The one where you and your mates get free shipping with Sami Jarrous from Mateship

Ryan Martin, host of eCommerce Australia and Founder of eCommerce SEO Agency Remarkable Digital hosts Sami Jarrous, the co founder of Mateship. 

Sami unveils the story of Mateship, a revolutionary platform that addresses the growing concerns of group purchasing, environmental sustainability, and the cutthroat climb of advertising costs in the e-commerce sphere. 

As we chat, discover how Mateship not only fosters community and shared savings but also how it's reshaping the strategies of customer acquisition by turning to a performance-based model, proving that the bond of mateship in commerce can indeed revolutionise the way we shop online.

Have you ever pondered over the ripple effect of your shopping habits on the environment or your wallet? Sami shares how Mateship's group ordering app for merchants is a win-win, offering insights on integrating with Shopify, facilitating communal order management, and driving customer loyalty through shared shipping thresholds. 

Retailers, buckle up as you learn about the potential of this seamless integration to amplify your sales and customer satisfaction. 

And for consumers, imagine the empowerment of collective action leading to tangible rewards, as you join forces with neighbours to unlock free shipping and cash back bonuses—because together, we achieve more.

Finally, let the concept of social proof and curated discovery sweep you off your feet with tales of viral products and the power of communal shopping experiences. 

Witness how Mateship harnesses the energy of social trends to elevate the e-commerce experience, turning every purchase into an opportunity for connection and shared delight. 

Get ready to be part of a narrative where the discovery of new stores and the joy of gifting are effortlessly interwoven into your online shopping escapade. 

So, come aboard and let's navigate the dynamic waters of e-commerce with the camaraderie of Mateship guiding us through 2024 and beyond.

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Transcript

Ryan Martin: 0:19

Welcome to the Ecommerce Australia podcast. For those of you seeking direct assistance, remarkable Digital is just a call away. Our mission is to be remarkable, doing great things for great people and great businesses. I understand how much choice you have and how many podcasts are out there, so I'm truly grateful you've tuned in. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or topics you'd like covered. Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of eCommerce Australia. Today's guest is the co-founder of Mateship. What is Mateship? Well, we'll get into that shortly, but Sami has come from a background in corporate and previously been working as a lawyer, so looking forward to hearing how he got started in the world of eCommerce and SaaS apps for Shopify. Mateship was definitely one of the most popular booths at the recent Retail Fest 2024 Expo, so I had to check out what all the fuss was about and invited Sammy on to explain more about what Mateship is and how e-commerce businesses can use it to their advantage. So, mate, welcome to the podcast.

Sami Jarrous: 1:19

Thanks, ryan, appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

Ryan Martin: 1:21

No problems, mate. As I said, you guys were very popular at the Retail Fest Expo. I thought, geez, what's going on here? There's four young blokes. They look like they're having a good time and a good laugh.

Sami Jarrous: 1:33

So, mate, it was good to see yeah yeah, I think the Bae Juice and the Rocket Fuel was doing a lot of the talking, but I think also it just must have been our radio voices just bringing people back in and wanting to hear about Mateship a second, third, fourth time or something like that.

Ryan Martin: 1:48

Yeah, nice one mate. So, as I touched on off the top, you're working sort of in the more corporate world and you know, practicing as a lawyer. How did Mateship come up as an idea to start with?

Sami Jarrous: 2:00

Yeah. So I was over in Texas on exchange and I was living in one of those college dorms. There was heaps of people there, it had a concierge and there would be just so many orders coming through to that location and I didn't have a car. It was pretty inconvenient for me to actually go ahead and walk to the grocery store or like go and buy some clothes or anything like that. But just the amount of packages that would be coming in.

Sami Jarrous: 2:27

I always thought in my head like it would be really cool if I could just join in on one of these orders. Like even you know someone that's for the first time there, I don't know what's the coolest stuff to be like buying. I don't know what the like best groceries are to like just go for. So it just made a lot of sense that if all of these people just let me know, hey, like there's this order coming from this store, you can join in Happy days. Like I would absolutely be joining those orders. I'd get free shipping because I'm just piggybacking on their order, why not?

Sami Jarrous: 2:58

So just trying to make that kind of technology was just like the big challenge there. So ran into a few troubles trying to build that out. But that's kind of the crux that really started it all. But yeah, once upon a time used to be a lawyer in technology M&A, and then over time I decided to kind of leave that behind. I've always been super keen on startups and just love, you know, just the idea of just building something new, just contributing to the world in like a really better way. That's like it feels more impactful. So that just felt like the right thing to do yeah, fantastic and definitely more impactful for the environment.

Ryan Martin: 3:36

I guess, if you, you know, instead of all those different packages arriving with different vans and all of that, if it's all in the one, then obviously that's going to have a great impact on the environment as well yeah, 100.

Sami Jarrous: 3:47

Yeah, the eco-friendly benefits are like absolutely ridiculous. Um, when you look at kind of like global statistics on shipping, it's around about like 20% like transportation is just ridiculous for the environment. And so the idea that you can actually kind of have this two-way communication of I'll just join in on this person's order you know, almost like timing it, based on what you know other people are buying at a certain time, just makes it so much easier. So, yeah, just even as well from a packaging standpoint that means less like package waste as well and just all coming in the one truck. They say like last mile delivery is like the most expensive part of the delivery process. It's around about 53 of the cost. So when you're spending 10 on shipping, five dollars and 30 cents is coming from just that last mile, like literally from warehouse straight to the um store. So if we can just merge multiple orders within that happy days like, it's just ridiculously good for the environment.

Ryan Martin: 4:46

Yeah, that sounds awesome, mate, and the way you're answering these questions. I think you've just nailed about four out of the five that I had for you, so tell us a bit more about the background. So there's yourself and three others. Where did you guys all meet?

Sami Jarrous: 5:01

Yeah, so we're all high school buddies. So my like co-founder, like co-CEO is Daniel, and he was actually the ducks of the school. I came second, so I had to swallow a bit of pride to work with him. No, but he's absolutely fantastic. That guy is a genius and so it was kind of you know working with him. That's where we kind of like thought of the idea and kind of you know brooded up from the start. And then Aaron is also one of our like old time friends, like known him since year seven, and he's fantastic. That guy's a coding genius. And then Jackson that guy was like vice school captain yeah, vice school captain of the school. So that's why he's got so much more charisma than I do and he's just fantastic. It's just a much funnier guy than I am, but, uh, he's really good as well. It's just kind of like a group of guys that really have this like kind of like everyone has like a certain skill and really brings a lot to the table. So it's just really fantastic to work with everyone. Yeah, nice mate.

Ryan Martin: 6:01

Uh, sounds like I should have got jackson on the podcast. Yeah, you got the wrong guy. I tell you what. Really fantastic to work with everyone. Yeah, nice mate, sounds like I should have got Jackson on the podcast there. Yeah, you got the wrong guy. I tell you what. No, that's good mate, look, yeah, as I said, it was really good energy in that booth and you know, I was keen to understand more.

Ryan Martin: 6:17

I guess when I heard about mateship, I'm like, well, how does that actually work? And you know, there are some things which no doubt you get questions around. You know, people's email addresses, people's privacy, how does the onboarding look? Is it, you know, more hassle than it's worth for people to sign up to the platform? All these questions which I, you know I sort of smashed at you there at the booth, but you touched on the business case around using MakeShip with that last mile delivery. Talk to us a bit more about that user journey. So maybe let's start from a business, an e-commerce business, that wants to look at using Mateship. What's the reason they would use Mateship? Do you get their store out to more people by suggesting what's trending? And you know, yeah, what's the business case around that? From an e-commerce store owner.

Sami Jarrous: 7:06

So a few things that we do kind of simultaneously. So the biggest thing that we do is we get new customers coming through in the door. So if you think about, for example, like Facebook Meta, like TikTok ads, google ads, that's kind of the primary way merchants feel like they can actually go ahead and get new customers and over time, that's kind of the primary way merchants feel like they can actually go ahead and get new customers and over time, that's become more and more and more expensive. There was this article that I was reading the other day and it makes a ton of sense where it's like in terms of where you're thinking in terms of marketing, you'll actually go ahead and market wherever is new, and the reason for this is because it feels novel. It's why, for example, you don't actually go ahead and click ads that appear on the side of your website or anything like that. Like it's because you just like trained yourself to not even look at those. So over time, you start to like go to the more novel aspects and so if, for example, you have, like facebook meta ads and these are like not performing anywhere near as well, the main reason for this is everyone thinks of that as the way to acquire new customers. And so there's this game theory where essentially all of the cost of ads just keep going up and up and up. You're auctioning against other kind of merchants as well, so it's incredibly expensive. And so the idea is that right then and there, in the meta TikTok ads kind of world, it's a probabilistic, it's a fingers crossed Hopefully it converts. I spend this much and it will go to this many people and hopefully some of those people will go ahead and convert. On the other hand, what we've decided to do is say to ourselves we don't want to pay for any kind of organic reach. Instead, just pay us per conversion. That way you're not actually doing this like fingers crossed moment. You're paying per conversion.

Sami Jarrous: 8:55

And in addition to that, the big thing that we see as well is that you don't actually have to work that hard for it. It's kind of fully automated. You don't have to produce content to kind of create that ad. So that's the big thing there. It's using purchases as almost the word of mouth driver rather than content, you know, showing how cool your workplace is, or whatever it may be. It takes a lot of time to do. So that's the first thing. The second thing that we see as well is shipping costs. They've just kept going up and up and up, and there's always these like ancillary fees, like I don't know, like fuel surcharge or something like that. Like just they keep getting more ridiculous. So it's just like making sure that we can actually go ahead and make that a lot cheaper in terms of grouping up that package as one package and send it as one delivery.

Ryan Martin: 9:45

Yeah, okay. So say, you know, let's just use Nike as an example, because it's a brand that most people are familiar with. You know, say, someone in an apartment building has purchased a new pair of Nike runners. What's that UX then? How does Nike get more sales because of that one purchase?

Sami Jarrous: 10:02

Yeah, absolutely. So. What we do is if a customer goes ahead and makes an order from Nike and then gets it delivered to, let's just say, their apartment or their workplace or maybe their university housing or college dorm, what will happen is that will notify everyone within those high-density communities that, hey, there's an order coming from Nike, you can join it and get free shipping and cash back because you might as well. You're essentially piggybacking on an order that's already coming to there, so that's going to then notify all those customers in that area what that person has purchased, you know, with privacy settings obviously involved as well, but what they purchased, and you can go ahead, purchase the same thing. You can purchase something different, different color, whatever it may be, just kind of keeping it nice and also super automated as well, Making sure purchases almost the driving factor for someone's kind of purchase decisions rather than content. So that's kind of the main thing there okay, yeah.

Ryan Martin: 11:02

And then you mentioned um, when we're at that booth. You mentioned also co-working spaces. It works really well for yeah, 100.

Sami Jarrous: 11:09

The best way to think about these kind of high density communities is that all of them have like a certain demographic that's there and they all in some way probably purchase very similarly. For example, the workplace has a certain you know income and ability to kind of like spend that on clothes or makeup. It might be higher end because that workplace I don't know has a lot of high earning people in it. Or, alternatively, if it's an apartment that's in kind of like a you know like a beachy area, then there's probably a lot of bikinis being purchased. So it kind of molds to what demographic you're actually targeting and will notify other people that are probably extremely interested in your product to actually go ahead and join in on that order.

Ryan Martin: 11:55

Okay, perfect. And so the question I had from there, and I'm sure many others listening how do you get all those other email addresses If no one's used that platform before? How do you sort of get that mass email database to be able to let them know?

Sami Jarrous: 12:10

Yeah, so we have a two-sided marketplace, essentially. So we have the merchant side, you know, you go and put in all your details through our merchant dashboard, but then there's the customer side, which is a customer app, and essentially on there customer goes ahead, signs up takes like a minute and they opt in to communities that they're involved in, For example, that they live at this apartment block, that they work at this workplace, that they go to this gym, whatever it may be and we have all those set out and essentially, someone can go ahead and opt in into those communities so they'll receive notifications saying hey, there's orders coming from here, these are your favorite stores and these are orders that are already coming. You might as well join it. If you don't want to join it, maybe you can wait till next week, whatever it may be.

Ryan Martin: 13:03

Yeah, okay, and so then that's a free app for them to start getting, essentially, notifications when there's opportunities for free shipping for any brands, some of the brands that they like? Do they identify different brands or is it just start with a, you know, a notification every time someone's ordered in that in that area?

Sami Jarrous: 13:15

yeah, so they'll get free shipping and cash back with any kind of store. That's like someone's making an order from. We have like a favorites list so someone can like set their favorites and, you know, opt in to only receive notifications from their favorites. But it often acts as like people are like super kind of curious, like there's this curiosity element, and so what we're finding is that people just want to see notifications for everything that's coming through and are more than willing to like try. See, the biggest problem, for example, in e-commerce world versus like retail world is that if someone wants to go ahead and try a new product, they actually have to end up spending ten dollars in shipping, which is probably what the like more than the product costs, especially in something like maybe like a makeup or like a deodorant or whatever it may be, some of those smaller items. But now you can just join an order and actually try that product without having to spend a fortune for shipping in comparison to your product purchase.

Ryan Martin: 14:12

Okay, yeah, great. And so then, from an e-commerce brand point of view, if someone's purchased something from there, then they get a lot more visibility through the database that you guys have that are in and around that, by saying, hey, someone's purchased this and it might be a great way to get their brand in front of new customers. Yeah, absolutely.

Sami Jarrous: 14:31

Like the way like even, for example, for the merchant, it's absolutely free. Like for those impressions of the new products that have been purchased, customers will be able to see an item has been purchased from Nike. It's this shirt, you can go ahead and join it. Someone says to themselves there's this element of social proof here. This is a real purchase that's being made and sent to this location. I'm going to go ahead and join it because other people in this area like Nike as well. I want to fit in, I want to look cool, whatever it may be. This makeup's being purchased. I've seen this purchased again at my workplace. I've now seen it being purchased at my apartment block. It seems like this is a really cool product, or it seems to be working. I'm going to go ahead and join that. And even as well. We have also friends. So if you go ahead and invite your friends to your order, they can see what you've purchased. And so you know, ryan, you've got some radiating skin.

Sami Jarrous: 15:28

Someone wants to know your skincare and you know, especially with what we're doing, word of mouth pushes back straight to where the purchase decision is. So it's not, like you know, we're going and hanging out for dinner. Hey, like you know, I've been using this new skincare. It looks really good on me. Like we shift that conversation way back to where the purchase is being made and essentially, if I'm making a purchase and I'm buying that skincare product, then I'm notifying you that, hey, like my skin looks good and there's a reason for it, it's probably from this product. You should join in and try it, or at least you know I know you were complaining about your skin being problematic. You know why not give it a go.

Ryan Martin: 16:08

Yeah, yeah that's fantastic and I really like that point around. You know you're only paying for a conversion, so you're getting all these free impressions essentially for nothing and only paying when there is a conversion which is super powerful and gives you that social proof which is probably the highest proof that you need when you're selling products on e-com. Question about pricing then, since we're talking about that Is there a range, is there different plans you have? Like, what is it actually going to cost that e-commerce merchant every time that they get a transaction through your app?

Sami Jarrous: 16:42

Yeah, so basically the merchant pays a transaction fee of 5% and that's only if a group order is converted. So the main thing there is if a customer goes ahead, makes a purchase from Nike and then it notifies their whole community, their apartment block, hey, join this order and no one joins that order, then you don't pay us a thing. But you've benefited from those free impressions because we're in the game of making group orders happen. That's our big thing, so we won't charge for that. And also, what ends up happening is the merchant decides how much cash back to give for that purchase and the best way to think about much cash back to give for that purchase and the best way to think about that cash back is almost however much you're spending on advertising to convert that customer. Well, now you're just kind of making it so that you're spending on advertising among customers based on that purchase. So it's far cheaper than spending on advertising because you're utilizing that referral network in a sense, which is always a cheaper option.

Ryan Martin: 17:40

Yeah, what do you mean by cashback? Can you explain that a little bit further?

Sami Jarrous: 17:44

Yeah. So basically, if a customer makes a purchase of $100 and there's a 10% cashback based on if they go ahead and join as a group, then that customer will go ahead and get $10 back as cashback for that purchase. And the main reason why we do this, what we do, is we actually send that cash back in two installments. And the reason why is because cash back kind of there's a lot of studies to suggest that like cash back makes someone feel like they should spend it. It's like free money.

Sami Jarrous: 18:14

So what it does is it enables customers to go ahead and say, hey, like I received this $10 for free, I'm going to use this and buy. Like you know, put this to my next shirt that I'm going to buy, or my next skincare, whatever it may be. And it just makes it a lot easier, in a sense, to actually get that kind of next purchase going on. So, yeah, rather than discount, which feels a little bit more kind of like then, and there kind of devalues the value of that product as well. So cashback kind of says I'm, as a customer, spending $100 for this product, I view it as $100 valued product. But if I, for example, did $90, discounted it by $10, then I perceive it as a $90 valued product.

Ryan Martin: 19:00

Yeah, yeah, interesting. So who sets that cashback amount and does the merchant pay for that?

Sami Jarrous: 19:06

Yeah so the merchant will set that cashback amount and the merchant pays for it. So basically the merchant will send us that cashback amount and then we provide that cashback straight to the customer. So the customer app handles all of that kind of stuff the cashback amount and then we provide that cashback straight to the customer. So the customer app handles all of that kind of stuff the cashback opting into communities, sending out emails, all of that kind of jazz. So we're handling everything from there.

Ryan Martin: 19:28

Good on you and so with that cashback then can they use that for any store that they want on the app. Do they have to use that on the app?

Sami Jarrous: 19:35

So that's straight cash. But what we're noticing is that a lot of customers are actually going ahead and spending that cash back at some of the stores on Matechip because they almost in a sense want more cash back to get and almost feels like a little bit addicting. So yeah, it really helps to kind of drive that revolving door, get customers buying on a more frequent basis, and works out really nicely.

Ryan Martin: 19:58

Okay, Beautiful mate. It makes a lot of sense. What brands have you got on board? I didn't mention this, I don't think off the top, but you guys have been live for five months, but the actual brand has been in work for a bit longer than that. What are some of the brands that you've got on board in the first five months?

Sami Jarrous: 20:14

Yeah, so we're talking to a lot of cool brands. We, yeah, so we're talking to a lot of cool brands. We've got, like Kalani Keeney's Clothing the G and we're in active discussions with a whole ton. The main thing there is that we're making sure that their WMS system actually goes ahead and takes the order accurately and reliably and makes sure that there's opportunity for that grouping order thing to happen. So that's the main thing that we're working with these bigger companies to like try and sort out.

Ryan Martin: 20:59

Yeah, nice one, mate. And so you know, I assume probably a stupid question actually, now that I'm going to say it out loud but it just integrates seamlessly into Shopify.

Sami Jarrous: 21:09

Yeah, yeah, so we're a Shopify app, so it works out really nicely. A merchant would just hop onto the merchant dashboard, takes 15 minutes to fill out all the information and they're fully connected to the Shopify app. And so we handle everything from the orders you know, prompting customers to go ahead and group their orders, as well as from your site, actually seeing one grouped order to go ahead and deliver without any confusion whatsoever about you know the individual orders that made up that, whilst also making sure that you can refund those individual orders if one of those people come back and say, hey, I want a refund.

Ryan Martin: 21:46

Yeah, so that's a good question actually. So when a group order does arrive, are they still sort of picked and packed individually and they're just in one bigger kind of shipment that gets delivered, and then it's just as per usual.

Sami Jarrous: 21:59

Yeah, so they're all individually packaged and then sent as one delivery. If, for example, you want to have like friends you know it's a friends kind of delivery then just putting all the items in there without individually packaging, each item works out nicely and because we're only working with like concierge-based apartments, workplaces, the concierge basically distributes all of those items accordingly. So it works out really nicely from that end.

Ryan Martin: 22:28

Okay, easy, any plans for sort of WooCommerce or BigCommerce, any kind of anything else on Shopify, or is it just purely Shopify?

Sami Jarrous: 22:37

Yeah, so so far our focus is Shopify, but we have a lot of interest from a lot of like Magento, woocommerce, bigcommerce, so we're working towards it. It's one of those things where you're just kind of balancing priorities so we'll get there eventually. Probably towards the end of this year is what we're hoping for.

Ryan Martin: 22:54

Okay, perfect, mate. We've talked really positively about it and it all sounds fantastic. You're ticking the eco sort of sustainability element of it, which is great. You're getting merchants new impressions of people that have never heard of the product or the brand before, but they're seeing it starting to get popular. See, you know, digital marketers and advertisers start to kind of look at ways that they could start to generate more group orders or more sales for different locations, as an example might be a good way to do it as well. Is there any type of customer that it isn't built for like? Is there anyone that shouldn't be using the mateship app?

Sami Jarrous: 23:31

yeah. So we originally thought that, like anyone with kind of bulkier kind of oriented items, so so think like furniture or you know like big I don't know, like beds and tables, anything like that Because that shipping element, like jumping onto an order like that and getting free shipping, just feels a little bit like kind of probably not that good for a merchant's bottom line. But I am talking to quite a few of those kind of Like Yas, for example, from Seconomy, who's actually saying that maybe there's something there where if someone's going ahead and buying furniture for their college apartment and someone else can join, then getting that set up is really easy because the one person that's doing all that setup is then and there, able to do two jobs rather than, you know, splitting it up over multiple different jobs. We just have to just work out that split shipping cost rather than free shipping elements, which is already built in. We just have to kind of like work through that. So I think that's so far probably the least likely to kind of to work as well.

Sami Jarrous: 24:41

Yeah, but we've noticed even like the results have kind of surprised us really, like we even have. We're working with Kings of Neon. Shout out to Steve, he's fantastic and he basically what they've noticed is that if someone goes ahead and purchases these big, like really cool looking neon signs and gets it sent to their workplace you know it's like a, you know they have their logo or whatnot Other customers within that workplace are saying, oh, I'm going to join in on this order. There's like Call of Duty or like any of these kind of you know fun kind of neon signs that are not logo oriented that people actually joining in on that order and getting some of their shipping costs split. So it works out really nicely and makes sure that Kings of Neon gets extra orders coming through.

Ryan Martin: 25:27

Yeah, perfect. That's a great case study really and highlights that user journey and how well that works. So in that case, does the first person who purchased the Kings of Neon sign pay the full amount for shipping and then everyone else gets in for free? How does that work?

Sami Jarrous: 25:42

Yeah. So basically everyone will go ahead and pay for shipping based on that kind of free shipping threshold. So if the merchant sets a free shipping threshold of $100 on their website, we now make that in a sense a group effort. So if someone goes ahead and makes a purchase of $50 on an individual basis, shopify is assessing that as hey, this is below free shipping threshold, we're going to charge $10. And so if someone else joins that and purchases $60, they pay shipping as well.

Sami Jarrous: 26:13

But then what we'll do is we'll refund the $10 back to each customer that they spent on shipping and, in addition, give them the cash back, because now as a collective group order, that's hit the free shipping threshold. So making that kind of like super seamless no kind of like transacting back and forth kind of like super seamless. No kind of like transacting back and forth no need to like for me to be like hey, like which shirt do you want, which color, what style? Is the pro version, non-pro version, whatever it may be and then transacting kind of bank details, bsb, account number, instead, this all just happens really seamlessly and everyone gets their cash back and free shipping back.

Ryan Martin: 26:49

Yeah, awesome, that's uh, that's fantastic. I know I've got quite a few tight mates. It would be as soon as they buy something, they'll be super keen to let everyone know that they've just purchased something, and if they can jump on and purchase, they'll get free shipping. So I could see that working quite well as well.

Sami Jarrous: 27:04

Yeah, 100% Like, I think even as well. It really fits that kind of like college apartment kind of demographic. I remember when I was in Texas I was just making sure to save as much as I could, and so any opportunity to kind of not pay for shipping, I mean even as well. There's a really good article. It's called like the Invisible Asymptote.

Sami Jarrous: 27:23

It was made by a former Amazon employee and basically they said that when Amazon first introduced free shipping, you know, by getting Amazon Prime, it was such a big moment for the company because they realized that free shipping had nothing to do with just spending $10. And you know, $10 is not much in the grand scheme of things. It actually had more to do with the just psychological effect. You feel a little bit sick inside paying for a fee that you don't feel like paying for and it's as simple as that. And so there's an enough kind of like of a bad emotional response to that that you don't want to keep doing that again and again and again. So any chance to kind of make it free shipping just feels a lot better for the customer yeah, perfect.

Ryan Martin: 28:09

It's another great example, I think. To just touch on one of the other points you mentioned there around getting in front of teens, like as a. As an advertising person myself, I know a lot of the brands that I work with that's always been the hardest question is how do you get in front of that next generation, the tiktok generation, how do you get their attention spans? A great way would be to through mateship. If you've got a brand that is, you know, sort of more focused on that sort of teenager, early 20s student type avatar, then mateship would be a great way to get in front of them by just getting a couple of people to purchase and then everyone else sort of jumping on and following through with the free shipping.

Sami Jarrous: 28:51

Yeah, 100%. Even as well. Among that kind of demographic there's this big kind of pressure to also fit in, and it feels hard to fit in if you don't know what other people are purchasing. I mean, you had this kind of like Frank Green Stanley Cup kind of you know wave come through and no one knew what that was, as it was first growing but then all of a sudden everyone just knows about it, and so it would have been cooler to in a sense be able to just jump in on someone else's frank green bottle purchase and say, hey, I'll buy the same as you will go twinning, or alternatively, just buy a different one and kind of keep that trajectory kind of going up and just make that virality a lot easier to generate now that you have that social proof, for you know customers and purchases as the driver of decisions yeah, beautiful, love it.

Ryan Martin: 29:41

Have you got frank green on board yet?

Sami Jarrous: 29:43

uh, we have biome, so biome has frank green bottles in store. They do fantastic on the platform as well. So, yeah, buy them as well. Like any product. That's kind of like referral based, so you know I always talk to people about like nutrition stuff or alternatively, like skincare, makeup, perfume, like those kind of like talking points among customers do extremely well on the platform even as well. We've been surprised with gifts, so anytime during like gifting season. We noticed during Christmas, any of the gift-oriented stores did extremely well because it kind of reminded everyone that hey, I need to buy gifts, don't leave this at the last minute. Like rely on the people that just bought early on. Buy the same gift Like it's not going to the same, you know, like family member or anything like that. It's anonymous, so it works out really nicely.

Ryan Martin: 30:32

That's right, and Mother's Day is coming up soon as well, so that's a great you know for anyone looking for Mother's Day present. Then sign up to the mateship app, really, and start to get some notifications on what people are purchasing and might help you as well.

Sami Jarrous: 30:46

Yeah, there's always that like what do I buy my mom this year, Like you know. So now getting that answer is a lot easier and you can just see real time, like what people are purchasing and what people are loving. So, yeah, I'm sure it'd be easy to see which purchases are for mom, not like toilet paper or something. I don't think that's going to be a Mother's Day present. I get you many points.

Ryan Martin: 31:09

What about florists, mate? Like, would it work for a business like florist? Obviously they're getting a lot of mother's day and they're having to do a lot of deliveries. It's a question without notice. I can edit it if we don't have an answer for that. But yeah, have you looked down that path at all?

Sami Jarrous: 31:22

yeah. So florists would do really well. We we have like a brand on board, um called imperial in the collective that does like flower bouquets, but they they're kind of like you know, with like a teddy bear and like not actually flowers, they're just like bouquets that kind of last for a lifetime in a sense and they do really well, I think, just like anything even as well, like alcohol related or like drinks or anything like any kind of like consumption-based product does extremely well, because also there's that repeat, frequent, like repeat purchase and that frequency of purchase. So those do really well as well.

Ryan Martin: 32:00

Okay, beautiful Mate. Two more questions before I let you go. You know you're obviously dealing with e-commerce brands the whole time. Is there any trends that you're seeing in 2024 for e-commerce that our listening audience should be jumping on?

Sami Jarrous: 32:14

In terms of trends. I think like the biggest thing is just working out how to actually get new customers. You know, just like that. Sit away from kind of meta ads and Instagram ads and TikTok ads and Google ads Like those things are incredibly tough now I think that you're reaching some element of saturation on those platforms. I think the best thing to do is to actually focus on branding like really think about, I think like any kind of like free content, for example, that like kind of you know exposes, you know the founder, or kind of like makes the founder, you know founder led, you know the founder, or kind of like makes the founder you know founder-led stories.

Sami Jarrous: 32:55

I think people purchase when there's like a person behind it, not necessarily kind of that you know like oh, the product's really cool and really appealing to both that kind of like logical and emotional side. There was a conference that I went to and they provided two advertisements and one of them was like really logical. It was like you know, this is a Mazda with this many kind of like I don't know horsepower and all the rest of it. You know all the specs. And then there was another side of it where it's like this Mazda lets you drive really nice and calming environments and like is super smooth and all the rest of it. And they asked the whole audience, like which advertisement resonated with you the most? And so I put my hand up for the logical one but, like, pretty much like 95% put their hand up for the emotional one and I was like damn, like I would have thought the other one was like a surefire hit. But what you'll notice and the biggest thing is that to make sure that you're appealing to both an emotional and logical audience in anything that you're doing, so if the content is quite emotional, try and add some logical element to it, and vice versa. I mean it's about knowing your customer in a way. Yeah, but a little bit of both works out really nicely. So we've, for example, started tailoring a little bit more emotionally in what we're doing because we felt like we were being too logical to begin with. So that works out really nicely, and then also as well, I think, trying to think of just how to stand out.

Sami Jarrous: 34:24

I think everyone's utilizing a lot of these like platforms just to try and kind of put themselves out there.

Sami Jarrous: 34:32

I think, for example, on LinkedIn, I've noticed like I made a post just like a week ago, and then I made a post like last year roughly the same time, and the impressions on that new post have been down by like 80%.

Sami Jarrous: 34:48

And I had a look at one of the so like a lot of the LinkedIn posts that have happened in the past kind of year and seeing like kind a lot of the LinkedIn posts that have happened in the past year and seeing what's the trend at that point and basically what's happened is that more of these platforms have become incredibly saturated because producing content is a lot easier, especially with something like AI as well trying to aid the effort there. So I think AI is making a bit of a problem here in terms of saturating content a little too much with kind of just like random kind of words or whatever it may be. And so it's when you have your personality or a photo of yourself or a video of yourself really putting yourself out there, people can really see that excitement and people can really buy into it and want to join that.

Ryan Martin: 35:32

Yeah, fantastic. I couldn't agree more. I think founder-led stories are great, but just being authentic and sometimes doing the things that don't scale. I had a client meeting today with an e-commerce brand and one of the challenges I had, or one of the asks that I was asking them to do for the next sort of month or two, was to actually start to comment on their community in terms of social media posts. So I think organic social media is actually really important at the moment, but not just posting a video or posting a product image or something all the time.

Ryan Martin: 36:07

It's a two-way street. You've got to be social on social and so I think, actually engaging with your customers, commenting on some of their you know, it's the little things, it's the little touch points that are going to make you stand out. As you say, it is a lot of saturation and you know there is a lot of competition on LinkedIn, as you mentioned. So I think, to be authentic and do the things that sometimes aren't scalable but are actually genuinely about community, I think you're spot on. That's definitely what's going to cut through in 2024.

Sami Jarrous: 36:38

100%. Yeah, I think just AI brings a lot of complications in terms of like content. It means it's just a lot easier. The barrier to entry. I mean that moment of like.

Sami Jarrous: 36:50

I was talking to Nick from Gift Note and I was saying like I don't know how you're posting every day, like it just looks insane, like it just feels like I'm like creating all these stories in my mind and I'm like I just don't understand how someone has the time, let alone like, just like the creative energy. It is incredibly tiring, yeah, but AI just makes that so much easier because you can just throw something at it and then hopefully get you know a response. It will sound a little bit robotic. You can just edit it a little bit and make it kind of um, kind of a lot easier to um to digest. So, yeah, I think that's why I've noticed on linkedin, a lot of videos are starting to come up, a lot of like images with like, kind of like, maybe not even like kind of work related. It feels a little bit more like personality driven. Yeah, do extremely well.

Ryan Martin: 37:38

Yeah, perfect, mate Sounds great. Look, really appreciate all your insights. Really excited to see where mateship goes. You know, we've got two types of listeners. We've got the e-commerce merchants and the people that have e-commerce stores, and then we have consumers who are, you know, there's a fair bit of crossover there, obviously. So how do people get started? Let's start with an e-commerce brand. How do they get started with Mateship?

Sami Jarrous: 38:02

Yep, so our website is mateshipapp. There's no com. We are secureapp. So mateshipapp and you'll see for business. If you press that for business tab, you'll see that you can actually go ahead and sign up and that will just send you straight to our merchant portal. It takes 15 minutes. We'll even contact you if you want and we can help speed you up through that process. Or feel free to get in touch with me on LinkedIn. Sammy Jarris and I can help you out. That's no problem at all. So that's from the merchant side and from the customer side. We have an app. If you go onto the website as well mateshipapp and you'll see it on the customer. You can actually go ahead and just sign up from there and it takes like a minute and you can see everything that's going on.

Ryan Martin: 38:50

Perfect, so the merchant just signs up and then the app does its thing. And once they start to get conversions, then they pay. Yeah, exactly right.

Sami Jarrous: 38:59

Yeah, so it's all automated. We keep it like a really easy process, like we made sure it's super smooth, I think just even as well. We don't really have a Shopify app page. It's only through that merchant portal that you can actually go ahead and sign up to mateship and then from there we're connecting to your online store and you're on the app literally within 15 minutes which is, um, which is insane.

Ryan Martin: 39:22

Awesome, mate. One more question before I just thought of one. Yeah, so if you're on the mateship app as a consumer, can you shop by brands on that app? Is that like a marketplace, you know, like afterpay and all that sort of have a similar type thing? Is that what you offer there as well?

Sami Jarrous: 39:38

yeah, yeah, so we have a stores page and from there you can see all the stores that we're working with and all the stores that you'll be able to make ship it from, um, so you can go ahead and and do it from there. Yeah, we make it super easy to kind of identify that Over time. We'll just make it kind of like super curated to what you like and you can also favorite those stores as well to make sure that you're getting the ones that you only want to see, or discover new ones that might be ancillary to those favorited ones.

Ryan Martin: 40:07

Sounds good, mate. All the best to it, good luck to the four of you and, yeah, I'm sure bigger and better things for the year to come for MateShip.

Sami Jarrous: 40:14

Beauty. Thanks, ryan, appreciate your time, always great chatting no-transcript.