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Brands spend a lot of time, creativity, and money on their social video content. But when a potential customer follows a link from social to a storefront there’s often a big disconnect, and this is leaving money on the table for D2C brands that rely on social engagement. But what if there was a way to make a more seamless experience from a social experience to an ecommerce checkout?
Welcome to One Amazing About Theorem. Today we’re talking with Jay Kulkarni, Founder and CEO at Theorem and they will be sharing one amazing thing with us today.
About The Guest
Jay Kulkarni is the founder and CEO of Theorem, a digital solutions provider he founded in 2002. Before founding Theorem, he was one of the earliest employees at DoubleClick, where he led product management for advertiser solutions and email platforms. With more than two decades of experience in digital marketing and technology, Jay has led Theorem’s growth and the development of its technology-enabled solutions, which help brands across industries simplify complex marketing operations and drive sustainable growth.
Resources
Theorem: https://www.theorem.digital
Theorem is a digital solutions provider that has helped media and commerce brands drive sustainable growth since 2002. Its AI-enabled solution, Upward for D2C, transforms existing brand content into shoppable videos designed to help Shopify businesses improve conversion, average order value and customer retention. Shopify brands can apply to join Theorem’s free, 90-day Founding Partner Program for early access to Upward for D2C at https://theorem.digital/uvc/.
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From the creators and host of the award-winning The Agile Brand™ with Greg Kihlström podcast, comes One Amazing Thing About… with Greg Kihlström, a show that puts the spotlight on the latest and greatest MarTech products and platforms by showcasing one feature that makes them… amazing.
Transcript
Greg Kihlström (00:00)
Brands spend a lot of time, creativity, and money on their social video content. But when a potential customer follows a link from social to a storefront, there’s often a big disconnect, and this is leaving money on the table for D2C brands that rely on social engagement. But what if there was a way to make a more seamless experience from a social experience to an e-commerce checkout?
Greg Kihlström (00:31)
This episode is brought to you by Theorem.
Theorem is a digital solutions provider that has helped media and commerce brands drive sustainable growth since 2002. Its AI-enabled solution, Upward for D2C, transforms existing brand content into shoppable videos designed to help Shopify businesses improve conversion, average order value, and customer retention. Shopify brands can apply to join Theorem’s free 90-day founding partner program for early access to Upward for D2C at
Theorem dot digital slash UVC. That’s theorem dot digital slash uvc.
Greg Kihlström (01:13)
Welcome to one amazing thing about theorem.
Today we’re talking with Jay Kulkarny founder and CEO at Theorem, and he’s going to be sharing one amazing thing with us today. Jay, welcome to the show.
Jay Kulkarni (01:23)
Great to be here, Greg. Thanks for having me.
Greg Kihlström (01:25)
Yeah, looking forward to diving in here in a second, but before we do, why don’t you give a little background on you and your role at Theorem?
Jay Kulkarni (01:32)
I’m the founder and CEO of Theorem. Theorem has been in business for over two plus decades. There are two parts to the company: content and commerce. On the content side, we work with some of the biggest streaming media companies, publishing houses to manage the media operations at scale all around the world. On the commerce side, we’ve been longstanding partners and experts in media in in marketing cloud for the likes of Fireworks.
Salesforce, marketing cloud, and Klaviyo And the one amazing thing is how we are looking to future proof our marketing cloud shops with this new one amazing thing I’ll be talking about.
Greg Kihlström (02:14)
Wonderful. Well yeah, while before you show us in a second here, what are we gonna take a look at? who’s the audience for it and and why is it important to them?
Jay Kulkarni (02:23)
One of the things we found because of our expertise and working with brands in marketing cloud is there is a lot of activity on the leveraging of video predominantly in terms of attracting audiences from social media or wherever they might be onto the store’s website. But one of the things we noticed is brands are putting in a lot of effort creating and engaging with audiences.
Leveraging video. The video is delivering the click, absolutely. But when they come to the storefront, the storefront is breaking, the momentum is breaking. So that’s the problem that we are zoning into, and I’m going to talk about how we hope to fix that problem for brands. In terms of the audience, our beachhead is Shopify D2C brands. Why? Because
Most of the activity for the four verticals that we’re looking to target, i.e., beauty, luxury, luxury, skincare, and fashion, are predominantly in North America, D2C, on the Shopify ecosystem. So that’s our beachhead, and that’s whom we are looking to target. So the problem we’re looking to fix is if the video is delivering the click, why is their momentum break on the storefront?
Greg Kihlström (03:49)
Love it. Well yeah, let’s let’s take a look.
Jay Kulkarni (03:52)
So that’s what did I mean when I said that a video is delivering the click, but the storefront momentum is breaking the intent to purchase. So this is what’s happening today. In the static journey, the user clicks on a video for the sake of this discussion. I limit it to the social media platforms where there is a preponderance of video consumption.
This is engaging. This is massive. They click on the shop now button and they go onto the PDP page. It’s all static. It’s absolutely static. So the journey, the experience is absolutely breaking. So that’s what’s happening today.
What we’re looking to do is fix. That’s our vision. How do you keep this engaging, interactive journey going onto the PDP page when the user is clicking on the shop now? Now they go to the PDP page and they are met with the same immersive experience on the storefront. So it’s a very immersive, holistic, and the intent to convert continues when they get to
That PDP page. This is massive because that is how they can keep the conversion process going. Well, this is not just a hypothesis or thesis, we put it to test and we submitted and we were awarded the conversion optimization solution of the year for 2026 by the Martech Award ceremony. So what we’re looking to do is take the learnings and our two decades of expertise.
And incubated upward, and now we’re ready to take upward to market. So Upward was built combining the two decades of experience plus our observation that this is a massive problem for D2C brands who depend on continuing that journey to make sure that there is a conversion to keep that momentum going. So now we can get into the actual demo of Upward where we demonstrate.
How we’re gonna be making this interactive journey continue on the P D P pages.
let’s take a look at upward and how we can fix this storefront momentum breaking.
When the brand the D to C brand
comes in they’re met with what they what we call the assessment. You go into an assessment
And I’ll start from the ideal state, which is what is it that we’re looking to deliver, and what is it that we’re looking to fix? What’s the enemy here? The enemy here is not the momentum breaking at the storefront. The actual enemy is that is causing the lack of conversion, lack of increase in average order value and retention.
So, those are the three metrics that we’re going to rally around throughout this demo. How can we deliver improvement in conversion, AoE, and retention for a D2C brand in the Shopify ecosystem? So, for the purpose of this demo, it’s a skincare brand, and we’ve narrowed it down to a category: face moisturizers. Imagine a brand could have multiple categories, and within that,
They can have many different products. Each product can have one or many multiple PDP pages. You see and get a sense of the scale of the magnitude of the problem and how much money is left on the table. So we’re going to look at this as the North Star. Everything we do is going to come back and rally around increasing these three metrics for the D2C brand. Because in retail, metrics matter. It’s ruthlessly competitive.
The margins are very thin. So every D2C brand in the Shopify ecosystem is looking for an edge on how they can do better. So I’ll walk you through how we are able to come up with ways and strategies to deliver an increase in these three metrics for a D2C brand on the Shopify ecosystem. So the first thing is we look at the industry category and the competitors that this brand is potentially going to
run into. So the system is able to do this market intelligence and come up with all of the required metrics that are needed to compete in this category and look at what its other chem competitors are doing. So that’s at a macro level, at a marketplace level. The next thing is we look at the consumer journey when they land on the website.
So the system is looking, there are many different kinds of journeys, but in this specific instance, the system is looking at the journey of a consumer in the context of their experience of video on the website, on their path to purchase. It looks, it scans, it makes recommendations. Where is the journey good, where is it bad, and it gives recommendations on how the brand can fix that video journey.
So we accomplished two things, the macro and the actual consumer journey on the con on the on the brand’s website. Next, let’s talk about content. On the content side, we are leveraging pre-existing assets, video assets the brand already has got. A lot of brands spend a copious amount of time, resource, and money to create video assets. So our B chat again is.
To leverage what exists today so that we can maximize ROI for the brand. So the system, if you notice, we look at every analysis through this lens of the three levers within the context of what we need to do with the creative. So if you scroll down here, part of the challenge with brands leveraging AI and technology for creative is seldom on brand.
So we fix that problem. First thing is we are leveraging existing video assets. So we take that existing video asset and we allow the brand to come up with message matrix and pillars that make sure that the communication is also on brand. And then we leverage that to figure out is the tone, the narrative role, going to be educational, reassuring, or inspirational? So they so you start to craft a storyline around that, leveraging technology.
So we accomplish that using many different layers of analysis. And we come back to BrasTax, we come back to that North Star, which is what are the three things the brand needs most? It is conversion, AOE, and retention. And we look at every analysis through that prism. Once this is done.
That analysis becomes a creative brief that is fed into the creative engine. The algorithm takes that creative brief, that direction, and starts to leverage the pre-existing assets. The assets are tagged based on the role they could play in the upcoming campaign. Then the clip is assembled, the system takes.
The pre existing clips, you can see this at the bottom here. It tags it. Where did this clip from come from? Is it UGC? Is it from a header page? Is it from a product hero page? Different assets are assembled based on the direction that is given to it in the creative breed. So it’s very bispo and the system is very transparent. It is not a black hole because the user can always go back and look at how did you arrive at this conclusion?
Once this is assembled, a storyboard is created. And then two things happen. The manager can approve it, the marketing manager, the e-commerce manager can approve it, or they can request changes. So there’s always a human in the loop at any given point in time. The machines are never 100% in charge. If you approve it, it goes, it integrates directly into the Shopify API.
And it launches the appropriate PDP. Now you’ll see on the upper right hand corner a bespoke and a very customized video that is tied to the consumer’s experience from where they came from the social media. So that is pretty much the demo.
Greg Kihlström (13:09)
Mm.
Jay Kulkarni (13:10)
Can I stop the share now?
Greg Kihlström (13:12)
Yeah, yeah, if you wanna stop. I can ask her.
Jay Kulkarni (13:32)
Stop sharing.
Greg Kihlström (13:34)
Okay. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, that was great to see. And you know, it it is in in seeing this I realize, you know, brands they spend so much money on their social videos and and stuff, and then they spend a bunch of money on their product pages and stuff, but you know, tying the two together, it you know, it’s it’s one of those things that it makes so much sense in in hindsight, that you know, it’s
It it makes a ton of sense and and it sounds like they’re just leaving money on the table because they’re the two may be optimized. the social v video might be optimized for engagement, but that’s a very different thing than AOV and conversions, right?
Jay Kulkarni (14:14)
Yeah, yeah. So you’re absolutely right. Because they’re already investing, like you said, the the brands are already investing in the video asset. The audience that they are seeking are engaging with video. And it’s no surprise that video is the fastest growing format. And what we’ve done is we’ve tried to narrow it down to those four verticals. The audience that is sought after by those four verticals, beauty, fashion, accessories.
Are predominantly in social media. So the ROI for a Shopify brand to fix that bridge, that the storefront breaking is massive. So what we try to do is make that very, very seamless and we’re very, very confident that it works. We’ve got an award for that and we’re using that learning to build like a solution and a platform. Look, the bottom of the the top of the funnel, excuse me, the top of the funnel.
Is doing its job because it is driving the traffic that you seek to your website. It’s doing its job. The problem, the friction is in the middle of the funnel and in the bottom of the funnel, and not to bring up another metric, but that’s where the return on advertising spend is not making sense. So we’re trying to give ROI to the brands at two levels. We will optimize your ROAS, but in addition to that.
By leveraging your pre existing assets, we are able to give you the revenue lift that you’re seeking.
Greg Kihlström (15:49)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, and and that’s I guess that’s the other part here is that it’s not creating more creative, so to speak. It’s it’s using things that already exist, which also
Jay Kulkarni (15:59)
Exist.
Greg Kihlström (16:00)
seems like it it makes that segue between the two a lot more seamless because you’ve been looking at
Jay Kulkarni (16:05)
Seamless.
Greg Kihlström (16:05)
a video, you were obviously engaged with the video, and now it follows you, so or similar things at least follow you there. so there there’s not only seamlessness, but also a
a brand team or a marketing team doesn’t have to create more stuff, right?
Jay Kulkarni (16:20)
No, yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned that early on. They’re already spending all of this time and effort to create that asset. It’s on brand. And that’s the other
Greg Kihlström (16:27)
Yeah. Right.
Jay Kulkarni (16:29)
challenge because it’s not only expensive, it’s a lot of work to keep it on brand. So we are entering it to the through the path of least resistance. Let’s leverage what you have. Can we use new content? Absolutely. But let’s demonstrate the ROI out of the gate within ninety days.
we can demonstrate the ROI. The award was given for a campaign that we tested and we were able to demonstrate metrics within 30 days. And there’s a lot of science and you know analysis and research that’s gone into how we are incorporating that learning and putting it into upward.
Greg Kihlström (17:09)
Yeah, love it. Well, Jay, thanks so much for joining today. For those that want
Jay Kulkarni (17:11)
Yeah.
Greg Kihlström (17:12)
to learn more, where should they go?
Jay Kulkarni (17:15)
Right, so the last piece is we are ready to go to market and we are looking to launch a founder partner program. We’re intentionally calling it the founder partner program. We are not an e-commerce company. We are not in the D to C business. So what we’re seeking is progressive founder brands and the Shopify ecosystem who want to take this for a test drive. We’re intentionally calling it a founder partner program.
Not a beta test, because we want the brand. And what will the brand get in the founder partner program? They’ll receive hands-on support, priority access to new features, direct voice and shaping the product. It’s free for 90 days, but we do want and need a public marketing case study for their participation. What we give is we lead with the storefront review, creative support, implementation, optimization, and weekly performance reviews in conjunction with the brand.
We will arrive at what would success look like for each brand in this Founder Partner program. So we’ll publish a link later on where we will allow it for an online submission. It’s by invite only. We want to make sure that it’s the best partner. We want to make sure that it’s a win-win for them and for us. So it’s a select half a dozen plus Shopify D2C brands in North America that we’re looking to partner.
