Don't make this BFCM mistake.

What is the optimal experience a customer should have after a popup opt-in?

And how does that change during the holidays?

This newsletter is a warning ⚠️

I see hundreds of brands make big mistakes with their post-popup experience every year.

Their customers sign up for popups (great), but then the emails & education that comes after feels like it hurts more than it helps. Incorrect offers during sales, incorrect products being shown, etc.

Not this year though.

Use these tactics below to optimize your customer journey during the holidays.

They are easy to implement and high ROI.

Truly a no-brainer.

5 Tips to Enhance the Post-Popup Experience

Alia Journeys

“Wow great. The Alia guy shilling his own software in his newsletter.”

Ok hear me out. We wouldn’t have built this unless we believed it could make money for brands. And it sure does. 9-figure brands routinely send me emails thanking us for this feature.

So here’s the magic behind it.

By now, we've all seen the power of questions in pop-ups and how much they can lift opt-in rates.

Our team looked at these numbers and said, "Hey, why don't we just keep asking questions after the purchase experience?"

So that's exactly what we did.

After someone fills out a pop up, we allow brands to continue to ask customers questions that achieve a few things:

1. Subconsciously guide the user along their education experience, asking them questions about their pain points that make the solution they want more and more obvious

2. Using questions to filter out products they don't want and identifying products they do want behind the scenes (like a mini automated CRM for each customer)

3. Surfacing products & offers relevant to them at the end of the experience

4. Gathering first-party data about them along the way to inform you on future product launches, features, offers, and more.

TLDR: Think of it like your customers skipping the entire purchase education and navigation process on your site, and instead asking customers questions that lead them directly to the product they want. And when they get there, it feels like an “Aha!” moment for them. All the questions they just answered converge into a product. clicks add to cart

Our team routinely sets these up for brands. Whether you’re on Alia or not, click this button to learn more. There’s a demo link on the page, you can book a 15-minute call with me for free, and we can riff on how this would look for you.

The Dynamic Sale Banner

Did you know you can use universal sections to display similar content across all of your campaigns and flows?

The most sophisticated agencies and brands we work with have a universal block at the top and sometimes at the bottom of each of their campaigns and flows.

Throughout the holidays they can easily call out their most recent launches, promos, giveaways, and more. When it’s done, they just shut it down all at once.

A few examples of how this could look:

Pro-tip: Avoid squeezing this information into a tiny announcement bar at the of the email. People will visually skip right past it. It’s called banner blindness.

What about Flow-verlap?

Do you ever shop from a brand that's running a big sale, and then get a browse abandon or abandon cart email from them with their worse evergreen offer?

To avoid this happening to you, take the dynamic sale banner I mentioned above and tweak it a bit.

Mention that this is the best offer you have right now. Have this banner only run on flows that call out a discount already.

When that customer opens the email, they're expecting a lower offer, but what they actually get is your most recent BFCM offer, which will surprise them for the better.

It's not quite bulletproof though. If you're operating a bigger 8 or 9-figure brand, it's worth reviewing all your subject lines and flows ahead of the holidays and making sure this is all thought through to minimize confusion.

Update, don’t remove, your popups during BFCM

Instead of shutting down your pop-up to avoid confusion during your sale, create a pop-up that calls out the sale.

Offer to give people the BFCM discount and send them curated product ideas right to their inbox.

You could even sweeten the deal by telling them you'll keep them in the loop on holiday releases and future exclusive email-only offers.

We’ve got a whole article dedicated to popup ideas for BFCM here.

Modify the first welcome email

If you're using Alia, you're probably asking customers a question about their experience before you get their opt-in.

This first-party data is incredibly valuable.

While it’s probably too late to build entire welcome flows around specific avatars and hero products people are interested in, it may still be worth tweaking your first welcome email.

Here’s why:

• The holidays will be one of your biggest email acquisition periods

• Most people are shopping much faster than usual.

And for those reasons, the first welcome email is way more valuable during this period than people realize.

So what should you do?

1. Take your first welcome email.

2. Segment the journey using the first-party data you're getting from Alia or your other pop-up provider

3. Tweak each email #1 to show more imagery of the product the customer is interested in, mention the problem that customer might be having and show multiple variants or tangential products that the customer might also want.

4. Flow the remainder of the emails back to your regular welcome journey

Example: I personally love when brands show me a “Best-Seller” or “Starter Bundle” that has the gift I want to give in it. If you send me personalized recommendations like this that make my gifting easy, I’m much more likely to purchase. You just made my life so easy.

Want more BFCM sauce?

Click here. Our resident popup genius (Cory) wrote an in-depth holiday popup guide you can forward to your retention team.

Meme of the Week

Crush BFCM revenue targets with best-in-class popups by working with Alia

There are two easy ways to get in touch:

1. Reply to this email - I read every single one

2. Book a free onboarding call with my team here

Let's crush BFCM together🤝

Until next time,
Shaan from Alia

p.s. shoutout to Fil from Bedford for sharing some of his email agency’s insights that went into this newsletter