Publisher Spotlight: Pouch

Can you briefly introduce yourself?

My name is Clement, I work for Global Savings Group, where I’m in charge of helping accelerate company growth by taking Pouch key commercial partners relationships to the next level and defining the commercial strategy for our new features.

Prior to joining GSG, I worked for Widilo as UK Managing Director. Before that, I was at Tradedoubler, where I started my affiliate marketing career in 2013 and held various roles first in the client service team and then as UK Operations Director.

Can you introduce Pouch and its core business values?

Pouch is a free Browser Extension for saving time and money when buying online. Pouch automatically sources the best available voucher codes and allows users to apply them at checkout in one click. It was launched in 2016 and acquired by Global Savings Group in 2019. It’s available for Google Chrome, Firefox and Edge.

When customers shop online, they look at multiple rather than a singular site when searching for the best deals or products. Our extension features a variety of useful tools that aim to prevent users from site hopping, stay on retailers’ pages and convert purchases in a variety of ways that ensure abandonment rates are reduced.

Overall Pouch is a great tool and really plays a critical step in the customer journey, making the shopping experience easier and better for the consumers at every stage of the journey.

In the UK alone we work with over +3,500 merchants including some of the largest and most recognised retailers to promote their best deals and discounts to their ideal customers, and over the past few years, we have run several incremental studies, each empirically proving that our browser extensions do drive incremental sales.

We’re committed to always have our users and partners best interests at heart and we are about to be launching Pouch Points, our free loyalty program that will let our users earn Points towards gift cards on eligible purchases.

Tell us more about Pouch Points, how it works and what are the benefits?

Essentially, once a user has downloaded Pouch when shopping with participating stores, they will get a chance to earn Pouch Points on their purchase. Once our users have earned enough points, they will be able to redeem their Pouch Points for an e-Gift Card from our list of available providers. It’s a great way to increase engagement with our users and conversions for our partners!

By having points, our users will not be disappointed when a discount code is not available and they can’t save money. With Pouch Points, we will always deliver a positive user experience at checkout.

For retailers, we will offer an efficient way to attract buyers, from discovery to checkout, without traditional discount codes. Members can spend more in order to save, which will help drive conversions and high-value purchases for those partners participating in the loyalty program.

Furthermore, our retail partners will easily be able to optimise and increase performance with Pouch Points by increasing the commission rate to expand the points range and further incentivise shoppers to convert on-site and purchase from their store instead of other sites.

What would you say are the biggest benefits for an advertiser working with Pouch?

Shoppers expectations from retailers become more complex and consumers are now more than ever looking for relevance at every single touchpoint when engaging with brands.

Pouch is a one-stop tool when it comes to shopping and finding the best discounts available online and our proposition holds huge value for advertisers who can utilise our engaged audience to improve conversion, reduce basket abandonment rates and add incremental revenue to their affiliate programme.

Our fantastic technology plays a critical step in the customer journey, and results from our incremental studies, across five different clients all in different industry verticals, have shown that Pouch not only boosted average order value but also significantly increased conversions for those retailers. At scale and over a long period of time, we can make a huge difference to the top line of any business and as Pouch continues to grow, we are confident we can be a great partner to any retailer by adding incremental value.

Furthermore, as a soft-click publisher, Pouch does not override any other affiliate cookies at the last click, meaning we are only rewarded by people who genuinely have Pouch as their first choice for finding and using deals and discounts. This should give all retailers confidence that we only get paid a commission when Pouch has genuinely converted the sale for our active users.

Can you tell us more about your audience?

Our users differ from those visiting traditional discount code sites as Pouch has an entirely different audience base of discount savvy consumers, who typically have a higher AOV than the averages of our retail partners.

By working with Pouch, retailers also have the benefits of showing their promotional content directly to a unique audience who wants to absorb and consume it, as our user base of active shoppers naturally values being prompted at checkout for a discount or deal.

And even though there may not be a code available, our users are still more likely to check out, rather than abandoning the website to search for a non-existent or expired voucher code, because of the trust we have built up with them. Our shoppers know they cannot get a better deal elsewhere, in turn reducing abandonment rates.

Do advertisers need anything specific to work with Pouch?

Getting started with Pouch is quite easy, there is no tech integration and once we are accepted on a programme we can be up and running fairly quickly.

We work across a wide range of advertisers across all verticals and we are always looking for new partnerships, so we can provide the best scope and coverage for our users when shopping online.

Ideally, we’d need a Voucher Code, but we can also promote deals only to our audience. Moreover, with Pouch Points we now provide an efficient way of incentivising customers without relying on a voucher code, meaning no advertiser is limited to working with us.

If you are interested in a partnership with us, get in touch with us via shoppingassistant@joingsg.com and we would be happy to have a preliminary call and discuss all the different ways Pouch can help you further optimise and drive conversions.

What’s the best thing about working for Pouch? What makes Pouch an exciting company?

I love working for a company that people are genuinely excited about, as well as one that is disrupting the e-commerce space by helping brands and retailers connect with their customers. After Pouch appeared on Dragon’s Den in 2017, our user base jumped from 5,000 to 50,000 overnight and we are still going strong since then as we keep adding new features and retailers for our fast-growing +300,000 weekly active user base, connecting them directly to the brands they love.

It’s also incredibly exciting to be part of the Global Savings Group family with such a dynamic and agile, fast-growing team of experts; everyone is passionate about what they do and what GSG started with discounts has grown into a portfolio of tools, services and innovations offering the shopper so much more today as we are empowering millions of people worldwide to make better purchase decisions when they shop online.

We are always looking for talented people so if you want to join an amazing team of +600 people from more than 50 countries in 10 office locations and work for a company that values a culture of belonging, check out our careers page for an overview of all our open positions!

How is your company different from other browser extensions? Can you elaborate on your uniqueness?

Though there are other money-saving browser extensions, not all are built the same. For instance, when running a split test with Pouch, most retailers found us to be highly incremental. Unlike some of our competitors, Pouch is a soft-click publisher meaning our proposition is de-duped against the rest of the channel and our cookies will not overwrite any existing post-click cookies from other publishers.

We also don’t allow for our users to publish community codes and we do not scrap the internet, ensuring that only affiliate-approved promotions are displayed within the extension, giving our retailer-partners continued reassurance that only valid and vetted content will be published.

Another differentiator is our cross-promo targeting solution. Through this unique and bespoke feature, we offer our advertisers the ability to put their advertising message on any website in the world, even on some of their competitors. It’s a great tool to leverage when brands have a strong event, new product launch or sale happening and it’s incredibly effective at driving highly engaged users to a brand’s site.

Any exciting plans coming up in the next few months?

We have an evolving product roadmap and we’re in a continuous process of improving our solution and technology, so we are never far away from releasing something new for our partners to get involved in!

For instance, we are about to be launching Pouch Points, our loyalty solution which we have built to provide our retailers with an efficient way to attract buyers, from discovery to checkout, without traditional voucher codes. 

We are very excited to integrate this new solution into our extensions and will very soon be releasing further features such as Favourite Retailers. This way, our users will get notified the moment an offer or discount code is available for their favourite brands and be the first to see the discounts, ultimately influencing the purchase much earlier on in the buyer cycle as our users no longer need to be on a retailer site or in our extension to get offers.

Moreover, we have some very ambitious user acquisition objectives over the coming months and will continue on raising our game in the world of influencer marketing. This year alone, we’ve successfully collaborated with over 50 influencers, and there are many more to come. Thanks to these amazing content creators, we’ve reached over 6 million views which already helped us achieve massive growth in new Pouch users.

A big thank you to Clement for this interview!