Podcasts about receiptful

In episode 5 of our podcast, Keith chats with Adii Pienaar founder of Conversio. Conversio is an all-in-one marketing dashboard that helps ecommerce store owners to sell more through gently reminding customers of abandoned carts and follow up emails. And Conversio doesn't stop there as it emails receipts, sends newsletters, gets customer feedback and really helps you boost your sales. Adii talks about the start of his journey in 2014 with Receiptful and it's progression to Conversio by finding the overlaps between different tools and data that resulted in Conversio's single dashboard. He chats about moving to the Shopify system and the value of the UX design to both Shopify and Conversio. Special Guest: Adii Pienaar.Sponsored By:Rare.ioLinks:Conversio.com — Email Marketing Automation. Make every email count.Shopify — The eCommerce platform made for youMilk Bottle Labs — Ireland's No.1 Shopify Experts

Adii Pienaar is a serial entrepreneur best known for founding the successful and multi-million dollar company WooThemes in 2008 which he also built from his home country South Africa. Since WooThemes, Adii has started a few new businesses, most recently Conversio (previously Receiptful), a SaaS business for all-in-one ecommerce marketing including features like email receipts, cart abandonment, follow ups, recommendations, product reviews, search, and feedback. Starting out  When Adii started out in business, he just wanted to be an entrepreneur and work for himself. He got into Wordpress out of necessity because he needed money for school. So he started doing some consulting for clients and he got to a point where he was building free Wordpress themes as a way to gain traction and find customers. That's how he started WooThemes.  That was before the ecosystem around Wordpress products even existed and there were only 2 to 3 other entrepreneurs who were selling premium Wordpress themes. Back then, one could only offer free opensource stuff or consulting services. Today, there is a vibrant community of different kinds of products, services and business models around Wordpress. Adii never thought Wordpress would become so big and that WooThemes would grow sustainably as far as it has.  On 2nd November 2007, he launched the first theme, The Original Premium News Theme, that eventually became WooThemes. The theme sold widely. He had started working on themes a year before that and he used to sell them through his blog.  Themes  Adii says that Wordpress has become a tougher place to build and sustain a business.   Tip: If there is a way to productize and some way extend some kind of service that you are doing, especially cost efficiently, then you will always have a market  Core revenue streams  He says with Conversio, they apply a Saas (Software as a Service) business model. That's unlike what he did with Woo Commerce/Woo Themes which only offered one-off downloadable content.  Conversio  In 2013, he was hoping to try his hand at building a new business. So, he stepped out of the Woo Themes operations and took a non-executive position. He then started working on a new product, Public Data, which was an online developments and learning community for entrepreneurs. While working on that, he was also negotiating his exit from WooThemes which concluded at the end of 2013.  He eventually shut down Public Data as a product. In early 2014, he came across a blog post about Email Receipts and when he read it, he became very interested in the idea. The first version of the idea before it became Conversio was called Receiptful, and it allowed people to include some form of marketing in their email receipts, this became very successful. From there, they slowly evolved into building complimentary tools including email marketing tools (now includes email newsletters and widgets).  Adii believes that anyone who read the blog post that inspired him could have just as easily started the same business he did. He says that what helped him was the fact that he had more understanding and experience in terms of building solutions specifically for people who were building ecommerce stores.  Building up on the idea  The first thing he did was Google to find out who else was doing something similar. His idea was slightly different from the existing ones. Addi identified Stripe (a payment platform) which was going through a massive growth phase as a potential business partner. People could build apps on top of the Stripe gateway exclusively and get a lot of success.   Adii outsourced the development of Receiptful's first version which was an app that would work with Stripe. It was geared towards other SaaS companies instead of ecommerce ones. He didn't want to target ecommerce customers because he wanted to initially build Receiptful as an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) as it would be easier. Once it was built, he had a few

In April during our Unite coverage, I had dinner with Carson McComas, the owner of Shopify Plus agency Fuel Made, and we got to talking about our mutual love of marketing automation, and specifically Klaviyo. Now, if you're not using Klaviyo, that's okay. Don't tune out, hear me out. Carson mentioned to me that they were having great success with Klaviyo to the point where they were pushing the limits of ecommerce email marketing automation. I immediately knew I had to have the rest of the conversation on this show. So I emailed Carson, and here's what he said: “Would love have Lisa on with you. She's the bomb and knows email marketing and Klaviyo like a pro. She's generated some pretty incredible ROI for our clients like Beardbrand.” Lisa heads the email marketing department at Fuel Made, she specializes in Klaviyo Email Marketing, and she knows it like the back of her hand. She's looked through 100's of Klaviyo accounts, helping clients add tens of thousands of dollars in automated monthly revenue by setting up their triggered marketing. In this episode, LIsa Oberst is going to walk this through the very same Klaviyo email marketing automation campaigns she's used to add huge value to Shopify stores like BeardBrand. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via Email Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS Join The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Work with Kurt — Learn how: Why and how to start with email marketing What to do before starting with email marketing The three typical lead magnet formats Lisa uses, and how to brainstorm Lead Magnets that capture emails The safe & polite way to offer your opt-in The 3-step approach to pop-ups The basic segmentations you must have The 4-step email cart abandonment email that converts The uncommon email that converts at 9% for BeardBrand Lisa's one-tip from Links Mentioned: Get Lisa's Email Marketing Checklist! Klaviyo - Get your free account FuelMade BeardBrand Leno's Garage HelloBar InkedGaming Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Transcript Kurt Elster: Recording from Ethercycle headquarters outside Chicago. This is the unofficial Shopify Podcast and I'm your host Kurt Elster. You heard our wonderful Shopify Unite coverage, which was very exciting. One of our best, our most listened two weeks ever; 7,000 downloads something crazy. We're going to crack a quarter million downloads. I'm really, really excited. I could not have done it without you guys. It's amazing. It's been a wild ride. Anyway continuing on that Unite coverage, I met with a lot of really interesting bright people there and that's where I have been picking up some wonderful guests, was from networking at Unite. One of the first things I did, was go to a VIP dinner there and the gentleman sitting to my left at this dinner was none other than Carson McComas your Shopify Plus Agency Fuel Made. We got to talking pretty quickly about our mutual love of marketing automation and specifically Klaviyo. Now, if you're not using Klaviyo, that's okay, don't turn out. Here me out here, because a lot of marketing automation principles will work across several different platforms and just that I like and endorse Klaviyo. Carson mentioned to me that they're having great success with Klaviyo to the point where they are pushing the limits of ecommerce email marketing automation. At which point, I heard the needle scratch in my head and I immediately knew I had to hear the rest of this conversation on the show so that you could benefit from it. Of course, I want to learn too. I do most of my learning through this podcast truthfully. It's great resource for me. I emailed Carson right away and I said, "Hey, come on the show. You're a great person, I want to hear this." He replied, and I am quoting. He said, “I'd love to have Lisa on with you. She's the bomb and those email marketing in Klaviyo like a pro, she's generated some incredible return on investment for clients like Beardbrand. I could not have wrote a better intro myself. Now I know Lisa has female marketing department at Fuel Made. I'm told she specializes in Klaviyo email marketing and she knows it like the back of her hand. I believe it. She has looked through hundreds of Klaviyo accounts helping clients at tens of thousands of dollars in automated monthly revenue by signing up their triggered marketing, so Lisa, thank you for joining us. Lisa Oberst: Thank you, Kurt, great intro. I appreciate that. Kurt Elster: My pleasure. Tell me, give me briefly, give me your Klaviyo background, how did you get into this? Lisa Oberst: Sure, so about two years ago, a little bit more, I moved to L.A. and joined a three-person team that was building an agency specialized in Klaviyo. That's really when I started my special connection to Klaviyo and since then I've been just needy in Klaviyo, so about a year ago, I joined Fuel Made and I've been developing our Klaviyo email marketing at Fuel Made. Kurt Elster: Very good. You've worked with some big brands including a well known Shopify rockstar who's been on the show once before the Beardbrand guys were very cool, tremendous business and probably them evangelizing their experience is really contributed to the explosion of beard oil products, which is crazy to think about. Aside from that, so certainly you have street cred, but let's dive into it. First, make the case for email marketing in general. I will play devil's advocate. People go, "Email marketing is dead. It's all about social media." Help me make the case for email marketing? Lisa Oberst: Sure, that shouldn't be too hard. A lot of stores that I start a conversation with don't have any email marketing in place. The most important thing, they don't even have a need capture in place. They have no way of even starting a conversation with leads who come through their store. I know, Kurt, you know about this. It is so important to capture all of this traffic that you're spending money on to get to your store and that is not going to convert. About 98% of visitors are not going to convert on a first purchase, because you need to have the opportunity to start up a conversation with these people before they leave your store. Kurt Elster: Yeah, as an example, let's say I got the most optimized store in the world. I have some clients with really optimized stores. They do 5% conversion rate, that's amazing. That means for every hundred people that go to that store 95 of them don't buy anything, they just show up and bounce. Whereas, email marketing lets you turn anonymous visitors are more or less useless to you. Email marketing is going to let you provide value to them. Start building a relationship with them. Stay top of mind and lots of other fun things we will learn about. If you think email marketing is dead compared to social media, well, A; they're not mutually exclusive. You could do both. You could certainly do both. Think about how many times a day you check your email. Unless you are unbelievably disciplined, you are probably checking it 10 times a day. That's just the nature of who we are as a culture now. Don't discount email marketing and love it. All right, now we've the case for it. I believe in it. What do you do first? How do we start this conversation? Lisa Oberst: Yeah, it's all about the conversations. You want to start by thinking of who you're talking to. As I said already, the first thing you want to do is having need capture in place. Before we even thinking about writing an email and sitting down to write content, you want to take a step back and think of who is your ideal customer. That's the way we do it and I definitely recommend doing it, is having a picture of your ideal customer in your head to think of what is the offer that is going to get them so excited that they will not even think twice about giving you their email address. That is step one. That's coming up with a great offer. Kurt Elster: Before we've even come up with, we've even touched email marketing, really, we're thinking about the lead magnet. I'd like to think of the lead magnet as like, all right before- Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: The email marketing at that point, if you think of it is like human to human is dating, by that point you have gotten the digits, you're now entering the beginning stages of dating here with this customer before even then, you need a good pick up line. That's your lead magnet. The first thing you think about is your lead magnet, but that something that make sense that is valuable to the customer, right? Lisa Oberst: Right, exactly. It's going to vary. It's going to vary a lot from one story to another. You mentioned Beardbrand for example. In Beardbrand's case we are giving away information. It's all education-based and it is working extremely well, but we were able to 4x; their lead capture rate by just giving away 10 tips on how to grow a beard. Kurt Elster: Is it like PDF or an email course? Lisa Oberst: It's an email. It actually just one email. Yeah, it's one email with 10 tips and then it's beginning of a Beardbrand bootcamp. Kurt Elster: Okay. Lisa Oberst: Sorry, go ahead. Kurt Elster: No, so I love this idea. This is like the first chapter of my book Ecommerce Bootcamp we talk about … You could get the free sample for free if you guys want it, ecommerce-bootcamp.com. We talk about sales through education or for lack of a better term "saducation". That's actually what you just described. You're not giving away a coupon. You're not giving away free product or sample. You're just flat out providing people. You're giving away value by educating them. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. In some cases, giving away a discount, giving away a product is going to be the most relevant offer. In others, it isn't. It's all about thinking the person that you're starting the conversation with. In Beardbrand's case, we're talking to customers who are obsessed with their beard; they want to learn everything about it. It makes sense to grab them with this education-based marketing. We do that and then we feed them into a welcome sequence. This welcome sequence is the continuation of the conversation. We're gradually taking the new visitor through a journey of learning about their beard. We're telling them everything they're wondering about their beard already. At the same time, we're taking this so little opportunity to tell them about Beardbrand products, because, well, how to take good care of your beard, you might want to check this out as well. We're not making it all about the product. We're making it about value, about what the customer is interested in, does that make sense? Kurt Elster: No. Absolutely. Yeah. No one wants to be sold too. I don't want to listen to a sales pitch. I don't want to hear about your time share. I want value. I want you to give me a better life. As a man with a moderate/mild beard, if you give me some tips on, "What do I do with this thing so it doesn't like scraggly and gross?" Honest to god, it's a thing you have to learn. I found it like I did not figure out how to properly shape and shave my beard until this year when I saw a video from another beard Shopify store BEARD KING, sells a different product. Yeah, honest to god, it sounds silly, but when you think about it, now I learned that. Now almost every time I trim my beard I think about that piece of content and I think about BEARD KING. This connection has been made where I can't help but think about this Shopify store and their product every Sunday when I'm trimming my beard in the mirror. You're doing the same thing. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. We're also training customers to expect high value from these emails. They're going to start loving to open these emails, because they just know that it's going to be full of exactly what they want to learn about. The beauty about this journey, this welcome sequence bootcamp is that we're gradually taking them to a point where they're going to be dying to buy from Beardbrand. Kurt Elster: I like it. Lisa Oberst: If they haven't bought by the end of … it's a five-day bootcamp, and they haven't bought by the end, well, we're actually telling them, "Here's a free gift, because you deserve it. You have made it through the bootcamp. Get this gift to become part of the club officially." Yeah, there's all the psychology that goes into it, but we're honestly using a elements of scarcity. We're using customer reviews. Social- Kurt Elster: Social. Lisa Oberst: Exactly, social proof. All of that, packaged in a way that looks like it's all about the customer. Kurt Elster: Right, so as long as you're providing them more value than you're asking for, it no longer feels sleazy. It doesn't feel like a sales pitch. You could still slide in those elements that act as psychological triggers to sales like scarcity, urgency and social proof. You don't have to feel guilty about it. Ultimately, if you believe in your product, you shouldn't feel guilty about trying to sell it to people. I've seen that. If you're confident and if you believe in it, it's probably your duty to educate people about why they may want your product in their life. Okay, so some knee grade, basic tips here. How do I come up with a lead magnet idea? Implementing a lead magnet, not terribly tough technically, the hardest part is coming up with the idea. Do you have someone like go-to formats, ideas or methods for brainstorming these things? Lisa Oberst: Yes, there are three typical ways to go, either education-based or discount-based or product offered. Before even thinking about that, what I typically do is, again, I take a step back and I think of who I am speaking to. What is going to be the key offer that's going to get them to take? For example, I have another client where they were offering 10% off. Their audience are gamers. They sell custom gaming accessories. Their offer was 10% off. We switched that over to giving away a card, a token that is worth $1 in the store that probably cost about 10¢ to make, just about 10x to your capture rate. Exactly, much, much higher dollar value with the 10% off, but so much more exciting to think of the token. I like to go as much as possible to think of something tangible. Think of something in your store that's tangible either education or a product. Imagine, your customer see that and using it. Is that going to be exciting to them? That's really where I'd like to start when coming up with these offers. Kurt Elster: I like it. Lisa Oberst: The more tangible the better, typically. Again, if I have another client who is medical supply company and in their case 10% off was right on. You have to think of your audience. You have to think of what, where they're coming from. Kurt Elster: Even if you're like I really don't know. Also if you go, "I really don't know what they want." Just experiment, it is not hard to change these things and switch them up and try them. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: Yeah, okay. Offering, probably like the most basic, the go-to. You don't have to think about it too hard. It's just, "Hey, here's a 10% off coupon for signing up, right? That one's easy. Lisa Oberst: Exactly, yeah. Kurt Elster: You don't even need marketing automation to do that one. You stick the coupon code in your welcome email or whatever it is regardless of platform. There you go. It's like these are all tips that work independently with Klaviyo. You can do them on Klaviyo, I wish you would, but you don't have to. What else? My gosh, I lost my train of thought. Yeah, I'm talking about the different lead magnets that work. Yeah, then from there, you know you could combine that with education. You could follow up with email course. I love email courses just because you're in their inbox everyday for a week or like in your case the Beardbrand bootcamp, which is a nice alliteration to it. It helps keep you top of mind. It gets you in the earn box every week. I love what you said, "Hey, you train them to expect value." That's how you keep those open rates up. As long as that first email delivers on the promise of the lead magnet and it better deliver on the promise of that opt-in form and then some. Then people go, “Okay, these are providing me value.” They're going to see them and they're going to be willing to keep opening them and that's what's going to help keep open rates up naturally with great tip. Then the other one, format we have recently seen work well is a regular giveaway, because like a monthly or weekly giveaway. We did it on Jay Leno's Store, lenosgarage.com. That one worked pretty well. We haven't tried anything else. There's no comparison. All right, so my next question on these lead magnets. We haven't even got in the marketing automation. Lisa Oberst: I know. Kurt Elster: Mostly, we're just talking about the opt-in form lead magnet and what you give them. Okay. We'll move on, one last question, how should I set up the opt-in form? I've seen them in the footer, I've seen them as exit-intent, as popup. At Leno store, we do it as a promo bar and a landing page. There's at least five different ways I could format a lead magnet. You can even do Facebook lead ads. What's the right way or is it all of them. What do I do? Lisa Oberst: Well, the same answer that goes for all of this. There is no one right way. Kurt Elster: Right, it depends, is the right answer. Lisa Oberst: It depends, right. For most cases, we like to go with an exit-intent popup. They're great because they don't interrupt the flow of your customer. If someone comes to your store, they intend to buy … you really do not want to be throwing a popup in their face. First of all, it's disrespectful. They are here. They're trying to get something done. Second of all, you're giving away margin. If you're giving away a discount and someone comes to your store with the intention to buy, you do not need to be sending them this discount code. That's why, I definitely lean on the side of exit-intent popups. Now in Beardbrand's case, we don't do that. Instead, we want to go even less aggressive and have a hello bar-type banner at the top. It depends. Beardbrand has a very specific way of communicating. If they did not want to do a popup, fine, a banner works fine as well. The conversion rates are similar. It's going to depend on how aggressive you want to go. If you want to go all out, then you could go for a Mat, a type of Sumo Mat. Kurt Elster: I hate those things. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, my problem with those is that they tend to trigger every single time you go to the store. They don't give you time to breathe. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but it does work wonders in some cases. Kurt Elster: I agree with you. I love the exit-intent. It's the safe, polite way to do it. Then if someone who's on the site to shop, you will never going to see your exit-intent popup form. If they're there, they browsed and then they're leaving. Okay, as a safety net, we have our last stage. Hey, let me give you something for free, please. All you're going to do is give me your email address, which is way harder than it sounds. People don't want to give up their email address, I don't blame them. You need to be finding something of value. Lisa Oberst: Okay. Exactly. Kurt Elster: Go ahead. Lisa Oberst: What's crazy with those exit-intent is that they're capturing customers who are leaving the store. We're still able with the welcome sequence to convert them at about eight to 10%, so that is huge. Kurt Elster: Yeah, you're right. In theory, you're capturing the least engaged segment of the audience and still converting one out of 10 of them which is just awesome. Okay, then my last question on exit-intent popups. The work on desktop, what do you do on mobile? There's no mouse. The exit-intent popup is just watching for the mouse to go toward the tab, right? Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: Mobile, their touch devices, there's no- Lisa Oberst: It doesn't work. Yeah, so that's a problem. The way we go around it is we trigger the popup with scrolling. One way of knowing that someone is exiting the page on mobile is that they're scrolling quickly towards the top and so that's one way of knowing that they're leaving. Another alternative is just to turn it into a timed popup. Kurt Elster: Okay. Lisa Oberst: Depending on the audience. Kurt Elster: Yeah, I typically done it as … I use OptiMonk and you can use OptiMonk just you know, whatever to do your popup forms or if you're fancy and you have a front-end developer, there's a free open source JavaScript called ouibounce, O-U-I bounce that I like. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. Kurt Elster: Yeah, mobile I was just doing the timer. I did not know about the scrolling trick that's very clever. I have to explore that more. Lisa Oberst: Yes and we build our own custom popups just so we have all that flexibility. One last tip about popups, this is, again, something that we're able to do because we build them in-house, but I love building the popup in a three-step manner. This all comes back to value, value, value first. On our popups, we don't even show you the email field on the first screen. It's only a question. For example, when we're giving away those token cards, the first screen that's going to show up is which one of these two token cards would you like for free? There's nothing indicating that you're going to have to do anything. It's all value. Then once the reader has made that micro-commitment of picking one of the two cards the chances of them going forward with giving away their email address are increased. This is a psychologic triggers that we use in this set up. Kurt Elster: I love it. Lisa Oberst: Another little tip there. Kurt Elster: Yeah, it is rather than ask for, "Hey, buy my stuff, give me your credit card details." That's a huge ask. You go with a series of micro-commitments that helps you build that relationship and build trust. The simplest one is, “Hey, did you want this free thing?” “Okay, yeah, the answer is yes, I do.” Lisa Oberst: Okay. Kurt Elster: You step them through it. Lisa Oberst: Once they said that, then they're going to focus all through. Kurt Elster: Can you share with us the store that uses the coin thing, this three-step process? Lisa Oberst: Sure, instagaming. Kurt Elster: Got it. Lisa Oberst: We actually also use that on Beardbrand. Kurt Elster: Okay, cool. I'm going to include all of these in the show notes, so people could check it out. I'm sorry if your opt-in rates go up and your conversion rates go down. Lisa Oberst: Conversions. Kurt Elster: Sorry. Lisa Oberst: At least, we're aware. Kurt Elster: If you check these out, please go, just by something small so she has something to do with that. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, I was going to say it. These products are amazing. You're going to love them. Kurt Elster: Yeah. Okay. In this sense, you've got into one of the early, one of the nice tenets about email marketing automation. You're only showing the sequence to a particular kind person. You're not just blasting the same message to everyone all the time. This is segmentation. Talk to me about segmentation? Lisa Oberst: Yes, the basic segmentation that you must put in place is what we just talked about with welcome sequence. This is someone who comes to your store. If they're not buying, you put them to through this welcome sequence. Then on top of that, abandon carts, so this is someone who went as far as putting a product in their cart, but didn't buy, so that's another sequence. Then on top of that is the post-purchase sequence. Those are really the core foundation of automation; post-purchase, abandon car, welcome sequences. Kurt Elster: All right. Go ahead. Lisa Oberst: Go for it. No, go for it. Kurt Elster: All right, so I love the … the welcome sequence is clever and each segment, each sequence has a goal. The sequence is to take these very fairly cold prospects and turn them into customers through a longer effort in high touch engagement process that's fully automated, which is very cool. That's our first one. That's with our exit-intent popup. Cart abandonment, they added the cart and left the store so now we're going to follow up with them. I have a format I follow that I like, what is yours? I will share you mine, if you show me yours. Lisa Oberst: Okay, well, mine is typically built with four emails. I like to go with four emails to present about across five, six days, it depends. First, goes out two hours an abandoned cart you want to hit. The idea is not to be creepy and not to be too intrusive, but to still potential hit them with an email before they've left their computer. Kurt Elster: Strike while the iron is hot. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. This email is always, always customer support-centered. It's just being helpful, because most of these customers who place an item in their cart, then abandoned necessarily because they didn't want to buy. They abandoned maybe because they got distracted and maybe, I don't know, someone got home and they just forgot that they were in the middle of placing an order. The idea of this first email is just to remind them, also, at the same time, you're reminding them, but you're also discovering if they had an issue, if they had a question. You can discover some really interesting information about your cart by just asking the customer if, maybe, they weren't able to put their order through. That's signal number one. Kurt Elster: Right. Lisa Oberst: It gets a lot of answers, a lot of customers think that someone sat down and wrote that email specifically for them and they really appreciate it. Kurt Elster: This sounds like the first email will be very plain texted. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, it is, a 100%. Kurt Elster: Okay. It's interesting that we separately discovered and came about the same approach. What I was doing was after four hours. Pretty similar, then I thought strike while the iron is hot, I would send them an email even if this was just basic Shopify cart abandonment an email or they only send one or it fits in something fancier like Klaviyo or Conversio. I would send them off an email. Its plain texted and says, "Hey, I'm the owner of whatever, and I saw you abandon your cart. I just want to make sure you didn't have any issues or if you have any questions just hit reply and let me know how I can help." It was just a way to find did they have a customer service issue, can we be proactive, can we find objections? Ultimately, most of the time, they got distracted, they forgot or they just said, "Yeah, not quite comfortable yet." Getting that personal touch email where it's proactive on customer service that's very positive. That's going to help increase trust. Okay, cool. We came up with the same thing separately. I like it. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. One little thing I like to do with that email is it's plain text, but I like to add a head shot in the signature just to give it even more of an element of real human interaction. Kurt Elster: That's a good idea. I like it. Next? Lisa Oberst: Number two. Number two, definitely, you want to show the cart content. At that point, a primary goes out about a day later. You want to show the content to get them out and excited about the products they were looking at. Sometimes, you can include a discount already in that second email. I try to keep it for the third, fourth. It depends on the brand. It depends on how much they want to send out discount codes or not, but that's an option. Kurt Elster: I like it. Okay. Yeah, typically, my second one I just go, "Good things come to those who wait, here's 10% off your purchase and here's your cart." Something like that after 24 hours. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, yes. The next one can go out after 48 and then that's when you want to really start pushing, putting some discount code in. They definitely have an element of scarcity in saying, "Well, wait, we can't keep these items forever, maybe make it fun." Definitely, for example, in gaining, they have a lot of fun on their store that we can reuse, so we do that, which is make it entertaining. I find that making emails fun, entertaining, definitely have higher return. Kurt Elster: Yeah. Why not make it fun. Everything doesn't have to be super professional and serious. A great example of this that I always point to, super successful Shopify store Violent Little Machine Shop, violentlittle.com. All of their descriptions are like its all gallows humor. They're swearing same with their emails. It talks about like writing them drunk. The store does phenomenally well. It's just such a great business because their audience likes that. It's authentic and engaging and it's rough and tumble and it works for them. Be fun, be yourself. I think have an authentic voice. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. Kurt Elster: That helps a lot. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, if you can afford to be fun, maybe you can say someone is going to run off with your cart content or just come up with some entertaining way, excuses for being in their inbox. Kurt Elster: All right, the third segmentation then is the post-purchase sale. We finally, we went through these two. Lisa Oberst: Yes. Kurt Elster: In theory, people who've gotten these two email sequences. They've got them to purchase, they've got a lot of emails, they're really building a relationship here, but the really successful stores don't just stop there. Lisa Oberst: Nope. Kurt Elster: At this point, we have optimized the top of our funnel, we validate our business, but how do we extend customer lifetime value both ways and I'm sure you have ideas? Lisa Oberst: Yes, there's so much that you can do with post-purchase email. One first tip I want to point out, especially for Shopify Plus stores. It's sending your order confirmation through Klaviyo. This just heads up, it isn't just the one click setup. It's a little complicated because you have to deal with Klaviyo's tags and put the email together. It enables you to include a product feed. The product feed is huge. It's going to show the specific products that a customer has highest chance of it wanting. I like to do the order confirmation, because order confirmation emails have the highest open rates. They have about 70% open rate on average. If you can show more products in that email, I typically, actually for Beardbrand the order confirmation email is converting at .8%, .9%, that's sending to every single customer. It's a little bit counterintuitive, but customers are super excited after making an order and it's a really good time to be actually showing them more products. Kurt Elster: I have loved this feature in Conversio which was normally called Receiptful. That's like how they started, was just this one single idea in automation. Just, hey, show them upsell products in the email receipt. I had no idea you could make this work in Klaviyo. I am so excited. Lisa Oberst: I saw them. Yes. No. As I said, it is not a one click setup, but it will figure it out. Kurt Elster: I hope someone from Klaviyo is listening to this. This needs to be added in one of like the defaults of just inflows. My gosh, that's fantastic. Lisa Oberst: I will send them an email. Kurt Elster: Please do. One of the issues you run into here, when you do this one is there's no way to turn off the order confirmation email from Shopify itself. You got to replace it with something, what do you stick in there? Lisa Oberst: No, you can with Shopify Plus. Kurt Elster: Okay. Lisa Oberst: You just have to reach out to them. Kurt Elster: Very good. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, it's a little sneaky. Kurt Elster: Instead of Shopify, what we typically do is make that one just like a personal plain text thank you from the owners. It's like, "Hey, you placed for an order, thank you for your purchase. Your receipt's on its way in the second email is the way around it. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, that's perfect. Kurt Elster: Cool. Lisa Oberst: That's perfect. After that, definitely, you want to send a thank you email and those, you might be surprised again, but those convert at the same rate about as the order confirmation email. Include another product feed, why not? Kurt Elster: I love the product feed, just tell me what that is in Klaviyo, they've got this drag and drop editor, it's very cool. You could drag product feed in and it gives you latest products, newest products, but most likely to buy. Something of that effect give you a couple of different feeds or you can make different feeds. Lisa Oberst: Make them, yeah. Kurt Elster: Yeah. The one you want is the one that people chose them products they're most likely to buy because it's got a JavaScript widget in your theme so it could track what people actually looked at. I always suspected what it's showing them. The intersection of bestsellers and products they looked at but didn't buy. Lisa Oberst: The way it works, if you set it up with the waiting. The way it works is it looks like what products the customer bought. If they bought A and B products and another customer ended up, pass about A and B and C, they're going show them C. Kurt Elster: Okay, so it's based on historical purchase data from other customers? Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: Very clever, it's personalized recommendations. You don't have to do anything. It does it automatically, dynamically, super cool. Lisa Oberst: That's a main great feature. Thank you emails, big ones too. Now something that we do for Beardbrand, for example is for every single product in the store, we have a special, we have a particular email that goes out. Let's say someone buys beard oil. We're going to send them a post-purchase email that teaches them exactly how to use their beard oil. If they bought a balm, we're going to send them an email that shows them how to use their balm. That's taking it to another level. Kurt Elster: What you're doing, it's very clever. You're going to ensure, you're going to help keep the excited, because I'm assuming they get this between the time they purchased and before they get the product, right? Lisa Oberst: Yes. Kurt Elster: Okay. It shows up. It helps keep that excitement going, but you're also going to preempt like you already know what customers objections are, issues. It's going to preempt those things and really radically increase customer satisfaction, because when that product shows up, they already know, "Hey, this is how I apply beard oil." The first time I bought beard oil, it showed up and it occurred to me, “Wait a second, I don't know how you actually apply this or how much.” Lisa Oberst: What do I do with this? Kurt Elster: I had to go find a video that explained it. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, exactly. If you know that your customers are going to be wondering, "Okay, well, what do I do with this when I receive it?" Send them the email with instructions. Very, very helpful. It helps establish that relationship to another level again, just increasing customer lifetime value, letting them know that you care enough to send them all that information. Kurt Elster: That one, that's huge. It may not seem obvious as to like, "This is going to sell them something. No, it doesn't need to; this is an investment in that relationship." You're going to have happier customers, you're going to have less customer support request and it's going to them more likely to buy and recommend your products. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. It's an excuse just to be in their inbox. Kurt Elster: Right. Lisa Oberst: Again, it's an excuse. Well, before sending them another sales email, you're sending them a lot of value. Next time they get an email they're going to open it again expecting value. Kurt Elster: What do I do? All right, we have now set them up where we know they're going to open up that next email. What is the next email? Lisa Oberst: That's when you want to study a bit of your customer lifetime value. You want to know; what is the typical journey of one of your customers, do they buy a second time after one month, after three months, what's normal? Let's take Beardbrand as an example; typically, a great customer will buy maybe every month. What we want to do after a month after their first order, we want us to be in their inbox. We want to show them, okay, well, you're probably running out of the product so here you can click this one click button and add the product again to your cart. That's one thing that we do. Kurt Elster: Swell. Lisa Oberst: It takes a little bit of coding, but it's possible to set this up so that you show them their past order. You have a "add to cart" button right next to the product so that all they have to do is click that button and refill. Kurt Elster: Very good. There's another way to do it, I forgot what it's called, but you could build a link that when clicked on sends everyone to the checkout process with a particular item or items already in their cart. This is a clever idea you have. In their case, they have a consumable good. We know they use it. It maybe takes 30 days to use it up since it's a consumable. Then you follow up with them, "Hey, are you running low, don't run out, order now, order again. Here you go." Just make it so branded easy, remove all the friction for them. It's clever. What else can we do? Lisa Oberst: What we do in some cases if they didn't buy after one month? Well, shoot them another email after three months. Maybe that they hadn't run out yet, maybe they just needed a bit more time before buying again. Send them another different email basically saying that same idea a little bit later. Then if they really haven't purchased in a while, you want to win them back. To do that, you can get creative, send win-back emails that, I don't know, a bit of emotion, be clever, be fun and give them a reason to come back. Maybe a discount, maybe a free product, those work pretty well in win-back emails. Kurt Elster: Let's say after, for most brands, it's going to be somewhere in between 50 and 80 days or if they don't make another purchase, we can really think of them as lost customer. They're a one time purchase, now they're gone. Maybe they'll be back, but maybe not. What we could do is send these win-back emails, where we try before they turn out, before they totally forget about us. Great, make another purchase, come back, we love you, that kind of thing. All right. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: All of those things. Those are three workflows or three colors for email marketing automation. Really tremendous, you've absolutely opened the kimono on this stuff. As someone who lives, eats, breathes Klaviyo, do have any Klaviyo pro-tips for working with the platform? Lisa Oberst: Actually, you've mentioned some of them already. Definitely using the product feed, I know you love it. I love it, it's amazing. Some other tips, so you definitely can setup. It takes a little bit of coding, but there's a way of setting it up your store, so that a customer who clicks through from your Klaviyo email has his discount code applied automatically to the store. Kurt Elster: I didn't know that. Lisa Oberst: Again, that does take a little bit of coding, but with Shopify Plus, Shopify also, that's possible. That really makes for a smooth process. Another thing that's possible by tweaking the Shopify Plus cart a little bit is trading a discount code that will automatically add the free gift to the cart. Kurt Elster: That one for just Shopify Plus only, right? Lisa Oberst: That is Shopify Plus only, yes. Kurt Elster: Yeah, we did that. Well, there's an app that will do it called like Secomapp Free Gifts, but it's not the same. It's not quite the same as the smooth frictionless version that you can get with a little bit of JavaScript plus Shopify scripts. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, exactly. Actually, big news, Klaviyo just announced that Shopify stores will be able to have custom coupons sent out through Klaviyo as of now, so that's really exciting. Kurt Elster: Yes. Lisa Oberst: It used to be only for Shopify Plus. Kurt Elster: Yeah, so what it would do is Klaviyo in Shopify Plus only could dynamically generate coupon codes. When you sense somewhat like, you get the abandoned cart email go say, "You get 10% off, order now!" Then the next you go, “It's going to expire.” Well, really like you were lying essentially, because everyone got the same coupon code. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. Kurt Elster: Even if you limit to them with one email and then those end up on coupon code sites. It was like the good outweigh the bad, but it wasn't perfect. Versus now, if you are in Shopify Plus, Klaviyo could dynamically generate a one time use coupon code for each individual person, which was very cool. It worked well, I liked it. Now, as of yesterday, well, as of May 16th, we see that that works on all Shopify stores even Klaviyo, very cool. Last question, we're running- Lisa Oberst: Go for it. Kurt Elster: When you've gone long, because this has been tremendously valuable. Last question, what's your favorite part about what you do? Lisa Oberst: You might have noticed I have a bit of an accent. That's because I'm French, I'm American, I grew up in Belgium. I've traveled a lot. I have a lot of different experiences to pull from whenever I start working for a new client. I love that aspect of the job. I love diving into these new personalities that I have to embody to be able to rewrite the best copy for each client. One thing, I didn't mention, but every single time I write for one customer, I have someone that I think about. For example, the in gaming sales, game accessories, I'm not a gamer, but I do have friends who are and every time I sit down to write, I start the email, "Hello, Jeremy." I really, really dive into that personality. I think that that's amazing. I get to learn a ton. I have learned so much about growing a beard. I really wish I could grow a beard right now. Kurt Elster: I love that idea. Yeah, when I was trying to unlearn like the awful academic business pros that have beaten into me in school, I had to unlearn that stuff write natural sounding, authentic sounding emails. One of the early tricks that helped was picturing the one person that you're answering. Writing to a single individual and that's going to help you kind of do some code changing, some code switching and writing their email. I love that you're actually titling it when you right the first draft, of course is like, hey, and that person's name. That's going to help you keep you on track as opposed to writing those gross emails that are like, "hello newsletter." You keep in touch one-on-one. Lisa Oberst: Hello world. Exactly. Yeah. Kurt Elster: Very good. Lisa, where can people go to learn more about you? Lisa Oberst: They can go to fuelmade.com and we've actually put together a free checklist, email checklist that you can access at fuelmade.com/usp for unofficial Shopify podcast. This checklist, it gives a lot of tips on how to think through every aspect of your emails before sending them out. Lots of best practices and it's just a great way to make sure that you don't forget a key element of the email before sending it. Great value, definitely go get it. It's at fuelmade.com/usp. Kurt Elster: I will include the link to fuelmade.com/usp. Download the checklist; I'm sure it is greatly valuable. You're talking to a Klaviyo pro here. What was going to say? Lisa, thank you so much for doing this. I greatly appreciate it. Lisa Oberst: Thank you, Kurt. This was great. Kurt Elster: I have learned a lot. To our listeners, thanks for your time and attention, your wonderful reviews on iTunes, your kind words et cetera. However, you found this, find out more about it and get those show notes at unofficialshopifypodcast.com. If you don't want to miss another episode, you want to be notified, sign up for my newsletter, kurtelster.com. Shoot you an email whenever we post a new episode. Of course, if you like to work with me in your next project, you can apply at ethercycle.com. Thanks everybody and we'll be back next week.

Earlier this week, we rebranded and relaunched Receiptful as Conversio. This was ultimately a project that represented our own evolution and what we had learnt about ourselves in the last 2 years since we first launched. See... In those two years, we had done quite a few things that weren't necessarily planned. We launched as a bootstrapped company with a paid-only product then switched to a freemium-only model, which meant raising $500k in a seed round all before we even had a feature set for which we could charge. And then we came to a fork in the road whilst raising our next round of funding, where the question was simple: Whose game do we want to play? That was a year ago today and I'm incredibly proud with the decisions we've made since then, because they've all been about doubling down on who we are. Our rebrand was just a practical manifestation of the mindsets and culture that we had grown in the last year. It was almost as if the way we were communicating our business and ourselves to the world hadn't yet caught up with who we were already. I don't think we're where we want to be just yet, but as a team, we have greater freedom today than at any stage previously in our journey. I feel that freedom so intimately every day. And it's growing too. And this is at least partly down to our decision of playing our game, where we accept that we can't change external things, but where we can make our own rules, we will do that. It means being clear about who we are and why we do things. It means we have the opportunity to play a game, so why would we play someone's game with their made-up rules? Cover artwork by Francis Taylor. Intro & outro music is "Warm Sunny Day" by sunchannelmusic.

We often hear about why work/life balance is important, how a few people are successful at achieving it (survivorship bias much?) and mostly how the majority of the world just struggles with this. I used to be that hamster on that wheel too. In February this year, I decided that I really wanted to run my first marathon this year. That goal soon become my primary goal for the year and helped reshaped my perspective on how I view work and life. My training for my marathon became the first thing on my daily and weekly calendar; my work just had to adapt to that. I didn't work any less than I did before, but I was optimising for something within which I had found purpose: running my marathon. This played into one of the discussions that we keep having at Receiptful, which is how we can be "family-first" (which may mean different things to different people), where the basic idea is that our work needs to adapt to our lives. And not always the other way around. All of this has lead me to come to the perspective that it's not about life and / or work. It doesn't have to be polar opposites. Instead everything we do is just part of life itself. Cover artwork by Francis Taylor. Intro & outro music is "Warm Sunny Day" by sunchannelmusic.

When I left WooThemes, one of my goals was that I wanted to create a SaaS company, because I wanted to have the challenge of hacking the recurring revenue growth curve. Inspired very much by "the startup way of thinking", growth hacking the shit out of a business just held such great attraction to me. Until I got to the point where I was trying to hack growth. And I struggled to do that. Which made me feel like shit and sometimes even made me feel ashamed that I couldn't report better metrics to Receiptful shareholders. So I typed up a 2000-word rant about growth hacking, shared it with a friend for feedback and as I listened to his suggested tweaks, I realised that I didn't feel as strongly about the article anymore. Plus I had no desire to actually publish it. It didn't however spark a realisation months later when I started learning about this idea of having a soft focus in my meditation. This idea that to find one's natural flow in the universe, we can't be too rigid in our focus. Since then Receiptful has continued to grow, but in a way more random way. Sometimes faster than expected and sometimes slower. And mostly we can't even pinpoint where that growth has come from. Having a softer focus on all of this though, has helped me avoid that sensation where it feels like I'm pushing a rock up the hill every day. ;) Cover artwork by Francis Taylor. Intro & outro music is "Warm Sunny Day" by sunchannelmusic.

Rishi Sharma, GM of Q-See Security, has had an interesting journey to say the least. In this episode, Rishi shares how he worked on Obama's election campaign before moving into local government, whereafter he joined Q-See in Customer Service. Over time he worked his way to the top and is now General Manager. He credits the lessons he learnt from his grandparents, which sees him taking chances and living a life without regrets. Rishi also shares how they focus on the quality of their products, their customer service and how they've build a distribution network via big retailers. Some of the best quotes from the episode: “Take chances and live a life without regrets.” “Meditation has helped me put life in perspective and step outside of situation in crisis.” “Connect with your customers around a bigger goal than just buying the product.” “Customer support is everything!” “Our biggest initial investment was the quality of our products.” Find Q-See elsewhere: Store: https://q-see.com/ Twitter: https://q-see.com/twitter.com/Q_SEE Facebook: https://q-see.com/Facebook.com/Qsee YouTube: https://q-see.com/youtube.com/qseesecurity Instagram: https://instagram.com/Q_SEE Credits: Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

9 out of 10 of Nic's previous businesses were failures. And that's something which he attributes to his current success. In this episode, we spoke to Nic Haralambous, who admits to having a sock fetish. Nic is the founder of the luxury men's brand, Nic Harry, and started his business by selling socks that he had to Photoshop into pairs. His first stock cost only $300, which he quickly converted to almost $5000 in sales. We also dive into how he started selling socks to get out of a depressive funk, what's he's learn about being an entrepreneur and running physical retail stores is much easier than Ecommerce. Some of the best quotes from the episode: “I’m pretty well-versed in failure.” “This thing has grown a little bigger than I thought it would.” “Our business is about gut decisions with a little bit of data behind it.” “Business is about tenacity, resilience and how pain you can handle.” “You have to be pre-conditioned to like the not-fun parts of being an entrepreneur.” “How do you know what success looks like if you haven’t failed?” “We solve problems manually for as long as we physically can.” “You have to offer value before you sell something.” Find Nic Harry elsewhere: Store: http://nicharry.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/nicharrystyle Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NicHarryStyle Pinterest: https://za.pinterest.com/nicharrystyle Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicharrystyle Credits: Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Oberon Design was born at a time before technology was what it is today. Neither social media or Ecommerce existed. In this episode, we talked to Oberon Vice-President, Becca Smith, who passionately shares their story and says "There's life beyond your phone". Becca - a cancer survivor - tells us how they've grown their handmade leather goods business, where they started promoting their goods at faires before getting their first website build in 2000. But she says: "We’ve made a good a living, but it’s never been about making a lot of money." Tune in as we speak about being unique, making things that are valuable and how customers rely on businesses to be honest. Some of the best quotes from the episode: “We make everything we make. So we can make our own decisions. We’re independent.” “People are more interested in American-made things today, but for years nobody cared.” “It’s hard for people to imagine that anything happens without the use technology.” “There is life beyond your phone.” “The most important thing is that you make something of valuable and something that is unique.” “We’ve made a good a living, but it’s never been about making a lot of money.” “It’s harder & harder to catch all the new waves in the marketplace. It takes a lot energy, savvy & smarts.” “Our customers rely on us for honesty and integrity.” “” Find Oberon elsewhere: Store: http://www.oberondesign.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oberondesign YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/OberonDesigns Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/oberondesign Instagram: http://instagram.com/oberondesign Credits: Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

FiXT has been in business for 10 years and probably picked one of the most difficult industries in which to build a business: music. In this episode we speak to FiXT co-founder, James Rhodes, who says he's had to wear multiple hats over the years. James speaks about not necessarily knowing what the best path to take was, but that they dug in, experimented and were willing to fail. We also hear how FiXT have grown their business through the evolution of the music industry from selling CD's to the inception of iTunes to today, where music streaming is FiXT's primary source of music-related revenue. And they've done this all through being in tune with their customers and not drinking too much of their own Kool-Aid. Some of the best quotes from the episode: “I just kept volunteering for more opportunities.” “At one stage, I did demo’s of 20 different Ecommerce platforms.” “There wasn’t a clear path ahead of me, but I just dug into it.” “One of the biggest assets we’ve had is building a direct relationships with our customers.” “We’ve never depended on a single revenue channel.” “Business involves a lot of experimentation & a willingness that you may fail.” “The more automated our marketing is, the better our return on time investment.” Find FiXT elsewhere: Store: https://fixtstore.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/fixtmusic Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fixtmusic YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Fixtmusic Credits: Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Neal's Yard Remedies has been in business for a whopping 35 years. Regardless of how you want to look at this, that kind of longevity in business is a real accomplishment. In this episode we spoke to Neal's Yard CEO, Lisa Costello, and we do a deep dive about their company values and how everyone on the team shares those values. Lisa also gives us some insight into how they scaled their global business and built a chain of retail stores to compliment their Ecommerce activities. And they've done all of this in a sustainable way which supports their vision of making organic skincare products that makes people feel beautiful. Some of the best quotes from the episode: “One’s personal values should be reflected in the business.” “This is 2016. People are pretty comfortable using the internet.” “I found a product that I’m passionate about and can talk about all day long.” “If you can be passionate about your job, then you’re really lucky.” “Testimonials on your site builds the kind of trust that a customer has when walking into your store.” “I’m a huge fan of calendar entries. I’m also a constant list maker.” “You can probably solve any problem if you really wanted.” Find Neal's Yard elsewhere: Store: http://www.nealsyardremedies.ca/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/NYR_Canada Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nealsyardremediescanada Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/nyr_canada Instagram: http://instagram.com/nealsyardremediescanada Credits: Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Do you really know your customers? Stacey Carlson, Chief Operating Officer at pet-retailer SitStay, thinks that you probably don't. Stacey shares her #1 tip, which is to get to know your customers and tells us how she learnt more after her first two phone calls with customers than she had in the 10 years of running her business prior to that. She too says she used to think she knew and understood her customers' real needs until she started speaking to them on the phone or in person. Beyond that Stacey also takes us along a walk of Memory Lane. SitStay was founded in 1995 and at some stage used technologies like Geocities and Yahoo Groups to help it grow. Today it uses a wide variety of tools to reach their customers, build loyalty and grow their business. Oh... And as a bonus Stacey told us how they wanted to determine which of their dog toys was truly indestructible by running over the toys with a lawnmower. Repeatedly. Some of the best quotes from the episode: "I go to sleep and all I can think about is solving the next problem." "The company started as a way to just showcase our favourite (dog) products." "We use Facebook to build loyalty. Most customers need to trust you before making a second purchase." "We need to understand our customers right at the ground-level." "I learnt more about my customers' needs in two phone calls than I did in 10 years prior." "We look at who our competition and we just try to do things better." "The biggest problem is that companies only advertise on social media when they want to sell." Find Blackstone Labs elsewhere: Store: https://www.sitstay.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/sitstaygooddogs Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dogsupplies Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sitstaydogs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sitstaygooddogs/ Credits: Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Are some people just born with an innate flair for social media? Maybe, but we think that mastering social media, like any other skill, can be learned with practice. Today we interview David Winsauer, Director of Marketing and IT at Blackstone Labs, a fitness gear and bodybuilding supplement shop. Although Blackstone Labs had an early advantage in this regard, having been founded by popular bodybuilder PJ Braun, one has to admit that the company is doing a great job, especially with its visual marketing. Blackstone Labs has a loyal audience of viewers and followers, and has successfully turned customers into advocates online by being open, good listeners. More importantly, David emphasizes the importance of being honest even if, and especially when, you are dealing with a controversial product. Some of the best quotes from the episode: "We didn't market ourselves as a big company selling. We were just honest." "Grassroots marketing is about talking to customers directly; not about getting a billboard." "Over 60% customers of our customers will buy at least 6 times." "Business isn't that hard once you hire good people that can just talk to each other." "We curse a lot. We're very rogue." "If social media didn't exist, we will not be where we are today. I don't think it could've happened." "It's much easier to sell to someone that trusts you." Find Blackstone Labs elsewhere: Store: https://blackstonelabs.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/blackstonelabs Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackstoneLabs/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Aaronsingerman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackstonelabs/ Credits: Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

After a difficult time, Sander Cohen found peace in Buddhism, and developed interest in spiritual items. He opened his online shop in late 90's, and after a family trip to Nepal in 1999, he dedicated his online store to supporting Himalayan artists. Sander never buys from Chinese factories or street vendors. The team goes directly to the artists every year, and ensures that the mission of creating an ethical, sustainable sourcing, is implemented and enforced even after nearly 2 decades. With his dedication to improving their lives, Sander built a community of loyal suppliers, who have now become like family. The rewards have been tremendous, both on the business and personal level. Some of the best quotes from the episode: "If you don’t love the products you’re selling, I don’t think you can be truly successful selling those products." "If you’re not going to be good at failing, you’re not going to be good at life." "We’re not going away, because we’re not a trend. We buy and sell products that we care about." "Businesses definitely have the responsibility for telling the truth about how they source and buy products." "This is a life that is full of headaches running your own business." Find DharmaShop elsewhere: Store: https://www.dharmashop.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dharmashop Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dharmashop Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedharmashop/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/dharmashop/ Credits: Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Megan Hunt is a serial entrepreneur proving yet again that successful startups don’t have to be based in the Silicon Valley. Frustrated with the difficulties of getting a breakthrough in the fashion industry, she started Hello Holiday, an eCommerce startup to support independent fashion designers. In this episode, we talk about partnering with other talents as a business model and growth strategy. Some of the best quotes from the episode: "What draws me to entrepreneurship is building my own best life." "We don’t sell anything that we wouldn’t wear ourselves." "As an entrepreneur, you have to be comfortable with a certain level of uncertainty." "Having control of your finances and data is what makes an early business sustainable." "If there’s a reason to start a business, it’s to run it the way you want to run it." Find Hello Holiday elsewhere: Store: http://helloholiday.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShopHelloHoliday/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/helloholiday Pinterst: https://www.pinterest.com/helloholiday/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/helloholiday/ Blog: http://blog.helloholiday.com/ Credits: Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Yanne Root is one interesting character. At Violent Little Machine Shop, he made a business out of hilarious, politically incorrect patchwork messages. When we spotted this shop, we knew we had to talk to him. One thing that separates Violent Little Machine from many others, is the consistency of the message, and the authenticity of the brand. To maintain this consistency, Yanne is not afraid of making clear boundaries with his customers, and they love it. Turns out, customers want you to say "No" sometimes! In this episode, he talks to us about the paramount importance of being true to yourself. Some of the best quotes from the episode: "Our brand name tells people that we don’t take ourselves too seriously." "What we do is very much an extension of ourselves." "If a new idea doesn’t pass our bullshit test, then we don’t pursue it." "Every time you get stuck, just go 10% further. That mantra has separated me from possibly failing to being successful." "If you don’t try bullshit customers, they’ll get on your side." Find Violent Little Machine Shop elsewhere: Store: http://www.violentlittle.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/violentlittle/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/violentlittle Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/violentlittle/ Credits: Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

This episode is a short, 3-minute prologue for the One Stop Shop podcast by Receiptful founder, Adii Pienaar. In this prologue, Adii shares some of the inspiration and motivation for why the Receiptful team has produced this podcast. He also shares their hopes and goals with the podcast (hint: it's about telling the stories of eCommerce businesses in a way that helps others learn and grow). Credits: Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Smart marketers know that the first sale is the only beginning of a relationship with a customer. If your marketing stops after the first sale, you are leaving money on the table. Moreover, while there're lots of ways to extend that the lifetime value of a customer, there's one thing you should be doing first. Upgrade your order confirmation emails! And today we're talking with Adii Pienaar of Receiptful. Adii is a serial entrepreneur "learning through making (new) mistakes." He previously co-founded WooThemes (exited 2013) and is currently working on Receiptful. He's also a husband, dad, complete wine snob, and occasionally suffers imposter syndrome. Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes! Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher! Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS! Learn: The stats on receipts Why we love receipts What specifically to do with receipts Which calls to action to include And how to tackle imposter syndrome Links: http://adii.me/ https://receiptful.com/ https://twitter.com/adii Free Guide! I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com

My guest on this episode is Adii Pienaar, founder of Receiptful and WooThemes. This conversation happened across the globe, from my desk in Nicaragua to Adii's in South Africa. The result is a raw, honest, and insightful talk about life, both personal and professional.

It seems like there's a new form of social media popping up every day.  How do you decide which ones to invest in and which ones just aren't worth your time?  Well, you may never know unless you test things!  Cheri Tracy is a master at testing new forms of social media to see if they'll result in sales for her cosmetics business, Orglamix.  But she tests in a way that doesn't consume her entire week.  With as little as 15 minutes each week, Cheri can be active on a social media platform and see sales as a result. Find out where she's promoting her products and where she's seeing results - along with tons of other e-commerce tips! On the Podcast 01:13 - The Business that Started on Bed Rest5:50 - Why Shopify is Worth the Price08:32 - Must-Have Apps for Selling12:19 - What is Wanelo?15:08 - The Buy Button16:09 - How to Get Found on Wanelo18:26 - How to Connect with Influencers on Wanelo21:00 Once Upon a Time...25:02 - How to Get your Brand Page on Wanelo27:03 - Outfy32:51 - Cheri's Secret Weapon37:25 - Productivity Tips40:11 - When your Business Feels like Cleaning the Toilets43:04 - Cheri's Magical Mom Moment ;) Press Play on the Podcast Player Below The Business that Started on Bed Rest When Cheri was pregnant with her first daughter, she was on bed rest at the end of her pregnancy and bored out of her mind!  She already had a business private-labeling cosmetics (buying existing formulas and putting your own branding on something to sell it.) but as she sat in bed, she started reading and researching all of the ingredients in the cosmetics.   Some of them had 30-40 ingredients in them, and she didn't think they needed to be there. Cheri realized that she could build a better product.  So she started Orglamix to create cruelty-free, natural cosmetics that felt more fun and glamorous than the current granola make-up brands in the marketplace. Cheri started out on Etsy, and sold there for several years.  It was really slow in the beginning, but she kept at it and grew year after year. One year Cheri looked back and she had sold 10,000 units over the previous year!  She thought, "I can do this!  I have a business here!" As Cheri's business grew, it got to the point where she was working 80 hours per week to keep things going, and her husband was across the country for his job each week.  She was overwhelmed, so she stopped everything and took 18 months off from Orglamix. Cheri just relaunched Orglamix on the Shopify platform a year ago, and it's been growing quickly! Why Shopify is Worth the Price After trying several platforms such as a Wordpress plug-in that constantly crashed, and other e-commerce sites like Etsy and StoreEnvy, Cheri just can't get over how incredible Shopify is! Cheri was hesitant to try Shopify at first because of the cost.  The base price is around $100/month, and that doesn't include other apps and features you may need.  However, Cheri's so glad she took the plunge. It's simple and easy to use.  Everything is pre-configured for you so that your site looks like a professional designer did it.  But the wonderful thing is that Cheri can manage the entire site herself. The other huge benefit to using Shopify are the sheer volume of Apps that integrate with the platform that will make your job as a seller so much easier. Must-Have Apps for Selling Cheri uses several Apps in conjunction with Shopify that help her e-commerce site to run smoothly. 1.) ShipStation. ShipStation can pull in shipping labels for orders from any platform that Cheri has integrated with it. Every morning she just pushes a few buttons and off her labels go to the printer. 2.) SEO Apps. Cheri uses several SEO apps that help her to get found in search more often. 3.) Email Marketing App. Cheri uses an app that's completely integrated with her site so that it can send out automatic emails if someone has a dropped shopping cart or if she wants to announce a new product. Cheri's biggest response is from a simple little email she sends out the day after someone makes their first purchase from Orglamix.  She essentially says, "Hi I'm Cheri, this is my company, it's so nice to meet you! I'm super excited for you to try my products, and please reach out if you have any questions."Cheri gets about 25-50 responses back each week from people who are so excited to hear from her and have that personal touch! 4.) Receiptful . Receiptful sends an email that asks if the customer is happy with they're order. Then they can click to rate Orglamix.  This rating system also helps Cheri to stave off any unhappy customers and resolve the issue quickly. Receiptful has another great feature.  If a customer shares it with their friends, they get a coupon for $10 off their next purchase, and their friend does too. So how expensive are these fancy apps? Cheri says that the fees for most apps are quite minimal.  Some are free and some are $6/month.  Ship Station is the most expensive app and it costs $99/month. What is Wanelo? Of all the social media platforms that Cheri has tried over the past year, Wanelo has been one of the most effective sites for her.  We completely understand the feeling of social media overwhelm!  You likely feel like you just can't add another thing! Cheri gets that too, but what changed her mind were the traffic and sales that came rolling in without too much effort on her part. So what is Wanelo, exactly? Wanelo stands for Want, Need, Love, and Cheri says it's best described as a social marketplace.  It's a way for shoppers to discover and buy products. What Cheri loves about Wanelo is that users aren't saving DIY projects or recipes or reading quotes, they're all there for one reason... and that's to shop.  Small indie brands can grow and make sales right alongside large brands like urban outfitters and anthropologie. Wanelo's demographic is majority female, and 50% of its users are between 18-24 years old.  Products that cater to young females tend to do well, but Cheri says that her market is considerably older, and she still gets high engagement and conversions with the site. The Buy Button One additional benefit to using Shopify is the "Buy on Wanelo" app that Cheri can use to sell her products directly on the site rather than redirecting Wanelo users to her site. If you have a shop that doesn't have an integrated app, you can simply redirect potential customers to your site, but often, a few sales may be lost in the process. Cheri says she pays Wanelo 10% commission for the feature, and they send her a check for her sales each month. How to Get Found on Wanelo You can get found in several ways on Wanelo. 1.) Create Collections. A collection is a group of your products featured together on your Brand page (the equivalent of your profile page on other social media sites). So if someone sees your brand page, they can browse your collections of your products. 2.) SEO. Use keyword -rich descriptions for your collections so people can find you on Wanelo via search. 3.) Create Stories. Stories are generally a mix of your own products plus others' products. It's kind of like a treasury and an Instagram post mixed together.  When you create a story, your followers may see that story in their feed on Wanelo.  They can then add your products to their own lists, collections and stories, and you'll continue to get discovered by other users.  (In this way, it's similar to Pinterest in that your content can spread from one user to another.) An added bonus?  Since Wanelo is very mobile-driven, many of its users are receiving push notifications when new things happen (like a new story from a brand they're following!) How to Connect with Influencers on Wanelo When you first sign up for Wanelo, the platform will suggest brands and shops you should follow, along with super users to follow.  Cheri calls these the Influencer accounts. You can also find these influencers by heading to "My Feed" then choosing "Find People to Follow".  Wanelo will suggest top influencers to you, whose follower numbers range from 20,000 to several hundred thousand. When you check out the profiles of influencers, many will provide their email address so you can reach out to them for potential partnerships.  You can work with an influencer to create a sponsored "story" in the same way that you might do a sponsored post with an Influencer on Instagram. Cheri just started reaching out to influencers, and she's in the process of doing 3 sponsored stories - she promised to report back to us on how it went! Basic pricing for a sponsored story is about $10 per story per 10,000 followers.  So if you want an Influencer with $50,000 followers to create a story with your product, you'd likely pay about $50 for the story.  An Influencer with 250,000 followers will generally charge about $500 to post a story. Once Upon a Time... We're pretty sure Wanelo stories don't have anything to do with Snow White... so how do they work? A story generally has about 9 products in it.  Users create stories that have a certain look or feel.  The products all pair well together and tell a "story" about a certain person who would use those products. When you save a story to your Wanelo feed, it goes out to your followers.  Each product in the story has a photo as well as a link to the product so customers can either purchase the item on the site or be redirected to buy off site. Cheri shared Several Tips for Using Stories: Use a story to announce a sale. Use a story to host a contest. Work with brands whose ideal customer is similar to yours so by posting a story that includes each of your products, you gain shared access to each other's followers. (In this way, a story is similar to a loop giveaway - but you didn't have to give any products away.) Post stories at peak engagement times. For Cheri, this is between 8-10 PM Central time. She gets triple to quadruple the engagement on her stories at peak times. Recency and Engagement both matter for getting more eyes on your story. So the feed is similar to Facebook. Influencers with lots of followers who like and interact with a story with see that story rise to prominence in the feed. Create stories that don't just feature your own products but other products too. Cheri posts shared stories 80% of the time, and then her own specific story about 20% of the time.Interestingly enough, Cheri gets a higher level of engagement when she shares her own products, but sharing other stories helps her to share the love, network, and find new people to partner with. How to Get your Brand Page on Wanelo If you don't have a Shopify store, it can be a drawn-out process to create your Brand page on the site. You have to submit your feed, Wanelo will approve it, and then you can manually import your products into your feed.  Wanelo is made up of a small team of people, so it's a drawn-out process to get your brand going on the site. However, if you're on Etsy, you're in luck.  Etsy is a bit more tightly woven into the set-up process, so getting your feed approved for your Etsy shop is a bit easier. Outfy There's a new tool for e-commerce sites called Outfy.com, and Cheri is really excited about it! It helps you promote and schedule your products on social media and e-commerce networks.  Outfy integrates with Polyvore, WeHeartIt, Keep, Instagram, and Pinterest. You can schedule 10-15 of your products  to go out to each platform each day of the week in just 5-10 minutes' time.  You can try 50 shares for free if you're a new account. Cheri has been using Outfy for two weeks, and she's already seen a dramatic increase in sales as a result. Cheri's Secret Weapon Since Cheri sells directly on several sites such as Wanelo, Amazon, and her own website, we were curious about how she keeps her orders straight. Cheri says that Ship Station is her secret weapon!  All of the platforms where she sells are connected through Ship Station.  She pushes one button to import all of her orders, and a few clicks later she's printed out all of her labels for the day.  Cheri says it's like having a shipping assistant! Some Features of ShipStation that Cheri Loves: Saves data for product weights. Ship Station will automatically calculate the shipping cost for each order because it's programmed with all the product weights. Saves shipping costs on multiple orders. If a customer makes multiple orders within 24 hours, Ship Station will notify Cheri so she can group their orders together and save on shipping costs. Projects inventory and sales. Ship Station will let Cheri know how many orders she's done in a given week and whether she's up or down in her sales Tracks Turnaround Times. Ship Station will let Cheri know if she's taking longer than 2 days to ship her orders (which is her personal goal.) If she sees orders sitting for 3 days, she knows exactly what to prioritize. Productivity Tips Cheri often gets 100 orders or more each day, so staying on top of her workflow is incredibly important! Set aside designated days to make products. Cheri sets aside two work days per week to just turn out more products and build up her inventory. Leave room for creativity! Because Cheri loves creating new products, she allows her time each day to create, but this is completely separate from her inventory build time. Package orders in bulk. Cheri can package about 150-200 orders in 2.5 hours . This is possible because her inventory is already made and organized, and she has her trusty tool, Ship Station to help! Scale back to ease stress. If you're struggling to stay on top of inventory with your own small business, Cheri recommends you scale back your offerings until you can build up that inventory. It will ease your stress a great deal when you can stop making products on demand. When your Business Feels like Cleaning the Toilets Cheri strongly believes that you should price higher for custom orders and for products you simply don't like to make!  Your time, effort, and sanity are worth that higher price.  (We agree!) Cheri makes a pressed eyeshadow that takes her more time, and she doesn't like making it.  But she has customers who really want that particular product.  So... she raises the price... by a lot! We all agreed that the same premium pricing should apply to our household chores.  Triple the price for cleaning toilets :)   Cheri's Magical Mom Moment ;) Cheri had a really sweet moment with her two girls the other week.  Maybe they haven't outgrown the magic of childhood just yet! Stay in touch with Cheri Orglamix.com To connect with Cheri in our Facebook group, you can sign up for our list and we'll send you an invite!