Bradley Johnston: Director of Partnerships at Opensend

^{Joe Fox (00:01.471)}
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of retain grow thrive the growave podcast. I'm your host Joe Fox. Today I'm joined by a very good friend of mine, Bradley Johnson. I've known Brad or Bradley for quite some time. We've been in the ecosystem for a minute and I'm very excited to have him on board today to talk about partnerships, open sand, the Klaviyo and Shopify ecosystem. without further ado, please welcome Brad.

_{Bradley Johnston (00:30.348)}
Hey, thanks for having me, Joe. Super excited to be here.

^{Joe Fox (00:33.693)}
Absolutely, man. Look, I know everyone in partnerships definitely in our ecosystem knows who you are and has quite a lot to do with you. But obviously, the audience of this podcast can be anyone from partners, other tech companies, agencies, but obviously a lot of our customers as well. So can you give a little bit of a background on your career? I know you've had an astounding career. been in you're a real veteran in this space.

and also just introduce open-send.

_{Bradley Johnston (01:05.592)}
Yeah, for sure. So for those who I haven't had the opportunity to meet yet, name is Brad Bradley either one Johnston live in New York now originally hail from the suburbs of Boston. I've been in e-commerce sass for the last 12 years plus I worked at a NOSTA, which is a common personalization provider, pretty common in the Shopify space worked at Klarna.

which is a pay in for, buy now, pay later realm of a provider. I worked at a company called Balance, which is a B2B payments provider. I've tried my hand at super early startups and then lastly, fortunately found myself at OpenSend. So within that time, I've worked in all aspects of business development from SDR to...

account executive to partner manager and now leading partnerships at OpenSend and what OpenSend is and how we help businesses is really by identifying a rather

providing our clients the means to identify anonymous website visitors so they can then engage with them through email as the first kind of channel approach and then also programmatic postal and then some other cool product features or other product roadmap developments for the future.

^{Joe Fox (02:30.934)}
Yeah, awesome. And that's such a good way of framing things. I've got an interesting sidebar is you and I both have that FinTech, kind of like Ecom FinTech background. And obviously, Lauren on your team, I worked with it at the previous FinTech company I was at as well, which is kind of cool. I feel like in e-commerce and on the FinTech side as well, everyone's so integrated and has worked with each other.

Yeah, it's really cool.

_{Bradley Johnston (03:02.488)}
couldn't agree more. that's why you gotta, I think always be be kind with who and how you engage. And you never know when it's going to come back around that you're sitting in front of someone that you had had some kind of interaction with years ago in FinTech. And now we're, we're doing a podcast together and Ecom.

^{Joe Fox (03:21.127)}
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. so that was a really good segue into OpenSend. I mean, to me, I find OpenSend so fascinating. we're obviously, you know, utilizing the product internally in our SDR and sales processes and everything like that. I mean, being able to see some of the insights and the behind the scenes of who's actually looking at your content and

for how long and how engaged they are. It's absolutely fascinating to me. And on that note, I know that you also recently got your Klaviyo integration and you guys are officially a Klaviyo partner. That's correct, right?

_{Bradley Johnston (04:02.348)}
Yeah, so as of less than a month ago, even we are working directly with the Klaviyo team. And as of today, to my understanding, we're the only third party data provider being accepted into technology ecosystem. And with that, we've been working with Klaviyo clients since the inception of OpenCEN. We've had an integration to make the onboarding and use

^{Joe Fox (04:16.917)}
Nice.

_{Bradley Johnston (04:32.332)}
super simple, but now we've developed the OAuth to be supported by their team after we've amassed, I think, 600 plus Klaviyo clients or so. So super excited to be really just approved by the Klaviyo team. And then it's going to be easy for us to onboard additional clients through even Klaviyo's interface. Yeah, it's a long time coming. I think it's going to speak volumes towards where we sit in the market from a kind of data

_{Bradley Johnston (05:02.192)}
sanctity standpoint as opposed to other providers that aren't necessarily data companies, which is really Open Sense history and core offering.

^{Joe Fox (05:13.254)}
Yeah, absolutely. mean, I think I can speak for both of us when we say how important, you know, those integrations with Klaviyo can be. mean, Klaviyo is GrowWave's largest partner outside of Shopify. And I think everything that Klaviyo is doing as well as Shopify obviously is so future focused. I mean, all this stuff they're doing around the CDP and...

everything they're doing with first party data and like just the, power of what they're enabling merchants to be able to do no matter what size is just so impressive to me. And I really, I love the way that they kind of enable their partners as well. Like whether it be on the tech or the agency side, I think, they do an incredible job. So super excited, you know, for you guys to continue to grow that relationship and

Congratulations on being first. mean, that's no easy, easy feat to be the first and to be the, to be the market leader with them. I mean, that's super impressive and you deserve all the benefit that comes from that, my friend.

_{Bradley Johnston (06:23.832)}
Well, really appreciate it. We're very aware of how...

vast the ecosystems are around both Klaviyo as well as Shopify. So I think the Klaviyo acceptance is just going to make the conversations with not only the agencies existing in the Klaviyo space offering services around Klaviyo, but also the various technologies like GrowWave that sit aside or integrate into Klaviyo. And it's just going to help us, I think, cut through the noise a lot easier as we develop these relationships.

^{Joe Fox (06:58.194)}
Absolutely, absolutely. I want to touch on a couple of things. mean, I think it's super clear, you know, that you guys are the market leader in this space. You're offering something that I think is so unique and so beneficial, you know, to merchants and obviously, you know, you have a large partner network based upon that value and that problem that you're solving. But let's rewind a little bit. You know, obviously we spoke earlier about your

career and your foray into partnerships and having that SDR and the account executive backgrounds. Do you think Brad, the way that we're heading, you know, in partnerships and with the Shopify ecosystems and the Klaviyo ecosystems, are you finding on a partnerships front that it's like crucial to have those existing kind of integrations in place?

before you do go to market with partners and then really kind of like triangulate that. So as an example, you know, I'm sure you work with a lot of really prestigious Clavio partners already, but now are you utilizing this announcement like as a springboard to do even more with those partners?

_{Bradley Johnston (08:16.696)}
That's a great question. And I think this goes beyond just the open send world. think, yeah, we can tell a one plus one equals three story, but it's not going to resonate. And it's not as impactful if it's not an integration relationship. If it's just,

X plus Y equals Z, then there's no integration and you're just kind of like, I don't know, shooting and shooting in the dark. It's not really like that impactful. can, it might be like a up funnel to downstream impact, but like, again, the integration piece is kind of the thing that makes it tangible and really hammers it home for, for the brand audience, which may be onboarding both of you. think really the beauty of

OpenSend is I joined the company since it's a data company. I wanted to either work in data since data is like the new oil, not to be cheesy, or I wanted to work in some kind of like ecosystem or rather environmentally conscious technology. So I landed at a data company and I think really the benefit to working at a data company in this regard is we are an up funnel solution

^{Joe Fox (09:16.124)}
Yep.

_{Bradley Johnston (09:35.488)}
like an acquisition as well as retention, but we are helping brands acquire intentional data into their CRMs by identifying these anonymous website visitors and then providing you email for you to engage with them. And then the reason that that's so beautiful to me is that's just if you pump intentional audiences into not only your email, but your social, would say downstream all the other Martech companies that are Martech

that you're utilizing like grow wave as well is only going to be positively implicated or positively impacted by those intentional

identities. So if you have people that are actually going to progress through the funnel and convert that open send is identifying and sending you, it's just going to not that this is what we're looking for from a merchant customer side of things. But from a grow wave side of things, the usage on your tech is going to be positively impacted. You'll be able to say charge more through that usage, similar to what we're seeing with Klaviyo customers.

adding additional identities to their directory. But again, we prioritize intent over all else. So we only want to kind of provide you with the creme de la creme audiences, those that have done X amount of steps on site in order for them to be deemed actually intentional and be deemed interested in purchasing products rather than just browsing websites for the sake of browsing. So as long as you stick with prioritizing intentional site

visitors, the down funnel impact is always going to be positive, regardless of if it's a subscriptions provider, if it's a personalization provider, if it is a say a ratings review, so on and so forth. That's kind of like why I wanted to join a data company like OpenSend, just because I knew others would want to work with us as we develop integrations, as we develop like these other relationships that again, we can impact heavily with.

^{Joe Fox (11:37.275)}
Yes.

_{Bradley Johnston (11:44.912)}
with the identities that we send to them.

^{Joe Fox (11:47.164)}
Yeah, absolutely. It's like actionable data, which, you know, to your point earlier, it is the new oil. It's the new gold. It's so important. So I love that. And just to, you know, kind of dive a little deeper on that, who is OpenSense ICP? You know, I'm sure similar to GrowWave, like there's a varying range, different verticals can all benefit. But if you were to turn around, you know, in an elevator pitch,

to a agency partner, like who is your ICP? Who's going to benefit the most from installing OpenSend today?

_{Bradley Johnston (12:24.334)}
For sure. would say the dream customer of ours is someone on Klaviyo. Someone using Shopify, it's really easy to install, but all OpenSend is at least from a install-in-the-site perspective is just like a JavaScript that you can put into a header. We can take care of that with Shopify site with a couple of clicks of a button. But yeah, would say Klaviyo customers, ICP that are doing over 20,000 monthly unique visitors.

It's really as long as you have enough traffic for us to identify a portion of. And then when you kind of work back the math's incorporating conversion rates on that percentage in which we can identify. If you're over that 20,000, you're most likely going to be able to see a return on our lowest package, which is $250 a month. That being said, if you're doing over a hundred thousand monthly unique visitors, you're going to see like a pretty unarguable

Return so the higher the traffic the more you'll get out of it

And yeah, we're not necessarily like restrictive in terms of the products that we can work with. It's really anyone who's for the most part selling tangible goods. have say, SaaS sellers or DTC stores that are selling software, but it's not necessarily our ICP. We can support it. we really run trials in order to just see if the data actually tells us a solid story before

getting people onto month to month agreements. I think whether it's in that 20,000, that 100,000, we're willing to try it out and see what happens and then let the data dictate whether or not it makes sense. So it's a long story short, ICP varies from customer to customer. Good parameter is, let's say, low barrier entry is the 20,000 monthly unique visitors.

^{Joe Fox (14:25.316)}
Yeah, absolutely. And on that note, there like a, is there like a, you know, vertical that, you know, maybe a selfish vertical that you really like to see win, but is there a particular standout vertical you've seen just continually crush it? Like, I mean, to me, it sounds like it's very much based around traffic and everything like that, but.

Is there a vertical that you've just seen like every time you know that that vertical is coming on board with OpenSend, they're going to knock it out of the park.

_{Bradley Johnston (14:59.342)}
Yeah, I'd say a bunch of verticals to be very, not to be cheeky, but one that is like an obvious is just D to C lifestyle brands that are like the alo yoga's of the world. The ones with the, um, female, predominantly female audience in the range of 30 to 50. Uh, it's,

pretty much guaranteed you're going to see a positive experience from that. But again, on the flip side, we have a bunch of clients in like the tactical space and there might be or the reason for the performance being so strong is that like some of these verticals have limitations on the avenues that they can advertise or engage with consumers on. So if they're like mainly focused on email, this is a perfect solution for them to get the most out of

say email and then yeah, I wouldn't necessarily say there are industries that don't work. I think we have in degrees all over the place from say $40 AOV products up to $5,000.

like Peloton type of bikes or massage chairs or like Jacuzzis or whatnot. So depending on the traffic and the AOV, if you're paying $250 a month with us for a small traffic site, but you have a decent conversion on a $5,000 AOV, you're going to make like a massive return on that investment if you can actually get one person to purchase a month type of thing. So I'd say there's a lot of factors

that kind of result to the end ROI, but it's really, I would say, up to the individual scenario more so than anything.

^{Joe Fox (16:54.968)}
Yeah, no, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. And on that note, we're similar. We support a lot of brands in the tactical space. It's a space that you know that I'm selfishly very passionate about. obviously, shout out again, thank you for the introduction to Justin over at Growth Factor. We spend a lot of time together now and our wives are even friends and stuff. So I've got to thank you again for that connection.

one thing that I, I'm super curious about to get your take. It's not necessarily related to open sound grow wave. It's just the not partnerships either just e-comm in general. Where do you see things like, you know, chat GPT having, having an impact on e-comm in general? Like, I mean, I think the tariffs thing is kind of sailed at ship. Everyone knows that that's all over the place.

doesn't know what to expect with that, but you know, AI is definitely having an impact on everything we're doing. mean, I think I still haven't purchased through chat GPT, but my whole search behavior has adjusted to utilize, you know, chat GPT and grok and the like, but what, are your thoughts there? Like, how do you see that?

I mean, I guess from an open-send perspective, doesn't impact you. It'll actually probably have more value because it's still a lot of traffic being driven to site. But how do you see that impacting e-comm in general?

_{Bradley Johnston (18:28.834)}
Yeah, no, that's a great question we were at.

We were actually just talking about this the other day, I think from a brand perspective, like a merchant perspective, but also from an open-send perspective, like people are searching online for really anything these days, whether it's looking to buy a product from a consumer standpoint or looking to buy a software from a merchant standpoint. Everyone is now going to start having to focus on like, I don't know the proper term for necessarily SEO within the like LLM space or the chat.

GPT space, basically reworking your SEO or SEM to make sure you get recognized on these searches or these, say, generative AI platforms. yeah, we're actually we're in the process of kind of, I don't want to say fixing or just developing our

ways of working to make sure that we show up in chat GPT when, say a customer or a prospect is searching for identity resolution or searching for capture or whatever that term is. It's just another avenue that you have to incorporate into, into that, that practice. then, yeah, from a consumer standpoint, I, I have actually bought through.

recommendations that chat.

^{Joe Fox (19:56.843)}
You have? Okay, cool.

_{Bradley Johnston (19:58.86)}
You make a search and then it will give a little bit of an explanation. Then it says prompt you to actually find prices and find individual distributors to purchase from, then click out to that product or rather that website and purchase from that brand. it's very, I use ChatGBT every day to whether it's just learn or actually acquire things. So it's changing how I'm shopping and as the

^{Joe Fox (20:27.702)}
Yeah, yeah.

_{Bradley Johnston (20:29.174)}
wealth transfers to younger generations, it's just going to become more and more prevalent and important to incorporate that. And then in addition to the chat GBTs of the world, think Reddit is becoming also increasingly important to advertise on because chat GBT and others are like taking a lot of information from the reddits of the world. So if you're kind of promoting yourself in those spaces, you're going to cover a lot more ground than the historic

avenues that people have have spent time investing in.

^{Joe Fox (21:03.638)}
Yeah, absolutely. And to the Reddit point, find Reddit fascinating. I don't have a personal Instagram or any socials. I have no meta ties. have no Twitter or X or anything like that. I only have a personal Reddit and I was kind of using it like ChatGPT before ChatGPT. So really using it as like a source of truth for recommendations and obviously

You know, everything that you can think of has a channel and has, you know, real honest raw recommendations and reviews and feedback. And I think it's, it's really interesting to me to see how much Reddit has grown over the past 12 months. think also there may have been a mass Exodus when Twitter became X. think a lot of people moved on to Reddit. So I think it's really interesting to see that and to see.

that in-depth content and reviews is really being favored from a decision-making standpoint and purchases. So that's interesting. And as you know, I just got back from this Europe trip and I used a lot of chat GPT instead of Reddit, even though I was pulling from Reddit a lot of the sources to find, you know, particular restaurants or things to look at and check out. So yeah, it's interesting. I think it's gonna...

_{Bradley Johnston (22:30.446)}
Did it serve you well? Did it?

^{Joe Fox (22:32.748)}
So yeah, no, it did. It did to that point. Like I was going to say, I haven't necessarily purchased through chat GPT or LLM yet. So I've definitely used it for research and to inform those decisions around what I spend my time doing or purchasing. So yeah, it's quite fascinating to me. What was the process? I ask when you checked out from there? Did it?

Just ask for your card details or payment details or...

_{Bradley Johnston (23:08.216)}
Well, I didn't check out through ChatGPT. I just asked for it to prompt suggestions on specific products. And then I just used one of those links to check out on where it directed me. So yeah, so I haven't seen the actual, if there is even today, like a checkout functionality within ChatGPT.

^{Joe Fox (23:22.121)}
Okay.

_{Bradley Johnston (23:30.6)}
I just instead of like just text it's actually prompted URLs to go to so that's kind of where I've just made the checkout after prompted me to go to URL immediately I was looking at I was looking at modest watches and It prompted me to just purchase sent me to Tiso Nonetheless it it was

^{Joe Fox (23:36.937)}
Yes. Yep.

^{Joe Fox (23:49.362)}
nice, nice.

^{Joe Fox (23:55.669)}
Nice, nice. Which Tissot did you get, the PRX?

_{Bradley Johnston (24:02.234)}
I couldn't tell you I'm not that into. It was an affordable first watch. So eventually trying to get in the watch game, this was the first step to do so.

^{Joe Fox (24:04.21)}
Okay.

^{Joe Fox (24:08.423)}
Nice. Nice.

^{Joe Fox (24:14.505)}
I'm a big Tissot fan. I think that makes some very beautiful, beautiful watches. I'm assuming, I have a feeling the one you got is one that I've been eyeing off. Yeah. It's like kind of looks a bit like AP-ish, like the square and boxy kind of thing. I'll send you a picture after this. yeah.

_{Bradley Johnston (24:33.46)}
Okay, cool. one thing fun that I'll just shout out, ChatGBT for the audience. saw Rachel Jacobs post a LinkedIn mention about utilizing ChatGBT to prompt a picture, like a self-portrait. And it was funny because they...

assumed she was a man. So that, is also some of the current fallacies of, of chat GPT of not knowing everything. But, if you want to, if you've used chat GPT and input anything about yourself, just go into chat, GPT say, Hey,

Like provide me a picture of what you think I look like based on the prompts that I've provided you previously and have a laugh. I did it with OpenCEN. You could do it with GrowWave as well. And then they'll personify what your company is.

^{Joe Fox (25:24.138)}
Absolutely. I'll definitely have to do that. mean, speaking of Rachel, shout out Rachel. She's fantastic. you know, she's been on our advisory board for like, I think eight weeks now or 12 weeks, but probably eight weeks publicly. And the back and forth banter I get with her, it's hilarious, even more hilarious than, chat, chat, GPT thinking that she's a man, but, that's funny. I'll have to, I'll send her a text about that.

_{Bradley Johnston (25:48.43)}
You

^{Joe Fox (25:53.236)}
Cool. So lastly, I always like to do this one because you know, I know you travel quite a lot. Everyone in partnerships and Ecom, I think we're one of the industries that probably travels, you know, the most in one of the most in in corporate America and, know, the Western world and the Eastern world as well. But what is something Brad that you cannot travel without? You know, I

As I said, I just got back from Europe. I know what mine is. It's somewhere here. I can pull it out. It's one of these battery pack charger things. This is a new one. I've probably been through about 10 of these in my life, but this one, I don't know the brand of it. It's just called outdoor battery or nest out. It's like this little thing. It looks like a little canteen.

_{Bradley Johnston (26:43.571)}
god.

^{Joe Fox (26:47.579)}
It's fully waterproof, so I'm excited for that for, you know, any hunting or camping trips I go on. But this is the best one. Like I got like six charges of my phone out of this and most I feel are only like one and a half. So this has been like a very, very good find for me. And this is probably the answer for me now is I cannot travel without this, but what's yours?

_{Bradley Johnston (27:12.034)}
I'll give you a couple work things and then a personal thing. It's obviously the phone. The other, carry my laptop around to be my computer charger. So I just like charge the laptop before leaving and then just plug it into my phone when I need that. And then the other is more of a personal thing. You'll get a laugh at it. I have asthma. So I travel with an inhaler everywhere I go.

^{Joe Fox (27:28.392)}
Nice.

^{Joe Fox (27:38.515)}
Perfect.

_{Bradley Johnston (27:40.966)}
I'm not very like, you could say tech gadget forward per se. I'd say outside of these physicals, just more of a mindset of a acceptance attitude. feel like...

^{Joe Fox (27:41.266)}
Last.

_{Bradley Johnston (27:57.182)}
everyone and their mother always just gets super frustrated in the airport. So if you're ever traveling and you see everyone else having absolute conniption fit, just reminding self that, hey, this isn't that bad. So I think just kind of flexible mindset and being okay with like constant change as flights get delayed, check-ins to hotels get delayed.

^{Joe Fox (28:12.135)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Bradley Johnston (28:26.12)}
ops manager books the wrong place in the wrong neighborhood. So you're hanging out in Gaslight in San Diego, for instance. So I think just like being easy with how things occur as you're on the road is really the thing I try and bring with me everywhere.

^{Joe Fox (28:45.446)}
love that. That has to be the best one so far, to be honest. Had some very interesting ones and obscure ones, but no one's ever, you know, brought the positive mindset into this. I love that. That's a great point. On that note, Justin and I got stuck coming back from Los Angeles to flying into San Antonio. There's this crazy storm front.

And so we ended up getting rerouted and diverted to Houston. you know, obviously a lot of disappointed people on the flight and, you know, you know the drill, but it worked out because we just used it as a working session while we waited. But to that point, it's like, you've got to have a positive attitude to see the good in that opportunity, right? So I love that one. That's the best one so far. I'm pulling a clip of that.

_{Bradley Johnston (29:41.228)}
I appreciate that. Amazing.

^{Joe Fox (29:43.64)}
Awesome man. Well, look, thank you so much for coming on board and coming on the podcast today. Really, really appreciate it. You know, value our partnership. I love what OpenSend does. I'm glad we have a great friendship ourselves. To close this out, Brad, what's one thing that you'd like people to take away about OpenSend or how can they connect with you? Or what's the best way for people to get some value from OpenSend out of this podcast?

_{Bradley Johnston (30:13.806)}
Yeah, for sure. If you ever want to get in touch, name's Brad, Bradley at opensend.com. Feel free to hit me up anytime. I would say a little tagline that came from one of my CEOs, LinkedIn post this morning. You can't personalize what you can't identify.

So the mention of being able to identify upstream allows you to provide the greatest experience for these identities once you have data on them. So, yeah, I'd say that's probably like a solid keep in mind as to the importance of identity resolution. And yeah, if you're ever curious about trying us out, happy to provide extended free trials or rather we provide dollar trials for two weeks.

^{Joe Fox (30:32.071)}
us.

_{Bradley Johnston (31:01.36)}
We can extend it for a month if you haven't utilized the tool. It's really all about showing you the data and showing you the impact before making you sign or having you sign on. And then it's a month to month agreement after that. So we're really like trying to be the most flexible SaaS provider to work with. And yeah, we'd love to have a conversation even if it's just making a new connection.

^{Joe Fox (31:23.461)}
Awesome, awesome, I love that. I'll make sure your email is in the show notes as well as the link across to OpenSend so the audience can come check you out. But thank you, my friend. Appreciate having you on and we'll connect again very shortly.

_{Bradley Johnston (31:38.734)}
Appreciate you Joe, shout out to the Grow Way fam and yeah, looking forward to seeing you again soon. Thanks for having me.

^{Joe Fox (31:44.871)}
Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Audience, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Retain Grow Thrive. Apologies about me coughing throughout. I picked up something on the way back from Europe, I think on the plane, but thank you for bearing with me. Brad is an awesome person. I encourage you to connect with him on LinkedIn. Very much encourage you to check out OpenSend, whether you're a merchant or a partner, particularly the Klaviyo partners.

Brilliant, brilliant piece of technology, one to keep an eye on. Thank you all so much for tuning in. I'll be back with another episode.

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