Samir Balwani 0:03
Hi, I'm Samir Balwani, host of Chief Advertiser and founder of QRY, join me as I talk to industry leaders about their strategies, challenges and successes in managing their advertising and marketing. On our episode today I have Shaan Arora, the co founder at Alia here. I'm really excited to have him on. I think they're doing some really innovative and interesting things, and we're going to talk zero party data. So thank you so much for joining us.
Shaan Arora 0:30
Yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it cool.
Samir Balwani 0:34
I mean, let's, let's give some people background. So who are you? How did you get to where you are now, and what are you doing? Yeah,
Shaan Arora 0:41
for sure. So I'm Shaan. I'm the co founder and CEO of Alia. So I started the company, actually about two years ago now, while I was in university, you know, the idea was, I was building a Shopify store for my mom's brand, who actually used to sell Indian clothes in Boston, where I'm from, and then she wanted to move online. And of course, I was like, let me, let me digital age here, right? So I was helping her as as I brought her online, one of the first things I honestly looked at on the website was like, What is this pop up thing? Like, what is this? So I kind of did a deep dive into like, what is that? And why is it used by every single site, but why is no brand innovating on it. Why is no software really innovating on it in a way that I thought could be innovated on? And I was like, I think this could be done better. So I did it better for my mom store. I thought it would be cool to see how it performed if we actually launched it to the public. Launched it to the public about two years ago now, working with, uh, over 900 brands using our pop ups, so yeah, kind of won. The company over the past two years, went from about 20 to 200 just in the past 13 months. But yeah, love pop ups. All we do is pop ups. All I care about in my life is opt ins and pop ups and zero party data.
Samir Balwani 1:53
And that's awesome. Well, I mean, you said the magic word. So let's talk zero party data, because I don't think most people really understand what zero party data is. So can you give just a definition on zero party data and how it's different from first party data?
Shaan Arora 2:07
Yeah, zero party data is data that users are willingly telling you about themselves. So it's like who? Very simple example is, who are you shopping for today, myself or someone else? When they answer myself? That's an example of them giving
Samir Balwani 2:21
you zero party data, that's awesome. And, and how are brands kind of using that data? Like, what are they doing with it?
Shaan Arora 2:31
Yeah, for sure. I think in in the lens of a pop up, which obviously is the world I live in, it would be, you know, within the pop up, you can ask a question at the very beginning, even before they're opting in to say, like, what are you shopping for today? Right? And if, let's say the brand is like Nike, it could be like sweat pants sweatshirts, like equipment for the gym, and then they, or none of the above, and they answer that question. And then the way that that data would get utilized would be an email and SMS flows, right? So based off my picture, you could then segment me an email, segment me an SMS, because, you know, I'm here for, let's say, workout equipment, which is probably relatively different in trust than if I'd say for sweat pants, you would send me a welcome flow, and then all the retention emails and the retention SMS flows about workout equipment, compared to a generic flow that You would send to everyone else. It's
Samir Balwani 3:21
almost interesting, because I it's like, akin to when you would walk into a department store early on. So I'd be like, Hey, what are you here shopping for? And then they would guide you to the sections that matter most to you, right? Like, and I think that that's like an opportunity for a lot of retailers. It's, you know, like you said, the flows online in your emails and SMS. But then there's also like site personalization and offer personalization on the media side, we love it, because I tell people the single most valuable part of first party data, if you wanted to ask a question or zero party data, if you want to ask a question to brands and customers on what they're doing, ask them if they're buying a gift, because if they tell you that they are a gifting audience. Well, then that's huge, because then you can do Mother's Day Father's Day holidays, you know. So really understanding what people are there for is super valuable. So what is, what kind of questions do you see people ask? What? What kind of zero party data are people, you know, asking for?
Shaan Arora 4:16
I think a few examples that work really well. Right? Brand pulled a ray gray. They asked, like, what is your hair care concern? Right? So I think this is something that works really well, where it's like, understanding, what do they care about another brand, like, he's trying to ask the question, what are you shopping for today, right? Like, whether they're building their home gym apparel and hats, dumbbells and plates, it could be my facility, right? And like, these are all like, pretty different, like, customers, right? I think hostage tape is a brand that asks that question you mentioned in the beginning, where it's who you shopping for today, and the answer being myself or someone else, right? So interesting. I think there's, there's, there's a few kinds of questions. One would be like, product questions, like, what do you shop? Shopping for today, right? A second question be like, intent, right? Like, why are you, like, a ray Gray says, What's your hair concern? Essentially, like, not really giving a product recommendation Off, off the bat, or asking you about what your what product you care about, but more about, why are you here? Like, What's your concern? And then I think the third question would be, yeah, as you mentioned, like a simple Are you? Who are you shopping for today? Myself or someone else? Gifting is super important, a lot of brands. So yeah, I think those three are great questions, and we've seen high performance for all three
Samir Balwani 5:31
of those. Yeah, that's really interesting. That's super cool. I love that the overlay is really customized and it's different, but the flow seems really simplistic. So Shaan, I guess you are asking an additional question. You're asking for more information. The natural marketer says, the more friction you create, the worse this performs. How does that is that true? Like, how does that work? Yeah, no,
Shaan Arora 5:59
it's super interesting, right? And intuitive, like when I first started the company, I probably thought the same thing too. And then by running a bunch of AB tests, right, and seeing all the data that we have, it's like, Oh, wow. Okay, so people are actually more likely to go through email and SMS if you ask them a poll question in the beginning, the idea of micro commitment is definitely there, right where it's like, Hey, I've already answered, who am I shopping for today? I might as well answer email, and then you might as well answer SMS. Like the land front plunge. They do like, like the personas and the tubs. They actually ask the second question. So it's question like poll question, email, SMS question, and then you get the discount, right? So that's interesting. Yeah, like, by asking a question in the beginning, not only do you get to collect zero party data, but you actually get higher opt in rates. Um, because people are more more likely to go through the whole flow, and they're more likely to start the flow, compared to just being like, what's your email for? 10% off asking that question, instead of showing the email field as the step number one, shows higher opt in rates. So I mean, and that is, like, super great data for like the world to know, because it means you should ask that question. Because you get better segmentation, you also get better segmentation in media and like, email and SMS, plus you also just get higher opt in rates. So, like, it's the Win, win for the marketers here. Yeah, it's
Samir Balwani 7:27
really interesting. So you collect this zero party data, you've got this information on people, once you've got it, how have you seen it actually impact conversions? Like, how has it actually led to sales? Can you talk through, like, stories of that or or examples of people that have done it? Well,
Shaan Arora 7:47
yeah, for sure. I think, um, there's, there's two plays here. The first is looking at the data at a meta level, right? So our ability, which is a Shopify president's brand, um, they ask a really good question in their pop up, and they asked, like, what are you interested in today? Data came back, and actually, most of their customers were interested in Matcha compared to green tea, right? And, like, that was data they didn't expect. So with that data, it then led them, and they actually ended up telling us this on a call, and they were just like, Oh yeah, that data we actually use, by the way, it led them to change their R and D and decide that more of one thing and less of one thing, right? So looking at data at a meta level, like, what? What are people here for? What do they care about in general, is really helpful. And then the second would be at a micro level, right? So, like, customer, right? And the way we see that right is, like, I think most people who have either done this or can rationally and objectively agree that, like, if I was to get a more personal email than a more generic email, I'm more like so just like my by proxy of that, we've seen brands make more money through email flows when they do segment versus when they don't segment.
Samir Balwani 8:56
That's really interesting. I love that you are like, all in on pop ups. And it's kind of really cool to think about that any advice or thinking around how someone should even just set up their pop up like, what is a perfect interstitial? Because, look, the reality of it is pop ups suck, right? Like, as a consumer, they are literally in the way of what you want to do. And so how do you make them not suck and be effective for the brand? Yeah, it's a great
Shaan Arora 9:27
question. I'll go through three parts of it, right? The first being delay time, right? So I'll speak generally here. Delay time in five seconds works the best through I mean hunt probably 200 million data points, five second delay works the best. Okay, so that's like the first step there. Second would be the graphics of it right full screen outperforms everything else. So having full screen pop up will outperform any other pop up that you could have. Third is going to be the copy of it. Right copy is pretty important, because 111, variation of this that works well is you've got a mystery discount. So you know, instead of saying, like, you've got 5% you've got 10% etc, you're you've got a mystery discount. The reason that works well, right is because brands can then lower their margin by not needing to give the super sexy 30% but they can give the 10% right, but put it behind the mystery discount copy. Meanwhile, they can actually increase their opt in rates and help with their margins by giving a lower discount and putting it behind you've got a mystery discount copy. Well, I mean,
Samir Balwani 10:43
the mystery discount is really fascinating too, because you could personalize the discount then, right? Because there are different discounts you can give to people depending on their value to you as a customer.
Shaan Arora 10:52
100% Yeah, 100% that is, that is really good point, right? So if you're able to collect zero point data on them, maybe ask them another specific question in the email flow, you can segment them, like, oh, they answered this question and they and they went through the mystery flow, like, let's send them 5% instead of 10% or send them 20% 10% whatever it might be. So yeah, that's really interesting. And sorry, the last thing I want to mention would be like, the first screen of the pop up as I showed the examples, like, asking that poll question in the beginning is better practice than having an email field, which is then better practice than having an email and SMS field in the same line, right? The idea of micro commitment and actually separation of these things works better than putting it all at once for the user to kind of go through, like email SMS at the same time, versus putting that up into poll question, email, SMS reward.
Samir Balwani 11:40
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love anything that can allow us to get zero party data is really valuable for us. So, so it's interesting, because if you listen to the podcast, I'm a big fan of post purchase survey also, right? And so it's, you know, you complete your your purchase, and you get a bunch of questions. Some of those are like, How'd you hear about us? That's like, the standard, but then it asks like, Why did you come to the store? Who did you consider all of those kinds of questions, right? That's great, but that only covers your customer base. So the beauty of the interstitial at the beginning of the product purchase is you get their intent before they've purchased, and that helps you better understand how to purchase, how to get more purchases. And so it is interesting, though, anyone that is using, you know, first party pop ups and plus purchase, make sure you're de duping like, you know, customer data and and like, if you really want to understand people that came to the site answered questions but didn't purchase, de dupe your customer list and see what everyone that didn't purchase, right? So when we do media segmentation, we want to exclude out those people where we got data for them but they didn't purchase, because ultimately, that's not the segment we want. We want the segment we got data for them and then they purchased. And so it is. It's really cool to get all this data. You just got to be really careful with it.
Shaan Arora 13:01
Yeah, for sure. Cool. I
Samir Balwani 13:03
know, you know, we've been talking about pop ups and innovation specifically. So what's next? I guess, where, you know, where do you go with the pop up, and how do you innovate on a pop up? More than kind of you have already, yeah,
Shaan Arora 13:19
it's a good question. And I mean, I mean, I'll try to succinct here, right? Like, the main trend here is going to be aI bringing into AI being put into every single piece of technology, which the future is just that. And I think everyone kind of sees that, right? I know it's like a buzzword, but like, it really is just the future. I think, yeah, in every way, especially with GPT four, everyone's like saying, wow, this really is, like, crazy, yeah, and we've seen that, and we've been building AI for a while into the product. So number one, we died. Number two would be, like, better segmentation and offers, right? So, like, how do you think about showing the right pop up to the customers at the right time, right? Right? So, like, bringing in features of, oh, like, because they landed on, because they came from this UTM, and because the in general, we see customers who come from this UTM on this website convert best at 15 seconds with this offer. We can actually show that directly to the customer, instead of guessing and randomly throwing an offer out there. So just understanding that better. So that's like segmentation and offers. And then the former thing I talked about, just like AI would be, and it's actually I already been built, was infinity testing. So 24/7 running AI generated AB tests on the pop up, right? There's, there's a lot of components of a pop up, just a lot of components on email, similar, and there's a lot of amounts of Teck, of like a text message, right? You can probably test most things in there, in the pop up, you can test literally everything you see on the screen. So the idea is, let's have 24/7 tests running that are constantly optimizing when people are sleeping, when people are not paying attention, but we're always optimizing the pop up. No, that's
Samir Balwani 14:59
really. Cool. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, I'd love to also pull in additional signals in right? Because we've got so many tools that are sitting on the site that are collecting data as well. So, yeah, there's so much opportunity in this, like experience that people don't even always pay attention to
Shaan Arora 15:21
Yeah, I definitely agree with that point. Cool.
Samir Balwani 15:26
Well, listen, Shaan, I really appreciate you coming on today. This has been so much fun. If someone wants to find you online, where can people learn more about you?
Shaan Arora 15:35
Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. I give a lot of like, tactical advice on pop ups on LinkedIn, on Twitter, my handle is at, I @iamshaanarora, and then our website is Alialearn.com, Alialearn.com
Samir Balwani 15:51
amazing. Thanks so much for coming on, Shaan, yeah. Thank you for having
Shaan Arora 15:55
Really appreciate it.
Outro 16:00
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