EP.167/ MUDDY BITES
Muddy Bites: Building a Brand Beyond Social Media and Kickstarter with Kate Kasch, Chief Customer Officer
Mariah Parsons hosts the "Retention Chronicles" podcast, sponsored by Malomo, a shipping update platform praised by Alicia, founder of Midstoppers. Guest Kate Kasch discusses her career in the food industry, from Wrigley to Mars Inc, and her transition to scaling brands like Good Pop and Muddy Bites. Kate highlights the challenges of translating consumer interest into retail distribution, emphasizing the importance of social media presence and retailer relationships. She shares a successful campaign by Good Pop, the "Good Pop Hotline," and discusses the significance of authenticity and consumer engagement in retention strategies.
EP. 167
KATE KASCH
Episode Timestamps:
Introduction and Sponsor Acknowledgment 0:04
Mariah Parsons introduces the podcast, "Retention Chronicles," and welcomes listeners.
Mariah thanks the podcast sponsor, Malomo, and introduces Alicia, the founder of Mid Stoppers.
Alicia shares her positive experience with Malomo, highlighting its benefits for her baseball brand.
Alicia emphasizes the importance of detailed shipping updates and problem order triggers in reducing support tickets and driving repeat purchases.
Background and Connection with Kate 1:28
Mariah Parsons introduces Kate Cash, a fun and bubbly person she met at Expo West.
Kate shares her current listening habits, mentioning Taylor Swift's "Red" album.
Mariah and Kate discuss their favorite albums and what songs scream summer to them.
Mariah explains the focus of the podcast on DTC and CPG industry, particularly food and consumable products.
Kate's Career Journey 3:22
Kate shares her 20-year career in the food space, starting from her first job out of college with Wrigley.
She describes her experience working for Mars Inc, including roles in logistics, sales, analytics, and marketing.
Kate talks about her midlife career change, leaving Mars Inc to join a small, scaling brand, Good Pop.
She highlights her role in scaling Good Pop and the challenges of competing with established brands.
Introduction to Muddy Bites 7:06
Kate explains her recent move to Muddy Bites, a brand focused on bringing fun and joy back to snacking and cookies.
She describes Muddy Bites as a 3D cookie inspired by the best part of an ice cream cone.
Kate shares the brand's history and the founders' vision of creating a unique, shelf-stable cookie.
Mariah expresses her excitement about trying Muddy Bites and shares her personal experience with the product.
Challenges of Scaling a Brand 9:48
Kate discusses the differences between working at a large global brand and a small emerging brand.
She highlights the challenges of translating consumer interest into retail shelf space.
Kate shares the story of Muddy Bites' Kickstarter launch and the difficulty of securing retail distribution.
She emphasizes the importance of building consumer demand and marketing efforts to prove the brand's value to retailers.
Retail Distribution and Consumer Acquisition 12:52
Mariah and Kate discuss the challenges of acquiring retail distribution and the role of social media in consumer acquisition.
Kate shares examples of successful campaigns, including Good Pop's "Good Pop Hotline" and Disney's emotional advertising.
They talk about the importance of virality and social media presence in attracting retail buyers.
Kate explains the need for a strong social media presence to create brand love and drive retail sales.
Retention Strategies for DTC and Retail 25:53
Kate outlines the tactics for retaining consumers in DTC and retail channels.
She emphasizes the importance of timely reminders, reviews, and discounts in DTC retention.
Kate discusses the role of in-store promotions, shelf availability, and retailer relationships in retail retention.
She highlights the need for a captive audience and effective communication with retailers to drive sales.
Authenticity and Consumer Connection 30:11
Kate and Mariah discuss the importance of authenticity and emotional connection in branding.
Kate shares examples of how large brands leverage their history and family roots to create authenticity.
They talk about the role of founder stories and consumer involvement in building brand loyalty.
Kate emphasizes the need for small brands to create a sense of community and ownership among their consumers.
Conclusion and Future Collaboration 35:03
Mariah thanks Kate for sharing her insights and experiences on the podcast.
They discuss the potential for future collaborations and additional episodes.
Mariah encourages listeners to subscribe, follow the podcast on social media, and suggest future guests.
The episode concludes with a shout-out to the podcast sponsor, Malomo, and its benefits for Shopify brands.
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
customer retention, e-commerce email marketing, Malomo, shipping updates, DTC brands, food industry, Mars Inc, Good Pop, Muddy Bites, retail distribution, social media, consumer engagement, customer loyalty, acquisition strategy
SPEAKERS
Mariah Parsons, Kate Kasch, Alicia Gaba
Mariah Parsons 00:04
Hello and welcome to retention Chronicles, the customer retention podcast for E commerce marketers, I am your host and fellow e comm marketer, Mariah Parsons. Tune in as I speak with D to C, founders and operators about strategy that works and strategy that doesn't of course, we are able to have these conversations because of our podcast sponsor, Malomo. Hi,
Alicia Gaba 00:26
I'm Alicia, the founder of mid stoppers. We're a fast growing baseball brand with a very small team, and Malomo has been a lifesaver. My customers love the detailed shipping updates, and so do I. My wismo Tickets are way down, and the problem orders triggers is especially helpful when a shipping delay occurs, and I want them to know we know what's happening and that we're on top of it. I don't recommend software lightly, and I've kept a very minimal tech stack, but if you want your shipping notifications to reduce support tickets and drive repeat purchases like mine do, you'll definitely want to check out Malomo. You can learn more@gomo.com that's G O M, a, l o m, o.com
Mariah Parsons 01:13
Hello everyone, and welcome back to retention Chronicles. I'm so excited for our episode here today, Kate, thank you so much for joining me. It is going to be a great time. A little bit of listenership or a little bit of background for our listeners, is Kate and I met at Expo West this year. It was the first time I went. And Kate is just such a fun, bubbly person, and we've already bonded so much, so I can't wait to have her on the show. Kate, please say hello and tell the audience who you are. Hi,
Kate Kasch 01:39
everyone. I'm Kate cash. I'm very excited to be here, Mariah, I guess I should kick off by saying I'm Kate, and currently I am listening to Taylor Swift's red, because my girls are very much into that album right now. Super happy to be here, though, and to chat with you today. I
Mariah Parsons 01:58
love it. I love it. We talked about this last time we chatted, of like, What era are you in? And I think I'm still in. I think I was midnights when we last spoke, but I think I'm, I'm getting, actually into folklore a little bit love that recently. I don't know if it's just because it's been, like, a little bit of a Rainier week here in Chicago, changing of the seasons. I think exactly yes, yes. But summer, like, should be here so soon. So I'll be, you know, in the I don't know what this is a fun question. What would you say? Like, what album screams summer?
Kate Kasch 02:32
Lover? I think lover. I think the the visualizations of a lot of like, what she was like going through in New York City, the windows are down in the cab as she's drunkenly crying on the way home from the bar. We love it
Mariah Parsons 02:44
summer. Okay, perfect. I love that answer. Okay, so yes. Thank you for giving the background. I think our listeners, as you know, are also in the D to C retail, just CPG industry in general, which you're kind of kicking off the I'm gonna call it loosely, like the conference connections that I've made, which has been a lot in the CPG world. So our listeners are going to get a lot more, I guess, focused episodes around food and consumable products, which I think will be really fun, especially a lot of brands that people are familiar with and they see in stores they see online. So yeah, you just joined the money bites team. Give us a little bit of background of like, you know who you guys are, in case people aren't familiar with your brand, all that fun stuff.
Kate Kasch 03:28
Yeah. Well, I'll actually start by telling you just a little bit about my career. So you talk about the food space, and I'll make the really bad joke that I've been in the food space for 20 years. So I started when I was 12. I think I love it. What's an introduction? But I've been working in food for 20 years. I started first job out of college, and I've been incredibly fortunate to work for three food based companies. So I started with Wrigley ahead of the Mars Inc acquisition and selling very much household brands, gum brands, orbit gum, extra gum, and, of course, juicy fruit, big red and sort of the original gum brands. And I ended up working for ultimately, Mars Inc, who acquired Wrigley in 2008 I ended up working for Mars Inc for 17 years, and really got an incredible sort of foundational knowledge and working expertise of consumer food products. I worked in various levels of the logistics side, sales and analytics, and, of course, even on the marketing side and the brand side, on brands like EMS and combos. And in 2020 I was, you know, like all of us, in the middle of a sort of existential midlife crisis. I had just given birth to twins. I all of a sudden, had three kids under three in my very crowded house that we weren't allowed to leave. And I had been close enough in my career to sort of touch these small challenger brands, like kind, but never like, close enough to live in it. And so people like Daniel Levitsky, who's the founder of kind, I mean, they were, they were rock star, human. Rose to me like, what, what would it feel like to take something from nothing and create a billion dollar brand, or more, sure, or take something from nothing and create something that becomes a part of everybody's daily life. And I think that's one of the really cool things about food and food brands, is, if you think about how we consume products, I mean, we're such creatures of habit, I just, you know, reached down for you a few minutes before we started, and showed you my emotional snacking. Meat sticks. Archer right like that is a brand that is a part of my daily consumption, and it's a it's a pick me up. So it's an emotional release. It's a moment where I'm happy to have that, like salty taste of my beef stick, my high protein beef stick in the middle of the day. So like, the way food brands come into into our lives is just at like, such a deep, deep level, they nourish us body. They nourish us and soul. We give them to our families anyway. All that to say, because of that and that love of food brands, and because I was so impressed with the ability of some of these founders to scale from nothing to something incredible. I took a crazy leap, and I left Mars Inc after 17 years and joined I won't call it a startup, but it was a small, scaling emerging brand in the frozen novelty space called good pop. And good pop is the brainchild of just an absolute genius, well intentioned visionary Daniel Getz, he really wants to change the way that consumers see food and see treats as nourishing. Has a real view to like sustainability and reducing unnecessary sugars, and this idea that that real food tastes great, and spent four incredible years growing that brand and growing really with that brand, to learn the ins and outs of what it really means to scale a brand in a conglomerate billion dollar, multi billion dollar brand space, and how competitive is and how it really takes a connectivity to Your consumers to drive brand love far and away above the sort of established big guys in order to win in that space. And then, as you mentioned, so I did that for four years. It's certainly become part of my DNA and my journey. And then recently joined another brand that's really trying to scale with fun food. So our purpose at muddy bites is entirely bringing fun and joy. Back to snacking and to cookies. I think we believe Real Food Fair Trade, that is table stakes in food today. It's about, how do we bring something that consumers aren't otherwise yet enjoying today to share a moment, a connection with families, friends, et cetera. It's really a 3d cookie, if I'm going to describe it. Now, it came out of the it was the brainchild of two founders out of LA Mars, Iowa, who realized that the best part of an ice cream cone is that very last bite it is, it is waffly and chocolatey, and maybe it's strawberry and it's melty, and it's the very best part of a great 20 minute treat. So how do, how do you make that into a cookie? So they created a shelf stable cookie, and now it's my job to bring it to the
Mariah Parsons 08:05
masses. Yeah, that was such a comprehensive review. That was great. I feel like, whenever I talk about myself, I'm like, What have I even done? I don't even know.
Kate Kasch 08:14
No, I didn't say anything I did. I just got to talk about things I love. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 08:20
yes, exactly. You can see, you can see you really live the life and the vision, which is why I wanted you on the show. So that's perfect. And yeah, so I remember trying muddy bites at Expo West, and I was like, Oh my God, those were so good. Like, I and I am such a chocolate person. Like, it's, it is my favorite thing in the world. And so I like, I feel like I've tried a lot of different snacks, and just seeing it, yeah, it literally is, like, probably, if you're not watching this viewer, it's like a one inch. I don't know if that's actually correct, but like, one inch, just bottom of the ice cream cone, yeah, one and a half, yeah, half inch. I don't know, um, what even is a measurement these days? Who knows? Is that metric? Yeah, metric system. I don't know. And then it's, yeah, it's like, filled with, like, frosting, question mark, I don't know, a filling
Kate Kasch 09:03
chocolate. So filled with chocolate. Okay, it is chocolate. We've just launched peanut butter and chocolate. So that is exactly what it sounds like we have. So peanut butter and chocolate is in a chocolate cone, filled with a delicious peanut butter filling. So good. And we have a cookies and cream, which is white chocolate with a chocolate cone, which is also amazing. We have double fudge, which is a milk chocolate filling with a milk chocolate cone. Amazing. I had
Mariah Parsons 09:24
that one because I'm like double chocolate all the way, always awesome. Well, I'll
Kate Kasch 09:27
be excited in a few more months to share our 2026, innovation, because we're really going to take this, you know, where no one has gone before, but even one step further, ooh,
Mariah Parsons 09:36
that's a good teaser for our audience. Okay, I love that. You're already in, like the in the mode of, you know, getting everyone intrigued and telling me about the product. Okay, so I love that. Thank you for sharing about your background, telling us more about the brand. This is always something that I love to draw parallels. It's the podcaster in me. So going from, like, a big retail name, obviously, to and even, like, seeing through an acquisition and then going to the scaling. Exciting startup world. Let's start with just one thing that, like, you didn't expect about going from, you know, a brand that gets acquired by a big, big player in the space, and then going to a smaller brand that is, like carving away a new niche in the industry. Yeah,
Kate Kasch 10:15
I think there's a lot that's surprising. And anyone who's done it knows that the biggest difference between a major global brand and company and a small emerging brand is really resourcing, right? So at a big company, there's someone to do every item on the list, and at a small company, there just isn't. And so because of that, you get exposure, really, across the business ecosystem in ways that you simply cannot imagine at any level, at a massive global business. But I think that the thing that was most surprising to me was that the translation between consumer interest and getting on a retailer shelf is not it's it's not as clean as you would expect it to be. The work that must be done to both convince to almost prove out ahead of placement on shelf, to show support in the form of marketing, in the form of pent demand, in the in the form of dollars. Certainly, it not only takes a really long time, but takes a lot of effort, energy and resilience to get that done. When I worked on brands like Eminem's in 2017 we launched Eminem's caramel, which was a huge launch in the confectionary category. But at no point was it really a question of what retailers are going to be willing to take this item. Are going to give us the floor space on this item, the shelf space on this item, all of our models were based on, really 80% ACV in eight weeks. And in fact, we over delivered that at a small emerging brand. You are counting in doors and shelves and debating greater than 50% certainty. We get one small retailer, and you're doing that for every single opportunity. I think that surprised me how truly, truly difficult it is to get a brand that has proven that consumers love it to the shelves of retailers at scale that was continues to be much more difficult than than I would imagine, and the way I would actually tie that to muddy bites. So muddy bites launched, we talk sometimes about how we launched on Tiktok. Money bites actually launched on Kickstarter. And when they put the two founders put the product on Kickstarter and said, Hey, who's interested in the bottom of an ice cream cone as a cookie? And the demand was crazy. They got support from all over the world, people saying, Yes, I want this product. Yes, I want this product. And that was able to support them in in Building a facility that enabled them to start creating, first by hand and then and then with a manufacturing line. But that didn't turn in that story alone proven consumer. The consumers were saying, Hey, we would love this product. We want this product that didn't turn into retailer, distribution. And in fact, that was 2018 19, and I'm sitting here talking to halfway through 2025, and we're still really less than 20% ACV in natural grocery so even five years later, just have such, you know, a Herculean task of getting the product on shelf. And so that continues to surprise me how difficult that
Mariah Parsons 13:18
is. Yeah, and I think our audience, like typically, a lot of brands start either in the E comm world and then make it to retail, or they start the other way, where they start in retail and then try and go to E Comm, and it's this constant battle of what is right for your brand, and like, trying not to cannibalize one group of consumers, because your strategy is totally different, right? Like most of our audience will know that a lot of the brands I speak with on this podcast have one of the two. Well, they definitely have E commerce, an E commerce channel, but they either are solely e commerce, or they have E commerce and retail or some other branch, like wholesale distributor, whatever their strategy is. And it always is so interesting to hear how people are making that decision of like, where they are investing their resources, especially as a smaller team. Because, like you said, Kickstarter, you can get massive amounts of support for something online. And then obviously, how Kickstarter works, right? Like, you get that that funding upfront, so then it helps you whatever you want to put that resource, those resources that cash towards, but it still, then doesn't even solve the, like, the getting those customers to shop again, right? Like, it solves acquisition for E commerce, but like you were saying, it doesn't solve retail distribution. It also doesn't solve retention. And so I think about it in the way of, like, proving that something is one you have a place in the market. Great, great thing to do, but you're totally right in that when you're looking at, where do you start, and then how do you translate that into a way that these buyers in the retail world want to see? And I saw actually at the suites and. Expo. I always have to think about that name, because I want to say salty and sweet, or sweet and salty, but no, it's sweet and snacks.
Kate Kasch 15:06
Differentiate between. I'm like, all my snacks are sweet.
Mariah Parsons 15:10
Yeah, I know so, so funny, but I guess, yeah, just sweet and snacks Expo in Indianapolis, and I saw one brand. It was like, behave. Have you heard of them? They're like, the high fiber, low sugar gummies. Oh, sure. And they had, like, on their it was like a podium with an iPad, and on the podium, like, wrapped around it was like as seen on gone, like it's, I forget the copy, but it was like as seen on Tiktok, or viral on Tiktok, or whatever. The iPad was just playing their tiktoks on repeat, and they were saying, like, at the booth, when I was chatting with them, they were like, buyers are interested in this right now, like, retail buyers. And I was like, That's so interesting to think about retailers wanting to see the social media presence before or after. I don't know what stage or conversations they're in, but like, wanting to see that presence, even though the social media isn't for, like, quote, unquote, traditional retail. It's like, can you generate that audience to motivate them to go to those stores before you're even in retail?
Kate Kasch 16:09
Yeah, and I think, I think that's really, that is a very true concept. I mean, back dating myself here, but it was always exciting if we could bring TV copy to a buyer ahead of it airing on national TV, and really gotten away from sort of any interest in that it is. Now, how can you tease for me what social activation you're going to do? And really this, this idea of, like, virality, or going viral as a strategy, is now sort of within, like, a lot of the marketing decks I've seen, and it's like, it's funny, because people be like, well, and then we'll go viral with this, and you're like, well, that's not how that works. But I love the effort, and our buyers do want to see that, because the reality for a lot of emerging brands is it's always been true. For my brands, emerging or not, we're not normally on the shopping list. Even for those who are super organized type A and have a great shopping list. There's so much value in that impulse purchase that they stop and they buy off a display or an end cap or even just off the shelf. What those like social ads do is, even if they're not gonna remind us to put it on a shopping list, they are creating brand love before you even tried it, so that when you do see it in store, it translates to a conversion. And I think social has a really interesting ability to do that more than TV ever could because of our algorithms. So if you obviously being a targeted consumer, you're gonna get that message, but then you're gonna get that message like 60 times in the like hour you spent spend on Instagram today. And so, you know, I don't know it's interesting. We can really reach our target demographic. We could pound them over the head with it that hopefully turns into a conversion at retail. But retail products thrive and succeed off of being wide reach, whereas maybe some of our socials are very narrow reach. So hence the virality thing being part of everybody's marketing strategy. But it's funny you say that I actually am preparing two different decks for two different customer meetings this week, and they both include different versions of tiktoks and Instagram reels that we have got had go viral over the last several months. Very, very real, very real Indeed,
Mariah Parsons 18:12
yes, and hopefully reassuring, right? Of like, okay, that is important, right? No. I mean,
Kate Kasch 18:17
it definitely is. It definitely is important, because there's no there's no doubt that. I think stuff, stuff you see comfortably from your like bed when you're like Doom scrolling at like 2am does, as we all do, but that's really about acquisition. You know? I think it's interesting to see, like, you can acquire new customers that way? Do you keep them that way? Does the thing that caught their attention the first time on social whether it was like a tongue in cheek, like self care morning routine, by dipping your face in a bowl of muddy bites, which we did do, and it got a lot of traction. But is that repeatable, or do you always need a new message to reach yet a new audience? Or do you need a different message to retain? I don't know the answer to that, but these are, you know, those
Mariah Parsons 18:59
are the questions that we all ask ourselves. I was gonna, I was gonna, if you hadn't said that, I was gonna be like, Well, what do you think about how do you think about retention? Because you're completely right in that we're talking about acquisition and like, acquisition and consumers online, but also buyers, right like, I think, I think that's something that, even if DTC brands that listen to this aren't in the retail space right now, or even just brands in general, they're, like, always thinking about, I think, the next, you know, five years, the next 10 years, wherever it would be the right time of, like the acquisition of a buyer, or like, actually being able to, you know, acquire their business. And then that's a whole other, a whole other different sector of, how do you actually market in retail and all that stuff.
Kate Kasch 19:41
Well, you make me think of something which I think for a D to C brand, it is probably a longer journey from discovery of the item to like put in the cart, and then even to go all the way through the purchase cycle. Because even if I think of myself, I like see a brand. Maybe I scroll the website. I like this brand of jeans or whatever. Maybe I even put it in my cart. Year, and then whether it's price or something else, my kids running around that distracts me from completing the purchase. You know, it might take me six months to finally place my first purchase against that brand at retail. That six month or nine month cycle is targeted at the gatekeeper to the consumer. And so that is where the effort goes in to acquire the ability to get the consumer, because once the consumer's in the store, really they're going to make the purchase decision in less than eight seconds. So it's sort of like this, I guess the to your point, the focus on Who are you trying to attract, is different if you're D to C, which is directly to the consumer, as in the name, or if you're going through retail, you really have to win over the buyer first to prove to them that the consumers will be there, because once you're on the shelf at Whole Foods or Walmart, the odds are you're gonna convert somebody that day, right? Yeah, that is, whereas in DTC online, it's really going to be, how do I attract Kate to finally buy this pair of jeans that are slightly cropped and baggy and let make me let go of my skinny jeans. That's
Mariah Parsons 21:02
the ever constant battle. They really are flattering.
Kate Kasch 21:04
I don't know. Yeah, you
Mariah Parsons 21:07
got to do what works for you, right?
Kate Kasch 21:09
I'm also wearing crew socks. Now, I don't know what am I doing here?
Mariah Parsons 21:13
We're just, we're just all out here trying to do our best, chasing twins and little ones. That's true all around. No, you make a really good point, though, of and I haven't thought about it that way. Of like, who's the gatekeeper of acquisition and different channels? Of like, a retailer is going to their main commodity is that they have access and already have customers coming to their stores. So like, that's what they can gatekeep, versus your own. Say, like, website is how much traffic can you generate? And the gatekeeping is like figuring out your own strategy and like figuring out what works. And so it's just, yeah, it's so fascinating. That's why we have this podcast, to just try and try and make our way through all of it. So I love asking this question, especially on the acquisition side, and then we'll tip into retention pretty quickly. But what's like one campaign that is there any campaign that comes, like, to top my mind of like, you're like, Oh, damn, that was a really good like, they got me with that one, or anything that you can share, like, as a consumer or as an operator in the space, yeah,
Kate Kasch 22:11
great question. I think the best campaign that I can think of in recent memory was actually a campaign that good pop ran, actually just earlier this year, and Christy Clea, who's the VP of Marketing at good pop, you know, I think she is, she's well, she's brilliant, but she really gets the role that the brand plays in a core good pop demographic minds, or mind and heart. So the program was called like the good pop hotline, and it was a, it was on only owned social so put out on, I think, just Facebook and Instagram, a post that had a number to call and like a picture of a dropped popsicle. And the concept behind it was, if you're in the middle of a tantrum at home and your three year old is screaming at you, call this number and we're going to send you an emergency box of popsicles of good pop. And we worked with Instacart to make sure they could deliver et cetera. We ran that as a test campaign for three days, and our, quote, unquote, our servers were overloaded. You know, we had real good pop employees at the other end of the phone to take the stories and the phone numbers and get the addresses and provide the popsicles. So overwhelmed, people were leaving voicemails, and, you know, voice mailbox got full because the campaign hit on a like it knew its audience. It knew a real problem that they had to solve every single day of their lives. It provided a solution that the person with the problem could feel good about it. No sugar, added fruit pop for their kids. 25 calories less than six grams of sugar. I feel like I can give this to my kid all day long. It solved the problem for the end consumer, because the three year old, the six year old, is having the tantrum, is now going to get a popsicle out of this. And it solved the problem for the brand in that it highlighted really the simple joys of being a fruit pop brand who spent a lot of time talking about nutrition and education, could for just one second pivot to talking about the simple pleasure of why the brand exists and is so important to so many consumers. So I think that's my favorite campaign. It was absolutely phenomenal to listen to real people's voicemails, to read real people's emails. And I have to say, I think my favorite were the there wasn't just one of them. It was like several millennials who would write an email and would say, I know I'm supposed to call, but I'm a millennial and I don't know how to pick up the phone. Please send me popsicles to this address. Love.
Mariah Parsons 24:35
So that was a really, really brilliant
Kate Kasch 24:36
campaign. And then, though this has nothing to do with social we're talking about here. I think a campaign that will live rent free in my mind forever is like the biggest guys in advertising, right? Disney World, like 10 years ago, had an ad before I was a mom, before I was even thinking about becoming a mom, where the parents were surprising the kids with Disney. I take it or no, they were taking them to Disney the next day, and the little boy, who must have been like, three years old, couldn't sleep. And they were like, buddy, you got to go to bed. And he just said in his cute little three year old, two year old voice, I'm too excited to sleep anyway. That is not a social campaign. It was run on old fashioned TV, but it lives rent free. In my
Mariah Parsons 25:18
mind, we take it, there's, there's something in there that will someone can translate into a social campaign, I'm sure. Yeah, emotional, like, emotion, emotions like, right? So, okay, I love those examples, and that is such a good idea with the popsicle hotline, like, good pop hotline, I love that. I'm just like, I now want to access to, like, all those voicemails and emails, because that is hilarious. You know
Kate Kasch 25:41
what? There are still some live posts on their their Instagram. You can scroll the comments and, like, a lot of them will be like, we're we couldn't reach you guys. The voicemail was full. But some of them, you know, I can't call. And I think they actually have some, some of their posts, we're posting, like, real voicemails that are just like, yes, of course, life is hard, and you need a popsicle right now, and you deserve it.
Mariah Parsons 26:01
Yeah, yeah, I love it. Okay, hard transition into retention now, because this is, this is what we love. This is, you know, where my heart really is. Like, I I think it's so fun. Acquisition is, like, interesting to me, but like, retention, I'm like, oh, that's like, the sweet spot. Okay, so walk us through, because obviously we talk about acquisition a lot. But like, how do you even start to view retention? And we can think about it in like, DTC and also retail, because, like we said, there are different strategies, and so I think both would kind of be interesting here. So yeah, give me your thoughts. Yeah, retention
Kate Kasch 26:34
is, I think, way more difficult than acquisition for a lot of reasons, in spite of our best efforts to emotionally appeal. Allah Disney, Allah good pop to the consumer. There's, there's a lot of brands that can occupy that same space, especially when it comes to fast moving consumer brands, right? There's always an upstart coming in and promising to do the same thing and better retention, I think on a D to C brand is probably very tactical and probably will remain so, right? It's the concert. It's the appropriately timed reminder whether that's the email follow up, whether that's what you guys do, right, where you can close a transaction and then be redirected to actually buy more. Certainly, it's the the ask for the review. It's the follow up of the 10% discount this time. But as I work on a brand that is started DTC, and is now in retail. I really think about how I can get those folks that either love us on Tiktok or bought us on muddy bites.com or Amazon, how they can maybe continue to buy us there or send us to their uncle Stan in Saskatchewan or whatever. But then that how that will translate actually to purchases in store, because, I think, because that's the journey that we want to make, to truly scale as a brand. And so for me, that is the same tactics, right? It's going to be reminding our consumers who bought us online that we're now available in more places. It might be to follow up with whether it's like a coupon that can be redeemed digitally or in store. In some cases, it's really making sure we have that captive audience. And we're telling them where they can now find us. We just launched globally, which means, you know, all stores in the US at Whole Foods, and we are leveraging our existing consumer email base to tell them to ask them for help, please go buy us at Whole Foods. Well, while we're launching there, because then, then the retention becomes both easier and harder easier. Because if they go to the same store at the same time every week and they walk the same path, the hope is they'll walk by your product every day on shelf. So retention in store is promoting with tags. We know consumers eyes are attracted to the yellow tag or the red tag that reduces the price and offers value. It's being in stock, which is way more important than you realize. If you're not on shelf, they simply can't buy you. It's just a lost sale, right? And so you go from online where, okay, your order might ship out three days later because it was coming from the production facility. But if you're not on, if you're not in UNFI, you're not shelf at Whole Foods, you know, you've lost that consumer for that week, or maybe that month of Whole Foods is is a once a month trip. And you know, for me, in my role, it's about ensuring, and we talked about retailers as gatekeepers, it's ensuring that that gatekeeper, that retailer, understands the ways that I am trying to reach the brand, so that they can actually become the most effective, best partner in helping me reach that consumer, and it's things like building relationships, finding the mutuality in our two strategies. If Whole Foods is looking to surprise and delight their consumers, how can I continue to bring innovation that will help Whole Foods achieve that goal while helping me achieve my goal of scaling? So I think D to C retention is about speaking just as frequently as you can to your consumer, to tell them why they love you, to remind them why they love you, to offer them value, to have a reason to be in their inbox, to be on their social page, to be an organic post that you know they somehow double click on and heart. Retaining consumers at retail is just as much about retaining the retailer and that partnership as it is the shop.
Mariah Parsons 29:59
Proper. Yeah, I love that breakdown, and I love too. Like, I'm pulling just one thing out of the many great things that you said, of like, asking people for help too. Like, across channels, and this is something I feel as a consumer, where it's like, if I if I see a brand that I like or like, I know someone who works there, or something, whatever reason that I'm affiliated with this brand, and they're like, please go help like, I'm like, Okay, say less like. And that is something that I feel like a lot of a lot of emerging brands understand, but this is where I think the difference of a like logo brand or a big name brand forgets about this piece and can't make that connection with their consumers, because they're just like, at that point which you've had experience in that industry. So I don't know if you'd say the same thing, but that, like, ability to connect with consumers and be like, Hey, we are doing this. But like, let us drop the curtain a little bit of like, give you the behind the scenes. Like, for us to continue to be in retail, or, like, continue to be at your local shop, we have to prove that there is value there. So maybe instead of shopping online, or instead of shopping here, like, could you, you know, give the extra effort to shop here for the next whatever amount of time. And this is why I think social is so it. This is why I think social does what it does for brands that are on there and that are giving the behind the scenes content, because it is showing people like, oh yeah, the explanation between behind why you do something and why you choose between different things. And I think that is why, like, customer retention. I think about it so so heavily, of like, educating your customers and keeping them in the loop, even outside of product launches, like really keeping them in the loop of what is going on with your brand. And I'm just seeing it more and more. So I love that you said that. Yeah. I mean,
Kate Kasch 31:43
I think the word authenticity is definitely overused, but it's overused for a reason, and and whether it's in our food system or whether it's a clothing line, and wanting to know who's really making the product. I mean, I think, you know, American consumers today do want to know where this comes from and what that looks like. And so when you talk about the asking for help, certainly small brands know how to do it. I think this is why people love founder stories, because we're not rooting for a brand. We are rooting for our friend or for someone that we admire. And I would say, you know, you say big companies, they don't do that. I agree with you, and yet they do leverage it. If you look at I'll go back to Disney. Walt Disney was a guy, and if you go to Disney World, or you're on any platform for Disney, they're going to remind you of that, that that was actually a family business before it was what it is. You know, the Mars family, it is a family business, and you know, the founders of that company, you know you're gonna find pictures of of, actually, ironically, at Disney World, at the flagship store, there's a Main Street USA. And too much about Disney World. I go down Main Street USA, right down on the right, there's a candy shop that is the Mars candy shop. It's actually got pictures of Frank Mars and with Walt Disney from 100 years ago, right? Like, wow. So I do think that there's, there's a sense of that sense of authenticity, like we're, it's not our generation that's discovered it. It's actually, you know, generations and generations old. If you walk into a Publix, there's a museum of the public's history. HEB, same thing, a family owned business, their offices, the butts offices are right there. You have a feeling of history of feeling that you're walking into a family company. And I do think that they leverage that with their shoppers, really, really, really, really, well. When you shop in HEB, you do feel you are supporting a local Texan family. And as you know, a Texas resident that that does matter to me. So I would say that it's less obvious, probably, that the big guys are doing it, but if you look for it, they're doing it too, because it does create a sense of authenticity that is, frankly, real. It's just that they've scaled beyond anyone's wildest dreams but small brands doing it. You know, I think there's a certain another level to say, like you're helping your friends in the industry, your friends from down the street, you know, earn a living. Or, you know, you can inform what the next flavor should be. Or it's like, it's almost like, you know, this is a total left hand turn, but talking about like Crocs or the Stanley water bottles, and the ability to customize has made those brands so successful to some degree in small consumer goods, it might be like Sarah from across the street suggestion that we launch an orange flavored muddy bite, but if we do it, how much ownership does she get to feel in the brand, too? So anyway, that's a total tangent.
Mariah Parsons 34:36
No, I love that. And that's a really good retort of like, because you're completely right. There are like, roots of the big logo brands in their history and their family run businesses and all that stuff. And, yeah, that's, that's a really good point, because I haven't thought about, like, I guess, how they're how they approach establishing that emotional connection in different ways than, you know, brands that are launching today or five years ago or or. Or whatever timeframe. So yeah, I love that. I love it so much. That's
Kate Kasch 35:02
a tangent. That's definitely a tangent. You and I can go off and do the tangent. Chronicles, yes,
Mariah Parsons 35:07
exactly. I have a feeling that that would be so easy for us, because it's already we're already at time. And if there's one thing I know from our interactions, is that we could just chit chat all day long, but articles next week. Yes, okay, okay, amazing. We'll just add it on to both of our plates that are already full enough, but we're gonna do it. Thank you, Kate. This has been amazing just to chat like strategy with you, hear just how you approach different things, of how you think about DTC, retail, acquisition, retention, all, all of the good things that you know this specific business podcast loves to chat about. So thank you for making the time. It's really, really important and really fun to have
Kate Kasch 35:47
here. Pleasure love what you're doing. It's, it's so great to have, like, fresh minds around this stuff to chat with people. I'm really enjoying your podcast. I'm such so honored to be a guest, and I look forward to chatting with you again. Oh, thank
Mariah Parsons 35:59
you. Too. Thank you for listening to today's episode. These conversations bring so much knowledge to the table, and I'm so grateful for that. If you haven't already, please subscribe, follow us on social media and tell us who our next guest should be on our website. Let's give another shout out to our day one sponsor, Malomo, as you know, Malomo is an order tracking platform that enables Shopify brands to take control of their transactional email and SMS through branded order tracking pages. That means you can ditch those boring, all white carrier pages, you know, the ones I'm talking about. Everyone has seen an ugly tracking page in their life, and you can swap it with a page that matches your brand. Customers like you and I obsessively check order tracking an average of 4.6 times per order. That's why leading Shopify brands are turning that engagement into customer loyalty and revenue through branded order tracking. Learn more about how to get ahead of shipping issues, brand your order tracking experience and reconvert customers while they wait for their package to arrive with Malomo. Visit, go malomo.com that's G O M, a, l o m, o.com you.
