Are we witnessing the death of traditional email marketing? Dive in as Damon reveals how AI might be the game-changer we never knew we needed, especially in the fever pitch of Black Friday.

And make sure it's in your voice.

Like the SMS should be in your brand voice.

And if you don't know where your brand voice is, another little secret, your

about us page or one of your best product pages, just copy all the text.

So go to chat GPT and say, you know, define the brand voice or what.

Celebrity personality most sounds like this, it says like, you know, Rodney

Dangerfield, or whatever, and, uh, let's see, you're in the UK, who would

that be, like, uh, I don't know, uh, what are the guys over there, and then,

like, Winston Churchill, perfect, in the voice of Winston Churchill, say

this, say this copy, and then, boom, it'll pop it out, and now, it's just

not, again, like the pop up you're talking about, it's 10 percent off your

first order, now it's like, oh, Winston Churchill voice is talking to me about

this, and that correlates with the brand, And that, and that makes sense.

And you're developing that connection, uh, in an automated way

Welcome to the e commerce podcast with me, your host Matt Edmundson.

You know what?

I forgot, Damon.

Very, very professional.

I forgot the music.

Hang on.

That's, that's...

No problem.

Hey!

Yes, we are doing the e commerce podcast, uh, and we're all about

helping you deliver e commerce, well, with or without the music.

Yes, we are.

And to help us do just that, I'm chatting with today's guest,

Damon Didier from Win at...

E commerce about email, marketing strategies for Black Friday, AI

innovations and the future of e commerce.

We're going to get into all of it.

Yes, we are.

But before we do, let me just remind you what to sign up for the newsletter.

If you haven't got it already, uh, we just send all the notes,

transcript, everything to you.

They get delivered straight to your inbox, totally free, no cost, totally amazing.

So make sure you do that at ecommercepodcast.

net.

And of course, where would we be without the show sponsor?

So let me just take a moment to thank today's show sponsor, which is

the very dynamic e commerce cohort.

And in fact, Uh, Damon, we were saying at the start before we hit the record button

that this episode is a bit of a guinea pig episode because for the first time

ever, we are live streaming the episode into the e commerce cohort platform.

So uh, we're moving our e commerce cohort platform.

We're live streaming this episode into it at the same time.

So if you're a member of e commerce cohort, and why would you not be?

It's a great membership group.

If you're involved in e commerce, uh, come and join us.

Prices start from as little as 14.

99 a month, cheap as chips.

Uh, plus.

You get to watch the podcast recording live.

It's one of the perks.

Come and ask your questions of our hosts, of our guests, of our host and our

guest and pick their brains as it were.

So, let's see how it goes, Damon.

I'm excited.

But yes, that's today's show's sponsor, right?

Let's stop talking about that and let's start talking about your good self.

Now it says here, Damon, right?

Um, that you are the marketing maestro behind a staggering 800 percent

growth in companies through channel optimization and email wizardry.

And as the CEO of Win at E Commerce, which you can find out

more about at winatecommerce.

com, you have turned data driven strategies into millions of dollars.

And we all like the word millions, let's be real.

Uh, making you a trusted advisor.

In the e commerce world, you've got over 15 years of experience

and a customer first focus.

And you, like me, just love to help businesses of all sizes, uh, win,

especially around Black Friday.

So we're going to be talking about Black Friday.

We're going to pick your brains, uh, about the whole thing to do with email

marketing, AI and so on and so forth.

But firstly, before we get into that, a very warm welcome to the show.

So how are we doing?

I'm fantastic.

That was a great intro, Matt.

Thank you very much.

Uh, pleasure to be here.

And, uh, yeah, I want to help out some of your, uh, your listeners, see what we can

do to, uh, get them ready for Black Friday and maybe then some, and talk about maybe

some different stuff on email marketing that you may not hear from other places.

Yeah, fantastic.

Well, let's jump straight into the hold, uh, the hold, the

old email marketing thing.

Now, when we were, the thing that I love already about this conversation

is before we hit the, the go live button and the record button or

whatever button is on my desk.

Um, You said you just wanted to not talk about the same old

stuff that we always talk about when it comes to email marketing.

You just want to rip that up because everybody knows maybe, maybe it,

we'll get into it a little bit, just pick up on some things.

But there were some very definite topics you wanted to get into around first

party data and all that sort of stuff.

So should we just dive into the deep end?

Why not?

Let's try it out and see where it takes us, right?

What could go wrong?

What could possibly go wrong here?

Yeah, famous last words, but let's do it anyway.

Let's do it anyway.

So, third party dates, let's get into it.

Why is this such a big thing

for you?

Yeah.

So, you know, at the end of the day, love or hate email, you know, everyone

focuses when it comes to email on great copy, great design by all means.

That's super important.

But I've seen emails that are disgusting, that are ugly, that,

uh, I would not be proud to send.

Do just extraordinary sales.

In fact, we were looking at one of our clients from years ago, uh, for September,

they emailed it 60, 000 on one send, and it was, it was like a clown made it.

So, you know, what's, what's the, what's the bigger picture here?

The bigger picture is, what does email represent going forward?

And, you know, we're a Klaviyo Master Platinum partner and what,

what we see happening right now is email as like your, your data store.

And what that means is everyone's heard about iOS 14.

5 and what it's done to Facebook.

And you've got Google now using, uh, you know, Analytics 4 that uses AI to help

identify people kind of, uh, you know, through, through AI and other tech.

But there's one place where we, you as the business owner own the data, where

you are given permission based marketing, uh, you know, permission to come in there

and, and talk to and, and, and communicate with your client and that's through email.

So this kind of archaic thing, email, it's been around since the dawn of the, of the

internet before the internet is now found new life, um, in the unique identification

that an email address provides.

So, you know, it starts today for all your listeners out there with a signup form.

And I know a lot of business owners I talked to, you know, don't want

to sign up form this and that.

So, you know, number one, getting prepped for, for Black Friday, Saturday,

Monday, get your signup form in check now because that's super important.

But the reason why that's important, you know, among all the other reasons

is that when a client or a customer jumps onto your website and provides

that to you, they're giving you explicit permission to talk to them.

And with that wonderful piece of identifying information, you can then

connect that data to other things.

It's called zero party or first party data.

And it completely allows, uh, you know, you to start

connecting other pieces of data.

So today it might be abandoned cart or, you know, a checkout.

Tomorrow, it could be...

Your customer, your CRM software plugging into the Klaviyo CDP that

then matches off of email or that matches off of like retention.

com and that you find a third party data source that way or some other third

party source external to you that you can plug in and use that email to do it.

And so I think today.

And going forward, email has found a new place as your first party data source to

kind of empower the future of your site.

Yeah, I totally get what you're saying.

I think email has become one of those things, hasn't it, where

it is fundamentally probably one of the most important things now,

because it is data you actually own.

And in a world where you're increasingly owning less and less, the email

data seems to be just as important.

Um, in some respects, we're throwing out the rule book, but in another

respect, you're talking about the sign up form, probably one of the most

important things on your website and getting ready for Black Friday, right?

Everybody wants a silver bullet, everyone wants the latest strategy, but the simple

checklist is, well, before we do that, let's look at your email checklist, right?

Let's look at your email sign up form and just make sure that that's there,

right?

Yeah.

So here's my first tip.

Uh, so a lot of new clients we had first engaged with the number one

thing we look at is the signup form.

Uh, we always get that in check.

So what does that actually mean?

So here's a pro tip.

Uh, you got it first.

You got to test it.

But what we almost always do is take their signup form.

Uh, make sure that there's a mobile version and a desktop version because

those are two different devices and need to be treated differently.

Don't just make one that, you know, transforms itself for two.

Just make two different ones.

And then maybe test it.

So here is our first tip.

First one is Do not give the percent off, make it obvious on the pop up.

Just say, hey,

Sorry, uh, sorry to interrupt.

Uh, let me just do this.

I love that tip.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, I'm getting carried away with

the sound effects on my desk.

Uh, but I just wanted to go back over that point.

Do not start...

With a discounted pop up.

Uh, and I, I, I interrupted you.

Sorry, Damon.

Carry on, because this is such an important thing.

I'm just getting bored of it with everybody's website.

So, uh, thank you.

Yeah, so, yeah, so first off, you gotta have the pop up.

But, so, I would test, whatever you got today that you think is

the gold standard, Alright, great.

That's A.

That's the, uh, that's the constant.

The variable is gonna be, you've unlocked a discount.

Leave it, leave it, uh, ambiguous.

The reason is 10 percent to you might be a huge discount.

20 percent to you might be a big discount.

Guess what?

To your client, you have no idea what a good discount is in their mind.

And if you put the wrong percentage there just by accident, it's going

to turn that potential client off.

The goal is, and we talked about this before, Matt, in your other podcast.

It's all about deliverability.

That's our number one goal.

So, to get deliverability, we need them to open and click that first email.

So, we don't give out the coupon code on the success page.

We don't do that.

Like, hey, you've unlocked a discount, next one says success, please check

your email, look in your spam, whatever.

Click there, go to the darn email, get it, because you're gonna help your

deliverability down the line with opens and clicks on that particular email.

You know, also, too, you know, Klaviyo, you know, their snipers will probably

end up shooting me on this, but I don't believe in doing the double

opt in, uh, you know, if someone's explicitly giving you their email,

why do you need to double opt them in?

Like, why are you making it even more difficult?

Now, if your list is massive and you've got deliverability issues, we would

suggest doing that, but if you're doing pretty good overall, you're growing your

list, don't make it any more difficult.

Just, just get right into their inbox.

So, number one, You know, first off, if you don't like pop ups, get off that.

You need pop ups.

We need to collect your email.

But the number two is make it, make it whatever, and here's a, you

know, we're, we're Klaviyo, but a lot of other platforms use this.

Everybody that hits your site is getting a session ID, a

unique ID associated with them.

And actually this is tip number two.

This is brand new for Klaviyo.

I'll tell you in a second.

So they're all getting session ID as they move around your site, but you

can never find out what they're doing.

Until they give you their email, so it really needs to be your number

one goal is to get that email so you can get and unlock that session ID.

Tip number two, I have not seen this published anywhere, but if

you're a Klaviyo user, and hopefully you are, they're the best, uh,

e commerce, uh, ESP out there.

Under your settings, uh, I believe it's under options.

It's a new option.

It's called backfill your data.

So what that means is if a customer pops onto your site, goes all over

it, never gives you their email, then leaves, but comes back later and either

does a pop up or checks out, it will now automatically, when you check that

box, And it's unchecked by default.

You have to physically go in there and check it.

It'll backfill their entire history going back in time, which allows

you to have all that data that you might be missing out on beforehand.

This was a manual thing that we would do before, but now it's all

automated and built into Klaviyo.

So, there you go.

Checklist number one and tip number two.

Well, there you go.

That's, I mean, that's awesome right there.

I didn't realize that you could now do that on Klaviyo.

Um, so we will, I'll, I'll talk to the team, uh, later and make sure that we

have that on our, cause we use Klaviyo, uh, for one of our econ sites and

make sure we've got that setting up.

Let me just rewind a little bit and just, um, clarify.

So you put the pop up on the startup page, um, unlock your discount rather

than, you know, give me your email, get 20 percent off your first order, which

is just drab and dreary and boring.

Um, I come along, I put my email in, you've still not told me the discount

because you want my email, um, You then email me, I have to open the email and

in the email you're telling me what discount I get or in the email Are you

saying click through to our website to

reveal your discount?

No, no, no.

So, you know, we've we've asked them to jump through a hoop.

People are smart.

Let's give them credit They know in exchange for their email, they're

gonna get something of value in return And if they're on your site, they're

interested in your product So in the email, that first email, you give

them what you promised them above the fold A lot of the CRO techniques

on websites we implement on email.

So that means call to action above the fold, headline above the fold,

what you promise them is delivered without any cognitive load right there.

Bam, right between their eyes.

In fact, usually in welcome email number one, we don't even put a navigation bar.

It's just your logo.

Beautiful image that represents your brand lifestyle, usually a human looking you in

the eyes with your product, whatever, you know, save 10%, whatever it's going to be.

And it's just an easy click through so that they're just playing

the game at that point in time.

And they're doing that.

Um, you can put a bunch of great content underneath it.

That's perfectly fine for those people that want to scroll and engage.

But by and large, you want to quickly and fast serve those people, um,

exactly what you promised them.

So you're already earning a bit of their trust by saying, okay, you give

me this, I'm going to give you that.

Don't delay it.

Um, a maximum there's, you know, for, for SMS, you have to delay a minute.

So if you have SMS and email going on.

You know, no more than a minute delay, but get it out to them fast.

Right.

Yeah.

No, fair enough.

I totally get it out to them fast.

Cause that's the other thing that annoys people, isn't it?

Is if they have to wait around, it's like, I'm off.

Can't blame them.

No, you can't.

Uh, so how would you do that in relation to Black Friday?

Would you just, rather than unlock your discount, just unlock your Black Friday

special offer or something like that would be the headline on the pop up.

So, are you saying around Black Friday?

Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

Would you change that pop up?

Would you change the wording on it, or would you leave it the same?

I, I love testing.

So, you know, in this first test, you test what you've got now versus

what I just suggested, and then you, you go into that into Black Friday.

So, around Black Friday, yeah, I would totally make it

bespoke around Black Friday.

You know, if you've got like a site wide sale, turn it on.

Like, in Klaviyo, and I'm sure in other platforms, you can

schedule them now via pop ups.

So, schedule it right around the promotion.

Uh, you know, the goal again is, yes, of course we want to sale.

That's the end goal.

But for right now, we want to build the list.

So I would even say in the pop up side, Black Friday starts like now.

And that's why we're talking is, you know, we're, we're recording this in September.

Whenever you are listening, if it's like early November and you're

just now like getting around to, to optimizing your pop up, you're too late.

So you better, you better get your butt moving, you know,

it's all happening right now.

And that's the.

You know, that's the kind of the point.

But yes, I would totally do that.

And next step.

And, you know, this is like, you know, uh, email and, uh, and earn marketing 101.

If, if you have SMS, uh, or you're thinking about testing

SMS, I would just test it.

Um, I, you know, in Klaviyo, Attentive, Emotive, um, a lot

of those have like contracts.

Klaviyo doesn't have a contract, so, uh, if you're wondering about SMS,

there are brands that we've worked with that were like, SMS is not going to

work, and lo and behold, guess what?

SMS did great for them.

So I totally think that if you've considered or thinking about it,

again, now is the time to start it.

Back to the pop up.

Uh, you know, the idea would be if you already have their email, then

you create a second pop up for email only people that don't have SMS.

So when they go back to their site between now and Black Friday, you get their SMS.

So you have every chance to get into their inbox or in front of

their face, uh, all in preparation for Black Fridays every Monday.

So what are some of the ways that you have seen work super well to

get people to give you their, uh, Say their mobile number for SMS.

So, I mean, unlock the discount is an obvious one.

Um, what else have you seen work well for that, especially around

Black Friday?

Yeah.

So, uh, I don't have any super secrets.

I think some people like I'm an older guy.

I don't like giving out my, my personal SMS, my phone number,

because I know what that means.

I'm going to get, you know, potentially hounded.

Uh, however, if you offer something in addition to just

doing the email for the SMS.

Then that is a, a great way to entice people to do it.

In fact, uh, what we're working with a couple of our clients on right now is

our sweepstakes in September and October.

If you're already an email subscriber.

Give us your SMS right now, we're going to do a giveaway of some product,

you know, at the end of October, yada, yada, yada, doing a whole

promotion to draw and to convert those people from email to email and SMS.

And then if you're not even a subscriber yet, get one entry for

email, two entries for email and SMS to try to build that list now.

But again, a lot of this is all prep, you got to do stuff now

for that Black Friday and Monday.

Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense.

One of the things that we're trying and tell me what you think about this.

Actually, we've not made any decision.

We were talking about this yesterday, uh, for our e com website, um,

for one of our e com sites.

We were like, it'll be good to get the SMS thing up and running.

Uh, we know we can't do SMS in Europe.

There's all kinds of complications, but in the UK, Australia, the

US and Canada, SMS is fine.

So we're like, we do a lot of business in those four, you know, parts of the world.

So why not?

Um, and so we were like.

Week three of Black Friday.

Um, we're gonna do this thing where we don't, the way we do it is we do, in

effect, the whole month is Black Friday.

Just because I try and avoid that one weekend, I try and spread

out the sales so it's not a total hammering on the warehouse.

It's, I like that.

Works super well for us.

Let me tell you really well.

Um, so this year we're gonna do the same.

Week three.

We were gonna do like, Hey, give us your s m s.

Uh, number, give us your mobile number and we will give you VIP

access to the Black Friday deal early.

So it was like, you know, in exchange for your number, you get early access.

So you know, when you know, the stock's going to be there, you'll be the first

ones, the first ones that will get sent out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And so we're going to try that this year and so we've not done that

before with this particular site.

We were going to try it and see how it went.

And uh, yeah.

We'll

Looking forward to that.

That'll go good.

That'll work.

Like that's, that's part of the, the, the playbook.

Absolutely.

SMS as a VIP is a fantastic idea.

Uh, don't of course forget about your normal VIP segments and all that,

but that's, that's a wonderful idea.

One thing I would say to take you to the next level would be on the,

um, on the SMS side is don't forget that SMS is not, it's not email.

So when someone, you know, most people send an SMS out, they're like, Oh, hey,

uh, You know, reply Y to get our messages.

You type Y and like, fantastic, here's your 10 percent code and

click here to go use your code.

Listen, that is, that is what old school email people do.

What it should be is engaging.

It should be like, people love their mobile.

So it should be like, hey, thanks for joining our list.

Um, you know, listen, Matt, you're into chat GPT.

You've talked about that.

You know, use chat GPT to, you know, display your brand

voice in the text message.

So if you're like a surfer brand, you're like, hey bro, You know, blah, blah, blah.

But then get them engaged.

Like, uh, if you're selling coffee, do you like light roast,

medium roast, or dark roast?

Text back one, two, or three, you know, for more.

And then boom, excellent.

Our medium roasts are loved for this reason.

Click here to go to our medium roasts.

And then now you're like, you're creating a con, you know, it's automated, but it's

a conversational type of aspect to it.

Um, that is, that's what people are looking for on your VIP.

It, you should make SMS automations just around that Black Friday that

says you've been entered in here and, and then think about what's the next

step I can have somebody take in an interactive model on my phone to maybe

get a deeper interaction with them.

Um, the downside with Klaviyo SMS is you're not able to ingest the

response back and add it to their custom customer profile, but you can

at least create automations that dump them to different places on the website

that are, that are good for you.

And you're good.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, absolutely.

No, I like that.

I like the interaction of it.

Almost like chat, like you say, chat GPT esque, isn't it?

Just set up a little conversation, like a little mini flow, if you like.

Totally.

And make sure it's in your voice.

Like the SMS should be in your brand voice.

And if you don't know where your brand voice is, another little secret, your

about us page or one of your best product pages, just copy all the text.

So go to chat GPT and say, you know, define the brand voice or what.

Celebrity personality most sounds like this, it says like, you know, Rodney

Dangerfield, or whatever, and, uh, let's see, you're in the UK, who would

that be, like, uh, I don't know, uh, what are the guys over there, and then,

like, Winston Churchill, perfect, in the voice of Winston Churchill, say

this, say this copy, and then, boom, it'll pop it out, and now, it's just

not, again, like the pop up you're talking about, it's 10 percent off your

first order, now it's like, oh, Winston Churchill voice is talking to me about

this, and that correlates with the brand, And that, and that makes sense.

And you're developing that connection, uh, in an automated way.

So I, I think that's really huge.

And I know you've talked about your B2B efforts as well, and using, uh, you

know, flows and automations for B2B.

Um, absolutely.

And, in fact, we can even talk, like, we've done stuff with Gmail.

Where we've had clients on Google Workspace that when they sent a templated

email out of Google Workspace, we fire off, using Apps Script and Google,

an entire Klaviyo flow off of that to help nurture the business side.

So there's, and once again, that copy, we can control from the mothership,

and we make sure it's really good and right on brand versus a sales guy

that may or may not do that, right?

So all of this needs to be taken into consideration, and that's

why you've got to plan for Black Friday, Cyber Monday soon.

Yeah,

totally.

I love the idea, uh, Damon, I'm going to, after this, I wish I had time to

do it now, uh, I'd love the idea of going to chat GPT and saying, here's,

create for me a Black Friday offer in the voice of Winston Churchill.

I'm very curious to see what that's going to come out like.

It would be amazing.

It would.

And like, you know, it's never perfect, but it's like, wow, that's really cool.

And, uh, yeah, we just pitched a new client recently and did exactly that.

And what it came out with, uh, Uh, Group Love from, uh, A Tribe Called Quest was

their brand identity according to ChatGPT.

I'm like, perfect, write out these text messages as Group Love.

Man, it was like amazing.

And it really connects with the clients in a great way.

Yeah, it does.

And if, and it just makes everything super easy, doesn't it?

I mean, that's what, why not?

That's what it does.

That's why we do it.

It's great fun.

No, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Um, So, we've got a pop up where we get an email and the SMS,

we're talking about Black Friday.

What else is on your checklist, Damon, of things that we need to be thinking

about?

You know, we kind of flew through some of them in the last part of the

discussion, but you know, the SMS, it's today, September, October, it needs

to be all about building your list.

Uh, the Black Friday, Cyber Monday is one now.

So the idea is, is how can you build it up?

Uh, there are tools out there like retention.

com where you can, uh, add in a cookie to your site and it allows you to find

those people that, that bounce off your site but did not provide an email.

Uh, I don't know what your opinion is of them.

Uh, you know, full disclosure, we're a partner of theirs.

Out of all the services that do something similar, we found them to be pretty,

uh, pretty white hat and above boards.

Uh, we've seen some transform, uh, transformative.

Email, uh, list games by using their tool and it allows, yeah, it allows you

for to build your list that way, uh, in a, in a pretty white hat way, uh,

beyond that is asking for referrals, making sure your referral game is up.

So what are you doing after, after the purchase?

If you don't have reviews going automatically, you know,

stamped or something like that.

And if you're on Klaviyo and have, um, Shopify.

Klaviyo now has a very affordable reviews plugin as well that

works great with Shopify only.

Uh, if you're, are you doing loyalty, looking at all those right now and

saying, is everything up to snuff?

Is it all good?

Uh, you know, one, one client, this is a pitfall to watch out for.

We have a new client.

Fantastic.

They've been doing a loyalty program for years.

God bless them.

So we get in there, we look around and we're like, oh crap.

Uh, when you look at their loyalty points, some people have, you know,

they sell, um, like a 20 dollar item.

Some people have 500 or more in loyalty points that they could use.

Like, those people, if they knew about their points, would never, ever,

ever, you know, buy from them again.

They would just use all their points in the infinity.

You've got to be very careful on a lot of these messages.

And, you know, for them...

Uh, you know, what do we do to, to, you know, engage the customer or, um,

as turn this on every campaign email from now until black Friday, we're

either, we come up with a strategy of either burning up their points or

maybe hiding points from those people.

But for those people that are in the sweet spot that have maybe five

or 10 worth of value, we, we now make sure on their loyalty side.

Is every campaign email we send have their points in the corner?

Is it clickable?

You can easily do this in Klaviyo with any of the big loyalty programs out there.

So you're just making it simple for people to see the value of

shopping back with you again.

But you're doing that now so that once the rush of Black Friday comes, that

those pieces are already set and you're not like scrambling to do something.

Uh, that's a big part of it.

So list building, uh, loyalty, retention at the back side of things.

I think the, uh, the next big deal...

is, uh, on your list in general.

So, by Klaviyo's suggestions, you should not email everybody on your

list except for maybe twice a year.

Maybe three, maybe.

Those times are Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

Uh, and I'm also gonna say the, the last shipping day or the last

shipping days in December, and we'll talk about that in just a second.

If I forget, remind me, you know, the idea is, is that you don't want to send

it to everybody because you're going to burn deliverability, but you could, so,

you know, somewhat burn yourself a little bit on the busiest time of the year.

Why not?

So the idea would be, is that, uh, right now you're not going to send

to anybody leading up to there.

Except for like the 90 days, you know, engage 90 days.

Like that's where you want to be at.

Some clients that are bigger of ours do engage to 150.

I don't care, fine, if it works, great.

I wouldn't over segment right now, but I would like have those nice big

groups and just start warming them up.

If you're bad and this, this, you know, I know you're on a holiday in August.

I know a lot of the people out there were took some time off in the summer.

It's slow, great.

Get those people warmed back up again.

If you're used to sending seven campaigns a month, Get back to the

seven again and just get them warmed up again right now and all that.

Now, the big thing for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and it

goes into early December is this.

Take the money out of the market.

I was in retail for the beginning of my career for 11 years, and our philosophy

in retail was we want to sell to your customer before our competitors can.

The way you do that is the beginning of November needs to be like your VIP sale.

You just started a moment ago, Matt.

Hey, I'm going to have to do a Black Friday Cyber Monday for the whole month.

Fantastic.

We, we oftentimes encourage our clients to do a messaging along the lines of, we

don't want you to be worrying about Black Friday on your Thanksgiving, or we don't

want you to have to worry about this.

You're getting our best deals today.

Spend time with your friends and family.

You know, here you go, and you can even do that sale early November

to the VIPs, whether it's your text VIP or a different VIPs.

And if you've got a VIP segment today for your company, you should

also do an almost VIP segment, one, one little ladder rung down beneath

them, which is usually a pretty big group of people to encourage them to

come up to VIP before Black Friday.

So you can say, Hey.

You know, you're one order away from our VIP list with exclusive

discounts and offers and try to encourage some of those almost VIPs

to get to the VIP so they're ready to go for Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

Now, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, um, you know, there's a thousand

guides out there and all that stuff.

Of course, everyone's going to kill it out there.

Um, of course, after Black, after Cyber Monday, you want to do the

Cyber Monday Extended and all that.

But what I think is different is in my retail life, our Decembers were actually

bigger sales months than our Novembers.

And, and econ was a little different cause you lose a week

or two because of shipping.

But I absolutely implore everybody out there to do a deep

study of your shipping times.

And then in the early to mid December.

Figure out what the last day of like cheap ground, dirt bags, smart posts,

whatever shipping and say, okay, I can definitely get it all over the

country, all over the world by this drop dead date and then aim all kinds of

promotions in December towards that date.

Then have a promotion right behind it of like your express shipping.

We had it on a, on a promotion a few months ago.

I don't know.

It wasn't Labor Day.

It was maybe Memorial Day.

Where we did that, uh, same kind of tactic with a, with a client and we, and the darn

shipping when we did it, express shipping was more expensive than the product.

And darn it, if we didn't sell 30 or 40 products with the express shipping tacked

onto it, because people were desperate to get it in time for that holiday.

Same thing for Christmas, you know, that express shipping just, you know, a

couple of days later be like, Hey, and you just make an easy segment out of it.

It's like.

Who's been engaged but didn't buy in the last 45 days and boom, say,

Hey, last chance at express shipping at checkout, bam, boom, pow, and,

and do it that way and see if you can't blow up your December as well.

Top tip.

No, I love that because everybody talks about.

It used to be everybody would talk about Black Friday weekend.

We've now extended that out into November.

I'm, you know, many of us have done it, me included, where we have tried different

strategies to draw the period out.

Mainly, um, We have a better overall sales month.

And like I say, it takes the, the,

uh,

pressure.

Yeah, it takes the pressure off the, off the, off the warehouse, really, you

know, the, the guys picking the orders.

Um, we don't have to go and get in a load of seasonal staff like we

used to, because you know, you've, you can, you can spread it out.

So I like that.

And I, I, we've gone from cyber Black Friday from being a day to

Black Friday, Cyber Monday being a weekend to being November.

What you're talking about and what I like and what I don't hear

many people talk about is actually doing something in December.

It's like almost December's the recovery month.

We just want to get through it till Christmas.

Uh, but let's not treat it like that.

Let's treat it like a follow on and maybe your December, it'd be

an interesting goal, wouldn't it?

To go to the team and say, I want December to perform better than November.

Uh, in those, you know, week by week basis, um, how do we do that?

Uh, and so I like your strategy with the, with the express shipping as well.

That's, that's

fantastic.

Yeah, totally.

And then even after that, like they've missed it, like you're not going to

guarantee a shipping time, but you know, maybe you make it something, something

fun and cheeky about, you know, you missed Christmas, but maybe we can make it fun

for your, your person receiving your product, you know, like, Oh, I missed

Christmas, but here you go, you know, whatever, but just make it your own.

And it's.

I think everyone kind of wants a rest in December.

So they take it.

Um, it's funny when I was in my retail life, we were the first

retailer in America, uh, to take the money out of the marketplace

by opening on Thanksgiving day.

So as a general manager, you know, I, I left the Thanksgiving dinner table

at like two o'clock in the afternoon to go out and, uh, And open up the

store and start selling at six o'clock on Thanksgiving and a 24 hour sale.

So all of this stuff we're talking about in e com, it's, it's,

you know, it's just retread.

It's just, uh, you know, we've been doing it for a long time.

It's just, I think for everybody who's listening, how

is this unique to your brand?

Um, you know, you look at like REI in America, they don't open on Black Friday.

Now they don't open on Thanksgiving.

Maybe that's your brand posture.

Maybe that's where you're at.

And if that's what your brand stands for, then stand tall on that.

And how do you win?

You just, you just do, uh, promotions earlier in the month or in December.

Like, REI is still participating, their sales haven't been hurt

overall, uh, it's just...

Make it your own and stand out by doing something a little bit

different and see what happens.

Yeah, it's a really interesting one, isn't it?

And again, we were talking about this because we had an e com business,

which I sold two years ago now.

Jeez, that time's flown by.

Sold that two years ago.

And that particular business, we stopped doing Black Friday.

It became part of our brand value, I suppose.

But, um...

We marketed that story, you know, we told that story well, and it worked

well for us, and it fitted well with our customers, um, the current e com

website we're running, I don't think the customers I think the customers

want Black Friday for this particular brand, for this particular product.

Um, and so we have to, I think we're going to participate in a way that

obviously makes sense for us as a company, but also makes sense for the client.

So, I like that, you know, don't, don't feel pressured to do Black Friday, but

certainly, you know, do think about November in some way, because people are

in a, I read a statistic, Damon, I don't know if you can speak to it, I don't know

how true it is, but, um, Irrespective of whether you do any kind of special Black

Friday sales, sales go up that weekend because people are just in a buying mood,

right?

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

I think it's absolutely true.

A hundred percent.

I mean, heck, uh, Amazon Prime Day.

I'm sure a lot of your listeners out there, you know, people just might

all of a sudden show up to their site.

They might not even have an Amazon store, but people would just start

hearing about Prime Day and they're like, Oh, I need this or that.

Absolutely.

Uh, you know, there's a, uh, it's like a life event.

Like, you know, we work with a baby brand.

So the life event is having a baby.

So, like, all of a sudden, your, your chemicals in your brain

change, your focus changes.

That whole weekend, the focus is, I gotta get presents for the

friends and family and the kids.

So, you know, once again, if you're marketing to them, you're

delivering to their inbox.

You're going to be front of mind, and that's the idea.

So I completely agree with that.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

What are the, what are the strategies that you've seen work well around Black Friday?

What are some of the other things we should be thinking about?

You know, I think, you know, obviously on Thanksgiving Day, the

day before Thanksgiving, there's all kinds of stuff you can do.

Again, I think all of the stuff that you do need to do needs to be, uh,

thought about in the, in the thought of your brand and your brand voice.

So one of the things a lot of clients, uh, you know, kind of push

back on me on is like discounting.

How much do you discount?

And that's really out of the purview of my company.

You know, we're email marketers, but a lot of times if you feel like you

can't give an exorbitant discount, figure out another form of value.

Uh, is there a, you know, buy this weekend and get a giveaway.

I love buy more, save more.

Um, obviously shipping is a huge component and cost of all of

our e com businesses out there.

So how can you maybe create new bundles or do something with the product mix

so that it, you know, so maybe you're actually like, maybe you have like a.

Buy 70 or more and get free shipping.

Well, maybe you're like, well, you know, I'm actually making a few bucks

off that shipping at that point.

Maybe if I go down to 50, but I make a bundle that gets right to that 50

that, uh, margin wise and everything else, I'm worked out properly.

And instead of just talking about a blanket, 50 percent off everything in my

store, you're instead saying, here's a discount on some of these bundles and, and

you kind of focus your energy that way.

Again, you can test that.

Like, if you wonder about that, test it in middle of November to your VIPs,

uh, you know, again, early November.

Talk to your VIPs, make sure that you know, starting from the first week of

November, our strategy for our clients will be work on those VIPs over like two

to three weeks to make sure that they don't have any buying needs by the time

Black Friday, Cyber Monday hits, because that's a chance for all your competitors

to go out there and snake them.

So we don't want that to happen.

Uh, you know, I think beyond that, I, I I believe around like that whole

time period, especially if you're on SMS, you got to have somebody

assigned to those conversations.

If you've, if you're, you know, there's two kinds in my world

of, of clients that do SMS.

One is the highly engaged using Gorgias or Zendesk to manage their SMS.

The other kind is I'm an older guy.

I don't, you know, it gives me some sales.

I'm going to put an autopilot.

That weekend, you need to have somebody who's watching the SMS, people are going

to be asking questions, uh, you know, customer service wise, people are asking

questions, don't lose the sales, you know, go in there and, and make sure that

you're, uh, you've got somebody that's answering those messages and, uh, and

staffed up and, you know, even for, you know, if you're a founder and you've got

a team, you know, if the team knows the founders taking their time off to do this,

I think it's a great thing to look at.

Um, but ultimately like, that's like the big takeaways we've got is,

Uh, just, just get into your brand.

Like, what do they stand for?

What does it look like, uh, through the lens of Black Friday, Cyber Monday?

If the, you know, I guess another strategy it's thought of.

Have a campaign ready for Cyber Monday.

That's like, just in case that Black Friday didn't turn out

like you thought it would.

You got the other one loaded up that might be a little bit deeper than you thought.

So that, uh, you know, you've got your main idea that's already scheduled.

Things are a little off the rails.

Boom.

Um, do make sure too that you've got suppression lists going on.

You don't want somebody on the VIP list who bought two weeks

ago getting another sale email.

You want to make sure you're suppressing like crazy.

We usually do like a...

Uh, 30 or 45 day look back, uh, purchase suppression list and we just throw that in

there to make sure it doesn't go through.

Another reason why I love, um, uh, Klaviyo is it's easy to do that, whereas

like on MailChimp, it's impossible.

So, uh, yeah, the heck with MailChimp, you know, we're a partner of

theirs, we shouldn't disparage them.

But you know, another thing, if you're on MailChimp right now trying

to run your email campaigns for this, get off it, you know, give me

a call, we'll get you out of there.

But that, like, that kind of stuff is, is really important and, you

know, if you want to talk in a little bit about data, we can talk about

some ways of using some data to like maybe target and find some people.

Yeah.

Well, let's jump in, just jump into it because I think it's, um, these

are all very good as you were talking, one of the things I've jotted down

in my notes, actually, uh, you didn't mention it, but I'm one of the

things I've been toying around with.

Um, is actually around that weekend.

We need to obviously increase the customer service staff.

We need to get people on the SMS, chatting to people, answering emails.

Um, but one of the things that we've never done, which I'm tempted

to do, is to do live shopping that weekend, to have someone...

You who is just live streaming onto the website, um, and you know, people

are asking questions in the chat and it's coming up and they're responding

to them in real time on the website.

I think it'd be quite fun.

We might do that.

That would be a lot of fun.

And I don't have experience with that.

So I don't have much of a point of view, but man, that would be a good time.

Yeah.

And yeah.

And yeah.

Have you done some lives before?

How'd they go?

Yeah, we, I mean, we've done a lot of live streams.

Um, and we've done, uh, it's something that we, we, we've done a lot of.

Um, uh, my other life, I'm a media company, but that, you

know, let's not talk about that.

Um, so yeah, we, we, uh, I don't think it would be a problem for us.

We've got the studio set up already for it, um, in a lot of ways.

So, Um, it would just be making sure that whoever's doing the live stream,

um, whether it's me, whether whoever has got knowledge about the products, right?

So, um, I, you don't want someone who is either just very cardboard on the

live stream or someone who just doesn't have a clue what the products are.

But this is

the same thing.

Like if any of your listeners have been thinking about doing the lives, and

we had a client earlier this year that they made most of their money off those.

Like their e com store emails were fine, but the lives were amazing.

Yeah.

If anybody's had a thought about that, now's the time to test it.

See what it's all about, how does it work, and uh, to implement, and why not?

Like, it's fun, like that stuff is exciting and engaging to, to users, yeah.

Yeah, it totally is, and you can live stream to Instagram, you can live,

you know, wherever your clients are.

Um, I think we'll probably end up live streaming to YouTube and embed the YouTube

video on the website, so when someone's on the website, they see the live stream.

Uh, and we'll just maybe do it for like two hours every day that

week, you know, over the, whatever.

We'll think about it.

We'll have some fun with that.

We'll have some data to report

back.

Exactly.

I'd love to hear that.

Can't wait for that podcast.

Yeah.

Although

the team, when they listen to this podcast, they'll be like, Oh,

Matt, what have you guys doing now?

Hey, that's not your problem.

Not my problem.

Yeah.

It's going to be funny.

Uh, it's going to be funny, but a lot, I mean, geez.

Uh, lots of takeaways there.

If you are not subscribed to the newsletter, this is gonna be the

one you're gonna wanna subscribe to because there's a lot of stuff Damon

talked about here, suppression lists.

Uh, was was just touch on suppression list because I don't think anyone's

really mentioned that on the show before.

I know what they are, but let's just hit that, uh, for a brief

second, if you don't mind.

Yeah.

Like.

That's like a secret weapon.

I mean, so to me, it's like our basic bag of tricks, a lot of email platforms

like MailChimp, you know, this is like way beyond them, but the idea is, is that

let's just say you've got your newsletter list, which is like what everybody

that signs up for your website, but you don't want to talk to all of them every

time, not just for deliverability, but.

You know, at the end of the day, you know, the number one concern people have when I

talk to them is I get way too many emails.

I don't want to get them right.

So the way you help do that is by suppressing people.

And, you know, in Klaviyo, I'm sure OmniSend has it too, and some of the other

guys, but it's a dynamic suppression list.

So you might be suppressing out people who bought from you in the last two weeks.

You might be suppressing out people that are, uh, you know, Black

Friday, that's, that's the big one.

You might be somebody who, uh, let's think here.

Oh, Here's a great example.

So when you're doing a sale, let's say the, um, we'll go back to Black Friday,

Cyber Monday, and this is like, like, it's just one of these segments we'll make up.

We'll make a dynamic segment of people who clicked on our email, not open,

and I'll go into opens in a minute, who clicked on our email since the last week.

Whenever our emails start up for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, but didn't buy.

And then we can suppress deeper with a VIP list and suppress deeper with,

we've got a thing called a, um, Uh, Spam Filter, which is our people that

are zombies signed up, but don't have any clicks, nothing into perpetuity.

And so that's a suppression list for every one of our emails.

So you just, uh, you just layer on these different suppressions to kind

of hone down your list a little bit.

So, uh, and, and back to that Spam Filter.

The, the deal is, is that today opens and emails don't mean a

whole lot, uh, ever since I was 14.

5 came out.

If those of you don't know, if someone opens up your email or open uses Apple

mail or Apple iOS mail, it's automatically opening every one of your emails for you.

So a lot of email marketers that are like dirt balls, they went out and said,

Hey, look, we went from 25 percent open rate to 40 percent open rate overnight.

No, they didn't.

Uh, it's absolutely, uh, 100 percent Apple obfuscating the opens because

their new privacy initiatives are doing, which I'll talk about some of

the scary ones coming up in a second.

If you're in Klaviyo, you can actually filter those people out.

So, uh, so on two levels, one is you can go back to your, your email under your

settings and attributions and say, uh, it's called, uh, Apple privacy opens and

you can remove the Apple privacy opens.

From your metrics in Klaviyo, it worked from this point going forward.

It does not go back into the past, but you can at least look at it and

let your team know our opens are going to go down, but that's okay.

The issue becomes that if you're in there making segments, uh, in Klaviyo

or any tool, and you're not already taking care of the Apple opens and

one of your segments says anybody that's open in the last 30 days.

Guess what?

Everybody you sent a campaign to that's got an Apple device

is going to show and open.

But that does not mean they're engaged.

That does not mean that at all.

So you're wasting a lot of sends over there to those people.

Clicks, definitely better.

Now, bad problem, and I haven't heard anybody really talking about this at all.

IOS 17 that's due out and soon is going to be hiding clicks.

So I don't know what that looks like.

I have not, I've not heard the Klaviyo line on that one yet.

I will hopefully hear it soon.

But if you're on, uh, iMessages with a, with a, with a UTM parameters,

it's going to remove all of those.

If you're in emails, it's my understanding in, uh, you know, the

Apple clients that it's going to remove click information there too.

Uh, and if you're in private browsing on your Safari browser, it's going to remove

all the tracking information from the URL.

Now, because I haven't heard a lot of freak out, it's very likely that our

ESPs have already figured a workaround, but that's something to look at next,

which is clicks might be, uh, you know, showing up incorrectly in the future.

So we'll have to see.

Wow.

Well, that's, I mean, that's fascinating information and, um, and worth paying

attention to, you know, I, about the opens and coming up about the clicks.

What are the metrics that you as a company now pay attention to then?

If, if opens are, you know, a little bit dodgy, clicks potentially

going to become a little bit dodgy.

How do you, how do you gauge the success of your emails?

What are the metrics you're

looking at?

Great question.

At the end of the day, it's all about sales, like that's what we care about.

And if our emails aren't selling, then that's the problem we've got to fix.

Then we use the clicks and the opens and start working backwards to figure out why,

like what's going on, design, whatever.

But at the end of the day, like, why do we do email?

Why do we waste our time on it?

It's because it generates sales.

And if it's not generating sales, that's the deal.

And, and to your point, you're, you're thinking smart.

That's exactly where our brains have been at.

You know, a lot of agencies looked at opens great, then they're

like, all right, it's two clicks.

Great.

But at the end of the day, all that's ever matter is the bottom

of that funnel when a sale happens.

So the, the other pieces can be indicators of a sales problem, but those

are like symptoms or whatever to the real sales problem at the very bottom.

And if your emails aren't selling, then, then you've got a problem.

And to kind of put a little bit of a spin on this and to, uh, you know,

kind of put things in perspective.

If you know that you're getting Apple opens, you know that your

open rate is an artificially high.

Great.

How has your opens been over time?

Uh, clicks, same thing.

Even if this thing happens with clicks, we can look at it and we know

because we're smart human beings.

We're not, you know, AI or something.

We know over time.

Oh, that's when the new iOS update came out.

Generally, Apple users do it pretty quick.

So, bam, boom, pow.

That's why clicks went down.

We tell our clients that in advance.

On, on top of all that.

Is we, we also look at other metrics.

So we've got a couple, a couple of proprietary metrics that we do inside

of my data scientists and stuff do inside of Klaviyo that allow us to

score our customers on the site.

And if we see the scores, you know, can't, you can't mess with those.

Uh, at the end of the day, if we see those messing up, that's an indicator of a.

Yeah, there's all kinds of like different things.

I guess my last one to talk about here is when you are in Klaviyo,

it's important to know that that Klaviyo attributed revenue number.

You know, how does that number get arrived at?

It gets arrived at two ways.

It's opens or clicks for the last five days.

So, some people hate that number.

They're like, that's not a real number because Klaviyo is going to take credit

for those numbers, but so is Google Ads.

And so is maybe Facebook.

Or so is Google Search.

That's okay, that number is accurate, it's 100 percent accurate, but it's important

for us just to be honest with each other, to say we know what it is, we know it's

limitations, especially on the open side, so if someone's got an iOS device and it

opens automatically and then they buy in 5 days, it's taking credit in Klaviyo.

Just know that and be like, okay, it is what it is.

And it's, you know, it's a number we look at in our entire set of data.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think it's, as with all these things, attribution data and all that

kind of stuff, which is hard to measure.

My general theory has always been.

We know it's hard to measure.

We know it's not accurate, but if we use the same mechanism to measure it

next month, I can compare month on month and I can see, is this going up?

Is this going down?

It might not be a totally accurate figure, but as long as I'm consistent

in my measurements, um, I'm going to get a good idea of how well

my business is doing, right?

A hundred percent.

That's exactly our point of view too.

Yeah, no,

absolutely.

Listen, Damon, I'm aware of time and we have talked about

just the tip of the iceberg.

Uh, we're probably going to have to get you back on the show to talk

about AI and the future of e commerce.

Uh, but we are live streaming into the cohort group.

Uh, and as we close, uh, I'm sort of quickly, the future

of e commerce intrigues me.

Where do you see it going?

What does What does the next 12 to 18 months look like, um,

do you think for e commerces?

So I think it's the golden age of e commerce right now.

I think that what I'm hearing now is we're The reality is the bubble

of e commerce is kind of gone.

The business owners that I'm talking to are sharper, smarter than ever.

They're using AI, they're using new tools to, to write copy, to dynamically create

their, their website content, to display what customers want on their terms.

And I believe that as long as.

Everybody out there in the e com world, your listeners are openly embracing

technology, looking at new tools, testing, and you know, going, going at it.

The, the next year is going to be filled with, sure, individual bespoke

websites, but that are better, better, almost like a large brand.

Ability with mega millions of dollars of marketing funds in empowered into this,

this small guy to be able to deliver the right email at the right time, the right

message at the right time, not overdoing it, but also the behavior on the website.

And if you like light roast coffee, that's what you're seeing on the website when

you go there, cause that's what you like.

And there's a complimentary item that maybe you want to buy along with it.

Fantastic.

And it just, it just naturally does it.

And everyone's worried about the AI apocalypse.

I'm more optimistic than pessimistic about it.

And I believe that.

As a friend to help you out, it's, it's going to be there to help

us in ways we can't even imagine.

So I'm really excited about it.

Yeah, I love that.

I totally agree with you.

I think I was talking to my son about this because my son's doing a degree

or master's degree in theoretical physics because I, why would you not?

And we were talking about AI and You know, AI taking over and all this sort of stuff.

So I think what AI is going to do is it's going to cause you problems if

you're really mediocre at your job.

Uh, because AI will do mediocre really well.

Um, it's not going to, it's not going to be, you know, the...

If you're an expert, I think you're going to be okay.

You just need to understand how AI is going to work.

And I love the fact that in recent months, we've been talking to all

kinds of people like yourself.

Um, I'm thinking of Alan Gormley, Max and Claire, some of the guys we've

had talking on about AI and shopping.

Um, it's leveling the playing field.

It's bringing to the small guy, the tech, which the big guys have been playing with.

Uh, and.

I, I, I, like you say, it's the golden age and I love that, I think it's right

and I think get on board with the tech and the AI and you should be okay, right?

You're doing lives, it's like, you know, in America with QVC and HSC,

like you could never do anything like that if you're a small guy.

Now you're going to be doing it on your website in real time to people, I mean,

that's incredible and, you know, uh, Yeah, it's just amazing what we can do.

And, you know, we've got our own AI tool that we're developing to

help write copy for emails that, um, we're hoping to work with some

agencies on and, and really do it.

But why are we doing that?

It's not to lay people off.

Like all my copywriters are going to be sticking around.

It's so that we can deliver better results for our clients.

Like instead of presenting to you one email, I can say, you know what, Matt?

Here's three or four different versions of the welcome email.

Which one do you like the best?

And we've tried some things.

We've pushed some limits and all of a sudden you're delivering a more

bespoke email that is tailored to your clients that, you know, it's,

it's a little bit of tribalism, but it's saying this is who we are.

If you're on my, in my team.

Come join me.

And I love that about it.

It's, it's really getting ultra personal and, uh, it's really exciting.

I think it's great.

And I always say to my team, you know, you either evolve or go extinct.

So AI is just the next evolution.

And I don't think they're taking over email marketing tomorrow.

Uh, I do believe though, to your point, The, the, the good people,

the experts are just going to have more power and, you know, more things

they can play with than ever before.

So yeah,

absolutely.

Absolutely.

Damon, listen, I genuinely have really enjoyed this chat.

If people want to reach out to you, if they want to connect with you,

find out more about what you do.

Maybe you've got a question about Klaviyo or whatever.

What's the best way to do that?

Perfect.

Go to my website, winatecommerce.

com all spelled out.

If you do the little contact us links, it goes right to me.

You're not going to somebody else.

Um, you know, uh, I'm a small business owner like many of you out there.

So, you know, I'm the CEO, sales guy, janitor, um, all that.

And I love to talk to you guys and, uh, you know, let's, you know, the

reason the company's called Win is because I think we all can win together.

So let me help you win and let's figure this thing out.

Fantastic.

And my last closing question, bass guitar behind you, do you play bass?

Oh, yeah, buddy.

Oh, yeah.

So, uh, the string I broke a couple days ago, I have some new

strings on order, but man, yeah.

Now, what, now your son plays drums.

Do you play anything?

Uh, yeah, guitar and piano.

Look at you.

Yeah, yeah.

That's awesome.

I don't play piano as well as my daughter now plays piano.

I have to, I shouldn't have.

Uh, but yeah, my son plays guitar better than I do.

So.

And I could never play drums.

So my, I have three kids and they all play musical instruments, and my wife

is brilliant and I'm, I'm now the Pleb

the portrait family over there.

Yeah,

that's, yeah.

Yeah, it's, it's been a long time since I've played in a band, that's for sure.

But yes, if you are watching the video, you'll see that I have

a drum set behind me, and Damon has a bass guitar behind him.

So fellow musician, absolutely.

All the way, biggest

time you started an eComm band.

That's what we should totally do.

Absolutely, listen, why not?

And in fact, the theme tune that you can hear in the background, ladies

and gentlemen, was actually written by my son, uh, and me, actually.

We wrote it, he's mixed it also.

All that aside, uh, we will of course link to Damon's information in the show

notes, which you can get along for free.

Uh, on the website eCommerce podcast.net or they'll come direct your inbox

if you're already signed up for the newsletter, Damon, thanks man.

Really appreciate you coming onto the show.

It's been absolutely fantastic.

And of course, big shout out to the show sponsor e-commerce cohort.

Uh, if you wanna join our group, join our mastermind, come and find

out more at ecommercecohort.com.

Uh, we'll be in there and if we're on the new platform, you can watch the podcast,

get live stream, come and ask the guest questions and all that sort of stuff.

Thanks for being the guinea pig, Damon, by the way.

Really appreciate that.

Now, be sure to follow the e commerce podcast wherever you get your podcasts

from because we have got yet more great conversations coming up and I

don't want you to miss any of them.

And before we wrap up today's episode, if no one has told you yet today, let

me be the first person to tell you.

You are awesome.

Yes, you are.

Created awesome.

It's just a burden you have to bear.

Damon has to bear it.

I've got to bear it, you've got to bear it as well.

Now the E Commerce Podcast is produced by aurion Media.

You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favourite podcast app.

Big shout out to Sadaf Beynon and Tanya Hutsuliak, and of course,

Josh Edmundson for the theme music.

All information at ecommercepodcast.

net if you want to go find it, it'd be great to see you there.

That's it from me, that's it from Damon, thank you so much for joining us.

Have a fantastic week.

I'll see you next time.

Bye for now.