Two years of testing and a year of paying only when real people walked into real stores. Here's what we learned.
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Two years of testing and a year of paying only when real people walked into real stores. Here's what we learned.
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Three years ago we asked a strange question. What if a marketing platform charged only when a real human walked into a real store? 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 15 minutes, and brought back a photo. 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 brands 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 mechanism. We rebuilt the matching engine. We threw out three versions of the app. Then, a year ago, we started charging. Here's what's happened since: 20,247 receipts issued. 0 fake clicks billed. 20,000+ verified shoppers signed up to do this work. 40+ brands tested the model. Some of what we expected: Brands liked the math. $24.99 per real customer is cheaper than most digital channels by an order of magnitude. Shoppers liked the visits. Most rated their experience 4.7 or higher out of 5. The photos came back better than agency shot content. Real people. Real lighting. Real stores. Some of what we didn't: The brands 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 receipts started getting forwarded internally. CMO to CFO. COO to CEO. "Look at this." The strangest part: Nobody asked us for a case study. Or an attribution analysis. Or a multi touch model. Or any of the things marketing usually drowns in. They just looked at the receipts. A real customer walked into a real store. We paid her $24.99 to do it. She took photos. The brand owns them forever. The brand can prove she came. That's it. That's the whole platform. 20,247 receipts. Zero fake clicks. One simple deal. Some brands want the receipt to be even tighter. They upgrade: the receipt isn't issued until the shopper makes a purchase. Same $24.99. Same auto refund. A real customer who walked in AND bought. The strongest receipt we issue. Field notes from two years of testing and one year of doing it the new way.