← The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
569: The Email Expert - How to Get Your Customers Attention
00:48:08
In this episode, Rytis Lauris, co-founder of Omnisend, shares how he bootstrapped a leading email and SMS marketing platform used by over 125,000 eCommerce brands worldwide.
Loading summary
Transcript56 lines
- [00:02]
Nathan Chan
Hey, founder fam. I want to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with Omnisend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e commerce founders. We've been recommending Omnisend to founder students for a while now because it just works. Whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling to seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get real results. Did you know on average, OMNISEND customers make $68 for every $1 they spend, which is an insane, insanely good return on investment. And because you're part of the founder community, you get 50% off your first three months with the code. Founder50. Just head to omnisend.com founder without the e to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show.
- [00:49]
Reedus Loris
So 2 to 3% of your website traffic actually converts. 97, 98% lose this traffic and usually you pay for the traffic. You pay for meta, you pay for Google.
- [00:59]
Nathan Chan
Where should they focus?
- [01:00]
Reedus Loris
First, first always have to convert into subscribers. 2, 3% convert directly. Another 2, 3% that you would convert into your subscribers. You double the amount of your visitors that leave you a second chance to convert them a little bit later.
- [01:15]
Nathan Chan
Today's guest is Reedus Loris, co founder of Omnisend. They go to email and SMS platform for e commerce brands with over 125,000 customers worldwide. For every dollar you spend, how much should your return on investment be?
- [01:28]
Reedus Loris
$40 for $1 spent last year, $68 back for every dollar spent. It's a big impact. Last year we generated more than $2 billion for our customers. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the founder podcast with Nathan Chan.
- [01:57]
Nathan Chan
Ritus. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. You're doing dialing in all the way from Lithuania.
- [02:04]
Reedus Loris
Thanks for inviting. Really great to be here. Really great to talk to you. So I have no doubts it will be an interesting conversation with you as you guys are experts in e commerce and business in general as well. So really looking forward.
- [02:18]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. So thank you for taking the time, man. Look, you've got this incredible platform. I want to talk about your background. So you started in political science and then you moved to SaaS. You know, you started your first business at 14. What pulled you into the world of entrepreneurship and how did those early experiences help you build Omnisend?
- [02:42]
Reedus Loris
You are well informed. Yeah, so formally I kind of, I have graduated political science, but never, never worked in, in that area. And you know, my first business touch was like, you know, probably the first lesson that it learned. So don't say no for the opportunities once they arise. So this is my. The first business was not my idea and I just joined as a smaller co founder. So basically my friend of mine just made me call and said look I have an idea, what do you think about us starting a business? And I said oh that, that sounds really great. You know, I'm going to be a businessman and maybe I will become rich, you know, being young, etc. And it was not like actually the case as usually it takes a bit more time than you, than you expect things, things to happen. But. But yeah, but just that that was, you know, that was kind of opportunistic approach and I didn't know how to okay my, my mom, she has a optic shop and private practice. So I helped being a teenager here with a business side etc. So kind of I felt a little bit and touched a little bit of this. But. But still, you know, joining, joining new business or starting or co founding new business was a lot of lessons to be learned etc. So since then I'm always running some businesses and prior to OmniSend had two startup attempts, failed twice, then getting back to more as I call extender business. Then finally Omnisend was a spin off from digital marketing agency as well. So I used to run digital marketing agency just basically selling hours, creative solutions as well as development hours. And among our customer base were the online stores as well. And this is how we identified that those who sell online, they have a unique capabilities as well as unique opportunities to better retain their customers via email. That was email primarily. And then we added to what you mentioned, we added sms, we added web push notifications, we had other channels as well as like Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, Viber. But we Dubricated because they did not work at that time as well as we expected our customers expected, et cetera. Yeah, so that's kind of like you know, the, the prehistory, short prehistory of Omnisend.
- [05:07]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. So how did you, how do you like identify that there was a demand for the product? You know there's a lot of ESPs out there.
- [05:17]
Reedus Loris
Oh yeah, this is a red ocean. You know, by the theory of blue oceans we should have never launched Omnisend because there was already a crowded market and it still is a crowded market. But what we identified with those who. So basically we made two assumptions. First one that you know those who sell online they. They have a unique Opportunity to better retain customers with a data driven automated communication. Because the entire customer journey is happening online as we as a tool or we are just a tool for marketers. We have way more digital signals that we can track and based on those signals we can run a better marketing campaigns. So all the exploration is happening online, the purchase itself is happening online and the post purchase experience is happening online as well with Reviews, satisfaction surveys, etc. Etc. And of course repeated purchase is happening online as well. So that was the first assumption that, you know, the, the value that could be created for customers is massive. And second assumption was that e commerce will be growing in the upcoming decades. And it kind of proved to be right. And then we focused and Melchi was really dominating the market by far back in those days. But it was like and still is generic email service provider. It's a great competitor, it's a great solution. We learned a lot from that business and I appreciate that business a lot because it's bootstrapped as we are bootstrapped as well. So we kind of follow in many ways the ideology, past ideology, maybe not the current one anymore, but yeah. And we thought, okay, so building this niche product which is in a big enough niche can really help us establish a business and grow business. What apparently was right, like those who sell online, we have specific needs and Omnisend is serving that specific customer group. We're not the best solution for church, for school, for like, you know, weekend clubs or so we are the best solution for those who sell online.
- [07:32]
Nathan Chan
Yep. And it's mainly physical products, right?
- [07:36]
Reedus Loris
It used to be mainly physical products. It's not the case anymore because like the definition of e commerce is changing and it's getting broader. So it used to be mainly physical products, they still are mainly physical products. But if you sell tickets, concert tickets, even if you sell bookings, probably kind of the newest example, like booking service, you are booking an appointment, doctor appointment, a barber appointment. It is E commerce because everything, more or less everything is exactly the same as you are selling physical products, except of you receiving a parcel. You are going to, you know, to take the product, to take the service. In this case, the rest is more or less the same. Discovery is happening online quite often. Often even like the purchase is happening online because you pay in advance for the booking and post purchase experience, like customer satisfaction service, all the things are happening online. So the definition of e commerce is broadening. So we are serving all those different kinds of E commerce, but vast majority of customers of course are selling physical products.
- [08:43]
Nathan Chan
Yep, mainly Running off Shopify per se or Woocommerce or. Or yeah, BigCommerce.
- [08:50]
Reedus Loris
Yeah, yeah there was, yeah, Shopify, WooCommerce 2. Two biggest platforms our customers are on by far. We integrate with other platforms as well like Wix, BigCommerce as you mentioned etc. And other platforms, quite a long list, smaller platforms, local or regional ones as well. But yeah those, those two are the main ones.
- [09:13]
Nathan Chan
Okay, so our community early stage E comm founders either just working on something, just about to launch something or they've recently hit product market fit. So you know, similar to you guys, small SMB also some mid market in there as well. So people watching this, what would you say to them when it comes to email marketing and really capitalizing on this multi channel approach? Right, like how much from what you see from customers, how much is, is one. Like how much email marketing for in terms of a channel? For every dollar you spend, how much should your return on investment be? Because I've seen like you know statistics saying you should be making you know, at least $1 for every subscriber on your list per month. Like what, what's your take there? What do you guys see? What's, what's the size of the opportunity if you're a founder?
- [10:09]
Reedus Loris
So on average it's like last year statistics throughout the year we generated $68 back for every dollar spent. So return on investment is that big. Usually like other statistics that we see in the market is around that you know at least $40 for $1 spent. This is what you have to aim at. So on average among Omnisend customer base we see way higher. Six to eight dollars. Of course it, it depends like you know, while just launching and maybe your subscriber list is very small etc. You should not expect that good of the numbers they will grow if you continue doing so. So for those who are just maybe starting, maybe small etc. So my main advice would be it's never too early to start doing retention marketing, email marketing, SMS marketing including so especially automations you should set up from day one you should collect subscribers and try to many as you can from your website visitors because usually what happens, you know around 2 to 3% of your website traffic actually converts and the rest 97, 98% just lose this traffic. And usually you pay for the traffic. You pay for meta, you pay for Google to acquire this traffic. So my advice would be you always have to convert into subscribers. So basically math is very simple like 2, 3% convert directly. You may add to another 2, 3% that you would convert into your subscribers. And that means that you double amount of your visitors that leave you a second chance to convert them a little bit later. So you know, and you can set up automations that someone like welcome Automation, someone just became my subscriber. Of course those are like either providing some incentives or providing some education to show that our product is the best option for you, that our product is worth buying or service is worth buying, etc. So yeah, so probably kind of for early stage that would be the main advice to grow your subscriber list from day one. Focus on this. And yeah, and while you grow, you should expect 60, 68 bucks return from each dollar we spent. And of course it's by far the most cost efficient channel in comparison to paid ads or other widely used channels.
- [12:44]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, for sure. I agree. Since I've been building businesses online, often people say the money is in the list, right? The money is in the list. The money's in the list.
- [12:55]
Reedus Loris
What is very important here, Nathan. So like what I would like to emphasize, list has to be always relevant. If you have an old list and you maybe collected them two years ago, the list, the values will start decreasing. So you, it doesn't matter the size, mid sized business, maybe established business, 10 years in the market, etc. You have to constantly refresh your list. So basically you have constantly use the tools and tactics to always convince or invite people to subscribe.
- [13:25]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, I agree. And look, not all email lists are created equally. It's. Yeah, it's all about relevance. I agree. So one thing that I find, and we see this a lot in our community, is people are always afraid to email and they build their list but they don't communicate with their customers. You know what I'm talking about, right? Like, like why do you think that is?
- [13:53]
Reedus Loris
Because of that, you know, bad word spam. And people are afraid sometimes that and, and there is another reason, like us marketers, we communicate via email a lot and we subscribe a lot and we have a feeling that sometimes we have our overwhelming feeling that our inbox is just flooded with so many messages of so many promotional newsletters, et cetera. But the average person, fireman, the nurse, who are your customers, who are your buyers, they don't subscribe so much, they don't use email so much. And their inbox is not flooded with emails with newsletters like you know, work related emails as well as promotion emails, et cetera. So the inbox situation is completely different. And you as marketers, you think like through your own perspective. So that's one of the reason, you know, oh I receive so many emails, I don't want to be spam, etc. But on the other hand what is very important that you have to be, don't be spammy. So this is kind of golden rule what we always say to the customers, you know, you should deliver what you promise. If you said that I'm gonna send you like a message once per month or updates once per month and if you're gonna start doing it daily, of course, I mean you will create a bad experience for your customers and then vice versa. I mean if you promise that there's gonna be daily deals and you will start sending them weekly, your subs disappointed so that's the first thing, you have to deliver what you promised. And the second thing, yeah, don't be afraid to, you know, especially for those who did not open, let's say yeah, you send the first campaign, some of your subscribers did not open and that's, that's, that's okay. So repeat the same campaign for those non openers and that's okay because you know you are fighting for the attention span, you know, which is, which is quite, quite short. And then maybe that was the wrong day. On Monday for example, you repeat it on Wednesday for the same audience with the same message and that's perfectly fine. For those who did not open, you add another channel as well. You send email for non openness, you can follow up with sms, you can follow with push notifications. Another good example, another thing, automate. So campaigns are great but automations are even greater. So that means that you will be sending messages that are really relevant because those automations are trigger based. So we identify your customers, your consumers behavior and based on that we trigger some automation. So you know all those things kind of. I hope that will convince someone who is listening that don't be afraid to communicate with your customers.
- [16:50]
Nathan Chan
And you talked about frequency, what's a good frequency? Because is it the more emails you send, the more money you make?
- [17:00]
Reedus Loris
In the short term, yes, basically that's the rule. Why it's in the short term? Basically because you basically kind of start diluting your list. So that's a thing. More often you communicate, the more unsubscribes you will start getting, the more ignorance you will start getting from your list. So but that works basically the more you communicate the better results you see. But you know you will cannibalize your list basically by doing this. So I would not recommend. And again so Kind of to what I said, you keep your promise. If you said it's going to be daily updates, send daily. If you said okay, once per month, do it once per month. So probably this is kind of the rule of thumb. But yeah, if you don't communicate, you don't convert. That's another rule of thumb. So just to find this middle ground. But at least a couple of times per week. I think for any business it's healthy in many cases it's quite healthy to do daily communication as well. Let's say for example, customers of ours who sell travel packages and travel deals, they communicate daily. Those who sell clothes, maybe there is not that much of it and maybe it's a more boutique store. So you have 50 SKUs. Yeah. In stock. So of course there's nothing to communicate daily. So you can do more like campaign things that you know, we have new collection. So when you are very, very intense campaign, let's say for two weeks, you do it daily because you just try to present your new collection, all the different models you have in the collection, good offers, maybe some combination with some offline activities, maybe some videos included, etc. Etc. Etc. So very active campaign in two weeks and then you can make a pause and just, you know, send updates and reminders weekly. So you know, it's. Sometimes you have to increase your frequency to stay relevant and to create interest.
- [19:29]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, look, I agree with you, you know and you know we send a lot of emails at founder and yeah, it's a fine balance. It's definitely a fine balance. I'm curious around text message because I love that you guys, you know, a lot of people, they might use, you know, in the E comm space they might use one email marketing platform and then they're looking at an SMS platform like Attentive or something like that. I love that you guys kind of have that, you know, all in one approach. How often should you be sending text messages? Like it's, it feels even more intrusive to text message someone.
- [20:12]
Reedus Loris
Less than emails. Probably that's, that's rule of thumb and yeah. So why we have this approach that you know, email text messages, push notifications in one platform. So it's really kind of helps you to create an omnichannel experience for customers and basically use the channel which is preferred by our customers to be reached out. And you know, and especially it works the best when you put it on the same flow. Either it's automation or it's just a bulk like campaigns, newsletters. So basically use, you know, you send an email, if it's not being read, you follow up by SMS or even if it's read or kind of like some of our customers, it's not super frequent but we see really great results. You just send the email and then you follow up with sms. That the same audience that look we sent some good offer to your inbox, check your inbox and, and basically okay, okay, if, if I trust in general the brand that I subscribe to and I go to my inbox to check and there is more content there, maybe some, some special deal, maybe some limited time offer, etc. So this is a really great as well advice that I would give for, for the listeners that you know, try this tactic. It really works. So, so and like to your question one, how often shall we send? So yeah, sms, it's kind of, it's like open rates are really good with SMS because just it's impossible to ignore basically this message. So then you have a good deal. So probably kind of two things when you have something special. So it could be seasonal, it could be related to. Let's get back to the same like April. So if you have new collection you can follow up the email campaign by SMS campaign as well. Another piece of advice that I would give. So all the post purchase communication done by SMS is really well accepted by the customers because it does not convert immediately but it doesn't cost you a lot. So basically you know Nathan purchased something from me and I sent text message that okay, we shipped. Did you receive? I mean you have tracking. Yeah. That your delivery company reported that you received. Did you receive? Are you happy? Yes. No Reply with Yes. No. That's it. Yeah. If a customer is not happy, maybe you can connect to your support center to convert unhappy customer into happy customer, et cetera. And all those kind of those post purchase sms, they're well received because they're not promotional. But at the same time this is a great opportunity for very low cost to remind your brand to interact with your customers, to show that you care about your customers. You will not see great conversion rates of those campaigns but again you're going to spend few, few cents additional. But next time then the person will be looking for the product to sell. You will be top of mind.
- [23:20]
Nathan Chan
So talk me through. I guess you would talk a lot about automation and there's some really interesting kind of omnichannel approaches, you know, push notification, sms, email, just kind of mixing them all in one and how effective that is to get cut through. What about AI like more than ever you know, I've got like, not a day goes by now where I've got someone saying they can build me an agent that can, you know, cold outreach to people and put, you know, X amount of, you know, appointments on calendars for our sales team. All these different things. How are you guys looking at AI in terms of copywriting, personalization, segmentation? Yeah, talk, talk us, talk us through that.
- [24:10]
Reedus Loris
Of course, AI is a disruptive technology and then we believe that it's equal to, to probably the steam engine invention, electricity, Internet invention. So it's, it's disrupting our lives and it will disrupt for sure. So what we currently already have in the product, so we have widgets and our kind of strategy, we embedding smaller elements into existing products, not re remaking the entire flow, maybe we'll do sometime in future. But for now we are embedding smaller widgets that to what you mentioned, it helps customers with copywriting. So probably the most used and the most popular thing that we have in Omnisend is subject line generator AI. So you just, you know, define what kind of campaign you want to make and it offers you the list of subject lines and you choose one you can regenerate, et cetera, pre header based on the subject line it generates. You pre header, we have in template the copy copyright generator. Translate, you can translate with AI, you can generate text to just prompt that, okay, this is what I want to say. This is the product I want to promote, to share the link, etc. And it, you know, it offers you the text, the copyright, and of course you are in control and you have a final say what we just recently launched, and I really, really love it because this is kind of probably the most challenging for the marketers that are more on the creative side. So segment builder. So to build a segment, those customers who have purchased, who have not purchased, let's say in the past 30 days, but spend in total more than 1000 bucks in their lifetime. So prior to AI widget that we currently have, you have to put all the conditions yourself and think through. And this, we saw that this is pretty challenging for our customers. So it's still in beta, but it's live for all of our customers. You can go now and you just put in human language and we will build the segment for you. And the segments could be really, really complex. Whatever you want to build.
- [26:31]
Nathan Chan
We will.
- [26:31]
Reedus Loris
Be adding more those. So basically kind of the direction and the idea and the vision AI within OmniSend, we see that AI will have to be the creator for you as well as the strategies. So basically help you with copyright with images as well as come up with recommendations what we would recommend you to do next. At the same time we still see a marketer as the person who will make final decisions. AI is recommending the marketer is making decisions. Either accept recommendations or ask for other recommendations.
- [27:12]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, that's cool. So talk me through because really it's about like businesses building relationships at scale. So you can use a tool like Omnisend to further build relationships with your customers and then use your tool to put out the right offer at the right time. Identify potential potential email subscribers that have a high likelihood to purchase or repurchase or continue to purchase and you can look at data and trends and that AI can automatically kind of find campaigns or, or even automations that are already there that could could help drive more revenue and customers. So segmentation is really, really interesting to me. Should people be segmenting or is it better off to just always broadcast to the whole list?
- [28:08]
Reedus Loris
Segmentation is very powerful. So first thing is automations. So basically an automation is basically at the same time automation is segmentation to the scale of one. Yeah, so this is the segment so that the person who just did something or visited certain pages or showed interest in certain, certain products or maybe purchased one week ago, etc. So this is kind of the like automation is a segment to one like flows automations. You can look whatever you prefer to call it and to call it and so this is kind of what the top advice and from what we see that you know automated traffic is around 2% of all messages that we send email, SMS messages, push notification. So 2% of messages generates 40% of orders. So it's just. And the like engagement rates, conversion rates are just massive because it's just super relevant content and it's segment of one. So that's the best, second best is really build segments and of course like you know if you are just a starter and you have 100 subscribers in your list, you should not be segmented. It's just too early. But if you have 100,000 subscribers in your list it's really worth segmenting and put diff and put different like campaigns, different offers to, to different segments. So and you know, should not like go too complicated sometimes it depends on of course on your business how many SKUs you have. But if you don't have many SKUs maybe you don't have what to segment much because the offer will be the same. But still you can, you can segment on behavior. You can you can you know, put one offer for your best customers, you can put another offer for your first time buyers maybe because usually, you know, usually the first time buyers you should come with a better offer to convert them. I hate saying that but usually that's how it works. Yeah, you should be rewarding for loyalty but in reality usually as like in marketers we come up with a better offer to convert for first time and those who are loyal customers, you come with some other maybe treatments for those customers but, but maybe not that much of financial discounts.
- [30:38]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, that's fair. Look, there's a very big difference between someone that's a buyer and not a buyer and it changes the relationship from a marketing psychology standpoint. And if you, you know, if you provide that customer with a good experience, the likelihood of them buying again is far greater than somebody that hasn't bought before. So yeah, you can segment on behavior around if they're a customer, that person is a customer or not. You can segment on engaged, they are, you can segment on what they've purchased, how much they've spent, all sorts of.
- [31:06]
Reedus Loris
Things have a kind of segmentation especially kind of in the, let's say United States, a bigger, bigger country. So times sending time zone optimization. When you send like across the time zones you've just set up that okay, one to this email to go at 8am depending on the customer's location, not on my location, if you sell worldwide or if you sell nationwide in let's say United States, multiple time zones, et cetera. So again it's an example of segmentation as well. It's just automated we call it by different words but at the core it's just different segments.
- [31:49]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. So when it comes to I guess revenue that your company powers, how much, how many, I'd say it would be billions in revenue do you guys generate for your customers per year? Do you have any stats like that?
- [32:08]
Reedus Loris
Yeah. So last year we generated more than $2 billion US dollars for our customers. Multiple currencies just converted into US dollars. It was more than US$2 billion for our customers per year. It's pretty massive. I mean we done calculated on daily basis and once I asked the colleagues so can we, can we come up with stats at the end of the year? Just you know, it was, it was really like what made our team happy etc. And since then we start calculating more on monthly basis etc that you know, it's, it's, it's a big number, it's a big impact especially for those small and medium Sized businesses.
- [32:47]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, I agree and and I guess when you look at that level of impact and there's a lot of options for a store to generate revenue through email marketing SMS automation if you are a brand, if you're speaking to somebody that has a brand that's doing you know, five to $10,000 a month where should they focus first campaigns automations what are the easiest wins? What quick wins would you give to anyone right now?
- [33:19]
Reedus Loris
What watching this I would say in this, in this priority order first set up subscribers collection because this is what you set up and it just works you know set and forget and it's very important because if you do to what you said. Yeah so values in the list so if you don't have a list it's it's you. I mean and you will spend the same time to compose campaign to the list of 100 as well as to the list of 100,000. Yeah you may be kind of segment change some elements but basically the same time that and same effort you need to put so that's the first thing set up the flows like pop ups be sure that you ask to upon the purchase moment the people that you have a tick box that people could subscribe to your email to your SMS communication that is very important pop ups for forms in your bottom in the bottom of your website. All those things are very very important landing pages. So first thing be sure that you're collecting constantly collecting subscribers inviting your visitors to subscribe or your buyers to subscribe. Second thing set up automations why it's second thing because this is again set and forget kind of style. You set up automations and make more of them. This is a general mistake that we see among our customers but at least set up one, maybe two Like a bundle card miner is the most popular but you know those who set up 10 automations they double their revenue or sometimes even triple in comparison to those that set up two. Yes, a bundle card is the most effective. That's right but you know if you add second third like post purchase automations like browse abundant not only those who put something in your in the shopping cart but those who just browsed products and did not even put in the shopping cart and then post purchase automations asking for reviews satisfaction surveys back in stock. Super effective automation very underused you know because sometimes we see the situation that we out of out of stock and the product is still there but just we have a button so button sold out and that's it. Yeah so let people subscribe to this Very, very specific. One off campaign or one off automation in this case that you know, let me be noticed when the product is back in stock, it's super effective. So set up more automations, not 2, 5 is better than 2, 10 is better than 5. And third do campaigns. This is what you kind of do like manually. This is what you do, what you think, what you want to promote. Yeah. Either it's weekly or daily or monthly. So that would be the priority order I would recommend.
- [36:19]
Nathan Chan
Yep. And so if you have, you know, a store that's doing five to $10,000 a month and you have an email list of, let's say a couple of thousand people, what kind of benchmark should you be aiming? Should you be aiming for at least 20 to 30% of your revenue to start coming from email?
- [36:38]
Reedus Loris
Yeah, yeah, so we usually say 15 to 30%. So 20 to 30 really kind of completely agree with you here.
- [36:47]
Nathan Chan
Yep. Okay, so that's a good benchmark for people. So if you're right now you're listening to this and you're not driving anywhere between 15 to 30% of your total revenue through email, effectively it's not working. You got opportunities, right?
- [37:03]
Reedus Loris
Sure. Or if it drives more than 30% sometimes we see that that's the case as well that you know, 60% of your revenue is being driven by email. That means that you are under investing in other channels as well. I mean it's great but still maybe you have to invest more into paydats, into customer acquisition maybe etc.
- [37:27]
Nathan Chan
Okay, that's an interesting take. So what do most early stage founders get wrong when it comes to emacs? What are common mistakes you see your clients and customers make?
- [37:41]
Reedus Loris
They start communicating too late and they don't automate enough. Probably those kind of, ah, I have a short, short subscriber list. Maybe I still have to continue collecting but you know, while collecting of course you have to have welcome Automations set up. Yeah. So every subscriber, every new subscriber gets into your list, should be, you know, tried to be converted into a buyer. So yeah, so just set up Automations as early as you can. And this is the main mistake, I would say that the thought process is okay now I am in subscribers collection phase and I will get to the communication phase later. So while you start collecting subscribers, please start communicating with them immediately. And automations is really great help here because of course to you know, come up with new campaign, maybe just you have too many spinning plates on your table and you have too many things to take care of and you cannot create their unique campaigns but you know AI helps already and it will help more and more in the coming months.
- [39:02]
Nathan Chan
And yes, yep, I agree. So we have to work towards wrapping up. I could talk shop with you all day about email, marketing automation, all sorts of things but I have two questions for you. One, what's the craziest story, case study or story you'd like to share about a customer succeeding on your platform that you think is important? That will teach some great lessons for anyone listening. And two, where do you see the future of I guess Martech, you know, email or marketing automation going.
- [39:39]
Reedus Loris
So pro kind of first would be Dixon Flannel. So shirts, we do sell like flannel shirts and like the, the idea, the campaigns, what they make. So they, they have limited stock, they come with collections and they have limited always limited stock and they just make such massive campaigns prior to launch like pre sale etc, you can pay book etc, they kind of basically sell out their, their new collection of entire stock in like half of a day et cetera. It's pretty kind of of pretty niche brand but really decent established business at the same time. And they never discount but it's all about like FOMO that okay, this is a new collection and they make a very intensive campaign prior to launch and they sell out in like few hours which, which is, which is amazing and again it's a really amazing tactic which is not being applied by, by a lot of merchants that you know this kind of, of FOMO feel of shortage a little bit. And this is where the conscious decision that they have limited stock, although technically they could potentially make a little bit more money having unlimited stock but at the same time you know they sell out without any discounts and audience is really loyal and waiting for another campaign to happen, collection to come come out, et cetera. So yeah, so think, I think this is, this is a really, really crazy then I mean it's the results that, that being generated from email. It's, it's flat, flat, flat and there's wow, just a massive spike for, for one day etc. But like overall results like monthly annual results are super great. Yeah and second, the second the future. So of course like AI will assist a lot for sure. That's the main change that will happen. It will be way easier to just sell them to the level of 1. I have no doubt just to build very, very personalized, very targeted campaigns. So you can do that now with automations but I have no doubts you will be able to do that with Those campaigns, bulk, bulk sending. But just each email will be very personalized. It's a first. First thing and second thing, I truly believe that email will not die and email will remain the most effective channel for retention. Customer retention augmented by SMS web push notifications maybe have a channel has arise. WhatsApp seems like becoming more and more popular. Potentially we will. We used to serve WhatsApp. We didn't stop doing it but. But potentially we will relaunch in some near future. So yeah, so probably those two things. Email will not die. As you know, Once we launched OmniSend 10 years ago, people were saying, oh come on email, it's so old school. But up until today it remains the most effective customer retention channel. So I believe that AI will help you to do better email and email will remain the most effective retention channel.
- [43:01]
Nathan Chan
Why? Why, why do you say it will not die? Why, why do you say that?
- [43:05]
Reedus Loris
Because I think the main reason why email is still the most effective retention channel because the customer is in full control of their inbox. And usually what happens with us, I mean us when we are consumers. So we subscribe to different newsletters and, and we barely read like each and every one. Nobody does that. But you know, it depends on subject line. I trust founder, brand. I subscribe to your newsletter. Do I read each and every one? Not. Why? Because sometimes I'm just too busy today I have too many priorities, you know, and then very busy, I skip one, but then I receive another one another day and then I open, I read and engage, etc. So. And I'm in full control. Yeah. And that's okay to have some unread messages and then read of another. And this is not the case with other communication channels. Let's say, you know, messenger or other people kind of see those channels as more personal and, and then they prefer just having, you know, friend to friend communication, not, not person to brand communication. So I think this is, this is the main reason. And there's no, no replacement.
- [44:27]
Nathan Chan
Yep, yep, yep. I agree. I never thought of it. On, you know, people curate their inbox on what they want to subscribe to. They can unsubscribe anytime and they get, you know, communications versus phone, phone number, text message. You don't really curate that. You are, but you're not. And it's mainly for texting with friends and, and yeah. So yeah, people use email to really power commerce, you know.
- [44:53]
Reedus Loris
Yeah. And even like, you know, text messages, like across our customer base, we see that text message communication is more popular in the United States. And Canada and to be honest, I'm not sure about Australia but I think you don't have this. But because in the US and Canada it's so easy and so standardized. How you can unsubscribe by just replying stop. It's a default and every like consumer knows that it's. I'm sure that I will unsubscribe easily. And this insurement like that's why more people subscribe to SMS communication in Canada and the United States because it's all standardized. They are pretty sure that it will be so easy to unsubscribe in the other countries there is no such enforcement by coming by government. So that's why people are a little bit more conscious. To what brand do I subscribe? Do I really trust this brand and will it be easy for me to opt out? In Omnisend we always put the unsubscribe links if you are outside United States or Canada. So but you know the experience is, is, is sometimes different for the consumer.
- [46:10]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, yeah. Okay, very interesting. And it's cool that you guys can segment, right? So you can do text message and you can do certain, certain behavioral actions depending on where somebody's at. So look, we have to work towards wrapping up readers. So I just want to say anyone listening watching this, you got to check out Omnisend. It is legitimately an incredible platform and look, we cannot recommend you guys if you're an E Commerce founder to use Omnisend. It's an amazing platform, super cost affordable and look, we recommend it to all of our community. So I just wanted to ask you one last question. Any final words of wisdom, any questions that you wanted me to ask you that I haven't asked you yet?
- [46:59]
Reedus Loris
I think we touched like everything. So really well prepared interview. So good, good questions. I don't believe that our listeners learned new things or maybe just reminded some old good stuff that they technically know, but fortunately not maybe not doing, maybe not following the best practices. So yeah, it was a really great conversation. So thank you.
- [47:24]
Nathan Chan
Awesome. Thank you so much.
- [47:26]
Reedus Loris
Thanks. Thanks Nathan.
- [47:28]
Nathan Chan
Hey guys, if you love this episode, make sure to check out this interview with Scooter Braun on how he identifies 10 talent that could go on to find wild success like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande.
- [47:39]
C
Justin Bieber was the most talented, gifted kid I'd ever met. It was so insane how great of a singer he was, how soulful he was, what he could do on the drums naturally caught himself with guitar, drums like he was a phenomenon. And we met at the perfect time in both of our lives.