Client Success: Zero-Party Data Win with Pure Archery Group

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This is a podcast episode titled, Client Success: Zero-Party Data Win with Pure Archery Group. The summary for this episode is: <p>The Pure Archery Group adopted a zero-party data strategy as early as 2016. As a leader in the ZPD and personalization space, Jeff Suiter joins us to discuss why zero-party data is the rocket fuel for their marketing plans, how they collect and use it to personalize content and offers across channel as well as how thy 50%+ open rates on email and used Cheetah Experiences to help them achieve over 50% market share in key regions. This is a must-watch for anyone on a digital transformation journey or struggling with cookies, third-party data and privacy issues. </p>
Why we created this session
02:36 MIN
Pure Archery Group's Overview
02:04 MIN
What PAG makes and its audience make up
01:37 MIN
Why SMS is important
00:41 MIN
Why they adopted zero-party data
01:50 MIN
An always-on personalization strategy
01:37 MIN
How they use Cheetah Experiences data
02:32 MIN
50%+ open rate son personalized emails
01:04 MIN
Zero-party data and ads, 6x returns
02:01 MIN
Zero-party data to drive brick and mortar sales
01:54 MIN
Scalability and the ROI on zero-party data
01:13 MIN
ZPD feeds brick and mortar during Covid lockdowns
02:15 MIN
How Chetah Experiences saved the quarter
02:24 MIN
A 50% market share result
02:11 MIN
Why data create better human connections
01:27 MIN
Using social to drive zero-party data collection
02:30 MIN
Cheetah Experiences example
01:56 MIN
Email and SMS frequency
01:39 MIN
The resources needed to execute
08:26 MIN
How quickly they got up and running
01:47 MIN

Rich: It is Acquisition and Enrichment Week here at Signals 20. Now a big part of what we said Signals 20 was going to be all about was actually telling the stories of our customers, exposing marketers, just like you, and the successes, the issues, the goals that they've been working through and how they're meeting their KPIs. It's about telling marketers story. Tim, Acquisition and Enrichment Week, I know you've been speaking to a lot of customers. What have we got today?

Tim: Today, Rich, this is the one I'm most excited at Signals, and this week, I think this is the most important session. I'll tell you why very quickly. A, Bowtech has been collecting, using and personalizing on zero- party data for years now. They are like the poster child brand for how to do this and I don't care today if you're in FinServ, if you're in restaurant, if you're in CPG, you're in media, the tactics and strategies that you're going to see in this next session absolutely apply. What I love about this one is Jeff Suiter, the director of marketing actually gives you real results. We're not talking thought leadership here. We're talking in the weeds. Rate percentage opens and clicks and engagement, ad revenue lift, he literally spills the beans here, Rich. I'm super excited. It was done in a fun way. I hope you have fun. This was done in a Pacific Northwest forest. It was fun. I'm really excited about this one.

Rich: I am as well. Yesterday, we heard from Forester analysts, Fatima Khatibloo and Stephanie Liu, talking about the background to this balancing privacy and personalization, the importance of zero- party data and what kind of tactics marketers are actually using. That was a certain level. Now we're going to get into the do a deep dive with one market, one customer. I'm really looking forward to it.

Tim: It's cool again because you're going to hear it straight from the person who's responsible for building the brand, the ad dollars, all the resources from the marketing department and turning that into revenue. Jeff has done a great job of that and there's a live Q& A. After the last question in our session, we are going to go to a live Q& A. In that live Q& A, I'm actually going to show you the other free resources on the cheetahdigital. com website where we go into how to use influencer marketing, how to use social and other brands. You're going to see that live here during the live Q& A at the end of the session. Let's kick it off.

Rich: Let's go. Let's get it done.

Tim: Cool. Enjoy this one.

Speaker 3: Hey, guys, thanks for watching with us. Get ready for the Pure Archery Group.

Tim: Welcome to another Cheetah Digital Client Success Story. As part of our Signals 2020 content series, we are hitting the road. I've got to jump a flight. I'll see you on the other side. 2020 has been a real kick in the pants, huh? Social distancing, lockdown, challenges at every turn, but we are committed to letting our clients tell their stories in their own environment, in their own words. We'll do the heavy lifting, you stay safe at home. Today, I'm meeting Jeff Suiter, the director of marketing at the Pure Archery Group. Their portfolio of seven outdoor global archery brands serve millions of outdoor enthusiasts in both the recreational and hunting activity space. Give me one second. Sorry, excuse me. That's better. We'll be hearing how these guys adopted a direct- to- consumer strategy rooted deeply in first and zero- party data acquisition and how they're using highly personalized email, messaging and offers and advertising across multiple marketing channels. With over 20 million unique zero- party data points in their customer data platform, they are driving meaningful revenue in the highly coveted retail and independent dealer channels. They figured out direct- to- consumer communications and they're stealing market share. They are turning their competitors customers into their own. Welcome to the beautiful forest here in the Pacific Northwest America where guys like Jeff and millions of other outdoor enthusiasts love the sport of archery and the wide open which is also properly socially distanced. I think this is my meeting point. Hey.

Jeff Suiter: Hi, man. I'm doing good. The question is how are you doing?

Tim: I'm okay.

Jeff Suiter: Feel afraid of heights?

Tim: I think I'll be all right with this one.

Jeff Suiter: Good.

Tim: Jeff, it's great to see you again, man. We've told your story so many times. Give me a short explanation. What does the Pure Archery Group actually do?

Jeff Suiter: We're actually a global brand and we actually have seven different brands underneath the Pure Archery Group. We're all in the archery industry which is a pretty large industry in the outdoor space. We go anywhere from a very premier product, so the very high end, to kind of the good category that we're going to sell across all sorts of different channels of-

Tim: Let's talk about that. There's 105 million outdoor enthusiasts in America alone, so you serve tens of million in the archery recreation and hunting space, but tell me about your revenue channels. How do you guys make money? Where do you make money?

Jeff Suiter: It's a little bit different than what most people would think. You think that the ecomm is just really popular and cranking right now. That's just a small part of actually our business. We have a lot of independent mom- and- pop retailers in several hundreds, close to the thousand mark of how many there are, so we have to do a lot of business through them as well and we also do a lot of business through key accounts like the Cabela's and the Bass Pros of the worlds, the SCHEELS and that is a big extension of our ability to get our products out to market as well.

Tim: Got it. I'm assuming you're a manufacturer of archery and sporting equipment. You have accessories, seven brands, but primarily, you don't have a direct relationship to your consumers when it comes to a revenue channel. You're through the big box retailers, you're through the independent. What are the marketing channels that you use? Tell us where you're actually marketing to consumers.

Jeff Suiter: There's actually three main ones, we'll use social media, still super, super important for us to have it, but we use it in a different way than most people. We start using that to start collecting data, instead of just informing consumers of what's in marketplace.

Tim: We'll dig into that in a second.

Jeff Suiter: Then, we have emails and emails is a big differentiator for us. Then we'll get into more weeds on why that is. It's not just a traditional way. Then we really utilize SMS a lot.

Tim: That's so nice.

Jeff Suiter: Everybody answers the phone, right? You know that for sure.

Tim: Hey, look, we know that the studies will tell you that friends and family are huge on messaging. SMS message, 90% of them get read within three minutes. I think maybe 90% of them also get replied to when asked to, so huge channel and you're using that for inbound and outbound.

Jeff Suiter: Both inbound and outbound, in content side as well and the experiences that we have in place. We can get people engaged a lot quicker and sooner just through SMS. It's pretty amazing platform if you utilize it properly.

Tim: You're using all the traditional marketing channels. Let's talk about the data you guys have been collecting because you've been a pioneer in zero- party data, right? This is data that's explicitly declared from consumers, not just customers, not just people that are doing business with you, but also your competitors' customers. Tell us what kinds of data you're collecting and what kinds of data you're not really worried about.

Jeff Suiter: Sure. Well, traditionally, most people go off your basic web experience or behaviors through what they're doing to the web crosstalk-

Tim: Clicking from this page to that page.

Jeff Suiter: We learn a lot with that. It is good to fine tune to help them along, but it's not the meat that gives us what we need to help give the consumer the best experience they want.

Tim: Everybody gets that, right? Everybody can get social intelligence. Everybody can get web behavior, " They went from here to there." That's not a differentiator. All your competitors have. What really are you getting from consumers in the zero- party data strategy?

Jeff Suiter: This is the complete unique thing that separates us from everybody else in our space currently right now. It is some of the coolest stuff, Tim. It's the things that we know when they want to purchase, what they want to purchase, what are they frustrated with, what they were shooting previously if it wasn't our brand, why they were leaving that brand, why they loved the brand. Anything with those mixes you can figure out. It's affinity. It's what the customer wants to know, wants to do. They tell us.

Tim: Literally, it's the what, why, when, how, the marketer's holy grail of data, when they're going to buy, what channels they're going to buy, do they want to buy it a big box, direct from the brand, at a mom and pop, how much they're going to spend, when they're going to purchase. All right, everybody's like, " Yeah, I'd love to have that data too," but we have some large brands out there that go, " How do you get that at scale? How are you actually collecting some of that data?" Can you give us some in the weeds tactics of how you get that data from consumers?

Jeff Suiter: Yeah, absolutely. We have multiple ways we do this. The trick is once you start to realize how it works, it's just plug and play in your different channels.

Tim: Always on.

Jeff Suiter: Always on mentality, exactly what we call it, Tim. It's always on in our office. We'll build in Cheetah Experiences, super simple to set up. We can have things up and running in a matter of hours really if we wanted to. We can put that out onto social platforms, some really cool stuff we do. People are passionate. We're in the woods right now because we hunt. We'll give away hunts and experiences. The cool thing with that, Tim, is they told us where they wanted to go and what they wanted to hunt. We'll give those hunts away in experiences.

Tim: That's personalization. Now you're skipping ahead on my agenda here. We're already into the personalization. All right, so let me understand so that people understand. You use Cheetah experiences and I looked in your account, you have nearly 400 experiences under your belt. Your Sweepstakes, Watch and Wins, you're launching a new product, you'll say, " Hey, this is what our product is. Watch this two- minute video and then you can enter to win." I looked in your account, you guys have well over, I'm not going to give away too much secret sauce, but you guys have literally tens of millions of data points on your consumer database in your CDP data portal.

Jeff Suiter: We do. We wanted to be close to the customers as we possibly could. What we mean by that is, " We want to know about you and not talk at you, but talk with you."

Tim: Got it.

Jeff Suiter: "If I can only talk with you, if you're willing to engage with me, I can only do that if I have an experience of something of value that you'll engage with me." My web behavior doesn't tell me that. I can't go in there and pop up and go, " Hey, let's just talk all of a sudden." It doesn't work like that. These experiences get the psychographical, the affinity of what they're wanting for all these data points that we need to have a conversation with you instead of at you anymore. It's impressive.

Tim: Let's talk about personalization for a second because you've acquired data, you've enriched your profile data on your people, you're constantly reengaging them, more Cheetah Experiences going directly into your database, so that you're segmenting and analyzing. The personalization engine, what are some examples? Can you give us a good example of something meaningful that drove revenue or a great KPI that blew your expectations out on how you're using that data to personalize at scale?

Jeff Suiter: Yeah, absolutely. One of our premier brands Bowtech, individually-

Tim: Your flagship brand is Bowtech.

Jeff Suiter: Our flagship brand is Bowtech for us. It is not sold through ecommerce channels. It's not sold through this. We have to go through a pro shop.

Tim: For somebody to buy a Bowtech product, they must go into a brick and mortar and actually fork over credit card or cash-

Jeff Suiter: Absolutely.

Tim: That's a tough. In this day and age, man, that is a tough thing to do.

Jeff Suiter: This is the tricky part and this is where some of this really personalized information comes in and it's a separator for us. If I were to do traditional, all I could do is just give them our normal advertising and push them through the door and go, " Man, I hope that works."

Tim: What you're saying there is if you don't know anything about them or your competitors are taking out full- page print ads, a 30- second spot saying, " This is our new product. It's the best, one- size- fits- all," and you're hoping that resonates with every single consumer out.

Jeff Suiter: We know it just has poor result. We switched that whole philosophy.

Tim: Based on data.

Jeff Suiter: Based on data.

Tim: Based on data insight.

Jeff Suiter: As we started getting information in, it was just like the light bulb effect went off. You just go, " Oh, my gosh. You just laid up all of our creative for what we need to go to market with." Here's the best part about it. The creative is not the same for everybody, so we'll start to segment out. I'll give you an example. We launched a premier product last year. We segmented out into five different buckets, personas for people and individuals. Inside of that, we go, " Okay, great. Now we can communicate outbound and we'll make sure we get the right individuals for that," but then we go, " Wait, we got more data. Let's go a couple more layers deep." The next set of information was... Well, they did tell us that they want it in a product in those just attributes. For us, it's things of like smooth or vibration- free or speed, things of that nature. With this data, now we have the information we need to know to develop our creative for the company side of it as well. Now when we have this specialized creative to the consumer and now we're distributing it out, we're talking with them again and they're going, " Whoa, how did you know I want it smooth? Wait a sec, how do you know I wanted to buy it next month? Wait, how did you know my competitors was X? You knew my frustration point, you gave me the solution to it all in inaudible."

Tim: What kind of lift in, let's just say, open rates? What kind of lifting open rates can you get with that strategy?

Jeff Suiter: I'll tell you what, traditionally and it's probably same for a lot of people, you're lucky if you get into the 15 mark. You really nailed one. You get to 20, " Wow, we're really crushing it." Sometimes when we get to the level of personalization, we really nailed it. We've got the right question sets. We had to create and develop it. You're looking at upwards of 50% open rates in email.

Tim: You're taking the data you've learned from somebody and customizing the subject line, not just their name...

Jeff Suiter: Not just their name.

Tim: ... because that's notpersonalization. You're saying, " Hey, Tim, this is the smoothest bow and we have an offer if you buy it within three months." Bad example, but you're going along those lines. You can personalize the subject line to get an open rate. How about the calls to action and click rates inside when you dynamically match the right data that a person has given you with an offer inside the email?

Jeff Suiter: That goes up tremendously as well. You're looking at three, four or five times the click- through rate on that. The nice thing with that too is you get to see the behavior of your creative putting in and your call to actions. It just adds up completely.

Tim: I'm going to pivot for a second because a lot of our clients watching, probably you're thinking, " Hey, look, we do a lot of advertising. How can this data help me in the advertising world?" As cookies fall apart and the cookies crumbling and the IDFA being rolled back from Apple devices, you guys have actually taken segmented data. You've created these persona groups and dozens of different personas really, to take that data back to a walled garden, back to a Google, back to a Facebook, somewhere where you can make an identifying match in advertising. What kind of lift are you getting when you take zero- party data back to these walled gardens forever?

Jeff Suiter: It's pretty impressive. On the minimum side, it's at least double, but we're seeing close to four or five times the lift when you take that information, take it to a Facebook or a Google and go, " Here's what we know and here's what we're advertising," and it just increases amazing.

Tim: Specifically, you're using that data to create the right creative that matches with that person. If John said again, " Hey, I love smooth shooting and archery bows," then you're going to make that creative align right to him, whether it's pay per click, it's display, remarketing, etcetera, but you know that about that.

Jeff Suiter: Every piece of advertising we go out, if I know something about someone, I'm going to give them exactly what they want. We're not going to give them a one- size- fits- all solution for it.

Tim: All right, people are probably asking, " Oh, man, now I got to create 17, 25, 40 different pieces of creative, but you said at least double, so your money's going twice as far as it would natively if you just got on and used Google's tools. I happen to know you guys have gotten on average over five times traditional.

Jeff Suiter: We have.

Tim: Can we at least make that you can get up to five, maybe six times?

Jeff Suiter: In some cases, it's even higher than that. It's that...

Tim: Hyper, hyper-

Jeff Suiter: ...hyper, hyper sensitive, the right offer for the right person and the right platform works tremendously, but in general, if we float around that five times mark, we feel pretty good with our ROI on it now. It drops below that, we'll look at it and have to change something.

Tim: Hey, look, the good news is you've collected all this data, right? You have a leg up. You're not playing on the same ballpark as your other competitors, because they tend to not have this data. They're going to Google and Facebook direct going, " Okay, we think this interest group and this keyword and this and that," that's not a differentiator. You're bringing, " Hey, this is Tom and Sally and Sue and Skip and Jack, and they want this, so run this ad, please, Google. Just make the match. Get out of our way."

Jeff Suiter: We're the proofs in this. In some of our instances, we don't have a direct sale to the consumer. We have to rely on a dealer or a third party to make that transaction. Well, anecdotally, we'll get the information back from the dealer going, " They're coming in asking for very interesting things in our product." I go, " Oh, what is that?" Geez, guess what? It lined up with exactly what they told us and they creatively gave them. The dealer wouldn't know that because it wasn't public facing.

Tim: Let's think about this as a visual, you're a manufacturer, you've got all your retail channels where people actually spend their money in the middle and you've got consumers. It's like monkey in the middle. You're trying to get to the consumer because the retailer, let's be frank, if a consumer comes into a mom- and- pop shop or even a big box like Cabela's or Bass Pro, they're coming in looking for an archery bow. You're one of 10, maybe 20 solutions on the wall, you have the difficulty of making sure the consumer knows about your product, what it does, why it's better because the salesperson might say, " Hey, look, I make three, four more points on this competing brands, so I'm going to try and pay my mortgage this month by selling that one." What you're able to do is go direct to the consumer with information you collected directly from them, tell them the story, they need to hear, the features, the benefits that are mapped to their needs, so that when they go into that retailer, independent dealer, whatever it is, they're already asking for your product, they know what it does and they know that it solves their problem.

Jeff Suiter: I don't need to say anymore. You just did it. That's it.

Tim: I just gave your secret sauce.

Jeff Suiter: It works just like that.

Tim: You can do this at scale. I know you guys have, nearly I'm not going to say, you guys have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of consumers in your database where you have this psychographic data. Is this scalable? Is this the path forward for companies like yours that have these revenue channel strategies?

Jeff Suiter: Absolutely, I'd say it's the only path forward. If you're looking at trying to make an investment with a higher ROI, understanding your consumers at that level, you have to be able to do what we're doing. The return that we're getting, because I said two, twice as much, up to five, whatever those are, for me to bring on another part- time person, a graphic person to fulfill all this unique creative, it's a no brainer.

Tim: Got it. The data is there. The revenue is there. The ROI is there. It's all measurable. It's numbers and figures. It's not like, " Oh, I didn't do so well, CEO. Sorry. We're not selling because our ad was bad." You take creative out of the mix. You're using real data, real measurables, real ROIs to actually say, " More of this leads to more of that."

Jeff Suiter: It's direct measurement of attribution to the consumer across any channel that we have. The nice thing is I'll close the loop. After they get, purchasing our product, they register. Guess what? I'll ask them a few more pieces crosstalk I get them back over. Then I'll know their purchase cycles.

Tim: That's how you're getting somebody every four years to maybe buy every three years because you're constantly talking to them. It makes so much sense. It's relationship management 101. It's having a direct relation with not only your customers, consumers that own competing products that might be sniffing around, you're converting them. Jeff, I'm going to throw this at you. COVID hit this year. 2020 has been a real kick in the pants, I think, for everybody across the board. However, I know you guys were able to pull off some really interesting things. Can you set up what happened when COVID hit in March- April of 2020? What was going on in your revenue channel landscape?

Jeff Suiter: Besides everybody freaking out for the moment because your business shut down, period. It didn't matter what state you were in and each state had its own little nuances in issues and controls they have to deal with, so we had to look at that very seriously, going, " How do we keep the revenue stream up?" We said, " Easy. Go start on a Cheetah Experience and RSVP people. That way we can take care and serve our dealers and serve our customers as well."

Tim: Let me get this straight, you set up an RSVP form in Cheetah Experiences of which you guys set up dozens of them for your key dealers and now because a particular dealer in any given state could only do a one- on- one appointment of which dealers didn't even know how to handle that, right? There used to just like, " Oh, the door is open. Come on in," so you were able to create an appointment form at scale for each dealer. Let people come through. Were you collecting other data in that RSVP rather than just like, " Hey, when do you want to come in and meet with the archery dealer?"

Jeff Suiter: Yeah, absolutely. There's things that we're doing not just on the consumer side relation, for the dealer side relation. We're even asking questions like, " What else do you need?" because we don't know how long this is going to happen. Then we were feeding the dealer or customers to purchase stuff that it wasn't even purchased from us as a manufacturer.

Tim: Your RSVP form was actually asking people like, " Do you need arrows? Do you need maintenance?" things that were going to be revenue generating for you, but you're collecting these leads, essentially and handing them to dealers saying, " Hey, Tom want to come and meet me on Tuesday at 8: 00 and he needs arrows too." How did you actually promote that and get people into the RSVP?

Jeff Suiter: Right back to the database. The whole time we looked at it and building up this data and making sure they're close to the consumer, it paid off in a major way.

Tim: Your competitors didn't know how to support their dealerships and revenue channels and their partners, you were able to go to the database and say, " Okay, hey," for example, Jimbo's Archery, in some area, you're able to say, " Hey, Jimbo's, we're going to create an RSVP form and we actually have 2,000-3, 000 people in a 50- mile radius of you in our database. We're going to send them an email, invite them to RSVP for a safe one- on- one appointment. By the way, he needs arrows and maintenance and this and that." That was-

Jeff Suiter: Exactly how it works.

Tim: How quickly did you turn that around to support your dealers?

Jeff Suiter: We had it up and running within three days.

Tim: Three days.

Jeff Suiter: Not just within three days we had it running, we had scheduled RSVPs within minutes of sending the email out.

Tim: God, and so you're doing this for dozens of dealers. All right. How does that help your dealer beyond you literally?

Jeff Suiter: To a lot of ways, one, he actually has money coming through his register now.

Tim: When he couldn't.

Jeff Suiter: He couldn't. In this industry, it's spiky for us. We have big peak sell seasons and we were just on the cusp of starting that season.

Tim: Spring hunting. People were getting out. Winter is over. They needed things for... All right.

Jeff Suiter: The dealer, we, literally, were trying to keep the dealer alive during that time. Actually, it turned into a great revenue stream for them.

Tim: Not only are you driving revenue at your dealers, they're making money on things that you don't make money. You're selling bows. I happen to know and I'll ask you this, I know you're converting competitors' customers into your own. That's got to feel good for a long- term value with your revenue partners because you can now say, " Hey, remember COVID hit, and all those manufacturers, sure, they had bows on the wall. We actually got you leads. We had a database with geo and psychographic information. We actually drove people into the store for you." How's that going to help you long term from your partnership strategy?

Jeff Suiter: It's all about relationships at that level. If you can make sure the dealers at the end of the day he needs to make money and that's his goal is to always make money, if we can help that and reel their competitors, at some level, they're going to be able to help to some degree.

Tim: In other ways.

Jeff Suiter: We just happen to have a few extra little-

Tim: You had some real horsepower and you're able to drive real revenue in a matter of days when everything was shut down. That's obviously going to come back and you're going to be able to leverage that later down the lane.

Jeff Suiter: Not just that, the fact that we were turning inventory during that time. It wasn't even the long- term effect. We've already seen the effect of it. We're turning inventory on a daily basis.

Tim: All right, so you're able to use your database, Cheetah Experiences is to activate. You got to give me some nuggets. What kind of revenue were you doing? What kind of lift did you see? Did you see market share increase? Give me something.

Jeff Suiter: Yeah, I can't give you actual numbers, but I'll give you some percentages.

Tim: All right, I'll take it.

Jeff Suiter: We have a unique thing of registration as well. I know what I'm selling in, so I've seen an increase in that, but for that time of the year, I've watched the registration and we were 20% and 30% over in registrations at the same time period during COVID.

Tim: You actually saw more product registration during a COVID area than traditionally.

Jeff Suiter: Absolutely.

Tim: Wow. All right, you don't have to give me revenue numbers because I know you're increasing revenue. What else did you see? There's got to be some other things in the data that we're interested.

Jeff Suiter: Well, that was a head scratcher for us. I was like, " How could that be so high?" I started diving into the data and looking at what the consumers told us. Here's the interesting part. I think part of the reason it was so high is we stole tremendous market share from our competitors. We had knowledge in what they have owned previously. It was a question that we've asked during it and it was from competitors' brands.

Tim: Literally the sales you were driving, you had a huge influx and you were stealing competitors' customers crosstalk.

Jeff Suiter: To get it, partially because they weren't communicating with their audience or they didn't give them the opportunity to get to a dealer and make that connection.

Tim: They don't have a data- driven strategy that it leads to better direct- to- consumer conversations and opportunities.

Jeff Suiter: I'll take it out of layer for you there.

Tim: Give it to me.

Jeff Suiter: Where we have in our other brands, where we do have eCommerce and we saw the interesting growth in that, we decided to go, "All right, why don't we play in that game as well?" We built custom landing pages, went back to the database, took and extracted the people, took advertisements, drove them back to our funnel landing page. With eCommerce, the sell was complete.

Tim: Wow. All right, well, there's a happy story out of COVID. There's not a lot of them, but you guys, obviously the database, the investment in that having the direct communication channel with your consumers is huge and then how funny, all of a sudden, you're leveraging and throwing the leads back to your sales people when I'm sure, as a marketer, you're probably getting beat up by the big ones going, " Hey, can you discount your product? COVID hit, right?" You're like, " No, we'll drive them to you. Don't worry."

Jeff Suiter: We actually gave them extra business on top of the products that we sell.

Tim: That's right. You're selling maintenance and arrows and accessories that you don't know, so the dealers must love it. All right. Look, another great COVID success story and a reason why you need this data. Well, we've spent some time here in the woods. I know you've got some work to do that's why we're here. I want to thank you, but Lastly, you guys are data driven, right? You're all about acquiring, you're about enriching your data, you're about personalization, but it's more than that, right? What's really in it for you guys and why do you adopt this data- driven strategy?

Jeff Suiter: That's a great question. The data is extremely valuable, but it means nothing If we don't know our customer. It's all about our customer for us. It is that personal relationship. It is the passion- driven sport that we're in. We have to know these guys. We have to know what they're about, how they tick, what makes them work. The data just complements the consumer experience for us and then it just makes a better experience for the manufacturer and for the consumer and for our customers as well.

Tim: There you go. Data centric can also be customer centric because really it's a value exchange. You're collecting data, but you're giving them real value, and really, you're using data for good, right?

Jeff Suiter: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tim: There are people out there that use data for bad and they just want to scale it and it's a numbers game to them, but for you guys, it's about matching the right products, the right offers the right experiences to the right people so that people feel good about your brand. Look, that's why you guys are one of the bests in the business. You're as close to the customers as you can get.

Jeff Suiter: We appreciate them as much as they appreciate us.

Tim: Great. Well, we appreciate you and I appreciate you inviting me into the Pacific Northwest here to talk about your success story. You've been a great client with us. Really appreciate all your knowledge and sharing it with everybody who's watching. Jeff, for one second. I lost Jeff. Jeff, we're good? I can hear you. I'm going to ask a question right off the top and then I'm going to try and bring you in, a little technical difficulty on my end. I closed the tab that I shouldn't have, but Jeff, let's get right into it. Can you explain exactly how you're using social media to collect this is zero- party data?

Jeff Suiter: Yeah, absolutely. Social media is a key piece to the puzzle for us for collecting this data. Here's what we do with it. We don't use the traditional method of just posting and hopefully people engage with our brands. We ended up using sweepstakes for it. We would post a sweepstakes. We can use our organic, reach your page. If we want to put a little paid dollars behind it, we can absolutely do that as well, but if we create something of value to the consumer and it's sweepstakes oriented, whether it's a prize or a giveaway, we would run that through our social channels. Now we're collecting a tremendous amount of data with these sweepstakes and these engagement pieces. The nice thing is you can turn on all of your digital influencers, your ambassadors that you're working for your brands and that gets turned into another stream of contact to people and we're collecting their information. That all goes in houses back to our website, houses information we can access directly from sweepstakes or at an event that we do in the social platforms. Here's the really cool piece about that too, Tim. We can measure attribution of our influencers. If we have three or four different really strong digital influencers out there or key ambassadors that really turn a lot of numbers for us, we'll know if they actually can activate an audience or not. We also can find these little people that are just starting to have a passion audience in there and they produce significant numbers as well. Social is a key mix for us across the board with sweepstakes and engagements for consumers.

Tim: Yeah, that that's a great strategy and I actually want to show, Matt, if you can take my screen, I have an example here, where you're using an event ambassador right now, Allie Butler, and she's not super hugely known, but she has 165, 000 followers on Instagram and she has a post here that she's actually promoting this giveaway, where she's giving away her bow, Bowtech giveaway, it has your name in it, but really, it's about Allie, but realistically here, let me go to the next screen where up, you're actually giving it away. Not only that, you can choose and depending on how you choose, you might get a different experience. If I am interested in winning a vertical bow from her, etcetera, I can go to this short experience survey where you're asking things like, " Hey, what's most important?" etcetera. I found this live example. I'm sorry to put you on the spot, but this is what you're talking about, right? Asking people questions-

Jeff Suiter: Oh, yeah, that is. Yeah, that is exactly what we're talking about. This one's a little unique in that Tim too because we're not pushing that out through our channels. I am truly measuring the effectiveness of that particular talent or influencer for us. We're always running these. We call them Always On. There's very seldom where we'll not have something in the background collecting data, whether it's direct from us, through our channels, our own channels or whether it's through our partnerships, whether that's an influencer, an ambassador or even a retailer partnership or other people of that nature as well or like- minded brands and things of that nature. We'll know how much data they bring into us and we'll also be able to measure them against everybody else too. It's a very useful tactic for us. We're still learning a lot and they're segmented out. Her individuals that come in, we're going to bucket them and she has a certain audience that's attracted to her and that's what we're going to look at and understand the psychological pieces of that audience and then we'll cater custom content back to them through our nurture streams.

Tim: It's great. We had another really interesting question here that I think needs to be addressed because I hear it all the time. " How frequently are you emailing or messaging customers to get those types of open, click and engagement rates?"

Jeff Suiter: We changed the philosophy on that for us and it worked. We had some partner help through this as well with some Audience Sherpa to help us navigate through this thing, but in general, we learned a few really good things. The newsletter cast and blast mentality, we don't do it anymore. I know that's commonplace for a lot of companies, large and small. I still receive them from some pretty large brands. They work if they're in the seasonal mentality or a product launch or something along those lines, but you really need to get your core messaging that's corporatewide, it's not segmented out. We only send that maybe three, four times a year when we tap the entire database of our users and actually send an outbound communication. We look at this as a segmented opportunity to speak with people, not at them about what they want to know, so we will hyper- personalize our communications that is always on daily, have something going out on a daily basis. When we do that, our open rates skyrocket. We've seen it up to 50% on open rates, the type of personalized, the right content, the right promotion to the right person and speaking with him instead of at them. It's an always- on email thing inaudible brands that we're operating under, but the cast and blast mentality newsletter, that's far and few between these days. We're only doing that for major launches or feature announcements of products.

Tim: That makes total sense and we saw in the video, you actually using personalization, some examples there of how you're saying, " Hey, Tim," and by the way, I brought my bow. If you didn't notice I brought my bow today, but if you want a smooth draw or a fast bow or a good looking bow, whatever you care about, you're personalizing. Instead of cast and blast, to use your words, you're hyper- segmenting when needed. There's another question, Cheetah Experiences, I know it well, you know it well, the people watching though aren't really familiar with the interface. It's easy. You guys have hundreds of experiences built and you have a very small marketing team, I won't get too deep into that, but how much do you rely on out- of- house resources to help you create and distribute these experiences that collect the data?

Jeff Suiter: That's a good question. The out- of- house resources, really I'm only dependent on out- of- house for just distribution side. What I mean by that is if we end up doing any type of paid advertising where I built in the sweepstakes or these events into a paid offering, whether it's a display advertising or something of that nature where I have traffic, that's the only dependency I have on any outside. The nice thing with Cheetah Digital, it's basically templatized and you can scale it extremely easy. I'm not extremely technical in that side, I have a team that really helps with this, but I can go in inside of a Cheetah Experience and I can duplicate a very successful campaign, change the things around and it's up and running in matter of hours. Our dependency on any outside agencies or any outside board, especially in the data acquisition side is not really, quite honestly, we don't do anything outside of Cheetah Experience. We don't need to. We really rely on them to build out some really cool sweepstakes and events that I can just duplicate. It simplifies inaudible really, once you get in there and you do it once or twice, it's simple.

Tim: It is pretty cool. It's like a web content management system where you put in your own themes, your fonts, your brand, look and feel all that and then templatized it. I agree with you and hopefully some other clients agree here. You just mentioned something about advertising, went out of house using resources. Frank was chatting along, asking a little bit about Facebook and this and that. I want it to be very clear for everyone watching. When you, your brand or any brand is collecting their own zero- party data, you are actually acquiring a one- to- one agreement contract, right? Your brand with Jane Doe, with John Doe, they are opting in through an explicit- declared opt in through sweepstakes, survey, etcetera through the experience. Now the brand owns that data. When the brand takes that data back to Facebook or Google or Amazon or any other DMP or other ad server like Kroger's doing amazing things with zero- party data, when you take it back there, you're not giving Facebook that data. They don't own that. Frankly, you're not telling Facebook or Amazon or Google, " This is Jane Doe. She has size nine shoes. She loves to run. She buys local," all you're doing is sending janedoe @ gmail. com some identifier to Facebook and saying, " Hey, Jane and all these other emails, run this ad. Skip in all these emails, run this other ad." Facebook isn't learning all your psychographic data that you've built up. They're just simply making a match to their users on behalf of the brand. Frank, I hope that answered your question. You're not giving any proprietary data that you've learned to your competitors through Facebook and Amazon. It's just matching.

Jeff Suiter: I would add to that a little bit. Sorry, I was going to add to that, Tim. Not only you're very safe and protected from that and that's a common practice now, when you're moving some of this information and providing Facebook that you're only giving them the access to go communicate to them. You're not giving him any other insight to that, but it also helps tremendously as you're getting a return on your dollar when you're doing that. They're a gated community, right? They want to play in their little world. When you give very valuable information and go, " Hey, you don't have to sift through everything. We did it for you. We have everything segmented out. We know what we want to say to these groups of people. We don't have to spend as much to get more people engaged with our brand from advertising through them as well. It's a cost savings on top of it.

Tim: It's absolutely cost saving. When a guy like Mark Pritchard at P&G said this almost two years ago now, he wants to collect zero- party data and contacts so that he can go get better, smarter targeting and retargeting. That's what we're talking about here. Good point there. I have one more question for you and this one is a fun one. What's the most effective or coolest experience you've created so far with the Cheetah Experiences data platform? Do you have a favorite?

Jeff Suiter: The coolest most effective... Well, we've done probably over 200 of these now, probably more than that.

Tim: You've just done over 300, almost 400.

Jeff Suiter: crosstalk. We've done quite a few of them. There's been a few that have been extremely successful. I think for me, because I have a different KPI that I would measure against in some instances, when we're launching products, for example, we're very seasonal. A lot of people are, whether it's a Christmas sales, whether it's their seasonality of their product for use in market, whether it's snow used or skis or whatever it could be, you could you can see why certain times of the year it'd be important to have your product focused on, we have the same concern to make sure that everybody gets to see our product the right time of the year. We do something I think is probably one of the coolest things called Watch and Win. The thing I like about the Watch and Win is basically allows us to put some type of content. We put a lot of money and time into making sure that we have our message drafted properly and it's ready to be disseminated to our consumers, but as we all know, we're fighting for space constantly. We're fighting different competitors. We're fighting for people's inboxes. We're fighting for Instagram feeds, those types of things. Watch and Win takes that out of the equation, especially if they have something of value. I usually give something inaudible combine it with the sweepstakes, " Watch this video for an opportunity to win this product," whatever the value you want to play. Some of ours happens to be in the$1, 000 mark. That is a pretty good value exchange to the consumer, but what it really does for me is I know that the core messaging pieces that we're trying to get out to our consumers was 100% watched. It's my KPI. Also it does this, right out of the gate, when I launch a product, I know I can get into the tens of thousands of views with customers that have leaned forward and showed intent for our product already. Here's the cool part about it, Tim. This is why I like it so much. Not only is the Watch and Win getting my information out there in the way that I want it to be perceived that the audience, so they're digesting that in the manner that we hope they would, I'm learning from them. Part of the sweepstakes engagement is they're going to be provide me information about them. It's personalized information. That happens to be that I'm going to segment that personalized information and nurture streams afterwards. Whether they buy or they don't buy immediately from that function aside from that open window of purchasing, I know that I can sit there and nurture stream them into sell at some point in time and I can see their engagement between my other opportunities and other sweepstakes are doing, and pretty soon, it's just a math problem. How many times do I have to hit them with the right content to get them into the right segment? Now I've got them and I've captured the sale.

Tim: That makes total sense. Look, video is ubiquitous today. Every brand, I don't care your industry, you're using video in some form and you're probably reporting upstairs by saying, " Oh, we got a million views," but really, when you dig in, you got a million three- second views, right?

Jeff Suiter: Three-second.

Tim: You spent all this money on content, you paid to get it out there and market, and all of a sudden, you no one watched it to the end. You're actually using Watch and Win, they have to watch to the end, then it flips, the technology flips to a survey or entry format. That's smart. I know you guys have actually... You guys are personalization experts. If somebody registers a particular product, you have sent them back an email that knows the type of product, I'll say, recreational over hunting or kid versus a pro level product and you'll send them a Watch and Win that's in line with what they need to know. The personalization runs deep with you guys. You guys are amazing. You're the poster child brand for zero- party data and how to do it. You've been a great client, man. I really appreciate you taking the time today. Do you have any closing thoughts for us?

Jeff Suiter: I think that the best thing for us was, once you get into it, it's very simple to operate and you can scale it. That's always been something we've looked at is, look, we pushed our resources to the limit. I run a lean team. We are very good at what we do. We try to trim any excess off, but Cheetah Experience allows me to do that and operate without fumbling. It's scalable. It allows me to go through any type of processes. If I'm trying to do any type of new event or sweepstakes or I'm getting all of my ambassadors on board, I can get things up and running in hours instead of weeks which is something that we need in today's environment. We need to be able to turn things quick. We need to be able to activate against things. We have a little help with some key partners outside that we do, Audience Sherpa being one of them, but with that support, man, we can get a lot of stuff done in a short window of time. It really makes a big difference in our business, especially when you're looking at eComm and a lot of things happening in today's world, especially in 2020, the ability to activate and scale is something that we have to have to stay on top.

Tim: For sure, 2020, man. Talk about digital transformation and accelerating your business in a digital capacity. You guys have done it. Well, Jeff again, I appreciate the time. Everybody watching, we have some more resources on our website cheetahdigital. com. Actually, we break down how to use influencer marketing to drive zero- party data. There's a zero- party data playbook that you can download for free. You'll see all kinds of examples from, I think, brands like Air New Zealand and a few others in there. Definitely poke around Jeff. Have a great season. I hope you're hunting safely and we'll talk to everybody later. Make sure you keep registering for all the great Signals events. We've got another few weeks, so get it on your calendar. Talk to you soon.

Jeff Suiter: Thank you.

DESCRIPTION

The Pure Archery Group adopted a zero-party data strategy as early as 2016. As a leader in the ZPD and personalization space, Jeff Suiter joins us to discuss why zero-party data is the rocket fuel for their marketing plans, how they collect and use it to personalize content and offers across channel as well as how thy 50%+ open rates on email and used Cheetah Experiences to help them achieve over 50% market share in key regions. This is a must-watch for anyone on a digital transformation journey or struggling with cookies, third-party data and privacy issues.