[Voiceover]: Welcome to the checkout. We catch up with previous add to cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get you through your Friday.
Nathan Bush: Today's checkout features Adam Sharon Zipser, Director of GiftNote GiftNote is a Shopify app which allows gift givers to have an SMS or an email arrived to the gift recipient within 30 minutes of their delivery. It solves the problem of impersonal or even worse, unknown deliveries. Adam is also the founder of Elephant Room, an e commerce agency that helps e commerce brands grow through paid performance, website development, UX integrations, analytics and a lot more. They have worked with brands including Booty, Bedthreads and Sur the label. Adam, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout. We had a great conversation around all things gifting and gifting note as well as the state of e commerce because you've got such a brilliant perspective across a wide lens, across some brilliant clients. But we want to learn more about you today. So I've got five quick questions for you. Number one, what? What? Here we go. We already heard about your RM Williams present the wardrobe. But what is the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Adam Sharon-Zipser: It's a good question. During COVID we were looking every year we do Christmas gifts. We usually give staff an option to do a charity donation or pick a gift from a, from a batch of stuff and there's like donations as vouchers. And then the gift that we put up was device sanitizers, like a phone sanitizer, like an infrared bath for your phone. And it was kind of like a wild card gift. And I was like, it's probably going to be shared. I don't think anyone wants it. People definitely want the vouchers. And like I think we had, we bought 20 of these like phone sanitizers online. I don't even know where it was from and like the box just came and I'm like holding these things and I'm like wow, this is a once in a generation purchase. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Do they actually work?
Adam Sharon-Zipser: It's similar principles to like the baby sanitizers where there's like a UV bath and you'd like, there's no water or anything. It just sort of kills whatever's on there. I don't know the science but it was very popular and it was very unprecedented. It was something that I wouldn't expect to buy again.
Nathan Bush: There you go. Fantastic. Do you get frustrated now buying gifts for other websites that might not be using Gift note or having experiences that you go, this isn't optimal.
Adam Sharon-Zipser: Yeah, it's actually great customer service. Hey, I was like trying to buy from your. Trying to buy from you, but your competitor has giftnote and maybe there's an in there. So really, really stir some shit with a customer service team.
Nathan Bush: Fantastic. All right, number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Adam Sharon-Zipser: Wow. I mean, I don't think anyone's doing one thing incredibly well. I really, really like the how data synchronized. Like, coming from an engineering background, I'm very big on like unison of data. I love how athlete's foot know my foot profile. I know. I love how P. Johnson where I got my wedding suit knows my measurements. I know. I love how woolies does smart recommendations if I forgot to add the jats or the cottage cheese at the end of the checkout. I love how Zara has the best app and the fastest app Mecca for loyalty. I mean, there's definitely all these bits and pieces together, but I do like brands that are synchronizing the data well from like loyalty to membership to warranty to everything. I think everyone's borrowing a few playbooks from Apple as well.
Nathan Bush: So if I had to put you on the spot as the best, is it Apple?
Adam Sharon-Zipser: So cliche. Sure. Give it. Give Steve Jobs one more win. There you go.
Nathan Bush: All right, number three, which e commerce practice do you wish was history?
Adam Sharon-Zipser: By history do you mean not happening anymore? Doesn't happen Reporting on roas. Anyone who reports on Roas can get out of here. I'm done with that. ROAS is a made up metric.
Nathan Bush: Why is it made up?
Adam Sharon-Zipser: Because it's opinionated. And every ad platform grades their own homework. And it's like, it's like asking the five weather people what the weather is and they all say, it's 28, it's 30, it's 31. And you're like, well, which one is it? Like, it's like, is it hot outside? Are called like, which one is it? It's like, oh, no, I have an opinion because I feel this way. And it's like, it's not a. It's. If they're grading their own homework, then it's not the right way. There's not an accurate way to make decisions.
Nathan Bush: Do you have any clients who insist on using roas?
Adam Sharon-Zipser: Yeah, for some clients, like, it's a good signal on creative and miniature success. I think it works in a small microcosm of performance. But I think, no. Like, it's not a practice. Like, you can't just say, hey, we got a 20 roas for this client. When it's like branded terms and non branded terms combined, you're like, what the fuck? What is it? So I'm very passionate about that. We spend at elephant room like 80 million a year in paid media. Like it's a, it's a big problem.
Nathan Bush: I love the passion.
Adam Sharon-Zipser: Yeah, like it's super triggering.
Nathan Bush: That was great.
Adam Sharon-Zipser: Yeah, it's super triggering.
Nathan Bush: Should make a main episode out of that.
Adam Sharon-Zipser: I'll happily. I'll give you five hours of content.
Nathan Bush: All right, Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Adam Sharon-Zipser: Good one. I mean Ultimate History is amazing podcast, but totally not related to E Comm. I think I like related and non related. There's a book that I read a few years ago called Play Bigger. It's about defining and owning a category. They use incredible references from Tesla and other people and I think it's, it's awesome. It's, it's written by Al Ramadan and David Peterson. It's, it's an epic book. It's just like each chapter focuses on a separate company. And I loved it. I don't think it gets enough credit.
Nathan Bush: And did you read that before or after Gift note?
Adam Sharon-Zipser: I think I read that book three times and I sent to actually one of our tech co founder Callum when he was joining and we finished all the paperwork, I was like, I want you to read this book. It was over Christmas and I was like, just punish it and come back to me. And it's like you'll get an idea of why gifting infrastructure might be a category in itself and it helps like just quantify everything.
Nathan Bush: Great tip. Thank you for sharing. All right, last one I have for you. Finish this sentence. The future of retail is personal, I
Adam Sharon-Zipser: guess everyone says that, I feel, but it's. There's if. If customers are opting in and brands are giving the best experience and they have a reason to opt in. So for example, Woolies has everyday rewards and everyday, I think extra where you can pay your membership and you're motivated to sort of give them your data because there's a price incentive and there's an experience incentive. I think once that union and that lock is made, it's a whole, it's a whole new world of opportunity. And that's what's very exciting. Yeah, the new loyalty, the new reverse loyalty. Let's just, instead of just earning for stuff, just let customers pay for it. Like if it's seven or ten bucks a month, that's your incremental gap customers will probably pay for it.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful Adam. Thank you for joining us on the checkout.
Adam Sharon-Zipser: Thank you for having me.
Nathan Bush: To hear more from Adam, jump back into episode 288 where Adam shares how GiftNote is improving the gifting experience and he tells us what a great gifting experience should look like. We also go broader than gift giving, given Adam's view across the e commerce industry, and he shares how to outsource the performance media algorithms. Hot tip. You can't. Adam also shares his favorite measurement tools for different sized ecommerce businesses. Thanks for listening and until next time,
Adam Sharon-Zipser: keep adding to cartoon.
