What if the most valuable customer acquisition channel you’re ignoring is the one you’ve always written off as just a discount tool?
Agility requires not just adapting to new customer behaviors, but fundamentally re-evaluating long-held beliefs about which channels drive growth and which ones are merely a race to the bottom.
Retailers are making big moves into the cashback ecosystem.
Today, we’re going to talk about the shifting economics of customer acquisition and how they are causing many brands to rethink their channel strategy. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome, Carolina Paradas, GM, North America at ShopBack.
About Carolina Paradas
Carolina Paradas on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolina-p-693b418a/
Resources
ShopBack: http://www.shopback.com
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Transcript
Greg Kihlstrtöm: What if the most valuable customer acquisition channel you’re ignoring is the one you’ve always written off as just a discount tool? Agility requires not just adapting to new customer behaviors, but fundamentally re-evaluating long-held beliefs about which channels drive growth, and which ones are merely a race to the bottom.
Today we’re going to talk about the shifting economics of customer acquisition and how they’re causing many brands to rethink their channel strategy.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Carolina Paradas, GM North America at ShopBack. Carolina, welcome to the show.
Carolina Paradas: Thank you so much for having me. Really excited to be here today.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Looking forward to talking about this. before we dive in though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at ShopBack.
Carolina Paradas: Yeah, I’m Carolina Paradas. I’m the GM of North America here at ShopBack. I’ve been with the business for about six months, but I, I come from a rewards and FinTech experience. previously to this, I was working across many rewards platforms, including Cash App, Bank of America, PNC and employee, rewards platforms. I’ve also been on the brand side. So I feel like I’ve, you know, kind of got a lot of the different angles of the industry when it comes to rewards and overall growth channels.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah, yeah, I love it. So and and let’s, let’s start with talking a little bit about ShopBack. Maybe tell our audience what the company does, what makes it different in a relatively, you know, crowded rewards space and, you know, who your core customers are.
Carolina Paradas: Sure. So we are a rewards platform that allows you to earn cashback on any online purchase that you make. So we are predominantly, mobile, so we have a mobile app. We have the, web version and also an extension. So essentially you can use ShopBack as you would do your everyday shopping. You go to the app, web or or extension, shop and browse on the brands that we have, and then you would go on to to shop as you would normally. in terms of our user, I think quite interestingly the way that we’ve positioned ourselves in the market because we’re very much mobile first. I would say, you know, our majority of users are Gen Z and young millennials. So anybody that is financially savvy, mobile savvy, anyone that’s looking for that kind of extra reward, when they’re shopping, whether’s, you know, whether is everyday spend to travel or even playing games, you can actually earn, cashback on ShopBack whilst you play games as well. So overall, we try to be kind of in footstep with, our users on, you know, every kind of category in their lives.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah, yeah, I love it. So I want to start with, talking about this from the, the strategic shift here and, and what I teed up in the intro as far as how brands are rethinking and and need to rethink customer acquisition. And so, you know, the holiday season, you know, 2025 at least is a few months behind us, but what we saw was, brands who, you know, previously were very, you know, tightly controlling their image, their promotions, and things like that, making a shift to just change some of their long-held channel strategies and, and how they, how they really behave, in terms of of their, their consumer, audiences. Can you talk a little bit, you know, what, what’s driving this? You know, what’s, is it economic, consumer behavioral shifts, you know, what, what are you seeing?
Carolina Paradas: Yeah, so I think what’s really interesting is how we are right now in the market position. So when it comes to the microeconomic, environment that we all live in day-to-day, you know, no retail brand or, you know, across any category can afford to ignore the fact that users need to stretch their dollars. Like the average American American consumer needs to be able to get something back, or that’s why we see, you know, an increase not only on cashback, but on any reward currency that you that you look at, because ultimately, the, the economic pressures that we all live in today, it’s impossible to ignore by any retail brand. So I think, you know, where we are from a microeconomic, space, that’s number one. But then when when you think about overall brand strategy and what their tasks to do as performance marketers, it’s it’s so far now from, you know, clicks and it’s so far now from views and impressions only. When we look at what CMOs, what CFOs are looking for is actually having a return on investment on what you’re doing. And versus, you know, previously you think about 2021, both of even an investment front or performance marketing, it was all about more vanity or like upper funnel, KPIs, versus now we’re all asked, right? to be able to prove the value of everything that we’re doing. Longer the days of free money being kind of thrown up people. So I think it also comes from what the, you know, leadership a lot of these brands are are facing in terms of their return on investment. And then lastly, I would just say, you know, brands have always been involved. If you look at, you know, other rewards platforms that have been around since literally the 1900s. They’ve had partnerships with department stores, luxury, whether it’s luxury beauty, luxury fashion, et cetera. They have always utilized these, tools for, you know, Q4 or like specific strategic moments. However, because of the economic pressure that we feel as consumers and how much these brands are feeling it, they can’t afford to just do it during Q4 or do it discreetly. So I think that what they’ve done instead is look at platforms like us or like anybody that can prove their return on investment and actually look at them as strategic partners, you know, how how is your audience valuable to me and how I can work with you to to meet each other’s goals, versus before, you know, the conversation was more, weighted on the brand side. Um,
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah.
Carolina Paradas: So, yeah.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah, and so, you know, to to that end, given, you know, the everyone from the CFO to the CMO is looking for that that return on investment as as you said, what does it look like then to integrate rewards not just at the top of the funnel as as you were saying, but really throughout the broader marketing mix?
Carolina Paradas: Yeah, so like I was saying, obviously if we’re looking if you’re looking at specifically a lower funnel activity, you know, specific affiliates or rewards partners, that can provide you that kind of volume when it comes to sales and eyeballs, right? When it comes to new customer acquisition or rewarding your own existing user, these platforms are great. but the good thing as well is that at least what we’re seeing on our side, we’re all obviously as well spending and things are upper funnel. So what we what we bring to our brands is the ability to do both, right? To create this flywheel of where you’re creating intention, you’re creating brand affinity and you’re creating that moment for the consumer when they’re on social media, when they’re actually browsing and they’re in that awareness phase. And then ShopBack comes in or any, you know, acquisition partner you have and then we are there when there is intent and when they’re ready to purchase too. So we’re able to provide brands that kind of like flywheel of branding, innovation, ways to present yourself to the consumer, but also bring in in ourselves when there is intent so you can prove your, you know, the ROI.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Well, and then so to to get to the the more tactical part of this as well. So, you know, as as I’m sure we we well know, there is a massive shift to mobile commerce and and, you know, just a demand for for stackable value, you know, particularly with the the Gen Z audience, but but really, you know, I think across the board. How do brands adjust for or what do they need to adjust to, you know, to to take most advantage of this?
Carolina Paradas: Yeah, mobile experience is extremely important these days. not only, you know, with an app, there’s a lot of brands that don’t have their own app. However, you know, mobile, browser and the overall experience that you can do from a smaller screen is extremely important. And to be transparent, not only in the retail space, but we do see brands still struggling to increase that footprint when it comes to Gen Z and millennial because they don’t have an enhanced mobile experience. Even for us, you know, the way that ShopBack was created, because we we came from Singapore and Asia, which is, you know, almost 100% mobile. The way that we created our business was in mobile rails and desktop came after. So the way when you’re entering the market with those strengths, that’s what it makes a difference for us to have such a strong Gen Z and millennial follower, right? so I think brands are feeling that more and more and focusing in on on mobile commerce as a whole.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: And so for, you know, for for any strong brand, for, you know, particularly premium brands, there’s there’s always this concern about brand dilution, you know, that it can come in many forms, but how do you work with partners to ensure that that, you know, the customer experience on ShopBack is seamless and reinforces brand identity and, you know, just doesn’t doesn’t contribute to to dilution?
Carolina Paradas: Yeah, so I think that’s something that we take a lot of pride on in in terms of the experience the user will have with ShopBack. so, you know, our experience is constantly looked at, QA’d, et cetera. But we will also work with the brand to make sure they’re comfortable. So things like very important to brands, like logos, creative, how the brand is presenting, the, you know, what brands they’re next to, what category they fall into. We can work with the brand to really tailor the experience and make sure they’re not creating the wrong habits for the users. so we’re very, very particular on that front. And I would say the other really interesting thing that we’re doing is what I was mentioning earlier, is actually we bring an upper funnel opportunity for brands. So we have a whole influencer network. We have, a lot of editorial partners. We have, corporate partners that can help us. We have sports partners that can help us expand the message. So we actually give brands the opportunity to expand beyond the last click, right? So that’s part of that flywheel. So we work with them on how we can be targeting the user at every stage of the funnel.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah. So when I get back to the the ROI part of the conversation as well, and so, you know, as as with anything I I assume traditional metrics are not going away and and those are still, those are still being tracked, but are there additional or different or maybe a different emphasis on some other key success metrics that should be tracked, when when, you know, determining ROI on on something like this?
Carolina Paradas: Yeah, so I think traditionally, right, when you look to specific partners that were focusing on acquisition, you would just mainly be looking for new customer, right? You would look for these platforms to bring you new audiences, new eyeballs, et cetera. Versus we’ve seen a shift on specifically brands that don’t have loyalty programs themselves, on a focus on existing customers. So, you know, if you think about the customer, the the cost of new customer acquisition, it’s huge. So how, you know, previously in the past, why when brands focus in that existing user. And that’s where we’ve seen kind of the shift and that’s a newer KPI, right? When you look at lifetime value and what is the overall existing customer, quality that you’re bringing in. So there’s definitely more emphasis on, okay, we can work on existing user campaigns as long as we’re seeing the right quality, the right audience, et cetera. Versus before, you know, specifically platforms like ours would have been more looked at as a new customer acquisition tool.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: And then from a customer behavior and, you know, just kind of customer perspective, how does a cashback acquired customer compare to one maybe acquired through other types of channels? You know, are there any behavioral differences, any any differences in loyalty, anything like that that that that you’ve seen?
Carolina Paradas: Yeah, I think traditionally the the thinking was like, oh, these are more savvy consumers. These are users that, you know, need to or want to have something back, for their spend. But honestly, now that we’ve seen the shift, and the impact of, all of the economic, issues that we’re facing as the world in like the whole world really. We’re seeing that everyone is attempting, to use rewards. You know, it’s it’s the it’s the cashback call, but there’s also, you know, credit card points and miles. Everybody that we see, whether it’s in our audience, whether it’s Gen Z to millennial, to what we call the CFOs of the households, so higher income, et cetera. Everyone is trying to stretch, you know, get some value. What what we’ve seen in today’s world is that users want to understand why to shop with your brand. They want to see the value instantly. They don’t want to shop and then see how you engage me and if you have a brand loyalty program. No, they want to see that value instantly, which is driven is driven rewards to be something more mass market versus like a an assumption of a lower, income demographic.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: I know again, we’re we’re a little bit past the the holiday season last year, but, you know, what I know from other from other brands is that they’re already planning already planning next, next one. So, you know, what what would you say? What what was a takeaway from from last season that might be able to be applied to either, you know, not even waiting for for the end of the year, but, you know, to be applied to the to the to the year ahead?
Carolina Paradas: Yeah, so we saw some really interesting stats when it came on the timing of the holiday season. So, you know, every year companies try to go a little earlier and earlier, but actually last year, we saw, spikes from early October. So say from Prime Day, which is around the first week of October, kind of that peak and that right didn’t come off from there. So I think it’s interesting that, you know, people are trying to start to go earlier to actually during the big moments like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when it’s super hard to highlight yourself, you know, they’re trying to get the value of people who are seeking discounts and seeking rewards earlier in the year for sure.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah. And then looking forward a little bit, how do you see this space evolving? You know, certainly there’s a lot of different things at play here. There’s certainly, you know, continuing economic pressures, but there’s also, you know, AI innovations, a lot of focus on consumer data privacy. You know, how does all this come to play and, you know, perhaps redefine the role that that platforms like ShopBack may play for major brands?
Carolina Paradas: Yeah, I think what’s interesting is that even though, you know, we’re evolving and we will definitely find new ways to reach customers, new ways, to drive awareness, new new ways basically on of communication, right, between consumers. Ultimately, nothing is going to be the same in the next 10 years. However, what I’m very clear on and I think all of us at ShopBack are very clear on is that the customer wants value more than ever. So ultimately, you know, how you find it, how you interact, how you earn might change, right? That whole way of interaction with the consumer will change. However, what what won’t change is the seeking of value from users. If anything, it’s increasing, right? So I think relevance for businesses like us, relevance for businesses that are, I would say in the middle of rewarding the user and being very clear what you bring to the table, have an opportunity to to be able to continue to be successful. Like I said, ultimately speed and being agile will change, and will impact how you interact with your consumers, but ultimately seeking value and the need for platforms like us, it’s not going anywhere.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, Carolina, thanks so much for joining today. Just a couple questions as we wrap up here. First one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
Carolina Paradas: Oh, I love this question. let me think. Okay, so we’re we’re working really hard to bring, sports into rewards. and how, you know, if you think about sports fans and rewards fans or rewards users, very similar. There’s a lot of similarities there. so we’re trying to to bring those two worlds together, and we’re working really hard. so I feel like maybe we’re we’re going to be talking about how two industries come together and see success.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: Yeah, love it. Well, we’ll have to, we’ll have to have you back on and and talk about that. That’s great.
Carolina Paradas: Love that.
Greg Kihlstrtöm: And then, last question for you. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Carolina Paradas: Yeah, so honestly, the way that we we look at AI and tools in in the business, we we try and give everybody as many tools as they need to be successful and to be as efficient every day. I keep myself educated. I keep myself curious and informed. So I listen to this, podcast every day that basically gives you different tips on how you can make your time more efficient. So I continuously learn and I continuously apply this both in my professional and personal life. So I think continue to be curious and that’s how that’s how I stay, I wouldn’t say ahead, but I stay at least on trend, on how to keep my time as efficient as possible.
