Mark Stern: Transforming Customer Journeys with Physical-Digital Experience Design for Growth

On this episode of the Scouting For Growth podcast, Sabine VdL talks to Mark Stern, founder and CEO of Custom Box Agency, an award-winning boutique specializing in bringing digital offers to life through innovative offline ‘box experiences.’

Today, he’ll share how he made the leap from corporate to startup life, offer practical tips for integrating physical touchpoints into a digital world, and discuss the secret sauce behind building high-impact customer journeys. I can’t wait to dive into his wealth of knowledge.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• When I mixed physical and digital together with my publication called ‘Entrepreneur Elements’ I people started posting unboxing videos, which a digital-only product can do. Everyone who received the product became an ambassador and lots of organic traffic was being created as a result.
• During Covid the virtual event game became bloody red, in terms of competition, because everyone became a virtual event expert overnight. But the boxes, and how we were approaching this to get results faster, was an unknown, exciting realm which  I went 100% in on and the business skyrocketed from zero to a million in the first year just by pivoting and focussing on this opportunity.
• What we include inside our boxes is a welcome note, a getting started guide – which, for me is the most powerful sales pieces to orient people on the journey that they’re about to start and see your universe, a journey map – a visual depiction of the recipe that’s going to get you the result, then all the tools and resources.
• This isn’t SWAG (Stuff Without A Goal), think of it a product development and who we can truly get into your programme and give people the incentive structure to want to take one step at a time. I love data, so I can engineer feedback loops to say, once you’ve hit a certain milestone, how can I get you to provide me with the information I need so 1, I can celebrate you, but 2, it also gives me good intel to make the product you’re making better.

BEST MOMENTS

‘In the online space done beats perfect. I approach the standards of the online realm in a corporate way; the client’s either ready or not ready at all.’

‘If you have a digital product, you have to compliment it with something physical because physical can tap into other modalities and senses that digital can’t.’

‘It’s not about you, it’s truly about your customers and their needs.’

‘Boxes can be a tool to take what you’re already talking about/teaching, or the service you’re providing and making it easier for people to have the breakthrough in the tangible way the a digital-only product just can’t.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Mark Stern is an accomplished serial entrepreneur and the visionary behind Custom Box Agency, an award-winning experience design firm headquartered in Austin, Texas. Leveraging his background as a top-ranked strategy consultant at Deloitte, Mark has guided major retail and lifestyle brands through transformative growth initiatives. He holds an MBA from Duke University and has been recognized as a Forbes Next 1,000 Entrepreneur, as well as featured in Joey Coleman’s bestselling book Never Lose an Employee Again.Mark’s passion for merging the physical with the digital underpins his signature approach of crafting “offline-meets-online” experiences. By moving beyond standard swag and focusing on strategic box campaigns, Mark’s team has successfully launched 100+ direct mail initiatives—boosting conversions, slashing churn, and extending c