Email marketing revenue can account for 25%-35% of an ecommerce brand’s revenue. Yet it still remains an untapped resources for many companies. Dylan Kelley is founder of Wavebreak, an agency that helps 8 figure ecommerce brands turn email marketing into a top revenue driver. The reason that brands leave money on the table? As Dylan sees it, it comes down to strategy: frequency, segmentation, creative, copywriting, abandoned cart. In this episode, we discuss the high level strategy in understanding the customer journey and what to look for in an initial audit, and get down into the nitty gritty details of actually sending out the campaign. This was an enjoyable episode where you’ll get your wheels turning on how to get more visitors into email leads, and email leads into customers and repeat customers.
Highlights:
Wavebreak - an ecommerce email marketing agency for 7 figure brands.
Gen Furukawa: [00:00:00] alright Welcome. Thanks for joining the cart overflow podcast. Today, we have Dylan Kelly from WaveBreak and I would love to just start just Dylan, if you could give a quick summary of what you do with WaveBreak?
Dylan Kelley: [00:00:13] Yeah, absolutely. Well, first things first, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. I know we've been friends for a while, so it's good to, to be on the show, love everything that you're always up to. So it's going to be a part of it, but, yeah, my name is Dylan Kelley background on me. I run a boutique agency called Wave Break, we specialize in exclusively in email and SMS marketing for DTC commerce brands. we drive a lot of email revenue. We send over a billion emails, been in business like four years working on some of the fastest growing brands on Shopify Plus. so I've seen a lot and know kind of exactly how the scale of brand inside and out across the board.
And specifically, obviously my focus is email cause it's just so untapped for so many brands like your existing traffic list and customer base. then the other piece of me is also hosted the Wave Break podcast sponsored by Klayvio, over a hundred episodes and you read a lot of really cool people, so huge fan of podcasts and always loved coming on him. As often as I can. So, yeah. Thanks for having me!
Gen Furukawa: [00:01:04] Yeah, of course, of course. So the first thing I wanted to start out with was this manifesto that you have, and it's basically what's what's next for e-commerce like, what's the next nine figure, what's the next billion dollar brand. So there's been MVMT for watches.There's beenTuft & Needle for mattresses.
And I think you have an interesting point in an obviously it does dovetail nicely with what you're doing at wave break. So can you just kind of expound on what your foresight is for the next break of e-commerce past 2020?
Dylan Kelley: [00:01:38] Yeah. Yeah. I'm super excited about, e-commerce like, not only are we at a time, that's just absolutely booming right now. but like you said, like I put together this manifesto, I don't know if that's like. The best that's, that's kinda how I described it, but it's basically what I see as the future. and it's funny, cause it got a lot of really good response and I got some people who are like normally quieter to even respond to it.
And I was like hopping on calls with some really cool people who are like, you know, doing a ton of revenue because of it basically. I was talking what, what I say in the manifesto is like, we've seen some really successful brands over the last, you know, five or 10 years in eCommerce. you know, the MVMT watches the blinders.
I wear all these companies who have gotten acquired at like these $100 million evaluations. you know, and they might not be selling a hundred percent of it, but I just think it's really interesting. and what's really interesting about like, humans is like, you know, we achieve what we believe we can achieve.
And so now that these companies have been acquired for a hundred million, you know, 10 years, you know, that were started like 10 years ago, I think a lot of them were started in like 2011, 2013, 2014, like in that range, Which is like when e-commerce was still like, I mean, that was like, Shopify was just becoming a thing.
Like now Shopify is hot. E-commerce is hot. Like once the gurus get into it on Facebook, it's like it's mainstream. and I think that just shows like how much opportunity there really is. Like, people are already selling companies for a hundred million dollars. I think what we're going to see next is, you know, companies selling for 200 million, 300 million, you know, even a billion dollars in what I think is really interesting is like, especially the brands we work with, like on the flip side of this, like the VC model, you know, while it's great sometimes does not always great. Like we see that with Casper, like there's only so much money you can throw at it. Same with the way travel. you know, it's not to say like, you're not good companies, not good entrepreneurs, but it's just like, It's interesting to see like how the bootstrap brands are, you know, selling for a lot of money.
And then you have Casper listed publicly valued at less than their annual revenue. you know, when they were once this like billion dollar startup, and the way I see the trend I see going is like, I think bootstrapping is, is still the future. And. But what I think is going to happen is like, we're going to see even bigger exits from people because now we know that a hundred million is doable.
So it's like, why can't we do 150? Why can't we do 200? and like, just because e-commerce is growing so much, it's just like only a matter of time before we start seeing, I mean, even Tuft & Needle, right? Like there's rumors on how much they sold for, but it could have been up to a billion dollars now that we're seeing the threshold on what's achievable and how much money people can make it's only a matter of time before people are selling for, you know, like a billion or more.
Gen Furukawa: [00:04:02] Okay. So you're actually saying it has to do with venture capital financing and the expectations of growth as well as almost the mentality of what the ceiling is, is what's possible as an eCommerce brand?
Dylan Kelley: [00:04:16] I think there's, I think there's a lot of pieces to it. I think we're in a really good spot for e-commerce like, I mean, it's literally the gold rush right now. which like, you really don't get the opportunity to partake in, but it's, I mean, it's legit and it makes sense. It's not like the dotcom boom, where like people are selling air and being really successful.
Like these, these are legit companies or just moving their buying behavior online and like, I'm really excited to see Gen Z come up because like, you know, they literally born with the internet. I mean, I'm sure that's going to mess them up in a lot of ways, but like, you know, like the think about them, all the malls is dead, but e-commerce is on fire.
And so that's the other piece. So it's like definitely mindset, definitely the way companies are being backed. And then also just like in general, like e-commerce booming, I think is what's really driving all this.
Gen Furukawa: [00:04:58] For sure. So where I thought you were going to go with this, and my takeaway from your manifesto was that it's actually less about the customer acquisition and more about the retention. So it's like extending the lifetime value from recurring purchases, as opposed to this constant land grab almost of relying on paid, paid acquisition and other channels that are great, maybe short term levers of growth, but then harder to scale.
And as things get more expensive costs, increase CAC increases. It impacts profit margins immensely. And so now there's maybe a foot, so maybe that's what you're referring to
Dylan Kelley: [00:05:35] Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. No. And that's exactly what I mean, as far as. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess the first piece of it is what's possible and why it's possible. And then the second piece is like, as a result, now we're dealing with a different marketplace. Like everybody knows it's hot, so it is getting more competitive.
And you're looking at the Casper is one of the reasons they weren't successful. It's not necessarily that they're VC back. Same with the way travel. It's like, you know, the lack of repeat the lack of lifetime value. What makes Amazon so successful? Right? I mean, heck I order from Amazon once a month. that's really powerful, and that's the thing is like, you're only going to be able to scale acquisitions so far. And like, I mean, I always even say it's changed since I wrote it because I wrote that like, I mean, I forget when exactly I wrote it, but things are even different now where it's like, we have more retail coming online as well.
And so it's just becoming more and more competitive to acquire customers, that, and most brands just, they don't have anything on the back end to really maximize existing traffic. Most brands want to pull the lever of. Add more traffic and more ad spend to grow your business, which is great. And it works.
but the most untapped lever for brands is their existing traffic customers and list, which they're not doing enough with. And that's why, what we do at WaveBreak is so profitable. And like our case studies are so good, like regularly double tripling email revenue for, you know, eight figure brands.
It's like, how are you doing this? It's like, well, because it's just so untapped and it's so pro on profit or it's so profitable for so many brands, it's literally that easy. Most of the time.
Gen Furukawa: [00:06:57] Yeah. Yeah. So, and that's how you kind of become focused on the life cycle and the retention and yeah. Leveraging under-resourced assets. yeah, so I was, I was curious to know like eight figure brands. These are a significant brands significant teams. You would imagine maybe a robust email marketing program.
What are, what are you doing? And what's your mindset as you start your relationship with a new client and you're starting the auditing process. Can you walk me through like what a checklist looks like of where you're fixing some of these things to improve their email revenue?
Dylan Kelley: [00:07:34] Oh, yes. This is a great question because like most of the brands we work with, like you talk about like, they're already doing a lot of email marketing. They have a lot, you know, they might be using like most of our clients are Shopify plus. I mean, we have clients who work on everything, but like most are on Shopify plus.
Most are using Klaviyo. So they have those initial flow set up there. You know, sending emails, the emails might even look really good. but what we found is like, most brands are just doing enough to get by. So they get caught in the weeds. there's three kinds of key areas that brands get caught up.
and where we kind of say, it's like there operating on a fraction of what they could be.
So like the first piece of strategy. So there's just not a lot of strategic development around, like how does email actually fit into the picture? And what does that look like? There's not a lot of in house expertise on email.
the next piece is, Just like not leveraging the software to its full potential. So like knowing I can do XYZ with Klaviyo, but how the heck do you actually set it up?
And then the third piece is like, you can know, like you need to use more of the software and you need to have a better strategy. but like how do you actually execute?
Creative is really hard. It's really time to, to me and all that. And that, those are kind of the gaps that we come in and fill. But as far as like, how do we uncover that? we start with strategy. We're very strategy-first. that's, what's different about us than most of the other brands in the space for agencies in our space is like, we go really deep on strategy.
So really reverse engineering. People's actual customer journey and why do people buy and why they don't and then building, you know, program to match that, not trying to make up tactics or copy and paste templates or do anything like that, but instead of think about why people buy and why they don't, and then just add an email well and SMS, where it makes sense to accelerate the process.
Gen Furukawa: [00:09:01] Yeah. So obviously strategy is custom tailored to each brand. How would it differ though? If you're talking Tuft and Needle for a thousand dollars product versus Blenders, you know, a hundred dollars sunglasses.
Dylan Kelley: [00:09:15] Yeah, that's a great question. And we've worked with clients, who've sold mattresses. We've worked with clients who sell, you know, sunglasses, watches, whatever. And so like it is different. and like the big difference is like, and I would say email works for both and can drive huge revenue for. You know, one of our most successful clients sells a very high ticket one time product.
but you just have to think about it differently. Right? So it's more like, how do we, you capture leads and how do we persuade those people to buy? Like, what are the objections? But it's all very similar. It's like, what are the objections and why do people not buy, like with more. Visual products. It's like, you can just showcase it and kind of like show people, Hey, here's what this looks like.
Get into more lifestyle, but with a higher ticket product, like a mattress, you really want to like reverse engineer, people's stop objections and then feed them content. that's gonna, you know, help them make that buying decision faster. And like, you can kinda know, like you're running customer surveys or different things like that, which I know you're a huge fan of.
You can find out why people buy and why they don't and then yeah, you just literally take that data and, you know, put it into a sequence after we captured them as lead or whatever that might look like. and so that's kinda, that's kinda, the main difference is like, I mean, really it comes back to the customers, why they might and why they don't.
So like with that, with the onetime product, there's going to be a lot more segmentation. that's expensive like that. You're going to have to have a longer welcome series, things like that. Whereas like, you know, sunglasses, it's very like impulse buy. So it's a lot quicker of an approach as far as like get them in and they can buy right away.
Gen Furukawa: [00:10:34] Right. So is there some kind of benchmark or ideal of the number of segments that you have on the back end? And so I'm thinking about it. Like our purchasing might be. One metric. Right. So have you purchased or have they not, how long has it been? what their lifetime value is, how long they've been on the list?
Can you describe how you approach like the segmentation part of the backend?
Dylan Kelley: [00:10:58] Ooh, segmentation is spirits and it's the word that's been thrown around a lot lately. It's like, Oh, we gotta get more segmented. But what does that actually mean? Well, first, like, you need to make sure you have a list that's big enough to be segmented because if you end up creating a segment and there's only 200 people in it, it's like, That's a waste of a cent.
It takes a lot of time and energy to create an email campaign. You want to make sure it's going to a list that's big enough. So the bigger your list, the more segmented you can get, but ultimately like what we look at is, I mean, first you want to look at who your buyers are and who's buying and who's on the list.
so there's a few. Few pieces. We'll look at number one is engagement. So who's engaging with email opening, clicking, buying. that's a super important statement. That's kind of like your bread and butter. the next piece is like, okay, customers. Non-customers, who's the bigger segment who should we tailor content to more frequently on a personalized basis.
If you have a lot of non customers who have opted in, but not bought should probably focus on those people.
the next piece is like maybe like for one brand. No, we found 80% of their list is first time buyers. They've never bought a second time. So our first thought is, okay, how do we create targeted sequences to automatically target these people, to get them to their second purchase?
And then also, how do we fit that into the campaign calendar that we run to get them to come back and buy a second time because that's huge. How do we get the 80% number lower that's gonna do wonders for lifetime value. It's going to do wonders for your Facebook advertising and all this stuff.
You're throwing a ton of money at a cause you need them to mind more, obviously, you know, that helps everything out.
Gen Furukawa: [00:12:21] Okay. So just to break that down a little bit, you're like, let's start with like the, the one time purchase customers, but they haven't purchased again and suppose that 80% of your 10,000 person list. So you're going to segment them out separately and then basically put them down a flow or a sequence just to get to that second purchase.
Right. But is that again, assuming that they have familiar familiarity with a product and then you're kind of playing up the benefits or is it more like product feature focused or is there any like strategy there that you have that's applicable across the board?
Dylan Kelley: [00:13:02] Absolutely. Like, what we do is like really, it's not like fancy stuff. Like it's just a ton of work. so like we go through, and we're, we're mostly working with the established brands. so it's like they have all this data, but most people have all these data and analytics, but they don't do anything with it.
now, and they don't even know what to do with it. They're like, what do we do with it? So like, this is a perfect example of this. It's like, okay, well now if we know 80% of people who buy once never buy again, what are those 20% of people doing? What are they buying? Oh, you might find 20% of those. 20%, 80% are buying the tennis racket.
Huh? Interesting. Okay. And then if they're buying a tennis racket, they're probably gonna want some tennis balls or maybe they want to get another tennis racket or whatever that might look like. but really everything we do is kind of based on the 80 20 rule on this, what is the biggest lever we can pull for the biggest result?
and just like drilling in and like, we really don't try to make anything up or be too fancy. Like as fancy as we get is like, just like drilling into the data and really knowing like, okay, what is somebody most likely to buy next? And then. Creating that flow to match and targeting them there.
Gen Furukawa: [00:14:03] Got it. Okay. And then, so is it specific to wave break? You guys create the copy and the content of the emails, or are you just kind of picking and choosing from existing content assets and then linking out.
Dylan Kelley: [00:14:16] Yeah. So as far as like implementing creative, I mean, we, the whole in house creative team of designers and copywriters, like create the actual emails themselves. but as far as like, you know, implementing. I guess, like, are you talking about like implementing content marketing to a email strategy or.
Gen Furukawa: [00:14:32] Yeah, how they work hand in hand and then also like the email strategy totally makes sense. But then the content creation, part of understanding of what that 80% might need and then creating creative end content around that might be a whole other initiative. And so is that like a necessary part or do you kind of work with the existing asset library and kind of like tinker with a copy of the email in order to get the point across.
Dylan Kelley: [00:15:00] Oh, yeah. Great question. I mean, it, it really varies. Like if you have a lot of content, like we can really supplement that. And that's great. I mean, we'll kind of mix it between both because you know, only so many people are going to click on your email. So sometimes just put it all in. so that people can look really quickly.
Other times it's just like a little bit of a teaser and like, come check this out. the more content you have, the easier it is, But yeah, as far as like what actually goes in the email, I mean, it's like test and also, so it's like, what does it look like if we include all the texts versus what if we just say like, for example, like one email campaign we did, featuring a type of content, not really related to cross selling or anything, but like, one thing we like to do is like add, do like value added content.
So like the email list is fun. It's engaging and it's not just something that's like trying to sell all the time, because then what we found happens is like we end up driving more revenue because like, people are more willing to open and click on emails.
So we did want it's like what happens when, when, what was it it's like, what happens when, or like, does a bee actually die if it's things you, and then we had a video of somebody, like a beekeeper was like, Hey, I'm going to get stung by a bee and film it and let you know.
And like that was putting a blog post on the site. And then we just linked out to that, but that was the teaser is like, Hey, do do bees actually die? When they singing it and watch this, this beekeeper gets stung and see if the VI dies and it's like, learn more like that was the email did really well.
Cause it's like, you want to know?
Gen Furukawa: [00:16:22] Yeah. So that's more of a brand email, not a performance email per se. Right. So when you're saying it did well, are you measuring that on CTR or click through rate or revenue driven?
Dylan Kelley: [00:16:35] Yeah, like engagement's really high, but what's so funny about doing this is like you think, like, when I first started experimenting with this, it's like, okay, let's add more value. Let's see what that looks like. you know, with our clients who have blogs, it's like, it's just a really great way to stay top of mind.
Like people get there and like, ha this is so funny. This is great. And they're like, Oh yeah, I forgot about these guys. And you're like navigate over and you buy your next piece of clothing or, or whatever it is. And then they also get added back in you're retargeting. So it just starts the buying cycle all over again.
And it's, it's really powerful stuff. And it's just, what's great about these emails is like they, you know, they, they feed your list for later. So when Q4 comes around, you still have subscribers, they're still engaged and they're very engaged because they know it's like, Oh, I don't know what's going to be in this.
Or I love their emails. I can't wait to see what they're sending now.
Gen Furukawa: [00:17:19] Yeah. one thing that you had that I liked and you avoid it, being anything, click baity with it is basically like how to double your annual revenue and it's summarizes the rule of 25, right? So. The number of customers, times annually times, your average order value overall average for the year, it comes to number of orders is your total average revenue.
And so you're suggesting, instead of focusing on one channel to drive up the revenue, say focusing just on one piece of that, like the number of customers you're saying, just do a little bit of each and then actually that compounds to be far more impactful. Right? Can you explain a little bit about this rule of 25?
Dylan Kelley: [00:18:02] Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah. Rule of 25, I love this rule. I mean, it comes from working legend, Jay Abraham, at least that's where I discovered it, but like, it's basically like there's only three ways to grow your business. which is like number one, increase the number of customers. so how can you do that?
Conversion rate traffic number two, increase like. How much these are, how often these people buy. And then the third piece is like, or now it's how much people buy. And then the third piece is like increase how often people buy. so many people are just focused on increasing their ad spend and increasing their traffic that, they, they never, they never touched the last two, but it's crazy about this is like, if you increase all these metrics, by just a very small percentage, you can end up almost doubling the business and it's a lot easier to get that smaller 25% increase than it is to like, you know, double your ad spend and double your sales. Cause I think, you know, anyone listening to podcasts knows it's not that easy. but you know, what is pretty easy is to think about how do we increase repurchases a little bit, how do we increase average order value a little bit? How do we increase conversion rate a little bit? How did we increase traffic a little bit? And like doing these things just a little bit can actually really have huge effects on your revenue. And like, that's what I'm about is like, I'm about really fast scale and like doubling tripling metrics, but I'm also about like, not putting all my eggs in one basket.
that's something huge that we see happen way too often. It's like, if you could become too reliant on Facebook and the channel goes South, or you have to turn off your ads, you know, like, like brands had to do in June, it's like, it can completely change your business. Same with influencer marketing or any other channel.
so yeah, that's, that's, that's why I love the rule of 25. This is just like small bite sized chunks to drive huge revenue growth for your business overall.
Gen Furukawa: [00:19:35] Yeah, I think that's the underlying philosophy of wave break, right. Is like using email as a way to build a community and then they are customers for life that you don't necessarily have to like keep on feeding, but there's longevity to it. So maybe a little bit of a, yeah.
Dylan Kelley: [00:19:55] Yeah. I mean, like back to the manifesto, it's like, we are not just in the business of let's crank out a bunch of revenue. Tomorrow or yesterday it's like, how do we actually put together an email program? Cause like email and SMS, they're still like really personal channels. Like really they're as personal as it gets, like people know Facebook ads.
It's not a big deal. Like it's, you know, it's kind of weird. Cause if I say pillow now I'm going to get a pillow ad. you know, like that's weird, but it's not like somebody's texting you or sending you an email. Like that's still very personal. And so the way we think about email. It's not just how do we drive more revenue, but how do we also do something that's going to contribute to the longevity of your brand?
And that's kind of where the community piece comes in is like, I think ultimately the end of the day, like if like, I mean, running a business is a lot of work, so how do we build a real brand? That's awesome. And that's just a brand. That's awesome. But a brand that has like a community around it, because I think, you know, those types of brands and the most successful, you look at a company like Nike and like, They've gone through so many shifts of time.
Like you don't care what the sales channel is. They don't care if it was retail and malls. Right. They've been there, done that you don't care that it's e-commerce now they're still crushing it. cause when you build such a strong brand, like, I mean, that's, that's where the value is. Like you're not going to hire multiple in your company.
It's going to be worth more. That's going to lead to your ads converting even better. Like, I mean, you throw up an ad for Nike. It's probably going to convert really well. Cause like. People already know who it is. They already trust it. you know, and we can get into branding and all that stuff, but like, that's, that's kind of the big, big thing about what we do is not, not only do we just drive this more revenue to help you scale and like double your business.
And that's something we're thinking about, but also we're thinking about the longterm longevity of your brand, and how to build that next big eCommerce company.
Gen Furukawa: [00:21:31] Yeah, absolutely. So one thing I wanted to get into is basically. How email correlates to mindshare and presence. And first is, do you have some recommendation on frequency of emails? Because there's always a fine line and of course it always depends on the brand and the type of relationship that they're trying to build with a customer.
But how often do you like to see your clients sending out emails to their base?
Dylan Kelley: [00:21:59] Yeah, this, this is a great question. I mean like what we tell people, like, as far as listeners go, it's like just whatever you can be consistent with. Cause consistency trumps everything. Like if you like your email says email lists sit for like three to six months. If you're going to be a bad spot, it's better.
If you just email it once a month for three to six months, then not at all. but. We like to be in the inbox multiple times per week. And then as things kick up into Q4, I mean, it's, it's a good time to be in daily, just cause like the volume is like getting up there and this might be some like, I guess like controversial advice, but like ultimately like your open rates are going to go down and you're going to have to send more just to stay top of mind.
so that is something we think about, but for most brands it's a lot to do in like manage the volume like that. so it's like as long as you can get in yeah. Weekly, I think that's a good spot. And if you balance it with the right strategy, It's not annoying. It's not overly promotional. you'll be sending like customers will actually be thrilled to hear from you.
And as your list gets bigger, you can send more too. Cause you can do more segmentation.
Gen Furukawa: [00:22:54] got it. Okay. And then. Following up on Mindshare and brand presence. Do you find yourself coordinating with the paid ads team or remarketing ads to correlate like email engagement with whatever remarketing ads to reinforce the brand message?
Dylan Kelley: [00:23:12] Yeah, I think that's, that's super powerful. I think it's really important to have a cohesive brand. And that's part of what we do is it's just like, You know, and that's why most agency relationships don't work is because people can't nail the brand. you know, maybe it's lack of talent. Maybe it's just lack of communication or whatever, but that's really like big walls that we try to break down.
And like, that's why, like our model is really focused on becoming a partner with our clients and like having a seat at the table. So because like, if someone can learn your brand in house, like we can learn your brand. And so we built our process around that. so like we're huge on like really integrating everything together.
not just being like an outside vendor, because I think that model doesn't work and most agencies don't work, because it is very siloed and I think that's an issue. so like the more integrated you have everything together, it's like, the more powerful everything's going to be. which I think it is super important to make sure it's on par with your ads and stuff like that.
And I mean, to be honest, like a lot of our clients manage their paid ads in house. cause it's just like so hard for them to find a good partner in that. Like a lot of them don't really outsource anything else besides like the stuff we do or maybe like site design and stuff like that. which I think is, is really interesting to see like some of the fastest growing brands we're working with right now, or like running their ads in house.
and they don't really have plans to bring them out because they've run tests and it's just not as, not as good, but then suddenly they do outsource and they do keep is, is us, which I think says a lot about the model that we built and, and how we think about that as far as like, like you're talking about, I was like getting really deep with everything and like connecting everything.
Cause like that's next level. That's how you build the a hundred million dollar company you go from. Good to great.
Gen Furukawa: [00:24:37] so about a year, like extending lifetime value and getting to these, you know, repeat nine figure brands. One key thing that you offer in terms of your value add is recovering loss, revenue, abandoned cart emails. Let's say learn more about. Your experience there and what you've seen, what works, what doesn't in terms of getting people who are so close to buying, but then not.
Dylan Kelley: [00:25:04] Oh, my goodness abandoned carts there. Oh, I mean, we were just talking, talking to somebody the other day. me and my team it's like, they left a ton. I'm not gonna share the exact number, but it's like a lot, a lot of money on that. I mean, it was like millions of dollars on the table. Just, just an abandoned cart center.
I mean, most brands do because so many carts are abandoned. so as far as, as what we recommend, it's like strike while they're hot. And then also like, don't just like, so many brands will just give a discount right away. what we like to do is like, think about like back to strategy. Why do people buy, why do they not buy?
It's like, bam, we're addressing those objections on upfront. Just going hard with those. And then, you know, th the sales usually take care of itself. And then now obviously, being omni-channel like being able to be on the, you know, if you have a mobile app, if you have SMS, like, as channel, like. What I like to do is like what we're calling now, like double or triple touch, which is when you can hit like a few things at the same time, it was just kind of cool that we're we're testing.
Cause if somebody gets two notifications, like they're going to check their phone. so that's something we're experimenting with to where it's like two notifications at the same time, to increase the odds of somebody looking and then, and then buying again. Cause they probably just forgot or, you know, they had some objections or questions and it's like, you just got to answer it and you're set.
Are there any results in yet in terms of whether that works or not?
We're still testing that specifically, but I mean, as far as like adding SMS to the Mexico's, I mean, that's been really successful. it's just like, I mean, you gotta be careful with it. You gotta be like, we're all about adding value and not just like short term quick wins for the sake of money and then like burning things out.
so you take a bit of a different approach to SMS than some brands. but like just adding that to the mix as a second test and its own channel, I'm really excited to see it. Yeah, rise into the channel. It's becoming where it's becoming a lot more legit. There's really good software vendors in this space now.
it's becoming more accepted and desired by consumers. So it's really good spot to like start layering and stuff like that as well, as low as he mobile apps and all that good stuff.
Gen Furukawa: [00:26:55] Yeah. So when you're. Trying to figure out why somebody didn't purchase, they added it to the cart, but didn't complete. Are you explicitly asking them? So for example, a software companies would ask that in a churn survey of why are you leaving? Do you ask that of why did you not complete your purchase?
Dylan Kelley: [00:27:13] Yeah. So usually what we'll do is like our clients will, Have already run like surveys on this stuff. So they already have like all of this data and we'll back into that. but yeah, I mean, it's, it's not uncommon for us to like fire up the list of past abandoned carts and, you know, figure out why. And a lot of people will be cheap about it and like, yeah, we'll select one random person to like, not our clients, but like, you know, it's like, Hey, get a $5 gift card.
Maybe if you're one of the lucky 5,000 to fill this out, like we don't like to do that model. It's like, just like. Pay the money, like these insights are gonna make you so much more. so that's another model too, is like to, to that's. What's great about eCommerce is like you have that data. So extract that list and just like, you know, send them that email and see what happens
Gen Furukawa: [00:27:51] so I'd like to ask you a little bit about the list building approach and your strategy there. What's your thought on a discount in exchange for an email?
Dylan Kelley: [00:28:02] Yeah. So I know a lot of people are like, Oh, like discount exchange for an email. It's not good. It's not scalable. It cheapens the brand. I think it depends on the brand. you know, we work with some luxury brands where it's like, you know, we're not going to do that. we aren't afraid to do really, but I mean, if you think of the other option, Which is 90 to 95%.
I mean, for most people it's like 98, 99% of your traffic that hits your store, doesn't convert. which is like, you know, 90, over 90% of your ad spend is wasted. If you're spending 10, 20 K 30 K day on ads, it's like, that's a freaking lot of money. It's a lot cheaper to give up 10% capture a lot more leads onsite from those people.
And then remarket to them over time. Like, cause most people aren't going to buy on the spot, especially, you know, think of like high level product. Like you said, they cost a thousand, $2,000. It's just better to get the leads in. Then you can remarket to them later. And it just, I mean, it helps everything overall.
So I think for the right brand, it can be very successful, but you also, you definitely do have the balance and you don't want to get overly promotional. you don't want it to eat into your margins too much, but when done right, it can be very successful.
Gen Furukawa: [00:29:02] Right. Have you found any other effective ways to get email opt ins easily without offering that discount?
Dylan Kelley: [00:29:10] Yeah. Like for more luxury brands, like free gifts with purchases. Good. I really like, you know, if you could put together some buyer's guide or something like that, like that can work well. I mean, honestly, sometimes you just ask for the email and people give it to you to like lead magnets are good and stuff.
it really depends. and you get really fancy with it. quizzes are good. That's a good plug for you is like, you know, figure this out and add the email to get the results. And then you can segment like crazy afterwards. I'm like that's really effective and it can be a great way that we've used with luxury brands in the past.
You know, even just like, Hey, what type of person are you? And we'll find the right watch for you or something like that. We've seen good results with, as well.
Gen Furukawa: [00:29:48] Right. We're coming down to the end. And I just have one more question and it's kind of like would encapsulate everything. I think that you offer, which is increasing relevancy at a scalable clip. What would you recommend to somebody if they had one, one thing to do to their Klayvio automations, how can they increase their relevancy to offer the right message to the right person at the right time?
Dylan Kelley: [00:30:17] Oh, yeah, this is a great question. I mean, I think it comes back to what we talked about. Like just figuring out what is the 80 20, like what is the biggest lever you can pull for the quickest results? So where are the customers? Where are the biggest gaps right now? And then like reverse engineering from there.
What that looks like. So if it's, post-purchase like we talked about what are people buying on their first purchase? What are people buying on their second? And like, really it's, it's, it's, it's not about like trying to come up with super creative ideas, but like trying to just mimic how people think and buy already.
And that's why, like, the emails we send are so successful is because we're not trying to reinvent the wheel and like, we definitely get creative with it to stand out in today's competitive inboxes, attention spans are getting small. But I would just say like, look at the data, look at the gaps and like, just do what you can and then be consistent about it.
Like consistency is one of the biggest things, for, especially for an email program. Like, it's like, if you're not doing anything, you're just doing enough to get by. Like, there's so much that you leave on the table. and then just like prioritizing and like planning in advance really helps. Well, and like having the clear vision on where you want to go, which I think a lot of brands could, could improve that.
Gen Furukawa: [00:31:21] Right. Yeah. I think there's great consistency, but then also at minimum, ideally on a weekly basis because that, that consistency of messaging and yeah, because our inboxes get cluttered. Not going to open every email. So you might assume like 25% of them will actually reach our intended target. So yeah, it was fantastic.
Dylan, this was awesome. I really appreciate it. Can you just share what the best way to get in touch with you? Is.
Dylan Kelley: [00:31:50] Yeah, for sure. You can learn more about us at wavebreak.com. or you can go to, which is going to redirect to wavebreak.co. You can schedule a call at wavebreak.co/call.
Gen Furukawa: [00:31:59] Yeah, fantastic. And Dylan that you've shared so much and been transparent and offered insights. I really appreciate the time and hopefully people have learned a lot. Know, they have so
Dylan Kelley: [00:32:09] Yeah, no, thanks so much for having me. It's it's it's been great to be here and it's always fun talking about email.