Two years of testing and then paying only when real people walked into real stores and bought. Here's what we learned.
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Two years of testing and then paying only when real people walked into real stores and bought. Here's what we learned.
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A few years ago we asked a strange question. What if a marketing platform charged only when a real customer walked into a real store and bought something? Not when an ad served. Not when a link got clicked. Not when somebody "engaged." Only when a real customer crossed a real threshold, stayed 10+ minutes, bought, and brought back the photos. It sounded reasonable when we said it. It sounded crazy to most of the marketing world we said it to. So we didn't launch. We tested it. For two years we ran the platform without charging businesses a single dollar under the new model. We sent shoppers. We watched them visit. We checked their photos. We measured the no show rate. We built the refund system. We rebuilt the matching system. We threw out three versions of the app. Then we started charging. Here's what's happened since: 230,000+ verified visits completed. 0 fake clicks billed. 21,500+ verified shoppers signed up to do this work. 40+ businesses tested the model. Some of what we expected: Businesses liked the math. $24.99 per real customer, plus the item at cost, is cheaper than most digital channels by a mile. Shoppers liked the visits. Most rated their experience 4.7 or higher out of 5. The photos came back better than agency work. Real people. Real lighting. Real stores. Some of what we didn't expect: The businesses that started first kept ordering more. Even when their other marketing budgets got cut. The shoppers who did one visit kept signing up for more. We have a waitlist now. The proof started getting forwarded internally. Marketing to finance. Ops to the CEO. "Look at this." The strangest part: Nobody asked us for a case study. Or a complicated report. They just looked at the proof. A real customer walked into a real store. She stayed, she bought, she took photos. The business owns the photos forever and can prove she came, down to the receipt from its own register. That's it. That's the whole platform. 230,000+ verified visits. Zero fake clicks. One simple deal. Field notes from two years of testing and then doing it the new way. Brad Co Founder and CEO, Eveoy