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This is FERMAT Fridays, your backstage pass to what’s going on at FERMAT.
Join us every Friday as we chat about what we're cooking up, the strategy behind it all, and of course our general musings.
Expect juicy insights on new features, our latest experiment results, and whatever else is making waves in our world. Whether you're an existing customer or just a little FERMAT curious, this podcast will keep you up to date and entertained.
Alex McEachern (00:01.77)
Welcome back to another Fermat Friday. We're switching things up a bit today. Today we've got our first customer joining the podcast. So I'm super excited to chat with her. Today we've got Erin Sylvia, who's the director of marketing at Caddis. They actually, I was going to try to do a quick introduction of what Caddis is, but Erin, you're way more qualified to do that than I am. Do you want to give our listeners maybe a little bit of a rundown of Caddis and maybe some quick hitters on you?
Erin (00:31.31)
Yeah, absolutely. So, Katis started as a reading gloss company, which doesn't sound sexy. And that was kind of the whole point of the company. So, once you're over the age of 40, people typically need reading glosses. The option was to go to like a CVS or Walgreens, pick one off the sad rotating display. Not a great experience. It didn't make someone feel great about aging. And so Katis took the stance of, well, let's make a really high quality reading gloss that, you know, becomes an extension of someone's personal style, personality, and kind of rephrase.
frames aging as a superpower or something that you get to be really proud of and stoked on. So that's how Cadis came to be. Since then, we've expanded to a full optical retailer. So we now do prescription, sun, and then reading glasses remains basically the core of our business. And I head up customer acquisition at Cadis. So overseeing all of our paid marketing, anywhere we try to acquire customers, and specifically a fairly large investment in meta in Google, which is where Firmat kind of came into our market.
mix.
Alex McEachern (01:33.002)
Love it. You have been with Caddis for a while now and you've been in the space for a really long time. So I promise we'll get into talking about Vermont and how you're using Vermont and a few other things, but anything kind of like on your mind right now, just in the acquisition space and maybe over those years of doing this, like what's kind of the biggest change between acquisition then and acquisition now?
Erin (01:59.534)
Yeah, I think the biggest challenge when I sit back and I think, okay, I've been, you know, working kind of in this space since, I don't know, roughly like 2013. If you think about the period between let's call it 2015 and 2017 on Metta in particular, you could just kind of fire off money cannons and acquire customers. And that came back a little bit during kind of like peak pandemic online shopping, but,
It's not as easy now. The market is much more saturated. Ecom in general is more saturated. Meta in particular is more saturated. So in my view, it's just become much more competitive and you have to work a little bit harder and be a little bit smarter to acquire customers in a way that works for your business from a bottom line perspective. I would say the other thing, although it's not really a change per se, is that change is constant. And so I think, I don't know how else to phrase that.
Early days, you had a lot of people spending a lot of VC money on acquiring customers, going back to the money cannon analogy, went through COVID where there was a huge peak in online shopping. Now we're kind of experiencing like, what is the post -COVID world look like? And obviously the platforms themselves have shifted and changed a lot in that time period as well. So I'd say like, you know, the change is that there's always change. It's a literal constant and you have to be willing to and able to adapt on an ongoing basis.
Alex McEachern (03:23.466)
When you said one, I love firing the money cannon. That's a great one. All right, so market's always changing on us. That is gonna continue forever. Things are different. Gotta work a little harder, a little smarter. Maybe this segues into Vermont, maybe it doesn't, but what does harder and smarter look like for you on the acquisition front right now? How does anyone listening start to think about this smarter?
Erin (03:26.734)
Yeah.
Erin (03:51.47)
Yeah, so I'm really, really focused on conversion rate because I think, you know, when I back up and I think about like meta in particular, we can optimize ad creative, we can optimize targeting, all of that's great in terms of what we can control kind of on platform. But I think where the rubber really meets the road is what happens when someone actually comes onto your site or onto a format experience. And that, you know, in my experience is where you can have the biggest impact on ad.
your scalability of customer acquisition. So.
you know, in terms of working smarter, I'm spending a lot more time these days thinking about, you know, once someone like after that initial click, once I've gotten them with the ad creative, what does the experience look like? And does it align with what they expect? And more importantly, is it built for kind of how we consume media and shop in an increasingly like mobile and scattered attention world? And so that does kind of, you know, segue into Firmat. And I can talk a little bit more either now or later about, you know, how we've used it specifically. But I think just trying to preserve
a really clear path to purchase and path to conversion is how I've been thinking about trying to be smarter with our ad dollars.
Alex McEachern (04:59.69)
I do think that's smart. And when you were talking about, hey, on the conversion rate side of this, obviously you can control what you can control on the ad creative side, but that ad creative needs to point someone somewhere. And if you're looking at the conversion or like any like conversion row as anything that is like the efficiency of this, like it's going all the way to purchase. So like there is a funnel here that goes way beyond just the ad creative.
And one thing I was chatting with someone the other day and we were talking about, Hey, sometimes you find these amazing creatives that have like great hook rates, great hold rates, great click through rates, but they kind of fall off on the other side. And I think it really hits on that aligning with what they expect because maybe you made this killer ad creative that could potentially capture like a new section of the market or is hitting on a new value prop that you are finding is net new. But then when it goes into kind of that.
the funnel that you always run your ads through. If it's not lining up with the expectations, then you might have a killer ad, but it's just falling apart in the post -click experience.
Erin (05:57.102)
Yeah, exactly, which is then such a bummer because you feel like you've won something, but at the same time, you're just, you know, all of your like actual financial performance metrics are falling short.
Alex McEachern (06:07.178)
Exactly, and like I and if you go the other way like you have all the creative where you're going based on like hook hold and like trying to find what works on the creative side and then if you just look at like the conversion rate and go the other way you might just be picking ads that fit the current experience best rather than like the best possible ad that you could create it's the marrying of those two in my opinion that like really makes this as smart as possible.
Erin (06:21.422)
Yes. Yep.
Erin (06:31.886)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think being able to go and look at your creative performance and see where you have those high performing creatives that aren't converting as well, and then trying to tailor an experience that more aligns better with the ad creative is another way of thinking about how to work smarter on ad platforms.
Alex McEachern (06:49.738)
Love it. Putting you on the spot here. Do you have any, like, have you ever had an example of that where you've had this like killer ad creative and it's just like, I know this is working. It's grabbing attention, but it's just not going anywhere post -click.
Erin (07:02.414)
Yeah, so I think you have this example queued up so we can actually like speak to it. But when I started at Katas and, you know, previous in my career, I've always used this really like very basic landing page strategy of five reasons why, you know, you need X. I hate even talking about it because it feels so like simple. But we, you know, we've been spending against a concept like that since I started at Katas and we'd started to really see degradation in conversion rate. The ads were still getting great click through rate, great engagement.
we could continue to iterate on those and see the creative metrics looking strong. We tried a bunch of different versions on the site, changing up imagery, trying to change up order, trying to just retool the landing page. We couldn't get it to convert. And I think part of it was that we'd run some version of this landing page in the same layout for forever. And so the fatigue was there. But more importantly, it drove.
I can get kind of get into the crux of the problem for CADIS is that we offer glasses across a thousand different variants. So you could come in and customize your glass to the nth degree. And as a new consumer, when you're presented with a PDP where you have to choose a lens type, a color, a magnification, maybe you want some extra features, you're asking someone a lot in the maybe like 10 seconds that you have to get them to evaluate their product. So I think part of the reason that
these landing pages stopped performing for us is that once you got beyond the initial page and you clicked into the cat is kind of PDP experience, there was a lot of overwhelming information on top of this already being like a pretty content heavy campaign. And so if I'm the consumer, I'm like, whoa, you've made me read a lot. Now you're making me choose a lot. I'm done. I want something easier. So that's kind of where we started testing with Fermat was to understand like.
Alex McEachern (08:37.834)
Yep.
Erin (08:54.99)
is our site, you know, the number of choices we're presenting inherently a roadblock for, you know, first touch conversion.
Alex McEachern (09:03.946)
I love that. So for those who are just listening and not watching, I have the Vermont landing experience that Aaron's talking about up on the screen here. Without you talking to me about this prior, I'm assuming this experience here is exactly what you're talking about. Like being able to pull that kind of like merchandising out of the PDPs and like through a bunch of clicks and just starting to bring this into a singular view where someone who's coming in, they were hooked on that ad.
they end up into this landing experience and like you're actually pulling and merchandising directly on the landing page here. Like they're not needing to click and explore beyond.
Erin (09:41.198)
Yeah, exactly. And then when they actually do get to the product on the landing page, there's a much more concise number of options. So we're able to serve up what people are actually purchasing as opposed to every single option that you could conceivably think to purchase.
Alex McEachern (09:57.45)
Love it. And maybe some like nerdy questions here about like Shopify, but are each of the magnifications and frames like inside of Shopify, are those individual skews or are they variants of like the same skew? Just for like anybody else with a big catalog that might be listening.
Erin (10:16.43)
Yes, they're individual SKUs. If we could go back in time and like know how we were going to kind of build the business, it would be set up very differently. But because things have sort of been bolted on as we go, which I think is the case for, you know, companies that grow quickly, we would have taken more of a parent SKU approach. But yes, every single variant, even down to like lens type is a separate SKU. So we have a catalog of, I want to say like 52 ,000 SKUs. It's an incredible number considering we're really just selling glasses.
Alex McEachern (10:41.866)
Wow.
Alex McEachern (10:46.698)
So with 52 ,000 SKUs and each of these being their own SKU, send it like, the merchandising experience becomes difficult on the site because like, do you drop them on a catalog page? Do you drop them on like an individual SKU? Now you're picking the like magnification and lens color directly for them. So just for those who are watching, like what's actually happening here in Vermont is that we have a custom PDP here where we're actually taking.
Erin (11:02.862)
Exactly.
Alex McEachern (11:13.514)
multiple SKUs and allowing someone to kind of build their own but presenting it as if it is a singular SKU to the customer who's coming in through the ad.
Erin (11:24.302)
Yeah, so it's much closer to like a one click experience as opposed to an 18 click experience.
Alex McEachern (11:30.698)
Yes. And I mean, I love how easily I can kind of just switch between what I need here.
Awesome. Actually, I should probably just show this as well as if I add this to bag, it's actually just going to add this directly to my bag with other options to potentially add to the cart as well.
Erin (11:54.894)
Yeah, and I think the fact that this just layers directly on Shopify, it makes it so much easier to explain internally and then the customer experience is pretty seamless. So.
Alex McEachern (12:06.154)
Love it. So one thing you were saying before is, hey, I mean, OK, pre -format, you have this killer ad experience. Where did you drop them? Did you drop them on the catalog page? Like, where was the the best of the worst, I guess?
Erin (12:24.942)
Yeah, so we, it's, I'd say probably like.
30 % content landing pages, 30 % collection pages, 40 % PDPs. So kind of all over the place in just a continual effort to test what performed the best. And I don't have an answer for you. It really depended on, it depends and still depends on the ad type. But certainly, you know, the ability to kind of drive someone into either a specific assortment or, you know, a single, you know, Miklos, which is our top selling skew.
available in five magnifications and four colors, let's call it, is much simpler than Miklos available in eight magnifications, six colors, three lens types. Like you can see how the problem sort of multiplies.
Alex McEachern (13:12.106)
Yeah. Did because of that, did you find yourself mostly running ads to the products that had like a simpler classification? Like even if they weren't necessarily like best margin or like top performers, just like trying to create easy paths before finding something like Vermont.
Erin (13:30.99)
We tried that a little bit, but unfortunately, the skis, or fortunately, I guess for us, the skis that convert the best are the ones with the most options. I don't think that's because they have the most options. I think it's just where we've invested in terms of building out new colors. I mean, probably like 20 % of our skis drive 80 % of our business, which I think is fairly typical. But anytime we tried to kind of go out of that bubble, we'd see some glimmers of success, but trying to scale it didn't perform for us.
Alex McEachern (13:42.41)
Right.
Alex McEachern (14:00.522)
So you talked to, hey, we might send it to a PDP, we might send it to a collection page, we might send it to something custom, hey, we have to test and figure this out. I've heard you refer to Fermat in the past as Caddis' proving ground. Maybe talk to me a bit about what testing is like on the website versus what testing or experimenting in Fermat kind of looks and feels like. Why is that?
Why has it become the proving ground versus like doing something on site?
Erin (14:32.75)
Yeah, so.
Our Shopify site is custom and with 52 ,000 SKUs plus a custom site, building any sort of like quick and easy test on like a PDP, for example, is never quick and easy. And so it's something that, you know, winds up having to go through a roadmap process and get prioritized and we need the resources to make it happen. And it's slow. And like, by the time we're able to make it happen, I have moved on to something else. Like there's a new problem that I'm trying to solve. And, you know, we've tried other like landing page builders that are,
clunky and don't necessarily replicate the experience that we're trying to build. And so what I found really useful with FirmOut is that I can have an idea and I can take it from like conception to test in a matter of days. And so an example is we sell wireframe reading glasses. They look like this. This one has clear lenses. This looks like a thing that like a normal person on a Zoom call would wear. We sell these default with tinted lenses, which is great for fashion play and works for
a subset of the population, but I had this theory that if we offered them with a clear lens in a way where you could easily find that clear lens option, we would see a better conversion rate. Just it's a more commercially viable skew. we build those custom, so it's not like we could, you know, order the inventory, build the PDP and test it. That's like a 90 to 120 day cycle for us to figure that out. Yeah. Right. Like not, and again, by that point, there's a new problem. So we were able to build kind of that clear lens landing page.
Alex McEachern (15:55.754)
cheese.
Erin (16:03.84)
with Firm -Ot, pull in that specific skew, see how that converted without all the noise of colored lenses and other options and what have you. And by doing that, I was able to go to our merchandising team and say, look, I have these metrics that show that this is converting really well for us. Add an acceptable CPA. We think we've started to achieve scale here. How do we build this so that we're making better margin on it versus trying to build it as a custom product? So it really becomes a proving ground both for the site experience. So we've
built the simpler page and it converts better, how do we do that? And merchandising or product development, using that huge catalog to our advantage and saying instead of building this variant custom, let's bring it in directly, let's make better margin on it, we'll sell more of it.
Alex McEachern (16:50.186)
I love that. I was expecting the site experience side of things as the proving ground, but actually having this be helpful from a merchandising and like, Hey, how do we make our product more efficient? Like that is beautiful. And especially like when you're able to build again, go from concept to actual implementation faster and easier. You're able to do that. Like I'm the same way. I have this amazing idea, but if it's going to take me like two weeks to
bring it to life by the time I actually get there, it's like, well, onto the next set of problems or something new came up and you just kind of like put it off to the side. So on the like on the product side of things, that's that's really interesting to me. So like, hey, we know this is going to work. It's at an acceptable. It's not an acceptable CPA. Let's make this more efficient. Like maybe walk me through like how how does that conversation go? Like when you're talking to the team?
Erin (17:18.35)
Great.
Erin (17:24.27)
Yeah, you're over it. Like.
Alex McEachern (17:47.594)
Like how do you, I don't even know what I'm really asking here, but like what was that conversation like to go from like, I've learned something to let's change how we're merchandising this and like, like let's find a way to make this more viable.
Erin (18:01.422)
Yeah, so.
I mean, it was really, we're a small team, which I think makes this these types of conversations easier, but it was literally just me saying, you know, I had this idea. I've brought this up before internally. I can be a little bit of like a dog with a bone when I get an idea. So no one was surprised that this was happening, but I was able to pull up both the firm out experience. we're all remote to being able to show it digitally is great. Pull up all of our metrics and then compare it against, you know, kind of in aggregate, this is where we see, you know, our meta account run. And this is where we saw this specific.
experience run relative to like our baseline and because it's outperforming our baseline we've spent you know X amount against it there's kind of like proof positive here that it works and so we were able to kind of talk through as a group okay how do we take this to the next step and do it in a way that's like still pretty risk adverse before we bring in a ton of inventory but like let's continue to iterate on it and see how we can build it out.
build out the SKU in a risk averse way and see how it performs kind of over the longer term and with more marketing support.
Alex McEachern (19:04.33)
risk averse. Like one thing we talk about here a lot is like the expense of doing something. And expense isn't just like how like monetarily expensive something is, but like time and like the risk, like you were talking about, like if you do something and you make a big bet and you change the site, like it can come with some like brand degradation, it can hurt returning business. So like there's opportunity costs, there's actual monetary costs, but to your point, like the time side of this, I think is the biggest one. And I know that
Erin (19:12.493)
it's time, I think.
Erin (19:22.35)
Yes.
Alex McEachern (19:34.282)
You one thing that you were talking to me about in the past is just kind of like your experience working with the Fermat team. Like has that how has that played into the time saving aspect of this for you?
Erin (19:47.726)
Yeah, absolutely.
We're super lean, like I said, and so if something's gonna take me a while, it tends to just bounce down my to -do list because there's other things I can get to more quickly. Like I think that's just human nature. And so having the Format team really work as an extension of our Catus team has been huge. Like we can bring an idea. It's very quick for someone on the Format team, you know, shout out to Sarah, who's great, to help us figure out how to set up the experience, get it live, start testing it, and you know, get data.
really quickly. And so something, you know,
Like I said, that would have to go through the internal roadmap process and get built out and, you know, maybe never happen happens in a couple of days. And then we're able to get data, you know, based on, depending on how much we spend within a week or so. So it's both from like a, you know, a teamwork and like feeling supported standpoint, and just from a technological standpoint, everything flows much more quickly and much more efficiently. And there's a good exchange of ideas too, which I think is nice. I feel like in e -comm, especially as like, you know, on a smaller team, not
agency side and you know it's really easy to wind up feeling pretty isolated in your own little echo chamber and so it's always nice to work with people who have kind of a broader view of what's happening you know in the industry overall.
Alex McEachern (21:04.426)
I love that point. Yeah, feeling isolated, but also like looking through like kind of having the blinders on to like a specific problem. And Sarah, in this case, like being able to look at what's happening across all the from our brands and like from a landing page perspective, a merchandising perspective, a CRO perspective, just being able to kind of like, I've seen this work before. I've seen that work before. Like, let's kind of like brain meld what you're thinking with what I'm thinking and come up with the best solution possible.
Erin (21:18.798)
Yep.
Erin (21:33.294)
Yeah, exactly. I can get so far snooping on other people's ad libraries and making some guesses based off my own intuition, but it's great to have that thought partnership.
Alex McEachern (21:44.362)
Yeah. And I mean, I know you know this, but like when we're sleuthing, I mean, I do it all the time. Steal like an artist is like, go look at what's going on out there. but it's always like, there's always something that is unique to you or unique to them that you're not necessarily realizing. And like, sometimes I steal something and then in hindsight, I'm like, wow, obviously that didn't work because they have this or obviously that didn't work because my business is like this. so I love that.
Erin (21:52.238)
Yep.
Erin (22:06.382)
Right, totally.
Erin (22:11.406)
Yeah.
Alex McEachern (22:14.345)
I wanna, you said something way earlier that I wrote down and I kinda wanna go back to it when you were talking about, hey, send people to a PDP, send them to the catalog page, maybe build something custom and you tried other ones. I'm not gonna ask you to name anyone, but like you referred to it as a clunky experience. Like why was building landing pages kind of like the more traditional way strapped onto the site, like a clunky experience for you?
Erin (22:42.798)
Yeah, I almost think it's the additional, like the same problem of there being too many options. and then like brass tacks trying to get something to look good on mobile and desktop and across a number of devices. And I'm not a designer. I like know enough to be sort of dangerous, but basically trying to kind of use my limited skillset and the limited options in a landing page builder to come up with something that looks good, feels good from a brand perspective and performs.
just took a ton of time and effort. And I think because FirmMod is building on some proven, I don't know how to say this, templates isn't the right word, but there is a structure there that works. It takes a lot of the guesswork out of it and makes it much easier to build experiences that convert.
Alex McEachern (23:31.978)
Love it. We call them, so like we do have templates. We call them modules is like basically like all the pieces that we're using to build and kind of like build your own adventure with all these proven modules, as well as kind of like our, I've been calling it the CRO design system is like, Hey, being able to apply brand colors through this kind of like design system where we're not gonna, we're not gonna let you go rogue and potentially tank the performance of something. It's all kind of like implemented through a system that we know is going to work.
Erin (23:35.502)
modules. Perfect.
Erin (23:49.774)
Yeah.
Erin (24:00.174)
Yeah, and it feels cohesive, which is huge. I would also say, I think part of the benefit going back to this idea of thought partnership is I would find myself kind of spinning out, building landing pages, trying to identify exactly what I was wanting to test and how I kept everything else constant. And I could kind of talk myself in and out of a lot of different.
build for landing pages make myself a little crazy. So having someone to kind of build the experience alongside of just, it makes it a lot easier to get to a product that you feel good about.
Alex McEachern (24:34.698)
Love it. So one thing, again, I'm gonna put you a little bit on the spot here. One thing that we get a lot on social right now is like, I see you guys everywhere, but like, what exactly are you? If I was to ask what's for Vermont to you, like what would your response be? How would you explain Vermont to one of your colleagues somewhere else?
Erin (24:55.374)
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you kind of how I've explained it to people internally, but I think you referenced this earlier, but I call it like a proving ground. So for us, it's the ability to kind of, you know, take ideas from conception to execution and determine whether something works to improve our conversion rate, our customer acquisition costs, you know, all of the metrics that I'm held to. And so I think, you know, really it's, it's a conversion rate optimization tool, like at its core. That's kind of what y 'all are doing, but the flexibility.
in terms of being able to test specific content experiences or specific PDP experiences, you can really tailor the tool to your need to answer your business questions. It doesn't just have to be like, let me build one landing page that converts better than another. There's so much more depth there than just like an A -B testing tool.
Alex McEachern (25:47.466)
I love that you said there's so much more depth there. That's one thing I've been saying internally lately is like landing pages, but deeper, or like going kind of like more full funnel than, than a landing page, because like, it's not like just, I snapped my fingers and I use Vermont and all of a sudden I'm seeing like crazy, crazy performance. It's like the surface area that you can build an experiment within goes so much further than a traditional landing page that you give yourself, like the, you, you said flexibility, you give yourself the flexibility to find those winning outcomes.
Erin (25:53.742)
Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Erin (26:09.87)
Totally.
Alex McEachern (26:16.522)
faster and more efficiently and like that's what leads to performance.
Erin (26:20.814)
And I think too, the other aspect that I try to represent kind of internally, especially is there's been, although this shift has been happening for years and I still don't know if I buy it, but like a shift to commerce happening on platforms like Meta or TikTok happening directly. And like Facebook shops is just whatever. I don't want to diss it or anything, but it's like kind of a difficult experience. And so having Fermat to kind of play in that more like direct conversion kind of from Instagram,
space without being beholden in another way to Metta is huge as well.
Alex McEachern (26:56.874)
Yeah. And for those that don't know, once you, when someone's in that for mod experience, like when I was showing that earlier and able to check out that checkout is actually pushing back into Shopify. So it's transacting in Shopify. So like, it's not like all the data is going somewhere else. Like it's still living inside of Shopify for you. that's one misconception we get a lot because it's living somewhere else. Like, I don't own my data anymore. Not the case. Like it's all just being, it's all being pushed back into Shopify. So you can see it.
Erin (27:13.39)
Exactly.
Erin (27:24.974)
Yeah, and you still, you acquire those customers. Like I have their email addresses, like all of that data flows into our dashboards. It's great.
Alex McEachern (27:32.298)
Exactly. It doesn't have to live in an Instagram shop or a TikTok shop or wherever, wherever else it could potentially transact. Aaron, anything I didn't ask you about on the acquisition side of things like challenges, things you're super excited about that you want to share and you think people should know.
Erin (27:35.95)
Yeah.
Erin (27:55.15)
that's a great question.
I mean, I think from a firm app perspective, I'm really excited to see how your technology starts to apply to like other channels. I see, you know, potential, and I think I've mentioned this before, but to use this on, you know, Google shopping or Google performance max, like how do you leverage that experience where you have someone driving to a PDP traditionally, how can you make those convert better and build more custom experiences for different channels where there's different levels of intent? So.
I'm really excited to continue to see how it fits into our overall marketing mix. And then I would say, you know, the past probably like two years, there's been definitely more focus kind of in the industry on continuing to diversify kind of away from meta and Google, whatever that means. It's a challenge. It will be a challenge for forever. But along those same lines, like, you know, from an acquisition perspective, I am excited to see kind of what develops outside of those two platforms and how tools like Firmat
kind of come along with changes in the overall industry.
Alex McEachern (29:02.346)
Love it without spoiling too much things coming on a lot of the fronts that that you're talking about there on the product side of things. Maybe last question for you before I let you go when you're trying to diversify. So I mean, I think that's something that's on every growth market or every acquisition minded person in Ecom right now is mind is, okay, how do I how do I not be so reliant on meta? Anything that you're kind of like looking at?
Erin (29:19.406)
Of course. Yep.
Alex McEachern (29:30.058)
to diversify there? Anything that has like, I don't want to say worked, but like, is there is there a path you're seeing to something else that's very interesting to you?
Erin (29:42.734)
Let me think about how to answer that. So the way that I describe it when I talk about it is we have found small wins. And so there are like pockets outside of Facebook and Metta where we've found that we can play. And some of that I think is related to our target audience because our target audience, our core demos, over 40, high household income, highly educated. That opens up some niche areas for us.
But the challenge is, from my perspective, that it's so many of these smaller sandboxes to try to get, to claw away share from Facebook and Google, that just from a management perspective, it becomes really difficult. Because the amount of effort that you put into something that maybe drives 5 % of what Medi can drive might be somewhat equal, but you're not getting the same return. So there are some things, like direct mail is one of them that's interesting. There are some tactics that I think
were kind of dismissed for a while as like not targeted or you know they're not algorithmically driven so don't spend time on them that I think are becoming more effective again but in terms of finding like a one -to -one replacement it's been really challenging. I don't know if that fully answers your question.
Alex McEachern (30:50.73)
Yeah, no, it absolutely does. Because like, I think people know that they need to move. Like I can't, I can't be 95 % reliant on a single channel to drive my growth. So like people want to diversify out of that. But yeah, you're right. No one, you're not going to find a silver bullet that is like, this is just as good as, as metaphorical. It's kind of like the single best acquisition lever anyone's ever been given.
Erin (31:02.958)
rape.
Erin (31:11.822)
Yeah. Yeah.
Alex McEachern (31:16.906)
maybe in the history of mankind. I don't know. I might be overselling that. But even the ability, that's why I said not necessarily working, but like, hey, there's some glimmers of hope here. There's an opportunity here. that's interesting enough for me to go to pursue it because I think you're right. It's not going to be like, I have Facebook meta and then I have this other channel. I think it's like, I have this and then I have these other playgrounds that I'm playing in that some together give me a good chunk, but they're not.
Erin (31:17.358)
Yeah, great, great. No, totally.
Erin (31:40.973)
Mm -hmm.
Alex McEachern (31:45.418)
one -to -one replacements for what I'm doing on Facebook. Like, analogy I've used before is it's kind of like gas prices. Like when gas prices get high enough, all of a sudden there's viability, like drilling for oil in places we never did before just because like the dynamics have changed. I think there's a little bit of that in like Facebook advertising as well.
Erin (32:04.59)
Yeah, I think that's a bleak but like very accurate way to describe what's happening.
Alex McEachern (32:10.794)
Aaron, this was amazing. Before I let you go, anywhere, if people wanna follow along with you, LinkedIn, Twitter, is there anywhere that you're kind of active on the social space or where people can maybe poke you, pick your brain on anything?
Erin (32:29.358)
man, I wish I was more active on the social space in general, but you can find me on LinkedIn, Erin Silvia. So, yep, that's probably the best place to find me. Although I wouldn't say I'm active, but happy to connect.
Alex McEachern (32:31.242)
Sam.
Alex McEachern (32:41.962)
Awesome. We'll put Aaron's LinkedIn profile in the show notes so that everyone can grab them. Aaron, this was fantastic. Thank you so much.
Erin (32:49.166)
Yeah, thank you so much, Alex. This was great.