In this episode of the podcast, Brandon speaks with Megan Blissick from Retention.com. The discussion centers around partnership programs and how they operate within the ecommerce ecosystem. They also highlight Retention.com's unique approach is the use of tracking technology in ecommerce to capture potential customers with abandoned carts across devices. 

The conversation touches on the differences between working at a big company versus a growing startup, and the importance of building processes while navigating the sunk-cost bias. Megan also shares insights on leveraging partnerships for sales and business development, building mutual success and referrals, and educating partners on how to work with the product. Megan also shares tips and tricks on growing and scaling a team, including hiring tips and diversity. 

The conversation concludes with a discussion on the importance of putting dogs on websites.  

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.   

Find Megan Blissick at on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganblissick/.  

Find the behind-the-scenes YouTube series on Rentention.com here: https://www.youtube.com/@retentiondotcom  

And the Ten Years In The Making Podcast: https://retention.com/podcast_episodes/ten-years-in-the-making-podcast/ 

In this special one-year anniversary episode of D2Z, Brandon is joined by Alissa Taggart, VP of Electriq, to discuss agency life and the story of Electriq. Alissa shares her experience of joining the team just before the company's acquisition and how Electriq has evolved over the past year. 

The conversation delves into the importance of having a strong team in an agency, and the significance of feedback and iteration. The discussion highlights key learnings from building effective and strong teams, including the importance of humility and the role of team leaders in embracing the growth of team members. 

Alissa stresses the importance of being real human beings and embracing work/life balance while also prioritizing business success. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the critical nature of focusing the agency and authentically having the team's interests at heart. 

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.  

Find Alissa Taggart at on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/alissataggart/. 

Alissa’s recommended book:  Good to Great Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't 

In this episode of The D2Z Podcast, Brandon speaks with Dan Deren, senior partnership manager at Klaviyo. Dan shares his insights on the importance of partnerships in ecommerce and the Shopify ecosystem, and how ecommerce businesses can get the true value of Klaviyo as a customer data platform through integrations. 

The conversation focuses on the post-purchase journey and the significance of personalization strategies in ecommerce. Dan also shares what a typical day looks like for a partnership manager, and how he keeps up with rapidly changing features and new opportunities in the industry. 

Listeners can expect to learn about the role of agencies when working with tech stacks, and how DTC technology companies can benefit from working with agencies. The discussion highlights the importance of collaboration in achieving success in ecommerce, and how strategic partnerships can help businesses achieve their goals. 

Links:  

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.  

Find Dan Deren on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dderen/  and find Klaviyo at https://www.klaviyo.com/. 

In this episode, Brandon talks with Noah Rahimzadeh, partnerships at Malomo, a platform that specializes in post-purchase and customer journey solutions. The discussion focuses on improving the order tracking experience to enhance customer lifetime value and retention, and the importance of upselling opportunities on the order tracking page.

The conversation also delves into the significance of enhancing the overall customer experience to increase customer loyalty. Noah and Brandon discuss how an agency can leverage a tool like Malomo to help ecommerce businesses achieve their goals, the importance of strategic partnerships in business, and building the ideal ecomm tech stack to achieve optimal results.

They also share their insights on navigating the Shopify ecosystem, choosing the right apps, and making the most of integrations. 

Links: 

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com. 

Find Noah Rahimzadeh at on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-rahimzadeh-91667bb1/  and find Malomo at https://gomalomo.com/ 

Brandon talks with Tyler Grech with data as a service company Daasity. They talk about Tyler’s experience in the Shopify ecosystem, how to align with partners to go to market with technology, and leveraging ecosystems like Shopify, as well as DTC technology trends. They go into the importance of data-driven customer communication, retention strategies, and the power of data in marketing. 

They also discuss overall DTC business trends around social media, building and managing teams, and the importance of process-building and iteration. 

Links:  

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.  

Find Tyler Grech on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylergrech/?originalSubdomain=ca  and find Daasity at https://www.daasity.com/. 

Brandon talks with Kevin Kline, Director of Agency Partners at Recharge, a recurring payments and retention optimization company. They talk about the recent Shopify Editions report which dives into Shopify solutions for merchants, creating strong communications after the sale, and how to optimize every part of the ecommerce journey. They go into the psychology of today’s customers and their ecommerce expectations, reducing friction with the customer experience, and focusing on lifetime value. 

They also talk about technology integrations in the Shopify ecosystem and the importance of partnerships within the industry, as well as the role of agencies in the ecommerce space, and how to measure success with your content in new channels like TikTok. 

Links:  

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.  

Find Kevin Kline on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-kline-a327341b/and find Recharge at https://rechargepayments.com/. 

Find more information on EEE at https://eeemiami.com/. 

Brandon talks with Roman Yoffe, Founder and CEO of Absolute Web, a digital commerce agency. They talk about creating and sustaining a founding team for start-ups, specialization and the importance of focusing your practice, and recent DTC platform trends. They go into the business of Shopify, what to expect with the tech companies in the Shopify ecosystem, and how to make companies resilient during economic uncertainty. 

They also discuss the EEE eCommerce event hosted by Absolute Web and what to expect from this exclusive event, including a keynote by Kevin O’Leary. 

Links:  

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.  

Find Roman Yoffe at on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/romanyoffe and find Absolute Web at https://www.absoluteweb.com/. 

Find more information on EEE at https://eeemiami.com/. 

Brandon talks with Benjamin Mitchell the founder and CEO of Privé Creative, a performance marketing creative agency and studio for digitally native DTC brands. They talk about building a founding team and start-ups, scaling businesses, and the importance of honing your practice so you can be confident with your service offering. 

They also discuss entrepreneurship, taking the plunge into creating your own business and seizing opportunities. They go into how to build empowered teams and structured processes so you can scale easier, and dive into performance marketing and conversion strategies. 

Links:  

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.  

Find Benjamin Mitchell on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjaminmitchell1/  and find Privé Creative at https://www.privedesign.co/. 

Brandon talks with Michael Charleston, Sr. eCommerce Product Manager at Nordic Naturals, an award-winning omega-3 fish oil and other foundational nutrients company committed to delivering the world’s safest, most effective nutrients essential to health. 

They talk about the technological side of building a strong omnichannel brand at various levels of development and maturity. From the front-end focus of start-ups, where the focus is on launching products and customer acquisition, towards growing an established brand with equity where activity expands to increasing subscriptions and building retention, finding the right software integrations for the entire customer journey is key. 

They explore the value of investing in customer service as a vital part of brand experience and the importance of transparency and simplicity to drive a return and strengthen relationships for high lifetime value with the company. They discuss collaborative team empowerment as key to creating long-term success in a company, with the perspective of delegating business objectives with full strategic and operative ownership to get the best out of your team. 

 
Links:   

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.   

Find Michael Charleston on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mcharleston/ and find Nordic Naturals at https://www.nordic.com/ 

Brandon talks with Pranay Prakash, Founder & CEO at Windsor, an AI video-marketing platform that helps D2C brands acquire, grow, and retain customers through an AI video-personalization tool that enables brands to level-up customer communication from email to mass personalized video at scale. Using their tech, a founder or marketer can record a single video and send out millions of personalized copies to their customers in seconds. 

They talk about the fundraising component of entrepreneurship with a venture-backed technology innovation company, and the value of the age-old advice that the best way to learn how to swim is by jumping in. They explore how to balance the skill sets and roles of being a creator (operations, team curation and product development), a financial manager (securing capital, managing spend, and reporting to investors), and salesperson of your vision, culture and product across customer, employee and investor contexts. 

They discuss the opportunities for app developers to grow in the Shopify business model, which goes beyond the product platform into investment in Shopify-app development, contributing to entrepreneurial innovation and increasing the value of Shopify for everyone. 

 Links:  

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.  

Find Pranay Prakash on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranaygp/ and find Windsor at https://www.windsor.io/ 

This week D2Z Podcast producer Mark Havenner puts Brandon in the hot seat so we can all learn more about him and his journey. They talk about what “the Gen Z” mindset means, Brandon’s approach to business and building teams, and the story of Electriq. They also reveal Brandon is working on a book about his journey as a Gen Z entrepreneur.

Links: 

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com  and https://www.electriqmarketing.com. 

Brandon talks with Richie Jones, CEO & Owner at vvast, a B Corp certifying D2C at vvast scale, where he blends his agency and brand side experience by bringing a market disruption approach for lifestyle, retail and action sports brands seeking low capital EMEA market entry.
 
They talk about the vvast direct to consumer marketing playbook that delivers a comprehensive framework and strategy to scale brands globally. They explore the differences and similarities between the North American and European markets in terms of thought leadership best practices of localization of sales when expanding geographically. They discuss the power of leveraging cultural context and linguistic nuances, and the importance of translation, to reach and connect with consumers in smart and innovative ways in specific markets.
 
Links: 

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.  

Find Richie Jones on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/richiejones/ and find vvast at https://vvast.net/ 

Brandon talks with Josh Fonger, CEO & Owner at WTS Enterprises, a business operations consultancy that helps ambitious business owners develop and implement systematic solutions that optimize operations, enabling them to break free from the day-to-day and generate powerful growth. 

 
They talk about the power of systemizing business operations into a collection of streamlined processes and standardized procedures, enabling delegation, automation, consistency, efficiency, quality, and ultimately, the foundational momentum and clarity to scale. Developing infrastructure through segmentation and documentation extracts the foundational intelligence from the founder, allowing them to mentally elevate above and separate from their business operations, repositioning them to plan, innovate and grow. They discuss the power of coordinating strategic objectives, general operating principles and culture, and systemized operations to attain success. They explore best practices on how to work with teams as a consultant, integrating leadership goals with your plan of action, and including all team members in the process. 

Links: 

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com. 

Find Josh Fonger on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshfonger/ and find WTS Enterprises at https://wtsenterprises.com 

Brandon talks with Emilio Di Marco, CEO & Founder at Aument, the eCommerce toolbox to get new sales easily by providing customers with the best practice, product and experience. They talk about simplifying communications tools for small brands and solo-founders to help them make the most of their resources with omnichannel marketing automations, personalizations through email/SMS campaigns, and leverage data, through deliverability, strategy and design solutions. They discuss the importance of customer education, as being key to enable the use of a tool to its fullest capacity, in order to extract the full ROI it can provide. With regards to growth and development, they highlight the value of understanding marketplace pain points and staying focused on solving a problem, and determining how to balance your internal roadmap and objectives with prioritizing customer feedback. They explore the urgency for start-ups to let go of perfectionism and get a product to market, when to scale and hire, as well as the opportunity and challenge of remote work environments.

 
Links:

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com  and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.

Find Emilio Di Marco at on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/emiliodimarco/ and find Aument at https://aument.io/ 

Brandon talks with Monica Sharma-Patnekar, a Brand and Growth Strategy Consultant/Coach at Business with Monica, who helps conscious and creative D2C companies with a clear and focused vision know how to communicate and connect with their real audience in order to grow and scale. They talk about the power of purpose-driven brand strategies to establish loyalty, build trust, create growth and foster longevity. They explore the value of understanding your real customer through empathy and the intimate insights that may be gained with conversation-led market research, with applications to emotional marketing. They discuss caring about the 5 Ps of business principles, niching down, as well as using clear and defined brand purpose as an internal and external tool to attract and align people around meaning and add value to their lives. 

 
 Links: 

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com  and https://www.electriqmarketing.com. 

 
Find Monica at https://www.businesswithmonica.com/ and at @businesswithmonica, or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicasharmapatnekar/ 

 
Download “Desires over Demographics” to find the 4 types of questions to ask your customers to reveal their true needs, wants and desires here: https://www.businesswithmonica.com/resources/ 

Brandon talks with Christine Russo, Principal and Founder of Retail Creative & Consulting Agency, a Retail Technology B2B Communications Consultancy, Sales and Marketing agency. 

 
They talk about the challenges and opportunities of creating a tightly integrated shopping experience for customers, regardless of where they purchase, whether digitally through your website or mobile app, or at your physical location. An optimized UE across each of your company’s assets is accomplished by creating a seamless rather than disconnected online and in-store experience through eCommerce and POS integrations, which improves everything from real-time inventory, product knowledge, CRM, UE, shipping, and the accuracy of sales data tracking and insight. While technological innovation is expanding in all directions in the eCommerce space, many retailers operate these systems separately due to interface issues, migration challenges, and overwhelm in determining the best solution in an ecosystem of endless choices. They explore differentiation factors to consider when selecting software to solve or support the fragmentation problem such as quality and integration level - from omnichannel platforms, plug-in applications and tech stack tools, or custom design. They also discuss tactics to blend the UE between digital and physical structures by leveraging tech developments for acquisition, engagement, and retention. And finally, if it’s all about meeting the customer where they’re at, let’s all consider getting into the metaverse sooner than later. 


Links: 

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and https://www.electriqmarketing.com. 

Find Christine Russo at https://www.linkedin.com/in/christine-russo-3684604/ and www.russochristine.com. Check out her video podcast here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DdDLHi3YI4BfHnnNXWxLg 

Connect with Christine directly at RCCA at https://rccagency.com/nail-that-meeting/ 

Brandon talks with Andrea Popova, CEO of CPGD, an investor-backed community of 5,000 founders, creators, and investors in the DTC industry. 

 
They talk about how emerging consumer brands can get off the ground with the right marketing and operations resources to build them. In matching brands and agencies, brands are enabled to amplify their digital footprint and, build effective relationships between their founder, their audience, and generate community. With the right tech stack tools, brands can bypass technical hurdles in their sales journey. They explore strategic integration trends to unlock growth and opportunity in the physical marketplace and the digital marketspace for client discovery, acquisition, and retention. They discuss the potential of creating and leveraging synergistic market flows by providing in-person experiences in retail, pop-ups and events, followed by nurturing sales and loyalty through e-commerce channels. 

Links: 

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com  and https://www.electriqmarketing.com. 

 
Find CPDG at https://www.cpgd.xyz/ and @cpdg.xyz. 

 
Find Andrea Popova at https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-popova/ and https://www.andreapopova.com/ 

Brandon talks with Philip Portman, CEO of Textdrip, a text-focused business growth platform. They talk about the power of text drip campaigns, keeping up on SMS/Text compliance, and how the text will help growth through automation. They also go into changing old-school mindsets to address business problems, the Gen Z mindset, business culture, how to be innovative, imposter syndrome, and more.

Links:

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and

https://www.electriqmarketing.com

Find Philip Portman at https://www.linkedin.com/in/philportman/ and

https://philportman.com/

Brandon talks with Kausambi Manjita, Founder of Mason, an e-commerce conversion platform. They talk about the nuances of building a technology company, the need for conversion services for e-commerce brands, and solving the customer acquisition cost problem. They explore making effective promotions,  helping the customer as a driver of promotions, and missed opportunities for customer conversions.

Links:

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com  and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.

Find Kausambi Manjita at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmanjita/ and Mason at  https://getmason.io/.

Brandon talks with Alexej Pikovsky, CEO & Co-Founder of Alphawell Brands and NUOPTIMA (formerly the Alphagreen Group), a global health and wellness e-commerce platform. They talk about building health and wellness brands online, how to determine what brands to acquire or pursue, the anatomy of product supply chain and distribution channels, and Health and Wellness trends. They explore authentic brands, social proof, and building a business.

 Links:

 Find Brandon Amoroso at  https://www.brandonamoroso.com and  https://www.electriqmarketing.com.

Find Alexej Pikovsky at https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexej-pikovsky-9743701/ and Alphawell Brands at https://www.alphawellbrands.com/.

Brandon talks with Bill Boulden, a serial tech startup CTO who focuses on bringing products from the idea phase to launch. They explore Bill’s unique approach to building start-ups as a  fractional CTO, and they go into some common mistakes start-up founders will make. Brandon and Bill discuss building a minimum viable product, success strategies, and start-up trends.

 Links:

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com  and https://www.electriqmarketing.com.

Find Bill Boulden at  https://www.linkedin.com/in/billboulden/  and 

https://www.billboulden.com/.

Brandon talks with Yash Chavan, founder of the DTC influencer marketing management platform SARAL. They talk about the pitfalls and issues around influencer marketing, nurturing influencer relationships, and aligning influencers with your brand. They also go into influencer marketing trends and building a business.

 Links:

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and  https://www.electriqmarketing.com.

 
Find Yash Chavan at https://www.linkedin.com/in/yctheman/ and https://www.getsaral.com/  

Brandon talks with Hiral Zalavadia, Founder and CEO at Stately, a men’s fashion subscription service and innovator in the space. They talk about entrepreneurship and Hiral’s journey,  growing a business, and getting past pain points and bottlenecks, how to assess and mitigate risks, and navigating toward the future. They explore the ins and outs of the online subscription model, leading with subscriptions, and structuring products for success.

 
Links:

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com  and https://www.electriqmarketing.com

 
Find Hiral Zalavadia at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ hiralzalavadia/ and Stately at  

https://statelymen.com.

Brandon talks with Billy McClennan, Director of Partnerships at customer service platform Gorgias. They go into Billy’s journey from chemist to e-commerce platform Gorgias, customer service platform, and the e-commerce industry. They explore driving revenue and retention with customer service, using automation for improving the customer experience, and building self-service processes. They parse the different modes of customer service, preferred methods and trends, and educating brands around the impact of customer service on business.

 Links:

Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and
https://www.electriqmarketing.com

Find Billy McClennan at https://www.linkedin.com/in/billy-mcclennan-27bb3484/ and
https://www.gorgias.com/.

Find the Gorgias eBook The Support Performance Flywheel:
https://www.gorgias.com/ebook/support-performance-flywheel 

Brandon talks with Dan Sweeney, Chief Operating Officer of Torque Detail, a leading
automotive detailing product company. They talk about distribution in e-commerce and brick and  mortar, the benefits of brick and mortar for some products and getting into retail, using database segmentation for local activations and community building for retail, and e-commerce tactics that are working. They explore landing pages, building a good offer, email strategies, and copywriting.
 
Links:
 
Find Brandon Amoroso at https://www.brandonamoroso.com and
https://www.electriqmarketing.com

Find Dan Sweeney at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sweeneydaniel/ and
https://www.torquedetail.com/.