How Your Customers Can Become Your Lead Marketing Channel with Joel Leong, ShopBack 

Michelle Lomas: Hey there, hustlers. Welcome back to another episode of Flex Your Hustle. I'm very excited to share with you today's episode. Interviewing Joel Leong, the co-founder of a company I've long admired, ShopBack. What's ShopBack, you ask? Get ready, because if you aren't a user, you are about to become one.

Michelle Lomas: The ShopBack premise is simple. Consumers pay for goods using the ShopBack app, and a percentage of the sales comes back to them in the form of cash. That's right. Consumers get paid to shop. ShopBack offers a suite of products to their users from cash back through purchases, both online and in store, vouchers and deals, as well as payment options.

Michelle Lomas: And for the retailer, it's a win too. More customers more often, and you only pay when you get a sale. It's no wonder with a model that benefits both retailer and customer, but ShopBack has become the leading shopping, rewards, and payment platform in Asia Pacific with over 38 million shoppers across 10 markets.

Michelle Lomas: Listen in as I chat to Joel on how it all got started.

Michelle Lomas: Joel, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show. It's a really exciting product that we're talking about. ShopBack is pretty huge, pretty huge in my circle, pretty huge in my world. I use ShopBack a lot, so I'm really keen to have a great chat with you today and talk about the origins and what's next for ShopBack.

Michelle Lomas: Firstly why don't you introduce yourself to the listeners?

Joel Leong: Cool. Firstly, thanks for having me here. And thanks for supporting ShopBack. Get more people in your circle to use it, don't leave money on the door, right?

Michelle Lomas: I'm a big passionate advocate, don't you worry.

Joel Leong: That's a good thing.

Joel Leong: So maybe I'll just share a little bit about myself. I'm Joel I'm one of the co-founders of ShopBack. So we started way back in 2014 and it was started in the sunny island of Singapore. And how we started was that we were working for another e-commerce company called Zalora. It's the sister company of The Iconic, actually in Australia.

Joel Leong: But it's here for Southeast Asia. And while we were working here we noticed that there was this business model that was growing and doing very well in other parts of the world. In the US there was Ebates there was running at that time and they were doing they, they were unique themselves.

Joel Leong: There, there was Topcashback, Quick Call in the UK. There, there was also funding in China. So actually this model was actually quite common throughout the world actually doing pretty well. However, nobody was doing it in Southeast Asia. And therefore we came together, we got a few friends and we say, Hey, why don't we bring this model to Southeast Asia.

Joel Leong: And we started in Singapore and we've since expanded into 10 different markets and brought this cash back model whereby we bring cash back from the merchant and give it to the user. So the merchant pays us for every sale we get for them. And then we share part of it with the customer as cash back.

Joel Leong: And then in between we take a cut there, so we win the customer wins and the merchant wins. That has actually been how we started on the online space. And since then we've launched in multiple markets. Australia was one of the markets we launched into as well.

Joel Leong: And it's actually been a very interesting journey because in our part of the world mobile is the first thing that we use and everything is mobile first and when we went Australia we took that approach with us there as well. And then you know, we were able to, to get a huge pool of customers because it was so much more convenient for them to use it on the app itself that ShopBack was providing. And then after the online space, we moved into the offline space which is we allow people to use ShopBack pay to pay for their offline transactions. That started in Singapore as well, and we've since brought it to other markets, including Australia as well.

Joel Leong: So yeah, we're quite excited. The whole goal and our mission of what we are really trying to do is to try to see how we are able to help users save more money, help merchants get more sales. So it's win-win on three fronts.

Michelle Lomas: Huge stuff going on. A huge amount to unpack there, which we will. So we'll talk about a few of those pieces in a moment.

Michelle Lomas: I guess what I wanted to dig into a little bit was the origin story and how you got started and found it really funny when we were talking the other day and I said, oh, What's your story? There's you and there's Henry Chan and you guys came up with this idea and founded ShopBack and I'm like, you know, what got you into this space? And you were like, we looked for something that was working everywhere else.

Joel Leong: Yes.

Michelle Lomas: And it wasn't in APAC and I just couldn't, I couldn't stop laughing cause I was like, I'd never hear that. There's always some sort of like, you know, real deep story behind a founder's story and you're like, We were just looking for something successful and that this was it.

Joel Leong: Yes.

Joel Leong: That's an interesting one, right? So I think there is always a founders story behind that. So for us, we were working in Zalora, we saw that this would work because it helps us when we wear our Zalora hat. We knew that this was something we were willing to spend money on because it helps us get sales, but at the same time, on the user front it really helps them to have cost savings uh, as well.

Joel Leong: So it's win-win on both sides. But I think one, one other layer that, that we've learned is that in business there are two kinds of risks in business. The first risk is the idea risk, and the second one is the execution risk. And if you are able to handle these two types of risks, you have a really good business, right?

Joel Leong: The idea risk is actually highly risky. There are a lot of ideas that come about every day. And some of them work and some of them don't. And many times if the idea doesn't work, then you don't get product market fit. So that I think is a very big, big portion of our business as long as the underlying idea has to work before you can bring in your execution and how you drive it.

Joel Leong: If it's a bad idea to begin with, then you know, it doesn't take off. One thing we like to say is that if no one else in this world has ever done this idea before, there are two possibilities for that. One, you are the genius out of billions of people. You are the first person you know, in, in a hundred years to

Michelle Lomas: Well done to you.

Joel Leong: Yeah. The other one is that the other, the idea might not be a viable one. And that's why people have tried. They failed and have not succeeded. If you are able to eliminate the ideal risk, Meaning that you find an idea that has actually worked well in multiple geographies, not just one, because one could be an anomaly, but if you see it working in multiple geographies, then actually it seems like the idea is viable.

Joel Leong: Then the next thing you do is how do you build a strong team that can execute well? And then the game of play now becomes less of an idea game, but more like who can execute better to create better value and better experience for the customer? And that team will be the winner. You no longer compete just on a idea portion, but now you're competing on execution and execution will be, how can you get a really strong team that can execute well?

Joel Leong: How do you go at speed and how do you make sure that you know you are doing the right thing so that customers get good experiences and it creates a really good flywheel.

Michelle Lomas: I love that and I hope that everybody listening gets something out of that because we do often have founders on here and their stories are genuine and they've built something beautiful off the back of something that's really meaningful to them. But also, if you're heading into business, it's okay to just head into business with a smart strategy. You don't always have to have kind of some really compelling reason behind it that's gonna spur you forward in that aspect, rather just being really smart.

Michelle Lomas: If you know the category that you're in you know what it needs to grow, just focus on that.

Joel Leong: Yes, correct. And I really agree with you on that be because at the end of the day, it's always about the customer. And if you have a viable idea that's running in the end, the customer wins because there is a positive flyer that goes there.

Joel Leong: If you go to a customer with a very bad idea, even if you execute very well, the customer does not benefit from that, and therefore they don't stay with you and therefore, that business does not become viable. So it's losers lose on all three fronts if you go with a non-viable business model.

Michelle Lomas: Let's talk about the model of ShopBack. There's a good groundswell of awareness, but there's also mixed awareness in this market.

Michelle Lomas: So why don't you break it down for us and for all the listeners. How does ShopBack work for both the retailer and the customer?

Joel Leong: Cool. Cool. So what we do is we build a platform and have a membership base of users. And for these users, what we do is we create offers for them. And these offers come in the form of cashback and how these cashbacks come along is that they are funded by the merchants, right? So if you think from the retailer's point of view, there's a pool of users that ShopBack has, and ShopBack is actually a platform that people use for shopping. You don't come to ShopBack to read the news, check the football score, come here and watch videos.

Joel Leong: That, that's not what you come to ShopBack for. You come here for shopping. So the shopping intent, of the user is very strong. So then the retailer says if I wanna target very strong shopping in 10 users, where do I go and ShopBack, I think it's one of the platforms that they can use, right?

Joel Leong: To be able to target that. And the, that's the first part, so on the user front. The second portion is that ShopBack's business model is really predicated on, on a cost per sale model. So what it means is that we are aligned with the retailer in every front. The retailer pays only when they get a sale.

Joel Leong: And that's super important for the retailer of or any brands that decide to invest in ShopBack. Because what happens if you think of the whole flow is that the user comes to ShopBack, ShopBack drives them out to the merchant, makes a purchase, the merchant or the brand or retailer collects the money from the sale.

Joel Leong: And then after that gives part of it to ShopBack, sort of, like a revenue share model. So on a cash flow point of view as well, the retailer gets the money first before he dispenses out the that, that money to ShopBack as a portion, right? So cash flow, very positive for the retailer and the brand.

Joel Leong: If you think of other advertising models, many of them even on the digital front, you pay upfront first and then you pray and hope that it brings you the customers that you want. Maybe you are paying for clicks, for example, and the clicks get you users, but you don't know whether would the user sign up.

Joel Leong: You don't know whether would the signups lead to a transaction. So these are things that we remove out of the equation because we only charge a user only when that happens. So even if the user buys it and he rejects, meaning he returns the product, we don't charge the merchant at all because we are partners, right?

Joel Leong: So we are revenue sharing, and if you don't make revenue, then you have nothing to share with us. So I think on the retailer front, they're quite protected for that. They're able to go for very high shopping intent users. At the same time, they are paying for users only when they get the sale and the sale is modified.

Joel Leong: So that's on the retailer front of how it works. And then on the user front what happens is from the commissions on the cost per sale that we get from the retailer, we take a part of it as our margins. We need to run the platform and still keep it running, but then the bulk of it, we pass it back to the users as cashback.

Joel Leong: Every time you come to ShopBack and good deals it, it was actually funded by the merchant because he wants you to spend more money. He wants to give you a sale and give you an offer. So that you make that purchase. So these are, this is how our business model works at ShopBack.

Michelle Lomas: It's like a win-win for everybody, isn't it? I'm a consumer, I love more cash. You know, retailers love more customers. If I think about how I use ShopBack and I'll admit I often forget to click the ShopBack button on those little purchases, but we always make our big purchases waiting for the deals to come through ShopBack and I'll do a little shout out actually to one of your retailers, but we always book our holidays on Booking.com.

Joel Leong: That's good.

Michelle Lomas: Because they have the best deals and they pop up all the time. So we know if we're going on a holiday, we'll just wait till they have like a 12% cash back and we'll book our entire holiday on Booking.com and automatically we get cash back into our account, which we can use on our holiday.

Michelle Lomas: It's brilliant. And of course Booking.com's happy 'cause they have a loyal customer in us. We just wait for them to put their deal in place and off we go. So it's a brilliant model. Obviously one that's taking the traditional affiliate model but rewarding the customer at the same time so that everybody is sort of winning at the end of the day.

Joel Leong: That's correct. I think you, you brought one point which was very apt, which is actually for high purchase purchases. You will notice that customers actually have some friction point in trying to close the sale. Sometimes you think about Do I really wanna spend this amount?

Joel Leong: Should I spend slightly less? This incentive for cashback actually helps to tuck them along and make them make that purchase. I'm sure you have seen it before, where there are mega upsizes that we have run and you see a huge spike in sales.

Michelle Lomas: Yes.

Joel Leong: Just before Hey was on the fence of my by making that purchase, but hey there's an upsize now. Why not, let's just go for that. So I think that helps. I would say it's a much smarter way of doing discounting, because if you think of discounting you actually, let's say a hundred dollars item and you discount by say, 10%, actually your sales amount will be $90 on your books.

Joel Leong: But if you do cash back, what happens is that you still sell the item at a hundred dollars and then afterwards you pay it out as a cashback and your cash flow is actually very positive compared to a discount whereby off the top the customer just doesn't pay you the 10%. It's a, I would say it's a much smarter way to do this discounting.

Michelle Lomas: Definitely. And it's much more competitive out there, particularly for online retailers or any retailers in general. All your competitors are offering the same offers. They're all doing you know, snap 30% discounts or you know, get $25 off or free shipping or whatever it may be. It's becoming harder and harder to stand out and to a consumer be the obvious choice because there's more value in my purchase.

Michelle Lomas: And so this just makes it so much easier to make that decision and stay loyal to a specific retailer, and particularly like you said, for those bigger purchases because you know that you are getting rewarded in a real tangible way with cash. We're not talking about like a free gift to my purchase.

Michelle Lomas: We're talking about cash. Everyone loves a bit of cash.

Joel Leong: It's cold-hard cash. You'll cash it up to your bank account as well, so likely you know, it's all no frills. There, there's no magic in that. It's really just cold-hard cash. Yeah.

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Michelle Lomas: This product was really built you know, at its heart around the customer. And I know you guys really obsessed about you know, what's the next thing? Some of the stuff you're doing in other markets in Asia is really exciting.

Joel Leong: So in Southeast Asia, 90% of transactions actually come off the mobile app.

Joel Leong: So every time we go to a place like mobile is number one, and when we came in there were a lot of brands that reach out to us and say, Hey I wanna grow my own app. And that's where I think there was a good opportunity that we could work together, because we were building up our base primarily on the app.

Joel Leong: And that was how we were trained. That was how we were doing it back in our headquarters and then you could see that there was a lot of value given to the merchants because when we drive the user, not just to the website, but to the app, if I did not have the app, I would download the app, right?

Joel Leong: But you only pay only for the sale. So you get two for the price of one in some sense. You get the install and you get the sale as well. So what you really see is that we saw a big shift for retailers and even users as well moving towards the app itself.

Joel Leong: You would see that it's actually something quite big that we pushed when we first launched, and that really helped us grow a lot at the start. And also help the users have multiple platforms they could use this on website, they could also use this on the app itself.

Joel Leong: So that, that I think was one bad move for us in terms of the difference. The second one, actually that, that we saw is that when we first came to the market, it was just plain vanilla. We had online cash back that what we tried to grow was actually to add more and more verticals so that for multiple different use cases people could get cash back based on what they were spending money on.

Joel Leong: Was it on marketplaces like Amazon and eBay? Then also to food delivery, also to fashion to travel, activities, and more. So that's the online space our goal is really to cover as much as possible so that we are able to not only help the users get more cash back on these places, but also bring in different merchants because different merchants and brands bring in different user pool to the membership as well.

Joel Leong: So then it's solve a very positive flywheel 'cause each one brings in different types of users and then they're able to tap on different groups of customers by itself. So that, that I think was the first, like I would say, version one of ShopBack, then after that we added new functions that allow us to work with more retailers and brands as well.

Joel Leong: So we add in vouchers as well. People could buy in vouchers or even redeem vouchers using their cashback as well, and claim it. So you could use it for movie tickets. You could claim it for, for vouchers from different of our merchant partners as well. So that's the second part that we did that could make it much faster for the user.

Joel Leong: You just buy the voucher, you get the cash back instantly. You can use it in the movie theatres right away. So that, that was the second one. Then, now what we have, we've come to do is that we are not just wanting to tap on the online space, but also on the offline space. So we have a product that did really well in Singapore whereby if we call it ShopBack Pay, you could use it at different outlets offline especially in the F&B space.

Joel Leong: So what you scan it and if you pay using ShopBack Pay, you could use your cash back to pay for that, and with that you get cashback as well for that. So trying to bring that same marketing model, not just on the online space, but to the offline space as well. And I think that really is win-win for everyone because it helps us acquire more offline users that we could maybe bring them online and also help bring more online users to the offline space as well. Because a lot of our offline partners are telling us, Hey I'm gonna tap on users that, that might predominantly just shop online. Can I also have a way or needs to tap on them as well?

Joel Leong: So we constantly trying to build up the membership and the platform so that it's win-win-win on all three fronts.

Michelle Lomas: I love that, you know, you're constantly thinking about the consumer and where they're spending money and finding ways to make it super easy, and I love that sort of closing the loop, using the money you've made on ShopBack to pay for your groceries, for instance, and then get a little bit back.

Joel Leong: So for us, we always fundamentally believe that every user that came into the ShopBack ecosystem, came in because we gave them a reason to use ShopBack. That there must be a reason why someone uses ShopBack. And for now it could be because of online purchasers.

Joel Leong: They shop online a lot. They have high shopping intent for online. That's why ShopBack is a good reason, our merchants are a good reason why they use ShopBack. So we gave them a reason to do that and we are constantly trying to create more reasons why people should use ShopBack so that we can grow the member base.

Joel Leong: As we talked about. I can share some examples that are currently being innovated in, in other. countries within the ShopBack ecosystem. So for example, in Taiwan we have a receipt scanning function. So what happens is if you go to a supermarket in Taiwan and you could choose the, we will show you a list of products that will get cash back if you make a purchase on them.

Joel Leong: For example, you could buy maybe Pepsi, you would buy a particular skincare product, you could buy a particular Pringles. If you buy that, if you choose that, if you click and choose that product and afterwards you scan the receipt to prove that you make that purchase, we would give you cash back on your groceries.

Joel Leong: And the fundamental business model for that is actually, it is funded by the brands themselves mainly because if you think about it, I'm not gonna eat more than what I usually eat, but I might be able to choose which brands I would like to buy from. Am I gonna buy from a white label brand or am I gonna, or private label brand, or am I gonna buy from a branded brand?

Joel Leong: And even that branded brand, which branded brand should I choose from? Is it gonna be brand A, brand B, brand C? And what happens is that we, we soft create now a platform where it allows the brands to fight for their customers and try to get customers in, right? They could use it for multiple functions, instead of having someone at the supermarket giving out samples, we could just do a hundred percent cash back deal on a particular brand. It's almost like free sampling in some sense, right? But they, the customer pays for that. He gets that product, he tries it and then we can track and see whether does the person continue to purchase subsequently.

Joel Leong: Right or let's say there is a brand that you wanna spike up sales for the month. You have excess inventory that you want to clear. Let's do that. Let's create a cashback deal for that particular brand or that product, and then we are able to drive sales for that. So we're parting that in Taiwan.

Joel Leong: The user pickup has been quite good and hopefully if it gets more successful, we can roll this out to more and more market. Similar to ShopBack Pay, whereby we started in Singapore and we have since just launched it in Australia as well.

Michelle Lomas: I can't wait till you roll it out here. It's, It's brilliant.

Michelle Lomas: We have uh, some very big supermarkets who are extremely competitive and a lot of brands within those supermarkets who are also competitive and something like that can really shake up the game again. A product like that is so exciting and so brilliant for consumers. It puts the power in their hands, you know, which I love.

Michelle Lomas: And also gives them you know, the opportunity again to try new things without risk and try new products and stuff like that. So yeah, it's really exciting how you are constantly innovative in thinking about, you know, where are the ways that people are shopping and how can we bring ShopBack to that environment?

Michelle Lomas: Let's talk a little bit about Australia. We said in the beginning that, you know, your strategy was not to bring something new, but you were bringing something new to a market. Your product isn't new. It's tried and tested in other markets, and it's proven to be successful, but how do you break ground and drive awareness in a market that's you know, never seen anything like this before?

Joel Leong: So the first thing is I think we must have confidence that the product works, and it does not have to work in a particular market first, but it must work in at least one market in the shopper ecosystem. That is one of our beliefs, because once you know that it works, then the team has confidence when they push that product and they roll it out.

Joel Leong: So, let's start from the assumption that we have, when we bring something in uh, to a market, we lightly have quite high confidence that this can work. Then the second thing we need to do is we need to localise it because every market is different, right? So the first thing we always ask ourselves is like, which part of this business model must be localised or make it different for the customer?

Joel Leong: So I'll give one example. There was way back uh, online cashback, even though we replicated the model from Ebates when they were rolling that out. One thing that we, we change was that to cash out, you need to wait for a check, and the check comes every quarter. And in, in Singapore when you do a check, there are a lot of fees that come with uh, and cashing a check.

Joel Leong: And it takes really long. So then we just change it to a bank transfer, right? So, they do theirs, which is a check. But we do ours, which is a bank, a bank transfer. But fundamentally, it does not change the business model, but it makes it much smoother for the customer.

Joel Leong: We need to understand what are things that we can make smoother and better for the customer and that I would term it as like localisation. How can we make it easier for Australians to understand that product that we are bringing in? How can it be something that it's maybe something that they understand.

Joel Leong: Then that, that's the second part that we do. Then the third thing that we, we really try to do is we go back to the same thing of giving people a reason to use ShopBack, right? We try to find the first like early adopters of users who have the highest reason to use ShopBack. And that is I would say is an art more than a science. So we would try a lot of different experiments to try to reach out to these group of customers and try to find the people that have the biggest reason to use ShopBack. And they would start to be your initial base first, and then as you expand they can refer you to their friends and then there are more people with reasons to use ShopBack, but first always go for the, I would say the hard-core fanatic ones, which have the highest, I would say the highest or most reasons to use ShopBack.

Joel Leong: And it's an art more than a science because I can share transparently that when we first started, we thought students would be our number one target audience when we first launched in Singapore.

Joel Leong: It sounds logical. They are digitally savvy. They are price sensitive and why not? They would use ShopBack. But over the time we found that actually it was the big spenders, it was the Mums, it was the families, it was the IT professionals. These were people that actually were, had the biggest reason to use ShopBack because they for example, Mums, they buy a lot for the family.

Joel Leong: So it makes sense when to use ShopBack for that. So it's more on art than a science but we constantly try different target audiences and different ways to reach them, and we change our decisions based on the numbers that come back.

Michelle Lomas: And how do you understand about your customer? Do you have a big team in-house that's constantly doing research?

Michelle Lomas: Like where do you get that feedback from to constantly, you know, iterate your plans?

Joel Leong: So we, we always look at like, because when you first do your marketing, then you will get your, the people with the path of least resistance would come in. So by self selection you would get that, that pool, and you try to understand that pool.

Joel Leong: Who are they, what do they do? What similarities?

Michelle Lomas: You like to call them in Australia low hanging fruit.

Joel Leong: You could, yes.

Michelle Lomas: You can just pick 'em off a tree 'cause they're ready to go. They're prime.

Joel Leong: Yeah. So I would say like these are the people that had the highest reasons or the best reasons to use ShopBack and I wanna understand the reason why, and once you understand the reasons why that then you can create more such reasons.

Michelle Lomas: When you launched here in Australia with a concept a little unique in market, which still people, you know, I talk about ShopBack and, you know, Users who've not been exposed, kind of go, what? You get money back for, how, how? It's, it's like quite hard to get

Joel Leong: Yes.

Michelle Lomas: Their head around how it works and what, how do I, I don't understand.

Michelle Lomas: No one's ever given me money before. No one's ever given me money to give them money. I don't understand. So, you know, what sort of tactics from a marketing perspective did you deploy? You know, do you go big and bold and brand awareness and, you know, billboards and buses? Or do you take a bit of a groundswell approach?

Joel Leong: Yeah, so I think for us referrals are actually very important for us, trying to get users to tell other users about ShopBack. You brought a good point, right? ShopBack, ShopBack as this concept of giving, rewarding customers for shopping is not the most easiest thing to understand at the start.

Joel Leong: What we notice is once they understand it, it becomes something like

Michelle Lomas: I'm all in.

Joel Leong: Yeah. Like, you know, they go all in for that, but how do we get them to put the first chip in, like that seems to be the key thing from the first chip going into, it's all in, that there is a gap there.

Joel Leong: And we noticed that referrals are actually a very good way to make that happen. Mainly because like your friend or family is able to explain to you like why you should put your first chip in, what's the reason for using ShopBack? And then they give you the reason, and of course it comes from a trusted source.

Joel Leong: It's helpful. And then after you put the first chip in, as you mentioned, you start to put more and more chips in, and then it's all in, right? Every time you wanna make a purchase, before you make that decision, you look at ShopBack before you make that decision. So we just need to work together with our members themselves and be able to help get more members in by giving them the reason why they should use ShopBack.

Michelle Lomas: So it's fair to say that your customer and your product is actually your number one marketing channel.

Joel Leong: I would say so, I would say so, because think of it in reverse, right? If you have a really bad product and you have a very bad customer experience, then even if you do really good marketing and sometimes you ask your friends, Hey I heard of this product.

Joel Leong: What do you think of it? And they give you a bad review, then you don't even use the product itself, right? So if you just think of it and you're flipping back to what we are doing, we really just wanna make sure that the customer has reasons to use ShopBack, and then now we just need to give them another reason to amplify this reason why they use ShopBack.

Joel Leong: So it comes in a form of a refer-a-friend program, comes in a form of very good upsized campaigns or even special campaigns. We work, for example, Westpac, Wednesdays that we're doing this helps to create bus and then this bus gives people reason to share the reasons why they use ShopBack.

Joel Leong: So that, that is something that we constantly thinking about, how do we let people have reasons to you ShopBack and then give them reasons to share these reasons with their friends why they, use ShopBack.

Michelle Lomas: It's such a simple philosophy. I guess it, it's sort of stems back from the origins of ShopBack in a way as well you know, your strategy around, you know, focus on building the best product and let's stay laser focused on that rather than trying to build something new. And, you know, And you do the same, you know, for your marketing, it's about the customer. So let's focus on the customer instead of like getting distracted by big shiny billboards and big campaigns.

Michelle Lomas: Let's just build an absolutely brilliant product that rewards them and they feel good about using, and they become our best marketing channel. Often marketers get a little scared by that. Is it enough to grow as fast as we need to?

Joel Leong: Yeah. I think it's just being laser focused in some sense because I think everyone will tell you that they have not enough time.

Joel Leong: And if we all agree that we have not enough time, then you know we should be judicious in how we use time and resources. So to be fair we still do billboards, I think you might see ShopBack around, but then they are very focused on a particular reason. Like why are we doing that? Is it a particular campaign that we are running that needs amplification or we just launch of a new merchant, or it's an offline product that's why we want um, that at that particular spot to let people know that we're in that spot. So I, there always must be a reason why we are doing that.

Michelle Lomas: And so what do the numbers look like today? How many customers are we talking about?

Joel Leong: So I think in the whole impact we have close to 35 million users and we're still growing 'cause we are constantly still expanding in more markets.

Joel Leong: Where I will be more excited to share is what are the new products that we are gonna bring to market?

Michelle Lomas: Let's do it.

Michelle Lomas: Let's talk about it.

Joel Leong: You can see how excited you were when we were talking about the groceries product. I think like constantly, we're always thinking of like new ways that we are able to reward customers.

Joel Leong: And then how can we work with merchants or brands in that particular category to get that going. So I guess you'll hear more from us but for now I would say the latest, newer, shiny product that, that we have would be the ShopBack Pay product. And that went crazy in Singapore we have a population in Singapore about 5 million plus people.

Joel Leong: But then just in Singapore alone on a monthly basis, we get almost half a million transactions just using that, that, that Pay product. So we really trying to see how we can take that same magic over to Australia as well because it really helps users to save money on a very frequent basis, at the same time, help them rack up like good cash back over time.

Joel Leong: Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: If there's any brands or retailers on board, what do you wanna say to them?

Joel Leong: I think for me the key thing is this, it's not always, there are new marketing channels or ways to try out, right? And I always tell the team if there's something new to, to try out, try to understand what are the, what are the upsides and the downsides, and if you, if you have high upside, but very high downsides as well, okay, you gotta stop and think about that.

Joel Leong: But if you have sort of like, covered, uh, your downsides are covered and they're sort of like, the upside seems quite probable, then actually it's, I would say it's a bit like a no-brainer to, to at least try it out.

Michelle Lomas: It's such a no-brainer. It's just try it out. I mean, If you, you might be giving away a percentage of your profit on that sale, a small percentage at that, but you are guaranteed a sale.

Michelle Lomas: The amount of money that is funneled into marketing where there's no guarantees, you might be able to guarantee a lead that doesn't always mean that you're guaranteed a purchase or conversion. Whereas here you only pay for a sale. So what's the down there? There's like literally no downside. Other than you might give a very, very small percentage back.

Michelle Lomas: But it also builds loyalty for the customers like myself, who now only, you know, make bookings on Booking.com because I know that they give the best cashback. So I don't go anywhere else anymore. Why would I?

Joel Leong: Makes sense. Makes sense. So my message to thems always just try it out, right? And after you try it, you have data.

Joel Leong: And with data you can make good decisions. But if, let's say, if you haven't tried it out before, then you have to look at your upsides and downsides. And I agree with you. I have vested interest, but as I explain how it's really a no-brainer, I really think you should just try it out.

Joel Leong: Yes.

Michelle Lomas: And so, um, I have to ask, how much is in your ShopBack account?

Joel Leong: I have it live here now.

Michelle Lomas: You do?

Joel Leong: I didn't know you asked that question, but uh, we'll see.

Michelle Lomas: I have, have to ask. I mean, You must be like customer number one.

Joel Leong: Yeah. I have about thousand. Oh I don't know if you can see on the screen, but it's about $1,600.

Joel Leong: That I have not withdrawn I've actually withdrawn another 2000 bucks. Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: Excellent.

Michelle Lomas: There's a lot of things that you can buy with that.

Joel Leong: Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: And what a wonderful reward for shopping.

Michelle Lomas: Well, thank you Joel. Thank you for joining us. I think there's a lot here that any marketer can take on board listening.

Michelle Lomas: A lot about being so customer-centric and building a product that just, you know, is gonna grow from strength to strength because it delivers to everything that the customer is looking for and needs right now. We all need a little bit of extra cash in our wallet, you know, with the way the economy's going right now.

Michelle Lomas: So it doesn't hurt at all. And obviously there's a lot of exciting things happening in Australia for ShopBack.

Joel Leong: Yeah.

Michelle Lomas: So hopefully, you know, some retailers, if you're listening and, and brands reach out. You know, There's no downside, as we talked about, only upsides.

Joel Leong: Thanks for having me. We are really excited about what the Australian team has built up in Australia.

Michelle Lomas: What an awesome chat with Joel Leong from ShopBack. Hopefully you're inspired to start saving more dollars through your shop. A few extra dollars in the account never hurt anyone. We have another exciting episode coming up. Here's a sneak peek.

Anthony Nappa: I was just pretty much not really experienced at a website, but it wasn't working that much. Naturally you just gravitate to the thing that works well, and yeah, so he put me in touch with a digital agency, you know, it was three grand a month. And I'm like, oh,

Michelle Lomas: That's huge for a startup. You're like, what? I've already paid employees and rent, and now I've gotta pay this agency.

Michelle Lomas: If you aren't already, don't forget to follow, so you don't miss an ep.

Michelle Lomas: And while you're there, why not drop us a rating and review? We'd love to hear what you think. Flex Your Hustle is made possible by the great team at Commission Factory and produced by Ampel. I'm Michelle Lomas, keep hustling and bye for now.