Unlocking the Power of Email Forward-ability in E-Commerce: Insights from Nikita Vakhrushev

Marketing

22 Feb

Guest: Nikita Vakhrushev

Meet Nikita Vakhrushev, the digital marketing wizard who turned his e-commerce dream into a booming agency reality! With a playbook of marketing magic under his belt, Nikita found his golden goose in email and SMS marketing, scaling over 100+ DTC brands. Now, wielding email as his 'bread and butter,' he's here to share his secret sauce on squeezing every last drop of success from your brand's retention channels. Buckle up, it's going to be an electrifying ride!

Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:

In the realm of e-commerce, where digital communication reigns supreme, the art of email marketing often gets overshadowed by more flashy tactics. However, on this episode of the eCommerce Podcast, our guest Nikita Vakhrushev, a digital marketing wizard, brings to light an underutilised yet powerful aspect of email marketing - its forward-ability.

The Hidden Potential of Email Forward-ability:

Nikita emphasised the significance of creating emails that are not just informative or promotional but are compelling enough to be shared. This strategy, while seemingly simple, can exponentially amplify the reach of your message. Each forwarded email opens doors to new potential customers, multiplying impressions and engagement.

Other Key Takeaways from the Podcast:

The Critical Miss in SMS Marketing: Nikita pointed out that one of the most significant oversights in digital marketing is not collecting phone numbers for SMS marketing. This is a direct line to your customer, often more immediate and personal than email.
Education Over Sales in Emails: Another salient point was the power of educational content in emails. Instead of constantly pushing sales, providing value through knowledge can foster a stronger, more loyal customer base.
The Impact on Revenue: Perhaps one of the most striking revelations was the potential revenue impact of a well-executed email and SMS strategy. According to Nikita, emails should account for 25-30% of your turnover, and a well-integrated SMS marketing approach can add an additional 10%.

How do you create an email that people want to forward? Start by understanding your audience deeply. What information would they find useful, interesting, or worth sharing? Nikita used Harry's launch strategy as a prime example, where incentivising email forwarding led to more engagement and rewards for the customer.

In the fast-evolving world of e-commerce, these insights from Nikita Vakhrushev are like finding hidden treasure in plain sight. By focusing on the forwardability of your emails and integrating SMS marketing, you can unlock new levels of engagement and customer loyalty. It's not just about sending messages; it's about starting meaningful conversations.

Links for Nikita Vakhrushev

Sponsor for this episode

At the eCommerce Cohort, we're committed to helping you deliver eCommerce WOW through our lightweight, guided monthly Sprint that cycles through all the key areas of eCommerce.

What happens in a Sprint?

Each Sprint is themed-based. So using the topic of Everything You Need To Know About Subscription eCommerce as an example - here's how it would work:

Sprint Theme: Marketing.
Week One: Coaching Session -> Marketing.
Week Two: Expert Workshop -> Everything You Need To Know About Subscription eCommerce.
Week Three: Live Q&A with our experts and coaches. This is a time to ask questions and contribute your thoughts and ideas so we can all learn together.
Week Four: Submit your work for feedback, support, and accountability. Yup, all of this is to provide you with clear, actionable items you can implement in your eCommerce business or department! It's not about learning for the sake of learning but about making those constant interactions that keep you moving forward and ahead of your competitors. Sharing your work helps cement your understanding, and accountability enables you to implement like nothing else!

Who can join the eCommerce Cohort?

Anyone with a passion for eCommerce. If you're an established eCommercer already, you'll get tremendous value as it will stop you from getting siloed (something that your podcast host, Matt Edmundson, can attest to!).

If you're just starting out in eCommerce, we have a series of Sprints (we call that a Cycle) that will help you get started quicker and easier.

Why Cohort

Founder and coach Matt Edmundson started the Cohort after years of being in the trenches with his eCommerce businesses and coaching other online empires worldwide. One of Matt's most potent lessons in eCommerce was the danger of getting siloed and only working on those areas of the business that excited him - it almost brought down his entire eCommerce empire. Working on all aspects of eCommerce is crucial if you want to thrive online, stay ahead of your competitors and deliver eCommerce WOW.

Are you thinking about starting an eCommerce business or looking to grow your existing online empire? Are you interested in learning more about the eCommerce Cohort?

Visit our website www.ecommercecohort.com now or email Matt directly with any questions at matt@ecommercepodcast.net.

Matt has been involved in eCommerce since 2002. His websites have generated over $50m in worldwide sales, and his coaching clients have a combined turnover of over $100m.

Matt Edmundson: Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Now this is a show all about helping you deliver eCommerce. Wow. And to help us do just that, I'm chatting with today's special guest, Nikita Vakrushev from Aspekt, about the secret email and SMS strategies you have got to get your head around.
Oh yes. We're going to be talking about email. We're going to be talking about SMS. We're going to be talking. About that to some, some insane depths, I have no doubt. Now, because it's such a hot topic, you're going to want to get the notes and the transcript from today's show, which you can get at the website, ecommercepodcast.
net. Uh, but if you have already signed up to the newsletter, guess what? They'll be going straight to your inbox. And if you haven't got signed up to the newsletter yet, make sure you do that. You can do that at ecommercepodcast. net. Just put in your name and email address. All we'll do is we'll send you a weekly sort of update of the guests we've had, the notes, the links to the guests, all those kind of good things, they come straight to you, which is awesome.
Now, big shout out to eCommerce Cohort, that's who brings you this show, the eCommerce Podcast. The eCommerce Cohort is our monthly membership group. And it's amazing, even if I do say so myself, which of course I'm going to, uh, I'm in there, whole bunch of people are in there, we get expert workshops every month from eCommerce experts, basically, they come in, they share their knowledge, we learn a whole great deal from them.
Plus, there's a little bonus, oh yes, if you're in a, uh, in the cohort, if you're a member, You can join us on the live recordings of the podcast, which is just fantastic. They get played into the cohort. You can come along, talk to the guests, ask the questions, and it's just. Good fun. So yes, go ahead and join the cohort.
ecommercecohort. com is the website URL. If you want to know more, that's ecommercecohort. com. Tell them Matt sent you and I'll see you in there. Now let's talk to Nikita, uh, from Aspect, the digital marketing wizard who turned his eCommerce dream into a booming agency reality with a playbook of marketing magic.
Under his belt, Nikita found his golden goose in email and SMS marketing, scaling over 100 plus D2C brands, now wielding email as his bread and butter. He's here to share his secret sauce on squeezing every last drop of success from your brand's retention channels. Oh yes, I'm loving this bio, uh, buckle up.
It's going to be an electrifying ride. Nikita, welcome to the show, man. Great to have you. How are we doing today, sir?
Nikita Vakhrushev: Appreciate you, Matt. Thank you for having me on. I don't remember if I wrote that bio or that was one of your assistants, but I do like the kind words and I'm also glad that you brought up the newsletter for the show because I am part of it and I did get your one on Jason Wood this morning.
Matt Edmundson: Uh, I see,
Nikita Vakhrushev: You know, you're doing it right with email.
Matt Edmundson: ah, ha ha ha, we should get some tips from you on how to do that newsletter better. Uh, rather than, you know, just assume I'm doing everything right. Uh, excuse me by the way ladies and gentlemen, I have got a bit of a cold, which is why I've got, um, got a few nasal tones going on here. Uh, you'll be pleased to know my man flu has not been so serious that I've had to call the paramedics, but it has been close on occasion.
Uh, we're getting better. Um, so yes, uh, do sign up for the newsletter. Uh, so Jason Woods obviously come out today, which is going to give you some indication of when this was recorded, uh, and when it goes out. Um, but yeah, it's, it's good that those are going out and, uh, there's quite a few thousand people on the newsletter list.
Come join them. Why not be there or be square? I don't mind either way. It works for me now. Uh, Nikita, where we were talking before we hit the record, but you're based over in Nashville, right? Nashville, Tennessee.
Nikita Vakhrushev: yes, sir. Yeah. I moved here about a year and a half ago and recently we, my girlfriend and I actually just moved from our apartment into a house. So for the last two weeks, it's been nothing but chaos. And you know, it's right smack dab in the middle of Q4, so we're just in the middle of unpacking, moving and everything.
Clients are asking for their Black Friday, 7 Monday emails and whatnot. So
Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Busy
Nikita Vakhrushev: a, it's a lot to, a lot to juggle, but you know, I'm glad I moved here. It's, people are very nice. It's a beautiful city and the weather isn't as bad as Chicago, which is where I'm from originally.
Matt Edmundson: Okay. Okay. Yeah, you've just sort of gone down south a little bit, haven't you, really? And, uh, yeah. Nashville, the home of good country music, uh, as, as
Nikita Vakhrushev: City, that's what we call
Matt Edmundson: absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Um, I lived in North Carolina for a little while, so just across the border, uh, and, uh, but never actually made it to Nashville.
Never. It's one of the few cities in the US I've not been to. I've been to Chicago. But Deverton, Nashville, maybe I just need to go one day.
Nikita Vakhrushev: gotta head down south. But yeah, uh, yeah, I know, I know in the intro we talked about, uh, my golden goose is email marketing, but it wasn't always like that actually.
Matt Edmundson: Mm hmm.
Nikita Vakhrushev: I got started in like the whole entrepreneurial journey about A few years ago, not a few years ago, actually. I'm getting old, man. I started this when I was 19.
I just turned 26. So,
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, you're well old. Ancient, mate. Ancient.
Nikita Vakhrushev: the wrinkles are showing up day by
Matt Edmundson: Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Nikita Vakhrushev: So, yeah, I
Matt Edmundson: I'm laughing because I turned 50 this year.
Nikita Vakhrushev: oh, you don't look 50. So,
Matt Edmundson: Well, I appreciate you saying that but, uh, yeah, it's funny when you hear a 26 year old guy just sort of sit there and go, I feel old, man. I'm just really old. Yeah, course you
Nikita Vakhrushev: crisis the other week.
Matt Edmundson: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Oh dear. Ha Sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but I do find that thing kind of funny,
Nikita Vakhrushev: I don't know, I think the younger generation just, um, like myself, we, we think that every, like, time moves a lot quicker, or at least it does on my, Like in my perspective. So it's like, wow, I'm 26. I haven't done anything, but then, you know, you take a minute, a moment to like reflect and it's like, wow, actually I have done something, but.
In the forefront, it feels like I'm just, you know, doing things. I don't know how to explain it, it's a weird feeling.
Matt Edmundson: No, I get it. I totally get it. And it's one of those things, uh, Nikita, what's going to happen is in 24 years time, when you turn 50 and you won't have, you'll have completely forgotten about this conversation. But in my head, I still feel Like I'm 26, 27. That's the kind of age that when I got to that, I don't think in my head, I've ever sort of gone on further, if that makes sense.
Um, and so the age you are now is kind of the, I, for me, it's kind of been the age that I have been for, for quite a while, if that makes sense. And so when you reach 50, and if perhaps you do remember this conversation, You'll look back and you'll go, Hmm, I understand now what Matt was talking about.
Nikita Vakhrushev: That does make a lot of sense, because, I mean, pretty much up until this point, not directly, it wasn't a night and day difference, but I've always felt like I've been, like I feel younger than I actually am. Um, sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways, and making immature jokes and all that. But, um,
Matt Edmundson: I still do that now and I'm 50. That never stops. I think that's more of a man thing. I don't know. I could be wrong. Yeah.
Nikita Vakhrushev: You know, evolve as a business owner and evolve to the point where, you know, we've done some amazing things for our clients on both like just the email side, but on the relationship side as well, like helping them outside of what are, you know, our, um, exact, uh, direct, um, like assets that we have to deliver.
So, um, and I'm more than happy to share today, all the things that we have done for our clients and some of the strategies.
Matt Edmundson: I want to get into this, um, this whole email thing. Cause obviously it's your bread and butter. It's what you do. Um. As we said in the bio, um, and so let's start at the top, Nikita, you know, you, you've obviously had a lot of businesses come to you, um, to talk to you about email, uh, and SMS. What's the most common mistake we're still making?
Nikita Vakhrushev: Oh, that's a big one. I'd say the lack of SMS capture is the big one that I still see in email accounts. You know, SMS was a brand new thing way back when I started and no one knew how to utilize it properly, but now it's more of a mature industry and There's a lot of softwares that utilize SMS, pretty much every email software that you see, like Klaviyo, OmniSend, Sendlane, MailChimp even, all have an SMS component to them.
And when people come to visit your website, whether it's eCommerce or non eCommerce related, there's so many businesses that just aren't capturing that phone number. And that's... Just another way for you to reach your audience. And it doesn't even take that much time for you to make that reach out, you know, with email campaigns, you have to go out, do the copy, make the design, set it up in Klaviyo or whatever you're using.
And, you know, schedule that out with SMS messaging. It's honestly not that hard. You just have to take the copy that you have with email, shrink it down, make it more personalized
Matt Edmundson: Mhm.
Nikita Vakhrushev: the text message audience and send it out. And yes, it's a little bit more costly. It's not like email where you just pay a flat subscription fee, with SMS you do have to pay for every send, but, it's a more personalised way to reach out to your customer base, and at the same time, in some cases, it is more effective than email because you are directly talking to the customer rather than going through their email, where you know, sometimes people may overlook it, or maybe they don't see it
Matt Edmundson: mhm.
Nikita Vakhrushev: because everyone else is emailing them.
Matt Edmundson: Interesting. When you say that. Um, this is still the most common mistake that actually we're not taking advantage of gathering people's phone numbers, right? Uh, and sending them the text messages, the SMS messages. Now having been around the block as we've established a few times, I am a bit of an eCommerce dinosaur, but that's okay.
I'm comfortable in my skin. Why, why are we still not collecting the email addresses? Obviously the text there, the technology is there. The, the understanding, we're going to get into that a little bit in today's show, um, but it's not exactly, you know, rocket science, it's kind of locked in a vault for Knox.
We can get hold of that information. So what is it that's stopping us from getting people's phone numbers? Why are we so resistant to it?
Nikita Vakhrushev: If their customers, they're gonna be bugging their subscribers and they feel like they're gonna be tarnishing the brand quality by adding in another channel to communicate with their customers. Now, granted, once they see the revenue numbers, after sending out the first few campaigns that that whole that goes out the
Matt Edmundson: That just disappears overnight, doesn't it? I don't know what you're talking about. Uh, it's always funny, isn't it? The proof's in the pudding, but is that the genuine reason? I mean, I'm saying this not because I know the answer, but I'm genuinely curious. Um, are we not gathering people's phone numbers because it feels somehow a bit more personal, whereas email is, feels a bit less personal, and we don't want to bug people, and we feel like taking their phone number is maybe a step too far into sort of intruding in their privacy.
Is that, is that why?
Nikita Vakhrushev: So far, that's been the biggest reason
Matt Edmundson: Wow.
Nikita Vakhrushev: like, if they don't have it set up already and we're trying to get them onto it, um, it's like, the first thing is like, we don't want to be intrusive. We don't want to bug our customers. We feel like the cadence that we already have with email is already good enough.
Because I'm sure they had the same exact conversation a few years ago with someone saying, Hey, you need to implement email into your business. You know, they were maybe apprehensive to that before, but now they see it work and they see the revenue come in and they're like, okay, this is now a stable. Of our business.
And now it's like, Hey, we need to implement this new channel. And it's also, uh, you know, something new that they have to do. They're not used to, you know, it's not a routine. Uh, so bugging routine, and it's another cost to their business. You know, simply if they're trying to run a lean business or if they're trying to reduce costs, that's just another added cost to their business that they have to take care of, or another thing that they have to worry about fulfillment.
So all of those things stack up to, you know, of like, Hey, I don't think this is the right fit right now. This, you know, there's a lot of moving pieces behind it, even though, you know, with a team like us that can handle it for them, it's not really that much of a burden for them.
Matt Edmundson: So if I get over my initial... Reluctance with SMS. Um, when I gather people's phone numbers on the website, is there some kind of disclaimer I need to give them some kind of notification, you know, like with email, we kind of, we've got double opt ins now, we've got GDPR, we've kind of got all kinds of regulations flowing around. Um, so it seems to be that the double opt in is a pretty safe bet to get that.
Sort it out. Is there something like that or an equivalent to that with SMS marketing that we need to think about?
Nikita Vakhrushev: Yeah, the pretty much every, there's, it's a lot more strict on SMS marketing. Uh, so it's not as simple as email where it's like, okay, cool. They subscribe to the list, you send out an email for the double opt in for them to subscribe, and then they join the list. With SMS, it's a little bit more tricky because you need actual consent and you need consent language on the actual SMS sign up form.
And if you go through any of our clients, um, like pop ups that they, that they have on their website, if someone visits their website for like, I don't know, 10 seconds or more, you have the pop up come up for the free offer. Um, on the SMS page, there's like a long paragraph. Right below the submit button to let them know of all the different SMS language that they consent.
They consent to getting marketing materials, uh, from our phone number and all of that sort of like, uh, like terms and service jargon. And after that they do get an initial text to say like, Hey, we're confirming that you're subscribing to our SMS list. Please reply with Y or N. If you want to subscribe or if you don't want to subscribe.
So there is more friction added into SMS marketing.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Nikita Vakhrushev: we try to overcome that friction with, um, a very juicy offer of, you know, maybe something more, more, um, more beneficial than an email offer. Instead of 10% off, you get 20% off of text if you sign up for text. So we, you do have to be more careful with SMS,
Matt Edmundson: Yeah. No, fair enough. Um, and it's one of those, so you've got this sort of the double opt in thing, haven't you then, with text messaging? You're sort of, you're saying to them, yes, you're signing up. Please confirm yes or no. And do you do it in a sense that if they don't respond to that text message, you don't sort of bug them again?
You might send them another reminder saying, Hey, just to remind you, you need to consent, yes or no. Um, but you, or do you, do you actually still send text messages even though they've not responded?
Nikita Vakhrushev: we leave it at one follow up and that's it. If they haven't replied, then we simply can't do anything. And they're even marked with like. Um, like we have like special markers in Klaviyo. So like whether they consented or didn't consent, and typically if they don't reply, they're just typically, they're stuck at not consent and we can't send anything out to them even if we tried.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no, fair enough. Fair enough. Uh, very wise. Um, so yeah, there's a, there's a little bit more friction. So I'm imagining, right. Um, I don't, I it's going to depend on the website in terms of the stats, but I'm imagining if you've got a hundred people coming to your website, 10 of whom are prepared to give you their email address, what, two or three will give you their mobile number on average.
Yeah.
Nikita Vakhrushev: the pop up. And that's one of the things that we work on within the agency is making sure that you get a higher conversion rate pop up. And this is like mistake number two with SMS marketing is not only are you not capturing those phone numbers, uh, the second mistake is you're not capturing them effectively.
A lot of brands, they have that pop up set up. It's usually a one and done solution for them and they don't really worry about it because you know, it's just a pop up. It's nothing that's, you know, quote unquote driving revenue. They have the name, phone number. Email at like, maybe like another question.
And that's like a lot of things for a customer to put in. So we try to break that up into a three step pop up. So it's. It's really stupid simple. It's what's your email? And then, then once they submit that, what's your phone number? And then after that you get the coupon code or the success message. Um, and we've seen that to work out significantly better to where it's not just like a significant, like, like you mentioned, 10 people get the email.
Uh, two people sign up for SMS. It's actually more on like this, you know, seven to eight people sign up for SMS as well. Um, because of that two step, because once people give you their email information, they've already kind of given something to you and like on a psychological basis, so they're more likely to give you something again.
Because they've already given. And that's how, you know, we set up our pop ups for the most part.
Matt Edmundson: So, uh, I, and I've seen this a lot actually, where they, they've started to break it down. Now, when you start to fill in details, you don't actually know how many steps there are, but the first, the step that I'm looking at is pretty straightforward. So I give you my email address. I'm gonna go to the next screen, and on the next screen I, I'm gonna give you my mobile number, but on that screen, I'm not getting any coupon codes.
I have to give you my mobile number to get the coupon code, or if I don't wanna give you my mobile number, a coupon has been emailed to me. Mm-Hmm.
Nikita Vakhrushev: Yeah, so we break it up into do, into, I guess, more steps here, uh, for getting granular. If they sign up with, like, with SMS, then they get the coupon code through their phone. Uh, if they don't, then you can skip that step if you want to. And, uh, the coupon code is either Email to them or it's at the thank you page and it depends on a client by client basis And this is something we test for as well is We split up, uh, uh, like a 50, 50 percent on people that see the pop up at the end of the pop up or the coupon code at the end of the pop up, or they get the coupon at the email.
And depending on what works on their specific brand, we go with that.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah,
Nikita Vakhrushev: You know, if we see more revenue come through the email, then we stick with email. If we see more revenue come from directly from the pop up, then we stick with a pop up.
Matt Edmundson: yeah. And very good testing. So, you've, you've, you've persuaded me, uh, to give you my, um, phone number. Does this work better with specific countries? For example, I, I know in the States... Does it work better, for example, in, I call them the big five, the big, you know, the sort of English speaking nations, um, than say in continental Europe or in South America?
I mean, are there specific places where SMS works very well?
Nikita Vakhrushev: America, I, without a doubt, because there's just, there's a lot more leniency. There's no GDPR here. And even with email, uh, you can get away with single opt in. You don't have to do double opt in for email. So there's a lot more potency and a lot more, I'm sure time's going to run out. And there's going to be a point where that's not going to be.
I think, but, uh, while the iron's hot, we are striking with only using single opt in for email, and we still do double opt in for SMS, but there's just a lot more freedom with communication, um, and back and forth communication between the software and the customer with, uh, SMS, because within some countries, Klaviyo doesn't, you can't use two way SMS because of, you know, the infrastructure is just not set up there yet.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no, that's fair enough. Um, so you've got my phone number. I'm living in the States. You've got my number. What's your strategy? What's your thinking? I mean, sort of headline strategies here as an eCommerce business owner. What do I need to be thinking about? Because I think this is where a lot of people, I mean, email is pretty straightforward.
I could, there's a whole bunch of stuff I can send you on email. Um, from educational pieces to promotional pieces. I mean, you name it, you can do it. Text messages become a little bit more nuanced, don't they? A little bit more complex. So what sort of strategy on headlines should I be thinking about here?
Nikita Vakhrushev: So the name of the game when it comes to SMS. Obviously with email, you can do a lot more storytelling. You can provide a lot more content and context about your business. With SMS, it's a little bit tricky because, you know, you only have a certain character limit if you want to keep it under one message.
And typically with SMS, we don't do that much storytelling. And the main purpose of SMS is the follow ups. So for example, if someone abandoned checkout or abandoned cart. And we have their information. SMS is like the best way to recover that cart because it's a very personal way to contact them. You know, it's like if you want to service your car and you know, you got an email saying like your car is ready, you may not check that for the next three hours.
But if you get a text saying like, Hey, your car's ready, you're probably already getting a taxi to go there as you
Matt Edmundson: yeah, yeah. Now that's, yeah, so it's, it's that sort of follow up strategy. So it works with abandoned carts. Um, the, I I've seen it where the, the ones I tend to get, and I'm not signed up to many, it's just more of an experiment really, Nikita, if I'm honest with you. Um, the, the ones I tend to get abandoned carts.
Um, sort of special one off sort of discounts. I don't get regular sort of text messages about offers. Um, I get text messages like your order is shipped. Um, you know, your order's on its way. Um, those kind of more, I call them transactional emails, you know, those sort of transactional type things. Is that what we're predominantly using it for then?
SMS. Hmm.
Nikita Vakhrushev: do 20 percent transactional emails, like you mentioned, the order shipped emails or order confirmation, uh, maybe even throwing in a order review SMS, but yeah, but a lot of it is used to not only follow up with customers. So, for example, in the welcome flow strategy that we utilize.
With our clients. We use, uh, SMS as a follow-up on a promotion that we sent over. Um, like I mentioned, abandoned checkout, uh, making sure that they, we follow up on that. And lastly, a lot of promotional, uh, items on just like campaigns. We don't really do a lot of play. And actually we do, there's a, there's a thing we're testing right now with a few clients where we do a conversational.
Uh, SMS, and this is a little bit based on AI info and can't really spill too much beans about that. But basically if, like, let's say we send out an SMS message for a hair care brand and we ask them like, Hey, how do you, how do you take care of your hair? Like, what's your hair care routine? And based off of their reply, we send them a product recommendation or, um, any information about a new product that we've launched on, you know, through the brand.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it's a kind of, this is where, um, where AI gets quite interesting, isn't it? Because you can start to now be more conversational in tone. Um, almost, uh, there is a difference, I think, between text messages on my phone and WhatsApp messages, you know, there's, I can't explain it. I'm sure somebody has done some research on this somewhere, but what I write in WhatsApp messages tends to be a bit more conversational, a bit friendlier.
There tend to be more people that I know. Um, and. Um, they tend to be longer, more involved because obviously, you know, you've got more space, et cetera, et cetera. And so I can see, I can see them now starting to become more conversational, but do you have, I'm just trying to think about how this then works with your email and your offers.
So you're using this word follow up. So in my head, what I'm saying, Nikita, and please explain how it would work, but I'm going to email out 10, 000 people. Um, our latest offer, right? Whatever that is, um, to a targeted list. I'm gonna email them. Those that didn't open it, I'm gonna email them maybe a day or so later.
Those have. Those that didn't open it say the second time I sent it, I'm then sending them say a text message saying, Hey, check out, you know, don't forget to check your email or whatever we've sent you this. Hey, for you to miss it kind of thing. Is that how we're doing it with the sort of the followups on the offers or are you just going straight for, Hey guys, 10, 000 text messages, here's the, here's the latest offer.
Nikita Vakhrushev: So we actually do send out the email and SMS in tandem together with whatever offer we're running, especially if it's, you know, like one out of the four big sales that we run for a client per year. So we make sure to use SMS in tandem and the follow ups mainly come from action based or intent based like abandoned checkout, abandoned cart, et cetera.
Matt Edmundson: Okay. Okay. But you send them out at the same time. It's really interesting. I'm really intrigued by this. I mean, we do use SMS messaging here, uh, and SMS marketing, um, in my own eCom businesses. Um. Um. It is still, it feels still to me, Nikita, a relatively new thing. Uh, I mean, I don't feel as established with that as I am say with email marketing.
Um, it still feels like a relatively new thing. We were having conversations about it earlier on with the team and, um, just sort of going backwards and forwards on it a little bit. And. I'm intrigued by it. So how do you, um, earlier on, you talked about how, you know, one of the things that we're not doing is taking advantage of getting people's phone numbers because of various things in our head about not wanting to bother people and so on and so forth.
But customers quickly get over that when they see the revenue that it brings in. So where do you notice the revenue coming in? Um, what's working well to bring in the, the cha ching?
Nikita Vakhrushev: Are you talking about like specific SMS structure or
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, just in terms of if someone sat out, you know, someone sat outside, someone's sat there listening to the podcast, listening to us talk in there and they're thinking, right, well, where's the money going to come from? What types of things bring in the cash? You know, um, what's going to work well.
Nikita Vakhrushev: So I hate to answer it, but with it, it depends because depending now, okay, I will, I'm digging the hole, but I will get myself out of this hole. So it does, it does depend, but it depends on your average order value and the types of products that you sell. So what we've noticed with SMS marketing, that brands that have an average order value above a hundred to 200.
The conversion rate with SMS doesn't necessarily correlate well compared to email marketing. Like it's more so it's better used within the, like I, like I mentioned, follow ups as well as big promotional times. But if you're trying to do a flash sale, It doesn't really work that well. Now, under that SMS works tremendously well for some of our clients, especially during like flash sales or maybe like overstock based, uh, SMS messages like, Hey, we ordered, you know, extra, uh, inventory.
We need to get rid of it by the end of the week type sales. Um, those work really, really well because AOV under 100 to 150 to 200. It's a very impulse based purchase. So then it works very, very well of like, Oh, I got a text of like, you know, my, I don't know, like my, uh, a company that sells water bottles that I've been following for the last year.
And I bought three water bottles from them and. They're selling the same water bottle for, you know, 20 bucks off. Like I'm going to get that because it's a very easy and digestible purchase. You know, when you look at the average family, when it, when you're trying to buy something over 150 to 200, that's something you have to consult with your wife or husband,
Matt Edmundson: yeah, mm
Nikita Vakhrushev: so you can't just spend out 200 bucks willy nilly.
So that's, that's a talk that you have to have, and that just adds a lot more friction. And, and one thing that I did notice with SMS marketing is it costs a little bit more to do this, but sending out an image with your text message, like an MMS with an SMS tends to perform significantly better. It has lower click through, it has lower click through rate, but it has double the revenue on average than comparative.
To just sending out a text message.
Matt Edmundson: that's interesting. And what are you sending a picture of?
Nikita Vakhrushev: So there's actually a lot of things and like there's, it's broken down into like four main things. Um, you have to have the branding of your, like the business. So like, let's say one of the businesses that you run has blue and white branding. You have to have that in there because it immediately, uh, helps the customer recognize what brand is actually sending them that SMS message.
When you see a block of text. It's just a block of text. And then you take a second to be like, Oh, it's from this brand, but with images, it's easy to recognize, uh, some sort of product model or lifestyle image within there is also very important because then it's another context clue that you can immediately identify what brand it is.
You have to have a reason of why you're texting them and this isn't compliance, but it's more so just. To make it a bit more personal. It's like, Hey, if someone reaches out to you, they usually have a reason why they're reaching out to you. Same thing with here, you know, it's like, Hey, we're having a flash sale, or, Hey, we're having an overstock sale, or, Hey, we're running a giveaway.
There's a reason for us to reach out to them. And you have to have the offer, uh, center and clear to read. So don't just send them a photo of your products. Send a photo of your products with an overlay text of saying like, Hey, we're having a BOGO.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Mm-Hmm? Mm-Hmm
Nikita Vakhrushev: SMS message where you can mention their first name to personalize it. More details about the offer or any specific terms of the offer and the call to action, which is the link to participate in the offer or the giveaway or whatever you're sending out.
Matt Edmundson: mm-Hmm. Really great. It's really, really great. It is simple strategy as well. 'cause I mean, it's throwing an image in the text messages. 'cause everyone's got smartphones, haven't they? I mean, it's just, you know, it is what it is. It's gonna come up well, uh, on their, on their phones. Um, one of the questions I get asked a lot, uh, Nikki Twell talking about SMS messaging.
Let's talk about WhatsApp. Can you do this type of thing with WhatsApp or is it just native. Um, text messages using, uh, whatever text message platform it is, you know, um, but it's sort of separate from WhatsApp.
Nikita Vakhrushev: Now here's the thing. We don't do WhatsApp marketing. So I cannot answer that question, unfortunately. Yeah.
Matt Edmundson: And is the reason you don't do it because it's, you see, I, I kind of know the answer to this question a little bit, why it's not actually as straightforward as we'd like it to be. Um, it, it has always felt like a little bit too complex, um, WhatsApp marketing and is that why you've sort of avoided it?
Nikita Vakhrushev: so that's a good question. It's a mix of both. Uh, number one, it's complex. There's a lot more complexity to it. And number two, it's not that popular in the U. S. or it's not as popular as it is internationally. Um, everyone that I talk to, everyone in my circle of friends and family, the only reason that they use WhatsApp is to talk to someone internationally.
You know, it's not as a, I could be wrong here and I could be like the outlier here, but that's the only reason I talk to. Uh, or that's the only reason I use WhatsApp is to talk to friends and family internationally rather than texting my mom or texting my girlfriend because I just use the native text app.
So in the U S I don't, it is a little bit of a personal bias that I didn't see the point in adding that service in because I just didn't see a need for it. And most, like I say, 90 percent of our clients are U S based with U S customers.
Matt Edmundson: Mm. Yeah, no, fair enough. It's really intriguing because here in the UK, I think it's different. Um, I'd probably say, I don't know, maybe 80 percent of the messages I get from people that I know are through WhatsApp. Um, and it's, um, the native... There's a big thing going on in the UK at the moment, whether Apple's going to close down iMessage because, you know, the UK has got some very quirky laws.
Cause you know, why would we not? We're English. Um, and I think Apple have gone, yeah, well, we're just, we're just going to switch that whole thing off. Um, and so whether they do or not, it's a different story, but, um, but everyone's kind of going, well, we don't care. Cause then we all use WhatsApp, you know, and so Apple are going to do what Apple's going to do, but we're on WhatsApp.
We're fine. It's not a problem. Um, Um, so I'm intrigued because it feels like Facebook haven't really monetized WhatsApp yet. Um, I shouldn't call it Facebook meta, maybe, uh, in a way which I've, I've sort of looked at and gone, well, that's clever or that's intriguing where you can see how they've monetized Facebook.
You can see how they've monetized Instagram. But it, it always struck me that WhatsApp was, was complicated, uh, more complicated than it needed to be. And I, um, um, I don't know how long, much longer that will last for. Um, yeah.
Nikita Vakhrushev: and secure and you have that little lock icon, I still, the, the tinfoil hat in me, uh, person still thinks that it still uses it for data collection. Cause I remember there's so many times where like I'd send a voice note or mention something specifically about a specific product.
And then the next day I see like an Instagram ad for it. So, I'm a little skeptical on them not directly monetizing it, but indirectly they're definitely monetizing that data.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah. You wouldn't be surprised, would you? Uh, if they, if they were actually reading and picking out keywords. Um, but what, what do I know? What do I know? So we've talked a fair bit about SMS there. Let's go, let's talk about email, Nikita, because. Um, the key to, uh, email is still one of those things where we do talk about it on occasion on the show because I feel the need to come back to it because I talk to clients and I'm just going, why, why, why are we not doing email better than what we're doing it?
And it still strikes me as, Hmm, this is still happening and it, it surprises me every time if I'm honest with you.
Nikita Vakhrushev: The biggest surprise for me is that anytime I talk to like, or anyone new I meet, and they're like, Hey, what do you do? And it's like, Oh, I have a, I have a marketing agency. They're like, Oh, what do you do? It's like, I run an email marketing. They're like, that still works. I'm like, well, like, what do you mean? We generated this client like 200 grand this year. You know with email so it there's still like that stigma of like why like people actually respond to those emails It's like if you do a good job, yes, they do. They actually buy from you So there is still a lot of juice left us to squeeze in email marketing and we don't see any decline whatsoever within our industry It it just comes down to the strategy and the way that you communicate with your customers or subscribers you know if you treat them with You know, bombarding them with sale, sale, sale, sale, you're not going to have a good time.
You're just going to churn through those customers. And, you know, people are only going to see you as a discount brand, but if you actually have storytelling and visual branding behind your emails, then people are actually going to be receptive to it and see you as a legitimate player in the eCom game.
Matt Edmundson: yeah, yeah. That's very wise words. Um, we tend to find if with clients, if they're not achieving 30 to 40 percent of their revenue from email, something's wrong. Um, and actually you, you can improve that. I don't know if that's, I mean, that's based off some. Probably some prehistoric thinking on my own part, uh, Nikita if I'm honest with you, but, um, I don't know whether that's still the case, whether we should be thinking sort of 30, 40 percent of revenue from email marketing.
Nikita Vakhrushev: We do like, we say 30 to 40 percent in retention marketing because we include SMS in that. But if you're going solely off email, it's anywhere between 25 to 35%, depending on the brand, of course.
Matt Edmundson: hmm. SMS is going to add another sort of 5, 10 percent to the bottom line, isn't it? Um,
Nikita Vakhrushev: exactly.
Matt Edmundson: okay. Which is another reason why you should be thinking about SMS. Just take your turn up, divide it by 10. There's what it could potentially add to your bottom line if you get it right. Uh, which is always a nice thing.
Um. And there aren't that many ways where you can quickly and easily grow your business by 10 percent are there really, uh, but, um, yeah, it's, it's interesting that it's still around the 30, 40 percent bracket. That's always been a good test, always a good markers, like how much of our revenue is coming. Um, and conversely, if you've got good email marketing, you've got good customer, uh, repurchasing rates, haven't you on the whole?
Nikita Vakhrushev: Not only customer repurchase rate, but also customer conversion, because, you know, a lot of people come in from Meta or YouTube or Google, and maybe they were just browsing and they wanted to check something out, but maybe an email two weeks down the line is what converted them, and, you know, that's where like that last click purchase came from, rather than customer conversion.
Matt Edmundson: Hmm.
Nikita Vakhrushev: So if anything, it's a good tactic to not only retain the current customers that you have and, um, re send to those people to repurchase, but also it's a great mechanism for people that are just brand new coming in to learn more about your business, learn more about the brand and the values to then eventually become a customer and purchase.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no, it's true. I always ask clients whenever I see them. I may have mentioned this on the show before. I always ask clients when I sit down with them, what's the primary purpose of your website? And it feels a bit like a trick question, right? Um, I'm an eCommerce site. The primary reason I exist is to sell products.
Okay. What's the secondary one? You know, what's the second thing that you'll. What's the second thing you want to, if someone's coming to your website and they haven't bought your product, what one thing do you want them to do? What's the second purpose? And for me, that's always been, I want them to give me their email address, right?
It's just because I know that if I've got their email address, there's a lot I can do with that. I should probably now add the third, which is to get their mobile number based on this conversation, obviously. Uh, but, um, we're getting their email address. Do you still see... The, um, what I would call the educational flow.
So you get people come to your website, they're not necessarily ready to buy. So we give them a good reason for, uh, to get their email address. Sometimes that might be a discount. Uh, I often cite a plant site that I went to a house plant website, which, um, I wish I could remember the name of. Um, but there was this email sequence that I signed up for cause I thought it was rather.
Creative and Clever, which was, um, give us your email address and we'll send you emails basically at 10 proven steps on how not to kill your houseplants, uh, which made me laugh because I always kill the bloody thing. So, um, I'm like, I need this, right? So it was educational. So by the time I got to the end of that sequence, not only did I feel confident that I wasn't going to kill the houseplant, but I, they'd given me enough information to know what type of plants I should buy for the kind of room that I had.
Um. I don't know if I see that as much these days, um, the whole educational aspect of email marketing. Um, and is there good reason for that or is that something that actually we do need to be thinking about?
Nikita Vakhrushev: I think it's like the most important thing of email marketing. You know, you have someone that comes off, that comes off Facebook and comes off Google and they don't know anything about your business. They just saw an ad that, you know, hooked them in, especially if you're in eCommerce. You know, if you're not like Nike, you know, there's a lot of brand presence and a lot of top of funnel marketing that they did.
But if you're an up and coming eCommerce brand or you're just starting to hit that stride of like 50 to 100K per month. Uh, revenue still in the grand scheme of things, you're a very small brand and you still have a huge adjustable market to hit with your business. A lot of people don't know who you are or they just saw your ad.
So what is the best way to educate them without spending 30, 000 on Facebook every month, you know, unless you have to do that, but an additional 30, 000 to educate those customers and actually own that data it's through email marketing. So that's something that we implement internally with all of our clients is.
When within that welcome flow, obviously, if they signed up for a coupon code, we send them that coupon code, but the subsequent emails that they get, for example, with a, with a men's hair care brand that we were working with right now, we're teaching them how to properly style their hair. And, you know, if they're interested, they can use our products to make it easier for them to style their hair.
In specific ways. So that sort of education not only leads to a lot better customer attention, but a lot better customer engagement and obviously revenue down the line because they understand like, oh, if I need to have better hair, I need to utilize these guys' products, and they're the ones that taught me how to do this.
I'm just going to go straight to the source and buy. I can't tell you the amount of times where I've bought from brands because they've educated me on a specific thing that has helped me somehow in my life.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah. No, that's best. And are you, are you getting people in this sequence and this, this sort of educational sequence because of, say, there's a coupon, or are you getting them into this sequence because you've addressed a specific question like, you know, how not to kill your houseplants is a, is a, is a simple example, I suppose.
Or are you testing both to see which works better? I'm just kind of curious how you're getting them to actually give you their email address in the first place.
Nikita Vakhrushev: Right, yeah, so with that pop up, it's typically done with like some sort of discount code, or again, it depends on a client. Some clients we run pop ups with discounts, some clients we run pop ups with information, like whether it's like a free e book or a free guide, like you mentioned. And depending on the brand, You know, if it's ebook based and we do a little bit more information and we don't even have a discount in there until like the very end, um, and if they haven't purchased up until that point, but if it's more offer based and discount based, we give them the discount within the first email.
And then we preface the rest of the email like, Hey, for the next few emails that you'll get from us, you're going to learn about our business. You're going to learn about these specific things or how, like why we started the business, who we are, how it makes us different. And on top of that, more information on whatever niche that they're in, like for example, like houseplants and how to not kill them.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Nice. That's fascinating. Again, it's an interesting one because we're just, we're launching a new, um, skincare brand, uh, probably in January next year. Um, and so, uh, having, you know, done beauty, we're sort of heading back into it a little bit. Can do things a little bit differently. And so we're thinking through now things like the welcome sequences, you know, and how we do that whole, uh, email aspect of it, because it's a new brand, people won't have heard of us.
We're going to need to do that quite well. Um, and so I'm always kind of curious, you know, in terms of. What's going to trigger somebody to give us their email address? And I think we'll, we'll test the different aspects. Like if we give you information, do we, what emails do we get? What's the average order value we get out of you, you know, over time.
Versus if we give you a coupon code for a sort of a one off discount, does that work better? Um, do you end up buying more? I'm just kind of curious to see, you know, what the, the sort of the net results of that will be.
Nikita Vakhrushev: One thing I would take into consideration, and this is something that we're trying to test out and figure the strategy out for is. Email forwardability, you know, what's something like, what kind of content do you put into your email that is, has the highest chance of being forwarded to a friend or family member?
Because at that point, you're not getting just one impression, you're getting multiple impressions per send. You know, like, how can you value, like, what kind of value can you put into that email or what kind of, what are some things you can do in order to do that? And that way you can get more brand exposure as well.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah, no, really good. Who do you see doing it well?
Nikita Vakhrushev: There's a few brands that I noticed that, like, I know that, like, this is, like, way back in the day, but I know Harry's did a thing when they just launched their brand of, if you forward your our emails, you get, like, added to, like, you get more rewards points based off of that. And, you know, if you get enough rewards points, then.
You get like a free razor or something like that. Um, that's like the most immediate, um, you know, example that comes to my mind, but I've not seen too many brands do something that's forwardable I, and I'm, I'm talking about brands, brands like eCom brands, when it comes to newsletters, you know, educational newsletters, like that's something that I forward to my business friends all the time because like, Oh, I read this.
This is very valuable. I know that, you know, my friend is in a similar situation that this newsletter talked about. I have to forward that to them.
Matt Edmundson: yeah, yeah, really interesting. The forwardability of an email address, uh, the forwardability of an email, um, it's a really good point because I don't know if I've ever sat down recently and thought, Thought this email that I've got, how forwardable is it? Um, it's not actually easy to say, let alone think about, is it?
How forwardable is this? Um, but it's a really good question.
Nikita Vakhrushev: either. It, yeah, could be like one a month or one every other week that you can send out that you know can, is like likely to be forwarded. So
Matt Edmundson: Yeah.
Nikita Vakhrushev: that's
Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Really worth thinking about. Listen, Nikita, I'm aware of time, man. The clock has gone by at a million miles an hour. Um, and we're... Yeah, we're just, we're just getting started. Uh, as, as is often the case. Um, if people want to reach out to you, if they want to connect with you, if they want to find out more about Aspect, about how you can help them maybe with email or probably SMS, what's the best way for people to reach out?
Nikita Vakhrushev: Yeah, definitely. So I'm relatively active on Twitter. So it's just my first and last name on there. Uh, I'm also, I have a, what's it called? You can just find me on my website, which is aspectagency. com, A S P E K T. www. agency. com. And if you want us to take a look at your emails and tell you, you know, what's good, what's bad, what needs to work on, uh, just go to, go to the website and there's a free audit button at the top that you can click, submit your info, and we can take a look at your account and, uh, show you some improvements and it's completely free as well.
Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. Do you find the free audit thing works well? I mean, talk about lead magnets here. I'm just kind of curious from an agency side.
Nikita Vakhrushev: I mean, we get, um, I think like five to 10 a month.
Matt Edmundson: Hmm.
Nikita Vakhrushev: yeah, all of those for the most part, if they reply and give us access to their email account, we then hop on a call and then that leads to a better, bigger conversation. Sometimes they turn into customers, sometimes they don't, but either way they still get value out of the call.
Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no, absolutely fantastic. We will of course link to Nikita's information in the show notes as well, which as we talked about earlier, if you sign up for the newsletter, they're going to be in your inbox. So do reach out to Nikita. I'm sure he'd love to talk to you, um, and answer any questions you've got, but listen, uh, Nikita, appreciate you coming on, man.
Uh, I've got lots of notes. As I inevitably do, uh, when I have these conversations and, um, uh, always good to sort of stay on top of these things. So appreciate it. Appreciate your insight and, um, just coming on and sharing some real high value stuff, man.
Nikita Vakhrushev: Yeah, of course. It was a pleasure.
Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. And of course, a huge, big shout out again to today's show sponsor, the eCommerce Cohort.
Remember to check out their free training online at ecommercecycles. com and be sure to follow the eCommerce Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from, because we have yet more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first.
You are awesome. Yes, you are created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. Nikita has to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now the eCommerce Podcast is produced by Aurea Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The wonderful team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Bainon and Tanya Hutzlak.
Our theme song was written by the super talented Josh Edmundson. And as I mentioned, The transcript, the show notes, they're all available on the website, ecommercepodcast. net. So that's it from me, that's it from Nikita. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world.
I'll see you next time. Bye for now.
Nikita Vakhrushev: Appreciate you, Matt. Thank you for having me on. I don't remember if I wrote that bio or that was one of your assistants, but I do like the kind words and I'm also glad that you brought up the newsletter for the show because I am part of it and I did get your one on Jason Wood this morning. You know, you're doing it right with email.
So
yes, sir. Yeah. I moved here about a year and a half ago and recently we, my girlfriend and I actually just moved from our apartment into a house. So for the last two weeks, it's been nothing but chaos. And you know, it's right smack dab in the middle of Q4, so we're just in the middle of unpacking, moving and everything.
Clients are asking for their Black Friday, 7 Monday emails and whatnot. So it's just, it's a, it's a lot to, a lot to juggle, but you know, I'm glad I moved here. It's, people are very nice. It's a beautiful city and the weather isn't as bad as Chicago, which is where I'm from originally.
Music City, that's what we call it,
gotta head down south. But yeah, uh, yeah, I know, I know in the intro we talked about, uh, my golden goose is email marketing, but it wasn't always like that actually. I, I got started in like the whole entrepreneurial journey about A few years ago, not a few years ago, actually. I'm getting old, man. I started this when I was 19.
I just turned 26. So, um, it's been, the wrinkles are showing up day by day. So, yeah, I started, oh, you don't look 50. So,
I had an existential crisis the other week. Um,
I don't know, I think the younger generation just, um, like myself, we, we think that every, like, time moves a lot quicker, or at least it does on my, Like in my perspective. So it's like, wow, I'm 26. I haven't done anything, but then, you know, you take a minute, a moment to like reflect and it's like, wow, actually I have done something, but.
In the forefront, it feels like I'm just, you know, doing things. I don't know how to explain it, it's a weird feeling.
I hope not.
That does make a lot of sense, because, I mean, pretty much up until this point, not directly, it wasn't a night and day difference, but I've always felt like I've been, like I feel younger than I actually am. Um, sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways, and making immature jokes and all that. But, um,
yeah. Yeah, the lack of maturity is still there. But, you know, I still have been able to You know, evolve as a business owner and evolve to the point where, you know, we've done some amazing things for our clients on both like just the email side, but on the relationship side as well, like helping them outside of what are, you know, our, um, exact, uh, direct, um, like assets that we have to deliver.
So, um, and I'm more than happy to share today, all the things that we have done for our clients and some of the strategies. The listeners can use.
Oh, that's a big one. I'd say the lack of SMS capture is the big one that I still see in email accounts. You know, SMS was a brand new thing way back when I started and no one knew how to utilize it properly, but now it's more of a mature industry and There's a lot of softwares that utilize SMS, pretty much every email software that you see, like Klaviyo, OmniSend, Sendlane, MailChimp even, all have an SMS component to them.
And when people come to visit your website, whether it's eCommerce or non eCommerce related, there's so many businesses that just aren't capturing that phone number. And that's... Just another way for you to reach your audience. And it doesn't even take that much time for you to make that reach out, you know, with email campaigns, you have to go out, do the copy, make the design, set it up in Klaviyo or whatever you're using.
And, you know, schedule that out with SMS messaging. It's honestly not that hard. You just have to take the copy that you have with email, shrink it down, make it more personalized for the text message audience and send it out. And yes, it's a little bit more costly. It's not like email where you just pay a.
flat subscription fee with SMS you do have to pay for every send but it's a more personalised way to reach out to your customer base and at the same time in some cases it is more effective than email because you are directly talking to the customer rather than going through their email where you know sometimes people may overlook it or maybe they don't see it
Matt Edmundson: Mhm
Nikita Vakhrushev: because everyone else is emailing them Holcombe, Origin, Origins, Liverpool, Frontline Church, Jesus, Jesus Christ, eCommerce Podcast, EP.
If their customers, they're gonna be bugging their subscribers and they feel like they're gonna be tarnishing the brand quality by adding in another channel to communicate with their customers. Now, granted, once they see the revenue numbers, after sending out the first few campaigns that that whole that goes out the window.
So far, that's been the biggest reason for like, if they don't have it set up already and we're trying to get them onto it, um, it's like, the first thing is like, we don't want to be intrusive. We don't want to bug our customers. We feel like the cadence that we already have with email is already good enough.
Because I'm sure they had the same exact conversation a few years ago with someone saying, Hey, you need to implement email into your business. You know, they were maybe apprehensive to that before, but now they see it work and they see the revenue come in and they're like, okay, this is now a stable. Of our business.
And now it's like, Hey, we need to implement this new channel. And it's also, uh, you know, something new that they have to do. They're not used to, you know, it's not a routine. Uh, so bugging routine, and it's another cost to their business. You know, simply if they're trying to run a lean business or if they're trying to reduce costs, that's just another added cost to their business that they have to take care of, or another thing that they have to worry about fulfillment.
So all of those things stack up to, you know, of like, Hey, I don't think this is the right fit right now. This, you know, there's a lot of moving pieces behind it, even though, you know, with a team like us that can handle it for them, it's not really that much of a burden for them.
Yeah, the pretty much every, there's, it's a lot more strict on SMS marketing. Uh, so it's not as simple as email where it's like, okay, cool. They subscribe to the list, you send out an email for the double opt in for them to subscribe, and then they join the list. With SMS, it's a little bit more tricky because you need actual consent and you need consent language on the actual SMS sign up form.
And if you go through any of our clients, um, like pop ups that they, that they have on their website, if someone visits their website for like, I don't know, 10 seconds or more, you have the pop up come up for the free offer. Um, on the SMS page, there's like a long paragraph. Right below the submit button to let them know of all the different SMS language that they consent.
They consent to getting marketing materials, uh, from our phone number and all of that sort of like, uh, like terms and service jargon. And after that they do get an initial text to say like, Hey, we're confirming that you're subscribing to our SMS list. Please reply with Y or N. If you want to subscribe or if you don't want to subscribe.
So there is more friction added into SMS marketing. Now, typically we try to overcome that friction with, um, a very juicy offer of, you know, maybe something more, more, um, more beneficial than an email offer. Instead of 10% off, you get 20% off of text if you sign up for text. So we, you do have to be more careful with SMS,
we leave it at one follow up and that's it. If they haven't replied, then we simply can't do anything. And they're even marked with like. Um, like we have like special markers in Klaviyo. So like whether they consented or didn't consent, and typically if they don't reply, they're just typically, they're stuck at not consent and we can't send anything out to them even if we tried.
Well, that actually depends on the way that you structure the pop up. And that's one of the things that we work on within the agency is making sure that you get a higher conversion rate pop up. And this is like mistake number two with SMS marketing is not only are you not capturing those phone numbers, uh, the second mistake is you're not capturing them effectively.
A lot of brands, they have that pop up set up. It's usually a one and done solution for them and they don't really worry about it because you know, it's just a pop up. It's nothing that's, you know, quote unquote driving revenue. They have the name, phone number. Email at like, maybe like another question.
And that's like a lot of things for a customer to put in. So we try to break that up into a three step pop up. So it's. It's really stupid simple. It's what's your email? And then, then once they submit that, what's your phone number? And then after that you get the coupon code or the success message. Um, and we've seen that to work out significantly better to where it's not just like a significant, like, like you mentioned, 10 people get the email.
Uh, two people sign up for SMS. It's actually more on like this, you know, seven to eight people sign up for SMS as well. Um, because of that two step, because once people give you their email information, they've already kind of given something to you and like on a psychological basis, so they're more likely to give you something again.
Because they've already given. And that's how, you know, we set up our pop ups for the most part.
Yeah, so we break it up into do, into, I guess, more steps here, uh, for getting granular. If they sign up with, like, with SMS, then they get the coupon code through their phone. Uh, if they don't, then you can skip that step if you want to. And, uh, the coupon code is either Email to them or it's at the thank you page and it depends on a client by client basis And this is something we test for as well is We split up, uh, uh, like a 50, 50 percent on people that see the pop up at the end of the pop up or the coupon code at the end of the pop up, or they get the coupon at the email.
And depending on what works on their specific brand, we go with that. You know, if we see more revenue come through the email, then we stick with email. If we see more revenue come from directly from the pop up, then we stick with a pop up.
America, I, without a doubt, because there's just, there's a lot more leniency. There's no GDPR here. And even with email, uh, you can get away with single opt in. You don't have to do double opt in for email. So there's a lot more potency and a lot more, I'm sure time's going to run out. And there's going to be a point where that's not going to be.
I think, but, uh, while the iron's hot, we are striking with only using single opt in for email, and we still do double opt in for SMS, but there's just a lot more freedom with communication, um, and back and forth communication between the software and the customer with, uh, SMS, because within some countries, Klaviyo doesn't, you can't use two way SMS because of, you know, the infrastructure is just not set up there yet.
Mm hmm.
So the name of the game when it comes to SMS. Obviously with email, you can do a lot more storytelling. You can provide a lot more content and context about your business. With SMS, it's a little bit tricky because, you know, you only have a certain character limit if you want to keep it under one message.
And typically with SMS, we don't do that much storytelling. And the main purpose of SMS is the follow ups. So for example, if someone abandoned checkout or abandoned cart. And we have their information. SMS is like the best way to recover that cart because it's a very personal way to contact them. You know, it's like if you want to service your car and you know, you got an email saying like your car is ready, you may not check that for the next three hours.
But if you get a text saying like, Hey, your car's ready, you're probably already getting a taxi to go there as you get there. So
not really, if anything, we do 20 percent transactional emails, like you mentioned, the order shipped emails or order confirmation, uh, maybe even throwing in a order review SMS, but yeah, but a lot of it is used to not only follow up with customers. So, for example, in the welcome flow strategy that we utilize.
With our clients. We use, uh, SMS as a follow-up on a promotion that we sent over. Um, like I mentioned, abandoned checkout, uh, making sure that they, we follow up on that. And lastly, a lot of promotional, uh, items on just like campaigns. We don't really do a lot of play. And actually we do, there's a, there's a thing we're testing right now with a few clients where we do a conversational.
Uh, SMS, and this is a little bit based on AI info and can't really spill too much beans about that. But basically if, like, let's say we send out an SMS message for a hair care brand and we ask them like, Hey, how do you, how do you take care of your hair? Like, what's your hair care routine? And based off of their reply, we send them a product recommendation or, um, any information about a new product that we've launched on, you know, through the brand.
So we actually do send out the email and SMS in tandem together with whatever offer we're running, especially if it's, you know, like one out of the four big sales that we run for a client per year. So we make sure to use SMS in tandem and the follow ups mainly come from action based or intent based like abandoned checkout, abandoned cart, et cetera.
Are you talking about like specific SMS structure or can you clarify that a little bit?
So I hate to answer it, but with it, it depends because depending now, okay, I will, I'm digging the hole, but I will get myself out of this hole. So it does, it does depend, but it depends on your average order value and the types of products that you sell. So what we've noticed with SMS marketing, that brands that have an average order value above a hundred to 200.
The conversion rate with SMS doesn't necessarily correlate well compared to email marketing. Like it's more so it's better used within the, like I, like I mentioned, follow ups as well as big promotional times. But if you're trying to do a flash sale, It doesn't really work that well. Now, under that SMS works tremendously well for some of our clients, especially during like flash sales or maybe like overstock based, uh, SMS messages like, Hey, we ordered, you know, extra, uh, inventory.
We need to get rid of it by the end of the week type sales. Um, those work really, really well because AOV under 100 to 150 to 200. It's a very impulse based purchase. So then it works very, very well of like, Oh, I got a text of like, you know, my, I don't know, like my, uh, a company that sells water bottles that I've been following for the last year.
And I bought three water bottles from them and. They're selling the same water bottle for, you know, 20 bucks off. Like I'm going to get that because it's a very easy and digestible purchase. You know, when you look at the average family, when it, when you're trying to buy something over 150 to 200, that's something you have to consult with your wife or husband, you know, so you can't just spend out 200 bucks willy nilly.
So that's, that's a talk that you have to have, and that just adds a lot more friction. And, and one thing that I did notice with SMS marketing is it costs a little bit more to do this, but sending out an image with your text message, like an MMS with an SMS tends to perform significantly better. It has lower click through, it has lower click through rate, but it has double the revenue on average than comparative.
To just sending out a text message.
So there's actually a lot of things and like there's, it's broken down into like four main things. Um, you have to have the branding of your, like the business. So like, let's say one of the businesses that you run has blue and white branding. You have to have that in there because it immediately, uh, helps the customer recognize what brand is actually sending them that SMS message.
When you see a block of text. It's just a block of text. And then you take a second to be like, Oh, it's from this brand, but with images, it's easy to recognize, uh, some sort of product model or lifestyle image within there is also very important because then it's another context clue that you can immediately identify what brand it is.
You have to have a reason of why you're texting them and this isn't compliance, but it's more so just. To make it a bit more personal. It's like, Hey, if someone reaches out to you, they usually have a reason why they're reaching out to you. Same thing with here, you know, it's like, Hey, we're having a flash sale, or, Hey, we're having an overstock sale, or, Hey, we're running a giveaway.
There's a reason for us to reach out to them. And you have to have the offer, uh, center and clear to read. So don't just send them a photo of your products. Send a photo of your products with an overlay text of saying like, Hey, we're having a BOGO.
SMS message where you can mention their first name to personalize it. More details about the offer or any specific terms of the offer and the call to action, which is the link to participate in the offer or the giveaway or whatever you're sending out.
Yes.
Now here's the thing. We don't do WhatsApp marketing. So I cannot answer that question, unfortunately. Yeah. Uh,
so that's a good question. It's a mix of both. Uh, number one, it's complex. There's a lot more complexity to it. And number two, it's not that popular in the U. S. or it's not as popular as it is internationally. Um, everyone that I talk to, everyone in my circle of friends and family, the only reason that they use WhatsApp is to talk to someone internationally.
You know, it's not as a, I could be wrong here and I could be like the outlier here, but that's the only reason I talk to. Uh, or that's the only reason I use WhatsApp is to talk to friends and family internationally rather than texting my mom or texting my girlfriend because I just use the native text app.
So in the U S I don't, it is a little bit of a personal bias that I didn't see the point in adding that service in because I just didn't see a need for it. And most, like I say, 90 percent of our clients are U S based with U S customers.
I think it's mainly there for data collection, if anything, even though they say it's private and secure and you have that little lock icon, I still, the, the tinfoil hat in me, uh, person still thinks that it still uses it for data collection. Cause I remember there's so many times where like I'd send a voice note or mention something specifically about a specific product.
And then the next day I see like an Instagram ad for it. So, I'm a little skeptical on them not directly monetizing it, but indirectly they're definitely monetizing that data.
The biggest surprise for me is that anytime I talk to like, or anyone new I meet, and they're like, Hey, what do you do? And it's like, Oh, I have a, I have a marketing agency. They're like, Oh, what do you do? It's like, I run an email marketing. They're like, that still works. I'm like, well,
like, what do you mean? We generated this client like 200 grand this year. You know with email so it there's still like that stigma of like why like people actually respond to those emails It's like if you do a good job, yes, they do. They actually buy from you So there is still a lot of juice left us to squeeze in email marketing and we don't see any decline whatsoever within our industry It it just comes down to the strategy and the way that you communicate with your customers or subscribers you know if you treat them with You know, bombarding them with sale, sale, sale, sale, you're not going to have a good time.
You're just going to churn through those customers. And, you know, people are only going to see you as a discount brand, but if you actually have storytelling and visual branding behind your emails, then people are actually going to be receptive to it and see you as a legitimate player in the eCom game.
We do like, we say 30 to 40 percent in retention marketing because we include SMS in that. But if you're going solely off email, it's anywhere between 25 to 35%, depending on the brand, of course.
Yeah, exactly.
Not only customer repurchase rate, but also customer conversion, because, you know, a lot of people come in from Meta or YouTube or Google, and maybe they were just browsing and they wanted to check something out, but maybe an email two weeks down the line is what converted them, and, you know, that's where like that last click purchase came from, rather than customer conversion.
So if anything, it's a good tactic to not only retain the current customers that you have and, um, re send to those people to repurchase, but also it's a great mechanism for people that are just brand new coming in to learn more about your business, learn more about the brand and the values to then eventually become a customer and purchase.
I think it's like the most important thing of email marketing. You know, you have someone that comes off, that comes off Facebook and comes off Google and they don't know anything about your business. They just saw an ad that, you know, hooked them in, especially if you're in eCommerce. You know, if you're not like Nike, you know, there's a lot of brand presence and a lot of top of funnel marketing that they did.
But if you're an up and coming eCommerce brand or you're just starting to hit that stride of like 50 to 100K per month. Uh, revenue still in the grand scheme of things, you're a very small brand and you still have a huge adjustable market to hit with your business. A lot of people don't know who you are or they just saw your ad.
So what is the best way to educate them without spending 30, 000 on Facebook every month, you know, unless you have to do that, but an additional 30, 000 to educate those customers and actually own that data it's through email marketing. So that's something that we implement internally with all of our clients is.
When within that welcome flow, obviously, if they signed up for a coupon code, we send them that coupon code, but the subsequent emails that they get, for example, with a, with a men's hair care brand that we were working with right now, we're teaching them how to properly style their hair. And, you know, if they're interested, they can use our products to make it easier for them to style their hair.
In specific ways. So that sort of education not only leads to a lot better customer attention, but a lot better customer engagement and obviously revenue down the line because they understand like, oh, if I need to have better hair, I need to utilize these guys' products, and they're the ones that taught me how to do this.
I'm just going to go straight to the source and buy. I can't tell you the amount of times where I've bought from brands because they've educated me on a specific thing that has helped me somehow in my life.
Right, yeah, so with that pop up, it's typically done with like some sort of discount code, or again, it depends on a client. Some clients we run pop ups with discounts, some clients we run pop ups with information, like whether it's like a free e book or a free guide, like you mentioned. And depending on the brand, You know, if it's ebook based and we do a little bit more information and we don't even have a discount in there until like the very end, um, and if they haven't purchased up until that point, but if it's more offer based and discount based, we give them the discount within the first email.
And then we preface the rest of the email like, Hey, for the next few emails that you'll get from us, you're going to learn about our business. You're going to learn about these specific things or how, like why we started the business, who we are, how it makes us different. And on top of that, more information on whatever niche that they're in, like for example, like houseplants and how to not kill them.
Nice.
One thing I would take into consideration, and this is something that we're trying to test out and figure the strategy out for is. Email forwardability, you know, what's something like, what kind of content do you put into your email that is, has the highest chance of being forwarded to a friend or family member?
Because at that point, you're not getting just one impression, you're getting multiple impressions per send. You know, like, how can you value, like, what kind of value can you put into that email or what kind of, what are some things you can do in order to do that? And that way you can get more brand exposure as well.
There's a few brands that I noticed that, like, I know that, like, this is, like, way back in the day, but I know Harry's did a thing when they just launched their brand of, if you forward your our emails, you get, like, added to, like, you get more rewards points based off of that. And, you know, if you get enough rewards points, then.
You get like a free razor or something like that. Um, that's like the most immediate, um, you know, example that comes to my mind, but I've not seen too many brands do something that's forwardable I, and I'm, I'm talking about brands, brands like eCom brands, when it comes to newsletters, you know, educational newsletters, like that's something that I forward to my business friends all the time because like, Oh, I read this.
This is very valuable. I know that, you know, my friend is in a similar situation that this newsletter talked about. I have to forward that to them.
It doesn't have to be every email either. It, yeah, could be like one a month or one every other week that you can send out that you know can, is like likely to be forwarded. So that's something to keep in mind as well.
It was a good conversation.
Yeah, definitely. So I'm relatively active on Twitter. So it's just my first and last name on there. Uh, I'm also, I have a, what's it called? You can just find me on my website, which is aspectagency. com, A S P E K T. www. agency. com. And if you want us to take a look at your emails and tell you, you know, what's good, what's bad, what needs to work on, uh, just go to, go to the website and there's a free audit button at the top that you can click, submit your info, and we can take a look at your account and, uh, show you some improvements and it's completely free as well.
I mean, we get, um, I think like five to 10 a month. And yeah, all of those for the most part, if they reply and give us access to their email account, we then hop on a call and then that leads to a better, bigger conversation. Sometimes they turn into customers, sometimes they don't, but either way they still get value out of the call.
Yeah, of course. It was a pleasure.