This is the unknown secrets of internet marketing.

Your insider guide to the strategies top marketers use to crush the competition.

Ready to unlock your business full potential.

Let's get started.

Howdy, welcome back to another funfold episode of The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing.

We are branding the best SEO podcast.

We're focused on LLM visibility.

We think that, well, SEO is all over the place.

People can't figure out what it's called.

We've decided that we built a methodology that's working to rank in uh the large language models like ChatGBT.

And uh we are going in that direction of LLM visibility.

I am bringing on a number of agency owners to talk about what they're doing, how they're dealing with this, what they've been doing is working.

I feel like everybody needs to be sharpening their skill sets in today's world.

So I have Nikita here with Aspect, and he's got a great story of uh building a personal brand and focuses on e-commerce.

And that's something for you listeners, I'm not an expert in.

So I'm uh looking to Nikita to educate me.

Um, we brought on a number of other e-commerce experts, and we're gonna be building a playlist uh for you to listen to on our YouTube channel.

We're really trying to move over to YouTube, so please go give us a subscribe, like, follow.

Uh, it looks pretty sad right now.

So um thank you so much for uh being a listener.

And Nikita, uh, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me on, uh, Matt.

Really, I love the SEO side of things on the internet marketing because that's that's where I got my feet wet on the internet marketing side.

So it's kind of like hitting close to home.

And it's crazy seeing that you can now rank within large language models.

And we've kind of had a firsthand experience with that a couple of weeks ago where we had our first sales call booked in from Chat GPT, actually.

Awesome.

It's it's really exciting.

Um, there's a lot of data out there and a lot of debate and some different studies um of uh are the users coming out of Chat GBT more engaged, ready to buy, uh, or how is Google doing?

And and I've seen studies both ways.

What I've really seen, interestingly enough, is in similar web data, I was doing some uh uh research on an industry.

People are going to the sites, right?

Maybe they're finding it through Google.

Then after they find the brand, they're going to ideate on the brand in the large language model.

So that was something super interesting.

So people are not just using it to find the brands, they're using it to figure out okay, like I've narrowed it down.

Tell me more about these agencies.

So uh really that that transactional, that that comparison style content of who you are and where your values sit, and really the narrative that LMs grab onto, you it reputation management, I don't know, AI.

No one's been talking about that, but that's that's something that I recently saw right before I went to Brighton.

Um, I was uh doing a big kind of research project, uh, put out a 33-page deck uh on on an industry and just really went deep and saw some super cool data that I I'm gonna publish maybe in a couple weeks.

So that's that's amazing.

I mean, that customer behavior really comes down to like just natural customer behavior from yeah.

So it's really interesting that you brought that up because that's really what natural customer behavior is.

It's like, okay, I found the brand.

Um, and now let me just do a little bit more deep dive and digging on the research side.

And then Chat GPT or whatever LLM that you're using just kind of helps either re-reaffirm your decision or it helps with um not only like just reaffirming, but also doing a little bit more research on that specific product or service that you're gonna be buying.

So I thought it was really interesting on our end with that sales experience because after talking to that business owner more specifically on like, hey, you I saw that you came in from ChatGPT, like how did that work?

And from his end, he was like, I was just doing research on like email strategy and flow strategy and whatnot, and and your agency just came up as like one of the options and I booked in a call.

Yeah, that that's what I'm seeing a lot.

I'm seeing if you show up in Chat GPT, um you're you're predefined.

I think it's like remember when Google was coming out and the ads, everybody well, 80% of people would skip the ads and go to organic.

And if you ranked higher organically, there was like implied trust.

Right.

Um, I I think that with the LLMs, it's even more so, but it it's just implied trust and getting surfaced on specific things that they're trying to solve that's personalized to them is super powerful.

And so understanding how these LLMs ingest the data um is just really been a rabbit hole that we've gone down.

I I think that there are a lot of foundational things that we should have been doing, and Google is kind of trying to give us hints on, um, because it's just one big LM, in my opinion, anyway.

Um but it's really like an ecosystem shift now as people are using it to search.

So it's not like uh human search behavior, even like the normal sales funnel, and that that was thrown out the window a long time ago anyway, but people still use that.

It's it's really not about that anymore at all.

So um we've been actually building out a framework, which I I'm gonna roll out.

Um, we're we're putting out uh a paper, but it is absolutely working.

And you know, it's based on data, it's based on science, it's based on the patents.

And um, you know, I I think that this is a big question mark for a lot of agencies.

I think it's a question mark for a lot of business owners.

Um, you know, traffic's been cut almost in half at most publishers, and so it's not business as usual, and um, so yeah, it's been it's been a pretty wild ride.

We got to remember it's only five percent of the market today, but you know, I think in three years, uh, you know, it's gonna eat search uh in a big way.

I that's you know, my my opinion.

But also, I just did this LinkedIn post and uh I heard this at at Brighton and it said AI predictions age like milk, not wine.

Yeah.

I mean, I would probably agree with that, uh, because it it is, I mean, there's still so much more fact checking that I have to go through in order to like, okay, is this actually accurate information?

Um, and I've kind of seen it firsthand.

I don't know if you've um, I don't know if you're a big follower of South Park at all, but they recently put out an episode a couple of weeks ago where um Stan was like super obsessed with Chat GPT and like always asking it like for marriage advice and everything like that.

And it was weird because about a week after that episode aired, I met up with a close friend and he was using Chat GPT just like that, where it's like getting all of his personal preferences and he's always like constantly asking, like, hey, what movies should I watch?

And like kind of teaching that algorithm and his personal account on all of his preferences.

So I think it's he's very in um he's on the bleeding edge of using it, and but it was very interesting to see of like, okay, this is how people are going to be using it in the in the long run, of like just constantly talking to it and just giving it as much information as possible, but it's also a little scary at the same time.

100%.

I actually on a couple different podcasts where it's more general, like AI stuff, they're talking about how um the younger generations are are using it as a true co-pilot for life, and they're like, should I go on the date with this guy?

Or should I, you know, I go hang out with these people, and they're just giving it all the data.

And you know, um, depending on what your input's in, it could be a really good output or it could be uh a really bad output.

That's why, that's why.

Well, I think that that's why ChatGPT 5 changed from four, where it remembered everything, and now you gotta have it, uh, you gotta specifically kind of pin it to to remember things.

Um it's gonna be a wild ride.

Um, it's gonna be a wild ride on on how everything's changing.

I I'm seeing a lot of people compare this shift to online, like how different it was buying online.

I remember when people are just trying to um give you put your credit card in online, we'll give it to you free.

Like, or or just sign up online, we'll give it all these magazines, everything we'll give them to you free.

Like it was just please just use online.

And and you're I mean, you leaned into it, and and I want to transition into kind of your story because e-commerce, where you can reach more than just the small business general area around you, transforms your your customer base, how you do business.

I feel like everybody's moving towards this AI first company, which is a whole different can of worms, but moving to an e-commerce component, and I even interviewed right before COVID um somebody from the Google spam team, and they were recommending every single site based on what they were seeing in buyer behavior should set up some kind of shopping cart on their website because people are more generally um okay with with buying stuff online.

Now, there's some strong ecosystem pools like Amazon, but I mean, Shop Shopify's making inroads, uh, and a lot of brands are are are pushing that.

And you got TikTok store, and there's a lot going on.

I would love to hear kind of your perspective on the e-commerce market today.

Well, it's changed a significant amount since I started out.

Um, back in like 2016, 2017, I was able to like put a t-shirt.

I was doing like a print-on-demand business at that time.

That's how I got my feet wet into like internet marketing and all that.

Um, and you I would just put a t-shirt up, make a title tag or a heading tag, a title tag, H2s, and do a little bit of that, and it would immediately rank in Google, and I would immediately get sales.

And the store, man, it had no trust at all.

Um, where versus now, where you need like UGC, testimonials, lifestyle imagery, photo shoots, um, you have to have your email backend set up.

You have to have ads, you have to spend at least like 10 to 15 grand on ads before you can even make a profit on ads from learning.

Um, like the border, like back like 10 years ago, like the the barrier to entry was just so low.

As long as you have a Shopify setup, you can capture payments and you have a product that looks legit-ish, like you're gonna get sales.

Whereas now there's been so much, I think, burn from the major, like a major consumer population of like with the man, I remember the offer of like free plus shipping when that was a thing.

Like I'm I'm sure so many people got burned by like AliExpress or like team or Timu like products, where now like you need so much social proof in order to get a customer.

And I think that just transcends through the entire consumer behavior, like in the agency space.

Like I used to have cold emails be like one out of a hundred would book a meeting.

Now it's like one out of a thousand, if not more than that, because of the trust factor being so low in the consumer market.

So I think the evolution on the e com side has been really great, not only for on the not only for consumers, but also it's made it a lot more challenging for um store owners, but also agencies to like help get better results every year, and if not push the the limit on getting better results.

Nikita, I think you said something that I haven't hit on enough, uh, and I appreciate you calling it out, is that it's the buyer behavior that's changing, and that we're following the buyer behavior, right?

It's not you need to do this for SEO or you need to do this to make sales, it's that everyone's growing up on how they're using the internet, the experiences they've had.

Um, it's getting mapped out.

A lot of people have been burned.

Uh, and and so people are are really skeptical of of everything.

And then, you know, products like Timu that flood the market.

I mean, you can go on there and get total replicas of like even like gold coins, and yeah, um, like I somebody uh he got a bunch of views.

I think he did it intentionally bought a car off of Tamu, uh, and it came in a big shipping box, and it was like a card or it was styrofoam painted.

Okay, it was like$20,000 Lamborghini or something like that.

And you know, I think that the buyer behaviors changed, so how how people are searching is changing.

So marketers have to adapt with where people are going, what they're doing, and unfortunately, they're going everywhere and they're looking at everything, and so it was awesome back in the day when you could do a few things and you could rank and there wasn't much barrier to entry or competition.

I feel like COVID accelerated it big time.

I felt like PPC budgets just a lot of the campaigns that we were running just became um not profitable, uh, and we had to come up with different strategies and it became more complex and kind of there was a fan out effect to different channels, and it's just the evolution of search, you know.

There was that little sweet spot though in March, April of 2020 when the CPMs were dirt cheap, and I just you know, sometimes I dream about those days where it's like five dollar CPMs.

I missed that.

Now it's fifty dollars.

But uh besides the point, I think yeah, the buyer behavior has definitely changed and evolved into not only researching a lot more, but like just doing a lot more due diligence online because you don't have the same amount of brand equity as you had with like legacy brands like like Sears and JCPenney.

Like you walk in there, you know you're gonna get like perfume or makeup or clothes and betting, everything.

Whereas now it's like you have a betting brand that's in your Instagram feed and it's like, well, I don't know what this brand is.

Like, let me look into it, and you do more research.

And as a brand owner, you have to do a lot more to spoon feed a lot of that research to convince the buyer or convince the prospective buyer to actually become a buyer.

Uh, and that's where a lot of like the heavy lifting that we do on the email side helps support of like not only spoon feeding that information, but also gaining trust with more impressions for free, essentially, um, in order to convince those people to become buyers.

So you brought up something interesting that I'm kind of following.

I feel like a lot of big brands are just leaning on their logo, right?

And and they're leaning on the trust and they're not moving very fast.

A lot of the bigger brands are not as savvy online as smaller brands, and maybe it's like a big bigger battleship that's got a turn, but these smaller brands, I feel like if they do it right, they can they can in a certain category, a certain niche, they can eat the bigger brands lunch.

Um, like Dollar Shave Club, and then Gillette eventually acquired them.

Yeah, well, I think that might be the strategy, right?

Like uh yeah, um, I've seen that in pharma too, right?

Like you have a biotech company that gets bought up.

Right.

Um, I I don't know.

I I think that there's so much opportunity.

I a lot of people I talk to are like the good old days, right?

And I feel like it's like new land, it's kind of like America with Christopher Columbus, and you don't know what's gonna be there, and but you know it's gonna be good, and you know it's gonna be exciting, and you got multimodal uh engagement coming down the pike, like glasses, um wearables, like it's it's really exciting, but it requires a lot of learning and staying on top of it because it's moving, it's moving so fast.

Yeah, every month at this point feels like a year of like information just hardwired into the brain.

Um, with those bigger brands, like you brought up a good point of like they move a lot slower, where the smaller brands can almost out-innovate them in uh in certain marketing materials or ads or promotions that they're running.

Uh, and I think a lot of that comes down to just bigger brands.

It they they plateau from too much hands touching a project and too much middle management, and you have to work it up the chain to make sure that you get the VP's approval, the VP of VP's approval, and all of this other corporate, I guess, structuring that prevents them from trying out new things.

So, like, I mean, now like, okay, we do have big brands acting as like social media crazy people in like the comments of like Instagram reels or posting like crazy content, but there was brands that were doing that like six years ago and were crushing it and we're going viral.

Uh, whereas now it's like, okay, finally bigger brands are catching up.

Like, okay, we need to do this because they're like the late stage adopters and they're seeing all these other brands crush it because of this new way of marketing to a newer generation that's more um that was grown up more on the internet rather than the traditional of like running TV and media buying through radio and and whatnot.

Man, the bigger brands are catching up, and so the small businesses that haven't caught up and aren't staying ahead and they're the laggards.

Yeah, I I don't think that they have a uh a bright future ahead of them.

Um well, CPMs are only gonna get hired because these bigger brands are now dumping more money into online advertising, so it's just like okay, you got to do something more creative now.

Yeah, no, I'm I'm seeing digital get a much bigger budget, and and you did point out I I have seen that the approval process to get stuff done and multiple people to report to and different stakeholders and then decisions.

Well, we we did a press release for a big client, and um, right after the press release went out, they're like, wait, no, like pull it back.

And I was like, that was a new experience.

I hadn't ever pulled back a press release.

You can do it, they charge you, but um, it was it was uh I I you know I had never I had never uh uh I was like, let me see.

I don't know.

So what I feel like I'm learning new things all the time.

Um so I would love to hear like case studies maybe of uh clients you've worked with uh that have outinnovated the bigger brands, or how you've been able to navigate through it, or if there's any kind of frameworks that you follow that would be helpful for people that are going, oh my gosh, this like social media is so noisy.

I'm taking screenshots on my phone left and right of everybody selling me something.

Like, where do I turn?

That that's what what I'm finding with with this podcast.

We've been around 12 years, is like I try to curate a little bit what's going on.

And also, even uh if I'm interviewing somebody and like they're talking like way in left field, I I try to kind of like go, okay, can can you talk through this, explain it and like let's unpack it so people understand where you're coming from because to process all this stuff if you're not doing it every day, even if you're doing it every day, it's incredibly difficult.

I mean, I talk to agencies all the time that they're busy trying to run the business, they're busy, busy trying to get these things implemented, and now there's 10 new things that um they need to be considering, and then it's like uh we need more budget.

Uh and the client's like, why?

Well, it's getting harder.

That's a great answer, by the way.

Like it's it's getting tougher, we need more budget.

Um, but it's real, right?

Like the CPMs are going up.

I think it it comes down to speaking uh in the language of accounting and and showing projections and uh showing trajectories and showing costs so uh you know the the executive team can understand that this is not just branding if you're if you're doing performance marketing or what have you.

Well, the fun stuff about doing all of that is that you also have to juggle your family life as well, which is great, especially if you have like kids and like a whole big family.

So um it's only getting tougher, unfortunately.

But um, those do those bigger budgets do help.

Uh, I don't think I have a direct case study where like David beats Goliath in a in a sense, but we have worked with a few clients where they've taken an original idea and just made it easier for a consumer to try that product out.

So, for example, like you know what Invisalign is, right?

Where it's like you know, clear retainers.

They just they they just went generic from what I understood.

I was talking to a dentist, so yeah, so they just lost their patent, so there's a bunch of them popping up everywhere.

I heard that at a dinner last weekend, random.

Uh not really useful for this conversation unless you want to launch a brand and not have yeah, exactly.

Um, well, there is a brand that we worked with in the past where they did the same thing where it's not directly at a dentist's office.

You they send you an impression kit, you bite into it, you send it back to them, and they give you all of the retainers that you need in order to align your teeth and make them straighter um and more symmetrical.

So, in that sense, they were able to out-innovate the bigger brands like Invisalign on that end.

Um, they're not making anywhere near the amount of revenue that Invisalign is, maybe like a tenth of it, but still they were able to carve out their own market um through out-innovating on the Facebook ad side, obviously, having our team on the email side and pushing revenue there.

Um, so I think that they were pretty much, I think, a good case study on just moving way faster than like some of these big brands that already have like a foothold in dentist office rather than capturing a market online and being more of a DIY self-serve rather than like a premium product that you have to go to a dentist for.

So when you talk awesome case study, by the way.

Um, so when you're talking about emails, uh my brain goes a couple different directions, it certainly goes to AI agents, but um, I I try to keep the conversation uh from from going there too much.

But um I feel like emails, uh like cold reach out emails have have changed a lot.

Like what is your message to somebody or brand or company that doesn't use an email list to continue to kind of sell that that group of subscribers, like they don't have they don't have an email list.

How do you get started?

How should you be thinking about it?

If you do have an email list, the degradation rate on emails, I mean, what is it 30% a year is what I think I recently read.

So if you have like a couple year old email list, it it might not even be useful.

People would mark you as spam.

Um, you have to, you know, vet though those emails to make sure that they're actually legit emails and uh there's deliverability on them.

Like there's a whole kind of world in emails, and then also if you could talk about well, I I've been banned on a couple of social media platforms.

I'm trying to get access to it again, it's really important for my entity identity.

Um, but I used automation uh on cold outreach, and you're not supposed to do that.

Uh and so I would love to hear kind of your perspectives on that.

And for anybody listening on a platform, because I know y'all have sponsored this podcast before, I scouts oath, I'm following the rules because I don't want to get banned.

Uh and uh I didn't totally know the rules uh completely.

Um, so I'm sorry.

So public uh someone's listening out there.

Hopefully they can get you on banned.

Um, but a couple things to break down on that end.

So we typically handle, we don't do any cold email.

Um, the only cold email I do is for our business, like ourselves, like for getting new business, but also getting on this podcast.

That's how we got you.

Um, but we don't handle cold email.

Um, we handle uh purely warm email or like a list of contacts that already exist within a client's like Clavio, for example.

Um, but outside of that, there's a lot of things that you you mentioned as far as like how do we get new people on lists.

Like if you're brand new and you don't have a list and you just started your brand, there's actually a couple ways um to start up that email list.

Well, number one, you have your phone, you have a contact list.

I'm sure you have all the emails that you've ever like talked, like all the people that you've ever talked with on that contact list.

You can go through your Gmail, it's probably like thousands of emails.

Um, so you can start off with like a close-knit group initially, maybe a couple hundred emails that you can send out to that.

You know people will open emails up from you because they support you.

You have that personal uh equity built up with them.

Um, so that is like a good start just to start, just to have like a hundred or like a couple hundred contacts in there.

The next thing you can do is setting up a website pop-up.

Um, I'm sure you've seen these all over the internet where you go on a website, it's like, do you want 10% off?

Yes, put your email in.

So that is the first thing that I would do right off the bat is just to start capturing any random visitor that's coming onto your website onto your email list.

After that, you can start to get a little bit more creative.

So uh if you have a blog post and you're ranking on those blogs, you can integrate a sign-up form in between uh like the first or second paragraph, or maybe even in the heading for people to sign up for your email list to get more of these newsletter-based um or check the box.

Yeah, check the box.

Um, so that those are a few ways.

And then if you want to really explode your email list, maybe not the most um, maybe it's not the most warm market, but you can do giveaways, and those tend to do really, really well.

You just have to make sure that after someone signs up for a giveaway, you have an automation set up on the back end to nurture that list uh and nurture the people that have come in because they do typically giveaway subscribers have less interest, and you kind of need to warm them up a little bit more before you can like directly hit them with like sales and promotions and whatnot.

So that's those are a few ways that I would recommend getting started on just growing an email list.

Yeah, a lot of people use additional emails for those kind of like uh sweepstakes and stuff like that to keep their emails clean.

I feel like a lot of people are also dealing with like death by email.

Um, and it's not that the emails are not getting delivered, it's just they're not getting looked at because the overwhelming amount of emails that everyone gets.

Like, we've even dealt with clients where um we're starting to send text automations or Slack to say, like, hey, like we sent you an email, like go look at it.

And uh we've like embedded like videos and emails, and we can look at have they watched it?

No, like so you know, we're sending, we're communicating things, but it it might not be received, and it's not anything that we're doing, it's just the overwhelming amount of information that everybody's dealing with.

I feel like well, you brought up a good point in like the previous uh where like email degrades at a 30% year over year.

Um, that is more true.

And the thing is, it degrades even faster if you stop.

You know, it's almost like running a like a 5k or like a marathon where like if you stop in the middle when you have a good flow going, it's almost harder to finish that that run because you lost your momentum.

So we actually had a a client that signed on for like a one-time project earlier in the year, I think it was like in February or March.

Um, they were recently new buyers of a of a new like of an existing Shopify store.

So that Shopify store, the previous owners used to email like two or three times a week.

These new buyers, um, they didn't have stock, unfortunately.

So they weren't able to send out any promotional messaging or even just informational-based messaging for two to three months before they got back in stock.

And after those three months, when they first sent out their initial message, their open rate was in the single digits because they weren't sending out any communication in between that time, and no one really remembered that brand because they weren't staying top of mind every week.

That's you know, that's what's tough.

I think that there's a compounding effect.

Um, there's kind of a signal amplification that happens with all marketing.

Um, I feel like the same thing with paid ads.

Uh, once the AI starts to kind of find its groove, like sometimes if spam keeps commenting on your ads, you want to stop it and start it again because it will optimize for ads.

But right, um, you know, you when you get in that groove, it's almost like you don't want to touch anything and maybe build on top of it.

And I just see big budget switches or new campaigns getting launched.

And I'm kind of like, let's not do it like a light switch, let's phase it in, phase it out, let's not drop it by too much.

Um, same thing with SEO, it's it's a compounding effect.

You and and a lot of I think it's like working out too.

It's like you're working out and you don't see anything, you don't see anything, then all of a sudden you start seeing stuff.

But if you stop working out, same thing happens.

So, you know, I I think that people gotta wrap their head around like, I'm gonna do digital marketing or I'm not, and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna learn enough to know where the guardrails are.

and kind of where the navigation buoys are.

And then I'm gonna like do it and it's gonna be part of what I do long term.

And I feel like that's the biggest difference I've seen between brands that win and lose is people that like like it's a mindset.

Like you know, I know you don't talk about a mindset a lot, but like it's a mindset of like even though I know I'm not seeing results now, I understand what's happening and I'm looking for that compounding.

A lot of that happens with SEO.

Sometimes you get a bunch of leads and then all of a sudden the market stops and then it starts again.

And you gotta you got to keep being there.

You got to keep showing up and the algorithms reward um the frequency uh I would I would assume humans reward that as well right because you're there's the recognition and association uh with that brand I think people buy typically novelty uh and uh well familiarity so it's like how do you offer something novel but also be a familiar brand and that's where the magic comes in have you ever heard of the term knowledge resulting say it again resulting it's like resulting no tell me about it so uh there's a book called thinking and bets that I recently read and really great book by the way in there there's a term called resulting which is very common among like poker players and it's essentially create making a decision based off of results rather than having a good decision making framework to begin with.

So for example if like you're doing like YouTube video content or LinkedIn content or whatever other kind of content and you're doing it for like two months three months four months like the decision and the habit is like sound but if you're constantly looking at like the likes and everything and all the statistics and analytics you're like wow I only have like five people that read my stuff you know like because then it's like okay cool the results aren't there I'm gonna stop rather than yeah try something else yeah that that I I I'll tell you um I was at a conference and uh I there's a guy I I need to get him on podcast uh entrepreneurs on fire um and and essentially he's like okay I'm all audio right all audio he did daily podcast he was probably one of the first to do it and he's like I'm gonna start doing YouTube and he changed the focus he didn't brand his name and he was showing his results and it was something like eight months maybe even a year and a half before he started to see anything and he was doing it every day okay but he knew he knew I'm gonna work this muscle I'm gonna I'm gonna uh you know fan the engagement like he knew what to do but it just takes a long time and now it's just skyrocketing you know but but you I I I think people quit too early I I think a lot of times people quit too early I I and and you know I don't I don't know how to talk them through that because they they like there's got to be a level of trust with you there's got to be a level of trust what they see like they got to believe and it's very hard to believe when you're walking through that desert um you know and I don't know I don't know I think I all these experiences buying experiences that people have had online shape shape how people are and shape what people do and it's it's it's sometimes difficult.

And that's I think one of the biggest things that I tell um my sales guys I say hey like what what is the mindset of the person that wants to sign this contract right like where are they at?

How have they been successful before you know if it's like a Hail Mary and it's like I've tried everything and like I'm gonna throw some money at this and like I hope it works and the house is on fire that's not a good client.

No that is a nightmare client that will churn in two to three months.

But a lot of it comes down like okay here's a good one.

I had uh a sales call booked in earlier in the year from a podcast I did three years ago like I wouldn't have known like when I was doing that podcast at that time I had no clue anything I was just yapping and talking about email strategies and everything.

And I was like okay like it was it's it was pretty valuable.

I'm sure like people liked it but it was like hey I switched job positions I listened to this podcast a year ago and I remembered your name and now here we are I'm in a new company and I need help with email and it's like okay like I didn't realize that the impact that I've done years back finally boomerings back to me as like a potential sales opportunity.

And I think that's a lot of just like it a lot of it comes down to like just taking the bet and seeing what are the odds of that bet succeeding.

So like you know it could be um like with ads it could be like a one in 10 bet that it works out meaning like okay you can lower that statistic by having better creatives or better media buyers or a better ad buying strategy um like doing a podcast to lead to a client is like a one in a thousand strategy or taking an interview with another person like that.

So maybe one in a five hundred like bet.

So like when you think about it in that perspective of like okay if I do this consistently and like the decision making is there, then it will lead to results rather than just constantly like okay I'm not getting anything I'm not getting anything and I'm putting all this effort and nothing's coming from it.

So um you're you're right on like you're dead on with like all coming down to like the mindset of like okay how are you thinking about doing this is it long term or is it just like a quick fix and a Hail Mary a lot we could go with that.

Now we're getting we're getting close to time here.

So I want to give uh anyone listening some actionable steps right of like okay in today's world just break it down the top things that matter the top things they should be doing maybe give them some actionable tips to you know level up what they're doing currently we've been having such a good conversation I forget we're even talking about email and SMS um but I'd I'd probably boil it down to a handful of things.

Number one, make sure that your standard automations are set up in order to communicate with a potential customer and an existing customer at multiple points of their journey.

So having like a welcome automation, abandoned cart, abandoned checkout, post purchase, cross-sell, win back for people that may have not opened your emails in a while that sort of thing.

So having the baseline automation set up is very important and it leads to a better customer experience and a lot less work on your end because it's automated and you don't really have to worry about it and it converts customers on on repeat essentially the next thing is we talked a little bit about this earlier but make sure that you have a good list growth engine.

So having a high converting pop-up or maybe other channels where you're getting subscribers in through the door that is the lifeblood of your channel because if you're getting less visitors or not less visitors less subscribers that means that's less people you can email which means less sales and that is a cascading effect if enough time goes by.

So flows um flows pop up next thing is deliverability uh we didn't really talk about it too much but there's a lot that needs to be done on the deliverability side most of the time making sure that um your open rates are high making sure that your emails are actually getting delivered in specific inboxes you know you could have a 40% open rate but maybe Yahoo's put putting your emails into spam and when once one falls eventually all the other dominoes will fall and like you'll have problems with Gmail, Apple, Verizon Media Group, etc like all of these other inbox placement um softwares will eventually start to put you in spam.

So take serious note of deliverability.

The next thing is campaign cadence I would try to aim for a one to two uh per week email sending cadence so if you have a smaller list you can go maybe even once a month but try to stay top of mind on a consistent and regular basis um you don't want to end up like that client that we had in the past where they stopped emailing and all of their people all of the subscribers just stopped responding.

And then the last thing on the design side when you are creating these emails um make sure to have the most important information above the fold as an SEO guy I'm sure you know this and this has been drilled into your head but the above the fold section is the most important thing not only on a website but also on an email.

So have your headers any timers for urgency any coupon codes or any call to actions the first thing that a person sees both on mobile and on desktop awesome so Nikita if people want to find out more about um what you're working on how to get in touch with you what's the best way for them to do it yeah so all the things that I just talked about as far as like tactics and specific tips I actually break them down in full length YouTube videos on a weekly basis just my name Nikita Vakrushev on YouTube.

If you want to learn more and maybe get a free audit from us and just get a better understanding of email marketing go to aspectAgency.com uh aspekt agency.com and you'll be able to fill in uh a free audit form there and it'll be comped as long as you mention this podcast name so awesome well everyone go go check that out um Nikita thank you for coming on um well please shiko us share like and follow we uh definitely are trying to move over to YouTube and it's been a little bit of a slow start so uh would really appreciate any reviews uh comments likes um we're really putting some some energy into it uh everything that I've seen from where Google is going everything is folding into YouTube is the front page of the internet as well Reddit would say they are Facebook would say they are but I I think YouTube is where um a lot of that trust is going to accrue and where people are going to get answers.

So I would encourage everybody to go there and check it out.

So guys if you like this podcast let me know about it.

If you don't like it tell me um I've tried to improve the sound so thank you for the feedback and um until the next time my name is uh Matthew Bertram bye bye for now