00:00:00
Arielle Feger: All right. Thank you everyone for being here. I know it's a little hot in the room, but I appreciate everyone taking the time. I'm Arielle, and I'm here with Lauren and Laura. I'd love you to introduce yourself.
Lauren Copland: Absolutely. Hi. Lauren Copland, and I am the Ecosystem Partnerships Lead at Block. Block is a parent company for Square, Cash App, Afterpay, TIDAL, et cetera. So very excited to be here and with this wonderful group of women.
Laura Cosgrove: Hi, and not to make it more confusing, but I'm Laura. I'm the Head of Strategic Partnerships at Rokt. We are an ecommerce relevance technology, and we work with the largest brands in the world, everyone from Sephora to Target to Block.
Arielle Feger: Awesome. All right, so let's start with the Afterpay relationship. Lauren, what made the partnership a strong fit initially, and what have you learned from working together that you wouldn't have known at the outset?
00:01:00
Lauren Copland: Absolutely. So Rokt was a perfect fit for the partnership with Afterpay. The focus is very much on the customer, and that was a key component. So all things with Afterpay, I think everyone knows that the shopper and the merchants that work with us love us because of the checkout and post-checkout experience truly being seamless, trusted, and just very simple.
Lauren Copland: And so it was crucial that as we were looking to bring partners into that environment, that it is a partner that is very much additive and someone that is not interfering with what the customer is there to do at the end of the day, which is checking out. So Rokt was a perfect fit for that. They bring offers to our customers that are a perfect fit and, as I said, very much additive.
00:02:00
Lauren Copland: So we very much have seen that our partnership has grown over the years. Today, we are seeing about a 32% year-over-year growth in our revenue, which is fantastic. And then from a positive offers perspective, we're at a 4.6% response rate as opposed to Rokt's 3.8% network average.
Lauren Copland: So very much demonstrating that everything that we're doing together is absolutely working. And I would say that over the years, I think we started and you think about bringing offers to these customers, and that's very much what it is on its face. But we've spent several, several years really working and testing and honing it and making it into what it is today, which is a fantastic partnership.
Arielle Feger: Strong partnerships tend to have learnings that can be used beyond the original use case. What signals do you look for, Lauren, when you're evaluating where else a partner might create value?
00:03:00
Lauren Copland: A partnership starts out and you typically are looking at what could be beneficial for customers and for the company. And then you take a step back and you think, "Okay, how else can that be applied throughout the company?" And that's going to very much change and vary depending on which product you're looking at. So while the core product may work for what you launch with, you definitely have to look at it through a different lens.
Lauren Copland: Across Block, we have Afterpay, Cash App, Square, TIDAL. Each one of those, while our core ethos and mission is economic empowerment, has a different end user. What we did for Afterpay isn't always going to be a perfect fit for those other brands. So it's really important that you look at what is the customer journey, who is the end user, and how you need to modify and tweak it accordingly to make it the right fit for those other brands.
00:04:00
Arielle Feger: Digging a little bit further into that, as you approach opportunities across your portfolio, how are you making sure each new use case is tailored to the right business, the right customer, the right use case?
Lauren Copland: It's very much digging into those components as far as the customer journey, who is that end user that's going to be using it, and seeing where there are strengths and weaknesses across both. There may be things that we're trying to solve for on the Block side that, through our partnership with Rokt, we've identified that they have X, Y, and Z where we can apply learnings and help address some of those needs.
Laura Cosgrove: That's exactly what our technology is built to solve for as well, to take some of that workload off of our partners. From a partnership perspective, we love going deep with our clients and understanding their business needs and their pain points and being deeply curious.
00:05:00
Laura Cosgrove: But from a technology standpoint, what we're trying to do is unlock relevance to every customer in every moment, no matter where we see them. And we do that in real time by listening to the real customer signals. I think what has been so successful about this partnership, Lauren just quoted that she is above our network average, is because they're such design partners for us. They are first to market with many of our new products, like Shoppable Ads, which we just launched a couple of months ago.
Laura Cosgrove: They provide feedback, and they really cater and customize our integration with them to solve their needs.
Arielle Feger: Lauren, when you see potential for a partner to create value somewhere else within your organization, how do you collaborate with other teams to make that happen?
00:06:00
Lauren Copland: Collaboration is key. It's both internal and external collaboration. A lot of times, in working with a partnership, I will identify either the core piece that we're already partnering with them on and then look internally to see how else we could work with them.
Lauren Copland: On the flip side, we may have a challenge that we're trying to solve for that I will bring to Rokt and say, "Hey, we have this thing. I think these components could work. Can I throw it over the fence, see if you all can dig into it and unpack it a bit more?" But it's a lot of asking all the right questions. What are we trying to solve for? Who is the end user in this case? And then starting to have those conversations internally and externally to see what solution could be a good fit.
Arielle Feger: Laura, from your perspective, how do you build trust and context with the Block team?
00:07:00
Laura Cosgrove: Whenever we're looking at a new opportunity across the Block portfolio, obviously we would love to have a great referral from Lauren's team as we're meeting new stakeholders. I think unless you're truly solving problems and bringing value to the customer and the business in one unit, you're not going to make it into other units.
Laura Cosgrove: So you need to prove yourself, whether it's a proof of concept or a test-and-learn mindset. But you do need to bring that strong credibility and trust with one business unit before you expect to expand into other areas of the business.
Arielle Feger: As a partnership expands, many other stakeholders are going to get involved. How do you keep it from being too many cooks in the kitchen, and where does ownership need to sit?
Lauren Copland: I am a firm believer in having a single point of contact for a partnership. I apply that today through our partnerships team. Having that single point of contact truly allows for someone that's going to see across all the different initiatives that you have going on, so they know where to prioritize.
00:08:00
Lauren Copland: Additionally, they have a deep understanding of the partner, so they know where there are alternative areas we could dig into that may not be their bread-and-butter product. There may be other things that they're focused on. It's a great way to see across their organization and then bring that learning and really be that advocate internally as you try to solve problems internally and work with our partners to help solve those problems.
Lauren Copland: I think you can only do that if you have that single point of contact. Otherwise, you do get into a situation where you have too many cooks in the kitchen. That said, while you have that single point of contact, I do think that it is obviously very important to still collaborate and bring in all the different relevant teams. But having someone to really oversee all of that and be across all of it is very important and very valuable.
00:09:00
Laura Cosgrove: I'll just add to that. I think that sense of ownership is so key. Internally at Rokt, we structure our teams as single-threaded owners, and so we have business units that have all of the cross-functional resources that they need to be successful and to move autonomously and quickly when they are driving towards a common goal.
Laura Cosgrove: If you are dependent on someone else in another team who's potentially got competing priorities, it can be so hard to get things done. With our partners, it's so awesome having a contact with aligned objectives and skin in the game equally. We've had it plenty of times where we could be sitting with a contact who we're kind of like a side project for, and then they've had all these other things put onto their plate that take up all of their priorities.
Laura Cosgrove: Sometimes you have to have a frank conversation of, "Am I the right person in the business to be aligned to? And how else could we be structuring this partnership so that we are sitting with the right people who can make the decisions and move quickly?" Otherwise, the partnership is going to get stagnated.
00:10:00
Arielle Feger: Having a single contact also helps with my next question. How should learning be carried over from one use case to another? What are the things that can be standardized versus what needs to be custom-built each time?
Lauren Copland: I think the day-to-day operating mechanism that you've built with a partner is what can absolutely be replicated. But typically, depending on who the end user is, you're going to have to rejigger things and rework it, so it's not just going to be a complete rinse and repeat.
Lauren Copland: The partnership can exist the same, and the normal operating rhythm can be the same. But you do definitely have to take a step back and ask a lot more questions about how we're going to tackle this, how we're going to accomplish this, and what is going to be most successful for this specific use case or this different product. You're also often bringing in more teams from across the organization, potentially a different marketing team, a different product team, all of that.
00:11:00
Laura Cosgrove: Again, if you have that single point of contact overseeing it, they help keep that operating rhythm very similar. Hopefully, no matter where you are working across the organization, it should be very seamless.
Laura Cosgrove: We work with Afterpay on both the acquisition side of their business, acquiring new customers across Rokt's broader network of partners, and as an integrated partner, delivering relevant offers in their experience. What that provides is a holistic view of the customer from the top of the funnel all the way to the bottom.
Laura Cosgrove: Those teams can decide how they want to leverage those insights and those learnings, but it's ultimately partner-led. I have other partners where they have different brands within their portfolios, and they almost see them as competitive, and so they don't want to do any cross-learnings between those brands. It's entirely partner-led.
00:12:00
Arielle Feger: With brands that are a little more siloed, how do you work with them to carry those learnings across?
Laura Cosgrove: They could see them as competing brands that are grabbing different market share, or they want them to be uniquely creative and different. That's not for us to decide, and so we don't share those insights if that's not what they want.
Arielle Feger: There may be a commercial use case for expanding the partnership, but that doesn't always necessarily mean it's going to add value for the customer. How do you decide when it's worth expanding that partnership to add value rather than just a monetization opportunity?
00:13:00
Laura Cosgrove: Our core metric that we measure at Rokt is conversion per impression, and that's our North Star metric for determining relevance. We don't want a customer to just click on an offer. We don't want them to just view it. We want them to take up that offer and actually drive an acquisition and also stay with that brand.
Laura Cosgrove: We measure everything from conversion per impression, and if we deem that it's going to be a low-quality impression, we show nothing at all. We would rather get out of the customer's way and show nothing than show something that's going to introduce friction just for the sake of monetization.
Laura Cosgrove: What you'll find over time is that you will lose revenue in other areas. You could be creating an erosion of lifetime value. You could be meaning that they don't click on anything in the future. So it's better to protect the experience and the customer's journey in that moment and then play the long game.
00:14:00
Lauren Copland: At the end of the day, something does need to be beneficial for the customer. As I mentioned at the beginning, our mission across all of our products, no matter who the end user is, if it's a seller, a musician, a customer, whoever it is, we are all about driving that economic empowerment and making their lives easier.
Lauren Copland: Anything we're doing and offering to them does need to be easy and seamless. It can't just be a revenue generator. I very much appreciate Laura's point of view on that in the sense of if something is not beneficial, neither party should be doing it. We should be doing things that are a win-win for both companies, but ultimately, at the end of the day, a win for the customer and the end user.
Arielle Feger: I think it's really important for both parties to look at it long term and say, "Okay, maybe there's a quick win here, but what's more important?" Is it more important to have that lifetime value with that customer? Checkout is particularly sensitive because the customer is already so close to making a purchase.
00:15:00
Arielle Feger: Laura, what does a partner have to do to introduce something new at that point without distracting from the transaction?
Laura Cosgrove: We firmly believe that it needs to be relevant to the customer. What I mean by relevance over personalization is, when you're checking out in a retailer store and they're personalizing some content for you, they might say, "Laura, you should sign up to our credit card, and this is how many points you're going to save on this purchase." That's personalization.
Laura Cosgrove: Relevance is: should you be showing me the credit card at all, or could you be showing me another offer that's more relevant to me and what you know about me? Maybe I should be seeing an offer from a buy now, pay later provider. Maybe I should be seeing something for your loyalty program. It's that level of eligibility and relevance to the customer.
00:16:00
Laura Cosgrove: We sit on the payments page of all these large retailers. We wouldn't be able to exist there if we weren't creating a seamless and valuable experience for their customers, and we help them put Afterpay front and center in that moment only to the customers that Afterpay makes sense to.
Lauren Copland: Totally aligned and agreed. I think everyone knows that the checkout page is the most prime real estate. It is the make-or-break for the end of the journey if they do or do not check out. So it's crucial that whatever is being placed there is highly relevant.
Lauren Copland: That does make all of our jobs a little bit trickier as we are working on these because it takes a lot to get any sort of placement on that page. So really making sure that what is there is a value add and not a detractor.
00:17:00
Arielle Feger: What tends to be harder, proving that there's an opportunity worth pursuing or getting the right people aligned around it?
Lauren Copland: I'm going to say getting the right people aligned around it. Typically, when we're making any sort of change or bringing in a partner to talk through how to potentially solve a problem we may have within Block, it is very collaborative and for all the right reasons. We will have the design team, the product team, the growth team. It's a lot of teams.
Lauren Copland: It is really an education opportunity to help teach the teams about who the partner is, what their product is, and how we can partner together to grow that. It's always a fun problem to solve for, and it's usually something we do quite collaboratively with the partner.
00:18:00
Lauren Copland: Historically, Rokt has been wonderful at working with us on figuring out, giving us stats and details and visuals that we can bring into those initial conversations.
Laura Cosgrove: I think you said it perfectly. As a partner, I think you have to help build the business case for them and take as much of the heavy lifting as you can off of their plate, and understand their evaluation process.
Laura Cosgrove: Which stakeholders are you going to be engaging with? What do they care about? How do they like to typically see these things? Are they visual or should it be numbers? It's about being a real partner to them and understanding their process, and then trying to do as much of the heavy lifting as you can.
Arielle Feger: For companies in the audience who are evaluating their own partnerships, what's something you'd recommend putting in place early to help strengthen the relationship later?
00:19:00
Lauren Copland: I know I'm beating a dead horse, but a single point of contact for a partnership. It really does allow you to become more strategic with that partner.
Lauren Copland: I'll give a great example of a digital partner where we were partnering with them on a technology, a digital wallet, and there was an opportunity that opened up with hardware. Number one, we already had contacts into the company and had already started building that partnership and that relationship with that partner. But two, we were already a trusted partner who they knew and could rely on.
Lauren Copland: When they had this opportunity arise, they knew who to come to, the right contact. That person can also serve internally as a subject matter expert for that partner. So when you're building something internally or looking to solve for something internally, the company doesn't have to go on a fishing expedition for who to go to.
00:20:00
Laura Cosgrove: It's much easier when you do have that single point of contact. Again, they can see across the organization, but also know the ins and outs of the partnership.
Laura Cosgrove: From our perspective, aligned interests and aligned principles. Everything Lauren was saying at the beginning about why this partnership worked was that we both deeply cared about the customer and the customer experience. We don't always come across other partners like that.
Laura Cosgrove: Aligned principles are upfront: what are going to be our North Star metrics that we anchor this to, and how are we going to hold ourselves accountable to it? And then aligned interests, skin in the game on both sides. I think people really need to share the pressure of what you're trying to achieve.
Arielle Feger: They need to be held accountable to those numbers as well. I want to ask you one question that we didn't have on the list. If you look out a year from now, what's one thing that you'd like to stay the same in your partnerships, and what's one thing that you might want to change?
00:21:00
Lauren Copland: Stay the same, very much having a very healthy relationship and partnership between our two companies. My team and I tend to be very transparent amongst our partnerships, and I think that helps to build trust. So continuing that rhythm.
Lauren Copland: As far as what else, I know we are currently exploring other opportunities across Block and where else we could partner, and my hope would be that we are growing and expanding beyond Afterpay. Maybe 40% year-on-year growth.
00:22:00
Laura Cosgrove: Yes, that too. I think you articulated it perfectly. I just am so appreciative of how much you are a design partner to us and that we co-innovate together. The partnership does not stand still, so I want that to stay the same, funnily enough, which is that we keep moving forward and really pushing the boundaries on what we can achieve and test and iterate because it's possible now. Everything is deeply competitive as well, so we can't afford to stand still.
Arielle Feger: Absolutely. I think that is a great note to end on. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you, Laura. And thank you all for being here.
