Cris Dinozo | Yotpo
When Yotpo’s global team of employees began to feel disconnected during the pandemic, the company made the decision to form a community powered by NFTs. Today, Yotpo’s “Fabulous Flamingo” NFTs are sought after tokens that signal a sense of belonging, but also serve as incentives for the team to get more actively involved in the company and its community.
On this week’s episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Yotpo Senior Director of Brand Marketing Cris Dinozo explains why Yotpo decided to incorporate NFTs into its community strategy, how they’re using them to bring the team closer together, and what the future roadmap holds as far as leveraging the NFTs for Yotpo’s marketing efforts.
Check out the full episode to hear what Cris had to say.
Resources from this episode:
Connect with Cris on LinkedIn
Visit the Yotpo website
Check out Yotpo’s Fabulous Flamingo Club
Learn more about the Amazing Women in eCommerce community
Cris and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:01):
Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and my guest this week is Cris Dinozo, who is the senior director of brand marketing at Yotpo. Welcome to the podcast Cris.
Cris (00:44):
Thank you for having me, Kathleen.
Kathleen (00:46):
I am really, really excited about this episode cuz you guys are working on some cool stuff that, that selfishly I want to learn from, for my own marketing. Before we start, can you take a moment and just tell audience a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do and what Yotpo is?
Cris (01:07):
Yeah. Happy to. Again, thanks for having me on the show. Super excited to talk about this particular subject review. So before that, my name again is Cris Dinozo. I work at Yotpo, which is an eCommerce marketing platform. What makes the company special is that it's eCommerce native. So it launched 10 years ago just when DTC brands started to really become a thing and develop their online presence and make it be a brand extension. And we started out with reviews, but today we actually have a full suite of integrated marketing solutions for eCommerce reviews, SMS, marketing loyalty and referrals, visual marketing technology. And so what we're trying to do is consolidate that marketing tech stack for brands, because if you're online, if you're selling, you have to be super agile and we want your technology to be agile as well. What I do at Yotpo in terms of brand marketing is I consider myself the frontline engage and hostess with the most and the welcoming party to the brand.
Kathleen (02:08):
Director of first impressions.
Cris (02:10):
That's right. Like we like to showcase who we are so that you feel like, oh, this is a brand that we wanna work with. We wanna buy from, we wanna partner with and we do that through amazing brand programs like Amazing Women in eCommerce or Yotpo Grow, which is our accelerator program for black owned businesses. And now the topic of our conversation, this project called Fabulous Flamingo Club, who that's a tough one to say and alliteration, but it's our NFT community that we just launched.
Kathleen (02:40):
Oh, I am so excited about this. So people who listen regularly know that I, I have, I'm trying to basically record a series of interviews around helping marketers get a little bit more educated around Web3, crypto, NFTs. And so this is, this is one of that series and we've spoken to Philip Alexeev who gave us a nice overview on Web3 and what it is and the blockchain and crypto and how it all fits together and why those are all not the same thing. And then I talked to, she goes by V, Vyara who is with oh my gosh, I'm forgetting the name of her company right now. This is so embarrassing. But anyway, she talked about, she talked about community building in general and like how you do that with, with Web3 and crypto. And now I feel like this conversation is gonna be an, a deep dive into like an example of somebody who's actually doing it for me, at least the way I learn.
Kathleen (03:41):
I find it so much more effective to, to talk about actual use cases rather than to do it theoretically, which is what a lot of these other kind of conversations have been. And we needed to start with the theoretical honestly, to get to where we are now. So, and by the way, company is Late Checkout. So I caught it, I got it. I knew it was gonna come to me. So Yotpo is, as you said, you guys are doing some really interesting things. You have a community, you have the Fabulous Flamingos. Start from the beginning and tell me like, what was the origin of all this? And what's the purpose of it?
Cris (04:18):
Yeah. So I mean, like, I mentioned where an e-commerce marketing platform and one of our sort of like key messages is that it's really important to build a community among your customers and make them, you know, and by doing so, by creating that kind of experience around your brand, you can create loyalty, right. And build that emotional loyalty. At Yotpo, you know, like, like every, the last couple of years experiencing the pandemic I think we saw within our own employee base, everybody's working from home, we're starting to disconnect and lose touch from each other. We're like on Zoom all the time talking, but you know, nothing replicates that in person relationship, building experience, you know, where you kind of create like those connections. And I feel like that's not very different from brands today, even, you know, over the last couple of years, I would say brands have really taken that opportunity to build emotional connections and engagements virtually.
Cris (05:15):
And so I, I feel like with the rise of NFTs over the past year, you really saw like brands use NFTs as an extension of their brand as you know, as assets that their customers can own and feel connected to. And in some ways, like if you're like a, a brand fan, you wanna show, show off your NFT, right. You know, like your ultimate brand ambassador, this is kind of like the next step in that, what our founder or like co-founder CEO Tomer kind of thought of just, you know, kind of crazy genius brainstorm was like, Hey, like our, our, our employees across the globe are starting to feel disconnected, like what will rally them together. And when he saw NFTs start to become a thing, he is like, why don't we create our own NFTs that were, you know, for our own employees, but has the potential to, you know, kind of like go public and what better way to experiment with Web3 and NFTs than with your own people. Let's experiment and figure this all out together. And so what happened is that they worked with our creative team who was like truly amazing and said, Hey, can you kind of create like a first drop of these flamingos that we're going to raffle off to employees and, you know, kind of like, and we're taking it step by step, by the way. It's like the whole roadmap wasn't built yet.
Kathleen (06:38):
That's okay. I love that. I'm like, I'm a startup marketer at heart and anybody who's who's ever worked in the startup world knows like part of the deal is you're building the plane while you're flying it. Right. It's just, it's great.
Cris (06:50):
Totally. The, you know, that's totally the, the M.O. in regards to this project because by the way, it's also kind of like, we have our regular marketing projects and then there's this one that just like popped on the radar late last year. And with like tremendous fanfare within the marketing team and my team in particular, who was like, really, what are we doing? Sure. Let's do that.
Kathleen (07:12):
Let's just add this on top of everything else. That's also, by the way, common with marketers, we, we, we get like the passion projects lumped on us, but this is cool. So, okay. So keep going, tell me more.
Cris (07:23):
It's really, really cool. So what, the reason why flamingos first and foremost, I think when you, as you can see from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, animals seem to do really well as NFTs. And so the reason why we picked Flamingo is like, again, our co-founder Tomer. He know when we hit our unicorn valuation last year he was like, you know, I have a deep problem with this concept of unicorn. Yes, it's well known that that's, you know, if your company's valued at over a billion, you're a unicorn, but it's not real, you know, like, and what I want people to know that what we're doing is real. So why not? Why be a unicorn, when you can be a Flamingo. I love flamingos. They're bold, they're passionate. They're real animals. And so he kind of just like did this thing where it's like, okay, maybe flamingos are our mascot. And I'm like, sure, why not? Seems fun to me. And so when he was trying to like brainstorm around, like what we could do with NFTs, the flamingos, we're a very natural fit again. They do really, really well. There are actually other Flamingo NFTs out there. We feel like we are, we kind of look like them, but we are way cooler, like way, way cooler.
Cris (08:35):
Actually we all love the flamingos and just a, a sneak peek here where we might work with the other flamingos as well, which we can talk about in terms of future roadmaps that-
Kathleen (08:43):
Oh, that's cool. So, okay. So you said you started internally and, and I guess I should back up and say you, you guys have a community, correct?
Cris (08:54):
We do well, we have several communities within the e-commerce kind of like industry, you know, like you have Amazing Women in e-Commerce, that's kind of like a, a brand community. Let's say we actually have a huge partner ecosystem. So in, that's also sort of a community, but in this case, because we're all still in the experimental phase with Web3, and we're trying to learn what it's all about and what the potential would be for our, our brand customers. We, we're starting with creating a community among our own employees. OK. Like, I think, I think you could say that like you will do of course your community or employees, but I, I think, you know, the point here being that because or so disconnected, we lost that sense of community. And so, you know, it's kind of creating a community, not just around our brand and who Yotpo is, you know, as like these flamingos, you know, that represents kind of like in a mascot forum, but really serves to remind us who we are like, that we are bold, that we are passionate, that we flock together.
Cris (09:56):
And you know, like this whole NFT initiative goes beyond just like, almost like virtual merch around your company, right. It's like really representative of who we are. And then you can think of these NFT, like these Flamingo avatars, as like our, you know, kind of like our virtual representative of who Yotpo is. And so I, I really feel like this is succeeding in terms of like rallying your people in this case, like internal customers or ourselves around something that generates excitement on a regular basis. And like I said, we started with a, with, with like an initial drop of only actually 40, only 40 flamingos to start. So there's kind of like that scarcity aspect that gets people like super excited. Like I want my Flamingo, what do I need to do to get my Flamingo? And that's where you can really start gamifying you know, like that engagement, because there's only 40 to go around in the first drop, like, well, the intention is that everybody in the company will get one.
Cris (11:02):
You know, like by the fact that you kind of are holding it off, like, and only releasing little by little, you can then really think through, okay, like you can get your Flamingo, but then this is a good opportunity for you as a company or a brand to say what, okay, what can we incentivize people to do in order to get their Flamingo? And I think that's where some of the magic happens because then you can be like, okay, we can use it for marketing, marketing goals. And so I, in the initial drop, it was more like joined a Discord. So like I can talk about-
Kathleen (11:37):
So it's in Discord.
Cris (11:40):
Yes. So we have the different channels. We have a Discord channel, we have an Instagram, I think we launched a Twitter, but I have to double check on that. As well as our dedicated website and, and we're hosted on OpenSea.
Cris (11:53):
So there's that, I guess, as a channel as well. And so the, in, for the initial 40 drop, what we wanted for people to do was join all the channels and start engaging on all the channels. And if you are, you know, we have like a, one of somebody on my team who raised their hand to volunteer moderate all of these channels, like this woman Savina her job was to see who was actually actively participating to see whether or not they earned their earned their chance at getting one of the 40 initial Flamingo.
Kathleen (12:28):
So you, you created these 40 and only employees in the beginning were able to get them. And you had to do certain things to qualify, to get a chance to get them right. Like, when I was talking with Philip, who kind of explained the different types of NFTs, he was explaining like, there's artwork NFTs, then there's utility NFTs and utility NFTs are obviously NFTs that, that you have, and they gain you access to something they're either like a, to, to something or or they, and their membership. Like, so with the Flamingo NFTs, is there some utility involved once someone has it, like, does it, does it qualify you to either get something participate in something?
Cris (13:09):
Yes, yes, absolutely. So, but that's a, a future roadmap. So right now they're not yet utility NFTs, but the, the intention is that they will be your key to accessing different experiences and you know, roadmap items, like for example, merch, like physical merch is going to be part of the roadmap as well as collaborations and events. So it will eventually be a utility, but for now it is, you know, strictly avatar. And then, but also you own that asset on that, on OpenSea. So there is a potential for trading and any kind of, this is where it gets a little bit tricky from a legal and finance and whatever standpoint that is. But if you own your NFT and it blows up on trading, you get the royalties from that. Yeah. so, but yes, like right now it's not yet utility, but it will be-
Kathleen (14:06):
Okay. And, and talk to me about the Discord channel what's happening in there.
Cris (14:12):
So right now we actually open it up publicly at first, because we wanted to just kind of generate that excitement and kind of promote it to within the e-commerce industry to show that we're doing it. But then really quickly, we realized that in order to kind of, kind of stick true to our goal of cultivating community within our own employee base, we closed it. And that way we can kind know, let you know, people will feel more free to kind of talk in there, like share like kind of company information, I guess, you know what I mean? But just like, be more comfortable amongst each other. But mind you Yotpo, where are we right now? Maybe like 700 employees worldwide. So it is like a really robust scene in there. I would say that we have roughly 500 who joined the Discord so far.
Cris (15:03):
And I would say that least 30% is daily active, like posting things. So like I talk through the different little areas we have, there's the, the hello hi hello channel, which is where everybody joins. And then everybody does like little GIFs and emojis to welcome them. There's a news channel that where we recommend people like just post relevant NFT articles because especially as we work in e-commerce, we work with a lot of brands, like they're doing a lot of experimentation as well. So it's kind of in keeping with our goal of like, learning about Web3 and NFTs as we go along. So we kind of have that informative news channel. There's the support channel, which is like, I don't know what I'm doing. How do I open up my, my meta mask? Like, what does that even in so there's that where we have like, active, like actually the community does support, like as more and more people learn about it, the more they feel like they can help other people learn how to do Discord or anything really.
Cris (16:06):
At this point regarding the project as well as the, the most active part of it. And this is what Savi is doing is trying to get engagement in between those times where we do the drop. So we've done a second drop, which is a drop of a hundred new flamingos. What we did to get engagement around the drop is to get people to suggest traits that our flamingos might have. So, you know, that are personal to them. So we've, you know, people have been asking for dragon ballsy hair or like pirate eye patches or whatever, like shrimp, or like, you know, sunglasses and stuff like that. And so people really just like are so enthusiastic about giving ideas, sharing ideas of what these flaming could look like. And that has been really, really effective in kind of keeping the fires going until that next Flamingo drop.
Cris (17:01):
You know, and that Discord has been huge for that. They also use these channels and particularly Instagram to tease the next set of flamingos. And so they've done things like just silhouette. So the next flamingos, or like even boating, like, Hey, between these three styles, what do you wanna do? So there's really like a, a way to keep people like super interactive and involved. And you know, the most important part of it though, is that you as a moderator for any of these communities, is that you are super responsive. Like it might be know, like, it might be easy to just say, Hey, you know, like you can see that people are proactively posting because they're so enthusiastic about it. But I, I think an important learning for us is that when you respond and say and acknowledge, you know, like people, like no matter how many they are, like, acknowledge that they're you hear their ideas and wanna give 'em a high five for it.
Cris (17:56):
Like they are that much more likely to like, stay involved in this community. As we know, you know, we ourselves are like on different social media accounts, our personal ones, you know, like we're really busy, busy at work. So to actually try to get people involved in that one more channel is not as easy as you think, you know? And, but we've really seen that for whatever reason, the flamingos really are driving so much engagement attention. And I think that that sense of like, oh, I have input into the next drop or have put into the roadmap items in the future, keeps them super involved when, you know, like it's easy for them to kind of disappear until the next drop happens.
Kathleen (18:40):
So I'm curious when you first made the decision to go to Discord, did you have any pushback or hesitancy from your team about joining, like about participating there? Because like, I, you know, I'm seeing a lot of Discords popping up. I'm a big believer in it, but it's funny. I I'm in a lot of like B2B marketing communities and there's people there who are like, what is Discord? I've never heard of it. You know, it ranges from that all the way to people who love it. And I curious, like what the reaction was in, in your case.
Cris (19:13):
Yeah. I, we've definitely discussed that amongst ourselves, within the project team. Like whether it made sense a from a bandwidth perspective, but like we also manage our non Discord social channels you know, on top of this, but also that very issue it's like for many eight people, I would say the majority of the people who joined our Discord from the company, the majority have not been on Discord at all. Like they don't, you know, they were just not there. It's not even on their radar. Like, yeah, my son's on Discord and he was-
Kathleen (19:45):
Same.
Cris (19:46):
He was mortified, mortified that mom's on Discord.
Kathleen (19:49):
I know it's I actually think this is the biggest selling point that we can give to people in our companies is, do you wanna keep pace with your kids and understand the places they're spending time, then you too should be on Discord.
Cris (20:00):
But by the way, I still don't quite understand where he is.
Cris (20:04):
It's like all very, very foreign, but yes, exactly. I feel like I already had some comfort level with it because I, it through him, but really overcoming that hump of like bringing an entire company of people into a completely foreign land of Discord was a big question mark for us. But I think that it, it's also such an easy platform to use or to engage in that, you know, they would, they, they just like settled in like, like it's nothing. It, it was really easy for them and I, and again, I think they were so, like, we were able to keep pace with this momentum you know, like from the initial kind of excitement, which by the way we, the first thing, one of the first things we did was actually announced the initiative on the all hands with the president so that people knew that it had like an extra gravity, like, you know, they will like, like release some FOMO.
Cris (21:02):
So I would say like, if you were like another company, if you were a brand like Yotpo, you know, to just make as much possible noise in that initial launch, if you can, like, you know, like if it's, if you wanted to do it for your own company and you're gonna do it, but I would even like try to like make a show if it's public facing, I would make a show out of it, like bring some, whatever. So celebrities, some known person to like amplify your launch and then try to keep up the momentum versus like do a silent launch and then try to like build excitement. You know, I would say just like start off with a bang, like make as much noise as possible, open up all the channels. And then, you know, like by sheer force of how excited you are and how exciting your kind of like roadmap is I think that will really carry, you know, carry so much of what you're trying to do, but it is going to take a lot of, a lot of attention, a lot of thinking, a lot of passion, because that translates across your communication your, your daily engagement and all of these platforms.
Cris (22:12):
You really just, it has to come from you. And if you're not passionate about it, people are gonna spell it.
Kathleen (22:19):
Now I'm curious to hear what your roadmap is, cuz you've talked about and alluded to a few different things, but how do you see this evolving as part of Yotpo's overall marketing program?
Cris (22:29):
Yeah, so like at the end of the day, we do have these other, like our kind of company communities that we can tap. And I feel like one of the things that sets Yotpo apart is the kind of brands that we work with. They are really, really, truly amazing. They range from small startups, you know, who are like selling on line, like modern and pops all the way to the Ikes of the world. And what, like what kind of like keeps them, you know, what makes them all very, very similar to each other is how much they love to collaborate with each other, like brand collaboration is very much a thing. As well as the, the appetite for trying new cool thing. And so we have one of the things that we started doing in recent years is actually collaborating with our own customers or at least like, you know, company swag is very typical, you know, a, a totally commonplace practice.
Cris (23:24):
But what we're trying to do is collaborate with our customers on our swag and really showcase that, you know, like we are not just gonna get, you know, your typical t-shirt from the swag company. We want to use our own customers, even though it might cost a little bit more to a like, solidify that relationship with a brand that we're, you know, like our brand customer and be like, because we are proud of the customers that we serve in their products. And so one of the roadmap items is definitely some kind of brand collaboration you know, and then as part of that, we are very, you know, we really care about giving back to the community and we, lot of different initiatives that do that, but we are like, part of the intention will be like potentially doing some product collaborations and then have that go towards a charity because we do see a lot of engagement whenever we give back, people just wanna support.
Cris (24:23):
So that will be a huge part of it. And I don't know if you've seen for example, like what Shawn Mendes did, where he you know, put up some NFTs. I think some like kinda like almost like a Bitmoji type of style, like NFTs and some music behind it, but like he put it up for sale, but all the proceeds like go to a charity of his choice. And so I, I, I feel like there's a lot of potential to do that, especially with the, the accelerator program that we have for black owned businesses. Like we have some brands that we can collaborate with there. Maybe like together, like some of the proceeds from some of these NFTs that we're gonna have open to the public will be going back towards the community in some way, or even to support are some of these small businesses that we're supporting as well.
Cris (25:09):
You know, so the brand collaboration and partnership aspect is gonna be a huge part of our roadmap in the future. And then another aspect will be IL you know, like to what extent can we take the virtual and connected to the in first, especially as we, you know, hopefully come out of the pandemic there's such an appetite for people to just enjoy each other in person as well. So that's when the utility NFT will come into play. Like what special access will this FFC Flamingo give you? You know, like, not that we're gonna close the door to, to everybody, like most, in most cases, this will, whatever we do in person will be available to everybody. But think of your NFT as your VIP pass. Yeah. Like, you know, special access, maybe you have open bar, but not everybody else does.
Cris (26:05):
Yeah. You know, like that kind of thing. Special access to certain people like in, for employee experience, the, the way that we're using it right now, maybe it is access to our executive staff or like being able to go to certain events. Or we have our HQ in Tel Aviv. Like maybe some special flamingo holder will get to travel to our HQ. You know, so I we're really thinking through all of the benefits that we feel like is gonna be really exciting for, you know, to start with our employees. But when we do, when we do open this to the public, I think, you know, it just completely makes it a different type of experience and thinking through, okay, what's gonna excite the broader e-commerce community. When we, when we open this up what kind of access are they gonna be looking for? What benefits, like, so for example, we have partners, you know, where we, we have web share or referral fee is like, what if the NFT increases your, your rev share or your NFTs? And you feel like there's like a lot of interesting business implications this can create as well.
Kathleen (27:14):
Yeah. That's so interesting. I would love to hear you talk a little bit about like, the change that you saw in terms of the behavior because of the NFT. So you mentioned how, in order to get it, people had to participate in certain different ways on social channels, et cetera. Talk to me a little bit about the activation that came out of this and, and what you saw people doing.
Cris (27:39):
Yeah. So first of all, we, first, we proved that people are willing to do things, to get their NFTs and also to kind of like, because it's a way it's a way for them to be seen, right. It's like if they're participating actively in this community, I think there's some kind of like like halo effect of like I'm being seen, you're seeing, you know, you're starting to see like certain personas that you don't normally see in your day to day work. So it's really interesting to see which personalities can, you know, you can identify as potential brand ambassadors or really and so like really understanding who those people are and then thinking through what are the things that then you can incentivize 'em to do to amplify whatever it is they're doing. And so one key area, like is this area that we're looking at or at these company area is employer branding.
Cris (28:29):
How do we get use this eventually this program eventually to help us drive more candidates? And so we're thinking through you know, promote our jobs page or do some referrals you know, like kind of like that kind of actions to, to help our kind of boost our pallet acquisition program. But eventually what we would love to see is, you know, more activities around our other brand programs using these NFTs. And so for example, amazing women in e-commerce is an annual recognition program where we name amazing women in our industry. And we actually use is that to help drive the nations to girls Inc. And so one of the things that we'd love to see is like, you know, like through the FFC program, like potentially collaboration with our honorees and their companies, whether it's our brands or partners like Shopify or Salesforce and you know, how do we kind of create deeper connections and maybe like, even in incentives to, you know, do business with some of our partners or to drive more sales to the brands that we're recognizing.
Cris (29:35):
So, you know, you could potentially use the FFC or like the people who own it to like, have special access to them or to like just drive some awareness campaigns for some of our partners. Eventually too, we'd love to have these FFCs to like help us drive more registration to events like, okay, team, like you, you know, if you want like more access on the roadmap, you know, with your, your Flamingo, like help us drive more registrations to this webinar, or, you know, sign up to a newsletter. I, I feel like, again, it's like, if you can prove that people you're delivering on people's expectations, or like overdelivering on expectations around the experiences of what they're getting with their NFTs you can, you, sky's the limit in terms of like what you can point them towards to help you with, in terms of your marketing, your marketing goals, your business goals because they're, it's like a value exchange in a way.
Kathleen (30:34):
Yeah. It's really, it's so interesting. And I'm so glad that you, you talked through all that, because I do think for many people, the concept of an NFT is a very abstract one. But when you really boil it down to its essence, a utility NFT is effectively just a form of a carrot, right? Like you dangle that carrot and you choose, you know, what you want it to serve as an incentive for whether as you described it, it's posting to social or helping us try and source candidates for jobs or driving registrations for an event or subscriptions to a newsletter. I mean, that's what marketing is all about trying to get people to take action. And so the NFT is effectively a, a carrot that can be used as a part of a broader, like call it loyalty or incentive program. You know, and, and it seems at least from what I'm seeing in these early stages to be a heck of a lot, it more effective than the traditional loyalty and incentive programs, because, well, if you think about it, like what we're so used to as marketers is gift cards, or, you know, as you said, like swag or points or whatever.
Kathleen (31:36):
And the thing with those types of rewards is they're very transactional. It's a one-time thing. Like I did that. And so I get that, whereas with the NFT it's I did this and I get that, and that is really unlocking a new level. That could mean a lot of different things. It's not, I get my a hundred dollars gift card and then we're done, it's, I'm now bought into a whole new relationship with you that that has endless possibilities. And so I feel like the lifetime value of an NFT is what makes it so interesting as opposed to traditional loyalty and rewards.
Cris (32:12):
Yeah. And that, I would totally agree with that. And that is part of the reason why we're experimenting with it, because imagine the implication for reimagining what those loyalty or rewards programs could be like when you tap into the potential of an NFT, right. Because then you do not only do you get out of the transactional, you get out of the like a, a physical tangibility, let's say, you know, like, because it could be, you know, that what you, what you can provide as an incentive is access. It could be virtual things. It could be a piece of content. It could be, you know, just a song. Like it could be really anything that has, you know, like, you know, maybe in real life, like no material value, but has all sorts of live emotional value. Right. And so I feel like it redefines how, you know, a company or a brand can really like cultivate that relationship with your consumer when you have something that's like not rooted necessarily to like a physical piece of swag or like that $50 gifts or certificate, which, you know, I still advocate for that. I would love a good $50 loyalty reward, right. Or like my free lipstick from Sephora. But I feel like this is just like a whole new, like frontier for relationship building.
Kathleen (33:33):
It's less about rewards than it is about affinity is what it seems like, agree, you know, like it, you, you become a part of this club and, and just the fact that you are a part of it is in and of itself its own reward because you self-identify with the other members. And that feeling of affinity is really, really powerful. And the rewards become a secondary kind of benefit that you get out of it.
Cris (33:57):
Yeah. And I think you put it perfectly because if you are like a company or a brand, and you're trying to like build that community around your brand, like this is something that is a, like, has a low barrier to entry, right? Like if you wanna be part of this special club, like you don't even necessarily maybe need to buy into it, but like, you don't necessarily have to buy into it. You don't need to be, if you think about how anthropologically, you know, like you become a part of a club in your workplace, sometimes it's a boys' club. Sometimes it's like, you know, the girls who go out for coffee club, like this is sort of just like a, an equalizer. It's just like, you're, you're only entry is like whether or not you're willing to join the, this court and share an idea of what trait you want, you know, for your Flamingo, that's it, that's it, you're in the club.
Cris (34:46):
Congrats. You know, and I, I feel like there's something very freeing and actually very like, egalitarian about it. Where, which, if you want to translate it through your business, it's like you just open the door to so many more people to engage with you with kind of like, you know, initially like no, no strings attached, all you need to bring is like, be interested and engage a little bit at first. And then you can start developing that affinity where it's like, oh yeah, yeah. I'm part of this club. I feel like I belong. I have an NFT, like, you know, like you see me Kathleen, right? Like I, part of your, I'm part of your crew now it's really cool.
Kathleen (35:25):
It, it is so it's so fascinating. I'm I can't wait to see where you guys take it, cuz like there aren't a lot of B2B companies doing anything with this on, on any level. So kudos to you guys were being so far out ahead and blazing the path for the rest of us.
Cris (35:43):
Thank you. Thank you so much. And you know, we're, we're flamingos after all, we're very bold and we're colorful and you know, we just kind of our passion definitely takes us here and you know, I would to recommend it for, for people to give it a shot again, it's like we're early days still. There's so much that you can potentially do with it. And I do believe that early movers in this space will probably benefit.
Kathleen (36:09):
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I agree with you. All right. Shifting gears, I always ask my guests two questions and I wanna make sure, or we have a few minutes to talk about this before we wrap up the first is this is the perfect example, right? Like marketing is changing so quickly digital in particular, keeping up with it can feel super overwhelming. I'm sure there's a bunch of people listening who are like, I don't understand half of what they just said. Totally reasonable. How do you personally like stay up to date and educated on all of this?
Cris (36:40):
Well I am definitely in the Discord, you know, like, so like I would highly recommend like joining some communities that even if you're not actively posting or participating or, you know, hitting a, a like or emoji is just like, see what kind of information that people are sharing on there. I think that's a great way to keep a pulse on what's going on in your particular industry or business. And then second to that, I am also on Twitter because that's also another place where people have very interesting conversation and it's definitely a place where people are opinionated. So again, you don't necessarily have to be active. But it's just good to know what people talking about at any given time. And then, and then finally I try to stick as close to what brands are doing as possible.
Cris (37:27):
So I, I read all the trades, like the glossies and the Digidays and the Adweeks. But also try to attend as many webinars as I can. I love to hear from what you know, from brands and what they're think, what their pain points and challenges are. And I'm lucky that I work in the e-commerce industry where a lot of our partners also put their brands on panels and webinars and podcasts. So it's Al, it's always just good, like stick to your target audience and what they're doing. Whoever's talking, listen to them, that's gold. And try to, you know, of your own affinity for them so that they feel like you're empathetic to their needs.
Kathleen (38:04):
Yeah. You mentioned Discord and Twitter. And certainly if you're listening and you're interested in Web3 or crypto or anything to do with that, those are the two places to learn about it without a doubt. You know, that that's where that's where a lot of the conversations happening. So that's great that you mentioned that other question in is this podcast is, is all about inbound marketing, which, you know, the definition has evolved. And I look at it today as anything that naturally attracts your right customer to you. Is there a particular company or individual that you think is really doing a great job with inbound marketing these days?
Cris (38:36):
Mm let's see. I would, well, besides us, of course, Apple is particularly great at inbound marketing. But I would say Shopify, you know, Shopify really like, does it, well, I think they have such a strong sense of themselves as a company and a brand and a hyper focus on their mission to enable, you know, all sorts of people create all online businesses that I, I think that they really developed that reputation. And so they're all between their app ecosystem, which is ginormous you know, like in terms of like getting, you know, cuz they, they take a very democratic approach to any company that wants to build on the Shopify platform is like a friend are there. So they have this democratic approach, which then draws a lot of companies to wanna develop on their platform. In which case then all the audiences of all those different companies are interested in building on Shopify. So I feel like shop through Shopify and then the Shopify adjacent companies like, like ours, we're actually searching partners you know, like help drive inbound interests to a really crazy degree. So I, I feel like kind of taking that democratic approach like ecosystem approach has served them really, really well because there's not only their own, you know, direct channels like marketing channels. There's now the channels that are coming from there.
Kathleen (39:57):
Yeah. Yeah. That's a great example. I agree. They do a really nice job. All right. As we wrap up, I am 100% certain, there are gonna be people listening who really want to understand this better. Perhaps might have a question for you or may want to learn more about Yotpo what is the best way for them to do that and to connect with you?
Cris (40:14):
Oh, you can find me on LinkedIn, Cristina Dinozo and LinkedIn. I'm probably the only one with Dinozo's last name on there. But I encourage everybody to go check out FabulousFlamingoClub.com. That is our dedicated website and you'll have access to all of our channels through there. And you can certainly find me or anybody from my team who's working on this project because it's pretty much my team as well as the studio team is working on this project. You can find me through all of those channels as well, but my primary channel's LinkedIn, so please come find me.
Kathleen (40:46):
I will. I love it. And I will put the link to your LinkedIn, to the website in the show notes, which is available at kathleenbooth.com. So head there, if you wanna connect with Cristina or learn more about fabulous flamingos or Yotpo. And in the meantime if you enjoyed this episode, please head to Apple Podcasts and leave the show a review. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me at my newly renamed Twitter handle. Finally, after so many years, I have changed it to @Kathleenlbooth. And I would love to have that person on the show as my next guest. But in the meantime, thank you so much, Cristina. This was awesome. So interesting.
Cris (41:28):
Thank you so much. And I look forward to updating you on future drops and initiatives.
Kathleen (41:33):
Yeah, I can't wait.
