It’s like planting a tree: it’s better to plant a coconut tree first and take care of it until it grows fully, rather than to plant a coconut seed first, then change your mind and replace it with a mango seed, then with an avocado seed, then with an orange seed – if you do it this way, you’ll never see your tree grow because you didn’t stick with it long enough.

Focus on a single marketing strategy first and stick with it until you reach the point of learning where you’ll learn one of the following:

How valuable something is to your business’ growth. For example, this strategy is effective since it added $500/month into your revenue. Great! How can you work on this so it’ll grow to $1,000/month or even more? Or;
How not valuable something is to your business’ growth: If it’s not moving the needle, and you don’t see any significant results happening, then great! At least you learned from it so you can now move onto testing other strategies that may work for you.
You can only reach this point of learning when you “exhaust” a specific tactic – when you start it, stick with it, and eventually get to the bottom of it.

2. Focus on the ones with positive results.

Once you’ve done this, the next part is focusing on the strategies that work for you and doubling down on them.

Take your customer support, for example. If your customer support is top-notch and you can convert 50 customers a month through referrals alone, you know it works, so how can you double down on this?

3. Figure out how you can improve it.

You want to get the best results that can help grow your ecommerce store over time, right?

In our example earlier, perhaps you can automate the administrative tasks associated with this so you can deliver a more personal touch to every customer interaction and increase your conversion to 100 customers a month?

There isn’t a marketing strategy that’s one-size-fits-all, so dedicate some of your resources to find out what works for you and then making the best out of it.

Two caveats on this advice, though:

In my earlier video about “The Last 5% May Not Be Worth It”, I talk about the idea that even if you’re doubling down on something, you’ll reach a point where the marginal gain won’t be the same anymore since you’ve already reached the point of learning.

You don’t need to double down on a specific strategy forever. Once you’ve reached this point where there’s no obvious viable improvement anymore, it’s time to move on to the implementation of the next strategy.

Also, remember the Pareto principle which says that 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your top marketing strategies? It applies to this concept, too. You can spend 80% of your time working on the strategies I’ve mentioned on this blog post today, and then spend the remaining 20% into experimentation. Go ahead and try out something completely new, something you’ve never heard of before, or maybe even something that’s trending in your industry today, and find out if it works for you. If it does, then, double down on it until you reach the point of learning again.

I hope this concept can help you grow your business by focusing on a tried-and-tested system that works and optimizing it for the best results for you. This way, there’s a certain reliability factor that can help you move forward efficiently and effectively so you can reach that much desired sustainability of your business.

See you again next week, then! Cheers.

Simply put, use a help desk software so you have a central platform that focuses solely on customer service needs.

I know what you’re thinking -- you need to spend money! But before you close this tab on your browser, hear me out first: a) there are lots of help desk solutions out there so you’re guaranteed to find one that fits your budget; and b) it’s worth investing in this platform because you don’t want any customer communication to fall through the cracks, do you?

If you don’t have any central inbox to consolidate your customer communications, there’s a higher chance that a customer’s message will be forgotten, overlooked, or even accidentally ignored.

The #1 reason why customers switch to a new brand is because they feel underappreciated. Not replying to your customer’s message sends them the message that you don’t care about them. And you don’t want this to happen, do you?

It’s also more convenient to onboard other team members to help you with customer service if you have a central customer service platform to train them on. This way, the process is more streamlined, structured and easier to get the hang of.

2. Be owner-involved in customer service.

Your customers are the life of your business. If you don’t have any happy customers, you won’t have any business in the first place!

That’s why it’s important for you to be involved in customer service and interact with your customers as well. This way, you can learn from them, find out what areas of your business you need to improve on, and generally keep your pulse on your business.

Sure, you also need to delegate customer service to your trusted team members, and you also need the time to work on other areas of your business, but whenever you have extra time, you can also do customer service-related tasks accordingly.

3. Build a knowledge base of documentation and canned replies.

Customers prefer knowledge bases over other self-service channels.

You can build your own brand’s knowledge base by taking note of frequently asked questions and the most common customer concerns whenever you respond to your customers’ messages.

Check your customer support inbox. What are your customers’ top ten most common concerns? What do they usually complain about? What needs do your customers want to be taken cared of?

Create a list of articles about these and direct your customers’ attention to these articles as necessary. You can also craft high fidelity, detailed replies that answer their most common concerns. Use these as templates that you can personalize and tweak before sending to specific customers.

Doing this helps you kill three birds with one stone:

You save valuable resources in responding to your customer’s concern;
Your customers receive personalized messages that help resolve their concern; and,
You can quickly onboard your customer service team because there’s already a knowledge base they can refer to and a collection of detailed templates they can use

4. Beware of live chat.

Yes, in today’s world of instant gratification, offering a live chat function makes sense. After all, 42% of customers want to communicate with companies via live chat. If you can respond within 5 minutes of your customer’s message, and you can do this consistently, then offer live chat.

But if you’re not available to respond within 5 minutes, it’s better for you not to offer live chat in the first place. Imagine sending someone a live chat message and not getting any reply after 5-10 minutes -- you’d feel underappreciated, too, wouldn’t you?

Here’s a better solution: direct them to email instead. More customers (62%) prefer email over live chat (42%) anyway. Include a reminder that your customer service team will get back to them in an hour or two. This way, your customer’s expectations are managed better.

Additionally, customers believe that emails should be responded to within 24 hours, so if you respond within 1-2 hours, then your customers will be pleasantly surprised. Another win for the both of you, don’t you think?

Hopefully these tips can help you have better structures and subsequently, better conversations with your customers! That’s it for me today - now, over to you. What tip do you think is the easiest to start working on? Let me know in the comments below. See you next week! Cheers.

The idea of “do what you love and you never have to work another day in your life” seemed to be a lie - when you were starting out in business, you didn’t have the luxury to do only the things you love because you had to do a lot of things, even things you don’t necessarily enjoy doing.

Now that you’re scaling your business, though, you’ll have the joy of sitting down, figuring out what your greatest strengths & enjoyable tasks are, and delegating them to someone else in your team.

Do you want to focus more on sales and spend less time on bookkeeping? Or spend 80% of your time on product development to build a sustainable business, so you want to delegate your inventory-related tasks to someone else?

Find out what your weaknesses or your least enjoyable tasks are. Then, delegate them to someone who’s more qualified than you are. Your investment on doing proper delegation will be worth it. After all, you’re in it for the long run, right?

2. Hire a part-time assistant to help you with customer service and support.

As an entrepreneur, your mental space is one of your greatest assets. That’s why it’s important that you hire a virtual assistant or a freelancer (even on a part-time basis!) to clear up some of your mental overhead.

This way, you don’t exhaust your mental energy by focusing on these tasks only: you’re still involved with customer support and service, but you’ll have an assistant helping you along the way. Like the captain of a ship, you’ll still be in charge as you supervise your crew as sail through the rough seas.

You get to prevent burnout and improve your customer service at the same time. Talk about hitting two birds with one stone, right?

3. Batch similar tasks as much as possible.

Batching is a productivity hack that encourages you to do similar tasks all at once.

Think of batching as grocery-shopping: you don’t want go to the store every single day to pick up food, right? You’d waste your precious time and energy! Instead, you sit down, take note of your stock, plan your meals, and go to the grocery every week.

Personally, since I release weekly videos for Conversio, I batch my video recordings accordingly. This allows me to maximize my productivity and optimize my mental space to focus on a specific task for a scheduled period of time.

You can batch customer support and product shipping by doing them everyday - but only on specific schedules like doing them for an hour during morning and afternoon, instead of getting stuck on doing them several times in a day.

Additionally, you can also dedicate a specific time to batch a whole week’s social media content once a week. Or even batch your email newsletters by drafting them one month in advance.

There you have it. I hope these tips will help you scale your business successfully, without losing your sanity! As entrepreneurs, we should not be burning out - even the longest candle will burn out if you light it forever. That’s why I’ve made these tips that I hope you find helpful. Let me know what your valuable insights are, and see you again next week!

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy: conversio.com/academy

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at @birocratic.

Have a system that notifies you each time you receive a bad review. For example, with Conversio, you can choose to be notified of reviews which achieve a certain rating (or less) and you customize the rating level. So you might pick 3 stars or less, or 1 star ratings only.

Strike while the iron is hot so you can increase the possibility of your customer engaging with you. This can also diffuse the tension and communicate how much you care about your customers. On average, 53% of customers expect businesses to reply to their online reviews within seven days so can you imagine the positive impact to your customer when you reply to their online review in less than an hour?

2. Empathize with your customer and never ever be defensive.

Be sincere when apologizing but be objective when assessing the bad review you’ve received.

Start with a sincere “Hey, John, I’m really sorry about [reason why they’re upset].” This statement shows that you’re listening to them – you’re open to start a meaningful conversation with them and you’re accepting that the situation may be something that you’re partly responsible for.

Once you’ve apologized, address the customer’s concern or issue and fix it accordingly.

If they’ve received a defective product, apologize and tell them that you’ve sent a replacement immediately.

If they’ve received an item on a later date than expected, you can’t really fix slow delivery since it already happened. So if you can’t fix something that already happened, offer a simple compensation to make up for your mistake. Giving them store credit, a discount code, a freebie or even a refund (in extreme cases) works.

Just remember to always apologize first. After all, 37% of customers are satisfied with service recovery when they are offered something of monetary value (e.g., a refund or credit) but their satisfaction doubles to 74% when there’s an apology on top of the compensation.

The goal here is to improve your customer’s impression of you: from a one-star review, perhaps you can shift it to a 4-star or even a 5-star review instead. Sounds corny, but handling a bad review is like turning your customer’s frown upside down. Not everyone will be 100% pleased with your product & service, but it’s worth a try, right?

3. If you were successful in improving your customer’s impression of your business, ask for an updated review.

Once you’ve established that your customer is now satisfied with the resolution of their concern, and you’ve managed to turn that frown upside down, it’s now time to ask for an updated review from them. With Conversio, they can simply submit a new review via the email request or review form and it will overwrite the old one.

It’s better if they mention that they had concerns before, and that you were helpful in rectifying this. This way, you’re not only selling your high-quality product – you’re also guaranteeing great customer service to go with the product you’re offering. Not to mention the added bonus that if you resolve a complaint in your customer’s favor, they’ll do business with you again 70% of the time.

And who would say no to repeated customers, right?

Hopefully, this three-step process helps you to better address bad reviews in the future.

One, wow, has it been more than a decade already?

And two, there’s no such thing as a perfect entrepreneur or a 100% successful venture. Spending all your time, energy and resources to achieve perfection might not be viable anymore, considering that your to-do list as an entrepreneur is seemingly never-ending.

Sometimes, the last 5% is probably not worth it.

Talking about this reminds me of the blog post that Derek Sivers, CD Baby founder, wrote entitled “Relax for the same result”. Derek used to bike 15 miles every day. He used to do full-on biking, as in pedal to the metal, red-faced, rockstar biking that left him exhausted. Doing this -- giving his full, maximum effort -- gave him 43 minutes.

Over time, though, he started to link exhaustion and tiredness with the act of biking, so he felt tedious and less enthusiastic about it. That’s why he decided to give 50% of his usual effort instead. Doing so made him notice things, live in the present more, and actually enjoy his bike ride. The best part? His time was 45 minutes -- only two minutes more than his usual!

So for him, giving 100% of his effort resulted in 43 minutes; whereas giving only 50% and taking it easy resulted in 45 minutes, plus, he even got to enjoy it more as he wasn’t stressed and wasn’t exhausted about the ride.

Considering that the time difference between 100% effort and 50% effort was only 2 minutes, that last percent of effort didn’t give a significant result so it wasn’t probably worth it.

It doesn’t matter how much the actual percentage is. What matters is that aiming for perfection -- for 100%, for the maximum effort -- in your business isn’t realistic.
When you come to the point where the result you get isn’t really greater than the effort you make to get that result, it’s not viable anymore.

After all, investing 50% of your resources and achieving 23% is much better than putting in 80% and receiving 25%, right?

How does this translate to your business?

Take email design, for example. In my video “How Anyone Can Design and Send Beautiful Emails”, I talked about not custom-designing your emails and sticking to tried-and-tested templates instead.

Why? The trade-off isn’t viable.

Your time, money, and effort to custom-design your email may be greater than the direct and indirect profit you receive from doing it. The marginal gains may be off and you may be better off developing other core components of your business that can achieve a significant impact in your company’s growth.

Having two businesses worth multi-million dollars under my belt, I can say with absolute certainty that you don’t really need to achieve super-duper expert level in all aspects of your business. You don’t need to be perfect because perfection doesn’t exist.

You can approach this with a bootstrapper’s mindset: when inputs are scarce, maximize the output. Because when your time, money and energy are limited, the best thing you need to do is to make the most out of it. Know the phrase, “get the best bang for your buck”? It’s similar, but you want to find the best bang for your time, money and energy.

Another concept that applies to this idea is the Pareto principle: for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

This means that for your business, 80% of the profit may come from 20% of your clients.

Or 80% of your company’s growth may come from only 20% of your activities, such as setting up a better marketing funnel, or a more improved internal system for efficiency.

The key here is to find the best input to output ratio so you can focus more of your resources into doing things that actually improve the growth of your business.

I want to hear from you: have you ever had an experience where doing something in your business led you to the point of wondering if giving your absolute 100% resources is absolutely worthwhile? Let me know in the comments below. See you next week. Cheers.

Everyone wants to have a slice of the remote working pie. After all, being a “digital nomad” who can “work from anywhere” so they can live the “laptop lifestyle” gives them the freedom to earn money and still enjoy their time with their loved ones, right?

You don’t even need to log on to Instagram to check out the remote working trend. Stripe, the payment processor, recently announced that they would have an office exclusively for remote workers, even though they have offices worldwide.

Additionally, a Citrix study shows that 50% of the workforce will be office-free by 2020. Can you imagine a world where half of the working population will be working from the comforts of their own home? It’s also possible, considering that the remote workforce has increased by 140% since 2005.

While the idea of remote working sounds great to the remote workers, the entrepreneurs involved in the hiring and team-building process find it a bit daunting.

After all, how can you trust someone to actually hire them and work with them, even though you haven’t met them before? How do you build a remote team if you don’t have any experience with the process? Before you paralyse yourself with all these questions, take a deep breath and get your favorite drink as I help you start building your own remote team by discussing the 3-step process in today’s podcast.

You can start building a remote team by hiring:

1. Freelancer or Consultant

Hiring a freelancer or a consultant is a great start since you’ll be exposed to the wonders of remote working without feeling overwhelmed. To start the hiring process, you can work with them by assigning a project to them first and consider future collaborations if you’re satisfied with their work and the results they bring in. There’s no full-time commitment yet and you can test your work compatibility with them by communicating with them via email or video/voice check-ins.

Your freelancer or consultant needs to be professional and reliable enough since they’ll be managing themselves. There’s no need to micro-manage them since you’ll be working with them on a per-project basis and they’ll invoice you accordingly.

2. Virtual Assistant

Now that you have a little bit of hiring experience for a remote team, the next step is to hire a virtual assistant who can help you with customer support or administrative tasks.

Normally, you’d be advised to hire someone working at the same time zone as you -- but isn’t it actually better to hire an assistant who won’t be working at the same hours as you do? This will give you the necessary experience to deal with your remote team in the future. After all, your team will be all over the world, right?

In hiring a virtual assistant, you’ll ultimately be responsible for them, so the best way you can handle this is by working on a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) you can use to train them effectively and efficiently. You can also apply here the communication channels and processes that you’ve learned by working with a freelancer/consultant first.

Nurture your relationship with your virtual assistant: it’s a win-win situation that gives you more experience to work on building your remote team and allows you to win back some of your resources, too.

3. Full-Time Hire

You can get your full-time employee by evolving their relationship from a freelancer/consultant to an official member of your remote team. This way, you already know that you have professional compatibility and you’re guaranteed that their work output will be satisfactory.

Another pathway you can get full-time employees is by posting on job boards that are focused on remote working opportunities. In a world where freelancers and remote workers are forecasted to be the majority of the US workforce by 2027, hiring someone full-time means you’ll treat team exactly the way you would treat someone who’s an official part of your team, regardless of the physical boundaries.

After all, you’re all working towards the same goal -- to boost your company’s growth, aren’t you?

If I had to do it over again, I’d still build a remote team for Conversio. And you’ll get to hear more about my personal experience in building a remote team by listening to my talk over at the Running Remote Conference in Bali. Join our giveaway and win your free ticket here! See you next week.

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy: conversio.com/academy

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at @birocratic.

Sure, the most important element in your email is your content since it has to resonate well with your target customers. Compelling content helps motivate your customers to do whatever action you need them to do, right? Whether it’s buying, referring or subscribing.

Now, for the great content to be engaging, it also needs to be sent strategically by optimizing it via personalization, timing and segmentation. These elements, as discussed in my podcast, “4-Step Checklist To Effectively Boost Your Engagement in Email Marketing”, help drive email engagement up and boost your sales over the long run.

But these aren’t enough. Visual impression of the email matters, too. This is why 51% of B2B marketers prioritize visual assets creation as part of their content marketing strategy.

In this week’s podcast, I’m going to help you design beautiful, engaging and great-looking emails. Spoiler alert: I’m definitely not a designer, so you can guarantee that these tips are for everyone who needs them.

1. Use a tried-and-tested email template that just works

I agree that custom-designed emails are amazing. They’re great tools to solidify your branding identity and keep your business at top of mind.

However, designing custom emails take up a lot of time and investment -- resources that are better spent on growing your business and taking it to the next level.

Just think of the 80-20 principle: custom-designed emails don’t necessarily outperform templates by much, so why would you “improve” it when you can improve other elements of your business that are directly related to boosting your revenue instead?

You’re not sending a Christmas card to your family, so you don’t need to customize and overthink every single thing. You’re better off using a good email template, once that’s been stress-tested in multiple browsers and has a good design language, as your foundation for your email’s visual identity. If you’re still within the early stages of your brand’s growth, if it works (and it doesn’t have a significant impact yet), don’t stress too much about it.

2. Use better imagery in your emails

Now that your template is done, focus on the image you’re going to be using. As I’ve mentioned in my previous video, “One Action Rule”, the simple formula to create super-performing emails is a striking and related image + brief but consistent and relevant copy + one compelling call-to-action.

Since you’ll be using one image in your email, it needs to convey exactly what your content is talking about. This single image has the power to make or break your email so it has to be impressive to catch your reader’s attention and relevant to keep the momentum going.

HardGraft practices this simple recipe into their emails. You can check out several examples of their appealing emails here -- and when I say appealing, I mean it: after all, I am one of their customers! Observe how the images they use are striking enough to make an impression and appealing enough to encourage you to scroll down.

I’m leaving you with these two tips for today. Is there any other tip for creating beautiful images you’d like to add? Let me know in the comments below. Cheers.

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy: conversio.com/academy

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at @birocratic.

After all, it feels extremely great to know that implementing a strategy results in revenue to your company, right?

But did you know that revenue can be achieved directly and indirectly?

You ran an ad campaign and your target customers purchased from you so you got $13,000 in sales? That’s direct revenue.

You implemented an abandoned cart recovery campaign so you made an extra $5,000 in profit? That’s direct revenue. Direct revenue is the obvious result of your marketing strategies: an increase in profit.

Beyond direct revenue, though, there’s another magical realm where fairies, unicorns, Doctor Strange and indirect revenue exist.

And it’s good if you implement a marketing strategy that results in direct revenue. But isn’t it better if you can run a strategy that achieves both direct and indirect revenue at the same time because it’s optimized for both?

Your time, investment and efforts will be the same but you get to hit two birds with one stone. In this week’s podcast, I’m going to help you achieve exactly this.

In the spirit of having your cake and eating it, too, the inspiration to share the concept of indirect revenue came when I was doing a case study for one of Conversio’s customers, Pastreez, an online shop selling beautiful and yummy macarons (French cookies).

As a Conversio client, Pastreez’ lead magnet is simple and enticing enough: sign up at their website pop-up for free so you can receive 7 pieces of macarons for free. Once they’ve received the voucher for the free macarons, they’ll also be included in a nurturing email campaign to encourage sales over time.

In this scenario, the direct revenue is simple. For example, if you’ve sent 100 emails and made $500 from them, then $500 is the direct revenue.

Now, checking at the case study of Pastreez, I’ve noticed that the direct revenue seemed promising -- an additional $10,000 in direct revenue for them, spread over ~2500 email recipients in a 3-part email campaign is great, right?

But that wasn’t the end of it. There were also extra benefits in the name of indirect benefit that I’ve monitored:

1. Higher Average Order Value

Customers who went through this specific email campaign by Conversio had 23.57% higher Average Order Value (AOV) compared to customers who didn’t experience this campaign.

This is massively beneficial in terms of boosting Customer Lifetime Value and direct revenue. Just imagine: if your AOV is $300, and it’s increased by 23.57%, you get to have an additional $70 in sales -- for every customer!

2. Higher Repeat Purchase Rate

Another hidden benefit of indirect revenue is the increase of repeat purchase rate: customers who experienced this specific email campaign made 2.56% more purchases compared to the rest of the brand’s customers.

This is amazing news because a) it’s easier to sell to engaged customers who purchase repeatedly; and, b) repeat customers tend to spend 3%-15% more. So in a way, this indirect revenue affects your direct revenue, too.

3. Improved Cart Recovery Rate

Sure, 10.7% of customers who receive recovery emails return to make a purchase. But Pastreez’ number was off-the-charts: they had a 50% increase of the overall cart recovery rate!

This means that the overall email campaign was effective over the long run since it had a momentum going that encouraged the prospects to buy from them, even though it took two to three emails to make this happen.

Figuring out the hidden benefits also allows you to decide on whether or not a strategy is worth investing on: since you’ll be considering at least two metrics that’ll help you determine your ROI, you can make better investment decisions so your company can move forward.

Also, indirect revenue encourages you to look beyond the obvious metric -- sales in terms of numbers -- so you can also look into optimizing your email campaigns for both direct and indirect revenue.

So there you have it. I hope this video helps you with your company’s growth as a brand and as a business! Any other insights you’d like to add? Let me know in the comments below. Chat to you next week! Cheers.

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy: conversio.com/academy

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at @birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Consider your prospects who recently gave you their email addresses to sign up to your mailing list. At this stage, they’re still warm leads, right?

They gave their email addresses as a way to engage with your brand, so you’re not necessarily required to give them a discount code at your first contact with them. You already got their attention.

Now, the story changes if after a week or two, they still haven’t bought from you. At this stage, they’re becoming less warm: there may be less interest or less engagement with your brand. This is when sending a small discount -- $10 off their purchase or 5% off -- makes sense.

This is what the Heat Map Method of Better Discounting is all about. Take every customer category (prospect, first-time customer, repeated customer, inactive customer) and place them on the “heat map”.

Warm customers are those who are highly engaged, meaning, those who recently subscribed to your list, or those who recently bought from you.

Less warm customers are those who have been inactive for a specified time frame: those who’ve never bought from you, those who bought from you one year ago, or those who repeatedly bought from you in the past but abruptly stopped doing business with you.

Your customer is “warm”? Don’t send an email just yet. They’re “less warm”? Better get started on sending those discount coupons.

Now, this idea isn’t limited to your customer categories only. You can apply the Heat Map Method of Better Discounting to your abandoned cart emails as well. For your first recovery email, don’t send a discount code yet. Remind them of their abandoned cart. Find out what stopped them from finalizing their purchase. Listen to what they have to say first.

Then, if by the second and third emails, they still haven’t made their purchase yet, then by all means, include a discount code in your email so you can motivate them to finalize the transaction.

Pro tip: most customers want percentage off discounts (35%) and free shipping (20%) so keep these in mind when considering what kind of discount scheme you’ll offer in your email.

The “colder” a customer is, the better it is for you to do discounting. Simple, sweet, and straight-to-the-point, right?

I hope you find this video helpful! Any insights you’d like to add? Let me know in the comments section below. See you next week! Ciao.

Do you open your mouth as wide as possible and hope you can eat it all at once?

No, of course not. That’s crazy! You eat it one bite at a time.

The same principle applies to improving customer experience on your website so you can increase your conversion rate. You don’t do a major makeover and hope your conversion rate jumps from an average of 2% to a whopping 20% overnight. That’s impossible.

Instead, you tweak your website’s elements bit by bit and aim for a realistic improvement from 2% to 2.2% conversion rate. Sure, the figures may seem small when you look at it superficially. But have you considered the extra revenue you can earn just by doing small changes in your website?

You can start improving your website – and your customer’s experience – by doing these small tricks I talk about in today’s podcast.

Imagine walking into a brick-and-mortar store and just being bombarded by 20 different employees asking you what you want to buy, how they can help you, why you should sign up to their exclusive list, or what your target budget is.

It’s irritating. It’s overwhelming. It’s confusing. Right?

So if your prospect visits your website and sees a lot of things happening: a pop-up appearing, multiple widgets loading, and several things flashing on the screen at the same time, it’s the same thing. They feel targeted. They feel attacked. They feel overwhelmed.

And you bet they’re going to want to leave your website as quickly as possible.

Unless you do these three things to improve your customer experience, of course:

1. Log out of your admin dashboard and browse through your website in the eyes of a prospect.
   Here’s where a change in perspective comes in handy. Instead of checking your website as an administrator, think of yourself as a guest.

Another advantage of doing this tip is it gives you the opportunity to view your website with all its features.

Sometimes, the website development team tends to add a lot of widgets and pop-ups because they’re logged in as admin so they can’t view everything, so logging out and viewing in a private browser window helps you fix this by seeing all the website elements first-hand.

Think of pop-ups, for example. If you’ve set your pop-up to appear every 3 days only, and you’ve already seen it, whenever you test it while you’re logged in, you may not see it any more so you tend to add another pop-up to really capture your market.

Before you know it, you already have 3 pop-ups and 2 widgets. The only way you can know about this is if you view the site in a private browsing window and see for yourself – kind of like putting yourself in your prospects’ shoes, isn’t it?

2. Create contextual and relevant pop-ups with trigger, instead of showing it all the time.
   You and I both know that pop-up works.

Sure, Sumo even discovered that top performing 10% of pop-up forms convert at a whopping 9.3%.

But you also need to consider the fact that intrusive pop-ups are overwhelming and sometimes, irritating enough to negatively affect your customer experience.

After all, 70% of Americans say they get annoyed by irrelevant pop-up ads.

So how do you go about it?

You make your pop-ups relevant by providing:

Context
Instead of randomly showing your pop-up on every page of your website, consider displaying it in a highly relevant blog post.

For example, you can write an in-depth guide on investing and then display your pop-up offering a free ebook about personal finance.

This way, you’re sure that people who want to download your book are interested in finance as they’ve seen it appear on your post about investing – exclusively.

Trigger
Using the concept of “less is more”, show a pop-up only when it’s triggered by an action.

For example, the exit pop-up is triggered only once a prospect approaches the close button to exit your website.

Another example is taken from the Conversio website: whenever a visitor who’s reading our long-form content stays a certain time on the page or scrolls beyond a specific part of the page, a pop-up is also triggered to appear.

Of course, if you also want your offer to be available anytime but you don’t want it to appear as intrusive as a pop-up form, you can also use a bar that’s fixed on the top or bottom part and persistently appears on the page. It’s still a nice visual call-to-action that doesn’t detract from your customer experience.

3. Consider how your website elements interact with each other.
   Perhaps you have several pop-ups appearing: a persistent bar, a widget for chat, a widget for a loyalty program like Smile.io, and even Conversio’s Review Tab.

Sure, I understand the reason for wanting to include all these elements. They may all be helpful in helping you achieve your respective goals.

Again, think of choosing your website elements as you personally talking to your visitor. If you talk about different things all at the same time, your message will be lost, your customers will be confused, and your goal will be left unfulfilled altogether.

That’s why you really need to consider and prioritize which element you actually need and how this element will be displayed on your website.

Perhaps you don’t really need to have a persistent bar that’s available all the time?

Or maybe just showing a simple “contact us” link is better instead of showing a chat widget all the time?

Maybe instead of displaying everything on your homepage, you can consider displaying a certain element on certain pages only. Prioritize and consider alternatives to pop-ups. You owe this to your website readers and customers.

I hope this video inspired you to assess and modify your website as needed. After all, improving your customer experience can boost your conversion rate and increase your Customer Lifetime Value over time – killing two birds with one stone, right?

Interested in learning more about this? Let’s chat about it in the comments section below. Talk to you next week! Ciao.

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy: conversio.com/academy

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at @birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

As my imaginary friend Albert Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” and we don’t want this, do we?

Because here’s the truth: sometimes, your website may be great, and your email sequence may be top-notch, but if the customers coming into your website aren’t a good fit with your brand’s target market profile, then you’ll still see no change in your abandoned cart recovery rates.

If this is the truth, then, you shouldn’t change your website or your email marketing strategy. They’re already effective to your chosen target market.
Sometimes, it’s not HOW you talk – it’s about WHO you’re talking to.

Instead, you need to tweak your traffic acquisition channels so you can get customers who are more likely to finalize their purchase with you since they’re a better fit for you and your company.

You can do this both in your email marketing tool and Conversio. First, you need to look into customers who have recently abandoned their carts but haven’t purchased anything yet. In Conversio, it’s simply a matter of going to your All Carts page and filtering those into carts that are still recoverable.

Once you have your list, get in touch with them via direct one-on-one email. Start with customers who have the highest abandoned cart value and then slowly but steadily work your way through the list.

Perhaps they were just browsing. Or maybe they lost interest and bought from your competition instead. Or it could be that they don’t have the budget for it right now.

Because you see, you can always check out abandoned cart statistics and make an educated guess as to why your customers aren’t buying from you. Or you can do this trick and find out the exact cause — straight from the horse’s mouth.

You’ll never know the real reason why they abandoned their carts unless you personally contact them and find out for yourself.

Afterwards, feel free to tweak your website or your email marketing campaign accordingly. After all, you know the exact reason why your customers are abandoning their carts, so what’s stopping you from recovering them?

Now, I know a hands-on approach like this doesn’t scale. It’s not very “efficient” or “automated”, but if it’s going to be effective in increasing your abandoned cart recovery rate even just by 1%, then, by all means, try it out and see the difference for yourself.

It may take time and a lot of your resources. But this is one strategy that can give you a slow but steady ROI over time.

I hope this video will contribute to the growth of your business! Let me know in the comments below or email me at adii@conversio.com if you’ve tried out this strategy before. See you next week!

Once you know who these customers are, find out the initial products they purchased with you. Look for products that they bought for their first purchase with you.

Then, rank these products according to how many top customers bought it. The more it was purchased by the top 10% customers, the higher it’ll go up in your list.

Will a single product top the list? Or will you identify a product bundle that most customers buy because it provides the most value for their money? You’ll only find out once you do this exercise.

Knowing which of your products are loss leaders enables you to strategize a marketing strategy that works in your favor. You can push your loss leaders to a prospect who’s recently signed up for your mailing list.

After all, you may just break even on your loss leader’s sale, but theoretically, this first-time customer will also make repeated purchases over time, based on the purchase history of your top spenders.

There’s no second-guessing or blindly hoping for the best scenario here. You’re promoting your loss leader simply because they promote sales -- just refer to the abovementioned exercise that you need to do before implementing this strategy. Remember: numbers, like Shakira’s hips, don’t lie.

Now, if you’re not a fan of discounting, it’s okay. The key here is to expose your prospects to your loss leaders as soon as possible. While your prospects are browsing on your website, redirect their attention to your loss leaders. During this time, they’re highly engaged so they’re more likely to check it out.

If they haven’t made a purchase yet, you can also send them a follow-up email. A simple “Hey, just wanted to check in on you. By the way, most of our customers bought this product. Here’s what they have to say about it. You may be interested…” can get the ball rolling in the direction that you’d like.

Of course, if you’ve identified a product bundle as your best-selling item, you can also send them product pitches about those as historically speaking, they’ve already been effective in increasing your Customer Lifetime Value over time.

So there you go! As of this writing, you can do the exercise manually since there’s no tool available for it yet. And if you’ve reached the end of this post and you’re excited to develop a tool that helps does this efficiently and effortlessly, let me know in the comments below! I’ll totally share it with you guys. See you next week!

Sometimes when we’re given access to our prospect’s emails, we can’t help but think that people are already overloaded, so when they open our email, we need to put everything there so they can get as much information as possible, don’t you think?

After all, more than 59% of marketers say email is their biggest source of ROI. And knowing that around 76% of subscribers make purchases from email marketing makes you feel pressured to say everything you want to say in a single email so you can convince them to buy from you, right?

The problem with this approach, though, is that everything’s too cluttered and unfocused. Your reader will have a hard time following the content’s flow and eventually lose interest in what you’re saying.

Here’s how you can use the “one action rule”: before writing your email, figure out the one action you want your reader to do from this email and work towards this by providing relevant content that helps you convince your readers to fulfill this goal.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Confused? Let’s take abandoned cart emails as an example -- what’s your one action for writing and sending out abandoned cart emails?

To convince your reader to buy the items they’ve abandoned in their shopping cart, of course. In other words, to finalize a sale.

How can you fulfill this one action -- to finalize a sale?

You can 1) show the items they’ve abandoned to refresh their memory, 2) include discount coupons to incentivize them to checkout and actually purchase the products, and 3) share social proof. You can include as much relevant content as you’d like - as long as they all help the reader fulfill the email’s purpose of finalizing a sale.

Now, there may be some instances where a single call-to-action (CTA) isn’t enough. In this case, a secondary CTA may be added as long as the primary CTA is emphasized accordingly.

An example of this one would be announcing a new product launch in a newsletter. You can draft your email by dedicating 80% of the content talking about the new product and 20% of the content sharing about a product recommendation list that your readers may find helpful, based on their personal purchase history algorithm.

In this way, the readers have a clear idea that you wrote the email with the primary goal of introducing your company’s newest product. As such, they know that this is the most important thing that you talked about in the email, so they will respond accordingly.

Remember: the “one action rule” doesn’t necessarily mean you need to write just one sentence or just one paragraph. It means that you’re free to write as much content as you’d like, as long as it’s relevant to fulfilling your email’s primary goal.

If, before discarding an item, Marie Kondo tells you to ask yourself, “Does this item spark joy?”...

Before writing a sentence, I’d tell you to ask yourself, “Does this content help me to convince the reader to fulfill this email’s primary purpose?”

If not, delete it right away. And if it does, feel free to write to your heart’s content.

Try this exercise and let me know how it works out for you! Shoot me an email at adii@conversio.com or let me know in the comments below. See you next week. Cheers.

You get to spin a wheel. I get to spin a wheel. We all get a chance to spin a wheel!

Come on, we all know how these things work, right? After all, when you get to see this “spin a wheel!” offer pop up every other day when you’re visiting different websites, it becomes a bit meh.

Personally, too, I just don’t think that profitable and sustainable Ecommerce brands are built on short-term trends like this that deters from customer experience.

2. Marking all the products in your catalogue as “on sale”

If you went to a brick-and-mortar store and saw that every product was marked down without any mention of a special holiday or anniversary sale, you’d be pretty skeptical, wouldn’t you?

As a customer, you’d be wondering if you’re really getting a discount or if the company’s just inflating the products’ worth and selling them to you at their original price…

Why? Let’s be real here: would a sustainable company actually put all their products on unlimited sale just because they wanted to? This’ll put them in the red -- it’s just not something that translates well to customer experience and brand longevity.

3. Using generic themes because everyone is your target market

If you use a generic theme for your brand’s website because you’d like to sell to “everyone who has disposable income”, you’re making it difficult for yourself to close a sale.

Because your approach is so wide and untargeted, people browsing through your website aren’t compelled enough to get to know you more and eventually trust your company enough to do business with you.

The effective alternative? Identify your target market specifically, then brand your website design and customer service according to their preferences. What’s the age range of your target customer? What jobs do they have? What are their interests? Hobbies? Preferences? What are their desires and pain points? How would they like to be talked to?

Find these out and then tweak your branding, product catalogue, and marketing strategy accordingly.

Here’s the light at the end of the tunnel: yes, we talked about the trends that need to be out. And now that we know what they are, this gives us the opportunity to improve our businesses and aim for the long-term by thinking about the things we can do better. There’s a rainbow after the rain, after all.

Try to do this short exercise with me. Just think of at least one big, successful Ecommerce brand and ask yourself if they’re implementing any of the “trends” I mentioned above. Most likely, they’re not. So why should you?

Listen, Ecommerce sales are expected to surpass $735 USD in the year 2023. People with disposable income are expecting online buying as the new norm. And it’s time for you to ride the Ecommerce wave.

For every branding decision or marketing strategy you’re thinking of implementing, ask yourself: “Will doing this help me build the foundation to build a sustainable and long-term brand for the years to come?”

So there you go, we hopefully finished the post on a positive note that enables you to think strategically for your business. Any comments you’d like to add, or insights you want to share? Let me know in the comments. See you next week! Cheers.

Product recommendations generate 33% higher average order value. You can include product recommendations in both your product pages and cart pages.

In your product pages, you can include the phrase “Other customers who view this product are also interested in these products…”

And for your cart pages, you can include a list of products with the title “This product you’re buying is frequently purchased together with these products…”

How do you figure out which products to include in your recommendations? You can do this manually or by simply using a recommendation algorithm.

2. Upsell or cross-sell complementary products

You can get an immediate 15-30% increase in revenue from upsells. If you’re not doing this tactic, you’re stealing from your company by limiting its potential to earn more revenue.

If product recommendations mean you’re encouraging your customer to add popular products to their purchase, up-selling & cross-selling mean you’re encourage your customer to add helpful and complementary products to their cart.

Confused? Let’s take a customer buying a laptop as an example.

Product recommendation is suggesting a smartphone or a tablet.

Upselling is suggesting a more premium laptop model.

Cross-selling is suggesting a mouse, a keyboard or a laptop bag.

3. Set order minimums for a discount

In my 30+ years of experience as a human, I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t want to get a discount. After all, it’s more bang for your buck, right?

Don’t give out discounts too freely, though! You need to qualify

This tactic helps you incentivize your customers to spend more just so they can save money.

How do you do this in a sustainable way that’s win-win for the both of you?

Compute for your AOV. Then, pick a number higher than your AOV and add how much you’re willing to discount and use this number.

For example, if your AOV is $15, and you’re willing to discount $10, tell your customer that if he reaches $30, you’ll take $10 off his total. This way, your customer gets to save money via the discount and you get to increase your AOV over the long run ($20 vs $15).

4. Set up a customer loyalty program that exchanges points for customer benefits

The more your customer spends with you, the more points he’ll receive. And the more points he’ll get, the more benefits he can experience.

An effective way to implement this is to establish tiers within your loyalty program. The more he spends, the faster it is to unlock the higher tiers which provide more points per dollar spent.

Don’t know if this really works? Just check out this study done by Smile.io which found that “majority of brands see at least a 13.71% increase in order values from rewards program members over non program members.”

This means that every time a non-member spends $100 on an order, a member would have spent $13.71 more.

5. Sell product bundles/product packages or offer BOGO deals

Offer product bundles that cost less compared to buying the same items individually.

For example, a product bundle that includes a laptop + a mouse + a charger + a laptop bag can cost $499, whereas buying the same products individually can cost $649.

This way, customers are more likely to buy the bundle because this will save them money. And doing this helps you increase your AOV and subsequently, your revenue as well. You can also offer Buy One, Get One deals to incentivize purchases higher than your AOV.

Bonus!

Now, we’ve talked about the five tactics that you can use to increase AOV but you can do these only on the pre-checkout phase, meaning, before your customer finalizes the transaction. What do you post-checkout? You can also:

6. Include product recommendations and up-sells while the payment token is still active

Once your customer clicked the “pay now” button and while his payment token is still active, you can still send him to a post-purchase sales funnel which does the product recommendations and upsells for you.

For example, you can use CartHook to do this for you: while your customer’s payment token is still active, you can present time-limited exclusive offers that they can click once to be included in their final order.

7. Include product recommendations and up-sells in your email receipts

Here at Conversio, we still see email receipts performing really well: high open rate, high click rate and high conversion rates.

Simply include a discount coupon and a product recommendation in your email receipts to boost your AOV. For example, include a casual offer in the email they’ll receive, something like:

“Hey, nice cart! Customers who bought the products you’ve bought also got these… Want to get these products at a discount? Here’s a discount code just for you - valid for 1 hour only!”

Increase your AOV this 2019 and see your company’s profitability soar, too. Any other things you’d like to add? Let me know and let’s talk in the comments section below. See you next week. Cheers!

As long as you don’t lose more than 50% of sales, you’re coming out ahead, mathematically. Imagine, you get higher gross margin since you’re selling for a higher price.

Also, you’re selling enough products that doubling their prices increases your revenue without necessarily increasing the volume, too.

Not yet convinced why you should do this? Customers usually associate higher price = more value for their money. Just check out how Apple prices their products: according to a recent study, it costs Apple $247.51 to create an iPhone, yet they sell it for over $1,000.

Higher revenue and less volume of transactions translates to less overhead expenses. You get to enjoy the benefits of increased profit with decreased costs - how sweet is this? Doing this enables you to get that extra 1% or 5% that’ll help you increase your bottom line profit.

2. Increase your prices by 10%

Compare your conversion and profit every time you change your pricing.

For example, increasing your prices by 10% this February 2019 and comparing its profit versus your profit last February 2018 can help you figure out which of your products have more price sensitivity compared to others - perhaps you’re better off increasing the prices of your more “premium” or “exclusive” products?

The only way you’ll know if this is effective is by experimentation with product pricing according to the historical performance of your sales. Start with one product or one category: focus on the 20% of your products that provide the most value for 80% of your target market. Once you prove that this strategy is effective in increasing conversion, go ahead and try the other product lines, too.

3. List down your top 10 products with the highest conversion rates and find out the pricing strategies behind them.

Look at your sales history: which products have the highest conversion rates for an average of three to five years? This means we’re looking for products that have consistent performance and sustainable sales among the years.

Prioritize the top ten products and look into the pricing strategies you’ve adopted for each product. Find their similarities - have they performed well due to “power of 9” pricing, cost-based pricing, fragmented pricing, or bundle pricing? If you’re not sure which pricing strategy it specifically is, check out this helpful guide for your reference.

Once you’ve found out the pricing strategy of your best-performing products, use it in pricing your under-performing products and compare profits over the same selling period.

4. Compare your pricing strategy with your competitors and price according to the concept of “exclusivity”

Instead of offering your product at a lower price than your competitors, premium pricing allows you to offer your product at a higher price than expected because exclusive products naturally cost more.

Just think of premium brands like Apple Macbooks or Rolex watches - if someone offered the same brands at a lower price, you’d undoubtedly think something has to be wrong about the products they’re selling, right?

You can take advantage of premium pricing by offering functional value (it does what it says it does) and psychological value (not everyone can have access to this product so you’re pretty special if you do).

It’s all about product positioning in relation to value perception.

How do you market your premium products? What branding message do you want to tell your audience so you can tug at their heartstrings and invoke emotions that make them want to buy your exclusive products at higher prices? What makes your brand and your products high-quality and premium that your customers would willingly want to be associated with them?

Implementing these product pricing strategies can help you increase your bottom line profit and boost your company’s growth this 2019. Have you incorporated these tactics into your product’s marketing and development?

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:
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Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Basically, the tipping point is when you or your business crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.

It’s the moment when your idea, business or brand becomes viral because it’s spread by “connectors”, “salesmen” and “mavens” and simply because your brand is memorable enough to encourage people to take action.

Surely, you’d want your business to reach the tipping point, don’t you?

However, simply learning about the tipping point isn’t enough. You need to understand why certain people act a certain way and respond to certain brands, too. Seth Godin exemplifies it best on his book This is Marketing when he says:

“For most of us, from the first day we are able to remember until the last day we breathe, our actions are primarily driven by one question: “Do people like me do things like this?”

People like me don’t cheat on their taxes.
People like me own a car; we don’t take the bus.
People like me have a full-time job.
People like me want to see the new James Bond movie.

Even when we adopt the behavior of an outlier, when we do something the crowd doesn’t often do, we’re still aligning ourselves with the behavior of outliers.”

This narrative of “people like us” influences our behavior - even our purchasing decisions and the way we go about life. Think about it: before you do something, buy something, or even respond to something, you think about what your peers or other like-minded people would do first, right?

We act the way we do and we respond to certain brands because “people like us” do the same thing.

Now, to further drive my point about being local and building a global business, let’s talk about how Facebook and Uber started.

Facebook started on a per-campus basis. They started at Stanford, and once they’ve reached the tipping point on a specific campus, they move on to another one, over and over again. Doing this helped them build a strong base, so when they finally launched publicly, they had a solid momentum that grew steadily upwards over time.

Uber did the same thing: they started at San Francisco and once they’ve reached the tipping point on a specific city, they moved on to the next one over and over again. Because of this, they’re able to grow into the global business they are today.

Here’s how you can apply these interconnected concepts into your business:

Where are you based?

First, find “people like you” by focusing on your own locality. Get your first 10 or 100 customers by being true to your local roots. Cater to their needs, wants & desires as consumers. Speak to who they are so you can influence how they respond to you. Like-minded people are more likely to engage with each other. Doing this can help your business become viral.

When you’re locally focused, it’s much easier to reach the critical mass and gain the momentum you need to expand outwards - you simply need to take the momentum you’ve gained from the first location and move it to the next one.

Also, a little bonus point is infusing your heritage and your roots into your overall branding efforts makes you stand out from the crowd more. Share what you stand for. Talk about where you came from. Include a little bit of local flavor into your visual identity and similar-minded people can relate to you more.

After all, we behave according to what “people like us” behave, remember?

I truly hope today’s video helped encourage you to build your business and turn it into a global brand by integrating the concepts of “the tipping point” and “people like us” in your strategies - be more targeted, focus on a niche first, and start with your own location. You’re well on your way to building a better business.

Any thoughts you’d like to add? Questions you’d like to ask? Or valuable personal experiences you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments below! See you next week. Cheers from Cape Town.

But I can’t teach your brand to be your brand. It’s the artist that makes the artist. It’s who your brand is that makes your brand stand out from the crowd.

And this is also exactly why you need to learn about your customers first before you automate. You can use the best software, you can hire the best copywriters and you can even test for the best subject line.

But if you don’t understand your customers fully, you’ll always be one step behind because you’re not directly addressing their concerns, their fears, or their needs.

Let’s talk about how this applies to abandoned cart recovery.

I had a conversation with an ecommerce brand that had “flat” recovery rates for abandoned carts. Their first email sequence was a simple “Hey, you abandoned this cart…” And then their second & third emails offered free shipping to encourage the customer to finalize their purchase.

Guess which email had the best conversion rate?

The first email converted the best even though it had no “free shipping” offer in its text! Pretty interesting to find out, considering that the most common reason why customers abandon their carts is due to high or unexpected shipping costs, right?

So industry statistics may help you understand why customers generally behave the way they do -- but this doesn’t mean that everything you read about in your research applies to your own customers. That’s why understanding them first is the key.

This concept applies to up-selling and cross-selling, too. Recommending products to your customers based on their past purchase history may help you with sales because of accurate algorithms -- but doing so doesn’t necessarily speak to the nature of your business and doesn’t directly address the concerns of your customers.

Do you see what I mean here? We can automate all we want, but if we don’t understand the reason for our customer’s behavior, automation won’t be effective in the long run.

Imagine running an automated email campaign for abandoned cart recovery...without knowing why your customers abandoned their cart in the first place.

Or imagine sending an automated up-selling email to a first-time customer to encourage them to buy more products from you...without knowing why your first-time customer decided to buy from you in the first place.

Understand your customer’s motivation for their behavior and you’re off to a great start. Add in the layer of personalization and segmentation in your email marketing campaigns and you’re nearly there.

Automation without any understanding of the behavior’s reason makes you a robot. And people don’t buy from robots, right? They buy from real people with real emotions, real reasons and real motivations -- people who strive to understand them more and adapt their business to meet their wants & needs.

Hopefully you find this video helpful! Any thoughts you’d like to add? Let’s talk in the comments section below.

Also, in the podcasts in the next coming weeks, we’re going to talk more about research-based methods that can help you recover abandoned carts so stay tuned! See you next week!

After all, it costs 5x as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one, remember? Additionally, selling to an existing customer has a success rate of 60%-70%, whereas it’s only 5%-20% when you’re selling to a new one.

Now, let’s be real here: you already know about the concept of maximizing CLV, right? Maybe you’ve even memorized some of the statistics I’ve mentioned above. In fact, this was the topic of the ebook that I wrote for Conversio — 4 years ago! — and the tactics are still relevant today.

To successfully scale your business over time, you need to maximize CLV.

And to maximize CLV, you need to upsell and cross-sell to your existing customer.

Yes, you can maximize CLV if your first-time customer becomes a regular, repeat customer.

But did you know that you can also maximize CLV even through your first-time customer or a customer who bought from you only once in their life?

Let’s take the case of Casper, for example. When they launched years ago, they only had one product: a single mattress. Once you’ve purchased this, you were done. They couldn’t up-sell or cross-sell you anything else — even though you were their happiest customer — simply because they only had one product back then!

How can you maximize your CLV even though you have only one product in your catalogue?

You can do this by getting this customer to bring in a new customer for your business.

Engage with your customers + make your existing customers happy with your marketing & customer service + incentivize them to tell their friends about you = maximizing CLV over time.

Incentives can come in the form of store credit or discount code, sure.

But again, if your product catalogue only has one product, what would your existing customers do with their store credit or discount code? They can’t purchase anything else from you, so why bother getting the incentive in the first place?

Instead of giving store credit or discount codes, give your existing customers cash back for every successful referral.

One of the brands that’s been successful in doing this is Remarkable.

Now you may be thinking, “But Adii, isn’t it bad when I give cash as an incentive? I mean, they’re not going to use that money on my business anymore so why should I do this?”

Here’s the thing: giving cash may mean that your customer won’t buy anything else from you since they already bought your main product.

But shouldn’t you be happy to give cash to your existing customers? After all, this means they’ve successfully referred their friends to you. This means you got another sale. This means you’ve gotten another value from your existing customers even though they bought from you only once.

And this is what I exactly meant by the “one thing” that every business needs: it’s figuring out a way to make sure that you get more value from a first-time customer beyond their first purchase.

More value means your first-time customer:

– Buys from you again & again through up-sell and cross-sell; or,
– Encourages their friends to buy from you and you incentivizing their efforts by giving them cash back.

Hopefully this video gave you helpful ideas when it comes to maximizing your CLV over time. Any thoughts, reactions or questions you may have? I’ll be waiting for you in the comments section below. Cheers.

Additionally, your most engaged customers spend more. For example, in the consumer electronics industry, engaged customers spend $373 per shopping trip, while actively disengaged customers spend $289.

You can find out who they are by including top-of-mind customers.

Or you can check your past product reviews and look for the top twenty customers who gave in-depth, comprehensive and helpful product reviews that discussed product improvement.

These people are the key to helping you with your product development.

2. Interact with your most engaged customers during the product ideation and prototyping phase.
   Let them join the conversation. Ask for their initial feedback on your ideas. Show them sketches. Tell them the product’s benefits and ask if these will be helpful to them. Show them product packaging ideas. Heck, ask for their thoughts on the product’s initial name.

It can be as “small” as deciding on the font of the packaging, or as “big” as finalizing on the product features — it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you include them in the process and to show them that their input is valuable.

After all, their feedback may help you improve product development, product marketing or both.

3. Once the product’s first version is available, send it to them for free.
   This is done with the spirit of gratitude: their feedback helped you shape the product’s development, so you’d like to thank them by gifting them the product.

Surprise them (small gesture to delight your customers, remember?) by including a handwritten note in the packaging or sending a personalized email before delivery.

4. Build social proof.
   Once they’ve had time to try our your new product, ask them to leave a review. Including a photo of them using the actual product would be great too!

5. Enjoy the social proof and the authentic product reviews on the launch day.
   Step #4 kills two birds with one stone: having authentic product reviews on your new product means:

– You don’t need to spend a lot of money getting a copywriter to create your sales copy for you. This way, people can read honest-to-goodness product reviews written by clients who’ve actually tried your product and experienced the results first-hand;

– You’ve already built social proof for your product so the likelihood that someone will buy it increases. Nearly 63% of consumers say they’re more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews.
If you’ve successfully followed this five-step process, I’d like to congratulate you in advance — it’ll be your best product launch day ever!

Because let’s face it, building your own business is like riding a roller coaster.

One moment you’ve done really well for yourself, you feel like nothing could go wrong and you savor the moments that you’re on top of your game.

And then the next thing you know, you’ve failed at achieving your goals for your business. You’re struggling. You’ve done everything you could but nothing seems to go right for your brand. You’re experiencing the dreaded “downs” in the ride.

Sometimes, you can’t help but experience the challenges. After all, macro-economic outlook looks a little unclear. Many public markets around the world had a rough 2018.

And if I told you to “buckle up and enjoy the ride!”, you just can’t relate to it, right? I mean, no one really enjoys the pain, the obstacles, the difficulties and the rough times.

So forget that advice. Let’s talk about why you are in business instead. After all, figuring out my personal “why” encouraged me to persevere and motivated me to stick with my entrepreneurial journey.

Hey, it worked for 12 years and counting, so I must be doing something right, don’t you think?

Honestly, due to the success of WooThemes, a company that I previously co-founded, I had this idea in my head that I was a “one-hit wonder” so I wanted to prove to the world – and to myself – that I was not.

After working on Conversio for 2 years and realizing that even though it wasn’t as big as WooThemes, it was still a “safe” business that was growing nicely. Finally, I thought, I created a business from scratch and it was doing well.

This realization made me consider two things: one, I’ve lost the desire to work on Conversio because I finally see it being developed into a nice business; and two, perhaps it’s time for me to move on to the next new thing.

Why was it so?
Because my “why” for Conversio was just a short-term thing. Why did I build Conversio? I wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t a one-hit wonder. And so when I finally proved this, I lost the drive – the desire to continue.

It was a superficial reason. And I lost focus on the real reasons – the true “why’s” – the things that I ultimately value which encouraged me to be in business…

My family, having financial independence, freedom to work on what I want, when I want, and in the way I want, and fulfillment.

These things grounded me in reality. They made me look deeper within myself and find a deeper reason – “why” did I want to continue my path as an entrepreneur? “Why” should I push through even though the entrepreneurial journey has challenges? “Why” do I need to continue working on Conversio even though my short-term goal was already achieved?

I look at my deeper “why’s” and I find the answer to my questions easily.

Because you see, in today’s modern world, it’s pretty easy to start a business. You have the Internet to thank for that.

But in the same world where about 50% of small businesses fail within the first 4 years, starting a business for sort-of-okay-but-not-really-meaningful reasons just wouldn’t help you make the cut.

What inspired you to get into business?

Why are you promoting that specific product?

Or what urged you to offer your specific services?

Figure out the reason why. If it’s too short-term or superficial, you’re better off doing something different. Look for a journey that’ll align with your personal values, whatever these may be.

It doesn’t matter if you’re struggling, if you’re feeling down in the dumps, or if you’re having difficulty getting things done…

As long as your why is strong enough, as long as your reason for being in this business is to help you take charge of the things that are the most important to you, then you’re all set.

Buckle up, figure out your greatest “why”, stick with it and make the ride worth your while.

Bonus points for you if you include your “why” in your company’s About page! This way, you can connect on a deeper level with your audience, too. People buy feelings, not things, remember?

What’s your personal “why”? What drives you to pursue your business? Let me know in the comments below. Talk to you next week! Cheers.

To help you do this, start with this simple two-step process:

• Prioritize which customers are more likely to engage with you.

Technically speaking, you can’t make every single one of your customers super delighted by doing small, significant and surprising gestures to them. You need to prioritize by targeting new orders placed by:

Regular, repeat customers that have higher than average Customer Lifetime Value with you; and,
First-time customers that placed an order that’s 30% higher than your Average Order Value.

These customers are likely to be more engaged, so they spend more money with you. 70% of emotionally engaged consumers are willing to spend twice as much on brands to which they are loyal, so it’s important to pinpoint who these customers are in your circle.

• Place “small but significant and surprising” delights for their orders.

Here are some gestures you can consider:

• Include a free product in their order. This could be a supplementary or complementary product that they’d love to use together with the product they ordered.

• Give them free or expedited shipping. If free shipping isn’t possible, make it cheaper instead.

• Place a handwritten “Thank you” note in their order package.

• If handwritten notes aren’t your thing, you can also send them a personalized email (or even video!) to thank them for their order.

At the end of the day, doing small gestures to delight your customers kill two birds with one stone:

– You improve your customer service operations and your business as a whole.
By the year 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. Doing small but significant and surprising gestures for your client helps you stand out from the crowd and catch the attention of your loyal customers.

– Your customers market your product for you.
72% of customers will share a positive experience with 6 or more people. If your customers are overcome with warm fuzzies and feel-good feelings, you’re sure that they’d love to tell their friends and families about their great experience with your company.

Doing small gestures that’ll delight your customers doesn’t have to break the bank. If you prioritize well and personalize your service according to the customer’s preferences, you’re well on your way to becoming a rockstar brand like Zappos in the long run.

Have you had any experiences with small gestures in the past? Were they good – or were they great? I’d be thrilled to hear from you so let’s talk in the comments below. See you next week!

We believe that the future is all about building a profitable brand that your customers will love. This will be the only way to stand out, be sustainable and hopefully grow.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Money isn’t the end-game here. When it comes to building businesses, I also love discussing about email marketing tricks, customer loyalty techniques and product development - all of these are significantly helpful when it comes to crafting a sustainable brand over the long run.

My problem is this: why is it that in some marketing-related articles that I’ve read, most case studies have an infatuation with discussing revenue without even mentioning the word “profit” in the write-up?

In today’s podcast, I want to talk about why profit is not a dirty word. Don’t be embarrassed to talk about it. Don’t hold back discussing it. Let’s dive into the details.

For example, check out this case study where a merchant spent $191k on Facebook ads that generated $374k revenue. Many of the lessons featured in the article resonated with me. Entrepreneurs would definitely learn valuable tips in the case study. There’s one major problem, though: the word “profit” was not even given the light of day. It wasn’t even mentioned once.

This translates to entrepreneurs prioritizing - even romanticizing - top-line revenue. It’s okay to talk about revenue, yes, but if revenue is the only metric you’re considering, you lose sight of the business’ sustainability.

If you were to choose between $100k revenue (but $110k total expenses) and $10k profit, you’d be pretty sharp as a bowling ball to choose the former, right? After all, you wouldn’t want to operate on a loss.
Here’s why profit is an incredibly important tool in building your business and why it should have been included in the case study:

1. 51% of revenue has already been spent on Facebook advertising, leaving gross revenue of 49%.

At first glance, this seems promising, but we also have to include the cost of goods. The author suggest in the comments that the cost of goods is about 25%, so 49% minus 25% ultimately means that the gross profit is about 24%.

2. 24% gross profit out of $374 gross revenue means it’s about $90k in gross profit, which isn’t bad. It’s a significant amount of money for most people.

Let’s look at the time frame, though. Was the $90k gross profit earned in a month, and can it be replicated every month?

Aside from the cost of goods, there are still other operational expenses & overheads that needs to be deducted from this, before determining a true, pre-tax profit.

3. The other consideration is how many people need to earn a living from this value based on what their living expenses are.

Let’s unrealistically assume that it was a single person and they managed to pocket the full $90k and this can last for a whole year. Some people can realistically live in some places with this amount. But in some places in the world (hi, San Francisco!) $90k is not enough to support a family.

4. Lastly, what I’m also curious about is the longevity of this as a business. This may sound controversial, but stereotypically, the average “dropshipped product” is not of great quality.

So if you’re selling “generic” and substandard products, you have little competitive advantage to offer. And in this very competitive market, how can you guarantee that there will be repeat purchases for your customers if you’ve delivered products that aren’t of great quality?

Low standard products = unhappy customers = lack of repeat purchases = unsustainable business that would eventually tap out

Again, I’m not discrediting the article. The point of this post is to show you the importance of profit, not just to focus on the revenue.

For every business endeavor you take on, calculate the profit to make sure that your business will serve you - not the other way around.

I’m very passionate about this topic! Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below or shoot me an email. I’d love to connect with you. Cheers.

It’s not their products. After all, footwear, motorcycles and supermarkets are vastly different from each other.

It’s their amazing, efficient and feel-good customer service that allows them to stand out from the crowd and be noticed in a positive light in today’s nearly saturated and over-competitive market.

Now, you can invest everything that you have into making your products different: get the best suppliers, hire the best designers and programmers and even pay the best marketers to promote your product for you.

If you’re providing a bad experience to your customers, though, you can say Adios! to your profit. Studies show that 67% of consumers list bad customer experience as one of their primary reasons for switching providers. Think that’s not such a big deal? $1.6 trillion is lost by companies in the United States due to customers switching as a result of poor customer service.

Here’s the light at the end of the tunnel: U.S. consumers are willing to spend 17% more to do business with companies that deliver excellent service.

So buckle up, take a deep breath and join me in today’s podcast as we talk about simple and easy ways in which you can improve your customer experiences.

Sending emails to a segmented audience will increase click rates by 100.95%. This means that over time, click rates will increase on your emails as long as you’re sending them to a segmented audience. The more targeted and relevant the emails are, the more your customers will open them, and the more they’re likely to be engaged with you.

More engaged customers = better relationship between customer and you.

Now, that’s nice and all, but what does this mean?

Customers will spend more as their trust in the relationship grows. Over time, loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones.

The key here is using automated email marketing to grow customer loyalty via your rewards program - and once you’ve done this - focusing more on your most loyal customers so you can generate more profit over the long run.

Before we start, I want you to know that I’m not pulling these tricks out of thin air. We got these prime techniques out of implementing Conversio’s integration with our awesome friends over at Smile.io. As long as you have a rewards program in place, you can apply these tactics with most email service providers, but of course we’d love for you to use Conversio instead. ;-)

All the podcasts you’ve listened to so far? I had to do multiple takes to get them right.

All the lessons you’ve listened to in those podcasts? I learned them first-hand from my personal experience of being an online entrepreneur in the last 12 years.

Most brands love to show off their best features: perfect copy, outstanding visual identity, kickass content on multiple media platforms -- and this is okay.

After all, the more polished and put-together a business is, the smoother the operations will be, right?

But is this what most consumers expect - or even want - from online brands?

Think about it. It’s like dating someone online. This person’s gorgeous, humble, smart, funny, wealthy and kind. Not a hair out of order, not a word out of line, not even a speck of dust in their apartment.

They never make any mistakes.

They’re perfect.

Would you trust them?

It’s the same with building an online brand. Most consumers crave for realness and authenticity. Because in a world filled with “unscripted” YouTube videos and #nomakeup Instagram filters, I choose to show you who I genuinely am, randomness and saying “umm…” included.

This approach may not resonate well with everyone, and that’s fine with me because it’ll help filter out my real audience - people who are perfectly okay with this brand’s authenticity.

Find your target audience, those who will appreciate you and your brand’s quirks, a penchant for certain words that’ll make the sailors laugh, or your preference for mainstream media references. Find them and keep them, as they will be your best customers and best supporters.

And when you do find these people, you’ll be more motivated to keep pushing out content, keep working on your business and keep improving your brand.

Sure, you can learn swimming by reading about it, watching videos and asking people how to do it.

But sometimes, one of the best ways to learn swimming is to jump into the water, spend time with your swimming instructor and actually swim.

Done is better than perfect. There’s no need to be perfect as striving for perfection will demotivate you and give you more reasons to procrastinate.

Progress, not perfection, is the name of the game. The “polishing” part can come later.

I hope you enjoyed this little detour today! I would actually love to hear your thoughts on this, so feel free to pop us a mail if you feel like it!

Cheers!

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy: conversio.com/academy

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at @birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

You wouldn’t, right?

And yet, you and I know brands who use “influencer marketing” even though fake follower counts is a major issue and an “above average” engagement rate on sponsored posts is a measly 4%.

Now, again, if someone told you that they’d help influence your sales by posting about your product on Instagram or mentioning it briefly in their blog post - even though there’s no specific link used to tag the sale as coming from them - would you pay them a hefty fee for their influence?

It doesn’t make sense, right? After all, 76% of marketers say determining ROI on influencer marketing is their biggest challenge. And only 46% use actual sales as a way to calculate ROI.

The tides are shifting. Those times when you considered hiring an influencer to use high-end camera equipment and lighting to take a picture of them “using” your product and talk about it in an insincere way that doesn’t really resonate well with your target audience? Better think twice about it.

Now, before you get mad and punch your computer screen, relax. I’m not saying influencer marketing comes from the devil. I’m just saying that I don’t think it’s the future of marketing because of the above-mentioned challenges.

Not yet convinced? Get this: to reach the same number of people, many brands are paying 10 times more for influencer marketing compared to investing in non-influencer marketing campaigns. In Germany alone, $500M spent on fraudulent influencers went down the drain. Can you imagine how much this hurts to hear?

Polished pictures of perfect people promoting your product seem phony. (Try saying this sentence five times. It’s a nice tongue twister!)

Seriously, though, social media which used to democratize the microphone is making a comeback. Sprout Social 2018 Index discovery says it best: “Consumers want brands to dump the photoshopped models from ads and replace them with authentic real men and women -- people like us.”
This makes sense. After all, consumers are twice as likely to consider a product recommended by a friend compared to a product recommended by a celebrity or an influencer.

People are craving authenticity. They want realness. Consumers desire genuine interactions with you. Inclusive marketing is the future, and brands who integrate this in promoting their products can be one step ahead of the game.

Inclusive marketing means real relationships and trust between two parties. It’s being kind and open enough to welcome a diverse set of customers and actually, give them the chance to make their opinions be heard.

There’s equality, inclusion, and diversity - important values that are important in today’s society.

If influencer marketing blatantly screams “Look at me! Listen to me!”

Inclusion marketing gently announces “Yes, we’re looking at all of you. We’d like to listen to what you think!”

Build a real brand for real people. Give your customers the equal chance to represent what your brand stands for - kindness, trust, and equality. Make them your real, genuine and authentic brand ambassadors.

Now, if you’re interested in learning more about how you can make your marketing more inclusive, you can check out the Brand Trust Platform that we recently released here at Conversio.

Via the Brand Trust Platform, you’ll get access to tools that can help your brand be more inclusive and less reliant on marketing that doesn’t support kindness, trust, equality, diversity, and inclusion.

Agree? Disagree? Want to add your two cents into the conversation? Hit me up in the comments below, message me on Twitter or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you!

Cheers!

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy: conversio.com/academy

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at @birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

And for us entrepreneurs? We’re calling it a “Revenue-Rich Period”.

Whatever name you’d like to call it by, there’s no doubt that this shopping holiday, which signifies the start of the Christmas shopping season, is something that you and your business should prepare for.

Newsflash: it’s a very big deal. And before we dive into this week’s podcast, brace yourselves. I’m not here to talk about overly generic advice like “draft your emails”, or “stock up on inventory”.

Nope, we’re here to talk about alternative ways that can make your Cyber Week the best week ever. I’m talking out-of-the-box, beat-your-common-sense, stand-out-from-the-crowd tips that can hopefully help you grow your revenue during this period.

1. Deactivate your “discount pop-up” lead magnet.

Most online businesses use a pop-up that offers discount codes to first-time website visitors in exchange for their subscription to their email newsletters, right?

During Cyber Week, switch this off. Or better yet, use another incentive as a lead magnet. You can offer a free downloadable such as a short ebook instead.

You don’t want the discount code to compete with the Cyber Week promotion that you’re running. If you let them choose between the two discount choices, they may get overwhelmed, choose none and not buy from you.

Or worse, they may use both discount codes and you may make a sale... but not actually make money. Ouch.

2. Disable your discount codes and offer buy-one-get-one (BOGO) instead

Zero is the magic number. Just ask academic and behavioral scientist Dan Ariely who found out that customers “perceive the benefits associated with free products as higher” than their absolute value.

Yes, this is true, even if you gave away a $5 product vs a $10 discount!

Aside from the win you get by running the numbers, offering a BOGO deal to your customers makes them perceive your product as more valuable.

It’s not “Oh, I’m getting a product for a cheaper price”.

It’s more on “I’m getting more of this awesome product!”

TL;DR: customers value free products > discounted products

3. Deal with your customer’s sense of urgency by offering a “Limited Edition” product for a limited amount of time.

Ben and Jerry’s released “Scotchy Scotch Scotch” flavoured ice cream. Volkswagen made only 250 Volkswagen XL1 cars. And Starbucks carries limited edition tumblers sold exclusively at their corresponding locations.

So why don’t you sell certain products on this specific period of time? After all, using scarcity marketing is an effective way to boost sales since limited product supply can make the customers believe that scarce items are more popular, more desirable and more valuable.

You can also sell limited products using a BOGO deal and offer this for a limited period of time. You can hit two birds with one stone! Twice the profit and twice the increase in positive product perception can make you and your customers twice as happy, so it’s a win-win!

4. Drive customer loyalty by giving out more rewards points for products purchased during Cyber Week.

If you normally give 1 reward point for every dollar spent, pump out the volume and give more rewards point for every dollar spent during Cyber Week - it can be 3 points, 5 points, 10 points - it depends on you and your customers’ purchase information.

Yes, reward points can be claimed as discounts down the line, but consider the value proposition here. You’re not giving discounts directly. Instead, you’re driving customer loyalty and rewarding them for their patronage. This way, you’re not lessening your product’s worth: you’re actually strengthening your relationship with your customers over the long run.

Bonus:

Having trouble getting your customers’ attention and your message across? These two things can help you stand out from the crowd even more:

a. Make your social proof omnipresent
Don’t just put the reviews and ratings on your website. Include it in your social media platforms, postings and even email subjects.

b. Modify your “About” page
Make it more authentic and credible. When your customers read it, they should feel like your brand is trustworthy enough to do business with. Pro-tip #1: add nice pictures! Pro-tip #2: check out more tips to make the most out of your About page in my video here.

I hope this podcast helps you boost your sales during this Cyber Week. Any thoughts about the tips I mentioned? Let’s talk in the comments section below. Cheers.

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy: conversio.com/academy

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at @birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

No need to sign a massive amount of paperwork, no need for a brick-and-mortar presence and no need to work for “the man”. Being an “online entrepreneur” is the name of the game. And everybody wants a slice of this sweet, profitable pie.

Because it’s so simple to start an online business, here’s our problem: now, it’s become much harder to get attention and build traction for your start-up business.

Skeptical? Just check out Shopify’s data which says that the average lifespan of a new merchant is 14-15 months only. Starting your own business is absurdly easy. Getting your first sale so you can build towards sustainability is the absurdly back-breaking part.

And based from my own 12-year experience as an online entrepreneur, one way you can increase your business’s chance of success is by getting a business partner. I’ve done both (sole founder and with partners) and in this week’s podcast, we’ll talk about the four reasons why you should get one.

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy: conversio.com/academy
Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at @birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com

There’s only one difference, though.

Restaurant A has four 5-star reviews, three 4-star reviews and one 3-star review. Restaurant B has no reviews at all.

If you’d choose Restaurant A, you’re not alone. 85% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

If there are no reviews for your products, your customers don’t have any recommendations they can trust.

Aside from the social proof that product reviews & ratings provide, you can also use them as learning opportunities because they can highlight things that you can improve in the way you run your business and develop your products.

These two reasons - social proof and feedback for improvement - represent why you need to work on getting fantastic product reviews. And in today’s episode, we’ll talk about exactly how you can get them by following this great system.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

“If you had to manually email someone and ask for feedback every time their product has been fulfilled, could you do it?”

“85% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Having no product reviews may cause your customers to think twice about buying from you.”

“How can you get good and genuine reviews from your customers? These six simple ideas can help you get started today.”

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Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

This is why you need to segment your email marketing subscribers. After all, sending the same email to a first-time customer and to a lapsed customer won’t help you achieve anything substantial, right?

Do you remember the video we did recently, called “The Simplest Email Marketing Funnel”?

The four absolute must-have email marketing segments are based on these steps in the funnel. We’ll even go beyond these steps and speak a little about lapsed customers at the end.

In today’s episode, we’ll get right into these four email marketing segments, as well as the 4 E's relating to their end goals in order for you to have a better understanding on why these segments are important.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

“These 4 E’s represent the end goal of your email marketing segments.”

“A first-time customer is 27% more likely to buy from you again. A second-time customer is 54% more likely to be a repeat customer. If you’d like to have repeat customers, check out today’s video!”

“Aside from your prospects, first-time customers and repeat customers, there’s another email marketing segment you need to connect with. Don’t know who they are? Check today’s video to find out.”

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:
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Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Is it to send funny anecdotes and relatable memes to your customers?

Is it to ask for feedback from your customers about your products and services?

Is it because your competitors are using it so you need to jump on the bandwagon and use it, too?

The answer: none of the above.

You see, your email marketing may be nice and smooth. It helps you nurture a relationship with your customers.

But if it’s not profitable…

If it’s not giving you a positive ROI (return-on-investment), why are you still investing hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars in it?

Your end goal in your email marketing should be profit.

You can either reinvest your profit into your business, or you can use it to pay yourself a nice salary and splurge on nice things like champagne, your kids’ education fund, or a limited edition Marvel Funko Pop.

Since profitability is incredibly important, we’re going to talk about the three quick and easy things you can do today to improve your email marketing profitability in today’s episode.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

"70% of people will trust a recommendation from someone they don’t even know, so make sure to include your product’s testimonials in your email marketing campaigns."

"This well-kept marketing secret can be found in your website, but not in your emails…"

"Want your email subject line to stand out from your reader’s inbox? This simple hack helps you easily get noticed and boost your profit at the same time."

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:
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Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

It’s one of the reasons why you’re busting your moves, investing thousands of dollars and consulting with the top firms on how to improve your email marketing campaigns, right?

But if your business is a donkey, your email marketing can't do much more than putting lipstick on that donkey. Be mindful of the other things in your business that may need to be addresses first before you can improve your email marketing.

In this week’s episode, we’re going to talk about the five things that you need to fix in your business so you can have an effective email marketing strategy.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

"Think email marketing is all about emails? Here are 4 non-email things that can make or break your email marketing campaign’s success."

"Sure, email is 40x more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. But did you know that there are 4 crucial NON-email things that you also need to consider in email marketing?"

"A successful email marketing ends up in a successful sale. For this to happen, you need to have a well-functioning checkout page, right up to the end."

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:

Find out more in our blog.

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Music in this video: “Celery Man” by Birocratic and can be found at https://soundcloud.com/birocratic

Is their promise of “use-this-app-now-and-get-profit-later” backed up with actual numbers that will contribute to your business’ growth?

Or will it end up with you singing “Love The Way You Lie” while drowning your sorrows with Mountain Dew?

Here are three ways to calculate if your marketing solution (app/software/service) is making money for your business.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

"Here’s how you can get over Shiny Object Syndrome and actually find out if your marketing solution is making you money or losing you thousands of dollars per month."

"Did you know you can cut down your monthly expenses by 15%? Sure! Just follow the tips outlined in this article..."

"What if you could have 15% more profit? Use these three ways to calculate your marketing tool’s overall contribution to your business’ growth today."

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:

Conversio Academy
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Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Stop smirking. You know that’s not what I mean.

I’m talking about mutually beneficial partnerships.

In the first example, the bees get to eat nectar, and the flowering plants get to reproduce by distributing their pollen.

In the case of brand partnerships, you get to find a like-minded brand that targets the similar customer demographic that you also target, allowing you to leverage this and grow your own audience without relying on Facebook ads alone.

It’s not a new concept. Huge brands such as Apple & Nike, Spotify & Starbucks and even BMW & Montblanc engage in mutually beneficial brand partnerships.

So what’s stopping you from doing the same?

Ego comes into play. You automatically assume that any brand that targets the same type of customer must be your competition, right?

Here’s a simple way you can go around this obstacle: find brands with values and beliefs that align with yours, and, here’s the tricky part – make sure they’re offering products/services that are not direct alternatives to yours.

Obviously, partnering with a brand that tests on animals may not be a pretty good idea if your business is anti-animal testing, so make sure that the brand you want to partner with has values and beliefs that align with yours.

This way, when you get exposed to their audience, and vice-versa, you can connect with them on a deeper level.

The key here is bartering.

In an effective brand partnership, both brands exchange valuable offerings. You find what you have, they find what they have, and you exchange value. Since you’re exchanging what you already have, you don’t need to increase your marketing spend, and ROI is generally positive.

In today’s episode, I’m going to talk about four smart ways you can grow your brand and your business by cleverly using bartering techniques.

** Some of the best quotes from this episode: **

"Here’s how the relationship between the bees & the flowers can help you grow your brand."

"Want to be successful as Apple & Nike, Spotify & Starbucks and even BMW & Montblanc when it comes to brand partnership? Check this out."

"In an effective brand partnership, both brands exchange valuable offerings. This boosts your exposure to like-minded audience without spending more on marketing."

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:
Conversio Academy
Facebook
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Instagram

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy: Conversio Academy Facebook Twitter Instagram

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic. This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

You’re wearing a black coat.

You have a slick hairstyle and set of cool shades to go along with it.

And you’re asked to choose the blue pill or the red pill.

The blue pill guarantees to give your Ecommerce business $200,000 total revenue every year.

The red pill ensures that your business rakes in $100,000 in yearly net profit.

Which pill do you take?

If you take the blue pill ($200,000 total revenue), but you have no idea about your gross profit margin or the overhead expenses of your business, there’s a possibility that your business won’t be sustainable over the long run.

Sure, $200,000 in gross revenue sounds like a dream come true. But if your cost of goods sold and operating expenses are $210,000 per year, you’re in the red.

But if you take the red pill ($100,000 net profit) and your business raked in $50,000 net profit last year, you just doubled your net profit!

You can either reinvest your profit into your business or use a specific portion of it to use for yourself.

Either way, profitability can dictate how significant the contribution of your business is in your growth as an entrepreneur.

How can you guide your business to actually be profitable? These four cornerstone metrics are what we’re going to discuss in today’s episode.

Edit: 03:52 mark: $5 not $50

“Would you rather have $200,000 in total revenue or $100,000 in net profit? Profit is so much cooler than revenue. Here’s how you can measure it in your business.”

“If you’re not monitoring these 4 cornerstone metrics in your business, you may unknowingly be operating at a loss…”

“Ask yourself: For every product sold, how much money is actually made?”

“For every acquired customer, how much did you really spend on marketing to get them? Here’s how you can calculate this.”

“For a business to be profitable, you need positive cash flow.”

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:
Conversio Academy
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

How soon would you like to get started with your email marketing lessons?
Now, in a world where information is practically everywhere on the Internet, it makes sense for you to turn to email marketing providers for more information about how to leverage email marketing in your business.
However, there are two obstacles to these:

Popularity: When you’re learning from them, your competitor’s most likely learning the exact, same thing.

Wider audience: Since they’re catering to a general audience – from beginners to experts – you can’t find highly specific topics with details that you want to explore more.

In this week’s episode, we’re going to discuss about the Picasso Method of learning about email marketing.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

"Good designers copy. Great designers steal. Here’s how you can learn about email marketing, as inspired by Picasso."

"Tired of learning about email marketing the traditional way? This “cheat sheet” will give you what you need - all in a 5-minute video.."

"As with any education, you also need to invest time & resources in learning about email marketing."

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:
Conversio Academy
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Keep in mind that these metrics are specifically for gauging profitability.
By focusing on these five metrics, you can find out if you need to tweak your email marketing campaign to ensure that the resources you’ve invested are giving you a healthy ROI or not.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

"Think your email marketing campaign kicks ass? Not until it has these 5 important metrics to ensure its profitability."

"Your email marketing campaign should generate a positive ROI for you. If it’s not, you’re doing something wrong."

"If your gross profit margin is 25% and you’re running a discount promotion of 20% off, you’re making only 5% on that sale."

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:
Conversio Academy
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

For some people, this song is all about love, heartbreak and missed chances when it comes to pursuing romantic relationships.

But for you, and other Ecommerce entrepreneurs, this song is played in your head whenever you glare at your screen and wish for your abandoned cart’s recovery rate to increase.

You’ve addressed your customers by their names in your email.

You’ve been specific and true to your brand’s most authentic self.

You’ve sent them a lot of abandoned cart recovery emails that talk about how unique your company is, how special and one-of-a-kind your services are, or how helpful your product is to them.

But so far, you still got nothing.

Nada.

No spikes in your abandoned cart recovery rates, still.

If you’ve done all the “tried-and-tested” strategies to boost your abandoned cart recovery rate, but you’re still not satisfied with the results, why don’t you try thinking out of the box?

That’s why in this week’s episode, we’ll discuss four ways in which you can reignite your abandoned cart recovery rate and finally achieve the sale you’ve been working so hard on getting.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

"Did everything but still couldn’t raise your abandoned cart’s recovery rate? Here are 4 sure-fire ways that can help you stand out from the crowd & supercharge your recovery rate today."

"If you did everything & your prospect still haven’t recovered his abandoned cart, ask him to join your mailing list instead."

"Every abandoned cart in your business is an opportunity for you to make money - as long as you try your hardest to reignite your abandoned cart recovery rate."

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:
Conversio Academy
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Afterwards, you may stop for a while and whisper: “Sequences. Segmentation.”

Before you know it, you’ve stopped whatever it is you’re doing, and now you’re sitting in a fetal position, chanting email marketing terms over and over again: “Triggers. Events. Blah. Blah. Blah.”

Stop!

In this week’s episode, we’re going to talk about the simplest email marketing funnel that will help you convert customers and boost your business tremendously.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

"Crawl before you can walk. Walk before you can run. The key to a successful email marketing is mastering the basic principles, before anything else"

"Email marketing is like making the perfect pizza. Master the foundation (pizza crust) of email marketing FIRST before adding the advanced tools and strategies (toppings)."

"If your store is on Island A and your customers are on Island B, it’s your job to build a bridge so your customers can come to you." via="

"You can't make any sales if your store is on an island. You need to find ways to ferry your customers to your island." via="

"Don’t know how to sell via email? Start with the simplest email marketing funnel in the world."

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:

Conversio Academy
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

That’s why you closed your eyes, invested (maybe even borrowed?) a good amount of money in your email marketing platform and eagerly hoped for the best, isn’t it?

And when it comes to email marketing, you just need to send more emails to a lot of your customers, right?

Wrong.

The key here isn’t to send more emails - it’s to send better & smarter emails that will be opened and clicked on by your customers.

In this week’s episode, we’re going to talk about the four steps that will help you catch the attention of your customers and boost your engagement.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

"Effective email marketing isn’t about sending more emails. It’s about sending smarter & better emails that your customers will read & act on."

"When’s the last time you actually opened an email from a brand that you’re subscribed on?"

"Here’s how successful email marketers get their customers to open and click on their emails."

Learn with our FREE Ecommerce Academy:

Conversio Academy
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

But that’s not the topic we are discussing today.

Nick is really good at word of mouth marketing, an ideal way of getting new customers. However, word of mouth marketing is also very difficult to leverage and scale.

In this episode, Nick shares his tips on getting customers to talk about your business.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "Good evergreen content will promote your credibility, and expand your audience. Make it educational and actionable."
• "Approach people with a degree of humility and vulnerability. That, can be valuable."
• "When networking, do it in a personal, non business-y way. You want to be the person they want to have a drink with."

Find out more about Nick Disabato & Draft.nu:

• Draft.nu Official Website
• Nick's Official Website
• Twitter: @nickd

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, we talk about how you can get referrals to gain new customers.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "Right after a purchase is the time when customers are most engaged."
• "Document what you're already doing. By turning it into a standard procedure, you can build upon it."
• "If you want more referrals, you need to start asking."

Find out more about Kai Davis :

• Official Website: KaiDavis.com
• Twitter: @kaidavis
• Blogger Outreach Course

Shownotes:

• Shean D'Souza: The Brain Audit
• Allen Weiss: Million Dollar Referrals

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Austin wants you to “stop thinking like an online product salesman, and start acting like a business owner.”

In this episode he explains how to access hidden profits and retain customers by sending smarter, more profitable emails.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "The biggest marketing component, is your product itself. So educate, then escalate."
• "If there's one thing I would recommend, regardless of your business stage, is to capture more email addresses."
• "Email is a fixed cost, and you're paying less every time someone visits your site."

Find out more about Austin Brawner & Ecommerce Influence Podcast:

• Official Website: EcommerceInfluencePodcast
• BrandGrowthExperts.com
• Austin Brawner Official Website.
• Twitter: @a_brawner
• Email: austin@ecommerceinfluence.com

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Privy enables you to create exit pop-ups, opt-in forms helping you to grow your Email list.

In this episode, Josh shares his favorite strategies to convert traffic into buyers once visitors reach your site.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "Customize the experience, pop-ups shouldn't be one size fit all."
• "People now are looking for help buying, far more than being sold."
• "Think of a real life experience you'd like to have, and try to replicate that online."

Find out more about Privy.com:

• Official Website: Privy.com
• Twitter: @privy

Shownotes:

• Privy Academy

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, we go beyond the basic newsletter sign up button. We dig into best practices, trends, and the best ways to grow your newsletters list. Let's get started!

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "Email marketing is still the biggest driver for sales for most ecommerce companies, even more than social."
• "With Email Marketing, you have total control, you're not running against an algorithm."
• "On average, ecommerce stores are seeing 40% higher return on investment on email marketing, than social marketing"

Find out more about Michael Steele & SellLikeAHuman.com:

Official Website: SellLikeAHuman.com

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, we get her to share her best kept secrets to Facebook ads. From how to create an effective ad to boosting your engagement rates.

Listen in, learn and increase your ROI with Mojca now!

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "When it comes to Facebook advertising, you have to blend in, in order to standout."
• "When it comes to Facebook algorithm changes, if you don't exploit the system, you have nothing to worry about."
• "Two things work fantastically: Lead magnets work and retargeting. They will never go out of fashion."

Find out more about Mojca Marš & SuperSpicyMedia.com:

• Official Website: SuperSpicyMedia.com
• Email: mojca@superspicymedia.com
• Facebook: @SuperSpicyMedia.com
• Twitter: @MojcaMars
• Instagram: @MojcaMars
• LinkedIn: @MojcaMarš

Shownotes:

• Retargeting app mentioned: Shoelace.com
• How does your store compare? StoreGrader.co

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, Tyler shares his secrets to achieving incredible outbound marketing results with good, old fashioned cold calling and emailing.

Tune in to hear how you can start reaping the rewards of outbound marketing today.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• " A normal reach rate is 12%. Ours is about 75%. Here is why."
• "Don't exhaust yourself trying to reach everyone. You have to learn to let go sometimes. Some people are never going to be interested".
• "Be helpful. That's really the 1,000-foot look."

Find out more about Tyler Accardi:

• Official Website: ProTrainings.com
• Twitter: @TylerAccardi
• Linkedin: @TylerAccardi

Shownotes:

• Predictable Revenue book - Aaron Ross
• Impossible to inevitable - Aaron Ross
• 10x Copyhackers -JW
• How does your store compare? StoreGrader.co

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, we dig into the subject of video marketing, and Dan shares his tips, so you can start using videos for your next ecommerce marketing strategy... even if you have no budget, experience or technical skills.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• “Video marketing is “now”, it’s not the future. Anyone who doesn’t care is missing the boat.”
• "A huge myth is that you have to create a viral video. You shouldn’t measure your video on views, but conversions."
• "Making it funny is hard, but having fun with your business is highly engaging."

Find out more about Dan Moyle:

• Official Website: http://interviewvalet.com/
• One Stop Shop Listeners' Kit: http://interviewvalet.com/onestopshop/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/danmoyle

Shownotes:

Mentioned: Critter-removal service that has gone viral.
A story about it, too.

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Our guest today is Crystal Richard, an experienced global Public Relations expert, who has helped hundreds of startups and businesses navigate the world of PR.

In this episode, Crystal shares her tips to build relationships, get media attention, and make your business newsworthy.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• “Marketing is you talking about your company, PR is other people talking about it, and that includes customers.”
• "Journalists are sometimes hesitant to talk about your business, but they may like to talk about your customers."
• "One of the biggest things about PR is finding opportunities. No one is going to knock on your door, you have to be proactive."

Find out more about Crystal Richard:

• Official Website: http://crystalrichard.com
• Shopify Website & Blog, AKA Side Hustle: https://eastcoastmermaid.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/crystalcrichard
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/crystalrichard/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

This is copywriting.

It can be fun. It can be draining. But it doesn’t have to be a mystery.

Today’s guest is Lianna Patch, Copy Director at SnapCopy.co, and professional conversion copywriter. In less fancy terms, she will help you write better messages that will get your customers engaged.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• “When in doubt, test."
• "It’s not hard to let down a robot. If your copy sounds personal and human, you’ll get better results."
• "The more the product costs, the more resistance you’ll face, and the more convincing your copy should be."

Find out more about Lianna Patch:

• Official Website: https://www.punchlinecopy.com/
• Agency Website: https://snapcopy.co/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/punchlinecopy
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/punchlinecopy

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Ryan BeMiller is the founder and content writer at Shopping Signals, a website that is all about online marketing for ecommerce.

In this episode, Ryan explains the current best SEO practices and tactics, that you can (and should) give a try, to optimize your website for Google Search.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• “No one can guarantee a specific ranking in Google, so any professional who makes that promise should be a red flag."
• "You need to spend 20% of your SEO efforts on creating content, and 80% on outreach and building relationships."
• "Ecommerce stores, more than anyone, rely on trust. Make use of rich snippets to create that trust in search results."

Find out more about Ryan BeMiller and ShoppingSignals.com

• Official Website: https://www.shoppingsignals.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Shoppingsignals/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/shoppingsignals

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Today’s guest says that podcast marketing is the next gold rush, converting 25 times better than writing blog posts about your business.

In this episode, we interview Tom Schwab from InterviewValet, to learn how you can generate free traffic and conversions by participating in podcasts within your industry.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• “The landing page model can be limiting. A “lead magnet” is a better experience, where you give different calls to actions, to meet customers at different levels of engagement."
• "If you’re trying to compete with the big brand with paid advertising, you’re not going to be able to outspend them. But you can out-hustle them."
• "Facts tell, stories sell: Those who relate to your story, are going to be your best customers."

Find out more about Tom Schwab & Interview Valet

• Free resources mentioned on the podcast.
• Official Website: http://interviewvalet.com/
• Facebook: @InterviewValet
• LinkedIn: InterviewValet
• Twitter: @interviewvalet

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, we talk to Kurt about conversion rate optimization, and how he created two viral sites that exceeded a million hits in their first week.

Come away with tips to help to supercharge your conversion rates.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• “There are two factors which affect conversion rate: One is quality of traffic, and the other is site experience."
• "The receipt email is the number one opened email. Use this opportunity to learn more about potential buyers."
• "Use the language of your buyers when creating product pages, to attract people who are similar to existing customers."

Find out more about Kurt Elster

• Official Website: http://kurtelster.com/
• Shopify Plus Experts: https://ethercycle.com/
• Benefits of Shopify Plus: https://ethercycle.com/shopify-plus/
• The Unofficial Shopify Podcast: http://www.unofficialshopifypodcast.com/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

But how do you implement the subscription model?

What does it take to create more than a membership program, to turn loyal customers into tribe members who actually look forward to receiving communications from your business?

Are there challenges and difficulties that come with the subscription model, and how does a business handle them?

Tune in as Andy Hayes, from Plum Deluxe, answers these questions and more in today’s episode.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• “The question we started talking with is: Why are we better versions of ourselves when we are on vacation?”
• "You cannot grow a sustainable business just by playing with PPC. You have to talk to people."
• "One of the challenges of having subscription model, is logistics. You have to get good at planning, processing, and organizing your storage."

Find out more about Plumdeluxe:

• Official Website: http://www.plumdeluxe.com/
• Philanthropy And Fellowship Fund: http://www.plumdeluxe.com/fund
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/plumdeluxe
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plumdeluxe/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/plumdeluxe/
• Ravelry: https://www.ravelry.com/account/login
• GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/196419-plum-deluxe-books-and-tea

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

But how do you get quality feedback?

When should you take feedback into consideration, or disregard it as a distraction?

In today’s episode, we chat with Justin Hong, founder of Dapper And Done. Justin shares his favorite tools, and actionable tips and strategies that you can apply today to know exactly what customers want.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "Starting with your own pain points is a good way to start looking for business ideas, but make sure to validate it."
• "One of the best ways to get feedback, is to start with people in your network. Buy them a coffee, and ask open-ended questions."
• "Be open to reiterating your business and deviating from the original idea based on feedback. The only exception is when the suggestions are not aligned with your values."

Find out more about Dapper And Done:

• Official Website: https://dapperanddone.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/dapperanddone
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dapperanddone
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dapperanddone/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/dapperanddone/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In today’s episode, we chat with George Brooks from Banded2gether, about creating a tangible difference in the world, and the challenges of juggling wholesale and retail.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• " We made a lot of mistakes. Brands typically launch direct to consumer because they have a voice. We launched straight into wholesale first. We underestimated the draw of direct to consumers."
• "When it comes to POS, presentation is everything. We help retailers sell our products by providing tools like displays and merchandising."
• "The challenge with wholesale is that our message can often be diluted. With every order we ship a card that tells our story."

Find out more about Banded2gether:

• Official Website: https://banded2gether.com/
• Banded2gether Philanthropy: https://banded2gether.com/pages/how-we-help
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/banded2gether
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Banded2gether/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/banded2gether/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/banded2gether/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, Judith shares her tips on creating a compelling story that will help your business and increase your sales.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "I saw space for a company to come and do things better, not necessarily cheaper."
• "You have to have passion when you’re talking about your product, otherwise it will be hard to sell."
• "Our customers are buying not only the product, but the vision of what we’re after."

Find out more about Temples And Markets:

• Official Website: https://templesandmarkets.com.au/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TemplesMarkets
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/templesandmarkets
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/templesmarkets/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/templesandmarkets/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Kings Row Coffee pioneered what they refer to as the “Bordeaux-inspired blend”, to make a coffee that would taste good just about anywhere. Then, it was time to convey that value to the online buyer, who had no way of tasting the difference from looking at product images and description.

Today, we talk with Sam Sabky, CEO at Kings Row Coffee, about convincing prospects to trust your claims, and why it’s important to be persistent when soliciting sales.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "We are at an age where customers are inquisitive. They are asking where the product is sourced from, and how it is made."
• "Our retention strategy is “politely annoying”. We like to reach out to them directly, at least once a week. "
• "Don’t get discouraged or stop contacting customers just because they’re not answering. Until they unsubscribe, there is no reason to stop contacting while being polite about it. "

Find out more about Kings Row Coffee:

• Official Website: https://kingsrowcoffee.com/
• Selmata Family Project: https://kingsrowcoffee.com/selamta-family-project/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kingsrowcoffee
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kingsrowcoffee
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kingsrowcoffee/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Her simple tweak is what separates her store from all the gift and gift card stores, but it comes with its own challenges too.

In this episode, we chat with Kate about creating a unique, scalable, consistent quality product, even when the product is essentially handmade.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "If even I had a billion dollars, I would still be doing the same exact thing."
• "I didn’t even have a business, but I still pitched my idea. I had my first client, and I wasn’t ready, but I turned up and said yes."
• "People would ask: “How do you know this would work?”, and I would say: “Well, because I already sold it.”

Find out more about Thankly:

• Official Website: https://thankly.com.au/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thankly.com.au/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thankly.com.au/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Salem Essentials & Apothecary is a brand that aims to make natural products affordable for everyone. And while it exists online, most of its business comes from selling directly to the community.

In this episode, we talk to Jonathan about his favorite ways to make sales in places where other businesses are not looking.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "For a local business, the story is better said one on one."
• "The online market is overcrowded, but, no one knows your story. Find a way to personalize your business and make it your own."
• "I want to be able to sleep well at night, knowing that our products are giving people benefits."

Find out more about Salem Essentials & Apothecary:

• Official Website: https://salemessentials.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/salemessential1
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/salemessentials
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SalemEssentials/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Salemessentials
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/salemessentials/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Our guest today is Joshua Poertner, he bought Silca 3 years ago, but the company just recently celebrated 100 years in the market.

In this episode, Joshua tells us about his experience, what buying an existing business really entails, and even, how to know when it’s time to let go of managing your own business.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "I saw space for a company to come and do things better, not necessarily cheaper."
• "I think you have to have an element of passion when you’re talking about your product, otherwise it will be hard to sell."
• "Our customers are buying not only the product, but the vision of what we’re after."

Find out more about Silca:

• Official Website: https://silca.cc/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SILCAvelo
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SILCAvelo
• Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user38024414/videos
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/SILCAvelo/silca/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/silca_velo/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Eventually, he took the plunge and decided to start a business selling his handmade products. But he didn’t have online business experience, and he didn’t have huge capital, yet he was able to create a line of products that has raving fans.

In today’s episode, we hear from Calvin, how he did that, in an already saturated, highly competitive market.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "I’m not a chemist, but super curious, so I went home and started tinkering until we came with products that customers enjoyed."
• "One of the biggest pluses for me was having intimate dialogues with customers and understanding them."
• "We focused on an underserved market, and it made it easier for us to get the word out."

Find out more about Scotch Porter:

• Official Website: https://www.scotchporter.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scotchporter
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/scotchporter
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scotchporter/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/scotchporterbrand

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In Chloë’s latest book: Customer Persuasion, she gives a step by step guidance on “How to Influence your Customers to Buy More”, depending on the stage your Ecommerce business is in at the moment. Plus, she shows you how to determine your business stage, and where you should be directing your focus right now.

In this episode, we go over the key notes and learnings from the book, to help you make more sales, and create a repeat customer base.

To get the Customer Persuasion book: http://customerpersuasion.co.uk/

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "Nowadays, your customer service issues will end up on social media."
• "There are different relationship levels with your customers, and you need to work out which of these stages is most important to you."
• "It’s very important to get the email address, because most people don’t come to your website to buy anyway."

Find out more about eCommerce MasterPlan:

• Official Website: https://ecommercemasterplan.com/
• Podcast: https://ecommercemasterplan.com/podcast/
• Customer Persuasion Book: http://customerpersuasion.co.uk/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

So how did this phenomenal woman go from a side gig with no direction, to 10,000 orders in 37 countries, all within a relatively short time span? Today, we chat with Cindy, and learn the strategies that helped her multiply sales volume by eight.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "I asked questions and listened, and that’s how my best selling line of products was developed."
• "With market outreach, instead of going an inch deep and a mile wide, try to go an inch wide and a mile deep."
• "I look at what bigger companies do and ask how can I do this, but make it my own?"

See more from Euphoric Herbals:

• Official Website: https://www.euphoricherbals.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/euphoricherbals/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/euphoricherbalbirth
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/euphoricherbals/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/euphoricherbals/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Jessica Ekstrom was an intern at a wish granting organization, when she noticed that a lot of kids loved to wear headbands after hair loss from chemotherapy. With this simple idea, she founded Headbands of Hope. For every headband sold, a headband is given away to a child with cancer. Headbands of Hope is just one example of how a company that didn’t need a ton of products to scale and remain interesting.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "Entrepreneurship is impulsive problem solving, and the answer is to start a business."
• "The way to keep a single product fresh, is to anticipate trends."
• "You shouldn't have to choose between making a difference and making a living. You could do both at once."

Find out more about Headbands Of Hope:

• Official Website: https://www.headbandsofhope.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/HeadbandsofHope
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeadbandsOfHope/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/headbandsofhope/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

What makes Valfré's shop remarkable, is how it manages to provide such well defined Ecommerce branding. Although they sell products that seem unrelated at first glance, the harmony created by brand consistency makes it an addictive website to browse and shop from.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• "We try to create content that resonates with us. We try to have fun with it."

• "You have to both find, and create, your brand voice."

• "You got to create a great product, because great products market themselves."

See more from Valfré:

• Official Website: https://valfre.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/valfre
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Valfr%C3%A9-102420213136494/?fref=ts
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valfre/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/valfreofficial/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Ryan and Jon, Greats’ founders, knew that they could produce high quality Italian-made shoes for men for a lower price, if they could do business more efficiently than the bigger guys. They launched their brand in 2013, and quickly became an instant "Classic", selling out of most styles within 90 days. Today, we chat with Ryan to talk about the importance of understanding a market before attempting to disrupt it.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• "If you're building a brand but not retention and repeat, you're not doing a good job at building a brand."
• "Branding involves generating an emotion around a purchase."
• "When you create brand ambassadors, that's when you have a brand."

Find more about Greats Brand:

• Official Website: https://www.greats.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/greatsbrand
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreatsBrand/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greatsbrand/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Today’s episode is about the story of 3 military men, promoting world peace in a different way. Combat Flip Flops created jobs for both Afghan women, and US soldiers. Also, every product Combat Flip Flops sells puts an Afghan girl into secondary school for a day, while each Peacemaker Bangle or Coin Wrap sold clears 3 square meters of Unexploded Ordnance from a region rocked by long-term war - saving lives and providing economic opportunity.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• “Smaller dealers pre-orders, collecting e-mails on our website, retargeting, that’s how we get our very first sales.”
• “Our initial surge of traffic wasn’t from the article in NYT, but from Gizmodo. This gave us traffic that broke our site.”
• "Having the right manpower to scale is the hardest part, it’s the bottleneck of the business.”

Find out more about CombatFlipFlops:

• Official Website: https://www.combatflipflops.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/combatflipflops
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/combatflipflops
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/combatflipflops/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/combatflipflops/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/combat-flip-flops
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/combatflipflops/
• Google+: https://plus.google.com/+Combatflipflops275

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Ozi is an African American mother, who noticed the lack of diversity in mass-manufactured dolls. Inspired by her own childhood, and encouraged by own her daughters, she created Ikuzi Dolls, a line of dolls with different shades of darker skin, and texturized hair.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• A lot of times when you need something, a lot of people out there need it too.
• My best advice before you start a Kickstarter campaign, is to amass some following.
• Start small, test, and then expand. But taking the leap and starting is the way to go.

See more from Ikuzi Dolls:

• Official Website: https://www.ikuzidolls.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ikuzidolls
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ikuzidolls/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ikuzidolls/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/ikuzidolls/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-hxxE4fO6RDktlieWQV7Jw

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Liora and Meagan are two acquaintances- turned business partners, crushing it, and enjoying every bit of working together. Learn from their lessons here.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• “If you are concerned with maintaining friendship above creating something together, you’ll start seeing problems.”
• “I would never consider bootstrapping without a partner, because no one else will ever understand the struggle.”
• “You have to admit to yourself when a work relationship is no longer working.”

Find out more about oVertone:

• Official Website: https://overtone.co/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/overtonecolor
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/overtonehaircare
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/overtonecolor/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/overtonehair/

See more from Liora and Maegan:

• Maegan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maeganscarlett/?hl=en
• Liora on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/k_liora/?hl=en

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Joey Sturgis started playing with music and computers straight out of high school, but he never thought he would end up building a business around it. Joey never received any formal business training, only through sheer determination and hard work, was he able pushed himself to learn everything necessary to succeed. Pick up tips from his journey.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• “At the end of the day, business is about human connection. You could be the best at what you do, but that doesn’t matter if you can’t talk to people.”
• “If you’re an introvert and need to network, it helps to remember that other people are probably just as nervous as you are.”
• “Today, we have tools that others before us didn’t have. There’s really no excuse for you to not go out there and test stuff.”

More about JoeySturgisTones:

• Official Website: https://joeysturgistones.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/joeysturgistone
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joeysturgistones
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joeysturgistones/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/joeysturgis
• Tumblr: http://joeysturgistones.tumblr.com/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Some of the best quotes from this episode:

• “I am very open about the mistakes I made, because as an entrepreneur, this is how you learn.”
• “What could go wrong? Always ask this question before making a decision.”
• “If you can live without a business expense, and it’s not going to affect your bottom line, don’t do it.”

Find BrothersLeatherSupply elsewhere

• Official Website: https://www.brothersleathersupply.com/
• Twitter https://twitter.com/brosleather
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brosleatherco
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brosleather/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/brosleather/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Adrian specializes in Ecommerce and social media marketing. He turned a few dollars from Facebook ads into a multi-million dollar marketing company, and today, he helps other entrepreneurs turn their Ecommerce businesses around. He is also the author of "Social media profits from your home Series”, and "20K Per Day eCom Secrets".

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• "Here is how you can tell if an ad is going to be a winner or a loser with only $5 a day, and within only 3 days."
• "Instead of forcing a product to sell, look for things that already have the “Sizzle Effect", and will immediately take off."
• "Let me tell you what’s easier than turning your passion into a profit: It’s turning other people’s passions, into your profit."

Find Adrian Morrison elsewhere:

• Official Website: AdrianMorrison.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdrianMorrison
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adrianmorrisonofficial/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, Rishi shares how he worked on Obama's election campaign before moving into local government, whereafter he joined Q-See in Customer Service. Over time he worked his way to the top and is now General Manager. He credits the lessons he learnt from his grandparents, which sees him taking chances and living a life without regrets.

Rishi also shares how they focus on the quality of their products, their customer service and how they've build a distribution network via big retailers.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• “Take chances and live a life without regrets.”
• “Meditation has helped me put life in perspective and step outside of situation in crisis.”
• “Connect with your customers around a bigger goal than just buying the product.”
• “Customer support is everything!”
• “Our biggest initial investment was the quality of our products.”

Find Q-See elsewhere:

• Store: https://q-see.com/
• Twitter: https://q-see.com/twitter.com/Q_SEE
• Facebook: https://q-see.com/Facebook.com/Qsee
• YouTube: https://q-see.com/youtube.com/qseesecurity
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/Q_SEE

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, we spoke to Nic Haralambous, who admits to having a sock fetish. Nic is the founder of the luxury men's brand, Nic Harry, and started his business by selling socks that he had to Photoshop into pairs. His first stock cost only $300, which he quickly converted to almost $5000 in sales.

We also dive into how he started selling socks to get out of a depressive funk, what's he's learn about being an entrepreneur and running physical retail stores is much easier than Ecommerce.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• “I’m pretty well-versed in failure.”
• “This thing has grown a little bigger than I thought it would.”
• “Our business is about gut decisions with a little bit of data behind it.”
• “Business is about tenacity, resilience and how pain you can handle.”
• “You have to be pre-conditioned to like the not-fun parts of being an entrepreneur.”
• “How do you know what success looks like if you haven’t failed?”
• “We solve problems manually for as long as we physically can.”
• “You have to offer value before you sell something.”

Find Nic Harry elsewhere:

• Store: http://nicharry.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/nicharrystyle
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NicHarryStyle
• Pinterest: https://za.pinterest.com/nicharrystyle
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicharrystyle

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, we talked to Oberon Vice-President, Becca Smith, who passionately shares their story and says "There's life beyond your phone". Becca - a cancer survivor - tells us how they've grown their handmade leather goods business, where they started promoting their goods at faires before getting their first website build in 2000. But she says: "We’ve made a good a living, but it’s never been about making a lot of money."

Tune in as we speak about being unique, making things that are valuable and how customers rely on businesses to be honest.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• “We make everything we make. So we can make our own decisions. We’re independent.”
• “People are more interested in American-made things today, but for years nobody cared.”
• “It’s hard for people to imagine that anything happens without the use technology.”
• “There is life beyond your phone.”
• “The most important thing is that you make something of valuable and something that is unique.”
• “We’ve made a good a living, but it’s never been about making a lot of money.”
• “It’s harder & harder to catch all the new waves in the marketplace. It takes a lot energy, savvy & smarts.”
• “Our customers rely on us for honesty and integrity.”
• “”

Find Oberon elsewhere:

• Store: http://www.oberondesign.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oberondesign
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/OberonDesigns
• Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/oberondesign
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/oberondesign

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode we speak to FiXT co-founder, James Rhodes, who says he's had to wear multiple hats over the years. James speaks about not necessarily knowing what the best path to take was, but that they dug in, experimented and were willing to fail.

We also hear how FiXT have grown their business through the evolution of the music industry from selling CD's to the inception of iTunes to today, where music streaming is FiXT's primary source of music-related revenue. And they've done this all through being in tune with their customers and not drinking too much of their own Kool-Aid.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• “I just kept volunteering for more opportunities.”
• “At one stage, I did demo’s of 20 different Ecommerce platforms.”
• “There wasn’t a clear path ahead of me, but I just dug into it.”
• “One of the biggest assets we’ve had is building a direct relationships with our customers.”
• “We’ve never depended on a single revenue channel.”
• “Business involves a lot of experimentation & a willingness that you may fail.”
• “The more automated our marketing is, the better our return on time investment.”

Find FiXT elsewhere:

• Store: https://fixtstore.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/fixtmusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fixtmusic
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Fixtmusic

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode we spoke to Neal's Yard CEO, Lisa Costello, and we do a deep dive about their company values and how everyone on the team shares those values. Lisa also gives us some insight into how they scaled their global business and built a chain of retail stores to compliment their Ecommerce activities.

And they've done all of this in a sustainable way which supports their vision of making organic skincare products that makes people feel beautiful.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• “One’s personal values should be reflected in the business.”
• “This is 2016. People are pretty comfortable using the internet.”
• “I found a product that I’m passionate about and can talk about all day long.”
• “If you can be passionate about your job, then you’re really lucky.”
• “Testimonials on your site builds the kind of trust that a customer has when walking into your store.”
• “I’m a huge fan of calendar entries. I’m also a constant list maker.”
• “You can probably solve any problem if you really wanted.”

Find Neal's Yard elsewhere:

• Store: http://www.nealsyardremedies.ca/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/NYR_Canada
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nealsyardremediescanada
• Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/nyr_canada
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/nealsyardremediescanada

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Stacey shares her #1 tip, which is to get to know your customers and tells us how she learnt more after her first two phone calls with customers than she had in the 10 years of running her business prior to that. She too says she used to think she knew and understood her customers' real needs until she started speaking to them on the phone or in person.

Beyond that Stacey also takes us along a walk of Memory Lane. SitStay was founded in 1995 and at some stage used technologies like Geocities and Yahoo Groups to help it grow. Today it uses a wide variety of tools to reach their customers, build loyalty and grow their business.

Oh... And as a bonus Stacey told us how they wanted to determine which of their dog toys was truly indestructible by running over the toys with a lawnmower. Repeatedly.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• "I go to sleep and all I can think about is solving the next problem."
• "The company started as a way to just showcase our favourite (dog) products."
• "We use Facebook to build loyalty. Most customers need to trust you before making a second purchase."
• "We need to understand our customers right at the ground-level."
• "I learnt more about my customers' needs in two phone calls than I did in 10 years prior."
• "We look at who our competition and we just try to do things better."
• "The biggest problem is that companies only advertise on social media when they want to sell."

Find Blackstone Labs elsewhere:

• Store: https://www.sitstay.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sitstaygooddogs
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dogsupplies
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sitstaydogs
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sitstaygooddogs/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Although Blackstone Labs had an early advantage in this regard, having been founded by popular bodybuilder PJ Braun, one has to admit that the company is doing a great job, especially with its visual marketing.

Blackstone Labs has a loyal audience of viewers and followers, and has successfully turned customers into advocates online by being open, good listeners. More importantly, David emphasizes the importance of being honest even if, and especially when, you are dealing with a controversial product.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• "We didn't market ourselves as a big company selling. We were just honest."
• "Grassroots marketing is about talking to customers directly; not about getting a billboard."
• "Over 60% customers of our customers will buy at least 6 times."
• "Business isn't that hard once you hire good people that can just talk to each other."
• "We curse a lot. We're very rogue."
• "If social media didn't exist, we will not be where we are today. I don't think it could've happened."
• "It's much easier to sell to someone that trusts you."

Find Blackstone Labs elsewhere:

• Store: https://blackstonelabs.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/blackstonelabs
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackstoneLabs/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Aaronsingerman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blackstonelabs/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, he talks to us about the paramount importance of being true to yourself.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• "Our brand name tells people that we don’t take ourselves too seriously."
• "What we do is very much an extension of ourselves."
• "If a new idea doesn’t pass our bullshit test, then we don’t pursue it."
• "Every time you get stuck, just go 10% further. That mantra has separated me from possibly failing to being successful."
• "If you don’t try bullshit customers, they’ll get on your side."

Find Violent Little Machine Shop elsewhere:

• Store: http://www.violentlittle.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/violentlittle/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/violentlittle
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/violentlittle/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this episode, we talk about partnering with other talents as a business model and growth strategy.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• "What draws me to entrepreneurship is building my own best life."
• "We don’t sell anything that we wouldn’t wear ourselves."
• "As an entrepreneur, you have to be comfortable with a certain level of uncertainty."
• "Having control of your finances and data is what makes an early business sustainable."
• "If there’s a reason to start a business, it’s to run it the way you want to run it."

Find Hello Holiday elsewhere:

• Store: http://helloholiday.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShopHelloHoliday/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/helloholiday
• Pinterst: https://www.pinterest.com/helloholiday/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/helloholiday/
• Blog: http://blog.helloholiday.com/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

Sander never buys from Chinese factories or street vendors. The team goes directly to the artists every year, and ensures that the mission of creating an ethical, sustainable sourcing, is implemented and enforced even after nearly 2 decades. With his dedication to improving their lives, Sander built a community of loyal suppliers, who have now become like family. The rewards have been tremendous, both on the business and personal level.

Some of the best quotes from the episode:

• "If you don’t love the products you’re selling, I don’t think you can be truly successful selling those products."
• "If you’re not going to be good at failing, you’re not going to be good at life."
• "We’re not going away, because we’re not a trend. We buy and sell products that we care about."
• "Businesses definitely have the responsibility for telling the truth about how they source and buy products."
• "This is a life that is full of headaches running your own business."

Find DharmaShop elsewhere:

• Store: https://www.dharmashop.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dharmashop
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dharmashop
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedharmashop/
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/dharmashop/

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.

In this prologue, Adii shares some of the inspiration and motivation for why the Receiptful team has produced this podcast. He also shares their hopes and goals with the podcast (hint: it's about telling the stories of eCommerce businesses in a way that helps others learn and grow).

Credits:

• Music featured in this episode was "Celery Man" by Birocratic and can be found at www.soundcloud.com/birocratic.
• This podcast was produced by comealivecreative.com.