Podcasts about zipify

Imagine a world where your worst gas-related fears simply… disappear. No awkward moments, no subtle side-eye glances. Just peace, dignity, and activated carbon filters.That's the world Collin White and his father set out to create when they launched Tootles, a Shopify store selling flatulence-filtering underwear. At first, people laughed. But then, they listened. Because for people with digestive issues, this isn't a joke—it's a solution.Today on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, Collin joins Kurt to talk about building a business in a deeply niche market, convincing manufacturers that fart-proof underwear is, in fact, a real thing, and finding customers who need his product (but don't necessarily want to talk about it).In this episode:✔️ How Collin and his dad took Tootles from idea to reality✔️ The science behind fart filtration (yes, it works)✔️ Marketing a taboo product without making it a joke✔️ How Tootles increases AOV with clever bundling✔️ Why subscriptions aren't always the answer for consumable productsFarts are funny. Business is serious. And somewhere in the middle, there's a Shopify success story worth listening to.Links & Resources

“Rainier Watch started as me shouting into the void about whether the mountain was out. Now, it's a brand in REI. Didn't see that coming.”David Lindahl started Rainier Watch as a simple Twitter account—just a guy posting updates on whether Mount Rainier was visible that day. No business plan, no grand vision. Just a love for the mountain.But then people started following. They started asking for stickers. And suddenly, David found himself running an e-commerce brand. What began as a hobby turned into a business selling apparel, getting into retail stores like REI, and building a loyal community of outdoor enthusiasts.This week, we follow David's journey—from side project to full-time business. How he scaled his Shopify store, navigated wholesale partnerships, and made every mistake possible before finally getting it right. Along the way, we look at what happens when an entrepreneur outgrows their own operation, the challenges of building a brand rooted in a specific place, and what it really takes to turn a passion into a sustainable business.Links

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Hello and welcome to the DTC Podcast, I'm Eric Dyck. Today I'm catching up with my old friend and mentor Ezra Firestone, the DTC Powerhouse behind Boom Cosmetics with Cindy Joseph, Zipify, Smart Marketer, and more recently Navage, a leading nasal irrigator product that Ezra's company acquired. Ezra is an ecommerce operator who straddles all sides of the equation from products, to SAAS, to info, and who more recently has been focused on aquiring existing brands to apply his unique skill set to, rather than starting them from zero, so his perspective on the DTC game is always multi-dimensional... Today's talk dives into his brands' increased focus on proactive SEO and content marketing, the power (and longevity) of building a personal brand, and the mechanics of buying established brands... Join us for an insightful conversation packed with actionable strategies, personal business philosophies, and a look into the future of e-commerce through the lens of one of the industry's most respected figures... On with the show! Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction 2:00 - The Importance of SEO and Content Marketing in Today's E-Commerce 4:00 - Strategies for Building a Powerful Personal Brand 6:00 - Insights into Acquiring and Scaling Existing Brands 8:00 - The Future of E-Commerce and Predictions by Ezra Firestone Hashtags: #EzraFirestone #DTCpodcast #EcommerceSuccess #SEOStrategies #PersonalBranding #BusinessGrowth #Entrepreneurship #DigitalMarketing #BrandAcquisition #EcommerceTrends Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup Advertise on DTC - https://dtcnews.link/advertise Work with Pilothouse - https://dtcnews.link/pilothouse Follow us on Instagram & Twitter - @dtcnewsletter Watch this interview on YouTube - https://dtcnews.link/video

Having a pre-Black Friday offer helps grab attention and boost sales before the big weekend. Create FOMO with a contest or limited-time discount.Increase engagement leading up to the holidays. Run a social media giveaway and email your list to enter. This expands your reach when you later promote BFCM deals.Capture emails from website visitors by offering an ethical bribe like a discount code in exchange for their email. Follow up with valuable content to build the relationship.Analyze your data to identify your top-selling products or categories, then go all in on promoting those during Black Friday/Cyber Monday. Rely on proven winners.Boost average order value with post-purchase upsells, via apps like Zipify. If your AOV is $50, an upsell taking it to $80+ is a game changer.Other tips: Set free shipping threshold above your AOV to incentivize adding more items, layer products in images, send follow up emails with special offers.This episode will help ecommerce businesses maximize profits during the critical holiday sales season!Get everything we use to create successful Black Friday Holiday Sales! https://www.myholidaypromo.com Learn more about Privy to market your ecom store: https://privy.grsm.io/l7e58vux3z5s Connect with Carina Hatton!Website: https://www.knittedbelle.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/growyourboutiqueFree 10-Step Checklist To START, GROW & SCALE Your DREAM eCom Store™: https://pages.onlineboutiquecoaching.com/checklist-8293

So In this episode of Interviews with Entrepreneurs Show, we're Interviewing Troy Ericson. Troy Ericson is the owner of Copywriting.org, EmailDeliverability.com, & EmailListManagement.com. His company is called Email Paramedic, the leading Email List Management Agency that has generated over $50,000,000 for their clients since 2019 by improving email copy & deliverability. Troy has worked with Traffic & Funnels, The Sales Mentor, Rich Schefren, REPP Sports, V-Shred, Joel Erway, Zipify, SmartMarketer, Perry Belcher, 10X Advisor Network, David Meltzer, Sam Ovens, Jason Capital, Joel Marion, Alex Cattoni, and hundreds more. He was also ranked as the #20 Copywriter in the world by Peter Tzemis from Traffic & Funnels. Troy is also a musician and former college baseball player. Troy Ericson's SOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/troyallenericson/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yosoytroy/ FOLLOW RJ SOCIAL MEDIA: Facebook: ⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/therjahmed⁠⁠ FB Group: ⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/AMHOE⁠⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/itsrjahmed⁠⁠ Get My Free Script that used to Interview Over a Billion $ worth of Entrepreneurs: ⁠⁠https://www.billiondollarscript.com⁠

"Serve the world unselfishly and profit." That's the tagline that Ezra Firestone appends to his work, and he's dead serious about it. As the CEO of Boom! By Cindy Joseph and of Overtone, plus the Founder of Zipify and SmartMarketer, he's one of the most seasoned and trustworthy voices in ecommerce. That is reason enough to have him on my podcast, but I am particularly interested in Ezra's approach to the word "unselfishly." So we spent most of this episode exploring the deeper questions of life and business: what is "profit" really? What's the goal of making a lot of money? How can we generate meaning and joy in life? Ezra is one of the most reflective thinkers I've been around on these topics, and my big hope for this episode is that it will spur similar reflections for you. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS [00:01:39] Ezra Firestone is a successful e-commerce operator. [00:06:34] Serve unselfishly and profit. [00:12:48] Enjoy what you have now. [00:15:18] Be present and enjoy life. [00:19:06] You are not broken. [00:27:38] Generosity is self-interest. [00:27:50] Take care of yourself first. [00:32:07] Enjoy experiences and meaningful relationships. [00:39:49] Product optimization drives customer retention. [00:42:16] Deep thinking leads to success. EPISODE SPONSOR Virtual assistants can be helpful. Virtual professionals can transform your business. Get connected to incredible ecommerce talent from the Philippines with More Staffing by visiting ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.morenow.co⁠⁠⁠⁠. FOLLOW UP WITH EZRA Ezra's Instagram: @EzraFirestone Ezra's Twitter: @EzraFirestone Ezra's LinkedIn: @EzraFirestone SmartMarketer: https://smartmarketer.com/ Zipify Apps: https://zipify.com/ FOLLOW UP WITH ANDREW Follow Andrew on Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@andrewjfaris⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email Andrew: podcast@ajfgrowth.com Work with Andrew: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.ajfgrowth.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ EPISODE MUSIC Music Intro: "⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tell Me Mama⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠" by The Devious Means Music Outro: "⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Rusty Little Scissors⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠" by The Devious Means

Hi there, CPG friends! Welcome to Episode 45, where we're diving deeper into how to choose a successful promo offer for your brand. With Q4 just around the corner, it's time to gear up and make some serious cash! And guess what? We're here to equip you with the best tips and tricks to make this sales quarter your most successful one yet. Today's episode is extra special because we have our amazing team member Carley Jones joining us to share her promo expertise and insights. Together, we're going to unleash six revenue-driving tips that will help you pick killer promo offers, and set the stage for a profitable Q4. So buckle up; next stop: choosing your Q4 promo offer. 

Thanks for tuning in!Troy Ericson is the owner of Copywriting.org, EmailDeliverability.com, & EmailListManagement.com. His company is called Email Paramedic, which has generated over $100,000,000 for their clients since 2019 by improving email copy & deliverability. Troy has worked with Traffic & Funnels, The Sales Mentor, Rich Schefren, REPP Sports, V-Shred, Joel Erway, Zipify, SmartMarketer, Perry Belcher, 10X Advisor Network, David Meltzer, Sam Ovens, Jason Capital, Joel Marion, Alex Cattoni, and hundreds more. He was also ranked as the #20 Copywriter in the world by Peter Tzemis from Traffic & Funnels. Troy is a musician and former college baseball player living in Tampa, Florida.Connect with Troy:https://www.instagram.com/yosoytroy/https://www.facebook.com/troyallenericsonhttps://www.troyericson.comGo out and take action from what you heard, share this with somebody, and continue to elevate your life and business! ❤️Want to outsource your audio and video production to a professional and qualified team? ---> LET'S CHAT

Improving Email Deliverability Troy Ericson, Email Paramedic   – The Sharkpreneur podcast with Seth Greene Episode 904 Troy Ericson Troy Ericson is the owner of Copywriting.org, EmailDeliverability.com, & EmailListManagement.com. His company is called Email Paramedic, the leading Email List Management Agency that has generated over $50,000,000 for their clients since 2019 by improving email copy & deliverability. Troy has worked with Traffic & Funnels, The Sales Mentor, Rich Schefren, REPP Sports, V-Shred, Joel Erway, Zipify, SmartMarketer, Perry Belcher, 10X Advisor Network, David Meltzer, Sam Ovens, Jason Capital, Joel Marion, Alex Cattoni, and hundreds more. He was also ranked as the #20 Copywriter in the world by Peter Tzemis from Traffic & Funnels. Troy is also a musician, former college baseball player, and lives in Tampa, Florida.   Listen to this informative Sharkpreneur episode with Troy about how to improve email deliverability. Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week's show: - How reinventing yourself is not the end of the world – good things can happen. - Why it's important to make sure the prospects you're reaching out to are receiving your emails. - How doing good things for people will lead to good things for you and your business. - Why doing good work for good people will lead to more good business. - How building your community and being a part of it is important for any business owner.   Connect with Troy: Guest Contact Info Twitter @troy_ericson Instagram @yosoytroy Facebook facebook.com/troyallenericson LinkedIn Linkedin.com/in/troyericson   Links Mentioned: copywriting.org EmailDeliverability.com EmailListManagment.com   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Email is the new junk mail - our inboxes are flooded with so many sales emails and pitches, no one wants to open anything anymore. This presents a massive hurdle for entrepreneurs who want to build a healthy list and use it to communicate directly with customers and fans. Email has become a struggle, not because of the channel itself but because we treat it differently to social media, which we shouldn't.  As business owners, how do we send out the kinds of emails people want to open, read and engage with? In this episode, I'm joined by Email Deliverability Expert and founder of Email Paramedic, Troy Ericson. He shares strategies to get traction on your email list and how he has grown his business.  Three Things You'll Learn In This Episode  How to improve your email deliverability What steps can you take to make your emails stand out?  Stop treating email like email Most entrepreneurs are authentic on social media but super formal on email. Why is this the wrong approach?  Grow by solving a problem Troy 10x'd his business in a short time. What strategies does he use to connect with potential clients?     Guest Bio Troy Ericson is the #20 Copywriter in the World & one of the top Email Deliverability Experts who has generated over $50MM since 2019. He is the owner of Copywriting.org, EmailDeliverability.com, MailGenius.com, & EmailListManagement.com. His company is called Email Paramedic, the leading Email List Management Agency that has generated over $50,000,000 for their clients since 2019 by improving email copy & deliverability. Troy has worked with Traffic & Funnels, The Sales Mentor, Rich Schefren, REPP Sports, V-Shred, Joel Erway, Zipify, SmartMarketer, Perry Belcher, 10X Advisor Network, David Meltzer, Sam Ovens, Jason Capital, Joel Marion, Alex Cattoni, and hundreds more.   For more information, head to https://faqemail.com and opt in. You can also find Troy on Facebook.   

98% of the people who look at your products won't buy from you. It's sad but it's true. But let me tell you a secret... it's the people who don't buy from you that matter more in some cases. In this video, I'm going to show you why prospects are more important than profits, and how you can use 2 of my favorite programs to explode your E-commerce success.

Consider this a Pit Stop for your personal alignment! Ezra Firestone (Founder of Boom, Zipify, Smart Marketer, and now the owner of Overtone) shares the exact process he uses to reflect and set goals for each new year. You'll hear all about Ezra's recent challenges and how he plans to re-align for 2023 - so that you can learn how to tweak your outlook and routines and, in turn, adapt the goals you have for every area of your life. Want to hear the Business content left out of this podcast episode? You can watch the rest of this webinar here, https://zipify-1.wistia.com/medias/ni6u5l8y19. YOUR ENGAGEMENT MATTERS  Thank you to our listeners for the 5-Star Reviews and meaningful messages! This Podcast has gone above and beyond what we expected, and we have YOU to thank for that. It makes a difference when you follow us (and leave a review) on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-smart-marketer-podcast/id1522629407) or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.  We'd also love it if you repost this episode to your social media, share your favorite episodes with friends, and be sure to tag us in your next post, #WeOutHere. Have questions? Please send us an email at support@smartmarketer.com, and don't forget to… Serve the World Unselfishly and Profit.   Links Ezra Firestone, https://smartmarketer.com/about/ Smart Marketer Courses, https://smartmarketer.com/courses/

Ezra Firestone (Founder of Boom, Zipify, Smart Marketer, and now the owner of Overtone) talks with our Host (and CEO of Smart Marketer), Molly Pittman, in this encouraging beginning-of-the-year episode. Listen as Ezra throws out some wicked-smart wisdom on life and business, and Molly gets to a core question that she is asked All. The. Time. Together they set the record straight on how to think about Top Of Funnel Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Ezra and Molly provide a seasoned viewpoint that will help you better think about it, especially if you're drawn to those bigger ROAS numbers.  "Would you rather have a 10X ROAS? Where you acquire five customers to sell stuff to later and continue to increase their lifetime value, or would you rather have a 1X or 2X ROAS where you've acquired a hundred customers that you get to monetize further? That's what's missing from the ROAS metric; it does not show scale”. Molly Pittman. YOUR ENGAGEMENT MATTERS  Thank you to our listeners for the 5-Star Reviews and meaningful messages! This Podcast has gone above and beyond what we expected, and we have YOU to thank for that. It makes a difference when you follow us (and leave a review) on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-smart-marketer-podcast/id1522629407) or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.  We'd also love it if you repost this episode to your social media, share your favorite episodes with friends, and be sure to tag us in your next post, #WeOutHere. Have questions? Please send us an email at support@smartmarketer.com, and don't forget to…  Serve the World Unselfishly and Profit. Links Mentioned In This Episode, Ezra's Welcome to 2023 Webinar, https://zipify-1.wistia.com/medias/ni6u5l8y19.Ezra Firestone, https://smartmarketer.com/about/ Molly Pittman, https://mollypittman.com Smart Marketer Courses, https://smartmarketer.com/courses/

As entrepreneurs, we often have those times where we take on more than we should.  On today's Quick Tip Tuesday, Chalene discusses this topic with Ezra Firestone. They cover all sorts of pertinent issues, like: daily structure, personal policies, boundaries and learning to delegate. These areas apply not just to work related things, but also social media consumption, family commitments and anything else that could create stress or affect our peace, health and even relationships.     Links from today's episode:  Learn More about Ezra at www.SmartMarketer.com & www.Zipify.com Check out Ezra's FREE Trainings Follow Ezra on Instagram and Twitter @EzraFirestone     Get your free download of BeLay's CEO's book, Rise Up & Lead Well: How Leveraging an Assistant Will Change Your Life and Maximize Your Time Just text TRIBE to 55123 for your free copy today. That's T-R-I-B-E to 55123     Check out InstaClubHub!!  For Just $7!! The ONLY All-In-One Instagram Resource Community Designed To...Grow Your Following and Reach More Customers on Instagram™(All in Just Five Minutes a Day!)  InstaClubHub.com/trial     Download the Patreon App and Join The Chalene Show at patreon.com/TheChaleneShow       Join our awesome PodSquad on Facebook here!     Subscribe to The Chalene Show!!     Links you may want to check out:  Check out Bret's ALL NEW Course Money Matters 101 at Chalene.com/moneymatters Check out MarketingImpactAcademy.com Be sure to subscribe to Chalene's YouTube channel !!! Join our awesome PodSquad on Facebook here! Be sure to check out the Push Journals and Notebooks!! Go to PushJournal.com Leave Chalene or Brock  a message or ask them a question at  (619) 500-4819 Not sure what your thing is? Go to Chalene.com/MyThing  Learn more about Kajabi Leave Chalene a Voicemail review or question for a chance to win a gift  HERE   Connect with us on your fav social platform: Chalene: Instagram: www.Instagram.com/ChaleneJohnson    Facebook: www.Facebook.com/Chalene    TikTok: @chaleneOfficial Twitter: www.Twitter.com/ChaleneJohnson Brock: Instagram: @Brock11Johnson TikTock: @brock11johnnson Be sure to follow Brock on his travel adventures @tayandbrock     Stop dieting & start living:  PhaseItUp.com     Sign Up For MY WEEKLY NEWSLETTER and you'll get FREE tips on how to live a ridiculously amazing fun-filled life!     Be sure you are subscribed to this podcast to automatically receive your episodes!!!      Get episode show notes here: www.chalenejohnson.com/podcast      Hey! Send me a DM & tell me what you think about the show! (Use the Hashtag) #BuildYourTribe so I know you're a homie! XOXO Chalene

A lot of emails are going into a void. Their destination may be the trash... or the spam folder. Or, in some situations, they may not be getting delivered at all! This, in part, has to do with the fact that many businesses don't take good care of their email lists. In this episode, we hope to help your business fix that. Troy Ericson is the owner of Copywriting.org, EmailDeliverability.com, & EmailListManagement.com. His company is called Email Paramedic, the leading Email List Management Agency that has generated over $50,000,000 for their clients since 2019 by improving email copy & deliverability. Troy has worked with Traffic & Funnels, The Sales Mentor, Rich Schefren, REPP Sports, V-Shred, Joel Erway, Zipify, SmartMarketer, Perry Belcher, 10X Advisor Network, David Meltzer, Sam Ovens, Jason Capital, Joel Marion, Alex Cattoni, and hundreds more. He was also ranked as the #20 Copywriter in the world by Peter Tzemis from Traffic & Funnels. Troy is also a musician, former college baseball player, and lives in Tampa, Florida. Thank you! To receive Troy's email cheat sheet, please visit faqemail.com

Q4 is upon us, and there's no doubt: As a business owner or marketer, the Black Friday/Cyber Monday season is your biggest opportunity in 2022. The good news is you've got time to take action and see your best season yet, and we'll show you how.   We've broken Ezra's Black Friday Success plan into two parts: October and November (check out Episode 114 if you didn't catch part 1). In this episode, you'll hear the exact breakdown of what Ezra does across his companies (including Boom, Zipify, Smart Marketer, and Overtone) to squeeze the juice out of this sales season. YOUR ENGAGEMENT MATTERS  Thank you to our listeners for the 5-Star Reviews and meaningful messages! This Podcast has gone above and beyond what we expected, and we have YOU to thank for that. It makes a difference when you follow us (and leave a review) on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-smart-marketer-podcast/id1522629407) or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.  We'd also love it if you repost this episode to your social media, share your favorite episodes with friends, and be sure to tag us in your next post, #WeOutHere. Have questions? Please send us an email at support@smartmarketer.com, and don't forget to… Serve the World Unselfishly and Profit. Links Ezra Firestone, https://smartmarketer.com/about/ Smart Marketer Courses, https://smartmarketer.com/courses/

The Black Friday/Cyber Monday season is your biggest opportunity in 2022 (whether you're an E-Commerce brand or otherwise). The good news is you've got time to take action and see your best season yet; the even better news is that Ezra will show you how.  We've broken Ezra Firestone's Black Friday Success plan into two parts, October and November. Listen for Ezra's must-use strategy and the exact video formulas he uses (across all of his companies, including Boom, Zipify, Smart Marketer, and Overtone) to warm up his audience and prepare for a winning holiday season. YOUR ENGAGEMENT MATTERS  Thank you to our listeners for the 5-Star Reviews and meaningful messages! This Podcast has gone above and beyond what we expected, and we have YOU to thank for that. It makes a difference when you follow us (and leave a review) on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-smart-marketer-podcast/id1522629407) or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.  We'd also love it if you repost this episode to your social media, share your favorite episodes with friends, and be sure to tag us in your next post, #WeOutHere. Have questions? Please send us an email at support@smartmarketer.com, and don't forget to… Serve the World Unselfishly and Profit  Links  Ezra Firestone, https://smartmarketer.com/about/ Smart Marketer Courses, https://smartmarketer.com/courses/

Iris Smit built The Quick Flick into a reportedly $15-million-a-year business within five years—and that's after rejecting a $300,000 offer on Shark Tank. Her beauty brand is stocked in Australia's largest pharmacy and grocery stores, and did all of it while bootstrapping and learning how to be a CEO while on the job.  Learn Iris's must-use Shopify apps, mental health tips for entrepreneurs, and influencer marketing strategy in this episode of Female Founder World with Jasmine Garnsworthy. LINKS AND MENTIONS Subscribe to the Female Founder World newsletter: https://femalefounderworld.beehiiv.com  Register for Female Founder World x Shopify's Brand Camp in LA! https://losangeles.shopify.com/foundermixer0923  instagram.com/femalefounderworld instagram.com/jasminegarnsworthy Explore The Quick Flick: www.quickbeauty.com  Iris recommends Okendo, Zipify, Stockist Locator,Triple Whale

Brad Redding, Founder & CEO @ Elevar (Connect on LinkedIn and Twitter) shares the most common tracking issues we see with custom landing page funnels like headless sites, Webflow + Shopify combos, Shogun, Zipify, and Wordpress. Plus you'll learn how to implement fixes to ensure these are non-issues for your own site.-----We release 2 new episodes every week that go deep into the world of tracking, analytics, and conversion optimization. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.-----Links Referenced:Headless Tracking Podcast w/Jon CairoURL DecoratorHow to Implement Elevar on Zipify Landing PagesTop Headless Analytics Learning Lessons

#100 Ezra Firestone from Boom, Zipify, and Smart Marketer: Wealth Strategies for Creating Wildly Successful Businesses Welcome back to The Ecom Show. We're extremely excited because this marks our 100th episode, and we've got a special guest, Ezra Firestone, here with us today to celebrate this milestone. Ezra is the founder of three highly successful businesses, Boom, Zipify, and Smart Marketer, that generate over $40M+ in annual sales revenue. He specializes in e-commerce, digital marketing, flipping businesses, and wealth creation. Join our founder and podcast host, Daniel Budai and Ezra Firestone in a very interesting conversation where they discuss: ✔️ Ezra's early years in online marketing ✔️The power of content marketing ✔️SMS marketing 101 ✔️ The 3 steps to creating a wealthy business Ezra's Early Years in Online Marketing Ezra first stumbled upon online marketing in 2005. He began his journey as a freelance consultant, offering services he was interested in learning more about to other brands and professionals. His first client was an online life coach who needed assistance with paid marketing. Ezra assisted him in generating millions of dollars by marketing his e-books and course through optimization of his landing pages and google ads. However, he was more interested in a product that consumers could physically consume, pushing him into the world of e-commerce. So, he started his journey through drop shipping, all kinds of things. As this was before the existence of Alibaba, he had to source directly through American manufacturers. His first big success was in 2007 with costume wigs like, Elvis wigs, clown wigs, and troll wigs, which worked out well in the early years. Dropshipping was still in its nascent years, and Ezra identified that this model had many problems. For example, there weren't proper systems for tracking inventory, order status, and quality control. So seeing a better business potential in making products on his own, Ezra founded his e-commerce brand called Boom! The Power of Content Marketing Content marketing is huge in today's world. Social media has given each brand the power to build its own narrative surrounding its products. Let's look at how Ezra created a cult following for his skincare and makeup brand Boom using content marketing. Ezra launched Boom back in 2010; however, his business generated its first multi-million only in 2016. He partnered up with his friend, who was a makeup artist, to create an organic skincare and makeup line catered to women from every generation. Drawing from his experience of working with the life coaching business, Ezra implemented the influencer or newsletter business model. "The idea behind that is that you are talking to a group of people about a collective experience they're sharing and creating content about an experience that is helpful to them. And then eventually, you're going to say, Hey, if you like me, check out my products and services." Boom has always been a philosophy company. And their philosophy has been: "You're right the way you are, you're beautiful, just as you are, you don't need to change, you don't need to try to hide, you don't need to, you know, use cosmetics to cover up. And we have products that support that idea." Boom started a blog back in 2011. And that blog grew into the reason why they now have a 50% repeat customer rate. Through their blogs, they've created content that resonates with women of all ages. As a D2C brand, you're only going to make it in the long run if you coalesce a community through content to create repeat customers. The key takeaways from Ezra's experience would be to leverage content and create a community based around your products. This way, you can engage with your customers. And always remember the three C's of creating content: creativity, consistency, and composure. Boom has generated multi-million-dollar revenue in annual sales because they've been consistent and composed with their efforts to produce creative content over the years. It took them six years to establish themselves as a credible brand in the makeup and skincare industry. So if you're an e-commerce entrepreneur, be patient and don't lose hope! SMS Marketing 101 SMS marketing is a powerful tool that all e-commerce businesses should be using. Instant messaging can help recover sales and push your customers to shop more. It's an essential marketing tool that you should incorporate into your multichannel strategy. SMS marketing doesn't need to be complicated. You can make the most out of your SMS marketing by following three simple steps. ⭐ Build your database: Add phone numbers in your store pop-ups as a criterion. A two popup approach where you offer additional discounts for signing up with your phone number can help you increase your opt-in popups. Also, make sure to have a popup when customers try to abandon your website or check out while shopping. ⭐ Set up automated flows: Once you've got your database, use a good tool to create automated flows for abandoned cart recovery and post-purchase contact. ⭐ Content-based messages: Send out an SMS sharing the best content or your current sale once every week. This way, you target your list frequently without spamming them. Offering them customer support through instant messaging is also a great way to retain them. Following these three fundamentals can help businesses nail down their SMS marketing. 3 Steps to Creating a Wealthy Business Besides being a wildly successful serial entrepreneur, Ezra Firestone is also a venture capitalist. He recently acquired a $30M/year eCommerce business that's been generating losses for years, and made it profitable in just 90 days. Take a look at how Ezra's formula for generating wealth. There are three key steps to scaling your business. The first is hiring and training! Ezra Firestone has a team of over 150 people to help manage and run his multiple businesses. Scale comes from outside yourself.  "If you're on the road driving, you can't see what's up and up in the distance. You need to let somebody else drive because you need to get up and navigate. You have to make that shift from driver to the navigator. And if you never make the shift from driver to the navigator, you will not scale your company. It took me seven or eight years of my career to do this, and now I'm in a much better position." The second involves setting up systems and processes. For businesses to function smoothly you need to have, for them to function, you need to have repetitive systems and processes in place that run consistently. The last one is money management. You need to figure out where and when to scale your business. As businesses start to pick up, they go through a snowball effect. And the most common mistake people make is pulling out of their business when it begins to snowball. And so the snowball can never really pick up steam if they're just pulling money out of business and making unregulated spends. "What you should do is get a part-time job that pays your bills, which is what I did as well. And then just reinvest 100% back into your business so the snowball can build. And then eventually, when you start pulling from it, it's big enough that it can sustain that. So many people cut the legs out from under their business because they pull the money out as soon as it begins to make money. Whereas if they had just reinvested 100% Back in, it would have been able to get big." Another great way to generate wealth is through asset liquidation. Build your business to sell it one day. Then, use that money to acquire other valuable assets that you can optimize further and sell. Each profitable business reaches a point where they have enough revenue to grow by either building or buying. Buying is a quicker way to grow your business and achieve your goal. We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Ecom Show. To know more about scaling your business, venture capital, and e-commerce, follow Ezra Firestone on LinkedIn. Thank you for listening; we release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Follow Daniel Budai: Daniel's LinkedIn Daniel's Facebook Learn more about scaling your business: Watch Ezra Firestone's Masterclass Check out Ezra Firestone's ventures: BOOM by Cindy Joseph Zipify Smart Marketer

Your Shopify store is your money-making baby that sometimes needs a few accessories to make you more money. It's as easy as downloading the Shopify app --> Zipify pages. This app allows you to increase your average order value so you get more bang for your buck! You can incentivize with discounts or offer relative products, it's all up to you! "The app is in your court", now you just have to shoot your shot (make that money). If you're in need of a team, one that will go above and beyond for you and your brand, then please visit agmninjas.com to get more information on how we can help you today. You can follow Manuel on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrmanuelsuarez/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/theninjamarketer/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrmanuelsuarez/ Youtube: https://bit.ly/3GVPXVm Messenger Channel: www.m.me/theninjamarketer/ Contact AGM: site: agmninjas.com email: contact@agmagency.com phone: 1.888.280.3339

Si estás mínimamente interesado en el marketing online, probablemente alguna vez habrás escuchado hablar del término Ads, o lo que es lo mismo, publicidad. Lo que también es posible es que te preguntes qué significa realmente eso de Ads, en qué redes sociales se puede hacer publicidad y, sobretodo, qué ventajas tiene para tu empresa. Para ello, hemos invitado a José Renteria, quien tiene más de diez años haciendo mercadeo y manejando más de 10 millones de dólares en advertising, principalmente en Facebook e Instagram, y ayudando a empresas. Ahora que ya tienes claro qué es Ads, es importante que sepas algunas de las plataformas donde puedes hacerlo. Cuáles utilizar depende de muchos factores, entre otros del sector al que se dirige tu empresa. Por ejemplo, las redes sociales más utilizadas en el sector de moda y calzado son Facebook Ads e Instagram Ads, pero para otros sectores como, por ejemplo, despachos de abogados o asesorías, las más interesantes son LinkedIn Ads y Twitter Ads. También hay que tener en cuenta a Google Ads, que sólo permite utilizar texto en los anuncios mostrados en su página de resultados de búsqueda. Según José, “lo bueno de Facebook e Instagram es que es barato comparado con Google, a pesar de que haya subido demasiado sus precios el año pasado”, y agrega: “Google está atacando palabras que la gente está buscado. Ellos están más listos para comprar y es más fácil adquirir un cliente ahí. Con Facebook e Instagram puedes generar una demanda haciendo que la gente dé like, comente, etc. Pones en el post tus productos y en los comentarios escribes algo que cause engagement, que la gente quiera responder, y Facebook se lo muestra a más personas y tu CPM empieza a bajar”. Es muy efectiva la generación de interacción del usuario mediante distintos posteos que inviten al público a responder preguntas y otro tipo de consignas, además del uso de hashtags con el fin de fomentar campañas. Pero también hay que buscar a los clientes mediante el email marketing, que se enfoca en mandar un mensaje con la finalidad de adquirir nuevos consumidores, desarrollar la relación con los actuales, crear lealtad, interactuar con los contactos, aumentar ventas, generar confianza hacia un servicio o producto, confirmar una orden de compra, entre otros objetivos. José aconseja “mandar mails todas las semanas”: “Ahora es tan importante, más que antes, poder hacer el seguimiento bien en Facebook, Instagram y por e-mail, porque las audiencias se están haciendo más chiquitas, pero si agarraste sus contactos, les puedes hacer el seguimiento sin parar”. Hoy en día, las marcas cuentan con varios canales de comunicación y puede que quieran hacer publicidad en varios de ellos. A pesar de que sean distintas plataformas, la esencia de la información debe ser la misma y así puede ser también para los anuncios, pero “el contenido cambia dependiendo del producto”: “Depende mucho de qué tipo de producto estás vendiendo. Si estás vendiendo ropa, vender el estilo de vida funciona muy bien”, destaca José. Los objetivos para cada artículo varían, pero también para cada fin de la empresa en relación a ese artículo, y para eso debes tener muy claro el camino que se debe tomar. En este sentido, José recalca que “cuando uno crea una marca, muchos piensan que es importante tener seguidores o crear el Instagram o Facebook para poder vender, y no es necesariamente así”. “Antes, cuando no tenías los servicios ads, recibías muchos likes; ahora recibes muchos menos. No crecen las cuentas como antes. La gente piensa que los usuarios que entran en el Instagram son los que están super interesados y, por eso, debes tenerlo completo, pero nosotros hicimos una tienda la semana pasada y pusimos cuatro fotos, una descripción y ya se han vendido 500 dólares”, aclara José, y subraya: “Se puede ir creciendo en el tiempo; lo más importante es que informes bien con tu página, que tenga una estructura que no sólo incluya puro texto y que tengas e-mails y SMS implementado para poder hacer el seguimiento, porque casi nadie compra en el primer toque”. La implementación de ads, sin dudas, hace que las expectativas de crecimiento sean muy elevadas y las conviertan en un recurso excelente para potenciar la visibilidad de cualquier negocio. Para hacerlo de manera correcta hay que seguir ciertos pasos. En este sentido, José asegura que lo primero que hay que hacer es crear una lading page -con Zipify o Unbounce- o una página del producto, diseñarla y tener un botón que diga “únete a nuestro grupo de Facebook”, porque los grupos de Facebook son demasiado poderosos. Sumado a ello debes tener el Welcome E-mail, que es que si alguien se inscribe le mandas algún descuento, y finalmente comienzas con las ads, “con lo más básico, mandando ads a tus seguidores en Instagram y en Facebook”. “Puedes llevar tráfico a tu página atacando a tus seguidores de Instagram con una oferta fuerte. Después puedes hacer un look alike de ellos y atacar sus intereses”, añade. Cuando no sabes quién es el que te va a comprar, una estrategia que José nos recomienda es primeramente “agarrar diez ángulos que puedas atacar, como beneficios, solución de problemas, etc. Creas una página que puede ser landing page o de producto. Al principio no nos importa vender, queremos saber cuáles de esos 10 ángulos está recibiendo la más alta interacción”. Cuando tengamos el tráfico en la página, “hay que ver qué fue lo que dice este ángulo y vamos a atacarlo” en nuestro sitio. Una de las maneras de hacerlo es con un muy buen video: “Es un video general, porque no sabes cuál es el ángulo que va a funcionar, y si tratas de hacer varios videos es costoso. Haz uno y cuando tengas el ángulo listo, haz un video de ese ángulo”. El video sirve tanto para Facebook como para Instagram y el resto de las plataformas, lo que cambia es el estilo de video, dependiendo de cómo la gente actúa en los distintos sitios. Con esto, y teniendo un contenido bien desarrollado, creas un mensaje con el sentido de la marca. Aunque no olvides crear un call to action para comprar en todas las secciones de la página y “lo mandas al carrito en Shopify o al checkout”, afirma José. También es posible mandar tráfico a Amazon mediante las redes sociales, donde puedes ofrecer un descuento, dirigir al usuario a una landing page, capturas el e-mail del cliente y los mandas automáticamente a tu producto en Amazon. Los costos de los anuncios varían mucho dependiendo del artículo. “Hablando en general, una marca puede adquirir clientes con 30 ó 40 dólares. Si tu producto sale menos, tienes que hacer algo para subir el valor, como venta de varios productos en combo”, asevera José, es decir que hay que buscar la manera de que, al primer contacto con los clientes, se pueda pagar el costo por adquirirlos. “Algo que recomiendo ahora es usar TikTok, porque los números que estamos viendo ahora en TikTok es lo que uno venía viendo en Facebook en el 2016. Ahora las personas en Facebook están pagando un dólar por clic, mientras que en TikTok están pagando 20 ó 30 centavos. Es muy importante tomar ventaja de eso porque en dos años va a estar en un dólar”, advierte José. Después de leer esto, seguro que estás pensando en el objetivo conseguir ventas, pero si no das a conocer tu marca o si no atraes público a tu web, no tendrás opciones de conseguir ventas más allá de tus amigos y/o familia, que pueden comprarte por compromiso o porque les gusta lo que vendes pero, aun así, es un círculo reducido. Necesitas llegar a más público para obtener un buen número de ventas, conseguir que tu negocio online sea rentable y poder vivir de ello con anuncios bien pensados. E-mail: jose@social28.com Instagram: @jrenteria123

Today, Chalene welcomes back Ezra Firestone — an incredible entrepreneur who has been super successful with both physical and digital products. In today's episode, Ezra shares his journey, how he got into Ecommerce, the businesses he built and the philosophy he put into place that ensured his business growth!   Check out InstaClubHub!! The ONLY All-In-One Instagram Resource Community Designed To...Grow Your Following and Reach More Customers on Instagram™(All in Just Five Minutes a Day!)  InstaClubHub.com   Subscribe to The Chalene Show!!!   Links from today's episode:  Learn More about Ezra at www.SmartMarketer.com & www.Zipify.com Check out Ezra's FREE Trainings Follow Ezra on Instagram and Twitter @EzraFirestone Check out Marketing Impact Academy!! Go to marketingimpactacademy.com Check out all the brand new Push Journal designs!!! Hurry and get yours before they sell out!! www.pushjournal.com Leave Chalene or Brock  a message or ask them a question at  (619) 500-4819 Not sure what your thing is? Go to Chalene.com/MyThing  Learn more about Kajabi Leave Chalene a Voicemail review or question for a chance to win a gift  HERE   Connect with us on your fav social platform: Chalene: Instagram: www.Instagram.com/ChaleneJohnson    Facebook: www.Facebook.com/Chalene    TikTok: @chaleneOfficial Twitter: www.Twitter.com/ChaleneJohnson Brock: Instagram: @Brock11Johnson TikTock: @brock11johnnson   Stop dieting & start living:  PhaseItUp.com   Here's The System I Use Every Day to be More Organized & Crazy Productive: www.pushjournal.com   Sign Up For MY WEEKLY NEWSLETTER and you'll get FREE tips on how to live a ridiculously amazing fun-filled life!   Be sure you are subscribed to this podcast to automatically receive your episodes!!!  Subscribe to The Chalene Show!!! Join our NEW, awesome PodSquad on Facebook here!   Get episode show notes here: www.chalenejohnson.com/podcast    Hey! Send me a DM & tell me what you think about the show! (Use the Hashtag) #BuildYourTribe so I know you're a homie! XOXO Chalene

Today, Chalene has the pleasure of interviewing Ezra Firestone — an incredible entrepreneur who has been super successful with both physical and digital products. Ezra shares the story of his very unique upbringing and how he became friends and, ultimately, partnered with Cindy Joseph (over 30 years his senior). He explains the importance of their partnership and how their communication style made their Company BOOM! a huge success!   Join the FREE 3 Day Grow Your Gram Bootcamp by going to GrowYourGram.com The ONLY Instagram marketing event of its kind that will give you actionable step-by-step methods, techniques and strategies you can put to use right away to increase your following and attract customers for your business on Instagram.   Subscribe to The Chalene Show!!!   Links from today's episode:  Learn More about Ezra at www.SmartMarketer.com & www.Zipify.com Check out Ezra's FREE Trainings Follow Ezra on Instagram and Twitter @EzraFirestone Check out Marketing Impact Academy!! Go to marketingimpactacademy.com Check out all the brand new Push Journal designs!!! Hurry and get yours before they sell out!! www.pushjournal.com Leave Chalene or Brock  a message or ask them a question at  (619) 500-4819 Not sure what your thing is? Go to Chalene.com/MyThing  Learn more about Kajabi Leave Chalene a Voicemail review or question for a chance to win a gift  HERE   Connect with us on your fav social platform: Chalene: Instagram: www.Instagram.com/ChaleneJohnson    Facebook: www.Facebook.com/Chalene    TikTok: @chaleneOfficial Twitter: www.Twitter.com/ChaleneJohnson Brock: Instagram: @Brock11Johnson TikTock: @brock11johnnson   Stop dieting & start living:  PhaseItUp.com   Here's The System I Use Every Day to be More Organized & Crazy Productive: www.pushjournal.com   Sign Up For MY WEEKLY NEWSLETTER and you'll get FREE tips on how to live a ridiculously amazing fun-filled life!   Be sure you are subscribed to this podcast to automatically receive your episodes!!!  Subscribe to The Chalene Show!!! Join our NEW, awesome PodSquad on Facebook here!   Get episode show notes here: www.chalenejohnson.com/podcast    Hey! Send me a DM & tell me what you think about the show! (Use the Hashtag) #BuildYourTribe so I know you're a homie! XOXO Chalene

How To Increase Your AOV With Zipify One Click Upsell! Get 50% OFF DROPISPY using the code “YMNEPSVU“ >> https://znap.link/ecomerashow --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/ecom-era/support

Ezra Firestone is the Founder of Smart Marketer, Zipify, Boom by Cindy Joseph, and much more...Links MentionedTheBKShow.comLearnWithEzra.com — Check out Ezra Firestone's World Class courses via my partner linkFollow Ezra on InstagramDropshipWithJon.com — Learn how to start an Ecommerce business from Episode #36 guest, Jon WarrenDropshipPodcast.com — Listen to Jon Warren and I talk all things high ticket dropshipping and get looks behind the curtain of some of my businessesLearnWithChase.com — Learn Ecommerce Email Marketing with Episode #28 guest, Chase DimondLearnWithEzra.com — Check out Ezra Firestone's World Class courses via my partner linkBenKnegendorf.com/bonjoro — Build better relationships with your customers by sending thank you videos directly from you, the founder, post purchase.  Start your Free 14 day trial through my partner link and see for yourself!BenKnegendorf.comWant to pick Ben's brain?  Book a 15-minute call!Join The BK Show's newsletterFollow Ben on TwitterFollow The BK Show on FacebookFollow The BK Show on InstagramSubscribe to The BK Show YouTube ChannelNever miss an episodeSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsJoin The BK Show's newsletterHelp the showLeave a reviewSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsWhat's Ben up to?Follow Ben on TwitterFollow Ben on InstagramApply to work with Ben to grow your business.

Landing pages are the follow-up pages after a prospect clicks on your advertisement on Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. The goal of the landing page depends on the objective of your brand but most of the time you want to establish some sort of relationship to the potential customer. Is your goal to get an email, to make a sale or to get a phone call? You have to decide upfront and structure your website and landing page according to your objective and customer. It's super important to follow these 12 steps precisely with your landing page in order to maximize the results and actually get converting customers and purchases. Make sure you've created your perfect customer avatar beforehand so that you can easily speak the same language and talk effectively about their pain points, hopes and fears. I go in-depth in this video on how persuasion works, even if a total stranger lands on your website. We recommend using Zipify, Gempages or Clickfunnels when building your highly successful sales page. The first two integrate directly with Shopify.

For today's episode of Mike's Magical Ecomm Marketing Mini-Series Method, Mike explains how a simple change made his store an extra $27,000.Some of the big takeaways of this episode are here: Using an app which enables pre and post-purchase upsells is a simple move which can yield drastic results.Post-purchase upsells have often required the buyer to go back and fill out their credit card information again, which led to a significant amount of drop-offs. One-click upsells have a much higher success rate.Almost any online store can benefit from using Zipify's OneClickUpsell or a similar app.Have questions? Join the Building It Online Facebook group and let us know what questions you have or what you'd like to see in future episodes.Connect with Brice and Mike here:Brice @ Major Impact Media - Facebook, WebsiteMike @ Outside ROI - Facebook, Website

WOW! Ezra Firestone, the founder of SmartMarketer and Zipify, joined us on the Social Marketing Hour and unleashed massive pieces of business and life wisdom. What we thought would be just a valuable conversation about eComm strategies and growth turned into something so much bigger. We heard why Ezra believes it's actually easier to succeed in eComm today, why he says to give yourself 3-7 years to judge success, and how you can build generational wealth. Oh yeah, and we heard about strategies and tools to grow your eComm business too. This was one of the best interviews yet!I suggest you get ready to take notes. Thanks for listening! I hope you enjoy the podcast! Thanks for listening! I hope you enjoy the podcast! Do the FREE Facebook Ads mini-courses here: agmninjalab.com/free-mini-course If you're ready to take your social media marketing game to the next level, then check out the AGM Ninja Lab by visiting agmninjalab.com. And don't forget to follow me on social media for even more marketing tips and strategies. I post content every day, so be sure to follow me on your favorite platforms! YouTube: http://bit.ly/2Mqxfij Facebook: www.facebook.com/theninjamarketer/ Messenger Channel: www.m.me/theninjamarketer/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrmanuelsuarez/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrmanuelsuarez/ Ps: Don't forget to subscribe to the Social Marketing Hour Podcast with Manuel Suarez and if you found value in today's episode please leave a review. For more information about my advertising agency (AGM MARKETING) or if you would like to hire AGM for your marketing needs, please contact us at contact@agmagency.com/ or 1.888.280.3339

How does the founder of three 7- and 8-figure companies set goals for the year? In this episode, Ezra Firestone (BOOM!, Zipify, Smart Marketer) shares how he internalizes past results and makes future goals for himself, his loved ones, and his companies. As the founder of multiple 7- and 8-figure companies, Ezra has a full plate in the business world — but what people don't see is that he invests the same amount of energy into his personal life. Listen as he attempts to inspire you to take care of yourself, take care of others, and set big goals with every intent of reaching them. YOUR ENGAGEMENT MATTERS!  Here’s how you can make a difference: Subscribe to The Smart Marketer Podcast Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Sign up for our 2021 Traffic Strategy Bootcamp (kicks off Jan. 27) Repost this episode to your social media Share your favorite episodes with a friend Tag us in your next post and use the hashtag #NotBusiness Have questions? Send us an email at support@smartmarketer.com, and don’t forget to… Serve the World Unselfishly and Profit

WOW! Ezra Firestone, the founder of SmartMarketer and Zipify, joined us on the Social Marketing Hour and unleashed massive pieces of business and life wisdom. What we thought would be just a valuable conversation about eComm strategies and growth turned into something so much bigger. We heard why Ezra believes it's actually easier to succeed in eComm today, why he says to give yourself 3-7 years to judge success, and how you can build generational wealth. Oh yeah, and we heard about strategies and tools to grow your eComm business too. This was one of the best interviews yet! I suggest you get ready to take notes. Enjoy. Thanks for listening! I hope you enjoy the podcast! Do the FREE Facebook Ads mini-courses here: agmninjalab.com/free-mini-course If you're ready to take your social media marketing game to the next level, then check out the AGM Ninja Lab by visiting agmninjalab.com. And don't forget to follow me on social media for even more marketing tips and strategies. I post content every day, so be sure to follow me on your favorite platforms! YouTube: http://bit.ly/2Mqxfij Facebook: www.facebook.com/theninjamarketer/ Messenger Channel: www.m.me/theninjamarketer/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrmanuelsuarez/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrmanuelsuarez/ Ps: Don't forget to subscribe to the Facebook Marketing Ninja Podcast and if you found value in today's episode please leave a review. For more information about my advertising agency (AGM MARKETING) or if you would like to hire AGM for your marketing needs, please contact us at contact@agmagency.com/ or 1.888.280.3339

Ezra Firestone, eCommerce expert, Shopify Compass instructor, and CEO/Founder of BOOM! By Cindy Joseph, SmartMarketer, and Zipify joins us to share insights on repeat customer revenue, Spinwheel vs. no Spinwheel, Subscription models, List engagement, managing your unengaged contacts and much more. You can follow Ezra on Instagram here. BOOM! generates 45%+ of it's email revenue from repeat customers. One of the main flows that helps with this is the "2x Buyer Flow" which is designed just to get someone to that second purchase through additional discounting. This repeat customer revenue eliminates the need for a subscription model, but Ezra points out that generally one shouldn't push someone towards a subscription until the second purchase. List health is another big focus for Ezra and his team and he goes in depth about how they never actually delete contacts from their Klaviyo portal, they simply rotate lists and content to make sure they're delivering the right message to those that are unengaged. There's a lot of very good advice from Ezra, make sure you listen and let us know what you think!Follow us on social at: Twitter - @klaviyogrowthInstagram - @klaviyogrowthFacebook - @klaviyogrowthYouTube - Klaviyo Success

Welcome to the first episode of The Smart Marketer Podcast! Join our hosts Molly Pittman (SM CEO) and John Grimshaw (SM CMO) as they sit down with Ezra Firestone (Founder of SM, Zipify, BOOM! By Cindy Joseph) to discuss his 3 most successful business models. See which business model fits you best as we cover some of the pros and cons of running information, physical product, and software companies. Tune in and join us on this new adventure! #weouthere YOUR ENGAGEMENT MATTERS!  Win a Business Makeover with The Smart Marketer Team! Here’s how you can make a difference: Subscribe to The Smart Marketer Podcast to be entered in our giveaway Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts Repost this episode to your social media Share your favorite episodes with a friend Tag us in your next post and use the hashtag #weouthere. Have questions? Send us an email at support@smartmarketer.com and don’t forget to… Serve the World Unselfishly and Profit November 10, 2020

Ecommerce aficionado, Ezra Firestone, joined us for this weeks episode. Ezra is founder of Smart Marketer, creator of Zipify apps and owner of Boom by Cindy Joseph. We discussed building an 8-figure ecommerce business, being able to enjoy success, and having a true work/life balance. Don't forget to please leave a comment below or review […] The post EU165: Ezra Firestone – Work/Life Balance and Success appeared first on eCommerce Uncensored.

Today’s episode is about HOW TO GET AWESOME AD CREATIVE IDEAS. Ad creatives are one of the most important things in advertising. It often has the biggest impact on performance. This episode will show you FAST and ACTIONABLE ways to get TONS of awesome ad creative ideas. K: Look at the Instagram Hashtag of the niche. This one takes 5 seconds and gives you priceless information. If my niche is vegan food, look at the IG hashtag “Vegan Recipes”. Immediately you’ll see the top posts, which tells you what content people respond to for this niche. Look for similarities in the top posts, especially compared to the Recent posts. In this example of Vegan Recipes, immediately I can see that high-resolution closeups of food work well. E: The Ads Library is amazing to see. Go to any brand’s Facebook Page, under Transparency click See More, then GO TO AD LIBRARY. This shows you all the ads they are running. We find following the same few brands closely for months helps you get an idea of trends. So if you see them testing a bunch of styles in October, and a few months later it’s December and they’re only using ONE of those styles, that tells you this ONE remaining style was the winner of their test, and it likely performed best. We suggest you follow a small handful of brands with great ads. We like Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, Snow Teeth Whitening, ShaperMint, Pet Plate, and Zipify for non-physical products. We have no affiliation with these brands. K: See the Ads Library of FAST GROWING brands in your niche. We choose the fastest growing brands because they’re more likely to have strong direct-response advertising than the big corporate brands. For example, instead of Nike, look at Allbirds. Instead of H&M, look at Everlane. ALSO, look at FAST GROWING BRANDS who are not in your niche, but have the SAME TARGET AUDIENCE. For example, if you’re a PREMIUM HOME DECOR brand, and your audience is female ages 25-34, look at a brand like Everlane. See their tone, styles, because this is probably the type of content that attracts your target audience. E: Look at the ads and content of DIRECT COMPETITORS. Even if you are a small brand, look for who your direct competitors are. There are many ways to find this, but a quick way is to go on SimilarWeb.com, where you can look up your website and see what other sites are commonly visited by your website visitors. See what marketing angles, language, tone they use. See what content on their feeds does well, and what does poorly. If you can get an idea of testing trends over time in their Ads Library, you can find insights to save THOUSANDS of dollars on creative testing. K: The last tip we have is REVIEW SCRAPING. This one is HUGE. E: If you want examples, screenshots, or have any questions, contact eric@voymedia.com, and put PODCAST in the subject line. Thanks for listening! This action-packed episode is brought to you by the performance marketing experts at Voy Media. https://voymedia.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/digitalmarketingfastlane/message

Are you trying to find ways to increase your sales without going the nightmarish route of launching a new product? Are you stuck treading water, unsure which direction to take? All entrepreneurs at some point or another hit a point where their product seems to be stalling. Steve Chou joins Kevin in this episode of Maximizing Ecommerce to fill you in on some of his best-kept secrets to combat this problem. When Steve’s wife was pregnant with their first child, she wanted to quit her job. Armed with a desire to replace her income—and after stumbling upon the perfect product—they launched their first Ecommerce business and the “My Wife Quit Her Job” blog. Steve branched out into podcasting and is the co-founder of the Sellers Summit. He’s got some great ideas, listen to hear them! Outline of This Episode [3:15] How Steve got into Ecommerce [5:45] Day-to-day running the business [7:30] Starting a Conference [9:10] Grow your business with these 3 tips [14:20] Driving traffic to your website [19:00] White hat options to generate traffic [27:05] Steve’s top tips for upselling [34:20] Scarcity and the fear of missing out [36:30] Find ways to reframe the product [41:05] Connect with Steve Three ways to grow your business People often continue adding products to their stock to increase revenue—but it’s a lot of hassle. You have to decide on a product, find a manufacturer, and deal with production. Why not work with what you already have? Steve says there are 3 key things you need to focus on to leverage your current product(s). Increase traffic to your product Increase repeat business Increase order size It is far easier to implement these three things instead of creating new products. If you want to hear Steve’s favorite way to get repeat business from an Amazon customer, keep listening! White hat options to increase your traffic There are some great options to generate traffic to your website that are off Amazon. Steve’s favorite recommendations are:  Pay for ads: If your product is searchable, use Google Shopping ads. If your product is something people don’t typically search for, then a Facebook ad may be a better fit.  Content Strategy: Blogging, producing videos, and podcasts are all great options. Write content that you can rank in search and help you build a following. Get people to sign up for your emails and market directly to them.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Consciously create content. It’s a long-term play and you will see results down the road. Take your SEO content and run ads with it.  Steve and Kevin go into detail with each of these recommendations. To gain more insight into the process, keep listening.  If you don’t ask, you won’t receive It’s all about the upsell. To increase your average order value, there are some great things you can do. You control how products are listed on your own website—so move the product that generates the most income to the top of your sales page. Stop organizing from the lowest price to the highest! Remember that people like to buy in bulk. They also tend to choose items that are bundled together versus purchasing separately. You can connect with customers who make bulk orders (because YOU get their information when you sell on your site). You can offer them a discount if they continue to purchase from you in the future.  Put automated sequences into place that immediately sends purchasers an email with an upsell. Perhaps there are matching napkins in a different size or another product that pairs well. Shopify users can use Zipify—it’s a one-click upsell that offers double what they just ordered for a discounted price.  Fear of Missing out and Scarcity The fear of missing out—now popularized as “FOMO”—is a powerful driver. When faced with making a purchase, or losing out on the option altogether most people will buy. It’s a tactic that works on both Kevin and Steve—so why not implement it on your website?  Amazon will often tell you (in bright red) that there are only a few items left of the product you’re looking at. Some people implement countdown timers. If the timer runs out, you lose your ‘hold’ on that product. Grocery stores give you strict time periods for deals: “Buy 2 get 1 free ends in two days”.  Steve talks about how you can reframe your product and shares more tips and tricks. Listen to the whole episode of Maximizing Ecommerce for details! Resources & People Mentioned Brand Accelerator Live Seller Summit 2020 Click & Carry Shopify Zipify Connect with Steve Chou LinkedIn Twitter My Wife Quit Her Job Profitable Online Store Connect With Kevin Sanderson www.YouTube.com/maximizingecommerce www.Facebook.com/maximizingecommerce www.Twitter.com/maxecom Subscribe to Maximizing Ecommerce onApple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM

This action-packed episode is brought to you by the performance marketing experts at Voy Media. https://voymedia.com/ Increase Average Order Value “How to increase your average order value” INTRO: You don’t always have to get more customers to increase revenue in e-commerce. If you increase the amount of money customers spend on average, you can also earn more money. 1) Raise Prices This one is obvious but people often overlook it. Try price testing with gradually different prices. Key words here being TEST and GRADUALLY. Higher prices don’t always deter people, it could imply higher value compared to the competitors. 2) Bundles Products that are frequently purchased together should be put in a bundle. Make the price slightly less than the sum of all products. The higher price might seem daunting, but not if these are products your shoppers are likely to buy together anyway. Since the products they’re buying anyway are grouped together in one bundle, it’s less browsing they have to do, which increases conversion rates. Bold Brain is a great app to help you decide what products should go together. 3) Upsells/Cross-Sells This is when someone either adds a product to their cart, or makes a purchase, and you offer them a discount on a similar product to get them to buy. Do them lower in the funnel. On the cart page, or post-purchase. This works because if someone has added an item to their cart, or even purchased an item, they are very far down your funnel and have shown extremely high purchase intent, so these shameless upsets are fine to do. Zipify’s OneClickUpsell is great for this, so is Bold Brain, Bold Upsell. BIG NOTE: this is not only suggested but REQUIRED on stores with heavy mobile traffic and many SKUs. Browsing a store with many SKUs can be hard on mobile. If you can smartly cross-sell items frequently bought together to mobile shoppers, that’s less time they need to browse and less pages they have to go through. This increases conversion rates on mobile. Mobile purchase behavior is also usually impulse buying. So mobile shoppers are more prone to impulse decisions like upsells and cross-sells. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/digitalmarketingfastlane/message

Today, I’m thrilled to have my buddy Ezra Firestone back on the show. Ezra runs a number of 7 and 8 figure e-commerce stores, a Shopify SaaS company called Zipify and an e-commerce education company over at SmartMarketer. Ezra also recently spoke at my conference over at SellerSummit.com about Facebook Chatbots and as expected, his talk was very well received. Today, Ezra and I are going to discuss the challenges he has faced this past year with Boom and how he overcame them. What You’ll Learn What recently happened at Boom that caused Ezra a lot of stress How to […] The post 279: Ezra Firestone On Overcoming Adversity And How To Stay Sane Running Your Business appeared first on MyWifeQuitHerJob.com.

Dave Manley's passion for sports and mixed martial arts (MMA), and a desire to display MMA memorabilia in his office led him to develop a premiere collectible product, the MMA Bobblehead. Today we'll find out if he's got the product and business model to get the nod from the judges to advance to the next round. IG: @mmabobblehead Website: https://MMABobblehead.com **Sponsor - Zipify Pages** The first landing page builder unique designed for Ecommerce. Launch better campaigns more quickly and for more profit. Native integration with Facebook Google Analytics, and your inventory. Offers: 30 day free trial for anyone that uses the coupon code: ZIP5 Website: https://Zipify.com Instagram: @ZipifyExperts Facebook: @Zipify **5 Minute Pitch** 5 Minute Pitch is the competition that gives entrepreneurs from around the globe the opportunity to virtually pitch their business or product idea for the chance to win a grand prize of $50,000.00. This season, more than thirty entrepreneurs will pitch their ideas via Zoom conference call to our panel of five experts, for the chance to advance to the finals and pitch to the judges LIVE in Miami, FL. Our panel of expert judges includes: **Greg Mercer: eight figure Amazon Seller, and the founder and CEO of Jungle Scout **Michael Jackness, a serial entrepreneur who has spent the past few years building a high 7-figure eCommerce conglomerate while blogging & podcasting about all of it along the way at EcomCrew. ** Steve Chou: The son of 2 tiger parents, Steve Chou started (2) 7 figure businesses while working full time as an engineering director. He now runs Bumblebee Linens and MyWifeQuitHerJob.com **Scott Voelker: 7 Figure Business Owner and Host of The Amazing Seller podcast a top rated business podcast that has helped thousands worldwide start and grow their own eCommerce businesses.

Christian Gravel has developed a product to help people grow good cannabis more easily in their homes. With the rise in the legalization of cannabis, this seems like it could be a viable niche option for a successful business. Christian’s flexible nets allow them to fit multiple tent sizes, and they also include hooks to attach to the various tent poles. These flexibility and hook options of these hooks allow for maximum reusability for multiple growth cycles. Website: https://www.growerscrognets.com Instagram @growerscrognets Facebook @growerscrognets **Sponsor - Zipify Pages** The first landing page builder unique designed for Ecommerce. Launch better campaigns more quickly and for more profit. Native integration with Facebook Google Analytics, and your inventory. Offers: 30 day free trial for anyone that uses the coupon code: ZIP5 Website: https://Zipify.com Instagram: @ZipifyExperts Facebook: @Zipify **5 Minute Pitch** 5 Minute Pitch is the competition that gives entrepreneurs from around the globe the opportunity to virtually pitch their business or product idea for the chance to win a grand prize of $50,000.00. This season, more than thirty entrepreneurs will pitch their ideas via Zoom conference call to our panel of five experts, for the chance to advance to the finals and pitch to the judges LIVE in Miami, FL. Our panel of expert judges includes: **Greg Mercer: eight figure Amazon Seller, and the founder and CEO of Jungle Scout **Michael Jackness, a serial entrepreneur who has spent the past few years building a high 7-figure eCommerce conglomerate while blogging & podcasting about all of it along the way at EcomCrew. ** Steve Chou: The son of 2 tiger parents, Steve Chou started (2) 7 figure businesses while working full time as an engineering director. He now runs Bumblebee Linens and MyWifeQuitHerJob.com **Scott Voelker: 7 Figure Business Owner and Host of The Amazing Seller podcast a top rated business podcast that has helped thousands worldwide start and grow their own eCommerce businesses.

Steve Walker is the creator of SOMO tea. Steve is selling a variety of delicious organic teas, coupled with a brand that will help people learn about the different types of teas that are available, where they come from, and how to make them as a means to grow his business. **Sponsor - Zipify Pages** The first landing page builder unique designed for Ecommerce. Launch better campaigns more quickly and for more profit. Native integration with Facebook Google Analytics, and your inventory. Offers: 30 day free trial for anyone that uses the coupon code: ZIP5 Website: https://Zipify.com Instagram: @ZipifyExperts Facebook: @Zipify **5 Minute Pitch** 5 Minute Pitch is the competition that gives entrepreneurs from around the globe the opportunity to virtually pitch their business or product idea for the chance to win a grand prize of $50,000.00. This season, more than thirty entrepreneurs will pitch their ideas via Zoom conference call to our panel of five experts, for the chance to advance to the finals and pitch to the judges LIVE in Miami, FL. Our panel of expert judges includes: **Greg Mercer: eight figure Amazon Seller, and the founder and CEO of Jungle Scout **Michael Jackness, a serial entrepreneur who has spent the past few years building a high 7-figure eCommerce conglomerate while blogging & podcasting about all of it along the way at EcomCrew. ** Steve Chou: The son of 2 tiger parents, Steve Chou started (2) 7 figure businesses while working full time as an engineering director. He now runs Bumblebee Linens and MyWifeQuitHerJob.com **Scott Voelker: 7 Figure Business Owner and Host of The Amazing Seller podcast a top rated business podcast that has helped thousands worldwide start and grow their own eCommerce businesses.

Kathleen left her corporate job to spend more time at home with her kids. She began managing Amazon stores. The demand quickly outgrew what she could handle on her own, and she saw the opportunity to help other women achieve financial freedom. This is how Masters of Marketplace was born. Website: https://MastersofMarketplace.com Website: https://KobelConsulting.com Instagram: @KathleenKobel **Sponsor - Zipify Pages** The first landing page builder unique designed for Ecommerce. Launch better campaigns more quickly and for more profit. Native integration with Facebook Google Analytics, and your inventory. Offers: 30 day free trial for anyone that uses the coupon code: ZIP5 Website: https://Zipify.com Instagram: @ZipifyExperts Facebook: @Zipify **5 Minute Pitch** 5 Minute Pitch is the competition that gives entrepreneurs from around the globe the opportunity to virtually pitch their business or product idea for the chance to win a grand prize of $50,000.00. This season, more than thirty entrepreneurs will pitch their ideas via Zoom conference call to our panel of five experts, for the chance to advance to the finals and pitch to the judges LIVE in Miami, FL. Our panel of expert judges includes: **Greg Mercer: eight figure Amazon Seller, and the founder and CEO of Jungle Scout **Michael Jackness, a serial entrepreneur who has spent the past few years building a high 7-figure eCommerce conglomerate while blogging & podcasting about all of it along the way at EcomCrew. ** Steve Chou: The son of 2 tiger parents, Steve Chou started (2) 7 figure businesses while working full time as an engineering director. He now runs Bumblebee Linens and MyWifeQuitHerJob.com **Scott Voelker: 7 Figure Business Owner and Host of The Amazing Seller podcast a top rated business podcast that has helped thousands worldwide start and grow their own eCommerce businesses.

Steve Christensen is with Pure Organic Ingredients, a company currently selling over 650 products on Amazon. Steve is hoping to win the money to bolster this rapidly growing company, and spread the word about the benefits of shopping organic. **Sponsored by Zipify** The first landing page builder unique designed for Ecommerce. Launch better campaigns more quickly and for more profit. Native integration with Facebook Google Analytics, and your inventory. Offers: 30 day free trial for anyone that uses the coupon code: ZIP5 Website: https://Zipify.com Instagram: @ZipifyExperts Facebook: @Zipify **5 Minute Pitch** 5 Minute Pitch is the competition that gives entrepreneurs from around the globe the opportunity to virtually pitch their business or product idea for the chance to win a grand prize of $50,000.00. This season, more than thirty entrepreneurs will pitch their ideas via Zoom conference call to our panel of five experts, for the chance to advance to the finals and pitch to the judges LIVE in Miami, FL. Our panel of expert judges includes: **Greg Mercer: eight figure Amazon Seller, and the founder and CEO of Jungle Scout **Michael Jackness, a serial entrepreneur who has spent the past few years building a high 7-figure eCommerce conglomerate while blogging & podcasting about all of it along the way at EcomCrew. ** Steve Chou: The son of 2 tiger parents, Steve Chou started (2) 7 figure businesses while working full time as an engineering director. He now runs Bumblebee Linens and MyWifeQuitHerJob.com **Scott Voelker: 7 Figure Business Owner and Host of The Amazing Seller podcast a top rated business podcast that has helped thousands worldwide start and grow their own eCommerce businesses.

Today the newest member of the Quiet Light team, David Newell, joins us to discuss the four pillars for buyers and sellers, particularly when they apply to SaaS businesses. David knows SaaS super well and covers all the metrics that buyers and sellers need to pay attention to on both sides of the acquisition process. We discuss everything he looks for when listing a SaaS business, the challenges in measuring some of those metrics, and some common SaaS buyer pitfalls. David started his career in investment banking and worked in that environment for four years. Looking for a taste of life on the outside, he started brokering online, eventually working his way through the ropes to a head broker role. David is now a successful entrepreneur in his own right, with a brand in self-discovery and personal development which has grown from a podcast to a full online brand. Inner Truth offers a wealth of courses, community, and content for anyone embarking on a journey of self-truth. We're very pleased to welcome David to the Quiet Light team. Episode Highlights: David takes us through his background and the SaaS business floodgate that opened for him as he learned about this niche and began brokering SaaS deals. The top three things David feels are important to hone in on to add value to a business. What churn is, how it's calculated, and why it's a cornerstone to a SaaS business. The difference between MRR and ARR and how each can affect the revenue profile of your business. David's software recommendations for measuring the metrics he looks at in a SaaS business. We get into what micro SaaS is and how it differs from the traditional SaaS model. Potential pitfalls of owning a SaaS business and the challenges to consider when getting into the SaaS acquisition arena. Tips and advice for folks preparing to sell their SaaS business. Compelling acquisition tips on how to do the good work before getting ready to sell. Transcription Mark:    Joe we are quickly being outnumbered here at Quiet Light Brokerage. We just hired on somebody else who hails from the UK. Joe:        Yes; David Newall, a fantastic guy, and another Brit. I guess Brian's not a Brit he's a— Mark:    What is he? Joe:        He's Estonian, that's what he is. Mark:    Yeah but he's kind of an international mutt when we would think about it. He's Estonian but he lives in the UK sometimes but now he's looking at living who knows where. Joe:        Well, he's a true entrepreneur. He's been living all over the world with his wife for the last 12 months. And we just got together at the Prosper Show last week with both David and Brian and Brian's wife; a first time we've met a Quiet Light spouse right? First time you've met … you've owned this company for almost 11 years and you've never met a spouse until last week. Mark:    Over 12 years. I mean talk about the age of the modern company right? We are a distributed company. Everybody lives in different states and when we see each other it's at conferences. So it's pretty rare for me … very rare being that this is the first time ever that I met a Quiet Light spouse. And I think the only reason that I did is because Brian and his wife don't actually have a home that they go to. Joe:        That's right. Mark:    I mean obviously they have places where they live but they're constantly on the move which is fun but I'd like to meet more of the spouses. Joe:        I'm with you. Yeah, they were in Vegas and then they were heading down to … I think it was Panama for two months and eventually they're going to make their way back to the UK and settle down I believe but we'll see. Time will tell. But yes we have a new member of the Quiet Light Brokerage team. His name is David Newall; a former investment banker, a former head of brokerage services for a competing firm, a fantastic guy. I gotten to him a lot on the podcast but even more last week and I knew we were going to hit it off well when I started calling him Harry Styles because of his British accent and his affinity towards Taylor Swift. Everybody call him Harry if you want and I think he called me grandpa at one point. So I think we're going to get along well. Mark:    Didn't sort of from Australia though, is he? I mean— Joe:        Not at all, that's what I kept saying just to bust his chops a little bit. Mark:    Well, let's get to the meat of it though because David really knows SaaS super well. The guy is a genius when it comes to SaaS businesses and you guys talked about some of the metrics that both buyers and sellers need to pay attention to in a SaaS acquisition. Joe:        Yeah, we did. We went through everything that he looks for when he's listing a SaaS business for sale and he's done dozens and dozens of them personally. So all of the different metrics and what some of the challenges are in measuring those metrics from a selling standpoint and then we focused and flipped it over to what buyers should look for and what some of the pitfalls are. Very, very knowledgeable; a very smart guy and it's going to be a great podcast for those SaaS business owners out there. Mark:    Well, I love having these British guys on staff because they make us sound so much more intelligent. Joe:        He does. Come on now there's nothing like a good southern drawl though. I don't have it but there's plenty of folks that have. Mark:    Well, it helps that David is actually a really really smart guy so it's not just the way he says words, it's what he's saying. He's always extremely insightful. And he puts things in a very simple way as well that makes it pretty easy to understand and adjust. Joe:        Yeah so let's get to the accent. Let's focus on SaaS and what David has done in his history and how he's going to help the Quiet Light team build a much, much bigger brand and a great, great addition to the team for all the buyers and sellers out there as well. Joe:        Hey folks it's Joe Valley with Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got one of our newest brokers with us. He has a ton of experience. It's David Newall. David welcome to the team and Quiet Light's podcast. David:   Thank you, Joe, it's a pleasure to be here. Joe:        That's a funny accent. Is that Australian? David:   It's British and I saw you write it as Australian in an email the other day. I was absolutely savaged by that. I was going to reprimand you. Joe:        I was only kidding. I was on the phone with Ben. We won't say his last name but he's like yeah tell him he's a great guy but I really don't like that Australian accent. He was kidding at the same time as well. Anyway, I'm going to kick this off just the way we do with every guest David and that is can you give us some background on yourself? Tell us about who you are, where you've been, that kind of stuff. David:   Yeah well, I started life out in in investment banking actually. I've been a business degree undergraduate and then I launched myself into the windy world of investment banking. And I worked in merger and acquisitions for Citi Group in London for four years which as you can imagine is a very intense environment but also an incredible learning environment. And there I got to work on some of the biggest tech media and telecoms, M&A, Capital Races, for the first four years of my life. And you learn a lot, you earn a lot, you don't sleep very much and so at a certain level you start to think I wonder what life looks like on the outside of this office. And so I left that and took some time to travel and then shortly thereafter I decided it would be really good to get involved in something smaller where I could have more a managerial position and bring a lot of the experience that we had into a more exciting and a hotter area. And so that's when my online business brokerage life actually began. And I started life out at one of your competitors. Joe:        Our competitors; you're on the team now. David:   And yeah so I started like everyone does with this so that's the bottom realm with always the view to building up and becoming the [inaudible 00:07:48.7] which is just the head of brokerage and operations there. And so with the three attendant that I have, we obviously expanded very well out of London and moved overseas to Boston. Built a team up and so in that time yeah I must have done about 75 deals and sort of oversaw the rest of the team doing about 200. So a lot of deals across a lot of business models and a lot of niches. And yeah it was a very exciting endeavor. Joe:        You know I was out for a walk this morning and yes folks I'm in North Carolina and it's sunny here and I was thinking about having this conversation with you this morning and the fact that you mentioned the last time we chatted that you've done 75 deals. And I'm thinking wow David might have more experience than I do. And I'm adding mine often. I think I've done more but I'm doing it longer, that's the key. David:   Yeah for sure. Joe:        But you have me by doing a larger deal than I've done as well which is it's great to have that experience that you bring to the team just because that's everybody here at Quiet Light, a very successful entrepreneur business person and a great deal of skill and talent in the internet space as well. You are also an entrepreneur as well can you touch on that just for a moment? David:   Yeah, that's right I mean I think one of the things that was just becoming kind of a burning seed for me in 2016 which is the year that I sort of decided to leave was to strike out and become sort of my master and flex my entrepreneurial feathers a little bit. And so I spend the best part of sort of nine months, ten months as really resting and thinking in to what I wanted to get involved in. And my personal interest is massively in self-discovery and personal development. So I got really deep into yoga and meditation and shamanism and breathe work and all of these wonderful tributaries that are now becoming really big parts actually of modern culture. And so around this time last year, I actually launched my own online brand of self-discovery called Inner Truth and it started as a podcast and then we since added on audio courses with various famous speakers from around the world. And yeah the podcast is growing exponentially now and I'd had some really amazing people and I've got to interview some of my favorite authors, singers, writers, speakers, yeah it's mostly really famous people so it's kind of an interesting life now hopping on the podcast every week we have a celebrity and— Joe:        It's pretty neat. David:   Yeah yeah [inaudible 00:10:18.8] Joe:        Yeah, it's … Mark and I did a podcast on the benefit of podcasting for your business and for us at Quiet Light it's just opened up doors to very successful authors, professors at Harvard, whatever it might be and then there are these celebrities inside the world we live in which is e-commerce and SaaS and so on and so forth. But it really is a great tool for anybody that's running their own business. Start with a podcast, it doesn't cost that much. You can always edit out stuff that you're not good. I think actually when we did that podcast I must have stuttered and stumbled in the first three minutes and we decided not to edit any of it because we said look if we can do it anybody can. David:   Yeah, 100%. I mean on the first episode I recorded it was an hour long and I spent four hours editing it. Joe:        Yeah. David:   Well, I've got the last move and now and there's a lot less going on. You sort of have to force necessity when you're doing some of the bigger guns now. Joe:        You certainly do. Speaking of big guns let's talk about some of your experience in the e-commerce brokering world or internet business brokering world. A lot of folks think that Quiet Light is really specialized in physical products or e-commerce as they label that whereas the largest deal I've ever done was a content business. The next largest after that was a SaaS business. Sure I do lots of Shopify stores with an Amazon component or more these days an Amazon business with a Shopify component but you have a tremendous amount of experience in the SaaS base right? David:   Yeah exactly I think you know around 2014, 2015 we really started to spot this emerging trend of micro SaaS businesses coming up and sort of not really being thought about perhaps and valued in a very sophisticated way given the strength of these businesses, the IP mode that they've got and the recurring revenue. And so we really started to pour a lot of attention into what makes SaaS special. And yeah we're very happy to start working with some great names like Patrick McKenzie and Rob Walling and as they bought their businesses to us and we did successful exits for them; the floodgates opened really. And so for me yeah I think … you know I sold several dozen SaaS businesses over my time and culminating over course the successful sale of Rob's business direct in Leadpages in 2016 which was an incredible transaction an awful massively personally gratifying because Rob is such a good friend and great to get a life changing exit for him but also to sell into a company as big as that with Claire as a CEO; a super dynamic deal environment and yeah definitely a lot of learning. Joe:        Yeah, Mark had Rob on the podcast talking about his story of building Drip and exiting from it and it was a great, great podcast. If anybody hasn't listened to that please do. But it's kind of funny I remember when you were doing that deal and we were getting wind of it and it's funny we just thought oh yeah no we don't want to do 10 million dollar deals or whatever the number was. You have to fly all over the country, you got to put a tie on then you … and I don't think you probably did any of that. And now we're doing deals that are that size and a little bit bigger so we all grow up in this business and have to evolve so to speak. So let's talk specifically about SaaS David. For the audience that's out there, if they're running a SaaS business, if you're working with them through Quiet Light, you get a referral and boom you've got a SaaS business that you're going to value what are the top three or four things that you're going to sort of hone in on that is going to bring more value? Maybe even speak to the buyers here what should they be looking at and what would you look at as the seller's broker? David:   Well, I think that one of the most important probably least looked at and least understood metrics of any SaaS business is churn. Churn really is the cornerstone of successful SaaS business because it is completely cancerous to revenue growth if you don't get that right. Joe:        Can you define that for folks that are just beginning to look at SaaS; what churn rate is and maybe how it's calculated? David:   Yeah, churn rate I mean you can look at it from a revenue perspective or you can look at it from a customer account perspective. Revenue is probably more helpful and that's simply telling you how much revenue, how many customers you're losing per month through cancellations, expiries or sort of billings that aren't going through. Joe:        That's measured against total revenue and what's a good churn rate in the SaaS world? David:   Well, that's a great and a pretty seminal question that comes up a lot when you're evaluating SaaS businesses that specifically are targeting different end users. So if you're thinking like the B2B space the monthly customer churn rate actually varies quite a lot depending on which business segment you're looking at. So if you have a SaaS business facing an enterprise segment it's going to have a materially different monthly customer churn rate than one interacting or facing against an SMB segment because those end customers have different purchasing behaviors. So in enterprise, for example, you know very, very, very low monthly churns expected and we're talking like 1.5 to 1% a month which annualized is 6 to 10%. When you're looking at SMB something doing 3 to 7% is— Joe:        What does SMB stand for David? David:   Small to medium sized businesses. Joe:        Thank you. David:   And so annualize that's more like 30 to 60%. And so now you can start to see that the difference between a 6% percent monthly churn rate and a 4% monthly churn rate is going to have a mega, mega, mega difference to the revenue profile of the business 12 months out from now. Joe:        Yeah, let's just … I want to talk about the other two aspects in terms of things that you look at in terms of the metrics but the churn rate measured against the revenue; obviously, the revenue has to continue to climb and new customers need to come in at a higher phase than the churn rate in order for the business to be growing. Or even actually just staying steady right? They can be losing 5% a month and be gaining 5% a month in revenue just that. And the beautiful thing that buyers love about this is that … or SaaS business is that it's the recurring revenue. And they generally trade at a higher multiple. If you've got a straight up e-commerce business selling physical products with its own brand even with a patent I think that a SaaS business that's growing and has lots of growth opportunities and a reasonable low churn and workload is going to trade at a higher multiple. Is that your experience as well? David:   Yeah well, I think that the recurring revenue piece is one explanatory factor for that premium in multiples. I think the other is simply the moat that exists around the average SaaS business; having that intellectual property. We work in a space where if you can find product market fit for a very quick rate with an Amazon business and very quickly start to scale it but with the SaaS business you might have to pile in anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 into development and may not even make a penny. And so one of the things that actually make these micro SaaS businesses very valuable when they come to market is that actually, they've simply found product market fit after having put down a lot of Cap Ex. And so it's interesting that that's actually a large amount of the value proposition for people that are looking to acquire these and scale them because that in itself is finding a diamond in the rough. Joe:        Right, so that risk is one of the four pillars for those that listen often. It's one of the four pillars and it's the lower the risk as David's talking about the defensibility of the business, that moat around it, it lowers the risk so therefore the value of the business goes up. All right throw in another couple of metrics that you generally look at and it's important for buyers to think about as well when they're looking at SaaS businesses. David:   Yeah well, I think acquisition channel for the customers is really important and I think the really premium SaaS business at the higher end of the multiple range are just like every other type of business managing to acquire customers across a multitude of channels so the concentration risk is low. And that within those channels the competition is relatively low. You can look at say a SaaS business in the project management space which is absolutely saturated with VC vat competitors and that's a pretty frightening spot to be in. You'd much prefer to be somewhere in a quieter segment just like we'd look at in e-commerce. The same rules apply. I think it's quite nuanced in SaaS though because you have put down a lot of Cap Ex upfront to develop product and so you have to be pretty savvy when it comes to acquiring customers at a reasonable rate. Joe:        Okay. So we've got the cost to acquire a new customer, the channel that you're getting them from, the churn rate, anything else that really jumps out that you're looking at? David:   Yeah, I think the profile in terms of the revenue of the business is really important. So obviously we've been talking about MRR but there's ARR as well right? Joe:        So that's Monthly Recurring Revenue and Annual Recurring Revenue. David:   Yeah, exactly and it's very tempting when you're a business owner and this is kind of an important thing that I think a lot of business owners can trip up on to want to sell lifetime and annual plans at a gracefully discounted rate in order to book that revenue. But when it comes to sell it presents a pretty lumpy revenue profile at a major risk for the acquirer. And so actually the multiple that can be applied to MRR should be higher than ARR because it's more predictable. And this is, even more, the case when you know you're using debt financing to buy a business. And so something that I would always do when I'm evaluating a SaaS business is actually use something of a blended multiple where I value MRR higher than ARR. Joe:        Right so to further detail that and explain a little bit that annual recurring revenue if you have one or two months a year where let's say the subscriptions are opened up and there's a flood of customers with a special promotion and a steeply discounted price for an annual subscription but you're selling the business a few years later and you are nine months away from or actually just say two months after that annual subscription, the person that's buying the business they're going to go 10 months without having that big bump in revenue. They're not doing any daily or weekly or monthly work for that revenue. It's going to occur so there's no discount necessarily but it can become a challenge like you say when they're getting debt financing. They've got a monthly payment to make every single month and if that big bump is not going to come for 10 months it can be a bit of a challenge. That's great. David:   Yeah, and it's not entirely guaranteed that those annual subscribers will renew a great wish that came in there and I think people expect a certain level of annual around Black Friday but if the business is struggling to show MRR growth in off months then that's a bit of a red flag potential. Joe:        Right, so from the buyer standpoint you think really the focusing on the monthly recurring revenue … you got to look at the annual recurring revenue but the more attractive business would be one that's got more monthly recurring revenue because it's spinning out that risk a little bit more. David:   100%. Joe:        100%. Okay, software that's out there to help SaaS owners measure these metrics. It's a challenge like I've looked at trying to calculate at lifetime value. It's very, very difficult. Everybody does it a different way. Is there a particular software that you've seen more SaaS owners use than not? David:   Yeah I mean I really like the Profitwell analysis actually. I think whatever you use standardize. I think it's not helpful to swap between Chartmogul, Baremetrics, Profitwell, and just keep skipping around because then you're looking at very inconsistent numbers and methodology as in if trying to evaluate a number of SaaS business that's just not an additional complexity that you want to commit into your analysis. So I think stick with one and the one … the dashboard I've seen as the friendliest and the most well explained and the easiest to use is Profitwell. And in particular, looking at their cohort analysis the churn is this incredible way of seeing whether the business underlying is improving or getting worst as new customers are coming on board. Joe:        Okay, Profitwell or wells? David:   Well. Joe:        Well, Profitwell. Yeah, I've seen Baremetrics used quite a bit on the SaaS businesses that I've sold. It's a great tool for buyers and sellers just to go look at it and study what these metrics are that people are analyzing these businesses on. David:   Yeah, 100% and there's a bunch of open source businesses upon the Baremetrics platform where you can just go and look right now. I mean you can look at Baremetrics and their own metrics I believe on their own platform and I [inaudible 00:23:14.4] I think convert kit was on there for a while. They may still be. So it's fascinating to have a poke around and once you've looked at a handful of SaaS deals you can really start to get a feel for what makes sense for and what doesn't around from all of these metrics. Joe:        I got you. David, you've mentioned the term micro SaaS more than once can you define that for us? Is there a certain size? Is that what you're referring to? David:   Yeah I mean I think of micro SaaS as sub a million dollars in value but really when I think about it more deeply it's characterizing the business that has not gone down the sort of venture capital deep investment. You know fast growth, pushing for a revenue multiple exits and instead gone for the bootstrapped— Joe:        I got you. David:   Slower grave way of doing it. And that is absolutely not to say that you can't take a micro SaaS and push it into that revenue growth multiple VC back territory. It's just that I think a lot of the businesses that we look at in our world tend to fall into the micro SaaS class version. Joe:        Yeah, I sold one last year that literally was started by someone that had a problem and he solved it himself. It was sort of a self-calendar tool and he had it for 14 years but he was an engineer by trade and you could tell by the interview that I did with him that he was not comfortable selling or talking; very, very much an engineer. The person that bought it very much the opposite of that and is already talking to private equity folks to invest or get it to a certain point and take it beyond this sort of micro SaaS market that you're talking about. David:   Yeah this is a really important point actually that I want to extend because what I've observed in my experience is that a lot of the businesses that come off exit were designed by the engineer, by developer types that find a problem that solved that and pushed it out to friends and family and other developers, acquire a customer base. It starts to grow organically but they simply either don't have the appetite, the interest, or the skill set to market it. Nor do they want to. And so these businesses become right for marketers to take them over and actually work on building them out from a marketing standpoint because a lot of them are in very good shape on a technical side. They just need more sales effort poured into them. Joe:        Yeah, the one I sold it was doing … I forgot exactly, let's call it a quarter million dollars in discretionary earnings. His advertising budget on a monthly basis was $325. David:   Yeah. Joe:        Yeah, I get emails every week now from them. I'm on their list; the guy that bought it and they're doing a much more aggressive email campaign, retention campaign, and adding new tools and features for the existing customers. Let's talk about the pitfalls of owning a SaaS business for those that are potentially buying one for instance. What do you see as major pitfalls and I had a gentleman named Ezra Firestone, you probably know Ezra. David:   Yeah. Joe:        I had Ezra on the podcast and we talked about a number of things. He's very much into yoga and meditation too by the way but we talked and he's got e-commerce businesses and he got SaaS businesses and he talked about the differences and what he likes about each and what he prefers. But I'd love to hear you talk about pitfalls and I'll tell you Ezra's feel. David:   Yeah, I think that the IP roadmap for any SaaS business is always something that you have to be very clear on. I think you can easily fall into a trap where you start the design … excessively design the product either on specific customers and then it becomes this very odd sort of pool of mud. They like to use that phrase in SaaS world where you're designing around specific customers or you're just adding features to it that perhaps aren't really needed. And actually, I think a lot of SaaS business actually benefit more from dialoguing with customers about how to use their products more effectively. Because oftentimes they're only using about 20 to 30% of the functionality and then often churning away because they're not aware of the other 70% than just by adding feature sets for the point. And of course, this really does stack up because as you add more features that's going to add more complexity. You create more of a UX headache for your customer base. You create more of an operating manual to train your sales team with and everything starts to become … to slip out of control of. And I think that having a very clear crystal clear vision about the road map is actually like something that yeah probably keeps a number of SaaS owners up at night contemplating that. I think churn is a real challenge for micro SaaS businesses specifically because a lot of the time there ain't SNBs so they're naturally facing against a client base that's got higher churn. And the best way really to reduce churn is to really improve your onboarding experience and your customer success. And something we're all absolutely crushed during one of the best in class onboarding processes I've ever seen but it is expensive to do that unless you go down a very intelligent sort of IT lead onboarding route. And that's a challenge that I think a number of business owners struggle with because once you get up into massive scale on your VC back so you can have a whole sales team that come on and really help train every single house member when you're in this micro space you don't have the capital to do that. So you got to think very creatively about really educating customers, really onboarding them very well so that you can solve the churn issue and scale the business well. And the churn is also important because it really starts to impact your ability to run paid for example [inaudible 00:29:03.4] acquire customers that way and so there's a lot … you have to be just very, very thoughtful such I'd say churn is quite a headache as a SaaS business owner. Joe:        Yeah, it sounds like any business with customers. Take care of the customers first. Make sure they're using the tools to the greatest extent possible and that will reduce the churn. Which will, in turn, give you more money to do paid advertising than more than $325 a month. Yeah, I was going to go to the same place not that there's a right business or a wrong business to buy, they're just physical products businesses are just different than content versus affiliate versus a SaaS business. So anyway I was talking with Ezra about it. He owns both. He owns Zipify and he owns BOOM by Cindy Joseph or a portion of that one. In the physical products world, you create an ad and it hits and you scale. You spend more money on the ad. With a SaaS business it may be the same but then you've also got more support, more customer onboarding, and focusing on that churn rate and the metrics and you've got the cost of those developers which are also a lot more expensive than the cost of really good customer service people or graphic designers in the physical products world. A big, big difference though and again it all balances out. With the physical products business you have to have working capital for inventory. Your business is growing like crazy … sometimes I've sold businesses that have been 24 or 36 months old and had in-depth conversations with the owners of those businesses David. They bootstrapped it. They don't ever take any money out of the business. It's just growing and all they do is take every ounce of profit just trying to keep up with the inventory demand; that working capital demand. And sometimes they still run out of inventory. So there are two different ways to look at it; two different worlds. Those people that exit on the e-commerce world they don't take a whole lot out the first couple of years if they hung on that accelerated growth always slows down a little bit and they can then start taking salary and pull some more money out of the business. But you don't have that physical product or working capital requirements inventory in SaaS but you've got more expensive staff and developers that gosh if you've got a key developer and they go away it's a key employee and you've got to replace them. It can be very challenging and very expensive. So I'm not sure which is right. I always … I think people that are new in the in the internet space that are coming from the corporate world and want to live … work at home and see their family more and travel less and I've talked to a lot of people like that they say what … where should I go? What space should I look at? And I kind of think that they understand more easily physical products and can easily say I sell a widget versus I sell software to that people subscribe to to help them manage their calendar better. It's very different; very challenging I think. What are your thoughts on that? David:   Yeah, I agree entirely. I think there's a lot of things to think about with SaaS. It comes down to … as in life right? You always have to choose what problems you want to solve for and some people like solving for very intellectual problems. It's very interesting looking at the buyer base for SaaS companies that often people that enjoy the intellectual challenge of having a lot of the moving parts to think about. And there are people that enjoy the challenge of just scaling e-commerce. So it's … yeah, a totally personal preference. I don't think that one is better than the other. I think it's entirely a form or like disposition of character. Joe:        Yeah. Well, listen, David, we've had you on talking about SaaS. You had more than SaaS experience right? You sold lots of content, lots of physical product sites in the past as well. David:   Yeah, more than I can remember. I mean when I really started my brokerage career I spent almost exclusively doing content sites so we have all of the … it comes in affiliate stuff, Ad Sense sites and I love them because again you know we talk about these beautiful nuances between different business models. For me, it was just so interesting looking up the SBA strategies of these businesses, looking at the approaches that these owners are taking to rank specific pages. And I got super into ad optimization group and it just fascinates me with this psychology of ad revenues and clicks and so forth. So yeah I actually have a lot of reference for Ad Sense likes and I think I often look at them from my own personal acquisition perspective because I just love the pessimity of those business models. Joe:        Yeah, yes, absolutely for those that don't understand it's good quality content developed over time that's driving organic traffic and you're getting paid for clicks either through Ad Sense or a lot of folks doing affiliate stuff as well when they're doing product reviews and things of that nature. But that was the larger one that I sold last year which is under 9 million and it was a content site; just crazy, crazy growth. A great story too and we've had Ramon on the podcast. And this goes to the relationships with the people that we work with. The first one that we sold for Ramon a few years ago, let's call it five years ago it was maybe $125,000 business and a few years later he comes back as a client again. He says okay I've got another one like this out. It's 425,000. And then he comes back in December of I guess it was '17 and you know he's got one where we think it's valued around 5 and then we get it under a  Letter of Intent and it's just exploding growth. And so he says Joe I just don't think I can do this. It was a hard, hard call for him to make on a Saturday afternoon in April of 2018. And he had to walk away from a 5 million dollar deal because revenue was growing at 300% every month which really just drove the multiple down and the total value up. We pulled the listing and the same person it was under LOI for 5 million, he didn't go away. He wanted to stick in and he knew that the value was there so he bid it up and two others bid it up and it sold for just under 9 million; a great story for that guy. David:   The high quality strategic exit there to come back at that level. Joe:        It was a risky move to walk away from 5 million but it worked out for sure. And the buyer was fantastic too. You've got to have a good buyer and good seller on both sides of the table. Structurally business on the side I know but it was a combination of private equity money, a little bit of SBA money, some family fund money came into it, and then the owners… the buyer's personal money as well and as strange as it is that particular by David also bought the largest SaaS business that I ever sold. So relationships with buyers are critical as you know. Any quick tips or advice for people that are thinking about selling their SaaS business, what should they do? Should they just focus in on churn or maybe have a conversation with you with an eye to exit even in 12 to 24 months, what are your thoughts there? David:   Yeah well, I think definitely I'd advice there as based on how far you are out. If you're quite far out I do think it's worth split testing price increases. Over the years we've seen a surprising number of wins from people making micro price improvements. I'm obviously not grandfathering existing customers by trying that out. I think if you are closer into the potential exit talking six months like the really important stuff is actually things that seem to become incredibly easy to miss. But I've seen over the years things like just securing IP properly and then that's much more than just getting trademarks sorted out. But actually, if you've had a lot of third party developers working on the code getting proper IP assignments. Because the number of transactions I've been involved where they've got to be done retroactively is a little bit uncomfortable. I think another piece is around security. Again if you're not patching passworkds properly or if you're storing credit card data or any of this kind of things, like if there's any aspect at leaking they really need to be on top of that. I think absolutely avoid any kind of large discounting, annual plan discounting. Don't sell any life time plan type things. I mean that attempt to sort of artificially increase revenue earnings three to six months out is really, really, really visible unless of course, it's around something obvious like Black Friday. And I think that don't be too heavy with sort of trying to cost cut because again that's really obvious when you come into a sale that if in the last six months you suddenly just gone extreme and leave in order to get an attempt at inflated SKU it becomes very obvious to any experienced buyer. Joe:        Yeah very obvious. David:   I think one of the things that really does have a pretty big impact in terms of leveraging the multiple up is as much as possible obviously document source code and annotate that well. But as you can try and bring in … if you're the owner/operator and you've done a lot of the IP yourself and built a codebase really start to consider six months out bringing on a developer in time to hand that off. Because if you can show you by the time you come to exit that the third party developer has been in the business for six months, understands the codebase intimately, and has made … pushed out various updates; that is going to be a very compelling acquisition proposition for a buyer versus … you know that all of the knowledge is inside the owner's head and then we've got to do like fulfill the email gates at transition and our third party developer is part of this. So do that work before and you will get paid multiples upwards on the backend. Joe:        David, unknowingly you've talked about the four pillars; the risk, the transferability, the growth, and the documentation. It's not just financial documentation but it's SOP's and all the other stuff as well. All of the things that you're speaking to sellers about buyers can focus in on the same thing when they're analyzing a purchase of the SaaS business. Everybody, David is reachable david@quietlightbrokerage.com. Reach out to him there. He's up on the website now. A phone number extension is there as well. We'll put it on the show notes too. David welcome to the team. I'm thrilled that you're a member of the Quiet Light team now. Thank you for being here. David:   Thank you, Joe catch you. Joe:        Alright, talk to you soon. Links and Resources: David's Quiet Light Profile David's LinkedIn David's Podcast

It’s easy to forget that people in positions of influence and thought leadership face challenges just like the rest of us—especially because it’s rare for them to open up about hardships they face. But today, Ezra Firestone of SmartMarketer.com joins the show to give us all a look at the struggles he has had while getting his software business, Zipify Apps, off the ground. Listen in to hear him paint a more accurate picture of the problems entrepreneurs face and what it really takes to get a business up and running. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: http://bit.ly/2DfyMz4 

User the below links when you sign up to receive a FREE 5 day email sequence for you business!►Zipify One Click Upsell - http://bit.ly/2j95pYG►ClickFunnels FREE 14-day Trial - http://bit.ly/2xTPfEe

User the below links when you sign up to receive a FREE 5 day email sequence for you business!►Zipify One Click Upsell - http://bit.ly/2j95pYG►ClickFunnels FREE 14-day Trial - http://bit.ly/2xTPfEe

My guest today is the founder and CEO of Smart Marketer. In the past six years, they have grown to a team of 15 and he his thought by many to be the leading eCommerce expert in the world. He is also the co-founder and CMO of Boom!, the world's first pro-age cosmetic line for every generation. In addition to this, he is the founder of Zipify, a Shopify app-creation company. Now, let's hack... Ezra Firestone.

In today's video we go over some of the key differences you need to know between Clickfunnels and Zipify One Click Upsell for your ecommerce store.

In today's video we go over some of the key differences you need to know between Clickfunnels and Zipify One Click Upsell for your ecommerce store.

In today's video we go over a shopify app that can absolutely change your ecommerce business overnight! It's called zipify one click upsell and it's an absolute MUST for any shopify store owner. So much so in fact that this is the ONLY paid app I use in my shopify store that generates $30K per month!

In today's video we go over a shopify app that can absolutely change your ecommerce business overnight! It's called zipify one click upsell and it's an absolute MUST for any shopify store owner. So much so in fact that this is the ONLY paid app I use in my shopify store that generates $30K per month!

In today's video we go over a shopify app that can absolutely change your ecommerce business overnight! It's called zipify one click upsell and it's an absolute MUST for any shopify store owner. So much so in fact that this is the ONLY paid app I use in my shopify store that generates $30K per month!

In today's video we go over a shopify app that can absolutely change your ecommerce business overnight! It's called zipify one click upsell and it's an absolute MUST for any shopify store owner. So much so in fact that this is the ONLY paid app I use in my shopify store that generates $30K per month!

We get a lot of questions about what services and applications we use in our day to day business. Today I'm going to give our listeners a list of tools and services that really help us stay on top of our business. To begin with, we have four brands under the EcomCrew umbrella. The four brands are Colorit.com, Icewraps.com, Wild Baby, and Tactical.com. We use all these tools to run every brand and keep track of our customers' needs. Here is a list of those tools: Shopify -- Every brand we have is built on Shopify. It is the best platform we have found for running an ecommerce business. I will explain how we came to that conclusion during the episode. Stamped.io -- We use Stamped.io to get good quality reviews. Of course, they are a sponsor of the podcast, but we use their service because it is the best value. Zipify Pages -- If we are running a promotion or sale, Zipify is the tool we use to build the landing page. Shoelace -- This app allows us to create retargeting ads fast and easy! Rewind -- A tool we use to make sure we have system backups. Skubana -- This app gathers up our orders and distributes them to the right fulfillment station. It is a big time saver. I'm a little frustrated with Skubana, to be honest, but I will get into that during the episode. Klaviyo -- If you are a long time listener, you know I use Klaviyo a lot. It is a time-saving tool that makes email marketing a lot easier. ClickFunnels -- ClickFunnels is a service that helps keep track of our special promotion and contest email campaigns. AdEspresso -- An essential tool for creating great Facebook ads. Quickbooks Online -- The service we use to keep our books. Gleam.io and Up-Viral -- We use both for contest promotions. Phone.com -- This app redirects customer service calls to personal or designated phone numbers, so we can settle customer issues more efficiently. Sellics -- An Amazon based tool that is similar to Skubana. Splitly -- A split testing app. Jungle Scout -- A service we use to research new products and current market trends. RestockPro -- A tool that helps track our inventory and helps us plan reorders with plenty of time to spare! Basecamp -- The newest addition to our toolbox. Basecamp is a project management tool that allows us to keep in touch with all team members, no matter where they are based. So there you have it, our list of tools and services that help us keep the EcomCrew machine humming. I recently did some traveling on the east coast and I attended an EcommerceFuel meetup and met some great people. So hello, to all of you I met up with earlier! We have also released our first course on EcomCrew.com! The course is called Build A $1,000,000 Private Label Business Importing Kickass Products From China, if you are interested in the importing business, check out the link below. As a reminder, I will be speaking at Global Sources (discount code: ec350) during October 17-19 and I will be attending and speaking at EcomerceFuel Live during January 11-13. Please keep in mind that with all this travel the live Facebook shows will be postponed, but there will still be pre-recorded episodes. In closing, we also have a second sponsor for this episode, AsiaInspection. Dave and I both use AsiaInspection for our overseas shipments. They provide a very important service for anyone needing to double check the quality of their shipments. Resources Mentioned Today:   AdEspresso AsiaInspection Basecamp ClickFunnels Colorit.com EcomCrew Course EcomCrew Facebook Page EcommerceFuel EcommerceFuel Live Gleam.io Global Sources Icewraps.com Jungle Scout Klaviyo Phone.com Quickbooks Online RestockPro Rewind Sellics Shoelace Shopify Skubana Splitly Stamped.io Tactical.com UpViral Wild Baby Zipify If you have any questions or anything you'd like us to discuss on the podcast please go to ecomcrew.com and fill out the contact form. Also, we would really appreciate if you would leave us a review on iTunes. Thanks for listening!

If you're making sales on Amazon but are struggling to convert through your own channels, you probably haven't built a brand. During the recent Content & Commerce Summit in Los Angeles, Ryan caught up with the incredible expert marketer Ezra Firestone to discuss strategies for positioning your company as a business that takes orders from Amazon — not an “Amazon business." Ezra Firestone is an expert when it comes to building a brand and community. He's the CEO of Smart Marketer, Inc. and founder of Zipify Apps, a company building solutions for Shopify stores. Plus, he is speaking at The Capitalism Conference in Austin, Texas this December. Ezra teaches business owners the trick to turning cold advertising into profit. It starts with focusing on building your brand (not just your Amazon store) and being willing to test strategies for engaging your audience. In previous episodes with Ezra, we've discussed ways eCommerce entrepreneurs can leverage Facebook Messenger to add more customers to your business. This time with Ezra, Ryan zeroed in on his belief that if you're making sales on Amazon but struggling to convert through your own channels, you haven't built a brand. On this episode of Freedom Fast Lane, Ezra talks to us about the solid strategies for building a brand beyond Amazon, strategies for turning social media views into conversions, and creating a long-term view of your model using a direct response funnel. Plus, Ezra shares an exciting new solution by Zipify Apps called Zipify Pages, which allows Shopify users to create landing pages quickly. Zipify Pages gives entrepreneurs the ability to write long-form sales pages which they can test and optimize to turn visitors into converters more effectively. Key takeaways: Building a brand which is bigger than its Amazon sales The strategy for turning social media views into conversions Using Zipify to create a long view of your model with a direct response funnel Connect with Ezra Check out Smart Marketer for loads of great content on how to build your eCommerce site with an effective marketing strategy. Ezra on Facebook Ezra on Twitter Ezra on LinkedIn Ezra on YouTube Ezra on Instagram Connect with Ryan On Youtube On Facebook On Twitter On Google Plus On LinkedIn On Instagram Subscribe to Freedom Fast Lane Subscribe to the Freedom Fast Lane Podcast with Ryan Daniel Moran Tickets for this year's Capitalism Conference (Formerly Freedom Fast Lane LIVE) are now on sale. Go get your tickets here!

At Shopify Unite, we heard that Shopify is advancing their checkout process by adding new features like Shopify Pay. Advancement in the checkout process is great for merchants, and especially important for Shopify. It's important because the Shopify checkout process is tightly controlled. There's limited customization options, and unless you're on Shopify Plus, you're not given access to edit the checkout process. This brings us to a controversial point: is it not being able to edit that checkout process good or bad? And if we wanted to edit it, how could we do it? Then, what would do to improve the checkout process for the better? Joining me on the show to discuss it is Jordan Gal. Jordan is the Cofounder and CEO of CartHook, a software company that offers products that make your ecommerce business more successful. — 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: The coming battle for your Shopify checkout The arguments for and against replacing your Shopify checkout Customizations to consider that may improve conversion at checkout The one trend in ecommerce you need to know about The power of free plus shipping offers The strategy used by the most sophisticated Shopify store owners to dramatically increase ROI on ad spend Links Mentioned: CartHook Bold Apps Cashier (Beta) Zipify One Click Upsell Shopify Pay Address Auto Completion ClickFunnels 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: One of the interesting and perhaps blessed things that happen in Shopify is that unless you're on plus you can't mess with the checkout, and even on plus you can mess with it a little bit but totally rewriting the thing just probably isn't a great idea. The reason I say I like this about Shopify is the Shopify checkout is based on millions of data points, so in theory they're always optimizing this thing and we know it works well. I've seen really optimized stores with conversion rates at 3% and 5% and those that really juice their traffic to the store, conversion rates in the low double digits, so we know the checkout works. We've certainly seen it work a number of times, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to improve it, and not just in terms of conversion rate but there are other features maybe we would like to add to the checkout which would be cool. There's a controversial practice that happens and we'll go into why, but it's replacing the checkout. If you've ever used a subscription app, Bold app's recurring orders is a wonderful way to do subscription. It actually when someone goes through the checkout to place their subscription, it entirely circumvents the Shopify checkout, replaces it with Bold's that is just a duplicate. They have remade the standard Shopify checkout so that they can do their own payment processing, and then just funnels all that stuff back into your Shopify store via the API. It's kind of crazy and early on we were like, "Oh damn, that's how they solved that? That's nuts." And now we're seeing more people do it. You've probably heard about Ezra Firestone's Zipify, his company Zipify. Zipify's one click upsell. Bold Apps has one in beta. I've seen it enough places now I'm comfortable mentioning it, that we got a replacement called Bold Apps Cashier that's designed to try and pull all these things together, add a bunch of features to the checkout. And of course we have heard from him before. Jordan Gal from CartHook, who joins me today to talk about what's going on in this space, why and how it's heating up, and why it's controversial, what the trends are and what's going on. It's a more high level discussion but I think this should be very interesting. Jordan, welcome. Jordan: Thank you very much, Kurt. Thanks for having me on. I had to bite my tongue through the intro because I have a lot of interjections to make. Not disagreements but adding to the richness of the debate. How about that? I think we can get into it. I think it's a good, good topic. Kurt: I don't even know where I fall on this, so we'll see if you sway me. You probably will. You're a charismatic gentleman. Jordan: I don't even know if it's about swaying. It's a laissez faire argument. The checkout on Shopify right now is good. It converts well. Once people get into the checkout, it converts and it's standardized and it looks great on mobile and it's super stable and super fast, so there's not an argument to be made about how Shopify's checkout is terrible. That's not the argument. The argument is, should the eCommerce merchant have control over their checkout? And if so, then why? What are people trying to do with the checkout? And we saw the first rumblings of it with the subscription apps, and now it's starting to blossom a little bit in that space and we've got a few different companies playing in that space. Our company, CartHook, has a one page checkout and post purchase upsell app, and then Ezra's got OCU and then Bold's coming out, so it's getting interesting and my only argument is to let the merchant do what they want with their store. Kurt: When you phrase it like that then it's hard to argue with it. I'll play devil's advocate. The argument against it would be, protect people from themselves. If the checkout is based on ... It works and it's got these millions of data points, then lock it down. It's so important. Don't let people mess with it. But then I have said that and we've heard that on the show, but then I've also said if you want to add predictable, recurring revenue to your store, you should try selling subscriptions, in which case you got to replace the damn checkout. Jordan: And it may not even be like that forever. This very well may be a temporary period where things are in transition around the checkout. That's one of the things that we keep an eye on. We say to ourselves, how long does this last? This period where Shopify's checkout is locked down and then people are replacing it. Maybe there's something that we're transitioning into with some of Shopify's new APIs that allow for more features to be built into the Shopify checkout instead of replacing. I think it's a very fluid thing. To back up a touch, our product, it originated years ago when I ran an eCommerce business on Volusion where I ran the company with my three brothers. One brother was in charge of getting traffic to the store. I was in charge of converting that traffic into sales, and my other brother was in charge of everything that happened after the sale, from customer service to shipping, inventory, and so forth. So I spent my days staring at, okay, how do I convert more of this traffic into sales? The truth is I spent a considerable amount of my time on the checkout process or the cart page and the checkout page and trust symbols and error notifications and as everyone knows, every little tweak can make a difference. Sometimes you don't know which tweak makes a difference so you start off with your best practices and you make it super simple, and then you start to work from there and a lot of unexpected things happen. That's where it originated and now what we're really doing is we're bringing that same mindset and that same situation into Shopify. We're saying what works for one store may not be optimal for another store, so let's give control over to the merchant to experiment. Kurt: If we hand control over to the merchant, what are the things that people are going to do? What are they missing out on now that they could be doing if they had access to this checkout, or swap it to one of these other replacements such as CartHook? Jordan: We're seeing it happen in two different ways. The first is on the checkout page itself, and the second is what's happening after the checkout. I don't even know where we should focus first. I guess the first one's almost easier. Kurt: We'll do it in order. Jordan: Sure. I think it's more straightforward too and then the second part that the upsells after the purchase go deeper, so we can go deeper into that side. The first part is the checkout page itself. Shopify has a three step checkout and it's debatable whether or not that is the right way to go compared to a one page checkout. These days with more and more traffic and more and more conversions happening on mobile, you want it to be as fast as possible. Again, it's not straightforward that a one page checkout is faster and easier and converts better, but you can't tell without experimentation. What our customers are doing is they're trying to match up their checkout page with their brand so that it's on their own domain and it has trust symbols, testimonials, images, design that match the rest of the company's site so that there's a consistency from the product page to the cart page to the checkout page and then that consistency is generally understood to help conversions. Kurt: So the first is we want access to design for two reasons. One to make it match the store so you have a cohesive experience. You don't have this jarring, suddenly I'm on a different domain name with a different feel, a different look entirely. That's usually the first objection is listen, I just want this thing to look the same. Okay, cool. Then the second would be, all right, you're asking a lot saying to a stranger, "Hey, give me your credit card details and your home address, buddy." That's a big ask, so you want to add some psychological triggers in there like social proof, trust indicators. Even just, "Hey, if you have questions call us. Here's our toll free number." That kind of thing. Then of course remove all the friction. Make it as easy to use as possible. Add fancy features like address auto-completion would be a not atypical customization we see. Jordan: Yeah, and along with that just the desire to experiment with whether or not one page checkout will convert better for you than the multistep, and it's not straightforward. Kurt: It really does depend on the audience, because before we hitched our cart and did only Shopify, and obviously this was years ago so things have changed wildly, but we saw situations where some stores did better where you gave people the option to register as customers versus be guests. Some stores did better when you did one page checkout versus multistep. It really was dependent on the audience. Jordan: Yeah, it makes sense and that's what we're seeing too. It is not a straightforward, the second you add a one page checkout it converts better. It's not straightforward like that, so it's an experimentation piece. Kurt: And the end goal there to have those options, to have those features, is to increase the conversion rate. We make it as easy as possible, remove all those barriers, all that friction and we just make it easier for people to buy, and in theory our purchased rate goes up, right? Jordan: Yes, and one of the interesting things that we have an eye on is it's my opinion that the thumbprint wins. That's where I think everything is going on checkout. What I say is that my ideal is that 12 months from today, our default checkout page has no fields. Like the cart summary where you don't see the cart summary until you click on it and then it opens up and extends the cart summary. My hope is that the fields are hidden and you have to click on it to open up the fields to put your name and address in, because the thumbprint purchase will be that prevalent. That's what I hope things get to for merchants, because once ... There are a few different options. Apple Pay, Android Pay, some type of a Shopify Pay, Stripe. Whatever comes out over the next year I think the thumbprint is the thing that wins. Kurt: We see that with Apple Pay now and really I've only used it in maybe two or three situations and it was absolutely magical. Like oh my gosh, this is the easiest thing ever. How long has it been around? A year? And it's stunning to see how few ... This is not a criticism of just Shopify stores. Of just eCommerce and mobile in general that just don't use Apple Pay and that confuses me. Jordan: I think these things happen all at once. They grow and then all of a sudden you look at it and you say, "Whoa,". It wasn't that big last year and it's bigger this year and it's anticipated to be big, and the next thing you know it's huge and then everyone adopts it all at once. Over a 12 month period everyone will add it. That's my ... It's just inefficient, man. To be on a phone and punch in all those buttons when you're just using the credit card that you already have in your wallet and then you will eventually have inside your phone. It seems inevitable to me. Kurt: Absolutely. I'm confused as to why it didn't happen sooner. Jordan: I agree. Kurt: That's our dream as we get to, I want to check out. I just tap my thumb and it's like, "Hey, you want to pay with this card and send it to this address, right?" Yeah. Done. Send. No more thinking about it. It's done. It's over. It's one step. It works on our mobile devices and soon we'll see touch ID on everything. Jordan: It's a bit scary, isn't it? Kurt: A little bit. Jordan: The fact that the entire Internet will be as easy to purchase from as Amazon is scary. Kurt: Yeah. I ... It's a total rabbit hole here. I don't keep Amazon on my phone to prevent impulse purchases. When I need to shop on Amazon, I download the app and then I have to log in, make a purchase, then delete it. Jordan: Wow, good for you. Kurt: Because it's too easy. Jordan: If I were a Shopify merchant, that's what I would want. I want it to be too damn easy to buy from my store. Kurt: Right and fundamentally, with conversion rate optimization, that's the end goal is it is too damn easy to buy from this store. That's number one is, give me access to design so I can optimize this thing tailored to my specific audience. Then the pushback against that would be, "Well, if we do that we're giving you enough rope to hang yourself or you could mess it up and make it harder to use." In theory you're sophisticated enough. You can test it. You would know that your conversion rate goes down. Jordan: Yes. Like all business. I have plenty of rope to hang myself with in my business, just like you do and just like everyone else does. Kurt: There are other places I could through things up like uploading 12 meg PNGs to my carousel slider and that kind of thing. Then the other is this post purchase stuff, which I think is really exciting and is an untapped opportunity. Talk to me about that. Jordan: I think it's fascinating, and I have really enjoyed my job for the past year working in this space because it's just genuinely interesting and new. Once again, let's back up two steps. Here's what I see that happened over the past year or two. What's happening is that the marketers, the army of marketers that move around the web and identify opportunities, they have been moving from digital products to physical products en masse. Just a gigantic trend. It was not kicked off but accelerated by ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels brought marketing innovation in their platform. They basically said, "Okay, Leadpages, you guys have awesome landing pages, but people don't build landing pages on their own. They build them together in a funnel." So ClickFunnels just put that concept into play and said, "Now instead of building standalone landing pages, we're going to help you build landing pages that connect in a funnel," and then on top of that they provided a ton of education around how to use that. How to sell both digital and physical products through a funnel, and one of the key components of the funnel is the post purchase upsell. It's not just an opportunity to add something to someone's order. It is an opportunity to completely change the way you actually sell. The strategy from the starting point can be changed because of the fact that the post purchase upsell exists. A popular example is the free plus shipping offer. The free plus shipping offer, the way it works is what you want to do is offer something on the front end on your checkout page that's really low, low price. Ideally it's free. It's, "Hey, I just wrote a book. Buy my new book. I'll give it to you for free. All you need to do is pay for shipping." So the book is free, $0, and the shipping is call it $6.95, hence the free plus shipping nomenclature. Kurt: If you want to see this in action, if you've ever seen ads ... Clearly Facebook has considered me an info-marketer because I see ads for this stuff all the time. I got ads continuously for Russell Brunson, the owner, creator, of ClickFunnels, for his book DotCom Secrets, which was offered to me as free plus shipping and sure enough, after seeing enough ads, I did end up buying it for free plus shipping and it was like $7. Jordan: Right. And now after- Kurt: Then it worked on me a second time. He just came out with another book. Did it again. Jordan: That's right. So look, it works. It's a great offer, and so what that does is it gets the person into your funnel. All of a sudden your checkout page, what you're selling on the front end becomes an entryway. It's not the point. It is the beginning of the point. Once you put in your credit card information to pay $6.95 in shipping, what happens is that payment token can then be used again, which means ... Kurt, when you bought that book, what happened after you made the purchase? Kurt: Immediately afterward it's like, thanks. That's great. You purchased it. By the way, one time offer. You'll never be able to get this again. For $150 or something, add this extra package of just amazing value and it had a video and it was it's own amazing landing splash page and I said no thanks. But I also made sure to not read it because I'm sure it was very compelling and I might have bought it, and then when I said no thanks, it offered me another different thing. Jordan: A downsell. Kurt: A downsell, which is always going to be cheaper than the first thing it offered me. It always seemed way cheaper because I was just price anchored to the other thing. Jordan: Right. So if you had decided to purchase, in order to purchase all you would've had to do is click on the button that said, "Yes, I want to purchase." You would not have needed to reenter your credit card again. The credit card would have been stored in the payment token stored from the checkout page. That became very, very popular in the ClickFunnels world, and then the next phase what happened is a lot of people on ClickFunnels started selling physical products in this way. They'd say, "Okay, here's one unit of skin cream," and then after the purchase it's, "Hey, do you want to buy another one for a different price?" And, "Hey, do you want to subscribe and just save and get it every month without you having to do anything?" So then it started to creep into the physical product world. People started making a lot of money being really successful in the physical product world, and then what do they realize, Kurt? They realize, "Oh man, I really want to use Shopify to do the order management because it's really good at it." Then you had this strange gap where you said, "Okay, I want to sell like ClickFunnels but I want to manage like Shopify," and that's really what's happening in the market right now. You have a ton of these marketers coming into Shopify and they're introducing all these marketing concepts and now they're slowly seeping into the regular retailer world, not just the marketer world, and now there's this crazy [crosspollinization 00:19:30] around post purchase upsells are ... It's a legitimate strategy. It works. Kurt: Right. Initially, as soon as I think retailers and eCommerce folk in general hear info-marketer, they're like, "Oh, it's sleazy. I don't want to do it." Then over time they open their mind to it. It works for them for reasons, and a lot of the stuff is based on 50, 100 year old direct response marketing ideas. We've seen that with the power of landing pages and people's desires to rather than just have a product page, make these much more sophisticated, compelling landing pages for their Shopify store that are borrowed straight out of this info-marketing world. Jordan: Yes, and I actually want to make sure we talk about the landing page thing. That's probably the biggest insight I can give to your audience based on what we're seeing, so let's put a marker on that. I just wrote that down as a note. The process of normalization. I remember three years ago when we first launched our abandoned cart application, CartHook started off as an abandoned cart email app. We used to get people who saw our site and email us in such anger. Just, "I cannot believe what you guys are doing, that you are horrible, evil people who do this," and it's because we're sending emails to people after they abandon their cart. Do you know anyone who thinks that's a horrible, controversial, sleazy practice? No, it's normal. It works. It's inevitable. You need to do it in a tasteful way. It's always in the way you do it. Kurt: Yeah. Don't damn the tools. It's what you do with them. Jordan: Exactly right. I think there is now a process of normalization around upsells. I think within a year, basically not every single time but most of the time you buy something online you will have a post purchase upsell, and people will start to learn about it and be conditioned to it and understand that they're going to get certain offers and then they'll start to try to game it to see what kind of offers they get after the purchase. It's just a totally normal process. Kurt: I had not thought of it that way but yeah, we're already doing that as a standard practice in email marketing automation. You've got to be doing an upsell after the fact to extend customer lifetime value. Even the previous episode to this one that's literally what we discussed. Like a third of the emphasis was devoted to those post purchase sequences. At no point did we think it was strange, sleazy, or anything like that. Jordan: No, it's just a normal part of retail. Anyway, so that's the second piece. The first piece is the checkout. The second piece is what happens after the checkout. Now there's this amazing experimentation. What can you do ... If it's helpful I can give you what a typical post purchase funnel looks like. Kurt: I love examples. Really solidify it, picture it, so lay it on me brother. Jordan: Yeah, let's do it. Let's say you are selling flip flops. Okay. You sell flip flops from Brazil, so it's cool. You've got a brand going. A typical post purchase upsell funnel would look something like this. Visitor puts a pair of your flip flops in the cart, goes to the checkout page, fills out the forms, puts in their payment information, and clicks "complete purchase." After that checkout page the first page they would see would be an offer for more of the same. Meaning, the product you just bought, I'm going to offer you the same thing but for a better deal. Basically say, "You want to get a second pair of flip flops for 20% less?" And it's positioned as a one time offer because literally on the site publicly, it's offered for call it $40, but because you just purchased it, it's a thank you to someone who just purchased it. It's a one time offer. Add a second pair for you, for your spouse, for safekeeping, whatever. You get it for $30. Then, if they accept it, let's not get into downsells because that gets complicated, so let's just say three upsells in a row. Let's say they have two pairs of flip flops and they got a good deal on the second one and they're happy. The second would be for a complimentary product. What goes along with your flip flops? It is your flip flop cleaning kit. Then again you can say a one time offer, publicly or it may not even be available publicly on the website, or on the website the cleaning kit is available for $10 but now you can add it to your order for $5. So upsell number one is more of the same. Upsell number two is complimentary. Then what some people do, upsell number three is expedited shipping. What you're doing is you're saying, "This person is really interested. They just purchased. Maybe they want to get their product faster," and so instead of trying to convert them to upgraded shipping on the checkout page which creates friction, you can add an upsell as the third upsell for expedited shipping. Basically offering the same type of upgrade in shipping that you would've on the checkout page but this time you're not adding the friction up front. You're making an offer after the fact, then they can decide whether they want expedited shipping or not. That would be a typical post purchase upsell. More of the same, complimentary product, expedited shipping. Kurt: I love it. I love it and I can't do it right now. Jordan: Right. The point of this is really to change your average order value. Kurt: Right, obviously you're increase customer lifetime value but we're doing it in a much faster way. Where normally it'd be they make the purchase and then you email them their upsell offers, versus now we're doing it like, they have already committed to the first purchase, and in that same transaction now we're increasing that average order value, I think in theory extending their customer lifetime value through these upsells. Jordan: Right and the whole theory is, because these offers come after the checkout they don't interfere with the conversion rate on the front end. Kurt: Right and that's the risk. Right now if I want to do something similar I would use an app like Bold Apps Product Upsell [inaudible 00:25:51] pops up in the cart based on what's in the cart and offers me additional items. It's like, "Oh, you bought this beach towel. Did you also want to buy this suntan lotion?" So it pops this thing up. But they haven't bought the first item yet, so there's always the fear that this is going to increase bounce rate on the cart page. It's going to impact that conversion rate. Jordan: You got it. So it should be the same math on the front end. If you spend $10,000 a month in advertising and that usually results in let's just say 100 orders and the average order value is $100, that makes you $10,000 in revenue. Cool. Now, if you add post purchase upsells, that doesn't change at all. It's still the same spend, the same conversion rate, the same revenue but now 20% of those 100 purchases also add an additional average of $10, so now you've just made an extra $200. It shouldn't change the math on the front end at all on the conversion rate. Now what you're doing is just X% of customers are also taking an upsell, so you spend the exact same amount on ads but you make more revenue as a result. Kurt: So I'm getting a higher ... My initial order, my customer value goes way up but my cost per acquisition of customers doesn't change in the slightest. Jordan: Right. Shouldn't change, but the average order value goes up, and what does that allow you to do? It allows you to spend more on ads, and then you can make more money, and then spend more on ads, and make more money. Kurt: Right, you step on the gas and just keep this ... which I learned from you in a previous episode. If you get a funnel that works, it's profitable, step on the gas. See what you can do. Jordan: Yeah, step on the gas. Kurt: See how far you can scale it. That's a good example of how one might use upsells in eCommerce. Can I do this in Shopify right now? Jordan: You can do it in Shopify right now and there are a few options for merchants. Between ourselves and Ezra's OCU, there's starting to be some innovation in the space. Bold just came out with their Cashier. That's in beta, so the features there, we don't know what they're going to do but right now in the market you can use our product, CartHook Checkout or you can use Zipify OCU and people are doing it. We are getting a healthy amount of demand and we are kind of quiet. We don't really do any advertising and marketing, and we're just getting a wave of people who are talking about it in Facebook and then wanting to try it. It's starting to grow very organically and I think it's going to tip at some point over the next few months where it's just going to be more standard practice as opposed to the innovators on the marketing side. We're already talking to some really well known merchants that I don't want to mention, so it's already seeping into the ... The mean. The one standard deviation away from the normal. It's already creeping into the norm for them. Kurt: Right. Once we have these big ... You have some hero stores. Some stores that you aspire to be like. Very large, work in public Shopify stores. A good example would be [Beer Brand 00:29:18] or I always reference [Everest Bands 00:29:19] on here where you hear a lot about them and you're just like man, I want a store like that. Once you see those people, because we perceive they're successful and therefore when we see them adopting these things we go, "Well, they must know what they're doing." Everybody has that thought, even if they're just experimenting. That's what's going to normalize this and we're going to see more demand for it, and then we'll see more education about it, more people talking about it in Facebook groups, and you're right about that. I start seeing more and more mentions, especially in the Shopify Plus Facebook group. See mentions like, "Hey, how do I do this?" Then, "How do I do upsells? How do I do this?" And you hear people like, "Oh, check out CartHook. Check out OCU. Have you heard about this new thing from Bold?" I keep seeing this in the last month this conversation keep happening. Jordan: I think it's a great thing for Shopify merchants. I think it's a good thing for our market specifically. I expect more competition. Ezra and I are in touch and we're both supporting what the other person's doing and I think it's good for everybody. Kurt: That's one of the wonderful things about this community in general. Everybody works together for the greater good. Jordan: Yeah, and it's big enough. It's all good. Kurt: There's 400,000 Shopify stores. Jordan: That's wild. Kurt: It's all good, man. Jordan: Kurt, how we doing on time? I want to get to this one thing that we see that I don't want to leave out. Kurt: Right. We're at 30 minutes recording so I do want to wrap it up after this, but give me that one hit. Give me the tremendous value. Lay it on me. Jordan: All right, here's what we're seeing. People who are heavy into Facebook advertising, the people who really, really care about their ROI every single day for every dollar spent. What they are doing is they are first figuring out which product on their store sells, and then they are no longer sending the traffic to the product page. They are building a landing page and sending the traffic there and they are getting much more success from it. In theory you and I know that works. We know that a landing page converts better than a homepage let's say, but it is being put into practice in a big way in the Shopify world. People will figure out which of their products sell best and then they will do more work on the page to sell. Instead of just sending to a standard page where there's some photos on the left and then on the right there's some bullet points and a description, they'll put together a full blown landing page that does away with the navigation, keeps a super focus on the product, and does a lot more work with videos, additional testimonials, additional images, more copy, and they are being rewarded for going that next step in effort beyond just the standard page on the Shopify store. Kurt: I'm totally with you. I absolutely believe it. Just to give the crash course in Shopify landing pages, imagine a more purposeful product page. Often that is how we do it is if you've got access to a front end designer developer, we make a longer form version of the product page where we've got longer sales copy. We go through the whole pain, dream, fix format. We include social proof. Maybe we include urgency on there, scarcity. We'll do little hacks with that stuff ... And you can't do this for every product, right? So either you sell a few products, you could do it for all of them. Do it for your flagship product or use the 80/20 rule. Figure out, this is the big bad boy. Do it on just this one. Then take that same page, make a version of it where you just throw in some extra style tags and hide, display none, all the extraneous links that would get someone to leave the page. The fundamental thing that makes a landing page is in theory, it only has one call to action. Generally that means you got to strip out your navigation from your header/footer, so there you go. There's the easy crash course in Shopify product landing pages. Jordan: Just to plug my own product a little bit, what they're doing from there is they're using ... This is what our most successful merchants are doing. They're using what we call product funnels. In CartHook you can build something called a product funnel which links up directly to one specific product in your Shopify store and then provides you with a URL that goes right to a checkout page that has that product preloaded. They don't go from the landing page to the cart. They go directly from the landing page, they put the funnel URL from the CartHook product funnel, and then they go straight from landing page into the checkout page with that product preloaded, and then all the post purchase upsells after it and because you know exactly where the traffic is coming from, that one landing page, you know which product they bought so you can put testimonials that are specific to that product on the checkout page and then you can have a post purchase upsell sequence that's very specific to that product. It's a super, super focused funnel that you have full control over. You have control of the landing page, checkout page, upsell pages, thank you page. That's where our most successful merchants are dialing in their ad spend. Kurt: Just thinking out loud, if you are just starting out with a Shopify store, is this something you want to worry about or is this once you've got where your processes, your product validated, dialed in, then you want to start exploring this stuff? At what point do I start doing this, I think is my question. Jordan: I'm going to say that this is not something you should do as one of the first things. There are so many other foundational elements to your store that you need to get right, between the positioning and copy, navigation, and so on. I would work on that first. This is an optimization. This is, okay, how do I make things better? I think maybe eventually it will get to the point where, okay, I need an email app. I need a cart abandonment app. I need an exit intent popup app, and I need a checkout app. That's where I hope it gets to where every single person that starts a store just grabs these few fundamental apps that they need to add. I don't think it's quite there yet. I think this is a bit more advanced. Kurt: I want to wrap this up but now I got more questions. You rattled off here's the four apps you need to have. Do you have a preferred one or recommendation for an exit intent popup app? Jordan: No. I don't know. I don't know. I know OptinMonster. I know OptiMonk. I know Bounce Exchange for bigger stores, but I'm not as familiar with the app ecosystem to recommend exactly what to use. We partner with certain apps like ReCharge Apps on the subscription billing so people can sell subscription products inside the funnel and so on, but beyond the larger market, I'm not the right person to make those recommendations. Kurt: Okay. All good. I'll throw in my recommendation. I really like OptiMonk, but I've also heard fantastic things about Justuno but I have not personally played with it. I think in theory the thing I'd like to do and I never get around to because these other exit intent popup builders are so convenient, would be just coding our own using Ouibounce which is just an open source JavaScript snippet. It's O-U-I bounce, Ouibounce. I will throw those into the notes, the links mentioned. Jordan, where can people go to learn more about you? Jordan: Go to CartHook.com/checkout and you'll see more about the products, and then we interact with our customers and people on the site a lot so if you have questions just click on that chat button in the bottom right or hit us up at support@CartHook.com and if you are feeling podcasty, check out BootstrappedWeb.com which is my weekly podcast. Kurt: Who do you host that with? Jordan: Brian Casel. Kurt: He is a good dude. Jordan: My man. Kurt: Wonderful man. I will not go down any more rabbit holes as I was about to do. No, this is good. We're going to wrap it up here. Jordan: Cool. Kurt: Thank you, Jordan. I greatly, greatly appreciate it. I think that's all for us today at the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. And to our listeners, I would love to hear your thoughts on what you've heard come out of this discussion, so join our Facebook group. Just search the Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders. You'll find it. Apply to join. I will approve you, and come talk to us. I post every episode there. Or, you can always sign up for my newsletter at KurtElster.com. Shoot me an email. Either way, you'll be notified when a new episode goes live. And of course if you want to work with me, I'd love to have you. Go apply at Ethercycle.com. That's my consultancy. As always, thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.

Today's guest is Ezra Firestone. Ezra is the founder and CEO of Smart Marketer, and a serial entrepreneur with over $18 Million in projected revenue from just two of his eCommerce lines. He is truly a wizard when it comes to traffic generation, email marketing, and really anything eCommerce related.  In today's episode, we talk about Ezra's initial claim to fame: landing pages. We'll spend most of our time talking about the 'money pages' on your site: product detail pages. Every conversion path passes through these pages, making them crucial to optimizing conversions. Ezra will share some of his favorite layouts, must-have elements, mistakes to avoid, as well as companies to learn from.