Fix Your Pop-Up Strategy and Hit Over 10% Opt-In Rates

Matt Edmundson (00:04)
Well, hello and welcome to the e-commerce podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson and it is great to be with you this fine afternoon as we are recording this fine afternoon. I don't know when you're listening to it, but it's the afternoon when I'm recording. So it's a very, very good time to be with you. So thank you for joining us. If you're new to the show, very warm welcome to you. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for listening in. Hopefully you're to get some value out of it. And if you do, obviously we invite you to subscribe.

et cetera, et cetera. And you can also find out more information on the website at ecommercepodcast.net where we've got a complete back catalog of all our episodes. There's a newsletter which you can sign up for, which if you're regular to the show, you know, I'm a big fan of because why would I not be? I wouldn't do it. suppose if I wasn't a big fan of it. So we've got the newsletter and there's all kinds of information on there about cohort groups, which are like these sort of free groups we do with Ecom entrepreneurs where you can come join.

The conversation about e-commerce, a great fun, more information's on the website, ecommercepodcast.net. And of course, if you are a regular listener, welcome back. Love you guys. You're awesome. Thanks for joining us. Right. Today we are talking about a controversial topic. yes, we are very controversial. Or maybe not very, maybe I'm, maybe I'm over egging this slightly, Sean. I don't know. Maybe I am. ⁓ but we are going to get into pop-ups and all kinds of things with.

guest show on today's and welcome to the show man how you doing

Shaan Arora (01:33)
doing well thanks for having me I appreciate it

Matt Edmundson (01:35)
No, no, it's good for you to be here all the way from sunny New York City.

Shaan Arora (01:39)
yeah, yeah, Peace in the City.

Matt Edmundson (01:41)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Loving that. So it's afternoon for me, it's morning for you, I'm guessing. Nice, nice. So let's get into the topic straight away. Sean, the question I love to ask, guess on the show is simply this. If you could wave a magic wand and solve the biggest single issue your customers have when it comes to pop-ups, what would that problem be and why?

Shaan Arora (01:45)
Yep, in the morning,

Yeah, that's a good question.

And I think the biggest problem that our customers have is not knowing what tests to run on the pop-up. Obviously, there's a lot inside the pop-up. There's the offer, the timing, the actual copy, the creative, right? It's like which parts of these are the most impactful to test. So if I could wave a magic wand, I would let all my customers know exactly what to test and run those tests for them.

Matt Edmundson (02:17)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. And is it a case of there's one, I'm trying to think of a way to put this, you know, one size fits all kind of thing, or is it everybody's unique and everybody's different?

Shaan Arora (02:48)
I'd say like, yeah, it's a good question. unfortunately, the answer is kind of that most brands are different. So you kind of do need to, you know, I wish the answer was one size fits all because it makes it easier for the brands, but it's, you can get like, I'd say 40 % of way there with like the generic testing. And then there's other ones like optimizations you need to make after that for the brands.

Matt Edmundson (02:55)
Ha ha.

Yeah.

Okay. So if you're, if you're doing pop-ups, which I think most people do now, and we'll get into whether or not we should actually at some point, but if we are doing pop-ups and obviously we're wanting to test, we're to solve this main problem, not knowing what to test. If you're not there sat on my shoulder telling me what to do, what's a good process to try and figure out how does, how to understand what to test or that process.

Shaan Arora (03:17)
Red.

Yeah, it's a good question. mean, we have some educational docs on it. We also have this thing called smart testing where we'll run, essentially we use AI to create the variations of testing, run the tests and the tests and start a new one. So to like run all the tests for the brand, as long as the brand is okay with us running those tests, they can just like approve those tests and we'll run them. So that's one cool way to do it inside of what we do. But let's say like you don't have that feature because you're not an audio customer. Totally cool. Like this is probably the process that I think.

Matt Edmundson (03:45)
Mm-hmm.

Shaan Arora (04:08)
we've seen the most success with, right? Firstly is thinking about like the copy of the offer. ⁓ think a lot of brands believe that, like in order to get a really good opt-in rate, you need to give a pretty crazy offer, right? You're to give like 30, 40 % off, which is just not necessarily true. Like we've seen brands that have early access pop-ups without even an offer that gets to about 10 % opt-in rates. ⁓ so one thing is

Matt Edmundson (04:23)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Shaan Arora (04:38)
in the copy of the offer that you're giving, like try out different variations of it. So let's say you're currently giving 10 % off, right? A lot of brands give a 10 % off, totally cool. You can try out a copy that says, hey, you've got a mystery discount, or you've got an exclusive discount, or here's the discount you've earned. They're more likely to sign up because they don't know what the discount is, right? And so that's one very easy win. We've seen when we implement that, brands say,

Matt Edmundson (04:45)
Mm.

Yeah.

Shaan Arora (05:08)
large increase in opt-ins and it's very low lift for the brand to out.

Matt Edmundson (05:14)
Yeah. Yeah. I like that. That's, it's interesting, isn't it? The whole psychology, the whole psychology behind that, which I find quite easy. it's like, is it better to tell the customer they get 10 % off or is it better to tell them they get a mystery discount? Um, but obviously I I'm guessing if there's a mystery discount, it's still got to be worthwhile. It's like, the mystery is it's, it's one, it's 1%. Um, you know,

Shaan Arora (05:21)
Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

for sure. Yeah, like it probably it still needs to be a great discount. ⁓ But I guess the problem I'm to make is that like you can you can you can still give 10%. You don't need to like destroy your margins and maintain a great offer.

Matt Edmundson (05:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. This is a really interesting one. Isn't it? I, I, I'm, I'm curious how you think about this or what your, you know, with your customers, what you found, like, is it a case of discount rates work best? Because whenever I see a pop-up nine times out of 10, it's like, give me your email and I'll give you a discount. it, it, get it to be fair. We use it on our e-commerce sites. It feels, starting to feel a little bit lazy.

Shaan Arora (06:14)
Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (06:25)
because everybody's doing it's like the default thinking. ⁓ so is that still the best thing to do with our pop-ups or can we think differently or creatively? What other things have you seen work well?

Shaan Arora (06:39)
Yeah, it's a good question. kind of all I'm like, bit of context, just so it's not like, Hey, we just like, we work with, ⁓ close to 3000 brands now. ⁓ a lot of larger brands in the space, like Aviary Nation, Peloton, Nike Strength, Create, Portland Leather Goods, a of really awesome brands, right? So we have a ton of data. Like we get about a hundred million views a month on our pop-ups for our brand. we get, so we see, we see a ton. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (06:56)
Mm-hmm.

That's enough data, surely. I mean, you can figure a few things out with 100 million. Yeah.

Shaan Arora (07:06)
But just wanted

to kind of get that context so, you people kind of know that we see a lot of numbers, right? And across the board, discounts still tend to do the best, right? And generally they tend to do the best. However, one thing we've seen do quite well, which I think is a great thing to try out is cash back. Cash back has been doing pretty good. ⁓ Sweepstakes is a good one, right? You can like, anyone who enters your email gets entered into a sweepstakes. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (07:17)
Yeah.

Okay.

Shaan Arora (07:33)
That way you actually don't need to give up any percentage off upfront and you can still get a really high opt-in rate. So cash back, sweepstakes, free gift with purchase is interesting too. And customers really tend to like that. Across the board though, discounts tend to be the lowest lift out of those three to set up and the most expected by a customer. So if you can really hone in on what that pop-up should look like. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (07:36)
Yeah.

Shaan Arora (08:03)
discounts tend to in general outperform.

Matt Edmundson (08:08)
Yeah. Well, again, I think it's going to be one of those things to test, isn't it? ⁓ for yourself, but I, I get it. I get why we've done it. And I get why the default is discount because everybody wants a discount. And from an operational point of view, it's easy to get the website to go just put a 10 % discount with this code. There's, there's no involvement on anybody's part, to do that. And I'm wondering, and I don't know if you've got any view on this is, is

Shaan Arora (08:12)
Yeah.

100%.

Matt Edmundson (08:36)
then the discount outperforming because that's what we're all doing i.e. is it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy

Shaan Arora (08:42)
Hmm,

definitely. Yeah, it's a good question. And I think I think it could potentially be the case because again, it is the lowest lift thing to do. So everyone kind of does it.

Matt Edmundson (08:51)
Mm.

Shaan Arora (08:56)
When we've tested cash back versus discount, discount does win, but sometimes when it wins, it's not by such a huge percentage that it's worth it. Right? So it may win by, um, you know, relative to the other ones, like 30 % higher, right? 30 % higher. Now the brand has a decision like, okay, cool. Like, you know, I'm getting more options, but I am losing out on margin when I could be doing cash back. So then that's a decision the brand can make.

Matt Edmundson (09:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

So the, that's a really good point. I'm, so when you talk about cash back, just for the sake of clarity, just explain what you mean.

Shaan Arora (09:33)
Yeah, for sure. It's like only if a customer checks out, let's say they check out $40, they'll get like $3 back in cash. So it's like you'll only get the cash back if you go ahead and make a purchase.

Matt Edmundson (09:38)
Mm-hmm.

And is that cash back delivered in terms of store credit? How is that? Is that pretty much how people do it?

Shaan Arora (09:55)
It tends to be store credit, yeah.

Matt Edmundson (09:57)
Yeah. Okay. Which makes, again, makes a lot of sense because they've to come back to your website and spend that money, haven't they? I suppose it's a bit like the pop-ups where it's like register now and get free 500 points or, you know, whatever. It's going to be that kind of thing. You've said sweepstakes work well. Which intrigues me because I don't know whether this is just, maybe I think they have to be on a certain type of site. I find them a bit gimmicky and I tend to be a bit frustrated with those. But again,

Shaan Arora (10:02)
Yeah.

Yes.

That's

I'll

see you

Matt Edmundson (10:27)
I suppose if I'm on a gimmicky website, it would make sense. You know, like, I guess at the time of recording, it's early November. So I've just gone and bought my brand new Christmas sweater, right? My Christmas jumper. So that's being delivered, which is great. That was ordered from what I would call a gimmicky site, right? I don't, it's not like the sweetest fashion brand in the world. So I think, I think the sweepstakes makes sense in that kind of context for me.

Shaan Arora (10:30)
Yeah, sure.

Okay.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (10:57)
I don't know if you, is that just my internal bias? Is that something that you've seen? I'm kind of curious where the sweepstakes thing would work well.

Shaan Arora (11:05)
Yeah, it's a great question. And I think some brands are not interested in doing it at all. Totally fair. Like luxury brands are not interested in doing that. ⁓ Supplement brands like to do it. think brands that have a target demographic that like respond well to that sort of thing. Maybe like, you know, ⁓

I think like maybe like veteran owned clothes. I've seen a good amount of like veteran owned companies, like American veteran owned companies actually try that out. That's been kind of cool to try out. Totally fair. Like we do also things like spin to win. We've done like scratch off where like the user like takes their mouse and scratches off the discount and they get the discount. Like stuff like that works well. And I have seen large brands that we work with try it out, but it's personal choice on the aesthetic for the brand.

Matt Edmundson (11:37)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

yeah.

Shaan Arora (11:57)
And

like we never push anyone to try it. if they're like, it's not, not, part of the aesthetic, totally cool. But if you're open to getting a little bit creative and experimental, like, yeah, let's try it out. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (12:08)
Why would you not? mean, test it, right? It's

one of those, isn't it? You test it. And can it...

Shaan Arora (12:12)
Sorry,

just another quick one we've done. It's like a laundry machine spin to win. it's like, they sell detergent and you click spin and the laundry rotates with the discount. So stuff like that can be fun to try out.

Matt Edmundson (12:23)
Okay.

Yeah, that see that makes sense to me. ⁓ I mean, I've, one of the companies I've got is a supplement company and, I, you know, spin to win a year's supply of vitamin D or something like that. That can be, you know, that's something that I'd be open to testing. there's a restaurant in London and I wish I could remember the name of it. I, I can't remember the name of it. Anyway, there's a restaurant in London whereby they constantly have a queue of people wanting to get in there.

Shaan Arora (12:32)
Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (13:00)
Right now the food is good, but there's a lot of restaurants in London with good food. Okay. So you have to do more than just have good food. What they do is when you go to pay the bill, right. ⁓ so you stood there at the checkout, when you go to pay the bill, they give you a dice. And if you roll a six on the dice, you're, you don't have to pay the bill. Right. And so, and of course the odds feel quite good. It's like 16 % chance, I suppose, if you work it out.

Shaan Arora (13:03)
Yeah, sure.

wow.

Matt Edmundson (13:29)
⁓ and so they're a bit like, well, ⁓ this is interesting. They're in effect offering a 16 % discount on their food, which is probably slightly overpriced anyway, but they have a queue of people because they've got this. This mechanism at the checkout where it's like, I, if I roll a six, I'm going to get the meal for free. And the question then becomes, of course, if you go into the restaurant, knowing that will you order more?

Shaan Arora (13:56)
Yeah, that's a question. I think some people would. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (14:00)
Yeah, I I probably would, right? Because you're like, well, why would I not? I'm just gonna roll the dice and

I might get it for free. And I suppose if you get it for free at the end, you're kind of like, well, I wish I'd ordered more now.

Shaan Arora (14:12)
Yeah, yeah, right. It's like, yeah, it's like,

if you get it for free, you didn't order more. You're like, I could have ordered more. But if you order too much, you're like, all I, this was a waste. This could be a waste of money. But that's funny.

Matt Edmundson (14:24)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's funny,

isn't it? that, how that, but it's interesting how that gamification makes you think about these things, right? So when you gamify these things, how it works. And I've been wrecking my brains trying to figure out how could I do the equivalent in e-commerce? So rather than on a pop-up on post checkout, it's like you've ordered it. Now you're going to roll a dice. Now I'm going to decide whether or not to give you this for free. ⁓ and of course the downside of that is, people might think it's rigged when they don't win.

Shaan Arora (14:43)
us just

Matt Edmundson (14:53)
Right. Whereas if you're in a restaurant and it's a dice, you kind of like, wow, it's, can't, it's technology is not rigging it, you know? And so, ⁓ it's a, it's it's an interesting one, isn't it? Cause I, part of the things with the sweepstakes, I've, I mean, I finally get my key, but obviously they're not rigged. ⁓ well, I'm assuming they're not rigged. ⁓ do people want to rig them? Yeah. Yeah, no, it's, it's, it, you know, it's, it's one of those, isn't it? When it comes then to gifts with purchase, I'm curious about that. What?

Shaan Arora (14:59)
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah.

from my understanding, yeah.

Matt Edmundson (15:22)
things have you seen work well there?

Shaan Arora (15:24)
Yeah, it's a question. think like something small, right? Like if it's, if your AOV is $40 and you can add in a $5 free gift, like great, right? It's not going to affect your margins too much and you might already have a ton of supply of that. like, and who doesn't want a little, you know, let's say like you're selling like, let's say you're you're selling shampoo and you get like a mini travel one that's like $5. Like, I mean, it's nice, right? And like, I'm a customer, I think I'm pretty likely to...

Matt Edmundson (15:37)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Shaan Arora (15:54)
check out because like, okay, it's a nice thing that it just like gives me an extra reason to check out. I think you mentioned earlier, like thinking about should brands even use pop ups? That kind of falls into that realm, that question too, which I'm happy to answer an hour later, but like, I think like knowing that it exists makes people more likely to check out. or not it's like the best discount or the best gift in the world, just knowing that it exists.

Matt Edmundson (16:14)
Yeah.

Shaan Arora (16:22)
is one more extra lever you have.

Matt Edmundson (16:25)
Yeah, it's an interesting one, isn't it? With gifts with purchase. I'm a big fan of the GWP simply because it looks like you're offering more, but actually your margin is less eroded. So, you know, we, we, the example I've always given in the past is we did with candles. And one of our companies, we had this special Christmas candle made, um, and we sold candles on the website for like 27 bucks. And we're like, this is free gift with order. And they can go into the website and see their retail for $27. Right. So.

Shaan Arora (16:35)
Yeah, 100%.

Matt Edmundson (16:55)
But all of a sudden I'm giving it free as a gift with purchase. And, ⁓ you know, the whole cost of that candle was like three bucks. So it's, it's, mean, the, shipping increase was, was more than, cause the things were a daunting, ⁓ which is why part of the reason why we stopped doing them. But the principle is the same, isn't it? You, I'm giving away something with a higher perceived value, I think, with a gift with purchase. ⁓

Shaan Arora (17:01)
Yeah, that's it.

Matt Edmundson (17:21)
So let's go back to discounts. I mean, we've talked about the default 10%. Um, I think I've mentioned it before on the show, but whenever I go to a website now, I, I don't even fill in the pop pop inform. I just write welcome 10 in the custom code thing. And usually I get a 10 % discount, not all the time or welcome 15 or welcome 20. And I just see which ones work, you know, cause they're all, again, we got a bit lazy with the codes. Didn't we? It's like everyone does.

Shaan Arora (17:47)
Yeah, that's right.

Matt Edmundson (17:49)
I

would, I'm not asking you to reveal this in your data, but I'm curious how many customers of yours use the code welcome 10. and so

Shaan Arora (17:57)
Yeah, more than, yeah,

it's a, yeah. Yeah, it's, we recommend unique coupon codes for sure. ⁓ So whenever we can do a unique coupon code, we highly recommend that for our brands.

Matt Edmundson (18:05)
Hahaha!

Yeah, absolutely.

We'll come back to that in just a second. the discount itself, the 10%, right? Have you seen big swings? Because the big question a lot of people are going to have is what's a good discount rate? 10%, 15%, 20%. And obviously there's lots of nuance to this question, like your brand, your margin, et cetera, et cetera. But there's also the data, which we can obviously test on our own site. But I'm curious if...

when you look at the data, you see, actually brands that offer 20 % discount rather than 10 % don't actually do that much better, or maybe they're properly killing it. I don't know if you've seen like from the data, what a good sweet spot is on the discount on average.

Shaan Arora (18:59)
It's

great question. like, I urge anyone listening to test it, like if you're running 10 % or if you're running 15%, do a 15 versus 10 test and then just see like how big is this Delta. If you're doing 20, try 2015. We've had brands that have done 20%, gone down to 15 % and pretty much had the same results for all, often rates. We also track like CVR, Bounce, AOV.

Matt Edmundson (19:12)
Mm.

Mm.

Shaan Arora (19:27)
and actual revenue generated from these codes. like we can track that. I think Klaviyo might track some of that stuff, but we track that data, is super helpful for our brands too. There's been a lot of instances where we've tested, they were doing 20%. We tested 15 and the results were similar enough to where they went down to 15 and they got to say 5 % and it didn't affect them in terms of CVR, opt-in rate and revenue attributed to the codes.

Matt Edmundson (19:36)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, AOV stays the same, et cetera, et

Shaan Arora (19:59)
Yeah, so I mean, yeah, it's definitely a worthwhile test for sure.

Matt Edmundson (20:03)
Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. I mean, we, tested it. We went down from 20 to 10 and experienced no significant difference really. Um, not to the point where you go, well, actually 10 % margin. That's a lot of money. Um, when you think about how much of that is your actual profit. Um, but it's, it was definitely something that we tested, um, across the board. That's for sure. I'm curious again, right? The, um, the way that pop-ups work quite often.

Shaan Arora (20:09)
wow. That's pretty great.

Matt Edmundson (20:33)
⁓ is one of two ways. As in we're going to give you a unique code that you can use or we're going to automatically apply the 10 % discount for example at checkout. Any thoughts on that?

Shaan Arora (20:46)
Yeah, can actually within Shopify, you can have a unique code that is automatically applied at checkout. So you can have the best of both worlds, which is great.

Matt Edmundson (20:56)
And is that, you see, here's the thing that I'm thinking, Sean, and tell me what you think. What I've noticed with a lot of econ businesses, again, because margins are super tight at the moment, especially with the cost of customer acquisition being what it is. The thing that I've noticed is, and you'll see it, think now, you know, over Black Friday, over this month, especially people will stop putting out codes. Like here's a free shipping code.

But of course on most websites, you can only use one code at a time. Right? So I can sign up here. I can get that 10 % off code or I've got on the site, it's advertising free shipping. Um, and it's a case of, I'm getting the, they're obviously good. I now need to figure out which code to use. And then you get to check out and you're like, I forgot to use the code, which creates customer service nightmare. quite liked the idea of auto populating the codes. you, if you, or we'll get in the coast to work automatically if you can. Um,

I appreciate that's not everybody's cup of tea. It's just mine. But I have noticed more and more offers are given to codes as opposed to just directly on the site. Like I'm not going to discount this product by 20%. There'll be a 20 % discount code which you can use, but then that stops you using the free shipping code if that makes sense.

Shaan Arora (22:14)
Yeah, I understand. Yeah. think, ⁓ that we've seen brands like have one other thing that brands do during Black Friday, you're kind on this topic is they'll have a site wide sale going on and everyone at checkout will actually get the same code. So whether or not you entered your email into the pop-up,

Matt Edmundson (22:28)
Mm-hmm.

Shaan Arora (22:40)
You know how it's a site wide sale. So everyone on the site gets, when they check out, they're to get 20 % off regardless. But they still have a pop-up that says get 20 % off. Whether or not you fill that pop-up out, you're still going to get the 20 % off. But so that you're not creating any more confusion for the customer, right? They're like, Oh, like this discount is incongruent with the discount that I'm getting at a car. Like what's going on here? They'll actually change their pop-up offer to be applied to everybody.

Matt Edmundson (22:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Shaan Arora (23:08)
but they still ask for email.

Matt Edmundson (23:10)
Yeah, yeah, that's really good. I'm making a little note to check with our team what we're doing.

Shaan Arora (23:16)
Yeah, we've seen like,

like if you're not an obvious, they're pretty big supplement brand that's something that they did last year that crushed for them. And it's our, it's our recommendation to our brands that there's not a separate coupon code in the pop-up. Then what's going to be automatically applied at checkout. Like they should be congruent. Um, a big mistake that happened last year I've seen with not our brand, think just I was seeing them sell a few brands. Like they would have a 15 % site-wide sale and then like a 10 % pop-up, um, offer.

Matt Edmundson (23:31)
Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Arora (23:46)
It's like, it's, ⁓ it's really confusing UX for site visitors. So we just got to make sure the pop-up is the same as the site.

Matt Edmundson (23:50)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Very good. And again, whilst we're talking about data and metrics, opt-in rates, what is a pretty good, and again, I know it's a bit how long is a piece of string, right? What's your industry, cetera. But what are some of the benchmark opt-in rates that we should be examining ourselves against?

Shaan Arora (24:17)
Sure, it's a question. I think...

The index on which I'll think about measuring opt-in rates is going to be AOV here because AOV is what's going to create the huge difference in opt-in rates. So we have a brand that has like a thousand dollar AOV. They're never going to get beyond 10%. They are at somewhere between two to 5 % and that's really good for them because before they were less than 1%. So when the AOV is really high, you need to expect lower opt-in rates. If the AOV is under a hundred,

Matt Edmundson (24:42)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Shaan Arora (24:50)
Right? The expectation is that you can see between 10 to 15 % opt-in rates. Klaviyo says that 5 % is good. I think even 5 % can be considered very good by Klaviyo. For our brands, on average, we see between 10 to 15 % opt-in rates. So across, you know, around 3,000 brands, that's what we're seeing on average. So I'd say, like, if you're with 10%, that's good. 10 to 15%, that's good. And if you have low AOV, you can even push that. You can push that envelope even more.

Matt Edmundson (25:06)
Okay.

Yeah. And I'm curious, do a quick plug for your platform, Sean, if you like. Are you getting better rates in Clavio because you're focused in specifically on that and you're, I mean, obviously you're going to be better than Clavio opt-in, otherwise, you know, you're not going to say no, you? But I'm curious as to why there's a difference between you and Clavio.

Shaan Arora (25:42)
Yeah, that's a good question. And it's exactly what you said, Like, Klaviyo is phenomenal at email and SMS and forms is something they do. Same with PostScript, Omniscient, Attentive, like they all have forms, but it's not their world. At Alia, right, as CEO of the company, have 20 team members here, like we just do this one thing. Like we're obsessed with this one thing. And that means that we are just miles ahead in terms of features for what Klaviyo has. think what we care about is

Matt Edmundson (26:03)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Shaan Arora (26:12)
How can we show the right pop-up to the right customer at the right time? based on different UTMs, based on any other data we can get from the customer, we'll show them the right offer with the right copy and the right graphic. And running continuous tests for that is what we care a lot about.

Matt Edmundson (26:28)
Yeah.

So again, this comes back to the old ⁓ piece of advice, doesn't it? Segment your audience and target them specifically. You're suggesting we do that with pop-ups as well.

Shaan Arora (26:42)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Let's say you come from Facebook and I come from Google. We should actually be seeing different offers and potentially different copy too. ⁓ And pretty much nobody does that inside Klavia, which is totally cool, but it's really easy to set up how we do it. And it's something we can set up for lot of our friends too.

Matt Edmundson (27:02)
No, very good. I'm a big fan of that kind of level of personalization if you can make it work.

Shaan Arora (27:07)
Yeah, for sure. mean, that's

just so obviously the future here. It's like one to one. It's just so obviously the future with pop-ups and probably any other software.

Matt Edmundson (27:12)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? Cause we can get into the conversation about, our pop-ups right for everyone. Cause I think it was at Nielsen's and they did a bit of research and the rank, they rank pop-ups as the number one UI annoyance, comparing the experience to trying to go shopping in a shopping mall while promoters from every store should flyers into your hands.

poorly executed pop-ups degrade professionalism and overwhelm visitors with many people closing them without reading. So it's interesting, isn't it? Because I'm listening to what you say and I can see the data from my own site and go, man, these things work. But at the same time, I know from my own experience, every time a pop-up comes up, I'm like, I'll bugger off. Do you know what mean? And it's just like, automatically close like 95 % of them.

Shaan Arora (28:06)
Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (28:12)
Because I know if I need the discount, I'll find a way to get it at some point if I actually want to order. Are we, you know, like years ago, there used to be the carousel images on the hero and they'd go from one image to the next. They were cool at the time, but then we just became sort of blind to them. So then carousels didn't make any kind of sense. Are we becoming a bit sort of pop-up blind as a society?

Shaan Arora (28:36)
Yeah, that's a great question. And what I'd say is the numbers for keeping a pop-up on versus turning it off are undeniable from the data that we have that it makes more sense for a brand to keep it on, even if it's purely for AOV and CVR. So like we've done a lot of holdout tests because the point you mentioned, obviously brands think about that too.

Matt Edmundson (28:56)
Mm-hmm.

Shaan Arora (29:04)
make it extremely easy for a brand to do a holdout test, pop-up versus no pop-up, with the key metrics being C, VR, and AOV. ⁓ And across the board, I think on pretty much every single test we've run with this, we see C, VR, and AOV go up when you have a pop-up versus when you don't have a pop-up. And to your point, right, like you're like, hey, I click X right away, totally fair. But...

Matt Edmundson (29:22)
Mm.

Shaan Arora (29:30)
At least you now know that you can have a discount, right? You know that when I'm ready to check out, if I ever do choose to do so, there's a code waiting for me. ⁓ And you're a smart marketer, you're a smart guy, so even if you don't get a pop-up, you can probably find a way to get a pop-up from somewhere else, let's say, sure. Like if you don't get a pop-up offer, you can probably find a way to scout on the internet. Maybe get an offer from some, from some way you can get an offer, right? But not everyone is like that, I think. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (29:34)
Yeah.

Mm. Yep.

Shaan Arora (29:59)
You know, some people are like, okay, awesome. There's an offer I can waiting for me and I can go retrieve it. And just knowing that by itself increases the likelihood they're going to go ahead and make a purchase. ⁓ so like, I agree that it can be considered like not the best user experience and we care about trying to solve that. ⁓ but

Matt Edmundson (30:10)
Yeah.

Shaan Arora (30:23)
The numbers lead us strongly to believe that it's worth it because you will make more money, essentially.

Matt Edmundson (30:28)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And again, it comes back to the, you've got to, you've got to trial it, haven't you? You've got to see how you get on. One of the things that I noticed, and maybe you've seen this as well. And this actually, I thought was quite, it was the opposite to what I expected in the sense that mobile pop-ups drive about 40 % higher conversion than desktop.

I don't know if you found that because I, that's where I was a bit surprised when I came across that statistic. I would have thought actually mobile pop-ups are probably a little bit less engaging.

Shaan Arora (31:10)
I think, yeah, we see mobile pop-ups do a bit better, but I don't think it's 40 % better from our data. I think it's closer to like 15, 20 % better. No, why is it better? I maybe because on mobile, honestly, I don't have a good explanation. So I'd rather not make one up, so I'm not really sure why, but that's...

Matt Edmundson (31:19)
Mm-hmm.

Hahaha.

Shaan Arora (31:37)
That's what the numbers are saying for us too.

Matt Edmundson (31:40)
Yeah, it's interesting. when I read that status, that surprises me a little bit. I would have just assumed that actually, because maybe they're more effective because on mobile, they in effect take up the whole screen. You cannot miss them, right? ⁓ Maybe that's what it is. What about exit intent pop-ups?

Shaan Arora (31:53)
Yeah. I think that's part of it too.

Yeah, we recommend trying it out because you don't want to do it like immediately, like essentially we have a way to trigger the pop-up when they should be triggered. So imagine like you see the pop-up once you close X, right? You should have a floating button there. And it's what we call it. It's like essentially like, don't even show your shop. It says like get 10 % off. It's like on the page though. That's still recommended. And if you don't have that, we definitely recommend doing X and 10. So I think like...

Matt Edmundson (32:27)
Yeah, I

Shaan Arora (32:36)
You can probably do one of the two and be successful. Some brands do both because they want that highest opt-in rates possible. I'd say if we're gonna think about the sticky button, like that button right there, or X intent, I would choose the sticky button first.

Matt Edmundson (32:51)
Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. And, just going back to, suppose the, so the downside of, mean, we, know what the pop-ups benefits are. ⁓ and I mean, you know, you have a beautiful website, which does me a very good job of telling me all the benefits of pop-ups. course it's going to, ⁓ some of the downsides of pops. So it's annoying UX, where it's annoying. It's, it can be.

Shaan Arora (33:19)
can be.

Matt Edmundson (33:19)
an annoying customer,

not, not, it's not default annoying. ⁓ do you find like according, and again, I, I, this was based on, ⁓ an older study, ⁓ that Google penalized mobile sites by about 10 positions due to pop-up penalties. ⁓

Let me just read what this study says. Yeah, so in effect, yes, not all pop-ups are penalized. Google exempts exit intent pop-ups, legally required dialogues like cookie consent, pop-ups on desktops or between pages, small banners using 15 to 25 % less on screen. I don't know if Google is still doing this, but it seemed that Google was specifically penalizing mobile positioning on Google that used pop-ups. I don't know if you found that.

be true. I have not researched that particular project, that particular research has come through. I was just kind of curious as to what you had to say on it.

Shaan Arora (34:29)
Yeah, that's a question. I've been asked that before by our brands and we haven't seen anything significant that has made our brands turn off the pop-ups. So I wouldn't worry too much about that from the data we have. And I guess like one way to take comfort in that is like the largest brands in the world still use a pop-up like Nike, 8 Sleep. I think even Target has one thing, Home Depot.

Matt Edmundson (34:51)
Yeah.

Shaan Arora (34:56)
Well, the enterprise of enterprises use a pop-up. So I think like, could they come from the fact if like those behemoths are using pop-ups and they probably over-optimized for everything, like it's probably really fine for your brand to use one too.

Matt Edmundson (35:09)
Yeah.

Yeah. It'd be an interesting thing. I'd not, again, something I'd not thought about. I just, full disclosure, the research I've, one, I've not verified and two, ⁓ appears to be about eight years old. So I, it may well have changed, but something to definitely check and work on. So Sean, finally, guess around pop-ups, of course, the big, one of the big questions is timing.

Shaan Arora (35:27)
Sure.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (35:35)
⁓

should it be eight to 10 seconds? Should it be instantly? ⁓ should it be like 30 seconds or longer? What, what, what's the data telling us?

Shaan Arora (35:47)
First I'd say test it out to see what works best for your customers, if you want one answer, five seconds tends to be the spot.

Matt Edmundson (35:56)
Okay, and why do you think that is?

Shaan Arora (35:59)
I think it's not instantaneous, which is good. And it's.

Usually they'll have one scroll by then, so they might look at something and they're like, okay, cool, there's an offer. And then they know there's an offer and then they can come back to the offer if they're ready, when they're ready. That type of stuff.

Matt Edmundson (36:16)
Okay. Very good. ⁓ if there, I suppose if the, your magic wand is to resolve how to test based on everything that you've told us so far, I'm, figuring we've got a whole bunch of stuff we can test. Thank you very much. Which is great. ⁓ Is there anything else that I need to be aware of Sean that you can think of when it comes to

Shaan Arora (36:35)
Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (36:45)
pop-ups, I'm curious things that we've not touched on, like how does design impact it? Does it tend to be that, because quite a lot of the pop-ups that I see on sites tend to have that sort of older design feel because they've been around for a while. Have you found like including, I don't know, a video in a pop-up or something like that works quite well?

Shaan Arora (37:06)
This is your question. I think from the data we see, copy is number one by far and away the most important thing to test for, right? Like what copies can resonate well. And that's like, let's say you want to do 15%. You've got 15 % off, you've earned 15 % off, here's 15 % off, here's a mystery discount. Like all of these things are the biggest thing to move it. The timing is number two, right? So to your point, like should you show it at one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, like what, at what time should you show it? So those are the top two. And three I'd say is probably design.

Which is like, what creative should you show? Should you show a creative at all? ⁓ On desktop, we always recommend showing a creative. On mobile, half of our brands do, half of our brands don't. And that's simply because of issues with sizing. ⁓ But on desktop, pretty much every single brand shows a creative. And I think it's nice. I think it's another good way to show the usefulness of the product. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (37:50)
Right.

Shaan Arora (38:00)
So yeah, I'd design is probably third if I had to rank the top three most important things to care the most about for popups.

Matt Edmundson (38:08)
So if you're not showing design creative on mobile.

Shaan Arora (38:12)
Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (38:14)
Going back to my earlier point on mobile pop-ups more effective because they in effect take up a greater portion of the screen, right? Whether it's all the screen or the vast majority of the screen. If you're not using creative, I guess it's taken up a smaller portion of the screen, which then leads me to another question, which maybe might be getting slightly too granular here, Sean, and just, you know, just need to wind my neck in as we like to say in England.

Have you got some kind of ⁓ data or theory around if you show a full screen pop-up on a mobile, you get X, but if you show a pop-up which takes up maybe a third of the screen real estate, you get Y.

Shaan Arora (38:58)
Yeah, it's a good question. Showing a pop-up that is full screen or almost full screen is more effective than one that takes up a third to half. So let's say you want to show like 90 % of the screen or 80%. Those are over 100%. In general, tend to outperform the ones that show a smaller portion of it. The reason being like, I mean, it's just more obvious that exists. I think that's like the main reason honestly. It's just like, okay, okay, like this is so obvious to me that this is here.

Matt Edmundson (39:08)
Right.

Okay.

Yeah, you definitely can't avoid it, can you? Yeah. Now that would definitely be my expectation. I'm just curious as to why some people don't use creative in a mobile pop-up. And that'll either be because of site speed or it'll be because they don't want as much real estate space, right?

Shaan Arora (39:28)
And then, yeah, can, yeah, you just kind of work, yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Sizing, right? Like if it's like, if they're doing a third of the screen, the pop-up, you can't like put a good creative in there. It might just like look, might not look great.

Matt Edmundson (39:51)
And I mean, coming back to that point, do pop-ups affect site speed much?

Shaan Arora (39:56)
We haven't seen anything that would tell us that it affects site speed. ⁓ And as you can imagine, we get asked that all the time for brands, so something we care to make sure ⁓ we're not affecting.

Matt Edmundson (40:05)
Yeah.

So we're great. I'm loving this. Got lots of notes, Sean. I guess, where do you see it going? Like what in five years time, where is the pop-up industry? If I can call it that. It sounds a bit weird when it comes out my mouth, but you know what I mean.

Shaan Arora (40:13)
Nice.

⁓

Yeah, I think Where does where do pop-ups live in five years? I think the same with kind of how I think most software's are live in five years is like really trying to be extremely granular and one-to-one experiences, right? So like if you and I go to a website, we should see vastly different pop-ups Because let's say you and I have very different shopping habits whether or not we do or don't let's just say for example, we have extreme different shopping habits that we should be seeing different different offers different copy different creative nothing that's kind of where everything is heading and I'd say

Matt Edmundson (40:40)
Yeah.

Shaan Arora (40:52)
For pop-ups, that's probably where I see the future too. I think for email collection, both email and SMS collection will always, I think, be, not always, but think at least the next five years will be relevant. So I pop-ups will still have a place in e-commerce.

Matt Edmundson (41:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's interesting that you've gone down the personalization route. Um, I'm, I think that's very smart. I'm intrigued by it. The, I suppose one pop-up that I've seen, sorry, appreciate a bit scatterbrained today in some respects, but one of the things you've just said has reminded me of a pop-up experience where I was on a site and they're like, sign up to get your 20 % off. And I'm like, actually I'm going to buy, um, I'll give you my email. That's not because I'm going to give you my email anyway. Why do I care?

Shaan Arora (41:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (41:35)
So

I'm like, I'll get my 20 % off and, um, I don't think my welcome 20 code was working. So I'm like, okay, I'll go back and I'll put my email address in. put the email address in it says, great. You have now unlocked 10 % off, um, putting your mobile number to unlock 20 % off. was proper fuming. Um, to, to quote, you know, the good old British phrase, suppose, proper, I was proper fuming lad is how they'd say in Liverpool. Um, that.

Shaan Arora (41:37)
Ha.

Matt Edmundson (42:04)
Is an exp- again, I'm curious, is this a good strategy on their part? I might just be one of those anomalies that just goes, this is getting ridiculous. You just, you in effect promise me this for an email, but actually now you've changed the rules as I've gone down the system and you've got my email. I feel like I've been cheated a little bit.

Shaan Arora (42:21)
Yeah, I wouldn't recommend brands do it that way. I think a better way to do it is upfront offer 15 % off for the email and then say, hey, now if you put your SMS in, you get 20 % off, right? Instead of doing the other way around, like show a lower discount upfront, but then surprise them with a higher one if they enter their email.

Matt Edmundson (42:33)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

that's a good point. I like that they should do that. I'm gonna tell them to call you. I can't remember what site it was, but I'll definitely tell them to call you when I find it out again.

Shaan Arora (42:46)
Well,

I'll tell you what, think that probably works well, but I agree you get people pretty upset. honestly, it's probably the incremental lift you'll see in Optins isn't going to be worth the furious users who might be going crazy.

Matt Edmundson (42:54)
Mm.

People like

me that come onto a podcast, I do not buy from these lunatics. Brilliant. So listen, man, we've got to that stage of the show, where I ask my guests for a question for Matt. So this is where you give me a question. And I will go away on social media and at some point answer said question. So over to you, sir, what is your question for me?

Shaan Arora (43:05)
Yeah.

Cool, yeah, this question's not gonna be e-commerce, but it's a question I always love asking people, like, what's your favorite quote?

Matt Edmundson (43:31)
⁓ okay. What's my favorite quote? Can it be can it be a quote that comes from me?

Shaan Arora (43:37)
Check

that out.

Matt Edmundson (43:41)
Like, I'm not going to answer this now, but I'm just being a bit facetious in some respects. The thing that comes into my head straight away is the thing that I always used to hear my mum say when I was growing up and the thing that I always used to say that I would never say to my own kids, which is the very thing I say to my own kids, which is while you live under my house, you will obey my rules.

Shaan Arora (44:01)
I see.

Matt Edmundson (44:05)
⁓ Sean, listen, man. ⁓ Thank you so much for joining us. How do people reach you? How do they connect with you if they want to do that? If they want to find out more about using your software to help them with pop ups? Where do people go? What do people do? Let us know.

Shaan Arora (44:20)
Yeah, for sure. If you're interested in doing a trial with us, we do 30 days free. We do pop-ups. We do them very well, in my opinion. We're obsessed with them. So if you have an opt-in rate that's below 10%, do a trial. Worst case scenario, it doesn't work and then can uninstall and it's all good. So free trial, no commitments. ⁓ Aliapopups.com. Aliapopups.com is...

Domain and personally, yeah, so I'm CEO of the company I post on LinkedIn almost every day as well as Twitter So my Twitter is Sean Aurora 19 and my LinkedIn is just like my first and last name and then I post on Instagram to Sean Aurora 19 as well on Instagram

Matt Edmundson (44:59)
That's a lot of ways to reach out to Sean. So we will of course put all of those in the show notes, which you can get without the pop-up. I should put a pop-up on the e-commerce podcast.net website. Maybe that's what... Let's get more people subscribed. But now listen, we will of course put those in the show notes, which you can get along for free on the website.

Shaan Arora (45:08)
Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (45:22)
ecommercepodcast.net. You will be able to see the show notes in whatever app you are viewing or listening to this on. The links to Sean will be down there as well. So go check it out. If you've got an opt-in rate less than 10%, go give them a try. You've got nothing to lose. And I assume you're Sean, you platform agnostic or are you Shopify only?

Shaan Arora (45:40)
⁓ Where is Shopify on me right now?

Matt Edmundson (45:42)
Okay. So, uh, if you're a shopifying less than 10%, go check them out and see what you can find out. And of course, go hit him up on LinkedIn, uh, like comment to say, go load out the podcast. Everyone loves to hear those kinds of things. So do you go connect with people? Uh, but Sean, listen, man, we've got to that stage of the show where we say we call it saving the best till last. Um, and this is where I literally hand the mic over to you and go, right, man, you've got two minutes to deliver your best tips for those that have lasted.

until the end just as like saying thanks man for sticking with us right to the end and not switching off ⁓ just before all the other stuff. Watch your top tips. So two minutes over to you.

Shaan Arora (46:23)
Yeah, I'm going to also stay, I'm just going to give like my business advice. ⁓ that's worked for me to get to where we are today. So, you know, I, I think as software and also e-commerce, the barrier of entry becomes even lower with AI, right? You can, you can launch a store, create products. Similarly, you can create software very quickly now, right? It's like as

AI makes this even easier, competitors might come out and start like.

building your product for half the price and selling it for half the price, right? Like I think that's gonna continuously happen in every, in both software and e-commerce. I think one way to prevent that is by creating a personal brand around yourself as the founder or the CEO. For example, like I care a lot about trying to create a personal brand around me in my build, my journey of building this company.

bootstrapping it to six and a half million air or like I care about sharing that journey and having kind of be founder led. And likewise for a lot of e-commerce brands, like for example, there's a huge man, Skims, Kim Kardashian is the face of it. And I think because she's the face of it, like they get a lot more sales, right? And I'm sure there's a ton of Skims knockoffs, but there's this idea of like staying by the influencer, the person that you recognize.

⁓ and continuously buying that person's or clothes because you want to be like that person and you trust that that person.

is like the person that you look up to. And that's my advice is like build a personal brand because

when someone tries to come and cut your cost and price by half, you'll have some more stickiness because people know you as the founder and they're less likely to move to someone that's half the price, opinion.

Matt Edmundson (48:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

No, great tip. Top tip. it's something that I've been saying for years, actually. The way a small e-commerce brand competes with Amazon is not on the product necessarily, if Amazon are selling the same product. It's not on pricing because they're Amazon. The thing that you can compete on is you and your story and your brand, right? That's your positioning. That's your, that's what makes you you. And people buy that at the end of the day. Not everybody, but some people will be willing to buy that. And that's who you should target and hit.

Shaan Arora (48:54)
Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (48:59)
What's one thing you've done that's really helped your personal brand? I'm curious. Is it just posting content all the time? there, what is it? Getting great headshots?

Shaan Arora (49:09)
I think it's just being consistent, you know, I'm sure Matt you probably I you've been so consistent, right? I'm sure you can resonate so well with this like ⁓ Posting something every day even if it's not the best content in the world is better than not posting it at all in my opinion just being consistent. If you if you can post content for a decade, you can't lose Eventually at the end of decade. I think you'll you'll you'll have won so you can just consistently post the content

Matt Edmundson (49:24)
Mm.

Yeah.

Shaan Arora (49:36)
and be okay with not seeing insane numbers in the first day or in the first year, I think that's how you win.

Matt Edmundson (49:42)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Very good point. Love that. Sean, listen, legend, privileged to meet you and listen to your story and hear about what you guys are doing. Thank you for the insights and the conversation and beaming in all the way from New York City. Really appreciate it, brother.

Shaan Arora (50:01)
Thank you, I appreciate it. Great time.

Matt Edmundson (50:04)
Well, that's been great. It's been great. So there you go. What another great conversation that is as we wrap up this episode of the e-commerce podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure you stay connected with us as we've got yet more great conversations lined up. And of course, I don't want you to miss any of them, but that's it from me. That's it from Sean. Thank you so much for joining us. Bye for now.