PREVIEW:
“We actually pivoted our entire company's direction based on what we saw our customers using the platform to do. They weren't using it in the way that it was built, or they weren't using it the way that we thought they were. And so that's what kind of led us on this partnership journey — when we started to see these brands working with other brands and creating these really cool tech integrations, and it has led our company to change the way that we think.”
— Cristy Garcia
INTRO:
You're listening to CX Confessions, brought to you by Khoros. In each episode, we’ll share the customer experience stories and insights you need — straight from the sharpest minds in CX — to better connect with your customers and create customers for life. Let's start the show.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
Hello, and welcome back to a new episode of CX Confessions. I'm your host, Katherine Calvert, CMO of Khoros, joined as always by my fantastic cohost, Mr. Spike Jones, GM of our Strat Services business. How're you doing, Spike?
SPIKE JONES:
Oh you know, I'm here and it's good to be here. We have another amazing guest. I know there's a lot of chock-full, beautiful little nuggets of awesome in there. So I'm excited to get right into it.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
I am really excited for our conversation and for you to meet our special guest. She's been hanging tough in the marketing industry for over 15 years. Cristy Garcia is the CMO of impact.com. As CMO, as you would expect, she leads their marketing events, PR and communications efforts, as well as demand gen and branding. She was named by Business Insider as one of the most important Martech executives of 2021. So she is clearly an all star.
If you don't know impact.com, it's really one of the leading platforms for partner and affiliate marketing management. She came to this job from Celtra and Rakuten before that. She's a member of Chief. She's also a member of the Forbes Communications Council. So for all of our listeners, as you listen and learn, you can learn more about Christie and her insights in those channels. It is a thrill to welcome Cristy Garcia to the show today.
CRISTY GARCIA:
Hi, Katherine. I'm doing well. Thank you for having me. I'm excited.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
We are so excited to jump in and learn more about the work you're doing with impact.com, but also you've just had a fantastic career, and this is our chance to learn more about how you think about CX and customer experience.
SPIKE JONES:
Speaking of a fantastic year, congrats on the CMO position. I got, now I'm talking to two CMOs. That's super cool. You CMOs, you wear a lot of different hats and you’re pulled in a lot of different directions. So I would love to hear, in your new role, and even please tell us a little bit about impact.com too, but in your new role, what are you looking forward to tackling first? What are you already working on?
CRISTY GARCIA:
I'm going to be spending more time with the customers. Prior to the CMO promotion, which I'm very proud of and excited about, I was the VP of Marketing for a few years at impact.com, and when you're really in the weeds, you don't really have a lot of time to be more strategic and have those conversations with customers. So while managing demand gen and PR and events and brand marketing and managing a big team, a big global team, it's just difficult to fit everything.
And so I really want to work on building out our Voice of Customer and leveraging insights from our existing clients on the brand side, as well as on the publisher side, to continue optimizing our message and campaigns and providing a good experience for the customers.
You know, right now my big focus is on this in-person event that we call IPX. It’s taking place in June. It's where we bring all of our customers together, so it's a really great opportunity for me to kind of dive in and have those conversations.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
This is an event you usually have and you had to suspend it, or has it been going on? Tell us about how you're thinking about live events these days.
CRISTY GARCIA:
So the year — the 2020 year — is when the outbreak started happening, the pandemic started really picking up and being an issue in March, and so we had to quickly make that pivot to virtual. It was going to be like a 700 person event and so we ended up doing a lot of video and webinars and recordings. But we ended up having like 3,000 people instead of 300. And I've been to a couple of events recently and I can tell you that the energy is crazy. People are just really excited about being together in the same room again.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
I think that is so true. I also think that, and I saw the same thing for our virtual events, it opened my eyes to the pros of virtual and the reach that you can get. But I do think that it has, that live events and that pent up demand for just connecting is so critical to, as you were saying, the customer journey. And how do you go from 300 to 700? How do you think participation is gonna look this year?
CRISTY GARCIA:
Well, we've been driving a lot of category creation — categories partnerships. So when people think about partnerships, they might think about affiliate marketing or they might think about channel partners — it’s all of those things, but we talk about partnerships, including influencers, commerce content, which is working with like the big media publishers, brand to brand, apps — anyone can be a partner to help drive referrals and sales for their partners.
And so we've been able to establish ourselves as the leader in the space and a lot of companies that have not previously considered something like affiliate marketing, for whatever reason, are really leaning in to this concept of using a platform to meet new partners, engage with new partners, drive leads, sales, referrals, and then contracting and paying and doing all the measurement through one place. And that's what impact.com does. We really help businesses grow revenue through partnerships, and some of our most mature clients are seeing 30% of their total revenue through this channel.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
We also have something in common where we're marketers who sell to marketers. That's a pretty cool gig. You know, we were just talking about the constant changes and the ways that we're rethinking the tactics and strategies and activities that worked two years ago, let alone even even six months ago, are changing.
So how do you think about your audience, and especially when you're doing category creation? How do you think about your team and how do you get them focusing on the right things while staying agile?
CRISTY GARCIA:
We believe our job as a business is to be helpful and to educate and to drive awareness about the category. We don't have to insert ourselves every time we're talking about why companies are leaning into partnerships.
And so we stopped talking about ourselves so heavily, I would say. We're doing a lot more thought leadership when it comes to content creation. We're using third parties, which is exactly what the beauty of partnerships is, right, is having somebody else validate you and say, yeah, thumbs up. This is a legit business, or this is a good product you should buy.
And so we're eating our own dog food, drinking our own champagne. We do have a very active demand gen team and the way that we really look about performance there is we compare ourselves to ourselves. And so we benchmark performance against, you know, prior quarter, month, year. However we're setting it up. So for example, paid search. We would expect a minimum of one dollar in, two dollars out, right. We're looking at email open rates and click rates and paid social and direct buys and it's all measured against past campaigns.
And so we know how many leads we need from each channel and how to get there. I would say, to your point about things changing all the time, it's important to not be overconfident in your media mix, or to start to get complacent. Because new channels and new marketing strategies are created all the time. And tech just makes it happen at lightning speed. So we got to stay on our toes and spend a lot of time researching new paths to conversions because the mix we have today is going to look a lot different than what we're doing six months from now.
SPIKE JONES:
Yeah, and you gotta get smart on it quick. I mean, that’s the same for my team. And so when these new, you know, these new platforms pop up, we got to be — because we know our customers are going to come to us and go, do you have a point of view on how we should use TikTok? And we're like, oh, we're figuring it out ourselves, but here's what we think. And we do figure it out.
For you, and you already touched on a little bit, I mean, this partnership space, it evolves all the time. It's constantly evolving, but do you kind of see where it's going over the next couple of years? Do you have any opinions or thoughts around that?
CRISTY GARCIA:
Yeah, I would say that I've been in the industry since 2010 and there has never been a better time to be in this space. Journalists are covering affiliate marketing, influencer marketing, it's everywhere. Brand-to-brand partnerships are being really promoted and actively kind of like viewed and read. And it's a lift across the entire industry, not just impact.com, although we're the leaders, arguably. Partnerships really represent this revenue-driving channel for all businesses. And because it's CPA based, right? Cost per performance, really, is sort of how to think about that. And it's usually based on a referral, a sale, something happening.
As a prediction, the industry is really moving to outcomes, and I don't mean just like affiliate marketing and partnerships, I mean, the ad industry. Consumers aren't interested in ads, right? They don't trust them. They're not clicking on them. Especially marketers, oh my god. But my prediction is that these vanity metrics that some marketers have been leaning on a lot to say, okay, well, I know this was successful because of these impressions or because of this anecdotal feedback, it's like, well, okay, but, you know, wouldn't you rather have something concrete that you're looking at, like an actual sale? And of course, the answer is yes. And partnerships can make that happen.
So I see that the appetite for that type of CPA-based approach is, you know, is definitely driving this business.
SPIKE JONES:
So you said you see vanity metrics going away?
CRISTY GARCIA:
Even in influencer marketing, a lot of people are like, what am I getting from this? Being able to be measurable, that's budget that's not going to get cut. And that's how I always tell my team to think about it.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
So, in the marketing word salad, or acronym salad, you're talking about, once upon a time we would talk about CPI, right, cost per impressions. And when you say CPA, you're talking about cost per acquisition of the sale, of the opportunity, essentially, is how you're helping folks to think about it. That is pretty powerful.
The firmer the lines to revenue, the more protected the budget, right?
CRISTY GARCIA:
And the more ways you can optimize if things aren't working.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
You know, I think one of the challenges that I think about when we think as a business about partnerships and the strategic opportunities there is the protecting your own brand and making sure that the partner can deliver on the promise that you've worked so hard to create about your own experience. How do you coach people to think about partnerships and building the right kind of trust and connective tissue between companies?
CRISTY GARCIA:
I really believe that the partner should be viewed as an extension of the company that they're working with, right? So customers can always tell the difference. If you're a representation of a brand or of a particular product that you're recommending, that's, you know, you're sort of taken as like the person connected there, whether or not you actually are.
So what can happen, and I've seen it, is that a brand decides that they need to be more prescriptive and control what's being posted and written. Let's use an influencer example. Like we want you to say X, and that's when performance goes south. Because the whole purpose of the partnership is to leverage each other's strengths, and you have to allow creativity and flexibility in the promotion. And so if the brand is telling the influencer what to post, the influencer, who knows their audience and knows what they're going to respond to, needs to be able to push back and say, that's not going to work. If it's inauthentic. If there's something that comes out, and you see that all the time, right? That's always what people poke at with influencer marketing, is how, oh yeah, I'm sure this particular celebrity is actually using a diet pill, right.
But people can, consumers can smell that a mile away. They're so smart, right? And so it's really about being authentic and believing in the product or company that you're referring. And then sort of allowing your partners to do what they do best. If you knew what to do, you wouldn't need them, right? And so you need to lean on them as people who are smarter than you in some ways. Just like you want to hire people on your team that are smarter than you, you want partners that have reach that you don't have, or have some expertise that you can leverage for yourself. But the fact is, you know, you need to be trusting those people and they want to get paid, right? So they're going to do everything they can to ensure that the campaign or the partnership is successful also.
SPIKE JONES:
So brands are still trying to control the narrative? What? That’s crazy.
And a lifetime ago, we created this ambassador program. We told the people, the leaders of that, they were, we paid them very little, but they're very passionate about this category. We said you can talk about anything you want. And then the brand came up on top of it and said, but you can't talk about our competitors. And this is a category where like, you just don't have one thing that was made by one company. You have drawers and drawers of things made by different companies. We're like, that's gonna come across, to your point, as inauthentic and people are not going to tune in if we're just pushing these products. So it's interesting to hear you say we're still dealing with some of the same things.
CRISTY GARCIA:
Yeah, it does happen. Understandably, you don't want people representing your brand that you don't feel a connection with.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
Makes me think of, Spike and I were talking about favorite podcasts, in addition to CX Confessions, and we were talking about the Conan O'Brien podcast. And he's got this very charming part where he does ads, but he does them himself and they’re ads, they’re not his thing, but it's clear that he knows these companies and is connected to the story — literally connected to the story. So that's fascinating.
There are so many tropes and practices and ideas around partner marketing and being a CMO. We always ask our guests for their thoughts on this question: What is a commonly held belief or industry practice that you passionately disagree with?
CRISTY GARCIA:
I would say historically, and this is still a challenge, some people will look at affiliate marketing and say they don't believe it's incremental. And so what I mean by that is, let's say a coupon site, you're working with a coupon site, and they send traffic to a retailer site, and the consumer uses the coupon code and buys the product. The retailer may say, Oh, we would have gotten that sale anyway, they came in at the last minute to kind of steal the sale. But that's a feeling that's usually not backed up by data.
So what is backed up by data is that consumers have said that they won't purchase certain things that aren't on sale or have free shipping or something like that. So these coupon sites have a lot of power and they shouldn't be frowned upon, just because it's the last touch of the customer journey and can come in at the bottom of the funnel.
I've actually seen some retailers that have decided, like, we're just going to not have business with this coupon publisher anymore, and guess what happens? Their revenue drops significantly. So it's very important to understand that affiliate marketing and partnerships, they touch, different partners can touch different parts of the funnel, and if you're very concerned that it's not incremental, try shutting it off and see what happens. But I don't recommend that.
SPIKE JONES:
You talked a little bit already about the data that you encourage your customers to think about, which is fantastic. The data you think is kind of growing in importance and the ones, the data that’s kind of waning in importance, but for you and your customers, what's the data that you're looking for that’s most important to you?
CRISTY GARCIA:
Yeah, that's, for me that's an easy answer. It's their pain points and how the product is solving them. As marketers, we do everything we can. We research, we talk to people, maybe we create personas based on our experience, or I'm a marketer, so I know what other marketers want, but you're just guessing. And it can be a really expensive mistake if you're not really thoroughly having those conversations. But I've made that mistake before, which is how I know.
We actually pivoted our entire company's direction based on what we saw our customers using the platform to do. They weren't using it in the way that it was built. Or they weren't using it the way that we thought they were. And so that’s what’s led us on this partnerships journey is when we started to see these brands working with other brands and creating these really cool tech integrations and it has led our company to change the way that we think and talk about things.
So I would say that anecdotal feedback, you know, from sales or customer success isn't enough. You need to talk to the customer. And then you also need to watch how they're using your product. But those two pieces are gold for marketing.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
I think that's really powerful. And I think there's a, it's an underappreciated opportunity, right, that people, you have this chance to watch how customers, especially in the SAS business, to watch how they engage with your solution, and that's often some of the best data. So, fascinating.
Okay, so we've talked about data, we've talked about things you disagree with. It is called CX Confessions. So it is now confession time, and all of our guests, we ask them to share a moment from their career, whether it's at impact.com or other spots.
Tell us about a hard lesson you've learned that's made you a better executive.
CRISTY GARCIA:
I've made a lot of mistakes, and I've learned a lot. But I would say the hardest lesson is probably that you have to be willing to constantly change in order to be successful. It's something that we sort of already covered but, be comfortable being uncomfortable and have a mindset that's like a learning mindset. The day that you believe that you have it all figured out and you know what the customer wants, and you stop experimenting, is the day you lose your edge as a marketer.
And there's been a number of other mistakes that I could say have been hard lessons to learn, but I think the biggest one is just trusting that what you have and what you're doing is going to work always, and it's not.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
Thank you for sharing that. I think that is so true and also really hard. The more senior you are, the more people look to you for answers, and you can feel compelled to have all the answers. And as you said, the job would be really boring if there weren't all kinds of new things to learn and new ways to look at problems, but it can be very uncomfortable. And maybe not for you but for your team sometimes.
CRISTY GARCIA:
And I've definitely said this before, but I want them to fail. Like I really do. Because to me, it's trying something new and creating a safe space for that, where you have a soft landing, right. So we don't ever go big on a gut feeling. We're not going to spend a million dollars on a campaign that we haven't tested, you know, smaller amounts of money before. But even then, sometimes you miss the mark. Something didn't go the way that it should and that's okay. Like we're rewarding, we're celebrating the fact that we tried something we're not experts in.
You have to be, you know, okay with failing as long as you're trying.
SPIKE JONES:
That's great. Great advice, and a great environment to create, for sure.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
Well, this has been a fantastic conversation as we knew it would be. Thank you for sharing so much perspective, and you've given us a lot to think about in the ecosystem. I think partners, everybody recognizes there's opportunity, but it can feel unsettling to be so dependent on, or to have to chance your reputation, your sales process, with others. And you've given us some fresh ideas on how to look at that funnel and the impact that partners can have.
Now before we sign off, Cristy, we always like to spend a little time getting to know our guests. We have five quickfire confession questions we always ask because one of the heart and souls tenants, one of the key tenants of CX Confessions is that the customer journey is personal, and so we always like to get a little personal before we sign off.
So are you ready to play five questions?
CRISTY GARCIA:
Yes, I am.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
All right. Cristy, what was the first concert you ever attended?
CRISTY GARCIA:
I'm gonna date myself, but it was New Kids on the Block.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
I bet that was so fun.
SPIKE JONES:
What was the venue?
CRISTY GARCIA:
It was somewhere in Florida.
SPIKE JONES:
All right. How about your first job?
CRISTY GARCIA:
I was a lifeguard at a waterpark when I turned 16. Yeah, that was pretty fun.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
That would be fascinating. That feels like a movie from the 80s or 90s.
Speaking of jobs: if you couldn't do the job you're doing today, what profession would you attempt?
CRISTY GARCIA:
Psychology. It's a, it was what I studied in college and what I thought I was going to go into, but I'm fascinated by the new research and understanding what drives human behavior. I would call it a hobby, but it's a lot more than that. It's like an obsession for me. Understanding behavior is essential for any job. But when we're talking about the customer and understanding the customer, it's really important to understand what drives certain behaviors and, you know, how you can be more effective at driving the behavior that you want.
SPIKE JONES:
My favorite speakers at marketing conferences are when they bring in psychologists and people who study the brain and how different parts of it light up when they get — it's so fascinating. And then you introduce social on top of it and it's like, okay, well people are different when they're on social than they are in real life, so as a marketer, whom am I marketing to? Am I marketing to both of them? So it's like, yeah, so I'm with you there. Fascinating, fascinating. But that'd be a good career.
How about your current favorite app on your phone?
CRISTY GARCIA:
This is gonna make me sound like such a nerd. I'm on LinkedIn all the time. Like I scroll through LinkedIn. I would say other than that, my news app.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
I am on LinkedIn quite a bit too. I think it is underappreciated as a place to get meaningful industry business news. There's really great content on there that feels organically curated, not just sort of surfaced by — even though I advertise there — not just surfaced by people like me.
All right. Final question. Cristy Garcia, tell me your biggest indulgence.
CRISTY GARCIA:
Well, I'll tell you that I'm house shopping right now. And I have found so much joy in going and looking at other people's houses. I can't really explain it. I just really enjoy going to look at houses and how they decorate, and get like a little glimpse of their life.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
Oh, it's been so fun to get to know you, Cristy, thank you for coming on our show. Thank you for sharing your perspective and making time for us today.
CRISTY GARCIA:
Thanks Katherine and Spike. I really appreciate it and I enjoyed it. It's nice talking with you.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
Spike, wasn't that great? So interesting.
SPIKE JONES:
Good one.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
That was a good one. There was a lot there. I saw you light up when we talked about vanity metrics. I know that's a hot button for you.
SPIKE JONES:
I'd say, I mean as a lifelong marketer on the agency side, I mean, that's all we talk about. And I had one customer and they're like, we want this many followers or this many likes. That's what it was. And we're like, why? And they said because our competition has more. And like, that's not a reason, man. Like cool. We can get you that. But again, vanity metrics, like how many people have seen this tweet? Cool. Who cares? How many people actually bought something because of it?
So I love how she's thinking and I know she said it's never gonna go away. But I loved how she's thinking about, these are the ones that are actually more important. These are the metrics that are rising to the top, and probably down on the spreadsheet somewhere the vanity metrics will still be there, but de-emphasizing them makes me happy.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
Yeah. And it's hard. It's really hard work when you don't have the right tools or systems in place to measure all the way through the pull through to the funnel. But I will say I think what she was getting at, and I think the tools have advanced so far now that it shouldn't be that hard. It's worth the investment because all the vanity metrics in the world when your budget’s under pressure don't hold up. It's when you can point to revenue and when you can then compare it, right, as she was saying, to the cost of acquisition for one of those ads versus an expensive salesperson.
SPIKE JONES:
I really also like how she honed in and talked about the perfect partner because it's so important to have that extension. I mean, you know, in your experience and what you've seen out there, you know, what are your thoughts around that? About having that authentic voice?
KATHERINE CALVERT:
I really thought that was the heart of the tension. And I think it's very hard as a marketer to relinquish the control, but her point about remembering, I mean, it's really a point about humility, right? If I didn't need the partners in the first place, then I wouldn't have that tension.
And so I think it is key to spend the time upfront to make sure that you're choosing your partners wisely. But if you need that help, and I think the data says this is a really effective and efficient way to extend your reach as a marketer, then you've got to trust that they are the right partners, which means you're you're trusting their choices and their voice and their ability to be authentic in whatever they're bringing to the table to support your business.
SPIKE JONES:
Yeah, and it sounds like impact.com does a lot — she kind of lit up whenever she's like, oh, we've, so much research goes into you know, the perfect match between these, which I think that could be a really fun job. But I appreciate them doing that.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
It sounded a lot like a Match.com situation.
SPIKE JONES:
Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. Okay, that's super cool.
KATHERINE CALVERT:
Yeah.
KHOROS:
Your customers expect to be understood — their likes and dislikes, their history with your brand, and their communication preferences. But so many companies struggle to connect the dots of the interaction across their own teams and channels and its creating customer experience challenges and disasters. That's where Khoros can help. Khoros is the award-winning customer engagement platform built to turn those siloed interactions with your customer into enterprise value. Khoros works with more than 2,000 of the world's leading brands and powers more than 500 million digital interactions every day. Khoros is the award-winning platform for digital-first customer engagement. Ready to create human connection across the digital customer experience to create customers for life? Learn more at Khoros.com.
Thanks for listening to CX Confessions, brought to you by Khoros. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure the hit subscribe in your favorite podcast player and give us a rating. See you next time.
