Grapevine's Sam Henning
Sunday 11th August 2024Filed in: Craft+Work
"Patrons Perspectives" is an interview series in which we learn more about the companies who generously support Craft+Work events.
In this edition of Patrons Perspectives, we're highlighting our long-time supporter, Grapevine Post-Purchase Survey App. Grapevine has generously supported our 2024 events in London, NYC, and Toronto.
Please introduce yourself and your role within the company?
My name is Sam, and I'm one of three co-founders of the Grapevine Post-Purchase Survey App.
Sam (right) and his fellow co-founders from Union Works
We don't have formal job titles or specific roles within the company, although I tend to manage the commercial side of the business (marketing, sales and business development).
Where are you and the company based?
We're a remote team dotted around the South/East of the UK.
What does Grapevine Post Purchase Surveys do?
It allows Shopify merchants to collect customer insights using onsite and post-purchase surveys.
The data can be captured and stored against customer records in Shopify or pushed out to third-party systems for further analysis.
What are its main benefits?
Capture zero-party data from customers to improve attribution, customer satisfaction scores, product development ideas, and general customer profile data to help with advanced segmentation.
What types of businesses benefit most from it?
There is no specific type of business that benefits from surveys; all businesses should be able to improve by gathering insights from their customers.
How does it integrate with other platforms or systems, especially Shopify?
It's a native app with a "Built for Shopify" Status, so it offers seamless integration with the platform.
We also integrate with Shopify Flow, which connects survey data to many platforms. We also have integrations with Klaviyo and Google Analytics.
Can you share some key success stories or customer case studies?
Sorry, we don't have any!
However, we do have 155 5-star reviews, which contain many mini-success stories, which you can read here.
What's on the roadmap that people should get excited about?
A variety of new question types, more detailed reporting and more ways to deploy your suveys across different customer touchpoints.
Most importantly, a price change is not on the roadmap. Grapevine is a $25 p/m app with no restrictions and will always be that way: unlimited responses, unlimited surveys, and one fixed price.
What strategies have proven most effective in driving growth and success for your business?
Having operated on the Shopify App Store for a long time, we've learned that money and time are best spent doing the things we can control. We're a small team with a very limited marketing budget, so our biggest successes have come from retaining and delighting our existing customers.
We've struggled to find the secret sauce to unlock the floodgates, so our focus has always been, once we get a new user in the app, to make it the best possible experience it can be, from interface, onboarding, to support and customer communication.
We've found that if you do these things well, you get reviews, and the reviews attract more merchants. It's simple, boring, and uninspiring, but it's effective.
What have been the most significant challenges in developing and growing your business?
Getting across our marketing messages. We're very good at developing and supporting an app, but we've never been good at communicating how good the app is or why you should install it.
We also have competitors that charge more and 95% of the features are the same, so we often feel we're missing a trick when it comes to attracting new customers.
What's your approach to marketing your product?
Shopify App Store ads are the only tangible marketing activity we do; they're completely tracked and measurable. We monitor our position on the App Store and ensure our listing is as good as it can be. Apart from that, the real hard work begins once we get an install.
If someone would like to learn more or have a demo, what should they do?
You can contact me directly at sam@unionworks.co.uk.
Read other Patron Perspectives
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