The Power of Email Marketing with
Alex Persson

[00:00:00] Alex: so all the data in the world can be so granular, but you could just totally miss the mark 

[00:00:04] Alex: if you’re not asking the right questions. 

[00:00:06] Courtney: Hi, my name is Courtney and welcome to How They Scaled It. Where scaling is done with both sides of the brain. On this show, we sit down with growth stage businesses and speak to the founders and industry leaders from e commerce and the SAS, sectors. We showcase their journeys, unpacking pivotal moments, marketing strategies, and key decisions that have really shaped their success.

[00:00:28] Courtney: That’s why I’ve brought on Alex Pearson. Alex is an experienced business leader in e commerce known for scaling businesses through strategic acquisitions and growth initiatives. As a former CEO of e commerce, he expanded the company’s portfolio of Shopify focused tools. But currently he’s at the helm of Privy, which highlights his experience in leveraging email and SMS to drive conversions for small businesses.

[00:00:51] Courtney: I wanted him to help us understand how to build a SaaS brand and how e commerce brands can really scale using retention marketing. Alex, it is great to see you and welcome to How They Scaled It.

[00:01:03] Alex: Thank you so much. It’s wonderful to be here.

[00:01:05] Courtney: You’ve been with Privy for, not too long, just since the beginning of this year. How has that transition been?

[00:01:10] Alex: You know, it has been in some ways, extremely easy. And the reason for that is I stepped into what is 1 of the most customer centric organizations I’ve ever seen. And when you have that core ingredient, the customer centricity, you put the customer at the forefront of everything that you do. It makes my job a lot easier.

[00:01:35] Alex: So I’ll give you an example. We are known for that hands on support, especially for small businesses that usually don’t get that hands on support. Some of the larger players in the ecosystem. And because of that, people on our team get invited to our merchants weddings. We have people on our team.

[00:01:54] Alex: Being flown out to meet Brandt all because of that human connection, which is very tough to get, especially in the online realm that many businesses. Operate in. And so that makes my job a lot easier. on top of that, we have a really experienced team, a really aligned vision and again, that makes everything easy.

[00:02:15] Alex: That being said, it’s the old adage of the days are long. The years are short. that’s absolutely the case here.

[00:02:21] Courtney: Yeah, no, that’s, um, I can attest to that. So, full disclosure, we actually use Privy for a lot of our clients and it’s kind of our go to email marketing platform, and that really is because it’s so easy to get in touch with people We really can’t do that with something like MailChimp or Constant Contact.

[00:02:38] Courtney: I can verify that what you’re saying is true. That You guys definitely have really good personal touch, overall. So, that’s wonderful to hear. how are you maintaining that culture then? it sounds like you have a really good culture of this personal touch with your customers.

[00:02:52] Courtney: But you also have a really good culture of innovation. I feel like Every day you guys have new things kind of coming out and new tools going. So how do you, maintain that culture while also scaling?

[00:03:04] Alex: Yeah. And in a way, they have to go hand in hand in that customers are never satisfied. And that is a great way to keep you honest and keep your product honest because they will be your best critics. how we maintain that kind of culture of innovation, certainly this year, and we have a lot more rolling out over the next few weeks and months here is.

[00:03:25] Alex: leveraging that customer centric culture allows us to have such a good pulse on customer problems and having that dialogue means we’re hearing everything and anything in any given day about improvements. Things that should be working a different way within our product, but also we’re constantly hearing people’s problems.

[00:03:48] Alex: And that is really what we’re there to solve. Whether that be an email, SMS, marketing or list growth or elsewhere, really, what we’re here for is to solve customer problems and we’re not afraid to put things out there that might not resonate. We’re totally fine with failure, and we keep a really high bar for what we put out in our platform.

[00:04:10] Alex: We often build with our customers hand in hand, and so anytime we’re on the phone, or I’m on the phone with a merchant. I’ll pull up our demo account. I’ll pull up mockups and just say, what do you think about this? And because we have that existing trust that that open dialogue, ideas flow really freely, between privy and its merchants.

[00:04:33] Courtney: Yeah, no, that is really interesting, because it seems like your customer service almost drives your innovation. And I think a lot of times tech companies have that backwards, where they assume they know what the customer wants, and they’re building what they think is going to be cool. But it sounds like that’s really coming from your customers and really listening to what they want, which is something I think a lot of people can learn from.

[00:04:56] Alex: Yeah, I’d say 1, 1 thing to add is, especially in technology companies where you can kind of measure everything. You know, you can measure who used what feature who visited what page there is an unfortunate tendency that I call the kind of data tail wagging the dog. So, you see these metrics, but you’re so divorced from the context.

[00:05:17] Alex: About why things are happening this way that if you’re building really data driven products, you can totally miss the mark because you’re trying to incentivize a metric to go up. And that might be completely orthogonal to how a merchant expects to use your application or expects to get results from it.

[00:05:37] Alex: So we almost don’t use any of that and instead just really listen to the customer. Hire people with good judgment and intuition. And frankly, my job is to get out of the way.

[00:05:49] Courtney: Yeah, it’s, when you think about what is successful for like, what you use to measure success within privy as an email, SMS pop platform, what are the things that you’re looking for to say, like, this is working really well, we are happy with this, or, you know, this isn’t working well.

[00:06:06] Alex: Yeah, it’s, it’s really similar to what, any brand or any merchant is measuring, which is engagement and retention. you know, what percentage of your user base is actually using your product daily, weekly, monthly, and not just logging in, but, you know, we keep track of how many people send, an email newsletter weekly.

[00:06:29] Alex: How do we continue to help people build that habit? That’s one of the. Use cases, we’re looking at the data is really helpful because it holds us accountable. We know that continued engagement is a very healthy metric for us to monitor. And on the flip side, it’s as simple as are people coming back? 

[00:06:48] Alex: You know,

[00:06:48] Alex: we have a monthly subscription.

[00:06:50] Alex: That means we have to show value. Every single month, or else they’re going to opt out and, it’s, it’s, it’s a funny thing. It’s almost if Netflix. stops putting out new content, you’ll stick around for a month or two or three, but eventually you’re gonna get tired of it. You’re not getting recurring value and you’re gonna leave.

[00:07:10] Alex: And that helps keep us again accountable of every single month. We have to prove our value and it’s the same thing is true with stores, you know, repeat businesses, the lifeblood, a lot of these merchants. And so driving engagement and keeping customers coming back is really how we measure success.

[00:07:29] Courtney: Yeah, we are very similar in that all of our contracts are also month to month. And so for us, it just incentivizes us to be on the ball all the time. Like, you, you can’t have bad months really. And, it kind of gets everybody on the same page about never being complacent about the work that you’re doing, um, which is something I appreciate.

[00:07:47] Courtney: And it also is really great for the customer because They don’t have these long term, scary, risky commitments. 

[00:07:52] Courtney: And luckily for you, you’re showing value each month. You can very easily show, like, you sent these emails, you got this revenue. 

[00:07:59] Courtney: So, 

[00:07:59] Courtney: it’s very easy to prove your ROI, uh, which I think is probably pretty helpful for a lot of your customers.

[00:08:04] Alex: Yep. That certainly helps. And then we try to release things monthly as well to give a reason, give people a reason to come back, cause email marketing could be set and forget it. You know, you could set up your displays, you could set up your automations and you’ll make money while you sleep, but you’re also leaving a lot of money on the table.

[00:08:20] Alex: If you’re not actively in the product every single week,

[00:08:24] Courtney: Yeah. What would you say is the biggest challenge that you have with Privy, or really any kind of SaaS company?

[00:08:30] Alex: It seems like every year there are. New entrance in a vine for, your customers. That’s just the nature of competition. And I think one of the hardest part is how do you differentiate? How do you stand out as a company? And, our biggest driver of growth is word of mouth, but how do you scale word of mouth?

[00:08:51] Alex: Truly? How do you market word of mouth? Because everyone can say, you have hands on support. Everyone has testimonials. Everyone has case studies. But how do you actually get differentiated in the market besides having, happy customers. And so I think about that a lot. How do we because it’s the same thing for our merchants.

[00:09:11] Alex: There are, you know, we serve 10, 000 merchants. How do they stand out? How do they market themselves as a brand? That’s not just. A product on an Amazon search page, but there’s actually a founder with a really interesting story behind that brand. And so what I like to do is just really lean into what privy is known for what it stands for and put it out there and it’s not for everybody, but it should really resonate.

[00:09:37] Alex: And that’s one of the hardest part is just vying for people’s attention.

[00:09:42] Courtney: yeah, I know that, we run into that issue a lot with our clients where they come to us and they say, we’re so good. Like, our number one acquisition channel is word of mouth like referrals, but we need to find like, more consistent channels really. what I always say is that.

[00:09:56] Courtney: It’s so great that you’re starting with good word of mouth because that means you have a good product. if that wasn’t your number one source of referrals, then we would have a problem. So you’re starting from a great place because you have a proven product. So now it’s just about finding the different platforms 

[00:10:10] Courtney: and ways to 

[00:10:11] Courtney: amp up that word of mouth.

[00:10:12] Alex: Exactly. Otherwise you’re just pushing a boulder up a Hill. it’s never going to get easier if you have something that, you know, Isn’t quite resonating with your customers. And so it’s, you know, you got to find promise-market fit.

[00:10:24] Alex: So what that means is, is your marketing promise resonating with people?

[00:10:28] Alex: It might, be okay that your product’s not there yet, but is the value proposition is what you’re selling, getting a lot of people really interested. And then you can iterate on the product, what you’re offering until you can back up that promise that you’re making.

[00:10:42] Courtney: Yeah, it’s almost like using marketing as, focus groups. It’s the cheapest 

[00:10:46] Courtney: focus group you’ll ever 

[00:10:47] Courtney: have. but just seeing like what people want and then building a product around that. that’s pretty smart, especially if you can do it quickly and like execute. I know you can’t get into the specifics too much about the acquisitions that you’ve made under WeCommerce, but I did want to pick your brain a little bit about generally how you think about acquisitions.

[00:11:04] Courtney: I know WeCommerce’s focus was on acquiring Shopify partner businesses, and that’s pretty niche. Did you learn any lessons about how to identify the right markets or segments to scale into during that time?

[00:11:18] Alex: Yeah. You know, it actually, a lot of it comes back to, what I call like founder craft. And so what I mean by that is, does the founder have a reef, almost like an excellence reflex such that every part of the organization you touch is at a really high caliber. And otherwise. As you peel back the onion pre, you know, while you’re looking at acquisition or afterward, you’ll find things that make your life a lot harder.

[00:11:50] Alex: And so a good example of this is if the founder spending all of his or her time on just the product, but isn’t spending any time on sales, marketing, customer support. guess what, as soon as that acquisition is done, the founder often leaves, they’re usually doing the jobs of five people because that’s just what you have to do as a founder.

[00:12:13] Alex: And then you have pretty weak company because you have, yeah, you might have a good product, but it’s. Stopped if the founder only focus on that, never really hired or developed leaders within the organization. That is all the metrics could look great, but if you don’t have really top notch teams and every part of the business, it’s hard to sustain that momentum after acquisition.

[00:12:44] Alex: But for any acquisition, I always look at the same things too, which is engagement. And retention that that gives you so much color on the actual business, you have to look at, you know, is there a path of profitability to the unit economics? Makes sense. I’ve differentiated is this is a nice to have, or is it a must have what’s the competition?

[00:13:07] Alex: There’s a bunch of things you need to look at, but if I could boil it down, it’s really about is there an 8 plus team. Just permeating the company, because then chances are. They haven’t taken shortcuts and the product they haven’t discounted their product heavily to get to, you know, to hit a sales number.

[00:13:30] Alex: They’re actually thinking long term and that is the ultimate, um, you know, judge of any sort of acquisition because you’re buying these things for kind of forever, 

[00:13:39] Alex: whether that’s your plan or not, you have to go into that mindset.

[00:13:42] Courtney: Yeah, and also, is the team sticky? Like, are, and if they are an A plus team and they’ve put in all this effort, they probably are invested in the future of that product, so you want them to stick around and not leave after a couple months, or kind of work that into your acquisition plan, 

[00:13:56] Courtney: People make or break it no matter what you’re doing. 

[00:13:59] Alex: Always. For better. For worse.

[00:14:00] Courtney: Yeah is there any approach that you have to balancing? growth, via acquisition versus organic i’m sure you’re growing in both ways usually but How do you balance that? 

[00:14:12] Alex: You know, growth by acquisition is inherently riskier strategy. I think done well, it can really be transformative. And it’s a muscle that a lot of companies don’t often exercise. Salesforce is a great example of this.

[00:14:27] Alex: They have grown tremendously. By acquisition, and they are not afraid to make big bets and not all of them are going to pan out, but they have a really good muscle about acquisitions. Shopify, on the other hand, hasn’t really done a lot of acquisitions, and then not all of them have panned out as we saw with, the foray into fulfillment.

[00:14:49] Alex: But recently, what’s been interesting is. Shopify has been acquiring, kind of partners in the ecosystem. they bought checkout blocks, they bought a handful of, I would say, smaller businesses and given those people an immense amount of autonomy within Shopify’s product organization. And I think for Shopify, that’s a great thing to do.

[00:15:10] Alex: You’re getting really good product leaders into the company, pushing the envelope with a pulse on what merchants are looking for next. I think there’s a lot of reasons that people convince themselves that acquisitions are a good idea. But you need to have a process you need to exercise your muscle and you need to be crystal clear why you’re doing this.

[00:15:30] Alex: And what the metrics for success are. Down the road, I think one of the mistakes people often have is, pushing the acquired business a lot in the 1st year, because maybe the person who sold the deal internally has metrics. They got a hit, right?

[00:15:46] Alex: They presented a forecast to the board or to the CEO. And there’s a lot of pressure for those new acquisitions to deliver. But if you give people time, if you allow the businesses to actually compound, you get to a point where I take a linkedin as an example that was bought a long time ago and. It just keeps compounding and compounding and is now a massive, massive business and a huge successful, but it’s probably because there wasn’t, you know, they had, they had time to figure it out exactly what post acquisition LinkedIn would look like.

[00:16:20] Alex: And now they’re seeing the dividends from us.

[00:16:21] Courtney: Yeah, I think that a lot of times when people think about acquisitions, they feel like it’s this magic bullet where you can like double your business aside overnight. And like, and that’s just such a skewed way of looking at it because it’s a ton of work to acquire a business, and integrate it.

[00:16:36] Courtney: if you’re doing a full integration with your, company, and that takes time, the people take time. And there’s always skeletons that you, discovered

[00:16:44] Alex: As always said, yeah, And it’s a, 

[00:16:45] Alex: it’s a massive distraction.

[00:16:48] Alex: You know, the opportunity cost is massive.

[00:16:50] Courtney: yeah, it seems like it’s, it’s one of those things where it’s like, if you can be patient with it and be really thoughtful around the process, then it will pay off.

[00:16:58] Courtney: But organic growth is always going to be like a really, it’s your, your strongest, it’s kind of like search engine optimization. It’s like, you just kind of always have to be doing it on the back end over time, and then it pays off massively in the long run. But I think people get so excited about acquisitions because it’s, you know, big numbers and all of that,

[00:17:17] Alex: it’s big numbers and it makes a lot of sense in a spreadsheet, you know, but more lives have been told in a spreadsheet than, you know, in a Word document. So people get carried away.

[00:17:26] Courtney: Yeah, there’s so many ways of cutting the data to make it say exactly what you want it to.

[00:17:30] Alex: Exactly. 

[00:17:31] Courtney: do you see any trends shaping the future of e commerce tools and platforms over the next three to five years? specifically within like email and SMS marketing or, I guess you have experience in all tools,

[00:17:42] Alex: yeah, I think what’s going to be really interesting is. When you’re looking at acquisitions or just generally investments in the future, what is it that you’re getting? Because the cost of software development is declining rapidly with the advent of tools that are being put out by OpenAI and Anthropx, you know, cloud model.

[00:18:04] Alex: So, if the cost of software development is declining precipitously, what does that do to the acquisition environment? Because in some cases, you’re buying a legacy code, legacy decisions. And it’s going to be faster, cheaper, better to build it from scratch rather than acquiring that capability.

[00:18:23] Alex: So I think you need a lot of things to check the box for an acquisition to make sense and you start having more serious conversation. So that’s a huge trend. and I think the 2nd trend is just generally when you’re dealing with small businesses. And we see this with a lot of companies serving small businesses.

[00:18:40] Alex: the economics are such that you need to sell more than one thing to those people, right? if Shopify was just selling subscriptions, there was no app store. They outsource payments to somebody and be a massively smaller company

[00:18:55] Alex: you get from, you know, selling, one product to small businesses to five. All of a sudden it becomes a really compelling kind of compounding machine. And so I think a lot of point solutions that may have grown to 20, 30, 50 million dollars of revenue are really looking for that next act. How do I double my business? How do I triple my business? And where is that going to come from really? 

[00:19:19] Courtney: That aligns really well with kinda what we see in e-comm, like for, you know, selling physical products, where a lot of times companies will come to us and they’ll have like one hero product, and we’re like, it’s amazing that you have one product that everybody wants, but we need to get your order value up.

[00:19:33] Courtney: Your average cart size needs to be much larger in order for you to run ads. Upsells, having small products to add on, and then also not relying on one single product, because you never know when that thing will fall apart or get beat out by a competitor, so diversifying what you’re offering, is going to set you up for the long term.

[00:19:51] Courtney: that makes total 

[00:19:52] Alex: Yeah, we have a wonderful investor who is a longtime marketer kind of, you know, has been part of companies from the very beginning and taking them public. And, you know, he always told me the key to success is just sell more things to your to happy people. You’re happy customers. You’ve already earned their trust.

[00:20:11] Alex: The hard part. It’s over there. They know you. You’ve acquired that customer. You paid a lot to acquire them. You paid to retain them. They want to buy more from you. And sometimes you just, you need to keep that in mind when you’re thinking about doubling down on your core product or expanding into adjacent areas.

[00:20:28] Alex: You know, you kind of need to juggle both. If you don’t invest in your core, competition will come in, you’ll fall behind. If you don’t invest in adjacent products, you’re never going to grow. Yeah.

[00:20:40] Courtney: leads us very well into kind of the next few questions I want to ask about more of the privy side with email marketing and SMS, because what you’re talking about essentially is retention. So. Taking your existing customer base and making them more valuable to you. in your experience with Privy, what are the key factors that separate high performing email campaigns from average ones, specifically in the e commerce space?

[00:21:04] Alex: You know, it sounds cliche, but you got to give people something. You got to send something people want to open. You get to send something that’s actually compelling, right? I mean, the amount of emails people get, is only increasing. It seems like weekly. And so we have this wonderful merchant, that the husband makes the product and the wife does all the sales and marketing, kind of day to day running the business and their open rates, their click rates, their order rates are through the roof because they sell a super niche product. They only talk about that product and what’s coming down the pipe. And their Labor Day sales are astronomical and it’s a small business, but it’s very much because the content matches the audience. You know, it is this accessory to the best selling product. They just launched it. It’s 25 percent off for the next month because we just launched it.

[00:21:58] Alex: Want to get in the hands of people and they are, they’re writing their content as if it’s tailored to just 1 person. 

[00:22:06] Alex: And I think that is so much easier to do than trying to write ambiguous content, which you inherently get to if you’re trying to communicate with 10, 000 people. I mean, you just, how do you do that?

[00:22:20] Alex: But if you write for 1 person, you really study that person, you can write hyper personalized, targeted emails, targeted, subject lines. You don’t need to AB test your way out of this. You don’t need to think about what’s the best time to send. And it’s all about kind of having a compelling offer that resonates with your audience.

[00:22:39] Alex: That’s it. 

[00:22:40] Alex: That’s like, it’s simple. It doesn’t mean it’s easy, but 

[00:22:43] Courtney: Mm hmm. Well, it what’s great about it is that it comes from a place of authenticity. So if you’re speaking to your customers. Because you care about them, and you know who they are, and you might have, you know, four or five different avatars, maybe you just have one or two, but you’re able to segment your emails and speak authentically to each of them, which is actually so much easier than obsessing about what time of the day to send, A, B testing, obsessing over, like, minor differences in your open rate, like, It’s just so much more about just talking to somebody.

[00:23:17] Courtney: I will say that like in our experience the businesses that do the best have an authentic founder and have someone who actually cares about the thing that they’re making. so translating that into an email marketing strategy is a lot easier than you think because it’s just communication which you’re already doing, 

[00:23:31] Alex: Exactly. And let’s say you got to lean into your strengths, which is you’re a founder run brand. You can afford to be authentic. You don’t have corporate communication departments, editing, and kind of butchering your emails. It’s just lean into your authenticity. Experiment, chances are, most people aren’t going to see that first email and just keep trying.

[00:23:51] Alex: the good news is you’ll see the engagement pickup. You’ll see the sales come in and it’s all about not just leading with offers, but actually leading with education about who you are as a brand and what makes you different.

[00:24:04] Courtney: And I think that’s also a really important note for founders, people who are just getting into email marketing. I think a lot of us just say, Oh, what are the competitors doing? Like, what is my best competitor doing? And then just kind of ripping off what they’re doing and seeing if you can get the same success.

[00:24:19] Courtney: And that almost never works. It’s always helpful to see what they’re talking about, like what content they’re talking about. But just ripping someone off and just copying what your competitor is doing. it’s just such a short term solution and, and you really want to be thinking long term. How are we actually different from these guys?

[00:24:35] Courtney: Let’s not present ourselves as the same. 

[00:24:37] Alex: Yeah.

[00:24:37] Courtney: ourselves as different, you know.

[00:24:39] Alex: And I think that’s the hard part about, you know, online brands is, It’s thinking that you don’t have that customer connection, because maybe you haven’t met your customers. And so you’re just, emailing them, but you don’t really know who they are. And so we spend a lot of time at Privy just helping people understand who their audience is.

[00:24:55] Courtney: Yeah.

[00:24:55] Alex: Because some people, you just, you just don’t know. They come into the internet, they buy your product, you don’t know who they are. that’s why, it’s so helpful to just pick anybody that ordered from you recently. It doesn’t matter who they are. And just try to study and learn as much as you possibly can about that one person, like, really, and then that allows you to write those personalized emails that allows you to say, oh, well, if this person bought for their grandparent, like, chances are, there’s more people like this.

[00:25:24] Alex: And is that something we can really lead into,

[00:25:27] Alex: without that kind of studying one customer, you’re not going to get those interesting insights.

[00:25:32] Courtney: We also find that if you, once you’ve kind of studied a few customers and done your customer research and you can do this by looking at reviews and seeing what people are talking about, finding trends there. We also like sending a survey to all customers or maybe, the top 20 percent of customers, um, which you can do, like, send a, just send a mass email and offer them, like, maybe a discount or something.

[00:25:54] Courtney: But that’s going to be really good data to ask them questions like, why did you buy this? Is there anything that almost stopped you from buying this? do you like using our website? Asking those types of questions to help guide what your email should be about and just be more relevant to the customer.

[00:26:10] Alex: yeah, which is why, a lot of merchants are increasingly using post purchase surveys. and those are, you know, they seem easy or rudimentary, but man, are they effective. the opt in rate is so high, you already have a lot of customer contacts that you can then tie back to the survey responses.

[00:26:29] Alex: back at WeCommerce, they acquired, NoCommerce, which is one of the leading post purchase survey providers, and, Jeremiah, the founder, shared this great story about a brand in the Midwest was spending a fortune on Facebook ads, and they were selling, almost those, like, Taylor Swift friendship bracelets.

[00:26:47] Alex: And the buyer was, you know, according to their data was 45 year old kind of moms from the Midwest. Well, who are they buying for? They’re buying for teenage daughters and they didn’t realize that until they added a question to the post purchase survey. Like, who are you buying for today? so all the data in the world can be so granular, but you could just totally miss the mark 

[00:27:10] Alex: if you’re not asking the right questions.

[00:27:11] Courtney: And then that’s gonna change, you know, what your ads look like. Now, all of a sudden, you can speak directly to that. You can make emails that feature teenage girls instead of, you know, these midwestern 

[00:27:20] Courtney: moms. Like, it’s so powerful. Just, and it’s, it’s cheap too, like these post, purchase surveys.

[00:27:26] Courtney: Like, it’s not expensive. And you collect data really fast too, especially if you’re making a lot of purchases. So,

[00:27:31] Courtney: um, well, we talked a lot about, you know, personalized emails, but automation is a huge element of privy and email marketing in general. Um, how do you approach the balance between automation and more like human touch emails?

[00:27:46] Courtney: Yeah. 

[00:27:50] Alex: ways to do both have personalized. I mean, you’re, you know, probably a lot more about this than I do. You’re in the weeds every single day about this, but. You know, I think, I think so much about take a welcome series. It’s not just about sending increasingly higher discounts.

[00:28:07] Alex: It’s not really always about getting somewhere to order. It is about welcoming someone to the brand, building engagement. You know, you got to think about what’s the purpose of this flow is a top funnel, middle, middle of funnel, abandoned cart is obviously bottom of funnel, and so that can be more transactional that can be more offer driven.

[00:28:30] Alex: But at the top of the funnel, it’s really about awareness. It’s about building that awareness about your brand, what you stand for, your story, what’s coming down the pipe so that when, people are in the, what is it? The 95 percent of people are really not looking to buy from you. It’s only 5 percent at any given time.

[00:28:48] Alex: They’re actually in the market. We still got to get in front of those 95%. Those are the really important people to get in front of and leaning into who you are, again, that authenticity in flows 

[00:28:59] Alex: is really critical leaning into, kind of more middle of funnel. And that could be promotional flows. It could be, customer win backs.

[00:29:08] Alex: It could be a whole bunch of things. There’s ways to be personalized, and there’s ways to be increasingly personalized because you’re collecting a lot of data about those customers. So you probably should be sending different emails based on, you know, how much they spent. Are the people who spent a lot, they shop from you every month or every quarter, and then they disappear? How do you treat those people differently? And how do you automate that category of companies Almost how do And that’s really what I’m focused on is. How how do you put this on autopilot to some extent where you build the foundation, but it’s really on autopilot in terms of answering, who do I send to and what do I send?

[00:29:53] Alex: And that’s where AI could actually play a huge role in helping merchants easily answer those 2 questions. So I don’t think they’re exclusive. I think you just had to be mindful of where those flows are. In the purchase funnel bottom of funnel leave with discounts, you know, you’re trying to get their attention to get more of the finish line.

[00:30:11] Alex: You know, people need a nudge. Sometimes middle funnel, top of funnel. It’s not always about getting someone to buy. And seeing that attributed revenue, you know, in your dashboard, it’s really not about that. It’s about engagement and thinking long term and not being so guided. About what was your attributed revenue that day.

[00:30:33] Courtney: We always say, uh, look at your lifetime value, not today. Look at your lifetime value. Is the lifetime value of your customers going up? If so, you’re doing a great job. keep on it. and if it’s going down, then that’s when you should start freaking out, 

[00:30:47] Alex: Yes, exactly. that’s a good simple way to distill it. Yeah.

[00:30:51] Courtney: Are there any, um, common mistakes that you see e com brands make with email marketing? because I imagine you work with a lot of different types of brands, and I’m sure they all come in with the same mistakes.

[00:31:04] Alex: Yeah. You know, I think it’s like our job is to make it our job is to provide a simple, but powerful tool and we do a lot to try to make it easier every single month. About removing friction could be templates could be inspiration. You know, there’s a bunch of things that we want just to shorten the time again from inspiration to creation.

[00:31:26] Alex: that doesn’t mean you don’t need to spend any time on it. it’s like anything garbage in garbage out. And so spend some time on how your emails look spend some time speaking with customer success. Who want to know who you are as a brand because they can give you much more tailored actionable advice because of that.

[00:31:46] Alex: And your email activity, your SMS activity should be like 30 to 40 percent of your revenue. Like really? And people come in and say, I know I need to do email marketing. I know I need to do SMS. I don’t have time for it.

[00:32:00] Alex: I’m just going to set up an abandoned card flow and then they get a little disappointed when they’re not seeing the results. So we really stress like putting the time, we will help you. We will be the coach. We will adjust your strategy along the way, but you’ve got to put in some time. It’s just like you’re doing with any other parts of your business.

[00:32:19] Alex: You spend more time on it. You will see the results.

[00:32:22] Courtney: Yeah, I mean, it’s very similar to like your website. The better your website is, the more purchases you’re gonna get. I also think that when you think about email marketing, it supercharges everything else you’re doing. anything that you’re sending to your website, ideally, you have like a pop up and you’re collecting emails and All of that effort can be, like, you can get more out of it if you have a really solid welcome flow.

[00:32:46] Courtney: So, take the time to set it up, and once you set it up, then you don’t have to worry about it you know, you check in on it every once in a while, and you check in on your, different flows, and you send additional campaigns, it is worth the time at the beginning, because you might as well do it right, if you’re going to do it 

[00:33:00] Courtney: at all,

[00:33:00] Alex: And it’s, sometimes it’s 15 minutes. You know.

[00:33:03] Alex: it’s like, really not a lot of time. So we have we had this client who sells pretty high, you know, price product. So average order values and the 2 to 500 dollars. 

[00:33:14] Alex: you know, All we did was kind of redesign their, they went from a pretty nondescript, pop up that they just kind of set and forget it.

[00:33:22] Alex: And, you know, we made much more of an interactive. Full screen mini quiz, so we’re collecting preferences that then guides them into different flows essentially. And that just turbo charged both generates for email and phone numbers. it pushes people much further down the funnel because providing a lot more relevant information based on what you’re collecting.

[00:33:46] Alex: you know, I think that was probably 15 minutes of work, maybe 30 minutes of work and has provided tens and tens of thousands of dollars of life value. in the first month, if not more, and so there’s a lot. I don’t think people see the potential sometimes and working hand in hand with experts, even if they’re just nudging to do something, you know, you will see the results.

[00:34:13] Courtney: Yeah, I feel like the thing that gets people, like, stops them is just the idea, it’s an unfamiliar concept. They don’t know how email marketing works, like, they’re not an email marketer, they’re, you know, they make this product. And so it’s so overwhelming, and it, it feels really scary, and it feels like it’s gonna be this big, daunting task.

[00:34:33] Courtney: But, you guys have such good customer service that you’re able to, like, Really make it super bite size and really easy to do. Like it might just be 15 minutes. So I encourage anyone who’s working with, for me, just to talk to your customer service person. because it, makes the daunting tasks just not nearly as daunting.

[00:34:50] Courtney: And even if you spend 15 minutes and it doesn’t make you thousands and thousands of dollars, it’s 15 minutes

[00:34:57] Alex: yeah, a call, You know? 

[00:34:59] Alex: and it’s like, the good thing about email marketing is that, you don’t need to do a lot to start seeing results. You need to continue to put time into it, but listen, if you have a welcome series and abandoned cart, you’re already doing a lot better than most, and you’ll, pay for your monthly fee.

[00:35:18] Alex: 10 times over with just those small things.

[00:35:21] Courtney: And if it doesn’t work and you try everything, then, you cancel your Privy account and 

[00:35:27] Alex: Exactly. There’s no commitments. 

[00:35:29] Courtney: Yeah, 

[00:35:30] Alex: to refining your products.

[00:35:32] Courtney: exactly. so how are you approaching the next few years with Privy? I know, you’re just getting started, but it sounds like you got a lot kind of on the roadmap.

[00:35:40] Alex: There’s really no part of the application that we’re not touching and not thinking through. and so, you know, who we are is like. Kirby is a phenomenal fit. If you are the co founder of a brand, or you are the sole marketer of a brand, if you have a 12 person marketing team, you’re not going to use Privy.

[00:36:02] Alex: it’s just not the right fit. and so what we, it almost doesn’t matter how much a bigger stories you can doing half a million a GMB. You can do 10, 000, 000 a GMB. you know, we have 1 customer that over all their stores gets 40, 000, 000 views, massive, massive customers, but it’s all about how do we help these small businesses be more successful? And there’s no problem that we really don’t want to tackle for them. And it’s very much focused on, okay, how do I convert visitors into customers and then customers into loyalists? That is the lens that we’re looking through with all of our product innovation.

[00:36:41] Alex: So, yes, the core is, you know, list growth and onsite conversion tools, email marketing, SMS marketing. but it doesn’t stop there. Like, it’s very much if products fit within that. You know, short phrase turning visitors and the customers and customers are loyalists. We think we can provide that to our customers seamlessly.

[00:37:03] Alex: so where we’re going over the next few years is really focused on helping merchants answer the question. What do I send and who do I send to in an increasingly automated yet personalized fashion? When I say automated, a lot of it is just shortening the time again from inspiration to creation. It is allowing. Just as merchants have many different entrance points to their brand smaller price, you know, lower price points, higher price points. We want to do the same with privy that we’re not going to force you into a plan. It doesn’t make sense for your business. If you just want to focus on list growth and user, you know, completely top of the line list growth tools and sync that to Klaviyo or PostScript, that’s fine.

[00:37:49] Alex: If you just want to use this for SMS, because we have some of the lowest cost, you know, no commitment SMS product out there. Great. If you want to use it for everything, perfect. We can work with you and design strategies that touch on All 3 of those, because we’re chatting with you weekly, biweekly, monthly, whatever cadence you want.

[00:38:10] Alex: We’re available to chat with you. and that’s really where we want to go. We want to be flexible. We want to meet businesses where their needs are and not lead with a 1 size fits all approach,

[00:38:22] Courtney: Amazing. Well, to wrap up here, if you could give yourself one piece of advice when you were just starting out, what would it be?

[00:38:30] Alex: Take a long term view. Because some days feel like you’re making no progress, some days feel like you’re on top of the world. And I think that’s just how you feel as a business owner or an entrepreneur, and that if you don’t allow yourself to kind of step back, look at all you’ve done in the past, or take a long term view, which is, I’m not seeing the results from this initiative or this hire yet.

[00:38:56] Alex: Do you have the right ingredients? Do you have the right inputs? Because those will pay off. Even if you don’t see the immediate results today, so focusing on those fundamentals, taking a long term view is completely necessary to avoid kind of making stupid mistakes. At the end of the day, we’re not giving investments or initiatives enough time because you have to learn and you have to let that stuff compound and you can’t see a compound until you kind of look back in the rear view mirror and see where you came from.

[00:39:26] Courtney: I love that. I, feel like every single business owner I know is so deep in the weeds, and if they just zoom out, they can see one how far they’ve come, which is always very nice to remind yourself of, but also just it’s easier to see the future when you zoom out. So that’s a great piece of advice. where can people find you online?

[00:39:46] Alex: yeah, you’ll, You can follow me on LinkedIn. Uh, just search my name, Alex Pearson or search Privy and you’ll find me and, going forward, I’ll be posting on there 3 to 4 times a week and their content is really meant for merchants, like bite sized educational content that will help you provide value, obviously showcase what we’re up to your Privy.

[00:40:09] Alex: And a bunch of new functionality that we’re unveiling, but really my job is to get the privy word of mouth out there showcase the privy brand. I like customer stories. You know, I like stories like, what you’re doing Courtney, and just honestly, like, share the good vibes all around. So you can always email me.

[00:40:27] Alex: You can always get in touch me. And I look forward to hearing from any merchant about how we’re doing it. Pretty

[00:40:35] Courtney: Amazing. Yeah, I’m so excited to see what Privy does in the near future and the far future. so go ahead and follow Alex, Alex Pearson, and 

[00:40:43] Alex: awesome. 

[00:40:43] Courtney: much for being on the show, Alex. This is a really great conversation.

[00:40:46] Alex: Courtney, I really appreciate it. And thank you so much.

[00:40:49] Courtney: And thank you to everyone at home for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please make sure to subscribe, share with a friend, leave us a review. And if there’s anything you’d like to hear on an upcoming episode, just let us know. For more insights and behind the scenes stories follows on LinkedIn or visit rightleftagency.

[00:41:04] Courtney: com. And we’ll be back next week with more stories of success, innovation, marketing, and, strategies to help you grow. So I’ll see you next time.