Career Insights from Ashley Coates: From Ad Agencies to Loyalti

Lisa: And we're joined today with Ashley Coates, marketing director for Loyalti. Hi, Ashley.

Ashley: Hi, Lisa and Laura. Thanks for having me.

Lisa: We do usually have meetings about strategy fairly regularly, but it's a little different different purpose here today. So would you start by telling our listeners just a little bit of an overview of your career?

marketing and communications [: 00:01:00

So I've done I mean, gosh, I've even done sales for a publication. I've done, some fundraising but primarily I've done marketing and communications strategy and execution. And I, I started off working at an advertising agency. So I was an account executive working with clients. And then I moved over to the client side, I guess.

there. So it's, it's been a [: 00:02:00

I can't believe it's been 18 years.

Lisa: What was that experience like going from agency to client side?

Ashley: I'm so grateful that I have both experiences. I think it helps me on both sides because when I work with agencies, like working with Double Z, I have an understanding for what you need from me and what's helpful for you to get your job done. And I have the language which is very helpful and have a little bit of An understanding of what happens on the back end.

And then when I'm working on, on the agency side, Oh gosh, I just, it helps me take care of my clients really well, cause I know what I appreciate when I work with agencies and vendors. So it's been very beneficial for me to have both experiences and I would highly recommend it to anyone who's thinking about trying out the other side.

You can always switch back. I've done it. Four times. But so yeah, it's, it's been a great experience. Do it, doing both.

Lisa: [: 00:03:00

Ashley: Yes.

Lisa: Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Ashley: Yes. So I've been at loyalty for, I think almost four years. I started off as a contractor. They're just doing copywriting and eventually it became a full time marketing position. So loyalty is a small independent software company. We're based in the U S. Which kind of sets us apart from a lot of software companies.

ny started in, I think it was: 2010

Disney accelerator program. So a lot of people were very excited about this. And so they turned it into a company and, tried their software out in many different the many different use cases, I should say. They were finding the best [00:04:00] fit for the technology, and I think around 2016, 2017, around there, ended up applying their technology to the customer loyalty space for retailers, specifically brick and mortar retailers. So that's where the company's been ever since. Yeah, 2016, 2017 is really in the retail space and developing a real expertise around customer loyalty and retention and understanding really well what retailers need and what merchants need from a marketing tool.

So we've just been developing our expertise ever since then. And now what's really exciting is we're developing our first e commerce tool. So we've always been in brick and mortar retailers up until now, but just February of this year, we started developing an e commerce tool specifically for Shopify merchants.

t's like a marketing hub for [: 00:05:00

Great.

Laura: That's cool.

Lisa: that sounds really robust. Like, I can't imagine trying to manage all of those things individually without something to help.

Ashley: Right. And we haven't found another tool that brings all three of those things together. You know, as a communications person, I'm hesitant to say we're the only one until I have, you know, someone illegal going. Yes, you can say this but we haven't found any other platforms that do all of those things together.

So it's pretty slick. And, I mean, we're just working on version 1 right now. And the, the roadmap ahead is very exciting in terms of all the new features that will be added in the coming months. So I think it will be a pretty robust tool.

ad a couple of conversations [: 00:06:00

Ashley: It's the first time I've really done this. So we started developing this new tool in February and we knew that we didn't want to put a ton of money behind paid media until we actually had something to sell and it was going to be several months out that said, you know, the, the sales lead time. Can be a long and we just, we didn't know exactly how long it would be because this was a brand new audience and a brand new tool.

. You know, there were many. [: 00:07:00

We didn't know exactly which features were going to be built in. So figuring out how to communicate in a way that's as clear as possible and as specific as possible, but not over promising something that may not be there, that was challenging.

Laura: Did you have to do like trials and that sort of thing to get people to just start

Ashley: Well, we are going to offer trials but the thing is, we don't have anything for them to use yet. It's been really interesting trying to figure out content to put out there the past several months, because up until maybe a month or 2 ago, we didn't even have UX UI designs of what the dashboard would look like.

ng about the, the challenges [: 00:08:00

And then as we've gotten closer to our release date, we've been able to talk more specifically about the platform and the features, including showing some of the dashboard. So even though people can't play around in it yet, we put, we've cut a couple of videos that kind of walk you through the dashboard.

And they're actually all screenshots, but we tried to make it look like someone was actually clicking to make it look functional. But we do plan to offer free trials once we're live, which should be in the next few weeks. We're getting very close.

Lisa: That's exciting.

Ashley: Yeah. It's very close. One thing we did do though, which was very helpful is we had never done a big audience research project before, and that's how we kick things off, which I really pushed for.

And I'm so glad we did that.

Laura: Yeah,

esearch. You can't just keep [: 00:09:00

Ashley: exactly. It really helps you make better use of your marketing dollars when you know that this is based on the actual words and thoughts and feelings of your audience. So, yeah, we. We did a big audience research project where we started off just trying to get as many people as we could organically reaching out to our networks and our current customer base and having interviews and we started with all open ended questions so that we could get their words, their language.

And from there, , I was able to put together some closed ended questions that we could put out there in surveys and get larger quantities of, you know, answers. Of respondents and we ended up doing research with more than 450 customers within the first couple of months.

e data that we got from that [: 00:10:00

So we developed our creative, you know, one execution for each of those messages. And then we ran that creative and tested which one is performing the best so that we can know what to kind of double down on. But I think what was kind of interesting is we, we didn't really find a lot of patterns

Lisa: Yeah.

Ashley: in terms of the performance.

Laura: Like there wasn't a lot of insights or,

Everything was like kind of across the board

similar.

Ashley: what we found. And I know that your team dissected it in a few different ways. And we just couldn't find because we were looking at cross sections of industry. So fashion and beauty and gosh, I can't even remember some of them right now, even pets, I think and then we looked at how each of those industries responded to each of the different creative executions.

rn. Not a strong one anyway, [: 00:11:00

Lisa: And you are wearing a lot of hats over there at Loyalty.

Ashley: Yes.

Lisa: , how did you decide that it was time to bring paid media into your overall marketing strategy?

Ashley: Yes. That's a really good question because we had done paid media in the past and it didn't really pay off for us. And, you know, paid media, it's, it's, you have to choose to make that investment because it can be a big portion of your budget and You have to understand why you're spending money, where you are, and how it connects eventually to the bottom line.

tanding of our customer base.[: 00:12:00

Lisa: Yeah,

Ashley: And then we started off with a smaller budget than we have in the past.

And I think that was the right move. Especially for testing and you can always increase your, your budget from there. I'm trying to think if there were any other factors. I think also once we had a clear call to action you know, last, well, about a year ago when we were still doing our brick and mortar product, we did have a call to action.

It was purchase our product, but we were still, It wasn't quite performing the way we needed it to. So then once we pivoted to developing this new e commerce platform, and once we knew what we could ask of people and what we wanted to tell them, you know, I think having a clear call to action made it possible to actually go out there with a message and put money behind it.

Lisa: absolutely.

Laura: Yeah, that's basically it. As if something you can measure there too,

e going to measure this, the [: 00:13:00

Lisa: How do you? keep from being overwhelmed with all of these different marketing branches that you have to manage and really run yourself.

Ashley: Yeah. Yeah. Like PR and, , creative and, you know, any existing customers dealing with almost like your customer retention , and, , just navigating all

Laura: of that. How, how does that work? Cause I'm sure that's why you hired us is because it's like too much to do it all.

Ashley: And so, a few things. And one is, I work with a lot of really great vendors. So I am at the Yes, I am a marketing department of one. So I'm only internal person who does our marketing and communications, but I work with really awesome vendors and we, we searched for our paid digital media partner and I got recommendations from a few people and I spoke with a few different agencies and we really enjoyed chatting with double Z and I'm so glad that we, we went with you.

It's just [: 00:14:00

So it's, it's

that,

Laura: Yeah. Oh, perfect. , there's not just all this charisma and let's go and wow. There's that. But then there's also, but we got to, , pragmatic and this is what's really possible right now.

Ashley: Absolutely. Absolutely. So yeah, working with good people who who you, you know, you have to be able to trust them and say, Hey, I can't get all this done right now. What should I prioritize? And that's actually what I was gonna say is number three, prioritize, keep reprioritizing. I mean, I feel like I priorit reprioritize several times a day because you can't get everything done.

So. [: 00:15:00

Along with trying to sell a new product, it's it has been a little back and forth of where do I put my focus right now, because both are important. So you may just have to prioritize one, one day your priority that the

next.

Laura: Yeah, , it's all communications, really. It's like

you're doing basically communications and marketing or sales and marketing, you know, you're kind of doing it all. I mean, you're not going out there individually and

with a sales representative [: 00:16:00

So on that front, marketing communications really is responsible for.

than we have been in the past, because we're not just trying to drive them to book a demo. We're actually trying to drive them to make a purchase.

Lisa: Well, that's a lot.

Laura: Yeah. No, no, it is. I wasn't Yeah, that's incredible.

Lisa: Well, Ashley, thank you so much for joining us. It was really exciting to hear more about Loyalty, and I can't wait for the launch here coming up soon.

Ashley: excited about it. I've been able to play a little bit in our QA, environment and yeah, it just, it's looking really great. It's functioning really well. I did want to say if any of your listeners have a Shopify store, we would be so glad to have them come on in, test it out, get free access, give us their feedback.

t marketing at loyalty l O Y [: 00:17:00

Lisa: Absolutely, and we'll put that in the show notes as well

Ashley: Oh, thank you. Thank you.

Lisa: Before we let you go, we do have one final question. If you could go back in time and give yourself, at the beginning of your career, one piece of advice, what would it be? Yeah.

Ashley: such a good question. For me, it comes back to what I learned in school about what advertising is, and I graduated with an advertising degree, so this is very specifically advertising, but paid advertising, and remembering what it is and what its purpose is, which is to persuade, or just get somebody thinking about, using your product or service.

is doing. It has to work in [: 00:18:00

You have to be strategic, you have to be data driven, and it has to be an integrated. Strategy in order to be effective, and then you have to give it time to work and optimize along the way. So that was, that was probably many things, but I think it comes back to understanding that advertising is one way of promoting your business.

And it works with several other tactics.