Taking Bonjoro From 0 to 50K Users: A Talk With the CMO, Oli Bridge

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker, and today I have with me, Oli Bridge. He is the Chief Marketing Officer at Bonjoro, a platform that helps marketers send personalized messages to their customers. Today we will discuss Bonjoro’s growth story and exactly what strategies work best for them.

Awesome, you guys. Hey, we’re super excited today—we have Oli Bridge here from Bonjoro, and I actually have a funny little backstory before we jump into this. I actually met Oli—or Oliver, we’ll call him Oli today because we’re using the three-letter acronym. I actually met him in Santa Barbara. How long ago was that? Was it two years ago or three years ago?

Yeah. So I was speaking there, and I talked with you guys, and I’ve been trying to get you on the podcast for a little while because I was excited about the product you were building—and what we had talked about—and then we went out and had beers afterwards. I can’t go into full detail because we were still within the statute of limitations in Santa Barbara, but we had nothing but a good time.

I was excited because I’ve been thinking about your platform for a long time. There were a number of different things I wanted to use it for, and you’ve since done even bigger things. You guys have been worldwide, and it’s interesting to see what I originally envisioned, what I still want to use it for, and what you’re doing today. I think this is going to be a great podcast, and the audience is really going to love it.

So, as we usually do, I want to get to know a little bit about you. We’ll start with some not-too-personal but personal enough questions, and then we’ll jump into what you guys are building, what you’ve built, the future, and all the other fun stuff. So Oli, you ready for this, man?

All right, sounds good. Oli, so for people that don’t know you—which I’m assuming some people have seen you, being the CMO and all the big accolades you guys have—where did you grow up? Let’s start there.

Not a problem. I want to know about you, buddy.

That’s awesome. Sounds like it still has that vibe—an old-school feel with a lot of traditional features.

Do you get internet connection and Wi-Fi and all the other fun stuff, or is it actually totally disconnected?

Yeah, that’s awesome. I’ll tell you that there’s a part of me that makes me smile, and the other part of me that’s also nice to get away and just be able to tell the team, “hey guys, there’s nothing I can do.” I would love to be more connected, but I’ve just got to take these days off, and there’s something about that. So the only downside is that if you’ve ever told your team that they can’t get in contact with you, now when they hear the podcast, they’re going to know that you have full connectivity.

There we go. There we go. Now we’re pulling back a little bit. I like where you’re going with this. That was kind of my thing. I wasn’t doing that to set you up. So your team would say, “Wait a second. All he does is he can get in contact, he can send emails, but nothing through video. So let’s just email and make that official.” So you talked about your mom. How big is your family?

Tom and Matt, and so did you grow up a little bit of a fighter because you had two older brothers that kind of handed it to you. Were you guys pretty kosher?

I like the fact that you even said the fly kick—I could just imagine you in the air, fly kicking your brother. If you don’t know what the fly kick is, Google it because you’ll probably like those memes. That’s awesome. I love that. I wouldn’t want to see you fight your brother now, because you guys are grown adults. But if you ever have too many pints or something like that and end up in a fly kick situation, please send me the video because I would love to see that.

Yeah, that’s awesome. Sounds like he had a cool little family. So, anything interesting about your upbringing? Anything, I mean, other than your family’s taken over an old—was it a mill? No, whatever they took over. No, a mill.

That is insane. I have nothing but the utmost respect for people that are good with their hands. My wife’s dad is phenomenal—he was a woodwork guy, actually taught woodwork in school, and has a million tools. I mean, he has his anglers and planes, and I just am not that guy. If my wife says, “Hey, we need to fix this,” and she looks at me, I just have to put my hands up and be like, “With these soft little hands, I just don’t know if it’s gonna work, you know?” I’m great at finding people and negotiating. I’m good at other things, like the internet. I like to think I’m pretty savvy, pretty good at marketing. Last time I checked, I had a podcast and some other stuff, so I’m not doing too bad.

But yeah, I definitely was not given that gene. My dad didn’t say, “Hey, let’s go.” I remember one time we did the backyard—installing sprinklers. I’ll never forget that because it was hard work. I remember digging and digging until I had blisters, and my hands were bleeding. At the end of it, my dad looked at me and said, “So do you want to go to college?” I was eight or nine years old, and I said, “Yeah, I want to go tomorrow. Can I go to college tomorrow?” That was my dad’s way of showing you can either bust your butt on 8- to 10-hour days or be a marketer and sit in your chair and interview people like Oli. And I said, “I want to interview people like Oli.” That was very early on that I knew I was going to interview you.

I don’t mind working—getting in the garage and doing some stuff—but if you got me to build something, pray for me and for anyone around me, because I’m probably gonna get someone hurt, not in a good way. But then, where do you live now? You’re still in the UK, right?

Lot of character. I love that. Yeah, I feel like that—I’m kind of that way. I live in Sacramento, which is about an hour and a half from the Bay Area. So your Bay Area? Crazy prices. Crazy. Sacramento is a slower town, cheaper. It’s still expensive, but definitely cheaper than almost everything in the Bay Area. Same thing with London, right? If you go 45 minutes, an hour, or an hour and a half out, it becomes not quite as expensive. And it’s a little slower pace, which I really enjoy. I’m already in fifth and sixth gear—talking fast, moving fast, doing things—so it’s nice to have a slower environment. So, where did you go to college? Did you go to college in the UK as well?

This just in! Careful, careful—wifey is listening. You’re like, “my current wife?” What about your past wife? Whoa, whoa, whoa, Oli!

Waiting for it, yeah!

Yes, we call that stocking, but that’s okay. Some people call it calculated. Here in the US, we call that stocking, which is cool, but you caught her, and everything worked out good. So she actually went to school in Santa Barbara, yeah, yeah. Well, that’s awesome. And what a great—I mean, Santa Barbara is just awesome. It’s such a great community, great craft beers, great food—the culinary, just everything. I mean, of course, it’s expensive, but it’s an absolutely beautiful area. That’s awesome. And then, okay, so you studied history. And then you did—and you said you stayed around for what? What was the second?

English Lit. Yeah. And then, what was your first job out of college?

But wine’s not a bad path. Last time I checked, I mean, I get it—you definitely want to keep those weekends open. I used to be a huge connoisseur. I still have a pretty good cellar, but it’s funny now that I’m older—in my 40s—if I drink wine, I get tired. I don’t know what it is, and so I drink craft beer because I’m Irish; there’s nothing we can do to stop ourselves from drinking. But it’s just crazy. I have great wines—in fact, like we talked about at Christmas (obviously, it was weird because of COVID)—but I like great wines. I gotta open them up, and they’re gonna go bad. And every time I have a glass of wine, I just get tired. I don’t want to be tired; I want to be go, go, go. So it’s…

We’ve been plagued. And what’s really unfortunate is, and this is a long story, but I invested in a restaurant and got wholesale prices. I used to get some of the best wines for crazy deals, so I used to stock up and put all kinds in there. I haven’t bought anything in the last four or five years, so I have all this wine—that great wine—and people say, “I can’t believe you’re not drinking that.” And I’m like, I don’t know. It’s just one of those weird things. So anyway, I’ll have to open some wine. Maybe you and I will have some next time I see you—we’ll sip on some wine, take a nap, and be in bed probably by 7:15 or something like that. But we’ll try; we’ll see what we can do.

Yeah, so let’s talk about Bonjoro. I want to talk about how that process went—because obviously we were doing the wine thing—how did you jump into marketing? And how did you find those guys? They’re in Australia—a little bit of a hop, skip, and a jump. Tell us the story there.

That’s crazy, as you guys went to primary school together, and 20 years later, he’s like, “Hey, looking for a mentor.” And you’re like, “Hey, why not?” Then all of a sudden, it’s like, “Hey, this isn’t working out. Maybe, what do you guys got going on over there?”

So I tell you the reason why I love this—and I loved it two or three years ago when we talked about it—is that what we’re doing, and we’re still going to do, is create a course. The simple use case for us was going to be: when someone signs up for the course, I say, “Hey, John, thank you so much for signing up for the course.” And they’re gonna be like, “Dude, that’s crazy. I just signed up for Shane’s course, and he just sent me a video email saying thanks for signing up.” Now you guys have taken it to the next level. If there are, you know, five touch points—because I can only imagine if there’s someone kind of skeptical, I’m not really sure—and they give you their email address, then you say, “Hey, I wanted to thank you for joining, John.” And they’re gonna be like, “How did Shane know that I just signed up? And why does Shane care?” Now I feel like I’m getting that type of service. People are on top of it—it’s insane. I love the ease of use and how it’s gonna work to solidify a deal or a lead or get somebody excited about something. It takes seconds, right? I mean, if you have a phone—which, last time I checked, most people do—and most people have video on their phone, whether it’s an iPhone or an Android, you can literally just do a quick video, which is phenomenal, and you’re thanking somebody for that. The personalization is insane—it’s just, it’s silly.

And that’s what I liked, because I still think the UK said I wanted to use it a few years ago when I was creating the course—and still creating the course. That’s what I love about it: for you guys, right? You have a foundation that you’ve built, and you have other people that have said, “Hey, we’re using it this way,” and you’re like, “I didn’t even think about that.” That’s awesome. The fact that you’re using it as a touch point for your audience—letting them know you’re excited, thanks for signing up, whatever that is—or just giving them a personalized video is crazy when it comes to personalization. I was thoroughly impressed when we talked about this a few years ago. The only downside was that my course didn’t fully come out, and we’re still working on that. So, who would be, in your mind, the perfect target audience? I feel like anybody who wants to be closer to their audience and more in touch is the perfect audience. But who is your target audience?

That’s awesome. Scaling is always the big thing. You guys have such a solid platform that scaling isn’t really the issue—it’s figuring out where it will make traction. When you have a product that everyone could use, that’s great, but it also makes it hard to know who to target. It’s nice that you have these three areas narrowed down.

Allow me to interrupt the conversation for a minute to talk to my listeners. If you need help managing your online visibility, my team and I can help. We offer services including online PR, SEO, content marketing, influencer marketing, and more. For more information on these services, talk to my team at shanebarker.com.

Now, let’s get back to the conversation with Ollie. I wanted to talk about you guys—you now have over 50,000 users in 20 countries. That means you have the data to say, “This is where people are finding the most success: in SaaS companies, creators, course creators.” That’s awesome. Tell me a little bit about that journey, because I know you guys are one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in Australia.

And you and I talked well the last few months. I honestly love that bear. It’s funny to me because when you talk about it, you’re like, “Oh, we’re not doing the bear thing as much.” And I was like, what do you mean? That was your Instagram—there was always either you or, I think, Matt was the other one always in the bear outfit. You guys were there at Santa Barbara, and I remember thinking—and I do agree that some people find it cheesy—but for me, that’s kind of cool. It’s almost like we don’t care, not that we don’t care, but it’s like, “This is us. This is how we are.” For me, culturally, when I looked at that and was thinking about the company culture, that’s when I knew we could go out and have some beers. I thought, “These guys, this is going to be some fun. We’re going to have some fun with these guys.” And we had an absolute blast with you. Here we are building a legit SaaS product, but we’re also going to have some fun doing it, right? That attitude is really important because it’s not easy, it’s stressful, and everything else plays into that. I love that—hustle hard, work hard, and we got this bear. I literally remember the onesies; I didn’t know you guys sent them to people. I mean, I wish I would have sent out 1,000 videos, because I would have taken a onesie in a hot second. I would have worn the onesie right now on a podcast—it would have had that much impact. But that’s good to know: if I hit 1,000, I might get a onesie. That’s awesome, man. It really differentiates you. That personalization is just on another level. I mean, can you imagine receiving a bear onesie? That’s awesome. I absolutely love that.

Customer delight. I like that. I mean, that’s really just making them feel special, right? Really, what it comes down to is, what do we need to do to—once again, like, we always say “under promise and over deliver”—because when you sign up for something, nobody gets a personalized video or a bear onesie if you hit 1,000. You guys are trying to figure out ways to make it so that people are delighted. I love that. I love the delight thing. I think that’s a great term for it as well. So I want to talk about that a little bit, because obviously you guys have done a great job of delighting your customers, right? And I love that side of it.

Thanks, Oli, for the great insights. Unfortunately, though, we’re running out of time. We have to end the podcast segment here. In the next segment of the Marketing Growth Podcast, Oli and I will talk about the best ways to reduce your overall churn rate. Stay tuned.