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- [00:01]
Nikita Vachrushev
One thing that we've noticed make a big difference outside of having the most important information first is having the coupon code linked within the links that are in the email. So for example, it's like, hey, welcome to dad mug co get 10% off your first mug. And then it's a coupon code is like mug 10 or something. When you click on the button of like redeem my discount or whatever it is, the link that they click on has the coupon code embedded in the URL, so it streamlines the purchase.
- [00:32]
Cody McGuffey
So welcome back to Built Online, the podcast where we dive into everything online business. Here we explore the minds of of creators who are building online businesses to power their dream lives and ultimately transform economies. I'm your host, Cody McGuffey, and if you're new here, I'm the founder and CEO of Ever Be, a creator commerce platform where we believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to pursue their passions and to live life on their own terms. We're on a mission to make creator commerce accessible to everyone throughout the world, no matter where they are, and to make a positive impact in our families and our communities. And we believe that everyone that truly commits to a vision and pursues it with an undeniable force of will, that they will ultimately succeed. I'm really excited about today's show. Thank you for sharing your time with us. Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to ask a quick favor for anyone that's listened to the show before. If you haven't already, please let us know if these episodes and these conversations are are helpful or not. Share your feedback in the comments and review it if you if you would. It truly helps the podcast. It helps our team, helps me personally understand what types of guests that we should have on the podcast that really just helps us improve the show, make it better. We need your feedback. We would not be able to operate without your feedback. So be sure to follow the podcast, subscribe to the channel wherever you're watching this. So you really never really miss out on that. That one nugget that can really change your business and change your life. Enough of that. Really excited to have you here. Let's jump into today's show.
- [02:02]
Nikita, what's up man? How are you?
- [02:04]
Nikita Vachrushev
What's going on? Cody, Excited to be here. Excited to drop some knowledge on all things email and sms.
- [02:09]
Cody McGuffey
It's my favorite thing. It's actually literally one of my favorite things because it's so underrated, I would say.
- [02:15]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah, the, the most recent, like I guess analogy, I'VE been using on email and SMS has been like emails, like the ugly stepchild in the basement that you don't really want to talk to. And it's like they're bothering you like, hey, please use me. I can make you more money. And it takes a while for some brand owners to pick up on it. But I think enough, like enough brand owners at this point kind of get the power of email and when they start using the tools like a power user, whether it's like Klaviyo, the tool that you built, or Sunlane, whatever you're using, you can get a lot of juice worth of squeeze from email and sms, dude.
- [02:51]
Cody McGuffey
It's like easy wins too. Yeah, it's definitely not sexy. I would say email marketing is not sexy. I remember when I first started my E commerce journey years and years ago, I was literally typing in, is email marketing dead? Because I thought at the time, even back then maybe email marketing was dead because that was like the common thing that everybody would say that didn't want you to use email or either pushing out the tool they would see, like email marketing is dead. And it's like all this stuff. I don't know if you remember that.
- [03:19]
Nikita Vachrushev
I mean, I still see it. So like, I don't. Yeah, the fun part about marketing channels and the ones that are the least sexiest are the ones that drive the most consistent results. Like email isn't sexy, SEO isn't sexy, PR isn't sexy. But like it's one of those like channels that just consistently drive whether it's top of funnel awareness through pr consistent like dedicated search and like search intent through SEO and then obviously following up with everyone and nurturing your customer base or your subscriber base through email. I think it's just, it's one of those tools that like, if you get it right, like it's just like you're set for life pretty much with your business.
- [04:01]
Cody McGuffey
Crazy. I have one question I wanted to lead us off with. This is for anybody wondering, kind of on the fence if email marketing is worth it or should they spend their time, invest their time master this is email Marketing dead in 2024. Going into 2025.
- [04:17]
Nikita Vachrushev
The Klaviyo dashboards that I check on a daily basis say otherwise. So no, our clients on average are getting anywhere between like 25 to 35% of their revenue from email on a monthly basis, even in the low seasons as well. So it's one of those things that just keeps chugging along. And right now we're actually recording this About a few days before Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So that is about to go up for some of the brands.
- [04:41]
Cody McGuffey
So just put that in context. 25, 20 to 25% of revenue. So such as for example, if a brand does put this in whole numbers, if a brand is a million dollars in revenue and annual sales. Yeah. 200,000, 250,000 of those revenue should come from just email marketing, correct?
- [04:59]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah, email campaigns and email automations.
- [05:02]
Cody McGuffey
Beautiful. And when you say campaigns and automations, break that down for us. What high level, what does those look like?
- [05:07]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah, on a high level. The way you should think about campaigns and automations is Campaigns are just one off sends. Think of it like publishing like a YouTube video. Like you just put it out there and it's out there. Granted it's a bit different from a YouTube video because there's organic search traffic there. But with email it's just you're doing one time sense. So like if you're doing a product launch or if you're doing a sale or a company wide update, that's when you send out campaigns. Automations on the other hand, they're, they, they're, they used to be sort of campaigns that you would send out on a manual basis, but now they're just automated. So you set up a trigger so it could be someone subscribed to your list. And on an automated basis the email platform that you're using will automatically send out emails on a delay or on a certain time frequency to those people. So that way you don't manually have to keep sending out, you know, an email to all the new subscribers that you get every week or every day. So welcome automation is the one that completely like introduces your brand and sort of nurtures any new subscribers, turning those window shoppers into customers. And then you have abandoned cart which basically follows up with people that have abandoned their cart, were in the middle of purchasing, didn't buy and just following up with those people that is like obviously the higher performing one because people have already had intent to buy but they just maybe something happened and they dropped off post purchase is another one. It's more so getting people bought into the brand more so like obviously they bought in because they bought something, but helping them educate about the product, any product use cases, any more relevant information about the product, the brand, brand, etc. And then asking for a review. Cross sell is just cross selling any other product. So if you're selling toothpaste, selling toothbrushes is a great cross sell email. Win back is more so for re engagement so basically if someone has fallen off the face of the earth and hasn't opened up any of your emails or hasn't bought in a certain period of time, you can then follow up with those people through a win back flow or a winbeck automation.
- [07:09]
Cody McGuffey
I love that. It's so funny because when I was starting my journey I didn't know any of this stuff. Right. No one does. And you start to realize, wow, there's so many touch points in a customer journey. And it all starts with getting that email first time, then pushing them to like you said, a welcome series, a welcome sequence, whatever you want to call it. And I actually didn't know the power of the welcome sequence until a couple years into my journey. When you could actually create an email, like a person that joins your email, nurture them, introduce yourself, introduce your brand, nurture them a little bit, and then you could actually create a sale like email number four or five. Your clients do as well is they actually create that. They might not get a sale at first, but they actually create a sale on certain part in the welcome series.
- [07:56]
Nikita Vachrushev
So we actually do both. The way that we structure our welcome series is typically most of the subscribers come from some sort of incentive through a pop up. So the pop up that's on the website that you see, and maybe it's a little bothersome, but you'd be surprised at how many people opt into those.
- [08:12]
Cody McGuffey
How many percent for example?
- [08:14]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah, if you get a really, really good pop up, 5 to 10%, meaning 5 to 10 out of a hundred people that visit your website will opt into your email list, which is pretty good in the Internet marketing side of things.
- [08:26]
Cody McGuffey
Just pause right there for a second. Like for example, we've all been on this. For anybody listening to this, like what are we talking about? You go to a website, um, it's a store, it's a brand and all of a sudden you get pop ups like don't leave yet or not even don't leave yet. Just like hey, for 10 off or 30 off, put your email in here you're saying that 5 to 10% for a good pop up of those, 5 to 10% of those people will actually put their email in.
- [08:49]
Nikita Vachrushev
Correct?
- [08:50]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah.
- [08:51]
Nikita Vachrushev
And then about like if you also are capturing SMS numbers, about 70% will put in the their SMS number. So let's break it down again. So a hundred people Visit your website, 10 of those people will put in their email and then seven of those people will put in their SMS number. So if you have a really good system going on for pop ups and subscriber acquisition that's just going to keep growing your list. As you know, as you advertise, as you do other things on the marketing side of things, you're kind of building up your list very well and then you're nurturing them on a consistent basis through that welcome flow. So kind of going back to what we were talking about when you set up that welcome flow, we first off like we try to set up anywhere between 10 to 12 emails because we want the customer to be nurtured throughout their journey. But for starters we set up about six emails and then we build out the rest of it. The first email is sort of promising or delivering on what we promised in the pop up. So if it's an incentive, whether it's free shipping, 10% off a free gift, whatever it is, that first email, the first thing they see is, you know, welcome to X brand. Here's your coupon code for you know what, you applied for it because we don't want to be, you know, bait and switching people for like hey, sign up for a discount code. There's no discount code. So we send that out and then the following two to three, maybe four emails are all nurture based and then we follow up with a sale on the fifth or sixth email similar to what you mentioned. And that only goes out to people that you know have gone through the past four to five emails and just haven't purchased. So meaning if they have purchased, they're not getting that sale email because they've already bought something, they've already used the incentive. So we're kind of capturing even more customers in that last, I guess those last one to two sale emails because not only have they've read about the, the journey about your brand, more information about the brand, some of the testimonials from using your products, they're now more warmed up and feel like they have a connection because they have gotten those touch points over the last, let's say three weeks. They're more likely to buy from those two one to two sale emails towards the end.
- [11:02]
Cody McGuffey
Makes total sense. With your first couple emails. I'm curious about those because a lot of people right now are listening to this and like I know I need to do this but I don't know how. Everything Nikita said is kind of confusing to me. And so even though it's, it's fairly straightforward but maybe give us like some examples. So Sally goes through, Sally goes onto my website, it's called best dad.com drinking a dad mug and she'll see a pop up, pop up and it says like put your email address in for a 30 discount code. She puts it in Sally.com and then she immediately gets an email. Yep. And it says like, as promised, here's your discount code. And she's like, cool, you deliver in promised. Step one complete. Does she also get, does she get an email again now says, hey Sal, I just wanted to welcome you to BestAdCo.com. here's a little bit about our brand. Does she get that email as well?
- [12:02]
Nikita Vachrushev
So we combine those two emails into one, into the first email. So that first email, the header is all about welcome and then the coupon code because that's the first thing people want to see if you hide the coupon code. And this is just like a little pro tip, golden nugget, whatever you want to call it, whatever you're promising to the subscriber, make sure it's the first thing they see. And it's above the fold. We've had a lot of times where we brought on clients and they're like, our welcome flow isn't working. It's like, well, no dip. The discount code is buried all the way at the bottom. And you know, 70% of people drop off after the fold. So have that most important information above the fold. And then the second section is when we introduce the brand. The brand, like trying, I'm blanking on the world word, but like brand core values, how we started. And we try to keep it a little bit vague because we go a little bit more in depth into every single one of those things in the subsequent emails after that.
- [12:59]
Cody McGuffey
Okay, I see. That's beautiful. What if Sally doesn't click? What if she comes to puts her email in somehow some other way, not through that pop up. Does she still get access to that promo code and is it still the same welcome series of email?
- [13:13]
Nikita Vachrushev
So long as you put in that, that email and never did any other action like purchase abandoned cart, abandoned browse or abandoned checkout, then, then she will get those emails. If she, if we got that email from an abandoned checkout, then she's going to go through the abandoned checkout flow and that's where that revenue is distributed to or attributed to.
- [13:35]
Cody McGuffey
What if, what if I had like an Etsy shop as well or sold somewhere and it says like, hey, it's in my announcement bar like on Etsy and it's like join my email list for exclusive updates or something and she puts her email through that way so she would still get that same flow. You're pushing everyone to the exact same first email, is that correct?
- [13:55]
Nikita Vachrushev
Exactly. All non purchasers through that same flow.
- [13:58]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah. Beautiful. Okay, so it simplifies things where it's like you have a whole bunch of like nets and they all push the same funnel, which is the first email is coupon. Deliver on what? Deliver on what you promise and then it's introducing the brand. And then email number two, you go a little deeper and email number three, you go a little deeper. High level. What are those subject lines of email number two and email number three?
- [14:22]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah. So email number two could go over the history of the brand. So you know, if you started in like 2015, 2016, help, you know, even 2020 you can go through the different years of iterations that you've done to your business. So it could be like first launch or like first prototype and then going into production and then going into how you guys are able to scale, maybe a rebrand. So kind of telling the brand story so that people can see like, oh, these guys are legit. They didn't just pop up last night and trying to sell me on like some drop ship mug or something like that. So like there's a lot of thought that goes into that. And then email number three is where we kind of have like the founder write up a message and that's where the founder can say whatever they want to say to potential customers. And it's like a note from the founder, we have a headshot, it's very professionally done. And then at the bottom we have like call to action. So like shop, of course. But most of the email is just a note from the founder welcoming in new people onto the email list, what their thought process is for the brand, the future of the brand and what they hope to achieve with the brand.
- [15:23]
Cody McGuffey
Beautiful. And for email number two, is there a call to action at that bottom one as well? What is that call to action?
- [15:29]
Nikita Vachrushev
The call to action doesn't have to be anything hard selling. It could be like, hey, check out these bestsellers. You don't have to really overthink it.
- [15:37]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, gotcha. So there's a call to action, but it's not like you're hard selling, you just push them back to your shop. Always have a chance to always push back to your shop. You're saying in this case.
- [15:46]
Nikita Vachrushev
Exactly. Yeah. So like have 80% of that email be the value that is within that email and then the last 20%, like towards the footer is when you can do like three recommended products or three bestseller products or best selling Collection, whatever is like more valuable for your brand or what's more relevant to your brand.
- [16:04]
Cody McGuffey
I like that framework though. It's like 80% value, like give value, give, give, give to your people. And then the 20% could be selling something and they're expecting you to sell something. So it's not like you're you know, doing something weird. Okay, cool. And email number three, same kind of same type of thing found from the founder. Message. Now do you recommend with these call to actions. I know you mentioned email number two, like push to a best selling collection or something like this. Do you ever recommend specifically pushing to a specific product that's like your best selling product? Like you know that that person wants that thing or not? Yeah, welcome series.
- [16:39]
Nikita Vachrushev
It's usually the first product that you can see. Like obviously like in the US or like western countries we read from left to right so that would be like the first product on the left. Or maybe it's the product that's in the middle. Whatever catches the eye. For the most part, the only times we've only included one product in like the product recommendations is when we're working with a one product store or like where they have like one Halo product that's like 2, 3, $400 and then their accessories are like 20 or 30 bucks. We're not going to be pushing to the accessories. We obviously want them to get the main thing.
- [17:10]
Cody McGuffey
Got it. Okay, so it sounds like it works though, like pushing to collection works. Okay, cool. And then email number four.
- [17:17]
Nikita Vachrushev
Email number four. That's when we go through our unique process. So and again, 2, 3 and 4, these could be switched up at any point. So sometimes if it's relevant for like the production process of let's say you're making organic honey, like obviously that should be email number two instead of vice versa. So like everything that I'm saying is in fluid. Just go based off what's best for your brand. But yeah, going back to email number four, it's all about the production process or anything that makes you guys unique. So for example, if you guys have been on like Shark Tank or if there's a unique way that you make your honey or a unique way that you make your deodorant that is like paraben free or aluminum free and that sort of thing, like that's where you can highlight that you can also highlight in email for us versus them. So like what makes you guys stand out from the competition? So it's like, you know, if you're making hoodies, it's like yeah, we have a specific way to manufacture the hoodies and have specific cut lines that accentuate your biceps or accentuate your chest. Like those are like different like angles that you can take that email to where you kind of breaking down all the objections that someone might have. Where it's like where do you source your honey or how do you make your hoodies? That sort of thing. And you're breaking it down without the person even noticing.
- [18:34]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, I get that completely. Okay. Same TTA always push back to the shop.
- [18:38]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah, you could push back to different products or anything that's relevant within there. So obviously if you're selling honey, you're going to push the honey.
- [18:46]
Cody McGuffey
And it sounds like email number six and seven and all the way through nine, whatever it is, those are all based on like how, how deep do you go? Do you continue to just kind of keep going with this type of framework of educate, build trust, push back to your shop or when do you stop?
- [19:03]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah, exactly. So out of like the 10 email sequence that we have, I think so welcome number one follow up number or welcome one sales one two. I think out of the ten emails we have about seven that are value based. So when it comes down to it, like we try to go as deep as we can about whatever we're talking about and that could be even as deep as like going through research studies. So we have a client that's in like the medical health space and they've done like research studies. So covering the findings of the research study and how this specific product has helped like this like testing group of people with their sleep or with their mood or their stress, whatever that might be. So we try to outline all of every, pretty much all the ammo that you have to support that. Like hey, we're a great product, we're a great business. The thing that we're selling works and here's the people that are saying that it works as much as you have of that, try to put all of that into the welcome flow.
- [20:05]
Cody McGuffey
Okay, and what is your last, you said stepping out of 10. So last three times like are more time sensitive. Are you hard selling more? In those last three emails we have.
- [20:15]
Nikita Vachrushev
Like we're not hard selling, selling but like we do have like timers set up for urgency within like the email of like hey, your special Tuesday discount is going away on in like the next 24 hours and there's like a 24 hour timer at the top of the email. Okay. So we do have certain tactics that we use when we design the emails to increase Urgency and scarcity. But we're not like, hard selling of, like, we're about to sell out. Like, this is the last chance you'll ever get to buy our product, you know?
- [20:44]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah. You always want to, like, maintain that, like, level of trust and.
- [20:47]
Nikita Vachrushev
Exactly.
- [20:48]
Cody McGuffey
You're not trying to trick anybody. I noticed that too. Or I've just learned that over the years. Right. It's like, customers are smart, super smart. We way smarter than we think we are smart shoppers. And we can sense if there's like, some sort of trickery happening and you pay attention to it and it puts a weird taste in our mouth. We don't always have words for it, but there's. There's always a feeling that it leaves you with and, you know, like, you'll just lose that customer forever. Is that in your experience? True.
- [21:13]
Nikita Vachrushev
We're actually experiencing that right now with some of our Black Friday launches. We've had a few clients that wanted to launch in October, like late October. They're like, hey, we're doing our Black Friday things right now. And it's like, not even Halloween yet. So it's like, what are we doing? We. We advised against it, but, you know, at the end of the day, the business owner has the final say, so, okay, cool, we'll run with it. And it's like, sales have been slow maybe on the email side because, you know, we're pushing it. But, like, now sales are starting to pick up because we're getting closer and closer. It's Thanksgiving week right now, and it's like, wow, where. Where were these sales? It's like, well, people like, it's like, yeah, you have a Black Friday sale going on. But, like, they don't know if that's like, the sale. The sale. So you're kind of tricking the customer into thinking that there is a discount, even though there is a discount. But they may not fully trust you because of you launching things so early.
- [22:07]
Cody McGuffey
You know, I get that.
- [22:08]
Nikita Vachrushev
Actually.
- [22:08]
Cody McGuffey
I've gotten some of those emails too. We all can all getting these emails, and I'm getting these emails from brands and I saw this Black Friday. Lots of Black Friday deals go early. Right. For example, two weeks ago, which maybe it arguably is not that early, but let's just say that to me, it felt early. And when I see these things, I'm just like, ah, okay. You say it's a lot. You say it's an early Black Friday. Cool. But like, this is not the end. Like, you for sure are going to offer another Black Friday thing. Towards Black Friday. That's how I feel. It might not be true. That's how I feel as a customer. And so therefore I just lose a little bit of trust. Just a little tiny bit.
- [22:40]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah. So we do a, we do things a bit differently. We actually do the inverse. The early Black Friday has the biggest discount and then the Black Friday actual like November 29th this year is a step down discount. So for example we'd be running the 30 off during the early access VIP sale and then 25 or maybe 20% on the like the actual Black Friday and then even a further step down on Cyber Monday. So we're trying to get people to pre buy and I think the earliest that we launched our, our VIP sale was last Wednesday. So even then it's within the time frame of Black Friday, maybe like a week before. But either way, like that has, that generates typically pretty much the equivalent amount of sales that we would see on the Black Friday side. And we try to highlight it like this is the biggest discount, like this is where you want to be and build hype through like the pre sale emails before we launch the vip. And then once Black Friday comes out, obviously you know, we let that ride as is.
- [23:47]
Cody McGuffey
Love it. I have a couple questions too, like kind of almost maybe some bang through questions metrics. So we talked about like first seven, seven emails. What are open rate percentages that people should be targeting? What's like within benchmarks, all that stuff. Let's just call open rates for now.
- [24:02]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah. So with the welcome flow specifically or basically any intent flow that you have set up, whether it's a welcome, abandoned cart event, browse, post purchase, cross sell, that first email that they get is usually anywhere between 60 to 80% open rate. Because if someone opted in for a coupon code and they get an email from you, they're expecting a coupon code, they're going to open up that email. So in those cases, one thing I would highly advise against is including the coupon code in the subject line. Don't ever do that because then you're not going to get an open. They're just going to see the coupon code. All right, cool. Copy paste. And then they can shop.
- [24:42]
Cody McGuffey
What's the subject people should use just by default? Like what's an easy one?
- [24:46]
Nikita Vachrushev
What was that?
- [24:46]
Cody McGuffey
What's the subject line somebody should use by default?
- [24:49]
Nikita Vachrushev
Like it's like welcome to the family or welcome to, you know, dad mug co, whatever. It's just, it could be something simple like it's, you don't have to Overthink it there. One thing you could do is just add personalization. It's like, you know, hey Cody, welcome to dad mug co or whatever it is if you get their first name or if you have that data collected. So 70 to 80% on the welcome flow on the first email and then usually throughout the subsequent emails that drops off and it averages out at about 50%. So about again, half the emails that that or half the people that you send the email out to will open up that email and we'll skim through it at least pretty good. Yeah, yeah, well, that's just welcome flow because we're providing value. They may be brand new, so they're just seeing all these emails. It's kind of like, you know, if you're on the Instagram reels feed and you see cars and then for the next 10 reels you see cars because Instagram noticed you were engaging with it. So similar here, similar psychology here. At least click through is anywhere between like 5 to 7% and then place order rate is anywhere between like 5 to 10% depending on the specific product that you're ordering.
- [26:00]
Cody McGuffey
Last two, I'm sorry, click through rate was what? Percent?
- [26:02]
Nikita Vachrushev
5 to 7%.
- [26:04]
Cody McGuffey
That's pretty good too, it seems like. I mean again, welcome series, what is for anyone that doesn't know what CTR is, like what is click through rates when it comes to email? Like what defines that?
- [26:15]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah, so the click through rate is defined by how many people opened versus how many people click the email. So. Well, there's actually two different ways to define it. It's either by open and click or sent and click.
- [26:28]
Cody McGuffey
So and how do you look at it? Open?
- [26:31]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah, we like to look at open to click because then they wouldn't be able to click if they didn't open.
- [26:36]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, I feel the same. So open to click is anywhere from 5 to 7%.
- [26:41]
Nikita Vachrushev
Exactly. Yeah. So 100 people opened. Five to seven of those people would be clicking. Sometimes it's even higher than that.
- [26:49]
Cody McGuffey
So and if outside of the welcome series, if you take away the welcome series and just like let's call it email marketing venture benchmarks, is it typically around 2% is kind of like the industry standard for.
- [27:02]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah, 2% is the industry standard. So if you're like below 1.5 or like even below percent, I would highly, highly recommend improving the emails. And like again, this is another like free sauce, golden nugget, whatever you want to call it, have your call to actions, be above the fold and have all the most important information. Again, for the email be above the fold. There's been time and time again where we've taken over an email account. We look through their emails and the first thing that loads up when you open an email is just a big banner and just a blank image. Not like a blank white, but like it's like a lifestyle shot of like this jacket or something like that. And then the call to action is like below a paragraph, below a headline. You have to scroll like halfway through the email to get to the first call to action. So include the headline, the coupon code, the timer, whatever, like banners important information above the fold and make sure that that button with the call to action is within sight for whenever you open up your email.
- [28:03]
Cody McGuffey
Someone's wondering right now what is above the fold mean? What does that mean?
- [28:07]
Nikita Vachrushev
So the above the fold is the section that first loads up when you open up an email. So that like little box of whatever it might be. The, the reason it's called above the fold is the fold is when you start to scroll, whether it's on your phone or your desktop, whatever you're using. If you start to scroll, that's already below the fold. So the first thing that you see is above the fold. And make sure to have all the important information there.
- [28:34]
Cody McGuffey
If anyone's wondering like where this, why about this whole, why is it called this? It's go back to the newspaper. Think about like a newspaper days where the newspaper was folded up. You forgive me or correct me if I'm wrong, but this is how I always view above the fold. Newspapers are folded up and like the most important real estate is before you unfold the newspaper that's above fold. Right. So you didn't have to unfold newspaper to actually read it. So above the fold is again before you scroll down. Yeah.
- [29:01]
Nikita Vachrushev
So have all the most important information there. I lost. So that, that's one thing you need to do in order to get higher click through rates. Because honestly people would want to click on your email, they just don't know where or maybe something is irrelevant when they open up the email and that caused them to back out and never click to begin with. So if your click through rates are low, just try and do that.
- [29:25]
Cody McGuffey
Seems kind of silly, right? For someone that's new to email marketing, it's like why does that stuff little, why those little things matter? Because it's the volume of people, like every single percentage matters. It's actually dollars that make a difference and their conversions make a difference. So we're talking in hundreds and then thousands and Then tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of emails here. Those little percentages make a big difference.
- [29:47]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah, if you want to boost up conversions even further. If you are including coupon code within any of your emails, whether it's abandoned, cart, post purchase, cross sell, welcome, etc. One thing that we've noticed make a big, big difference outside of having the most important information first is having the coupon code linked within the links that are in the email. So for example, it's like hey, welcome to dad mug co get 10% off your first mug and then it's a coupon code is like mug 10 or something. When you click on the button of like redeem my discount or whatever it is, the link that they click on has the coupon code embedded in the URL. So it streamlines the purchase. So when someone goes to the cart or starts checking out, they don't have to be like, oh, there's no coupon code here. I have to go back to my email and I have to go back here and copying and pasting. In this case it's automatically applied at checkout and all you have to do is just fill in the information, order the mug. Otherwise people can drop off in the middle of them switching tabs. Maybe something came up, maybe their wife called or their kid's sick or anything. You know, it's life, anything happens. So you could get easily distracted, not finish that purchase and lose that sale.
- [30:59]
Cody McGuffey
You said 5%. What was the order rate percentage you had?
- [31:04]
Nikita Vachrushev
5 to 10%.
- [31:05]
Cody McGuffey
5 to 10%. And is that on every email is just like average across all those welcome series email.
- [31:09]
Nikita Vachrushev
It's usually the first email and then after that pretty much the subsequent automation emails are anywhere between like 2 to 5% depending on if there's incentive or not.
- [31:20]
Cody McGuffey
So can we do whole numbers real quick? So let's call a thousand. A thousand people have signed up for your list and a thousand people got that, received that email. Maybe they didn't open it. Let's just call it. Yeah, that means 80% of those thousand people have opened it. That means that's 800 people. Check my math here. 800 people have not opened this thing. And then let's call it 10% of those people actually purchased.
- [31:44]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah. So you'd have 80 purchases.
- [31:46]
Cody McGuffey
80 purchases and average order value for your guys customers. What are they, like 30 bucks?
- [31:52]
Nikita Vachrushev
It depends. Honestly, like we have brands that are doing like $5,000 cold plunge tubs all the way down to like $30 candles. So but even then like AOV being at 50 bucks. 50 times 80, that's 4,000, I think. I think that my math's correct.
- [32:11]
Cody McGuffey
It sounds right. Yeah. Let's go with that. Yeah, it's right off. Just a thousand people, right? Just a thousand people, yeah. Cool. Well, that's beautiful. What was my. I had some other questions that I had for email marketing. Oh, another one was images inside of emails or not.
- [32:31]
Nikita Vachrushev
We are using a lot of images and emails. Yeah. There are a few things that you should do before uploading the image. So number one, compress the image because the heavier your image is, the longer it'll take to load similar to your website. You know, if you have very, very heavy images on your website, it'll take long to load. People bounce from your website. Same with email. So if you have very heavy images, they will take a long time to load in a person's email. Especially if you're using like your phone, like, people back out because it's like a blank email. So you don't want that to happen. Try to keep all of your images under a hundred kilobytes or less. That's just the standard protocol that we use internally in order to have, like the fastest way for an email to load and use alt text, similar to web pages. Use alt text to describe your image. Because if someone has bad reception or if they have bad Internet access and that image doesn't load, at least there's a placeholder for what that image is supposed to be if that image doesn't load.
- [33:30]
Cody McGuffey
Oh, interesting. If you were to say a brand is doing no email marketing right now, like, they're doing nothing, but they are creating sales, what's the opportunity? If you could assign some sort of value to that, like a dollar revenue amount of value of the missing opportunity that they're. They have that they're having, what would you say that would be?
- [33:49]
Nikita Vachrushev
Dude, this is my. These are like my favorite clients. Honestly, like, whenever we talk to someone, they're like, we're doing nothing. And it's like, okay, well, there's a lot that we can do and there's a lot of money being left on the table. So at least 10% of whatever you're making right now per month could be generated through email. Obviously it depends on a client by client basis, but at least 10%. So if you're making 50k a month, at least 5 more $5,000 worth of orders could be added on to your top line.
- [34:17]
Cody McGuffey
I love that. So if someone. A lot of our customers are making around, I mean, it goes all the way up to 100,000amonth for sure, probably and above, but then all the way down to $0 a month. But then let's call it like most, most folks listening to this right now are probably making, they're, they're doing around 10 to $20,000 in revenue per month. So they're kind of like in that beginning journey, how important is email marketing for that person?
- [34:41]
Nikita Vachrushev
I mean, hugely. Like you need all the money you can get in that startup stage. So whether it's even like going full time into your business and having like one, an extra one to 2,000 coming in just to pay for, you know, yourself and living. So like that could make a big difference. So it's very, very important in those beginning stages. Now I don't want everyone that's listening to like, be an analysis paralysis of like, I got to make 30 different emails this week or else my business is toast. Like, no, don't do that. Take it one step at a time. It doesn't have to be a complicated system. Like we create complicated systems because we're working with very high leverage brands with multiple touch points and you know, number of statistics, Excel sheets, et cetera. So for us we have to do that because that's what we're paid to do. In your case, if you're just starting out, I would highly recommend just getting the basics done. Even if it's one email per automation. That's one more touch point that you don't have to worry about. And that's one more touch point that you could generate revenue from, whether it's one welcome email, one abandoned checkout email, one post purchase email, one win back email, whatever that is. Just start slow and then start building up on that whenever you feel ready to. Because again, being in that startup stage, you're wearing 30 different hats. You're producing, managing, creating content, running ads, trying to do email now, that sort of thing. So just take it easy and try and do it one at a time.
- [36:03]
Cody McGuffey
Love that. Such good advice and so practical. So I appreciate that for sure. So if anybody's listening to this right now, if you're only selling on Etsy, you're only selling on Amazon. That's not a bad thing. Continue to do that. But consider when you go to build your websites, your own standalone store, consider having like an email marketing strategy that is a part of this. Now you can use various tools for this. As you know, if you're listening to this, you know, at Everbee, we have an email marketing platform for this called Ever Be Email Ready to sign up. I would highly recommend doing that. But there's other ones like mailchimp and Klaviyo and like all these other ones that if you're already using. Great. Cool. And the idea is that go get started. It's kind of like what Nikita was saying. Nikita, I think this is a good transition point to the rapid fire questions, if you're up for it. Cool. What's your favorite business book?
- [36:51]
Nikita Vachrushev
48 Laws of Power.
- [36:53]
Cody McGuffey
What's the author of that one again? Robert Green, Evergreen. I wanted to ask you why, but let's just go rapid fire. What's the one thing that you wish that you knew before starting your business?
- [37:03]
Nikita Vachrushev
Sales is the only thing that's important.
- [37:06]
Cody McGuffey
Sales cares. All.
- [37:08]
Nikita Vachrushev
Exactly.
- [37:09]
Cody McGuffey
What's the worst business advice that you've ever received?
- [37:12]
Nikita Vachrushev
I don't know. There's just. So I think go back to school. My dad's like, hey, go back to school so you can make connections. And it's like, well, I can just go to a conference and make more connections that way.
- [37:22]
Cody McGuffey
How many hours do you think that you work in your business per week?
- [37:26]
Nikita Vachrushev
Probably like 50 to 60.
- [37:30]
Cody McGuffey
If your family and your friends and your customers all had to get together without you so you're not in the room and they had to write an honest article about Makita and characterizing your traits, your. Your good things, your bad things, what do you think they would say?
- [37:47]
Nikita Vachrushev
I think caring, but arrogant. So, like, I like to flaunt my success. But not in your face. Like, it's like, hey, if I got a win, I'm gonna flaunt the win because I worked hard to get that win. But at the same time, I take care of my relationships. I take care of my parents, take care of my siblings, take care of my. My girlfriend. And I make sure that I, like, if they ever need anything, I'm there for them. Same thing with my clients. Like, if they ever need anything, they have direct line to me at any point in time to take care of whatever needs to be taken care of. But at the same time, if I'm winning, I'm going to tell people.
- [38:21]
Cody McGuffey
Sure.
- [38:22]
Nikita Vachrushev
What?
- [38:24]
Cody McGuffey
This is not a question on here, but I like to ask this to fellow business owners. Do you think that everyone should be an entrepreneur? No. Tell me why.
- [38:34]
Nikita Vachrushev
It is not for the faint of heart. It is a lot of work. It is, you know, know, turning. Like, I wish sometimes I like not sometimes, but like, I guess in the early days, I'm like, man, it would be nice to just have like a set Time off. But, you know, being a business owner, there's never a time off. You're always responsible for everything and you have to constantly evolve. And I think that's just like two of those things which is constantly evolving and always, I guess, like being responsible is just what most people don't want to do. Like, if anything, majority of the population wants to be abstain from responsibility and they want to abdicate that responsibility to someone else. So that's one thing they can't do. And most people, after college, they don't really evolve that, you know, settle down, have kids, nuclear family, and you just ride the rest of your life out, which I don't think most people are built for. And to be honest with you, I wasn't built for that. I just had to become this person, person through years of failure and years of just sticking it out.
- [39:38]
Cody McGuffey
Why do you think you did it?
- [39:39]
Nikita Vachrushev
I had nothing else to do because I'm like, I want to get this done. Like, I've always wanted to be a business owner since I was young. And it's like, okay, I guess this is what it takes to be the best. And pretty much every time I hit a certain peak or a certain threshold, it's, you know, you kind of see over the horizon of like the next stage or the next peak and it's like, well, shit, okay, I have to rebuild my entire life now or rebuild the systems that we're doing in order to get to that point. Otherwise I'll just be stuck at this plateau.
- [40:07]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah. Do you think that everyone could do it if they made the decision to do it?
- [40:12]
Nikita Vachrushev
No, no, I don't think so. If you look at the general population, at least right now, I think a lot of people are lacking consistency and discipline. And I'm not the one to be on a high horse or, you know, die in this hill where I have problems with consistency, I have problems with discipline, but I feel like I'm more consistent and disciplined in the things that I'm really good at or the things that need to be consistent and disciplined at more than the average or like the entire world per se.
- [40:43]
Cody McGuffey
I think that, yeah, it's interesting. I agree. I wrestle with this question. That's why I like to get perspectives on it. Because in the sense on one side of things, I'm like, I completely agree with you. I'm like, this is, why would I wish any of this pain on someone else? Like, I, I, I wouldn't, right? Because sometimes just like the pain of like, uncertainty, the sleepless nights, the, the Worry about your employees, the worry about them getting paid on time. Like worry about, then you worry about them quitting and then you having a gap in your team or you worry about your customers and the customer. Like there's so many things that you're thinking about all the time.
- [41:13]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah.
- [41:14]
Cody McGuffey
Then parts of me, I'm like, no way someone should do this. Not really. And then there's another part of me of like, well, I've grown so much purely because I chose the path of business owner. Yeah. Business owning entrepreneurship that I would almost like. I think everyone should experience this level of growth, this level of investing in yourself, this, this level of discomfort in order to be their maximum potential self. Also because it also makes you, I think, a better husband, a better wife, a better probable parent. I think I'm a better parent because I'm a business owner. And so then I'm like, okay, maybe not everyone is built for it, but everyone should at least try it and touch it. And even if they maintain their full time job, they should still taste this thing of entrepreneurship also. It's just going to make them a better human being. And so I wrestle back and forth with this. That's why I like to get your opinion. Any thoughts there?
- [42:09]
Nikita Vachrushev
I think it's a lot about self reflection because you have to do that constantly as a business owner. Whether it's like did I say that email correctly or did I am I leading the company in the right direction? You know, that sort of thing. And I think a better question instead of asking do you think everyone could be an entrepreneur? Is do you think everyone would feel comfortable supporting, let's say a small business of 10 employees? Do you think everyone would feel comfortable being the sole person responsible for feeding 10 families? Because that actually puts it into realistic perspective of like you have to pay these 10 people every week or every other week, whatever your payroll schedule is. And you are basically responsible for feeding them, keeping them housed, paying for their car loan, paying for their mortgage, whatever it is.
- [43:00]
Cody McGuffey
That's true. I would say that probably the majority of people would probably answer like if the answer if the question was would you be comfortable doing this? I think everyone, if they've never done it before, it probably is going to be default. Answer would be no, I'm not comfortable with that yet. I guess I'm get comfortable with that if I'm going to pursue this, this thing. Because I certainly wasn't comfortable probably with that at first, but I was excited about having that problem.
- [43:26]
Nikita Vachrushev
I would say, yeah, but that's because you got A little taste of it.
- [43:30]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah. That's why I'm like, I, I right now. If you were to ask me where am I leaning towards my own question, I would say everyone should be an entrepreneur now with the asterisks. Define entrepreneur now and it's like, okay, well it's full time entrepreneur the definition or is it like a side hustle? That's entrepreneurship too. And I think that everyone should taste it to see how they grow, how they feel with it. Because if you didn't taste it at the beginning, you would never know. It's possible. If I didn't really start my first drop shipping business, the beginning, I would be where I'm at today. If I didn't just taste that thing and I had a full time job, I was like hustling in my full time career. But I tasted that and it kind of like led me down this path of entrepreneurship. Which is cool.
- [44:15]
Nikita Vachrushev
Exactly. Same boat here where it's like if I didn't get those initial like Amazon and Shopify sales, I don't think I'd be here. Or I mean, I think right now there's probably a bit of a different, I guess aura around entrepreneurship because it's not like sexy and all that. And there's tons of course creators and content creators kind of flexing and flaunting their wealth and all that, which I think is bringing more people in for the wrong reason.
- [44:42]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah.
- [44:43]
Nikita Vachrushev
But at the same time more people know about it. And I think there was like a stat that I heard last week where the average Gen Z person or the average Gen Z person expects to make half a million dollars a year and think that's like a good salary. And it's like, brother, you don't know how much blood, sweat and tears it takes to get to that point.
- [45:07]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, that is always cracked me up when you hear like this 22 year old not hating on any 22 year old listening to this.
- [45:14]
Nikita Vachrushev
It's a, it's okay.
- [45:15]
Cody McGuffey
And it's natural to feel this ambitious way. And it's a good thing actually. It's just, it is laughable sometimes. Thinking about myself, I'm like, I want to make like a million dollars a year and like by the time I'm 25, like possible. Okay, possible. But you have to grow a lot mentally and you're gonna have to grow into a leader that deserves that. Not just because you learn a couple skills that you learn from a course. It's now you should, you should take the course, but just expand the time horizon. I would probably say to anyone listening to this, like, expand your time horizon, play the long game and you will have that plus way more as long as you play the long game. That's my view.
- [45:55]
Nikita Vachrushev
I've been in the ring for eight years now and I'm like the last one to two years have been the ones that have been like not hockey stick but like consistent growth and like figuring it out. So like it takes time to get your shit together. Like it, it's just, it's normal. So I think, yeah, I feel like we're just constantly talking about entrepreneurship now, but I think it just super fun.
- [46:21]
Cody McGuffey
Topic to have because it's so elusive and you can't grab it with one thing. It's not like a metric. You just grab like, okay, if you read 10 books, you're going to be successful. Like no, you'll read 10 books. If you apply some of those learnings and then also do everything else that the best other entrepreneurs are doing, then you'll have a probably, probably good probability of being successful. But still not guaranteed.
- [46:44]
Nikita Vachrushev
Exactly.
- [46:44]
Cody McGuffey
Yeah, I'm part of it. Yeah.
- [46:48]
Nikita Vachrushev
Cool.
- [46:48]
Cody McGuffey
Nikita, thank you so much for coming on man. I appreciate you. Where can people find you? Where can people learn more from you and about you?
- [46:55]
Nikita Vachrushev
Yeah. So best way to, I guess if you want to take, if you like this and if you want to take your learnings to the next level, I have a YouTube channel where I go over pretty much everything in suit, in super in depth campaign ideas, how to structure your automations, how to structure pop ups that bring in that 5 to 10% of people in everything you need. Pretty much everything that we talked about in this podcast you can find separate tutorials on how to do those things. So this is just my name, Nikita Vachrushev. If you want to work with us. I do run an email and SMS agency called Aspect and it's aspektagency.com if you want an audit, just go to the audit section and just type in that you came in from the podcast and we'll provide you a free email audit as well.
- [47:44]
Cody McGuffey
Awesome. And for anyone listening this or watching this, we will link to all of Nikita's links in the show notes or the description below. And thank you bro, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing all this golden nuggets for free and I'm just grateful for that. And yeah, I'm excited to have you on. Maybe again after maybe Q1, Q2 or something like that. We'll talk about how Q4 wins and talk about, you know, the rest of the year stuff as well.
- [48:09]
Nikita Vachrushev
Let's do it. I'm excited.
- [48:10]
Cody McGuffey
Thank you.
- [48:12]
Nikita Vachrushev
Appreciate it.