Episode 2
Episode 2: Pete Kelso, FullThrottle
About Pete Kelso:
Pete Kelso has worked in marketing and production for 20 years serving various roles, including as a program manager for Commonweatlth/McCann, Chevy account. He is currently the Vice President of Agency Partnerships at FullThrottle, helping agencies develop a winning first-party data strategy for the cookie-less future. He shares his expertise in location-based targeting and marketing data services with The Backstory on Marketing. He is passionate about building strong business relationships with people “staying curious” as he seeks to learn from others.
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Transcript
Hi, I'm Guy Powell and welcome to the next episode
Guy Powell:of the Backstory on Marketing. If you haven't already done so
Guy Powell:please visit pro relevant.com and sign up for all of these
Guy Powell:episodes and podcasts. I am the author of the upcoming book, The
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:Prepare Your Team to Win. Today
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:we're speaking with Pete Kelso VP of Agency partnerships at
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:full throttle. So let me tell you a little bit about Pete.
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:Pete's been working in marketing and production for 20 years
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:serving various roles, including as a program manager for
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:Commonwealth McCann and had the Chevy account. He's now at
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:FullThrottle Technologies as VP of Agency Partnerships.
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:FullThrottle Technologies is a leading SAAS marketing company
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:focused on delivering cutting edge applications and data
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:services. Pete's job is to seek out curious marketers who are
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:focused on first party data and attribution. his passions are in
Post-COVID Marketing Machine:
:business, learning and also in people. So Peter, welcome.
Pete Kelso:Hey, thanks, Guy. It's great to be here. It's nice
Pete Kelso:to see you again.
Guy Powell:Yeah, definitely. Looking forward to our chat. So
Guy Powell:why don't we get started and tell us a little bit about how
Guy Powell:you got into marketing and how you got to where you are today?
Pete Kelso:Oh, sure. That's, it always starts with a failure,
Pete Kelso:right. So I'll wind the clock back all the way to the late
Pete Kelso:80s. When, before I was a true paid marketer, but my first
Pete Kelso:effort towards marketing really came. Actually, there's two
Pete Kelso:things that come up. It's one being in Student Council, I
Pete Kelso:think in sixth grade, and putting together a charity event
Pete Kelso:that we did, and just getting out there and grinding and
Pete Kelso:finding businesses that would help support our event by making
Pete Kelso:donations. And I quickly realized that I liked it, and
Pete Kelso:that I like to promote things. I like to launch things. And I
Pete Kelso:like to like you mentioned I like people I like connecting.
Pete Kelso:So that wasn't so much of a failure. But the next one was
Pete Kelso:about a year later, I decided that I was going to pivot from
Pete Kelso:mowing lawns in my neighborhood to babysitting. So I put
Pete Kelso:together my first stab at print or direct mail, and started
Pete Kelso:filling the mailboxes of my neighbors with a flyer telling
Pete Kelso:me telling them that the kid they probably barely trusted to
Pete Kelso:mow their lawn was now ready to watch their children. And so
Pete Kelso:that was the failure that that I mentioned. But I knew early on
Pete Kelso:that I liked connecting, creating promoting things. And
Pete Kelso:so I just took that interest and applied it towards my education,
Pete Kelso:went to Western Michigan University. I studied
Pete Kelso:advertising and production, my persistence came into play
Pete Kelso:again, when the advertising department was a little bit
Pete Kelso:booked up. And I had to repeatedly hound the dean to
Pete Kelso:make sure that he let me in. And after two or three semesters of
Pete Kelso:me bugging him once or twice a month, he let me in, and I got
Pete Kelso:to learn a whole lot about marketing, or at least what I
Pete Kelso:thought, right? Because you can only learn so much in school,
Pete Kelso:then I got out of school, and realize that I had a whole lot
Pete Kelso:more to learn, got involved in the Detroit automotive marketing
Pete Kelso:community, which really is an exciting place lots of big
Pete Kelso:budgets, right, these automotive companies spend a ton. And so
Pete Kelso:what I noticed early on is that we were doing some things, maybe
Pete Kelso:that other industries weren't or before other industries. And so
Pete Kelso:I got exposed to a lot of excitement. And I just never
Pete Kelso:looked back from there. I started as a freelancer working
Pete Kelso:with the automotive big three, doing experiential events, doing
Pete Kelso:marketing and business to business training, events, sales
Pete Kelso:training. And what I realize is that marketing is a part of
Pete Kelso:everything. Marketing is a part of that training that they're
Pete Kelso:giving to their dealers. Marketing is a part of the
Pete Kelso:education in the sales process. And that the more that you can
Pete Kelso:put marketing into messaging and realize how important it is to
Pete Kelso:connect with people, the more you can get the right message
Pete Kelso:across. And so it's all not necessarily about finding that
Pete Kelso:audience, but having the right message for that audience. So
Pete Kelso:not just finding but knowing the audience and now fast forward to
Pete Kelso:where I am now. And that's literally what we do at full
Pete Kelso:throttle is we identify anonymous website visitors and
Pete Kelso:create audiences and opportunities for businesses to
Pete Kelso:reach them. And so I don't get so much involved in the
Pete Kelso:messaging and the content right now. But it's really exciting to
Pete Kelso:be able to create at bats for businesses and connect those at
Pete Kelso:bats and those opportunities to actual sales and we do
Pete Kelso:that by identifying and marketing and then measuring and
Pete Kelso:connecting those dots, which I know, you as an analytics guru,
Pete Kelso:could you could talk all day about attribution. And it's
Pete Kelso:really nice when it's simple. When it's, here's Person A,
Pete Kelso:here's all the stuff that we sent them, did they buy or not?
Pete Kelso:And so you don't have to worry about an impression or lift, you
Pete Kelso:can connect one to one. And so, so full circle. That's where
Pete Kelso:that's where I started, and who knows where I'll go.
Guy Powell:Yeah, absolutely. And, and you're so right about
Guy Powell:the one to one and being able to connect the dots. And that's
Guy Powell:certainly what our business is about in terms of analytics. But
Guy Powell:it's also interesting, Jamie Turner, a good friend of mine,
Guy Powell:he just finished a book called an Audience of One, which is
Guy Powell:hyper targeting, and almost getting down to that one to one
Guy Powell:marketing. And so really, really, really true in
Guy Powell:marketing. If you can get down to that audience of one and be
Guy Powell:able to scale your messages, and what have you to that it really
Guy Powell:makes a big difference. I also like your story about going out
Guy Powell:and being the babysitter, my son went the other way. He was a
Guy Powell:babysitter. And then he went and did his marketing. He did a
Guy Powell:whole bunch of, you know, mailbox posts and what have you
Guy Powell:and stuffed the mailboxes. And he started a lawn service. And
Guy Powell:he was he was great at it. He made some good money doing that.
Pete Kelso:Yeah, I never made money at either of them. But I
Pete Kelso:just figured if they're going to give me free pizza, to sit and
Pete Kelso:watch TV at their house, that's a whole lot easier than sweating
Pete Kelso:it out in the in the backyard. But
Pete Kelso:I think I stuck to the lawn mowing for the most part.
Guy Powell:Yeah, no, he actually did pretty good. He had
Guy Powell:one or two guys working with him and he bought equipment, he
Guy Powell:bought a weed whacker and what have you and and he was really
Guy Powell:able to, you know, offer a good service, make some good money,
Guy Powell:buy the equipment, and then sell it. And so he did pretty good.
Guy Powell:But enough about that. That's, I like though that that bringing
Guy Powell:that, that that concept that marketing is in is in
Guy Powell:everything. And certainly when you're marketing for the
Guy Powell:automotive companies where their budgets are in the billions, you
Guy Powell:really get to see how marketing can do every last little thing.
Guy Powell:And it's just, I find it fascinating. I find that
Guy Powell:absolutely fascinating.
Pete Kelso:It absolutely is in those big budget programs, they
Pete Kelso:have so many stakeholders involved that even just pitching
Pete Kelso:and launching a big program like that you have to create a
Pete Kelso:marketing campaign around a pitch sometimes to make sure
Pete Kelso:that you can really check the box for every single one of
Pete Kelso:those stakeholders in play. Nice. But yeah, Chevy's still
Pete Kelso:around, I guess it's because of me.
Guy Powell:Yeah, exactly. Good. Good. Yeah. Good way to do that.
Guy Powell:That's fantastic. So well, unfortunately, though, the the
Guy Powell:future here, certainly with COVID. And what have you is a
Guy Powell:little bit uncertain. Hopefully, it's getting more certain. So
Guy Powell:what do you see as the challenges coming up for 2022?
Guy Powell:For marketers, big ones, and small ones, and any of them
Guy Powell:across the board?
Pete Kelso:Well, I think obviously, we know that there's
Pete Kelso:changes happening every single day when it comes to privacy.
Pete Kelso:And the cookieless world is on the horizon, or we're already in
Pete Kelso:it. So that's that's a known challenge that I think
Pete Kelso:everyone's aware of. But I think as how it relates to COVID is
Pete Kelso:that we're going to continue to see especially on digital is
Pete Kelso:more at home shoppers, more people in their in their
Pete Kelso:households, that are going through that that entire
Pete Kelso:customer journey, or maybe a larger portion of that customer
Pete Kelso:journey. Because COVID was pretty well timed with a very
Pete Kelso:challenging time for brick and mortar retail, for all of these
Pete Kelso:other factors. That was really unfortunate for a lot of, I
Pete Kelso:guess, marketers and retailers that were struggling to reinvent
Pete Kelso:their journey. Maybe it's a push in the right direction, where
Pete Kelso:they just needed to go all in on digital, and figure out a way to
Pete Kelso:create a more unique customer experience if if they're going
Pete Kelso:from digital to some sort of in person or brick and mortar. So I
Pete Kelso:think the main challenge that I see is really just connecting
Pete Kelso:that experience. How do you connect it not so not just from
Pete Kelso:a, an analytics in a marketing and a measurement standpoint,
Pete Kelso:but how do we do it in a way that can impact and drive
Pete Kelso:consumer behavior. And so that's what's exciting for me and why I
Pete Kelso:like where I'm at is that, like I mentioned, I'm not so much
Pete Kelso:involved in the messaging, but to be able to provide those
Pete Kelso:opportunities for marketers, to be able to talk with agency
Pete Kelso:leaders on a daily basis, big and small, in different
Pete Kelso:industries and different brands and find different ways ways
Pete Kelso:that we can help them through creating those opportunities by
Pete Kelso:creating opportunities for reach and measurement, to have those
Pete Kelso:complement what they're already doing. And I think, you know,
Pete Kelso:you mentioned I searched for the curious I do. And I never
Pete Kelso:claimed that we're going to be this one size fits all the only
Pete Kelso:solution that you'll ever need again. And I think anybody who
Pete Kelso:is taking that sort of approach really needs to pick their head
Pete Kelso:up out of the sand and realize that it's going to be a number
Pete Kelso:of different things that and factors and new tools and
Pete Kelso:solutions that have to be incorporated, and that the right
Pete Kelso:partners are the ones that are willing to be flexible, that are
Pete Kelso:willing to listen and learn and then present with a more open
Pete Kelso:minded nature. And not this one size fits all approach. So the
Pete Kelso:most exciting conversations that I have going on, besides the
Pete Kelso:ones where they just say, Yeah, I'll take it, let's let's, let's
Pete Kelso:start doing business, I'll send you a PO, which rarely happens
Pete Kelso:are the longer ones where I'm learning about what their needs
Pete Kelso:are, where we as a company are learning about ways that we can
Pete Kelso:check different boxes and be flexible, but in a scalable way,
Pete Kelso:and making new partnerships and strategic partnerships with
Pete Kelso:other solution providers so that we can sort of work together to
Pete Kelso:solve those problems, which is what I did a lot of when I
Pete Kelso:worked on the Chevy account, because there was always 10
Pete Kelso:different companies and stakeholders and stages. So to
Pete Kelso:see it on all small and large scale on a daily basis is it's
Pete Kelso:exciting for me, and I think those curious ones that are
Pete Kelso:seeking out new technology and solutions, I sure hope that they
Pete Kelso:find me or that I find them.
Guy Powell:Yeah, you're right about the curiosity. And the and
Guy Powell:I think a lot of you know, especially what I would say are
Guy Powell:the best in class marketers are the ones that really, that
Guy Powell:really look and are curious about new opportunities to be
Guy Powell:able to do with that one little thing significantly better. I
Guy Powell:really like your, your your mentioned to about the customer
Guy Powell:experience, and I was talking to a friend of mine about that the
Guy Powell:other day and, and I was using Apple as as an example, when you
Guy Powell:buy an Apple phone. And and now I haven't bought an Android, but
Guy Powell:you when you buy an Apple phone, for example, certainly the the
Guy Powell:customer experience starts even before you buy it, then you
Guy Powell:actually, you know, do your investigation, okay, so you buy
Guy Powell:it and you get it, you get this little box and what have you,
Guy Powell:and you bring the box home and it says really well laid out
Guy Powell:box. So they've already gone from the pre sale to the sale.
Guy Powell:And now you're in the post sale and you open up the box, or you
Guy Powell:open up the laptop or the iPods or whatever it is. And it's got
Guy Powell:all this stuff that's perfectly laid out. And so now they've got
Guy Powell:the customer experience, right to the post sale. And people are
Guy Powell:then are going to talk about that they're going to go on
Guy Powell:social about that are going to tell their friends about maybe
Guy Powell:not only that, but you know, certainly the product and that
Guy Powell:whole experience, and what Steve Jobs was able to put together,
Guy Powell:you know, for all of Apple really, really makes a
Guy Powell:difference. So you know, that experience is a is that customer
Guy Powell:experience. Journey is really so critical.
Pete Kelso:Yeah. And it goes to show you the value, it's
Pete Kelso:unquantifiable the value of acquiring a customer that's
Pete Kelso:going to become part of your advocate army. And, you know, we
Pete Kelso:deal with whether it's a home services company that's smaller,
Pete Kelso:or a giant brand like that, you know, there's a there's a brand
Pete Kelso:I can't mention in the on the golf industry that we're talking
Pete Kelso:with. And my father in law, just bought a new club from them. And
Pete Kelso:he is as brick and mortar as it comes, wants to you know, if
Pete Kelso:he's buying a new bike, he literally went to the store so
Pete Kelso:much that when my mother in law came in to finally buy the bike,
Pete Kelso:that was his gift, but he had to do like nine months worth of
Pete Kelso:research, they were happy to finally get him out of their
Pete Kelso:hair, right? He's a great guy, but he's an advocate for them
Pete Kelso:now. And now for him to go through that experience
Pete Kelso:digitally. He he is going to tell everybody, not how he's
Pete Kelso:hitting that driver, but about that experience. And you can't
Pete Kelso:quantify that value. So if I can give more opportunities for
Pete Kelso:people to become advocates that you know, it's it's really fun.
Pete Kelso:And I think that the some of the stuff my dad told me, he's a
Pete Kelso:he's a retired painting contractor. And he said,
Pete Kelso:commerce follows the path of least resistance. And I think
Pete Kelso:making that experience, fun and easy is something that the ones
Pete Kelso:that are doing it right they just have down and that creates
Pete Kelso:that advocacy. You know, I like the example of like Ikea
Pete Kelso:furniture that their instructions have no language,
Pete Kelso:right? They sell it all over the world and like every other
Pete Kelso:catalog or instructions that you open up and you see all those
Pete Kelso:other languages, your head immediately starts to spin, you
Pete Kelso:lose the page that you're on. But IKEA takes a different
Pete Kelso:approach, and just keeps it simple. And a lot of us feel
Pete Kelso:like it's like we're playing adult Legos, when we're putting
Pete Kelso:together that furniture that looks nice that lasts, but that
Pete Kelso:that experience goes beyond the sale. And I think that's what
Pete Kelso:creates that advocacy. And when someone puts together an Ikea
Pete Kelso:set of furniture, they usually like to tell them somebody else,
Pete Kelso:yeah, I put this together, it was easy, it was a lot easier
Pete Kelso:than I thought. And, you know, to see that and feel that
Pete Kelso:experience with Apple, I mean, they, they're always at the top
Pete Kelso:of the list when it comes to that experience. And that the
Pete Kelso:amount of thought that's put around every single point in
Pete Kelso:that process, you know, and it really never ends.
Guy Powell:Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's them as well
Guy Powell:as even Amazon, they kind of they just to your point, they
Guy Powell:set the standard for customer experience and shopping
Guy Powell:experience on Amazon and and then when you go to another
Guy Powell:company in any industry, and you want to buy with some furniture
Guy Powell:and and if they don't have that same kind of experience, you go
Guy Powell:man, this is there just like, you know, decades behind what
Guy Powell:what I could be doing, compared to what Apple and Amazon are
Guy Powell:actually doing today. And, and really leading the industry.
Guy Powell:That's that's for sure.
Pete Kelso:Yeah. And I think that sounds like opportunity to
Pete Kelso:me, those are the people I'm always trying to find, you know,
Pete Kelso:furniture industry is a great example. Because there are all
Pete Kelso:these independent furniture retailers out there that may or
Pete Kelso:may not have a robust website, maybe they don't even have the
Pete Kelso:ecommerce capabilities incorporated into their site.
Pete Kelso:And they want to get people to their store. And that's great.
Pete Kelso:But to find those people to nurture them, to get them down
Pete Kelso:to that funnel, you've got to have that storefront that's
Pete Kelso:everywhere, and that that's the web. And so if you can start
Pete Kelso:that experience there and give that option so that it's not
Pete Kelso:just this appointment, you know, driven, I have to go to the
Pete Kelso:store when I find time. But really cater that experience
Pete Kelso:around the customer. It really doesn't matter what you're
Pete Kelso:selling. So my advice to anybody would be, make sure your front
Pete Kelso:door is always open and inviting. And that front door is
Pete Kelso:your website.
Guy Powell:Yeah, yeah. And to your point as well, from before
Guy Powell:that COVID. And then this lockdown, and it really forced a
Guy Powell:lot of the retailers to relook at what was going on in the
Guy Powell:digital space, because that was their front door there
Guy Powell:otherwise, their front door, their physical front door was
Guy Powell:locked and was staying locked for quite a while one of our
Guy Powell:clients as well, they took that time and redid their back end on
Guy Powell:there, it redid their their whole website, and so that they
Guy Powell:were much better and much more focused on the E commerce
Guy Powell:experience and then looking at ways to offer new new products
Guy Powell:and services over you know, through E commerce as opposed to
Guy Powell:just the just the brick and mortar.
Pete Kelso:Yeah, and you're talking about new services look
Pete Kelso:at look at the restaurant industry and how much that is,
Pete Kelso:is changed because people are starting to go back out or they
Pete Kelso:are going back out. Now. You know, the poor restaurants are
Pete Kelso:still having a difficult time with resourcing and staffing.
Pete Kelso:But I think one of the reasons is because they're doing so much
Pete Kelso:more carry out business now in this new, you know, obviously
Pete Kelso:they were doing it before, but now they have this whole new
Pete Kelso:revenue stream. And you know, you think about that customer
Pete Kelso:experience. And I sometimes think as I'm sitting in a
Pete Kelso:restaurant, why is it taking me longer to get my food when I
Pete Kelso:don't necessarily see a packed restaurant. And then I look over
Pete Kelso:by the front door and I see a giant stack of carry out orders.
Pete Kelso:And I think what a good problem for that restaurant to have. But
Pete Kelso:they've got to figure out how do we make sure that it doesn't
Pete Kelso:impact the customer experience for the folks that are in there
Pete Kelso:especially because a lot of times those are higher profit
Pete Kelso:margin customers because they're having the alcoholic beverages
Pete Kelso:and things like that. But really, you've got it, you've
Pete Kelso:got to look at it from all angles. And that front door
Pete Kelso:always needs to be open to to grow. But, you know, we use the
Pete Kelso:the analogy because our technology was made for car
Pete Kelso:dealerships. And you can think of it both ways. But we would
Pete Kelso:say if if 100 People came into your store or your dealership,
Pete Kelso:you'd want to greet smile at ask every single one of them can I
Pete Kelso:help you, right? So that's what we want to design our websites
Pete Kelso:to be able to do. And everybody's fighting for
Pete Kelso:attention conversions to try to to bring those people in through
Pete Kelso:the funnel. But then if you look at it the other way, you got to
Pete Kelso:make sure at least for that restaurant example that you're
Pete Kelso:not making the person that is in the store feel like you're
Pete Kelso:saying hi to much to the people on the website. So it's a it's a
Pete Kelso:difficult balance but I think a good problem to have and you're
Pete Kelso:seeing You know, in a lot of other industries anyway that you
Pete Kelso:can put more doors out there. It's a good thing.
Guy Powell:Yeah, absolutely. And you know, your restaurant
Guy Powell:restaurant example. I don't I don't think the concept of the
Guy Powell:ghost kitchen was out there prior to COVID. And and now one
Guy Powell:of the clients we've been working with, they actually
Guy Powell:started two brands, and another friend of ours, who, who has a
Guy Powell:restaurant chain, they've started two other brands as well
Guy Powell:as ghost kitchens where you can only buy them on DoorDash or
Guy Powell:only buy them on on UberEATS. And what a what a fascinating
Guy Powell:change that took place. Because I hope, and I think to on those
Guy Powell:delivery customers, you don't get the alcohol revenue and the
Guy Powell:alcohol margins. But I think you're paying then the list
Guy Powell:price, so to speak, or you can plan and really optimize the
Guy Powell:costs and the pricing to those because you now have volume to
Guy Powell:be able to to calculate again. So very interesting concept.
Guy Powell:Very, very interesting. And especially if you don't have
Guy Powell:staff, if you got enough cooks staff, but you don't have enough
Guy Powell:waitstaff you have then the ability to use that fixed asset
Guy Powell:of the kitchen. Plus you have kitchen staff to be able to
Guy Powell:deliver that. That that delivered that delivered meal.
Guy Powell:Yeah, no dishes to wash either. Right. Oh, good point. Yeah,
Guy Powell:absolutely. Absolutely. Although I don't know how green those
Guy Powell:packages are with all that Styrofoam. Yeah, I know. Yeah.
Guy Powell:Yeah. That's the that's the conundrum. I see. But that's a
Guy Powell:whole nother discussion. We'll do that later on.
Pete Kelso:Yeah. All the world's world's problems in one
Pete Kelso:call, right?
Guy Powell:Yeah, that's right. Exactly. So Well, anyway, you've
Guy Powell:talked a little bit about full throttle, why don't you give us
Guy Powell:kind of the like a really good case study, or an example of how
Guy Powell:full throttle has been able to enhance the sales of one of your
Guy Powell:clients? Sure.
Pete Kelso:I mean, you know, we talked about furniture. And I
Pete Kelso:think that's, that's really one that I think is exciting. You
Pete Kelso:know, you think of businesses that have been doing things one
Pete Kelso:way for a long time. And then they sort of get maybe not
Pete Kelso:dragged, but you know, kind of nudged into the digital game,
Pete Kelso:but they don't know where it's going to lead them. Right. So
Pete Kelso:make most furniture independent retailers don't want to be in
Pete Kelso:the E commerce game, or they don't even have that ability.
Pete Kelso:But we want them to be found, we want them to be able to compete
Pete Kelso:against those giants, that are taking a big share out of the
Pete Kelso:market. And what those giants aren't doing, as well as these
Pete Kelso:independent retailers is taking care of those customers inside
Pete Kelso:of their own stores, right? Even the best customer service that
Pete Kelso:you see online, it's never going to match what John Smith, the
Pete Kelso:furniture owner in store owner in Tennessee, can do at a local
Pete Kelso:level. So I love the fact that we're able to take our
Pete Kelso:technology, and help these businesses that are already
Pete Kelso:figuring out how to get found online. Because they've
Pete Kelso:strengthened their SEO, they're putting their inventory out
Pete Kelso:there there. Their whole goal, though, is to take that website
Pete Kelso:experience and push it down the funnel to get these people to,
Pete Kelso:to keep them engaged and to get them to come into the store. And
Pete Kelso:what we've done is be as partner with, you know, one specific
Pete Kelso:agency who, who did a great job, and does a great job at creating
Pete Kelso:that widening that funnel for them. But to help them bring
Pete Kelso:those customers down the funnel. And you have to do it by
Pete Kelso:identifying them. So we can take an anonymous website visitor,
Pete Kelso:and we know their name, their address, the source that they
Pete Kelso:came in on all from one single privacy compliant location
Pete Kelso:share. What that does is it creates an opportunity to reach
Pete Kelso:that customer. But it also creates an opportunity to
Pete Kelso:measure that customer so that they can get an idea of what
Pete Kelso:does it take to get somebody to come into the store? What does
Pete Kelso:that average shopping timeline look like? How can we influence
Pete Kelso:that journey through increased communication and through, you
Pete Kelso:know, a much more targeted approach to retargeting. And
Pete Kelso:we've gone even a step further and added AI into that mix.
Pete Kelso:Because we're now up to over 52 million shoppers that we've
Pete Kelso:watched, we've identified and watched all the way through the
Pete Kelso:sales cycle, and then gotten that match back information to
Pete Kelso:be able to close the loop for attribution so that we can match
Pete Kelso:an identified household with an actual sale. So now that our AI
Pete Kelso:has learned and learned and learned and learned, it's
Pete Kelso:actually doing more than just showing you what's going on and
Pete Kelso:it influences the way that we retarget with direct mail. So we
Pete Kelso:have this product called Smart mail, where you get retargeted
Pete Kelso:with a with a mailer. in your mailbox three days after our
Pete Kelso:technology is identified you on a website as an anonymous
Pete Kelso:shopper, right? So everybody's using cookies to retarget. And
Pete Kelso:they don't necessarily know who they're reaching right that in
Pete Kelso:their reaching devices, but we're reaching a household and
Pete Kelso:now that our AI has learned and learned and learned, we're not
Pete Kelso:just going to send that mailer to every single one we identify,
Pete Kelso:we're going to send the mailers to those that deserve it. And
Pete Kelso:after 2 million samples, we know that if our AI says you're ready
Pete Kelso:to buy, you're three times more likely to buy. So when we can
Pete Kelso:identify that continue to measure, we can be
Pete Kelso:discriminatory on who we want to send that mailer and help manage
Pete Kelso:the costs of a campaign, and still show attribution and only
Pete Kelso:send the mailers to those who really deserve it. And we've
Pete Kelso:seen increased growth for these independent retailers on a large
Pete Kelso:scale and seeing increased budgets for direct mail because
Pete Kelso:they're seeing the return there. It's not a spray and and pray it
Pete Kelso:never really was for us because we knew who we were sending it
Pete Kelso:to. But if we were to compare how we used to use direct mail
Pete Kelso:to retarget to now we used to be spray and pray, we find an
Pete Kelso:audience and we'd spray them all with a mailer. Now we're finding
Pete Kelso:an audience, we're measuring that audience and we're
Pete Kelso:strategically retargeting so to see that maturation in the way
Pete Kelso:that we can help retailers and to see it work on the retail
Pete Kelso:level, every month to hear my agency partners asking when the
Pete Kelso:dashboard is going to be updated with the sales feed that they
Pete Kelso:just sent me. That's great, because I know that means
Pete Kelso:they're excited to share that information down to their end
Pete Kelso:client and to have advertisers or advertising agencies excited
Pete Kelso:for that monthly check in meeting with their client is
Pete Kelso:something that tells me we're doing something right and we're
Pete Kelso:making a difference on on the business level for the end
Pete Kelso:client. And my you know, my one of my resellers says, What does
Pete Kelso:it do for my client is always what they want. And so now they
Pete Kelso:don't have to ask, they can see it right there for them. So I
Pete Kelso:think that that's a great success story. And then what's
Pete Kelso:exciting to me is seeing how every single business and
Pete Kelso:industry has a different set of needs. And I touched on it a
Pete Kelso:little bit earlier that we can be flexible, and create a
Pete Kelso:program within the concentrates constraints of our, you know,
Pete Kelso:our ability to still to continue to scale and control the control
Pete Kelso:the quality of how we deliver for our customers, that maybe
Pete Kelso:you don't need everything, maybe it's just a data and a first
Pete Kelso:party export relationship but to be able to have those type of
Pete Kelso:conversations where it's you want to buy something off the
Pete Kelso:menu, we've got something that's perfect for you, or this is a
Pete Kelso:much bigger conversation, let's bring in the additional
Pete Kelso:stakeholders, let's let's figure it out, is something that we
Pete Kelso:love to do as well. So I'm excited about the future.
Guy Powell:Yeah, absolutely. And it is a fascinating approach
Guy Powell:and one of the things that we've always found in from an
Guy Powell:analytics perspective is if you can identify your prospects out
Guy Powell:of the huge opportunity or the whole base of you know,
Guy Powell:prospects but identify those prospects that have the behavior
Guy Powell:that they're ready to buy and then invest a little bit more in
Guy Powell:marketing or the right amount of money in marketing to
Guy Powell:strategically go after them. The ROI on that is enormous and
Guy Powell:that's that's where I really think your technology is being
Guy Powell:almost a game changer is pretty pretty fascinating. And and I
Guy Powell:think too if you're a you know a customer of yours and you have
Guy Powell:it before your your direct competitors, you're just gonna
Guy Powell:you know blow their socks off for quite a while. Yeah. Now I
Guy Powell:know you work in the quite a bit in the automotive industry and
Guy Powell:so my wife and I just started looking for a new car and and
Guy Powell:now we haven't gotten any direct mail yet but that may be because
Guy Powell:we haven't gone after the we haven't gone to the dealerships.
Guy Powell:We spent most of our time on the on the manufacturer sites, but
Guy Powell:it was kind of interesting so we were looking for you know,
Guy Powell:Hyundai key Ford Chevy we were looking at all the SUVs and the
Guy Powell:only one that is clearly now targeting us directly and coming
Guy Powell:at us with in connected TV is Hyundai and so we're seeing now
Guy Powell:I'm getting the Tucson the Santa Fe and I can't remember what the
Guy Powell:other ones are and it's like constant now when we're watching
Guy Powell:any kind of a any kind of a program it's bang bang bang with
Guy Powell:you know, Hyundai Hyundai Hyundai, so they they definitely
Guy Powell:are doing a good job at targeting and and if that's what
Guy Powell:you're doing now with direct mail and helping those
Guy Powell:dealerships to really send the stuff to the right people at the
Guy Powell:right time that that will make an enormous difference. Oh,
Pete Kelso:it will. And we're doing it on on television as
Pete Kelso:well, too. We're just about to launch smart scheduler, which is
Pete Kelso:a partnership we have with spectrum rich and effective.
Pete Kelso:And, you know, this tells me that that I'm working with a
Pete Kelso:company that has their act together that we have
Pete Kelso:partnerships with companies at that level that they see the
Pete Kelso:need, it enhances the value of their products, because they're
Pete Kelso:able to use our ability to identify to create those target
Pete Kelso:markets. But it's not just our ability to identify, it's the
Pete Kelso:fact that we for the right types of purchases, if we can get that
Pete Kelso:match back information, and then close that loop, they can show
Pete Kelso:attribution on, you know, on a TV spot, and to do that at the
Pete Kelso:hyper local level. For smaller businesses, I think it's it's a
Pete Kelso:really much a leg up. Because again, there's a lot of spray
Pete Kelso:and pray when it comes to broadcast media. And, you know,
Pete Kelso:we call it building awareness. And that's great. But if you've
Pete Kelso:got somebody who's already aware, like someone like you
Pete Kelso:that you mentioned that, out of all those OEMs, you're dealing
Pete Kelso:with that the memorable one is Hyundai, that's retargeting you
Pete Kelso:and found a way to kind of stay in your mind. Because you're
Pete Kelso:beyond awareness. Now there, you're starting to get lower
Pete Kelso:down into the funnel. And pretty soon you're going to act. So if
Pete Kelso:you can combine that on the OEM level, and then when you get to
Pete Kelso:the retail level, and you find the right site that maybe as a
Pete Kelso:partner of ours, then we'll be able to continue that
Pete Kelso:conversation with you. And then that business will be able to
Pete Kelso:measure that. And they when you can get a sense of what that
Pete Kelso:true timeline looks like not after you've become a lead or
Pete Kelso:been converted, it really changes the way that you look at
Pete Kelso:how you're messaging. And so again, that's always a cherry on
Pete Kelso:top, you know, we want to be able to show direct ROI
Pete Kelso:connecting sales to households. But if you can do that, and then
Pete Kelso:you have the validity to say this is your true buyer journey.
Pete Kelso:And this is this is how many of those people bought within the
Pete Kelso:first five days versus the next five days? How does that
Pete Kelso:influence your strategy, we don't necessarily want to get
Pete Kelso:involved into the weeds about those strategy conversations,
Pete Kelso:we're open to have them but we want to be careful and let the
Pete Kelso:strategy people make their decisions on their own. But you
Pete Kelso:know, I use the metaphor of at bats, those are at bats for
Pete Kelso:strategy people. So not only are we getting at bats for
Pete Kelso:marketers, and messengers and content people to drive
Pete Kelso:behavior, but the strategy people are looking at that
Pete Kelso:timeline and all this different, these different elements that
Pete Kelso:just come with the measurement, that that's really the icing on
Pete Kelso:the cake, and why it's exciting for me and sometimes confusing,
Pete Kelso:and whose attention am I going to be able to get, you know, at
Pete Kelso:a big brand or at a big agency? Or even in a smaller one? What's
Pete Kelso:the need? You know, I could come in thinking it's one thing and
Pete Kelso:then it could be the other. But it's nice to have something that
Pete Kelso:checks a lot of boxes.
Guy Powell:Yeah, absolutely. And I'm going to shift a little
Guy Powell:bit on the on the conversation, but it kind of all holds
Guy Powell:together. So when Hyundai advertised to us, and it was
Guy Powell:directly the SUV, you know, it was pretty obvious to me that we
Guy Powell:were being retargeted. And my wife is sitting there and I says
Guy Powell:well, what do you think? And she's Oh, yeah, you know, she
Guy Powell:didn't really understand. And I said, well, that that targeting
Guy Powell:that they're doing is because they have identified us
Guy Powell:specifically based on our visit to the website. And she goes,
Guy Powell:Oh, I don't like that. So which then gets to the I mean, she
Guy Powell:didn't know it. So she didn't see it as kind of being creepy.
Guy Powell:But as soon as you pointed out to her, she goes, Oh, that's
Guy Powell:kind of creepy. I don't know if I like that. And so that kind of
Guy Powell:moves us now into kind of the the privacy piece and the
Guy Powell:cookieless future piece. And so let's let's talk about that a
Guy Powell:little bit. Let's talk about the what marketers need to really
Guy Powell:think about as it relates to the the cookieless piece, the
Guy Powell:cookieless future and how privacy needs to be definitely
Guy Powell:carefully guarded, but also as a part of this whole future.
Pete Kelso:Yeah. And that is the line we walk right that line
Pete Kelso:of intrusiveness. Because sometimes a little bit of
Pete Kelso:intrusiveness is what you need to continue that conversation.
Pete Kelso:But being too intrusive, can be quite off putting. What I like
Pete Kelso:about what we do is that everything is based on a user
Pete Kelso:action, that we're not going after somebody until they come
Pete Kelso:to the specific site. The first thing that they do is they share
Pete Kelso:their location. Most people when they share their location, they
Pete Kelso:have a sense that that information is going to be used
Pete Kelso:to improve their buying or shopping experience. If you
Pete Kelso:don't share your location. We're not going to bother you because
Pete Kelso:we can identify you. But if you share Your location, what we
Pete Kelso:want to do is give that brand the opportunity to reach you.
Pete Kelso:And it's really up to us, I think to make sure that we have
Pete Kelso:the right type of partners. And you know, there's certain
Pete Kelso:industries like medical, for example, where there's
Pete Kelso:restrictions from HIPAA, but it's all about that user action
Pete Kelso:first that, that we, you know, we may not be a fit for some
Pete Kelso:industries, because ethically, they just don't like to go to
Pete Kelso:market like that. And we fully respect that, we don't try and
Pete Kelso:hide behind the fact that what we're doing is literally
Pete Kelso:resolving identity. And you go from anonymous to name, address,
Pete Kelso:and most importantly, what source brought you in. So what
Pete Kelso:we want to do for marketers is help them see that return,
Pete Kelso:because we don't exist if someone didn't already come to
Pete Kelso:the site. So a site's doing something to drive that traffic.
Pete Kelso:They're creating SEO content, they're, they're optimizing
Pete Kelso:their site, they're paying for media, they're trying to grab an
Pete Kelso:audience. So all we're trying to do is take that audience,
Pete Kelso:identify them when they're willing, when they opt in, and
Pete Kelso:then give an opportunity for that brand to reach back out
Pete Kelso:with the right messaging to help them move those consumers and
Pete Kelso:then to be able to tie that together. It's great to be
Pete Kelso:insulated from the cookie world, because, frankly, I wish they
Pete Kelso:would have pulled the plug on it months ago, it probably would
Pete Kelso:help me find more curious people out there. So I really do love
Pete Kelso:the way that we've taken the approach from the very beginning
Pete Kelso:of we saw the writing on the wall years ago and said, We're
Pete Kelso:going to use location based identification, and it's going
Pete Kelso:to be transparently opted in. And you know, as consumers can
Pete Kelso:continue to become more savvy, I think that's where there might
Pete Kelso:be a little bit more strategy involved in that exchange for
Pete Kelso:location, you know, how, how can you present it differently,
Pete Kelso:present value, when you're building awareness, I think
Pete Kelso:that's really where it's, in my opinion going to come that
Pete Kelso:you've got to find the right audiences and build the right
Pete Kelso:awareness to target these people that are in market. And if
Pete Kelso:they're in market, I think that they're always going to be more
Pete Kelso:apt to, to share their location. And then it's on the marketers
Pete Kelso:to do the right thing with that information. And, you know,
Pete Kelso:having a partner that's completely securing that first
Pete Kelso:party data that isn't sharing it, we don't share, we work with
Pete Kelso:1000s of websites, we don't share information between any of
Pete Kelso:the others. And if there's ever a conflict between, you know,
Pete Kelso:one reseller in a different industry, we make sure to keep
Pete Kelso:things separate, because it's really all about that customer,
Pete Kelso:their traffic and those households and attributing those
Pete Kelso:households back to their sales, and then it's in a fault, and
Pete Kelso:it's all in its own silo. So we have a lot of those silos over
Pete Kelso:at full throttle, it'll be interesting to see how, how
Pete Kelso:people navigate it in the future. But I think the data is
Pete Kelso:currency, that first party data is currency. And what we like to
Pete Kelso:say is own your data. So to be able to break down the walled
Pete Kelso:gardens of big tech to be able to give someone the opportunity
Pete Kelso:to take their traffic that they earned, because they drove that
Pete Kelso:traffic to their site. And their front door, people knocked and
Pete Kelso:say you can go and take that inactivate it agnostic of any
Pete Kelso:platform, and whatever they buy, if you tell us not who they are,
Pete Kelso:but literally when they bought and what their address is, we
Pete Kelso:keep all that those names out of the mix, when we're exchanging,
Pete Kelso:then we can make those connections and we show you your
Pete Kelso:attribution. Do we offer activations? Yeah, we are
Pete Kelso:offering them with the with the big tech, and we're happy to do
Pete Kelso:so. But if a client or partner has a good thing running, that's
Pete Kelso:where I mentioned, it's great to be able to have the ability to
Pete Kelso:say, we can enhance, not disrupt what you're doing. And if you
Pete Kelso:want us to handle it all we can do that. But if you want us to
Pete Kelso:just enhance, we can do that as well, and sort of figure out on
Pete Kelso:a case by case basis, how individual customer, each
Pete Kelso:individual.
Guy Powell:So what are you because I you know, one of the
Guy Powell:one of the things that I think marketers have a real challenge
Guy Powell:with is, there's a lot of really good technology coming out them.
Guy Powell:And you know, and unfortunately, it's kind of tough to weed out
Guy Powell:the ones that are might be good, but they're not good for their
Guy Powell:industry. So what do you do? What do you where do you what
Guy Powell:kind of data source news sources or whatever what do you really
Guy Powell:see as your source for really good marketing technology
Guy Powell:coming? Coming down the line that would be valuable for for
Guy Powell:for marketers nowadays,
Pete Kelso:you know, there's there is there's so much out
Pete Kelso:there, there's so much that does similar things and And there's a
Pete Kelso:lot of people that are invested in similar products, or maybe
Pete Kelso:something that maybe isn't as good as what we have. And so
Pete Kelso:what I have to constantly remember is that it's a
Pete Kelso:marathon, not a sprint, that the more that I can plant seeds of
Pete Kelso:knowledge, or I like to say, be an arrow in the quiver of people
Pete Kelso:out there companies out there, the better because the timing is
Pete Kelso:never as perfect as it is for me, I you know, so we have to be
Pete Kelso:persistent on our team to make sure that we're staying out
Pete Kelso:there that we that we're not putting all of our energy into
Pete Kelso:one specific opportunity, or have these expectations that
Pete Kelso:just because we know that or think that it might work, that
Pete Kelso:there haven't been two years worth of conversations and
Pete Kelso:decisions made to get them to where they are. And and I saw
Pete Kelso:that a ton when I worked on the Chevrolet campaign or the
Pete Kelso:Chevrolet account, because you're talking about a giant
Pete Kelso:brand. That nothing is simple. It's not it's no knock on
Pete Kelso:Chevrolet, their giant brand, they're all over the world. And
Pete Kelso:one little domino can create a whole lot of confusion. So
Pete Kelso:things have to be timed up the right way. And I think from my
Pete Kelso:perspective, I'm less focused on what else is out there, and the
Pete Kelso:competition and staying up to date on things because I want to
Pete Kelso:be more focused on finding more brains to plant that seed of
Pete Kelso:knowledge in and nurturing those conversations, and listening and
Pete Kelso:learning about where the problems are not necessarily
Pete Kelso:other solutions that are out there. Because we want to make
Pete Kelso:sure we learn first, and then walk, crawl, really walk and
Pete Kelso:then run. And even when we form a new partnership, the first
Pete Kelso:thing that we do with our technology is literally put it
Pete Kelso:on a website. And we don't do any activations all and we don't
Pete Kelso:charge anything for this. We call it our data trial and
Pete Kelso:learn. Because the first thing we want to do, even after we've
Pete Kelso:learned and learned and learned about the prospect and what
Pete Kelso:their needs are and how we could potentially solve problems for
Pete Kelso:them. The road meets the rubber on the web. And we need that
Pete Kelso:user action to give us that, basically that net audience of
Pete Kelso:opportunity, through our software's ability to identify
Pete Kelso:those households. And then it's exciting to be able to not only
Pete Kelso:offer that, yes, it makes that sales conversation even longer,
Pete Kelso:right, the one that I said could take years, it's months, you
Pete Kelso:know, we're willing to do it for months, whatever it takes, so
Pete Kelso:that we're not going in blind that we're learning as we go,
Pete Kelso:that we can set the right expectations, and that we can
Pete Kelso:prove that we can create opportunities, but not just
Pete Kelso:opportunities to identify right opportunities for those
Guy Powell:strategies, I think is the net, I think is the the
Guy Powell:critical piece is really being able to follow that. But also
Guy Powell:know don't think it don't get distracted. Too much. So, but
Guy Powell:anyway, I've got to, we're gonna have to close here. But before
Guy Powell:we do that, just and do you have any other comments or thoughts
Guy Powell:that you'd like to bring across?
Pete Kelso:You know, not really just, I just want to tell
Pete Kelso:anybody out there who's listening to be curious, and
Pete Kelso:take the take the call if you're curious. And especially if
Pete Kelso:somebody is persistent, because we're all juggling a lot of
Pete Kelso:things. And it's, it never hurts to know what's out there. And
Pete Kelso:it's always helpful to have another seed planted, you know,
Pete Kelso:our brains can handle it. And so I encourage everybody to to be
Pete Kelso:curious. And if you hear from me, you better you better.
Guy Powell:Yeah, absolutely. I do like that. And and I think I
Guy Powell:think that is a huge differentiator is is being
Guy Powell:curious. And that that does make a lot of sense. Well, so anyway,
Guy Powell:Pete, thank you so much. It's really been awesome. And really
Guy Powell:appreciate your time today. And thank you for participating in
Guy Powell:our podcasts and certainly helped me to, you know, educate
Guy Powell:me on on on how you really can use this, this location based
Guy Powell:data privacy, you know, totally privacy compliant, to help out
Guy Powell:that one to one marketing paradigm to really take your
Guy Powell:take web marketers to the next level. Otherwise, so Pete's
Guy Powell:website is full throttle.ai Full throttle.ai And if you're
Guy Powell:interested there you'll find a lot more information on what
Guy Powell:Pete calls closed loop marketing, and then of course,
Guy Powell:always stay stay curious. And with that, stay curious with
Guy Powell:with my with my blog and with my videos, and then certainly with
Guy Powell:my podcasts, the backstory on marketing, and you'll be able to
Guy Powell:find more information on that. For at the pro relevant.com and
Guy Powell:sign up for a blog, blog and podcast. Pete Thank you so much.
Pete Kelso:Thanks, guys. It's been fun
