Chase Dimond - Ep 1: The Ecommerce Opportunity

Hey guys, Chase Diamond here. I'm super pumped to bring you guys episode one of this new podcast I'm doing. I'm calling it the e-commerce opportunity. Um, for this first episode, I'm just going to talk through kind of the podcast and answer some questions that have been prepared. And then I'll be bringing on other people throughout the coming weeks and months. We'll be asking them about the opportunities in their industry. I've actually got my brother here. My brother's Connor. Some of you guys know him from Twitter. He does a e-commerce email marketing as well. So he's going to ask me these questions. So it's less weird of me asking myself. So we're going to dive in, please shoot us some feedback on the audio quality, the questions, you know, anyone that wants to be on the podcast, anyone that wants to recommend them for the podcast and looking forward to it. So let's, let's dive in. Yeah, man, to start people might be curious, like what are you working on right now? So right now I'm a partner at an agency called structured. I'm one of four partners. We have 50 employees on our team right now. We have actually four different departments. So we have a email team. We have an SMS team, a paid social team and a content team. And we have employees across six different countries. So one of four partners focused on the retention side on the retention side of the business that really is email and SMS. We have about 35 employees there and we're working with about 55 clients on the email side and about 15 on the SMS side. Outside of that, a lot of you guys are on my newsletter. I have almost 10,000 subscribers there as well as a paid newsletter with about 110 people. And then I have two courses, which has fortunately crossed the 1000 buyer mark. Yeah. So you mentioned your, how do you structure your team? So right now with our team, um, we have five core roles on the email side. So we've got email marketers, we've got account managers, we've got email designers, we've got copywriters and we've got developers, right? So the email marketers, just like it sounds, they're really focused on strategy and the ultimate execution. The copywriters are focused on all things written, right? So all the verbiage within the email, the text, the designers are obviously focused on the design. Um, the account managers are focused on keeping us organized, managing the project management system, doing the reporting and that sort of thing. And then the developers are actually custom coding these emails. So that way they render properly across all devices, whether that be your phone, your iPad, your desktop, so on and so forth. And each of these pods can manage depending on how experienced they are, whether they're junior or senior, you know, depending on kind of the lift for the client. So we've got two different pricing tiers. So we've got one that's a little bit lighter in terms of emails per month and one's a little bit heavier. So depending on some of those things, you know, our team can take on anywhere from maybe five to seven to six to eight accounts. So this group of five people can manage five to seven or six to eight accounts, um, sometimes more and sometimes a little bit less. Gotcha. So you have like a lot of team members. How do you keep everything so structured? So on the communication side, we're using Slack. So Slack is used for both internal communication with just our team, as well as communication with clients. So for every single client, we have two channels. We've got one channel that actually has the client in it. And then we have another channel without the client where we're posting up notes and sharing documents and sharing feedback. So Slack is a big one. We have a weekly call every single week with a client. That typically is done on Google meets or Slack calls or zoom. We are using a platform called notion.so for the project management. It's similar to an Asana or Trello or a monday.com. So there we store all the meeting notes. We're storing all the brand assets, right? Things like fonts, photography, videography. We're keeping track of all the flows that we're working on, right? All the email automations. Then we're also keeping all the campaigns in there. So clients can come in and see where something's at. They can look at the calendar for the month. We're typically planning a month out so clients can come in and see, Hey, we've got this campaign for this holiday going out tomorrow. We've got this product launch email going out in a few days, so on and so forth. So we've got Slack, we've got, you know, Google meets, Google hangouts, you know, notion. We're using Klaviyo for our email marketing. So almost all of our clients, if not all of our clients are using Klaviyo for the email side. SMS is a newer service of the agency. We're using posts kind of postscript for that primarily. And then outside of that, you know, we will use other platforms like Figma for design and so on and so forth. And then for me on the core side, I'm primarily using Klaviyo to send out emails and then I'm using Podia for my course platform. And I'll also use things like Typeform to send surveys and pull my audience. Yeah. So it seems like you have a good structure. So how are you bringing on new talent and that you keep up to speed? So us in terms of vetting clients, so my little brother actually does freelance recruiting for us. He's posting job descriptions and job postings on platforms like LinkedIn. And we're also hitting up our network. We'll post on social about opening roles and everyone's been really helpful in terms of sending people in. So every team has a team lead, have a department head. So that department head will typically do the very first interview. And if the person is a good fit, they'll then interview with someone else on that team. So say, for example, someone's on the copy side, they want to interview for a copywriting role. Our head of copy will come in. She'll interview the person. She'll either give a thumbs up or a thumbs down. You know, if a thumbs down we'll have our recruiter kindly send them a message saying, thanks so much for wanting to work with us. Unfortunately, it's not the best fit now, but we'll keep you in mind in the future. And if it's a thumbs up, then we'll have one or two other people on the copy team actually interview that person. And if they also give thumbs up, we will ask that person what their hourly rate is. We'll assign them kind of some tests and fake project. We will pay them for that project. And if the project works out, right. So in the case of the copy, if the copy for the welcome series or the abandoned cards or some campaign checks out, we will then offer these people a part-time role on a few clients. And we'll kind of deck them from a cultural fit from, you know, an attitude fit from an output fit, those types of things. And if they're a good fit across all the different things we're looking for, we'll make them an offer to join our team full time. So we are pretty slow to hire and we're pretty quickly to let people know if they're not a good fit. So we're always paying people for their time. It does cost a lot more money to do it that way, but it really helps us weed people out from the beginning. Yeah. It's like, obviously you're establishing what's going on. How can someone new doesn't have as much experience as you do at the stage, like get into human marketing, like what can they do and how can they do it? So I think there's a lot of free resources available, right? I think, you know, go on YouTube, look at YouTube content. Um, I have a free weekly newsletter. I think a lot of other people have really great newsletters. So you can learn a lot by just listening to podcasts like this, from watching the YouTube videos I put out with other experts in the field, you know, follow those people. I would subscribe and sign up to, you know, bunch of brands that you like their, their newsletters, right. Brands that you're buying from take notice of their post-purchase emails, right? Do these types of things, you know, other ways are to get an internship or a job at an agency, um, or really just shadow kind of other people. But at the end of the day, nothing will teach you email marketing, like actually getting thrown into the weeds and trying it yourself, right? So reach out to friends and family and people in your network and offer to help them for free. Um, maybe even take a paid course. You know, I have a paid course. There's a lot of other people that have great paid courses. I think courses that help you learn are a great way to kind of be a shortcut to success. I actually started with a course, um, you know, four or five, six years ago at this point on email that really helped me get started. But at the end of the day, you don't know what you don't know until you actually start and try. So don't be afraid to fail. Just try to find someone to help whether it's for free or for pennies on the dollar and getting that hands-on experience will help you learn very quickly. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I remember when I started out eight months ago, yeah. All right, Chase. I like, I like client. Where should I focus my initial efforts? Like how can I make sure like they're going to want to stay with me since I'm new to the game? Yeah. So when you're first taking on a brand, there's a couple of things that I look to do. One is starting with the email collection form, right? So whether it be a pop-up or a flyout, I'll typically look at what a brand has. Sometimes they won't even have anything. So I'll either a build a pop-up or some kind of flat for a brand or B, I'll run an AB test on what they have versus what I think is good. You know, small incremental changes here can really lead to big wins, especially as your clients are larger. So for us, most of the clients that we work with do about seven to nine figures a year and annual revenue. So they're getting thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of visits every single month to their website. So being able to increase the conversion on a form is huge, right? So that's one starting with the form running AB tests and trying to optimize that, you know, aim for about five to 10% of your traffic to turn into an email address to that pop-up in that form is going to trigger then a welcome series, right? So either a build a welcome series for the first time or B, if they have a welcome series, run a playbook that you maybe have or maybe that you're learning on how you'd build a welcome series, because that's going to be crucial. An email one in the welcome series should drive the most engagement and the most revenue out of all the emails in that automation. So I personally always resend that email with a new subject line after 24 hours. If people have not opened that email before funneling them down to emails, two, three, and four. So that's two. Um, the third thing I would do is what's called the abandoned checkout and it's different than the abandoned cart, right? The abandoned checkout. You either can send to people that are a already on your list or B that you collect at the checkout. If they've entered their name, their phone number, their email, their address, right? So those are the two ways that someone could be eligible to receive an abandoned checkout. And it's going to be really high converting both in terms of, you know, dollar and kind of percentage just because these people are so far down the funnel, um, you're able to easily move them from consideration and conversion. Oftentimes people get distracted. Maybe they're looking to see if you're going to send a discount or an offer. Um, so they're kind of waiting until you send those emails to purchase. So if you don't have those emails, that's a huge missed opportunity. And then lastly, once someone buys from you, it doesn't end there. You have to say thank you. Right. So having some basic post-purchase, you know, a customer, thank you. Here's some more info while you wait, all those types of things. We reduce buyer's remorse. They build rapport with the customer. Um, and they really set up hopefully getting a good positive review, you know, from this customer. Yeah. So people are setting these up. We're doing a work. How should we be pricing as an agency? Like our efforts, I'm saying the welcome series, how am I supposed to price this? So in terms of everyone I've talked to and everything that I've seen, um, there's three different tiers, right? So you've got the low end, the mid end and the high end of the low end is just people that are typically starting out. So the low end of pricing, I typically see between about one to 3000, maybe two to $4,000 a month is what agencies and freelancers are charging. Um, in the mid tier, you're about four to $6,000 a month. And then the high tier is about seven to $10,000 a month. So for us at our agency, um, we have two tiers. Uh, one is $5,500 a month and the other is $7,000 a month. And the only difference in those two packages is the number of emails per month. So the $7,000 per month package, you just get more emails than kind of the starter base package. But in all of them you get strategy, copy, design, reporting, implementation, AB testing, deliverability, so on and so forth. So if you're starting out, right, test it from pricing. The beginning stages is all about getting case studies and repetitions and you know, testimonials. So really focused on adding value. Don't focus as much about your price, right? Price is important, but it's more important to get that hands on experience and those testimonials. So that way you can land more clients more easily and larger clients over time. Yeah. So like obviously at first, like you said, once I'm actually established, like, how do you know if a client's good fit in your eyes? Like you'd say yes or no. So I think depending on where you're at and the type of businesses you're looking to work with, I think you'd have different criteria speaking for ourselves. So for us, you know what platform they're using is really important. So we're only currently working with brands that are on Klaviyo. So if someone's on drip or OmniSend or MailChimp, you know, we say, Hey, unfortunately it's not the right fit for us. You know, if you're willing to migrate to Klaviyo, great. If not, we'd be happy to make an intro to another agency or freelancer. That'd be a better fit. So that's one is the platform that they're on. Two is their list size. So because you know, we're charging, you know, 5,500 to $7,000 a month, we're typically only working with companies that have a list size of at least 10 to 15,000 subscribers on their list. So for you, that might be less, that might be the same. It might be more. So subscribers is one. And then three, right, is also looking at how much percent of revenue is coming from email. You know, are they at 1%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 50%, right? If they're at 30, 40, 50, 60%, you know, we'll honestly say to them, Hey, you probably don't need us. You're doing a really great job, but here's some of the ways in which you can increase it. Right. So we'll kind of give them feedback in an audit of, Hey, you realistically don't need us. But if you do this one or two things, I think you can have some pretty big incremental wins. So we're looking kind of to see like the percentage of revenue coming from email and like what all they have to make sure that we're honest and transparent about whether someone is or is not a good fit. Some people even say it's dead. So moving in 2021, like why are you so bullish on email? Why is it so powerful? Yeah. I mean, I've been bullish on email for a long time. I probably would be super bullish on email irrespective of this, but one of the big reasons in my mind is everything that's happening with iOS 14 and also Google getting rid of cookies on Chrome. And I think 2022, it is so next year. Um, so with all of that, right, there's a lot of kind of stuff happening. You know, ads are going to be a lot less relevant to some degree if people opt out. So essentially what iOS 14 is to kind of quickly explain it is if you do not consent to letting apps track you, it does not mean that you will not see ads. It just means that the ads that you're going to see are going to be a whole lot less relevant, which hurts all parties involved. It hurts consumers. And even as much as consumers complain about, Oh, they're listening to what we're talking about. They know everything we're looking at as much as people complain about that. I think you'll actually complain more when the ads have nothing to do and are more general with the things that you care about, right? That the ads are great because of discovery and awareness for consumers. Um, for brands, they're going to have to cast a wider net and kind of, you know, try more chances and more channels to really figure out what lands. So brands are going to have less insight and visibility into what's actually working and why. And then lastly, right. It hurts platforms, right? That hurts Facebook and all these other platforms because of that reason. And with that being said with Facebook and Instagram, all these other top of funnel channels being too unpredictable, right? They're expensive and they're unpredictable. They're very much a necessary, right? With everything I do on middle to the bottom of the funnel, we are solely dependent on the traffic that comes through and Facebook and Instagram are great channels. But 2021 in my opinion is the year of diversifying your marketing mix before you used to be able to scale your brand off the backs of Facebook and Instagram alone. Now in 2021 and beyond, I think own channels like email and SMS being the primary two are a must have more brands are realizing that they need the diversity of this marketing mix. More brands are realizing that they need email emails predictable. It's profitable. It's something that you control. So I think because of that email and SMS are going to be incredible channels for brands to leverage and agencies and freelancers to offer. So if you're thinking about offering email, if you're thinking about offering SMS, the answer is yes. Go learn as fast as you can go learn as quick as you can. There's so many brands popping up every single day. We're in the e-commerce gold rush and those are great channels that a lot of brands need, but don't know where to start. Yeah. So like use structure agency and all that stuff. Like the people that stuck around are still listening. I mean like where's some recent quick wins or things that you can take away and implement immediately and like come see this as a golden nugget. So one thing I actually haven't talked to anyone about, um, this is something we've been testing over the past couple of months is basically testing the, from name. So a lot of testing goes into the subject line. That's obviously super important. People were texting the preview text. That's obviously really important. Um, but from the, from name, we're actually testing sending it from an email address. So typically let's say, for example, you're on my personal newsletter. It would say from chase diamond. I'm actually testing and our team is testing this and they're testing this on our e-commerce brands, testing it from chase at chase diamond, um, dot com. Right? So again, instead of it coming from chase diamond, it's going to say chase at chase diamond.com. I'm not talking about the actual email that it's coming from. The email is going to be the same that it always has been, but the from name itself will come from an email address. Um, so I actually was looking before this podcast at some interesting data. We have a jewelry company, they sell jewelry for men's and by testing it with their company name, right? So let's say the company name is chase versus, you know, support at chase.com sending it from the support chase.com had a 41.1% open rate. Whereas the company name only had a 32% open rate and that was on 37,000 cents for each variation. Right? So a lot of data. Um, the other one outperformed it by a long shot. So I'm looking at the data. That was an additional 3000 people opening the email that came from the email address with the from name that then led to so many more clicks because way more people opened it. So the difference in clicks was 3.45% for the, um, the better one. And then the other one was 2.3%. That's a difference in like 300 to 400 clicks. So again, to round this out, hopefully this makes sense. Most companies just have a from name as whatever their company name is. Most people do that. It's a standard, that's the norm. Someone on our team had the idea of sending from an email address as the from name. And that's been a huge win. And I have, you know, dozens and dozens of data points and tests to back this up. I think that's probably been the biggest win that I've seen lately in terms of email kind of execution and then kind of some recent learnings that may or may not be interesting on the agency side for people that are starting or people that are established. Um, I actually posted a thread about this on Twitter recently, but a few really important points are, you know, good clients are everything. We're being a lot more strict where if clients are rude or if they're disrespectful for our team, we're just going to respectfully let them go. You know, we've worked with all sorts of clients and we always come to the same conclusion that if we vibe and we like the clients that we work with, it makes what we do all that much more fun. Um, and even if clients pay well, one bad client spoils the bunch. It is not worth it. I think the last other kind of learning that I've had on the agency side lately is how important it is to hire well. Having good people is the most important thing for the success of a business like ours. Being in a service business, people are everything, right? Obviously processes and systems are huge, but if you don't have the right people to put into the right process, it's going to be very difficult, right? So don't do everything on your own. Focus on hiring the best people, letting them work, staying out of their way. Great team members are expensive, but they're absolutely worth it. All sounds awesome. Is there anywhere else people can find out where they can just keep doing these nuggets? Yeah. If you're not already, um, following me on Twitter, if not already on my newsletter, my YouTube channel, check out those. This podcast is something I'm really excited about. Um, Connor thank you for being here. Connor's handle on Twitter is diamond email. I know he copied me. His profile looks like mine. He is a different person. Um, so go follow Connor as well. And for you listening to us, you know, if you made it this far, this is the end. Thank you so much for listening and being here. Hope you've enjoyed this. Please send me feedback. Let me know how the audio was. Let me know your thoughts on these questions. Um, the goal here, right? Is really to uncover opportunity within verticals, within e-commerce. So I'll be interviewing founders of brands, founders of agencies, freelancers about what they're seeing working, any tips and tricks that they have. So please send me your feedback and we'll go from there. Thank you guys. Thank you.