Red Rocks and Cannabis

Hey there,

Just getting back from the stunningly beautiful Enchantment Resort in Sedona, Arizona for the Trailblazers event and I left thinking a few things. 

• Nature is amazing. I felt so good after hiking and mountain biking along those beautiful red rocks, there’s no better cure out there. I’m making a commitment to get outside every day, there’s no excuse not to.
• Cannabis is an incredibly tough industry. As a relative outsider, it was fascinating to hear how much growth is possible but how it’s still such a wild west in terms of regulations and compliance without clarity on if/when things will change. A lot of companies are still struggling to get not just financing but even a bank account.
• People in cannabis truly believe in the power of the plant and its benefits. It was amazing to hear talks around the research and efficacy of THC and other cannabinoids helping with everything from pain management to Parkinson’s. Still a lot to be discovered, but there was raw positive energy on what’s to come.
• Connection is important. It felt amazing to go to an event again and just connect with other people in a live setting. The anxiety and loneliness a lot of us have felt during the pandemic is such a real thing and no amount of zoom happy hours will ever replace the feeling of sitting down and sharing a meal with friends and meeting new people. Optimistic that this summer we can get back to doing this again. 

Great job David Denberg, Pete Gross, & Tyler Wakstein for bringing us all back together in a beautiful setting.

Current Client Experiment

??Many of our clients are looking to build their subscription customer base for obvious reasons like growing their customer lifetime value and recurring revenue. There’s often a lot of questions that inevitably come up from the customer about how the subscription actually works, so we implemented a few different email automations for our clients to help make this process as streamlined as possible. Two flows specifically for subscription customers where we’ve already seen great results is a subscription-specific welcome flow and cancellation flow. The purpose of the first is to inform the customer what to expect and how they can manage their subscription to eliminate any uncertainty. The second allows you to receive feedback on subscription cancellation reasons, steering the customer to pause or save their account instead. It’s a great way to gather data around pain points for your customers and to try to get another chance to win them back.

New Tool We're Loving

??Charm - Recently demoed this product and was impressed with how much data they’ve collected on so many consumer brands, 2.8 million to be exact. It’s a great tool to use to check and see what your competitors are doing on their websites or how other companies in your industry are laying out their product pages, imagery and social media.

Cool Brand We're Into

??Real Sleep - As someone who has struggled with sleep for most of my life, I was really excited to get the opportunity to work with this company. They recently launched their plant-based alternative to melatonin and are seeing amazing results with new customers. I really like that they have sleep specialists on hand to answer any sleep-related questions you may have. 

What We're Up To

??As PCR is growing, we’ve been spending a significant amount of time thinking about our internal processes and systems from hiring, client onboarding, and sales outreach, to employee growth and development and it’s really starting to pay off. I’ve never been a fan of the mindset “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” because it’s way more likely that it probably is broken and you just don’t know it yet. Even after 14 years, we’re still constantly trying to improve the agency and have been seeing great long-term results from small, incremental changes over time that are evident in our bottom line.

A great book that I highly recommend is Working Backwards from two long-time Amazon employees. It already has us rethinking our hiring and vetting processes - with Amazon having close to a million employees to date, they’ve definitely learned a thing or two on what works and what doesn’t. 

Anything else?

??We had a great SMS Marketing webinar with Klaviyo! You can watch the presentation here in case you missed it.

Lastly, follow me on Instagram if you want to check out any of the pictures of Sedona or the occasional once every other month post :). 

Until next time, 

Drew

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