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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 (00:01.034)
All right, everyone. Welcome back to another Fermat Friday. Today I have a guest from outside of Fermat. I've got David Trow, who is the growth marketer at DT Co. They work with a bunch of Fermat brands. And I wanted to get him on because he has probably been the most vocal person for a particular feature and his love for it. And one of our recent releases and that is our split destination testing. And David, I was hoping that maybe today we could just kind of
jam on how to measure kind of full funnel experiences, why people don't like just kind of jam kind of at the intersection of the ad and the funnel and how you kind of think about it. I was hoping that maybe you could like quickly introduce yourself and then maybe give us the quick hitter on like, why has this particular feature been a game changer for you? And then we can kind of go into the specifics from there.
David Trau (00:56.161)
Yeah, great. So as you mentioned, I am a growth marketing manager at DT Co. I have a background with agency experience, also a lot of creative and brand strategy and just putting all of that together recently. Also just diving a lot more into landing pages, post-click experience and making sure that one of my favorite things to talk about is a promise alignment, making sure just what you're talking about in ads, the experience that you're delivering post-click and
Ultimately with your product match up just to create the most valuable experience for your customers possible, but super excited to dive in.
Alex McEachern (01:36.076)
Let's, let's maybe start there. Let's start on promise alignment. So, one thing that we talk about at Fermat a lot is you see a lot of growth marketers. They're very, they have very high velocity on ad creation and experimentation. Like on the upper end, you can see people testing like hundreds of creatives in a week. But when it comes to like the landing page, the post click and like what people are doing on that side, we might have like hundreds of variations happening at the ad level. And then maybe like, I don't know.
one, two, five at most happening like inside of a week on the post-click. Talk to me about promise alignment and like, how do you kind of figure that out between like, hey, we have all these ads going and maybe just like a few things on the other side.
David Trau (02:22.313)
Yeah, so something that we've been sort of hit on a little bit before too is I think the biggest reason is it's just a much lower lift at the moment. There's been so much conversation around creative testing. There's been so much conversation over the past couple of years that creative is king. And I think brands and agencies have really started to work on setting themselves up to be able to create that flywheel to generate
volumes of creative since that's been the peak of the conversation. I think the other reason maybe why the post-click experience has been less of a focus is because there's a higher lift there, right? Usually you need a developer involved even with some tools that don't take development up until even recently tracking on those has been an issue or unclear. so
The level of nuance and depth and the people that are involved to get some of these post-click pages spun up, I think it's just a much higher lift. And with that, it is a much higher risk. And so if it's... We have templates or we have the flywheel, we have the process and the production in place for the creative, it's natural to go fit, flip it on, give it a couple hundred bucks in ad spend or whatever it is, see if it's performing or not.
graduate the winners like and now you can move on. Whereas if you don't have the tracking in place, if you don't have the dev team, if you don't have these other things post click, it makes it a lot more difficult to not only understand if it's working, but to measure. And I think because of that, if you spend days or weeks or months to get a landing page spun up and then you run some ads to it, it doesn't work. It just feels like a failure. And it feels like a failure of like resources, of testing, of time.
It's just there's a lot more risk that's associated with it. And so I think because it's not as easy to execute on that or has it been up until this point, it gets kind of put on the back burner. And if you also can't translate like, hey, this is the exact effect of this post click experience to a client, to the brand, if it's not easy to show and communicate that too, then it makes it much more difficult. on our side,
Alex McEachern (04:36.685)
Yep.
David Trau (04:48.563)
as an agency or as a media buyer to really justify all the work that went into it, even if it is having an impact. That's where I would start really, I think.
Alex McEachern (04:58.734)
I love that. Like basically the TLDR there is we have been kind of like conditioned to focus on the ad account because creative is king. Like I'll say it, you didn't say it creative is the new targeting is like, Hey, if we just keep on throwing create like more in, then we're going to see more results come out. like, I can take, throw as many darts as I can over here. We'll promote the winners. We'll kill the losers and we'll just like find it at scale.
And I think the three things you hit on are the same things that I see in terms of like, why don't we put more emphasis on the post click risk lift tracking. And I think risk and lift are pretty intertwined. Like you were talking about, Hey, if this is going to take me a few days to a week and like you said months and like that actually does happen. Like there's so many iterations you go back and forth so often on the landing page that like it literally takes you three months and you have like maybe two landing pages that you did like some mild
different testing on between the two of them. If you're going to invest three months in something like it has to be perfect, right versus like, hey, if I'm only investing, I don't know, I'm getting a dozen ad creatives within a day. I don't it's not as risky for me. It's like whatever they're kind of like one doesn't work doesn't land. That's fine. We're on to the next one, where you don't really have that luxury, or at least you didn't have that luxury trying to do that on the post click side. Free something
like for Ma and we'll get to the, we'll get to the tracking side of this in a second, that third pillar, but on that risk and lift side, like what has, what has the experience been like working with for Ma? Because you said at the top, like I'm big on promise alignment. So I'm assuming like being able to generate on the post click at the same kind of velocity you do at the ad level gives you a lot more darts at the dartboard on that promise alignment.
David Trau (06:49.865)
Yeah, so a couple examples here. First is the speed of iteration is super, super simple. And that's like if we have we already have a winning creative to go from that to saying like, what are the best or like what are the most obvious? What are the comments? Like, what is the data that we already have on a top performing creative? How can we spin that up and create more alignment to create a better
through experience on post click for that specific ad. It's so fast now, for example, like, mean, within days, usually you guys have had pages for me. And then to just spin up an experiment where it's like, okay, let's take this ad. We launched the new one at least to start, but you know, I can talk about my love for EverLink after this. But you can start up just a new test.
drive to that same initial PDP or the homepage or collection or even a custom page that you were before. And then this new experience and immediately start to see within a few days. I mean, I check the dashboards all the time. It says right there, like have we reached statistical significance or not? And so the speed of being able to do that, like with the assistance of you guys or even being able to jump it on my own and say like, hey.
think we could actually improve this headline or adjust these sections. Create a new variant has been so easy. like it almost feels like creating an ad. And to spin up like a new variant and to make those changes, it's the lift and it's completely different. Versus you don't have to email the dev, they don't have to go in there, you're not asking for the new copy, you're not...
Like there's so many steps involved and then like, does it fit the Shopify theme or whatever? Like this exists in its own environment. And so to be able to one take something that's already working and saying, okay, how can we further improve what somebody's looking for? How can we take the data that we already have and implement that or like integrate it into a new page? that has been easy. then the other thing I'll talk about too is so many times, you know,
David Trau (09:05.383)
And one specifically that I think about, this was another FirmMot recommendation for a type of page that they had run for a similar client. We ran some creative with this concept. They did not perform going to the PDP. I took those same exact creative, ran into this new FirmMot page, and within a few days, they became some of the top performing ads in the account. And that just really highlighted to me is like, if we're setting expectations on the front end.
the next thing that somebody sees needs to answer that question, right? Like I always sort of like push the idea that like we're paying to get in front of people. I just want to be there long enough without annoying you that when you're ready to make a decision, right, you choose us. But it's like, if you can set up a question, I don't have to answer everything in the ad itself, but I can sort of peak interest or
Alex McEachern (09:38.104)
Yep.
David Trau (10:02.855)
you know, hit on a specific angle or pain point or benefit that you're looking for. And then on the next page, like, cool, we can give you super long form, we can get bullets or listicles. There's so many different variations in terms of what we can deliver after that. This was just, it really, really opened my eyes to like, creating as much of a through line with that experience as possible. And how much better these pages can do that versus just a PDP.
Alex McEachern (10:29.294)
Yeah, I love that. Like you were talking about the velocity at which you can put those like full funnels together, right? Like even going past the landing page, like if you want to talk about a particular thing at the ad level, then being able to follow that to the landing page, be able to adjust the PDPs like within for my, you can change how those products are actually going to be merchandise. Like I want this particular color of clothing to be the default variant when someone lands, even though it might not be the default variant inside of Shopify, just like having that level of control to make that consistent.
And we had like, I'm blanking on who said this, but someone once said to me, like, you have seven seconds at the ad, but you get two minutes at the, like on the post click. So to your point, it's like, Hey, how do I hook and how do I get a click? And then like, if I have the right tools in place, then I can educate and build everything else on the post click rather than just like, let's dump them on the homepage. Let's dump them on the PDP and kind of like cross our fingers and hope that level of control with that velocity, I think is huge.
you hit on it with, said like, Hey, I'm old. Talk about forever links in a second. Would love to get your thoughts. So we basically just hit on like, why don't people experiment more in the post-click? just hit on risk and lift trying to eliminate those factors. What about the tracking side of this? I think this is the spot where you probably have the deepest love for what's going on with Vermont and specifically the forever links. So we'd love to get your thoughts on the tracking side of the equation.
David Trau (11:52.841)
Yeah, so I don't know if other people have been experiencing this, but for me, especially over the last couple of months, duplicating ads, even with post IDs for some reason, haven't been performing at the same level. So starting off being able to launch an ad and keep it live and still be able to test on what's happening after that has been so massive. know the machine.
Right. It's looking for that first hundred people. You can launch the same ad. I've tested this a dozen different ways. I'm sure there's other ways, but like the same ad with three different ad sets, one ad, the same three ads in three ad sets, like as many permutations and ideas of this as you can think of. And it's wildly different performance virtually every time it's obviously there's some winners that are just
like they're just kidding and they work, more and more I'm seeing like even with post IDs, relaunching a winner just hasn't been able to perform the same. So to keep that initial core audience, to keep all of those learnings in one place and then be able to adjust the post click experience without resending things into learnings, without forcing it to go to a new audience has been absolutely like, I hate to use this term, but like it really is game changing. It just changes the entire way.
that I can structure my account, launch ads and test without just, you know, kind of just praying like, Hey, I hope that this hits that same audience that's been performing for that initial ad.
Alex McEachern (13:30.4)
Yeah, the dupe, the duplicating thing, like I think in a previous conversation, you're like, you just need to reduce as many variables as possible. Right. And like when you're duplicating these things, like you do your best to reduce all the variables, but like inevitably somehow you're like, reduced every single variable except for one where I was sending this to yet somehow I should expect the same results at the ad level, but they are wildly different. Why? Obviously like we're a little bit at the mercy of kind of the, algo.
to some extent, no matter what and being able to skip the learning phase again, like it's kind of a kiss of death to take like a good performing ad and change the destination, send it back into the relearning. Like you just, you never know what's going to happen. Like it could be fine. It could absolutely tank at the very least you're getting insane volatility during that relearning phase of like changing that and the forever links for those that don't know a forever link is a Vermont invention that lets you
define a link or a destination at the ad level, and then you can adjust where that's pointing to inside of Vermont. But we also have the ability to do split destinations. So you could send like some people to a PDP on the main site, some people to a Vermont funnel. And that has also been awesome for us as people are like, is the PDP better? a funnel better? Is the homepage better? Is a funnel better? Being able to actually kind of compare apples to apples, because David, like you were saying, if you
don't have one ad pointing to two places, you're never really getting an apples to apples comparison. Would you say that's fair?
David Trau (15:05.823)
Yeah, no, you're just never really sure. I'll just iterate again. Like, yeah, trying to test between a landing page and a PDP, right? I've tested an individual ad in an individual ad set, one going to the landing page, one going to the PDP, a collection of, you know, maybe three creatives, one going to the ad, one going to the PDP, the same ad set, right? Going to those two destinations and every single time they've performed wildly differently. So just to be able to remove that.
and say, like, I'm going to launch this one ad after somebody clicks on it. Part of them are getting sent to the PDP. Part of them are getting sent to this firm on experience. Now let's judge the performance based on that. Knowing it's the same audience, the same group of people, the same set of learnings has been huge. Not only to see like, what are the real results of like the specific page, but coming back and saying, bringing it back to the client again and just being able to show them like, cool, we ran the experiment.
50 % went to each. We got to statistical significance. For us, were seeing, I mean, upwards of, on average, 45 % on some individual experience, 65 % lifts. I can even get into the wildly different subscription rates, which has been one of the biggest surprises for me. But it really does just simplify. And like you said, just start to remove some variables when...
So much of it is just in the black box of the algorithm and what's changing in ASC, what seems like day to day. It's been a huge just next step for us.
Alex McEachern (16:41.612)
Yeah. So I would love to hear your thoughts on like some of the experiments you've been running and what you've been seeing. and yeah, I think like on the, on the split destination side of things, like reducing the variables. think the other nice thing that about for Mott is you're not sending people to the site where things can kind of get muddy. kind of have like these like isolated experiences where like from this particular ad to this particular experience.
Not just reducing the variables on like the link, but like actually the experience itself. It's kind of like a closed off component where you're able to something we say at Fermat's like, do you want to experiment in the lab or do you want to experiment in the kitchen? It's like, let's bring things into the lab, control everything, figure out what's working before we go and like try something somewhere else. So being able to have that kind of like isolated experience, point it to here, see what's going on. Because like we were talking about at the beginning, it's really tough to track in the post-click.
it's just like, can get so muddy there that like, no one really trusts the results after it's like, yeah, the, like great performance at the ad. Okay. What happened afterwards? Well, what about, what about, what about, what about, and you ask that a gazillion times and then you just don't trust it. which I think like putting it in that, I don't, can't think of a good term for it right now, but like that isolated experience kind of, again, removing the variables, not just at that desk, like the destination link, but even through the experience itself, like people aren't gonna.
accidentally get into something else and muddy the waters.
David Trau (18:11.881)
Yeah, and I think that's something I didn't quite fully understand at first. And like, it took me a couple of times to hear it. But everything that happens like that format is reporting on happens in that same session. Is that correct? To say
Alex McEachern (18:27.33)
Yeah. Most of it we label what's happening. Like we call it in unit for like what's happening for that user in that moment, which a lot of people don't realize like these things are happening, like person clicks they're buying right then and there. Like what you're seeing for the funnel metrics is happening in session.
David Trau (18:44.395)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly where, you know, to your point, right? Somebody clicks, they navigate the site, they maybe go to different products, right? This is something that's been very hard to control for, right? You're trying to push a hero product or a hero offer. They get to the site, they're interested, but now they click away, right? And all you have to look at is like, man, like this product is $120, but our AOV is 80. Like what's the actual behavior? What's happening here?
Like, what are they buying instead and trying to drill down, especially with brands that have tons and tons of products. It can be really, really muddy to understand that journey. But being able to look here and say like, no, we're going to send you to this specific page. You can't go anywhere else and just really limit what their experience is and then confirm what those purchases are, what those products are from that bin unit.
it just brings another layer of insight, another layer of control to like people get distracted. it's very easy to click around or to go into your browser. know what I mean? It's just so easy to, so to know that like this person went from the ad to purchase and like, we're confident in that. it's another, just another like layer. It removes more variables, just all the things that we've been saying. just another level of control.
Alex McEachern (20:09.41)
And it lets you, yeah, it you get really clear on things too, right? Cause like, say you have a hero product inside of a Vermont funnel and then you merchandise like some other related products as upsells or within the grid, being able to see what people purchased, like when they only had that select like grouping, those are learnings that you can apply to other things, right? Like, Hey, people are buying these things together. Maybe we should consider building a bundle around this.
Maybe we should actually consider bringing that offer in at the ad level. Like, let's put together some sort of kit. Like let's, let's actually launch at the ad level and build again. love that word you were using, like the promise alignment, like, Hey, here's this. It's great for this land. Here's why this is great for that. And like, just keep it very, very, very specific. And again, like take all those learnings, what you're seeing, and then go and find the next experiment. Cause like we were talking about before, like you're always learning at the ad level and it's like, what's next, what's next, what's next.
but historically that's been really hard on the post click. But with this type of experience and like the velocity you can build with it's, that's a cool iteration. Let's, let's build another funnel. Let's edit this funnel. Let's send it here. Like you just kind of have like all that freedom to keep going and let the learnings kind of compound rather than be like, that was good. Check.
David Trau (21:23.359)
Yeah. And I think, you know, one thing that's really interesting and that we've tested this too is because like at TTCO, we have like an internal analytics product that we use that actually has like these really amazing product breakdowns can compare like first order, like similar things that are in the basket. And that's, we brought that back for one of my clients said like, Hey, on first purchase, like a lot of people are also buying this other product.
Like, let's put that in a bundle together. Let's merchandise that in a specific way. And we did see an increase in people buying those products together, like in our firm out experience. So being able to pull that back to those through lines to test these ideas, with very like little risk, little negative consequence, right? Because in the same way that you have an ad, you're like, okay, great. Well, we tried going to both of these, right? We can keep the original version. Again, the same original ad, we can add in a new variant or variation or run a new test with it.
in this new level of merchandising or this new little adjustment and say like, do we get a lift there? What other impact, right? Like, is that affecting subscription rate? Like, are people subscribing to both products? Like, what's the other sort of nuanced impact of that? And so that's, there's just so much I could talk about, like when it comes to like these experiences and so much that I haven't even like explored yet, that I'm really excited to test for a couple specific clients.
Alex McEachern (22:39.2)
Ha ha.
David Trau (22:49.065)
over the next couple months.
Alex McEachern (22:51.992)
David, before I let you go, as you've been testing, as you've been experimenting, as you've been tracking everything that's going on here, like you alluded to it earlier with like subscription take rate, like what are some of the things that by testing and being able to experiment with this velocity has kind of like taught you or you've been able to find or like, hey, like this is going great. Like where has all this experimentation kind of led you to or any like great insight that you've gained from it?
David Trau (23:22.944)
Yeah, so I think it's confirmed my bias just a tiny little bit. Like going back to that promise alignment is that there's specific type of customers, specific type of funnels, like specific triggers for people to buy. And it's like, if you can create an experience for them, they will, right? And being able to take these ads that wildly underperformed, the only thing that we did is send them to a FirmOp page and now they're converting. just really...
It just, really gives me like a lot of hope and belief. Like, okay, let's treat people like people from the ad level. Let's give them an experience that matches up. Right. Like I think it gives us a little bit of room to, sort of experiment a little bit more and be more creative on the front end. Because like then the creative doesn't have to do as much of a lift, right? You don't have to pack in every single benefit, every single feature, every single like detail of the product.
and what you're trying to get across is you can just hook that interest. And then now you can build an entire experience for them. That gives them the rest of the information. I love that, right? You get, you know, seven seconds, which I think is pretty generous with the ad in two minutes on the page. I really love that idea. And the other sort of next piece of that is like, now you can scale out that funnel. You can scale out that experience, right? And so now I put more ad spend into that funnel.
I see what it can handle. okay, great. Now let's go another layer deeper. Like let's generate more creative specifically for this funnel. Meanwhile, we can test into other benefits, other angles, other, other emotions, other things. And it's not like, well, if the ad just didn't perform, that was it. It's like, no, we can spin these things up together. We can start sort of at the post-click experience or take the insight, you know,
Alex McEachern (25:05.933)
Yeah.
David Trau (25:13.769)
one of the big things like, Meta loves to spend on things that are good for platform. It doesn't necessarily align with the business. Well, now we can say like, what is Meta like about this? We can learn from that and say, now, how do we create a better experience post-click to capitalize on that rather than say, well, how do we iterate on this ad to maybe also get us closer to what our business objective is? And so then you can start to let maybe those ads that seem a little bit less profitable are a little bit more higher.
funnel, you can run a little bit longer because you're actually giving those people what they need to convert on the other side.
Alex McEachern (25:50.664)
I absolutely love that. No notes. That is kind of like the exact philosophy we have here at Vermont. All right, David, before I let you go, if people want to kind of keep tabs on you, Twitter, LinkedIn, newsletters, anything where the people can get a hold of you and connect.
David Trau (26:08.178)
Yeah, LinkedIn is really just the best.
Alex McEachern (26:11.722)
Awesome. We'll get David's LinkedIn in the show notes if you want to connect. David, this was a blast. Really appreciate it.
David Trau (26:19.573)
Yeah, love these conversations. Happy to talk to other people that like marketing.
Alex McEachern (26:27.489)
Alright.