The Nexus of Content, Commerce, and Community with Brian Sugar

Commerce veteran Brian Sugar has seen it all—from serving as the VP of ecommerce at J. Crew to founding PopSugar and Group Nine Media. And now, he's a general partner at Sugar Capital. The Tydo team sat down with Brian to discuss trends across the commerce ecosystem, the power of digital brain trusts, and the evolving future of brand-led media.
November 1, 2021
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Yellow background with the Tydo logo and Sugar Capital logo

The Nexus of Content, Commerce, and Community with Brian Sugar

Brian Sugar is a commerce veteran. He served as the VP of eCommerce at J.Crew. He cofounded PopSugar with his wife Lisa (acquired by Group Nine Media in 2019), and now Brian is the president of Group Nine (acquired by Vox in 2021).

He’s also the founder of Sugar Capital, an early-stage venture fund with investments that include in-demand DTC brands like Brightland, House of Wise, and Judy, and ecommerce infrastructure tools like EcoCart, Builder.io, and co-op commerce. Our team with chatted Brian about the trends he’s tracking across the commerce ecosystem, data analytics tools, and the future of brand-led media. 

Macro Shifts: What To Watch

The commerce ecosystem is rapidly evolving.

To illustrate this acceleration, Brian points to a handful of trends, including headless commerce, no-code website tools, and new performance marketing tactics.

If we look at how the DTC space has evolved over time, in the early days, most companies focused their marketing efforts on mail order catalogs, leveraging an old-school marketing model.

Phase two of DTC was marked by the emergence of digitally native, vertical brands (DNVBs) like Allbirds, Warby Parker, and Casper. These brands saw themselves as tech companies and spent too much capital on performance marketing. DNVBs applied the recency model (from phase one) to Facebook and Google, which didn’t work out that well.

Now we’re in phase three, where most founders are averse to spending money and time on performance marketing.

This DTC era is all about leveraging the internet to acquire repeat customers in an organic, sustainable way. 

“From my vantage point, I’m tracking three game-changing shifts across the commerce ecosystem: speed, virality, and heavy performance marketing.” 

The Brain Trust: Data Analytics

Data scientists and analytics hires are quickly forming the brain trust behind ecommerce brands.

While gut-based decision making can be helpful at times, today's primary marketing decisions need to be driven by quantitative feedback through analytics tools.

According to Brian, the key to a successful brain trust is a team's ability to identify, track, and quantify every piece of marketing, including both organic and paid creative.

First, Brian recommends thinking through goals and KPIs. Then, after the campaign is over, he suggests looking back at the results via an analytics dashboard—understanding what drove conversions and what creative missed the mark.

“If you don’t start with clear, data-driven expectations while running a new growth test, there’s no way to know what worked and what didn’t.”

The Power of Content Flywheels

Brands now realize that free distribution platforms are excellent growth hacking tools. If they can break through the noise, a massive arbitrage opportunity awaits.

However, breaking through emerging channels such as TikTok isn't easy. It calls for exceptional content and teams who can ship game-changing creative at a consistent cadence. And, that process needs to evolve and change with the native platform as well.

During Brian's early days at J. Crew, copywriters would write short stories and pass them on to editors, who would then create photo shoots based on those storylines. Then, designers and copywriters would turn those pieces of creative into page layouts and headlines. It was truly collaborative.

From the mid-twentieth century until now, content flywheels have to be incredibly powerful growth levers, time and time again—when executed correctly.

“If you create and ship high-quality, organic content that your audience truly resonates with, your product will sell. It’s really that simple.”

Parting Advice: Do Something Different

Every brand in today's landscape needs to innovate. That requires experimentation and a willingness to fail and try again.

Brian says, "The biggest problem is that not enough folks try in the first place." 

Instead, teams will copy other brands' work. That just comes off as inauthentic.

Brian explains, "Don't be afraid to do something different. That's where the real innovation happens." 

“To be blunt, I don’t know how big the ecommerce space is going to get. But, I’ll definitely be making some pretty large bets. That’s for sure.


Checkout our roundup to learn:
  • What to pledge
  • How to improve
  • Which tools will set you up for success

Dale Wilson

Partnerships Manager,
adQuadrant
Resolution

I think the most important thing brands can do in 2023 is to better manage their customer data—both ethically and effectively. There’s an opportunity for brands to know their customers better than ever before—a clear benefit for both the customer and the brand. When you manage your data correctly, you’ll create stronger and more personalized ads, creative, site experiences, and so much more.

Tip

This is a classic: Let the data guide you. Go where the buyers for your products are and communicate with them on a personal level (i.e. by persona and funnel position) and nurture those relationships (past, present, and future customers). It’s possible—all through data.

Tool

It's an honest tie between Gorgias and Klaviyo. Both tools have amazing plans for 2023 and beyond, and I'm looking forward to seeing the impact both have on their clients this year.

Shawn Khemsurov

Co-founder,
Electric Eye
Resolution

We recommend that Shopify brands analyze and update their websites using data-driven decisions. Using analytics tools such as heatmaps and scrollmaps can help brands better understand how customers are interacting with their store.

Tip

Store owners tend to make assumptions about the way customers interact with their website. Most never go back and analyze their design choices to find pain points or areas of opportunity. By using heatmaps and scrollmaps, they can see where real customers are clicking and concentrating their attention. Leveraging this data, brands can start to iterate on design and make their online store experience streamlined and intuitive.

Tool

Hotjar provides a simple way to implement heatmaps, scrollmaps, and recorded user sessions on your site, helping you acquire incredibly informative user data. Additionally, it gives you the ability to create on-site surveys, which allows you to obtain direct and often critical feedback from users about their experience.

Katelyn Glass

Founder and CEO,
Fifty Six
Resolution

Test various attribution models and analyze the impact on your business. At Fifty Six, we are always here to help our clients identify and optimize their approach—a critical step in any successful marketing strategy.

Tip

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times–Customer Lifetime Value. And even more importantly, Future Lifetime Value (FLTV). With the ever-growing importance of first-party data, it is crucial that brands take a good look at their CRM and FLTV metrics.

Tool

OrderlyEmails is our go-to tool for transactional emails. It helps us level up our brands’ email aesthetics with customizable, quick-to-implement Shopify templates.

Lately, I’ve been really interested in Smile.io’s loyalty platform. Their UX is fantastic for teams with low bandwidth!

Tom Rees

Founder,
WIRO
Resolution

Stop allocating budgets to low-hanging fruit that doesn’t move the needle on conversion. Think about what’s really going to improve your CX and the return of undertaking different initiatives—not just on what’s top on your list of bugbears on the site!

Tip

One of the best ways to understand your customer behavior is by using HotJar. Their heat-mapping and screen recording tools shine a light on where customers are navigating to and from on your site, where they're rage clicking and experiencing frustration, and where conversion is dropping off within real life customer journeys and flows!

Understanding your customers’ pain points via data and analytics , will allow you to work with your CRO/CX Agency to solve customer frustrations and improve conversion.

Tool

Rewind backs up all product, customer, and order data for Shopify sites—essential since Shopify itself doesn’t provide this solution. It's saved so many of our clients time and money from administrative accidents.

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Jimmy Aristizabal

Partnership Manager,
TalentPop
Resolution

33% of customer service inquiries are pre-sale questions. What does this mean? If you’re not investing in customer service, you’re missing out on revenue-generating opportunities.

Tip

The benefits of elevating your customer experience:

  • 10% to 25% increase in AOV for customers who engage with live chat pre-purchase
  • 21x higher conversion rate for customers who reach out via Live Chat or SMS compared to other site visitors
  • 87% of customers who have a great customer experience will make another purchase
  • 72% of customers share positive experiences with 6 or more individuals
Tool

Gorgias is our favorite Helpdesk platform. They can reduce costs by 35%, primarily by decreasing the average ticket handle time. Their machine learning algorithms are trained on millions of ecommerce-related interactions across Gorgias’ customer base and provide accurate, automated replies for the most common ecommerce inquiries. This helps our agents resolve tickets faster, which provides the customer a seamless experience.

Jessica Grossman

Founder and CEO,
In Social
Resolution

Trust your agency! Agencies do the same things across multiple brands and niches, so we see the trends and have the practice and experience!

Tip

Don't be afraid of data and insights. If customers aren't clicking on your emails, try a new CTA. If your ads are driving good metrics at a small spend, start scaling. If your customers are complaining about a product, look into QA! If the data tells you something isn't working, let it go and try something else!

Tool

I'm supposed to say Tydo, right? 😉

Rikin Diwan

Chief Growth Officer,
soona
Resolution

Double down on differentiation. There will be a lot of headwinds this year and standing out from the crowd will set you apart.

Tip

A picture is worth 1,000 words. A video? Probably millions. In ecommerce that value translates into engagement, acquisition, and retention—everything you need to impact your bottom line.

At soona, we've seen the we've seen the impact of creative and the continuous split testing of it yield results. Our resolution is to challenge ourselves and double down on innovation and creative optionality so that each brand we work with can distinguish themselves in a crowded sea of D2C ecomm. We'd love to see our brands share this resolution and keep pushing the creative limits.

Tool

Klaviyo. We're using it to power our email and newsletter at soona too!

Shayna Silvers

Director of Marketing Strategy,
Absolute Web
Resolution

Optimize your returns strategy! This can lead to valuable customer insights, enhanced user experiences, and increased revenue and customer loyalty.

Tip

Brands need to dive deeper into understanding their customers to set themselves up for success. Conduct research to gain insights into customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. By doing so, you can develop targeted strategies that will enhance customer experience and boost overall retention.

Tool

Right now I would say Gorgias. Having a good customer service tool is crucial to building strong customer relationships.

Wes Buckwalter

Resolution

Start paying heavy attention to data, specifically around retention. We see a lot of effort put towards acquisition with the assumption that once someone buys, they are your customer forever. Instead, get to know your customer, understand their needs, and analyze their behaviors once they are on-site and judge their sentiment after they have visited. Work with a retention focused and data-driven agency to implement tools that contribute to repeat business and customer delight. It will pay dividends.

Tip

When surveyed, about 80% of ecommerce merchants think that they are delivering a great experience to their customers. However, when the same customers are surveyed, only 8% of those customers think that they are getting a great experience from the merchant. Now, more than ever, retaining loyal customers is an essential part of any online business and you should spend time with your customers to judge their experience with your website and products and offer improvements based on that feedback.

Tool

Tydo's report cards are an essential tool, along with Klaviyo for email and SMS, Recharge for subscriptions and memberships, Okendo for reviews and surveys, Rebuy for AI driven collections and upsells, Loop for self service returns... each tool is great on their own, but their strength as the ultimate tool comes from when they are used together!

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Report Cards

Free

Report Cards is a customized glimpse into your business, delivered to your inbox for free.

Report Cards consolidates all your key metrics across platforms for an at-a-glance pulse of your business.

Discover metrics for every team member so they can stay updated with the right data on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

It's free because we believe everyone should have access to the basics.

Learn more
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Portfolio

Portfolio is a hub for analytics across multiple Shopify stores. The perfect tool for agencies.

See an aggregate view of all your data for all your stores in one place.

Make real time assessments on marketing initiatives across every storefront you manage.

Analyze the performance of one store versus another in seconds.

Learn more
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