The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Maruti Agarwal, CEO of Shopagain.io Interview

Episode Date: July 16, 2022

Maruti Agarwal, CEO of Shopagain.io Interview Shopagain.io

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I'll figure out what it is one of these days. Today we have an amazing gentleman on the show. He's going to be talking to us about online business. And I think this is going to be some money-making, expanding opportunities that you're going to learn from. And he's going to be talking about his startup, what he's done, how he's doing it, and the why, what, how, where, and when of everything. So right now, I just put a lot of pressure on him because he's going to have to deliver the how, why, where, what, and when.

Did I cover all the W's? I don't know. He is on the show with us today, and he's going to be talking, like I mentioned, his new startup. I think you're going to want to hear about this because there's also lots of money-making opportunities in the world.

People are more and more going online, especially for those of my friends in the Bitcoin community who are trying to figure out new ways to make money. He is the CEO at ShopAgain.io, and he's going to be talking to us about his new company. It's Maruti Agarwal. Did I get the name right there? You did pretty well, Chris.

There you go. I'm trying to just smack that one out of the park with all the energy. And like I said, the brain goes out the thing. And we're going to be talking about his new company that helps Shopify stores improve There you go. I'm trying to just smack that one out of the park with all the energy. And like I said, the brain goes out the thing. And we're going to be talking about his new company that helps Shopify stores improve customer retention using AI. So welcome to the show, sir. How are you? Doing great, Chris. How are you? There you go. I'm doing good.

As long as this coffee keeps me going this morning, we're off and running. So give us your.io, I guess we call it, and any place else you want to have people look you up and research you on the interwebs as we're talking. Sure. I'm easily accessible, LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever. I'm not very difficult to find. Hit me a DM and I'll be happy to respond back. There you go. There you go. So what motivated you to start this company? I kind of threw out that it was new, but I'm not really sure that it's new. Tell us about when it started and what motivated you to start this company? I kind of threw out that it was new, but I'm not really sure that it's new. Tell us about when it started and what motivated you to start it. My dad had a retailer store. So I always came from that, you know, commerce background and have seen the daily hustle of that business. And then I grew up, became an engineer, you know,

all of my career. So, I mean, those things is what led to shop again, that, you know, e-commerce is growing, no doubt. And especially last couple of years, it's been growing like crazy. And as things are getting better, there are also people are now starting to see new challenges in selling online. And that's where, you know, I came up with the shop again idea that we could help them sell more online and make more money. There you go. Now you have a background in AI. Can you touch on that just a little bit to tell people about your experience with AI? Sure. So I mean, I started in AI before AI was a buzzword, actually. I mean, when I was in my undergrad, I think this was like almost 15, 16 years back,

I was working on some robotic problem statement. I was building robots actually. And so I built a couple of them and I realized, you know, the most fun part personally for me was the intelligence that goes into those bots. So that's when I got attracted to AI and then rest of my studies

and higher studies, I just kept doing that. All of my professional career, I built AI systems for small companies, big companies, public companies. Pretty much that's that all of my professional career. I built AI systems for small companies, big companies, public companies. Pretty much that's what I did all my life. There you go. And you started your entrepreneurial career in 2010 when you started selling souvenirs to your peers in grad college. That's always a great way to start young, right? Absolutely. I mean, I was taking too many courses from the university and I had very little time, but I just saw that I was in Netherlands at that time. And the city I was in, Delft, that has a very high population of students. It's like a student city.

Oh, wow. And once, twice a year, they go back to their places and they buy a lot of souvenirs when they go back. So I said, you know, this is here and as an opportunity, I can help them buy those souvenirs easier. So to think of it, I was already into helping people sell more. That's funny. That's wild. I mean, you know, how young were you at the time? My first stint was at 18, becoming an entrepreneur. No, I was in, I think, early 20s or something.

There you go. Once you get that bug, once you get that drug bug, it's hard to shake, huh? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I worked for a company in Netherlands. Then I quit that and moved across the countries, joined a super early stage startup as their first hire. So I've been pretty much in the startup circle most of my career.

Yeah. I work for Gazmetrics, a 500 startups funded company in 2012. Built AI Stacks, acquired by Sysmos in 2015. And now you've launched your own company. And I'm not sure if you mentioned when this started, but it started in January of 2021. 21. 21, okay.

Yeah, it started, I mean, we registered the company in March 2021, but it's been a walk in progress from past few years. Okay. I was just reading off your LinkedIn, so trying to cheat off that thing. So do you find that ShopAgain users, what sort of need did they have? What sort of struggle were they going through that you're fulfilling for them? So, I mean, even in the e-commerce community in general, what you see the pattern is that past few years, they relied very heavily on paid ads, you know, running ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google for their growth. And that was the only

channel they focused on. Just running ads and growing with that and growing fast and growing rapidly. What happened in last few years that ads, because everybody's running ads, right? And there's only finite amount of real estate there. They're getting costlier. And the ad running just ads is not as profitable anymore. So businesses have started to struggle that their ads are not performing so well. They're getting more competitive, more costly. It's become costlier to grow and be profitable as a result of that. So what the thesis behind shop again is that you should not rely only on acquiring new

customers to grow a good business you should also focus on the customers that you already acquired and sell them again and again yeah and that's how you build a sustainable business you know what's that old line i don't know if the numbers are still correct but it's they've been around for about 20 or 30 years 40 years maybe the old thing it's it's easier to sell a current customer than it is to acquire a new customer and selling them. And especially if they're loyal customers too, as well. Absolutely. It's very much true even now. In fact, just to throw a couple of more similar lines around those, your existing customers are easier to sell to when they buy from you they tend to buy more higher

order value because they already know your brand they trust you so typically their bucket size is larger they pay you more and if you launch a new product or something your repeat customers will be the first ones to actually try it out so it's it's much cheaper to keep them and sell them more than the amount of money and pain it takes to get new customers. I'm not saying you should stop getting new customers. No, by no means. But don't only focus on getting new customers. You also have to focus on the ones you've already acquired. So what are some features of ShopAgain that you guys do that help to accomplish that? So ShopAgain is more like an all-in-one e-commerce marketing platform so it's got like plenty load of features but to really point out the the common metric behind all

of those features that these businesses these e-commerce stores they have x really become good expert at running paid ads but retaining their customers improving customer retention improving their customers lifetime value that's not the strongest suite that's not where they really hold the ground so shop again automates that for them so they don't have to have any technical or marketing expertise they can simply connect their store to shop again app and the app automatically pulls their customers browsing data data, purchase data, demographic data, a bunch of more attributes. And it creates retention-focused drip campaigns. And they don't have to have any expertise to be able to use those campaigns and see their retention improving.

Wow. And so it'll do product recommendation, email marketing, SMS marketing, pop-up forms, and multi-touch campaign, analytics and reporting, and it'll work with their audience. Yeah. That's pretty interesting. So would this be a replacement for maybe like GoDaddy or other people that you might be using a list for? I would say the biggest two competitors we have are MailChimp and Klaviyo. I'm sorry. That's what I actually meant was MailChimp and Klaviyo. I'm sorry. That's what I actually meant was MailChimp. I went to code out of you. That's totally different.

So MailChimp and Klaviyo. But here is the key difference. With MailChimp and Klaviyo, you as a business have the 100% responsibility to understand your customer data, create your own retention strategy, execute it, improvise it over time. Shop again is the only platform globally right now which automates all of that for you. So it doesn't just give out product recommendations and emails and SMS drip campaigns. It also continually keeps improving them too with time. Do you find that drip campaigns are much more successful? Is there any data or percentages on how much of a difference that can make? Oh, absolutely. I mean, businesses, on an average, I would say businesses are able to make 20 to 30% of their top line

coming because of these retention-focused drip campaigns. Now, some, depending on, you know, how much efforts you put into that, some people go beyond that up to 35 or in some cases 40 as well. But if you're doing below, you know, 15, then there is so much of room left for things to improve for your store and, you know, make, just sell more to your existing customers.

Is the big challenge just reminding your customers hey don't forget about us come by again you know make sure that they don't wander off to a competitor uh that's that's sort of the essence that you want to be in front of your customers you want to educate them you want to tell them you know who, who you are, why you build this, what your products stand for, what you stand for. That's really the thesis behind. The challenge is that businesses don't have the enough technical know-how to build this advanced retention program for their store. Yeah. And this automates it for you.

So you don't have to sit there and babysit it, do all the steps. I can see here the workflow on the main site that it will, you know, it'll send out the drip campaigns where it says, hey, you know, here's your purchase data. You know, here's your different 48 hours. It'll, I guess it takes 48 hours to train your system. And they send out emails and SMS workflows, branded templates and content. The automation is really the key, though, because you don't have to sit there and handhold each thing. I can see where it sends out different like discounts and reminders and stuff like that. I've always,

I've always liked that because sometimes I will go into a cart and half fill it. And then I get a call or I get an email that pops up that I got to go to. And then, and then later you're just like, Oh, did I finish that or not? I'm,

I do that a lot on Amazon too. Yeah, it's common. It's very common, Chris. Abandoned cart is a huge problem for the e-commerce industry. No doubt about that. And if you choose to not do anything about it, then you are just leaving money on the table. Wow.

Tell me about, for those who aren't familiar with Shopify and who maybe are thinking about using that, would be thinking about using that as a business. You know, a lot of layoffs are coming. A lot of people are going into business for themselves. We saw a lot of that in 2020 where people started their own companies. And usually with these recessions and layoff times that we have probably coming, well, they've started to come in different places. You know, people are looking to get an online business so they can make some money and survive these things. And sometimes, you know,

this is usually when the greatest group of entrepreneurs comes out of times like these. What is Shopify and how can people maybe learn to use it? What is it good for? So Shopify is a platform. It's an e-commerce platform. So if, let's say, you decide you want to start selling things online,

you go create your account on Shopify, and it won't take a long time before you can go online and start selling things. So I would say of all the other competitive platforms, Shopify makes it easiest and fastest for you to start selling quickly online. And what can you sell? Can you sell services like consulting or is it mostly product-based or how does it work? I mean, typically when you are selling consulting,

then the structure of your platform is much simpler. You don't necessarily have to use Shopify for that, right? I mean, in theory, if you're selling a couple of items or even one item, you can use Shopify. What they provide you is they provide you the storefront. They provide you a website. They provide you checkout and payment, right? That's what they hook you up with.

So essentially, yes, you can sell digital goods. You can sell services. But majority of the Shopify brands you will find to be products, physical products. There you go. And so people want to try your service. There's a free trial. They can. There's a big button on the website.

How long does that free trial run and how does it work? It's a two week of free trial. So people can automatically, you know, they can very easily go on Shopify app store, install the app. And for two weeks, they don't have to pay a thing. They can use the app. They can make money and see for themselves that, no, it's making good money for me and't have to pay a thing. They can use the app. They can make money and see for themselves that, no, it's making good money for me and then choose to pay. There you go. There you

go. And that's always good because I like to try things before I buy things. I hate where I got to put up money before something when I try things. What haven't we touched on about your guys' service and how it works? Actually, one thing I wanted to point about. So when we were talking about those drip campaigns, which are created for personalized and for each store for their audience. So the way process works is as soon as a new drip campaign is produced by our system, our customers get an email that, hey, there is a new campaign for you to review and launch. So we never send anything to your customers directly. You come on the dashboard, review the drip campaign, looks good, launch it and go back. But it's all you who decides this is good and I do want to send it to my customers. There you go.

So it's just not sending anything, but you basically design it, set it, forget it basically almost where the AI does all the work for you and kicks off the campaign and away you go. Absolutely. And the major part of what I would say is, which is also a new feature that we are introducing, that these campaigns will continuously improve with time. They will keep testing different scenarios. They run a lot of A-B tests. They'll keep finding what is the winning strategy for your campaigns and they keep improving the campaigns as well. So a lot of work thatB tests. They'll keep finding, you know, what is the winning strategy for your campaigns and they keep improving the campaigns as well. So a lot of work

that you would have to otherwise do manually, which will take technical knowledge, you know, advanced marketing skills and a lot of time and money. You can automate most of it and you are still in charge. You know, if you don't like the copy,

if you don't like the design, you have all the tools in one place to change anything you want. There you go. You have everything at your hands and needs. Anything more that we need to touch on about how you guys do it and what you guys do? I would say in essence, I mean, there is one angle that we provide more automation for e-commerce brands than any other competing apps out there. Absolutely anybody. Another thing is the nature of the platform

is all in one. So you don't have to use six, seven other apps to do the same thing because you can do all of that in one place. So we are very soon coming up with integration for direct mails and WhatsApp marketing as well, just so that you have everything in one platform. That is awesome.

That is awesome. So what are some, what do you find works for you in leading companies, starting companies? You know, I've written a book, but the rest of our team is remote. And that was not much of a problem for me because in my previous job also, I was running a very global team from past few years, which was distributed pretty much Latin America, Europe, India, North America, everywhere.

So, I mean, I had the habit of working in Async where people are not always online, not always on the face, but have the habit of working with them. That has worked just fine for me. That is awesome. That is awesome. Have you taken any courses or read any books that you like on leadership or how to manage and be a great CEO? I've read a lot of books. It would be hard to point out

but yeah I mean I would say I've not read as much many books in last one year probably but I like reading and I've tried physical books Kindle and a lot of audio books last few years actually yeah I love audio books because you can

listen to them and do everything else so when you go through them. Well, this has been wonderful to have you on the show and pretty insightful. And I'm sure Shopify clients and those who aren't, you know, you can take and learn about Shopify and then utilize your guys' service. One thing I would like to point out, Chris. So end of July, we are also launching WooCommerce integration. So people who have built their e-commerce store out of WordPress with WooCommerce plugin, they will also be able to use plugin right out of the box. That's huge because I know a lot of people are into WooCommerce as well.

And so that'll be good. I mean, are you going to eventually expand it to target more different online sellers? We definitely do. We do plan to do that. We will keep expanding to more platforms as we go. There you go. There you go. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on the show and very insightful. Give us your.io and any place else you want to have people look you up on the interwebs

to find out more about you guys. Just find me on LinkedIn, CEO of ShopAgain, and send me a message. I'm happy to chat. There you go. There you go, guys. Check it out. Be sure to go to shopagain.io. And of course, if you're not already on those WooCommerce and on the other channel,

they're trying to Shopify. I'm trying to flip between screens here. If you're not already a Shopify partner, find out about how that works. A lot of people are going to be looking to make more money online, whether it's you lose your job or whether you've got the company going, hey, you've got to come back in the office. You're like, I don't want to go back in the office. I want to start a business. This is the time that we usually see most people starting new businesses and being inventive and entrepreneurs. So this can give you maybe, hopefully, some folks some opportunities. Thanks for being on the show with us. We really appreciate it, man. Happy to be here, Chris. It was great speaking to you. There you go. Thanks so much for tuning in. Go to be here, Chris. It was great speaking to you. There you go.

Thanks, Samanis, for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to Goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss. See everything we're reading and reviewing. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe.

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