Conversion Engines & Donation-Driven Growth with Givz's Andrew Forman

Givz’s commerce platform helps brands convert discounts into donations, so customers can support causes close to their heart while shopping at their favorite brands. Givz Founder Andrew Forman gave the Tydo team a behind-the-scenes look into his company’s founding story, the broken ecommerce discount system, and the tangible value of social causes. 
December 1, 2021
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Yellow background with the Tydo and Givz logos with blue text that says "Donation-based commerce"

Conversion Engines & Donation-Driven Growth with Givz’s Andrew Forman

Givz’s commerce platform helps brands convert discounts into donations, so customers can support causes close to their heart while shopping at their favorite brands. The platform’s core donation-driven model directly increases AOV and conversion while also driving real impact.

Givz Founder Andrew Forman gave the Tydo team a behind-the-scenes look into his company’s founding story, the broken ecommerce discount system, and the tangible value of social causes. 

Designing Fluid Incentive Structures 

At its core, Givz converts discounts into donations by incentivizing consumers to give back to the charity of their choice. What does that look like in practice? Instead of spending $100 and getting $20 off a purchase, consumers can spend $100 and get $20 to give to a charity. 

The incentive is given pre-purchase, which is where Givz sees an increase in conversion and AOV. Their donation-driven offers perform just as well, if not better than, regular discounts, and they also drive full-price purchasing. About 25% of consumers actually allocate the capital and remain loyal to the brand, while the brand doesn’t need to incur any cost for the remaining 75%. 

Andrew designed Givz around choice and agency. Consumers want to say that they sent $20 to a charity, and they want a receipt or email that confirms it. Givz creates that closed loop.

Ultimately, the platform’s special sauce boils down to social impact. There are tons of solutions that claim to increase AOV, LTV, and conversion, but there aren’t many solutions that give back while doing that. It’s a win win. Since its launch, Givz has sent over $1M USD to charity, and they’re working towards becoming the largest charitable giving engine in the world, full stop.

“Our vision is twofold: send more money to charities while also helping brands make money. If we can nail both, we’re onto something huge.”

The Pivot: Doubling Down on Conversion

Givz initially started as a DTC app. Andrew notes that they initially wanted to be the Venmo for charitable giving until, one day, two brands opened a conversation with Andrew. 

One brand asked, “Hey, can I give customers credit on your platform as a reward for signing up for our subscription?” The other asked, “If customers use a specific code, can I send them $40 of credit on your platform, so they can donate to any cause they want?” So, Andrew tried both.

The first brand, a subscription business, ran an A/B test on Facebook. One Facebook ad asked users to sign up for a subscription and get $50 off, while the other ad pushed folks to sign up for a subscription and get $30 to give to the charity of their choice. The creative was identical. 

After shipping the A/B test, Andrew’s team found a 20% boost in conversion for the give $30 the charity of their choice ad. In tandem, their analytics yielded the same results for the second brand, a luxury handbag company. Right then, Andrew pivoted the entire business model.

After running these tests, Andrew first thought that Givz would be perfect for luxury brands and price-insensitive customers, but their partnership with H&M showed him that Givz can work with practically any type of customer. Now, the platform partners with basically any brand as long as they have a dedicated marketing function. Over the past year, they’ve worked with H&M, Tervis, and Smile Direct Club, as well as zero revenue brands just getting off the ground.

“After we pivoted, we haven’t spent a dime on marketing. Everything has been through word of mouth. It’s an insanely powerful growth tool when your customers are your biggest champions and public evangelists.”

Broken Discounts & Brand Dilution

Andrew broke down the range of issues that stem from ecommerce discounting. The first and most obvious drawback is the immediate impact of taking money off the top of the business. Over time, running discounts for an extended period can really cut into margins and unit economics.

Second, discounting attracts the wrong type of consumer, namely price-sensitive shoppers who jump from discount to discount and from brand to brand. This cohort doesn’t drive loyalty.

Finally, discounts degrade the value of brand equity that teams work so hard to build. They train people to think that an item isn’t worth its actual price, giving customers a reason to pause.

“Every time we lean into cohort analysis and dive into who was brought in via discounts, it’s clear that those customers have the lowest LTV metrics.” 

The Path Forward: Data-Driven Results

Givz is empowering brands and consumers to do good while making it profitable to give back, and with anything, there’s work that goes into making that happen. Put simply, brands still need to promote Givz just like they do with discounts, but without the negative externalities.

Andrew drives home the point that Givz is a platform designed specifically around data. For example, a spend threshold promotion (spend $100+ and get $20 to give to the charity of your choice) typically results in an increased AOV. When brands give 10% of every sale back to the charity of the customer’s choice, AOV goes up a bit less and conversion rates go up even more. 

While Givz sees the biggest increases in conversion and AOV, Andrew adds that there are a range of additional improvements across open and click rates for emails, social engagement, and repurchase rates across six-month cohorts. As the platform continues to grow, so will its ability to directly quantify each of its value drivers for brands that it partners with.

“Thus far, Givz has outperformed our expectations across the board. The early indicators of success are there, but we still need to keep improving.”
Checkout our roundup to learn:
  • What to pledge
  • How to improve
  • Which tools will set you up for success

Dale Wilson

Partnerships Manager,
adQuadrant
Resolution

I think the most important thing brands can do in 2023 is to better manage their customer data—both ethically and effectively. There’s an opportunity for brands to know their customers better than ever before—a clear benefit for both the customer and the brand. When you manage your data correctly, you’ll create stronger and more personalized ads, creative, site experiences, and so much more.

Tip

This is a classic: Let the data guide you. Go where the buyers for your products are and communicate with them on a personal level (i.e. by persona and funnel position) and nurture those relationships (past, present, and future customers). It’s possible—all through data.

Tool

It's an honest tie between Gorgias and Klaviyo. Both tools have amazing plans for 2023 and beyond, and I'm looking forward to seeing the impact both have on their clients this year.

Shawn Khemsurov

Co-founder,
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We recommend that Shopify brands analyze and update their websites using data-driven decisions. Using analytics tools such as heatmaps and scrollmaps can help brands better understand how customers are interacting with their store.

Tip

Store owners tend to make assumptions about the way customers interact with their website. Most never go back and analyze their design choices to find pain points or areas of opportunity. By using heatmaps and scrollmaps, they can see where real customers are clicking and concentrating their attention. Leveraging this data, brands can start to iterate on design and make their online store experience streamlined and intuitive.

Tool

Hotjar provides a simple way to implement heatmaps, scrollmaps, and recorded user sessions on your site, helping you acquire incredibly informative user data. Additionally, it gives you the ability to create on-site surveys, which allows you to obtain direct and often critical feedback from users about their experience.

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Test various attribution models and analyze the impact on your business. At Fifty Six, we are always here to help our clients identify and optimize their approach—a critical step in any successful marketing strategy.

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If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times–Customer Lifetime Value. And even more importantly, Future Lifetime Value (FLTV). With the ever-growing importance of first-party data, it is crucial that brands take a good look at their CRM and FLTV metrics.

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OrderlyEmails is our go-to tool for transactional emails. It helps us level up our brands’ email aesthetics with customizable, quick-to-implement Shopify templates.

Lately, I’ve been really interested in Smile.io’s loyalty platform. Their UX is fantastic for teams with low bandwidth!

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One of the best ways to understand your customer behavior is by using HotJar. Their heat-mapping and screen recording tools shine a light on where customers are navigating to and from on your site, where they're rage clicking and experiencing frustration, and where conversion is dropping off within real life customer journeys and flows!

Understanding your customers’ pain points via data and analytics , will allow you to work with your CRO/CX Agency to solve customer frustrations and improve conversion.

Tool

Rewind backs up all product, customer, and order data for Shopify sites—essential since Shopify itself doesn’t provide this solution. It's saved so many of our clients time and money from administrative accidents.

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Jimmy Aristizabal

Partnership Manager,
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Resolution

33% of customer service inquiries are pre-sale questions. What does this mean? If you’re not investing in customer service, you’re missing out on revenue-generating opportunities.

Tip

The benefits of elevating your customer experience:

  • 10% to 25% increase in AOV for customers who engage with live chat pre-purchase
  • 21x higher conversion rate for customers who reach out via Live Chat or SMS compared to other site visitors
  • 87% of customers who have a great customer experience will make another purchase
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Tool

Gorgias is our favorite Helpdesk platform. They can reduce costs by 35%, primarily by decreasing the average ticket handle time. Their machine learning algorithms are trained on millions of ecommerce-related interactions across Gorgias’ customer base and provide accurate, automated replies for the most common ecommerce inquiries. This helps our agents resolve tickets faster, which provides the customer a seamless experience.

Jessica Grossman

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Resolution

Trust your agency! Agencies do the same things across multiple brands and niches, so we see the trends and have the practice and experience!

Tip

Don't be afraid of data and insights. If customers aren't clicking on your emails, try a new CTA. If your ads are driving good metrics at a small spend, start scaling. If your customers are complaining about a product, look into QA! If the data tells you something isn't working, let it go and try something else!

Tool

I'm supposed to say Tydo, right? 😉

Rikin Diwan

Chief Growth Officer,
soona
Resolution

Double down on differentiation. There will be a lot of headwinds this year and standing out from the crowd will set you apart.

Tip

A picture is worth 1,000 words. A video? Probably millions. In ecommerce that value translates into engagement, acquisition, and retention—everything you need to impact your bottom line.

At soona, we've seen the we've seen the impact of creative and the continuous split testing of it yield results. Our resolution is to challenge ourselves and double down on innovation and creative optionality so that each brand we work with can distinguish themselves in a crowded sea of D2C ecomm. We'd love to see our brands share this resolution and keep pushing the creative limits.

Tool

Klaviyo. We're using it to power our email and newsletter at soona too!

Shayna Silvers

Director of Marketing Strategy,
Absolute Web
Resolution

Optimize your returns strategy! This can lead to valuable customer insights, enhanced user experiences, and increased revenue and customer loyalty.

Tip

Brands need to dive deeper into understanding their customers to set themselves up for success. Conduct research to gain insights into customer needs, preferences, and behaviors. By doing so, you can develop targeted strategies that will enhance customer experience and boost overall retention.

Tool

Right now I would say Gorgias. Having a good customer service tool is crucial to building strong customer relationships.

Wes Buckwalter

Resolution

Start paying heavy attention to data, specifically around retention. We see a lot of effort put towards acquisition with the assumption that once someone buys, they are your customer forever. Instead, get to know your customer, understand their needs, and analyze their behaviors once they are on-site and judge their sentiment after they have visited. Work with a retention focused and data-driven agency to implement tools that contribute to repeat business and customer delight. It will pay dividends.

Tip

When surveyed, about 80% of ecommerce merchants think that they are delivering a great experience to their customers. However, when the same customers are surveyed, only 8% of those customers think that they are getting a great experience from the merchant. Now, more than ever, retaining loyal customers is an essential part of any online business and you should spend time with your customers to judge their experience with your website and products and offer improvements based on that feedback.

Tool

Tydo's report cards are an essential tool, along with Klaviyo for email and SMS, Recharge for subscriptions and memberships, Okendo for reviews and surveys, Rebuy for AI driven collections and upsells, Loop for self service returns... each tool is great on their own, but their strength as the ultimate tool comes from when they are used together!

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Report Cards

Free

Report Cards is a customized glimpse into your business, delivered to your inbox for free.

Report Cards consolidates all your key metrics across platforms for an at-a-glance pulse of your business.

Discover metrics for every team member so they can stay updated with the right data on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

It's free because we believe everyone should have access to the basics.

Learn more
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Portfolio

Portfolio is a hub for analytics across multiple Shopify stores. The perfect tool for agencies.

See an aggregate view of all your data for all your stores in one place.

Make real time assessments on marketing initiatives across every storefront you manage.

Analyze the performance of one store versus another in seconds.

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