Behind G FUEL’s Explosive Growth

0:00At the end of the day, you can't survive if you're not making sales. You really should be talking to your customers and knowing your customers. The community aspect is really important because at the end of the day, yes, you're going to be trying to get new customers. And that is a very important thing. But those returning customers are people who keep coming back and keep wanting to buy things from you because they like you. They like your brand. They like your message, your motive. Those people are going to be a little bit more valuable than just one-offs. So I think curating and building that relationship is going to be really important.

0:34Welcome to the DTC Insider Podcast, where online business owners come to find actionable tips and tactics to grow their businesses. Now, here's your host, Brian Roizenthal.

0:54Hey, welcome to another episode of the TTC Insider Podcast. As always, I'm Brian Royce, employer host, and today I'm joined by Victoria Hanna. She's the director of e-commerce at G Fuel, and we'll have an amazing conversation. I'm sure, no pressure, Victoria, because they are an amazing brand, And I'm sure there are a lot of things for you to take notes about. So, hey, Victoria, thanks for being here on the pod. Hey, Brian, thanks for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. So how long have you been working at that company? I've been at G Fuel about three and a half years. Started off as an e-commerce coordinator and I have worked my way up into being the director.

1:39So it's been quite a time. Nice. It was 2021, 2022, right? More or less. Yeah. Like right after. I'm not that bad at math, I promise, but it was, you know, the half part probably killed me. You know, if it was 2024, sorry, 2021 or 2022, because a lot has changed. Probably it was pre iOS 14 or post iOS 14, right? So everything changed since then, right? Oh, 100%. I mean, it's like everything D2C online just kind of took off during COVID. And I think that had a huge impact on like the D2C space, e-commerce online. And yeah, so that's kind of where I found myself sliding into it. And here I am now.

2:30And where do you come from? You know, what background do you have? before you know i i have a degree in theater wow yeah in musical theater coming i know i i went to the university of oklahoma so boomer sooner um yeah i i mean i it's it's kind of a it's a conservatory like program so i didn't just take theater classes but um i that was my major and And then, yeah, after that, I did theater for a while, and then it just kind of didn't work out. And so I found myself going into event planning since I had done that a lot and then worked my way into systems like coordinating and designing sort of on the back end and the front end with a health care company.

3:27From there, COVID happened. um so health care was kind of kind of took a big hit uh it was a dental office that i worked for so of course people don't want to be poking around in mouths during covid um from there i went into apparel so like mass mass designing apparel for companies like logo apparel and and personalized items like that. And then right after that, I moved into GFuel. So I'm a gamer. I'm a gamer. So when I saw that they were looking for someone in the e-commerce world, which is kind of where I had found myself, I decided to apply. And it's just gone from there. Nice. I guess we don't know what is waiting for us around the corner in life, right?

4:26I come from a background of not theater, but from computer science. And my first company in 2010 was Software Factory. And now I own an agency since 2013 in the commerce space. When I joined the agency in 2013 with two partners, I remembered that back then it was mainly organic. You know, Facebook, not even Instagram. It was ads were like just for getting likes. Yeah. The right column ads, I remember. And it was like, is this working? Like I was coding all day long and all of a sudden I was reporting to clients. hey you got I don't know a thousand likes and 100 comments what does this mean it's like is this really working like what I've been doing like debugging the code and like I was like whoa this is a new world and then yeah hey I love this but I love to bring business results so that's probably how I got into e-com but well I'm I have like a really big background in in in creative so like i'm a creative person and so i think it just kind of it just kind of fit um right and then i was good at it so it it yeah it just ended up working out and yeah you're right you never know you never know what's gonna what's gonna land in your lap and where you're gonna go exactly so you said before that back then health care to get is this happening now with e-commerce 100 100 i think um since covid people aren't getting money from the government people aren't getting paid as much it's the job market's really really difficult so the economy is kind of really tight and people are are holding on to their dollars um so i think spending in in any aspect across the board, not just in nutrition, but in retail, in apparel, in like everywhere.

6:30It's, it's, it's, it's a rough go at it right now. So it's, I think everyone's trying to do everything they can. Um, mostly for us, we're focusing on, on trying to acquire new customers and then kind of, kind of stroke their egos a bit and make them feel good about the company. not always like pushing by this, by this, by this, but like, look who we did a partnership with in the past, or look who we're bringing on, or we're doing a community event, come out and hang out and get some free stuff. So that's kind of where we're trying to go now is more community building. I think that's really important to kind of essentially start from the beginning again.

7:20Because, yeah, we've lost a lot of people. We've gained some different people. But I think overall it has been difficult, yes. Yeah. And, you know, I was saying this before he didn't record. And I will say now for you and for the audience, you know, the goal of this interview. you, at least for me, is to probably spark some ideas for those who are listening to this or watching this, why not? And see if in this tough context, there's something that's working for you that applies to them. Because back in the day, we were probably met out back then. Facebook was a money-making machine pre-COVID. You put one dollar and you got 10, easy peasy.

8:08Yeah, definitely not like that anymore. Yeah, at the audience level, the creative work is just average. And it makes sense. If you have a full theater with your target audience because the audiences were so later targeted, you could probably hold a sign with an average message and it would work because you have in the front row your target audience. But these days, audiences are broad. You know how it goes, right? Like, so for I'm seeing to go, as we've been discussing here in the over 200 episodes we have recorded so far, it's been a while. It's like they need to go beyond the storefront, right?

8:46As you were saying, building community. So I wanted to ask you, what does that mean to you and to GFuel? Sure. Yeah, so we have had an Avid community on Discord for a really long time. um we just moved over to social snowball and have kind of been building out our affiliate program again through that um it's had a really great really great turnout um getting more and more people every day uh we're able to like give people commissions on sales when we weren't able to previously like when we run bogo sales we're able to now attribute sales from these creators codes without giving additional discounts but then also giving them credit for the sale so i think that's kind of incentivized them a little bit more um which i mean obviously in turn helps us uh but i think giving back to them because they're literally who they're who made us they're who we've turned to for years.

9:57And it just feels good to finally be able to give back to them and give them what they're worth, if that makes sense. So when you say that they gave you guys for years, is that because they are customers, right? Turned into affiliates. Yeah, both. Yeah. So some of them have been affiliates for 10 plus years. Some have been customers. But yeah, so we, G Fuel started off as like the, I mean, I would say the original influencer marketing brand. So we have been doing this for a really long time. And I think we took it for granted for a while. And so now it's kind of, we're getting back to our roots and really pushing these affiliates.

10:42And it's exciting. And for those, you know, looking to probably starting doing or starting an affiliate program. Well, of course, many questions coming on that. But the first one, I guess, is what can they expect? Of course, it depends on many variables. But what can they expect in terms of, you know, revenue percentage wise? Like, is it like 1 % of total revenue? Is it 10 %? how do you judge like if it's successful or not at least how do you guys do that at gfuel um so at gfuel we we determine if it's successful based on like sessions um and and new customer acquisition that come from these affiliates so in in our new platform we're able to determine this so we're able to pull what sales have come from whom and when they posted and what they posted and then we can see what works what doesn't work um and and and go from there i mean i'd have to like dive into the analytics right now no no no please don't do that just i thought you're like would you say that it would be something close to the one percent to the ten percent 30 % of total sales like for those trying to say hey you know is it worth it I mean I think it's 100 % worth it I'd say it's probably about I don't know 10 to 20 % of total sales

12:20yeah so depending on on the season and and and what's happening at the time I think it really it does depend but yeah for how do you start building one where if I were a brand you know consulting about this with you and say hey you know Victoria how do I start an affiliate program in 2025 probably not the same way that it was done before right well there's a lot of affiliate seating like programs where you can find people and reach out to them there's also if you already have a following which i would hope people do which you should in this day and age that you can reach out to those people too and and see if any of them would like to be an affiliate um so we've kind of had a page up on our website for a really long time where people can apply um and we'll obviously we vet them it's not like we just let anyone in i think we used to um back in the day but not so much anymore now we we have kind of set parameters on on on who we allow in and and and the requirements so but i think having having it available easily accessible like on your website or on your social media or anywhere else and you're making announcements about it all the time and making posts about it and showing the benefits of being an affiliate, I think are all good things to do.

14:02Okay. So now to create the big picture of the revenue sources for GFU percentage-wise, not figures. So what would you say are the biggest channels that bring new customers and, of course, the biggest channels for retention right now for GFU? I mean, for us, social media is a big one. So Meta and TikTok sometimes. TikTok's a little bit hit or miss. I think if you go viral, it's a hit. If you don't, then it's a miss. our app is a really great channel for us because we have people who can come in and and sort of be a member and like feel a little bit more exclusive that actually takes up about 25 percent of our total sales so it's kind of crazy um it's something many brands are not doing an app is is great it's people i'm always looking for an app for for a store that i like i'll i'll i'll look for an app and be like, yeah, I'll download that.

15:11Because sometimes they'll have... And if you have a copycat, sorry, sorry. Go ahead and then I'll ask. No, no, you're fine. Because sometimes apps will have more discounts or early access to things. That's what we do a lot is we offer early access in our app for product launches. But yeah, so a lot of our sales though are attributed to organic. So I wouldn't say that one thing does a lot more than another. Right. Just to clarify, just for those listening, like for those in the audience, you know, they have over almost 3 million followers on Instagram, almost 800 ,000 subscribers on YouTube, 1.40, if I recall correctly, million on TikTok, if I did my homework right.

15:57So they have a big following. And Twitch too. So we have a Twitch channel. so i i i recently interviewed you know black rifle coffee and they have a big they are big on organic too and many like a big portion of their sales come from organic as well but it's because they and of course you guys too invested the time embedded on you know on on the organic so what do you do in terms of organic both short and long form um organic meaning like like via social media or or or search so we do we have google search implemented um we're we're running paid ads on instagram and and and meta and everything like that but we're also during launches we're posting about these launches we're sending out emails We're sending out SMS.

16:53We're sending out push notifications for our app. Our affiliates are talking about us all the time. We do requests. Sometimes we'll request them to do something. Sometimes we don't and they just do it on their own. We do a lot of one-offs with different creators that I think is a great opportunity to reach different audiences. But that's a lot of what we're doing when we're trying to push organic sales. So we're always pushing out content on our channels in order to reach our current customers. Right. Let me go back to the app thing for a minute. Because I discussed with many founders and directors how they leverage the app.

17:48In your case, this is a copycat or a copy or replica of what you have on the website, or it's something that complements the experience. So, for example, brands selling supplements, they use the app to show recipes and other engaging stuff, beauty brands, the night or day routine, and blah, blah, blah, to activate customers. I mean, now you're giving me ideas. Sorry. but uh we uh we we mostly use it as a copycat um for sales um we do have um like a flavor quiz on there we have videos on there from our youtube um so it's not just selling things but that's mainly what it is so if someone is a big g fuel fan download the app they go in and it's it usually shows them what the deal of the day is or what's recently launched and everything's really easily accessible they can also access their account rewards um store credit and anything else that they would have in their like associated with their their email i'll go uh there in a minute but for now you tell me do you have you have subscribers right people can subscribe to your products or not so we don't have yes we do have subscription yes yes yes we do okay subscription Yes, evil subscribers like a subscription.

19:12So whenever you like for those brands that have a subscription as part of the business model, typically that's high, right? In terms of the percentage of total orders. Of course, it depends on the business, but it could be 30%, 50 % or even more, but it depends. But the point is that whenever you have someone subscribed to your products, once they order, you need to activate them, right? And even if they are not subscribed, like if you, let's say, order a supplement or a beauty product or something like that, if you don't use it, you're not going to replenish, right? So apps coming handy, not only email flows, but apps are more engaging for activating people because it's not only a reminder with the text or something.

20:01You're actually showing them in an engaging way, in a visual way, ways to use the products that they bought from you. right yeah we also have the like with our subscription program as you said like if they aren't out yet we they would skip but we also offer the opportunity for them to swap it for something else so they want to try a different flavor they could grab a different flavor instead of the same one so they they do have options and and and that's that's how we try to keep them instead of pushing them yeah yeah that's what i wanted to say about subscriptions i will i'll I want to go there, but more in depth in a few minutes from now, if that's okay.

20:43But before that, I wanted to know more or less, you know, we already covered that it's not easy these days. Nothing's easy, right? And even less in the DTC space. And you have a tough job ahead, you know, as a director of e-commerce. So what are you, let's say, obsessed with right now? What do you measure? Let's say you store your day, you open your laptop. up what do you measure to see whether things are moving in the right direction or not um i'm looking at returning customers percentage i'm looking at sessions over time and then mainly i think as we're all looking at is gross sales so like every day where where we're kind of living so kind of the average as opposed to when we're running a promotion or a launch like do are we seeing that go up?

21:35Are we seeing it go down? Is it consistent? What can we do to raise it? But if we do see that returning customer percentage going up, that means that we're retaining people, which is great. And people are coming back. Because we love to have that LTV go up. That means we're getting consistent customers and people who want to continue purchasing, not just for collaborations, but because they like the brand. so my head is spinning because i love what you're saying because believe it or not you might be wondering brian what did i say i didn't say anything crazy but you did because most people i talk to regardless of their role you know directors founders they are obsessed and i mean really really obsessed with new customers it's all about new customers and i get it that's important but they neglect all the other part and you didn't mention new customers it doesn't mean you don't care about it it is pushed on me it is pushed on me and it is something i do think of but i uh right now i'm really trying to to uh what's the word i'm looking for i mean earlier i said stroke their egos but i'm really trying to to be nice to our returning customers because they're the ones who are coming back and continue to spend money you know the other day i was talking to jeremy harowitz you know formerly he was a gorgeous uh okay he's now you know buying business he owns a company called let's buy a biz and they buy you know some businesses and all kind of stuff so he's a well-known in the ddc space i would say so hi jeremy if you're listening to this but But he was saying like when we were talking about new customers versus returning because I was telling him something about my agency.

23:26He said like returning customers is like eating vegetables. Everyone knows it's healthy, but nobody wants them. It's like everyone wants new customers because everyone is so obsessed about new customers. And nobody talks about this. And we discussed this with Neil Goyal as well. He's a friend of the house like two to three times. I interviewed him on the pod. and you know he says the same thing you know like acquiring new customers is really important yes but if they come through the door to never come back then what's the point so what's the point exactly you were one of the first i could say i could dare to say you're one of the first director of e-commerce or marketing or whatever role in the last year or so just keep new customers from the top priorities and see that.

24:15So I'm super curious. So what do you measure about the customer journey? Let's say, let's see, besides the returning customer rate, do you measure anything else about the journey since they, from the point they buy the first time and the rest, future purchases? Yeah, so we're diving a little bit more into it now, but we recently had a big conversation about our hydration products because we have two separate types of hydration products and we want to see we wanted to see who was possibly just a new customer just buying once and then going away who was someone who was a returning customer who originally purchased one type of hydration but then moved into another or they were they started at one tried the other but then went back to the original one um a lot of things like that so a lot of customer cohort analysis of like who's buying what and why and when um because originally it's like we we see people purchase and then they wouldn't purchase again for i don't know two or three months but i think it's because the serving sizes that we offer and people aren't drinking it every day um but yeah what was the question again i don't know where you see answer that so how do you know the why they don't know the why that's right that's right so we we send out we send out customer surveys a lot um when we launch new products seeing like what they liked about something what they didn't like um and yeah sometimes it's it's a it's a guess because you don't at the end of the day you don't really know um but i think sending out these surveys and asking people what they like and don't like and why they didn't come back um why they didn't purchase i think is is valuable information because you're getting it straight from the source and we have we have post-purchase surveys but it's like customers don't reach that until after they purchase but it's like i want to know if you didn't purchase why didn't you purchase So, yeah, I think zero-party data, or in other words, data coming from customers that is not aggregated numbers like real data you can read and interpret, like surveys and talking to customers.

26:47It's something valuable that not many brands are implementing these days. Everyone is so obsessed. Everyone is so obsessed with new customer acquisition. And again, it's fine, but they're obsessed with that only. Many are obsessed with attribution and attribution only, and they neglect the information coming from customers. Oh, they are churning the subscription, the subscribers, people who are subscribed to products. I don't know how to say that. They are churning. Oh, okay, great. But why? I don't know. Let's give them a discount to see if they don't churn anymore. Wait, let's analyze that. So one way that - Let's give them something free.

27:23Let's give them a bigger discount. Yeah, so it's like the churn from like order one to order two is like insane. Yeah, so you would be surprised or not. But I was many times until I wasn't, unfortunately, to know that many brands don't know anything. And I mean anything. And I'm talking about well-established brands, about their customers once they bought the first time. They don't know the average time for them to come back, the payback period. They don't know if they churn, why they churn, the products they buy after they bought the first one. So that's something that the other day I interviewed Curtis Matsko for those.

28:00I mean, if you don't know him or in the audience don't know them, he built Portland Leather Goods. Portland Leather Goods is, I think it's 400 million or 300 million company, the fastest growing leather company in North America. And the guy's hilarious. He's well-versed and he's super direct and straightforward. And he said that the first question I asked him, and I was laughing with him later about that, is, you know, what was the one thing that made them grow to that? And he said, there's no one thing. We need to be like, but he almost probably hung up, but he didn't. So he said, like, brands these days need to be efficient everywhere they can.

28:50So if we zoom in and say, hey, retention. And things happen so fast too. Yeah. So retention, let's zoom in there. There are many things to focus on. As you said, those who are not subscribed, okay, if they are returning or not. What's the subscription take rate? What's the churn? And let's fight those battles separately and let's try to improve 1 % in all of them. If that's important. Let's try to boost AOB in X percentage. Let's try to decrease the time between purchase index percentage. So those are the battles that probably many brands are not fighting. But I think there's one common reason that is they are not collecting the data in the first place.

29:34They don't know. Yeah. So we, for example. We have a lot of things that collect data for us. So there's a lot of information out there. Yeah. I mean, if it gives you ideas for the audience, you know, because you might be probably doing this. We use Lifetimely. I have no affiliation with them. I should probably by now. But we get not only what they use. We use Lifetimely. We use Back in Stock. And we use Upsell. So all three. That's amazing. So it's great because you not only see what people buy over time, the time between purchases. You can see actually the highest LTV products or product types or SKUs or whatever, right?

30:12And you can see that. I don't know if people buy X product or X variant in the first order. they are, I don't know, 3x more likely to have an LTV of x10 higher, right? So probably that's the battle we need to fight because in the end, you're spending money on ads. You can tweak the creative as much as you want, but there's only so much you can do these days. But we can talk about that in a minute. But sorry, I get so obsessed and excited about this, as you can tell, because everyone is worried about, you know, meta ads, cost increasing, but that's the reality. you can tweak a few little here's uh like a few things here and there but it won't create the next unlock for your business yeah um i think i think it's a a double-edged sword yeah it's it's more expensive it brings in new customers um but then the people who are already with us kind of uh i guess mitigate the the pain so so to say um but i think it's doing pretty well for us overall we we're constantly running ads um it gets kind of difficult sometimes because a lot of things are very ip based like intellectual properties and so we can only post specific things and the way things look um just like based on guidelines so sometimes that's a little difficult and then we'll only get new customers based on that intellectual property as opposed to people who would want to purchase and continue to purchase.

31:43So it can get expensive. I think our, oh, what's the word? I can't even think right now. Like our customer acquisition costs, our CAC is, is where our goal is around, I don't know,$35,$45. So we've been taking that down. It was pretty high for a while. I think it's been a little difficult just across the board with meta people are on tiktok a lot people don't have facebook anymore people don't have instagram anymore and i think a lot of people are moving away from social media as a whole just because of the environment and and the way it's taken over our lives so what do we do after that uh we do a little bit of retail so we're in like small we're in cbs um we do we have our some of our stick packs in cbs so we sell hype sauce and sage mode um the way we push that is is through social so we haven't pushed it anywhere like on paper um but uh yeah so we're in cbs we We have a couple of grocery stores.

33:02We used to be in Target, Walmart, all of those guys, but we kind of pulled back a bit. And I think the market just kind of got slammed with energy supplement, like ready to drink cans, anything like that. So it's just a lot of competition. And then it wasn't doing as well as we would have hoped. And so we pulled back and now we're kind of starting to roll it out again. And I think it's doing a lot better this time around. I'm not super involved in the retail side, but I'm excited to see where it goes.

33:46Yeah, we're in TikTok shop.

33:51Begrudgingly. No, no, it's a great channel. I think it's just really difficult to work with sometimes because the algorithms are wild. And all people want when they're on TikTok shop is deals. And where can they get the best deal? And then it's like, how much do I have to discount this product in order for someone to buy it? And then the back end is sometimes a little bit difficult to navigate. um however once it's ready and it's set up it's sort of almost like a set it and forget it except for like affiliate seating and and sending people samples and having them make posts for you and and things like that so i i think i mentioned earlier something about like virality on tiktok shop, like that's when we see success is when something goes viral.

34:46So, uh, I think it was sometime last year, we have a product with, with fallout. Um, we have Nuka Cola and that went, when the TV show launched it, it sales for it went through the roof. Like it, it, it was, it was crazy and we ran out. And so it was like, now what do you do? Cause it's like, you never know when something like that's going to happen. And then you're out of product and And then you can't get more for 10 weeks. And so, yeah, sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. I think it's a good channel that we're going to keep building. They've had a lot of turnover recently, TikTok shop themselves.

35:26And so I think it's kind of been difficult to continue on the path with your representative or the person that's helping you out. But I'm hoping. Yeah, yeah. So we used to go live a lot more. And the only times we've really seen big movement with going live is when we're live for like five hours. So it's like the algorithm pushes people who are on longer, not people who are just there for 30 minutes and then leave. So it's like people who are there and consistently on and just live. And yeah, so we're trying to start doing that again. It's hard to find people who want to sit there for five hours and talk about products, you know, but it's like QVC.

36:17Exactly. So my question, I guess, after all that is what do you look for in an agency or what does a brand like G Fuel value from an agency that you don't get in-house and that goes beyond if there's something beyond, you know. Yes, we do both. I think sometimes working with an agency can be easier, less inexpensive, or more inexpensive than hiring someone in-house. However, I am a big advocate and a big fan of having a fully in-house team just because there's nothing like it. you have these people who are working with you day in and day out, nine to five, that know the brand, that know what's going on.

37:08And sometimes I feel like agencies just don't. So it's like, we want them to, and they try. And then sometimes it just doesn't, doesn't work out. That does not mean I don't love the agencies that we're working with and, and the strides that we're making with them. Um, but I'm always going to choose to have someone in house as opposed to an agency. um we're working with a dev agency right now just because it was we did a whole new website and so they assisted us with that and so we've had them on retainer um since the launch um we have an agency that assists us with our paid media as well as emails sms um but we have someone in house who is managing them so we have like a senior paid media manager who is who works with them constantly um and yeah so but yeah personally i like in-house yeah i think there are ups and downs like everything of course having someone in-house is someone you can you can see you can build a personal relationship or work relationship with you can see them every day they're available full-time for you.

38:20But, of course, on the flip side, agencies see many stuff. I mean, they see more movies, they watch more movies, they work with more brands, right? So they can spot transfer changes or be up-to-date with something that's going on in this space faster than someone that is only watching one movie. So, yeah, probably the downside is that they're not exclusive to the brand. And of course, the upside is what I just mentioned, right? I think we really value if they understand our business at its core. Like, yeah, we're trying to sell things, but who are we trying to sell to? What do we do? What's our background?