Email Marketing Insights with Ben Jabbawy (Founder & CEO of Privy)

So today we've got over 500,000 stores that are using Privy. We see about just over a billion sessions every month in terms of people that are interacting with sites that have Privy actively installed. And we're collecting anywhere from 8 to 10 million emails a month. So the scale is real. I think in terms of the founding origins of the company, I was like classic entrepreneur, grew up in a family of small businesses and was like the guy that was building sites and doing email marketing for them. So, you know, I didn't exactly know what e-commerce was at the time, but saw this big shift coming of, you know, small businesses getting hungry to adopt self-serve technology, especially as it relates to marketing. So I kind of started talking around and realized, wow, there's, you know, there's solutions like MailChimp out there. Obviously Klaviyo is a great partner of ours today too. But so many of these, these existing ESPs didn't have great tools to kind of solve a very simple workflow. Right. And so like the initial workflow that Privy became really well known for was someone hits your site. You want to design something that looks awesome. It's on brand, it's targeted. So it's not going to annoy people that are already on your list. They sign up, you reveal a coupon code that's unique while they're on the site without having them to leave. And that code automatically works on the backend. And then you can sync your new leads to MailChimp or Klaviyo. So that was like the roots of the company. I mean, we just perfected that single workflow. We made it free. We've got, you know, we're known for the free plan. And now we're adding 12,000 stores a month that are starting to use the free version of Privy. That's, that's so awesome. And nine, 10 years ago when you launched it, was this really to solve your own need? This was just something that you were using for your own stores or family and friends stores, or did you actually start the business to start selling this software, this service to other people? No. So like lead capture was definitely something that I was doing for my parents' businesses as well as email marketing. But no, as I started to talk to other businesses, you know, I was just passionate about solving something for a small business. That's kind of all I knew. And so, you know, it was never, it was never actually just for me. It was really always for my parents. And then as we branched out other businesses. That's awesome. And then with, you know, with form collection, obviously you've done this for a long time. You have a lot of data. Are there any like metrics or advice that you could share to someone when they're starting to build a form or they're thinking about optimizing a form? Yeah, a hundred percent. So there's, there's a few use cases I want to talk about today. But I think, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, is it, is it the timing? Is it exit intent? You know, is it a pop-up versus a spin wheel or a fly out? Like, great. There's a lot you can do. And I did a course for Shopify. You can check out it's free on Shopify compass about list growth. It goes through all of that. But what I'll say is across our data set, the thing that we see that has the biggest impact on signup rates is the content of what you're putting in front of them. Right. So there's three types from what we see in our data. There's what we call sign up. Right. And that's like no offer, just sign up and join our list. The other is an offer. So it could be like a content download, or it could be a coupon code or free shipping in exchange for signing up. Right. Discrete offer. And the third is like an enter to win, enter to win a gift card drawing. Right. And so the sign up campaigns, you should expect you're going to convert one percent of traffic that sees that in offer. You're going to convert between five and 10 percent based on the strength of the offer and enter to win. You know, you're in the teens or low 20 percent in terms of sign up rate. And, you know, I think sometimes people are like, oh, that means I should just do an enter to win. The reality is like you got to be careful and, you know, maybe start with sign up and inch your way up. But at least that's a framework for how you can increase your sign up rates with, you know, just a couple of weavers and offers is really or lack thereof is really the thing that carries the biggest impact. Then in terms of like what you want to do. So rather than focus on like a timer or exit intent, I actually think about the world in terms of like the customer journey, almost like you would do inside of email marketing with your flows. You want to take a similar approach with your your site conversion. Right. So for new visitors, I really do believe that a welcome offer is what you want to do. Give them a little bit of time. Look for how long they've been on the site in their first visit or how far they've scrolled or how many pages they've seen and use that for your welcome offer. But then I think further down the funnel, we talk a lot about this concept of a cart saver, which is probably new to a lot of you here, which is, OK, maybe someone, you know, they saw that initial welcome. They closed it out. They're still engaged. They're kind of looking at different products. They add something to the cart. Meanwhile, your ESP still has no idea who they are. Right. Shopify has no idea who they are. And you can actually detect like, A, which products are in the cart, B, how much money is in the cart and C, are they then showing exit intent? And so when you kind of combine how much is in the cart or which products with the exit intent, that's like one of the most powerful scenarios around list growth that you could unlock. And, you know, we call that the cart saver. That's one of the staples of Privy. But you can actually use that as a way to grow your list, but certainly like reduce abandonment before it leaves with someone that's really, really far down the funnel. But you still don't know who they are. So, you know, those are the two things that I'd recommend is like a really strong welcome offer where you're using the offer itself as your lever if you're just getting started. And then the cart saver for people that are further down the funnel and still haven't signed up. Awesome. So diving to the offer piece, is there an offer that you think, you know, people should start with early? Is it 10% off? Is it 15% off? Have you noticed or done any testing around like the difference between the conversion of 10% versus 15% versus something more? Yeah. Oh, for sure. I mean, you know, a lot of our customers use A-B testing. We see the results of those. You know, what I would say is like start with 5%. Move it up if you want more signups. I'd say don't go above 10%. Like the difference between a 10% and a 15% offer in terms of your signup rate is going to be minimal. Right. Cool. I appreciate that. On the cart saver side, again, I haven't used the product yet. So apologies if this is a dumb question, but is there a way to dynamically or kind of customize what offer or what discount you're showing someone in a cart saver based off their value in their cart? Yeah. So that's kind of level 201, we call it. So like you've got your basic cart saver, which is, hey, anyone who has product in the cart is leaving, show them an offer if they're not a customer. Level 201 is what we call the tiered cart savers, right? So it's like, if someone's got less than AOV in the cart and they're leaving it behind, okay, fine. Maybe you want to show them a small little something and try to get the lead and close the deal. But let's say they had like 3X average order value in the cart, right? And it was like 250, really high value cart. And you know that they're about to leave and you still don't know who they are. You probably want to get more aggressive with that. So yeah, it's actually super simple to set up a tiered cart saver. Another kind of use case around that too, that's really powerful for brands that are selling internationally. You might be able to offer free shipping in your cart saver for people that are domestic, but internationally you might be handling that differently. So there's all sorts of kind of segmentation that you can apply to any of your displays in Privy, cart savers being probably the most impactful. Yeah, no, this makes a lot of sense. I know we were talking before we started reporting where, you know, we use Play-Doh predominantly for a lot of ours, but just the fact that you mentioned this cart saver thing to me is really unique and kind of attractive. I think I love Play-Doh, but I think that's one limitation of their form. So I'm going to go hit my team up after this call to test that and try it because that's really cool and that's really interesting. Yeah, and just so everyone knows, Privy and Klaviyo are tightly integrated. We can pass cookies that we capture over to Klaviyo, SMS, contacts, email, unique coupon codes that you reveal on the site through Privy we can pass over. There's all sorts of stuff. So it's a really, really tight integration if you do decide to test it out. Sweet. So you mentioned on the offer, maybe about 5% to 10% conversion of email collection with the enter to win right in teens. What are you seeing in terms of like the percentage of converting with this cart saver? Is it in between the two? Is it more? Is it less? Like what are you seeing there? Higher. Yeah. So because you're further down the funnel, like a, you know how I talked about an offer and you're welcome. So if you like a similar offer where it's like, hey, you've got X in your cart, like before you go, here's a code that same offer can get 10 to 20% higher because it's like that person's so close. Right. And maybe one of the reasons they're actually leaving is price or, you know, there was an unforeseen shipping costs that showed up and they're just like, ah, you know, so you should expect, sorry, this is where you're good, but yeah, you should expect a higher signup rate. And this is a much higher quality, higher intent audience that's further down the funnel. Makes sense. And this next question might be a weird question or hard to answer. So apologies if it's a weird one or one that's hard to track, but so with the car saver, with the people that you're collecting emails there for the first time, do you have any sense of like what that LTV looks like or what they actually end up doing later on? Obviously, right. It would depend on a store by store basis, but like what's the difference between someone that you collect at a welcome series with some kind of offer versus someone that's getting an offer at the car? Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So what I have offhand is just kind of like broadly speaking, the value of an email address. Um, I actually can't, I don't differentiate between, did they come in the LTV of a welcome offer versus a card saver? I think that's a really interesting concept. I should, I should ping the team on that, but, um, just in terms of like, Hey, you're out there, you're growing your email list or you're thinking about it. And you're like, why? Um, so the data that we saw, uh, from 2019, so two years ago now was that every email address you collect was worth 16 bucks. So not that everyone was going to purchase who joins your list. We all know that, but on average, your list will spend this much money. Um, in 2020, that doubled to 33, right? So the value of a single email address in 2020, maybe because of COVID, whatever it was, um, actually grew significantly. And I expect like, even now there's all this news about Facebook ad targeting and, um, cookie tracking and, and iPhones that's changing. And I expect that the value of an email will continue to climb up from 33 bucks. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm with you. Um, I mentioned this to you before, but we have a paid social division at our company and a lot of the conversations that we're having with that team is like, you know, how do we continue to double down on email, right? Like how do we start selling more package deals as an agency where we're being judged on a blended return, right? Because the tracking attribution is going to be difficult. So those are definitely conversations that we're having as well. Totally. And by the way, I think there's another like interesting, um, spot that, that adds a lot of value, right? Like some, so much of paid efforts are measured, measured in, um, like resulting orders and sales. Um, but for certain brands, like it actually might make more sense to optimize the tracking pixel around, um, email signups, right? Um, because, you know, maybe you're not going to drive in order in that first visit, maybe it's a more research educated by, and so, you know, you can, you can fire your pixels after email signup and then optimize that way. I think that's a great, like, you know, way to tie together from paid through an email program. That's awesome. Um, one thing I've talked a little bit about before is using forms, almost as billboards on a website. And it's not something that I think a lot of other people talk about or know or do. Do you have anything that you've seen or any kind of advice and essentially kind of not make that so vague to say, for example, um, Ben, you have purchased from my store, right? I already have your email. You're already on my list and you've spent, um, certain AOV with me, right? Maybe you're a VIP. The next time you come onto my website, I might want to show you a specific pop-up obviously without saying your name, you can use a personalization within the form. At least not yet. I'd be like, Hey, Ben, you know, thanks so much for being a VIP. Here's a special 15% offer on your next purchase. You'll go by now. Do you guys have any insight? Do you guys do much of that? Give me thoughts. Yeah, for sure. So I love this, right? We are, our CS team talks a lot about like the VIP return experience. Um, so, so just a couple of things. So you can actually use privy displays as another like huge use case for us, um, without forms. Right. And so you kind of marry the targeting instead of looking for people that haven't ordered before, or haven't signed up for your list. There's a whole slew of stuff around VIP and cross-sells that you can do inside privy that's focused on exactly that. And so you can actually drop like almost like you would drop a personalization variable into an email. You can do that into a privy display, right? So if we recognize that someone's coming back, um, you know, we could do like, Hey, you know, thanks for your third order. How did you like that? Or if they, if they're connected to a loyalty program, like smile, Hey, don't forget, you've got like a hundred points in your account. That means you get free shipping on this order. Um, you can do all sorts of stuff like that with, with displays for repeat customers as well. And, and, you know, our view and the reason we, we kind of expanded our platform so significantly was like, list growth was really just the first use case, but that same kind of technology of just like easy to use, easy to design something that looks on brand and really powerful targeting applies to so many other use cases on your site. I love the example that you just gave around like VIPs. I love cross-sells. We've got like dynamic shipping bars that show that. So there's really a lot of stuff you can do. And it's almost like just really thinking about, you know, the same approach you apply to emails and flows. Think about the traffic on your site and what sort of prompts or unique displays do you want to display to them? You don't want to get too convoluted, but I think there's some natural opportunities and use cases that really move the needle. Awesome. And I have one more question that I've been rapid firing. The last question I have is post-purchase, right? So someone's made an order. Um, are you guys using pop-ups to collect? Like, Hey, how did you learn about us? Like, do you have any thoughts? Are there any insights you could share on post-purchase kind of behavior and learnings? Yeah, we don't do any like post-purchase surveys or anything like that. Um, but we do see a lot of our customers target, uh, order confirmation pages, um, with, you know, announcements around like fulfillment times, um, with, um, uh, prompts to go follow them on social since they already have the email, um, with messages from the founders embedded in like that autoplay videos. So there is a whole new kind of crop of use cases that are propping up around post-purchase that we're seeing. And we, we plan on investing heavily there. Sweet. And I like, this is actually the last question. I didn't want to make this like a, a prediction conversation, right? Cause everyone likes to have those and what happens and what doesn't happen, you know, who knows, but you're obviously a smart dude. You have a lot of data on your side. You have any thoughts and recommendations for people that are, um, you know, thinking about email 2021, whether it's your tool, whether it's other people's tools, like, again, I don't even know if I would answer that. So I'm kind of asking you a hard question, but I guess what I'm asking is like, you know, for someone that's, you know, starting out with email or any ideas on email, like do you have any stats or numbers like emails converting at this percent compared to other channels? Like do you have any stats to kind of back up like what we're talking about and like why we think 2021 will be a really great year for email? Yeah, for sure. So I think there's a lot of like current events, like the cookie and ad targeting stuff. That's going to place more emphasis on unowned marketing, email being kind of the anchor there. Um, you know, another stat I'll just throw out there was just from, from, uh, black Friday. So Shopify actually put this out, um, that in terms of conversion rate by channel, they looked at email, direct social media, emails far and away, the best conversion rate for, uh, sales. Right. And so it just kind of speaks to the intent of email as a channel. Obviously those are big, big selling days. We know that, but still, I think it's, it kind of sets the tone. Um, and I think, uh, like there's a lot of talk about texts right now and I'm a huge proponent of text. We have a text offering at Privy. Um, I do think that that is a next wave, but I think it's much harder to get text, right? It's a way more intimate channel. I think there is a tremendous amount of, um, you know, execution that you can unlock quickly through email, whether your list is a hundred contacts or a hundred thousand. Um, a lot of the concepts in the email marketing are the exact same. And if you get them in place early and then grow your traffic and your audience over time, like you're going to be in a really good spot. Um, and you know, site conversion and list growth is a big part of that. Yeah, that's awesome. I don't talk a lot about text. If it's not something that I'm personally an expert in, it's something for 2021 that we're more focused on as an agency. Um, do you have like any reasons or understanding with why are people not investing in the text if they're not right? Is it, are they afraid of like the barrier to entry with all like the legal fees? And that's kind of the thing that people are scared of. If they do it wrong, there's a lot more fines, you know, or people kind of thinking it's creepy. Like if people are kind of against it, like what are some of the common, you know, myths or reasons? It feels like it's the exact same conversation I've had with merchants about email marketing and about pop-ups, you know, like I think there's a feeling of like, oh, well I wouldn't want that. I got, I don't want to pop up, you know, or that that's not working. That's annoying. Or I don't want to send emails to my customers and annoy them, you know? And certainly like all of that sentiment is heightened in a text environment, right? Because to me, you know, we're on Zoom, we're emailing, we're Twitter DMing, that's fine. Like we're not texting yet, right? Like my, my wife texts me, you know? And so I think, I think a lot of times it's natural, but it's, it's not the right behavior. Like as founders or as marketers or as the brand person, like we, we, we shy away from marketing channels that are really powerful because of personal sentiment. The reality is this stuff works. There's a reason that, you know, Chase has an amazing agency doing email all day long. There's a reason that, you know, hundreds of thousands of stores use Privy pop-ups displays to grow their list. Like the stuff really, really works. And I feel the same way about text. But also like, I think it's taking text a little while to pick up because people haven't even like nailed email. Yeah. You know, like, and how long has email been around? It's been around forever, right? And, and I can't tell you how many times I've talked about, I'm like, but you, you still don't have like email automation going, like you're a seven figure brand. That's amazing. First of all, but like imagine what it could be. Right. And so I think it's like, it's a little bit of paralysis too, of like, you know, you got to just get the foundation set. And I, I do still think that's email and get email set and humming. And then like, think about how text might be able to add a nice touch in some use cases on top of that, but not like mirror exactly what you do in email and text. Dude, fantastic answer. Ben, you're the man I could go on and on asking a bunch of questions. I think we'll just have to get you back for kind of part two. So that way we could be cognizant of your time today. Thank you so much that you're the founder, the CEO of Privy. I'm excited to play more with Privy now that you've kind of shared some of these things. I guess the last question is for someone that is interested in Privy, someone that wants to learn more about you or ask you anything, Twitter, email, like what's the best place to get in contact? Yeah, just, I mean, I'm on Twitter at Jabawi, J-A-B-B-A-W-I, or just Privy.com. P-R-I-V-Y.com. We got it all there. Sweet, man. Thank you so much for the time, man. I really appreciate it. Yeah, likewise, Chase. I'll just hit record.