As Chase explains, “There were no brands that were affordable enough and fit the San Diego style.” He seized the opportunity and built a direct-to-consumer business, tailor-made for Southern Californians like himself. By focusing on a local audience and niche market, Blenders developed a solid brand and soon became popular amongst international retailers.
Like many newcomers to the eCommerce scene, Blenders started out on Shopify and later upgraded to Shopify Plus. Backed by an Indiegogo campaign, he understood the power of word-of-mouth, but needed a solution to scale it and cement his brand.
Chase recognized the importance of customer content early on: “I looked to the Amazons of the world as an example, and saw that everything was built on reviews.” He decided to get Yotpo, initially just for customer reviews, star ratings, and commenting. He immediately saw the impact on customer engagement, community, and conversions, but he knew that to continue to grow, Blenders needed a solid strategy for using customer content to sell on social.
Working with Sum Digital marketing agency, Blenders decided to try incorporating user-generated content into their Facebook Dynamic Product Ads.
With Yotpo, they were able to take their best customer reviews and star ratings, and combine them with relevant product photos into effective ads. They were using FDPAs to retarget visitors with the exact product they had been browsing on site. With social proof, these highly-targeted ads would show hesitant shoppers just the right review of that product and bring them back to the site to checkout.
