Claire Komorowski

The 100% surefire way to compete in a cutthroat landscape: have strong relationships with your merchants/clients. How do I know? Because I've had tons of merchants tell me our competitors are in their inboxes, trying to poach business from SavedBy. So what do we do when this happens to our merchants? We brush it off and talk about how the week is going for them. That's what happens when you have a strong relationship with your merchants — competitors knocking at their doors just makes the lock tighter. My connection with our merchants is my favorite thing about SavedBy. I've been a merchant for 7 years. I get what they're talking about every week, and they know that. I won't name drop anyone here, but you can easily find our merchants — they're all hard-working teams who want to work with people as dedicated as they are. The best part? Our merchants aren't just telling me about the messages coming in — they're giving me all the gold nuggets: ➝ Giving insight into their wants/needs ➝ Helping us with product development ➝ Creating stronger relationships with their team Keep it coming. What do you do when you know the competition is approaching your roster?

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What drove earned media in May? Stacker sent out 3,175 stories from 75+ sources to a network of >3k publishers in May. Average story saw 302 pickups - what's there to learn from those that outperformed benchmarks?👇 1. "Your Money / Your Life" is the "if it bleeds, it leads" for features and data journalism. Stories around topics that impact pocketbooks (eg. inflation, college majors) or health (eg. boeing 787) were all over the top 100. 2. Kitchen table topics --- make it for dinner. While hundreds of stories touched on money and health, those that outperformed benchmarks found a way to turn the topic at hand into a "kitchen table topic," - stories with easy angles for conversation fodder. Ask: what's the frame for this story that makes someone bring it up later on? 3. Timely News - Stories with fast follow ons to current events - Boeing 787 woes, college graduation season, etc - were common in top 100. 4. "Accessible Travel" - The amount of travel related content contributed to wire jumped 3x in May as we head into summer. But the top performers all focused on travel for the everyman. Less jet setting to Europe, more roadtrips, national parks, local attractions, etc. h/t to Ken Romano for lending his brain on trends, follow me @ Noah Greenberg for more insights from our network

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So we recently started getting inundated with spam on the Upgrow contact form. I was tempted to enable a Captcha test, but I know that increases annoyance by 100%. How do I reduce spam and not reduce the conversion rate? I decided to try something different and added a final form question, "What's your favorite movie?". After a week, the CVR on the form has actually increased by 10% despite adding one more question, and the spam has decreased. As another positive, we now have a discovery call icebreaker. #happyaccident

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Hey fellow cannabis industry professionals! Are you tired of navigating through complex payment systems that don't quite meet your dispensary's needs? Look no further! Alleaves Payments is here to revolutionize your payment processes and take your business to new heights! 🚀 Here's why Alleaves Payments should be your go-to choice: 1️⃣ Competitive Rates: We offer competitive rates tailored to suit the needs of dispensaries of all sizes, helping you maximize your profits while minimizing costs. 2️⃣ Seamless Integration: Our platform seamlessly integrates with our POS or can be a stand-alone solution with your existing system, streamlining your operations and saving you valuable time and resources. 3️⃣ Enhanced Security: Security is paramount when it comes to handling transactions. Alleaves Payments employs state-of-the-art security measures to safeguard your data and protect your customers' privacy. 4️⃣ Customer Satisfaction: With our user-friendly interface and hassle-free payment process, your customers will enjoy a smooth purchasing experience, leading to increased satisfaction and loyalty. 5️⃣ Quick Access to Funds: We offer next day funding to your bank so you are not waiting around for your money! Ready to elevate your dispensary's payment experience? Email me at sean.c@alleaves.com today to learn more and take your business to the next level! 💼 #CannabisIndustry #PaymentSolutions #AlleavesPayments #DispensaryManagement #Innovation

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Want to learn more about the role of the business user in low-code. Watch this fun episode of Low down on Low-code!

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Headless is dead ☠️ At least for 99.9999% of merchants. I know this topic has been beat to death, but it’s still relevant. Especially now since we’re seeing the byproduct of many brands adopting a headless architecture over the past few years. - 60% of our pipeline are large/enterprise brands who are moving from a custom headless environment to Shopify native. - 80%+ of recent launches and current projects are large merchants who are coming from a headless custom stack. We used to put a GMV indicator to judge if headless was the right approach. But the large merchants are the ones moving towards Shopify native…. Why? - TCO and tech stack costs are dramatically lower on Shopify. - Easier content updates without needing a dev or waiting 2 hours for build time to preview. - Faster feature deployment - Leverge the app ecosystem without the need for custom integrations. - System integrations operate the same way. - Take advantage of Shopify’s product enhancements. Headless doesn’t solve complex back office needs. Yet many merchants still seem to think they do. It’s a Frontend solution for very complex content needs. Unless you’re Nike, you probably don’t need to push content to 50 different places. #ecommerce #headless #shopify

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The VP of Marketing for a $500M specialty retailer tells me 3 of his tech vendors are giving him headaches. And he’s on the lookout for alternative solutions. Here’s the story ⤵ Over the next 12-18 months, he wants to build a strong tech infrastructure. One that helps him: - Uplevel their website platform - Seamlessly incorporate future expansions - Rapidly and efficiently integrate acquisitions Here are his 3 top priorities: //1 He needs a new website. His company recently hired a vendor to build a new website. But he’s disappointed. “The platform feels stitched together through acquisitions,” he said. He’s also struggled to find third-party developers familiar with this vendor, making it difficult to leverage its full potential. “If I were placing a bet,” he shared, “I’d say next two years, we’ll move off the platform and transition to a more holistic provider.” //2 He needs a new search engine. “I give this vendor a 1/10,” he shared. “The search experience it provides is completely unacceptable.” His biggest complaint: - Even exact product names - If not inputted as a perfect match - Result in null search results or server overloads… Which is hurting their conversion rates. So he’s looking to bring on a new search partner ASAP. //3 He wants a true CDP. Right now, he’s using their SMS and email marketing vendor as a makeshift CDP… Which is limiting his ability to leverage targeted marketing across channels. So he’s hoping for a new CDP in the near future. His dream: “I want a place where my transactional data and my web analytics data are married.” ___ Vendors – How would you pitch to this client?

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For anyone who has worked in Business Development or in Ops, they would be familiar with a tension that simmers all through the year. A tactic of BD to get Ops to put up a dog and pony show is to label an account strategic. This one simple trick does the job of getting Ops and other functions that have to do the work of serving the account to be at their absolute best. People who have to do the grunt work hardly ask what makes the target strategic. They’ve been fed all their lives that there’s something called strategy and knowing that, let alone understanding it, will just muddle up their detail-oriented brains. Their position doesn’t allow them to see the big picture, the mysterious interconnections that make strategy-building an art. Some of these Ops folks are probably also worried that if they don’t toe the line, it may signal to management that execution is the problem. So they zip up and ask no questions. Now, often such a strategy (pardon the pun) is not malicious. It is just too much work to share context, and for Ops people who are used to putting their head down and delivering, it may even be too much information for no good reason. The problem is not BD; it is not Ops either. The issue is one of org design, in my opinion. It is tenable to keep BD or corporate strategy sealed in a bottle, and to not let anyone near it, because the bottle has the business’s secret sauce. It would also then make sense that orgs that closely guard their strategy do a thorough examination of lifetime value of accounts acquired for strategic reasons, just to make sure that it is not being used as an excuse to meet numbers. I would be surprised if this is the norm though. To me, labeling accounts as worth pursuing because of strategic reasons and taking away the license of Ops to raise credible objections works well in orgs where the culture is one of information asymmetry. Also, at such a place, except for a select few in the upper echelons, no one can tell what the org strategy is. And what is strategy? Strategy is anything that leaves employees nowhere to hide when they’re explaining their choices. #strategy #businessdevelopment #curiosityovercertainty

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Are Wegmans, Giant Eagle, and GetGo Tech companies? Or are they grocers, c-stores, etc.? Retail is in a Tech race. That’s clear. National retailers are now part of Big Tech. Shoppers want speed and seem less omnichannel. Brands want measurable, trustworthy velocity tools. But what about smaller regional chains? They don’t often have the resources. And some just want to be retailers. Enter Rippl. Rippl is now bridging the Tech gap for smaller retailers. It just launched a new retail media platform to: -> Create a standardized retail media point for small chains. -> Offer closed loop data reporting snd feedback. -> Consolidate a list of 70 Million shoppers. -> Offer state of the art customer targeting. And just like that… Wegmans, Giant Eagle, and GetGo are in the game. So if you need to increase velocity and one of these chains. Things are about to get easier. ——— 🔹Driving retail velocity in Kroger, Whole Foods, Albertsons, Costco, Walmart, Sprouts, and More 🔹DM me or book an appointment for help! #ecommerce #retailmedia #retailvelocity #retail #cpggrowth #instacart #cpg #tradespend

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DTC companies have this incredible asset of being *direct to consumer* yet we make it so hard to actually talk to our customers. We put up more walls (AI chatbots and online portals and surveys and what have you) for the sake of efficiency. There is a local cleaning service in Boston, Tidyhere.com, that does the opposite. Their customer service is AMAZING. Yes, they have an easy to use online portal where I can login, reschedule my cleaning dates, or add new services, but it's so much easier just to text them. So I do. I send them a message whenever I need to change something, they handle subscription management for me, and they are a pleasure to chat with (and, it's faster than logging into an app). I wish more brands offered a two-way SMS concierge. Especially for managing subscriptions or asking product questions.

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We've cracked the code. Our last five clients ranging from Mom and Pop Dispensaries to Premier MSO's averaged these results in the first 90 days: Marketplace Sales | Up 343.7% Marketplace ROAS | Up 222.7% Website & Direction Clicks | Up 65.6% Average Order Value | Up 16.6% Units Per Transaction | Up 5.6% Visitor to Order Conversion | Up 111.1% How do we do it? Step 1. Integrate data and measure KPI's from marketplaces including Weedmaps, Leafly, Yelp, Dutchie, IHJ, anywhere you're selling weed. Step 2. Activate Sparks best practices and daily management for each platform. Step 3. Strategize and update positions, promotions, products, and creatives. Step 4. Measure effectiveness of changes. Step 5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 every month. That's it. Partner with us before July 1st and we'll pay you $1,000 for ads on any platform you want if we don't improve your ROI within 30 days.

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Are you following TMIMIE? AKA, The Most Interesting Man in Ecommerce? If you’re into Shopify, DTC, Ecom SaaS, etc., you’ve got to know Jeremy Horowitz'. We recently caught up for my newsletter. Here’s 6 things I learned about ecom, business, & writing online - ✅ If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. ✅ Building on this, 3 things to move fast in your career - maniacal focus, ruthless prioritization, & teaming up v. going solo. ✅ The best newsletters a) solve a valuable problem b) too few are talking about (BTW, you should check out Jeremy’s). ✅ Most people a) do too much and b) are impatient. Winners do the opposite. ✅ There’s a secret to entrepreneurship - love the problem so much you’re happy to weather every sh–t storm. ✅ Shopify may be a trillion dollar biz with a $100B market cap 😲 … 👋 Catch our full chat on ecom & business at moonwater[dot]studio/scale-mba (send #18)

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A few months ago someone told me they would never consider 'a fractional COO because it's basically a lazy VP Ops' 😂 I really appreciated the honesty! But let me clarify a few things: 1️⃣ A Fractional COO is 𝒏𝒐𝒕 for everyone. For example, if you have a very aligned, organized, and strategic founding team, or if your founding team has worked together successfully in the past. You may not need a COO as you are able to replicate what you did in the past to drive performance. 2️⃣ A Fractional COO is 𝒏𝒐𝒕 a COO or a VP Ops. For the most part, we don't work day-to-day in the business. We don't own responsibilities fully end-to-end (for the most part). We come in to solve a specific problem. For example, you just raised a big round and your investors want you to scale at the speed of light. A fractional COO may come in to design your hiring plan, implement a new tech stack, and map out more efficient workflows. 3️⃣ The title COO is very vague. It can mean so many different things, and that's the same with a fractional COO. Some focus more on optimizing your financials, others on structuring your GTM. For me, 𝐦𝐲 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞. 4️⃣ The engagements vary as well. As mentioned above, we generally don't work in the business day-to-day, but sometimes that happens. We can be full-time, part-time, or project-based. Sometimes that changes over time as well. Many fractionals I know end up building very strong relationships with teams and join them full-time. But mostly, we're more than happy to hire our replacement and end the engagement. For some people, it's not ideal that the role of a fractional COO is so unstructured, but for others, that is exactly what they need. When you have a team full of people with defined roles and responsibilities, in times of growth it's ideal to have someone who can move around, be flexible, and slot in wherever is needed. I hope this helps clarify this a bit, and if you're interested in learning more about hiring a fractional COO, shoot me a DM 📩

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This week DevHub executive team gets together to close out the 2nd quarter and align on 3rd goals, priorities. Since late 2022 when the decision was made to work with #franchise brands directly it’s been freeing, hard - all the feels. We went from a company that ‘took orders,’ from partners to a company that truly provides real results, knowledge from the 17+ years, hundreds of brands and millions of websites migrated. Chances are before 2022 you did not know that DevHub was behind many of the leading #martech players from listings providers to paid ads vendors to review management platforms. We saw the commodization of tools and watered down services of many who offered ‘websites, local pages, store finder, franchisee sites, landing pages,’ to capture more of a brands business for the sake of revenue and many more that tried to shove every brand into the same box 📦. We are not in that rat race. We are exceptional websites, and we will continue on that path. These next few quarters are the pivotal moment of us, our customers as brands launching with devhub have to understand the value of/ difference of devhub…this is the time we show up. As always…will share here #linkedin See you 🔜 Rachel Berman Flanagan - COO Jennifer Koen - CCO Kimberly Kanber - CFO Daniel Rust - CTO Eunice David - CRO #eos

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Fountain's impact on UPS's hiring process is unbelievable. For TA leaders, imagine hiring 500,000 people in a year. This is a great podcast for those of you prepping for seasonal hiring or wanting to understand hiring at volume. It does not get better than this. #fountain #highvolume #seasonalhiring

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If you plan to expand and open a new food truck, you might as well map out your approach. Food truck equipment can cost roughly $25,000 to $100,000 to furnish a fully operational mobile restaurant. And that’s quite an investment to consider. To help you trim down expenses, Menu Tiger - Digital Menu QR Code for Restaurants' expertise is at your service. With our QR code menu software, you can carefully strategize operations and create a food truck menu without requiring many specialized tools, saving money on unnecessary purchases. Here, you can streamline the ordering process, customize the menu in real-time, enhance customer experience, and integrate with payment systems—all using one platform. The benefits and opportunities await. Here are other tactics you can use to reduce unnecessary outflows: • Shop around for deals: Take time to shop around and compare prices from different online and offline suppliers. • Buy used equipment: Consider purchasing used but high-quality equipment instead of brand-new items to save significant money. • Negotiate with suppliers: Don’t be afraid to negotiate to secure a better deal. • Consider leasing or renting food truck equipment: Leasing allows you to spread out the startup cost while renting gives you the flexibility to access equipment temporarily to control your budget. • Focus on essential items: Prioritize spending on equipment for your menu and operations. • DIY and repurpose: Get creative and consider DIY solutions or repurposing items to save money on tools. • Leverage technologies: Advanced technologies can significantly reduce the cost of outfitting your food truck, reducing POS equipment expenses. Unlike other businesses, a mobile kitchen can house various equipment and supplies that jump out of budget. But it should not be a problem if you have excellent cost-saving tactics, like MENU TIGER’s QR code menu, which you can enjoy for as low as $17 a month. It’s a bargain for your budget. Visit the website now and sign up, or you can test out our freemium plan and get 10 QR codes in one store for free!

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We're past the first-mover advantage of AMC. If you're running DSP and not leveraging AMC, you're behind. We've seen brands come to us spending a significant amount on DSP, but they aren't using AMC. The truth is, without AMC, they can't completely understand the impact of those ads and ad spend, and they can't fully understand if it's effective. They lack the confidence to spend that the data can provide. It's not that brands using AMC have an advantage, it's that brands that aren't are at a huge disadvantage. #Amazon #AMC #AmazonSellers

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