You Send Too Much SMS & Not Enough Email (With Joel Biery) transcript

Joel be is the co-founder and CEO he rejects the title but it's true he's the CEO of capture box an email agency that I worked with on at least one client and poked around with on another and that's because he does awesome work he and I first started working together back in my 4x400 days on a very small project and then he finished his illustrious pitching career in college and moved over entirely to D Toc Ecom world and is growing an email agency and he's just a great email thinker great email executor and so it's been too long since an email episode I brought on Joel talk all things email why you're probably over spending on SMS why you're probably over optimizing your email and a whole bunch more let's jump in Joel what's up man how are you what's going on Andrew good to see you had to throw the pitching career in the intro of course man it was not very impressive at all but I do remember I can spe it's weird like you know sometimes when I listen to things you'll remember where you were when you heard something and I can think back and hear like multiple of your Ecom Playbook episodes back in the day in my college dorm room you know in the apartment just listening when you guys sold FC Goods I was like telling buddies about it so it's definitely uh cool cool to be here and obiously yeah a little full circle moment for me for sure that's that's so funny I um you know the whole reason I first was interested in in um you and your work was because it was so impressive what you were doing you were you were a college baseball player and you were pitching in college and at the same time you had like dm' me on Twitter or something I don't remember you reached out to Me Maybe emailed me I'm not sure um after listening to those episodes and you were like you were starting an email agency and I basically didn't care how good your work was because I thought like it just reflected a level of serious interest a lot of people say they're interested in doing stuff or being entrepreneurial or whatever it was but to be at that stage of life that is I mean College college athletics is really busy no matter what level you're playing at it eats up your life and so for you to be doing that on the side while being a student and an athlete at the same time was just like really impressive to me it was a kind of drive that I certainly didn't have when I was at that age and I just thought this dude is is going after it and then also like it was clear right away that you were smart and you understood things right away and so um anyway it was fun later on to actually get to work together on a client of mine once that came around but that had definitely caught my attention because there's just I mean there's just so few people in college who were doing that how how did you I mean maybe it's a good question how did you get started running an email agency like cool for sure so um first of all it's probably good that you didn't care too much at the time about the quality of work and I remember like there's so many times we would be on Long bus rides one time we had we used to go down to Florida like spring training and we were at like a hotel the team was doing you know day off at the beach and I was taking sales calls from some random conference room of like some random Hotel I'd snuck into so it was it was a grind for sure um but the way we got into this thing was actually my dad so my dad wait in the conference you just would go into a hotel conference room Hotel yeah with on my phone and Google meet just pop up yeah dude that's that's just such an entrepreneur story like it's just that's so funny like just go just go barge into a that nobody's using don't don't tell my my college coach but I'd be in the Outfield shagging BP before games I was a pitcher and I'd have my slack in my glove like this and I'd be replying to people in the Outfield that is so amazing I mean yeah that's just hilarious that is that's so good yeah that's what I like this actually one of the reasons I I just don't think of myself as like a true entrepreneur as entrepreneur even starting my own business like I had no risk I I basically the whole reason I started my own business was because I had clients like falling into my lap when they knew that I wasn't working anywhere and so I just don't have any stories like that I didn't have that that drive to go do it so yeah so what what made you go start doing email as a freelance service for people or starting an agency or whatever you call it so my dad runs a little vinyl reissue label and he basically you know he leases licenses for major labels and then presses records that are like super Niche that they would never touch so during covid uh obviously store shut down he can't move any units he had this really like baby Shopify store that Sam my business partner and I just took over and figured like why not try to see if we can move this stuff online and so our you know our first abandoned cart flow was me in my basement messaging hey Andrew you know saw you were checking out this record you know if you have any questions I'm the you know son of the owner give me a call so then we figured out okay we can automate these we can you know put a little clavo action in here we ran a bunch of ads we started hearing the cha-ching you know when someone would buy a record and it was just like addicting awesome super addicting we you know we started pushing my dad like he dude let's do a li limited drop colorway of this particular you know like blue note record that really isn't something that people usually didn't anyways we went from $200 in Revenue in May of 2020 I think we did like 14 or 15 grand in July he sells out of all his records and you know a combination of ads and email yeah it basically just ads email and Sam infiltrating Reddit communities like full on gorilla Warfare and what kind of Records was he doing so he pressed like you know Grant Green Sunday morning a blue note record bird and the be is um this like kind of like all rockish um group like cool he would do Andrew Morra like the stones record that he just these really Niche weird titles and you know Facebook ads used to actually like be way easier back then yeah and it would just work so we got we got addicted yeah that is amazing and so then you thought I'll just do this as a service to other people yeah so you know I was still thinking like I'm going to go into finance a lot of my buddies were you know doing interviews and stuff like that and I remember hopping on this interview with this uh you know asset manager whatever is the only interview I ever took and just feeling super out of place trying to just be normal have a normal conversation and not going anywhere and feeling super awkward and so like literally the next day I had just picked up Golf and the pair of trouser pants that I purchased I was like you know what their emails suck let me just see if I can get a reply from them sent him a note jumped on a call with Andrew the founder of red vanley who's who's still a client of ours three and a half years later gave you know was like dude we're going to we're going to do this thing and they're going to do all these things he's like I don't know what that is he's like how much is it I'm like it's $500 for everything he's like let's do it I called Sam I was like I called Sam I'm like dude we're gonna be rich let's go right now we got to learn how to do this email marketing so that's that that's where our Origins were and slowly we've just uh we just you know been been doing it every day since so I was telling somebody else um about you after we last hung out for a shared client um and I was telling them about when you did the goad diet when you were training when you were training baseball with without Cent uh yeah which is a gallon of milk a day um can you just tell that story really fast I know it doesn't sound relevant but there's a way that it's relevant I promise all right here we go so I'm a sophomore maybe in high school I asked my cousin Max he was like the he was like the most jacked kid I knew my cousin Max was at UCLA and I was like Max I want to gain muscle I want to throw harder I want to be better at baseball what do I do he's like I got you Joel you're going to go and drink a gallon of whole milk every day and you're going to gain a lot of muscle I'm like perfect say less every day for like 60 days I go into the supermarket by my house pick up a gallon of milk before school fill up a bunch of jugs and in one my classes just drink milk like a psychopath and it did not work I was lactose intolerant for like three years after that and uh anyways that I don't know okay here's the reason I brought it up that's so funny to me U it didn't work I thought you gained a bunch of muscle from doing that I I did well you gain a lot of muscle you also gain a lot of fat and you become lactose intolerant so it's a give and a take there and and you feel sick to your stomach when you go to lift a weight but yeah um yeah I um the reason here's the reason I say that it's the exact same kind of person who does the goad diet as who just emails somebody and says I can your emails for $500 a day and checks your slacks in your glove in the Outfield like that is that is exactly the like I I didn't do any of the yeah I just I just love that I think about sort of the way that you have approached these things uh and I remember you you you also told me that like when you hit your biggest deadlift PR in high school it was by like 100 pounds over your previous one you just walked into the gym one day and decided to do it it's like that that whole mentality I think is it just Delights me because it's very different than me and I think it's it's awesome okay we should talk we should talk a little bit about email that's how you got here now you've got a bunch of uh we should say like you got a A solid book of business now like you have an agency you're running capture box you guys Serv as a bunch of clients you're hiring strategists um I have seen your work so the reason I brought you on was partly you know we first got connected because I thought like I like this guy's um entrepreneurial energy and drive um and you were obviously like a good dude easy to work with easy to talk to but then um but then now what I've seen is that your work's really good like I've watched you really impr improve um work for a client that we both worked on together like I said I recommended you to other clients um still some chance we'll do some of those things and um and I've seen your business grow and I've seen how long you retain clients for all those things are really good signs and I thought like man I haven't done an email episode for so long I need to bring on Joel and just like talk what's the state of email what should we be working on um what should I be thinking about for myself um or for my clients what should my audience be thinking about for email because I've seen you do it I've seen you like really grow um a bunch of different uh Brands Revenue now so um so let's just start like really big picture right now what is the ma what's like the 8020 of email what is the key to getting email right if you know nothing else what should you do as a starting Place cool so I think the key is first and foremost understand who you are so it's you know a lot of us marketers like to think that we're able to greatly you know a lot of email we're going to increase your LTV whatever um sort of true but if you understand who you are you understand how big of an opportunity the channel Act is to get right um and I think the starting place is always number one can you maximize the big moments in the year so you know you're your follower Four Peaks Theory the way you think about the marketing calendar is for us can we maximize those huge moments that are going to make the rest of the year um and really make you know be the difference between a great year and a good year or a good year and a disastrous year so that's the first you know first principal thing right there is just making sure that you're present that you are prepared that you've got a a fully fledged out you know plan that you're ready to go with when it comes to and usually it falls into really two camps either a huge promo or a huge product or collection launch perhaps the most under optimized area of your business that has the largest impact on your business is the supply chain and I'll be honest with you I actually never know what to say to help you make your supply chain better that's because I am not a supply chain expert but I just see it all the time like I just talked to somebody the other day who had a four-month lead time on a product that I'm almost certain should have less than two month lead time now I don't know how to fix it but my friends at more Staffing do and they're putting on a webinar because they have incredible amounts of experience and spend time in China all the time with actual manufacturers like this is what they do this is a core part of their background and so they are putting on a supply chain based webinar called transform your e-commerce supply chain into a revenue stream Five Savings strategies that deliver results in three months it is going to be really really good the webinar is going to be on May 30th if you are looking to improve your supply chain save money make turnaround times faster get terms find better suppliers all those things in your growing business you really should go attend that check out what they're talking about there because there is huge value to be gained in optimizing your supply chain uh it will help your cash flow it will help your profit everything there if I was currently running um a an e-commerce uh business there's absolutely no chance that I would miss this webinar because I feel so underere equipped to do what I need to do there and I know there's huge opportunity to make my business better go to that the link is in the show notes you will not regret it May 30th go to that webinar completely agree just did an episode about the marketing calendar I'm I'm with you on Four Four Peaks Theory like I like the um and I'll put a link actually in this episode actually a few episodes ago that I just um that episode that I did um but yeah go check that out uh I I think the marketing calendar drives so much value in most businesses there are some businesses where it's a somewhat of a smaller deal in some ways but um but in lots and lots of businesses people just need to keep paying attention to how to maximize the actual calendar with a mix of exactly what you just said promos and product drops is the main things for for most DC businesses that are going to be listening to this so um completely agree so actually from an email and SMS perspective what are the keys to getting those moments right yeah so simply put it's going to be volume primarily so don't stress about hitting engaged people when it's Black Friday or you've got a massive collection that's coming out um also a weird trap would be going from sending to a really tightly engaged group to then all of a sudden blowing it up going to a full list that's if you're going from hey we're going to send this email to 50,000 people and the next one to 250,000 people you're going to end up with some pretty big deliverability problems so kind of pacing and building into a big launch and taking the time beforehand to drive the the value proposition of what's going to happen and so looking to kind of get something out of the base and kind of ask them to do something prior to it happening first and foremost would be you know we want to replenish the SMS list SMS is massive churn associated with it and often times we see people come in and out of it so if something Big's going to happen perfect opportunity let's get our core people back into SMS and once they're in there we've basically learned that they're interested in this thing so we want to be building up the hype in advance of it happening whether that's through pushing them from once they've sign up to SMS to then go at it to their calendar and basically just how can we carpet bomb them when this thing happens and get them to to the site and to go take some action so that's the first thing is just utilizing the time beforehand to really um create some value proposition whether that's Early Access whether that's a sneak peek behind the scenes of the founder doing a video walkthrough of what's going to come out yeah you know those are probably the two the two big ones there is just revealing stuff and getting and building hype as well as how early do you start building hype for a big for a big drop or a big promo so promo is going to be way shorter cycle than a drop because with a promo you run the risk of basically just you know cannibalizing your sales so with a big collection launch if it's a really quiet seasonal brand we might start three weeks ahead because there's not you know much El to talk about if it's a promo maybe you know Black Friday maybe it's seven days beforehand and if it's you know something like a Memorial Day sale or whatever it's a day before afternoon before two days before what do you do so let's let's take the three weeks before big collection example what are you sending in those three weeks and what's the CTA for people because this is something I I wonder about I have some thoughts about this but I'm like let's say you want a promo sale what it's two weeks three weeks before um or promo a big drop I mean uh two weeks three weeks before you sent an email what's the email say about the drop and then what what are you asking people to do in that in that Pro like uh in that hype Builder email cool so what we're what we're saying is basically it's just a tease so sometimes it'll just you know maybe for a supplement brand it's a bottle with a question mark or something like this and we're asking them to you know sign up for Early Access if that's what we're we're rolling with what that's going to do is going to bounce them onto the site we'll have like an easy way to do this is just in the URL just throw question mark equals you know whatever the drop name is have a pop-up Tri on every single page load that occurs with that link and then have that popup basically collect you already have their email right so collect their their phone number and then as soon as they sign up for that they're getting put into another list that list is going to confirm hey you're good to go here's what's happening here's a little insight look out for these types of things as we lead into this thing you're going to get a text same deal and then we're going to push you to go add it to your calendar so that you have that thing marked and honestly we see like on big big Brands we'll see 10 15,000 of attributed Revenue to ad event which is the like widget that we use to do these calendar ads so it's kind of an important play um so then then then let's let's uh hit that really fast so email says goes to the site popup says or or whatever it says go sign up for sms okay so that's the next thing you're collecting okay and then you're going to ask them to add a calend add an event to their calendar to remind them that your drop is coming so that they've got a reminder built in basically free notification in their life uh that that the event is built in um how are you uh how are you is that is the ad event coming from email or is it coming from SMS um like both so email email will have a little CTA SMS will have you know add it to your calendar here link okay cool okay great great and then so that way so if they're already on your SMS list then you just push them to um you know just to add just forget the SMS part you just instead say go add this to your calendar exactly and so now we have two buckets sorry go for it well and the other question is uh for that moment I I imagine also if you have any like you know get Early Access or anything like that you're telling them they can get that by signing up for those things too exactly yeah cool um oh what who are you sting at to what what what percentage of the list usually we'll pull in so there's so let's say for example we have this one brand that do they do like IP capsules so we'll pull in you know maybe a 90 or 120 day engaged group of just like General people and then anyone that's purchased from that specific collection or product in the past um that's usually how we'll do it and then what happens is once you have that you know once you start to build that list and then you have like these two buckets right you have the group of people who are just generally speaking what we're going to do is just continue to kind of beat the drum as we lead into that event and continue to say hey if you want to get a head start you know we sold out of the last one sign up here then we have the group that's already self-identified and are saying we're really interested in this we're going to email them a ton we're going to give them you know behind the scenes looks first reveals hey this is I'm the founder of so and so this is why we designed this the way that we did we're so excited to share it with you and really like we once we kind of have broken them into two groups we can continue to push that early access stuff to the general list and just give the people who've already self-identified and signed up the goods as we lead into the into the big moment and we'll usually Pace that so it's like you know week one one send week two two sends as we get closer we can kind of send more and if it's something that's really going to mass move the needle for the business the week of maybe we're sending three teasers and you know day before we're sending you know this drops tomorrow last chance for Early Access or to the Early Access list Hey guys you're in get ready to roll okay that's awesome yeah I love all that this is funny like this will come out before this but I I did an episode of uh an opening the books episode that's coming really soon um with a guy who specifically asked me to coach her through a product release and um very similar very similar advice and what I've seen over and over is that uh is that is that you know you've definitely gotten the the Tactical details down in a way that is um is more filled out than than I have because I don't touch a lot of email these days but what I've seen over and over and over again is that like tease emails that don't tell anybody anything to do do okayish but if you just have some little simple CTA for somebody to take a next step and you you have a list that has like been told about this or whatever like you you're launch days can get really really big and I think I think you're right to kind of bring back this conversation to the original question which like one of the ways you drive outsized value with this owned channel is in your outsized moments right that like if you do a great job and in these moments of building careful timed messaging it's it just it just makes a really really big difference uh to to the total um value you create you can watch this happen at a like last click UTM level or any level you want you don't even have to use the sort of ridiculous email uh ESP attribution that you often get served right like it's just very clear that each of the emails and each of the SMS messages that you're sending um actually make a really really big difference and it's funny because I think people think about email optimization as this very like the key is like in your Evergreen non Mo non non-marketing calendar moments you know get exactly the right flow and get the right timing and make sure that you know you figure out do it better if this email sends one day or two days after they last clicked an email you know people kind of get into that into the Weeds on that sort of stuff um when actually like and then they don't they don't apply enough thoughtfulness to how do we just make sure that we instead think about the timing of the actual big moment and then to your point you use the phrase carpet bomb them later um so like I mean maybe this gets to to the last part of maximizing this and I think it's actually probably as a general email strategy but like let's say it's launch day how many emails and how many SMS messages are you sending actually on launch day cool so you know let's say we have a two-hour Head Start for our Early Access folks and that's the that's the day so we'll start right away you know we give those email texts to them and then maybe right before those the two-hour period is over we send them kind of a last chance this is about to go live to the public um kind of a message then at launch time for the you know quote unquote public list General list maybe the ads go live whatever um that'll go out again and then either Same Day evening time if it's something that's actually going to like sell through sell through if there's products that have already gone out of stock if it's one of those kind of like hype based drop based Brands we can kind of start to push some of that scarcity messaging and if not we'll usually follow up day after with kind of a text only from the founder email talking a little bit more about the launch explaining and expressing gratitude for everyone's support and letting them know there's a you know fixed number of units or just how excited they are to bring this product to life cool so you're and then we'll just beat the drum for like another three to five days once a day during those days yeah once a day okay I love that so maybe in a five day period you're actually sending on including launch day many people uh except probably I assume once once you once they've purchased you kind of fade them off the list a little bit more or send to them a lot less yeah we'll just have a segment that lives it's like placed order lasts however many days depending on the the product and um we'll just have that always excluded yeah right um so uh so okay so you do that let's say it's a fay period that you think of as the launch period you're going to send eight plus emails to people over that time yeah probably like eight or nine emails with you know six or seven hitting you know most people okay how how much SMS probably just two or three okay cool um all right so that's that's really helpful I think I think that's very good advice I think like the the notion of of really building up I I still think many people are too worried about um like annoying their customers and this is like one of those things that founders of Brands regularly think that like if you live in your brand you think people are going to be really annoyed to hear from you but like just like zoom out to own experience like how annoyed are you really that a company is emailing you like for me not very annoyed it's fine I just ignore it if I don't I don't think less of them if they email me I don't whatever people are just so worried about this kind of thing I think almost always like sending more pretty much works better and doesn't have much obvious downside do you agree with that yeah I do agree with that so long as you're filling the the the funnel with enough new people yeah I think there's also this ability in those big moments to give you get the excuse of ramping volume without any of the you know usual downside and so you take advantage of that when you can um but at the same time as long I think what the most important thing is just keep an eyeball on net list game which is just you know how many people are signing up how many active customers are signing up um usually just like active customers that signed up in this period against active customers that unsubscribe in this period as long as that's right sizing and growing hopefully over time there's really no no need to go crazy with exclusions and stuff yeah exclusions or even just yeah careal targeting or even just lowering your your Cadence of sense yeah yeah um yeah I don't have a problem with unsubscribes in general I think if somebody unsubscribes it's probably because they're not that interested in you in general it's probably not because you're sending too much it's probably because they just don't really care that much um about your brand and that which is like a subtle difference but it's important to me it's like it's almost like convenient list cleaning that happens without you having to do anything you know so um it's really hard I think I mean again tell me if you disagree with this but in my experience it's really hard to send so much email that uh you're unsubscribed actually become that big of a problem I agree um it's more pronounced if you're running into a period where you're even if it's seasonal or if it's just like based off of spend levels or you're just not getting as many new customers if you continue sending you know as many campaigns as you were when you when that wasn't the case then down the line you're going to run into some problems but I looked at a brand last week or two weeks ago that had literally sent 65 campaigns in April and yeah there's some pronounced churn that was kind of outsized versus previous years previous periods channel was still ripping for them and it was really hard for me to articulate the issue there which is going to not show up this month it's probably not going to show up next month it's something that's going to show up in you know Q3 and Q4 and so there's definitely a way to to make that not true and and over email for sure but I think it's a lot further away than most most people realize you so you think 65 was too much way too much yeah and how so how do make the case for me make the case that they're over sending if it was still ripping for them in April make make the case that they were actually over sending so they were over sending and I know that they were over sending because their list uh turn year-over-year was up 450% okay and their list growth year-over-year was up maybe or down like 7% right so what the case wasn't this is hurting your channel Revenue this is hurting your ability to produce revenue from the channel this month next month month after it was hey if you continue with this Pace in you know literally plot it out in 18 months you're gonna have zero people on your list yeah and so U that was what happens what do you think would happen if they had gone down to 45 EMA emails in the month so let's say your unsubscribe rate on the first bucket of sends is 1% and the unsubscribe rate on your second bucket of sends is 1.5% or something right it's very um it's almost it's not like the percent is climbing like to a ridiculous degree it's just that every time you send you're getting you know 500 people that are unsubscribing and so if you if you go from 60 to 45 you can literally you know plot that out the rate can stay relatively the same but you're going to have virtually the whatever you know 45 over 60 minus one is is the percent that you're list you yeah so it's not so much that like your unsubscribe rate goes up because you're spending too much it's that your un subscribe rate stays relatively constant but do that over in a long enough time and you just lose too many people correct and what are you actually getting out of the next 15 C if you've already sent 1.5 a day to virtually the whole list right what are you getting versus what is it costing you and it started like there's that point in the chart where you're like okay we should probably slow this yeah exactly yeah that I think that's helpful but I still think also on the other side of this most people would be shocked to hear you say like you could potentially send 45 emails in a month and be okay still like maybe it's a little too much but it's not that bad you know I think I I've talked to lots of entrepreneurs where it's like oh more than three a week I feel like I'm annoying people you know and I honestly I think the risk there is more so it's less about churn unless you're seeing what I was just describing earlier it's more about when the big stuff happens how are they going to know if you're already sending so much and so like you know sending for in April this is a brand that's going to peek out in June they have a Hu really seasonal business if they're sending 45 in April you really want to be able to lean into the the point of the Year where you have all the you know wins in your tail versus trying to like extract extra when when shit's rough that's such a good point I and I think this is a really common thing it's so it's so hard when you're running a highly seasonal business that uh to like sit there and watch the revenue suck for a while when in the down periods and and so it makes sense to me that you would go like we are going to we're going to do everything we can to make that Revenue go up during our our headwind moments um because we just can't deal with sales being this slow but it's exactly the wrong approach the the way to make the business better is actually to send those 45 emails or 65 emails or whatever when you have Tailwinds and and then to let it and then to relax and to not worry about trying to extract Extra Value I mean you may not send it that volume still but if you've got a highly seasonal business like you basically can't email too let's say it's a holiday brand right there's like a 30-day period there where it's almost impossible to send too much I think um and because if you spend the rest of your year building your list and maybe you have a nice Mother's Day or Father's Day or whatever um and and that's it like it to me it just seems like that's that's completely right like basically in general for marketing put tons and tons and tons of your effort towards the moments where you have the biggest Tailwinds um and and again I actually did another episode about this as well about seasonality which I think is more of a factor in more people's businesses than they actually realize um and and to actually instead of trying to lean against the seasonality lean into the seasonality and go make those moments bigger you just you just run a much better business by doing that in terms of the bottom line profitability it's annoying it's frustrating during parts of the year but you'll end up with a bunch more money in your pocket I think at the end agree and we run into it a lot I think the critical point that you're making there is planning for it because if you plan for it you're expecting it and if you're not expecting it there's you know there's emotions there's you know uh there's there's costs that you that you have uh that you have to pay and so that's where the stress picks up and that's where you kind of lean in and figure out okay now we have to kind of um if as long as you plan for it you're going to be fine that's right like every second I spent working on uh product drops this is this is overstated but I'll say this way anyway product drops between Father's Day and holiday when I was working with FC Goods was kind of a waste of time it it might have been a better idea for me to literally not do anything between Father's Day and um and holiday besides do regular like a few emails a week whatever just like simple stuff keep working on ads all the time because the more ads you generate in those down periods the more bullets you have ready to fire during your Peak moments right so part of it is just use that time to keep generating High performing creative because some of that stuff doesn't it doesn't have to be holiday creative to work at holiday right so just like keep trying to find your winners over time use the time to do those things but basically to create no promotional moments between those times and instead if I would have re invested almost all of my energy maybe 80% of it into the moment the calendar goes past Father's Day you start working on holiday the moment the calendar goes past holiday you start working on Father's Day in that business those two were like overwhelmingly the biggest moments I bet you my total business would have performed better by just thinking about that including on email and SMS and those things like it's just it's just you just plan plan plan plan financially plan you know ads email everything to just make those moments as big as possible which comes back to your original point right which you said here's the number one thing to do make your biggest moments bigger with owned audiences via email and SMS I think that's completely right so yeah um do you want to say something about that go ahead sorry no I just say that's an extreme example and it's not to say that totally if you have if you have a plan for May and let's say you know AJF grows running your ads and they've got everything on caps and to this week it's not spending the way you thought that is a perfect opportunity to say you know to your email team or to you or whatever you need to you know spin up quickly some extra sends to make sure that you don't miss but in in your macro view in those extreme examples of like a highly seasonal business it's definitely going to be a lot easier to squeeze out you know an extra you know 50 or 100 Grand from your list then than it is to do it in moments where no one's really paying that much attention yeah I think that's right um okay let's talk about generally speaking other mistakes that you see Brands making with email and SMS um what what are just like top of mind if I say what are the biggest mistakes brands are making right now in general um what what comes to mind first the biggest thing I've been seeing lately is Brands greatly over spending on SMS like great like more spend billable spend on SMS than their Shopify Bill than their clayo bill and I think this starts within the platforms and just how they attribute revenu so if you're not carefully looking in GA or triple whale or North beam or whatever um you're just going to see a really big number that's exciting but um there's some really easy ways that you can virtually cut your SMS bill in half from what I've been seeing so the the the biggest problem that we're seeing right now is like overspending SMS great how do you fix that easiest way to do it is uh and we've tested this pretty extensively where you'll have if if you know how it works there's a little bit of nuance with buildable spend but you have SMS which will just be like for most platforms like anywhere from in 10 8/10 of a cent to a cent then you have an image-based text which might be three cents and so we've tested this if you're using the short condensed 160 character text versus the GIF very rarely if ever will that gif outperform in any meaningful way traffic or Revenue off the normal SMS just it's just pure lot you're just paying you're just paying more money to send it and that's all you're doing and you're paying three times as much to send it right right and maybe outside of like you know a highly visual apparel piece that just dropped do you need to do that so I've got a client that recently switched its pixel over to be done through Billy which you might have heard me talk about in the last couple weeks on my show billy. a b y. a is the pixel installation I'm using with 100% server side tracking for all of my meta ads clients at this point I've switched everything over to that and it's because it works better and this client switched over uh because of the same reason that all my clients switched over which is that I tested Billy against other pixel installs and saw better event matching in meta ads as well as um better performance like we saw actually better row ass lower CAC on ads when tested head-to-head in this case it was actually against another thirdparty pixel provider we saw things working really great but then something happened which was that after we launched Billy we were seeing an increase in spend that was sort of confusing for us at first and we did a deep dive on it and found immediately as I looked more closely that my one day click Revenue in meta my one day click CAC in meta more closely aligned to last click data last click CAC which I had pulled from directly from Shopify using UTM sources which is all the evidence you need that Billy was actually tracking more of the purches that were coming through what I'm saying is it is definitively the case that Billy was recording more of the purchases that were coming through from customers from meta ads than my old pixel setup was so we tested it we saw the events manager change and uh we saw better performance and then a few weeks after the install we saw exactly what you would expect which is better more accurate conversion tracking on my website and at the same time we have seen an immediate increase in ad spend probably that's in part because better data quality is going to give meta better matching capabilities and better modeling and you can go find more customers it is a no-brainer for you to go switch to Billy it is also meaningfully cheaper than the other options on the market so it's cost effective as well if you are considering if you if you have a standard metap pixel install on your Shopify store right now you absolutely should right now stop what you're doing go to b. and add Billy to your store it will improve your tracking and the install is insanely easy at this point I am not Technical and I was able to do it go to b. a the link is in the show notes to get Billy on your store day a lot of Brands right now they either have like paragraphs in their text which I always see I'm like gez or they'll have like one emoji and you're like what are you doing because um that's just doubling your cost right there and just by condensing your taex and being a little bit more efficient with it you're going to you know potentially cut your bill in half there's also some extreme cases so like you know Brands will like to throw in a restricted symbol or a TM symbol on their from name which I've actually seen like a handful of times in the last few weeks so why it's just like it's coming to mind right now that is right there doubling your C your billable spend on SMS and so the way that we go about it is you know we pull in usually just simply GA you know Channel Revenue against Channel spend depending on you know what the you know what the team is basically comfortable with we'll have a Target you know Roi doesn't have to be complicated and then we'll spend into that Target we'll have a revenue Target and an Roi Target and we'll spend into it rather than you know just chasing after in platform Revenue which is firing off of deliveries most of the time for you know the majority of SMS platforms um do you think that's really helpful first of all I think it's so actionable right away for people just like get rid of your emojis get rid of your images get rid of your gifts uh get rid of your TM or your R sign yeah uh all those things and try to keep your SMS message to to you know 160 characters or less make that as cheap as possible which has the implication uh next to it that the value of SMS is that it is the deliverability not the messaging not the content essentially like it this this is what it seems to me to be the case uh if you are running SMS the whole thing that's valuable about it is that it will reach the people that are subscribed to the list basically at a much higher rate than than email so you pay more for it but uh but it's it's going to reach people which is especially important at like major moments like you know you know Memorial Day sale you know on the lower end July 4th sale whatever it is that are like kind of marketing moments but of course it gets crazy valuable come Black Friday and holiday where people are really going to be buying for customers attention so um do you think that's right that basically SMS is essentially just a way to get somebody back to your website and barely a Content Channel at all I mean I'll give you two I'll give you two points so I think that's generally right if it's time sensitive SMS is going to absolutely Crush um also there's been these like moments where for example we work with uh we work with origin so Pete who's Pete Roberts CEO of origin he loves to do these audio messages um he did one during the Super Bowl he did one during Black Friday or whatever and they're powerful brand because you can hear directly speak directly to your customer which is something that you don't really get to do if you're not willing to pay for it usually um and so yes but there are kind of instances where it does make sense and it is a really nice close- touch you know channel to to leverage but I think you know the vast majority of cases is exactly what you said it's just another medium to reach your customers and reach them really fast and reach them in a way that they're going to actually see and be able to take action on really quickly um and then just to kind of illustrate the impact too on the on the Spen side is you know and this is probably more so the case for brands with anywhere from 50 to 250,000 subscribers on the SMS side but we onboarded a brand last year and in February of last year they had spent $27,000 in Bill spend just to give you a sense of the scale there that is yeah within 60 days we brought it down to $5,000 a month and basically saw maybe five to 10% decline in Channel Revenue but I think from the agency side from the you know service side the perspective is always like if we're able to create more Revenue it's hard to draw a real straight line to it because even if the channel is performing better I had an ad that crushed this period I had a drop this period I had a big sale this period it's really hard to be like we did that but if you're going from spending $27,000 a month yeah on your SMS to $5,000 a month it's pretty clear and you're going to be able to pocket that and be able to draw a straight line to it so selfishly for us we're always looking to kind of ways to cut back where possible exactly yeah that that's so smart because just so measurable as a as a measur guys performance that's really helpful um yeah I think that's interesting have you ever tried this this thought just came to mind tell me if you've ever done anything like this or seen it with your with your audio message thing which I think is interesting um let's say I'm launching a product it has some visual elements or just I whatever just any product I launch it I send my my launch emails I send launch SMS Etc get through a couple of days and um I've now gotten a bunch of purchases from a bunch of people and that's great uh now what if I then at that point clear out everybody who has purchased from my SMS list they've clearly received a bunch of email SMS from me and I come back to them uh with an with a in this case it would be an MMS message I think where uh where now now I say like okay um here's a photo of the product uh entirely because I've already like essentially cleared out the people who I was going to reach with the initial stuff and maybe maybe in fact if they've clicked on an email I take them off the SMS list they clicked on SMS like anything that indicates to me they've already taken some action from my emails so far so that like showing them the product's not going to do it but now maybe I like take that smaller portion of the list that has not taken any action with the new product and now I try to like give them a little extra marketing collateral essentially to try to like sort of wet their appetite like what do you think about that essentially holding that back in reserve so I don't spend so much about it so much on it as a way to engage customers who aren't otherwise engaging so far where I know I'm going to reach that on SMS yeah I'm I'm generally with you I think that the the counterargument to that is if the most uh valuable people purchase from the first one yeah and then you're going to Triple the cost of the send the odds of that panning out from our original targets that we had agreed upon with the brand is going to be lower if we've already emailed them three times and sent them a text that said you know I think it's you know potenti yeah easy test but also I mean really not a big deal and definitely something that that we should you can do for sure yeah I I don't know if it would work I've never done that but I was just thinking I was just trying to follow the logic of some things you were saying about like maybe that's a place where you try to like okay we have to make the content a little bit better now you know but I don't know maybe you would actually save money by just doing it in the first place and not having to send them a second time so um I don't know u i I mean not definitely not the whole list in the first place that that wouldn't work but uh yeah um what were you gonna say I was gonna say you know sometimes I think we actually fall into this trap too which is we'll send the image to the most uh you know the previous buyers of that collection or the previous buyers of that exact product and they'll see the you know the new version of it because we're willing to kind of spend into people who we know are going to be higher value but you're you know you're basically taking the opposite side of that which I think we can probably roll out and see if throwing the GIF or throwing the image in there is going to do anything yeah yeah I don't care so much about like a gif to like be funny or attention to gra what I'm thinking here specifically of like product imagery that maybe would entice somebody makes the most sense in something like a Peril like you that's part of what made me think about it also you mentioned the idea that maybe in a Peril you'd want to have an image of the product or whatever um yeah we usually we we usually will have you know if it's a collection we'll flash through a bunch of products if it's just a single product we will include an image on those yeah for sure yeah that for something where the product where the visual aesthetic is the brand or is the product it makes more sense to me um okay complete this sentence Joel uh most brands are spending or most brands are sending too much just the right amount or too little email too little I think still um if you're sending every day you can ignore that message but I think generally speaking if you're sporadic with your sending it's just it just has downsides to it that and and you know whether it's on the deliverability side by like spiking and then you go multiple days without sending then Spike again I don't have the insights into the exact you know algorithms or whatever but um consistently sending emails on a maybe I would say four to six a week basis for the vast majority of the brands that we're working with seems to be working and I don't see that from the majority of Brands probably in the in the stage that we're working with as you get you know uh higher up the food chain those brands are usually like sending pretty consistently because um they have they're such a mature business they have so so many people on their list why wouldn't they um but anyways I think the vast majority of the time probably too little um that we're seeing okay so similar question and just to just to make the thought as clear as possible true or false most brands should send one email every day I would say truer than false yeah sure okay that's fine if they're growing fast yes yeah yeah makes sense um okay have you ever seen customers get like noticeably annoyed at meaningful scale pissed off create brand negative uh emotions from Brands over sending this is something I think Founders are very worried about mathematically no emotionally a thousand times so it definitely feels really shitty when 35 people blow up on you over email and your you know your customer service team is sending you screenshots or forwarding your emails and um and that often comes back on to us but you know from a numers perspective if you're sending an email to 500,000 people and 40 of them reply or 10 of them reply usually it's closer to two like it's just you're operating at a scale where if you run an ad to millions of people you there's going to be people write some CRA yeah you're WR you get the craziest comment so same same app here exactly yeah okay um what about uh let's let's sort of along the same lines about sending too much or too little I think there's a related thought here which is like what about uh optimization of things like flows uh really targeting campaigns to different segments of your list how much or how little should Brands be thinking about um sort of optimizing those elements of uh of their send strategy so I think the response would be it's more about what you're testing if you're testing an offer against another offer if you're testing something like versus send time or subject line you're you're actually going to gain some insight if you send half your list this offer and half your list another I think also critical component to this is understanding where they are in the trajectory right so if it's a 50 million year business versus a two million year business you know if you can squeeze out an extra one or five% off that send or off that flow it's actually going to be a pretty meaningful amount of of Revenue versus a really small business where especially if you're running it in-house I would I would never test and don't AB test anything on the campaign side and only ever test in my opinion a welcome offer against another welcome offer or something like this on the Flow side if you're if you're between 1 and 10 million a year and you're running it in house it just makes no sense because you know just from an opportunity cost in time perspective you know if you squeeze out an extra 10% or 20% off that flow it's like you know it's it's it's it's pennies it's table Stakes versus spending time to go build another ad creative or product or you know make your you know fulfillment timeline shorter or any other activities that you can take um there's just no there's just no comparison there I love that um it's just there's just so much advice out there about how to do things right and wrong that I think sometimes uh operators especially in small to midsize businesses are going oh we got to do a better job here and there and here and there and they hear about you know carefully constructed flows and all you know segmentation some of that and they they think in email they got only had more time to go do all that stuff it's kind of nice to hear like actually not the best use your time just keep sending without being an idot there's so few activities that an Ecom operator can take inside of their business that going to produce cash right now that there's this tendency that you're going to go spend a lot of time on email you're going to go spend a lot of time on SMS because sending that extra email sending that extra text you're going to see those results immediately versus the real problems that are staring you back in the face that you should probably be addressing now I run into this inside of my business all the time I'm sure you do the same but so it's easier to hear it from somebody else than to actually like take the action and do it but that said I do think that you know there's probably over optimization in terms of the spectrum most people are probably on the on the overside instead of you know understanding like you know just the Paro principle or the 820 rule of each of their channels yeah okay uh any last thoughts uh that people should hear about email SMS Etc that they should be should be doing differently better that come to mind top of Mind stuff for you right now no I think we we covered the we cover the basics right so send consistently know your content buckets so have almost a Cadence a Cadence that you're going to live by with the channel and so whether that means like let's say it's Tuesday you send on Tuesdays you send every Tuesday that's your rule that you set for the organization it's Tuesday Thursday Sunday as simple it can be as simple as that if it you know if it's Monday evening or it's Tuesday in the day and you don't have something to do or you don't have something lined up go back revisit three months ago six months ago nine months ago figure out something that performed that you still have stock in or whatever and just you know line it up make a slight variation of the header and send it out um because consistency is is going to be if you combine consistency with maximizing the big moments that matter with right sizing your list growth lowering your spend as best you can on SMS and having the basics and Foundations on the flows particularly pre- purchase and then immediately postp purchase you're going to be just fine to 20 million uh Joel if I am listening to this right now and I would like to work with capture box where do I go you can email me at Joel capture box.co k a p t RBX you can find me on Twitter I was gonna say can they find you on Twitter I feel like you're like you're a lurker man I I have an account and that you can I'm a total lurker on Twitter um you know but you can DM me there and I'll respond but email is always easiest where Twitter handle yeah what's my Twitter feed okay it's oh it's Jo great um yeah okay Hey listen let me just say this to people listening to this to watching uh yeah if you are if you at a stage of business where you're thinking about adding email or SMS agency I think Joel and his team do a really really good job so um so definitely go and and if you're thinking about it go take a call with them I think it'd be really good no this is not sponsored no I do not have an affiliate commission with Joel so uh so just just so that we're clear there's no incentive there except the fact that I'm just a believer and a fan so um okay that's it Joel thanks so much for for taking time with me today I appreciate it man thank you and and thank you for replying to my email when I was 20 years old in my dorm room listening to your podcast and thank you for you know just keeping the the communication open all these I guess it's been a few years and it's been great working with you and learning from you and so just really appreciate you know all you're doing for us and yeah um you it's been it's been a treat to just watch how you operate and work with clients learned a ton my pleasure man my pleasure that's it for another episode of the show all the links to go work with Joel and to follow up with me are in the show notes I'd love to hear from you email webs site uh X you can go find me in all those places all the links are in the show notes go check that out there got a whole bunch of really good episodes coming up including another opening the books coming very soon which I referenced in this episode and uh and so don't forget to subscribe wherever you are watching or listening or anything else thanks so much to my sponsors more Staffing it's got an incredible webinar on supply chain coming up soon don't miss that webinar it's going to be really good you're going to want to be there for that and Billy it's billy. a if you are not on 100% server side tracking yet if you are not using upgraded pixel for your meta ads what are you doing go do that right now billy.

A is the place to go for the one that I use personally with my clients is a great option go there thanks so much I'll see you next time [Music]