E-commerce marketers know the challenge of delivering relevant promotions to potential customers without violating privacy rules and standards. However, many providers now offer solutions that enable both – customizing offers and respecting privacy – for much higher performance.
Two of these providers are my guests on this week’s episode. Sean Larkin is the CEO of Fueled, a customer data platform for marketers. Francesco Gatti is the CEO of Opensend, a repository of consumer demographic and behavioral data.
The full audio of our interview is embedded below. Transcript edited for clarity and length.
Eric Bandholz: Give us an overview of what you do.
Sean Larkin: I’m the CEO and founder of Fueled, a customer data platform for e-commerce. We help brands amplify the data signals sent to advertising and marketing platforms like Meta to improve tracking and performance. Our team works with companies like Built Basics, Dr. Squatch and Oats Overnight, ensuring accurate pixel data and confidence in their marketing metrics.
Francesco Gatti: I am the CEO and co-founder of Opensend. We help brands identify site visitors who have not provided contact information. This includes new users who show sufficient engagement for retargeting and returning customers who browse on different devices or browsers. Our technology connects these sessions and enables brands and platforms like Klaviyo and Shopify to differentiate between returning visitors and new ones.
We also offer a persona tool that segments customers by detailed demographics and behavior, enabling personalized marketing. We integrate directly with Klaviyo and other email platforms. By improving Klaviyo accounts, we help marketers reach unidentifiable visitors and maximize ad spend. Our re-identification capabilities are critical because consumers often use multiple devices and frequently switch devices, which can disrupt tracking. We work with around 1,000 brands, including Oats Overnight, Regent and Alexander Wang.
Bandholz: How can your tools track consumers across devices?
Gatti: We see two main use cases. The first is the identification between the devices and the browser. Imagine Joe bought his old iPhone from you last year. This year he returns with a new iPhone or his work computer. You wouldn’t usually know it was the same person. Our technology compares signals like user-agent data to our consumer graph, which includes multiple devices per person, allowing you to recognize Joe regardless of device or browser.
The second use case involves capturing emails from highly interested visitors. Let’s say Joe clicks on an Instagram ad, looks at a few product pages for more than two minutes, even adds items to his cart, but leaves without making a purchase or subscribing.
Through data partnerships with publishers like Sports Illustrated and Quizlet, where users provide their email addresses in exchange for free content or promotions, we can match Joe’s anonymous activity to his known email. We then send this email and its web behavior to Klaviyo and similar platforms. This starts the abandonment funnel, allowing us to retarget them with personalized messages and increase the chance of conversion.
Bandholz: What are other ways brands are using data?
Gatti: Brands mainly set up automated flows and let them run. Like Fueled, we send data to email platforms and customer data systems, allowing them to automatically trigger personalized actions. The data allows Klaviyo to distinguish between new and returning visitors and only show pop-ups to first-time visitors.
Larkin: We integrate hashed emails into Meta. Match scores increase by 30-50% and ROI improves because we can prove that the ad led to a sale and retarget that shopper.
Gatti: Our identity graph stores multiple data points, including email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, IP addresses and devices. Sharing with Fueled feeds brings richer details to Meta’s conversion API, dramatically increasing match rates and targeting accuracy.
Larkin: Privacy rules now restrict simple pixel tracking. As of iOS 17, identifiers are removed, making it more difficult for e-commerce brands to track visitors and serve effective ads. Fueled collects first-party data and Opensend’s third-party chart restores lost signals. With conversion API integration, brands send detailed data directly to platforms like Meta to better target and automate emails.
Bandholz: When should a brand start using data technologies like yours?
Larkin: It depends on the scale. If you’re spending less than $20,000 a month on ads, Shopify’s free integration with Meta or Google is usually enough. Fueled is twice the price of our competitors because we offer hands-on audits, proactive monitoring, and direct Slack support. Our typical clients achieve annual revenues of $8 million or more, often over $20 million. Some entrepreneurs bring us in from day one because of the data advantage. Still, most brands should wait until ad spend grows and small optimizations have a significant financial impact.
Gatti: Opensend is about traffic, not revenue. We recommend at least 30,000 unique visitors per month so that our filtering can produce quality new emails. Services that identify returning visitors across devices work best for sites with 100,000 monthly visitors, where a 10x ROI is common. Our plans start at $250 per month.
Visitors who never share an email address convert less often, but our filtering closes the gap. For example, with clothing brand True Classic, we captured 390,000 emails in three years, recorded a 65% open rate and achieved a five-fold return on investment within three months. As these contacts are moved through remarketing with holiday offers and seasonal promotions, ROI continues to increase.
Bandholz: When should a company remove an unresponsive subscriber?
Gatti: It varies by brand, average order value and overall marketing strategy. We work with both top luxury companies and billion dollar tire retailers with very different approaches. Generally, if you’ve sent 10-15 emails with zero engagement, it’s time to ditch those contacts. Continuing to post won’t help.
Larkin: I would add that many brands, including the big ones, do not plan for redirect or abandonment flows, especially heading into Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The pressure to discount everything can lead to money being left on the table. Opensend reveals customer intent and allows you to customize offers. Someone who makes it to checkout may not claim the same discount as someone who just added a product to their cart.
We work with agencies like Brand.co and New Standard Co to help us build smart strategies. My biggest recommendation for the holidays is to check your flows, decide when a big discount is necessary, and avoid farm giveaways. If you blanket customers with huge discounts, many of them will disappear after the sale is over.
Bandholz: Where can people follow you, find you, use your services?
Gatti: Our site is Opensend.com. I’m on LinkedIn.
Larkin: We are Fueled.io. I’m also on LinkedIn.