Your popup probably converts at 8%. The best Shopify brands are pulling 15 to 20% with the same traffic, and this episode is the playbook.

In this episode of Ecom Growth Insider, Shaan Arora, co-founder and CEO of Alia, breaks down the popup playbook he built into Shopify's fastest-growing popup app. Alia now powers Nike Strength, Peloton, Hot Ones, HexClad, ILIA Beauty, Milk Makeup, Skims, Toms, Aviator Nation, and 3,000+ other Shopify brands.

Shaan and his co-founders Cory Gill and Bill Wohlers bootstrapped Alia from $1M to $8M ARR in one year, then sold to Dotdigital in March 2026 for a $60M exit. No outside funding. No debt. Profitable since day one.

Shaan's popup testing priority:

Test timing first (5 seconds is the default).

Test copy second (mystery discount versus standard percent off).

Test X-button placement and exit delay.

Track on-site CVR alongside opt-in rate.

In this episode:

- Why Klaviyo's 1 to 5% "healthy" opt-in benchmark is wrong (Alia's brands hit 10 to 15%, sometimes 20%+)

- The single biggest lift on opt-in rate: copy, not design

- When mystery discounts beat standard percent-off offers (and the brand sizes where each wins)

- Why gamified popups (Plinko, slots, spin-to-win) work for some brands and kill the experience for others

- How Aviator Nation doubled their welcome flow revenue by fixing their popup

- The on-site CVR metric most popup tools don't track (and why it matters more than opt-in rate)

- How Alia captures quiz data even when a visitor doesn't submit their email

- The default 5-second trigger plus the "smart trigger" that re-shows the popup on the second pageview

- How to segment new vs returning visitors without giving away your margin twice

- The popup program differences between $1M, $10M, and $100M brands

- What Alia did differently to attract the Dotdigital acquisition

- Why Shaan would take 30% of $60M over 100% of $1M every time

Chapters:

00:00 Why most founders miss the popup growth lever

01:09 The invisible cost of a bad popup

02:15 Healthy opt-in benchmarks: Klaviyo's 1 to 5% vs Alia's 10 to 15%

04:11 What Alia's smart testing actually tests

05:05 The single biggest lift on conversion: copy

10:17 Gamified popups that convert: Plinko, slots, characters

13:05 The on-site CVR metric most popup tools ignore

14:24 Aviator Nation: how a popup fix doubled welcome flow revenue

16:47 Default timing setup and the smart-trigger second showing

19:14 New vs returning visitor segmentation

20:26 What every top popup program has in common

24:26 If you could only test one thing

25:24 Differences between $1M, $10M, and $100M brand popup programs

28:35 Building polished popups for premium brands (and when to skip the discount)

30:52 The Dotdigital acquisition: how it happened

32:56 Bootstrapped to $8M ARR in one year: what Alia did differently

34:15 The one thing Shaan would do again (and why co-founders matter)

37:19 Why sales is the best founder education

39:02 Where to find Shaan

Connect with Shaan:

Alia (book a demo): https://aliapopups.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaan-arora/

X: https://x.com/iamshaanarora

Ecom Growth Insider is the podcast for e-commerce founders who want to scale profitably. New episodes weekly on paid media, CRO, offer strategy, and operating systems that actually move the needle.

More episodes and newsletter: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com

Work with HoloGrowth: https://hologrowth.com

6 months into your launch, the data shows you're targeting the wrong customer. Do you pivot the entire brand, or push through with what you've got?

In this episode of Ecom Growth Insider, Gene Oh, co-founder of day-guard, walks through how he and his best friend Felix Lee brought Korea's jelly-stick alcohol-aid category to the United States. Day Guard was featured in Forbes in February (the article went viral and drove their first NYC distribution deal across a few hundred convenience stores and bodegas). Their cap table includes Magic Spoon's Gabi Lewis and Rip Van's Marco De Leon as investors.

Gene turned down a guaranteed med school spot in Brown's PLME, an 8-year combined BA/MD program, to build day-guard with Felix.

Gene's category creation playbook:

Anchor cultural credibility through the country of origin.

Make the novel form factor the selling point.

Build retention loops because the pain isn't felt at point of purchase.

Pivot the entire brand the moment customer data demands it.

In this episode:

- How Gene tested 3 flavors with 500 sticks across Brown bars to lock down his ICP before manufacturing

- Why "insurance for when you drink" outperformed every other positioning for a product he can't legally call a hangover cure

- The customer data that flipped his real ICP from college students to 29-44 year old urban millennials

- Why he killed the original brand and reformulated the product 6 months into launch

- How one Forbes feature drove a few hundred thousand views and turned into Day Guard's first retail distribution deal

- The channel mix that's actually moving the needle (Meta, Amazon, DTC) and where TikTok Shop fits next

- The creative volume target: 20 ads per week minimum, around 100 active in testing at scale

- Why founder-led marketing on Instagram made Meta ad performance better

- Why Gene treats ROAS as a vanity metric and what he tracks instead (CAC, retention, LTV)

- The 10-year vision: become America's joystick company across sleep, creatine, energy, and skin

Chapters:

00:00 PLME dropout selling jelly sticks at 3am

02:27 The instinct to build something, not just consume it

04:29 How medical training shaped the formulation

06:03 ICP research at Brown bars: 500 sticks, 3 flavors, 2 months

09:38 Will the jelly-stick category translate outside Korea?

12:17 Creating demand for a category nobody knows exists

13:34 The no-pain-yet problem: retention plus retail unlock

18:07 Writing copy when you can't legally say "hangover"

19:43 Why they rebranded AND reformulated 6 months in

24:04 The daily liver play: expanding beyond hangover

25:47 What's actually moving the needle right now

28:35 Should every e-com founder build a personal brand?

30:38 Why they still do offline despite Meta scale

32:10 How to ignore every shiny object

35:38 The creative volume target: 20 ads per week

36:28 The 10-year vision for the alcohol-aid market

38:29 Lightning round

43:48 Where to find Gene

Connect with Gene:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/geneo.h/

Day Guard on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/takedayguard/

Text Gene directly: (781) 467-9870

Day Guard: https://www.dayguard.com/

Ecom Growth Insider is the podcast for e-commerce founders who want to scale profitably. New episodes weekly on paid media, CRO, offer strategy, and operating systems that actually move the needle.

More episodes and newsletter: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com

Work with HoloGrowth: https://hologrowth.com

If your ROAS or MER tanks the moment you push more spend through, this episode is for you.

Carl Weische is the founder of Accelerated Agency and runs CRO for brands like AG1, Huel, Vessi, The Oodie, and 200+ more 8, 9, and 10 figure DTC companies. He joins Andrej on Ecom Growth Insider to break down the exact system he uses to turn CRO into a profit lever from the ad click all the way to the thank-you page.

If your return on ad spend is dropping every time you try to scale, Carl's decision tree is simple:

Fix AOV first.

Fix conversion rate second.

Add presell pages only when you hit a true glass ceiling.

In this episode:

- The 3-tier bundle SOP Carl uses to lift AOV 15 to 25%

- Why revenue per user is the only CRO metric that matters, and the AOV vs conversion rate trap most founders fall into

- When presell and advertorial pages actually pay off (and when they waste ad budget)

- The first things Carl audits on any store before he touches a test

- The four real reasons customers abandon checkout

- How to raise perceived value without killing margin through discounts

- Why AI is about to widen the gap between elite and average marketers

- Realistic testing cadence at scale: 5 to 30+ tests per month

- Carl's sample size rule: 20,000 users and 1,000 orders per variation before you call a winner

- The revenue threshold where it makes sense to move CRO in-house (around $50M to $100M a year)

- Rapid fire: Carl's most underrated CRO lever, most overrated tactic, and the one mistake he sees smart founders make

Chapters:

00:00 Why your ROAS dies when you scale

00:43 The real job of CRO in 2026

05:04 Carl's decision tree when ROAS or MER drops

06:08 Fix AOV first: the 3-tier bundle SOP

07:45 Fix conversion rate: images and copy that resonate

08:33 Layering in presell and advertorial pages

11:00 When presell pages actually make sense

15:51 Revenue per user: the real CRO north star

20:19 The first things Carl audits on any store

23:00 Why customers abandon the checkout

26:07 How to raise perceived value without discounts

29:00 Why AI is splitting great marketers from average ones

35:00 When a brand is actually ready for serious CRO

37:09 Testing cadence at scale: 5 to 30+ tests per month

38:12 The sample size rule: 20k users + 1k orders per variant

43:11 When to build a CRO team in-house

46:15 Rapid fire: underrated, overrated, biggest mistake

48:11 Where to find Carl

Connect with Carl:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@carlweische

Accelerated Agency: https://acceleratedagency.com

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/carl-weische-2488a5198

Ecom Growth Insider is the podcast for e-commerce founders who want to scale profitably. Subscribe for weekly episodes on paid media, CRO, offer strategy, and operating systems that actually move the needle.

More episodes and newsletter: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com

Work with HoloGrowth: https://hologrowth.com