Hey everyone, welcome back to another edition of FERMÀT Fridays! This week, we did something a little different and invited our first customer to join the podcast. We had an awesome chat with Erin Silvia, the Director of Marketing at CADDIS. Erin shared her thoughts on how customer acquisition has changed, why conversion rates are so important, and how CADDIS is using FERMÀT as the proving ground to validate what's working in advertising and merchandising.
What is CADDIS?
Erin kicked things off by giving us a quick rundown of CADDIS. They started out making reading glasses, but not just any reading glasses. CADDIS' goal is to make high-quality, stylish reading glasses that help people feel great about aging. This unique approach helped them grow into a full optical retailer, now offering everything from prescription glasses to sunglasses, with reading glasses still at the heart of their business.
The Rollercoaster of Customer Acquisition
With years in the marketing game, Erin knows a thing or two about customer acquisition. She talked about how things used to be a bit easier around 2015-2017 when you could just throw money at platforms like Meta (Facebook) and reel in customers. But those days are gone. The market is way more crowded now, especially after the pandemic, making it tougher and more competitive to snag customers.
Erin emphasizes the need to be more strategic with how you deploy your ad spend. Her number one piece of advice on getting strategic? Experiment across the entire funnel. Most brands are experimenting and producing a large volume of ad creatives, but far fewer are applying the same principles to the funnel that follows the ad. Erin refers to the changes she's making here as matching ad expectations with conversion experiences.
Conversion Rates: The New Battleground
One of Erin's big focuses is on conversion rates. She explained that getting a click on an ad is just the first step. It's super important to make sure the post-click experience matches what customers expect. In today's mobile-first world, where people are constantly bombarded with information, having a smooth and simple shopping experience is key.
CADDIS has been fine-tuning their approach by simplifying the shopping process. They've moved away from overwhelming, content-heavy campaigns to more straightforward and effective landing pages. This shift has helped them better meet customer expectations and boost their conversion rates.
As an example, they have started to create custom PDPs within FERMÀT that bring together dozens of separate SKUs together. It allows the customer to shop as if its a single SKU with variants, even though its anything but in the backend of Shopify. This simplification of the funnel has been a game changer for CADDIS' ad conversion rates and ROAS.
Finding New Merchandising Opportunities
Not only has Erin been finding funnels with higher conversions for her ads, she has also been using FERMÀT's custom PDPs to test new merchandising opportunities before making any changes to the site or operations. She shares an example where they had a custom built product that she hypothesized could be a great product for new customer acquisition.
She began merchandising this custom product as if it was a mainstay SKU within FERMÀT and was able to communicate to the team what the potential CPA would be before committing to any operational changes that could have taken 90-120 days to validate.
Wrapping Up
Our chat with Erin Silvia was packed with insights into the world of customer acquisition and the smart strategies needed to thrive. From CADDIS' journey from a reading glasses company to a full optical retailer, to their innovative use of FERMÀt, Erin’s experiences provide a blueprint for marketers navigating an experimentation lead approach to customer acquisition.
As the market keeps evolving, Erin’s advice is clear: focus on conversion rates, test across the funnel, and keep exploring new ways to reach customers.