Episode 2 of my New Series w/Graeme McLaughlin

Hey guys, I'm super excited to have Graham here. Graham is the head of marketing at Avalo Evolo. He just told me how to say it. I already butchered it. Graham, how are you doing today? I'm doing great, how are you? Doing well, thanks man. And how do I pronounce the name of the company? Avelo. Avelo, cool. You just told me that and I already forgot, so Avelo. Do you mind telling me a little bit about kind of your role and a little bit about the company? Yeah, so Avelo's been around since 2013. We kind of design and manufacture electric bikes and we, yeah, so we design and manufacture electric bikes primarily for an older size of the audience. So it's not really kind of commuters that are kind of zipping around or bike couriers, but we kind of work with people that are trying to lead a healthier and more active lifestyle but need a little bit more support than a mechanical bike can give them to be able to kind of get up hills and be able to keep up with everyone that's in their group. That's awesome. So the company was founded in 2013. How long have you been there? I've been there since February this year. Oh wow. Oh yeah, so new. And were you at another, I guess, competitor or another person in the space or were you completely different in terms of background? No, so I've worked, I led the e-commerce team at MEC. So if you so I'm in Canada. So if you think of REI, that's the Canadian equivalent of REI. So they're an outdoor gear retailer. They work on a co-op model. And so similar in terms of cycling and kind of gear, but really different in terms of scale. Yeah, makes sense. Well, I mean, it makes sense, transition, adventure, outdoor, ride bikes. So it makes sense. So question for you, and again, this wasn't one I was planning on asking. I didn't know you just started in February. What's it been like starting in a role where you're leading a marketing team now when you can't really be in person with people? What is that like for you? It's interesting. I've got a background of working remote. So like that side of thing isn't new. The company's kind of headquarters or like our main warranty and parts center distribution warehouse is all in Seattle. So originally the plan was the founder was going to fly up from Boston. We were going to meet up in Seattle. I was going to get a bike and it was all going to go kind of peachy. But right as we're kind of piecing together the onboarding kind of COVID kind of got a lot more serious and kind of travel was getting a lot more restricted. And we decided that we're just going to push that off. I think in terms of kind of building relationships with the team, it's been a little different just because you don't have that same kind of, usually even if it's a remote role, you have that face-to-face time at the start. But that hasn't happened. So we've had to kind of find other ways to kind of build those connections and lots of Slack jokes and kind of gift sharing. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, appreciate you answering that. So when you were kind of onboarding coming into the company, under the marketing realm, obviously there's tons of acquisition, SEO, influencers, email. Obviously we're going to talk a lot today about email, but what were kind of the things that you thought you're going to be working on? Like when you came in, you immediately see an opportunity acquisition and email and this, that, and the other. Like what did the kind of that look like? Yeah, I think to begin with, so traditionally we've kind of done well on the back of paid, mostly on paid search. But we we knew that we weren't, the company kind of knew internally that they weren't getting the best kind of return on that spend and they were starting to kind of see it degrade. So one of the first kind of pieces that I was tasked with was kind of working out like, what does our marketing mix look like for the rest of the year? And how do we want to kind of write the ship in terms of strategy? It's interesting because one of our big competitors kind of got an injection of funding. So they're kind of spending everywhere. So we had to kind of work out, well, where can we compete? A big part of my kind of background is on the conversion optimization kind of side of things and particular kind of qualitative research. So doing a lot of customer interviews to be able to understand kind of jobs to be done, like what are your customers kind of going through? So we started there interviewing kind of 20 customers, all kind of lining up, kind of, we did a batch before COVID hit and then some more kind of during so that we could kind of understand like how things are kind of shifting as well. We saw that there's, within our page, like we're, we don't have the budget to compete just kind of full out on page. So we decided to kind of really focus it in on where we could win. And it's less about that kind of direct sale and using it more to kind of support other pieces of content that's a bit more kind of top of funnel and mid funnel to kind of bring people in. We know that email is a huge driver for us. So instead of kind of just buying clicks, we want to bring people in and then kind of get their, get them on one of our lists and kind of one of the welcome flows that we have and kind of nurture them over time. Awesome, man. That's fantastic. Yeah, I really want to dive into the email part right now. I do want to kind of like preface some of the email conversation with what we discussed before. Am I quickly talking a little bit about kind of like the AOV and kind of how your marketing might be a little bit different than a traditional kind of D2C company? Yeah, so this is my first real kind of internally working with a D2C brand. When I looked out and kind of got to know other people in the D2C space and kind of looking for that ever elusive kind of playbook, everyone's kind of talking about kind of LTV and repeat purchase, nudging kind of upsells by kind of 10% and then kind of growing with like frequency of purchase instead of that first time sale. For us, it's really different. So the bikes range from $2,500 to $4,000. And our AOV kind of average cart size comes in at around $3,000. So I would say like our sales process, we have a sales team that are on the phone. So they're all bike mechanics as well. So it's a little bit different than a typical kind of D2C kind of play where your AOV is a lot lower and you're going for that kind of repeat purchase. Yeah, that's super helpful. Appreciate that contact. So diving in, like how big is the marketing team today? And you mentioned a little bit before, but like how do you think about email and your overall strategy? A lot of brands, I know it's an afterthought. What does it look like for you guys in terms of the team size and kind of how marketing does or doesn't factor in? Yeah, so it can break it into chunks. So the team size is one. There's just myself on the team. We've started to work with a network of contractors on retainer to help with different parts of our kind of acquisition mix as well. So we have one person that's kind of just starting on social media for us. And we have a writer and then a graphic kind of subscription team as well that help kind of create designs for us. Got it. So you're the sole marketing person internally. You're running the strategy and you kind of leverage these freelancers, these vendors, for lack of a better word, to kind of do the copy and the design and whatnot. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. Cool. And then in terms of platform, what email platform are you currently using? So we're using Klaviyo. Awesome. And were they on Klaviyo prior to you joining or did you make the switch from some other platform to Klaviyo because you knew that wasn't as good? No. So they were already on Klaviyo. When I kind of came in, our email list size was kind of 60k. And we've had to do a lot of work kind of moving through the engagement kind of phase. So we were sending to everybody originally. I know we've had to kind of chunk that out and kind of go through kind of re-engagement with some of that and kind of segmentation to kind of focus more on the higher engaged segments of the list. Yeah. Yeah. So I think like traditionally we just kind of sent, we're like heavy, heavy on kind of discounts and we're really trying to shift away from that to kind of position ourselves more kind of value-based. So as you do that transition, what are your thoughts, just random questions, like what are your thoughts on like the customer base that knows and loves you guys for the discounts versus people that are coming in that aren't getting those? Like are you sending the same messages you think to those people? How do you think about that, right? Because people that are always used to discounts, right? Do you start selling things at retail value without it? Do they buy it and not buy it? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. I think with our audience, it's just a little bit different because it's not a kind of replenishment. Like people are in the market for a certain amount of time. And from the research, like if they're making a purchase decision, they're either deciding that electric bike kind of isn't for them at that moment in time, or they're going with a different kind of provider. So we know that people are going to research for about kind of six months, maybe even a year in some cases. But from our first kind of contact with them, they're getting to a purchase decision kind of fairly quickly. We see kind of discounting as a way to kind of nudge it over the finish line, but it's not really a draw to get people kind of in the door, or they already have to be kind of active and engaged because the type of money that we're talking about, like no one's kind of dropping that on their impulse purchase. Yeah, that makes absolute sense. So in terms of like the execution, the strategy in terms of both like the campaigns and the flows, right? So campaigns for everyone that's listening, it's like a one-time send to a group of contacts. I think Black Friday sale, I think a holiday or a product launch, obviously like the flow, kind of the automations out of the house is like the welcome series for non-buyers, the abandoned cart. So I just want to preface that for kind of anyone listening and watching this. How do you guys split your time between campaigns and flows? Like would you say half the time each week is spent on one? Is it more kind of month or quarterly thing? Like how do you split time between the two? So we prioritize the flows first. So we're kind of revamping everything just now. So we spent the last kind of six weeks getting the flows kind of straightened out and revamped. We kind of went with status quo with what we're sending on the campaign side, and now we're kind of doubling back and kind of focusing on the campaigns themselves. So I think it's kind of like you're spinning plates and you've got to kind of give it a little nudge every so often to kind of keep it going. But we're kind of going back and forth between the two. We've got a good base of flows that are set up, probably have about five or six kind of solid that are producing for us. And we're looking at like where we're in that kind of path, like from email acquisition to kind of purchase. Does it make sense to add more? Awesome. Yeah, that's great. I appreciate that. On the campaign side, how many campaigns per week on average? Again, it sounds like a lot of the flow is kind of focused recently. Like a typical week or typical month, like how many campaigns per week are you sending? And kind of how far in advance are you guys planning? Yeah, so we're trying to get like farther ahead. It's been really kind of fly by the seat of your pants of late. And we're trying to switch that up to get an annual kind of calendar of themes and then kind of breaking it down on a six week basis as like what is the relevant kind of messages that we want to send in line with those themes. One of the things that we kind of learned was that we're not sending enough email to our list. So we have kind of more capacity for campaigns. So originally we were sending once a week and now we're looking at twice a week. Awesome. Yeah, everyone asks me, right? Like how do you make more money from emailing? And typically one of the low hanging fruit is you're not sending enough, right? You really have to find the equilibrium between sending enough where you're maximizing revenue, but not sending too much right where you're, you know, increasing the churn. So yeah, I think that one to two week, right, two to three week, like that probably is going to feel like a sweet spot. And you guys are probably pretty happy with the revenue driven. So that's great. In terms of like planning emails and kind of executing emails, are there any like project management tools? Again, like I know it's you, that's kind of the person, one person marketing, you have people that you're working with. Are you communicating with these people on Slack or using something like Sana and Trello? Like how do you plan and organize kind of campaigns that you're working on or even flows that you're working on? Yeah. So we do a hybrid of just like a Google sheet and then Slack for kind of back and forth communication. Got it. And like what's an average turnaround time for like an email, right? So say you have an email idea, you give out kind of the brief or whatever the input you're giving, like how long does it take like copy and design and kind of switch you something back? Days. So yeah. And I guess really kind of the last question that I have, and then if you have anything else to add, would love to hear, are there any other tools that you guys are using kind of that helped with your marketing efforts, whether it's a design tool, I don't know, might be your designer that might know that better or a pop-up tool that you're using if you're not using Klaviyo forms, like are there any tools that you would recommend for people, you know, listening and watching to check out that you've really found value in? Yeah. So there's, there's kind of two things, like one email acquisition is really important for us. We know we're trying to kind of hit a 10% opt-in rate. We've been using, we tried a couple of different tools. So we used OptinMonster for a while and we wanted to kind of upgrade and see like what else we could see. So we tried JustDoNull and that one didn't really kind of hit the mark for us in terms of being able to kind of quickly test and iterate on new ideas. So we're still, we're still, we're still kind of trying to find out like what the, what the best kind of tool is for that. And we're trying to like, ideally I'm looking for something that has a bit of a two-way sync in terms of information so that if we've driven traffic from our email newsletter, we don't want to hit them with a pop-up like to sign up for our email newsletter. And the other, the other kind of piece, so lots of people kind of are using quizzes right now and we found that to be a really good kind of driver for us as well. We had something that was kind of custom built in WordPress. We're going through a migration entirely to Shopify just now, so we had to rebuild the quiz and we just launched a version of Typeform. And what we're finding is we're able to get a lot more information from our customers and prospects and we want to start kind of echoing that back through calls to actions and pop-ups as well as like in the email kind of series as well. That's awesome. And on the quiz side, is this where you're sending paid traffic only? Are you also sending people that are less to this to learn more? Both. So we tried like a campaign that was entirely cold just straight through the quiz and because we have this kind of level of kind of B2B in the mix, like we do a little bit of lead qualification as well through the answers and we're finding that if it was entirely cold, like they didn't know enough about us to make it worthwhile for our sales team to kind of run a follow-up. So we've been testing different landing pages and kind of showing them more of the product and the product kind of value prop and then having them kind of go through the quiz. Awesome, that makes sense. Last question I got a lot, this is actually not the last question. What are your thoughts at least with your demo and what are you seeing between like plain text emails and kind of nicely designed email? Are you testing both? Does one fit better or your thoughts on that? Yeah, that's another thing that's interesting that you bring that up because that's something we're testing at the moment. When we've, I think some of the plain text especially like the personal ones like from the founder and some of the team members, we're using those more in nurture sequences if they talk to sales or someone internally on the team. I think when I joined like our template was kind of subpar for the newsletter. We kind of went to one extreme on design and it was really like kind of flash zing zang polished and that really helped with clicks. We've kind of scaled it back a little bit just to help us with production so that we're not having to create entirely new kind of custom images for and kind of embedding them in the template for every email. Yeah, that's awesome man. Well, thank you so much. Unless you have anything else to add, I really appreciate you hopping on. If someone wants to connect with you or learn more or ask you any questions, is there an easy way? I know obviously we talk a lot on Twitter, is Twitter a platform, is it email, is it LinkedIn? How can people connect with you? Yeah, so Twitter or LinkedIn is great. Awesome. I'll grab your handle for this video but do you mind just giving us the handle name right now? Yeah, so it's Graham Mac and it's G-R-A-M-E-M-A-C. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate all the insight you shared. Yeah, it's been great. Thanks. Awesome. Thanks, bud.