All right, very cool. Welcome, everybody. To our first edition of Stacking Growth Live in season three, Carl and I are super happy to have you all here. Very excited about this conversation.
Carl, how you doing? I'd be doing better if I could just get my mouse over to the unmute button a little bit faster. But I'm doing good. It's just creative.
I'm out of my depth here. So I'm excited to have Trianna here to actually provide some subject matter expertise and excited to hear what she has to say. And I love a good company teardown. You know, there's nothing like looking at somebody else's work and criticizing it.
And thankfully, Trianna had to, you know, made it back to the different sales content on the Refine Labs team. So maybe that's next week. Trianna, how are you? How are you doing?
I'm doing great. I'm excited to talk about this and show people how to elevate their be to be creative and creative in general. So this is exciting. Yeah, to Carl's point for all of you, like Carl and I do amateurs at this.
We do this all the time. Like a company will come inbound. And so the process that Trianna is going to go through today is a lot like what Carl and I do when we research a company, but we don't know what we're talking about. And so you do.
So this will be very beneficial for at least Carl and myself. Hopefully everybody else. So a few housekeeping things for all of you. Super informal.
We're going to go through some slides that Trianna put together really cover the teardown on this company called me curly and we'll get into who they are and what they do. If you have questions or comments, just feel free to throw them into the chat in Carl or I will feel those questions for Trianna the best we can if you want to come off mute and chat with us. You're welcome to do that as well. So looking forward to any and all engagement as we go through this.
The process will go through, as I said, we'll introduce this company will have to go through this and we're going to bring down a variety of different programs. We're going to look at their website. We're going to look at their email strategy. We're going to look at some ads and kind of just give the pros and cons things that we really like about it that we find that they're doing well and we're going to identify areas that we think they could improve.
And this isn't necessarily a, you know, we're while we're critiquing a company. This isn't about the companies about what we can learn as an organ as a group about what they're doing to apply to our own business. So we all kind of want to be selfish here and say, you know, what are the things that we can learn from this conversation that we can go back to our, our work and apply to make what we do as an organization better so that's really the objective here so keep that in mind as we go through this. All right, anything I forgot, Carl, anything you want to add?
You nailed a Cassidy per usual. I like that. I like that per usual. I appreciate that.
Triana, anything I missed? Nope, you covered it well. We're ready to jump right into it. All right, why don't I turn the floor over to you and you can lead us on the way.
Cool. All right. Well, everyone, again, my name is Triana. I'm the VP of creative at Refine Labs.
I've been in this industry for over a decade now, which is crazy to say. And I've touched all aspects of creative from designing the inside and outside of gems and airports to motion design and video editing. So I'm excited to talk about how we can elevate all of these things. And I'm fortunate enough to be able to tackle all these things as a creative.
So let's get into it. So the first thing that I want to go over is, recurately, what are they? What do they do? And basically, there are subscription billing management SaaS platform that works with thousands of brands.
Some of them are Sling TV, Asana, Barkbox, CineMark, Twitch, and they have about over $39 million in funding. They're in the financial services industry. They're about 13 years old. And then they have over 1.8 million visitors a monthly in their website.
And I want everyone to remember that when we start going through this creative, that's going to be important. And then lastly, as Cassidy said, we're going to go through their email designs, their web and their social. So we're going to start with the web first. So let's zoom out for a minute and actually go to their website and give me a second to enter full screen.
Yeah, well, you're pulling that up, Trian. I was just saying, you know, Carl, when we look at this, I would say it's a pretty impressive company given the fact that they've only raised $39 million around 13 years, have this type of traffic, these types of customers. So it's going to be interesting to be intriguing to go through this in terms of, I would say they've made a lot of progress. Well, it's not a lot of funding.
Yeah, especially compared to some of their competitors, which is the detail that I wanted to add. There are many. I mean, this is a very crowded and polluted space that they're in, which I think makes, you know, the topic at hand today, even more even more relevant like how do you stand out? It's bad enough.
Most most segments are super crowded anyways, but I mean, this one is subscription billing. I mean, there's hundreds, thousands of different companies that do this stuff. So, yeah. And so let's talk about the ways that they're standing out, right?
I think that they put a lot of effort into this website because they have so many visitors. And so one of the things that I really liked is their illustration style that you can see right here in the background. So this style is very unique. I haven't seen this a lot.
And so if I were to see this on, let's say, a paid ad or their email, I would naturally think, Oh, I think this is recurly because it's so unique. So they're doing a great job of standing out in that way. I also like their headline as soon as you get on the screen where it says, keep a good thing growing. And obviously they like it too because they trademarked it.
And we're going to see that a lot in their website. And then another thing that I absolutely love is that when they show their product, they're actually highlighting the value that it brings. So it's not just a screenshot of their platform and they're hoping that you can dig into it and see what part of this is going to bring me value. They actually pull that out with the churn rate highlight and the plan test highlight so you know exactly what is going to bring value to you.
I also really like the interactivity inside of this. So when you highlight book my demo or start now. It's moving and engaging with you. So all of these were really nice things.
Now, what are things that we don't like about this section. So what I didn't like is that this illustration style is so nice, but the way that it is created could have been done better. So if you look here, they have these three circles and usually when you're on a website, this is an indication that you can click on these and see other parts of the website, right. But you can't do anything here.
It's literally just a design element. So I love design elements that can also be utilized and bring more value right let's bring in design for a specific reason. And then the other thing that bothered me was the fact that they aren't really bringing in this personality all throughout their messaging across the entire website and we're going to start to see that more as we scroll down. So we are continuing to tell the story right we literally asked keep a good thing growing we were saying keep a good thing growing.
And as we go down, we're trying to answer that question we're saying what does it take to keep a good thing growing. But then I'm automatically thrown at steps. And so you'll see here 50 million subscribers 10 billion in payment volume 98% customer retention. And I don't really see how this is relating to this question that's being presented so it would have been nice to utilize this space to continue to promote this question that's being asked.
Now what I do like is that they are using video. So they took a one minute video and I'll play this and I think it's muted which is good. They took a one minute video and they're trying to answer this question and bring as much value to you in this video as possible which is really nice. And you can see that they really took a lot of time in this the production value is great and I always love when companies utilize this because it could be a lot to talk about at times and usually video form can make this content more easily digestible so did a great job there.
Now one of the things that I want to highlight in this messaging is grow faster smarter and stronger. We are going to see that a lot right we're going to see a lot of repetition, but I don't feel like recurring recurrly was using repetition in the correct way. So as soon as we get down here we see that they're saying growth faster growth smarter grow stronger again. And the nice thing is that they're giving me a little bit more context around this so that I can go and learn more.
But then when I scroll down again I'm saying the same thing grow retain and scale. It's the same thing just in a different way. So what is the issue with this? Well because this has been thrown at me so many times by the time I get here I may honestly just scroll past this because I may feel like oh I already read this I already know about this.
And this isn't great because this may be an actual very valuable part of the story that you're trying to tell. So when you're using repetition make sure that you're using it in the best way and not just to fill up space. And so we're going to scroll down they have more like blog content, key studies, and then when we get to the bottom we're seeing repetition again but this is where it's utilized well because we're pushing that core message we want to get across which is keep a good thing growing but for curly. Now the one thing that I don't like before we in the website part is why is this different at the beginning we had book my demo and start now.
But now we're saying book my demo and try it free. So as a customer if I were looking at this I would say, well, okay, well you wanted me to get to the bottom of the website just to know I can try it free. Like why isn't repetition used here why isn't that at the top and at the bottom, especially when it's going to take me to the same web page. So let's go back to our deck and let's go over the key pros and cons because we went through a lot.
So from a messaging standpoint I love that the language is simple and easy to understand. I like that it reinforces the customer's purchase will lead to positive outcomes that they're looking for. And that is that's clear and concise expectations before the purchase those are all great things we want those things. And now from a design perspective I love that it's engaging and it's simple and playful.
There's a good use of visual cues throughout it. And then I also like that the customer has easy access to the customer service. It automatically pops up and has a nice visual cue. And then lastly there's a great use of motion graphics for storytelling.
So those are the pros. Now what are the cons again? Well the messaging tends to be very repetitive but not in a good way. It starts to lack emotion and edge and we want that.
And then there's lots of emphasis on stats but not in a unique way that shows the value that it's bringing to the customers and we're going to talk about how you can use numbers and stats in a creative way towards the end of this. And then lastly for the design cons. I would have liked to see more activity interactivity as I mentioned before throughout the website and the design again naturally lends itself to that so I would have liked to see more of that. I'm going to stop there.
Carl and Cassidy would love to know what your first impressions were when you saw the website. Yeah I'll be quick. I mean Donna nailed it right in the chat. There's no real like why.
Why does this matter to me? It's a lot of recurring kind of just talking about themselves. We're the best. You need to do this.
You need recurring. We are this good. We won this award right. There's really no like the language that I might use if I was like their target ICP right in the pains that I'm having kind of articulate when I go to a home page one I want to like understand what you do very clearly and to I want to do you resonate with me.
What kind of language do you understand my world and home pages best place to show as a company that you empathize with your ICP etc. And I think we're currently you know Mrs. I mean I think it looks great and it looks nice obviously to that but yeah Andy said it right missing the customer as a hero. Recurally is clearly the hero on their own.
Yes there's confidence being confident being built it's a recurly confidence not the customer confidence. Yeah it's cool. Yeah I would add 1.8 million people come to this website a month I think so maybe what's been echoed here. Very important to be able to communicate clearly what you do and who you do it for.
I don't see a lot of who you do it for. I kind of got a guess is it for me is it for my developer, my product manager etc. That would be one. I like the consistency of the tagline to the pillar content the pillars are like the faster.
Smarter stronger my sense though is my bet is this pillars are not used anywhere else in the company. And so one of the things I try to stress quite a bit when you're building kind of these types of pillars is it needs to be actually authentic to the value of your product. And a good test for this is what your sales team say this on a call would your CEO say this in a meeting. My guess is it's not how they actually described their value when they're talking face to face with somebody.
In fact if you go read a lot of the reviews the one thing that popped out really easily like really quickly to be as easy views. First thing everybody said you love the product super easy to use super easy to get up and going etc etc and one could associate that the faster in their description but it's not obvious. And so you know the problem here is easy doesn't tie well into this unless maybe it's grow easily. But so I think there's kind of like a over the over marketed this I think on the copy and probably under marketed to a lot of the points here if like you still don't really understand kind of who's the floor and what the value is why they're unique versus the hundreds of other solutions in this space.
I do think it looks really nice. I mean it's a nice looking site they got things in the right spot these videos testimonials social proof, etc. So at first glance. Yeah it's really kind of designed well beautiful site.
Well you definitely get the nail on the head Cassidy with them not using those that terminology throughout and I wonder if you're going to feel the same way when you see the emails. I would add a couple other things just so you guys know this is maybe not isn't a creative angle but it's something that we all brought up. And that is the try for free start now. If you dig a little bit deeper what it looks like is they've gone in 2023 to a free motion and before they had a trial notion and they didn't really they haven't really iron this out in their CTA's or on the form.
As a marketer. It's important that we get that right and it's consistent because this is probably a big move for them to go from try the product for a limited amount of time before you buy it to I have a premium offer. And the way they've executed that is confusing if you try to follow the conversion path of those buttons through the form so another thing to kind of just keep in mind since we didn't bring it up and you know a million people come to the site or almost too many people. Yeah, I'm going to be confusing them.
One quick thing there to add to that Cassidy before we move on email is this is pet people mind I don't we don't have a study to show if this matters but it's just like a noise the hell out of me. And I see this a lot if you go to there if you go click like request a demo or get a demo or whatever the CTA's and then you go to the lander and the form at the top of the form is a schedule a demo and then the CTA says request a demo. Oh my god, it drives me nuts like which one is it am I going to schedule it am I going to request it and then wait for somebody to reach out to me and I do see that like constantly so anyways it's just that inconsistency. You know again 1.8 million people like you have like every little detail matters here especially when you have a million competitors and charge these websites looks almost identical to yours.
All this stuff matters. So, okay, anyways off my high horse. No those are good points Carly and it's their first impression right so like you said every little detail matters. So let's go into the email now now when we get to the email it seems like everyone just gave up at this point it is not the same experience as the website I mean when I first looked at this at first glance it feels like it was written by a totally different person it feels like it was designed by a totally totally different person and it feels like after I've made my purchase I'm no longer valued even just looking at this from a design perspective which doesn't feel great as a customer right.
And so I decided to choose a couple of different emails that you would get on your journey with for curly so starting with the welcome email then going into a holiday style email and then getting an email that talks about their product and hand enhancements or new UI features and then the one you see here all the way to the right hand side is the same email as the one directly next to it but I wanted to show how long this email is I mean I'm being thrown so much information and it's impossible to digest all of this at one time. So those were key things that I wanted to highlight and we're going to dig deeper into some of these emails to talk about them even more. But let's go over the key pros well there's there's not a lot at this point for the email but what I did notice is that they're trying to bring value to the customer with the messaging right like maybe it's a lot of messaging because they want to bring as much content and so much information and value to them as possible but they're just not doing it in the right way. And then what are some of the design pros well the color palette is consistent that's great right so we may know that this is recurly from that.
And then they are using iconography and photography to make the content digestible but again that's still not being used in the correct way because it still feels overwhelming. So what are the cons well the core story is being lost right as Cassie mentioned seeing grow faster stronger all of that terminology we're no longer seeing that anymore. And seeing the trademark headline that they seem to love so much the welcome email literally just says welcome right. And then it's lacking personality in the messaging as well like what happened to that we at least saw some of that in the website.
And then for the design cons well the email doesn't look cookies with a website and we want to make sure no matter what we're developing for whatever program. Everything should feel consistent you want the person to have that wow factor no matter where they are in their journey with you as a brand. So I want to vote information as I said before it looks overwhelming because of the poor layout structure. And then it lacks the fun and inviting feel that we experienced again when we first went on to the website.
I would have liked to see visual cues that show that the step of making this purchase was valued. So how can we do that? Well one for the welcome email in the headline we should again bring value we should bring confidence in the toned feel consistent. I want to be confident that the decision I just made to purchase this was the right decision and that can easily be put into this headline instead of just saying welcome.
If you read closer in here it says start managing your company subscription billing here are a few tips to help you get familiar with recurley's tools and find your way around the software. Well great that sounds amazing but however when I dig deeper I see that I'm not actually getting tips I'm just getting icons that tell me about the features that are actually inside of the platform. So what are some questions that recurley can be asking themselves right now. Well one they can ask themselves what an animated video tutorial have brought more value in this situation.
Are these really providing tips or are we just highlighting software features. And then the last you know that I really wanted to go over was the one that was highlighting the new experience you would get from a UI perspective in the product enhancements. Again, there was a reason that the elevated this UI element of their platform. It wasn't done at random.
There were complaints that they must have been getting there some data that they're referencing to know that there's certain things in here we need to update. I would have loved to see more of that in their headline as well to give me a cue that oh you heard me you heard my wants and you're doing something about it instead of enjoying your experience with our new UI. I have no idea if this is addressing any of the concerns that I've had as a user. So that's something that I really wanted to highlight here.
And again I feel like they dropped the ball with this experience that you're having in this email. Yeah, try on it feels like you go back one slide to the email you would have been so much more engaging if they said again it's like what curly is the hero and even in their copy like subconsciously right instead of enjoying your new experience with our new UI like look awesome we are. I could have said something like you asked we listened you know that's a little bit more engaging. Anyways that's a comment I have a question for you the way you're talking about design tree on it is like it's strategic right you're not just talking about like oh these are pretty colors like you should use kind of some of the same tonality or what you're talking about is a few levels deeper.
You're talking about design as a way to again not just colors and iconography and fonts etc but the design that elevates the experience that a person has with rain even how they consume information you're talking about hey should this be animated or a video versus you know static copy etc. I feel like I want to speak out of turn here but I don't know that a lot of this maybe I'm wrong and correct me if I'm wrong but how does it find the designer and I've got these ideas but my company kind of like deprioritizes design or maybe commoditizes it right you're just like you're just kind of a producer of you know creative as opposed to like a strategic leader and thinker. How do you encourage a designer design team to you know kind of elevate their voice and have more of a strategic see at the table because everything that you're saying is amazing and a lot of it really is again it's strategic. Well thank you Carl.
Well, one of the things that I always say to our creative team is you have to learn how to speak everyone's language right like you may just want to talk about colors you may just want to talk about the messaging tone right but that may not resonate with everyone everyone has a different objective in the room. So you have to learn how to bring up things in a way where the creative decisions that you want to make feel like they're valuable right and not just being done to be done. So for example, we use data right so if we are making peace social ads and we've seen that using the color red overall is having a negative impact on the customers right we can pull the data and say hey CEO I know that you love using red on all of these different ads, but look at the negative effect is having through the data and that may be the thing that pushes them on the edge so use different tools to in your conversations and not just the language that you know which may be the design language. Yeah, there's a few things I would take away from this one is to be a little bit empathetic we've all done this as marketers like we've all I mean I did this just hits me in the face of like the bad emails I've said or my team is sent and not really thinking through the kind of brand and the messaging from your website throughout so I had the same reaction is both John and Carl but I'm also like man feel like I made this mistake a lot but anyway I digress.
I think the thing that this is lacking is like when I'm on the website I feel a certain way about the brand in terms of like it's simple, you know we know easy is a key piece of their story line even though they say fast they have these pillars. And then I come to the email and it's like the opposite of that it's complex. It doesn't feel smart in terms of what you mentioned is not kind of data forward. Like strong is this pillar I don't really get the sense here so it feels like kind of the brand kind of images are going for the tone of voice are going for the way they kind of trying to convey who they are and kind of the value they bring like that.
Like got lost in this in this channel or this as medium or program. And I think that's something that they obviously would want to go back and reassess and this bit of time and effort into that be thinking like brands brands the culmination of every single touchpoint. And that includes email and I think it's just not losing sight of that. Obviously they put a lot of effort money to the website and looks like they put less thought and effort into the email strategy.
Completely agree and I've learned that usually when you get to the email that's when everyone's the most frustrated trying to get as much content in their responsible. So it wasn't that surprising but again I would have liked to see them elevate this more after looking at their website. Yeah and I think it's like who's it for who's a reader how many emails are you sending like we've all made you know blast customers and our database with random emails and so it's probably a level just reassessing email strategy overall as well here. I think it's just like it's designing an experience right it's it's again beyond design of colors etc it's like to what to your point Cassie like why are we sending this email like who asked for like a product enhancements email and I think it's like going back to the basics of now.
Is this the best way to communicate this or we just going to the motions right that somebody just say like hey we have product updates like we should just I don't know put in an email blast right and so I think my takeaway here is. Every thing matters every bit of customer communication should always be assessed right why are we sending this does anybody care does anybody even open this email because maybe like nobody really maybe the customers are actually giving a 3% open rate on this email right so you should stop doing it right like save those resources and do something else how to spot does a great job with their product updates right it's in platform they do all the product updates like on their own. LinkedIn Hubspot tips and tricks like LinkedIn page and they distribute the product updates totally differently right maybe that's an option so it's like you did a think a little bit bigger like hey why are we doing this is it necessary does anybody actually want it maybe we should stop doing it. I think that's a very powerful question it can ask yourself as a company in every every single touch point right why we do that.
Yeah and Carl we actually talked about this a couple of days ago and what I call is customer chemistry design what is the design that you're creating between your brand and your customer like are you creating trust are you creating confidence and I feel like a lot of people may think that that's not something that's designed and happens at random but it's not that's where that strategic creative input comes in so you're calling out a lot of great things Carl. I just want to add one more thing and that is I wasn't sure how Carl was going to bring up Hubspot in this session but he did he managed to slide in Hubspot. We're going to hear about you'll hear about Hubspot on every time Carl talks. You can actually tell them for them.
I'm a fanboy I'm still in sales for them you know they're fired. Back to business sorry to go over to you. Okay so we're at our last section for programs which is paid social and I felt like when we got here they started to care again and you started to see hints of what they were doing. On the website they're introducing that illustration style again in a fun way they're using the bright colors to stop you however again it's like Carl has been saying this whole time it's all about me me me me me so like let's look at the first at here it says $1 billion in recovered subscription revenue in 2022.
Okay great that but that doesn't speak to me in any way it would have been nice to see how this unique stat has specifically helped their customer again in a unique way. Another thing that was really weird was how they're using testimonials which is absolutely amazing to use because it's your time to be the most authentic as a brand and genuine and they brought up a pain point by saying build your own subscription billing solution is a difficult nut to crack it can play havoc with your sleep patterns. So in this moment I feel like well thanks for reaffirming reaffirming something that I've already been thinking about but you're not telling me how you solve for this. So again I feel like they dropped the ball there.
And then for the last one where it says one four times revenue growth I love that they're presenting this as a question and the tone of the messaging is more conversational to get the viewer engaging but when you go to the post text they're not using this as an opportunity to effectively answer this question. Again it's all about me me me me by saying there's no alternative for curly the best all in one subscription billing platform for growth scale and category defining success. So I feel like a lot of love it feels like a lot of buzzwords and we're losing one of the things that is our philosophy is that is keeping your core story top of mind. So those are some of the things that really bothered me about these paid social ads.
So let's go into the real quick and I call out some just like grinds my gears go backwards one slide. Oh my god the copy on the on the far right one. There is no alternative I mean young give me a break or 10,000 alternatives and every single alternative says that they're the best only one subscription billing platform looking at charge these websites right now I mean this is a copy to paste it almost from their website. And so I just like how do you move like why the designers on this team are brilliant tree on it I have to believe that they're good like highly paid folks.
Why would they do this you have any insights for me. I mean it could be a lot of things that could have been that they've just been beaten down and maybe they did want to say more and they just didn't have the opportunity to do that because whomever feels like this is a better way to say this or these are the things that we need to talk about. Or maybe it's just that they feel like hey this isn't something we really focus on a lot our website is so I don't know let's just throw some text in there right. And that's not the right way to look at this you again need to be making sure that at every touch point you are bringing the most value to your customer especially in the feed right we talk about that all the time.
Like this is your ability to bring the most value in a place where people are consistently taking in content so for them to drop the ball in this specific platform was just like why why are we doing this. Yeah we know how this happens I mean it's a it's like copy by committee. By how many people marketing and sales leader chimed in and said something about like we need to tell everybody we're the best yes the CEO says something about you know give a stat like for x revenue growth I mean. I'm sure you know if you give it if you give this to like one or two people to figure out this would be a lot better and then like 10 more people get involved in this one down.
Exactly and I think that's one of the things that I love here that we do it's when we start a project we have the perspective from the creative team and we have the perspective from the demand team because we know each are equally important. And when you don't do that you end up with something like this so if there's any takeaway we should take from this is that both viewpoints are very important they're equally important. So try on again to support any of designers design teams on the call or people that are going to listen to this afterwards when it's published the podcast like too many cooks in the kitchen. Yes people that don't know what they're talking about like people like me and Cassidy.
Like what do you do in that situation. What do you. You have to you might get uncomfortable but you have to say like hey this is the story that we're trying to tell and we're losing that because there's so many people in the room like who do we really need here to make this the best thing possible. And again that may be an uncomfortable situation but sometimes it's a conversation that you need to have.
Love it. That's great answer. Let's just drop in some fire in the comments to all this good stuff. Again I got one rule of thumb.
That's my opinion only number get up and that is especially in a market like this. And so the marketiveness should be like inversely proportional to the size of company and so like here they're in a very competitive market we look to the funding. They're obviously an upstart to trying to disrupt. I mean when I think about pay the space I think it's or a way back in when they created that the space.
And so when I hear it when I see here is what we're saying this is the same thing that the leaders are probably saying or that's been said for a long time. Yes the team this team needs to figure out how to say something different and I would say it should make people uncomfortable, especially in the ad space and I think we'll get into that. And then the other thing I noticed like looking through some of their other ads on LinkedIn I this kind of whatever you call the copy at the top not on the ad. This is not very good here but in some other places they're actually using data and like the ad like the copy on top of the ads actually better than the copy in the ad and I think that's something you're going to hit on but.
Yes. Something to look at if you're saying something that's more provocative or more insightful outside the ad maybe put it in the ad. Yeah. Exactly.
It's very weird that they're doing that. And so I think it's a good example of how they have the tools right and we see them using them but they're just not using them correctly. So we just need them to start using their tools that they have correctly and this happens with a lot of companies but we're going to we're going to go over how to do that. Okay, so we talked about a lot let's go through the pros and cons again.
So the pros I would say is that the headline is written in the form of a question we saw which is conversational and brings more engagement so I love that and it highlights pain point so they do understand that highlighting a pain point is important, but they're just not highlighting the solution, which we don't like. And then for the design pros we know that the color palette and illustration stylist consistent which is good. They're using bright colors which are engaging I love that there's a good use of hierarchy so you see that they have that one billion which was really big and then the other headline that they had about four times revenue was really big so they're using higher archy really well. And then the imagery is aligning with the headline but they could have put more effort into the imagery in my opinion.
And then what are the cons so the con is we're using data but we're not combining it with creativity just because you're presenting data doesn't mean you have to lose the creative aspect of it. And I'm excited to show examples of how you can use both but just want everyone to remember that. And then it doesn't include how recurly solves for the pain points as I mentioned before so they should be asking themselves now that the problem has been addressed what value does recurly bring in the situation. And then for the design cons the illustration imagery as I mentioned before could be used to tell a better story it feels very safe which makes it feel bland and I feel like they could have put more effort into that because we saw that they go all out with design in their illustrations.
So I know it's in them to do that. So I'll stop there before we go into how to elevate any questions in the chat that have popped up that we can answer before we go in Cassidy or Carl. No, I think we're addressing them in line and a lot of great comments. So yeah nothing that I see here if anyone has questions please drop them and we'll address them so keep going tree on you're killing it.
Perfect. Alright so let's get into how to elevate now that we've seen talks about all the cons. So I pulled a couple of ads that are amazing creative team has done that focuses on revenue. And so the one that I probably love the most in this one is the one that says drip drip drip that's revenue leaking from your business like this is a perfect example of like being engaging being provocative like Cassidy said, and still honing in on driving emotion right so the emotion here is kind of like, man, I'm really thinking about this in the back of my mind what is this product because this isn't something that I want to continue to happen or happen.
And then the last one that I'll call out is it's your revenue on it. I like this because this is an example of them building confidence in the actual customer and not just building up their egos as we've seen it so many times throughout this creative that we've looked at for a curly. So these are all great examples of how you can continue to elevate creative both in a messaging standpoint and a design standpoint. And then lastly we're going to get into the numbers as well.
As I was talking about before. So in these examples that our team created to we're actually using stats right but we're using them in an effective way. So the first one that I'll call out is six lines of code 30% increase in revenue. This is quick to the point but it says so much in it at the same time.
If we've all seen code before and we know that it usually takes more than six lines. So that instantly would stop me to know that oh six lines of code increases my revenue by the way. Let me learn more about this. I also like the one that says we cleared 75% of drivers from BS claims again driving emotion resonating with the customer adding value at the same time.
And then the last one I'll highlight is the one that has two hundred five billion since this is something that we're currently off also used. And it says here shoppers spent two hundred five billion last black Friday. Now in the case of recurley I feel like they would have just stopped right there. That would have been the end of their headline.
But we took it a step further and said ready to clean your cut again we're building that confidence and saying to them we can bring you value. Want to learn more about that. So I think these are great examples of how you can use the numbers again, but also still be creative with this data. And I'll stop there.
That was the end of our slide and I'll stop sharing for a moment. And again I hope that the takeaway here is that you can drive emotion you can build confidence and you can build confidence and you can build confidence and you can build confidence and you can build confidence. And I hope that the takeaway here is that you can drive emotion you can build confidence and you can sell value. You don't have to choose one over the other.
There's one thing that was going through my mind and we'll get to all that Carl handled the question. And that is, and this is actually something Carl says quite a bit. So I'm going to give him some credit which I usually don't give him a lot of credit. What we all want from people and brands that we engage with is to learn something so something that's not obvious.
And I think what some of the examples you gave to be on and hit on versus maybe what we didn't see from recurley is to get me to stop and think I need to see something and read something that I. That either touches my attention because I didn't know it. Or I don't believe it. Or I want to learn more about it.
So it needs to be a hook that's like non obvious to get me to pay attention. I think what we saw an example of when we see a lot of examples of it's just obvious copy that anybody has say that we just kind of flips through in the at least in the at space. Yeah. So I appreciate those examples.
Carl, what you handle any of the Q&A from the chat. Yeah, again, to double down on your point Cassidy. I do say awesome stuff pretty often. You just don't listen that well.
I think when I am talking. But some of those ads were awesome and I don't know what the plan is after this if we're going to share out this deck or whatever but there's just some amazing examples in there of like showing the value prop not saying we do this but showing it right there was that one at copy that was like stop letting typos like cost you money and with like miss all the words and stuff. It's like that's very difficult to do. First of all, but it's it stops me.
It's I don't have a choice but to stop in the feed which is like what we're trying to create right like we're going to force somebody to stop and look at our ad in the feed. And we just you just missed that a lot of B to be advertising. One other thing that I really liked was like that one ad that said on like stop getting like BS claims. I love that it's very edgy and like I feel like a lot of times in B to B we like want to stay away from stuff that maybe deemed as like not safe for work or like not professional etc.
But the reality is that we're people and that's how we talk. That's our customer. I'm sick of you know getting all of these like bullshit claims called on like that's how we talk and that's so cool that we're allowed to create kind of an edgy ad that talks like our customer because again we're humans right. So a lot of super super awesome.
So I love those ads and obviously it's cool that you know that we created them right. So anyways I'm done. So I'm not so hit. I'm not so close to home that ad car.
I'm so you're primarily slacking. Kriana like who is that company I need to reach out to them. Yes. I do need to reach out to them.
Okay. So we got a question here. Chris off. I hope I said your name correctly.
I apologize if I didn't. But his question was how does refined lives express to its clients that cohesive design systems and creative voice matter from web to email to social or even he had sales team assets. Sometimes I found out my sales team made their own presentation and wrote some feature driven copy themselves definitely guilty of that. Personally.
But the question there. Triana like how do we align everyone and make sure that everyone understands the value of copy creative decisions that we make and you know avoid or prevent folks like me or Cassidy from going rogue. Yeah, that's a great question Kristoff. So one of the things that I love about our process is that we started off by trying to build a strong foundation through a creative analysis.
So what we do in that creative analysis is we break down what the customer is doing well before working with us. And then what are some things that they can elevate. And then we also break down what their competitors are doing and what they're doing well and not what they're not doing well. And by doing this, it gives the customer a different outlook on creative and it also gives us the opportunity to tell them upfront before we start executing anything.
Hey, this is where some improvement needs to happen. And they really appreciate that. And I feel like that's been the best thing that we've added to our process. I'll add one thing from a sales person perspective because again I'm guilty of like taking materials from marketing and being like this sucks I'm going to just build my own deck right.
I think it's a hub spot and hub spot. I mean like world class. And I think one of the things that might help marketing or creative teams that are on the call or listening to this is like in like sales wants to help. I don't want to pass it.
You know I don't want to create my own decks. I hate it. I hate creating slides. It's like I've abandoned my existence.
But I feel like I have to because sometimes the conversations that I'm having like I don't. It doesn't feel like marketing didn't talk to me about what I needed right I wasn't really included this deck or I'm just using deck as an example right. It was kind of like pushed onto me was forced onto me. And while it looks really nice and there's a couple relevant slides it's not exactly like what I need in the context of this conversation.
This you could also say the same with like customer stories I've had in the past customer story template pushed on me. And like this isn't exactly what the customer that I'm talking to like cares about right the points that we brought up etc. And so I think my answer is just like include us. We don't want to create slides.
Like I hate it. I'm lazy. I don't want to do it. I feel like I have to because the assets that are pushed onto me.
And that's how I feel emotionally angry about it. Don't feel like they were built for me. Right. It feels like it was built for someone else and I have to force to use it.
So I don't know what you do about that. But that's just like a salesperson's perspective. So yes, we do mean well. I love that you're transparent about that though with the creative team.
So we're able to help you in those situations because you come to us and tell us and I feel like a lot of times that step is skipped. And usually the person will just go straight to I'll just redo this. So I think that's the takeaway we can look at here is just sit down and have a conversation. Yeah, just open up those communication channels right like say hey, there's a slack channel for sales to like ask for stuff or give feedback and at least that's like okay they're listening to me instead of me, you know, being angry and just going rogue into Canva and inventing my own stuff right.
I don't want to do that at the end of the day, you know, I don't want that. I was just like that one parting shot on the design system and one of the things that's been beneficial for myself in the past is when we think about competitive analysis or intelligence, we tend to always do this from a product perspective, which is valuable. But I would advise marketing teams to do it from a creative and positioning perspective as well. So if you take recurally and the market they're in like, you know who became who came before you what is a landscape and how do you stand out from a kind of emotional feel on a brand feel as much as a product feel.
And how do you then align those two things that have kind of a unique perspective in the market from top to bottom. And I think that's just something companies don't do enough of they kind of come up with their brand system and isolation of their product capabilities and their competitive dynamics. And the last thing I'd say on that is for a company that's spending that hasn't raised that much money in a really competitive market being tight on your brand systems imperative, because it just you create a way more leverage for the money you're spending. And that might be another way to get this across to CEOs and CFOs and so forth and so on is every time we deviate from the brand system, it costs us money because we're not getting the leverage that we need to be getting out of the investment out of creative director work for me would say brands die by the death of 1000 cuts.
And that's what happens. So the tighter you are the higher return on investment give that one a shot with your CEO and CFO. Love back Cassidy. Alright everybody, thank you for joining hope you found this valuable if if you did let try on a car myself no offline and we'll continue doing this this will be available in the second group podcast next week and.
Maybe we'll try to get Stephanie to make this a video or something we can post somewhere because I've had some requests for the visual asset of this episode as well. Thanks everybody and have a good day. Thanks everyone. Bye.