Exploring the Depths of Email and SMS Marketing with Nikita Vakhrushev | Nikita Vakhrushev

Well, hello and welcome to the e commerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Now this is a show all about helping you deliver E commerce. Wow. And to help us do just that, I'm chatting with today's special guest, Nikita Vakrushchev from Aspect about the secret email and SMS strategies you have got to get your head around.

Oh yes, we're going to be talking about email. We're going to be talking about SMS. We're going to be talking. about that to some insane depths. I have no doubt. Now, because it's such a hot topic, you're going to want to get the notes and the transcript from today's show, which you can get at the website, ecommercepodcast.

net. But if you have already signed up to the newsletter, guess what? They'll be going straight to your inbox. And if you haven't got it signed up to the newsletter yet, make sure you do that. You can do that at ecommercepodcast. [00:01:00] net. Just put in your name and email address. All we'll do is we'll send you a weekly sort of update of the guests we've had, the notes, the links to the guests, all those kind of good things, they come straight to you, which is awesome.

Now, big shout out to eCommerce Cohort, that's who brings you this show, the eCommerce podcast. The eCommerce Cohort is our monthly membership group. And it's amazing, even if I do say so myself, which of course I'm going to I'm in there, whole bunch of people are in there. We get expert workshops every month from e commerce experts, basically.

They come in, they share their knowledge, we learn a whole great deal from them. Plus, there's a little bonus, oh yes. If you're in in the cohort, if you're a member. You can join us on the live recordings of the podcast, which is just fantastic. They get played into the cohort. You can come along, talk to the guests, ask the questions, and it's just.

Good. Fun. So yes, go ahead and join the cohort, ecommercecohort. [00:02:00] com is the website URL. If you want to know more, that's ecommercecohort. com. Tell them Matt sent you and I'll see you in there. Now let's talk to Nikita. From Aspect, the digital marketing wizard who turned his e commerce dream into a booming agency reality with a playbook of marketing magic under his belt.

Nikita found his golden goose in email and SMS marketing, scaling over 100 plus DTC brands. Now. Wielding email as his bread and butter, he's here to share his secret sauce on squeezing every last drop of success from your brand's retention channels. Oh yes, I'm loving this bio. Buckle up, it's gonna be an electrifying ride.

Nikita, welcome to the show man, great to have you. How are we doing today, sir?

Nikita Vakhrushev: Appreciate you, Matt. Thank you for having me on. I don't remember if I wrote that bio or if that was one of your assistants, but I do like the kind words and [00:03:00] I'm also glad that you brought up the newsletter for the show because I am part of it and I did get a You're one on Jason Wood this morning.

I see, you're doing it right with email. So

Matt Edmundson: We should get some tips from you on how to do that newsletter better Rather than just assume I'm doing everything, right? Excuse me, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, I have got a bit of a cold, which is why I've Got a few nasal tones going on here You'll be pleased to know my man flu has not been so serious that I've had to call the paramedics But it has been close on occasion we're getting better.

So yes do sign up for the newsletter. So Jason Woods obviously come out today, which is going to give you some indication of when this was recorded and when it goes out. But yeah it's good that those are going out and there's quite a few thousand people on the newsletter list.

Come join them. Why not be there or be square? I don't mind either way. It works for me now. NIkita, where we were talking before we hit the record button, you're based over in Nashville, right? Nashville, Tennessee.

Nikita Vakhrushev: Yes, sir. Yeah, I moved here about [00:04:00] a year and a half ago. And recently we, my girlfriend and I actually just moved from our apartment into a house.

So for the last two weeks, it's been nothing but chaos. And it's right smack dab in the middle of Q4. So we're just in the middle of unpacking, moving and everything. And Clients are asking for their Black Friday, 7 Monday emails and whatnot. So it's just, yeah, busy time. It's a lot to juggle, I'm glad I moved here.

It's, people are very nice. It's a beautiful city and the weather isn't as bad as Chicago, which is where I'm from originally.

Matt Edmundson: Okay. Okay. Yeah, you've just gone down south a little bit, haven't you, really? And yeah, Nashville, the home of good country music

Nikita Vakhrushev: music City,

Matt Edmundson: that's what we call it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I lived in North Carolina for a little while, so just across the border and but never actually made it to Nashville. Never. It's one of the few cities in the US I've not been to. I've been to Chicago, but never to Nashville. Maybe I just need to go one day.

Nikita Vakhrushev: Gotta head down South , but yeah. Yeah, I know. I know in the [00:05:00] intro we talked about my golden goose is email marketing, but it wasn't always like that, actually. I got started in like the whole entrepreneurial journey about a few years ago, not a few years ago, actually. I'm getting old, man. I started this when I was 19.

I just turned 26. Yeah, you're well old, ancient, mate, ancient. The wrinkles are showing up day by day. So yeah,

Matt Edmundson: I started because

I

Nikita Vakhrushev: turned 50 this year. Oh, you don't look 50, I

Matt Edmundson: appreciate you saying that, but yeah, it's funny when you hear a 26 year old guy just sit there and go, I feel old, man, I'm just really old.

Nikita Vakhrushev: I had an existential crisis the other week.

Matt Edmundson: Oh dear. Sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but I do find that thing funny.

Nikita Vakhrushev: I don't know, I think the younger generation just like myself, we think that every time moves a lot quicker. It does. Or at least it does on my... In my perspective, so it's wow, I'm 26, I haven't done anything, but then, you take a moment [00:06:00] to reflect and it's wow, actually I have done something, but yeah, in the forefront, it feels like I'm just, doing things.

Yeah. I don't know how to explain it. It's a weird feeling.

Matt Edmundson: No, I get it. I totally get it. And it's one of those things Nikita, what's going to happen is in 24 years time, when you turn 50 and you won't have, you'll have completely forgotten about this conversation, but in my head. I still feel like I'm 26, 27.

That's the kind of age that when I got to that, I don't think in my head I've ever gone on further, if that makes sense. And so the age you are now is the, I, for me, it's been the age that I have been for quite a while, if that makes sense. And so when you reach 50, and if perhaps you do remember this conversation.

You'll look back and you'll go I understand now what Matt was talking about.

Nikita Vakhrushev: That does make a lot of sense because, pretty much up until this point, not directly, it wasn't a night and day difference, but I've always felt like I've been, like I feel younger than I actually am. [00:07:00] Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad ways and making immature jokes and all that.

I still do that now that

Matt Edmundson: I'm 50. That never stops. I think that's more of a man thing. I don't know. I could be wrong.

Nikita Vakhrushev: Yeah, the lack of maturity is still there, but, I still have been able to, evolve as a business owner and evolve to the point where, we've done some amazing things for our clients on both like just the email side, but on the relationship side as well, like helping them outside of what are, Our exact, direct like assets that we have to deliver.

And I'm more than happy to share today all the things that we have done for our clients and some of the strategies that the listeners can

Matt Edmundson: use. Yeah, I want to get into this this whole email thing, because obviously it's your bread and butter. It's what you do. As we said in the bio and so let's start at the top, Nikita, you've obviously had a lot of businesses come to you to talk to you about email and SMS.

What's the most common mistake we're still making?

Nikita Vakhrushev: Ooh, that's a big one. I'd say [00:08:00] the lack of SMS capture. Is the big one that I still see in email accounts. SMS was a brand new thing way back when I started. And no one knew how to utilize it properly but now it's more of a mature industry.

There's a lot of softwares that utilize SMS. Pretty much every email software that you see, like Klaviyo, OmniSend, Sendlane, MailChimp even, all have an SMS component to them. And when people come to visit your website, whether it's e commerce or non e commerce related, there's so many businesses that just aren't capturing that phone number.

And that's... Just another way for you to reach your audience and it doesn't even take that much time for you to make that reach out you know with email campaigns you have to go out do the copy make the design set it up in Klaviyo or whatever you're using and schedule that out with SMS messaging.

It's honestly not that hard. You just have to take the copy that you have with email, shrink it down, make it more personalized for the text message audience and send [00:09:00] it out. And yes, it's a little bit more costly. It's not like email where you just play a flat subscription fee. With SMS you do have to pay for every send, but it's a more personalized way to reach out to your customer base.

And at the same time, in some cases it's more effective than email because you're directly talking to the customer. Rather than going through their email where, sometimes people may overlook it or maybe they don't see it because, everyone else is emailing them. So why,

Matt Edmundson: It's interesting you say that this is still the most common mistake, that actually we're not taking advantage of gathering people's phone numbers, right?

And sending them the text messages, the SMS messages. Now, having been around the block, as we've established a few times, I am a bit of an e commerce dinosaur, but that's okay, I'm comfortable in my skin. Why... Why are we still not collecting the email addresses? Obviously the text there, the technology is there the understanding, we're going to get into that a little bit in today's show but it's not exactly, [00:10:00] rocket science, it's locked in a vault at Fort Knox.

We can get hold of that information. So what is it that's stopping us from getting people's Why are we so resistant to it?

Nikita Vakhrushev: A lot of it is actually like the psychology behind the person that's running the business. And, like you said, it's very easy. The tools are there, but a lot of the founders that I talk to, it takes some convincing for them to be like, okay, cool.

Let's try out SMS mainly because they feel like they're going to be bugging. They're going to They're going to be bugging their subscribers and they feel like they're going to be tarnishing the brand quality by adding in another channel to communicate with their customers. Now, granted, once they see the revenue numbers after sending out the first few campaigns, that whole, that goes out the window, disappears

Matt Edmundson: overnight, I don't know what you're talking about.

It's always funny, isn't it? The proof's in the pudding, but is that the genuine reason? I'm saying this not because I know the answer, but I'm genuinely curious. Are we not gathering people's [00:11:00] phone numbers because it feels somehow a bit more personal, whereas email is, feels a bit less personal and we don't want to bug people and we feel like taking their phone number is maybe a step too far into sort of intruding in their privacy.

Is that why?

Nikita Vakhrushev: So far, that's been the biggest reason for if they don't have it set up already and we're trying to get them onto it it's like, the first thing is we don't want to be intrusive. We don't want to bug our customers. We feel like the cadence that we already have with email is already good enough because I'm sure they had the same exact conversation a few years ago with someone saying, Hey, you need to implement email into your business.

They were maybe apprehensive to that before, but now they see it work and they see the revenue come in and they're like, okay, this is now a stable. of our business. And now it's Hey, we need to implement this new channel. And it's also something new that they have to do. They're not used to, it's not a routine.

Bugging, routine, and it's another cost to their business. Simply, if they're trying to run a lean business, or if they're trying to reduce costs, that's just another added cost to [00:12:00] their business that they have to take care of. Or another thing that they have to worry about fulfillment. All of those things stack up to, of hey, I don't think this is the right fit right now.

This, there's a lot of moving pieces behind it, even though, with a team like us that can handle it for them, it's not really that much of a burden for them.

Matt Edmundson: So if I get over my initial... Reluctance with SMS. When I gather people's phone numbers on the website, is there some kind of disclaimer I need to give them? Some kind of notification? Like with email, we we've got double opt ins now, we've got GDPR, we've got all kinds of regulations flowing around. So it seems to be that the double opt in is a pretty safe bet to get that sorted out.

Is there something like that or an equivalent to that with SMS marketing that we need to think about?

Nikita Vakhrushev: Yeah, pretty much every, it's a lot more strict on SMS marketing, so it's not as simple as email where it's okay, cool. They subscribe to the list, you send out an email for [00:13:00] the double opt in for them to subscribe and then they join the list.

With SMS, it's a little bit more tricky because you need actual consent and you need consent language on the actual SMS sign up form. And if you go through any of our clients like pop ups that they have on their website, if someone visits their website for I don't know, 10 seconds or more, you have the pop up come up for the free shipping offer.

On the SMS page, there's like a long paragraph. Right below the submit button to let them know of all the different SMS language that they consent. They consent to getting marketing materials from our phone number and all of that sort of like terms and service jargon. And after that, they do get an initial text to say Hey, we're confirming that you're subscribing to our SMS list.

Please reply with Y or N if you want to subscribe or if you don't want to subscribe. So there is more friction added into SMS marketing. Typically, we try to overcome that friction with a very juicy offer of, maybe something more, um, more [00:14:00] beneficial than an email offer like Instead of 10 percent off, you get 20 percent off of text, if you sign up for text, so we, you do have to be more careful with SMS.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: No, fair enough. And it's one of those, so you've got this sort of the double opt in thing, haven't you then, with text messaging? You're you're saying to them, yes, you're signing up, please confirm yes or no. And do you do it in a sense that if they don't respond to that text message, you don't bug them again?

You might send them another reminder saying, hey, just to remind you, you need to consent, yes or no. bUt you, or do you actually still send text messages even though they've not responded?

Nikita Vakhrushev: We leave it at one follow up and that's it. If they haven't replied, then we simply can't do anything. And they're even marked with like we have like special markers in Klaviyo.

So like whether they consented or didn't consent, and typically if they don't reply, they're just typically, they're stuck at not consent and we can't send anything out to them even if we tried.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no, fair enough. Fair enough. Very wise. So yeah, there's a little bit more friction. So I'm imagining [00:15:00] I don't, it's going to depend on the website in terms of the stats, but I'm imagining if you've got a hundred people coming to your website, 10 of whom are prepared to give you their email address, what, two or three will give you their mobile number on average?

Nikita Vakhrushev: That actually depends on the way that you structure the pop up and that's one of the things that we work on Within the agency is making sure that you get a higher conversion rate pop up And this is like mistake number two with SMS marketing is not only are you not capturing those phone numbers?

The second mistake is you're not capturing them effectively A lot of brands, they have that pop up set up, it's usually a one and done solution for them, and they don't really worry about it because, it's just a pop up, it's nothing that's, quote unquote driving revenue. They have the name, phone number, email, and maybe like another question, and that's a lot of things for a customer to put in.

We try to break that up into a three step pop up, so it's... It's really stupid simple. It's what's your email? And then once they submit that, what's your phone [00:16:00] number? And then after that you get the coupon code or the success message. And we've seen that to work out significantly better to where it's not just like a significant like you mentioned, 10 people get the email two people sign up for SMS.

It's actually more on like the. Seven to eight people sign up for SMS as well because of that two step. Because once people give you their email information, they've already given something to you, like on a psychological basis. So they're more likely to give you something again because they've already given.

And that's how. We set up our pop ups for the most part.

Matt Edmundson: I, and I've seen this a lot actually where they've started to break it down now when you start to fill in details, you don't actually know how many steps there are, but the first, the step that I'm looking at is pretty straightforward.

So I give you my email address, I'm going to go to the next screen. And on the next screen, I'm going to give you my mobile number, but on that screen, I'm not getting any coupon codes. I have to give you my mobile number to get the coupon code. Or if I don't want to give you my mobile number, a coupon has been emailed

Nikita Vakhrushev: to me.[00:17:00]

Yeah. So we break it up into do into, more steps here for getting granular. If they sign up with with SMS, then they get the coupon code through their phone. If they don't, then you can skip that step if you want to. And the coupon code is either emailed to them or it's at the thank you page.

And it depends on a client by client basis. And this is something we test for as well, is... We split up like a 50, 50 percent on people that see the pop up at the end of the pop up or the coupon code at the end of the pop up, or they get the coupon at the email. And depending on what works on their specific brand, we go with that.

Yeah. If we see more revenue come through the email, then we stick with email. If we see more revenue come from directly from the pop up, then we stick with the pop up.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, and very good testing. You've persuaded me to give you my phone number. Does this work better with specific countries?

For example, I [00:18:00] know in the States... Does it work better, for example, in, I call them the big five, the big, the sort of English speaking nations than say in continental Europe or in South America? Are there specific places where SMS works very well?

Nikita Vakhrushev: America. I, without a doubt, because there's just, there's a lot more leniency.

There's no GDPR here. And even with email. You can get away with single opt in. You don't have to do double opt in for email. So there's a lot more potency and a lot more, I'm sure time's going to run out and there's going to be a point where that's not going to be a thing. But while the iron's hot, we are striking with only using single opt in for email and we still do double opt in for SMS.

But there's just a lot more freedom with communication and back and forth communication between the software and the customer with SMS. Because within some countries, Klaviyo doesn't, you can't use two way SMS because of, the infrastructure is just not set up there yet.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. [00:19:00] No, that's fair enough.

So you've got my phone number. I'm living in the States. You've got my number. What's your strategy? What's your thinking? Sort of headline strategies here as an econ business owner. What do I need to be thinking about? Because I think this is where a lot of people, email is pretty straightforward.

I could, there's a whole bunch of stuff I can send you on email. From educational pieces to promotional pieces, you name it, you can do it. Text messages become a little bit more nuanced, don't they, a little bit more complex. So what sort of strategy on headlines should I be thinking about here?

Nikita Vakhrushev: So the name of the game when it comes to SMS. Obviously with email, you can do a lot more storytelling. You can provide a lot more content and context about your business with SMS. It's a little bit tricky because, you only have a certain character limit if you want to keep it under one message and typically with SMS, we don't do that much storytelling and the main purpose of SMS is the followups.

So for example, if someone abandoned checkout or abandoned cart and we have their information, SMS is like the best way to recover that cart. [00:20:00] Because it's a very personal way to contact them, it's if you want to service your car, and you got an email saying your car is ready, you may not check that for the next three hours, but if you get a text saying hey, your car is ready, you're probably already getting a taxi to go there, as you get there.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. So yeah, so it's that sort of follow up strategy. So it works with abandoned carts. The I've seen it where the ones I tend to get, and I'm not signed up to many, it's just more of an experiment really, Nikki Driftwood. The ones I tend to get abandoned carts. So the special one off sort of discounts, I don't get regular sort of text messages about offers.

I get text messages like your order is shipped your order's on its way. Those kind of more, I call them transactional emails, those sort of transactional type things. Is that what we're predominantly using it for then, SMS?

Nikita Vakhrushev: Not really. If anything, we do 20 percent transactional emails, like you mentioned, the order shipped emails or order [00:21:00] confirmation maybe even throwing in a order review SMS, but yeah, but a lot of it is used to not only follow up with customers.

For example, in the welcome flow strategy that we utilize. With our clients, we use SMS as a follow up on a promotion that we sent over. Like I mentioned, abandoned checkout making sure that we follow up on that. And lastly, a lot of promotional items on just like campaigns. We don't really do a lot of play and actually we do, there's a thing we're testing right now with a few clients where we do a conversational SMS.

And this is a little bit based on AI info and can't really spill too much beans about that. But basically if let's say we send out an SMS message for a haircare brand and we ask them like, Hey, how do you take care of your hair? What's your haircare routine? And based off of their reply, we send them a product recommendation or.

Any information about any product that we've launched on, through the

Matt Edmundson: [00:22:00] brand. Yeah. It's the kind of, this is where where AI gets quite interesting, isn't it? Because you can start to now be more conversational in tone, um, almost there is a difference I think between text messages on my phone and WhatsApp messages.

There's, I can't explain it. I'm sure somebody's done some research on this somewhere, but what I write in WhatsApp messages tends to be a bit more conversational, a bit friendlier. There tend to be more people that I know. aNd they tend to be longer, more involved because obviously, you've got more space, et cetera, et cetera.

And so I can see them now starting to become more.

I'm just trying to think about how this then works with your email and your offers. You're using this word follow up. So in my head, what I'm saying, Nikita, and please explain how it would work, but I'm going to email out 10, 000 people. Our latest offer whatever that is to a targeted list.

I'm going to email them. Those that didn't open it. I'm going to email them maybe a day or so later. [00:23:00] Those of those that didn't open it, say the second time I sent it, I'm then sending them say a text message saying, Hey, check out, don't forget to check your email or whatever we've sent you this hate for you to miss it kind of thing.

Is that how we're doing it with the sort of the follow ups on the offers or are you just going straight for. Hey guys, 10, 000 text messages. Here's the

Nikita Vakhrushev: latest offer. So we actually do send out the email and SMS in tandem together with whatever offer we're running, especially if it's, like one out of the four big sales that we run for a client per year.

So we make sure to use SMS in tandem and the followups mainly come from action based or intent based like abandoned checkout, abandoned cart, et cetera.

Matt Edmundson: Okay. Okay. But you send them out at the same time. It's really interesting. I'm really intrigued by this. We do use SMS messaging here and SMS marketing in my own econ businesses.

It is still, it feels still to me, Nikita, a relatively new thing. Do you know what I mean, I don't feel as [00:24:00] established with that as I am say with email marketing. It still feels like a relatively new thing. We were having conversations about it earlier on with the team and I'm just going backwards and forwards on it a little bit and I'm intrigued by it.

How do you... Earlier on you talked about how, one of the things that we're not doing is taking advantage of getting people's phone numbers because of various things in their head about not wanting to bother people and so on and so forth. But customers quickly get over that when they see the revenue that it brings in.

So where do you notice the revenue coming in? What's working well to bring in the cha-ching.

Nikita Vakhrushev: Are you talking about like specific SMS structure or?

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, just in terms of if someone sat out, someone sat outside, someone's sat there listening to the podcast, listening to us talking there and they're thinking where's the money going to come from?

What types of things bring in the cash? What's going to work well?

Nikita Vakhrushev: So I hate to answer it, but with it, it depends because depend [00:25:00] now, okay. I will. I'm digging the hole, but I will get myself out of this hole. Okay, cool. So it does depend, but it depends on your average order value and the types of products that you sell.

Okay. So what we've noticed with SMS marketing, that brands that have an average order value above 100 to 200, the conversion rate with SMS doesn't necessarily correlate well compared to email marketing. It's more it's better used within. Like I mentioned, follow ups, as well as big promotional times.

But if you're trying to do a flash sale, it doesn't really work that well. Now, under that, SMS works tremendously well for some of our clients, especially during like flash sales, or maybe like overstock based SMS messages. Hey, we ordered, extra inventory. We need to get rid of it by the end of the week.

tHose work really well because AOV under a hundred [00:26:00] to 150 to 200, it's a very impulse based purchase. So then it works very well of Oh, I got a text of my, I don't know, like my a company that sells water bottles that I've been following for the last year. And I bought three water bottles from them and they're selling the same water bottle for 20 bucks off.

Like I'm going to get that because it's a very easy and digestible purchase. When you look at the average family. When it, when you're trying to buy something over 150 to $200, that's something you have to consult with your wife or husband. Yeah. . So you can't just spend out 200 bucks willy-nilly.

So that's a talk that you have to have and that just adds a lot more friction. . And one thing that I did notice with SMS marketing. It costs a little bit more to do this, but sending out an image with your text message, like an MMS with an SMS tends to perform significantly better.

It has lower click through. It has lower click through rate, but it has double the revenue on average than comparative. To just sending out a text message.

Matt Edmundson: That's [00:27:00] interesting. And what are you sending a picture of?

Nikita Vakhrushev: So there's actually a lot of things and there's, it's broken down into four main things.

You have to have the branding of your, like the business. So let's say one of the businesses that you run has blue and white branding. You have to have that in there because it immediately. Helps the customer recognize. What brand is actually sending them that SMS message? You see a block of text, it's just a block of text and then you take a second to be like, Oh, it's from this brand.

Yeah. But with images, it's easy to recognize some sort of product model or lifestyle image within there is also very important because then it's another context clue that you can immediately identify what brand it is. You have to have a reason of why you're texting them and this isn't compliance, but it's more so just.

To make it a bit more personal. It's Hey, if someone reaches out to you, they usually have a reason why they're reaching out to you. Same thing with here. It's Hey, we're having a flash sale, or Hey, we're having an overstock sale, [00:28:00] or Hey, we're running a giveaway. There's a reason for us to reach out to them.

And you have to have the offer center and clear to read. So don't just send them a photo of your products. Send a photo of your products with an overlay text of saying Hey, we're having a BOGO. We're having an overstock sale right now have the coupon code within the image. And then once you send out that image, you can get into the nitty gritty within the actual SMS message where you can mention their first name to personalize it.

More details about the offer or any specific terms of the offer and the call to action, which is the link to participate in the offer or the giveaway or whatever you're sending out.

Matt Edmundson: Really great. It's really great. It's a simple strategy as well. Cause it's. Throw in an image in their text messages, because everyone's got smartphones, haven't they?

It's just, it is what it is. It's going to come up well on their phones. Yes. One of the questions I get asked a lot Nikita, while we're talking about SMS messaging, let's talk about WhatsApp. Can you do this type [00:29:00] of thing with WhatsApp or is it just native? tExt messages using whatever text message platform it is, but it's separate

Nikita Vakhrushev: from WhatsApp.

Now, here's the thing. We don't do WhatsApp marketing, so I cannot answer that question, unfortunately, yeah. And

Matt Edmundson: is the reason you don't do it because it's... I know the answer to this question a little bit, but it's not actually as straightforward as we'd like it to be. It has always felt like a little bit too complex WhatsApp marketing.

Is that why you've avoided it?

Nikita Vakhrushev: So that's a good question. It's a mix of both. Number one, it's complex. There's a lot more complexity to it. And number two, it's not that popular in the U. S. or it's not as popular as it is internationally. Everyone that I talk to, everyone in my circle of friends and family, the only reason that they use WhatsApp is to talk to someone internationally.

It's not as a, I could be wrong here and I could be like the outlier here, but that's the only reason I talk to or that's the [00:30:00] only reason I use WhatsApp is to talk to friends and family internationally rather than texting my mom or texting my girlfriend because I just use the native text app.

So in the U. S. I don't, it is a little bit of a personal bias that I didn't see the point in adding that service in because I just didn't see a need for it. And most, like I say, 90 percent of our clients are U. S. based with U. S. customers. Yeah,

Matt Edmundson: no, fair enough. It's really intriguing because here in the U. K.

I think it's different. I'd probably say, I don't know, maybe 80% of the messages I get from people that I know are through WhatsApp. And it's the native, like I, there's a big thing going on in the UK at the moment, whether Apple's gonna close down iMessage because, the UK has got some very quirky laws.

'cause, why would we not we're English, and I think Apple have gone, yeah we're just going to switch that whole thing off. And so whether they do or not, it's a different story, but but everyone's going we don't care because then we all use WhatsApp, and so Apple are going to do what Apple's going to do, but we're on WhatsApp.

We're fine. It's not a problem. [00:31:00] So I'm intrigued because it feels like Facebook haven't really monetized WhatsApp yet. I shouldn't call it Facebook Meta, maybe in a way, which I've looked at and gone that's clever or that's intriguing where you can see how they've monetized Facebook.

You can see how they've monetized Instagram. But it always struck me that WhatsApp was complicated, more complicated than it needed to be. And I, I don't know how long, much longer that will last for. I

Nikita Vakhrushev: think it's mainly there for data collection, if anything, even though they say it's private and secure and you have that little lock icon, I still the tinfoil hat in me person still thinks that it still uses it for data collection.

Cause I remember there's so many times where like I'd send a voice note. Or mention something specifically about a specific product, and then the next day I see like an Instagram ad for it. Yeah. I'm a little skeptical on them not directly monetizing it, but indirectly they're definitely monetizing that data.

Yeah,

Matt Edmundson: you wouldn't be surprised, would you? If they were actually reading and picking out keywords[00:32:00] but what do I know? What do I know? So we've talked a fair bit about SMS there. Let's go, let's talk about email Nikita because Nikita email is still one of those things where we do talk about it on occasion on the show because I feel the need to come back to it because I talk to clients and I'm just going why are we not doing email better than what we're doing?

And it still strikes me as. This is still happening and it surprises me every time if I'm honest with you.

Nikita Vakhrushev: The biggest surprise for me is that any time I talk to or anyone knew I meet and they're like, Hey, what do you do? And it's Oh, I a marketing agency. They're like, Oh, what do you do?

It's I run an email marketing. They're like, that still works. I'm like

What do you mean? We generated this client, like 200 grand this year, with email. So it, there's still like that stigma of like, why like people actually respond to those emails. It's if you do a good job, yes, they do. They actually buy from you. So there is still a lot of juice left for us to squeeze in email [00:33:00] marketing.

And we don't see any decline whatsoever within our industry. It just comes down to the strategy and the way that you communicate with your customers or subscribers, if you treat them with. Bombarding them with sale, you're not going to have a good time. You're just going to turn through those customers and, people are only going to see you as a discount brand.

But if you actually have storytelling and visual branding behind your emails, then people are actually going to be receptive to it and see you as a legitimate player in the e com game.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah. That's very wise words. We tend to find if with clients, if they're not achieving 30 to 40 percent of their revenue from email, something's wrong.

And actually you can improve that. I don't know if that's, that's based off some, probably some prehistoric thinking on my own part. Nicky is with you, but I don't know whether that's still the case, whether we should be thinking sort of 30, 40 percent of revenue from email marketing.

Nikita Vakhrushev: We do. Like we say 30 to 40 percent in retention marketing because we include SMS in [00:34:00] that, but if you're going solely off email, it's anywhere between 25 to 35 percent depending on the brand, of course.

Matt Edmundson: Sure. And so SMS is going to add another sort of 5, 10 percent to the bottom line, isn't it? Yeah, exactly.

Okay. Which is another reason why you should be thinking about SMS. Just take your turn up, divide it by 10, there's what it could potentially add to your bottom line if you get it right. Which is always a nice thing. And there aren't that many ways where you can quickly and easily grow your business by 10 percent are there really?

But yeah it's interesting that it's still around the 30, 40 percent bracket. That's always been a good test, always a good markers, like how much of our revenue is coming. And conversely, if you've got good email marketing, you've got good customer, uh, repurchasing rates, haven't you, on the

Nikita Vakhrushev: whole?

Not only customer repurchase rate, but also customer conversion, because, a lot of people come in from meta or YouTube or Google, and maybe they were just browsing and they wanted to check something out, but maybe an email two weeks down the line is [00:35:00] what converted them. And, that's where that last click purchase came from rather than.

From Facebook or Google. So if anything, it's a good tactic to not only retain the current customers that you have and. Re send to those people to re purchase, but also it's a great mechanism for people that are just brand new coming in to learn more about your business, learn more about the brand and the values, to then eventually become a customer and purchase.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: No, it's true. I always ask clients whenever I see them. I may have mentioned this on the show before. I always ask clients when I sit down with them, what's the primary purpose of your website? It feels a bit like a trick question, right? I'm an e commerce site. The primary reason I exist is to sell products.

Okay. What's the secondary one? What's the second thing that you'll, what's the second thing you want to, if someone's coming to your website and they haven't bought your product, what one thing do you want them to do? What's the second purpose? And for me, that's always been, I want them to give me their email address, right?

It's just because I [00:36:00] know that if I've got their email address, there's a lot I can do with that. I should probably now add the third, which is to get their mobile number based on this conversation. But we're getting their email address. Do you still see the what I would call the educational flow?

So you get people coming to your website. They're not necessarily ready to buy. So we give them a good reason. for to get their email address. Sometimes that might be a discount. I often cite a plant site that I went to a house plant website, which I wish I could remember the name of. But there was this email sequence that I signed up for cause I thought it was rather creative and clever, which was.

Give us your email address and we'll send you emails basically at 10 proven steps on how not to kill your houseplants which made me laugh because I always kill the bloody things. I'm like, I need this, right? So it was educational. So by the time I got to the end of that sequence, not only did I feel confident that I wasn't going to kill the houseplant, but I, They've given me enough information to know what type of plants I should buy for the kind of room that I had.

[00:37:00] I don't know if I see that as much these days the whole educational aspect of email marketing. And is there a good reason for that or is that something that actually we do need to be thinking

Nikita Vakhrushev: about? I think it's like the most important thing of email marketing. You have someone that comes off Facebook and comes off Google.

And they don't know anything about your business. They just saw an ad that, hooked them in, especially if you're an e commerce, if you're not like Nike, there's a lot of brand presence and a lot of top of funnel marketing that they did, but if you're an up and coming e commerce brand, or you're just starting to hit that stride of 50 to a hundred K per month.

Revenue still in the grand scheme of things, you're a very small brand and you still have a huge adjustable market to hit with your business. A lot of people don't know who you are or they just saw your ad. So what is the best way to educate them without spending 30, 000 on Facebook every month, unless you have to do that, but an additional 30, 000 to educate those customers and actually own that [00:38:00] data it's through email marketing.

So that's something that we implement internally with all of our clients is when within that welcome flow, obviously, if they signed up for a coupon code, we send them that coupon code. But the subsequent emails that they get, for example, with a men's hair care brand that we're working with right now, we're teaching them how to properly style their hair.

And, if they're interested, they can use our products to make it easier for them to style their hair in specific ways. So that sort of education not only leads to a lot better customer attention, but a lot better customer engagement and obviously revenue down the line, because they understand like, Oh, if I need to have better hair.

I need to utilize these guys products, and they're the ones that taught me how to do this. I'm just going to go straight to the source and buy. I can't tell you the amount of times where I've bought from brands because they've educated me on a specific thing that has helped me somehow in my life.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah.

No, that's best. And are you getting people in this sequence and this sort of uh, educational sequence? [00:39:00] Say, there's a coupon, or are you getting them into this sequence because you've addressed a specific question like, how not to kill your houseplants is a simple example, or are you testing both to see which works better? I'm just curious how you're getting them to actually give you their email address in the first place.

Nikita Vakhrushev: Yeah. So with that pop up, it's typically done with some sort of discount code or again, it depends on a client. Some clients we run pop ups with discounts.

Some clients we run pop ups with information, like whether it's like a free ebook or a free guide, like you mentioned, and depending on the brand. if It's ebook based and we do a little bit more information and we don't even have a discount in there until the very end and if they haven't purchased up until that point, but if it's more offer based and discount based, we give them the discount within the first email.

And then we preface the rest of the email like, Hey, for the next few emails that you'll get from us, you're going to learn about our business. You're going to learn about these [00:40:00] specific things or how, like why we started the business, who we are, how it makes us different. And on top of that, more information on whatever niche that they're in, like for example, like houseplants and how to not kill them.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Nice. That's fascinating. I get it. And it's an interesting one because we're just, we're launching a new. Skincare brand nice. Probably in January next year. And having, done beauty, we're heading back into it a little bit, can do things a little bit differently. And so we're thinking through now things like the welcome sequences, and how we do that whole email aspect of it because it's, it is a new brand.

People won't have heard of us. We're gonna need to do that quite well. And so I'm always curious, in terms of what's gonna. Trigger somebody to give us their email address. And I think we'll test the different aspects. If we give you information, do we, what emails do we get? What's the average order value we get out of you, over time.

Versus if we give you a coupon code for a sort of a one off discount, does that work better? Do you end up buying more? I'm [00:41:00] just curious to see, what the sort of the net results of that will be.

Nikita Vakhrushev: One thing I would take into consideration, and this is something that we're trying to test out and figure the strategy out for, is email forwardability.

What's something, like what kind of content do you put into your email that is, has the highest chance of being forwarded to a friend or family member? Because at that point, you're not getting just one impression, you're getting multiple impressions per send. lIke, how can you value what kind of value can you put into that email or what kind of, what are some things you can do in order to do that?

And that way you can get more brand exposure as well.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no, really good. Who do you see doing it well?

Nikita Vakhrushev: There's a few brands that I noticed that I know that this is... Like way back in the day, but I know Harry's did a thing when they just launched their brand of if you forward your art emails, you get added to you get more rewards points based off of that.

And, if you get enough rewards points, then you get like a free razor or something like that. [00:42:00] Yeah, that's like the most immediate example that comes to my mind, but I've not seen too many brands do something that's affordable. And I'm talking about brands like e com brands, when it comes to newsletters, educational newsletters, like that's something that I forward to my business friends all the time because Oh, I read this.

This is very valuable. I know that, my friend is in a similar situation that this newsletter talked about. I have to forward that to them. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Really interesting. The affordability of an email. Address. The forwardability of an email. It's a really good point because I don't know if I've ever sat down recently and thought this email that I've got, how forwardable is it?

It's not actually easy to say, let alone think about, is it? How forwardable is this? But it's a really good question.

Nikita Vakhrushev: It doesn't have to be every email either. No. Yeah, could be like one a month or one every other week that you can send out that you know is likely to be forwarded. Yeah, that's something to keep in

Matt Edmundson: mind [00:43:00] as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Really worth thinking about. Listen, Nikita, I'm aware of time, man. The clock has gone by at a million miles an hour and yeah, we're just getting started. As is often the case if people want to reach out to you, if they want to connect with you, if they want to find out more about Aspect, about how you can help them maybe with email or probably SMS, what's the best way for people to reach out?

Nikita Vakhrushev: Yeah, definitely. So I'm relatively active on Twitter. So it's just my first and last name on there. I'm also, I have a, what's it called? You can just find me on my website, which is aspektagency.Com, A S P E K T, agency. com. And if you want us to take a look at your emails and tell you, what's good, what's bad, what needs to work on just go to the website and there's a free audit button at the top and you can click, submit your info and we can take a look at your account.

And show you some improvements and it's completely free as well.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. Do you find the free audit thing works well? Talk about lead magnets here. I'm just curious from an agency side.

Nikita Vakhrushev: wE get I think [00:44:00] five to ten a month. And yeah, all of those, for the most part, if they reply and give us access to their email account, we then hop on a call and then that leads to a better, bigger conversation.

Sometimes they turn into customers, sometimes they don't, but either way, they still get value out of the

Matt Edmundson: call. Yeah, no, absolutely. Fantastic. We will, of course, link to Nikita's information in the show notes as well, which as we talked about earlier, if you sign up for the newsletter, they're going to be in your inbox, so do reach out to Nikita.

I'm sure he'd love to talk to you. And answer any questions you've got, but listen Nikita, I appreciate you coming on, man. I've got lots of notes as I inevitably do when I have these conversations and always good to stay on top of these things. So appreciate it, appreciate your insight and just coming on and sharing some real high value stuff, man.

Yeah, of course. It was a pleasure. Fantastic. And of course, a huge, big shout out again to today's show sponsor, the e commerce cohort. Remember to check out their free training [00:45:00] online at ecommercecycles. com and be sure to follow the e commerce podcasts wherever you get your podcasts from because we have yet more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them.

And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are. Created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. Nikita has to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now, the e commerce podcast is produced by Aurion Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app.

The wonderful team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Beynon and Tanya Hutsuliak. Our theme song was written by the super talented Josh Edmundson. And as I mentioned. The transcript, the show notes, they're all available on the website, ecommercepodcast. net. That's it from me, that's it from Nikita.

Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye [00:46:00] for now.