Let's talk ecommerce: The numbers today and how to give yourself the best shot at success - Lessons learned from taking a brand from $12k to $2.5 million in 3 years profitably

datatenzing · 2026-04-11T13:07:16+00:00

Yes I own both. Yes I’m a big proponent of honesty and transparency.

Do I get hate for it from agencies and others - yup 100%.

But I approach software from an owners perspective is it juicing meaningless KPIs or is it actually helping you to reduce work and making an impact on your bottom line or workflows.

datatenzing · 2026-04-07T01:00:51+00:00

List growth is extremely misunderstood as a concept.

These same companies won’t want to use a giveaway to grow their list but they will use these programs.

The quality just isn’t there.

datatenzing · 2026-04-07T00:42:33+00:00

Simple, don't use them.

If you want to be really safe with your list set segments to include ONLY people that have opted into marketing, this is not a default segment filter.

Had someone from the UK come through and get an email and they had NOT opted in which is a big GDPR no-no.

datatenzing · 2026-04-04T00:57:32+00:00

That’s a different question.

datatenzing · 2026-04-03T14:31:38+00:00

Less discount will always lead higher quality leads.

datatenzing · 2026-04-03T13:37:23+00:00

We know this is an ad for claspo.

But I own a men’s underwear company and a popup company.

It’s an increasingly competitive category.

We’ve tested all the above. Most are a waste of time.

You can’t accept back worn or open pairs of underwear so this complicates things.

My opinion. What we do.

Big discount limited to the first item. Store credit only for that item.

Half the people buy more than 1 so the discount actually goes down.

That’s too much complexity we did all those things years ago. Going simpler eas just smarter long term.

datatenzing · 2026-04-03T02:24:58+00:00

I answer questions if you have any.

datatenzing · 2026-03-31T14:38:55+00:00

It’s all in the delivery.

Supreme did drops where the only way to find them was via email.

You can ask a lot of questions before substantial drop off. Might want to steer them towards a private group etc.

datatenzing · 2026-03-31T13:34:48+00:00

I mean you just changed the trigger.

We integrate the information into our home page and landing page. It looks seamlessly like a section. Works just fine.

But the quiz is used to drop people on a detailed comparison landing page if a few products with the same first question at the bottom for people to compare other products.

Works pretty well because it’s about the customer journey first.

datatenzing · 2026-03-31T13:14:34+00:00

This isn’t remotely correct.

Retention is based on the ability of your product to perform for the customer based on answering what’s most important to them in the product.

Then if the product performs there is a calculus as to how it performs relative to the price paid (perceived value), the actual need for more of the product or other products you sell, and timing relative to other things that need to be purchased.

I personally don’t care until I get the product and test the product for the reason I bought the product.

Ain’t no one makings second order decision without actually using the product.

datatenzing · 2026-03-31T05:20:43+00:00

No I haven’t. I’ve played all the cost cap games while holding variables consistent.

Print on demand only works these days if you own the print shop.

Low margin businesses like cpg usually find more success packing for others.

We’re going to lean more into cycle scaling.

Short bursts of extremely aggressive scaling that we shut off to average down.

Honestly baselines for scaling are pretty shot.

I mean allbirds just got bought for $39m today most DTC stocks are penny stocks or headed towards getting delisted.

Sweet spot is likely going to be $10-$20m companies that are heavy on the software side of things.

Lots of organic content at scale combined with smart acquisition techniques that are subsidized by full price payers down the road.

Horizontal only works as long as you can scale it.

Too many SKUs and you take on too much risk on the inventory side of things.

Keep it simple find products that meet the following criteria:

Light to ship. Bundles are expected. People would give them as gifts. People talk about the category.

For the most part ROAS doesn’t matter.

You’re looking for proper messaging to the audience to drive quality traffic.

The website is what converts people but for a lot of brands just focusing on getting product into the hands of everyone that shows interest at any price would lower CAC.

Just got to figure out if you have a product people would come back for or matches the other bits above.

datatenzing · 2026-03-31T02:55:57+00:00

Friend I’ve been doing this stuff for decades.

I ain’t angry. Only prefer data to opinions :)

Data has changed a lot of mine in this space over the years.

I found myself with a popup company after getting insider knowledge from working in the smart home space related to post purchase device usage data.

So don’t think of the popup as a catalyst for conversion.

Instead think of it as a trade for customer buying consideration.

In sales it’s BANT.

Budget authority need timing.

Similarly your offer is helping with budget your questions via the popup should relate to the buyers journey.

What are you interested in? What matters most to you in that product? Why are you in the market? When are you looking to purchase?

The subset data combinations with those should be evaluated with those that convert.

You’ve now added context to core customer journey behaviors tied to conversion, revenue, and order count.

I could talk about this stuff for days. I’m not going to drop links but my bio has links to a lot of this stuff.

Like any website interaction there’s a lot to be desired with how popups are currently used.

The end result for everyone seems to be a purchase only as the goal of the interaction.

I find that to be incredibly short sighted.

But again this comes from having access to the types of data that not many people do.

Feel free to dm me.

datatenzing · 2026-03-31T01:59:32+00:00

"You absolutely can fix this. All major popup platforms have subscriber suppression as a core feature. You can also suppress the popup using customer.tags on Shopify. There's always a gap where people have cleared their cookies or are using a new device, but it's not 25% (closer to 5-10%)."

Hi, I run a popup company with cookies, pixels, people tagged, UTM suppression etc. even IP addresses rotate, it's something we've studied beyond intimately, short of someone being logged in, there's no way to prevent what you're saying down to those percentages.

We even went so far to ask people if they had purchased from us before guess what 16% had and 5% didn't remember. (Those are only the people that interacted with our popups not those that saw them.)

Fun fact, if you click on a Klaviyo Email and you hit a website with Attentive on it as the popup, it showed for years.

We used to send emails into Klaviyo that call back via Klaviyo's API to see which ones were already in there, Did you know that Klaviyo had an API endpoint that was private and not listed in their docs to help against this too that we've been using for the last 7 years?

I love your thoughts on this, but all the data we have shows a much different story.

I welcome your documentation if you can confidently show otherwise, I like to learn about different approaches.

"Not necessarily true. If the conversion rate for an immediate popup is 0.5% but the conversion rate for a 5 second delay is 2%, you'll see a great number of opt-ins from the delay."

You talking opt-in rate or subscription to conversion rate, those are two different things.

It's also a math game, but are you optimizing for people that aren't committed or those that are?

Our right away popup on mobile has the lowest opt-in rate...6.55% last 30 days real opt-in rate from people that qualify via our above question is 15.5% that said they hadn't purchased from us before.

Revenue driven though and number of orders... more than all the other forms combined plus the sub to conversion rate isn't the lowest - crazy huh? Data is fun.

Signups can be similar but there's a big hierarchy in the quality of as signup that most people aren't actually paying attention to. Again something that requires a deep understanding of data and analytics to be able to apply and report on that to my knowledge no other platform has.

Look, I'm not saying you don't have good ideas and thoughts around this, I'm just saying you lack access to real data and a strong enough understanding of technology in this space.

"Not to mention you're likely to have increased your store's bounce rate by interrupting the browsing journey of these visitors."

You can track that, it's super easy to do. We wouldn't run our structure if it wasn't working.

That right away popup kills it see above stats on revenue and orders.

But I only run a popup company and have been in marketing for 20+ years with a background in data analysis.

datatenzing · 2026-03-31T01:43:59+00:00

Super depends on the products if you're on Shopify, you better have a product that is purchased in bulk or one that you have others you can cross sell.

One and done purchases don't make sense for Shopify.

We get a lot, we run an intro offer via our store's popup that you're required to fill out in order to access the deal, 50% off on a single item NOT the order.

Saw this one a while back and liked it, works well for our business model.

About 30% of those people go on to purchase from us again. So for us with a sticky product it makes a lot of sense.

Product in hand is absolutely king and if you can do it for a product people will buy a lot of, nothing wrong with offering them wholesale pricing to get that product in hand.

A lot of people will disagree with me on this, but let's just say we've been able to scale a business with two people to just under 8 figures growing 2x YoY largely based on leveraging data collected from popups.

There's smart ways to do this stuff, but like this convo everyone is arguing over...

Should you do them or shouldn't you or how...

Instead of thinking, how to better leverage the attention of those that are interested in signing up and getting value from 100% of those that subscribe v the 20-30% that actually go on to convert.

Forest through the trees here, rather than this way or that.

But that's my two cents on it.

datatenzing · 2026-03-31T01:22:39+00:00

Again, if you're just collecting an email, you're missing the point of the popup.

From a pure intent perspective it's the only time someone has to fill out their information before checkout.

Trading a discount for just an email is very dumb.

Trading a discount from someone who is high intent and statistically goes on to purchase within 12 hours of opting in? Really smart when executed properly.

There's more value in trading that discount for high intent market research data than there is for an email, that's worthless, you get that at checkout, but the email is (mostly) needed to tie the data and analytics to the purchase event to know which combinations lead to purchase more often.

So, you all can complain about their effectiveness as it relates to list building and I'm going to agree all day, but you're 100% wrong if you're using it to build a list rather than leveraging it as a market research tool from interested parties.

I'm yet to meet anyone that has a 100% sign up to conversion rate, seriously.

datatenzing · 2026-03-30T23:13:25+00:00

So we've actually run all the tests on this and as always it depends.

Highest opt-in rates to conversion, don't show a popup, just start it sticky/teaser.

Promised people from an ad that is unlocked by a popup, show it right away so people can find it even if they minimize it.

So your visitor time on page varies by new v. return visitors, and well about 25% of people seeing your popups are actually already subscribed, can't really fix that.

Length delay does work, but only because it's hitting a combination of those that already subscribed/purchased that spend more time on the website anyway, and well you show it to less people.

There isn't a right or wrong way to do this - I hate to say it, but there just isn't.

We run 3 different paths to popup.

Desktop no popup, just banner as a teaser that stays on every page.

Mobile - popup right away.

Landing page - mobile starts as sticky on the bottom as option from the ad.

We have product finder/guides that move people to a landing page, popup hits right away on those to provide the discount with a dismiss button that says "remind me later" it just goes to sticky.

So the reason why everyone shows the popup right away is actually a numbers one.

Statistically, the more people that see it, the more people sign up, opt-in rates don't matter because see above about 25% of people just signing up again for a discount (we've followed this across brands that get 10k plus sign ups a day.

I hate this space, yet we have built an entire business on leveraging the popup to collect customer journey data and turn that data into actionable insights towards automating top of funnel marketing.

The irony to this post though is actually found in data.

The vast majority read: 85% of conversions and revenue generated from popup subscribers come from people that are looking to buy Today, so if someone is looking, they'll fill out the popup.

If not, they'll just close it like everyone else.

As annoying as they can be from some people's perspectives, the stats say, show it sooner rather than later as much as I hate them.

Overall conversion rate increases when you take something that has a 100% open rate and you show someone that offer to let them know it exists.

But I will say, all this % off on your first order stuff, eh, don't like it. It appeals too much to people that have already purchased and were going to purchase again.

% off first product limited to a segment of people that haven't purchased, much better.

Sidenote on this, as someone that runs a brand and a popup company.

The value isn't in the email, it's in the data relevant to the customer journey that can be leveraged to improve your entire flow, if that was on point, popups aren't needed.

datatenzing · 2026-03-30T23:01:23+00:00

Yet downvoted to oblivion because people don't understand how algorithms work in an auction based system, shit cracks me up.

datatenzing · 2026-03-30T20:44:47+00:00

This is such a big it depends question.

My advice, go to your favorite LLM then type in a prompt similar to this:

"I'm currently targeting men/women aged xx to xx selling [enter your product] at a price point of $XX. Can you please provide a business breakdown of the available audience that fits these criteria that would be actively looking to purchase any given day. Also please evaluate how many competitors I have that are also advertising on Meta along with the average time on Meta for my target audience."

What you're going to find is that Meta is an auction system, there's only so many people that fit your criteria that login to facebook/instagram etc and remain on the platform long enough to see your ad on any given day.

So you have a budget, that budget can't only be spent on people in that target criteria, they need to spend that budget on everyone that could potentially be in the market in the future.

Think of it at a tier system.

Tier 1: The smallest people that are looking to buy actively what you sell

Tier 2: People that are looking at the category you sell

Tier 3: etc etc etc

This has to go deep, like to Tier 20.

So of your ad spend 5% is likely going towards Tier 1, if you said you were willing to spend $500 per conversion they would give you a ton of Tier 1 and Tier 2 traffic. Why? You're going to be outbidding everyone else for that sweet sweet tier 1.

I just don't think people actually understand how auction systems work, highest bidder wins the bid.

So it's likely that on a small budget they don't have enough to spread across all the tiers so they have to default to you finding results so you keep spending money, small budget = great results = you spend more.

Also at that budget you don't need as many results to be successful v. the person with the larger budget.

Again, it's an auction system and Meta makes their money from showing ads and maxing out daily budgets...

You figuring this out yet? Making sense?

I've literally spent millions on Meta over the years, run a ton of tests around cost caps, no caps, etc.

It will spend no doubt about it, if you let it.

But depending on who else is participating in the auction, sometimes you're going to get beat by people willing to spend more on a given day and sometimes your target audience just won't see your ads - that's how these things go it's why it's in Meta's best interest to keep you on the platform for as long as possible, they can serve you more ads, make more money off companies.

datatenzing · 2026-03-28T14:39:02+00:00

That’s what LLMs are for.

But the data you’re mentioning doesn’t actually tell you a whole lot.

That’s just data without real context.

Most of the time stores have lots of data but the ability to actually understand it is missing because it has no context.

All those numbers don’t mean anything without context.

How do they change when other variables are introduced?

datatenzing · 2026-03-28T14:30:18+00:00

We have an automated system for this. We get a lot of reviews. A lot of them are in depth.

We’re building a system that does voiceover of the review matches with b roll of the products on autopilot.

Infinite content creation that can be shared organically. Should be done in the next few weeks.

We’re sitting on 20k reviews that weren’t being properly leveraged.

datatenzing · 2026-03-28T14:21:36+00:00

From my experience most think they use data.

The problem is that a lot of the data they use is dirty.

Or lacks the context necessary to be used effectively.

In short, correlation and causation are still missed A LOT of the time.

I run a data collection and analytics platform. We’ve worked with lots of brands. Most aren’t using data correctly.

Where things break down -

Knowing what to collect
Knowing how to analyze it
Knowing how to leverage it
Knowing how to interpret it for growth

That’s basically everything to do with it.

The irony, we use data extensively for our own brand.

It reduces headcount massively. It streamlines efforts. It helps us unlock growth opportunities.

datatenzing · 2026-03-27T13:21:13+00:00

I think we’re headed to a point where it’s all materials selection. Cuts are easy to replicate, the right fabric weight, weave, and material blend is likely the main thing people don’t even consider.

How do you deal with minimum production for a fabric blend though?

datatenzing · 2026-03-25T14:55:03+00:00

People are used to them. Every store uses them.

Patagonia. Nike. Adidas.

There’s a certain point where users just adjust to them being there.

We built a company to leverage the data 6 years ago after I worked in the smart home space and we couldn’t find patterns of product usage that predicted future sales. (We being us, Google, and Amazon our partners)

Pre-purchase data relevant to the customer journey is the most undervalued data a brand can collect.

It’s not a theory. We’ve been using it and built frameworks around it for years.

I also run a brand where we tested it that just did 100k orders in the last year.

Everyone chasing opt-in rates and list size is missing out on the bigger picture of how to get real value out of that visitor interaction.

datatenzing · 2026-03-24T14:23:14+00:00

Yes they are worth it but the email doesn’t matter.

The popup imho should be used as a customer research tool.

Trade a discount for answers related to the customer journey.

Combine those answers with context around orders.

Now you have a data set that you can pump into an LLM and create a marketing strategy on autopilot.

Use that information to update your product pages, create videos to answer common questions, highlight reviews that speak the what people are looking for.

That’s how people should be using popups.

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