Customer Confidential: POSH Group turn RSVPs to ROI with Optimizely
Teddy Eisenstein, Growth Manager at POSH Group, sat down with Audrey Hungerman (Manager, Customer Success) from Optimizely for an exclusive deep dive into POSH's bold experimentation journey. This second installment in the Customer Confidential series delves into how POSH has been able to enhance customer experiences, drive significant growth, and highlights how they’ve embraced innovation to stay ahead in a competitive market.
Teddy Eisenstein, Growth Manager at POSH Group, sat down with Audrey Hungerman (Manager, Customer Success) from Optimizely for an exclusive deep dive into POSH's bold experimentation journey.
This second installment in the Customer Confidential series delves into how POSH has been able to enhance customer experiences, drive significant growth, and highlights how they’ve embraced innovation to stay ahead in a competitive market.
From leveraging Optimizely’s cutting-edge Web and Feature Experimentation tools to transforming mobile app testing and fostering a culture of innovation, this conversation uncovers the secrets behind driving growth through experimentation.
Welcome to POSH
A platform for event enthusiasts
Key points
- POSH is a leading event management platform that caters to both event organizers and attendees. The company operates in major cities across the U.S. and is expanding internationally.
- POSH recently surpassed 2 million attendees and regularly runs over 10,000 events per quarter.
- Teddy started in sales and quickly advocated for a growth team focused on data-driven strategies.
- Early insights revealed a 96% drop-off rate in the event creation flow, prompting significant changes.
POSH's growth journey wih experimentation
Key points
- POSH has doubled its employees in the past year, with experimentation and data-driven decisions now central to its culture.
- New hires, especially on the product side, are encouraged to have a strong understanding of data and testing.
- Experimentation has led to more efficient product development and increased team motivation.
Experimentation is still new on the operations side, but with tools like Optimizely, it's easier to integrate it into the product process. On the product side, data is a hundred percent essential. We recently hired a designer who's brilliant with data, and we're constantly debating it—exactly the kind of person we need
Teddy Eisenstein
Growth Manager
Cultivating a culture of experimentation
Key points
- One of POSH's earliest experiments involved removing an Instagram field from the creative event flow. This resulted in a 5% increase in conversion rates, proving that simplification could lead to significant improvement.
- An initial test on Google ad wording demonstrated that even minor tweaks could drive measurable differences, getting the team excited about data-driven experimentation.
- Teddy fostered engagement by organizing a competition where team members, including the CEO, pitched ideas for the landing page copy. This playful approach led to a 2-3% increase in performance and helped spread the experimentation culture across the company.
- POSH shifted from intuition-based decisions to a data-driven growth model.
We're at a great point where engineers are eager to understand the impact of their work. This helps us prioritize tasks and motivate the team. In product meetings, we can now discuss why we're working on specific projects, backed by key metrics and Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), to show how we'll improve the company and achieve our goals over the next three years.
Teddy Eisenstein
Growth Manager
Web to App: Enhancing user engagement across platforms
Key points
- Web users often start their journey on POSH via links, but app users are more engaged.
- App users are twice as likely to make purchases, with a purchase frequency four times higher than web users.
- POSH is focused on converting web users to app users to increase engagement and sales.
POSH app users are 2x more likely to purchase and the frequency they purchase at is 4x. Our next goal is to get new users to realize that there's an app for finding events, so they can become frequent users.
Teddy Eisenstein
Growth Manager
Experimentation success stories
From hypotheses to results
Key points
- Successful experiments have led to significant improvements in conversion rates, such as a 5% increase after removing an unnecessary field.
- Internal competitions for experiment ideas have engaged the whole team and fostered collaboration.
- Even small changes, like removing unnecessary fields, can have a big impact.
Since May last year, we've 3x'd all of our key metrics, which are Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), new attendees and number of organizers hosting events
Teddy Eisenstein
Growth Manager
Optimizely's impact and POSH's next steps
Key points
- Optimizely has significantly reduced the time spent on decision-making by enabling quick and efficient testing, cutting meeting times by 50%.
- The platform’s ease of use allows for widespread adoption across the company, even among non-technical staff.
- POSH is focused on growing their app user base and enhancing social features. The company is exploring ways to turn influencers into event organizers.
- Future growth will be driven by creating new opportunities for organizers and attendees.
Optimizely has been incredible for us. It's cut meeting times by 50% because instead of arguing, we can just say, 'Let's test it.' It’s also boosted our speed significantly. I can build tests without taking up hours of our engineers' time. The return from Optimizely is clear, and our company is realizing the importance of investing in experimentation
Teddy Eisenstein
Growth Manager
The importance of testing
Teddy's advice to those debating whether experimentation is right for them
Key points
- Optimizely has been key to fostering a culture of continuous experimentation and innovation at POSH.
- Teddy emphasizes that whether a company lacks data or is overwhelmed by it, experimentation is essential for validating assumptions and establishing a clear strategic direction.
- Experimentation uncovers hidden insights and highlights gaps in existing data, providing organizations with valuable guidance for informed decision-making.
- Both startups and large enterprises can greatly benefit from continuous testing, as it enables ongoing optimization, more accurate decisions, and fosters innovation across the organization.
Conclusion
POSH Group’s journey into data-driven growth has truly transformed their business. By embracing experimentation and personalization with Optimizely, they’ve evolved from a traditional event platform into a dynamic, innovative leader in the industry. The results speak for themselves—tripling key metrics and significantly boosting engagement among their mobile app users.
Optimizely has been a crucial partner, enabling POSH to test ideas quickly, make informed decisions, and foster a culture of continuous innovation. This partnership has allowed them to stay agile and ahead of the competition.
As POSH looks to the future, they’re gearing up to expand their app community, introduce exciting new social features, and empower influencers to become event organizers. With Optimizely’s support, POSH is not just keeping pace with the market—they’re setting the standard.
