[00:00:00] Hi everybody. Welcome to this episode of Commerce Today. I am Joshua Warren, CEO of Creatuity an e-Commerce Agency and your host here on Commerce Today. You may not hear the birds chirping, but I am finally outside. The weather in Dallas is finally cooperating with an outside episode here.

But we're not here to talk about the weather. I actually wanted to talk about e-commerce partnerships. So was working with a merchant recently and talking to them about a few of our trusted partners and I had to explain, what. What is a partnership for me and for creativity? Why does it matter?

What value does it bring? And I realize that there's really two kinds of agencies and two kinds of partnerships out there. And I wanna preface this by saying not all agencies and not all partners. I'm gonna give some pretty harsh examples. I am hopeful that. These are the exception and that most companies are playing fair with their customers and really looking for what's best for the merchant and for their end users.

And not just what makes them the most money. But diving right into that and probably the stickiest subject, I'm talking about [00:01:00] partnerships. For a long time at creativity, I actually did not pursue a lot of partnerships because early on in the industry, the impression I got of partnerships was, oh.

Kickbacks. This is where you can go earn a little bit extra money. Recommend this solution to every single client, and then this company's gonna pay you a commission on that. It's a way to build in, especially with the ones that pay on a recurring basis. It's a way to build in some nice recurring revenue.

I saw too many companies like that. Was it like that was the extent of the partnership? Like you send us your merchants, we'll send you dollars. And there are a lot of referral relationships that involve money changing hands, and that's not always bad, but these were relationships where all that really mattered was the money.

And there wasn't an actual like desire to see if it was a good fit for the merchant, if it made sense for the merchant. It was literally just, there were agencies back before SaaS and cloud solutions are so popular. I remember so many agencies that they made more money off of hosting commissions than they were making off their actual builds.

They'd say, Hey, [00:02:00] we can stand you up a Magento website. It'll be super quick, super cheap, but you have to host it with this company. And then of course, that company was paying them on a recurring basis. So I, like I said, resisted partnerships for a long time until I realized that. It's really not about the financial aspect.

It has to be about what's best for the merchant. And there are companies out there that really do look at partnerships as a way to drive the most value for the merchant. They see me as the agency owner and e-commerce consultant as the person that knows my merchants that I'm working with the best and can make the best recommendations.

And I think the key difference there is you have some people that. They recommend all of their partners to all of their merchants because they want those commissions, and then you have others that they will actually look and say, okay. Does it make sense for this particular partner to work with this particular merchant and only make those recommendations and referrals whenever it makes sense?

And that's the approach I take with our partners. I'm actually gonna highlight four of them and walk you through why a [00:03:00] merchant might be interested and might benefit from working with one of these partners. First up, I want to talk about IPAs. And this one I always get a lot of questions because people are like, I googled for iPASS and iPASS is a thing, but I couldn't find IPAs the company.

So iPASS stands for integration platform as a service, and there is a company actually that is called. ipa.com that provides an iPASS, so you wanna go to iPASS iPaaS s.com to see their website specifically, and not just all the IPAs out there. So IPAs, I actually had known one of their executives for quite some time, even before he was with the company, and he's the one that introduced me to what they do.

And as I dove into it, I realized that there were a lot of merchants that will spend money with Creatuity or other agencies. To build integrations between say, their ERP and their e-commerce platform. Those integrations, they've already been built, and in this case they've been built by iPaaS and you can save a lot of time and money by using those preexisting [00:04:00] integrations that iPaaS already has.

On top of that, because all they do is those integrations. iPaaS is a great platform they built out that makes it easier to catch errors to see how the data is flowing. It really just simplifies everything for both the merchants and the agencies. So they're one that if we're working with a merchant and they don't really have any integrations or.

All their integrations are simple or covered by things that are already an Adobe app builder. If it's an Adobe commerce client then we won't introduce them to iPASS 'cause it doesn't really make sense. But the second you start talking about an integration, especially an integration that iPaaS already has coverage for.

I'm definitely gonna introduce you to them. Especially since integrations can get expensive, building an integration from scratch, especially into some of the more complex ERPs or CRMs, can take a lot of hours and it adds up to a lot of dollars. And iPASS, at least as of this recording, they have a plan that fits the needs of a whole lot of merchants out there.

That's only 500 bucks a month, and yes, $500 a month, that is a lot of money, but it's nothing compared [00:05:00] to what you might spend building and supporting a custom integration. The next partner I wanna talk about is the opposite side. IPAs is one of our newest partners. ShipperHQ is one of our oldest partners.

We were working with them way back when they were still called web shop apps, and ShipperHQ, their new name pretty much says it all. They handle just everything you need around shipping rates and providing just an excellent shipping experience to your customers. We use them, a lot of the platforms have shipping rates built in.

And if you are looking for kind of the basics in shipping and shipping rates and quoting then. You probably don't need Shipper hq, but the second someone starts talking to me about conversion rate optimization, which I'll connect that in a second. About wanting to show specific delivery dates about having LTL or freight or cargo shipments, anything like that.

As soon as I hear those things, I think okay, this is a case where ShipperHQ can definitely help. And like iPaaS one of the things I like about ShipperHQ is they've built out this interface that allows merchants to do so much. [00:06:00] Without needing to involve an agency or developer. So once ShipperHQ is integrated into your site you can use the ShipperHQ admin panel base or interface to manage just about everything, about your shipping.

They also, they are the shipping experts. They continually win awards from UPS and other big shipping companies because of everything they've done around the world of shipping. They understand shipping. And so part of that is they understand that sometimes. U-S-P-S-U-P-S, FedEx, all the shippers, sometimes their API goes down and on a lot of e-commerce platforms.

If your shipping rate API goes down, people can't check out, they might just get an error at checkout or they might get a weird like fixed flat rate shipping option. They're not gonna get the shipping options you want them to have. ShipperHQ has this awesome feature though, where they can provide basically a backup for those APIs.

So if that API goes down. They know typically what, say the UPS rate for package going from Dallas to Austin is gonna be, and they can quote that [00:07:00] until the APIs back up. So saving you from those errors. And that starts getting into what I mentioned about conversion rate optimization. A lot of agencies you say, oh, I need help with conversion rate optimization.

They're gonna recommend heat mapping tools and. User testing tools and just different things around the user experience and all those are good tools, but the one thing so many of them miss, is a tool like ShipperHQ. And the reason I mention that is ShipperHQ can just so greatly improve the checkout experience.

It does so much around, for instance, being able to show the exact date that a package is gonna arrive so that if a customer wants to know when it's gonna arrive or wants to make sure they're gonna get it quickly. They can do that by using the shipper HQ system. So that's why when people start talking conversion rate optimization, I start looking at their checkout and shipping experience.

And if it's not solid then that's where I'm gonna recommend that they talk with Shipper hq. Next up I wanna talk a little bit about.digital. So they are a marketing and loyalty platform. They do some amazing things around helping you with marketing [00:08:00] automation. They started out as dot mailer, so doing email.

Now they do really everything digital marketing related. Of course, a lot of that these days is text messages, SMS, iMessage, that sort of fun stuff. And again, they're ones where I don't recommend them to all of our clients. If you're already using a marketing automation platform. Unless you're paying for a really expensive one and I can show you how much money you can save with.digital, typically I'm gonna say, okay, you stay with the platform that you have, and that's an important difference.

I mentioned that kind of the two different approaches to partnerships, and I'll be like those companies that have their merchant's best interest in mind. If you already have a solution that fits and works for you, they're not gonna keep trying to introduce you to this partner just so they can get a commission.

So that's always something to look out for is, are you getting just constant recommendations of talk to all of our partners? Are you getting very targeted, specific, tailored recommendations of, here's the one or two. Partners of our agency that it really makes sense for you to talk to, that can really help you out for your [00:09:00] specific needs.

But back to.digital they're another one. They have been around the Magento and Adobe space for a very long time. I've had the pleasure and honor of knowing them for quite some time. And they just have a solid platform. It's one just like Shipper, H hq, and IPAs. It's a platform that I'm willing to vouch for.

I've seen how stable it is. I've seen all the work they've put into it over the years of improving it. And it's just a great tool to use for your marketing automation. So again, if you already have a tool, you're, you love, I may not, necessarily push digital, but especially when someone comes to me and says, we don't really have a marketing plan.

We're gonna launch our new site and then, we're gonna build it and we're gonna hope that the customers come and that's it. That's when I'll say, hold on. We need a plan and a strategy here for how we're gonna do some outreach, how we're gonna do some bounce backs, just all the different things that you have to do.

To keep people coming back to your site, keep them loyal to your brand. That's when I'm gonna say, okay, let's check out dotdigital Last partner I wanna talk about, and this is one that I've talked about on a few podcast episodes re recently with the new cloud [00:10:00] announcements they've made, but that's Adobe.

On the e-commerce platform side we have been partners with Magento and then Adobe. Once Adobe bought Magento for. Goodness, 15 years now, pretty much since the beginning of the partner program. And there's been some ups and some downs in that partner program, but throughout that whole time, there's been a solid Magento and Adobe product that has been a great fit for a number of the merchants I talk with.

And so that partnership with Adobe I think it's also a good example of how. Not all partnerships are equal. You might have two different agencies that you're talking to and considering, and they might both be partners with a vendor that you plan on using. Just because they're partners doesn't mean they're taking full advantage of that, their partner program.

I'm amazed at the amount of things that Adobe sends out to partners every single week. Webinars, resources, heads up about upcoming patches, heads up about new product releases and a lot of agencies. That's just going into someone's junk folder. They're not taking advantage of that. Also I mentioned there's been [00:11:00] some ups and downs in the Magento partner program over the years, and what I've learned with that is the partner program is the start.

So becoming a partner with say, Adobe. Is the start of that relationship. But if all you do is sit back and say, all right, send me some leads you're not gonna get a lot outta that partnership. And you're the merchants that you're working with aren't gonna get a lot outta that partnership. So I've always gone outta my way to develop connections and friendships.

Honestly, just friendships with. Different people that work at our partners and sometimes they go on to other companies. I have some friends that over the years I feel like have worked for every single tax solution out there in the e-commerce space. That's a one good example of how people move around from company to company and that can be beneficial as well.

But just really staying on top of those friendships and connections with different people working at Adobe has really helped our customers be one step ahead of what Adobe has to offer. Meaning they're also one step ahead of their competition. So it's a little bit about a [00:12:00] few of our partnerships. If you have any questions about those definitely feel free to reach out.

You can always find me on LinkedIn as Joshua Warren with a creativity gold background behind my head. 'cause there's a lot of Joshua Warrens out there. I will be back to talking a little bit more about the new Adobe Commerce as a cloud service coming up soon. Also, if you are in the North Texas area, especially now we're moving to the Fort Worth side of things.

We have a great event coming up at Martin House Brewing. It is Thursday, April 17th, I believe. Don't quote me on that date. I can send you the exact date and sign up form if you are interested though. It is a. Thursday, happy hour in April, I can tell you that much. We've had to move the date a couple of times due to potential weather and conflicts.

But that is open to e-commerce professionals and executives in North Texas that are working at a merchant love to have you come out and visit. And I'm actually gonna take the questions and conversation that I, we have at that event and turn it into a podcast later in April or into May. So I'm really excited about that one.

At our [00:13:00] last event, which was the Rangers game, we had some great conversations, everything around. Tricky ERP integrations to dealing with selling licensed merchandise and all the pros and cons and fun that can bring. So yeah, definitely reach out to me. LinkedIn is usually the best way to find me.

You can also find me though, on the creativity website that CRE. A-T-U-I-T y.com. Definitely you can reach out. There's actually a link on both LinkedIn and the website for scheduling a free e-commerce problem solving session with me. So if you have a need around one of these partners that I've talked about today, or maybe a different aspect of your e-commerce business, definitely reach out.

Let's schedule some time to chat. And I will do everything I can to help you out with that. And in the meantime, let me know what you think about this awesome outdoor episode. It'll be interesting to see how the audio comes out as I'm hearing neighbors radios and such now. But I just wanted to enjoy a little bit of springtime with you and I will see you next week on Commerce Today.