Episode 1: How to Streamline Your Ecommerce Marketing Approach w/ PushOwl & UWP

Miz Trujillo

Hello everyone and welcome to the Make Merchants Money podcast by Underwaterpistol, we will be discussing everything Shopify and ecommerce related. I am your host, Miz Trujillo and today we're looking at how to streamline your ecommerce marketing approach. Absolutely delighted to have two guests with us today. We have Kunal on the show he is head of sales and partnerships over at Push Owl. Push Owl is a great Shopify app which enables you to reengage with previous store visitors by sending them push notifications directly to their mobiles or web browsers. Thank you so much for being on the show Kunal.

Kunal Konde

Glad to be here, excited to get started.

Miz Trujillo

And also with us today is Alan Rooney digital strategy and PPC specialist here Underwaterpistol. Thanks for talking with us today Alan.

Alan Rooney

No problem. Thanks for having me.

Miz Trujillo

So to jump right in, we live in an age where we're constantly bombarded by information and Push Owl seems like a great way to stand out, get a message through to previous store visitors and convert them into sales, which is what everyone cares about. Could you tell us a bit more about the app and how it could help Shopify store owners with their marketing approach?

Kunal Konde

Yes. So in a nutshell, Push Owl is a push notification platform for Shopify stores, everybody is pretty familiar with push notifications on their mobile devices, you must have seen alerts pop up on your phone whenever somebody is following you on Twitter, or sending your friend request on Facebook. So these alerts show up on your device telling you what happened. That is a push notification. So what we do is we take that power and utility to the web. Now, that itself sounds pretty awesome. But Push Owl l goes way beyond that. One of the Golden Rules of marketing is sending the right message at the right time to the right person. There's a whole bunch of advanced features like smart delivery and segmentation which helps you do just that. And that's exactly why ecommerce businesses are using Push Owl.

Miz Trujillo

That's amazing, excellent, I think we'd all agree that obviously it's never enough to just have one thing working right. I'm sure our listeners would agree that a good ecommerce marketing strategy requires a lot of time, thought and planning, even having a good product isn't enough on its own. So Alan maybe, would you say that there's any steps listeners should be taking in their ecommerce marketing, before they start sending these push notification out, so that these are as effective as possible?

Alan Rooney

Well, I guess the first thing would be, one of the main mistakes that I see a lot of Shopify and even ecommerce sites doing, is that they're relying on one channel and to be honest, if you if you are relying on one channel, that's a recipe for disaster. Like, I see especially the way Facebook and Instagram is at the moment it's underpriced, so a lot of people are going all in on that and if it's working for you, you know, happy days, but you kind of need to audit where your revenue is actually coming in at the moment. If you are relying only on the likes of Facebook and Instagram you know when the when the CPM is triple in a year or two and you're not getting the return on ad spend that you were in the past and you haven't looked into the likes of push or email and stuff like that, you're going to be in trouble. So I guess first steps would be auditing. You know, usually what we do with with our clients would be like a workshop or an initial analytics in order to see how each channel is performing and then seeing where it is that you can drive more revenue. And I guess push notifications is one of the most undervalued channels that I'm seeing at the moment. I guess this is why we're we're having this first conversation anyway, so I guess that's probably your first step.

Miz Trujillo

Absolutely. I think one of the one of the main issues people face is definitely abandoned carts. I know that according to a report by Baynard Institute, and I'll link the reports in the description below, 69.89% of shopping carts are abandoned. This is a lot money being lost and a lot of stress that's caused, Kunal, maybe from your experience, how can Push Owl help with overcoming this scenario?

Kunal Konde

Yeah. So just building on what Alan said before that, you know, having just one channel is a recipe for disaster. So the usual methods of recovery where people are using emails or SMS, or even Facebook Messenger for that matter, they are great. But the the problem there is that what happens when you don't have your visitors personal details to get in touch with them and notify them about the abandoned cart? How can you recover those? And that's exactly where push notifications shine. One of the biggest advantages of Web Push is their ability to target even those carts where you don't have any personal details. So yeah, so that makes it a pretty powerful tool for recovering abandoned carts and just increasing your bottom line.

Alan Rooney

Push is a very effective way of getting people back into back into the funnel you know. One thing I'd say is people are spending all this money being on Google Shopping, Instagram, Facebook ads and stuff like that, you want to be giving each, with the amount of money you spending you want to get basically as much sales as possible out of that and then if you're spending all your money in retargeting and stuff like that, the ad spend can can rack up very quickly. So having having push notifications on that abandoned cart, I guess Kunal would be in a better place to say how many push notifications, but in terms of other channels, email marketing is always one of the better ones for getting people back in the door. Usually we'd recommend, I mean there's a few very good email platforms that sync with Shopify, but we usually recommend at least three automations over the space of, you know, maybe 72 hours or a bit longer than that. And usually, you know, maybe the final email would be some sort of enticement, like a discount or something like that. And after three; from the data that we've seen, I think people kind of get the impression that they're they're being pestered and I guess after three, if they haven't converted, then it's probably time to leave them alone. So yeah, I mean you have your regular ones like retargeting and stuff like that, but like I was saying that can get expensive quickly. So emailand push, I think are two staples that you really need to have to get people back in.

Miz Trujillo

Kunal is there anything you'd add to that maybe?

Kunal Konde

Pretty much agree with what Allen says, even we have seen similar kind of data where after three it does get a little bit irritating and annoying, but in the case of push one thing is sure, that since the messages themselves are so small and the notification takes maybe two to five seconds to read in its entirety, it's pretty relevant and pretty time sensitive notifications that you're sending people to remind them about, you know, completing the purchase. So in that case, instead of having to send it over a 72 hour time period, you can probably have it over 24 to 48 hours instead, so that does give people really good results.

Miz Trujillo

Thank you Kunal, now that leads on to a point I wanted to touch on anyway, how do we avoid seeming overly intrusive to customers? It's something that people are really bothered about at the moment. How do we actually get them to say yes to push notifications when they have so many distractions around them at the moment?

Kunal Konde

That's a good question. So I think there's two parts of this. First is the subscription itself. And the second part is the frequency at which you're sending those campaigns be it through push notifications, or emails or any other channel for that matter. So for the first part, the major reason why these problems and pop ups might seem so intrusive or distracting or annoying is because websites these days, they just have so many of them which pop up which start popping up the moment someone visits the website, we have something asking you to sign up for an email newsletter, something else asking you to agree to cookies, and then so on and on and on. So it gets pretty overwhelming for visitors to deal with these problems. Even before they've had a chance to properly check out the site. I'll give an example, imagine you're asking out a girl you have just met, if she says no the first time, it probably isn't a good idea to ask her again just a couple of minutes later to see if she's changed her mind.

Miz Trujillo

Absolutely.

Alan Rooney

I have to follow that piece of advice.

Kunal Konde

So we have applied that same philosophy to our UX. So Pusl Owl has an inbuilt safety feature that prevents the subscription form from being shown repeatedly. So if someone dismisses it the first time, they won't see it again, for the rest of the session. And another feature that we have is giving our users the option to add a time delay to the pop up, and they can customize it differently for their mobile and desktops. So instead of having like, you know, all of these email pop ups and the one for cookies, and the ones who are push notifications all showing up at the same time, you can add a delay to them, just to ensure that the people who you're showing that particular browser form to are genuinely interested in your store and getting updates from you. So that is definitely something that deals with this huge, you know, this big issue where people find it extremely irritating. And the the second part of it is when it comes to campaigns, we always encourage users to be very respectful of the subscribers and send notifications only at a frequency which matches the purchasing habits of the audience.

Alan Rooney

Yeah, I think just just to add on to that, I mean, the whole of people's attention is a very, it's a very fragile thing and once it's gone, like, there's a million companies that abuse people's attention, you know, and once you're classified or filtered as that company it's very hard to get them back on track. So when I'm thinking of this, you know, if, we're running like email sequences and stuff like that, but try to think even back to myself, my own email account or whatever it is, and I think; Jesus, I mean, which companies do I just look at, and just roll my eyes like. Companies like Groupon, like they built their whole company based on email marketing, if I see a Groupon email in my email account, it's straight to spam, because they completely abuse that you know and you don't care about it anymore;and I guess like the people listening this podcast I'm sure have have different examples of companies that just either they over retarget, every time they open up their Facebook, or whatever it is that they're getting a retargeting in their newsfeed and stuff like that. So I mean, you do have to be very careful. What a lot of companies do is that they see the results coming in and they think, Oh, great we're getting a great return on this, but what they're forgetting is that, yeah, people hate your brand now and after a year or so they won't, they won't even want to look, they'll get sick at the sight of you, you know? So you have to be very careful that you're striking a balance between getting a good return, but also that you're not like pestering people, you have to make sure that you're doing it in an elegant way and also that you were providing value. Like I mean, of course, you know, discounts and all that kind of stuff is great, but I mean, you can push all sorts of things, like you can push content their way that they're actually getting value out of not just you know, bye, bye, bye. You know. So I guess it's a combination of things.

Miz Trujillo

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? If people are going to get a message through, especially on their mobile devices, they want it to be something that they're actually interested in, ideally, something that's really useful to them and if this is tied in with a product that they actually want to buy, then you've really got something going there haven't you? I wanted to touch on comparing push notifications to web based retargeting ads as well, because it falls in line with a lot of conversations I've had, people can find those a bit intrusive, sometimes I think people forget that their internet history is being used in this way and that can end up in some rather strange results popping up from time to time too. Kunal maybe, would you say that the more direct approach of push notifications is its main benefit, or is there an anything else you'd highlight when comparing the two?

Kunal Konde

I mean to be honest comparing retargeting ads with push notifications is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. Yes, there are a few similarities, but for most part, they are two very different champions. I mean, the one thing that's common between the two of them is that essentially they are a method of retargeting. Push Notifications, yes, they are a really good method of reaching your customers directly on their screens so compared to retargeting, yes, it's a much more direct method where you're showing the notification at the time that matters the most. Because in the case of a retargeting ad you need to be on your device browsing through Facebook or maybe Google or something in order to actually see the add, that's not the case for push notifications. To give you an example one of the biggest success stories that we've had when it comes to comparing retargeting ads with push notifications and how stores are actually using them is from this Australian Shopify plus fashion brand which is using push. So during one of my monthly calls with them they told me that their retargeting ad spend has gone down from about $20,000 to just about $2500, $3,000 per month; and that increased their profit margin; and now they are just repurposing the amount that they were spending on retargeting ads on maybe different kinds of ads or different kinds of marketing channels. So this was just like, this was a really mind boggling factor here from them, that just through using push notifications, they are; you know, they're saving such a huge amount of money. And yeah, I mean another really important advantage that push notifications have is that they're very immune to the fluctuating algorithms and the increasing costs that you find on ad platforms like Facebook or Google and so on, so yeah overall these are the main benefits that people can actually see if you do end up comparing the two channels.

Miz Trujillo

I mean, I'm guessing; and I'm sure Alan you'd have a lot to say about this, that this doesn't mean we should only be using one. Is there any suggestions you'd make to tie the two together in order to form a successful campaign?

Alan Rooney

Well, I guess always shaping your funnel to see what stage their at. Ideally the person who's just visited the homepage or whatever, like that should be getting a different retargeting message than someone who has just dropped off at the last stage of the checkout. So i mean like, sometimes people just put everything in one basket, so people who have purchased as opposed to people who haven't purchase, but obviously some people who are further down the funnel you need to place a higher priority on them, you know. I think going back to the whole thing about attention, with like Google Display I mean 20 years ago or something like that people were were clicking remarketing ads at a hell of a lot higher rate than they are now. I mean people are just they just don't really click them as much as they used to you know. So I think having these things like Push and again you know Facebook will become that soon enough, kind of; oh yeah that's just retargeting, but at the moment it's still a bit new you know. But push is something that a lot of ecommerce sites are under using and the fact that it's underused means that it gets better pictures. You need to take each retargeting platform and you know segment it as much as you possibly can, I mean the way you get the best results is having one to one as much as you possibly can with what the user is actually doing on your site, so for instance this is why the dynamic Product Marketing on Facebook and Instagram is so successful, because you looked at a pair of jeans or you looked at whatever that particular brand and then it pops up in your newsfeed, you're not just getting a general catch all brands banner in your news feed, so it segments your customers or your potential customers where best they are in the funnel. So I guess this is just the approach you need regardless of whatever retargeting platform you are using, it needs to be consistent that you know the person who was top of the funnel isn't getting the same message as someone who's just about to check out or who was abandoned cart. Just that there's a message match across all your retargeting platforms, be it Push, be it Facebook or Instagram retargeting, or whatever retargeting platforms, you use in ad roller, you know, etc. And I guess maybe Kunal if you have anything to add to that?

Kunal Konde

Not really, I think that pretty much covers everything.

Miz Trujillo

The next thing I want to touch on was a survey that was published by Statista which said that by 2021, more than half of online shopping is expected to happen on a mobile device. Now, I thought that was obviously a great thing for push notifications, because they can grow rich mobile devices, which makes them even more valuable, but also means they it's more important than ever to design sites with mobile visitors in mind from start to finish. Now, what tips would you give listeners when it comes to optimizing their sites for mobiles?

Alan Rooney

Well, I guess, you know, the first, the obvious thing is that you need to make sure you have a mobile responsive site. I mean, that's just the most now. I mean, the one thing that I'm seeing from the Google Analytics audits that I'm doing, I mean, we have some sites that are 70 - 80% mobile traffic. I mean, so many people are always like, yeah but it converts better on desktop. Yeah, but it's like, you have 80% of your traffic of your sessions coming from mobile. So you just you can't ignore mobile anymore. And the first step is, it needs to be very easy to complete a check out on mobile, the second thing I would do, you need to put some sort of CRM strategy together, and conversion rate optimization. So, you know, first of all, you need to make sure you have the right tracking set setup. I mean, I'd always recommend Hotjar which which kind of gives you the qualitative and quantitative data. You can set up things like heat maps, and you can set up funnels, you can set up feedback holds, and you can even set up video recordings and you can split that, you can get data that's just for mobile, you can get data that's just for tablet and just for desktop. So I mean, you need to have that tracking set in place and left and then see where people are clicking, where people are dropping off. So for instance, let's just say, you see people aren't clicking, people are dropping off of the product page in particular, you need to analyze your product pages, you need to move the Add to Cart button around, is it above the fold on mobile? Is it below the fold? You know, there's a million in one different variables, but I guess you need to start somewhere. And I guess once you have the data tracking, then you need to have some sort of tool for split testing. I mean, the one thing I'd always stress would be never go with your intuition with CRO, because I've seen some crazy things that I thought, okay, that'll definitely bring conversion rates up; and, you know, maybe it doesn't. So everything needs to be data driven. There's free tools now that you can use, you can use something like Google Optimize and again, it syncs up with the Google Analytics. So, you know, if you want to run 50% or a fraction of your traffic onto your new design, your new mobile, be at a product page or whatever it is and Google will run statistical significance tests on it to make sure that, you know, say, okay, so 99% sure that this will improve conversion rates, you know, so, I mean, you just you need to start somewhere. So I guess the first thing I'd say was get some sort of tracking in place, Hotjar is the one that we use and then you need to get some sort of way to split test that.

Miz Trujillo

And anything you'd add to that Kunal?

Kunal Konde

I guess if I had to boil down what Alan said at the end of it. When it comes to optimising sites for mobiles at the core of it remains the navigation. So everything that he talked about from like, you know, below the fold above the fold, where the buttons are placed, how the checkout works and everything. So, like the simple reason being that when you're on a desktop, there's just so much more space for your website to be seen. And like, you know, the kind of filters that you want to use the kind of product descriptions and buttons and pretty much anything and everything that you want to show, you just have a lot more space to do it on desktops. But, you know, with more and more people coming onto mobile, you just have to keep in mind that the navigation is as easy as possible.

Miz Trujillo

I mean, it would, it would seem a shame to be able to get push notifications on your mobile and then click through the notification to the site and it not work well, it'd be a wasted opportunity really wouldn't it?

Kunal Konde

Yeah, exactly. I mean, if if you don't have a good landing page, if you don't have, you know, really nicely designed product pages, then it's like, no matter what kind of marketing you're doing, not just push notification, but even if you're doing ads, even if you're doing like, you know, just organic search and anything for that matter, if you're getting people on your mobile, you're getting people to visit your website, on mobiles and if it's just not up to scratch, then yeah, you're not going to see results.

Miz Trujillo

Absolutely. And I think something that it would affect is also customer loyalty, if they get on with the site well, they're more likely to come back and buy more obviously. It's something like 22% of retailers revenue is made up by returning customers and they also spend 15% more over the course of a year than anyone else. So how would you recommend using push notification campaigns in order to reward customer loyalty and making this part of an ecommerce marketing approach?

Kunal Konde

Yeah, that's another good question. Because like, it's a fairly obvious and well known fact that it's much easier to bring back your previous customers to purchase again from you as compared to say spending on ads or retargeting or anything else to acquire them once. So I mean, with Push Owl we have the ability to segment your subscribers. So you will be able to segment your subscribers based on if they have previously purchased from you or not. So you can send them, you know, exclusive deals or coupon codes to just incentivize them to purchase once more. And you can also target the opposite segment, which is all the non purchasers and give them a different kind of incentive to become your customers. And another big news that we have on the loyalty front is that we will be integrating with Smile, one of the most popular loyalty apps on Shopify, so there's going to be whole new use case of, you know, loyalty based notifications, which will be opening up once we create this integration.

Miz Trujillo

Amazing, anything you'd add on that customer loyalty front Alan?

Alan Rooney

No, I think I'd just echo that, especially the segmenting, so, I mean, you have customers and they're all at different stages. I mean, some of them, they're buying every month or whatever like that, and they repeat custom, some have just purchased one and have never come back. So I guess just to echo that you need to segment based on people, how many they've purchased, have they purchased, if they haven't. So they all need to be put into, I guess, different buckets, you know, and then they need to get different messages.

Miz Trujillo

Absolutely. So it'd be good as well to just focus on the fact that we've got Black Friday and Cyber Monday coming up and then obviously the festive season after that as well. Are there any good examples of tips you could share Kunal of using push notification to successfully convert during these periods?

Kunal Kombe

I think one of the biggest problem areas where people go wrong with their push marketing is that they leave it as an afterthought. Yes, you have your emails your SMS, Facebook Messenger, social media retargeting ads and everything else as your marketing channels, but then you're leaving your push notifications as an afterthought, it's just not going to convert as well. So my biggest tip here would be integrating push notifications as a part of your overall marketing strategy, adding a PR marketing calendar to ensure that you are getting the best results possible from it. And in terms of just sending the push notifications itself, to be honest, like push is a pretty new channel, it is still being widely adopted, so there's not enough data which tells you that, okay, these are the best practices that you should follow, or these are the types of notifications which are going to convert well, so I think the the best tip that I have for people is just experiment, experiment and experiment. So just try out different kinds of copy, try different types of campaigns, just to see which convert better. One step that I have for people is experiment more and more, because once you're trying out, you know, different types of campaigns, different copies in your push notifications, and you get the data from it, which tells you that a certain type of campaign is performing better than anything else, you'll realize for yourself that it makes more sense to add that as a weekly or a monthly campaign in your marketing calendar calls.

Miz Trujillo

Yeah, of course. And Alan any other tips you'd give people who maybe want to focus on Black Friday, Cyber Monday coming up, and what they can do to be successful?

Alan Rooney

This is a stage where people make some of the most revenue they're gonna make the whole year, you know, it means a lot to a lot of different businesses and they really should have a plan already in place. Kunal touched on that, I mean, they really need to have the whole strategy ready. It's only a few weeks down the line. And I guess, once you've done that experimenting that you're getting a return , I mean, it's just a case I guess of filling your boots, you know, getting more sales and getting as much sales in as possible at a return that you're comfortable with you know. Because this is the time when people really have their wallets open, you know. So this is the time when you can make a huge, huge influence on your business in a positive way.

Miz Trujillo

Well, that's the thing, it's a great time for people to actually be focusing on getting those sales in, isn't it! Before we start wrapping things up, I'm sure by this point in the podcast, or our listeners will be dying to know, Kunal, could you give us some examples of growth statistics that your clients are seeing from successfully using push notifications? Just to convince people further.

Kunal Konde

Oh, man, this is like, just amazing to watch. The kind of results that our users have been getting is just like, even beyond what we imagined that they would be getting. So for example, one really surprising statistic, we found that 87% of people who end up subscribing to push notifications are actually first time visitors. So since opting in for a push notification is just one click, you're getting a whole new class of subscribers who you might not have gotten via your traditional methods. So with targeted campaigns, and, you know, Push Owl automated notifications like the ones for cart recovery, stores are able to add revenue which just wasn't there before. So in terms of like statistics, , , I'll give you one more, which is that the Shopify plus and other core Shopify brands, which are using Push Owl, they are seeing an ROI of anywhere between $150 to $500, for each dollar that they are spending on Push Owl; and this kind of ROI is just insane. So yeah, I mean, as and when brands are ramping up the marketing efforts with push notifications and making use of like, you know, some of the advanced features that I mentioned earlier, like segmentation and smart delivery and things like that. This ROI just keeps climbing, you know, even beyond $500.

Miz Trujillo

That's amazing. Thank you so much Kunal. I think just to start summing things up, maybe Alan, what are the main tips from what we've talked about, you'd leave people with as they're trying to streamline theire commerce marketing approach?

Alan Rooney

I guess, kind of the low hanging fruit, like you need to get push notifications, I mean, Kunal pushed on the returns that you get there, I mean, I don't think we've ever seen a 500 to one or 500 quid for each euro spent in the likes of Facebook and stuff like that. So I mean, you need to make sure that you've got your email sequences set up correctly, especially the abandoned cart, re-engagement sequences, upsell, cross sales, you need to have push notifications setup in a way that the message is matched with where the user or the customer is on the site; and in terms of Facebook and in terms of like paid advertising I think, Facebook and Instagram are some of the best ad products out there. Google Shopping is great as well. I wouldn't really be touching much other things, I mean I've tried different places like Twitter and stuff but I just haven't gotten the return that the likes of Facebook and Google has. So yeah I mean, get Push Owl, I guess if you haven't cracked Facebook and Instagram try and figure that out and one thing I'd say is make sure you get Dynamic Product Remarketing setup on Facebook and Instagram. That's kind of the low hanging fruit there so that's a good start. I mean push notifications and email marketing automation if you got that setup you'd be doing well.

Miz Trujillo

Excellent and Kunal, any any last tips or words of wisdom you'd like to leave people with?

Kunal Konde

Yeah, I mean, what I would say is that I know that push as a channel it still remains a bit unheard of, not a lot of people might have seen it for themselves and you know like when you have a really good marketing strategy already in place, it might feel like you know, you might not be inclined to add yet another marketing channel to the mix and mess things up. But what I would recommend people on here is that until you give it a try, don't judge it and make a decision on it as a channel because you'll really be surprised with the kind of results that you see once you start using push notifications.

Miz Trujillo

Well, thank you both so much for being on the show with us, really appreciated talking to you and thank you to everyone who listens to the show too. You can find links to any of the reports mentioned and of course to both Push Owl and Underwaterpistol in the description below. And if you need any help with Shopify and ecommerce you can book a free consultation with Underwaterpistol this via the link below too. Please subscribe to the podcast to keep up to date with any of the upcoming shows and you can also get involved in the discussion and receive all the latest news by joining our Make Merchants Money Facebook group. Thanks for listening and thank you Kunal and Alan for being on the show with us.

Alan Rooney

Thanks, guys.

Kunal Konde

All right. Thank you.