The Future of AI in Ecommerce 👀

The TL;DR:

• Let’s Chat D2C: Google’s New AI-Powered Tools for Ecommerce provide a look into the future of how AI is going to revolutionize this industry.

• What I’m Thinking about this Week: Hiring Someone with a Personal Brand: a Blessing and a Curse your company needs to be aware of.

• App Highlights - TikTok Video Shopping & the New Klaviyo Email Editor.

• Upcoming Events: I have five events until the end of June (including a private suite at Dodger Stadium)! More details are at the end of the newsletter.

This week’s newsletter is brought to you byGorgias, my go-to for customer service. When I saw thatBrumate made $9m through their CS channel, I knew Gorgias had to be onto something, and I needed to rethink how customer service fit into a retention marketing strategy. Historically, we’ve considered customer service a cost center, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Next week, I will dive into some ways you can shift your CX strategy into being a revenue-driving channel. Stay tuned!

Let's Chat D2C: Google’s New AI-Powered Tools for Ecommerce

Google unveiled some AI-Powered Tools for Ecommerce at their I/O Conference that I am super excited about! They also provide a glimpse into where the industry is headed.

Magic Editor

Make complex edits without pro-level editing skills. Magic Editor will allow you to edit specific parts of the image. For example, you could reposition the image's subject to a better spot within the image and change the sky to sunny from cloudy.

With generative AI, you can create new content to fill gaps after repositioning your subject. The example Google used was a boy sitting on a bench with balloons, but it was to the left of the image. Wouldn’t it be better if he was centered? The Magic Editor allows you to bring the boy and bench to the center of the image while generating the additional balloons and the part of the bench needed to complete the new picture.

This begs the question, when does a photo no longer become a photo?

For Ecommerce, Magic Editor can take just a couple of model shots and swap out the product hundreds of times for your website. 

There has yet to be a current timeline from Google for a beta.

Magic Compose

Magic Compose allows you to adapt the personality of your conversations. While currently confined to the Google Messages app, I see this technology helping ecommerce brands with customer support, identifying the type of tone and style of language a customer is using and subsequently providing the CS agent with responses that match it.

According to Google, Magic Compose will roll out later this summer in Beta.

Bard Chat Tool

Bard is now available in 180 countries with support for English, Korean, and Japanese, with 40 more languages coming shortly. Another interesting tidbit about how Bard is differentiated from competitors is that ChatGPT has no internet access and has only been trained on information available up to 2021. Bard can access Google’s search engine and provide responses based on the most recent up-to-date information.

For example, when I asked ChatGPT to provide me with an analysis of Shopify’s recent earnings report, it couldn’t offer anything. In contrast, Bard was able to produce a comprehensive summary.

Search Generative Experience (SGE) & SEO

The SEO game is completely changing with Google’s new generative AI capabilities in Search. For example, below is the result for the question, “What’s better for a family with kids under three and a dog, Bryce Canyon or Arches?” Typically, this would require asking multiple questions, digging through various sites, and adding the pieces together for yourself. With SGE, you get an AI-powered snapshot of crucial information to consider with some relevant links to view.

The first three results on Google’s organic search already receive over 50% of clicks. Only 0.67% of searchers even make it past the 1st page of results (I am a part of this 0.67% requiring at least 20 browser tabs to consider a search done).

I expect SGE to create an even stronger winner takes all environment where most users won’t even surpass the AI-generated result. This increases the stakes significantly for brands and their SEO strategy. If you’re not first, you’re last. 

Search Generative Experience (SGE) & Shopping

Searchers will now get a snapshot of relevant information and factors to consider when making even the most complex purchase decisions. SGE is built on Google’s Shopping Graph, which has over 35 billing product listings, making it the world’s most comprehensive dataset of constantly-changing products, sellers, brands, reviews, and inventory. 

Available on Chrome desktop and the Google App, you can learn more about Search Labs here, where Google will be testing SGE first.

What I’m Thinking About This Week: Hiring Someone with a Personal Brand. A Blessing and a Curse.

 First, if you’re not sold on the value of building your personal brand, just look at some of the most successful ecommerce businesses. Whether it’s an agency, SaaS product, or brand, so many are bolstered by at least one public-facing thought leader who is considered an expert in their particular field.

A Personal Anecdote

Electriq grows purely by word of mouth and content marketing. Our content marketing primarily consists of my newsletter, webinars, speaking engagements, white papers, case studies, youtube videos, the D2Z podcast, and more. I’d say more than 80% of these are personal brand oriented. But that’s where the magic happens - my brand is used as a funnel to the agency.

Hiring Someone with a Personal Brand

Now, my example is a bit different. As the founder of a company, I would strongly encourage anyone with their own business to start thinking about how they can “build in public” and position themselves as a thought leader in the space. Even if it doesn’t help with inbound, it’s a huge selling point in the sales process. Multiple prospects say they chose to work with Electriq because when they googled us or “Brandon Amoroso,” the results page is littered with content, awards, accolades, and more—social proof at its finest.

But, what I’m fascinated about right now is individual contributors within an organization who have their own personal brand. I’ve seen it propel companies to the next level, but I’ve also seen it completely discredit them.

Hiring Someone with a Personal Brand - The Good

As a business, you want more eyeballs on your product, whatever it may be you’re selling. And, you want trusted sources of information referring others to your product. One of the easiest ways to do this is to find a thought leader in your vertical and bring them on in a high-level marketing role or as an “Evangelist” for your company.

Almost immediately, you’ll be able to tap into that person’s network and influence and further legitimize your company within the eyes of the ecosystem.

Hiring Someone with a Personal Brand - The Bad

Your product and company need to be able to live and exist on social media independently from the personal brand. Still, too many times, I’ve seen this team member essentially become the company online. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if it’s the founder, but if it’s a team member, what happens when they move to a new company? Especially if it’s a competitor? Think of the “Can you hear me now?” guy who used to be the face of Verizon and was poached away by Sprint (now T-Mobile).

Hiring Someone with a Personal Brand

There are pros and cons to consider here, and there’s no arguing against the value of a personal brand and network. But as a company, be careful not to become too reliant upon one individual's network and influence to define your standing in the social media landscape.

This Week’s The D2Z Podcast

Ironing out some of the kinks with the new and improved content production studio setup we’ve built, but we’ll be back next weekend with Episode 60!

App Highlight - Recharge’s Affinity Portal

TikTok Video Shopping

Smartly.io has been tapped as TikTok’s inaugural video shopping ads partner… hello in-stream commerce on the TikTok app!

With Smartly.io, brands can showcase their product catalogs alongside their video content with a powerful suite of automation and optimization tools to test shopping ads at scale.

Even better, brands will be able to collaborate with top TikTok influencers and allow them to embed shopping campaigns within their content.

TikTok’s Chinese counterpart, Douyin, has already dove headfirst into direct sales on its platform, allowing creators to monetize their fanbase. While live shopping hasn’t taken off in the US as in China, I expect TikTok’s Shopping capabilities to be significantly more successful in market adoption.

Is there a future world where brands don’t even have Shopify websites; they just have TikToks? 🤔

Klaviyo’s New Email Editor

On May 23rd (Tuesday!), the classic email editor in Klaviyo will be replaced by the new email template editor experience. All remaining classic editor email templates in your account will be automatically converted for you, but it may take up to two weeks for the change to occur in your account.

Upcoming Events

A LOT is coming up, both virtual and in-person!

• Conquering Conversions in Q2 with ShipBob on May 25th, where I’ll present specifics around Electriq’s Email & SMS Marketing tactics.

  • Leveraging Rebuy Across the Customer Journey Master Class. I’m hosting an hour-long master class on June 8th, demonstrating how I leverage Rebuy across every aspect of the customer journey. From pre-purchase AOV increasing tactics to retention strategies deploying Rebuy’s AI recommendations tool, I’ll cover it all in this jam-packed session!

  • Private Dodger Stadium Suite with Recharge on June 13 in LA. There is extremely limited space for merchants, so RSVP ASAP if you’d like to attend, but no guarantees that we’ll be able to accommodate you.

  • DTCxRetain June 14-15, where I’ll host a retention marketing breakout session. If you’re a brand, use the code ELECTRIQBRAND for a free pass!

  • Transactional Email & SMS Master Class on June 21st with Malomo, where I’ll dive into how Electriq creates personalized transactional journeys that improve retention and increase LTV.

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