Gen Furukawa is the Co-founder of Prehook, an ecommerce company that helps Shopify merchants generate sales with quizzes and product recommendations. He has over 10 years of ecommerce experience, having worked in venture-backed SaaS companies.
Before co-founding Prehook, Gen was VP of Marketing at Jungle Scout, the leading software brand for Amazon sellers. He is also the host of an ecommerce marketing podcast, Cart Overflow, where he shares how top brand operators, agencies, and tech platforms are growing their ecommerce revenues.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- What is zero-party data, and how does Prehook use it?
- How do merchants utilize Prehook’s quizzes to personalize the customer experience?
- How brands can use customer data to maximize their marketing campaigns
- Gen Furukawa’s tips for creating a personalized paid ad experience
- How Prehook stays up-to-date with customer needs
In this episode…
Consumer trends are constantly adapting, so it’s essential for ecommerce brands to develop content that speaks to individual buying habits and optimizes the customer journey. With so many data points involved in dynamic personalization, how can you leverage consumer experiences to generate sales?
Prehook offers an accessible and innovative way to personalize the customer experience. Their interactive quizzes use zero-party data to mimic a retail store interaction, so your customers receive product recommendations that meet their needs. And with Prehook’s quiz funnels, you can create a compelling marketing campaign to drive revenue and scale your brand.
In this episode of the eCommerce Profits Podcast, Joshua Chin joins Gen Furukawa, Co-founder of Prehook, to talk about optimizing the customer journey. Gen explains how Prehook uses zero-party data in their quizzes, how brands can use customer data in their marketing campaigns, and what you need to create a personalized ad experience.
Resources mentioned in this episode
- Joshua Chin on LinkedIn
- Chronos Agency
- eCommerce Growth Hackers Facebook Group
- Gen Furukawa on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook
- Prehook
- 100% Pure
- Ric Kostick on eCommerce Profits Podcast
Sponsor for this episode
This episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency.
If you are a direct-to-consumer ecommerce brand that wants to unlock the optimum customer lifetime value through email marketing, then look no further than Chronos Agency!
Our team of passionate email marketing experts has helped hundreds of brands generate over $70 million in return from email alone, and our clients receive an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts.
Chronos Agency has worked with a variety of brands, including Truly Beauty, Alya Skin, and many more. Our mission is to help real businesses achieve real results.
If you want to take your revenue to the next level using email marketing, be sure to email our team at sales@chronos.agency or visit chronos.agency to learn more.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top founders and experts in the ecommerce Industry and take an in depth look at the struggles and successes in growing ecommerce brands profitably.
Joshua Chin 0:21
Hey guys, Josh Chin here and the host of the eCommerce Profits Podcast where we feature top experts and founders in the ecommerce Industry and we go behind the scenes of the struggles and successes in growing a brand. Now this episode is brought to you by Chronos Agency. If you run a direct to consumer ecommerce brand that is ready to scale and to double your customer lifetime value through lifecycle marketing Chronos is your company. We’ve helped hundreds of brands scale profits with email, SMS and mobile push marketing will gain an average of 3500% ROI from our efforts. We’ve worked with brands like truly beauty that will the lightest skin and many more. The next step is to email us at sales@chronos.agency or you can go to chronos.agency to learn more. Today’s guest is Gen Furukawa the co founder of Prehook a leading quiz platform for Shopify merchants, helping Shopify merchants scale with zero party data and first party data and we’ll talk a little bit about what that means. Gen has been an ecommerce for over 10 years was the last seven years in SaaS in ecommerce SaaS prior to Prehook. Gen was part of the founding team and VP of Marketing at Jungle Scout, a brand and company that many of us are aware of the leading software for Amazon sellers globally. Now Prehook helps hundreds of high growth Shopify merchants sell more accelerate list growth, and capture zero party data with interactive quizzes. Gen is also the host of the ecommerce marketing podcast Cart Overflow, where he shares what the best brand operators, agencies and tech platforms are doing to grow their ecommerce revenues. Again, welcome to the show,
Gen Furukawa 2:02
Josh, thanks so much for having me.
Joshua Chin 2:05
Again, tell us a little bit about what zero party data means. And how does that differ from first party data? And Prehook’s roll in the whole? The whole thing?
Gen Furukawa 2:17
Yeah, totally. So zero party data is has been getting more traction and more mentions in 2021 2020, which is, so it is basically data that customers proactively and willingly share with a brand. Now, this differs from first party data which a brand passively gathers. And so that would include things like purchase behavior, which is what you’ve purchased, how much you’ve spent, for example, so you can create segments on lifetime value or VIPs. Engagement with the website? Did you abandoned checkout? What pages Did you visit? Interactions with email? As in? Do you open a lot? Do you click through a lot. And so these little data points first party data are usually used to triangulate and create assumptions about the customer. And the second party third party data is basically that but just aggregated and anonymized and packaged up. So that’s where you might get things like Facebook’s interest in behaviors, segmentation. So the thing is, you don’t know how accurate it it is because you don’t know the source. You don’t know when it was collected. So it can be very old. And it could be very disparate in its in its origin. But zero party data is beautiful, because you know exactly where it came from. It is you Josh Chin, who has shared what your interests, preferences, goals challenges are. And the reason why you might do that is because there was a promise of an exchange of value. So that’s really the crux of a quiz, which is, Hey, Josh will ask you a few questions, you might enter your email or phone number or both, so that we can send it to you. And then we’ll we’ll make your shopping experience better. On site, we’ll recommend a product based on what your quiz responses are. But then also afterwards in your email or your SMS, they will be far more relevant and timely because we know what you’re looking for. So it is really a win win between brands and consumers where brands are getting the data that all of a sudden after iOS 14 iOS 15 third party cookies being deprecated is far harder to gather. And then consumers are willing to share it because they want a personalized experience. And they’re willing to pay more in terms of average order value and more conversions and therefore higher lifetime value. And a quiz is just one way to do that at scale.
Joshua Chin 4:51
I love the idea of interactive quizzes and as an email marketer where information is At relatively scarce, it’s it’s really, it’s really important for me to be able to paint a picture of what a profile is like, and then automate the journey in a way that mimics and a one on one interaction as you would in a retail store, maybe even elevate the experience beyond that. And I see that there is a clear upside and there is a clear value add in terms of the revenue that can be generated from, from focusing on using zero party data to form good automations and good personalized journeys with a customer. What are some interesting ways that you’ve seen merchants use your quizzes to automate that journey and personalize their customer experiences?
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