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April 9, 2021

Blocking Coupon Discount Extensions – What Should Know With Kathleen Booth of Clean.io

Blocking Coupon Discount Extensions – What Should Know With Kathleen Booth of Clean.io

In this episode, Andy discusses coupon discount extensions with Kathleen Booth, VP of Marketing at clean.io, the market leader in digital engagement security solutions.

Have you ever wondered how coupon extensions such as Honey and Capital One Shopping work or if they are increasing your sales or instead decreasing your profitability as an online merchant? 

This episode addresses all of those questions and more.

If you are an online retailer, this episode covers what you should know when it comes to coupon discount extensions including what they are and how they could negatively affect your business. In addition, and maybe most important how you can stop them from offering unwanted coupons on your website.

Episode Action Items:

You can learn more about Clean.io by visiting https://www.clean.io. Visit www.clean.io for a 14-day free trial of their product cleanCART to stop coupon discount extensions on your website.

ABOUT THE HOST:

Andy Splichal, who was recently named to the Best of Los Angeles Awards’ Fascinating 100 List, is the founder and managing partner of True Online Presence, author of the Make Each Click Count book series and Founder of Make Each Click Count University found at https://www.makeeachclickcountuniversity.com.

He is a certified online marketing strategist with twenty plus years of experience and counting helping companies increase their online presence and profitable revenues. To find more information on Andy Splichal visit https://www.trueonlinepresence.com, read the full story on his blog at blog.trueonlinepresence.com or shop his books on Amazon or at https://www.makeeachclickcount.com.

New episodes of the Make Each Click Count Podcast, are released each Friday and can be found on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Apple Podcast and on Make Each Click Count at https://podcast.makeeachclickcount.com.

ABOUT THE HOST:

Andy Splichal is the World's Foremost Expert on Ecommerce Growth Strategies. He is the acclaimed author of the Make Each Click Count Book Series, the Founder & Managing Partner of True Online Presence and the Founder of Make Each Click Count University. Andy was named to The Best of Los Angeles Award's Most Fascinating 100 List in both 2020 and 2021.

New episodes of the Make Each Click Count Podcast, are released each Friday and can be found on Apple Podcast, iHeart Radio, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts and www.makeeachclickcount.com.

Transcript

Andy Splichal 0:02

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count Podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichal. And today we're happy to welcome a guest to discuss a topic that has recently come to the forefront and a solution to this potential problem as well. This guest is a VP of Marketing at clean.io. clean.oi is the market leader in digital engagement security solution used by businesses looking to optimize their revenue and buyer experience by taking back control over third party code on their website. In addition, this guest is the host of the long running inbound success podcast and was named by Top Rank as one of the 50 top b2b marketing influencers of 2019. She is Kathleen Booth. How are you today, Kathleen?

Kathleen Booth 1:40

I'm great. Thanks, Andy. Thanks for having me on the show.

Andy Splichal 1:42

Well, we're glad to have you. Now before we dive into today's topic, which is blocking coupon discount extensions, what you need to know, let's first hear your backstory and what ultimately led you to what you were doing right now.

Kathleen booth 1:57

Well, I have sort of a crazy story, it's definitely not what you might expect. I spent many years working in a different industry international development, and sort of had a mid career pivot. When I had children. I had way back in the day, I had done my MBA in marketing. And when I had kids and could no longer travel all over the world for my other career, I got back to my roots in marketing. And my husband and I started a digital marketing agency, which we owned for 11 years. And we sold it in 2017. And since then, I've worked in a series of startups as the you generally the first head of marketing, as somebody who used to own a business, I love the startup world. And so I tend to really focus there. And now I'm at clean.io, as you said, and really focused on helping ecommerce brands get control over their user experience and revenue.

Andy Splichal 2:55

Great. And we're is clean IO based out of?

Kathleen Booth 2:57

We're in Baltimore

Andy Splichal 2:59

Baltimore, and you're in Baltimore as well?

Kathleen Booth 3:01

I am actually in Annapolis, Maryland, which is about 20 minutes outside of Baltimore. And, of course, in true COVID style. I have been working at clean.io for almost a year and I think I've been in the office twice. So

Andy Splichal 3:16

Yeah, that's that's one thing about our current environment is you don't even have to really be close to work there.

Kathleen Booth 3:21

It's true.

Andy Splichal 3:22

Now our subject today blocking coupon discount extensions. Now I think most people listening probably know what that is what what those coupon discount extensions are, whether it be Honey or or Capital One shopping. But for those who who may be unclear, can you describe what this extent what these extensions are and what they do?

Kathleen Booth 3:42

Sure, and you know, it's really interesting, because what I've learned about this is that I think a lot of people are familiar with extensions as shoppers, right? Like many of us have used these products. But and many ecommerce brands have come across them, but but not a lot of them really understand how they work. So to sort of back up. Coupon extensions are literally browser extensions. So you know, if you're using your will use Chrome as an example, you're browsing the internet on Chrome, you go to the Chrome Web Store, you download the, in this case, it could be Honey, it could be Capital One shopping, or any, any one of a handful of other extensions, and you install it in your Chrome browser. And there are many browsers and they have versions for each type. And what happens is when you go to an e commerce website and you're shopping, and you put some things in your shopping cart, the extension will automatically pop up. And we'll say something along the lines of Hey, Andy, we've got 10 coupons for this site, we think we can save you, you know, 20% Would you like us to try them? And of course what shopper in their right mind would say no, so you hit a button and say yes, and the extension then will auto inject all 10 or however many coupon codes it has into the discount code field in the checkout cart, and it will test each of those codes, see how big of a discount it gives you. And then it will basically pick a winner, the one that gives you the largest discount, and it will populate that in your cart, and then it will let you know, you know, we've saved you 20% or 30%, or whatever that amount is. That's how they work. And that's why shoppers love them. There are some extensions and an increasing number of them that will also if you're on a site, say for example, if they see that you have something in your cart, maybe it's a pair of running sneakers, they will scan all the all of the information they have about the other sites that are selling that same product. And many of them will then say, hey, we think we can get this for you at a better price on some other website, would you like us to take you there? So again, for shoppers, it just sounds wonderful, because you barely have to do anything, and you can save all this money and you can know you're getting the best price. What many ecommerce brands don't understand. And in fact, I think shoppers don't understand is it's kind of like how how they get those codes and that information and what harm it does. So the, you know, codes, these, these extensions get discount codes in a variety of ways. They can be manually submitted. So a user can go into the website of the extension and say, Hey, here's a code that I that I want you to have and share with your other users. Or if I'm a customer who legitimately has been given a code, I go to the site of my favorite retailer, and I have that extension present in my browser, and I type that code in the extension then scrapes it off and gives it to everybody.

Andy Splichal 6:45

Ah, okay. Now, how do they make money? Because I have honey, I don't have Capital One installed on my own browser? How do they make money, do you know?

Kathleen Booth 6:56

Yes, so they are basically affiliates. And they make money when people use their extension on site, and then they get paid a percentage of that sale, just like any affiliate would.

Andy Splichal 7:13

Even though they're not really driving the traffic?

Kathleen Booth 7:16

You know, it's this is where I think the debate comes in. There are many brands that believe that these extensions are very good for their websites, and they believe they drive a lot of traffic. I personally don't believe that. Because you know, and in so many cases, they're popping up at checkout, when somebody's already put things in their cart. And so they're, you know, they've shown all signs that they're a high intent shopper that they're gonna convert. So the question is really, you know, what value are they adding? They may not be driving shoppers to your site, but maybe they're pushing them over the edge just that little bit needed to to complete their cart.There's a lot of debate about that we're collecting a lot of data on it. But, you know, yes, whether they drive the traffic or not, they get credit, because they take what is in effect, like a last click attribution. And what's what's really kind of harmful about that is that it in many cases, erroneously reports, what's driving traffic. So you might have a legitimate, like an influencer, you're partnering with or you might have given the code to, you know, you might be advertising on a podcast and sharing the code there. There are many ways that businesses get their codes out. And when a shopper comes to the site, and they may have even entered a code they got from your legitimate affiliate or your podcast ad, but then if they have that extension, and it says, We think we can save you X and they let it auto inject, it's going to get credit for that sale.

Andy Splichal 8:51

Interesting. Now, Honey, Capital One, are there others? Or is it mainly those two?

Kathleen Booth 8:58

Oh, there are so many others. And it's just it's fascinating because literally almost every day I see a new one. In fact, this morning I Slack my team and I said, Hey, here's another one I just heard of. There are a lot of them but there is no doubt.

Andy Splichal 8:58

Did you say you slapped your team?

Kathleen Booth 9:17

Oh, sorry slack. I messaged my team through Slack. No, I did not slap my team.

Andy Splichal 9:22

They run a tough organization over there?

Kathleen Booth 9:24

Yes, no, no, no, there will be no beatings. Yeah, no Honey and Capital One shopping are without a doubt the 800 pound gorillas in the space like they we have a lot of data because our script is on some, you know quite a few ecommerce websites. And so we see which extensions people are using and by far the vast majority come from those two,

Andy Splichal 9:47

Honey and Capital One?

Kathleen Booth 9:49

Yeah. And it makes sense because, you know, Honey is owned by PayPal, which paid I think it was like $4 billion for it. And Capital One shopping which used to be called Wikibuy obviously is owned by Capital One. And so the two of them have very, very deep pockets and are doing a lot of aggressive advertising like John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson are appearing in their ads. Like they're, they're going after new users pretty aggressively.

Andy Splichal:

Now speaking to Capital One, I gotta get it out there. There's no personal beef with Jennifer Gardner here?

Kathleen Booth:

I love Jennifer Garner. And she's not pushing. Well, I don't know, if she's pushing the shopping extension, she's usually pushing the credit card.

Andy Splichal:

Credit card. That's right.

Kathleen Booth:

Right. But if she starts pushing the extension, we might have a beef. No, no, no beef against Jennifer Garner.

Andy Splichal:

So let me ask Why should retailers really be concerned about these coupon extensions?

Kathleen Booth:

So there are a couple of reasons. And I'll break them down for you. I think first and foremost, the most important one is profit margin. If you have customers coming to your website, who are putting items in their carts, fully intending to buy those things at whatever, you know, price, full price you've advertised on your site. What these extensions do when they pop up at checkout, is they they take a hit on your margins unnecessarily, it's essentially incremental profit margin loss because it's taking money away from a sale that otherwise would have gone through at full price. So that's number one. Number two, they really mess with your marketing attribution. So I'm a marketer. This, of course, is top of mind for me. But you know, one of the big reasons to use coupon codes is it's a very easy, simple way to track what's working from a marketing standpoint, you know, you put a code on a postcard, you put a code in a podcast advertisement, you give a code to an influencer or an affiliate, when those codes are used on your site. In theory, you should be able to track that that revenue right back to the source of who's who was given that code to share. When the coupon extensions are present, you can't trust any of that information. Because as soon as those codes get used, it seems they immediately are scraped and shared by the extensions. And so your your marketing data is untrustworthy. And that makes it very, very difficult to know what's working and where you should put your marketing dollars as a business. It's also the other implication of that is if you are doing affiliate or influencer marketing, and you're doing that with codes, you might be double paying, because you, you or you may pay your affiliate or influencer for sales that they did not drive because if their code is leaked, and gets into an extension, you know, all of a sudden, you might see a massive uptick in usage of that code. And if you're comping that person based on a percentage of those sales, you could very well be paying them a large amount of money for business that they did not drive at. And, you know, then I would say, then the other issue is also just time, you know, I spoke to one of our customers the other day, and he told me, he spent at least an hour every week, just dealing with this problem chasing down codes that have leaked, shutting them down, issuing new ones changing out, you know, the where the codes were posted on his website, it is a massive, massive headache. And many brands have gone so far as to stop doing affiliate and influencer marketing, because the code issue was such a problem. So they would put a halt on those programs. And that really kind of ties your hands behind your back from a marketing standpoint as a brand. So there are a number of ways that it hurts brands, and I think there's a lot of education needed around exactly why it's a problem.

Andy Splichal:

Sure. Yeah. No, I'm a big believer in the statement, what gets measured, gets improved. And so if you can't measure it, how are you going to improve your marketing or, or even know what works. That is an issue. Now, clean.io, it says on the website, it's a digital engagement security platform?

Kathleen Booth:

Yeah

Andy Splichal:

What the heck is that?

Kathleen Booth:

So you know, when you just think about the way the world has evolved, when, you know, traditionally, as brands as retailers, when we did business, a lot of it was brick and mortar, and you know, at the heart of any business, whether you're in Ecommerce or b2b or any other sector, the heart of it is we're all selling trust. Doesn't matter what your product is, if somebody doesn't trust you, they're not going to buy from you. And so with traditional brick and mortar retail, somebody walks in your store, and the way you build trust is through the physical environment of the store. It's through the people that greet your customers. It's through the experience they have shopping et cetera, and you have a lot of control over that in a physical location. Today, with Ecommerce, that relationship has shifted online. And so the way we build trust with our customers is very different. And, you know, for the most part, we control our websites, which is great, and the website has replaced the physical store. But I say for the most part, because the reality is that the way the modern internet works, when we design websites, we're sort of like, forced to allow a lot of third party code into our site, whether that is a plugin or an app, or very interestingly, you know, browser extensions, browser extensions are not something that we even let in as businesses, they are what's called a client side injection. So client being the visitor to your website. And because of that, because they live on the client side, and they're in the browser, they actually have a higher level of permission to execute on your site. And this is something that a lot of brands understand. That's why it's such a problem and so hard to stop. And so digital engagement security is about is about looking at the engagements we have with our customers, recognizing that they're happening today in the digital world, and, and securing those engagements so that we have control over them. And we can build, like a digital way of interacting, that that inspires trust, and leads to a great user experience and ultimately helps us grow our revenue.

Andy Splichal:

You made some great points there. One thing I really liked is when you said if someone doesn't trust you, they won't buy for from you. And I had a conversation earlier today with somebody in the university regarding just that in the issue of conversion rates, and how do you increase your conversion rate on your website and trust was the topic of that conversation. So I love how you put that in there. Let me ask you one thing, why can't online retailers prevent these coupon extensions? Is there a way for them? Or can they can they opt out of them? Or, or how does that look?

Kathleen Booth:

That is a great question. And, you know, this is, this is something that's really just kind of become a problem in the last few years. And when I talk to retailers, and they say they're experiencing this problem, generally their first attempt, you can't you can't control. Typically whether a browser extension is used on your website, because the control over that lies with the visitor to your site. That's the first problem. So what generally brands have tried to do is reach out directly to these coupon extension companies, for example, we'll just use honey. And I've spoken to plenty of online retailers who who've written to Honey, and they've said, Hey, somehow or another a limited use code that I have has gotten on your site. Like I had one,

Andy Splichal:

Hey, Honey, I don't want to be in your system like that.

Kathleen Booth:

Yeah, exactly. I had one I had one customer who told me that she has wholesale customers, she's in the home decor, industry and, and some of her customers are in the trade and get a trade discount on her site. And she didn't want to have a wholesale site and a retail site. So she was offering coupon codes as a way for her trade customers to get their discount. And those trade discounts were leaking. And retail customers were basically getting wholesale prices, huge problem. So she would reach out to honey and say we need to get these coats taken off and and honey and I just say honey, it could be any of them. But the response is typically, no problem. We have a partner program, if you join our partner program, that'll give you much more control over codes on your site. But of course, what they're not saying. And what that means is by joining the partner program, you are joining their affiliate program. And that means that every time those they codes are used on your site, you're paying them a cut. In additional,

Andy Splichal:

That's how they're making the money?

Kathleen Booth:

Right, in addition to taking the hit on the margin through the discount that the code is offering. And so, you know, a lot of the retailers I've spoken with feel like it's like a form of extortion. It's kind of like how restaurants have felt about Yelp in the past.

Andy Splichal:

I was gonna mention Yelp.

Kathleen Booth:

Yeah,

Andy Splichal:

It sounds like Yelp reviews.

Kathleen Booth:

It's very similar. And so there are a lot of strong feelings about this within the Ecommerce world and, you know, merchants saying, No, I'm not going to do that, because I'm not going to let you force me into this, this program that I don't want to be a part of. And so, so, you know, we obviously the reason I'm here talking about it is we have a product called cleanCART that we've just come out with that currently is available for Shopify Plus users that that ecommerce brands can install on their sites. And it doesn't prevent anybody from entering a coupon code. But what it does is it prevents the extension from auto injecting the codes at checkout. And so it just sort of helps to level the playing field. And it particularly helps avoid the codes that have been scraped being used by people who shouldn't have them. So your customers that have legitimately received codes can still come and type them in. But those other folks that weren't legitimately given codes maybe have a little bit more of a barrier to using them.

Andy Splichal:

So with with this product, it doesn't let them auto in check. So it really, they're not going to be able to use like, Honey, it's not automatically inserting the code or how to is that?

Kathleen Booth:

Correct it's somebody that their extension will pop up. So the user experience for the website, visitors, they come to your site, they put their stuff in the cart, they go to checkout, the extension pops up. And what it says is, you already have the best deal, basically. So it doesn't really interrupt the user experience. Now, if somebody if that person then goes to the honey website and manually searches for codes, they could still certainly pull those codes and manually enter them in but there's, you know, there's a bit of the laziness factor, the human nature factor, where a lot of people aren't going to do that. And so, you know, we're not stopping the problem altogether. But we're dramatically making a dent in it and giving ecommerce brands a little bit more kind of ammunition to control how their codes are used.

Andy Splichal:

Or and I would say it's probably way beyond a lot, I would say. I mean, I don't know, I'm guessing it's gonna be high 90% of people aren't gonna, they're just gonna assume that Honey are very reliant on that as finding the best deal. They're not going to double check, I would think.

Kathleen Booth:

Yeah, I mean, I don't have any specific data on what the drop off percentage is. But I like I just know, human nature. And I would guess that it's a large percentage as well.

Andy Splichal:

No, I'm still trying to get to the bottom line on how big a problem this is. Do you? Do you have any information on, you know, on average, how much money retailers are currently losing to these to these coupon extensions?

Kathleen Booth:

Yeah. So of course, I'm sure it won't come as a surprise to you that my answer is it depends. But I can dig in a little bit further and share some kind of factoids with you. So it depends obviously, on how large of a percentage discount brands have been giving with their coupon codes. So then, you know, if those codes leak, obviously, it's a big difference between if it's a 10% code, or 40% code. So that's one factor. And then there's also the issue of how big is the average transaction, the average cart value on their website. So we work with a lot of different brands. And I've seen pretty much every flavor of this. And what I can share with you are some examples. So we have, we have a couple of brands that have higher average cart values. One is in the fitness equipment, space, and other one is in the furniture space. And so for those companies, they might save up, like four to $500 on a single transaction by blocking coupon codes.

Andy Splichal:

Wow!

Kathleen Booth:

Yeah. You know, and then we have another customer who has very small average cart values, but a lot of volume. And so each transaction, they might only be saving seven to $10. But with the volume they're doing it adds up to a really significant amount of money on a weekly and monthly basis. And so you can kind of see how how it's going to be different for every retailer. It's also it is somewhat dependent upon who your target audiences because my experience has been that these extensions are more popular amongst a younger demographic, and that's changing as they throw more advertising dollars behind them. So we found for example, like fashion and lifestyle brands or makeup companies tend to have really big problems. Home Decor seems to be particularly prone to it. So certain industries have it worse than others for sure.

Andy Splichal:

Now, before we get into your solution, I usually have been liking to play a game like halfway in between. Are you up for a game I've been playing?

Kathleen Booth:

I love it. Let's do it.

Andy Splichal:

So it's just a word associationgame kind of gets where you are in your thought pattern and I just say a word and you're gonna respond with the first word that pops in your head. You're ready?

Kathleen Booth:

I'm ready.

Andy Splichal:

Okay, run

Kathleen Booth:

Fast

Andy Splichal:

Stop

Kathleen Booth:

Go

Andy Splichal:

Fun

Kathleen Booth:

Times

Andy Splichal:

All right, now those are all easy. Let's get into some business terms. Business

Kathleen Booth:

Hard

Andy Splichal:

Success

Kathleen Booth:

Wonderful

Andy Splichal:

Family

Kathleen Booth:

Happy

Andy Splichal:

Email

Kathleen Booth:

A lot

Andy Splichal:

Promote

Kathleen Booth:

Marketing

Andy Splichal:

Gratitude

Kathleen Booth:

Thankful

Andy Splichal:

Wealth

Kathleen Booth:

Money

Andy Splichal:

Clarity

Kathleen Booth:

Truth

Andy Splichal:

Growth

Kathleen Booth:

Success

Andy Splichal:

Nice. That's it, I think you passed.

Kathleen Booth:

So I have to clarify the reason I said hard, I think it was, what was the word that I said that again?

Andy Splichal:

Business, business

Kathleen Booth:

Ah, it's because I owned my own business for 11 years. And, and I loved it, it was an amazing experience. But being an entrepreneur is one of the hardest things that that you'll ever do. And one of the most wonderful things, but just to clarify, that's why I said hard against business.

Andy Splichal:

No, that makes sense. And, you know, going from an entrepreneur to to work in for a company, have you lost an area of motivation? What I mean, nowadays, what, what gets you what motivates you what gets you out of bed in the morning?

Kathleen Booth:

Oh, I haven't lost it at all. In fact, that's the reason that I have become kind of a serial startup marketer. I am, since I've sold my business I've I've worked in house at a variety of companies, all of which are, you know, startups that and in recent years, startups that are venture backed that have really aggressive growth goals. Because, you know, when I, when I, my true entrepreneurs, heart, loves growing things and loves a big challenge. And so, I tend to come in to these companies as the first head of marketing. And for me, it's like, building a business within a business, you know, I come in, and there is no marketing. So I have to build the strategy, the processes, I have to hire the team. I love that so much. I don't think I could ever work at a large fortune 500 company just because I love the growth phase.

Andy Splichal:

Now, before we get more into that, I wouldn't really want to talk about the solution, because it sounds like it does offer a great solution. You said the compatibility though it's it's available for shopping plus store Shopify Plus stores?

Kathleen Booth:

Currently, it is a private app for Shopify Plus websites, and we are moving as fast as we can to make it available for other platforms, our intent is to roll it out very broadly. So like, we'd love to make it available for a regular Shopify for BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento. Like you name it, we'd love to have it available. So what I tell people is that, you know, go to our website, and it's called cleanCART, you'll find it on our site. And if you go there, you can fill out a form if your Shopify Plus for a 14 day free trial, if you're not on Shopify Plus, fill out the form anyway. And soon we'll actually have a separate form for anybody who's not Shopify Plus, because we're building a waitlist. And as soon as we make the product available for whatever platform you're on, we'll send you an email and let you know.

Andy Splichal:

Okay, great. So you're, you're actively working on it. Now, how does somebody know that they might need your service? Is it excessive coupon use is they see coupons coming in? And they're like, Where the hell did that come from? I mean, where, you know, how do they know if they use your if they need your service?

Kathleen Booth:

Yeah, typically, what we see is that retailers are using coupon codes. And they start to notice that all of a sudden, there are unusual spikes in usage of particular codes. That can't be explained, you know, sometimes you have a spike in code usage, because of a particular campaign, you know, maybe a big email went out, or an influencer mentioned you on social, those are explainable spikes. But when you have unexplainable spikes, many times, it's because your code has leaked, and it's pretty easy to figure it out. Because you can just go to the websites of these extensions. And usually, there's a page for every company, you go to your page, and you see your codes on there. And it's very clear what's happened. And so if you're seeing those unusual spikes, then it's probably because your codes have gotten out.

Andy Splichal:

Now, what is the benefit to using your service over just canceling that code? Once you see a bunch of spikes?

Kathleen Booth:

You know, I think you absolutely can deal with this problem on a manual basis. But the biggest feedback we hear from our customers is that there is a massive hassle factor. Somebody needs to spend, could be an hour, two hours per week, chasing this stuff down. And that and then and that's if you just have codes that you're using in your own marketing. That's one thing but like I spoke to one of our customers the other day, and they give codes out to to very basically customer evangelists. So like, customers who love the product, and then share the code, and it's sort of like a brand ambassador program. And they were telling me that they would shut the codes off. But then the problem was they had given the codes to their brand ambassadors, those brand ambassadors had their codes and their social profiles on their websites. So now not only do you have to have somebody on your own team, spending hours are we chasing the codes down, shutting it off, like tracking down wherever they've been mentioned and correcting them. But you create this element of friction with anybody else who's using your codes, you know, so you got to go out to your brand ambassador and say, Hey, I'm really sorry, your code leaked to Honey, I've shut it down. Here's a new one. Now, can you go to your website, to your Instagram to your Facebook? Can you like replace this code everywhere you have it? And you're asking your brand ambassador to do all this work? Just to keep your codes under control?

Andy Splichal:

You know, now, I don't know. I mean, I don't work with you guys at all. But I would think to if somebody who's relies on honey sees that Honey pop up and say you, they're getting the best deal possible. It's probably pretty good, too. So if you're opting out and see and you know, getting honey to do that, I would think that would be a positive.

Kathleen Booth:

Yeah, I mean, we we've found, we've looked really hard at what our usage of our product does to cart completion, because obviously, one of the questions we get from retailers is does this hurt conversion rates, and we've seen that it really doesn't, you know, customers are just as likely to buy. And when you factor in the massive amount of revenue that you can save by shutting these extensions down, and then you factor in that you're not really hurting your conversion rates, it's a total win win. And most of our customers are seeing at least a seven or 8x return on their investment.

Andy Splichal:

So if somebody has a Shopify Plus story, and they, you know, they're thinking this sounds pretty good. How should they get started? How should they contact you? Or get a hold of clean.io?

Kathleen Booth:

Yeah, well, we like to make it as simple as possible. So our company name is our URL clean.io is the website, just head there. And you'll see right in the main navigation that our product is called cleanCART, click on that. And on that page, you can enter your email address and fill out a form and request a 14 day free trial. And I think that's really the best way to get started is to just test the product out and see, you know, we report back on how much revenue you're saving how many coupons have been attempted, you know, even if you just do the 14 day free trial, you're gonna learn a lot about how customers are using your codes and whether or not you have a problem. So it's a real no lose proposition.

Andy Splichal:

Okay. And then after that it, is it a monthly flat fee based on the number of users or number of coupons you're blocking? What's What's the pricing structure?

Kathleen Booth:

Yeah, it's a monthly flat fee based on the number of orders you process on your site every time. Yeah, so we have three different pricing tiers based on order volume. And like I said, most companies can expect to see us like a seven 7x return is average.

Andy Splichal:

Well, that's, that's a great return. So who wouldn't want that? And again, it looks like you do offer a 14 day free trial. So that's fantastic. So before we wrap it up, is there anything that you can think that I didn't ask where you're like, man, I can't believe he didn't ask that?

Kathleen Booth:

Well, I'll not so much the question, but I'll share a little story.

Andy Splichal:

I love stories.

Kathleen Booth:

Because sometimes, I think there's this perception that that shutting down coupon extensions is not consumer friendly. And I the story I'd like to share is, is an example of why shoppers should also care about this, which is that we see a lot of codes that get tested, because we're on the back end of these sites. And some of the codes I see are things like military hero, 30, hero, teacher, 20, health care worker, we see employee discounts. You know, these are obviously codes that are not intended for everybody to use. And the story I always share is, would you ever walk in to a restaurant and say, Hi, I'm in the army? Yeah, I see you have a discount for veterans? Can I get 20% off my lunch? You know, I certainly hope most people wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that. It just seems like morally and ethically wrong. And yet, when we use these extensions, and we're using codes that were not intended for us, it's that's in effect, what we're doing. And, and I just think it's wrong. You know, just because the business gave a code to one person doesn't mean that everyone should have it. And I think it's unfair to retailers, especially in a year with COVID When online business, you know, ecommerce is one of the only lifelines a lot of these companies have had to survive. And so if we want our favorite businesses to still be around, when this is all over, we really need to think about you know, the implications of using these extensions. I will add that you know, the the biggest example I have of like the worst case and how this really hurts a company is my CEO found one code through One of these extensions, and it was on a men's apparel website. And it was a code for $75 off your purchase, but whoever set it up neglected to set a floor for the purchase price. So if you could make an unlimited number of purchases at $75, or under and get every single thing you got for free. Wow. And, you know, he he tested it and ordered something and immediately returned it because he's a good guy. And he also contacted the company to let them know about the problem. But if you think about that, it's not even worth it to return the items because the cost of the return is going to put them further in the hole. It's just it's a horrible, horrible situation for any retailer to have to be in. And the harm it does, it is real. So I think it's important to remember that.

Andy Splichal:

No, that's definitely some food for thought and you know, worthwhile thing to check out if you see a spike or are concerned about these coupon extensions affecting your business. So that is it for today. Remember, if you liked this episode, please go to Apple podcast and leave an honest review. And if you're looking for more information regarding Kathleen or connecting with clean.io in order to seize control from third party coupon extensions, in contact or through how she just mentioned and I'll also put a link below in the show notes. In addition, if you're looking for more information on growing your business using paid ads request to join the Make Each Click Count Facebook group, I've been releasing some new free live trainings and more will be happening so in the meantime, remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing and I will talk to you in the next episode.