Acquisition and Omnichannel Marketing for E-commerce | Dallin Koski from Dragonfly Commerce

Ernesto Quezada: Pathmonk is the intelligent tool for website lead generation. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition. Online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments. With relevant micro experiences like case studies, intro videos and much more, stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50%. Add Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Let the AI do all the work and get access to 50% more qualified leads while you keep doing marketing and sales as usual. Check us on Pathmonk.com. Welcome to today’s episode. Let’s talk about today’s guest. We have Dallin from Dragonfly, director, DTC and paid media. How you doing today, Dallin?

Dallin Koski: I’m doing great. It’s great to be here.

Ernesto: It’s great to have you on, on today’s episode. And while I’m sure our listeners are tuning in wondering what Dragonfly is all about, Dragon, and correct me, it’s Dragonfly commerce, correct?

Dallin: Right? Yep.

Ernesto: So, your words tell us a little bit more then, Dallin.

Dallin: Sure. Yeah. So Dragonfly commerce is an acquirer of fast-growing e-commerce brands. So we own about 25 different e-commerce brands across twelve or so verticals, everywhere from beauty to CPG, food and beverage, auto parts, outdoor, you name it, we do it. About 60% of our business is on Amazon. And then 40% or so is on other channels like direct to consumer, Walmart and other marketplaces. We’re looking to grow these brands and operate them efficiently and looking to always looking to acquire new, fun, fast-growing brands, definitely.

Ernesto: So then here, then, so that our listeners could get a good understanding here, Dragonfly commerce then, do you guys acquire these brands? Do you buy them or what would you say is a key problem that you solve for clients? Are you guys investors or do you own the whole brands? How does that work, Dallin?

Dallin: We own the whole brands, yeah. So we’re looking strategically to find brands that have, you know, really interesting products, solve good problems for their customers, have good relationships with their customers. And we look to acquire those brands, you know, buy them out entirely. And then we built a really talented team and feel that we can scale those brands quickly so we can operate and scale them fast. We have a world-class marketing team and a great operations team, great product, new product development and sourcing teams. We look to find efficiencies within the stack as we acquire brands. So maybe we’ll look to have brands that are in the same category that we can find efficiencies in, in terms of where we warehouse our products and how we source our products, you know, how we cross-sell to customers and things like that. But in general, we’re looking for just high-quality brands to purchase. And then once we roll them into the stack, we’re looking to operate them efficiently and grow them over time.

Ernesto: Definitely important. And you were mentioning a couple of verticals there. But is there a vertical that you guys like to go for, or is it kind of, do you guys see that more on the revenue side or what would be an ideal ICP for Dragonfly there?

Dallin: Yeah, we’re pretty channel agnostic. So we’ll go, you know, if there’s an interesting brand solving an interesting problem for a customer in any niche, we’re certainly interested. I think we’re just looking for the right business metrics that make sense for us in terms of the customer. We are very much an Amazon-first company. We tend to acquire brands that are really strong or have a really strong presence on Amazon. A lot of our products tend to be more what I would call demand capture products, ones that solve a very maybe acute problem in your home. We have over 4000 products, and a lot of our products solve really interesting little problems that you might encounter in your home. It’s the typical Amazon style product. But we certainly have brands as well that have a stronger presence outside of Amazon. And so yeah, we’re sort of vertical or industry agnostic. We’re just looking for the right brands that solve the right problems for interesting customer bases.

Ernesto: Definitely important. Great to hear that from Dragonfly. Is there a top client acquisition channel for Dragonfly?

Dallin: Say that one more time.

Ernesto: Yeah. So is there a top client acquisition channel for Dragonfly?

Dallin: Right now, it would be Amazon.

Ernesto: But for people to go onto the website, is there someone that drives people to the website?

Dallin: So Dragonfly commerce isn’t the website for Dragonfly. Since we own the 25 different brands, we don’t really drive traffic to our website. We’re driving traffic to the individual brands. So they all kind of stand alone. Dragonfly’s website is just sort of meant for, you know, just having a place for our business, for, you know, investors or whoever, you know, to come and find out information about the overall company. But in general, we’re running traffic to our brands’ websites. So if we have an auto parts store, we’re running traffic to that website and then to, you know, Amazon and, you know, through the different various channels that we market on.

Ernesto: Okay. All right. And, so is there any tools or tips or methods that you would recommend to our listeners as far as some, say you’re talking about auto parts, right. As far as some website lead generation and sales there?

Dallin: Well, we use all the channels, but one of the things that we’re really excited about right now is the new emergence of TikTok shop. So we’ve seen a lot of our products have pretty good traction with the new TikTok shop. And it seems like a lot of brands are flocking to that to try to see if it’ll work for their brand or their product. We were able to get in pretty early and get a bunch of our brands approved, which is certainly a difficult thing for a lot of people right now with sort of the landscape of TikTok shop and Bytedance and what’s happening with the US government. But we were able to get in a bunch of our brands and sort of test the waters. And we’re seeing a lot of traction with getting new customer acquisition on both our shop, our website, and our Amazon product listings as well.

Ernesto: Definitely. Okay, perfect. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. And, well, let’s switch gears a little bit, Dallin, and let’s talk about you as a leader. You being the director at DTC and paid media there for Dragonfly. What are some key tasks you like to focus on your day-to-day work?

Dallin: Well, what’s interesting about my role is that, you know, I have to shift from brand to brand throughout the day. And every brand has its own nuance and its own key issues that we’re working on and different goals and initiatives. And so in terms of task management, we use the classic tools like Asana, Notion, and we’re really heavy on that internally as an organization to stay productive. And so, yeah, when it comes to task management, we rely on tools like that, and that helps us shift from one brand to another. And, you know, there’s so many different tasks just for running one business, let alone 25. So, those tools are certainly important for us.

Ernesto: Definitely important. And in the between times, how do you stay up to date with all the trends, strategies in the marketing world? Is there a specific channel that you like to go with?

Dallin: I love podcasts, personally, Twitter or X now, and podcasts are great. So a few of the podcasts I like, one of them in particular is Limited Supply. Love Nick and Moyes over there, so I like to listen to that. I follow a bunch of people on X and try to stay updated with the new trends and new channels and things that are working in the e-commerce world. I found that those two places are the best for sort of sharpening the saw, you know, and finding out what’s happening and what the new trends are.

Ernesto: All right, thank you so much for sharing that. And, well, let’s jump into our next section here then, Dallin, which is our rapid fire question rounds. Are you ready for them?

Dallin: Sure.

Ernesto: Awesome. All right then, first off, Dallin, is what is the last book that you read?

Dallin: Oh, man, the last book I read, it wasn’t marketing, it was Dune. It was the second Dune book. So I, you know, the movie came out and I read the first book, and so I was excited about the second one and hopefully they make that into a movie. But, I tend to, for, you know, business-related stuff, I tend to do podcasts and Twitter more than marketing books, definitely.

Ernesto: I mean, there’s always, you know, that time off reading for more. So it’s great to hear, you know, a little bit of science in there, right. So that’s good.

Dallin: Loved it.

Ernesto: All right, awesome. Next then is if there would be no boundaries in technology, what would be that one thing that you want to fix for your role as a marketer today?

Dallin: I think the biggest problem that a lot of brands face right now, at least in e-commerce, is in content creation for paid acquisition. So on paid social, like TikTok, Meta, I think it’s really hard for brands to create high-quality content at the pace that they need to acquire customers efficiently. On Meta in particular. And so I think, I’m excited about the new AI, sort of emerging AI technologies, that are coming out to help iterate and rapidly create content, for paid acquisition. I think there’s still a long way to go, but I’m excited to see where that leads because that’s a big pain point for a lot of brands and a lot of the agencies out there are really expensive with varying results. And so I think right now brands have to be able to generate a lot of content, high-quality content, at a rapid pace and that’s a big problem. And so I’m looking forward to seeing where AI takes us in that space.

Ernesto: Definitely important. All right. Awesome to hear that from you.

Dallin: Then.

Ernesto: Next then is if there’s one repetitive task that you could automate, what would that be?

Dallin: Oh, that’s a good question. We’ve leaned on a lot of automation so far as we can. I think one of the things I would like to see is a little bit more automation in terms of reporting. We find reporting across so many different marketing channels to be difficult, particularly when it comes to attribution and figuring out where our customers are coming from without spending an arm and a leg on big enterprise-level tools. I think we lean a lot on just going in and updating things a little bit manually. I’d love to see a little bit more automation on our end in terms of updating reports daily and getting all the data that we need in the right format that we need it.

Ernesto: Absolutely. Okay, great to hear that from you. And, well, lastly, you do have a lot of experience already in the marketing world, Dallin, but what is that one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

Dallin: That’s a great question. I think things have changed so much over the last five years in terms of marketing, especially for e-commerce. We had iOS 2014. A lot of brands were very focused on Meta Facebook advertising, and that has changed. I think now brands have to be sort of everywhere on all the channels. They have to go omnichannel a lot sooner than they had to in the past. So five years ago, I would have told someone to find one channel and go really deep on that. If Facebook’s working, lean into that as much as you can. I think we’ve seen there are certain things that are just out of your control. And if you build your own brand around one channel, when those channels have issues or when something like iOS 14 happens, then you have a lot of headwinds to deal with. I think I would urge new founders or new brands that are just getting started to go more omnichannel sooner than they would have in the past, as soon as they could. Because you need to be sort of everywhere now. Somebody will see an ad on Facebook and they’ll go to Amazon to make the purchase, or they’ll see something on TikTok and then they’ll look at reviews and then they’ll end up somewhere else to make the purchase. So you sort of need to be everywhere instead of just really deep on one channel if you’re a newer brand. So that’s probably where I would start in terms of advice. It’s a great question, definitely.

Ernesto: And some great advice there for not just for yourself, but for everybody that’s tuning in. Do appreciate that, Dallin. And, well, we are coming to the end of the show here. But before we do end, I do want to give you the last word. If someone forgets everything about the interview today, what is that one thing they should remember about Dragonfly commerce?

Dallin: Ooh, great, question. If you’re looking to sell your brand, you know, reach out to us. We’re always looking for interesting brands to acquire. And, yeah, I mean, that’s probably what I would leave you with.

Ernesto: Ah, well, guys, you could always check them out at Dragonflycommerce.com. Dragonfly is an acquirer and developer of standout e-commerce business. Dallin, thank you so much for being part of us. Today’s episode. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in, and I’m looking forward to our next episode at Pathmonk Presents. Thanks a lot.

Dallin: Thank you. Have a good one.