PostPilot - The Future of Commerce Isn’t Digital—It’s Personal

Ramon Vela (00:02.914)
Welcome back everyone. Today's going to be a great show. I have with me Neil Goyal, who is the SVP of Postpilot. Welcome to the show, Neil.

Neal (00:27.038)
Hey, thank you so much for having me, Ramon. it's an absolute pleasure to be here. As you know, I've been following your journey from what feels like the beginning of time and, and just having the opportunity to join you here again is an absolute honor. So thanks so much for having me.

Ramon Vela (00:42.296)
Well, I appreciate you making time for us. know you're very busy and just so everyone knows, Neil is a returning alumni of the show. We actually had him on the show when he was SVP over at Disco. And we're going to talk a little bit about that. many of you know Neil from that perspective and from some of his other adventures before that. And today we're going to talk not only a little bit about his days at Disco, but we're going to talk about his now move over to post-pilot.

What is getting them so excited about post-pilot? What is post-pilot for those that may not be aware of that? And kind of a little bit of a lot of things we're gonna talk about touch base. There's so much to talk about. So why don't we just get started? My first question, as you know, for everyone out there is a gratitude question. I ask it for two reasons. One is I just am a big believer in gratitude. It's free, it's available, and it is a very powerful tool to use if you are feeling stressed out.

So whether you are journaling, whether you meditate like I do, or whether you pray or whatever, you you feel is good for you. Using gratitude puts things in context and helps you to relieve your nervous system and really just kind of help you kind of de-stress and feel a little bit less anxious and really helps you feel clear and cool headed and calm. And I highly recommend it. The other reason why I ask this or

asked this gratitude question is that I want to make sure that we humanize these interviews that we do. When we talk about companies, lot of times people look at companies and they think, oh, it's just some faceless corporation. They don't realize that there's real people behind these companies who care deeply about their consumers, their customers, their communities, the tech world, everything. And Neil is one of those people behind these companies that I want to make sure that we humanize it and getting to know what he's grateful for.

is a great way to kind of humanize this. So Neil, if you don't mind, can you share a moment or a memory when someone did something for you that just made you feel grateful because it meant that they believed in you, your vision or your potential.

Neal (02:45.634)
wow. you know, I love this exercise because I think when you, oftentimes when life's moving fast, we lose sight of what's important, what got us here and, and how grateful we need to be in order to like truly appreciate those moments. you know, when I look at my career, particularly over the last seven years, it has really moved quickly, really moved quickly and am so grateful for that. And oftentimes when someone achieves

More success than they envisioned for their own, you know, possible career, on a faster trajectory than they, imagined to initially, lot of times you have to realize that successes are often not just a function of what you do, but by a function of the people around you who lift you up, who push you, who, know that you can exceed more limits than you know possible for yourself.

And so who are the people that reach out their hand, pull you up, push you up, but, know, elevate you and amplify what you're trying to do. you know, that is something that over the, especially over the last seven years, I've been so grateful to be surrounded by, so many incredible folks who have just propelled me in this direction. No part of any success that I've achieved has been solely because of what I've done. It's been a function of each of those people making a bet on me.

I think, um, as you, uh, as you interact with different people throughout your life, whether it was a, uh, a boss, whether it was a founder, whether it was a customer, had the opportunity to serve, whether it's a coworker, whether it's a family, a friend, or someone that you're joining on a podcast. Every single one of those moments adds some kind of incremental value. And so the question is, do you take a moment to be grateful for that interaction that that person is giving you? Do you have the opportunity to say,

Hey, listen, my, I'm benefiting right now because of what this person gave to me. And if you can truly appreciate that and harness that and everything that you do, you'll end up having this belief, and this piece that comes from that. and it allows you to kind of really be happy and be able to find a path to happiness in every juncture in your life, regardless of the challenges that you might face. So, I'm really grateful for the individuals that have just.

Neal (05:10.344)
reached their hand out and pulled me in a direction that I never even thought was possible for my career seven years ago.

Ramon Vela (05:17.131)
Yeah, well, I appreciate that. know, the reality is that there's so many people in our lives, if we stop and think about it, that have helped us in small ways and big ways, not just like people who give us financial support, but also just people who give us a kind word. I had a guest on the show and he used the term transfer of belief. You know, there's some days and...

when you're in positions like yours, executive positions like yours, or whether you're a founder or an entrepreneur, there are moments when things get really tough and you feel like quitting. Like you feel like just giving up, like this is not worth it, or there's too much stress or whatever. And someone comes along and gives you a little push and says, hey, you know what? You can do it. You know, like you're bigger than this moment or whatever it is, but it's a transfer of belief. And there's a lot of people that do that. And then there's all these people who

indirectly make this decision to be a part of your life, know, the stressful life of what you might have like being an executive or being an entrepreneur. So there's a lot of people. I mean, we're not islands, right? So I love the idea of thinking about all these people who helped us. So thank you, Neil. Appreciate it. So there's a lot to talk about, Neil. So for those of you who are interested in hearing our conversation about Disco, I'm going to make sure that we...

tag that or put a link to that on our podcast description. It's a great conversation. But I have to tell you, so like I knew you loved your time at Disco and I you were having a lot of success there. I'm just going to be honest with you. I saw a post and it said that you're, you know, like you were teasing that your time was ending there. I was just like, wow, I was kind of blown away. It was like, I know, you you thought highly of Disco and you had some success.

And I thought, well, what would move him away from that? What would get him to go somewhere else? Like, what is this? And then I didn't even know what Postpilot was. I think I heard of him, but I thought, I wonder what is this thing that you're so, you know, you're willing to leave disco for and do this. So I don't know where you want to start, man. I'm just curious to know, you know, a little bit of that sort of, you know, that part of it. For me personally, I'm kind of curious.

Ramon Vela (07:32.801)
What was it that motivated you? But feel free to start wherever you want.

Neal (07:35.9)
Yeah, I think, first off, you're absolutely right. Like, you know, it was a wonderful time at disco, huge believer in the product and the solution and the customers that we were serving and loved the work that we were doing. And we had tremendous level of success over the course of the time that I was there. I mean, over the course of one year, we increased revenues by a function of four or five acts, right? pretty amazing, especially in this particular, you know, climate where it's pretty hard for software companies to achieve that type of outcome. Right.

Ramon Vela (08:02.817)
Hmm.

Neal (08:03.848)
I think there was also a juncture where I was at an inflection point and trying to look at like what the next few years was going to look like, particularly three to five years, right? it's really hard to forecast what the next three to five years are going to look like. Things are changing at a, at a greater velocity than they ever have changed. and so to be able to forecast three to five years out is a really difficult exercise. So as I was looking for that, like, what is the next chapter look like?

It was actually a pretty tough kind of internal, I think moment for me. Right. So, and when we, when we think of like what you know about Neil, if you've ever interacted with me before, if you've ever seen me on LinkedIn before, if you've ever been a customer of mine, a coworker of mine, or worked with me in some capacity, you know that I'm kind of the guy that's like always overflowing with optimism, loads of energy.

glass is over, always, overflowing and full and that I'm extremely bullish on all things Ecom. And particularly the outlook I have for amazing brands that are building amazing products in a variety of categories, serving the U S consumer in a way that the direct consumer ran never did before. Right. I'm so incredibly bullish on that. And I think the hard part.

over the period of let's, let's call it four to five months is like this kind of, I don't know, self therapy. needed to put myself through in saying, okay, if I'm so bullish on the sector itself, I also have a pretty incredible dark view of the software that's supporting that space. Right. And that was a hard thing to like feel and say out loud again, given how bullish and

and how I'm always focusing on like what's possible as opposed to what's the limitation, right? And it's, kind of goes into like three consecutive buckets, right? The first bucket really came, started around 2021, right? 2021 through to the early 2023, where you get to a point where e-comm has blown up post COVID era and

Ramon Vela (10:01.324)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (10:24.042)
It was amazing, right? You saw these amazing brands being born. Some of them are so much bigger today. It was an exciting time to be part of e-comm at the same time. You also had so many software companies that were coming into the space, also looking to serve that boom of brands that were born as well. So you got to a point where there was 14,483 software companies that were all chasing the same two to 3000 brands on Shopify. Right. So.

Ramon Vela (10:41.281)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (10:53.908)
huge competition and a very limited total addressable market or TAM. What this created over the course of that time is yeah, competition's normal, but by virtue of so much competition, there was the start of almost like a race to the bottom effect, where legacy software providers...

Ramon Vela (11:13.953)
Hmm.

Neal (11:18.856)
were encountering a lot of challenge, not because they were competing on product, but they were competing on price. Right. And you had these software companies that were in growth mode that are willing to give their software, away at a substantial discount to what the legacy providers were offering. And it just became a price, erosion. Now this was a huge benefit for brands itself, right? Brands had not only

access to lower cost tech solutions to avoid the crimp that it might have created to margins. But they also had the function of more choice and more flexibility to be able to choose whatever tech provider and who they wanted to work with, right? More options. And more options is always a good thing, right? But for the tech providers, it proved to be a challenge, right? And that's okay. Like that's a new normal that every single category serving...

Ramon Vela (12:01.271)
Thank

Neal (12:12.33)
e-commerce sector, whether you were an email provider, SMS provider, mobile app provider, conversion rate optimization provider, a widget on a website, no matter what corner of the software ecosystem you served, that was a normal that we all lived and we had just had to learn to navigate. But then as early like 2023 rolled around, that's where...

software companies were really taking ahold of how we can leverage AI to build software. Right. And that's where you see a new like burst of competitors come onto the scene. And I'm seeing these software companies that are building the equivalent of 90 % of legacy providers, but building it inside three to four months. What it took these legacy providers to six, seven.

Ramon Vela (12:52.257)
No.

Ramon Vela (13:05.153)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (13:09.266)
eight years to build these new startups are building it in inside 90 days because AI just made it so much easier to build software. Right. So first you had just a lot of software entrance competing on price and then race to the bottom on price. Then you have a second wave of the AI native software builders that are coming and building more entrance into the space. And because it's so easy to build, because these are teams of three, four, and five people.

They can literally sell their software for next to nothing, right. And still build a very attractive business for themselves. But what did that do for the overall software ecosystem? It made it really difficult. Right. And so then the third part, this is the third part where we just don't know yet. And that is this new concept of agentic commerce, right. And what that means now, everyone has these, these

Ramon Vela (13:40.009)
Yes.

Ramon Vela (13:48.876)
Thank

Neal (14:02.366)
bold predictions and, and, unique takes and spicy opinions about it. Love all of that. I'm not marrying myself to any one specific opinion or outlook, but what I can marry myself to is the fact that commerce today will look radically different than commerce three years from now. Right now as a function of what a brand does with a consumer.

or their customer and they say, you're interested in our brand. Okay. You must go to blank blank blank.com. Go take a look at our website, go add that product to cart and go check out. You force your customer into the same customer journey into a near identical customer journey. And what agentic is doing is creating an infinite possible, number of customer journeys that could exist. Someday we're going to be wearing these little necklaces from open AI that are going to be

Reading our minds and predicting our every next item that we need to purchase and going and making those choices on our behalf. We're going to have new forms of discovery, just like we've already learned the partnerships with chat, GBT and, and, and Shopify and the ways to discover a product that are going to take away from Google share. But the, we know is the customer journey will not just be one dimensional. go to Amazon, go to website. It'll be different for every consumer. Right.

Ramon Vela (15:21.751)
you

Neal (15:28.402)
And so agentic commerce where we can't predict what that end outcome will look like one, three, five years from now, because things are changing so quickly. What we can confirm is a brand's website has officially hit its top in terms of value. It is that it is for a brand. And that's a hard thing for me to even say out loud, right? A brand's website has officially hit its top because going forward, the brand's website will be more of a showroom, right?

That the product page is meant for that customer that really wants to learn the nitty gritty of the product that is looking for that extra moment of discovery, but it's not going to be the only place and mechanism by which a customer buys. Right. And so now when you think of all these software companies that are built around the brand's website, wow, like traffic to that website will go down with the gentic commerce, the need for the website, the demand.

and shopping behavior is going to radically change. The checkout's going to change. The checkout's going to be happening in so many more places than it ever was before. That is not the website. And so therefore, if you are a software company that serves only the website, then your value as a software company has gone down in the eyes of the brand. The willingness that a brand is willing to pay you for that software goes down over time. And then the agents.

Ramon Vela (16:46.775)
you

Neal (16:57.074)
Are going to replicate a lot of these software tasks. So why do I need a particular piece of expensive software? When I can go just build an agent to go into my website and do that for me, right? Like, why do I need to sign onto these, expensive software? So listen, that is like a really dark view, right? Like that, that paints a really dark picture for the software that serves that space. But that was the challenge that I was.

Ramon Vela (17:09.793)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (17:24.72)
Having this internal battle with in terms of like, what is that next step of my career, where I want to go where a, want to be a part of something that has the ability to have legs in this new world that we're entering in. but also be defensible. Right. In that same process. so in choosing that next step, there's two buckets that it can fall in either a.

Ramon Vela (17:29.751)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (17:50.44)
join a company that is truly AI first, that's going to shape what a agent commerce means that is going to shape the types of customer behaviors and journeys that could possibly exist. And those are like moonshot bets. Like if you, if you pick the right, ship on that one, wow, like it could be amazing, but at the same time, we don't really know who those players are yet. Like we know Shopify is at the forefront of this agent.

Ramon Vela (18:10.743)
Yes.

Neal (18:20.33)
They're working with all the biggest partners on that. But in terms of the other startups that exist out there, who's really going to be at the forefront? We don't know that yet. You can place your bets and we know one of them is likely to win in some capacity. And there's going to be many more that are born every single day, but you just don't know who that who's going to be that winner yet. It's too early. The other bucket is the category of companies serving e-comm that'll still be.

Defensible against AI. other words, let AI do its thing and those categories will still flourish. If anything, they'll actually just be made better. Right. The easiest example is thinking about logistics. Like a brand still needs to have that box arrive at that customer's doorstep. Right. So logistics is logistics going anywhere with AI? No, but will logistics be made better with AI? Absolutely. Right.

Ramon Vela (19:09.078)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (19:17.281)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (19:18.378)
So that's a category that I would describe as defensible. Right. But for me, I'm just, I'll tell you, I'm like a, I'm a marketing guy. Right. So I just didn't see myself going to career in the logistics front. Right. Um, and, and so for me, I'm, I'm all about more tech. I'm all about advertising. I'm all about retention. I'm all about customer acquisition. Like everything on the marketing side is what speaks to me. Right. So then what are the categories that, that, that make the most sense?

Ramon Vela (19:32.589)
Thank

Neal (19:48.508)
And so that's where post-pilot has always been on our radar. I've been a partner of theirs for years now, right? I've known the founders for Drew and Mike for such a long time. And then you think about the category that they're serving is that the consumer will always continue to live in a home and always have a mailbox sitting outside that home that let AI come and go, let digital landscape change as much as it wants to.

But one thing that will never change is that customer's mailbox that's sitting outside their home, let AI come do its thing. And it's going to amplify what we do. It's going to make it better. It's going to expand the possibilities of what could be achieved there. And that's what got me really excited about it, right? Is like the concept of understanding where post-pilot is currently in their journey, where they've built a moat, right? Understanding that they actually

Ramon Vela (20:23.83)
Thank you.

Ramon Vela (20:29.462)
Hmm.

Neal (20:47.658)
truly own the space right now, right? The entire direct mail category for Shopify is currently owned by post-pilot. And even despite that, the total addressable market, even though we are working with all of the largest brands out there, the potentially to expand what we do with each one of those brands is huge because what we're known for is retention. What we're building and right now proving our worth with right now.

Ramon Vela (20:57.012)
Hmm.

Neal (21:17.274)
Is customer acquisition, not just retaining your customer with, with direct mail, but how do you go acquire and leverage this as an acquisition channel where you can tap into evergreen audiences. Right. And truly make it the meta for mail. And that's what we're building. We're building meta for mail right now where the concept of acquisition, that's where all the budgets are. That's where brands are always focused on.

Ramon Vela (21:29.996)
Thank you.

Neal (21:44.424)
Retention is key to profitability, but acquisition is key to growth. And so like we're building the metaphor male. And that's what I'm so excited about.

Ramon Vela (21:51.731)
Wow. Yeah, I wanted you to finish that because and you ended it, I think, at a really great place because I want to put a pin on that and I want to get back to that. And I think it's fascinating and I have a lot of questions, but I can't let you go and not ask you questions about what you said a little earlier. So this darkness that you're talking about, you know,

Bottom line, what you're saying is that, and we kind of talked a little bit about this before we got on the air, is that the number of software companies that we see now is really going to be a lot less.

in the future, right? Because we'll have this agent, a genetic sort of perspective. Why build all these different softwares to do all these different things or these little one-off tools to help you do X, Y, Z when you can just, you know, buy an agent or build an agent to kind of do that on your website. So that's really, I mean, the bottom line is that the software industry as we know it is going to be vastly changed in the next few years, right?

Neal (23:05.332)
Thousand percent thousand percent. mean, I think, you know, we had such a strong value proposition, particularly at the enterprise level, right. Value proposition in moving to Shopify from like a Salesforce commerce cloud or Magento or, you know, legacy e-comm platforms, right. The whole argument there was like reducing the total cost of ownership, right. Of tech allow the brand to focus on their brand and their customers instead of focusing on being developers, right. That was like the whole value proposition for Shopify. And then.

Ramon Vela (23:25.963)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (23:35.422)
because Shopify also made it so easy for that brand, Shopify equally made it just as easy for software companies to be born and serve the customer virtually overnight as well. Right. and so then now when you think about that, like if the brand is always looking to reduce the total cost of ownership and if the margin environment right now is harder than it's ever been with tariffs, with, customer acquisition costs higher than they ever have been, like the margin environment is harder than it's ever been. So that.

appetite to lower the cost of ownership will continue to go down as well. Right. And while that cost of ownership did go down as more entrance came into the ecosystem, as they raised to the bottom on price, the reality is a lot of brands also got caught with what I describe as a shiny object syndrome. other words, like they're, they're navigating all of these challenges. They see a shiny object. this new piece of software that could solve this particular problem for me by software. And.

Ramon Vela (24:07.882)
Yeah.

Neal (24:33.588)
Boom. As much as each one of those softwares may cost less than legacy providers. Now they wake up and they have 52 apps that are plugged into their Shopify store and they're there. They have what I call tech bloat. Right. So this whole, there's a new appetite for this lowering of total cost of ownership. One comes from having a little bit more rigor of who is in your tech stack. other words, lowering the lowering the number of tools that you have in your stack to, to run your business.

Ramon Vela (24:46.454)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (25:02.782)
But then also some of those tools really work well. How can I just have that same functionality, but save a lot of money? And that's where the agents are really coming in and displacing a lot of tools where is that tool really needed anymore? If I have an agent to do it for me. And so we've only started that. Like we're like, we're like a lot of software companies are still not fully internalizing that concept.

But the lens I'm looking at it from is if I was a shareholder in that company, right. Which I've been a shareholder in every company that I've been a part of. Then what, what is my view for what that equity will be worth three and five years from now? And that's the scary part, right? We don't, we are not commanding the same valuations that we were in 2021, right? Many of these companies raised capital during 2021.

Ramon Vela (25:48.704)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (25:59.89)
At valuations that were just absolutely insane, particularly for the e-comm space. And so the chance to catch up to that valuation. Well, that was a SaaS valuation at, at, at an absolute peak in frothy time. And nobody is giving SaaS that valuation anymore by virtue of what's happening with AI and agents. And therefore what is the equity going to be worth three, five years from now?

Ramon Vela (26:20.576)
Hmm.

Neal (26:26.57)
And that's the lens by which I'm letting it kind of guide all of my decisions and predictions.

Ramon Vela (26:26.592)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (26:31.02)
Yeah, no, I think that's smart. Wow. mean, when I hear you speak about that, and I know this has already been happening for a while, the, just think about the days when I started selling software. It's like, can sell e-commerce software for like 10, 20, know, $30,000, you know, and those, I kind of, you know, those days are all gone now. But it's just, wow, that, and that hasn't even, that been that long yet, but in such a span of time, things have changed so much.

But what hasn't changed is the direct mail part of it. And I have some questions about that. One other thing you mentioned that I thought was interesting, and I just want to unpack a little bit, is about brands and the website. Now, I realize that the brand's website has become less and less vital as time goes on. And especially with social media and all these other places, and now, of course, like...

search and, purchase being able to be available on, on, you know, chat GPT and other platforms like that. So, I mean, it's just, you know, the website is becoming less and less important, but I feel like in some ways the website was part of creating a brand perspective. So just from a brand perspective, without a website, how are brands going to be doing that? Or are we already seeing that now through

social media, through user-driven content, through other ways. Without a website, will brands be able to continue building their brand, their personality, their ethos, whatever, what they mean for the consumer?

Neal (28:13.054)
Yeah, that's a great question. think, I think a website is a great like endpoint for telling what that brand story is, but I would say, or, or summing it up, but I would say like for the vast majority of consumers that are buying into a brand story, that journey is happening through multiple touch points in the ecosystem, right? It's that's happening on social it's happening on UGC from existing customers of the brand that are telling.

impactful stories themselves that, that connect with other, you know, individuals as well, different forms of discovery are telling that story. yes, like there's going to be a huge push to like, how do I tell that story? So I'm discoverable in L L L mean, that's going to be a huge push. Like, how do I preserve that? But yeah, that's going to be an absolute challenge, right? Like we've only scraped the surface. I'm like, how do I truly storytell or at least

Ramon Vela (28:52.364)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (29:10.74)
control the storytelling around my brand, when it's not built around that website, we were literally in the beginning of the first inning on, on, on that front, but you're absolutely right. It's, harder. And for, for it's going to vary on a category basis, but you know, depending on what the product is, there's a different varying or varying levels of contemplation with the customer, right? the contemplation phase of

Someone buying a bicycle is different than the contemplation phase of someone buying a supplement. Right. And so the more contemplation that's required, the more the website is going to play a role that it's a consumer that wants to research, that wants to find more reasons to, to buy, that wants to find a differentiation between the brand story or product. Right. So I think the website will still have more longevity for brands that have a higher

contemplation phase by virtue of their product. but yeah, there's definitely going to be a challenge in terms of like maintaining the story brands mission if it's happening in other channels.

Ramon Vela (30:19.85)
Yeah, yeah. And I think I see that's already happening. It's been happening for the last few years and I think it's just more and more becoming less and less important to have the website. Although, I mean, think it's still like something you have to do, but I've just noticed that it's getting less and less. And because there's so many other ways to help spread that brand in different vehicles. So let's get back to post-pilot.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful kind of explanation as to like how you got there and why you believe that. You know, in some ways, kind of, I've been on the simmered train of thought, although for different reasons. and what's interesting to me is, you know, like for instance, from my own personal anecdotal experience, you know, I actually started off marketing in the 2000s.

Well, actually in the mid 1990s and then up to like close to the late 2000s. And in the 90s, especially direct mail was so like, that was like part of every marketers quiver. that was part of what you did. Like that was a capability that you built up. It was his own animal. You had to figure out basically like how to create a really great Demerik marketing piece, how to put the messaging in there.

you know, and then of course all the logistical aspects of it and so forth and the mailing and all of this. And there was a whole industry around it and you know, mailing houses and all sorts of other stuff. mean, it was, it was interesting. And I find it interesting that we're kind of like floating back there again as well. And it almost feels like the defensible strategy that you're saying in some ways is like,

Look for the industries that will have opportunity but not be massively changed through AI. It's like those are the defensible ones, ones that can, but it's not as easy as just that. If I have what you're saying correctly, it's not just easy in saying, you know, those industries that are not going to be vastly changed through AI, but it has to be an industry that's not only going to be vastly changed through AI, but

Ramon Vela (32:40.404)
like you said, going to be improved by AI and on top of that can utilize AI to make it better than it was before and crisper and more individual or personalized, however you want to say that. So it's something that's not just defensible, but also enhanced through AI. I find, and I, if I understand correctly, I think that's a smart strategy.

Neal (33:06.408)
Yeah, spot on. mean, I think when you think about the concept of

Ramon Vela (33:11.933)
I'm sorry. It also has to have the metrics, the provable metrics that will help you justify being in that space as well, which you also mentioned as well. So anyhow, I just want to make sure we mentioned that.

Neal (33:28.274)
Yeah, exactly right. mean, I think, when you're talking about that previous time where like mailing houses, like were a huge part of the stack, that was also during a time where, you know, Mar tech, any type of those are pre Facebook type of, environments where, how else do you reach your customer? Right. and, and so now when you think about it, okay, as

Ramon Vela (33:36.374)
Thank

Neal (33:55.882)
digital advertising took hold. know, now we, now we reach 2006, 2007, it's really starting to take hold in a, in a bigger way. And then all of a Facebook paid ads comes and now we have all these new channels, Tik TOK reels, uh, Snapchat. And now app love and like all of these, there's an incredible appetite for the finding new channels to acquire a customer. If you take a look at what happened with

With, with Metta brands had gotten to a point where they were like, Hey, this is the only channel in which I can grow my business. Like, that, that existed for several years. Right. And the Metta tax, we would call it is like, Hey, I'm paying more to acquire every customer more than I was the previous year, but I have no choice, but to be okay with it. Right. And so.

When you think of that, that's where the concept of the owned channels took a greater like meaning and power, right? For a brand is like, okay, when iOS 14 hit and then brands who were so addicted to that digital growth now are not able to target their customer in the same way they were before. That's where the own channels and being able to like say, okay, let's hit them with email. Let's develop relationship through SMS. Let's.

use other channels that could be valuable to engage with our customers, right? That was a value proposition at Tapcart as well, you know, with the mobile apps, like how do you develop a close relationship with the customer? And that was a value proposition with direct mail as well, right? As time goes on though, one thing that didn't change was the fact that the meta tax continued to increase over that. So LTV was now finally being prioritized, like, hey, if I'm going to get profitable with my customer, the only way I can get profitable

Ramon Vela (35:32.118)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (35:54.026)
It's not happening at the top of the funnel because it's so costly to acquire. It's going to happen if I can extract more LTV from them. Right. And that was a mindset that really took hold like post 2021 all the way through 2024, would say like tail tail end of 2024. Right. The, then you see something like Apple of and hit the scene, you know, late last year. And there's a beautiful story to be told.

Ramon Vela (36:17.067)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (36:22.568)
as it pertains to Apple oven. It's that it's, it's not about what kind of platform it was. wasn't what kind of format it was. It wasn't about what kind of audience it was getting in front of. It was just a another performance marketing channel that allowed a brand to diversify away from meta. And the returns were very meta like, right? Not necessarily substantially better than meta, maybe incrementally.

better than Metta, but why was there such a mad rush to go to Applovin and to experiment there and test there? And why did brands decide to hit the accelerator so quickly just after testing for two, three weeks? It's because there was just so much pent up appetite to diversify an acquisition channel that brands currently were allocating 80 to 90 % of their acquisition budget to a machine that was going to charge them more over time.

And so as soon as they can diversify just a little bit, they're actually less concerned about the return and they're more concerned about what this means for them to be able to shift dollars from one place to another as time goes on, depending on how performance happens and, and based on what their CAC was going to be. So the reason why that story is so powerful is that we look at it now and there's like this incredible crowd, crowded market for

channels, digital channels that a marketer can hit a consumer. Right. And then you combine the digital channels with ones that are lower in the funnel, like email and SMS. And what it comes down to is. Customers are increasingly becoming desensitized to digital channels because there's so much digital, right? So much digital and don't get me wrong. They still work, but at the end, they don't work.

Ramon Vela (38:08.715)
Hmm.

Neal (38:17.706)
At the, at the velocity that they once did on a per consumer basis. Right. Again, we're just becoming more and more desensitized right now. An email inbox to us is now viewed as a to-do list. Right. As opposed to a place of joy that you go. Right. Um, if someone is going to, um, uh, a, uh, going to tick-tock or they're going to Instagram, they're going there to be entertained.

Ramon Vela (38:23.154)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (38:36.747)
Hmm.

Neal (38:45.064)
And they become increasingly desensitized to those ads, right? That's part of the reason why CAC has gone up so much is because the performance of those channels has diminished over time. And a lot of that has because of digital desensitivity, right? By the individual consumer, right? And so that's where the unique part of like, okay, what if we could do mail in a way that is relevant to the way performance marketers

Ramon Vela (38:58.215)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (39:13.68)
analyze their channels, but also give the ability to cut through the digital noise. Right. So that's where traditional mailing houses just don't work. They just don't work in today's day and age because that's not the way there's no way to track performance. there, there's like giant minimums that you need to do in order to make it worthwhile and have economies of scale to bring the cost down on a per unit basis. And

that requires brands to make big bets and not be able to track performance like they do now. In the previous world, that was totally fine. But in the way performance marketers analyze their channels right now, it's with more rigor and detail. And there's so much more of a focus on incrementality, right? From one channel to the other. And so that's where, what if you could build programmatic, formal,

But then give marketers the analytics to demonstrate and see the incrementality that's being driven as a result of that channel too. And that's what we've built, right? That's where the opportunity is here is that like, we are an own channel. You have your customer's mailing address. You have the ability to send a message to that customer without an algorithm at play. Right. And so.

thereby making an own channel, but then also have the ability to hit that customer at the right place at the right time and have different conversations with different customers, depending on who they are, what they're interested in, what their behaviors are. Right. It's not one postcard sent to every customer. It could be a different postcard sent to every single different human being, depending on who they are and what their tastes are. Right. And without any minimums, it could be literally five pieces on any given day. Right.

Ramon Vela (40:50.56)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (41:03.656)
And I think the opportunity is where we're moving in the funnel, right? Where we're known is unlocking more LTV. So an example would be, okay, a customer that, made a purchase over 12 months ago and the, the, Brent and they've been trying to retarget that customer to bring that customer back and reactivate them via email and have been unsuccessful in doing so. Well, let's just take that segment and hit them with a postcard.

Ramon Vela (41:33.76)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (41:34.098)
Right. And reactivate them. This allows us to work with other channels too, with email, with SMS in conjunction. It's not one or the other. It's working in tandem to see which one works because every customer has a different way in which they want to interact with the brand that they love. So how do we do that in a way that the performance it's going to meet the performance marketers rigor, right. And the retention marketers rigor, but then where the opportunity lies is as we move up funnel. So what if a customer.

Never bought something. How do you leverage direct mail to acquire the new customer? That's the unlock that we've built and are continuing to build on right now. That's what's going to create the up and to the right for post-pilot is the opportunity to say, where can we tap into the acquisition budget? Right? When you think about tech or when you think about retention tools, there's typically a cap a brand's willing to pay for all of it.

There's a cap on what a brand's willing to spend on SMS is a cap on what a brand's willing to spend on email, or maybe a tool for their website or a piece of software they need to buy. always a cap on it, but what. This is the magic question is like, what is a brand willing to spend on meta if it's performing for there's no limit. They will just continue to increase spend over time if metas performing for them. So when it comes to top of funnel budgets,

Ramon Vela (42:42.464)
Hmm.

Ramon Vela (42:51.851)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Neal (43:00.372)
There's unlimited runway. So the question is, how do we make ourselves North in the funnel? And that's what we've done, right? Right now, if Ramon goes to a brand's website, clicks on a few product pages and leaves, doesn't even add any item to the cart, just leaves. We de-anonymize Ramon's mailing address and can hit them with a postcard. Right? So now you think of BFCM. BFCM.

Ramon Vela (43:05.365)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (43:23.071)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (43:29.61)
95 of the sites visitors are going to buy something. 95 % won't. We can target those 95 % with a mailing address and de-anonymize those and allow the brand to send a different message, depending on what products they clicked on and what their behavior was on site and be able to target a funnel. This is where we start to make it an acquisition tool as opposed to just a retention tool.

Ramon Vela (43:53.028)
Mm, love that. By the way, I love that phrase that you use, email is a to do list. You know, we've been talking about a lot of changes in the software industry. And I was like, man, this guy's not letting anyone go. You know, he just hit the email folks. But that's the reality, right? But I think that term is so accurate because

I do feel that way. I never thought about it that before. Like I go through my emails and I'm gonna have, I just have to quickly go delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete until I see something that I think is relevant for me. And that's, you know, it's become more of like, I not like what, Hey, I'm going to wake up and what am I going to see today? It's more like, what am I going to wake up and clear my inbox? Like, how am I going to delete the stuff? So anyhow, I just thought that was a, a great phrase that you used.

So I have some other questions that I'm gonna wait till later because they're not necessarily about Postpilot, but they're more about our discussion. But I wanna make sure that people understand Postpilot and what you just said. The biggest question I have, and thank you, I think you did a great job and I understand where Postpilot is. I wanna delve a little bit more deeper into how AI is going to improve it. And then I also wanna unpack a little bit more about how are you capturing the performance metrics?

Let's give that example because it's coming up. So BCF, know, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Week and all that stuff is coming up in next few weeks. So basically around a month's time from now. you know, 90, 90, you know, 100 % they're going to target it 100 % of their audience. Maybe 5 % are going to buy or 10 % or whatever that percentage is. It's going to be a smaller percentage than the overall list that they have, the overall number of people.

You said that you could take the other 95 % or other 90 % and target them for acquisition or target them for, you know, the purchase. If you did that, like let's say a company saw that and thought, okay, that sounds like a pretty good opportunity. How do we capture the metrics from that other 90 %? How do we know who is following up, who is doing, just walk us through that. I know it's kind of mechanical, but.

Ramon Vela (46:17.752)
I want people to understand how this whole thing will work out kind of in its entirety.

Neal (46:24.2)
Yeah, that's a great question. you know, when you think about, first off, we're, when we are firing off the postcards, we know that when the postcard was delivered to the recipients addressed, right? So when they receive it, there'll be a live dashboard inside a brand Shopify dashboard. That's reflecting that as, as a campaign goes out, how much of that campaign campaign has been received in terms of like the recipients actually receiving the postcard to their, to their address. And then over the course of that.

we're able to develop, we've developed an internal dashboard that shows the incrementality driven by that direct mail. The way we measure the incrementality is doing it through holdouts, essentially taking an identical audience and holding them out from sending direct mail to see the actual incremental effect that direct mail has on those that did receive versus one that didn't receive a postcard, right? So that is like the gold standard for measuring that incrementality.

And then doing that in various markets and various geos and understanding like how that impacts various audiences. We are like best friends with Klaviyo, like literally best friends with Klaviyo. Like from our perspective, it's not email or SMS or postcards. In fact, we actually help the other channels work a lot better because we love to play at the end of a particular Klaviyo flow, a Klaviyo flow that let's say a customer came to a brand's website.

Ramon Vela (47:36.395)
Yeah.

Neal (47:49.13)
And what's the first thing you see on every website is like, Hey, thanks for being a first time customer. Here's your 21st at 20 % welcome offer, right. Or 10 % welcome offer. Well, how many of those individuals put in their details? Cause they're like, Hey, I don't know if I will buy something, but I might. And I don't want to click away from this pop-up, but I want the discount. So let me go ahead and insert my email address. Keep browsing. But 90 % of those still don't end up buying anything in that moment. Right. But you have their email address now.

Right. And so then how do you then, every brand now is taking that email address, putting it into a Clayvio welcome flow. And there's still going to be a small percentage of those that actually convert for purchase. There'll be plenty that do, but there's still going to be 90 % that don't even convert from a welcome flow. So what can we do at the end of that welcome flow, right. To hit them in a different channel. So that is all automated, right? We it's truly dynamic, right?

Ramon Vela (48:19.135)
Mm-hmm.

Ramon Vela (48:41.365)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (48:46.422)
As more consumers are coming into a particular segment, meeting certain conditions and falling into a segment in Klaviyo, it's programmatically also creating triggers inside Postpilot as well. Right. So it's not like we need to batch out and print 10,000 cards. No, they're printed the second that that consumer has it on a one-off basis. Right. If we need to print five cards, 10 cards. And so that's the beauty of it. Right. And then on top of that, you think of it.

Ramon Vela (48:57.323)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (49:15.254)
Of moving further up the funnel. So everything we've talked about in terms of acquisition has been on a warmer audience. This is a customer that's been on the website. They maybe clicked a few product pages or maybe they abandoned a cart or something like that. Right. That intent level is already there. It's a net new customer and we're able to demonstrate that, in dashboard, how we acquired them, but then how do we move even further up funnel and actually do cold prospecting. And that's where the AI conversations coming in, in a huge way right now. Right.

The entire underpinning of what that acquisition channel is for us is built on AI building lookalike audiences, analyzing customer data, analyzing customer behavior, and then helping build audiences for brands to do cold prospecting. Right? What if we could analyze the customer behavior of Ramon across the 38 other brands in the Shopify ecosystem that he's shopped from?

understand his tastes, understand what he likes, understand what he doesn't like, understand the places where he has a high LTV or a low LTV and then understand where, whether or not he has responded to a postcard in the past and then go target that type of audience. Right. And so that's the beautiful part is I think where AI comes into the conversation is like, how do we help brands build, build an acquisition channel and funnel.

using AI and the insane data set that we have at our fingertips.

Ramon Vela (50:46.379)
I love that. Pause. Just a quick question for you. I know we started off a little bit later. It's going to be 11 15 right now. Do you have time to go over? OK.

Neal (50:57.514)
I I do. I have 15 minutes.

Ramon Vela (51:01.355)
Okay, I'll make sure we finish that. I just have a few more questions. Okay, unpause one, two, three. I love that explanation. And by the way, I didn't mean to infer that you were against emailing us over, but I think I do agree with what you said. I think email and a lot of other places are, you know, it's getting harder. It's getting much harder. And, you know, there is,

a lot to unpack in what you describe. I just want to make this as easy as possible for brands to understand like how to implement this. One thing, and I'm there's a bunch of other FAQ type questions I could ask, but one thing I just want to, I'm curious about is the direct note pieces themselves. Are these templates? Are they created by the brand? Can the brand personalize them? Brandetize them, however you want to say it.

Who helps with the messaging? Is there messaging involved? Do you you guys already put all of that in this place or have like a library of things that people can use? I guess from a very operational standpoint, tactical standpoint, how does this work? Like someone listening to this thinks this is a really good idea, is fascinated by this, wants to start, goes to postpilot.com, the website, and wants to get started.

How is this going to impact our team? Do they need someone to be focused on this? they have, do they need copywriters? I mean, a lot of stuff, I'm sure you guys figured it out.

Neal (52:37.79)
Yeah. this service is fully white glove. So we would do all of the design work for every brand on our platform. Right. now there's plenty of brands that still want to do the design themselves, whatever that creative is we can do. There are no templates or fixed parameters and whatnot. Like brand wants to design their card. more, more than welcome to do. So what we take pride on is the fact that this actually can truly be an autopilot hands off channel.

And so we have our designers that can take a brand's creative and digital assets and brand guidelines and design for them. Brand approves, brand makes tweaks and whatnot. And we take care of it. The average brand has anywhere between 15 to 20 different. Cards going at any given moment. And we design all of that for them. So it's a truly a white glove channel. There is no like minimum, there's no like incremental cost to have design work done. That's just a part.

of the service that we offer. It's truly white glove because you know, if we're really trying to be a dynamic programmatic and acquisition focused channel, it really does have to run on autopilot to a degree. And the part that, that is probably the largest tax on brands is understanding, Hey, who do I target and be the creative piece. Right. And so we take all of that off their plate for them.

Ramon Vela (54:05.162)
What are the things that you want to do you want to make brands aware of in terms of the tactical aspects of this? Is there anything else that they need to be aware of?

Neal (54:15.978)
I think it's the concept of like brands not knowing when do I get direct mail involved? Right? Like when is the right time to do that? Um, is there a specific moment? And I think that's a, that's like an analysis per analysis paralysis type of moment for the brand. Um, if you think about it, any brand at any given moment, I mean, you could have some of the most successful brands in the planet and they have three or four human beings on their marketing team. That's it.

Like super lean teams, leaner than they ever have been. So the ability for them to take on two or three different projects at any given moment, that's like the max, right? So the goal is to make it as easy as humanly possible. Oftentimes, if a brand is not like kind of dragging their feet on direct mail, what ultimately brings their attention back to the channel quite aggressively is when they look at their customer acquisition costs. Completely blowing up, up into the right.

with no end in sight, first order profitability is harder than it's ever been to achieve. And that's where they typically start. And that's where we recommend folks to start too. Right. think, nine out of 10 potential customers come in saying, Hey, test me on acquisition. I want me, I need new customers. Let's start with acquisition. And from our perspective, we actually flip the script and say, Hey, listen, I know we want to do acquisition. know we want to move a funnel.

But let's start with the retention audiences first, because that's where we're going to understand. Like the data, like what from your existing audience that you already know a fair amount about what's resonating with them, what creative works, what types of formats work, what strategies work, what segments work. And then from the learnings we get there, then we move up funnel, right?

Ramon Vela (56:01.195)
And so I'm on the website postpilot.com and I'm just taking a look at it. And I went onto the pricing page and it feels very affordable for brands of all sizes. And you have like four, was it three different or four different plans.

One being a custom elite and so forth. But to me, looks like just the pricing sounds very affordable. Anything else that you want them to know about in terms of the website, any particular solution or attribute about the company that you want people to be aware of.

Neal (56:43.49)
I think it's just one of those moments where I'm like the most excited I've ever been in my entire career, by virtue of the, the organization that I'm not part of. And, know, when you think about post-pilot and you think about what it means to have a partner, right? I think I've had the luxury of personally knowing and working with so many brands that also already work with post-pilot. And that was a huge part of my decision to join.

So things that you won't see on a website are like the kind of people that are here, the kind of people that are here that are obsessed with serving the customer. the ones that will bend over backwards and make a fire drill out of every small thing, that a brand could possibly need. and that's something that I've always seen from the outside in knowing post-violent I've known Drew and Mike for a really long time. spend 60 % of their day customer facing and for.

Ramon Vela (57:18.41)
Mm-hmm.

Neal (57:43.338)
You know, post pilot is now one of the top 20 most successful Shopify ecosystem software companies to exist. Right. From a revenue perspective, from a success perspective, top 20 in the entire Shopify ecosystem. And I was wondered like, what was the secret sauce in the trajectory that we've seen particularly over the last like 24 months with post pilot it's because the culture of serving the customer starts from the top drew and Mike, the two co-founders.

are customer facing 60 % of their day. And when you typically look at, at software companies that have achieved a certain level of scale, like what post-pilot has already achieved, you see, the distance oftentimes from leadership interacting directly with the customer. That's completely the opposite case here, which creates this infectious culture inside the organization, that I've never witnessed before in my career.

And that's the part that I'm so excited about. So what you won't see on that website is a culture of that. it's not just about the software we provide, the solution we provide, but it's also like how we can perform as your partner, in helping you succeed. And I just been, you know, blessed and lucky to be a part of this journey now.

Ramon Vela (59:03.048)
Well, thank you for that. And I just want to mention again, the website is postpilot.com. You go on there, there's got these navigation button solutions, success stories, resources, company pricing. You can also book a demo. And under solutions, you've got some of the things that we just talked about, prospecting, retargeting, retention, and reactivation. And then it talks about featured categories, which leads me to ask the question.

You already have up there CPG apparel, home furnishing, pet supplies, THC slash CBD, which is I think is a great one to have because there's so many other barriers to advertising for some of those folks. there any categories, excuse me, are there any categories that do not work or are not good for this? I can't imagine any, but I just thought I'd ask.

Neal (59:54.196)
Yeah, we don't have a single category that's not performing right now. There's, I think, it really also comes down to a cyclical, aspect of things, but like, think, there is literally no category that does not perform with direct mail. There's certain, categories that perform really well, like health and wellness as a sector, performs really well. And it forms really well during Q5, Q5 being the new, new, new year, new me.

Ramon Vela (01:00:19.54)
Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Neal (01:00:22.922)
Um, phase that we're going to be heading into shortly. Um, uh, furniture is an incredible space. It's a high contemplation purchase typically for, for a customer. And typically it works really well there. But then at the same time, baby apparel, um, you know, toddler brands perform extremely well because of the short LTV window that those brands have to deal with. So there's so many different use cases. Um, so it's just about understanding like.

what a brand needs to solve, what are the specific pain points and the way they serve their customer and connect with them, and then how we can specifically solve that. We've done that for every category.

Ramon Vela (01:00:58.582)
Well, this has been amazing. I want to be respectful of your time. I'm really, really impressed by a couple of things. One is I'm impressed by the company. Honestly, I kind of feel because of my background and I'm a little, you know, I've been around for a while doing this, but I've always thought that direct mail should be a part of every, you know, every marketing campaign. And it lost favor, obviously, because of our focus on digital.

But I've been seeing, as you have seen, think, since the pandemic has not stopped or whatever it is, since we've been able to get out and do our thing, that more and more people want to be in the physical world, more people want to be in live meetings, more people want to be around other folks, and so forth. And in some ways, I kind of feel like that's people's direct mail. People are feeling that with the digital side, which you kind of described a little bit.

And I think direct mail can have a really good positive effect on that. And it's for me, it's not the only solution, but it's it's a definitely, it's, it's definitely something that can help your other efforts and, or your other efforts can be helped with direct mail. So I appreciate it. I really love it. Um, one thought that keeps going through my head is, um, I love that Neil is always ahead of the curve. So you're kind of, you know, you talked about.

you know, some of the stuff that you're worried about in terms of AI and SaaS and so forth. And you're making this move. And I'm just thinking like, wow, he's kind of getting ahead of the curve. Like, what do you know that we don't know? Is there going to be a bubble person? No, just kidding. Well, maybe I'm not kidding, but I just feel like you're making a really, you're making a very strategic move here. And it sounds like it's a great company. And, and I just, I love what you're doing. I love your energy and I love.

to see where you're going and what you're doing as a person, because I feel like you're very astute strategically. so I think people can learn simply by the moves that you're making, because you start to think, okay, I wonder, you what can I do that is Neil-like in terms of strategy? So I appreciate, man, I appreciate what you're doing. And I love that you're a part of this new venture. I definitely...

Ramon Vela (01:03:18.279)
see a lot of value in this from the perspective of the brands that I work with and that I talk to. So I definitely will recommend it to them. But thank you, man. So let's leave it with last words, anything that you want to leave with the audience. And then, of course, where do you want them to go and how do you want them to contact you?

Neal (01:03:38.314)
First Ramon, it's an absolute honor to even be on the show. You know, as I've followed your journey, I've just seen some of the stories that you've been able to unlock and the learnings you've been able to bring to your audience too. And so, just having me on here, like it's just such a privilege. So I'm just so incredibly grateful for that. I always preach the Ramon Gossipel and how amazing your show is. So thank you so much for having me on.

Ramon Vela (01:04:04.767)
you

Neal (01:04:06.122)
In of where you can find me, I live on LinkedIn. So I eat, sleep, and breathe LinkedIn. So you can always find me there. I encourage anyone to connect with me. I love building relationships. I love talking with other smart e-comm folks and look forward to finding them there.

Ramon Vela (01:04:23.198)
Great. So everyone out there, we have just had Neil Goyal, who is SVP over at Postpilot. You can go to postpilot.com as a website. We're to have that link as well as any social media links that they have. We're going to put them on our podcast description, which you could find at Spotify.

I was gonna say Google, Spotify, Apple, et cetera. And anywhere you listen to podcasts, you should be able to find it. Simply type in the story of a brand show and you should be able to find it. Beyond that, I wish we had more time because I think there's a larger discussion to have made, but I really love these moves that Neil makes. And this one in particular, I think it's very valuable for brands. And I've always been a big fan of direct mail and I'm glad that companies like Postpilot are keeping that alive. Because I think there's a lot of value and I think

how they're adding AI and how they're just enhancing it, I think is really worth a look at if you're a brand and you're listening to the show, I think it's definitely worth looking at. So go ahead and do that. Visit the website, sign up for the newsletter, a Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Cyber Weekend's coming up. I don't know, actually that's one question I had, how quickly can people start this?

Neal (01:05:35.658)
I get started and up and live in 24 hours.

Ramon Vela (01:05:38.034)
Okay, so that's something to think about if you hear this before the holiday season. But even if you don't have time for this and you're interested in it, he just mentioned that a big push is happening obviously in Q5, as you mentioned, or Q1, depending on your calendar year. And I think this will be worth looking at, so go take a look at it. Beyond that, everyone, stay safe, stay sane, stay healthy, and one last thing. We've all been going through a lot of stuff in the last...

you know, seven years or so with the pandemic, with geopolitical wars, with politics, with domestic politics, everything else. People are little stressed out. People are anxious. Let's do ourselves a favor. Let's just be kinder to each other. And I know we can make this human experience a better one. Beyond that, thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode of the story of a brand.