Max Reva, who built the #1 tool for Reddit marketing intelligence, wanted to create a job board in a specific niche, but first wanted to test its viability and build a solid base of users. He created a simple landing page with a sign-up form and spent $180 on Reddit ads over 2 weeks. This resulted in a subscriber base of 510 users. The emails sent to the list had an open rate between 45-53% and a CTR between 4.8-9.4%. Reva also received valuable feedback on how the product should work through his interactions with these users.

Social shopping is growing but not as quickly in Western markets as it has in China, where Douyin saw $375 billion in sales in 2023. TikTok, in comparison, generated $4 billion in in-app spending last year. Facebook leads in driving social shopping behavior, but Snapchat and Reddit have higher purchase rates among their engaged users. Short-form videos are currently the most influential content type in social commerce, though security and trust issues continue to pose challenges for social shopping adoption.