Boost ROAS by 20% With This Revolutionary Feature...

Boost ROAS by 20% With This Revolutionary Feature... Speaker 1: What are some of the benefits of actually using Clips instead of your standard browser website? Speaker 2: Landing pages are great, and they serve a great purpose. Think of Clips as a landing page on steroids, right? You get the same effect of, hey, you know, we're pointing you to this product, this collection, or this specific deal. We want you to learn more. But now, because everyone's busy, when they forget about it two minutes later, you get these notifications on their device. And people don't actually even click the notifications when they come in. It's usually between 9 p.m. and midnight when they're sitting on their couch or they're lying in bed just swiping at things. They click back into it and conversion at that stage is like 6% or 6.8% across the board. It's insane. Yeah. Speaker 3: Welcome back to another episode of Chew on This. Today's a special episode brought to you by Reactiv. We have the co-founders here, Zach and Ross, who are going to talk about why mobile commerce is the future of commerce. So before I get into it further with them, let them give a little bit of an intro. Zach, Ross, I'd love for you, for the few viewers who maybe don't know you guys, Give them a little bit about your background and what the hell is Reactiv and what are you guys doing here today? Speaker 2: Yeah, nice to meet everyone. Thanks for having us guys. It was a quick trip over from Toronto. It's not as bad as everyone thinks it is. We're probably too close, but Ross, CEO and co-founder of Reactiv. Zach, COO and co-founder as well. And our other co-founder, Mike, he's back in Toronto. He's our CTO. Sorry, Mike, that you didn't get to make it out. We started Reactiv about a year and a half ago. I mean, before that, we've known each other for almost 10 years now. So we used to work at Shopify together. Early, early days. Best time ever. It was a lot of fun. So we started Reactiv a year and a half ago together with Mike. We've been in the app ecosystem for four years now. It's been a really long time. And we learned everything not to do at the previous company we're at. So when we decided to start Reactiv, we took the three biggest problems about having an app and we said, how are we going to solve these problems? And I'm sure we'll get into it during the podcast. But yeah, we started a year and a half ago, got almost 30 people on the team now, all up in Toronto. It's been a fun, fun journey. Speaker 3: It's incredible. Zach, anything to add there? Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean you missed the point about what Reactiv actually is. So I can jump in there. Reactiv, we're essentially a mobile commerce platform. We're enterprise ready and I think what we're most known for are these apps that customers don't have to download. We'll talk about it a lot but customers hate downloading apps. We figured out a solution to that and yeah, excited to dive a little bit deeper. Speaker 3: Yeah, I know we're I know we're personally super excited so selfishly I think this episode is really for us But I think we're super excited because we've been in the space of having an app We've had countless sessions where we've worked on, can we get this customer to download? Can we get the next one? And can we continue to get people to use the app once they've downloaded it? And it becomes like you realize you're starting to manage a separate business now. And although it's great, the fact that you guys have created something that is removing friction is super powerful. So I think maybe let's touch a little bit on the actual way this works. You mentioned you don't have to download an app to be able to get the app experience. Explain that a little bit more. I mean, are you talking about push notifications? Are you able to literally have the same experience and then does it sometimes lag on browsers? Like how is the actual experience being able to be replicated without downloading an actual app? Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really cool. So the way that we build them, we call them clips. People have no idea what we're talking about half the time, but that's kind of one way to get the experience. Get it across. You can also call it like a slice of your app. Think of it as just one piece of the app that you want to make accessible without a download. So the way that it works is someone clicks a link anywhere on their iPhone. So think your Google Ads, your meta ads. Someone just sends it to their friend on iMessage or they click on a link on Instagram. It could be anywhere on your device. And instead of clicking that link and going directly to the website, it'll open the app to where you want it to go to. So it could be a landing page within your app. It could be a collection page. It could be a product page. And our goal there is to take that friction of having to go to the app store, installing completely out of the equation. And as a bonus, you get all the customer data. So you can see who came to the app, what they did in the app, get all that session related data. And on top of that, you get to send them notifications for the rest of the day. So it's been Really, really powerful for the brands that we're working with already. It's incredible. Speaker 4: And the notifications don't require an opt-in either. It's something that you're pre-opted in for, for a specific window Ross mentioned all day. You can ask for more time, but then that prompts the Apple iOS window. Incredibly powerful though. Speaker 3: Super cool. Speaker 1: I love that. I think for us, the whole idea of the app was always thought as a retention strategy more than anything acquisition related. It was always like, okay, how can we provide more value to the customers? How can we give, you know, at least for a brand like us, it was You know, blogs, recipes, videos, not just another marketplace to just shop from, even though it was, and it becomes a cool strategy when you want to have another channel to reach your customers, right, like push notification, but like Ron mentioned, it becomes a whole Different channel that you have to manage and after a while we kind of just let it sit and it kind of fizzled out. People don't want to have to manage different things right and so looking at it through the lens of acquisition now kind of makes it a little bit more exciting. So I'm curious on your guys's thoughts like you know let's just say you know Avi's ready to you know set up some clips. What are some of the best practices that you guys are seeing when it comes to actually utilizing this this tech? Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is to figure out what the goals are for the business, right? So a lot of brands are focused on retention and that's their goal and we can help with that, right? So we build apps as well, full-blown apps, apps that you can install, the normal thing and those work really, really well. So we can do that if that's the goal. But for most brands, it's acquisition that they struggle with, right? How are we gonna get more customers to shop with our brand? How are we gonna continue to afford to run retargeting ads and do that over and over again? It gets very expensive. And when you have a lean team like you guys probably do and most businesses do, it gets even harder, right? So with Clips, it's really easy now. You know, we have a team that can help you guys get live. It takes a couple of days. Really, it's super quick. And once it's live, we just give you a URL. So it's as simple as, hey, we're gonna point our ads to this place, or we're gonna point these clicks to this place, or if we're running our email campaign or an SMS campaign, you just use this URL instead of your traditional web URL, and it works really nicely. So if someone's not on their iPhone, they're on an Android, or they're on their desktop, it'll just point to the website. But if they're on their iPhone, it'll open directly into the app without them ever installing. It's seamless, yeah. Speaker 1: So what are some of the benefits of As a marketer, right, I'm using, you know, landing pages for my ads. I've used tools that are like lightning fast landing pages. What are some of the benefits of actually using Clips instead of your standard browser website? Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think landing pages are great and they serve a great purpose. Think of Clips as a landing page on steroids, right? You get the same effect of, hey, you know, we're pointing you to this product, this collection, or this specific deal. We want you to learn more. But now, because everyone's busy, When they forget about it two minutes later, you get these notifications on their device and people don't actually even click the notifications when they come in. It's usually between 9 p.m. and midnight when they're sitting on their couch or they're lying in bed just swiping at things. They click back into it and conversion at that stage is like 6% or 6.8% across the board. It's insane. Yeah. Speaker 3: You guys brought up the push notification piece, which is important, right? How do you guys look at this? So if I'm a brand that's, let's say, already has been growing and have the avenues of email, SMS already triggering, How does it work with, you know, the timing of Push Notification with you guys? Is all that managed on the back end? Are we able to kind of almost use it as its own marketing campaign or is it more so seamlessly tied with when somebody entered the Clip experience and it's just kind of time gated with that? Speaker 4: Yeah, we kind of give you the choice. So we can support both of those flows. We're integrated with Klaviyo and a few of the other players in the space, but we also have Push notifications that are triggered by events. So if you open up a PLP from an app clip and you abandon it, we'll just try and get you back into that browse. But if you specifically look at a product, maybe we'll send you abandoned cart campaigns. Speaker 2: Very cool. Speaker 3: I know you guys are already working with some incredible brands. Can you reference, and you don't have to say the specific brand name, but could you guys give some references of some of the success stories you have seen, whether it's through Clips, whether it's through the push notifications, or just in general, from how people are utilizing it, either top of funnel or middle of funnel, et cetera? Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's mostly top of funnel right now that our merchants are using it for, and it's usually for ads. We talk about ads a lot, but it's not the only place that you can use Clips. We're trying to get into retail as well, and we have some cool retail stuff that we're building out this year. So you can walk into a retail store, scan a QR code. Open the clip and do like an endless aisle experience, which is really, really cool. We're thinking of doing pop-up experiences. So, you know, for drops with like really hype products, having that clip just be visible for a limited amount of time, being able to buy it directly through there and Apple Pay, you know, something that just works better, usually in an app space and going on a website and fighting with bots all the time. So we're trying these cool other avenues, but for right now, it's top of funnel. It's usually meta ads and Google ads that our merchants are using them for. So, you know, the customer will see the ad, they'll click on that ad, they'll go directly into the clip, and we're trying to get them to convert. We've spoken to some merchants that don't care about conversions. I don't know if you guys have experience with that. And they're like, we just want emails. And we're almost creating like a landing page experience where they just capture the email. We think it's weird, but merchants have asked for it, so we'll do it. But most of the campaigns are conversion-focused. So how do we get a customer to see an ad? How do we get them to convert? So across the board, we have some really cool aggregate data. So in the last 30 days, we've had over 200,000 impressions. So people that have opened a clip, they've gone through the ad, clicked through and gotten to the page. Take a guess at what the push notification open rate is. So what percent of notifications are open? You guys have had an app. You know the struggles. You know the things that work well. These are people that have just clicked on an ad. They've gone to a PDP or a PLP and they're getting notifications now for the next day. Speaker 3: I want to say like 50? Yeah, I was going to say 40 or 50. Yeah, 66%. Wow, crazy. Speaker 2: Insane, right? It's really, really high open rates. And then the percent of those customers that get to the cart are just under 30%. And then, so once they get to the cart, we can now send abandoned cart notifications that work really, really well too. Again, this is all stuff they haven't even opted in for. So, there might be this like, how did I even get this notification? But it's really cool. And then, conversion. So, this is a weird metric. And it might just be, hey, this is early days. It's been live now for two-ish months. So I don't know if it statistically makes sense, but when someone opens the clip for the first time, conversion is around 2.8%. That's aggregate. Seems really, really high, and we're not sure why yet. And then you throw in the notifications on top of it, and we're getting another 5% delta. So overall, people clicking on your ads to conversions, over 7% aggregate across brands. That's crazy. Speaker 4: And where the story kind of continues, and kind of ties in more to like the traditional app experiences, After you've completed a purchase, we're able to continue to send you push notifications, whether it's to track your order or to incentivize a full app download. And of the 230,000 people who've clicked and opened up an app clip, 3% of them have just downloaded the full app. So you kind of move them from the acquisition funnel, now they're into the retention funnel with the full app. So we're starting to see some really neat, Holistic views of how mobile apps aren't just like a retention play, but it's the full funnel. Speaker 1: This might start to sound like an onboarding call, but just for the questions that came to mind for me, and I'm sure a lot of other marketers might have the same ones, is typically when it comes to anything in my ad account, I'm like, I don't want to touch anything, but I will always be open to like A-B testing, right? So is there anything that you guys offer or how would you want some of these marketers to go about A-B testing the tool and actually proving out incrementality? Speaker 2: That's basically what we're doing right now with our merchants, so everyone's A-B testing it against their existing ads, and we recommend that, right? We also recommend, you know, really trying to change the content within the app. Content can make Such a big difference on conversion. People always underestimate that, but use this as a testing ground, right? Poke around with it, change things, see what's working. But you're able to do it just within the ads account. So you're able to pick directly into the products. What we can do is we'll turn on that URL as a deep link and then an app clip link. It's very technical. Mike should be here explaining that. We can turn it all on our side, and then it's just a matter of setting up your A-B test in your Google or your Meta campaign, and it'll just work right off the bat for you. And then all the data just pushes back into it. So you don't even have to trust our dashboard. You can trust what Meta's saying. Speaker 1: That was gonna be another question I had on the technical side. Speaker 2: We didn't have that when we initially launched and with some of the brands, we would get on a call with them every day and say, okay, what did you see in Ads Manager? Okay, this is what Mixpanel is showing us, but all right, is it making sense? And we'd like piece the data together, but we finally got the conversion API built so you could just see everything through Meta now. Speaker 1: You guys aren't missing anything. Speaker 3: It's incredible. Now, I think one piece about just anyone who's even going to our mobile website or sometimes our app, there's a lot of like people who like to explore, right? They use the navigation menu, the hamburger menu, and they're finding themselves in sections of the site they shouldn't even be in, right? But they're always kind of fishing around. How do you guys cater to an experience where There are a lot of exploratory customers. There are a lot of people who want to move around and whatnot, yet you guys are saying, hey, here's the exact experience I want you to stay within, and I want you to make a decision here. Do you find that's built for a certain type of acquisition or whatnot, and do you feel like there'll be advancement into allowing people to move around, or is that not really part of the scope? Speaker 2: That's a great question. This is what we think about all day long internally. We're challenging our internal team. We've got about 20 developers now, which is insane. All up in Toronto. They're all amazing. Or not all in Toronto, all in Canada. We have some on the West Coast. But our goal is to get the entire app within a clip, which would be insane. So we had this goal when we started Reactiv, which was In five years, people won't install or people won't shop within the browser on their phone. It'll all be done via Clips. And that's the goal that we're trying to get towards, but there are tight regulations with Apple on like size as well, right? So you're opening this up in real time. If the internet's not fast, are people just going to sit there waiting and loading screen? No, right? So our goal is to compile that down as small as we can possibly get it, but still allow for people to find different users for needs. What's happening now is it's great for an individual product and it's great for a collection. We also have recommended products that we can do so we can pull from stuff that's not technically there. We can also do stuff with upsells. So if you notice, hey, so-and-so is adding this product and people also like to bundle product, you know, A, B, and C, we can do that kind of stuff too. So we're trying to expand that horizon, but still early days. Yeah. Speaker 4: And I think for some color too, like The difficulty behind that is these aren't just like PWAs. These aren't Safari experiences. This is essentially you streaming the native mobile app. So the way we have to have everything built out is like every part of the app has to be essentially compartmentalized and be able to run independently. But the challenge is, yeah, making sure, you know, product page connects to cart to check out to thank you and then search and everything else. Speaker 3: And it needs to all react to each other. Speaker 4: Exactly. Speaker 2: Or we just add like 17 collection pages and there's no cart because it doesn't fit in. Speaker 4: Not great for conversion. Speaker 2: It's a big technical challenge. Yeah. And then just making sure we keep up with Apple's regulations. You know, we've all seen what's happening in the world right now with like TikTok shop and stuff too. So making sure we're on the right side of that. Making sure we're on the right side of Shopify, that everything plays nicely with them, and they update their APIs every three months, so making sure that's all working. It's a big kind of technical problem that we're trying to get behind. Speaker 1: I think even with Meta too and some of the other social media apps, because like at least from the experience I just tested before this was, I think Meta and I would imagine every single one of the social media apps want to keep users within the app itself. At least on the iPhone, it kind of opens up a separate experience. So do you guys see that becoming an issue with some of these social media platforms at all? Speaker 2: I don't think so. I think TikTok shop, Facebook shop, Instagram shop, they serve a purpose too. I think we serve a different purpose, right? And the same way that they let people get out from, hey, Instagram shop to your website, it's kind of the same thing. So as long as we can point it to a link anywhere on someone's phone, it'll work properly. So we're not too concerned on that side. But yeah, we got to make sure we play nice with everyone. Speaker 3: Going a little bit on the macro level, right? You guys are obviously, especially given your guys' backgrounds, you guys have understood how the macro economy works, how consumers are looking to shop. I think one piece that I think probably everyone will agree to is the mobile piece is now more important than ever and has been. What's your guys' kind of take on just consumer behavior and why you're creating what you are creating? Because parts of it feels like are consumers just looking to make quicker decisions and just looking for efficient processes and when they know, they know and it's like this is the quickest non-friction way or like what else are you guys seeing in just the mobile commerce universe that really got you guys to set out to create this? Because again, I think it's Not only First to Market, but it's extremely revolutionary in the fact that you're removing something that feels like is the core of our phones and our processes. Oh, you need something? Get it. There's an app for that. There's an app for that. And it's like you're removing this big piece. And I'm just curious on what you guys are seeing, what's happening. Speaker 4: The whole point of mobile first and mobile apps was to be convenient, right? As consumers, it was supposed to be convenient. I don't think traditional apps have fulfilled that. There's the friction of installing an app. As a consumer, the amount of times that I install an app and I'm hit with a PWA or arguably a worse experience than mobile web, that it's almost like apps have become like a checkbox for e-com directors or marketers looking to retain their customers. I think while it's good that For us, right, more people are talking about apps. That's a wonderful thing. But there's also all these, you know, not bad actors, but you know, for lack of a better word, bad actors in the space who are kind of like pulling away from that convenience and the whole like premise of having an app in the first place. So I think Clips do a really good job of, you know, bringing it back down to like what's important to us as consumers. And it's convenience, it's speed. And those are two things that like are core to what we're doing at Reactiv. Speaker 2: On the macro side though, I can add to that. If we just look outside of commerce too, if you had told me five years ago, you can unlock your car from your phone and just drive away without a key, I'd be like, that's crazy. And that happens all the time now, right? Or I'm checking into the hotel and you don't even have to go to the front desk anymore. You do it on your phone and you tap your phone. There's so many examples of that. At home, we have a smart door lock and the door opens and we walk in and the lights turn on. It's all like magic. But when you look at mobile commerce, it's kind of been stuck. There hasn't been any new tech in it. The same apps that are being built with the same apps five years ago, there's nothing really new that's been coming out. And when I think about it, I've got two young kids at home, and they have their iPads, and I've got some nephews now that are like 12 and 13 years old. And when I go to see them, and they're like, hey, what do you do? Like, what does your company do? And I tell them, they're like, oh my god, apps. We love apps. We love shopping apps. It's like the younger generation is so used to it. And then when I talk to people our age, and they're like, Who uses apps? Unknown Speaker: Who shops on apps? Speaker 2: They're so confused or they don't get what we're building. So when I think of it, I think of it on like the macro side. Everything is done from your phone now, right? And I used to call people crazy for booking flights from their phone. I was like, you guys are crazy. That's a laptop thing. And here I am when we booked this flight down to New York. I did it on my phone. It took like two minutes. So it's just things are changing so fast and we want to be at the forefront of that technology, right? With App Clips, that's a big one for us. Have you guys had any cool experiences with live activities on iPhone? Speaker 4: You know when you order on like DoorDash, it'll show you. Speaker 3: Oh yeah. Speaker 2: So we're working up some really cool stuff with live activities behind brands as well. So if you're doing a shopping experience in a store, there'll be like a countdown and you can, you know, hey, come to our store at this time and that'll pop up. And then when you're in the store, we can store like really relevant information for when you're there for events and things like that, or if brands are doing drops. So we want to just be at the forefront of this like bleeding technology. And we just feel like innovation in mobile commerce has been really stagnant, right? It's all the same players that have been around for five years building the exact same thing and everyone's so focused on CRO and like optimization, rightfully so, because we're all busy and we all don't have enough time. But we really want to bring some cool new tech to the mobile commerce side that people haven't seen. Speaker 4: And tech specifically that's beneficial to consumers, right? Building an app because my CMO said so. Speaker 3: That makes complete sense. And I think the other piece, we all value email and SMS a lot, but push notifications still, I think, is in this place where you mention it to some people and they're like, oh, I didn't think about it like that. And then you mention it to others like, oh, yeah, but I don't really want to build an app. And so I just think you're also creating a pathway for this third way to communicate, which is, But I think arguably in ways probably even the most intrusive, right? Because like when you open your phone, especially if you're doing the banners and then stuff like that, I think push notification can become the first point of touch before even email and SMS. I think that's gonna be really cool to see how you guys tethered to that. Speaker 2: It's scary. We're thinking of it of like how to navigate it regulatory wise as well. Yeah, right. So today we have a couple dozen merchants using the platform, but we scale that to a hundred. We scale it to a thousand and now everyone's doing the same thing where you click on an ad, you're getting a notification. What happens, right? And I know Apple has rules on like do not disturb and you can really filter stuff out there, but We want to be on the good side of that too. So if you're a merchant of Reactiv, I'm sorry we don't let you send 50 notifications under the eight-hour window. It's limited to four right now and it's hyper-specific and we can specify it based on user behaviors or user events. I think that's going to be really important too as this becomes tech that everyone starts to get used to. We want to make sure that we protect people as well. So internally, when we think about the tools that we're building, we try and put the end user first in front of the merchant. I don't know if that's the right strategy just yet, but yeah. Speaker 3: Makes sense. Speaker 4: I think too, when you say push notifications are the most intrusive form of communicating with your buyers, I agree with you, but it's also When you get a text message from 4789, that feels more intrusive than a branded push notification from something you're just looking at. Speaker 2: Does that happen here in the States? It's the same thing, right? If you use SMS, it's like a random number? Speaker 4: Yeah, most of the time it just goes to your spam anyways, right? Speaker 2: Do you guys get the SMS... So we have this thing, it's like the Venmo of Canada, it's called e-transfer, and everyone does like a, they pretend to send you money there, but you click on it, it's like a phishing scam. Do you guys have those? Speaker 1: Yeah, all the time. Speaker 2: Oh, it's the same thing, okay. I didn't know if that was like a Canadian thing or not. Speaker 1: No, that's worldwide. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the nice thing too. It's like the notifications that come, they're fully app branded. So you know you're going to that brand. Yeah, yeah. It's not like a reactive notification. It's, you know, the brand's notification too. Speaker 1: So question around that, right? If you send a push notification after the fact, now I'm thinking through, right? You send somebody to a landing page. Cool, you learn about the product, you leave. Two hours later, you might get a push notification of maybe like a review or a testimonial, right? Can you... Speaker 2: We haven't done that yet. That's a great idea. Speaker 1: You heard it here first. Speaker 3: Actually, kick that out of the podcast. Unknown Speaker: Nobody else does that. Speaker 1: Can you actually open up a new experience from that push notification? Speaker 2: Yeah, we can. So the notification can point to a new app clip. It could point to a website. It could point to a YouTube link. You could point it wherever you want. It's just a URL. Speaker 3: Right. Speaker 1: So now I'm thinking, okay, you have a landing page. Next one is maybe a landing page about testimonials. Then the next one's like a fully offer. That's so smart. Yeah, we got to sign up for this. I think that's the biggest problem right now, especially media buying on like meta, is that after the iOS update 14 years ago, retargeting has now just become like a thing of the past because Facebook wants to consolidate data. Now, it would be better if we had separate Steps of the journey to take people through, you know, okay, fine, here's your first experience. The second experience should be different. But right now, it's everybody seeing the same thing over and over again, seeing the same ads. But I think that would be... Speaker 3: I mean, it's creating the whole funnel. Speaker 1: Creating the whole funnel and you're retargeting without having to pay for it on meta. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: So we should definitely do that. Speaker 4: That was the whole logic behind like releasing clips in the first place right it's like when you really think about it it's I mean, if you watch hockey, if you watch basketball, if you look right beside the score, there's always shots on net, right? And the reason they show you that is because the team with the most shots on net usually wins, right? And that logic is exactly applicable to this. If you're going to be able to notify your customers and bring them back to that funnel, you're going to increase your chance every single time. Speaker 1: I love that. Speaker 2: I was going to make a bad Detroit Lions joke, but I know Zach has still heard about that. Speaker 1: Too soon, too soon. Speaker 3: I'd love to go into a little bit more on like you guys have created Reactiv and now Clips. What's also maybe in the pipeline that you can share just for the people who maybe feel like Clips is not enough but want to know the roadmap. Can you share a little bit of that? Speaker 2: Yeah, when we started Reactiv there was three things that we wanted to solve that every app merchant that's using an app or every app provider has dealt with. So the first is You know, getting a customer to onboard, it's usually a really, really hard, tedious task. So we have an AI onboarder that we're working with. A lot of merchants just tend to build it themselves or they work with our team and get the app out the door. We try and make that process as easy as possible. So it's white glove service and we solve that problem. Once your app is live, you're still in the middle of the desert, right? Like, you need to drive people to this app. You need to engage with your customers. You need to prioritize it. And like you said, It's cool at first and it gets all the priority and then you have a million and one of the things to deal with, right? So how do you maintain that? How do you keep up with that is another problem that we're solving right now. With AI we can do a lot of those things and it's a work in progress. There's no silver bullet here and I can just say Hey, you don't have to manage your app anymore. I think it'll get there over time, but that was a big problem We wanted to solve and then the third was how do we drive installs towards the app, right? And then we kind of had a bonus fourth, which is the innovation for this year and we call it plus So our goal with reactive was to be the Shopify of mobile apps And I know everyone has built apps in this ecosystem. I said the exact thing But our thesis there was I was a merchant way, way back. I worked at Shopify. We use a ton of tech tooling. One of the things that we wanted to do was to get the tech tooling out of the way for customers, and we wanted our roadmap to not be their roadmap. They can have their own independent roadmap. So what we're prioritizing this year is getting a full SDK going, not an IDE that you use within a web browser, not some janky web views, you know, that works, but it doesn't always work. It's not reliable. It doesn't look great within the app either. This year we're really focused on building an SDK so that if you're an agency like Domain, Laser, some of the agencies that we work with, you can now go to your agency and say, hey, I want to build this custom screen or this custom loyalty or this custom watch page. I don't want to wait for Reactiv to build it. I want it in a month, and your agency can use our dev tools. They can go into GitHub and build that for you, right? And our goal there is, you know, three, four, five years from now, instead of just working with Shopify brands, we're also working with Lululemon and Nike and Zara, you know, who spend millions of dollars a year on maintaining their app and having that team to manage it. They can use Reactiv to take care of all the boring stuff, and they could build the really cool stuff themselves on top of our platform. That's what's coming out this year. Yeah, we've got live activities coming out this year. There's a ton of cool stuff that we want to do for retail activation. So yeah, I think retail is huge and we just came back from NRF. Shopify is killing it in retail. I was on the first retail team at Shopify. Speaker 4: I was waiting when that would come up. Speaker 2: I don't always tell this story. Speaker 1: You know what? Speaker 2: I'm not going to tell this story. But Shopify is killing it in the POS space, right? They have so many amazing merchants. So we want to power an experience where you walk into one of these retail stores and you scan a QR code or we give you a Siri suggestion that'll actually open up the app clip and it'll say, hey, welcome to the Lululemon store. These are hours of operation. Do you know what you want or do you want to talk to somebody? And if you know what you want, because we have all the barcode information and the product information, you can just shop with your phone. You can scan that stuff, self-checkout, do endless aisles, all within a clip without having to install the app. Walk out and then get traffic, you know, get notifications about shipments all sent to your device and all you did was scan a QR code. Speaker 3: That's actually crazy. Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's coming out later this year too. Yeah, our devs are watching this and they're just like I'm I'm curious. Speaker 3: Are there categories that you feel have performed better with? Reactive so far whether it's beauty or apparel or something. So you think it's pretty agnostic to category curious on that end. Speaker 2: Yeah, great question. So I was looking at Zach. I thought Zach was going to take it. Speaker 4: I have an answer if you want me to go. Speaker 2: Let me take it first. We'll see how in sync we are. But you know what? You go. Speaker 4: I think there's two answers. I think particularly with Clips, not specifically like vertical related, but relatively lower AOV, more impulsive purchases work best. I think when you're looking at like high ticket items, the bottom of the funnel with like the retention cycle, that's where like a downloaded true mobile app shines because you know, if you're buying, you know, an expensive pair of shoes or like some luggage or something like that, you want to keep going back and you're going to hope that Brand has a lot of like long form content or UGC, something that you can kind of like keep referencing. Speaker 2: That you can chew on. Speaker 4: That you can chew on. Yeah. And, and, you know, convince yourself to make that purchase, but it's just like, you know, on your home screen really easy. Yeah. So in terms of verticals though, like probably what you would expect, right? Anything that's, um, you know, a high, high number of products on the, on like shoes, fashion, beauty is a big one. CPG, um, supplements. Yeah. Speaker 1: How are you guys thinking about on the other side right so you guys can build apps like proper apps and everything? How do you guys think about pitching that to brands, right? At least for us, it's always been like, well, I don't want another place that somebody can shop, right? There's no benefit of that, like I'd rather... Yeah, like it's either you shop on the website or you shop on the app, right? So what do you guys, what is the pitch? Speaker 2: I mean, we've been selling apps for four years now, right? We used to work for a company that sold apps in this space and it used to be so hard. I mean, it is so hard still, but This used to be a nice-to-have, having a mobile app, right? It was, we got our website, we're running out of things to do, let's launch an app and let's see what happens. Everyone talks about their LTV, their conversion in the app, let's get those metrics. That's the pitch there for those types of merchants, but it's hard, right? And we're not going to pretend like it's easy to manage another platform. It's a lot of work. That's where the Clips and the acquisition really come into it, right? We're giving you A whole new way to think about it, and it's kind of the biggest problem with what we're selling to, our biggest problem is education. When we tell people, hey, you can open an app without ever installing it, they just look at us like we're crazy. They're like, what are you talking about? Like, no, it's going to be in Safari, PWA. And then we say, hey, so you're going to get a notification in 15 minutes. And they'll contact us later and say, I never got the email. And we're like, no, no, it's not an email, it's a notification. Or they'll say, I didn't get the text message. People just have no idea what we're talking about. Speaker 4: Or they'll send us a screenshot of their homepage and they'll be like, how did you guys do this? One of our brands refers to us as the Black Magic Company because they don't know how any of this works, but they know they can send push notifications. Speaker 2: Yeah, but in a world where there's so many channels and things to manage, I think at this point, especially with Clips and you tie the whole life cycle in from top of funnel to bottom of funnel with the retention piece, it's becoming a lot more compelling of an offering and that's been working for us. So a lot of the brands that we talk to now, we just start with Clips. And they're like, hey, I don't even care about the app anymore. You know, and before it used to be like, hey, we're using Klaviya, we're using Yotpo, we're using this, we're using X, Y, and Z. We'd have to go through a traditional scoping and they wanted everything to truly be one-to-one. Whereas now there's almost this urgency where they're like, hey, I need Clips by Friday. You know, I need to be able to send notifications to my ads on Friday. So that's been a big accelerant for us. But yeah, the app sell on its own with retention has not gotten easier. Speaker 4: And I think like, We probably don't do any justice to that because often if a brand will come to us and they're like, hey, I want an app, we'll like drill into the why, right? Like we got pulled into a conversation at NRF and She was a marketer. She's like, Hey, we have a million dollar budget. She was talking to an agency. She's like, we have a million dollar budget to build a custom app. My CEO wants this. Don't know why, but, but my CEO wants this. So it's like, we try to navigate that as well because that's cool. That's like, is it, is it a retention play? Is it, is it, um, just like a, another channel for you? Like, are you going to build something interesting into the app to keep engaging? Like, What are you actually hoping to get out of it? So maybe we like anti-sell it sometimes, but we really make sure that if you're gonna do this, you're thinking about it thoroughly. And we'll help you like craft that strategy as well, but there has to be a why. Speaker 2: And this is probably anti-selling it too, but also if you're too small of a brand, you're too lean and you truly don't have the resource to be able to manage it, might be something that you want to do later. Speaker 4: Other fish to fry. Speaker 2: Yeah, there's other fish to fry too, right? So it's kind of finding the right time to do it. Speaker 1: With your current clientele, any experiences that you guys think have been like super unique or anything that has stood out to you or has been successful thus far? Speaker 2: We've got some cool weird stuff. So one of our brands, they're big on Instagram or on YouTube, so they brought their entire YouTube collection into the app in like custom UI, UX. So you can go in, you can watch the YouTube tutorials, their quilting tutorials that kind of They're kind of awesome. I don't know if you know this brand, Missouri Star Quilt Company. The founder of the company, he now owns a town in Hamilton, Missouri. Speaker 4: You guys got to get them on the pod. Speaker 2: You got to get them on the podcast. Speaker 3: Set that up. Speaker 2: Yeah, they're amazing. But they have a huge quilting community. So people will now go to the app. They can watch those YouTube tutorials. They can filter out whose videos they want to watch. They can like, favorite them. They get notifications when they drop. And they can also buy all the products from the tutorial in one click, which is really really big They have like a custom daily deal page and it updates every night at midnight and they'll send you a notification Hey, this is what we're pushing today. We have another brand That thinks that the world is going to end. They're like a prepper company and they have this amazing survival Bible in their app. So and it even works offline. So say the world blows up or whatever happens. Speaker 4: Knock on wood. Speaker 2: You can go in and there's like, hey, there's a fire. What do I need to do? And they have all these like stored PDFs that you can view. We're working with a cool company now that does fragrances, you know, like the home fragrance stuff and it has a diffuser and So they're building a functionality where you can go in and you can manage that all from the app, you know, control the Bluetooth and do those types of things. So we're not limited to just shopping apps. With this new SDK, you can really build on top of it and separate your brand from, you know, every other one that kind of looks the same. Speaker 4: And you just have to worry about that part that you're building. We'll handle all the boring, like, APIs with Shopify, making sure we're adhering with Apple and Android. So we handle all the foundational stuff. They just get to work on the cool, exciting quilt tutorials. Speaker 3: One thing that I think we've always looked for in our app that we've just never been able to build, source, or maybe even conceptualize fully, but we have a large community on Facebook, about 115,000 women that are in a Facebook group that talk all day every day, and we've always, I think, I subconsciously dreamed of the idea of that being on an app and living with an app on an own channel. Just control measures and being able to do a lot more with it. But I feel like we run into far fewer even examples. Is it just harder to create Something like that when it comes to in-app experiences in general? Speaker 4: We literally just had this come up this week. We're kind of scoping it out, but they have that sort of solution on their website already. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 4: And we don't just want to like web view it in. We're anti-web view. We don't think that that offers a good experience. Exactly, or figure out a way to like properly integrate that. So I don't know yet. But it comes up a lot. This week and then it's probably come up like 10 other times in my lifetime of selling apps. Speaker 2: Do you guys moderate it on Facebook? You do? Wow. Okay, so you're doing all the work. It's just on someone else's channel basically. Speaker 1: When you put it like that, it sounds awful. Speaker 2: There's definitely ways that you could build it inside of the app, you know, and you can leverage some open source tool to have the framework and stuff already built out for you. I think there's a big jump to get them installed, you know, to get them into the app. It's possible. We have a lot of brands that will go live and they won't tell anyone the app went live and they'll just share that link in the Facebook group so their VIP community gets first access to. So you can kind of do something like that to try and migrate those people over into the app. But yeah, you can build it out on the platform. Do you guys use an agency already? Speaker 3: We use TapCart. Speaker 2: No, your tech, your e-com tech, like building stuff on the website. Speaker 3: We have a developer that we use for freelance, someone in Europe, but not consistently because we just don't have that much developer. Speaker 2: Well, if this person knows React Native, we'll give you access to the SDK and they can build it for you inside of the app. And we'll connect you with our solutions team. So they'll help solution it out for you and like come up with the why again. We always start with the why of like, does this make sense? Are there any going to be any liabilities of you having it on your platform? And if all that checks out can help you solution that and then your dev can just go in and build it for you guys. That's huge. That's crazy. Speaker 1: So talk through a bunch of different tactics when it comes to Clips and all the new strategies that people should be thinking about in the future of commerce. What's one thing that both of you would want to give as advice to the audience and listeners? What's that one thing to chew on? Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know if this is advice or not, but if you're a brand and you're thinking about all the ways that your customers, your consumers interact with your brand, right, whether that be at retail, whether that be on Amazon, on Facebook, on your website, on ads, on Instagram, affiliates, whatever it might be, imagine that every time that a customer had to interact with your brand, It can now go to a place that looks the same, feels the same, is even better because it's in a mobile app, but you get to notify them with notifications. You get to remind them when they're lying in bed at night, hey, we exist, you forgot about me. I think that would be the biggest thing. That's really what we provide. Speaker 4: Hard to follow that one. But in terms of advice, I think it's very easy to get caught up in like fast-moving trends in commerce or just in life, but in commerce specifically. And I think, you know, there is a lot of attention on mobile apps right now. You know, retention is hot right now. It's important. I would just say, you know, pause, like make sure you're really thinking about it. It is something, it's not just like a Plug and play type of strategy and your customers are going to start shopping 25% more. That can be a result, but there needs to be like a thought out strategy there. So if this is something that you're thinking about, you know, chat with us. We can help you kind of think that through. But yeah, it needs more thought than just like, Let's do this tomorrow. Speaker 2: Love that. Speaker 3: Chew on that.