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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 (00:01.322)
Welcome back to FERMÀT Friday. Today I've got someone joining me who I talk to all the time because he is our head of product. Today I've got Azi. Welcome to the show Azi.
Azi (00:14.752)
Thanks for having me, Alex.
Alex McEachern (00:17.226)
So I want to talk about a few things today, but one of the things, one of the reasons I invited you to come talk to us now is we've been doing a lot of iterations to something that we call forever links. And I think one common misconception about for Mott is it starts with the landers and that's actually not true because for Mott has to be hooked into the ad experience. And that's where forever links come into play. So.
We did our first iteration of this a few weeks ago. We're now on kind of like V, I don't even know what V we're on V2, V3, but like some drastic improvements to this. And I want to go through a few of them, but before we do, I was hoping you could maybe give our listeners kind of like a quick summary of what is a forever link.
Azi (01:01.344)
Yeah, totally. So forever links are Remappable links where you can remap the destination of the link So the original customer problem that we that originated the idea was that ad buyers Had this new tool that could use for my chops in ads But now instead of having to just choose between like first destination a website
you had the option of like all these other shops. And there was a bit of like a decision paralysis, like, which shop do I use, right? So we found that brands or ad buyers would end up like directing people to the brand website or a business as usual PDP or something, instead of using eventually higher performing landing experience.
So we approach this question or this problem from the perspective of, okay, how can we make it easier for ad buyers just add a link to an ad, not worry about the destination, and then be able to change the destination after the fact, right? So that kind of reduces a lot of the complexity in deciding which destination I should be pointing this ad to. Hence, you know,
It's kind of the origin of forever links, which are these remappable links. You just add the link to an ad. It can be pointing to a FERMÀT drop. It can be pointing to an external destination, putting to an external PDP, lander, whatever it is. And then later on, you can decide to change the destination to something else.
Alex McEachern (02:44.234)
I love that. And obviously one of the biggest value props of FERMÀT is the ability to experiment, to use all of these different tools that we put in front of you to find winning combinations of the funnel. And when you find a winner or you find something better, having the ability to actually like propagate that to where you want it to be. And you're right. Like, Hey, if I'm an ad buyer, not only is there paralysis in like, what do I want to hook this ad to?
but what about when I have something in market and I want to change it to something else because like we see it all the time, right? this ad is crushing, but once it gets to the site, like further down the funnel and the mid funnel, it's kind of falling apart. I really wish I could change it, but changing an in -market ad sucks. Do you want to kind of like elaborate on like why that sucks?
Azi (03:32.832)
Yeah, right. So when you change the ad, the ad meta goes to the learning phase again. And that can be challenging because spend might be lower, performance won't be as high while meta is trying to figure out, OK, what's this ad all about? Who should I target, et cetera? And in those critical days, when it's in the learning phase, you're potentially missing out on performance impact of your ad. Right? So.
that transition period from like going from a high performing ad creative, maybe a poor performing landing experience to like, Hey, I've got great ad creative and I have a high performing shop, but now I have to wait a week or whatever it is to actually get back up and running again to scale for that ad can be costly in terms of the opportunity costs, right? Cause you're like giving up new revenue during that time period. So one of the,
great advantages of this approach to ForeverLinks was that not only is the decision of which link I should use easier to make for ad buyers, but now they could also change the destination without having to go through that learning phase, which just improves the efficiency of your marketing, because you're not going through the learning phase every time you want to upgrade the destination to a higher converting learning experience.
Alex McEachern (04:58.538)
It's amazing to be able to just like change it while it's live in market too. Like I remember when we were doing the launch of V1 of forever links, we actually put a link out into the market and we just directed it to like a John Travolta meme. And then we're like, everyone's like, what are these guys talking about? And then we decided we were launching and we just remapped the forever link. And then we were pointing it to, Hey, here's everything you need to know about the launch and about this feature.
Azi (05:11.424)
Yes.
Azi (05:20.2)
Totally, totally. Yeah, I mean, one interesting use case has come up here is that there's some brands using Foreverlinks and QR codes, for example, right? Because now you can, you have flexibility as to the destination of that QR code over time. Some brands have moved entirely to launching all new ad creatives on Foreverlinks, right? Even if it's pointing to their main brand website, to like a PDP.
brand website because that gives them the flexibility to change in the future. So it really is becoming a tool to help brands manage not just their firm odd shops but their entire marketing instance.
Alex McEachern (06:06.954)
Love it. I mean, that flexibility is huge. Like even if I, I think I know where I want this ad to go right now, just the ability to change it. And especially with a, with a forever link, I could map that to any other spot I want on my site. So like no harm, no foul. But if I find a better for mop funnel to attach to that ad, that forever link allows me to switch it to that shop or switch it to another shop and basically like always be finding what's working for me. So that was V one of forever links that's been in market for a bit now.
We talked about like the use case problem we were trying to solve there. It's been great, but I'm even more excited about what you and the team are cooking up in terms of like what the next iteration of this is. So do you maybe want to give our listeners a sneak peek into what some of these changes are?
Azi (06:48.448)
and
Azi (06:55.634)
Yeah, totally. So I would say there's kind of two things going on right now. There's, you know, V for Mount Foreverlinks, V1 .5, which are basically a bunch of usability improvements to our initial launch, right? So making for Mount Foreverlinks is more usable being able to more easily see what Foreverlinks are mapped to a shop, being able to customize the slugs for a Foreverlink so you can have more human readable slugs.
being able to easily append UTM parameters to a ForeverLink, so you get better attribution within a particular ad channel, things like that, just kind of core improvements that we discovered as pain points after the initial launch, right, from working with our customers and with our growth managers. And then there's ForeverLinks V2, which is kind of the next big iteration of ForeverLinks, which is currently in beta.
right now, but this essentially enables split destination. So initially, forever links are one -to -one mapped from a link to a single destination. We've introduced the ability to split traffic for that link to multiple currently two destinations and be able to run an experiment, an A -B test between those two destinations. So you can see, for example, how the
traffic for that link performs when going to a format shop versus how it performs when going to a external landing page or the brand website or a external PDP, whatever it is, and get really precise data on ROI lift, CPA lift, AOV lift, whatever it may be you're interested in.
Alex McEachern (08:49.194)
You kind of so 1 .5 and two. I don't want to sell 1 .5 short because I feel like 1 .5 is actually sick. So yes, the slugs on this, but like the UTM pram. So I'm probably revealing too much since we're like in beta and like still working on some of these things and Azi might kill me, but I'm going to say it anyway.
Azi (08:54.24)
Okay.
Alex McEachern (09:07.402)
So I've seen some of the mocks on what this is going to look like and the ability to build these forever links, like simply select what platform this is going to be going to and kind of like appending the params that you're going to need for that platform, like right there, just making it super simple to get into Vermont, grab what I need, put it to the ad and like, I'm done, like as few steps as possible and just being very specific about what the intent of that link is right now. And like you said, if you go to remap it.
Azi (09:19.648)
Thank you.
Thank you.
Alex McEachern (09:36.234)
easy to remap it and change it to whatever we need.
Azi (09:39.904)
Yeah, totally. And I think the, you know, we take a very iterative approach to product development here at FERMÀT. So shipped initial version, got a bunch of feedback and just iterating on that to solve new problems that we discover. And ultimately this tool we see as getting pretty good traction and early signal as a key workflow tool for our brands. Right? So we want to make it as easy as possible, as useful as possible.
for the brands to deploy these links in their ads.
Alex McEachern (10:13.546)
And with ForeverLinks 2 .0, and we're talking about like these split decisions or split destinations, and we look at it as like shop versus website. Like I love this because one thing that is, it takes a little bit when a brand on boards with us, but like they quickly discover the value of sending someone to like a full for mot funnel versus sending something to just like a custom landing page or like maybe a catalog page.
And I love that with this split, you're able to see, like you were saying, like CPAs, AOV, like what is the difference between these two? And like selfishly, I think this is great for, for Mott, because if we get one of these set up right away and it's like, I generally just send people to my homepage or like, I just send them to my like best sellers and all my ads point there. We send 50 % of the traffic there, 50 % to a funnel that we help them create. And it just like, for the most part, night and day on like,
the conversion that you're going to get going to a FERMÀT funnel versus just a standard page on the site.
Azi (11:16.32)
Yeah, totally. I think the key kind of is a problem for V2 was really around, hey, help me understand how much incremental left for mass providing, right? And help me understand like, as I iterate and make improvements to shops, how does that lift change over time? And the ForeverLink Split S Nation setup feature.
is kind of the key solve for that, right? Cause you get like really tightly controlled AB tests for these two destinations, right? Versus previously brands would have to set up ad level tests in meta and there are questions about, okay, like maybe Facebook's doing something and targeting is different. And so it was harder to get full trust in that data versus with this, you know, it's all, it's, it's the same ad. It's the same traffic source.
and we're just randomizing across two different destinations, which really improves the fidelity.
Alex McEachern (12:18.122)
even as a playing field, like, yeah, if we're using two different ads to send to two different places, like it's never gonna be a fair comparison, especially since like the ads are at the mercy of the algorithm to figure out like where, who's gonna see what, where it's gonna go, that sort of thing. So I love this. Any, so you said this is in beta right now, and I guess plug if any current customers are listening to this and you wanna join the beta, hit up Azi or I and we can.
Azi (12:30.848)
Mm -hmm.
Alex McEachern (12:45.802)
we can get you introduced to the split destination. Anything surprising that you've seen as you've been in the beta with this, maybe in terms of results or how people are using this, anything kind of catch you off guard?
Azi (13:01.152)
Yeah, I think a couple of interesting things. One, really finally getting a really tight comparison for measuring relative lift has been awesome, right? And seeing some really promising results as well for the value that FERMÀT's able to drive for a brand via these links, via increased ROAS, CPA or approved CPAs. Second is...
this.
some requests from coming from brands around being able to experiment not just with two destinations but with multiple destinations. So you can like test it for mod shop against a brand website, against a PDP, against a external landing page. So you know like three, four -way splits, which is awesome. And then some brands actually setting up more of like a permanent holdout as well. So hey, we have this initial split destination.
Maybe FERMÀT shows some really positive lift from that. So we're going to allocate more traffic to the FERMÀT shop, maybe 90%, but then maintain like a 10 % holdout on the brand website and then maintain that over a long period of time. So we can actually always refer back to that and measure, okay, how much incremental lift has FERMÀT provided in the past week, for example.
Alex McEachern (14:26.41)
I think that's really smart to just like always having like something running in the background because like if you just make the assumption, like I'm going to kind of like go against like, yeah, FERMÀT's mods. great. For just a second. It's like, if I see something as an improvement right now, if I'm able to leave that going, then I can see like over time, like, is that still the case? Because I think that's like one of the biggest things, especially in like our industry and DTC and in advertising.
Azi (14:49.216)
Mm -hmm.
Alex McEachern (14:54.474)
things are constantly changing. And like Azi was talking about the beginning of this, like we're always grabbing customer feedback where we take a very iterative approach. That's because like our industry and advertising is changing basically weekly. So we need to keep up. So if you have that holdout test, just kind of sitting there, you're always able to see like, it's kind of moving along with you. So like the site and FERMÀT kind of like moving in unison and seeing.
Azi (15:11.328)
Mm -hmm.
Alex McEachern (15:19.786)
Is that still holding true over time rather than I did this, it looked good. And now I'm like, just completely I'm good. I don't need to look at it ever again.
Azi (15:28.768)
Totally, totally. Yeah, and you know, I was looking at some shop conversions, conversion rates recently, and it's crazy how much volatility there is in conversion rate, right? Like, day over day, it'll swing from 1 % to 4 .5%, right? And when you see that volatility, the question is, okay, like, is this still a driving value for me?
The question, the way to answer that is always refer back to, okay, what does it, what would it look like in terms of your BAU, your business as usual destination, right? And the holdout lets you actually measure the on an ongoing basis.
Alex McEachern (16:07.786)
And earlier in the conversation, you just, you, I kind of just like glossed over it, but like the business as usual page, like a lot of, a lot of ad accounts hadn't kind of have like that BAU ad. Like this is just like, this is my bread and butter and that business as usual page, it can be anything, right? Like for one brand, it might be the homepage for another brand. It might be a quiz for another brand. It could be the catalog page or something custom that was built. So it's like, it's hard for us to say, Hey,
Azi (16:21.44)
Right.
Azi (16:29.568)
Mm -hmm.
Alex McEachern (16:35.466)
this is the difference between FERMÀT and no FERMÀT because no FERMÀT is also like, it could be anything for depending on what business as usual means for your brand.
Azi (16:44.384)
Yeah.
Exactly. Yep.
Alex McEachern (16:49.642)
So.
Forever Links V1 comes out. We got 1 .5, we got two in beta. Anything putting you a little bit on the spot here? Like, is there, do we keep going from here with Forever Links? Is there like, is there a next iteration to this that's kind of like ruminating in your brain at all?
Azi (17:11.456)
Yeah, yeah. I think one, being able to expand to more ad channels, for example, right now for equivalent source of meta, making sure that we can pull analytics when used in TikTok or email or SMS. So that's kind of one angle. Second is allowing for multiple destinations as well. So how do we go from just two destinations to being able to compare across multiple?
third is in general, just how to make for my forever links, the best link for a brand to use when deploying an ad. Right. So, you want to like offer a product that a brand always wants to use when they're deploying, whether it's a meta ad or whether it's an email or an SMS or, or a QR code, wherever it may be. like the one I use is for my forever link, because it gives them all this power.
that they may not have otherwise if they used a URL directly. Yeah, I would say that those are kind of the major points. The last thing I'll mention is that this idea of this holdout experiment, I think within the Firmware customer base, really making sure that every brand has this holdout experiment set up, right? So we can really easily measure for them the incremental ROI of using Firmware. Yeah.
Alex McEachern (18:39.754)
I love that you said, hey, make this the link that you're going to use it like for every ad. I would say let's make this the link someone's going to use if they're driving a customer click. If you're putting the effort to get a customer to engage with you, a forever link is going to be like, that's our goal is that you're going to be using a forever link because it's giving you more power, more flexibility, more adaptability than anything you've used in the past.
Azi (18:49.76)
Yes.
Alex McEachern (19:04.522)
Since I have you here, Azi and I think like the most popular question for anyone on the product team is like, what's on the roadmap? What are we thinking about? And since the show is kind of pulling back the curtain on what we're up to, I feel like I gotta ask you, what's on your mind right now? What's coming down the pipe? What should customers of FERMÀT and potential customers of FERMÀT be getting excited about?
Azi (19:31.016)
Yeah, totally. There's a lot, a lot on the roadmap. I think things that are most exciting for me, one is a lot more investments in bundles. So being able to create arbitrary bundles within FERMÀT and test out different discounting, different merchandising. This is important for brands who use bundles today on their website and for brands who have never thought about bundles.
because it may be too hard to implement. But now they have this tool to easily spin up a bundle and test driving traffic to that bundle versus like individual products, right? So that'll be a really big unlock, I think, for a lot of brands. Second is on the analytics side, we're looking at things like heat maps, session replays, more visual analytics so you can really...
Better understand what's going on within a shop and uncover key customer insights Third we're looking at DPA display or dynamic product ads as well, right? So right now We work really well when you're sending Going from an ad to like a shop We are enabling brands to also use us for product ads
where you're showing a product in meta, let's say, and we bring you to a high performing PDP instead, right? And then, you know, in the latter half of the year, I think there's a lot of thinking we're doing right now on the automation side. So how do we actually create shops in an automated way based off of all the great data we have around what drives conversion across different verticals, different product types, different price points?
And then being able to turn on autopilot for your shops and just run experiments in the background, constantly optimizing for whatever metric you care about the most.
Alex McEachern (21:39.21)
Okay, so many great things in here. I could go in a bunch of different directions, but on that automated side of things, one thing that we've been saying a lot lately is build funnels the same way that you build ads. And I think one of the best parts about building ads is I can experiment, change, tweak, do all these things, but I think one of the best parts about it is that Facebook algorithm is able to take everything and figure out what is working. So if we're able to take it that step further, then...
Azi (21:44.768)
Mm -hmm.
Azi (21:50.848)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Alex McEachern (22:08.33)
building funnels, like you build ads actually becomes as close to one to one as possible. So like, I'm super, super excited about that. Also very excited about the DPA side of this. Cause like, like you were saying, the way I've been describing it is when you send someone into the FERMÀT funnel right now, you drop them into the top, right? Like, Hey, here's the lander. You got the PDPs, you got the cart, and then back to Shopify for the checkout. But with the DPA, it's like,
Azi (22:16.864)
Mm -hmm.
Alex McEachern (22:33.034)
a little awkward to have a lander. You need to go straight to the PDP. You need to like be presenting that product. So, I, I think it is fantastic what we're doing there. And like, I know we've already started to do some testing with this, maybe without revealing too much, like, have you seen anything exciting from the initial testing that we've been doing with this? Or you could feel free to say kick rocks, Alex. We can't talk about that yet.
Azi (22:55.872)
Yeah.
Azi (23:00.832)
Yeah, no, I can share some without kind of giving away too much, but we've done some more manual testing with DPA and Meta, and I have seen 13 % ROAS lift when using Frameout PDPs, which is really exciting given that we haven't really optimized for these flows at all, and it's using a subset of the product catalog. All these limitations right now.
this initial test, right? But still, some strong early signal. So we think with a few weeks of dedicated investment in this and building up the right flows, building the integrations with Ameda and other providers in terms of the product catalog, we can drive some really interesting impact and just unlock a huge new ad type for brands, right? Which are really hard to support with Vermont right now.
Alex McEachern (23:59.946)
And like, I'm, I'm very bullish on from up for DPAs. mostly because like, if I have to set my catalog and that catalogs like similar to the catalog structure that I have inside of Shopify and like my PDPs that I'm directing to are built for, I don't know, the person who's just like browsing my site is that person isn't necessarily in the same mindset has the same goal as like someone who's clicking on an ad. So being able to streamline this, being able to like build and.
construct the PDP in a way that makes sense for like the click that drove them there. Like, I think, again, I'm very excited about this. I think we can absolutely change the game.
Azi (24:34.048)
Mm -hmm.
Azi (24:38.912)
Yeah, yeah, I think I think it's a really important point you're making. A lot of the performance gains that we see from Vermont shops actually come from the PDPs, right? And having really high performing PDPs, knowing what works for a PDP in a different vertical, right? Like what's a great nutrition supplement PDP versus a great apparel PDP, right? And
we can embed those learnings into a Firmware PDP really easily, right? Given how much context we have around what works, around how easy it is to actually spin up or edit a PDP. And then, you know, boom, like add those to DPA where you have these really great lower in the funnel product ads, which bring you to a super high converting PDP, which is informed by this network of data around.
What we know works well for products and for PDPs, right? It's kind of a winning combination there.
Alex McEachern (25:44.33)
Yeah. When you were talking about the PDPs, they're like, I, I've seen a bunch of great examples of this where, Hey, someone's using an ad that's more educational in nature and like they're merchandising in a particular way. Instead of just having product shots in like the carousel, we now have like this compared to this nutritional information, like some of these things that I might not want to be front and center on my site. But if I know that someone's coming in through an ad that was targeting a specific benefit, I can like,
Azi (26:08.608)
Hmm.
Alex McEachern (26:13.61)
merchandise the product in a very specific way. In the same way that like, okay, if someone's coming in through a DPA and like, they like they clicked on an image of the product, like, maybe when I get them into the PDP, I don't need to have as many of those, like they are, they are primed to buy, maybe I can layer in like a few lifestyle images of like, hey, I saw the product when I clicked, okay, here's the it's a shoe, here's the product on someone's foot, or here's like, it's a cleat, someone kicking the ball, like, I don't know.
Azi (26:38.608)
Thank you.
Alex McEachern (26:42.954)
You can just get a lot more flexible and like I just keep on saying match intention, right? Like people coming into these PDPs have different intentions depending on where the click was driven and you're able to customize and change based on that.
Azi (26:48.448)
Yeah.
Azi (26:55.232)
Yeah. Totally, totally. Yeah. I think, you know, a really interesting use case that's emerged here is targeting, let's say, a shop or a PDP to men versus women, for example. Or like, hey, like, you know, I really unlocked the female segment. And I want to also expand to men. Can we actually have a PDP as more tailored to that persona?
There's other things here like some professions, right? Like, hey, I really am great with, I don't know.
men, police people, whatever it is. And I also now want to expand to fishermen, for example. And this type of like, you know, being able to really customize the messaging, the content in a shop or a PDP for a given customer segment is, it's been a huge unlock for many of our brands.
Alex McEachern (27:54.89)
Love it. So you talked about two other things, like coming down the pipe, talked about bundles, you talked about analytics. I want to hit on analytics for a second because like you talked about heat maps, you talked about like some of these other ways to evaluate. It's really hard to just look at the numbers of something and get the full story. And just for like everyone listening, like we have a team here that's like constantly evaluating basically every aspect of from.
And like, we do look at the data, but we also look at other things at our disposal to like, try to figure out what's working. So we've had Josh on the show before and he was talking about like, when we see people interacting with these pages, they do this. And our hypothesis is because like that's the Amazon experience. So like we're finding ways to optimize this, like kind of like across our brands and like being able to bring this to the individual brand so that they can make like,
see everything that they need to see to find those winning combinations. Like that's one of my favorite pieces of FERMÀT is, hey, experiment and like not only find like what's winning now, but like keep evolving, keep changing. And if we introduce more of these ways to evaluate this beyond just like, okay, ROAS, CPA, conversion lifts on raw numbers, like I think we're...
Azi (29:17.92)
Hmm.
Alex McEachern (29:18.73)
we're in a really good spot for our brands to always be winning.
Azi (29:23.648)
Yeah, yeah, it's great. I think a key value prop which is maybe sometimes underappreciated, I think, for Vermont is the learnings and the insights. You can actually, through this type of shop -level experimentation and customization, actually really understand, OK, which messaging is going to perform best for a given segment.
what types of content or images or reviews, whatever it may be, right? And actually being able to use the FERMÀT as a tool to generate a corpus of insights and data and learnings that you can then apply into product development or to your main website or to your brand marketing, whatever it may be. That I think is...
something that we've seen really positive traction with. I want to find ways to actually bring more of to our brands, right? Via more insights and like automated platforms that can actually surface these learnings to brands.
Alex McEachern (30:38.794)
I love that. And I'll leave a link. We had one of our customers on the show a few weeks ago, Erin from Caddis, and she was basically echoing what Azi's saying here. Like, hey, I have a hypothesis on how a product could perform, but it would be very expensive and time consuming for me to make those changes on the site. So like, I'm going to experiment and play around with a Vermont funnel. Okay, cool. That's an acceptable CPA. Okay, we're actually able to like generate interest in this. That's proven out.
let's now apply that to the overall business. So being able to like take these wins and apply them more broadly. And like, I thought her example was fantastic because like, I'm always thinking in terms of like better conversions, better customer experience. And she's like, no, it changed how I merchandise it introduced it like something that I want to be like highlighted in my product catalog that we just never would have got to before.
Azi (31:14.912)
Okay.
Azi (31:25.024)
Yeah.
Azi (31:34.048)
Yeah, we, you know, bundles, for example, I think will do something similar for brands. So there's a supplement brand who's thinking of like pairing their really high performing creatine skew with their whey protein skew that maybe isn't performing as well and trying to drive subscriptions of that bundle together, right? That is like, they can test that in Vermont.
maybe it performs really well. Now they can bring that to the rest of their business. They can create that bundle on their main website, whatever it may be. Right. So again, using Formata as a proving ground, a testing ground to unlock a larger business.
Alex McEachern (32:21.066)
love it. Love all of it. Azi. Thanks for giving us the breakdown on everything we got coming in the pipe with forever links. Once again, if you're a customer or future customer, and you want to get into that beta, let us know, and we can get you introduced. thanks for sharing the roadmap. well, what's kind of coming on the roadmap without, without too many details. it was a blast. Thanks for joining.
Azi (32:47.072)
Thanks Alex.