Ecommerce Unlocked

Summary

In this episode, Russell and Emerson discuss their experiences and observations from Black Friday and Cyber Monday. They talk about their discounting strategies, the effectiveness of plain text emails, and the importance of targeted follow-ups. They also discuss marketing tactics and the winner of Black Friday. They conclude by highlighting Shopify's success and the peak sales time during the weekend.

Takeaways

Discounting strategies should be carefully planned to avoid customer dissatisfaction and price matching requests.

Plain text emails can be more effective than image-heavy emails, and targeted follow-ups can lead to higher click-through rates.

Brands should consider selling on multiple channels, such as Amazon and their own website, to reach a wider audience.

Shopify had a successful Black Friday, with peak sales per minute reaching $4.2 million.

Keeping track of industry trends and learning from past experiences can help improve future Black Friday strategies.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Black Friday Recap

03:00 Discounting Strategies and Sales Tactics

08:25 The Effectiveness of Plain Text Emails

12:07 The Importance of Targeted Follow-ups

15:10 Observations on Marketing Tactics

18:25 The Winner of Black Friday

20:51 Shopify's Success

21:38 Peak Sales Time and Conclusion

Summary

In this episode, Russell and Emerson discuss the differences between Shopify and WooCommerce as e-commerce platforms. They start by recapping Black Friday and the success of Shopify during the holiday season. They then dive into the pros and cons of both platforms, highlighting Shopify's ease of use, dedicated support, and seamless integrations, while noting WooCommerce's flexibility and lower costs. Ultimately, they recommend Shopify for e-commerce businesses due to its user-friendly interface and time-saving features. They also touch on the culture and mindset differences between Shopify and WordPress users.

Takeaways

• Shopify is recommended for e-commerce businesses due to its ease of use, dedicated support, and seamless integrations.
• WooCommerce is more flexible and customizable, making it a good choice for specific needs and SEO optimization.
• Shopify handles technical aspects like web hosting, while WooCommerce requires finding your own hosting.
• Shopify's plugin infrastructure is more centralized and rigorously approved, while WooCommerce offers more free plugins.
• WordPress and WooCommerce are more suitable for informational websites or testing the market before launching a full e-commerce store.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Black Friday Recap

05:49 Shopify vs. WooCommerce

07:39 WordPress and WooCommerce Relationship

09:48 Pros of Shopify

13:36 Pros of WordPress and WooCommerce

19:05 Cons of Shopify

21:27 Cons of WordPress and WooCommerce

22:34 Conclusion

Did you know that 1 in 20 orders fail delivery on the first attempt?! Or that at least 2-3% of orders aren't delivered on time, no matter which carrier? This means a significant portion of your customers are going to have shipping issues or questions! Today we are talking about how to handle those issues and give your customer the best experience possible!

Here are some of the things we discuss:

1. Have a great help desk process
2. Have an easy to use branded tracking page
3. Use a shipping method that has tracking
4. Use Shopify's new shipment tracking tabs functionality.

Emerson dives into 5 ways you can reduce your customer service emails and even drops a little nugget that we'll call the McShipping Secret.

Focusing on a tool in each category you can reduce your CX tickets by up to 50% or more!

1. Address Validation - Address Validator Plus
2. Post purchase order editing - Orderify
3. FAQ or Knowledge base Section - Gorgias or Helpscout
4. Automating Returns and Exchanges process - CREW by Corso
5. Shipping protection/insurance - Green Shipping Protection by Corso
6. Tracking page with updates - Malomo or Wonderment

If you have any thoughts on this topic, or if we missed any amazing apps, let us know on LinkedIn:

Russell Steed

Emerson Hammer

We're big fans of Shopify here and after a recent consulting call that Russell had we decided to make a list of our top five marketing apps for Shopify.

We're going to give you our list of 5 apps, but in reality this is more of a list of 5 categories of marketing apps. You don't have to use the ones we recommend, but something that gets the job done will go a long way with your marketing.

1. Email Marketing - Klaviyo or Sendlane
2. SMS Marketing - Postscript
3. Upsells - Rebuy
4. Onsite Popups (list growth) - Amped.io
5. Reporting - Triple Whale Founders Dash

If you have any thoughts on this topic, or if we missed any amazing apps, let us know on LinkedIn:

Russell Steed

Emerson Hammer

There are infinite ways to create holiday and Black Friday Cyber Monday sales. In this episode Russell shares everything he's learned from a decade of running BFCM sales.

Top points include breaking the sales period into 3, leading with your biggest offer, how many times you should be emailing on specific days during the holiday sale rush, and so much more!

If you have something to add to this conversation, let us know on LinkedIn:

Russell Steed

Emerson Hammer

You may have your sales for the holidays all planned out, but are your operations all buttoned up and ready to roll?

Emerson shares his 4 part checklist for preparing your ecommerce operations for the holiday order rush!

1. Preparing your carriers
2. Getting your warehouse ready
3. Updating your published policies
4. Working with tech partners to make sure everything goes smoothly

You can download the entire checklist here.

We'd love to connect with you on LinkedIn!

Russell Steed

Emerson Hammer

This is just a quick episode letting you know that after a little bit of a break, we are going to be rebranding the podcast to highlight our new and improved focus of helping ecommerce professionals just like you.

After dropping out of high school in 11th grade, and moving to Israel for 7 years, Judah found himself hustling to make ends meet. He was a natural born hustler, finding used items and selling them on Amazon. Judah takes us through his Entrepreneurial journey of how he founded and scaled a booming baby products brand called Jool Baby.

Judah now sells dozens of baby products on his own webiste, Amazon, and in retail stores such as Walmart and Target. His story is motivation and a great case-study of how hustling can create a multi-million dollar brand.

There comes a time in every direct to consumer brand's lifetime where they are spending on Facebook ads, Google Ads, Display ads, and feel somewhat tapped out on those channels. Even though the barrier to entry on digital PPC is so low and highly scalable, diversifying a advertising strategy is the best way to scale and future-proof a rapidly growing business.

Direct mail is making a comeback in the advertising space and it is proving to be even more effective than most digitally native brands originally thought. In this episode we go into detail on what direct mail looks like for a D2C company. From what the minimum spend looks like to what different kind of campaigns perform well, we talk about different strategies that a brand can employ to effectively scale a direct mail advertising campaign.

To learn more about Megan and Labyrinth Digital you can go to https://labyrinth.digital/.