In this episode of the eCommerce Podcast, host Matt Edmundson reunites with Amelia at Sub Summit in Dallas to discuss the evolution of marketing strategies. They explore the challenges and opportunities of old-school marketing channels like direct mail and podcast advertising in a digital age where traditional platforms like Facebook and Google are becoming saturated and less effective due to privacy regulations and rising costs.

Key Takeaways:

1. Embrace Old-School Marketing Channels: With the increasing scrutiny on privacy regulations and the decline of traditional attribution methods, it's crucial for marketers to diversify their media mix. Exploring old-school channels like direct mail, billboards, and connected TV (CTV) can provide new opportunities for reaching and engaging with customers.
2. Importance of Podcast Advertising: Podcasting is highlighted as a powerful marketing channel due to its influencer-like impact and high engagement. Host-read ads on podcasts can provide third-party validation and reach a highly attentive audience, making it a valuable addition to any marketing strategy.
3. Adaptability and Measurement in a Cookieless World: The anticipated deprecation of cookies presents a significant opportunity for alternative marketing channels. Marketers need to focus on building direct relationships with customers, such as through email lists, and leverage advanced measurement technologies to track the effectiveness of their campaigns across various platforms.

Amelia's insights are valuable to anyone struggling with their marketing, encouraging the audience to think outside the box and look back at more classical forms of marketing to succeed in the current marketplace.

[EP] Subsummit Recording - Amelia Coomber

Matt Edmundson: Welcome to the eCommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Now this is a show all about helping you deliver eCommerce well. And to do just that today, well, we're doing things a little bit differently, especially if you're watching the video, you'll notice that there is no one sat beside me.

It was on the Bold stage. I think you will hear me say that if I remember rightly. Um, uh, sponsored by Bold Commerce. Uh, shout out to Jay, who's an [00:01:00] absolute legend, who heads up Bold Commerce. Uh, we had a great time and I got to chat with Amelia Coomer. Now, Amelia has a been on the show before. Uh, in fact, we met at SubSummit 2023.

So we met last year at the SubSummit show. She came on the eCommerce podcast. She is an absolute legend. We hit it off straight away. Literally she punched me in the face, but that's another story. You have to listen to the old episode to find out that story. Um, but, uh, when we got the chance to do another project, we're both at SubSummit, we're like, let's, you know, jump on stage and do this.

So this is the podcast where Amelia and I are going to talk about. Well, we're going to talk about old school marketing. That's what we're going to do. And we're going to dig into some of the things that may be a work and that maybe you've not thought about in marketing that, you know, it's not the usual AI is going to change my life kind of thing.

Uh, I'm trusting you're going to have some fun with it, uh, and you're going to learn some love. We post content every week, eCommerce content. You know, keep coming back, keep joining us, uh, on this epic journey, uh, of e commerce because like you, I'm an e commerce entrepreneur. I'm just trying to figure this thing out.

Now, one of the things I do want to, yeah, sort of quick call to action, I suppose, if you are listening to the show and you are an e commerce owner, uh, or an e commerce founder, in other words, you run your own e com business. And I know that there's thousands of you listening to the show that do. I really want to hear from you.

And so if you are running an online business, doesn't matter how big or small it is, whether you're new, whether you've been around for years, whether you think you've got an interesting story or whether you don't, I just want to talk to you. Um, and so there's a chance that we might be able to get you on the show.

I'm not promising it for everybody. I just want to put that out there. This is not a promise, uh, but, uh, you never know until you get in touch, right? And so we would just genuinely love to hear from you to come tell your story, come share your, uh, your secrets, what you've figured out, what you're hoping for, and all that sort of good stuff.

Just come share this journey with the rest of us. Cause it's always better, you know, When we do, and obviously we'll give a shout out to your business and your website at the same time. So if you want to know more about that, just head over to the website, ecommercepodcast. net. I think there's a link, which has applied to be on the show on there or something like that.

Again, let us know, we would love to hear from them, um, especially founders, uh, experts are great, referred guests always make the best guests, um, we've got a list as long as you're on with people wanting to come on the show and episodes waiting to be recorded, which is nice, uh, so we do want to introduce this founders section, so, I think I've said enough.

What do you think? Great episode, great conversation with Amelia. Amelia, thanks again for coming on. You are such a beauty. A [00:05:00] legend, such a legend. Uh, so that's it for today's show. Make sure you like and subscribe to the podcast, wherever you get your podcasts from, because as I say, we've always got more episodes lined up.

I don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are. Created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. I've got to bear it. Amelia has to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. It's just the way it is. Now this show is produced by PodJunction, the amazing, beautiful, wonderful team that makes this show possible with Sadaf Beynon, Jonah Prisk, utter legends.

Not officially, I mean, well I suppose, I don't know. Anyway, [00:06:00] go check out SubSummit, subsummit. com, you're not going to want to miss 2025, um, but yeah, that's it from me, that's it obviously from Amelia, uh, but have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I will see you next time. Bye for now.

okay, so welcome to the eCommerce Podcast. Great to have you. Great to have my very good friend, Amelia. We're here at Sub Summit on the stage sponsored by Bold Commerce. Quick shout out to Bold Commerce. And this is where we met, wasn't it, last year?

Well, not on this stage.

Matt Edmundson: But we did meet, we did meet here at Sub Summit.

And so when they said, Matt, come back and do a podcast, and they said, would you talk to Amelia? I'm like, yeah. Yeah, no brainer, right?

Yeah, I'm not doing that again, no, no, no. But no, welcome, thank you for coming on. Thank

you. How are you

Matt Edmundson: doing?

I'm good. I think

Matt Edmundson: you need to get close to your microphone. Remember this is a podcast. I

Matt Edmundson: We need microphones. We

do need microphones.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah. Are you doing well?

I'm doing good, yeah. How are you?

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, really good. It's

a nice sunny day.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. It's warm. It is very warm. It's crazy because it's 35 degrees here in Dallas. I don't know what that translates to, but in England, at the moment, it's like 18, and we think it's really warm.

So it's twice the temperature, and you're just like, holy moly. So it's nice to be here,

nice to be

Matt Edmundson: in Sub Summit. So thank you for the wine, by the way. Shout out to Skater Girl. So this is a family brand wine.

It is a family brand. That's our old bulldog. She used to ride a skateboard. That's so

Matt Edmundson: cool. I'll take a photo of that.

We'll put that on there. Oops. on the show,

but we're, yeah, thank you for that.

Thank you.

Matt Edmundson: No, no, no. No, really.

Thank

Matt Edmundson: you. No one knows why you're bringing me wine.

No, no, no. Well, I was for punching you in the face last year.

Matt Edmundson: That's true. You did that.

That happened.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn't get that on video,

unfortunately.

Amelia Coomber: It's something you said.

Matt Edmundson: There's so many people in our audience going, Go Amelia, do it again.

Oh God, one of those reach out for the hook. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The

Matt Edmundson: right hook thing, uh, was good fun. So, um, last time you were on the show, we were talking about content, talking about creating content and the crazy things that you had going on that were working for you.

So let's evolve that conversation a little bit. Um, if we can. So you are, just a quick recap, right? Um, you are with Petplate. It says here in my notes, you're a software engineer turned growth marketer, uh, with a six year track record of building and leading performance marketing teams for both high growth D2C brands.

And B2B SaaS Startups. That's a bit of a mouthful.

I know. Thanks, Chachabit. It just

Matt Edmundson: sounds like you're really busy. Busy.

For sure. For sure.

Ooh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson: Well done. That's fun. Yeah, yeah. I think it's because you were telling everybody you punched me in the face. Yeah, yeah,

yeah, probably. And they had to listen to it on like half speed. And so, you know, just listen

Matt Edmundson: to it again. That was really good. Um, so let's evolve that.

Because we were talking before the sub summit. So we're here at sub summit in Dallas. All about subscription commerce, and we were talking before about what we should talk about, right? Um, and we came up with this idea about talking about old school marketing. So let's explain that. Why did we come up with that as an idea?

Obviously they've got great tracking, um, everything's in platform, they own all of the data, you have your pixel on their site, things like that, but I think the biggest thing is it's really easy to get started. You can be a brand and be like, all right, we've got a 5, 000 a month budget and, uh, we're going to install the pixel, we're going to create an ad account and there we go.

Um, so it's really easy, but, you know, the, the out of home marketing, whether it's direct mail, billboards, uh, you know, even now these buses and stuff that people are, you know, sort of plastering with their brands, um, things like CTV, things like linear connected TV, linear, more cable focused. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: Sorry.

Amelia Coomber: Yeah, so CTV is connected TV.

It's basically streaming, so it's closer to digital, so you're watching something, um, and, and that video feed is actually, like, streaming live, um, and, and the cool thing about that is it, again, allows you to, You know, at least on the data side and the actual platform side, track the interaction. So, how much are people listening?

Are they skipping ads? Things like that. Can they skip ads? Linear is more cable, right? So it's typical broadcast television. So your sports channels, things like that. So, not children's TV, but connected TV and linear. And usually they're run together. You might, you know, sort of treat it like podcasting or streaming.

You're never break out in terms of budget. But, uh, yeah, channels like that.

Matt Edmundson: Okay, so You've been playing around with these a little bit, haven't you? Yeah, oh

Amelia Coomber: yeah.

Matt Edmundson: Because, like you say, I, with Facebook, I remember a few years ago, we were getting a return on ad spend, 14, 15, 16. We were like, this is amazing! And now the guys are saying to me, man, we're getting a return on ad spend, I don't know, what we've got at the moment.

on ad spend.

Matt Edmundson: So you guys have been playing around with some of this old school marketing now, and this is why I love it. And I've mentioned this before on the show.

But actually for me, marketing is not about the silver bullet. And you get asked this all the time. Yep. Right? What, what, what should, what's the latest marketing thing I should do? And it's never the silver bullet. It's all about old school principles. Mm-Hmm. and getting those right and building on those.

Yep. And then maybe the silver bullet will help you. But if you just rely on TikTok shops, which I think is what it is now, you may do well, but in six months time, it's. It'll, it'll all, all have changed because marketers will have come in and screwed it up. Absolutely.

Amelia Coomber: Uh, I mean, and not to mention that, I mean, how many brands listening to this have had their ad account shut down, right?

Like that sort of stuff happens all the time when 70 percent of your revenue, you know, on a daily basis is coming through that and you have to fight through. Different regulations or different changes or, you know, so help me, the pixel gets removed, you know, because they update their, you know, conversion.

with

Amelia Coomber: whatever you're tracking, and then QR codes came in, and those are great.

They're an extra sort of like touch point where somebody can measure, attach your UTMs to them. Um, but pixel based solutions, uh, IPs, view through rates, looking at these sorts of things. There's a lot of different methodologies that these channels, um, whether it's from certain companies that have developed them around them or whatnot, but they can still, they can be treated and they can be measured similar to digital.

Matt Edmundson: It's fascinating, isn't it, that they've managed to do that.

It is. So, if you, if I, like you say, the reason why a lot of people don't do it is it wasn't measurable. Whereas, you know, you could say, well, on Facebook, if I put a pound or a dollar in, I'm going to get ten bucks out, right? So, um, if I, if I put a pound into direct mail, how do, how do I know what I'm getting out?

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: Um, and so we, we, we've tried for years to sort of be able to measure that, never one, never really been able to do that well. Right. It's going back. My first direct mail I ever did, um, I thought I was an absolute genius. I went to like a wholesaler, and I bought a lot of forks, like a knife and fork, just the fork, and I, I wrote a letter, and I sellotaped the fork to the letter, basically saying you pick the restaurant, and I'll pick up the bill.

Amelia Coomber: I believe it.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I spent a fortune on forks.

Amelia Coomber: Yeah, why did you do it? Oh, you wanted to add a couple cents to that, to the amount it was going to cost you to ship? I mean, but it is things like that, right? And last time we talked about ad creative and how important, you know, like again, creating sort of like a video ads funnel is and modulizing that ad creative, But, uh, you know, I, I think the other principle to that is, is again, like, be unique, try to stand out.

And so attaching a fork, you know, we talk about, like, this concept of, like, three second hooks, right? If you can get somebody to watch the first three seconds of a video, you're gonna have a 70 percent higher likelihood of them watching the rest of the video. Um, and, and you'll see, like, you know, TikTok's really good at this, right?

And just that alone, like, grabbing somebody's attention, especially in this, like, attention deficit economy is so critical.

Matt Edmundson: So, what's your favorite, if I can put it this way, which, at the moment, what's the channel that excites you the most, which I would call old school marketing channels?

Amelia Coomber: Um, I mean, it's still new, right, because like, my answer is podcasting.

Um, I think that Good answer. Yeah, exactly. Uh, there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on there. I think, you know, Sure, it's not, you know, at its peak that it was during COVID. I think more so the channel starting to mature. Um, but again, the measurement technologies behind it, they're, they're really, really advanced.

They're coming up fast. Um, and I mean, when you talk about looking for new incremental audiences that you can't hit on Facebook or, you know, that they're not in the, you know, place and environment where they're ready to convert because they're just scrolling through 10, 000 other ads. Podcasting is really, really unique because it.

They're an authority source, and so when he tells you, this is awesome, you're like, fuck yeah, that's awesome, and I want that. And so I think that influence, because podcasting really is it, it's sort of a form of influence or marketing, just in a different medium. Um, they, it, it holds that, that other channels don't.

I mean, even like Direct Mail or, or CTV, right, those are, they're commercials. And I think podcasting, other than the DAI and the programmatic stuff, which has its place, um, that's more classic advertising. But when, when you do host red ads and, you know, Athletic Greens come on, comes on, again, you know, Joe Rogan, whoever it is, is talking about him, you, you get that, you know, like third party validation, I want to buy this, if it helped him, it's going to help me.

Because Tim really liked their stuff, and it's just transformed their brand overnight.

Amelia Coomber: There's so many brands that have scaled, like, again, AG1 is even one of those, they started off on podcasting, they took a big bet, even when they were, you know, starting to ramp up, pixel based technology for podcasting wasn't even around.

When you attach promo codes, when you attach banded URLs, when you do pixel based attribution, and you have that great, again, testimonial from this person you respect, it can also be a really, really great direct response.

Matt Edmundson: So you're talking in podcasting, you're talking about actually sponsoring or running ads on someone's podcast, not actually hosting.

And there's, again, I think the thing that I have a lot of conversations with brands about is, you know, people think, Oh, we're going to have to, you know, invest 100, 000, right, to see any sort of thing. There's a lot of really interesting ways, again, with this advanced measurement types of things, um, where you can test it.

You can spend 5K and you can actually see the direct conversions you can spend, you know, and you start to sort of scale up from there. So. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's really awesome, and I think, again, the, the influencer sort of captivating third party validation that you get, you don't get a lot from other channels.

Matt Edmundson: No, well, if you think, if you say influencer marketing, everybody thinks Instagram. Exactly. Right? I've got to have an Instagram person with 20, 000 followers to, to start with this. Um, but actually what you're talking about here is podcasting where the, the cost of advertising are actually really quite low.

In reality,

Whereas they're not, you know, they're not just scrolling endlessly.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. And they, it's the thing I like about it with podcasting is if people are listening, they rarely do they sort of skip forward five or 10 seconds. They do listen as long as it's an interesting ad and you hear actually now a lot of podcasters read out the ads.

Yep.

Matt Edmundson: Right, so if I was doing it on the show, we're on the stage and it's Sponsored

by Bold Commerce.

Matt Edmundson: Sponsored by Bold Commerce. So bringing you the eCommerce podcast sponsored by Bold Commerce. Well, that's an interesting thing for me to say, but if I said to you something like, you know, Bold Commerce is great because of X, Y, and Z, and I tried it on this, that, and the other.

Well, everyone's listening now, aren't they? And so getting the host to talk about maybe their experience or why it's funny is the best way. So how do, if someone is listening to the show, right, and they go, well, this is an interesting thing with podcasting, never thought about it, bit out of the box, we always have these out of box conversations, um, how would you get started on something like that?

Where would you begin?

You send in the prompt, you tell them what you want to talk about, and then again they do the measurement and all that sort of stuff. So, there's solutions like that to get started. I think the most classic way, and, and, and this is still, you know, you would do this for CTV. You would do this for direct mail.

You gotta sort of work with an agency because podcasting, again, it's like, you know, it's you. How are they gonna get in contact with you? They've gotta reach out. They've gotta get to know you. Um, maybe you're represented by somebody. So I think agencies are a really great route and that's the route that I've, I've historically gone whenever I've tested out the channel, um, because they can negotiate those lower CPMs.

They can work, make it worth your while. Um, you know, they're going to make sure that everything's delivered on what, you know, what you paid for, um, which is really, really important, right? It's not, it's not a visual channel. It's, it's audio. And so, you know, things like, you know, making sure that the host didn't say this bad word or whatever it is, right?

You can spend, maybe it's 10, 000, right? And, and, you know, I know that sounds like a lot, but if you're running any tests on any channel, you better not be spending less than 5, 000. You're not going to get statistical significance in order to actually validate whether this channel has, you know, uh, traction or not.

Matt Edmundson: So, uh, this is not a strategy maybe for someone who's just starting out in eCommerce. This is, like you say, do your Google, do your meta, get, get all the standard stuff in order. Um, and then try your podcasting, but you're gonna need a bit of budget to play around with it.

Amelia Coomber: Yeah, you are. And again, I think with any channel.

Um, but I, but I will say that I, again, I know a lot of brands that they start on podcasting. They know the impact of it. They know that that's where the audience they want to reach is. They know that they're going to be able to convert them at a higher rate because again, it's coming from that validation.

It's, it's semi offline. It's a little bit out of home, but it's also reaching the people when they're sort of in that intent phase. So

Matt Edmundson: how would you, so you've got your five, your 10, 000, you've, you've gone with some of these sort of self service, uh, agency type things, but if you're setting up doing podcast ads for your e com business or your subscription business, how would you set them up?

How would you measure? And how would you know at the end of the month whether this is a girl or not?

Amelia Coomber: Um,

Matt Edmundson: Have you done it?

The way that podcasts are actually distributed is very unique. So, uh, RSS feed, really simple syndication. That's where, again, you get those updates on new episodes. Um, when you click play on an episode, for instance, you open Spotify and I'm listening to your podcast. A lot of people think that you're streaming that episode.

That's not the case. That audio file is actually being locally downloaded to your device. And that's what makes podcast advertising and the tracking part of it really difficult. I sort of use the example like it's like Google Docs versus Word. Right, if I share a Word doc with you and I make a change, that change is not going to be reflected.

If I share a Google doc and make a change, that change is going to be reflected. So, podcasting is more of like the Word doc. Again, that's the same for, let's say, Linear and some of these other channels. It's more static. Um, so basically what happens is that a tracking pixel is installed inside of the RSS feed and when somebody clicks play right before that episode is downloaded, it actually redirects and pings that, you know, attribution provider's server and grabs the IP.

And so they own all of that data, and then when it comes to matching that back, To the person who actually converted on the website, they obviously have their pixel and that matching is really easy. Um, so for podcasting, you know, again, it's, it's, you know, almost decentralized. That audio file gets downloaded to your device, they know who downloaded it and they know the IP.

And that's the main point of data that you can use to do that matching. Right. Um, and then again, you have a pixel installed on the person's website. So, um, there's a lot of different attribution providers out there, um, and again, they all have different methodologies. It's real, podcasting is going through a, a, a similar sort of evolution in terms of measurement, like, uh, CTV went through.

I mean, 70 percent of people that, like, again, were influenced by, uh, you know, Andrew Humerman didn't use a podca uh, didn't use the promo code. So that goes unattributed. Um, so Tatari has some really, really sophisticated methodologies for CTV where they can do sort of, you know, like, You through, look through rates, they do correlation, they can do incrementality, we don't have to, you know, nerd out and go through that.

You are

Matt Edmundson: properly nerdy now. Um,

Amelia Coomber: but, uh, yeah, so, so again, you work with a, you know, an attribution provider, um, and you get those pixels installed, you make sure that, you know, whatever, uh, show or publisher you're working with that owns the show, they have the prefix installed, and then they're able to do that match rate, um, or that, that match back.

And so, again, it's not going to be perfect, there's, you know, there are things that are called, like, noisy IPs, which basically, you know, it's an IP, so you're listening in your car or in Times Square, if you're listening and other people on that same IP, they can't do that matching, because who knows if you were the reason that you converted or not.

Um, and if we're talking about spending again, even 50, 000 on a couple month test, right? Like, If I can't measure it properly, that's going to come back on me. And so it wasn't until these, you know, again, technology sort of started to evolve, um, where you're like, all right, I can see those real time metrics.

I can optimize in real time. Um, and, and there's so many brands that I've talked to where they're like, you know, same sort of story, right? We were able to see the incremental impact, the net new audience that we were able to reach and we were able to measure that in real time.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. So you've got podcasting.

What else is on your list?

Um, so we did a lot of retargeting from direct mail, where either, again, we were passing back, uh, you know, email addresses if we had them from people who had visited the website but didn't convert, or we're passing back IPs, this data partner again is like, hey, this is who that person is, this is where they live, and then we would send them that, and that works really well, and you might even do that sometimes before, um, at least from a remarketing standpoint before you do podcast advertising, but, uh, direct mail's awesome, and again, if you can make

Yeah.

The

Amelia Coomber: creative, like interesting, and the offer is compelling. Those sorts of things work. I think a lot of people think, you know, they throw their QR code on, they have their little, you know, tagline, and then, you know, that discount, and, and of course that's going to fall flat on its face. Yeah. And I'm not saying attach a fork.

Matt Edmundson: Oh, have you seen the desk?

Yes! Yes, uh huh, it's awesome. It's

Amelia Coomber: incredible, right? And, and, you know, sure, we can say like, oh, you know, sort of taking the authenticity away from that, but if you get a letter, right, like Subtummit gave us a letter, right, it was written by Warren, and I read the whole thing, and I was like, what, that's so cute, right?

And it wasn't just a line, it was like, there was a

Matt Edmundson: paragraph. A

Amelia Coomber: paragraph, right? Yeah. So, you know, it's. It's a letter from a founder, or you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, you can make it interesting, you can bring back that authenticity and not be like, hey, I'm just spamming your house with other shit. I think, uh, you know, there's some really great stuff that can work, so, um, I would say again, that's a great channel to test, it works really, really well from a remarketing standpoint, especially if you have a more enticing offer.

Um, and then again, CTV and Linear, I think are really, really great channels, especially for a certain level of scale. Uh, the, the difficulty, and that's why it's sort of above, you know, in terms of, uh, uh, you know, next steps above podcasting is that, you know, Usually, you know, most brands want to do like a big commercial, they're going to, you know, it's going to be a huge budget, 100, 000 just to film it, right?

Even just ads that are literally vertical, right? They look like they were taken by your phone and there's those two black bars. Those work really, really well. And it actually gives you a lot of room on the right hand side to do like other copy and like that QR code and stuff. So I think that there are ways to get into the channel without spending 200, 000 to record some sort of commercial.

Um, and if you just sort of apply the methodology from a creative standpoint that you do on Facebook and TikTok and things like that.

How are you finding the challenge, you know, moving from, say, the Facebook? way of writing ads and doing ads to take in those principles to say direct mail. How are you finding that shift in that challenge?

Amelia Coomber: It's diff, it's difficult for sure. And I think, uh, working with brand teams to help them understand, um, where again, you still need to, because again, you know, larger brand teams, right?

They come from the traditional sides of marketing. Direct response, direct response is relatively new. Digital marketing is relatively new, relatively new in the scope of marketing in general. Um, and so. You know, sort of convincing them that we need to take this more direct response, low fidelity, again, almost low fidelity type of approach to these things can be hard.

Um, talk to other brands, see what they've done, um, but I think, again, you just can't expect to like put something up and, and have it convert, right? You've gotta be creative. And I think, you know, again, save time on like spending a lot of budget on like the most beautifully designed thing or the, you know, most, uh, you know, cool commercial, right?

If you're gonna do CTV and, and use that time and that money in actually developing something and maybe test a couple concepts out, right? Like I know that a lot of the new direct mail companies. You can almost A B test stuff, right? So you can have four different types of direct mail pieces. That was

Matt Edmundson: going to be one of my questions actually, because if I, if I put out a Facebook ad, right, I know instantly whether that's working and I can split test and within five minutes I can go with this ad, well,

Matt Edmundson: five minutes, but you know what I mean?

Very quickly you can test and you can see the data. How do you even think about something like that with say the podcasting or the direct mail? You've got to think beyond the five minutes, I suppose.

Amelia Coomber: You do. I mean, there's definitely longer tails, um, in terms of, again, when those people are going to be exposed and when they're going to convert.

But again, podcasting, that exists. You can see in real time how many people listened to the episode, how many people visited the site. And so, again, that technology, and same thing for CTV. You can see in real time, maybe it's not the first second or whatever, but, uh, you can see all of those things, like, relatively new, or relatively real time.

I don't think it's the same way with direct mail. I think it's closer to the same way with CTV and podcasting and some of these other and semi offline channels. Um, and even like billboards and stuff, right? Like you can, there's a lot of really cool stuff. There's this company called AD Quick and they're kind of like the Zillow fur out of home.

Yeah. And we do a lot of this pixel based IP stuff. Yeah. Um, you have your, their pixel on their site and then, and there's. And, uh, I mean, it's just crazy. The forum, it's, uh, you know, like, there are, you know, there are a lot of, you know,

Matt Edmundson: them. You're starting out, right? I always like to ask this question because I appreciate people listening to the show at very different stages of their journey.

But if you're starting out, how does this apply? What would your advice be to a startup?

Matt Edmundson: Just, yeah, well, just starting out their eCommerce business, you know, they, they, they maybe turn over a hundred, two hundred grand a year, a small company that's just started.

Amelia Coomber: It's a great question.

I think we actually did a fun little one. You gave me some companies before. You were like, how would you market

this? There was like

Amelia Coomber: a krill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I think a lot of people try to go not too brand heavy, but too high level. You look at, you know, Things like maybe it's the farmer's dog or maybe it's Athletic Greens and you look at their messaging and you're like, I love this.

That resonates. We, we're going to take that, feed it in a Chachiby team. We're going to come up with something beautiful like that. Um, the thing that, you know, and it's really good to look at, you know, competition, even adjacent companies, what you have to understand is that brands like that are at such a different scale.

You know, elegant phrase. What the, what the heck does that tell you? Yeah. It doesn't tell you anything. And so there's so many companies that sort of try to start out a little too broad, especially when it comes to that messaging. And I'm not saying like, you know, just throw promo codes and discounts at people's faces, but I always like to think about the problem that somebody's experiencing.

So in the krill oil right? The, you, it was a,

Matt Edmundson: oh, the, the, the vegan, yep. Omega spray instead of, uh,

Amelia Coomber: yeah. Instead of, you know, taking it from fish, right. Like we get it from krill or something like that. Algae al. Yeah. Algae. Um. Yeah, uh, and, uh, I should

Matt Edmundson: have bought you some, I'm really sorry. You should have, that's, no, it's good.

Like what? Why were you doing this? What were you doing before? You know, what were, what was the biggest pain point? Um, and you start to like learn things about those. So I think again, start, start small, go niche and find that. Like if you identify again, maybe for the krill thing, it's like this krill oil.

Now that's Omega three doesn't taste like fish. Double down on that. Right. That is so compelling. Um, and you know, sure. Not everybody is going to feel the same way and it's not going to convince everybody to go and convert, but that. You know, 5 percent of people, you know, that they're going to convert when they hear that and that's how you sort of start.

And then you find out, you know, find other value props or other pain points to sort of scale from there.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, very good. Very good. So, in closing, what are you most excited about over the next year in all of this?

Matt Edmundson: Oh, not, okay, not the biscuits, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, not the

Amelia Coomber: biscuits, not the, I, I, I found my answer. Uh, cookies are going away, cookies are being deprecated, uh, they were supposed to deprecate this year, they were supposed to deprecate last year, they're actually getting pushed back again. Eventually, they will go,

they

Amelia Coomber: absolutely will, um, and so it's really important for companies, you know, whether you're a provider or you're a brand to start, you know, thinking about solutions around that.

I think what that does, and going back to like, you know, the, the efficacy and the, and the potential of these traditional channels. Again, everybody, you know, you think about podcasting versus Facebook, and of course go to Facebook first, right? They've got really great attribution, they've got great measurement solutions, they have access to a lot of data.

That stuff is going to start to go away, and so the expectation of being able to match perfectly one to one on a channel like Facebook, on Google and stuff, that expectation is going to start to lower. Um, even right now, the amount of modeling, the amount of double counting and stuff that's happening in those channels is just outrageous.

Not only is those, that measurement for those channels going to get better because, again, cookies are going away, IPs They're never going to go away, right? You can always do that sort of tracking. Facebook's going to have to start relying on more, again, almost like archaic methods of attribution. And so I think, again, that the sort of scrutiny that these channels are going to receive, or are going to, you know, have been getting, is going to start to lower.

And they're going to, again, have more of an equal playing field. Does that answer your question?

Matt Edmundson: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it's an interesting thing, isn't it? What are you most excited about? Cookies going. Cookies

Amelia Coomber: going away. Yeah, I just think it's a huge opportunity for all these other channels. I mean, and who knows what's going to happen with TikTok and things like that, but I think, you know, there is a huge push.

Matt Edmundson: Which means there's opportunity.

Amelia Coomber: Yep.

Matt Edmundson: And wherever there's opportunity, you know, you can do some good stuff, can't you? It's rather than crying over spilt milk, just go buy another opportunity for something different. But it always stresses to me, Amelia, the importance of gathering everybody's email address and being really nice to them.

Always.

Matt Edmundson: Always. The best kind of attribution ever. Have I got your email address? Yes. And am I nice to you? Yes. Okay. I'll be alright. Listen, I loved it. Thank you for doing this. Thank you. Here at SubSummit. And always nice to chat to you. Always nice to sit in front of a microphone. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And

Matt Edmundson: thanks for not punching me in the face this time.

Well, you know. It's not over yet.

Amelia Coomber: Awesome. Thanks, Matt. Thanks

I don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are. Created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. I've got to bear it. Amelia has to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. It's just the way it is. Now this show is produced by PodJunction, the amazing, beautiful, wonderful team that makes this show possible with Sadaf Beynon, Jonah Prisk, utter legends.

Not officially, I mean, well I suppose, I don't know. Anyway, go check out SubSummit, subsummit. [00:43:00] com, you're not going to want to miss 2025, um, but yeah, that's it from me, that's it obviously from Amelia, uh, but have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I will see you next time. Bye for now.