life insurance or just general insurance industry, it’s very, very heavy brand, right? They’re really capitalized on that and they’ve started to catch up to performance marketing. And then if you look at startups, we’re very comfortable with performance marketing and we’re just kind of catching up on brand and figuring out how to invest there.

So we’re kind of coming at it from two opposite angles. You know, it’s in our DNA, as to companies, to just love clear cut metrics that we can measure really quickly. So usually that’s going to be all your direct response stuff. You’re creative is going to be very oriented towards your offering. You’re going to be able to calculate your return on ad spend by being kind of smart with all sorts of attributions, to just know, hey, I spent this kind of money, I got this much cash back, I’m right side up on my [inaudible 00:20:10] economics, feeling great.

Olivia Borsje (20:12):

And there’s a point where you need to, you realize that you’re not just building for short term growth and harvesting the current demand that you have, but you want to build, actually in our case with Ladder, a transformational lasting company. And in order to do that, your marketing is going to have to operate at two levels.

You’re going to have to continue to do the direct response stuff really well, but you’re going to have to start investing in brand, because brand will lift all boats. You know, when your direct response program starts to diminish in returns, brand is really what’s going to come to support your conversion rates, it’s going to come to support your organic growth, it’s going to come to help get more partners in the door and candidates in the door.

Olivia Borsje (20:58):

So it’s really a multiplying function and a differentiating moat, that I think startups need to figure out how to invest in, not too early, but as soon as they start thinking about the future and they have the financial backbone to do it at a level that’s going to pierce through. And that’s definitely not going to be a progressive level kind of investment, but if you’re smart about your creative, about your spend, you can really pack a punch with it.

The one thing I will say though, just to disambiguate is, I see brand advertising and just brand dots as two very different things, right? Brand is everything, brand is who you are, brand is your promise, brand is your product, brand it’s your look and feel. That is something that companies should invest in, in day one, really understanding clearly who they are, and who they’re for, and how to show up in the world. And I think once you’ve passed kind of that level, then brand advertising is just a different tactic that you layer onto your marketing mix.

Adam Conner (22:03):

Yeah. I really appreciate the deep dive there just because well, listening to this show right now is probably the next startup, not necessarily insurance but you know, in somewhere and I would be, and not that I’m a startup founder, but I would be really tempted by certain things and probably would misconstrue those, the nuances of brand as you’ve just said. So that was really nice, thanks for bringing that up and-

Olivia Borsje (22:30):

Yeah.

Adam Conner (22:30):

… given your expertise there, obviously, and as the person captaining the ship at Ladder, I’d like to know without diving into that which you cannot speak about, I want to peer into the future with you a little bit, because I predict that others in this industry will say, hey, we like what Ladder’s doing with regard to that speed to entry-

Olivia Borsje (22:52):

Uh-huh.

Adam Conner (22:53):

… and that digital experience Ladder leads in now, may become so popular that others might try to pick up the reins and take it themselves.

Adam Conner (23:03):

So it becomes then about an ideal overall experience. And maybe that relates to what the brand is overall, but peering into the future with you, I’d love to speculate a little bit and get your thoughts on what the ideal future insurance digital experience ecosystem looks like, because I’m still wondering, what really does come after that initial process to keep somebody engaged over time? Is it content? Is it layering of things?

And I think that’s a really great dynamic thing to lever, like I said at the beginning, but I’m curious what else you think in the digital landscape will keep folks in touch and conscious of their position with Ladder or any insurance player?

“I think there’s one thing to be said about insurance and the fact that there’s something about the, said it and forget it, that’s also nice. It’s something that you want to make sure you have, you do quickly, and then it’s just relief, such a huge burden from your shoulders, that you’re happy not to kind of think about it anymore, but we’ve had customers say, whenever I see my charge at the end of the month, fund my card, I know I’m covered, I feel good, I know my family’s protected if something happens to me.”

— Olivia Borsje (23:44)

Olivia Borsje (24:14):

And so sometimes just that is truly enough, honestly, to keep a consumer engaged and staying with you throughout the duration of their term. There’s also high switching costs, right, to leaving and to getting another type of life insurance company.

Olivia Borsje (24:31):

So there’s a natural high retention and kind of lock in for life insurance. So the question to us is more about, how do you add value on top of that, both to attract consumers to Ladder compared to other competitive offerings, and then to add more value to them and add more value to Ladder in exchange throughout this decade or 30 year long relationship?

So I do think some of that is going to come from all types of possible innovations and integrations in the world of physical wellness, in the world of emotional wellness, in the world of financial wellness. Right? So you can really imagine all the things that will help you live longer and healthier that we can add on to kind of our Ladder platform. You know, you could go as far as saying, hey, research has proven that having a dog helps you live longer.

Olivia Borsje (25:25):

It can go that far, right? We could do something with pets in the future. Right? Nothing we’re doing right now, I’m really being illustrative. And on top of kind of these wellness types of things, you’ve mentioned earlier, abilities to reward you over time for healthy or safe behavior.

So how many steps you’re taking every day, or are you driving safely, or are you paying your mortgage on time? Are you… So there’s a whole ecosystem of data as well that can be used just to give consumers some money back, which is always something that everybody appreciates.

Olivia Borsje (26:04):

So I can really see innovations in those two rounds and then the last [mode 00:26:09] around all of that, as we discussed, is just brand, right, is feeling like this is a great brand that gets me, that made me laugh, that engages with me. And then not only do I want to stay with that company, but I want to refer it to my friends.

You know, it’s a very word of mouth type of product. So really those three layers of a great product with built in with retention of value add around it, and a strong brand to cement it, is where we see our long term success.

Adam Conner (26:36):

I appreciate the outlook and I want to round out with one, fill in the blank, which brings us home with regard to the way that fans are made outside of the sports’ realm, which is this, and I’d just love to get your take. Finish this sentence and I’ll finish it with a blank. I know that my customer has turned into a genuine fan when they blank.

Olivia Borsje (26:59):

When they shout out from the rooftop that they love you and everybody else should get your product.

Adam Conner (27:06):

Well, can’t we all hope that happens with our businesses and I hope it does with yours as well, and maybe to get to the rooftop, they will use a ladder. But Olivia, thank you so much for joining us here, it was great to get your perspective, thanks for giving us all life.

Olivia Borsje (27:22):

Thank you so much for having me, it was a pleasure.

Adam Conner (27:28):

Thanks again to Olivia Borsje from Ladder for joining us. And hey, if you’ve been holding off on life insurance because it takes too long, I see you, you got no excuses anymore. And thanks to you, the listener, of course for exploring the Future of Fandom with us, I’d encourage you to stay connected beyond minute five.

So subscribe to the Future of Fandom, wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can also find all of our content at livelike.com/podcast and every episode has a sub page now. So you can go to the website and find that and across socials, we’re also on LinkedIn @LiveLike and Twitter @LiveLikeInc. I look forward to predicting the future again with you soon, until then, I’m Adam Conner saying, so long and thanks for being a fan.

At LiveLike, we strive to offer our clients the strongest possible solution to fan engagement on the market. And to do this, we make sure our product is always improving by constantly implementing new features and enhancing the use of our backend/CMS.

This month, we are pleased to introduce a major new feature to our live sports viewing solution.

Send Automated Insights During Live Events

Yup, you read that right! Thanks to our collaboration with Stats Perform, you can now automate the creation and publication of match insights and facts to provide your audience with compelling and contextually-relevant information while they are watching your stream.

These updates will be powered by Opta and will rely mainly on exciting statistics and data that come alongside the game.

Other examples of these updates could be: “G. Burgstaller has assisted his fourth goal in the German Bundesliga Zwei this season!” or “St. Pauli has a record of W6, D0, L0 when leading at half-time in the German Bundesliga Zwei this season.”

All of the information will be automatically sent to our backend and, as soon as we receive the information, we will process it and deliver it through our Alerts Widget feature.

On your side, you will simply have to connect your Stats Perform Account to our CMS and input the Stats Perform Match ID when creating the automation.

So, What’s in It For You?

To keep it simple: Less human control over the CMS, an increase in pace in terms of widget publication, and the allocation of your resources elsewhere when your event is live.

What are the next steps? We still have some work to do in order to provide you with the full suite of automated widgets.

Firstly, we are in the process of creating specific scenarios to turn relevant data into prediction games, live polls, and trivia questions. We will be releasing these during the upcoming weeks and months, so stay tuned!

Secondly, our integration at the moment is solely suitable for soccer. Our goal is to expand the number of integrated data feeds to be able to cover more sports and provide you with even more possibilities. That being said, if you wish to use our solution for other sports right now, we would be pleased to further investigate the possibilities together.

Also This Month

In other news from April, we have significantly improved our chat message feature! Now you can use the REST API to retrieve messages as well as count the number of messages sent for a given chat room.

In other words, you will be able to count messages for all time, before a certain timestamp, after a certain timestamp, or between two timestamps.

Message counts will also enable you to show users unread message indicators and highlight new chat activities with notifications.

We hope you enjoy these new updates, and please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. If you are not yet using LiveLike but are interested in integrating our solution, you can also reach out and book a demo with our sales team.

Crafting Brand Love Via a Common Enemy

Today on The Future of Fandom, we craft brand love, find a common enemy and talk a little bit about Spongebob. We’re here today with Kim Rosenblum, Chief Marketing Officer of Betterment, an American financial advisory company that provides digital investment and cash management services.

Most people in their 20s and 30s will deeply appreciate Kim’s contributions as a leader at Viacom where she led creative for properties like Nickelodeon. That’s what makes her journey into fintech all the more fascinating. The perspective of a media style approach to building a community of investors is one not often seen, but many of its principles work incredibly well when it comes to influencing one’s financial choices.

As someone who’s had the pulse of the next generation since the ’90s, Kim is incredibly well-positioned to peer into the crystal ball and chat about what the leaders of this industry will need to do to stick.

Connect with Kim Rosenblum on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimrosenblumnyc/

Read more about Betterment: https://www.betterment.com/

Full episode here:

Back to All Episodes

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Adam Conner (00:09):

Today on The Future of Fandom, we craft brand love, find a common enemy and talk a little bit about SpongeBob. My name’s Adam Conner, I’m your host and together we’ll explore how Betterment is setting up the next generation with a long-term investing focus (and building a fandom regardless) with our guest, their Chief Marketing Officer, Kim Rosenblum.

Adam Conner (00:32):

Most folks in their 20s and 30s will deeply appreciate Kim’s contributions as a leader at Viacom where she led creative for properties like Nickelodeon. That’s what makes her journey into FinTech all the more fascinating. The perspective of a media style approach to building a community of investors is one not often seen, but I think you’ll agree that many of its principles work incredibly well when it comes to influencing your financial choices.

Adam Conner (00:58):

As someone who’s had the pulse of the next generation since the ’90s, Kim is in incredibly well-positioned to peer into the crystal ball and chat about what the leaders of this industry will need to do to stick. So let’s do that now as we predict the future with Betterment and Kim Rosenblum. Hey Kim, how are you? I’m so excited to have you on. Thank you for joining me.

Kim Rosenblum (01:21):

Thank you, Adam. It’s nice to be with you today.

Adam Conner (01:24):

I am lucky and listeners, you are lucky. You might not know it yet, but you are lucky to be listening to this voice for the reasons I’m about to lay out. Number one, we’re going to learn all about Betterment. We’re going to learn about how fandom applies to super long-term investing. I’ll get into all that, crafting brand love, having a common enemy. We’re going to talk about a couple of things that you might relate to.

Adam Conner (01:46):

But listeners who are, oh, let’s say in your mid to late 20s, early 30s might be the most nostalgic when we talk about some of the history that brought Kim to Betterment. So let me start there. Without giving too much away. Kim, can you tell us a little bit about you? Obviously we want to learn about what Betterment is, but sort of where you came from and why you came into this world after being a part of a quite different one just before.

Kim Rosenblum (02:14):

Sure. Thanks, Adam. I am CMO at Betterment, which is the largest independent digital investment advisor. We’re just over 10 years old and we are really a pioneer in FinTech, especially in the long-term investing category regarding FinTech. So a lot of people know Betterment as a founder company. Jon Stein founded the company and it’s now grown to 700K plus customers and over 33 billion said it’s under management. So it’s a significant FinTech. We’re still, like I said, independent, which we’re very, very proud of. We are driven by innovation and really making people’s lives better through financial planning and wellness.

Kim Rosenblum (03:00):

And it is unusual for me to be in a FinTech space since I spent the majority of my career, well over two decades in media. But Sarah Levy, the new CEO that Jon Stein appointed about 18 months ago had also been in media. And she was a former colleague at Viacom and she recruited me when she came over to Betterment. So it was an interesting leap for me. And I think I brought a lot of experience from media and a lot of experience from branding since I was lucky enough to work on some of the best media brands in the world.

Adam Conner (03:34):

Well, listeners, I told you. Now, in case I haven’t laid this out clearly. We haven’t laid this out clearly enough, those 20 years at Viacom included sometime at every American’s favorite network for cartoons. I say it that way. Nickelodeon, of course. So we talk about media, man, such a passionate follower base there and it immediately makes me wonder how we’re applying some of the principles that you applied to growing those various audiences, because it wasn’t just Nickelodeon. It was the various properties that Viacom had in that world to this world.

Adam Conner (04:09):

And so I wonder like what was the first hurdle like once you joined Betterment that you foresaw and then we’ll talk about how you crafted love to get over that?

Kim Rosenblum (04:22):

Sure. Well like a word on my experience at Nickelodeon, I was incredibly lucky to walk into Nickelodeon in the 1990s, which you Adam and probably many listeners were actually at home watching Nickelodeon while I was sitting in a cubicle making Nickelodeon. I mean, it was like the startup before the word startup existed. We were just making it up frankly and growing really quickly. And it was really exciting because it was a brand-driven concept. Nickelodeon was actually acquired by MTV right before I got there. Comedy Central was a sister channel.

Kim Rosenblum (05:04):

So this idea of creating a brand, a concept, targeting a specific audience and then the product, or in this case, the programming fulfilled that brand mission and spoke specifically to an audience in a passionate way. That was like a very new concept. And so we really were inventing it and it worked. It was great. I have a ton of fond memories. I would say my proudest, funnest one is that I was in the room when we watched the SpongeBob pilot. And I can tell you that no one was like, “This is change the world.” Everyone was like, “Yeah, that’s funny. Let’s try it.” We actually were in the room, decided to put our marketing effort behind another show called CatDog, which is a great cartoon, but no SpongeBob.

Adam Conner (05:54):

Well, in the world with a little CatDog I didn’t feel that way.

Kim Rosenblum (05:57):

So I actually did like a big marketing launch campaign for CatDog. I did a lot of like business to business also with ad sales marketing and affiliate sales marketing. I worked a lot on Nick at Nite and the spinoff channel TV Land. So yeah, I just learned a lot there. And it was, like I said, a startup culture that very quickly became a media BMF.

Kim Rosenblum (06:18):

So taking all of that learning was really interesting coming to Betterment, which is also moving past startup to growth stage and also building a brand that’s based on a particular audience with products, in this case, FinTech products that really serve a specific audience and trying to generate love around that. Not just being transactional, but actually a relationship between a financial brand and a customer.

Adam Conner (06:45):

Yeah, let me go right there because I have had the privilege of talking with a few players in the broad FinTech spectrum on this podcast. Now, when I have that it has been around a specific offering or asset class, but the point for the most part has been the novelty of the product that you can invest as part of the business. Now, I am sure though we haven’t quite gotten there that there is an avatar. I mean, that’s what we would call in the podcast game like a person that you are specifically going after, an audience.

Adam Conner (07:22):

That side very, very well because, well, you targeted that as part of every episode of SpongeBob targeting a specific type of person. And sure there was a product there, but it was searching for a person first. I’d like to get your perspective on the industry because you probably know more about it than me or you definitely do with regard to where do you see that development falling? Is it in finding a specific person or is it finding that specific product and regardless what are you trying to do with Betterment?

Kim Rosenblum (07:54):

Yeah. Honestly, Adam, I feel like it can come in both directions. I don’t know that I would say it’s definitely product first or audience first. I do know that those two things have to fit really well together. And we like to say product market fit. But like if you unpack what product market fit means, it really just means that you really understand what your audience, your customer really wants and that you design a product that fits need.

Kim Rosenblum (08:20):

So that might be for us as we’re developing crypto investing portfolios, which will be launching later this year. That isn’t just about a crypto product. It’s about saying, “Okay, our customer is a long-term hold, managed, diversified investor.” So how does crypto and portfolios and what is the experience around that product mean to that customer? So for us that might mean just the way we develop the product, the way that you onboard onto it.

Kim Rosenblum (08:52):

We are there for the long-term, we there to help you make you feel comfortable. We’re there to like bring forward like our core values of trust, safety, security long-term. So I think the product like we’re developing a great product, but we’re developing it with the brand tenet and the customer in mind. So I think they go together. I would say the difference between when I was doing it early days Nickelodeon and now at Betterment is obviously it’s a much more fragmented world. There’s way more competition in every sphere. And I think what’s happening, especially in FinTech, is that in the beginning even for Betterment 10 years ago, it was a little bit of like a digital marketing play and you sort of went out and you acquired customers.

Kim Rosenblum (09:34):

Now it’s not just about acquiring customers. It’s too competitive to think about that way. And if you’re not just acquiring customers through a product, what value are you bringing to them? What’s differentiated about you? Why would you pick Betterment over one of our competitive brands? Whether that’s a smaller player like a Wealthfront or a legacy like a Marcus. And so we have to provide a point of difference and it has to have value. So to me the idea that brand or product, I wouldn’t say one comes before the other. I think they have to work together.

Kim Rosenblum (10:06):

And brand, by the way, is like a 365/24/7. And so is the product. Like our product is there for you for the long-term. So they go really nicely together. Transactional brands, which might be more in sort of like FinTech banking categories probably have different goals. So this doesn’t apply to everyone. This is where we’re coming from.

Adam Conner (10:30):

Sure. And you’re right. I mean, with regard to brand being 24/7/365 and I have found just via my conversations with CMOs just like you just how omnipresent and important it is. And to me what that signals is like, well, it’s hard not to go after that type of person in that audience first. But Hey, in an increasingly competitive space. Yeah, now there has to be that balance from both ends, as you said, the product and the person.

“I think one of the things that’s really important in branding is not just knowing who you’re talking to and what your value proposition is to them, but to know like what else they offer they have out there and what’s your point of difference? I’ll go back to my Nickelodeon days. It’s not like at Nickelodeon we didn’t know that Disney or Cartoon Network existed. Of course, you did. And it wasn’t like you’re all in or you’re nothing. It wasn’t like you could so easily, it’s so easy to just pick up the remote and flip around.”

— Kim Rosenblum (11:00)

Kim Rosenblum (11:32):

So you have to understand that like you serve a specific difference between those competitors. I think one of the things that’s interesting for Betterment is just looking at some of our data, like the other apps that our Betterment customers have on their phone include things like Coinbase and Robinhood and Acorns. Like I get that. We’re not all things. Our customer has other brands that they have a relationship with and that’s awesome and they should. We just need to have a clear point of difference and a clear value proposition.

Adam Conner (12:02):

Sure. And because it’s hard to nail down like a specific person when you’re building something, obviously you have an ideal customer in mind. But really what this triggers to me is like, well there’s a broader set of behaviors. There’s a persona that you’re that you’re going after as well. And I’ll tell you why it’s really hard to nail that at least from my perspective, because my beliefs on investing in my relative risk aversion or hunger they’re in has swung wildly, even in the last few years as you get hooked by the craze of crypto and even things like the meme stocks of early ’21.

Adam Conner (12:44):

Now, obviously I know that through something like Betterment you’re looking at it in a slightly different way, but regardless like I have swung wildly between keeping my emotions in check and chasing a check. And for you, I’m curious what the relative importances of each of these are. A persona that focuses on like just the money side and the persona that focuses on the emotions of investing. And given the fact that obviously you’re leading FinTech forward, how do you think that your leaders of this world will prioritize between them or do you think they will?

Kim Rosenblum (13:20):

Yeah. I understand. I can be the same way I can have a reactive day and I can also be a long-term strategist. Like I think that’s human. I think what’s happened is it’s on our fingertips. There’s apps that allow us to access things quickly. So impulsive behavior is possible, whereas that wasn’t true before the proliferation of FinTech apps and brands. So I think like what you’re saying, Adam, is totally normal, but honestly what we stand for at Betterment is long-term and diversified and we manage it for you.

Kim Rosenblum (13:52):

So the people that like Betterment are people who want to have like that in their life. It doesn’t have to be the only thing in their life, but they value that. And they also value … so for us, it’s not like, okay, it’s this person this age, this demographic. Like those things are helpful, but the mindset to me is more important. And these are people that and maybe you’re one of them, Adam, that like you get that there’s some fun in transactional and some hype that you want to be a part of. But you also need and know that you want to have a long-term solution.

“In some ways, FOMO, the fear of missing out on a GameStop or whatever is almost like our perfect villain, because what we want to do is say, “That’s fine. You’re going to have those impulsive behaviors, but we’re here for the flip side of that.” We’re the other side of the coin. We’re here to be your long-term partner so that when you have those moments, go ahead, you can have that fun money. You have that try some stuff, chase the check, because we got your back in terms of the long-term.”

— Kim Rosenblum (14:23)

Kim Rosenblum (14:52):

So I think that’s like where we fit in our sort of anti-FOMO brand. It’s a weird thing because it’s anti-FOMO, but that doesn’t mean we’re not in the conversation. We can just be in the conversation from that point of view.

Adam Conner (15:06):

The use of the word villain even makes me under or stand a little better how you’re thinking about this and of course where you came from. I mean, this to me is the root of anybody’s fandom of a television program when they’re a kid. You unite around what you want to see quelled if it’s plankton or whether it’s, well, it’s this FOMO.

Adam Conner (15:32):

You’ve as a result then between Betterment and that time have had long tenures of building brands around these sorts of villains. Is that fair to say? I mean, is there an element of the FinTech world that is just as much in the ease of investing as it is in the thwarting of some common enemy? I’m curious about that from your perspective.

“Listen, Nickelodeon, I can tell you because I was there in the ’90s, it was all about us versus them. Us was the kids, them was the world. So it was kids versus the world. And that’s because kids didn’t feel at the time that they had any rights or any respect. And that was sort of coming off of a certain type of parenting, sort of like this passive parenting and kids were like, “I want to have a seat at the table and no one listens to me and I’m marginalized.” So we got the advantage of sort of like rallying around this idea that kids should be empowered and kids should be listened to.”

— Kim Rosenblum (15:56)

Kim Rosenblum (16:32):

By the way, it worked because now kids and I think many parents, millennial parents who are raising these kids they grew up with that feeling and they empower their kids. And by the way, now kids are like driving major purchase decisions. They are absolutely responsible for what car the family buys, what vacation the family goes on. Parents and kids have this incredible connection. There’s a lot of family time now. So what was the enemy then is not the enemy now, but what happened was that millennial mindset kind of came forward, I think into finances as millennials became adults and started earning real income and thinking about what’s going to work for them.

Kim Rosenblum (17:12):

They did not have confidence in the institutions and why should they have? Many millennials, come out into the 2008 housing bubble pop and didn’t have jobs and had student debt, and didn’t really like get a sense that the government was there to actually figure it out for them. And once again, they found themselves sort of like me versus the world.

Kim Rosenblum (17:34):

And so out of like that, I think the FinTech and then of course the tech revolution happening at the same time was kind of a perfect moment for finance and tech to collide and address this group of people who were looking for something that was like spoke to them, that they could feel confident in that it was personalized. And that wasn’t coming from like a giant institution with whom they had little reason to trust or little confidence in a benevolent relationship.

Adam Conner (18:03):

Right. Yeah, because when I think of the FinTech world in term of somebody to look like, “Oh, I’m not like them or it’s them against me.” I’m not necessarily at least at first I wasn’t thinking about FOMO over any of this. I was thinking about some hungry banker taking away a percentage of my money just because they were there to claim it. And so it’s very interesting how these things have developed.

Kim Rosenblum (18:26):

Yeah. And I think the other thing that like Betterment was absolutely founded on was accessibility. And it’s still happening, but there was so many decades of exclusivity. And that was another piece that I think that the intersection of finance and tech allowed was for people to say, “You know what? I don’t need to be welcomed in. I don’t need to be invited in by and advisor or have my parents introduce me to their financial advisor. I can actually take control of this and drive this for myself.”

“That’s been like a real game changer and I think you’ve seen all of the legacy institutions launch FinTech brands or trying to figure out their relevance. And I think there’s no putting that genie back in the bottom and there shouldn’t be. And I think the next generation is Gen Z who’s starting to come of age and graduating college and getting jobs, they’re looking for people to advise them where they’re at. So the rise of financial influencers or the fin talk makes perfect sense to me.”

— Kim Rosenblum (18:57)

Kim Rosenblum (19:30):

I know there are some people who feel like, “Well, I can’t believe people are getting their financial advice from a TikTok.” But that’s where the audience is and that’s where they’re seeking information. So not being there doesn’t make any sense to me or being offended by that or being sort of like snobby about that. It just means you don’t really understand that audience.

Adam Conner (19:49):

Sure. And I mean, assuming that you can get through probably what … Quite a bit of is probably not great advice if it is coming from somebody who’s a young investor who hasn’t just been there very long, it can be incredibly valuable. I’ve I’ve been there as well, plus there is that added bonus of it being always on, always there, always fresh. You can swipe, swipe, swipe and assuming that you’re still in that community, you get new things.

Adam Conner (20:14):

To me, it serves as a great compliment to something like what Betterment provides. It’s the short term content to answer to the long-term vision of what making an investment in Betterment offerings is like. And that’s actually where I want to ask you a question about this because it’s a privilege to be able to chat with you as a leader of building this community of people who are focused on that long-term.

Adam Conner (20:44):

And like others who I’ve talked to who have been specialized in certain assets where maybe you can’t track a ticker every day so too does it become less relevant to be checking in constantly, frequently if you are aligned with a long-term goal. This may mean in my mind that maybe one of your customers, one of your 750,000, you say 700,000 logs in once every couple weeks, once a month assuming they’ve made the initial investment in. And I assume that’s okay for you all, but how do you build a fan strategy within that? I say fans just because we like to focus I’m fandom here. I’m curious to get your thoughts on that.

Kim Rosenblum (21:29):

It is a little tricky because the best behavior, especially like we’re talking right now 2022, it’s been a wild couple months. That we went from what was a pretty boom boom 2021 to like a very volatile 2022. And the thing that I’m really heartened by with our customer base is that they’re not making a lot of moves right now. They’re actually sitting back and like riding it out, which is exactly what we’ve been advising and will continue to advise.

“Part of fandom doesn’t have to just be about likes and that kind of measuring engagement by daily interaction. It can also be about did we give a useful message and was it helpful and useful to you? So I think people are fans of a brand because it serves their life. Not necessarily because it just pops up in their feed. So I think it’s okay to sit back. We need to constantly reinforce that value and that long-term aspect. And we do that through the normal means through paid marketing, through organic social, but also in product through our content.”

— Kim Rosenblum (21:59)

Kim Rosenblum (22:40):

We have put out a little bit of content around the volatility right now and the message is stay the course. The message is don’t get distracted, don’t be impulsive. We have a behavioral economist on our staff and he calls it going on an information diet that he advises that in these crazy times it’s actually better to get a little less information.

Kim Rosenblum (23:03):

Don’t go like too hardcore, maybe half hour of news morning, in the evening, not before bed. Because it doesn’t feed your best instincts. It doesn’t serve your best instincts to be just constantly checking your feed and wondering what’s going to happen next when things are out of your control. And everyone likes to be in control of things. It’s hard, but I don’t think fandom and daily engagement are synonymous at all.

Adam Conner (23:30):

And do you see other places in the world? We’re going to exit the world of maybe FinTech right now or maybe just a general brand circumstance. Like when specifically that engagement or that metric shouldn’t be your number one. I mean, obviously in areas where it’s a long-term considered purchase or investment like here, I get it because my guess is that what does a business focus on? Well, it focuses on assets under management, focused on having that bottom line. You don’t need, “Oh, but look at all these views I got. Well, it’s great. But it’s more of a pulse check than a business line. When else or is there, I’m sure there, are circumstances when engagement probably shouldn’t be at the top?

Kim Rosenblum (24:11):

Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, one of the things I think is really fascinating is we have a sustainable investing portfolio of products, a portfolio of climate impact portfolio, broad impact and social impact. And to me that’s a really good example because we did actually ask for people’s participation. We brought in a partnership with Engine No.1, which is the activist investors that are taking on board seats. They took over board seats on mobile to cause change from within. So we are actively with things that are activist investing.

Kim Rosenblum (24:48):

So I kind of speak out of both sides of my mouth, but to me what’s really interesting is that’s an example of like actively engage and put your money into companies that support your values and coming from Engine No.1 that can represent you in the boardroom and do that in a way that means putting my money and I’m leaving it there because that kind of change takes time.

Kim Rosenblum (25:11):

So I think the other thing to your question about like when is it okay not to engage is long-term change. If you’re trying to affect long-term change, like reversing the climate damage, enforcing companies that are using fossil fuel to review that and reduce their dependence on them. That’s not going to happen in a short-term. You’ve got to be committed to that for the long run. So in some ways being an activist is actually a moment to also say maybe engagement and daily engagement isn’t the point. Maybe it’s about long-term commitment.

Adam Conner (25:45):

Yeah. That’s very interesting. I appreciate you speculating with me there for a moment. And I’ll ask you to indulge once more and as we start round out here, because we also focus on the future, which is speculation by definition. And since you are currently at the cutting edge of the next gen FinTech experience, especially one focused on the long-term, I’m interested in what you foresee for the future of those best-in-class digital. Let’s stick with digital experiences within finance.

Adam Conner (26:17):

What do you think people are going to want? I mean, you talk about Gen Z, they’re just coming into their own right now. They’re just starting to see their first sources of income. They’re starting to make these decisions. What are you currently see as what they want and do you anticipate they or people will want going forward?

Kim Rosenblum (26:33):

Yeah. Obviously crypto is very topical, but I actually think the bigger picture here and what people will want long-term is access to the way we are going to do business in the future. It isn’t so much about like a particular coin or a token. I think what we’re going to see is people really interested in the future of business, which is the crypto economy. So for us, as I mentioned before, we’ll be doing long-term diversified portfolio management with crypto assets. That’s alongside, that’s not mixed in just to be super clear. We’re offering that as a separate investment strategy because that’s what we think people want too.

Kim Rosenblum (27:13):

They don’t want it just sort of mixed in. It’s volatile. They understand that, but it’s going to even out and it’s going to be here for the long-term so we want to provide a product, back to that product market fit that they’re looking for. But I do think the future is going to be about that decentralized finance and that’s the way business is going to be done. So that’s how I think people will want to get into it. Not necessarily just sort of like chasing whatever is popping right now in terms of like an individual coin or cryptocurrency.

Kim Rosenblum (27:45):

So that’s like one speculation on my part and obviously we’re launching a product around that so I believe in it deeply. I also think I don’t think it’s going backwards. I think it’s only going forwards and the more access people have to be able to use digital payment I think you’ll see that really integrated. The idea of banking as a service integrated into experiences, whether that’s travel, moving money like within a consumer and retail experience I think will be commonplace. Yeah, so those are some of my sort of crystal ball predictions.

Adam Conner (28:22):

Well, I appreciate getting to peer into that crystal ball with you. And for learning all about this it’s, first of all, it’s a pleasure to talk with you just because of the tenure lead not to Betterment, but now like the ability to apply these sorts of principles to a world that I … Of course, this app-based trading and investing didn’t really, I don’t really think it existed until like seven, eight years ago really, at least in a prevalent manner to be able to apply some of these tried and true fan building, audience building, common enemy philosophies towards this world that really hasn’t had it is a treat to hear about in practice.

Adam Conner (29:00):

Because I could think about it all day. “You know, that makes sense.” But to know that there’s somebody out there doing it is really something cool. So personally, thank you for that. And for our audience, thank you so much for joining us and, well, telling the future with us.

Kim Rosenblum (29:13):

All right. Thanks Adam. It was a pleasure talking to you. I appreciate it.

Adam Conner (29:19):

Thanks so much to Kim Rosenblum from Betterment for joining us. I truly, truly appreciate what you’re doing now for the next generation just as you did for mine. And thanks to you the listener, of course, for exploring The Future of Fandom with us. I’d encourage you to stay tuned to this channel. So subscribe to The Future of Fandom wherever you listen. And you can also find our content at livelike.com/podcast and across socials. We’re also on LinkedIn @LiveLike and Twitter @LiveLikeInc.

Adam Conner (29:51):

I look forward to predicting the future with you again real soon. And until then, I’m Adam Conner saying so long and thanks for being a fan.

Leveling Up Investor Relations

Today on The Future of Fandom, we quit chasing memes and level up our understanding of the market with Public.com’s General Manager of Investor Relations Innovation, Katie Perry.

On this episode, we get a look at how Public.com is differentiating within one of the most commoditized financial services out there, stock trading. App-based stock trading has gone from virtually non-existent to everywhere within the last seven to eight years, and so has the community surrounding it. The forums of yesteryear have become the full content studios of today, giving new meaning to what investor relations really is and the power it wields. Katie has invested in this world early and makes a few calls as to what’s to come.

Connect with Katie Perry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherineperry/

Read more about Public.com: https://public.com/

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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Adam Conner (00:09):

Today on The Future of Fandom, we quit chasing memes and level up our understanding of the market. My name’s Adam Conner, I’m your host. And on this episode, we get a look at how Public.com is differentiating within one of the most commoditized financial services out there, stock trading, via their GM of IR innovation, Katie Perry.

Adam Conner (00:32):

App-based stock trading has gone from virtually non-existent to everywhere within the last seven to eight years, and so has the community surrounding it. The forums of yesteryear have become the full content studios of today, giving new meaning to what investor relations really is and the power it wields. Katie has invested in this world early and makes a few calls as to what’s to come. So let’s make a few asks of our own and predict the future with Public.com and Katie Perry.

Adam Conner (01:07):

Katie, thank you for joining me. How are you? I appreciate the time.

Katie Perry (01:11):

Hi Adam. I’m great. I’m really excited to be here. Can’t complain, it’s almost spring. So looking forward to this conversation.

Adam Conner (01:20):

Me too, I have to say that Public among, just a handful of others were among the first real apps I think about when trading stocks or making any sort of investment. So it’s cool to have that full circle now and be able to talk to you and get a sense of how are you a building community and to define that word fandom in the way that you all see it. For the listener, I’m going to say this up front. And by now you follow us in a plenty of podcasts and things like that in the financial sector, but we may talk about classes of stocks, certain stock trends, things like that. None of this is meant to be construed as financial advice, okay? This is all for educational purposes. And we’re really not even going to be talking about specific tickers or anything, but just so I can cover us. Katie, how do you do, is that good?

Katie Perry (02:06):

Perfect.

Adam Conner (02:06):

Okay, good.

Katie Perry (02:07):

Our chief compliance officer will be very happy and it’s great.

Adam Conner (02:11):

Excellent, check mark on that. All right. Now, to this wild world, which can be volatile at times, but is just to me it seems to be, through the last two years, not nearing the top of a hype cycle, but certainly more exciting than I remember in recent years, there has also developed this concurrent narrative about what the stereotypical next gen investor is. And part of what I want to do here at the top is, I mean, for somebody who doesn’t know who Public is, we could talk about that, but also let’s attempt to break that narrative up and separate meme chasers from genuine information seekers. Could we start around there, your perception of what the next gen investor looks like and how they’re using Public?

Katie Perry (02:59):

I would love to start there, because this is a conversation I just love to have. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions about people who are investing these days. Public.com, we’re an investing platform, we offer stocks, ETF, cryptos, soon to be NFTs are and collectibles. So we’re really trying to build one central place where you can build a diversified more modern portfolio. And we’ve been at the heart of this movement. I joined the company in fall 2019. GameStop, at that time it was a video game store. My brothers used to run to at the mall when we were growing up. There wasn’t this sort of wave of really popular stocks that broke through in pop culture. And we really got a front row seat to that. And I think over the past few months, year, what we’ve seen is a lot of narratives around who the new retail investors are. And a lot of times they’re very reductive narratives.

Katie Perry (04:01):

You see a lot of people saying, “These investors aren’t informed or they’re just gambling.” But we see a different, more nuanced picture of that at Public. What we see in our community is actually a lot of people who come into our app and maybe the first thing they buy is a, quote unquote “Meme stock” or a meme crypto even. Most of those people who find that to be their entry point actually diversify over time. And so the way we see that is that, these days there’s just more and different ways that people get interested in investing. And since investing is so mainstream, those hooks are more tied to pop culture, they might be more tied to meme stocks, but that doesn’t mean that’s where that person stays. Another just quick anecdote is that, a week or so ago I think it was, the Fed raised interest rates, we had a live show in our app and there was 2,500 people in the room listening. So it’s not that these audiences aren’t interested, they’re just looking for less friction to the information and more interesting formats.

Adam Conner (05:12):

Let me ask about that real quick, because I… It’s not common that you get at to see the viewer count on a conference call like you might a viewer count on a YouTube or a Twitch. So that number to me seems impressive, but just to give it relative importance, I mean, you’re barely scraping that with any other typical financial type of call, right? Is that what I’m to pick up from that?

Katie Perry (05:35):

Totally. And if you think about the topic itself, the Fed, again, going back to that narrative, A lot of dismissive takes I see. And I think retail investors are really curious about macro and economic trends. We’ve live broadcast earnings calls through our app. We had one a couple weeks ago that they had 3000 listeners. In talking to public companies and IR teams, that’s akin to some of the numbers they see on the earnings call, like main broadcast, that they have on their IR website. So again, it’s like, how do we get this content and information to people in ways that are more natural to the way they’re experiencing content and information. And on Public, right in the context of where they’re managing their portfolio.

Adam Conner (06:23):

Sure. And I do want to ask about that a little bit later on with respect to IR, because the audience that you wield gives you the right to play in disrupting the ways in which those traditionally stodgy or otherwise cold means of transporting information can be disrupted. But I think that’s really fascinating that you had thousands of people in for a talk about the Fed, which to me brings up two things, either like a college lecture, which never seems that interesting or the other side, which are those memes of Jerome Powell hand cranking the money machine. But you have people in the middle there who take an exhale from either of those polls and come to the middle, where they do want that genuine information. And if communicated to them in a way in which they can understand, means they don’t necessarily need an economics degree to understand the implications of such policy moves on the market and thus to their positions.

Adam Conner (07:20):

Now, I might be putting words in your mouth by saying that, I’m going to assume that part of that is true, but over time you develop through that information and accessibility of it, a certain type of fandom, maybe not the type that has foam fingers for a stock ticker, but one that makes for a very sticky loyal experience with investing through you. So I want to ask first, if you flipped open your dictionary of Public moments and meanings, and you came to the page titled fandom, what would that word be defined as for you or maybe for Public in general? I want to start there and then talk about the offering more deeply.

“Fandom for me has three parts. One is passion: Am I passionate about this? Am I interested in whatever I’m a fan of? The second would be value: Do I derive some sort of value from being a part of this. And then related to that, the third for me would be, do I feel like I’m part of something bigger than myself? And I think what we’ve created on Public is a way to create all of those experiences and create this sort of fandom in a really productive way. So being interested in what’s in your portfolio, being passion about it, those are great things. And again, going back to the narrative, a lot of times you see this passion reflected in activity on Reddit or social media, but on Public we really see it as, in terms of passion, people investing in what they believe in.”

— Katie Perry (8:02)

Katie Perry (08:55):

I just saw recently there’s an ETF that was actually just issued. And it’s a collection of companies where they’ve basically identified CEOs with great character. This is the stuff that really matters to a lot of retail investors. So you see that passion coming through, in terms of value is the affiliation or the experience on Public serving needs for us. We really want to create an environment around investing that helps you get better over time. I think with any fandom, the payoff could be long term. I think about the Bengals waiting 30 plus years to get back to the Super Bowl. Our mission is over the long term to help people continuously level up. And then in terms of the last piece of being something bigger than yourself, I think that community we have built in, the ability to connect, whether it’s even just seeing someone else’s face on the same earnings call, feeling like you’re a part of something checks some important box for lot of people, so that’s sort of how I would define fandom.

Adam Conner (09:56):

When you came in 2019, what elements of that fandom do you think were most present? And where over the last couple of years, do you think that Public in the sector has leaned in the hardest to develop it?

Katie Perry (10:09):

I think over the past two years, there’s been a lot of maturity in the audience of retail investors from my vantage points. Early days pre COVID, pre meme stocks, pre crypto wave, you saw a lot of people who were just really curious. There’s a lot of beginners in our app at the start. Their fandom was around a curiosity to learn. And what you see over a time is that, it’s been really cool to see people evolve over time, become more sophisticated. And then maybe that fandom turns into a passion for a specific investment strategy, or a passion for a specific category of investment opportunities, whether it’s cyber security softwares or sustainable investing. And so I think over time people sort of find their niche, they find their interests, they learn, they get smarter. And that curiosity narrows into specific areas they’re interested in.

Adam Conner (11:15):

So through it all, investors through Public have been able to build community with those who invest like them. I know that because, something which attracted me to the platform though, I know it isn’t necessarily unique to be able to see without quantity, the types of stocks and investments that others are making, including those who they may know publicly like influencers and things like that. They’re also getting information in digestible ways and you’ve described this, and I would describe this as investors leveling up in the way that they think and in the way that they act. I think back to 10 years ago, the first ever stock purchase I made in the market was a little micro-cap stock, 10 years ago, I read about on a forum. Might not a smart idea at all in retrospect. And now I would say that, thanks to some of these tools, I’m much more educated and knowledgeable and maybe risk averse, relative to that first buy. What does it mean to you to be leveling up the ways in which investors think and behave?

“I think [leveling up investor relations] is about building in healthy and productive habits around being engaged with your portfolio. So for us, 90% of our community say they’re mostly long term investors. We see a lot of people diversifying over a time, like I mentioned. We’ve actually seen a huge increase in people investing in ETFs which, for those who don’t know are sort of bundles of stocks, many of which have built in diversification. So I think you’re right in that, the experience of actively investing of, actively exploring an investment opportunity is a great learning exercise, I think, I can relate to your experience, I think the first stock I ever bought was Under Armour, I think I was 20 years old.”

— Katie Perry (12:23)

Adam Conner (13:08):

Oh, that’s a good buy, that’s a Baltimore native, good on you.

Katie Perry (13:10):

Yeah. But what’s interesting when I think back, and I won’t say what platform it was, obviously it wasn’t Public, but I remember buying it and I was excited and I checked on it and then I just fell off. It was, I knew I wanted to kind of hold it for a bit. And so in the day to day, there was nothing keeping me interested necessarily. And so on Public, what we done is, created this experience around the stock market that creates habits of constantly exploring, researching, sharing ideas and being engaged in what you own in an ongoing basis, without necessarily trading every day. And I think building those habits is really great to see, I saw one of our share yesterday that, her morning routine involved Public morning brew, CNBC. We want to be built into how people experience this stuff in a way that’s accessible and fun, and helps them learn more over time.

Adam Conner (14:12):

Is that something that you’ve particularly leaned into over these last two, two and a half years, to differentiate? Because you rightly noted and I hinted at it as well. Both of our first experiences in investing in the market were done outside of Public, but we’re also done in a time when this service was not as commoditized, was not as fee free. Those things just popped up, what I can, I think I remember Robinhood being, I think it was like a private thing, still invite only as far as 2014, so we’re looking at seven, eight years ago. Nowadays it feels like most brokers, most custodians are offering that service. And that obviously means that there’s lots of other places where you could do it. So are those differentiations something that you’ve specifically been focused on over this time? And if so, and even if not, what’s been the most impressive thing you think Public has done to differentiate?

Katie Perry (15:06):

I think differentiation is huge. We’ve done it in a few ways. The first real way we did this was actually trying to reimagine the culture that existed around the stock market. I think we’ve all seen, like you referenced some memes, the Wolf of wall street, despite over time investing becoming more accessible via apps, via fractionalized assets, it still had this culture around it that was [inaudible 00:15:31] not inclusive. And so that was our first big disruption was, what would a healthier, more welcoming experience around the stock market look like. Because for a lot of people, the barrier to entry was financial literacy, but also maybe just not wanting to affiliate with a specific culture that they felt they didn’t belong to.

Katie Perry (15:52):

And I think over time too, with the proliferation of investing apps and fractional investing apps is, you have a commoditization of most apps offer the same assets, whether it’s securities or cryptos. And so if you think about it almost like two different stores that have the same products. What would make one store stand out versus the other? And I think for us, what we’ve really been focused on is building this environment around the products that are in the app, around the assets, that is going to make people choose us. And that’s, things like content that’s relevant to your portfolio, the live audio shows I referenced. We have town hall events where you can ask CEOs of companies you invest in your questions and see them respond. In-app TikTok style educational videos. All of this stuff is what exists around the actual assets. And I think that experience is what makes Public stand out in what’s becoming a really crowded space.

Adam Conner (17:02):

And I do want to ask about the ways in which people invest and consume in a little bit. It’s good to know that you’re always differentiating, of course, every brand always has to innovate in that way.

Adam Conner (17:12):

And speaking to your expertise on the editorial side of Public for a moment, because I know that, that’s been part of your tenure, something that I’ve learned, even through this podcast with other businesses who are focusing on different asset classes, where you can’t track a ticker as quickly, and I know that Public has also started to step into those areas too, also gives importance to the need for education and awareness, because these are also asset classes which are not invested in as commonly as stocks and bonds and things like that. And most of the time when I think about that, and frankly through the conversations I’ve had, a lot of the time, how do you get to that awareness in education? We got to have a community, we’ve got to build content. We got to have content that people can read, listen to, watch. Does that change when you have to differentiate and create content editorially for the most commoditized asset class out there? I mean, what are the nuances as far as you’re concerned, just speaking to your specific experience in building that side of the community?

Katie Perry (18:14):

I think people learn best in the moment, in a timely fashion, in the instance of a real world example. So think about, you’re curious about metrics shared in an earnings report, maybe one path would be to read an article online, that’s a blog post and defines each thing, maybe another way is to pick a brand you’re really familiar with, Nike or Netflix, listen to the earnings call, hear how these things are framed in context and have that be a building block to learning in a way that actually relevant to you and interesting to you. And I think that’s how we view editorial, it’s not just what we’re covering, it’s how we’re doing it. Another example and just speaking, again, to like platforms having similar assets, but different ecosystems around them. Today we just added a popular new crypto asset to the platform. On another app, maybe there would’ve just been some sort of notification that this was now available.

“What we’re doing is…yeah, we let people know that we have this now, but we also have a live show in a few hours that is actually going to have an expert in the space and they’re going to break down, how to think about this crypto asset. Not to go on a tangent, but cryptos are really interesting because many new crypto investors don’t understand that there are founding teams behind a lot of these, there’s a thesis for the project, there’s goals for the project. And in unpacking that white paper component, it goes back to what we were are saying about earnings calls, like maybe someone’s not going to go and read the 50 page white paper, but they still want to understand. So we want to create that information in context. And that’s what it’s about at Public, it’s the content in the context relevant to what you’re interested in, relevant to what you invest in. And that’s sort of the hook for people to really level up.”

— Katie Perry (19:20)

Adam Conner (20:13):

Fair enough. And this is great because it is much more, I don’t know about advance, but certainly more. New current hip to do rather than the old days of dialing in to the group number and the stodgy hold music only to hear five minutes of numbers that you roughly understand, followed by 20 minutes of questions from bankers that may not care about. And it makes me want to call back to what we talked about briefly earlier on, which is that like, investor relations is really old to me, as an old it hasn’t really changed a whole lot. Is that something that, again, I said at the beginning you have the right to play in these areas like, what are some of the ways, and obviously anybody who goes in your LinkedIn can see also that IR innovation is part of your world, how does that layer into all of this? Are you going to be the cure to all those cold conference calls?

Katie Perry (21:12):

I don’t know about the cure. I think, IR is interesting. I think it hasn’t changed a lot, not necessarily because of a lack of desire to, more so a lack of need to.

“Historically IR teams really only had to worry about and focus on institutional investors. And that still is the most important audience for, the lion’s share of IR teams. But what you see there is, I think now 25 million retail investors have entered the stock market in the past couple of years, slowly ticking up their total share of ownership. And some companies, you think about your AMCs, it’s a very large audience of retail investors. So now you have two different audiences that IR teams need to sort of cater to, instead of, in the past, pretty much just tailoring things to what worked for institutional investors and that worked, that works for that audience.”

— Katie Perry (12:18)

Katie Perry (22:09):

And what we hear in our conversations with IR teams is they’re really interested. Many of them are very passionate about engaging with retail audiences. But what we hear is, “Retail seems like a black box, they don’t really understand fully what motivates their shareholders, what kind of information their shareholders are looking for and how they want to receive it?” And so it’s, there’s a lot of question marks of like, “Yes, we understand that there’s this increasing interest in investing over here, but there’s sort of a friction in, well, what do we do about it, because the old playbook didn’t really account for this?” And it’s a really, really interesting time to be at a public company. And I think many of the teams we’re talking to are embracing it, and they’re just looking for a little help in figuring out how do we make sense of this new audience.

Adam Conner (23:03):

As you continue to find the solution for that new audience, perhaps together we’ll hope that more public companies become Public companies. Let me round out by asking about the other F word we focus on the show here, which is future. Specifically around the ways that, you predict people will be investing in consuming going forward. You mentioned earlier that there are an increasing numbers specifically within ETFs, of groupings of securities based on elements, not necessarily tied to their profit and loss, for instance, the content of the character of the executive suite. I know that there are plenty of ETFs that focus on things like social impact, investing, DEI, other elements which, again, can’t necessarily be found on a balance sheet. And I also know on the consumptions side, when people go to the store, they’re looking to do their business with brands who they agree with from a value’s perspective. In which ways do you see those two things coming together, going forward and specifically influencing the ways that people take money out of their pockets and invest in assets?

Katie Perry (24:12):

That’s one of the most interesting things I think about sort of all these new trends in the marketplace that exists between retail investors and companies, because especially, and specifically for consumer brands, a retail investor is very likely to overlap with an actual customer of your product. So it goes both ways in terms of, being a customer and then being interested in investing. So that’s been proven to be a path for a lot of retail investors, invest in what I know, or have familiarity or interest, that’s their way in.

“It also goes the other way, there was a really interesting Texas A&M study that found that retail investors in consumer brands were more loyal over time, they were more interested in new products, they felt like they were a part of the company. And so there’s this really interesting interplay between being investor, being a customer, and for companies and consumer companies, that’s a really interesting sort of dynamic and it’s being fueled by, what I think is like, younger generations having this sort of ownership mentality, wanting to own a stake in the things that they’re either supporting with their wallet…”

— Katie Perry (24:12)

Katie Perry (25:21):

And just like you said, supporting businesses, companies that align with their own values. And it’s a really fascinating interplay, that creates a lot of opportunities but also challenges, because then it becomes on the consumer side, that’s usually in the marketing teams camp and on the investor side, that’s usually an IR, so you have this middle area, but I think it’s one that like, companies are starting to realize and embrace, and it’s going to be really, really interesting into the future, in my opinion.

Adam Conner (25:54):

I agree. I’ve been glad to speculate on that side of the financial world here with you, just as much as to talk about the current state of information getting and in the meme chasing of course, and everything in the middle. I’m really interested to see what happens with that IR side, because I think back to 10 years ago and that was where I got most of my info, other than like a random forum. And so the fact that you all have been able to fill in the middle really, really nicely is the most interesting for me, because I’m more on the information seeker than the meme chaser anyhow, but for helping me break down some of the stereotypes and chatting a little bit more about the importance of community and how you think about it, Katie, thanks so much for joining me, coming on the show.

Katie Perry (26:34):

Thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Adam Conner (26:39):

Thanks again to Katie Perry from public.com for joining us. Personally, I’m shocked that IR hasn’t been disrupted yet, given the massive communities stock trading has built. Someone’s got to be first to do it and it may just be these folks.

Adam Conner (26:53):

And thanks to you of course, the listener for exploring the future of fandom with us, I’d encourage you to stay connected rather than just trading these minutes with us. So subscribe to the future of fandom, wherever you listen to your shows, or you can find all of our content at livelike.com and of course on socials, LinkedIn @livelike and Twitter @livelikeInc. I look forward to predicting the future again with you real soon, until then, I’m Adam Conner saying so long and thanks for being a fan.

This week on Get to Know LiveLike, we’re introducing you to someone who has been with us since 2018, Account Director, David Gonçalves. We’re happy to introduce you to David and give you a chance to hear about his career path that led to his managerial position, his typical day-to-day responsibilities, and more. We’re proud to have someone like David on our team, and excited to get to share a bit about him!

Tell me a little bit about your career path. How did you find yourself in your current role?

Since I was a child, I always wanted to work in the sports industry. I started my journey in 2014, working for the FIFA World Cup at Rio de Janeiro where I was in charge of supervising volunteers who accompanied the French fans in Brazil. Then, I managed to find a 6-month internship at Nike, where I was assisting the Brand Event Manager.

Following this, in 2015, I joined Netco Sports, a company that develops multi-platform apps for sports and media key players. I learned a lot from this experience; I operated in several different positions which allowed me to better understand not only the sports ecosystem but also how to run a product and the difficulties that come with implementing new solutions in a pre-existing digital ecosystem.

Over the years, I have worked with many talented people, and I have learned so many tangible skills and gained so much knowledge around digital expertise, project management, entrepreneurship, etc. Netco in particular was a very good learning experience for me. I really proved myself and worked my way up the ladder to become an Account Director in 2017. I was then managing Netco key accounts—such as PSG, beIN and ASO—and the overall strategy regarding RFPs and tenders that we were receiving. But of course, as all good things must come to an end, my journey at Netco ended in 2018.

After spending three amazing years at the agency, I realized I wanted to work in a startup environment where I could dedicate all my time and effort to enhancing a specific solution. I later met our CCO Samuel Westberg who was working at LiveLike already and it was the beginning of a new adventure!

Can you describe what an account director does and what your typical workday looks like?

The most important responsibility of an account director is to deliver our value as a solution and remain an expert of our product.

Basically, I am constantly following the integration process of our product. So what does that mean? Well firstly, I have to perfectly know the technology itself so I can run our integrations. This means I am constantly in touch with the technical teams and similar to what a project manager would do, I simultaneously manage the relationship with the specific client.

The main questions I have to ask myself or bring answers to are: How do we progress? What do we need to move forward? What are the next steps? Who has to be involved on the client side? Who has to be involved on our end? Are there any third parties we need to put in the mix? And based on the answers to these questions, we work to determine how we can deliver and be as efficient as possible.

Did you always want to work in a lead managerial role?

This is a hard question to say yes to! I always had the feeling that I wanted to create something great with a true value proposition to sports organizations. I love to create solutions and to move forward so maybe that’s how I found myself in the role.

How has LiveLike grown/evolved since you joined the team in 2018?

What a journey it’s been! When I arrived at LiveLike, we were still working on the VR product. Meanwhile, we were starting to have conversations about this new great LiveLike engagement suite, so it was super interesting and challenging at the same time.

Regarding the LiveLike Engagement Suite, we started with a good baseline of experience and valuable lessons thanks to our VR journey but all in all, we really developed the product from scratch. So the main thing that has evolved since I joined in 2018 is definitely the product itself.

It is amazing to see all the features and capabilities of our solution now. I think with where we’re at now, we are not only providing a gamification solution but a full gamification engine that demonstrates a real vision of the future of content platforms.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

I think now people are just starting to understand the impact of a gamification strategy on a digital platform. Gamification is like automatic stats 10 years ago and video highlights six years ago. We are working to build the best gamification product to let our clients build the strategies that fit with your unique organization. In just a few weeks, you’ll actually see some of our new initiatives on the market that will allow users to really feel like they’re a part of a brand or organization and be rewarded for that loyalty.

Thank you, David!

Earning a Cart Full of Fans

Today on the Future of Fandom, earn some cash with us! Or, earn some back, anyway. On this episode, we go shopping with Rakuten to learn about what might be on the horizon for online and in-store shoppers alike, via their Chief Marketing Officer Dana Marineau.

Over the last two years, we’ve seen shopping change a lot; being forced out of stores similarly forced brands to think harder and faster about how to create better digital experiences and partnerships, and new ways to showcase their products. Now that COVID seems to be on the decline, consumers continue to demand high-quality e-commerce experiences, a demand that companies like Rakuten are working to meet.

Rakuten Rewards is an online shopping platform that gives you cash back at your favorite stores. Dana has been with Rakuten for almost 2 years and brings with her a wealth of knowledge and experience in the marketing space.

Connect with Dana Marineau on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danamarineau/

Read more about Rakuten: https://www.rakuten.ca/

Full episode here:

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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Adam Conner (00:09):

Today on The Future of Fandom, earn some cash with me! Or earn some back, anyway. My name’s Adam Conner, I’m your host. And on this episode, we go shopping with Rakuten to learn about might be on the horizon for online and in-store shoppers alike via their Chief Marketing Officer Dana Marineau. Obviously over the last two years, we’ve seen shopping change a lot, being forced out of stores similarly, forced brands to think harder and fast about how to create better digital experiences, partnerships, and new way a to showcase product. Now that COVID seems to be on the decline, consumers continue to demand high-quality e- (and now hybrid) commerce. Dana’s on the cutting edge there and has plenty to teach us about what to expect for best in class shopping. So fill your cart and we will start to predict the future with Rakuten and Dana Marineau. Dana, how are you? Thanks so much for joining me.

Dana Marineau (01:10):

Adam, it’s great to talk to you again. Thanks for having me.

Adam Conner (01:13):

I can’t wait to chat with you again. I love chat with you on podcasts and listeners, prior to the life of The Future of Fandom, I did interview Dana a few times in this world, so this is going to be a nice familiar conversation to have. And one which is, of course, with a well known, recognized, and still growing leader in e-commerce a pioneer in some ways, but now we’re going to be talking about how trails will continue to be blazed in the namesake future of the show. First off, and not that people don’t know what this is, can we just do a very, very basic what the heck is Rakuten and what does it provide just in case everybody’s not familiar? And then we’ll talk about e-buying and what these past two years have done and go from there.

Dana Marineau (01:57):

Of course. So, yes, Rakuten. You may have heard of Rakuten and it is a very large company in Japan, but here in the U.S., it is newer to some folks. So I will say, Adam, Rakuten is an online shopping platform that gives you cashback at your favorite stores, your favorite brands. So we have over 3,500 stores, everything from Nike, to Old Navy, to Neiman Marcus, to Expedia, you name it, we probably have it. And every time you buy online through Rakuten, you get cash back on that purchase. So we think it’s a way for people to feel like they’re winning every time they shop.

Adam Conner (02:31):

And listeners, if you watched the Super Bowl, you will have seen their most recent high profile spot, featuring Hannah Waddingham who was on Ted Lasso at a very high stakes poker game, where some interesting chips were used, if I’m recalling correctly, pairs of shoes and microwaves. And what the heck was that? Dana, you had a hand in that. Didn’t you putting all that together?

Dana Marineau (02:50):

We did. Thank you. Yes. Very proud of that campaign. And Adam, I think, as we’ve talked about before, we’ve built an in-house brand and creative team. So we built that whole thing in house and, yes, instead of poker chips, it was an i-robot, and a little i-vacuum, a television and a pair of shoes that Hannah Waddingham, by the way, she is incredible, from Ted Lasso, was playing against a savvy Rakuten shopper, who, of course beat Hannah, because she shopped all those things with Rakuten and got a lot of money and cash back. But thank you for mentioning that. We’re very proud.

Adam Conner (03:25):

Of course, it’s a good intro too, because doesn’t it really set the scene for what the last several years has done to the e-buying experience. Though the field has been leveled in a way, and you can get access to goods that you get cash back for that you never could before, which maybe makes you feel like you deserve a seat at that high-stakes table. Over the last two years, obviously, lots of digital trends have been pulled forward. We’ve heard that ad nauseam, but since you are in the e-commerce world and seen that first hand, what, in your perspective, has it done for, shall we say, the present of the digital shopping experience. What COVID did to e-buying, truly buying, not just, “Hey, I’ll look at it online and then I’ll go to the store,” because you couldn’t do that. In what ways were your hands forced? And did it help?

Dana Marineau (04:15):

Excellent question. And, yeah, something we have been thinking about at Rakuten, certainly COVID, the pandemic has been eye opening in a lot of ways about the way people shop, how people shop, when people shop. And as you said, we have read a lot about the pandemic fueling e-commerce. Now I will say part of that is, as you remember, the first six, nine months or so, people were not going into stores. So that in its self was an interesting and different dynamic. Everyone was forced to buy nearly everything, from clothes to sunglasses, to toilet paper, online. So that of course changes the dynamic. One of the things I think has been very eye opening to us around how retailers and merchants are balancing what I would’ve called sort of a hybrid approach now. People are going back into stores. People are comfortable going into a shop now.

Dana Marineau (05:08):

So, but, as you said, e-commerce really blew up and people have become used to buying online. So what I think is interesting and I would even put the analogy of getting people returning to the office, this hybrid approach, “Some days I’m in the office, some days at home.” I’d say the same thing about online-buying and e-commerce is there’s a hybrid thing happening. “Sometimes I go in the store, sometimes I buy online,” but there’s also this new, “Hey, I want to buy it online. I’ve enjoyed that experience for all the reasons, the convenience, et cetera. But I need that instant gratification of what it feels like when I go into a store.”

Dana Marineau (05:46):

So there’s this hybrid thing happening now, too, that a lot of our partners and retailers have been testing, which is this concept of buy it online and then pick it up in the store or buy it online and now we partner with DoorDash or Uber Eats, so that it can get to you right away. So there’s just been this interesting shift in, again, I call it sort of a hybrid of the good experience of the in-store, the bad experience of the in-store, the good experience, the bad experience of online, just it out to see what people really want and how to make the best possible shopping experience, whether it’s physically in the store, or online, or some hybrid of those two things.

Adam Conner (06:30):

And I expect you and Rakuten having built for… not obviously having built for a pandemic where it be forced, but built for a future of that, where people would have their hybrid options or their purist options in either channel. I’m sure that somewhere in your head, you thought, “Well, I know that people are going to like this,” but maybe the reasons they’re in some of you expected and some of you didn’t. When it came to or when it comes to how consumers are getting value out of either Rakuten or the e-shopping experience, what’s been most unexpected?

Dana Marineau (07:02):

Well, I would say about Rakuten, you’re definitely right that we try to give you the best possible shopping experience, no matter how you’re shopping.

“To your point, whether you buy online and we give you that very winning, satisfactory feeling of the cashback, or you go into the store and you’re a member of Rakuten, so you still get that in-store cashback. You’re right to say, we have been prepared for a moment like this. However, you’re going to shop, make sure you do it through Rakuten, so you get that cashback and that winning feeling. I think the from unexpected is I, person, have been testing out myself. This concept of, ‘I don’t have time to go to the store, but I need this thing right now.’ So testing out some of these hybrid options, sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.”

— Dana Marineau (7:04)

Dana Marineau (07:49):

I’ve been surprised by how many people have tried this buy online, pick it up in store or, “Hey, I’m going to trust Walgreens to partner with DoorDash and get me that thing immediately.” So I’ve been surprised to see how many people have adopted that, how many retailers have adopted that and to see that people really are enjoying this hybrid approach. And I guess I would say the concept of hybrid is a shock. If you had asked me two years ago, would I imagine a day where I didn’t go to my office every single day, that some days I worked from home, I would’ve said, “Adam, are you insane? Of course not.” Same with this. I didn’t really imagine a day where you could shop online and then get it that second. That was definitely not something I anticipated myself.

Adam Conner (08:33):

Yeah. For me, and I’m not a business operator myself, but I’m just thinking about all the logistical nightmares that go into linking these disparate entities into a partnership that, ultimately, gets the whatever it is from the retailer to the delivery partner and is there an online experience as part of that just seems like a complete spiderweb, which I guess we were forced into weaving, but one which it was a bit unexpected to me just is like how quickly everybody came together. And all of a sudden things that I would’ve assumed were roadblocks were lifted in light of this new environment. And, of course, all to the benefit of shoppers, yourself included. And just for the record here, I believe all of your shopping is done through Rakuten. You’re really drinking the Kool-Aid there.

Dana Marineau (09:15):

You know that’s right, Adam. I refuse to buy anything unless I can get it on Rakuten and get my cash back. So I am hardcore Rakuten shopper. It is true. I will go out of my way to only shop at Rakuten. And, honestly, I love it. And I am a big fan, of course, of Rakuten and getting that cash back, I’m kind of addicted to it. But, yes, I only shop with Rakuten. That is for sure true, because there isn’t anything we don’t have that I need. That is just true.

Adam Conner (09:41):

Sure. And I love the idea of getting cashback anywhere. In fact, you mentioned something here that I’m going to ask about again in a little bit, that in-store cashback, because I think there’s a bit of education that you’ll have to give to me here just because it’s a slightly new-ish concept in my ears. So I’m not the most sophisticated shopper. My idea of a hybrid shopping experience is what I was thinking when a couple of years ago, I went on a few year run of going out to shop on Black Friday. Now I would not get in the line and wait in the JCPenney for the pair of pants or whatever it was. I would walk around the store. I would see the thing that I liked. And then I just go online to their site and buy it without having to wait in the line, any ad will show up before Christmas, whatever that’s as far as I go.

Adam Conner (10:22):

So I’m glad to be able to learn a little bit more about these specific intricacies, which I’ll ask you in a second, because I first want to go to the side of the buyer, the side of the me who is getting more sophisticated each and every day, specifically within the filter of fandom. Now fandom, a word that everybody on this podcast, everybody listening to this might associate traditionally with sport. I’m a fan of a team, a player, a thing. And I think eventually people will become genuine fans and diehards of brands. That’s what this show is all about. And so there are parallels in business that are to be discussed. And I think when you talk about retailers and providers of good manufacturers, things like that.

Adam Conner (11:01):

It’s almost in my head, and it’ll be in your too, because we prepped for this, being a fan of a team, which is maybe like where the retailer is that you buy the thing from, and the player, which is the good that you buy within that. I think I have that correct. Do you see any parallels there in how people shop based on either the brands or the banners that they love the most?

Dana Marineau (11:28):

Yes. And I do love this analogy and I think, Adam, you also know I’m a huge sports fan, so this will be fun for both of us.

Adam Conner (11:35):

I assumed as much.

“When I think of being a fan, I think you can be a fan of a team. I am a huge Warriors fan, obviously. And just like I’m also a huge fan of certain brands. I love Nike. I love Bloomingdale’s. There’s also the concept of “I can love the Warriors, but maybe I’m really just a fan of Steph Curry, the player on the Warriors.” And using that same analogy, I love Nike. I said that, but I also collect Air Jordans. So the thing that I just think is very interesting about this analogy is I think shopping with Rakuten or shopping online, in general, is a lot like this. I can collect Air Jordans. I can buy those Air Jordans from Nike, or I could buy them from StockX or I could buy them from Finish Line.”

— Dana Marineau (11:36)

Dana Marineau (12:22):

It’s the same idea of “I can love the Warriors or I can love the players on the Warriors.” I think Rakuten provides you the ability to be a fan either of the store or the item that you’re trying to buy from many stores. And that’s actually how we encourage our members to buy from Rakuten actually is “Is it you love this particular store or is it you want this product? Let me show you all the stores Rakuten has and the cash back rates at each of those stores. And that way you’re still getting that product you wanted, but look to compare who has the better cash back rate?” Is it Nike? Is it Finish Line? Is it Footlocker? Is it StockX? So I think that’s a really interesting way to think about buyers and what is it that they’re a fan of? Is it that they’re loyal to this one store or no, they just want this one thing. It doesn’t matter where they buy it, as long as they get that exact thing. So I love that analogy. I think it’s very true.

Adam Conner (13:18):

And maybe it’s a third thing in the middle. Now I’m going to go into the basketball… I’m not as massive a fan of basketball as you are, but I’m thinking there’s got to be the fan that says, Well, I like the Warriors and I like Steph and some days I’ll prefer… Regardless of the team of the player, or a certain player, or a certain team, but really what I like is good basketball. And in this case, really what I like is the cash back. If I’m going to get the most utility from a certain place, maybe that is what drives me more than anything else. But regardless of the metric that people go after, whether it be the banner, or the brand, or the incentive, how does the experience, and I will speak to Rakuten specifically here, how does the experience get differentiated when you approach different consumers who select those types of preferences? I’m sure that it modifies in some way, but I just am curious, because, hey, personalization, differentiation, that’s all pointed at the future. And I’d be curious to know how you handle it.

“We definitely do our best at Rakuten to personalize your home feed experience. Meaning when you first sign up with Rakuten, we will ask you, ‘Hey, tell us about the things you shop for. Like do you have pets? Do you have kids? Do you shop for apparel? Do you shop for airline tickets?’ So we’ll ask you those questions. And then if you click ‘I shop for travel. I shop for shoes. I have a kid, so I shop for soccer cleats,’ then we’ll say, ‘Great, thank you for telling us that. Here are all sorts of stores that we can offer to you. Do you happen to like any of these stores?’ And you say, ‘Oh, yes. Actually I like Under Armour. I like Bloomingdale’s. I like Expedia,’ whatever it is. And then when you get to your home feed, your homepage of Rakuten, we will show you the stores that you’ve selected or stores like the ones you’ve selected and you can see the cashback rates.”

— Dana Marineau (14:14)

Dana Marineau (15:05):

And we do our best to personalize that experience fair. So that we say, “Hey, I know you told us. You liked Nike, but by the way, Adidas is on 12% cashback today.” So I think answering your question, what we want to do is give you the best possible shopping experience, whether it is, “I love Adidas,” or “No, no, I just need to buy new cleats for my son and I see that this brand has a higher cashback rate today. Oh, and by the way, is having a free friends and family sale too. I should go there.” So to your point, fandom really does evolve. And I think there are people who actually just want the highest cashback rate. They don’t care what store they’re-buying or what even brand they’re-buying it’s that they want the highest return. So there are definitely people like that. And then there are people who are like, “No, no, no. I only buy from Nike.” So I do think do our best at Rakuten to personalize that experience and give you what you need based on what we know about you.

Adam Conner (15:57):

And listeners, that was not a verbal typo there. When you think about making cashback on purchases, you might think of something like a credit card, which offers 1 or 2%, but Dana said 12. That is not an anomaly. If you don’t know what Rakuten is, that’s the kind of thing that you can look forward to. So maybe we just made a Fanny it just out of that, because we’re in the heck else are you’re going to get 12% off of a purchase like that, especially made online?

Dana Marineau (16:19):

Oh, and Adam, I’ll just say many times a year, we go above that 12%. Certainly, for our big give event in may, we have many, many hundreds of stores at 15%, for many days. Over the holidays, Black Fridays, Cyber Monday, we have hundreds of stores at 15, sometimes even 20%. So we have some big deal days that are really high. And sometimes we even have days where we call it super app Sunday, where we get a very high percentage across lots of stores, only if you buy in the app. So we try to do our best to make for some special days.

Adam Conner (16:52):

So listeners, if you’re not downloading it, you should at this point, all right, because you’re missing out. And we’ll touch on this a bit further, because obviously, in regard to the way that any fandom will grow, we got to also assess the state of it today. So I have a few questions about where you see it right now today and we’ll keep it Rakuten specific again. I mentioned I would talk about in-store cashback later on and we’re near that moment now, but first I’ll ask over the last couple of years, there are different sects, as you’ve said, of consumers who prefer the, like you, prefer a certain store, maybe prefer the cashback. Have you seen those trends changing at all? Or what’s popular nowadays? Is it more fandom of a banner or a brand or utility? What have you seen?

Dana Marineau (17:36):

I would say what we’re looking at in terms of trends is less about what you’re asking about and more about genres and what people are-buying and not buying. So I’ll give you an example. Of course, you’ve seen all the press coverage on the last two years athleisure home office, home improvement, casual yoga pants, sneakers. Oh and by the way, of course, pets and pet supplies. There are things that people were-buying in store and online that sort of took a huge swing over the let’s call it two years of the pandemic and lockdown and quarantine and where people were just mostly staying home. What I will tell you is there’s been a huge shift back to two things. People are starting to travel again, so we’re starting to see a big uptick in our travel properties, whether it’s hotels and planes and car rental.

Dana Marineau (18:34):

And we’re seeing a lot more activity happening in travel again, which of course for nearly two years, we didn’t see much at all. We’re also seeing a lot more purchasing of things people are going out again. They’re going to parties, they’re going back to the office. They’re going to dinner with friends. So we’re seeing a lot more purchases happen in whether it’s the luxury buying and “I’m going to buy a nice new pair of heels or a nice blazer, because I haven’t been to my office in two years.” And again, travel like things, people are leaving the house and we’re starting to see that shift again, away from the athleisure and the home improvement. So when comes to trends, we’re definitely seeing those things happen.

Adam Conner (19:13):

Okay. So we are seeing trends more in categories than in a type of purchase, but even in the ways that people buy, there are new features on the rise. Let me ask about that in-store cashback. So let me get this straight. So I can use Rakuten to buy something, which is an e-buying experience, but I can get cash back in the store. Could you explain that to me?

Dana Marineau (19:33):

Of course. So we are happy for you to shop on any Rakuten retailer or merchant, whether it’s online or, of course, in the store. So for example, when you go into a Macy’s, or you go into a Men’s Warehouse, or you go into Finish Line or Adidas, if you have a Rakuten account that is linked to your credit card and you use that credit card at the store, again, Macy’s, Finish Line, Adidas, you will automatically get your cash back. It is actually as easy as I just said, you have to be a Rakuten member and you have to have your credit card linked, you use that same credit card and you get the cash back. It is awesome.

Adam Conner (20:09):

I got to tell my wife about that Macy’s thing. Macy’s is a good look at the bill at the end of the month. It’s a lot of Macy’s there. So I’ll have to do that.

Dana Marineau (20:16):

So you’ve got to get that cash back, Adam.

Adam Conner (20:19):

Yeah. And I guess that should have been obvious from the beginning. It’s like, “Hey, why should I be forced to choose the platform where I do it? If everybody is partnered and agreeing on the same thing, if I make a buy online, why shouldn’t that link to something that I could then go in the store and get the same benefit, especially if I’m the type of consumer that likes to go into the store, try on the thing, look at the thing, see the selection of items there? And maybe, hey, maybe I see something there and it’s a retailer partner with Rakuten that I didn’t know that I wanted, but, I find it that’s a great cross-sell, upsell opportunity there. So good for the business and, hey, also good for the consumer.

Dana Marineau (20:52):

That’s right. And you hit on the thing that we hope for, which is that discovery. So both online and in store, we hope that, “Hey, you’re going to Rakuten because you know we have Macy’s.” “I’m going to shop around, I’m going to buy the thing and I’m going to get my cash back. Oh, wow. Rakuten also has Sunglass Hut. Oh, Rakuten also has Expedia. Oh wow. Rakuten also has Ann Taylor.” Whatever it is, we want you to be able to discover that both in the mall and online.

Adam Conner (21:20):

I think that makes complete sense. And hopefully listeners, you’ll do some discovering of your own as you continue to peer in to this capability. And I’m sure you’ll be a fan of it right quick. And to that, in terms of what will happen, let me touch on the other F where we focus on the show here on, which is future. I want to ask as we begin to round out today, and then at the very end, I’m going to ask a question, which I believe I’ve asked you before, but not for this audience. Let’s speculate a bit. Let’s peer into the crystal ball, five-ish years down the road, let’s say. And based on what you are seeing now in the market with what retailers are doing, or certain loyalty programs, or whatever, what would a great future state of shopping look like? What can consumers, or should they, expect from the retailers and the brands that they love?

Dana Marineau (22:11):

Okay, great question. I’m going to address it…

Adam Conner (22:13):

Big question too, by the way.

Dana Marineau (22:13):

… through macro sort of online shopping, and then I’ll talk about Rakuten. So I would say what consumers, you used the word expect, and I’m going to use the word demand.

Adam Conner (22:25):

Hey, fair enough. Let’s do that. They’ve demanded a lot after these last two years. So let’s do it.

“Consumers demand options. So what I will say to you is I think a lot of retailers and merchants are playing catch up right now, when it comes to giving consumers as many options as possible as relates to buying. So, again, buying online, buying in store, buying hybrid, you shop for it online, and then you receive it quickly, instant gratification, via a partner that they have, whether it be a DoorDash type thing, an Uber Eats type thing, a shipped delivery, whatever it is. I think you’re going to start seeing people demand that and only shop in places where they have choices and options. So I definitely, asking about crystal ball, I think we certain stores and certain merchants got there faster, quicker during the pandemic. Not everyone is there yet. So I just experienced the other day for the first time I needed something from Walgreens. I didn’t have time to go to the store, but I also needed it that day. So buying it online and having shipped to me and getting it three days later, not an option for me. And it turned out they had an option with DoorDash. Brand new, and I got it in an hour.”

— Dana Marineau (22:30)

Dana Marineau (23:35):

So I think stores are going to have to start adopting all these things in order to, and I’m getting to your second part, the loyalty. People will be loyal to the convenience of shopping. And they’re going to want to shop in all three of those ways. Now with Rakuten, I would say you should only do your online shopping and your in-store shopping in places where you get that cash back. I’m not sure why you would buy anything and not get that cash back reward in return. So we are building, what I would say, is a very loyal member base where people expect from us and our partners that they have a variety of ways to shop with, again, online, in store, or some sort of hybrid.

Dana Marineau (24:12):

So speaking of Rakuten in the future, I would say what we are working on is what I would call exclusive experiences. So you shop with Rakuten and you get something exclusive that you can only get if you shop through Rakuten. And to me, right now, that thing that you get is cash back. I am hopeful that we can start introducing other exclusivities and other experiences as a Rakuten member that you only get when you buy through us. So that’s what I would say, is people are really just trying to give options and give exclusivities for that loyal membership.

Adam Conner (24:46):

I hope you come up with that too, because, again… And it’s in the same vein. I think about other ways in which I would traditionally associate cash back on a purchase. I go back to the credit card thing. This is something that credit card company’s been doing for a long, long, long time. They’ve also only in really one case have done the add-on value of experiences or things exclusive through. Listeners, you have a credit card somewhere in your wallet where somewhere that bank is saying that, but do you really use it? Do you use it that much? I think that exclusive experience world is yet to be disturbed. I don’t know about disrupted because it started, but disturbed for sure, by somebody with this sort of powerful marketplace, like you do.

Adam Conner (25:29):

So I’m really interested to see what you do with that, Dana, genuinely, even outside of this podcast. And listeners, you should expect that and maybe even demand it in the next couple of years from somebody. I don’t know who it is, but, hey, if it’s Rakuten, that’s great. Let me round out with a question that, and this is especially going to help for the uneducated Rakuten-er of the future. But as a question, I think I’ve asked you each of the times that I’ve interviewed you before, which is we have spoken about the things that you can purchase on the platform that you might expect, a pair of Nike shoes, and then other things that maybe you don’t expect, like renting a car. What would you say or what is new about the unexpected things that you can buy on the platform, that is to say what’s the most unexpected thing that you can get on Rakuten that you’d never thought you could?

Dana Marineau (26:14):

That is a great question. Well, you named a couple of them.

“I think people think of Rakuten as apparel and all kinds of clothing and department store. I think people don’t know that you can also get your Uber through Rakuten. You can buy your groceries on Instacart through Rakuten. You can get your ESPN, Hulu deal through Rakuten and buy your plane tickets through Rakuten. And so I do think there are a lot of things that are unexpected. I always am encouraging my friends to go to our feed and play around and discover to see what else we have. So we have everything from Old Navy, to GameStop, to some of the fresh food makers. So I do think nearly, and you joke with me how I only buy at Rakuten, that is true, because there’s nothing that we don’t have that I need for myself, my family, my dogs. So we have it all. So there are really all sorts of unexpected things outside of what people think of us for, which is that retail and apparel.”

— Dana Marineau (26:17)

Adam Conner (27:14):

Well, it sounds like the sky is the limit at least until you start doing consumer space travel. For now, thank you for telling me more about this and also and importantly, what shoppers expect demand at Macy in the future as they develop their fandom with the teams and the players of the sport that is shopping. Dana, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your perspective.

Dana Marineau (27:36):

As always, thanks for having me, Adam.

Adam Conner (27:40):

Thanks again to Dana Marineau from Rakuten for joining us. Hopefully, our conversation opened up a lot of eyes and maybe some wallets as to how to get more from where you shop and thanks to you. Of course, the listener, the wallet opener for exploring the future of Fandom with us and I’d encourage you to stay connected as well. So be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcast and, or you can also find all our content at livelike.com and across socials, LinkedIn, a lot of LinkedIn @LiveLike and Twitter @LiveLikeInc. I look forward to predicting the future again with you real soon. And until then I’m Adam Conner saying so long and thanks for being a fan.

Building a Neighborhood of Investors

Today on the Future of Fandom, we make ourselves at home, or at least make a portfolio of them, with Suresh Srinivasan, Chief Marketing Officer of Roofstock. Roofstock is a digital real estate investment platform with a mission to make ownership of investment real estate radically accessible, cost-effective, and simple. With Suresh to guide our conversation this episode, we’re talking about the rise of home investorship as a proxy for ownership, especially among the newest generations in the workforce, and what that means for the need to build best-in-class digital experiences to make the process more accessible.

Suresh is based out of the San Francisco Bay Area and holds over 25 years of experience in the marketing space. He joined Roofstock in 2017 and has worked ever since to build the real estate investment market into a space this is proactive, cost-effective, and accessible.

Connect with Suresh Srinivasan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/imsrino/

Read more about Roofstock: https://www.roofstock.com/

Full episode here:

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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Adam Conner (00:09):

Today on The Future of Fandom, we make ourselves at home or at least make a portfolio of them. My name’s Adam Conner. I’m your host. And in this episode, we rent some time with Roofstock and their Chief Marketing Officer, Suresh Srinivasan. In a world where job and city hopping alike is often met with better opportunity, so too has buying a home lost a fraction of its luster. Today, we talk about the rise of home investorship as a proxy for ownership, especially among the newest generations in the workforce and what that means for the need to build best in class digital experiences to make the process more accessible and foster a neighborhood of happy homeowners from afar. So, let’s open the door on this topic and predict the future with Roofstock and Suresh Srinivasan. Suresh, how are you? Thanks for joining me.

Suresh Srinivasan (01:01):

Thanks, Adam. Good to be here.

Adam Conner (01:03):

I’m interested in learning about this world of real estate investing just because I feel I’m probably in your target audience, if nothing else. And then of course, because I’m in that target audience, I’m curious to learn how you’re building that community. But before we get into any of that, let me begin with the simple question which is what’s Roofstock, if you could, for the listener that may not know?

Suresh Srinivasan (01:29):

Yeah, just really quickly. So, Roofstock is a digital platform for investing in the $4 trillion single family rental home market. Using Roofstock, an investor could buy, sell, or optimize an investment portfolio comprised of properties that could be anywhere across the US.

Adam Conner (01:47):

Okay. So if I don’t own a home today, this is a way in which I can still be investing in single family homes, multi-family homes in a diversified manner basically, right?

Suresh Srinivasan (02:00):

Yeah, that’s exactly right. So with Roofstock and our focus today, Adam, is primarily single family rental homes. So we do have smaller multifamily, so two to four units, but it’s primarily the $4 trillion single family rental home market which has largely been… Up until the last decade or so, it’s been very hard for folks to access anywhere outside of their local geographic region. And so, I would say that Roofstock’s unique innovation is that we break down the geographic barriers to investing. So if you happen to live in New York City, you could easily be investing in Indianapolis or Orlando almost as easy as you could within the New York City area.

Adam Conner (02:42):

And hey, I mean, if you don’t live there, the that’s a nice way to do it because-

Suresh Srinivasan (02:46):

Right.

Adam Conner (02:46):

The first thing I think about when I’m not as sophisticated as to say, invest in a home yet, but certainly to buy one, I got to be there. I got to see it. And in this case, if it’s an investment, obviously, you don’t see a stock. Sure, you see a company operate, but this is an interesting way to get in there. Are you seeing by the way… And we’ll talk about sort of how the audience has been built in the growth they’re in. Have you been seeing that the folks who have been joining Roofstock’s portfolios and investing, do most of them own homes already? Or are you seeing that some folks are even taking the plunge for first timers and saying, “Well, I’m going to invest in some markets first before I buy?” Because maybe, they’re renters themselves.

Suresh Srinivasan (03:28):

Yeah, you know what? So, here’s what’s really interesting. When we think about individual investors who are using our platform, more than 80% are under 44, more than half are under 35 years old, and 75% of them are first time real estate investors. And the reason I say this is that when you sort of look at demographic trends, one thing that’s really striking is that you look at home ownership stats at large. Millennial home ownership rates are well below prior generations when they were in this same age range. So for example, millennials are in the 50% home ownership range, whereas prior generations were in the mid to high 60% range.

Suresh Srinivasan (04:08):

And so, one thing that we’re finding with Roofstock and our investors who are coming onto the platform is that, there’s a strong priority that’s being placed on financial independence. And so, what they’re doing is saying, “Hey, if I have spare cash to invest, I’m not going to go lock it up in a down payment necessarily on a home to live in.” What they’re saying is, “Could I put the cash to work to build up passive income streams so that I can break free from my nine to five job, if you will?”

Adam Conner (04:34):

Right.

Suresh Srinivasan (04:35):

Yeah. So, we’re absolutely seeing that people are choosing to rent where they live and then buying through the platform for investment purposes.

Adam Conner (04:45):

Well, I can totally understand not being in a home and sticking money into it and this is my personal experience just because I haven’t. Also, I’ve recently moved. And I think that, that sort of transient nature of the newest workforce who are craving flexibility, who are going and pursuing job opportunities maybe in different geographies, because whether it’s chasing a new opportunity, a new leadership position, or chasing a bigger bag, they are going for cash first, and then building equity in this way second, and using the cash to do that. I have not figured out exactly why that’s the case other than jobs, except I’m thinking maybe the rising prices of homes. But that probably is also a reason why you would want to invest rather than to buy. So when it comes to home ownership, and then let’s say, investorship, you’ve been on this ship since 2017 with Roofstock specifically. A lot has changed, a lot has happened even recently there. I’m curious since you’ll have seen this for the last five-ish years, what’s changed the most even in that time about home ownership and its relative weight compared to investorship?

Suresh Srinivasan (06:02):

Yeah, you know what’s interesting? So, I’ve been in real estate tech for over a decade now. I would say up until a decade ago, there wasn’t much innovation. So there was no software, no tech really entering real estate. And prop tech as a category has really emerged over this last decade. And so, I would say that the biggest thing that we’re seeing is that it was pretty hard to access this market. When you think about real estate investing, it was mostly people buying and selling locally. And so, the old adage is that a real estate investor is generally buying an hour driving distance from where they live and that’s no longer the case. And so, we’re seeing this really pronounced, accelerated shift toward remote investing. And there’s just a ton more activity around single family rental properties.

Suresh Srinivasan (06:49):

And I think COVID has sort of accelerated this trend.

“[Since COVID] people have gotten more comfortable buying and selling homes hundreds of miles from where they live. Even if you were to go look at open houses, right? Everyone was on lockdown. And so, you’d have to depend on photographs and virtual tours and all of that stuff. And Roofstock started doing this in 2015 when we launched our platform so that you could go shopping on our online platform, look at the photos, look at inspection reports, look at all the underwriting and data that we provide you on the property, and make a decision without actually ever having visited the property itself.”

— Suresh Srinivasan (6:51)

Suresh Srinivasan (7:16):

The other interesting thing about COVID is that it sort of accentuated how resilient the single family rental asset class is and I think we’ve seen a heightened interest because of it.

Suresh Srinivasan (07:37):

And so, what I mean by this is that people’s preferences for where they live ended up shifting more to suburbs where there’s a little bit more space. If you have children, you’re doing Zoom schooling, and so you have a need for more bedrooms. And so, people were starting to move from sort of urban core out to the suburbs and this led to significant demand for single family rental homes. And so, you combine all of these things and all of a sudden, we’re starting to see more and more folks not only look at the asset class as a place to invest and to have sort of durable yield, if you will, but also, you’ve seen sort of the renter generation desiring this asset class more so then they would tall, large, multi-family type buildings.

Adam Conner (08:27):

Obviously, yes, COVID moved forward a bunch of trends not only digitally, but in terms of where people live. And you had, at least for a spell, mass exodus from urban centres into suburbs and things like that. Cost of living goes down. That’s really nice. These big organizations now, some of them have said, “Well, we’re going to keep that remote work intact where you can do it,” but some are calling folks back. I’m curious the extent to which you believe that, that shift from urban to suburban will be maintained in the long term and what the behavior will be once return to work becomes more popular and once, shall we say, investors on the other side of real estate commercial start to realize that they need people in their offices to make good on their investments. What do you think will happen there?

Suresh Srinivasan (09:23):

Yeah, very interesting question and we’re of course monitoring this pretty closely. My personal opinion is as it relates to work, I think we’re going to be in sort of this hybrid environment. It’s funny. You look at LinkedIn or whatever and some companies are calling for a return to the office and other people will call them out and say, “Well, that’s going to be my new employee I’m going to go hunt. I’m going to go recruit at the company.”

Adam Conner (09:47):

Oh, did you see that post? I saw a post just like that which is, “It’s never been easier. As soon as you see somebody says return to work and just write those…” Yeah.

Suresh Srinivasan (09:54):

That’s what I saw.

Adam Conner (09:55):

Yeah.

[crosstalk 00:09:56].

Suresh Srinivasan (09:56):

That’s insane. Yeah, so I think what’s going to happen, Adam, is that we’re going to have this hybrid environment, certainly for younger folks who are just joining the workforce. I think they’re sort of at a relative disadvantage if they’re not in person and gaining mentorship and learning. There’s just so much that happens in person that’s really hard to replicate through Zoom or through a series of coordinated phone calls. And so, could be couple days a week, could be people fly in once a month or something and stay for a week and a half, or something like that. But I think you’re going to see this hybrid environment. And so, what will that do for housing? I think you’re going to see that this desire for flexibility continues and I think companies are going to have to accommodate because it’s essentially a war for the best talent. And if that desire for flexibility and freedom continues, then companies will essentially have to accommodate.

Adam Conner (10:51):

Right. Eventually, they’ll have to meet their people where they’re at, so to speak.

Suresh Srinivasan (10:57):

Yeah.

Adam Conner (10:57):

Let me ask then about these folks who are… No matter where they’re working, they are investing in buying real estate in not necessarily different, but just new ways, maybe because they’re being educated for the first time. Now, you’ve said that the majority of the folks that are part of the community at Roofstock in terms of who are investing are… I believe you said, “Over half are below the age of 35.” I want to make sure I have that right. Is that right?

Suresh Srinivasan (11:22):

That’s right, yep.

Adam Conner (11:22):

Got it. I’m sure just as you’ve been following this area very closely, you’ve also been doing a bunch of research as to why these members of the youngest generations are investing in this way. Why are they doing it? I mean, do you ask them?

Suresh Srinivasan (11:35):

Yeah, we do.

“What’s really interesting is there’s a strong preference toward digital first. All-in-one solutions is kind of the first thing. Now, if you take sort of the pursuit of financial freedom and then couple it with the tendency to want a digital-first solution, I think this sort of sums up why people are investing through Roofstock. And you think about all the apps and tools and investing services that the younger generations use like Robinhood, they’ve come to expect sort of the same level of ease and user experience, right? With online banking, with Rideshare, food delivery apps, and also real estate.”

— Suresh Srinivasan (11:36)

Suresh Srinivasan (12:16):

And so, Roofstock happened to meet them exactly there which is a simplified digital storefront and tools. We’ve got a platform called Stessa which is… You can almost think of it a little bit like a credit karma for someone’s investment property portfolio, where you can use an app which then helps you optimize your portfolio to increase your returns over time. So, we’ve packaged up everything that we do in a more digital, consumer friendly way. And I think this is why people have a preference toward using Roofstock versus their analog ways going about investing.

Adam Conner (12:55):

Yeah, let’s get into that a little bit because of course, as CMO, you’re the steward of the brand. And so, what are some of the things that make up for that current digital experience which is keeping people excited, engaged, investing, keeping their wallets open? What are the things that you focus on the most to ensure that this digital first wealth of buyers and investors are satisfied with the experience just as much as they are with the product?

Suresh Srinivasan (13:24):

Yeah. I mean, look, it cuts across everything. So with Roofstock, it’s not just about the buying and selling, but it’s also about the owning experience. And so, just in this last year, we ended up buying two companies. One was a full service property management firm called Great Jones. And Great Jones is again, it’s furthering our mission to separate the ownership from the investment management, if you will. And so, Great Jones, being full service property management across all of our market, makes it so much easier that you could buy investment properties much like you’re picking stock. The second acquisition was Stessa we were just talking about. And Stessa is a little bit more for the DIY-er.

Suresh Srinivasan (14:09):

Maybe, someone who is on Robinhood or other investing apps and prefer to sort of monitor their investments in real time and make their own decisions, Stessa enables them. And so with Stessa, we see that there’s over a billion in properties being added to the platform monthly and being tracked through platform. So, there’s a massive acceleration of adoption of this platform as well. So, I think what Roofstock does really well is we take all of these services that have historically been done through people and we are digitizing them and providing sort of a best in class user experience that’s through our website, through these series of apps, and then using humans in the loop whenever it makes sense. So for example, with full service property management, sometimes you want to just talk to somebody and find out what’s happening. And so, we’re there for you.

Adam Conner (15:02):

There is always going to be, at least in my opinion, that element of having the human touch because well, folks have just been used to that. You buy a house. What happens? We go and see a real estate agent. But then, there’s the other side of course, which you mentioned upfront, the Robinhoods of the world have certainly upgraded and updated that experience to, “Oh, here’s the ticker. I’m going to buy it.” And that’s it. In this particular class of assets, I do think that you are on the right track, that the best in class experience will have some elements of both for now and going forward. I want to talk to going forward here in the next section of this conversation, because well, to speak to the title of this show, I want to know what you think the future of this will be.

Adam Conner (15:48):

And I should note here that others are interested in that as well. Anybody who’s listening to this, if you’re listening to this close to the day that it launches, can go to Roofstock’s website, roofstock.com. And the first thing that you see across the top is unicorn sighting announcing our series E. And a series E, E for enormous, $240 million coming in the door from people who also want to see this succeed and have an eye on the future. Could we talk a little bit about that next generation of growth, but more importantly at least to this show, what it means for what that bet on the future is? What it looks like? Can we talk about that?

Suresh Srinivasan (16:29):

Yeah, let’s do it.

“So, what’s the future of real estate ownership? We’re in the middle of, I think, a movement that’s probably decades in the making. The way I sort of think about this is that we’re in the midst of a redefining of what home ownership actually means. And I think you touched on it earlier, Adam. It was thinking about it more so like investorship. And what we’ve seen is that younger generations are placing priority on achieving financial freedom and maintaining flexibility. Investing in rental properties satisfies this desire more so than buying a home to just go live in.”

— Suresh Srinivasan (16:30)

Suresh Srinivasan (17:09):

I think this is one of the reasons that our investors in the series E financing round, what they find interesting about Roofstock and sort of why we’re positioned to, I think, make a dent in this market or at least accelerate this shift is that with Roofstock, through this digital storefront, you can buy an entire home or even fractional shares of homes and build a portfolio much like you build a portfolio of stock. And again, going back to this notion of separating investing from operating the assets, now if you could do this in a super simple way through a digital app, all of a sudden, you could have exposure to real estate across five different geographies and have a small portfolio build all for probably less than the price of a down payment on a home to go live in. And so, I think this is where we’re heading. So I think the future of real estate ownership is all about just bringing in radical accessibility, making everything super cost effective and simple.

Adam Conner (18:10):

I’m curious as somebody who may jump into real estate investing in this way, but who eventually will also buy a home. First, to that accessibility, you had mentioned earlier that currently you are able to… If you wanted to even though you don’t live there, you can invest in communities in India I think you said. You said Orlando and things like that. Have to mention that those are in the US. Any plans to go global there too? Because I know that real estate has to be heating up. Obviously, it’s heating up in the US, but this is a much bigger opportunity. At least as that series E would suggest that beyond the US’ borders, this is an enormous opportunity.

Suresh Srinivasan (18:49):

There’s been a lot of interest from parties asking Roofstock to go global. But the market here, Adam, is huge, right? It’s a $4 trillion asset class. Today, if you just look at the market for single family rentals, it’s roughly 10 million owners of 17-ish million single family rental homes. And the market is getting bigger. What’s really exciting about Roofstock is that we’re making the market accessible to more people. So instead of just 10 million owners in the next decade, we could see it be 20 million owners. And so, the market is literally expanding. And so, while there’s a desire and an appetite to go international, I think we’ve got our work cut out for us here just domestically.

Adam Conner (19:30):

Well, fair enough. That’s a big pie to take a slice out of and maybe down the road, we’ll see that, that’ll be your series G for global

[crosstalk 00:19:39]

Suresh Srinivasan (19:39):

Probably.

Adam Conner (19:43):

As we begin to round out here, I’ll continue to speculate with you a little bit. The future of course of real estate investing, as you’ve noted, is this sort of hybrid human touch with a digital experience more accessible than ever before. Maybe, you could help me fill out a couple of blanks and we’ll start with one that says, “The future savvy real estate investor does blank or blanks.” What does that blank look like at least as far as the ideal vision from your perspective at Roofstock? How does that fill in that blank?

“I think the future savvy real estate investor builds a diversified portfolio. And look, it doesn’t have to be just single family rental homes. It could be multifamily, it could be a little bit of commercial. But I think it’s about diversification. And so, what I was mentioning earlier is that through Roofstock, you could buy shares of rental homes instead of buying a whole home. And I think over the next five years or so, what’s going to happen is that we’re going to have more and more innovation entering the space across all of real estate categories, right? So commercial, large multifamily, could be residential, as well as single family. And I think a smart real estate investor of the future builds a diversified portfolio. Not only diversification across asset classes, but also geographies.”

— Suresh Srinivasan (20:14)

Adam Conner (21:01):

Mm-hmm (affirmative), okay. Then how about this for another one just because I’m curious about this next blank? “I can tell you for sure that the future of real estate investment will not include blank.”

“I think the future of real estate investment will not include cumbersome loans, middlemen in the process who are extracting significant fees. I think there’s a potential where tokenization and putting information on the blockchain can make the transfer of assets a lot easier and again eradicating fees. So I think the future of real estate investing is all about a simpler way to gain access, more transparency around information, and much lower fees all around. I think it looks a lot more akin to stock investing than it does buying traditional real estate.”

— Suresh Srinivasan (21:15)

Adam Conner (21:55):

And this last one is probably a bit weighted of a question, but I’ll say it. Do you think that in the future, more people will buy a home first or invest in a home first?

Suresh Srinivasan (22:08):

My personal opinion is I think people are going to invest in a home first.

Adam Conner (22:12):

Can’t wait to see how that plays out. At least for me, I think I’m playing into that exact prediction. But there’s plenty more just like me who are possibly listening into this just to learn more. And I appreciate you sharing more with me right here and speculating a little bit on the future real estate investment. It’s a very interesting space place whether that be the industry in general or Roofstock growing again. Congrats on that massive round and best of luck on your continued growth trajectory. But for this today, Suresh, I really appreciate you joining me. Thanks so much.

Suresh Srinivasan (22:45):

Thanks, Adam.

Adam Conner (22:48):

Thanks again to Suresh Srinivasan from Roofstock for joining us. And I agree. I think the future will see a majority of folks becoming home investors before they become home owners. And thanks to you, the listener of course, for exploring The Future of Fandom with us. I’d encourage you to stay connected even after you move out of here. So subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts, and you can also find all of our content at livelike.com and on social media, LinkedIn @LiveLike, and Twitter @LiveLikeInc. I look forward to predicting the future again with you real soon. And until then, I’m Adam Conner saying, “So long, and thanks for being a fan.”

Employees are the foundation of every successful business. That’s why having an HR team that understands how to develop and reinforce a positive company culture and make employees feel valued and supported is beyond crucial.

This week on Get to Know LiveLike, we’re introducing you to one our very own HR team members, Senior Associate of People Operations, Anima Kara. We’re happy to introduce you to Anima and give you a chance to hear about her career journey into people operations, her day-to-day HR responsibilities, and more. We’re proud to have someone like Anima on our team, and excited to get to share a bit about her!

Tell us a little bit about your career path. How did you get into HR/People Ops?

My professional journey actually started as a finance trainee…yes, you heard that right! Once I completed my post graduation degree in the finance stream, I joined another company in the educational sector where I was working as an operations specialist doing around 40% finance and 60% HR work.

During that time, I found myself more inclined towards the HR responsibilities and got myself involved in recruitment, payroll and other typical HR work for the next two years. After those two years, I switched to a new organization with the new title of HR Analyst and worked there for approximately four years until finding myself in the Senior Associate role here at LiveLike.

Can you describe what an associate of people operations does and what your typical workday looks like?

A senior associate of people operations is a part of the people operations team and works closely with people strategy to support employees throughout their employment lifecycle. People operations is a strategic business sector that focuses on putting employees first by humanizing impersonal systems and continuously improving employee engagement, development and retention.

My typical day-to-day responsibilities include managing employee journeys, developing people strategy, increasing employee value, updating HR systems, and generally helping to achieve the wider goals of the organization.

Did you always want to work in an HR role?

The answer to this question is actually yes, despite my educational history. I’ve always loved to spend time looking at different employee profiles, and job descriptions that helped me later in the recruitment process. I hold a degree in accounting which involves lots of calculations such as salary, expenses, revenue, and profit which is also a part of HR work in many organizations. Along with this, I have also always been interested in gaining knowledge of employee software.

In an HR position, being able to spot and address key problem areas in your team structure is also always going to pay off. You have to stay on your toes when you work in HR. One day, you may be helping an employee navigate changes to their health insurance, and the next, you could be dealing with the effects of new laws or regulations. Challenges like these can keep the work engaging, no matter how long you’re in the field.

What have you learned about LiveLike (as both a business and a team) since you joined?

Livelike is an organization where all employees enjoy their work from the very first day and I believe this is because of the company culture. I learned a lot of new things in my department as well as cross-functionally.

In my initial phase at LiveLike I was able to understand the product but was facing difficulties in explaining it. Our HR Director Megha Maggo and CFO Lawrence Chan help me every step of the way and I know I can reach out to them anytime with my questions without any hesitation. The best part about LiveLike is this kind of open culture that motivates every individual to give their best effort and help those around them to succeed.

Is there anything else you’d want to share with those aspiring to work in people operations?

A great HR professional can have a profoundly positive impact on people just by clocking in each day, since the daily duties of the job make employee welfare and happiness a matter of professional responsibility.

There are countless examples of ways HR professionals have a hand in helping those in need: Hiring someone who’s in danger of losing a home or job, providing health insurance or tuition reimbursement to someone who’s never had it before, arranging job training that will give employees transferable skills no matter where they work, etc. Remember that HR professionals have the ability to advocate for policies that can truly change an employee’s life.

Investing in an Alternative Future

Today on the Future of Fandom, we diversify our understanding of investing and provide some alternatives to watching stock tickers with Wittney Rachlin, Chief Marketing Officer of Yieldstreet. Yieldstreet is an alternative investment platform focused on generating passive income streams for investors. In other words, it works to give regular folks like you and me the ability to invest in assets like art in short-term notes. Yieldstreet’s CMO Wittney is based out of New York and holds with her over 20 years of high-impact growth marketing and operational leadership experience for global consumers and financial services digital product leaders.

Connect with Wittney Rachlin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wittneyrachlin/

Read more about Yieldstreet: https://www.yieldstreet.com/

Full episode here:

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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Adam Conner (00:09):

Today on The Future of Fandom, we diversify our understanding of investing and provide some alternatives to watching stock tickers. My name’s Adam Conner, I’m your host, and in this episode, we buy into a conversation with Yieldstreet via their Chief Marketing Officer, Wittney Rachlin. Yieldstreet gives regular folks like you and me the ability to invest in assets like art in short-term notes. Between the explosion in stock trading app use and the rise of crypto, it’s no secret that investors are looking for new and different ways to invest their wealth and Wittney sees opportunities in building communities of people building a future of their own from investing in these alternatives “before it was cool.” So let’s have some fund (get it) and predict the future with Yieldstreet and Wittney Rachlin.

Adam Conner (01:02):

Hey, Wittney. Thanks for joining me. How are you?

Wittney Rachlin (01:05):

I’m doing well. How are you?

Adam Conner (01:06):

I’m doing well. Thanks for joining me to, mostly, well, first to educate me, I think, about not only Yieldstreet, what it does, but what that whole world of alternative investing is, and then to speak about how to build community within it. There’s a few intricacies that I foresee, but first, before we get into the weeds there, let’s start with the baseline. You tell us a little bit about Yieldstreet and then we will get into this world of alternative investing.

Wittney Rachlin (01:34):

Absolutely. We are a New York-based fintech company. We were founded in 2015, essentially to fix a fundamentally broken process between investors and investments with a mission to provide access to the best-in-class, high-yield, institutional-quality investment opportunities that were previously unavailable to most people because the barriers to entry were just too high, or just didn’t exist before.

Adam Conner (02:00):

What were those barriers? Let’s talk about that real quick.

Wittney Rachlin (02:02):

Yeah, sure. I think prior to these retail platforms, and clearly we’re not the only one in the market, it was hard for a regular everyday retail investor to find these types of investments. They were being offered through hedge funds. They were being offered through institutions to other types of institutional investors and they were being offered at very, very high minimums that made it unrealistic for your everyday investor to partake in these opportunities. What we are trying to do is bring these investments directly to the investor, as well as at lower minimums to make it more available. I will not use a name, but give you an example of something we recently had on our platform, a really desirable institutional-like investment. When I say that, I mean, institutions are actually investing in these types of products, but the minimums were at about 250,000 per investment. Our minimum investment was 25,000, so it makes it much more realistic for somebody who’s putting away savings to invest in these types of alternatives to be able to partake and experience that type of investing quality.

Adam Conner (03:07):

Sure. What called you to this purpose specifically? Prior to this, of course, I know you were at Blockfi, but I’m more referring to before that, you were part of, shall we call them more legacy, large financial players?

Wittney Rachlin (03:21):

Yes.

Adam Conner (03:22):

Which may not have been here, and then over time, it seems that you’ve drifted more into these certain vehicles. Was there something about them? Was there something about their potential, the communities, the type of people they attracted that attracted you?

Wittney Rachlin (03:32):

Absolutely. I would probably put myself squarely in our target market, so it definitely appealed to me. I come from a generation of people who were told, “If you put every dollar you can into your 401(k), starting at the time that you get your first job, you can retire comfortably at 65,” and that is no longer the case for most of us. We need to be investing outside of just the stock market and finding these other opportunities to generate wealth outside of our regular income stream. In the past, from where I had been, I had these wealthy friends who were investing in real estate or were getting access to these funds that I had never heard of before, and Yieldstreet is bringing this to people just like me and to many more people than previously had access to. And I think in the wake of COVID, especially, where you hear the richer getting much richer and not everybody else is getting there, we are looking to close that gap and bring more people access to things that were previously unattainable for them.

Adam Conner (04:31):

Gotcha. When you say that you’re squarely in the target market, who are the types of people, what are the types of communities Yieldstreet’s trying to build right now?

Wittney Rachlin (04:38):

Sure. Overall, we service accredited investors, which means people who make over $200,000 a year or have over a million in net worth. That is more of a regulatory outline, not something that we have imposed, so we also offer two types of funds for people who are non-accredited as well, and we will continue to work across government legislation ensure we give access to as many people as possible. But it is generally people who are a little bit older and have saved a little bit longer that have the investible assets outside of their 401(k) to think about where else to put their money.

Wittney Rachlin (05:14):

I think when you’re in your 20s, you’re hopefully putting money aside in your 401(k). You’re probably investing in some stocks and bonds by yourself, and when you get to be about in your 30s, I’m just generalizing, some of us in our 20s are much better at planning and generating wealth than I was in my 20s, but once you get to that point in life that you have the ability to save some more and to invest some more, that is where we come into play. Alternatives are all about having a place to invest side of the stock market, outside of the bond market. I think a lot of people think of crypto as being that only place, but there’s a whole wide world of alternative-type investments out there.

Adam Conner (05:52):

Yeah, crypto’s certainly the one which is the most media-forward and has had the most hype, arguably, shall we say since, oh, 2015, probably?

Wittney Rachlin (06:00):

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Adam Conner (06:01):

Probably hyping up once in 2017, again in 2020, and maybe a third time now, given the state of the world, but that’s not the only alternative, as you said, which is why I want to get a definition of this next. While a 20-something looking at investment advice, which they shouldn’t do, by the way, on TikTok, might just see something like stocks, bonds, crypto, and then maybe a house, like you’ve mentioned. I know that’s not all there is. Could you define what alternative investments is in the broad basket that Yieldstreet and you think about it?

Wittney Rachlin (06:28):

Absolutely. It’s fairly easy and crypto is part of that alternative universe. We’re talking about public markets, which is more your stocks and your bonds, and then there are private markets, or anything outside of the stock market, which I would consider alternatives. I think crypto has gained a lot of popularity because in some ways it functions very much like the stock market, right? You can move things daily. There’s liquidity. You can go in and you can go out, you can track it very easily, whereas other alternatives can be more illiquid and long term.

Wittney Rachlin (06:57):

If you think about buying a house, yes, that is an alternative investment, but there are ways to invest in real estate outside of that. There are REITs, there are multifamily housing, there are office buildings. We also offer art investing. We currently have an equity vehicle where you can invest in a variety of different art pieces in a diversified way. We deal with short-term lending, long-term lending, so there’s lots of different flavors of this. Venture capital is another very popular one these days. But really, I would broadly call it anything outside of the stock market.

Adam Conner (07:31):

Got it. What you are helping people to do in an increasingly democratized manner is get access and then invest actively in these things where it might not be so clear without something like a Yieldstreet as to what their value is, the fluctuations they’re in, and the ability to enter and exit these types of things?

Wittney Rachlin (07:48):

Exactly. In general, it’s a longer-term investment. We have investments for as short as four months and as long as, I think, seven years right now, so it’s not something people are as familiar with if their experience has been with the ups and downs and the daily liquidity of the stock market, so it’s a generally different place where we are hoping to create a platform for not just access, but also education.

Adam Conner (08:11):

Well, yeah, that’s where I want to go next, or I mean, that’s the clearest question I have in my head first. I’m 30, all right, so I’m right on the brink of people who should have been investing well in their 20s and people who should be diversifying in their 30s.

Wittney Rachlin (08:23):

Yes.

Adam Conner (08:23):

Of the instruments that you noted between stocks, bonds on one end, and crypto on the other, I mean, you just mentioned a few, which is at least more in number than those entities, why don’t I know much about this? I mean, is it just literally because no banker’s calling me up being like, “Hey, want to buy this art fund?”, or …? I imagine, as the CMO of the company, it creates a great awareness opportunity, but how are you trying to educate folks? I imagine that’s the beginning of any community that you seek to build, but what are the ways in which you’re doing that?

Wittney Rachlin (08:53):

Of course. One is we create a lot of content, a lot of blogs, a lot of co-sponsored newsletter, written articles about the different types of ways in which you can invest in alternatives, and the reasons why, understanding liquidity, understanding risk, understanding these types of investments. That’s more your broad-based awareness play.

Wittney Rachlin (09:13):

We also, obviously, we’re in the business of bringing on new people on our platform, so we leverage wider sponsorships and events to really bring that awareness, and in ways possible, we bring it with a very personal touch. We love to sponsor events where we can have people on the ground who help describe what we do to different people. I’d call that our very baseline education. But once you sign up on our platform, there’s a series of videos, information, how our offering pages will give you more information than you can probably digest in one sitting about the style of investment that you’re looking at, what it means, what the risks are, where the upside comes from, how the payment structures are, so we offer a very diverse, I’d say, from your very basic education to your really deep information to service all of the different layers and segments that we offer products to.

Adam Conner (10:05):

It’s worth noting here, listeners, you’re listening to a podcast in which we’re talking about this and Yieldstreet has their own called, appropriately enough, The Yield, where you can learn a little bit about this, one of the many content streams that they provide. Wittney, has the type of content changed the type of person that knows about this? Because I think about alternative investments in content. Maybe it’s because I’m a consumer of the platform, but the first thing that comes to mind is TikTok and how much garbage there is out there about how to do it, how not to do it, what to do, what not to do when it comes to investing. How have you made sure, other, of course, than putting the Yieldstreet name on it, to make sure that you’re not being lumped in unfairly with that muck?

Wittney Rachlin (10:48):

Absolutely. We’re really careful. I will say we’ve only recently really started entering the TikTok space and we only do it in ways that are highly informative and maybe in a slightly more fun way. We want to stand out in the quality of education we provide and it’s a way of bringing complex information to the market in a somewhat simple way. I always say, just because people are rich doesn’t mean they understand everything. Just because people are really smart. Doesn’t mean they know how to in the best way possible, so regardless of your level of education, we want to provide information to you in a succinct and clear way that makes mucking through all of that easy. We want to stand out, we want to be short, concise, and informational, and the best way to do that is obviously engaging on our actual platform, or you can find information in so many different ways based on your level of education about investing and the knowledge that you have already.

Adam Conner (11:45):

Yeah, it’s probably smart for us to start talking about that because even when you think about the broad swath of content out there, high quality, local, it doesn’t matter where it comes from, there’s also been, if you’ll excuse the pun, almost like a derivative market of content, which is simply ridiculing that which has come out, which is as popular or more popular than the advice or lack thereof itself, so the more you can control within your four walls, the better.

Adam Conner (12:07):

Let’s jump there. Let’s assume that I’m an investor and I want to get it access to some of these alternative things and so I dive in feet-first with Yieldstreet. What about the platform, the community there, what would keep me engaged? Here’s why I ask that, because if some of these have such a long maturity set up to seven years, it might be the kind of thing that I buy and let’s sit and ignore. How do you keep people active?

Wittney Rachlin (12:35):

That’s such a great question because we encounter this question all the time to that very point.

“If you come in and invest in a three-year real estate deal, why are you going to come back? Well, we hope you’re going to come back, one, because we’re going to give you updates about the investment that you’re in. If you’re invested in a real estate deal, we’re going to give you information about how that deal is progressing. Are you getting cashflow out of that? So while these investments can be illiquid from your principle, you still may be getting cash distributions on a very regular basis, either quarterly, twice a year, or annually, so that’s another reason to come back.”

— Wittney Rachlin (12:40)

Wittney Rachlin (13:10):

The hope is that you don’t just invest in one deal, you invest in several because it is about diversification, and because I can invest at lower minimums, I have the capacity to invest in a real estate deal and in a venture capital deal and in an art equity deal, and there’s always new deals coming on the platform at least every week, if not more often than that. I know for me personally, I had not invested on Yieldstreet prior to joining the company. Since then, I’ve been in about 10 active deals. The reason for that is something new comes along all the time that’s interesting and fits into the risk profile of my portfolio, where I feel like it’s a good return for the level of risk that I take. It has a good term at a good minimum.

Wittney Rachlin (13:49):

I’m always thinking about what’s the next thing. Plus, if you’re in a shorter-term deal, I’ve been in several as well, which are six to nine months in length, you get paid back. I start thinking about, “Well, if I put it back into my savings account, I’m going to make 50 basis points on my money, but if I put it back here for another two to four years, I’m going to start making much more than that.” The beauty of compound interest is something that we don’t realize until we start building it, so I’m always looking for what that next thing is going to be, and there’s so offered on the platform that I don’t really have to go elsewhere to do it.

Adam Conner (14:19):

Yeah. See, because in my mind, immediately where I jump is like, well, if I’m going to get into some of these alternatives, I would bias personally first towards something with a shorter timeframe because yeah, maybe my attention span is thin and I focus on this at part of my life, and then other things is as part of my life, and so I come back to this every now and again, but if I know that six to nine months from now, this money’s going to be unlocked, basically, with some return therein, I could go and put that back in. I thankfully understand the value of compounding as well.

Adam Conner (14:48):

That is, to me, currently more preferable than something on the long term, but I know there’s value in both, and it’s probably a result of two things, one, my age, frankly, and because I can afford to be risky right now in my portfolio, riskier, and two, just because once again, of all of this media-forward business around either, and again, it’s mostly stocks and bonds, it’s mostly in crypto, of wildly volatile things, where probably by survivorship bias, you get stories of wild winnings, and then in some cases, these ludicrous losses.

Adam Conner (15:23):

I’m curious about something else because through all of that, right, crypto market stocks and bonds, there is a common heartbeat and that common heartbeat is that I can go pretty much any website that provides the data and watch a ticker, I can watch it go up and down, sometimes faster than others, and that gives me a pulse without having to engage with additional content. It’s just like a number and that number’s good or bad and maybe it makes me feel a certain way, whatever. With these alternative investments, and you can educate me here as well, I don’t know that you necessarily have that heartbeat. I’m curious what the replacement, or if there is a replacement, or what the surrogate for that is, and probably again, to tackle the question of how do you make these investors feel involved? I understand there’s plenty of content there, but I’m just curious if that’s something that your current customers talk about, or where the hunger for shorter-term engagement comes from, do you know what I mean?

Wittney Rachlin (16:14):

Oh, absolutely.

Adam Conner (16:15):

That’s a huge question wrapped up, but I’m curious.

Wittney Rachlin (16:18):

It’s a huge question.

“I will tell you that a real estate investment is never going to have that heartbeat of crypto. I think a good portfolio has a balance of both because it’s not just about the excitement of investing, it’s about your short term in your long term. Going back to your previous point, there’s lots of opportunities to get into short-term deals, and I think a lot of first-time investors test the waters and dip their toe going into short term. We have three short-term notes up right now, which are less than nine months, so that’s a great way to do it.”

— Wittney Rachlin (16:19)

Wittney Rachlin (16:47):

But if you think about, “If I get into short-term notes, which is six months and that’s my short-term, I’m going to wait for my first payback and think about what next,” say I’m in a real estate deal. Suddenly, I’m thinking about markets and market dynamics and what’s happening in the space and what’s the housing markets sound like. I think content helps to replace that heartbeat and it becomes its own distinct heartbeat that’s a little less of following a ticker and more about absorbing more information and understanding the broader market context.

Wittney Rachlin (17:12):

For example, I invested in my first art deal recently, and suddenly, I find myself paying attention to the auctions and how much is the Banksy selling for, and is Basquiat as popular as it used to be? Those are the different ways, I think, that you start keeping people interested in their investment on a regular basis. That’s what we try to provide to investors on our platform. If you’re invested in an art deal, you’re going to get lots of information for us about how the markets are moving and what’s sold recently and for what and for how much more. I think there was a big note this morning that came out in The New York Times about how rents are skyrocketing in New York again and people have stayed away from real estate investing because of what happened during COVID, so it’s almost like this broader context and more intellectual focus that I have now on markets and market directions I’m invested in these deals.

Adam Conner (18:02):

Which I think is probably good for anybody to become a more prudent investor via that-

Wittney Rachlin (18:05):

I hope so.

Adam Conner (18:06):

… knowledge is opposed to a or mitigation of this volatility and fervor and fear mostly.

Wittney Rachlin (18:13):

Yep, and we’re hoping to deliver that in an easy way to our investors, so you’re not out there scouring The Wall Street Journal for information about where your investments are going.

Adam Conner (18:22):

Right. What are the youngest consumers on Yieldstreet or youngest customers on Yieldstreet saying, and craving? I ask this because on this podcast, partially we’re focused on what the, we say “next-gen consumer” but those that are digital-first are doing and thinking, and of course, with a nod to the future, which this is all about. I’m curious as to what they’re thinking because obviously, that’s going to drive where you go. What are they saying right now?

Wittney Rachlin (18:45):

I think of the younger investors, I’d say the way we provide crypto is probably for a somewhat more mature investor because a younger investor is very comfortable going out and trading coins in a way that maybe an older investor isn’t and we offer crypto through a diversified mean and through managed capital on our end.

“For people who are a bit younger, I think that the first step outside of stocks and crypto is probably real estate. It’s tangible, it’s understandable, it’s been around as an investment vehicle forever. We launched our first real estate REIT last week and that’s been a great way for us to engage new investors, especially because you do not have to be accredited to invest in it, and there is also a level of liquidity as we’ll be offering tender offers on a regular basis where you can actually move money in and out of the evergreen investment.”

— Wittney Rachlin (18:51)

Adam Conner (19:31):

Interesting. Then let me ask you this, because hopefully, even if folks are utilizing crypto investments in other means, ideally, you hope that as they age and mature, they move into your platform, so what do you see as the, I don’t want to use the word “future,” but I will, as like the next iteration of this sort of experience because as I’m understanding it right now, accessibility is growing. You can access a greater number of alternative investments than ever before, you can do it in a single place on Yieldstreet. Isn’t that great? Then once you make it, even if it is a long time to maturity, there’s this large content library in the middle to keep people, to give them a pulse on it.

Wittney Rachlin (20:08):

Yes.

Adam Conner (20:08):

What comes beyond that? Or, I mean, well, what’s on your mind for the next two, three, five years of Yieldstreet, or even the ideal alternative investing experience?

Wittney Rachlin (20:20):

Sure. I think that’s a great question.

“I’m always thinking about, ‘How do we think about the younger generation who are accumulating wealth right now?” To me, the ideal portfolio, again, my personal view of things, is where I think people see the very wealthy getting rich right now is probably in venture capital. That’s kind of the hot ticket item and it’s easier and easier to invest in. There’s a lot more retail platforms out there that allow for it.”

— Wittney Rachlin (20:22)

Wittney Rachlin (20:46):

But if you were to come to Yieldstreet, I think the great diversified platform to really experience everything that alternatives has to offer is to have something short-term that you move in and out of and potentially free up cash along the way. Certainly better than putting your money in a savings account right now. Then you have a couple of different investments that run different time periods as well as different underlying assets, so you have something in real estate, you have something in the VC private market space. I think every celebrity athlete out there is now invested in 12 different companies. I think Kevin Durant was, I mean, every time you hear about him, it’s because he was invested in some company that recently went public, and that’s the thing that people are thinking about.

Wittney Rachlin (21:26):

Then for me, from crypto, and obviously, I am a crypto investor and I do appreciate the ups and downs and the everyday momentum of it. But then there’s also this part of me that there’s a lot I don’t know about it. There are the new coins, there are people who are managing it in a different way, and I think having that kind of active management of crypto is an interesting alternative to being out there and trading Ethereum on my own.

Wittney Rachlin (21:48):

I think it’s the right mix, it’s the right duration, and it’s making sure you have the right amount. Institutions have around 40% of their assets in alternatives. On average, the retail consumer has less than 10, so obviously, there’s a happy place in the middle there. I’m not digesting consumers put 40% of their assets in alternatives, but under 10 is clearly not optimizing the diversity of their portfolio, and I hope people start taking those measures because my goal is to see more people generate wealth for the long term and not be impacted by the ups and downs of the stock market or the ups and downs of the crypto markets.

Adam Conner (22:27):

Sure, or at least to learn, I mean, my God. Yeah, and you hit the nail on the head with something that I’ve been thinking about, which is that every so often, I’ll have a conversation with somebody who will talk about access to VC. I always just saw that as behind some Manhattan/Connecticut garden, which is neatly trimmed and only accessible to a few select people. Then you find people on the other side who our athletes or entertainers, you and I must be reading the same edition of Adweek talking about Kevin Durant and his wild portfolio of tech and media ventures, we’ve even talked about it on this podcast, where that’s clearly a huge unlock, and yes, alternative, but I don’t know anything about that. Again, I almost feel silly not knowing it because, what, I’ve been in the real world, let’s say about, anyway, eight years after graduation and this is the kind of thing that I should know and anybody building wealth for the future should, so I appreciate that, and I appreciate you coming on the show, teaching us a little bit more.

Adam Conner (23:24):

Final thought. How about this? Favorite alternative investment? You have one? A favorite one? You mentioned art a lot and talk about VC. What do you really like?

Wittney Rachlin (23:31):

I do love art. I mean, I love art in particular, and I certainly don’t have the resources to buy my own, and yet the values continue to appreciate, so having someone tell me where that’s going to go. I’ve been investing in a lot of real estate. Actually, I’m a New Yorker and I’m a lifelong renter and I actually don’t own any real estate on my own, so I’ve actually-

Adam Conner (23:49):

Same here, except for the New York part, but I don’t own either.

Wittney Rachlin (23:51):

… Yeah. I’ve been leveraging Yieldstreet to become a real estate investor outside of being a homeowner.

Adam Conner (23:57):

Yeah, that’s a cool one, too, just because I, as well as anybody look at those staggering prices and say, “My God. Am I going to dump all my money in this? I mean, I know I got to get a piece, but jeez.”

Wittney Rachlin (24:06):

Exactly, exactly. Well, thank you so much for having me. It’s been great.

Adam Conner (24:13):

Thanks again to Wittney Rachlin from Yieldstreet for joining us. This alternative world is certainly worth looking into more and should probably be a bigger part of our financial future. Thanks to you, the listener, for exploring The Future of Fandom with us today. I’d encourage you to stay connected, so be sure to subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can also find all of our content at livelike.com and across socials, LinkedIn at @livelike, and Twitter at @livelikeinc. I look forward to predicting the future again with, with you real soon. Until then, I’m Adam Conner saying so long, and thanks for being a fan.

For most marketers looking to boost user engagement on their platform, interactivity is the first thing to come to mind. Of course, it’s intuitive to think solely of interactive widgets—exciting polls, trivia quizzes, and AMAs—when trying to draw in an audience and make them feel more inclined to use an app or website. And while interactive widgets are key to engaging users in this way, there is another widget type that is often overlooked but that is equally important to boosting engagement rates; the informative widget.

Informative widgets are exactly what they sound like: Widgets that provide your users with the information you want them to know about your product or service. These can include alerts about a schedule change during an event, pop-ups about deals you’re offering, notifications about an upcoming holiday promotion, or a social embed relaying brand information that’s been posted on an external social media platform.

Whatever information you’re communicating, informative widgets allow you to keep your users in the know, and give them the relevant updates you want them to get at the exact moments you want your users to get them.

At LiveLike, we’ve developed a library of informative widgets to make sure your users feel as connected and up-to-date with your brand as possible. With a suite of customizable alerts, deals, and social embeds, you’ll be able to communicate important timely updates as soon as they happen.

To introduce you to these major benefits and widget types, we’ve compiled a full rundown of our informative widgets library, with best practices, example use cases and the partnerships that make this offering possible.

ALERTS:

Give your users the best experience possible by providing the information they need, exactly when they need it. LiveLike Alerts allow you to broadcast breaking headlines, timely GIFS, special savings offers, and relevant event commentary, at just the right moments.

Our Alerts widget is extremely versatile, allowing you to easily broadcast text, media, or a combination of both on your platform to keep your users as up-to-date and informed as possible. As well, you’ll have the chance to attach relevant links to your Alerts to feature sponsorship destinations, or points of integration for other apps and websites.

Some best practices on how to use Alerts widgets:

• Enhance a live event (video or not) with a live feed with more information
• Showcase your own specific offers and discounts
• Showcase partners at specific moments with deals, promotions, discounts, etc.
• Reduce churn with content recommendations

SOCIAL EMBEDS:

Seamlessly integrate external images, videos, or posts onto your platform, no matter what kind of layout you love. Social Embeds include images, videos or posts originating from external social media platforms that are placed within articles to enhance the timeliness and relevance of a story.

You’ll be able to mix in any other social posts between all other types of interactions that LiveLike provides. Embed content from Twitter, Facebook, or any other provider that supports oEmbed.

AUTOMATIC ALERTS BASED ON DATA FEEDS (StatsPerform Integration):

LiveLike and Stats Perform have partnered to automatically deliver compelling and contextually-relevant widgets through mobile-friendly overlays:

Alerts: Use data feeds to automatically push out relevant alerts at exactly the right moment to engage and inform fans

Graphics: Use data feeds to automatically push out visually appealing  insights to engage and provide fans with deeper informations

Deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HKyoXfkV6UyPYTZTsIqZfc5uYgs-Oc4gKRJ51EIEouw/edit#slide=id.gfb89b69c12_0_18

LIVE CLIPPING ALERTS (Wildmoka Integration):

Start automating the creation and publication of video clips, using our integration with Wildmoka.

The new partnership with Wildmoka will now allow partners to have Wildmoka’s Digital Media Factory near live clips automatically plugged into their timeline, facilitating the operators work and enhancing the end user experience. Media companies can now differentiate themselves by not only being the first to publish but also by delivering a superior viewer experience and engagement.

PR: https://blog.wildmoka.com/wildmoka-partners-with-livelike

Test Alert

ASK ME ANYTHING = SHARING INFORMATION

By letting your fans ask the questions, you’re able to tackle the topics that really matter to your entire community.  Use AMAs to gather open-ended feedback, respond to users in real time, or even to compile a list of questions from the crowd to ask the on-air talent during a live stream. The Ask Me Anything or AMA widget not only gives your users the chance to ask the questions, it also provides you with crucial insight into what your audience is thinking and looking for.

Conclusion

So there you have it! While interactive widgets might be first to come to mind when thinking of ways to engage an audience, informative widgets can have similarly major benefits and successful outcomes. By combining the use of interactive widgets, informative widgets, live chats, and loyalty rewards programs, you’ll get the most of our audience engagement suite and start creating an experience your users won’t want to miss out on.

In 2023, customers crave authenticity more than ever before. Whether it’s on social media, TV commercials or even subway posters, we are all constantly being bombarded with sponsored posts, celebrity endorsements, and paid influencers, some of whom may not even use or like the product or service they’re advocating for. And with so much doubt as to whether the reviews we’re seeing are authentic or paid, word of mouth (WOM) marketing has become crucial.

So do brands have any control over WOM marketing? The short answer is yes. While creating a strong WOM marketing strategy isn’t easy, a key step is to make sure you’re doing everything in your power to build and maintain a loyal customer base. When you foster a tight-knit community of people who feel a sense of loyalty to your brand, you in turn build a customer base of users who are likely to recommend your brand to others.

With the LiveLike audience engagement suite, we offer features that work specifically to enhance your WOM marketing efforts and encourage your customers to remain loyal to your platform. In this article, we’re breaking down the top six ways you can use the LiveLike engagement suite to build effective rewards programs and maintain customer loyalty.

Remember that Consistency is King

One of the first steps to making sure your customers stay loyal to your brand is to create an experience they’re going to remember and that they can depend on. This involves offering a user experience that is not only unique and stands out amongst the rest, but also one that remains consistent.

Delivering a consistently positive experience allows your customers to form an emotional connection and a sense of familiarity with your brand. This in turn allows your users to depend on your brand experience as they know what they can expect, and feel confident when referring it to a friend.

Ensuring consistency across all UX touch points will build this brand credibility and trust, foster brand recognition, and maintain long-term relationships with your customers.

Create Personalized Engagement Opportunities Throughout the User Journey

No matter what kind of users are coming to your platform, something every faithful customer wants to feel from your UX is special. And creating an emotional connection with your users and then treating them like a new customer each time they interact with your brand is a sure-fire way to lose their loyalty.

In other words, a user won’t want to be prompted to sign up for your newsletter each time they visit your website when they are already subscribed. Sending a long-term customer an email that introduces them to your company will waste both your time and theirs. Similarly, celebrating the subscription anniversary date of a long-term user will let them know you care about them and value their loyalty.

Work to create an automated engagement strategy that is personalized to each individual user and meets them where they’re at in their customer journey. This can include creating unique user experiences, automated emails or interactive widgets for new, lost, or interested customers. Celebrating birthdays, holidays, and special events will build these customer relationships even further and make your users feel all the more appreciated.

Don’t Rely Strictly on Rewarding Purchase Actions

As previously mentioned, your users want an experience that is genuine, and not solely focused on encouraging them to spend money or invest in your business. If part of your UX strategy involves constantly finding ways to encourage spending, your users are likely going to seek out alternative experiences that feel more authentic.

In order to avoid this, make sure you are rewarding a variety of user behaviors that are not solely purchase actions. This could mean offering loyalty rewards to users who visit your app every day for a week, fill out a feedback form, or even simply vote on a poll. By offering this kind of rewards system, your users will feel as though you truly value their time and brand loyalty, and not just their spending habits.

Combine Engagement Widgets with Competitive Leaderboards

While interactive widgets in general are fun and engaging, what’s really going to draw in your customers is if they feel a sense of friendly (or not so friendly) competition with their fellow users.

For many people, there’s nothing more motivating than trying to top someone else’s score, keep themselves in the top ranking position, or even surpass their own previous scores. If this means returning to your platform every day or even multiple times a day to keep up with the competition, your users are likely to grow a feeling of loyalty, or at least dedication, to your site or app.

This works to not only draw in new users who want to be part of the action, but also to retain your existing users and keep them coming back for more.

Leverage Chat Functionality

Another key motivator to return to a platform is feeling a sense of community and connection with other users. This can be created most effectively with the use of public, private, and influencer chat capabilities.

By allowing your users to connect with each other from across the world, you’ll allow them to discover and create communities of like-minded people who they are excited to interact with consistently. This will not only keep them coming back to your platform, but will also make them associate your platform with the feeling of comfort, community, and interesting discussion.

Create Use Cases for All Users

The final way you can help to encourage WOM marketing for your brand is to create use cases for your product for all types of users or industries. If your product or service is only being marketed to a certain audience or industry, your users are not likely to recommend your brand to those that are outside of it.

However, by offering examples of all the diverse ways your product or service could be used by different people, your customers will be more likely to think of your brand when recommending services to their friends or family.

Of course, the first step to creating user loyalty is to make sure you are offering a quality product or service. Once this is the case, following these six methods will be key to building a strong WOM marketing strategy for your business.

Still not sure if gamification can be applied to your business platform? Get in touch today to learn more about how gaming elements can enhance your user experience.

No matter the size of your company or the industry you’re in, a good website can mean the difference between a new conversion and a lost prospect for your business. Your website is often the first impression you give to your potential customers and partners; the last thing you want is for a poorly designed, hard-to-navigate, or content-lacking website to dissuade them.

Now, we’re not saying our old website was bad—in fact, we’ve always been proud of our compelling design and quality content. But with our product being the strongest it’s ever been, we decided our site needed a little updating.

We’re so excited to announce the launch of our 2022 LiveLike website, created with our users in mind and made to better reflect our latest product advancements. Not only is our new website more easily navigable, aesthetically pleasing and dynamic, we’ve also added the content you’ve been craving. Read on to hear more about some of the exciting updates we’ve made.

Dedicated Industry Pages:

It’s no secret that LiveLike has seen great success in sports over the years. Partnering with brands like FOX, NASCAR, and Canal+, we have established ourselves as one of the best audience engagement solutions for sports companies around the world. And with this exciting achievement, we realized our capability to go even further, and move beyond just sports to cater to a wider audience of users—which is exactly what we did.

On our new website, you’ll find a dedicated Use Cases section, with individual pages for Sports, Fintech, Entertainment, Edtech and E-Commerce. On each of these pages, you’ll find industry-specific information on how the LiveLike Audience Engagement Suite can enhance your product or service. Browse our past partnerships, relevant widgets and use case examples, and start visualizing how you might implement our solution.

Detailed Widget Overviews:

Our audience engagement suite has so much to offer, with tools that can bring your UX to the next level. On the new LiveLike site, we’ve made it so much easier to learn about our amazing features, with individual pages for each of our unique Solutions. Now, you can read about and browse our Interactive Widgets, Informative Widgets, Live Chats, and Loyalty & Rewards tools with ease.

LiveLike Blog:

We have SO MUCH to say about the evolution of digital user engagement, and we seriously needed an outlet. On the new LiveLike website, we’re introducing the LiveLike blog hub, where we’re constantly sharing all of our coolest product updates, unique industry insights, and even our opinion pieces on where we think the world of DX is headed in the future.

LiveLike Podcast:

The future of fan engagement is fast approaching, and there’s no one better to talk to about it than the leaders of the brands at the forefront of it all. On our new LiveLike podcast, the Future of Fandom, we put these leaders in the hot seat, to discuss the future of digital marketing, user engagement, and the brand fan experience.

Launched at the start of 2022, the Future of Fandom has already seen amazing guests like NASCAR’s Tim Clark, Jordan Olivas from Qisstpay, and more. And now you can read all about it at www.livelike.com 😉

And So Much More!

We’ve worked hard to make our new website as dynamic, effective, and easy to use as our product itself, and we’re excited for you to take a look. But don’t just take our word for it; see for yourself! Check out the new and improved LiveLike website at www.livelike.com.

Still not seeing the content you’re looking for? We’d love to hear your feedback! Get in touch to let us know what our website is still missing.