Nerd Marketing Ecommerce Podcast
Drew Sanocki
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If you’ve ever asked yourself: How can I get more traffic? What are the best practices for ecommerce marketers? How do I grow my business on a limited budget? How do I increase AOV? What about customer retention? Then you have come to the right place. Welcome to the Nerd Marketing Ecommerce Podcast where ecommerce veteran and industry legend Drew Sanocki delivers clear, actionable, data driven strategies to grow your ecommerce business.
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Nov 26, 2019
Podcast 41: eCommerce Fuel interview – Post Card Marketing for eCommerce
In this episode, Drew talks with Andrew Youderian on the eCommerceFuel.com podcast to explain how to leverage post cards in your business, how his companies are gearing up for Black Friday, and more.
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Highlights
The best way to utilize post cards for a significantly higher return on investment than other marketing outlets (i.e. Facebook)
What to focus on when gearing up for Black Friday
How to use post cards for your business
Links / Resources
PostPilot’s On-Boarding Concierge
Ramit’s Copywriting Course
NerdMarketing.com
AutoAnything.com
RightMessage.com
Klayvio’s Holiday Guide
Klaviyo
Liquid Web
eCommerceFuel Job Boards
eCommerceFuel Forum
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Apr 25, 2018
Podcast 40: My Private Equity Rolodex
In this episode, Drew shares his favorite resources and private equity investment contacts.
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Highlights
A few names to file away and pull-out when you're looking to sell
Links / Resources
Brian Colton, Brooklyn-Equity
Carson Biederman, Digital Fuel Capital
Tom Clark, Comvest
Dominic Ang, Turn/River Capital
Kingswood Partners
Me
Chris Yates, Rhodium Weekend
Empire Flippers, Justin Cooke
Quiet Light Podcast, Episodes two and eight
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you can request the text transcribe and I will send it to you as a PDF.
Read The Transcript:
Hey, everybody. It's Drew Sanocki with the Nerd Marketing Podcast. We are talking about buying and selling businesses in this short web series if you will. This one, this episode, is the final one. Here I kind of want to open up my contacts to you and walk you through some people who are doing some interesting buying of businesses like yours, so these are ... Just file it away. If you hope to sell someday, these are some of the people who may be interested in buying your business, whether you run a SaaS company or a direct-to-consumer brand.
I'm going to give you some resources here, and also just want to make it clear that it's not what you know; it's who you know. Part of fetching a good valuation and being able to sell your business or raise money for your business is knowing the kind of people who would love to own your business, right? Because these buyers, these funds come in a million different flavors. What we want to focus on here is not Robert Smith and Vista Capital. He's going for the billion-dollar SaaS companies. I want to talk about people who are playing in our space, direct-to-consumer and for smaller companies.
First up is a friend of mine over in Brooklyn. His name's Brian Colton. He runs Brooklyn Equities. Brooklyn Equities is his vehicle for buying just solid, good direct-to-consumer brands. He owns one called Sherrill Tree that I want to say he bought back when it was doing about $1 million in revenue and is now at $40 million in revenue. I mean, he's just had a couple big success stories. Those numbers, don't quote me on them. I'm just trying to give you a sense of what he buys. His typical checks are typically $5 to $15 million, so he writes checks that size in return for which he wants majority ownership of the company. He'll take a board seat. He's targeting growth-ready companies that are doing under $5 million in EBITDA.
I would also say I've seen him go after companies that are high in recurring revenue, often from B2B, so it could be an e-commerce company with a strong B2B play. I mentioned Sherrill Tree, so they do arborist equipment, so again, lots of B2B buyers, which means high recurring revenue, which means lower risk in the business as I went over a couple of episodes ago. So, his name's Brian. He's at brooklyn-equity.com. I am an operating partner with him on his funds, so feel free to reach out to me with any questions about Brooklyn Equities.
Number two would be Carson Biederman at Digital Fuel Capital. Carson's up in Boston, another friend of mine. Great photographer and great ... just really sharp digital marketing mind. Again, probably goes after deals of the same size. I would say Carson a little bit more likes companies with passionate customers where content can play really well. He's got ski.com. He's got a couple sports apparel companies where there's a passionate user base. He sees that as a differentiator versus Amazon. He also owns Vermont Teddy Bear, which is a brand a lot of us are familiar with. I've certainly heard of them, growing up in the Northeast. Carson's operation is a little bit different at Digital Fuel Capital because he is growing an internal te...
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Apr 19, 2018
Podcast 39: The Six Things You Can Do Today to Maximize Your Valuation Tomorrow
In this episode, Drew talks about six things you can do to maximize your company's valuations.
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Highlights
Six tips to maximize your valuation
How to decide on your story
Tips for minimizing risk
Diversifying your traffic sources
Getting your company on autopilot
How to network for selling
Links/ Resources:
Built to Sell, John Warrillow,
The E-Myth, Michael Gerber
IRCE
Shop.org
Flippa
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you can request the text transcribe and I will send it to you as a PDF.
Read The Transcript:
Drew Sanocki:
Hey everybody. Welcome to the Nerd Marketing podcast. This is Drew Sanocki. We're talking about investments in private companies. We're talking about maximizing your valuation in this episode. I think it's a really important episode for that reason.
Everybody wants to maximize your valuation, whether you're raising money ... If you raise money, if you're going to raise a couple million bucks, you want to do it at a higher valuation so you give away less of your company. Obviously, if you're going to sell your company, you want to maximize that valuation so you can get more money in your pocket.
This isn't the typical maximize your valuation list that you'll see on a number of brokerage sites. Just Google it. You'll find plenty. This is my take, based on ten or so years in the game, on the things that I see, in particular around direct to consumer brands, and SaaS brands. Really, I've tried to distill it down to six tips, six things you want to do to maximize your valuation.
Drum roll please. Number one. I would say decide on your story. What I mean by that is are you going to raise money or sell off of a growth story, or a profitability story? I'll give you an example. Karmaloop. When we acquired the assets of that business, it was probably ... They couldn't tell a growth story because the company was in bankruptcy. It was a declining asset. They're in bankruptcy. You can't tell a growth story. They couldn't also tell a profitability story, because they were in bankruptcy.
You put those two things together, and the business fetches a much smaller valuation. So assuming you could do one or the other, try to decide now if you are going to be selling a growth story in a couple years, or selling that profitability story, because it's going to dictate what you do, and decisions around your business.
If you are going to sell the growth story, you want to put as much of your profits back in the business, step on the gas, run Facebook ad campaigns at a lower return on ad spend. Whatever it is, you want to sell that growth story, so you want to lower your profitability, and always favor growth at the expense of profits.
On the flip side, you're going to sell a profitability story, you want to do what you can to maximize the profitability of the business, like your target return on ad spend goes from two to ten, or something, to just generate as many profits as you can.
The growth story and the profitability story determine very different kinds of buyers, and very different multiples, as we discussed multiples in the last episode. If you are growing, and you choose that growth story to tell, you sell that in your deal book. Then, you could also argue that you get valued off of multiple of revenue.
Conversely, if you're on board with the profitability story, you want to maximize that owner's discretionary cash flow, because that's the thing that's going to drive the multiple of the business, and the ultimate valuation. So, I'd say, number one, decide on what story you want to tell.
Number two, you want to reduce risk in the business. We talked about how valuations go from nothing for the smallest, riskiest businesses,
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Mar 29, 2018
Podcast 38: How you sell a business—“the Deal Process”
In this episode, Drew talks about the three highlights of how deals go down in the private equity process.
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EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Prefer to read rather than listen? Click here to download the text transcribe from this episode.
Highlights
Three highlights on how deals go down in the private equity
Links / Resources
FE International
Quiet Light
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you can request the text transcribe and I will send it to you as a PDF.
Read The Transcript:
Hey, everybody. welcome to the Nerd Marketing Podcast. Drew Sanocki. I'm still here in San Diego, still stuck. East coast is being slammed by another nor'easter. My wife's watching the kids. It's always good when you negotiate with your wife like, "Hey, I need you to watch the kids because I got this business thing I gotta deal with on the west coast. It's only gonna be 48 hours. I'll be back in a couple days." You negotiate that, she signs off, and then you're there for the whole week, and every time they FaceTime you, they see palm trees in the background, and you FaceTime them, it's like dark because it's snowing. They're losing power and stuff.
So shout out to my wife, Sarah. I love you. Thank you for watching the kids. But it allows me to talk a little bit more about buying and selling a company, private equity.
In this podcast, I'd like to delve into kind of how it goes down. I was working on the AutoAnything deal for maybe two months. It was accelerated because AutoZone wanted to close the deal by the end of their fiscal quarter. Typically, these process ... I've been a part of deals that have gone for like six months, and those are only the bigger ones. On the other end of the spectrum, when I sold Design Public, my small first retailer, that probably took about a month.
It has to do with a lot of things: how sophisticated your buyer is or your investor, how buttoned up your own business is. But today I kind of want to talk about how the deals go down and really highlight three things.
Number one is the process. This is the process you will go through if you go to sell your business or raise money or, if you are on the other side of the table and you wanna buy a business. That's the process.
Number two: quick sidebar on valuations, just where you get them. Do they come out of thin air or not? And I just wanna touch on the third thing: control. That obviously applies if you are not exiting a business, but if you take an investment, control becomes a big thing. How much control do you give up of your company?
Again, this all applies whether you are doing the buying or the selling, but let's start with the process. The process for ... I've probably been a part of 20 different deals, some as the buyer, some as the seller. It kind of all follows the same four or five steps.
The first step is that, if you are selling, you hire a banker to run your process or a broker or decide to do it yourself, but the general idea of the process is that the banker or you, whoever's running the process, creates a deal book. The deal book is, I don't know, 10 to 20 pages, nice and pretty, with a lot of charts and graphs showing just what a wonderful investment your company is. You spend some time working with the professional to kind of put that deal book together, and then you or whoever you've hired approaches potential buyers with that deal book. The idea is to drum up interest.
Typically, the banker will add some urgency into the process like, "Hey, here's the deal book on Auto Anything, and if you are interested, we'd like some approximate bid or something by next Thursday." There might be a couple calls with potential investors then or potential funds, but the first step is assembling that deal book and getting it in front of the right people.
That's, I'd say, the more proactive way to sell your business.
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Mar 27, 2018
Podcast 37: Intro to Private Equity
In this episode, Drew talks about his own personal experiences in buying and selling companies, and gives a brief intro to private equity, which he'll discuss in the next few episodes.
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EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Prefer to read rather than listen? Click here to download the text transcribe from this episode.
Highlights
Insight on selling Drew's first company, DesignPublic
Intro to Private Equity
Links/ Resources:
Robert Smith
Kingswood Partners
Bill D'Alessandro
Turn/ River Capital
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you can request the text transcribe and I will send it to you as a PDF.
Read The Transcript:
Drew:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Nerd Marketing Podcast. This is Drew Sanocki, and I am podcasting from San Diego, where I've been working on AutoAnything. And for like the fifth time this winter, I am stranded in San Diego. So the New York airports are down, I can't go home. There are no flights in and out of there. So what better thing to do than podcast, right? I can probably think of a million better things.
But seriously, what better things than to bang out a short series on buying and selling companies? We're going to call it buying and selling companies. I call it private equity, but I think most people don't know what the heck private equity is, so we're going to call it buying and selling companies.
As you may or may not know, I just recently worked on a transaction to buy autoanything.com. It's a drop ship retailer based here in La Jolla. And as part of that I've podcasted about maybe one or two times. Some people are curious about private equity, how it happens, why they should care about it, why is there private equity.
And it boils down to one thing, and I think it's ... these are probably the funds, or the groups of people that would buy you someday. If you are listening to this podcast, you're probably running a small direct-to-consumer brand, or SAS company perhaps, maybe an agency. Well, a lot of those things get bought by private equity funds, or small private investment groups. And so, why do you want to know about this stuff? Well, it's ultimately to fetch a higher valuation for your company, and to know about how to exit. That's probably 90% of you. But 10% of you, maybe you want to get in to private equity. Maybe you want to get into buying and selling your own company.
And why would you want to do that? Well, for a number of reasons. I think it accelerates your growth. I think you can just get to where you want to go faster if you're working with some capital, or with other people's capital. So it's of interest to you too for that reason.
So I want to spend three of four episodes doing a quick overview of buying and selling companies, at least my own experience with it. And I'm going to start with a story. And the story is of a young, handsome man, probably like 10% body fat. Am I painting you the picture of myself, maybe 15 years ago? Actually no, it was more like seven years ago when I sold my first company.
But I'm walking through the West Village of New York, and in my hand I've got a FedEx package. And in the FedEx package is a bunch of signed documents to sell my company at the time, Design Public. And this was my baby. I bootstrap designed Public in 2003, we started the business, and now at the time it was like 2011. And we found a great buyer who we worked really well with, and they gave us an offer we liked. So at the end of months of work, of diligence of them going through our books and a lot of legal back and forth, in that FedEx pack was the signed purchase agreement.
As soon as I got to the FedEx/Kinko's, I put that thing on the counter, and that was the point of no going back. It was my company up until that document was mailed. Once it gets mailed in, it triggered all sorts of things, like the money went in ...
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Mar 13, 2018
Podcast 36: So we just bought AutoAnything.com ….
In this episode, Drew talks about buying a company, and a few major lessons he learned from doing the deal.
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Highlights
The Lessons I learned from the AutoAnything deal
Links / Resources
AutoAnything Press Release
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you can request the text transcribe and I will send it to you as a PDF.
Read The Transcript:
Who is tired of hearing about Karmaloop? Raise your hand. "Here goes Sanocki, the one trick pony. Karmaloop again? We've already heard about that, Drew. Tell us something we don't know." Right? Well, this is the problem when you have one big recent case study that kind of is very relevant to your audience. I mean, I've done stuff since Karmaloop. I was the CMO of this company Teamwork and I run my agency, Growth Engines. We've got a number of direct to consumer brands, but the problem there is I can't talk about a lot of them.
Today I'm excited to announce something big and something I've been working on a long time. I was part of a team that bought a new company, and the company is called AutoAnything. Autoanything.com, they are in the car accessories category. They sell things like floor mats and converters and things to sup up your car or Jeep or truck. It's the reason I've been in California so much. I know I've been saying, I do this podcast from San Diego. Been here for months, going back and forth to New York, and it was because I've been working on this deal.
AutoAnything, the deal was announced today by AutoZone. We bought it from a public company, AutoZone, I guess about an $8 billion company. There was a divestiture, so what that means is, any company that size owns a number of different business units and for some reason or another, they decide that this business unit isn't core to their business and they want to get rid of it or think it'll be better off as an independent entity. I was part of a group that could move fastest and put the right offer together to acquire the asset.
AutoAnything itself is a beast of a business. I mean, a million plus skews. If you can imagine in the auto category there is a make, model, year of every car and if you're selling something like a floor mat make, model, year, and then that thing comes in every color imaginable. Just a huge product catalog. It's primarily drop ship, but they do own a couple private label lines and brands, which obviously have great margins. It does about, I can't get into the specifics, but call it a nine figure retailer and seven figures in EBITA, so seven figures in profits, which is great. It all depends on the deal price, on what you buy it for, and obviously I can't get into that, but we're happy with it. Obviously it made sense for all parties.
Man, I learned a ton in the process of this deal, and would love to kind of start getting into it, start getting into what we're going to do with the company. Just for me as a marketer and as an online merchandiser, I look at a number of assets here that I'm excited to work with. First, there's just the scale of this business. You know, you don't get to work on a nine figure business every day. There's four million people on the email list, from what I see a lot of discounting going on and not a lot of lifecycle marketing, so that gets me excited. Four to five million visits a month, there's just traffic. You know, there's scale here. Scale that you can sink your teeth into and make changes and see results very quickly.
Some of you might be saying, "Drop ship retail," I mean, this was my first reaction when I heard drop ship retail, like, if I started a business today, an eCommerce business, it wouldn't be drop ship. Right? Because you don't have anything proprietary and you're selling the same stuff your competitors are. "Drew,
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Mar 8, 2018
Podcast 35: Top Nerd Travel Tools
In this episode, Drew talks in-depth about the tools that made productive work possible during a 7-month long trip across the globe with his family.
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Highlights
19 Online tools that made it possible to work and travel for 7 months
Productivity tips and hacks for combining work with travel
Links / Resources
Download my list of Top Nerd Travel Tools
Sanebox
Worldwide101 (Mention Drew sent you and get 20% off your first month)
Sovereign man
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you can request the text transcribe and I will send it to you as a PDF.
→ Read the Transcript
Drew:Hey everybody. Drew Sanocki here with the Nerd Marketing podcast. This is an early morning podcast. I'm recording this at 4:30am because I am on the West Coast and I'm still on East Coast time. Got up this morning at the nice time of 3:00 a.m. I don't even have my kids here with me to get me up, so what else would I want to do at zero dark thirty but bust out a podcast?
I'm here working on a big deal, and more on that in an upcoming podcast episode. Today, I know I promised everybody my top tools, my top travel tools. These are apps and tools and gadgets and cool things that I really appreciated when I spent seven months on the road with my family going to Europe over the last year. We're about to go to Asia. We're thinking of a trip to Asia again for another six or seven months. These things are going to be in my travel bag or on my laptop or on my phone. They really help run my business remotely. I think I mentioned in the last episode that one of the visions I have is running an iPad business or being an iPad leader. What that just means is I want to be able to run everything off the iPad. I don't want to do it on my computer.
Initially I laughed when I saw these kind of senior private equity guys show up at board meetings just with their iPads, but now I get it. There's nothing better than getting on an airplane with just your iPad and a small bag of your clothes and just kind of sitting down, preferably in first class or business class, you take out the iPad, do a little bit of work, watch a couple videos, watch some Seinfeld and that's it. I don't want to be hunched over a laptop the rest of my life so iPad leadership is kind of what I'm going for and that really has helped inform some of these tools.
I started out to do a list of about 12. I think I ended up with a list of, I don't know, I want to say 30 or so. Too many to go into in this podcast, so what I'm going to do is highlight some of my favorites on the podcast and then you can go to the show notes and download a PDF that has the whole 30, many of which you probably know about, but I think what I tried to do here is be a little bit different from the standard Tim Ferris bio life hacking stuff and just talk about what a typical dad might appreciate on a trip or a typical parent.
So, without further ado, SaneBox. Let me start with SaneBox, which I've talked about before. It's an app to help you manage email. The primary benefit is fewer interruptions, right? It's like reduced information that you have to process on a daily basis. This holds true if you're traveling, it holds true if you are going into your office every day, but there's a lot of evidence that shows that the more information you've got to process, your willpower goes down, you just kind of get beaten down and stressed out.
The beauty of SaneBox is you can configure it, or when configured the proper way, you can open your inbox at any time and all you see is the most important stuff and it's typically, in my case, I've got the thing so dialed that it's like three or four emails that I need to respond to at any one time. If I open it at 9:00 a.m., 10:00 p.m.,
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Mar 1, 2018
Podcast 34: Productivity Insights After Six Months on the Road
In this episode, Drew talks about the five different observations he had while working and growing his business during 7 months of travel with his family, and the people and tools that made it possible.
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EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Prefer to read rather than listen? Click here to download the text transcribe from this episode.
Highlights
Five different observations I had working and growing my business while travelling
How the 80/20 rule saved my life (because airport wifi is shady)
If you're making more than $100,000 a year, hire an assistant yesterday through Worldwide101
How you can use Sanebox to triage your emails (and an assistant to triage your Sanebox)
When you should start swinging for the fences
Links / Resources
Growth Engines
Worldwide101 (mention Drew sent you and get 20% off your first month)
Sanebox
Checklist of 12 online apps and tools to use for work while traveling
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you can request the text transcribe and I will send it to you as a PDF.
→ Read the Transcript
Drew: Hey, everybody. This is Drew Sanocki of the Nerd Marketing Podcast. Today I want to talk about the five things I learned while I was traveling and working. It's kind of funny that the number one question I get is not about, like, "What was the coolest thing you saw?" or "Where were the nicest people?" or "Where was the best food?" The number one question I get from entrepreneurs is, number one, "Did you work?" and number two, "How did you work?"
To answer those questions, I put this podcast together. Yes, I did work, in short. I have a couple of different businesses I'm involved in. The primary one I'd like to talk about here is growthengines.io. That is an agency catering to direct-to-consumer brands and to private equity funds that often buy or sell those brands. That business today is bigger than when I left. I think a big reason is because I embraced these five things I'm going to talk about today.
Without further ado, the number one observation that I have after six months abroad or seven months abroad is that, really, the 80/20 rule reigns supreme. I know I beat that dead horse all the time on this podcast, but you don't fully understand it, you're not forced to comprehend it until you are on some remote island in the Caribbean, and there's no WiFi, except for the one hour when you're going through the airport on the way in and on the way out. I mean, talk about a constraint.
What that forced me to do is, you can't be online all the time. What you really need to do is think through what are the most important things you need to do that week, such that when you hit a WiFi connection or can get cell phone coverage, then you can log back on and accomplish those things.
So, what didn't I do during those times? I mean, really, the 80% of my work that doesn't give me any results, and those were things like this podcast, for one. Actually, the podcast gives me results, but I dropped it. I stopped doing the podcast. Bookkeeping. Tinkering on my blog. I mean, how much time do I spend, do you spend, messing around, moving fonts on your blog or configuring colors or something, just so it looks nice? Really, there was no time for that at all. So, drop that.
Coffees and calls. These two things are a huge time suck, especially when you're in a city like I am, where there are a lot of people, and everybody wants to meet, and "Hey, Drew, you want to grab coffee?" or "You want to hop on a call here?" If you add that time up, those are hours every week I would spend at coffees or on phone calls. So, I really could not do those at all. Those got dropped. Calls to my mother, for example, also got dropped. I mean, completely unessential, right? I mean, I don't need to call my mom. So, I would go months without calling her. No, I didn't, but reduced amount of time calling my mother.
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Feb 21, 2018
Podcast 33: The Podcast is Back and Three Updates for 2018
We're back! In this episode, Drew talks about where he has been the past 7 months, and 3 things listeners can expect from upcoming episodes of the podcast.
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Highlights
A little look at where I've been the past 7 months
The podcast is back (obviously)
Over the next few sessions, I'll be talking about buying more assets
I'll share some lessons I'm learning with my other company, Growth Engines, Inc.
I'm developing a course on e-mail marketing
Links / Resources
Drew's Instagram
Sara's Instagram
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you can request the text transcribe and I will send it to you as a PDF.
→ Read the Transcript
Drew: Hey everybody. Welcome to the Nerd Marketing Podcast. I'm back. I am back. It's 2018. I have been on hiatus for seven or so months, and I have just been overwhelmed by the number of people out there who are asking, "Where's the podcast? Drew, where's the podcast, how come you haven't podcasted in a while?" That's just among my two kids, and even people on my e-mail list are asking for the podcast to come back. I don't know why. It's not something that I think adds a lot of value to anything, but some people like audio, so I'm going to roll with it.
In this podcast, I wanted to kick of 2018 and set the stage a little bit, catch everybody up on what's going on in nerd marketing, like you care, but there is some things in it for you. Give you a little trick I've been experimenting with, and then we'll move on to some content in the next couple of podcasts.
The big thing is, I just got back from a seven-month trip with my family. We left back in March, came back to the States in early November, or I guess around Halloween. This was awesome. It was life-changing. It was really an incredible time. We went to the Caribbean, we went over to Europe and did the Clark Griswold thing. Again, yes, this is with the kids. I've got a five and a three-year-old now, but at the time they were two and four. Brought the wife also. Yeah, it was just amazing. It's too much to put into a podcast. A lot of falconry and boating and beach time and visiting museums and eating cheese and all the good stuff that comes with that.
I think the big thing for me was that it really allowed me mentally to punch out of the system, or the systems. I think when we live in a place, we are at the mercy of several systems. It can be the career system where you feel like you've got to do something in your career. There's the housing system, you've got to own some sort of housing or play that game. The school system, where in New York it's just a nightmare. You got to get your kids into the right schools, and there are all sorts of things you got to do to get that kid into the right school. It was really liberating to just eject and break free of all those systems. The rent system, I didn't have to pay rent for six or seven months.
I think if you're really enlightened you can break out of those systems without needing to break out of them geographically, but moving geographically can't hurt. It was really liberating for me and my wife to leave for seven months and just be this nice, independent, mobile family unit without a lot of constraints. It allowed me to think about a lot and to plan for what I really wanted to get out of the next couple years in my life, and that brings me here. It brings me back to New York. We came back to New York for the holidays. We are planning on travelling again, maybe in a month, and this time we're talking about the West Coast, Asia, and the idea would be that we get back to the States in time for my five-year-old to start first grade. We are homeschooling him now, which I thought he would end up really weird, but he's great.
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Apr 24, 2017
Podcast 32: Postcard Marketing and A Powerful Chat App (Tips/Tricks/Hacks)
Drew is joined by Patrick Shanahan for another round of Tradecraft - this time featuring a tool for postcard marketing, and a chat app that reveals what your customers really want.Subscribe: iTunes | StitcherEXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Prefer to read rather than listen? Click here to download the text transcribe from this episode.HighlightsDrew is off to travel the world with family in tow, expect new episodes from sandy beaches and other exotic locales.A new emphasis on video contentA shopify app to trigger the sending of physical postcards to people in your databaseWho to make the target of your postcard marketingA chat app Patrick uses to get in touch with what his customers really wantHow to collect customer feedback into something actionableLinks / ResourcesMore Tradecraft in Episode 28 and Episode 30.PostPilot.comDriftTranscriptPrefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you can request the text transcribe and I will send it to you as a PDF. → Read the Transcript Drew: Everybody, welcome to the Nerd Marketing podcast. This is Drew Sanocki and I am joined today by Patrick Shanahan, my trade craft partner. How're you doing, Patrick? Patrick: Good, Drew. Nice to talk to you again.Drew: Today we're going to go over some tips and tricks, what we see working out there, what's helping us do our jobs better as online marketers. You've got a couple things, Patrick? Patrick: I do, I do. I've got one I'm quite pleased with, so I'm fired up to talk about it.Drew: I think people like these episodes. They like hearing what's working.Patrick: Yeah, they do. I mean, I've looked at your stats, they're the most downloaded so obviously it's working. So, you just come off your big talking circuit, I know you talked about that in the last episode, but you're about to go full vagabond. Hit the road. Want to tell us about that?Drew: Yeah, it's something really exciting my wife and I've wanted to do for a long time so next Saturday we're packing up, and we're going to the Caribbean, and we're not coming back to New York for probably six months. I think that we're not going to be in the Caribbean the entire time, but we'll do Central America, and Europe. We're taking the kids, obviously. We're really looking forward to it.I mean, we're stressed about the packing and getting everything done and we're trying to liquidate a lot of our personal belongings that we really don't care about or want to store, but with any luck it'll all come together by next Saturday when we're on that flight.Patrick: Amazing, amazing. I can't believe you're taking the kids. That's going to be an adventure, buddy.Drew: Yeah, we debated leaving them at home for six months, but we thought we should... we thought they'd miss us so we're going to take them with us.Patrick: Well, congratulations, that's amazing. And are you going to stay podcasting? Drew: No, I'm shutting down the podcast for six months. No, I'm going to... I'm going to keep podcasting, I'm going to do some video. A lot more video. Maybe not quite as much writing, the long form emails, they take up a lot of time, so I think I can try to move a little more into video and audio for the next six months.Patrick: There we go, so the future dispatches will be from sandy beaches and other places hither, and thither, and yon.Drew: Yeah, you know, I feel like I've got a lot of things I want to cover. We've been talking a lot about this concept of a cash flow business, or a lifestyle business, and we're just scratching the surface. We're talking about customer problems and brand, and there's a lot more I want to talk about on that and what I see working for you, Patrick, for me, at Nerd, and through my own consulting. So I want to share that on the podcast.And, really, I think video's going to be a great medium for that. So, maybe you'll see a lot more of me now that I'm leaving the country.Patrick: Maybe the best thing that every happened to the podcast,
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Apr 3, 2017
Podcast 31: Traffic & Conversion Summit 2017 Recap + More Updates
A few updates from Drew - recaps of three recent events he spoke at, the key learnings at each of them, and a preview of the near future for Drew and Nerd Marketing.
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EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Prefer to read rather than listen? Click here to download the text transcribe from this episode.
Highlights
RECAP: Traffic and Conversion Summit
Niche businesses - why they're great, how they fail, and where retention marketing comes in
The "Scrum" approach to growth
RECAP: Brand Growth Intensive Workshop with Austin Brawner
RECAP: Masterclass with ConversionXL
What's Next: Build a Bigger Business Course for Shopify
Catalogues - A resurgence of old school mail marketing?
A couple of new courses are coming
Much, much more
Links / Resources
Check out Drew's free, 7-lesson email course Double Your Ecommerce
Touchstonetests.io
More on basic segmentation in Google Analytics in Episode 16
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you…
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Feb 23, 2017
Podcast 30: Newsjacking and Resending Emails (Tips/Tricks/Hacks)
From taking advantage of the 24-hour news cycle, to improving your sender score - Drew and special guest Patrick Shanahan share a few of their favorite tips, tricks, and hacks.
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EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Prefer to read rather than listen? Click here to download the text transcribe from this episode.
Digital marketer Patrick Shanahan joins Drew to talk tips, tricks, and hacks in this episode of the Nerd Marketing Podcast.
Learn how one eCommerce company used newsjacking to turn a hot-button topic into huge sales. Plus, resending emails to boost your overall open rates, and a clever hack Patrick calls a "Reverse LeadMagnet" to improve your sender score with Google.
Highlights
Drew has a new office, some hilarity ensues
Newsjacking – using the 24-hour news cycle as a marketing channel
Resending to unopens - an email technique you need in your toolkit
Speculating on the mysterious Google Sender Score
Patrick's "Reverse LeadMagnet" technique to improve sender…
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Jan 31, 2017
Podcast 29: Email Marketing Strategy with Austin Brawner
Austin Brawner from Ecommerce Influence joins Drew to share four killer strategies to make the most of the all-powerful email marketing channel.
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EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Prefer to read rather than listen? Click here to download the text transcribe from this episode.
To accurately convey just how valuable a sophisticated email marketing strategy can be to an Ecommerce retailer, Drew enlists the help of Austin Brawner from Ecommerce Influence.
Both Austin and Drew have a ton of experience consulting and providing audits to companies asking the big question, “What can I be doing better?”
Typically, the answer is – smarter email marketing!
As Austin says in this episode, most retailers are only using 10% of the available power of their email service provider.
Automation, segmentation, retention campaigns – these are the strategies the most successful retailers are using.
Learn about each of them in this episode of the Nerd Marketing Podcast.
Plus,…
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Jan 6, 2017
Podcast 28: The Top Marketing Tools of 2016 with Patrick Shanahan
Drew and digital marketer Patrick Shanahan share their favorite eCommerce marketing tools of 2016.
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EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Prefer to read rather than listen? Click here to download the text transcribe from this episode.
We all know that there is no one silver bullet guaranteed to push your business to success, but certain tools can be a big help on the path to higher revenue.
Special guest Patrick Shanahan, a digital marketer from Art Storefronts, joins Drew in this episode to talk about just that – key marketing tools that brought him wins in 2016.
Learn about PushCrew, an in-browser notification system, and hear Drew talk at-length about Drip – an email service provider with some serious automation chops.
Highlights
00:20 - Introducing special guest Patrick Shanahan
01:30 - More episodes of the Nerd Marketing podcast are coming
02:15 - Where has Drew been? Announcing his new CMO role at a SaaS company.
04:55 - Recap of SaaSFest 2016
08:36 - Let's t…
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Oct 13, 2016
Podcast 27: A “One-Two Punch” Email Campaign to Increase Order Frequency
Average Order Value as a key multiplier to increase your company's revenue, and how to implement premium service upsells to increase your AOV.Subscribe: iTunes | StitcherThis week's campaign is so simple and effective you'll be kicking yourself for not thinking of it ages ago.It's Drew's "One-Two Punch" Email Campaign designed to increase your order frequency.It starts with asking yourself one question: "What kind of recurring needs do my customers have?"Tune in to hear the rest of the campaign implementation, as well as a little bit about why Drew favors increasing the number of purchases over the number of overall customers.Highlights00:21 – Drew may have ruined his son's reading habit by introducing him to the world of Star Wars02:40 – Recap: three multiples that will grow your revenue03:20 – Focusing in on frequency. Why more purchases instead of more customers?05:18 – The "1-2 Punch" Email Campaign07:00 – Campaign results example (10% lift!) and why it works so well07:50…
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Oct 6, 2016
Podcast 26: Using Premium Service Upsells to Increase Your AOV
Average Order Value as a key multiplier to increase your company's revenue, and how to implement premium service upsells to increase your AOV.
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Want the AOV mindmap Drew mentions in the episode? Click here download it! Also includes the full transcribe from this episode.
A 25% increase to your AOV is a 25% increase to your business's revenue. It's as simple as that.
So how do you do that?
Considering you probably don't have the next 12 hours to listen to Drew cover all the potential ways to build up your AOV, let's hone in on just one method – the premium service upsell.
Listen in to hear more on AOV as a key multiplier in your business, and how to use a service-based upsell to influence AOV and identify your whales.
Highlights
0:52 – Drew's recap of the Digital Marketer Content & Commerce Conference
2:30 – AOV - Average Order Value. What it is, why it's a key multiplier to increase the revenue of your company
3:25 – No sp…
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Sep 28, 2016
Podcast 25: How to Actually Make Money with Your Win-Back Campaign
How to treat your win-back campaign as a discount ladder, with every rung designed to retain customers and make you more money.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Want the win-back email template Drew shows off in this episode? Click here download it as a PDF! Also includes the full transcribe from this episode.
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher
One win-back email is good. But even better? How about a chain of emails designed to escalate your win-back offer the further the customer slips away?
Using a discount ladder is the key to making money with your win-back campaign.
Tune in to see how Drew set up such a campaign for a large-scale retailer. Plus, his insights on using your remarketing audience in Facebook Ad to win-back customers.
Highlights
00:30 – Discount ladders in the form of win-back emails
01:08 – The problem with most win-back emails
01:30 – Full walkthrough of an anti-defection discount ladder Drew set up in Klaviyo
03:15 – A/B testing every rung of the ladder
03:55…
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Aug 30, 2016
Podcast 24: Increasing Average Order Size with Bounce-Back Email Campaigns
Bounce-back email campaigns as a clever and simple way to cross-sell and increase your average order size - implementation tips and a downloadable template.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Want the bounce-back email template Drew features in this episode? Click here download it as a PDF! Also includes the full transcribe from this episode.
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher
Would you like fries with that?
McDonald's offers a cross-sell with every order for a reason – it's a simple and effective way to increase average order size.
If your shopping cart can't support advanced cross-selling on-site, a clever work-around is an email-based bounce-back campaign like the one Drew implemented at Karmaloop.
This little trick takes just an hour or two to set up and will capture your customers in their most engaged state – in Drew's case it resulted in an additional million dollars of revenue across twelve months of implementation.
Highlights
01:20 – Why cross-sells and up-sells work
02:11 –…
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Aug 25, 2016
Podcast 23: Dynamic Ascending Offers (and Hamilton)
Competing against Hamilton, segmenting based on recency, and using dynamic ascending offers to make the most of your offer campaigns.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Want Drew's Dynamic Ascending Offers presentation slide deck? Click here download it as a PDF.
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What's the theater around the corner from Hamilton to do this summer?
Drew knows someone in just this situation, and proposes a solution in dynamic ascending offers.
This is a key concept to implement if your retailer distributes offers via email, and ties together all of our past discussion on recency.
Highlights
00:23 – Drew saw Hamilton
01:15 – Recency – Good customers stay good
03:05 – Example of working with recency segments in Google Analytics
04:48 – Promotions – Most retailers OVER promote. Look at your subsidy costs
06:00 – Dynamic ascending offers – sync your offers to customer recency
07:05 – Your offer doesn't need to be a discount
07:30 – An example of a real world…
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Aug 4, 2016
Podcast 22: The Karmaloop Marketing Playbook – 100 Days to Double the Business
Tune in to learn how Drew designed and executed his marketing strategy at Karmaloop. What to focus on, specific tactics that worked, and key overall learnings.
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EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Want the transcribe from this episode? Click here to download it as a PDF.
Now that we've heard from Karmaloop CEO Seth Haber on last week's episode, let's get into what Drew was doing behind the scenes as CMO to take the business from bankruptcy to profit in just 10 months.
It starts with an "operational" framework for growth, and a commitment to improving three key metrics...
Highlights
Approaching growth from an "operational" framework
(The only) three ways to grow a business
Doubling your business by increasing three metrics by 30%
Increasing your average order value – what worked at Karmaloop
You might be able to charge more than you think
Upselling with automated email marketing
Playing with the free shipping threshold
Winback and tripwire campaigns to drive frequen…
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Jul 26, 2016
Podcast 21: Bankruptcy to Profit in 10 Months: A Conversation with Karmaloop CEO Seth Haber
Drew talks to Seth Haber about how they rescued streetwear retailer Karmaloop from bankruptcy in just 10 months. What went wrong, how they fixed it, and what they learned from it all.
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EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Want the transcribe from this episode? Click here to download it as a PDF.
You may have heard about Drew's involvement in turning Karmaloop around – from bankruptcy to profit in just 10 months.
But what strategies went into accomplishing this? What growth paradigm were they operating under?
And how did Karmaloop get in that position in the first place?
In this much-requested episode of the Nerd Marketing podcast, Drew talks to ex-Karmaloop CEO Seth Haber about that 10 month period of rapid growth. What they did, what they didn't expect, and what they learned from it all.
Highlights
Why Karmaloop went bankrupt before Drew and Seth came onboard
How Seth ended up as CEO
The things Seth didn't expect to be so difficult about turning Karmaloop around…
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Jul 20, 2016
Podcast 20: Three Growth Paradigms – How to Think About Rapid Growth
Three different ways to think about rapid growth, some resource and books to look into further, and Drew's preferred approaches to growth.
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EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Want the transcribe from this episode? Click here to download it as a PDF.
There is a ton of info out there about how to grow a company. Books, blogs, podcasts like this one, and everything in between.
If you could use some help narrowing down your focus and deciding how to approach eCommerce growth, this is the episode for you.
Drew covers three different growth paradigms – tactical, strategic, and operational – and shares a little bit about his personal approach to growth.
Highlights
How Drew thinks about growth when approaching a new company
Three Growth Paradigms – How Drew Took Karmaloop from Bankruptcy to Profit in 10 Months
Tactical growth strategies – optimizing what you're got
Some Blogs to check out for good tactical growth advice
The risk of absorbing too many tactics
A few…
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Jul 12, 2016
Podcast 19: Working with Recency Segments in Google Analytics
Learn how to create recency segments in Google Analytics and how to use this data for predicting marketing campaign success and calculating lifetime value.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Want the transcribe from this episode? Click here to download it as a handy PDF.
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher
Do you know what your customer lifetime value is?
Many startups are too new to have access to reliable information on this metric, but a great predictor is recency.
Follow along in this episode as Drew walks through setting up a recency segment in Google Analytics which you can use to isolate your "best" customers to better understand where they came from and how you can acquire more of them.
Highlights
00:00 – Introduction to recency and the lifetime value metric
00:54 – Drew's headbands
01:22 – How to create a "high recency" segment in Google Analytics
03:21 – Ignore the "Days Since Last Session" metric
04:08 – How to read the graph after you've created the segment
05:06 – Viewin…
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Jun 29, 2016
Podcast 18: An Introduction to Recency – A Key Predictive Metric
In this episode, I introduce the concept of Recency as it applies to an online business, and show how it's critical to figuring out the campaigns that will lead to growth.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: For tons of freebies and to be notified when my next episode on Recency is released, sign up for the Nerd Marketing newsletter
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Highlights
A dating quiz from Drew's love life
Recency is the #1 most powerful predictor for future customer behavior
The problem with using Life Time Value (LTV) when you're a start-up
A basic definition of recency
Using recency to understand which customers to focus on
Recency vs. Latency
Using recency in your advertising and A/B tests
Much more!
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you'll find a text transcribe below, and you can also download it for later.
→ Read the Transcript
Hey everybody. Welcome to the Nerd Marketing podcast. Got a bit of a question for you today, who…
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Jun 16, 2016
Podcast 17: The Best Time for Ecommerce Retailers to Send Emails for Maximum Engagement
How to access Time of Day reporting in Google Analytics to help you decide when the best time to send marketing emails is for maximum engagement.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Add Drew's custom Performance Over Time report to your company's Google Analytics account! Click Here to get access + download the transcribe from this episode.
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What day of the week is your audience most engaged with your content? Are they more likely to visit your site in the morning or at night?
Performance over time reports are a great way to sharpen your email marketing strategy, arming you with historical data to back up your decisions when it comes to the days and times you send emails.
In this episode, Drew covers the importance of Time of Day reporting, talks about a few ways you can use these analytics to grow your business, and shares the link to a Google Analytics custom report he created that you can use, too.
Highlights
00:48 – A couple of reasons you’ll want to…
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May 16, 2016
Podcast 16: How to Create Killer, Profit-Maximizing Segments in Google Analytics
Three metrics that will show you who your best customers are, where they are coming from, and ultimately how to grow your top and bottom line. Recency, frequency, monetary — RFM
RESOURCE: Prefer to read instead of listen? Click Here to download the text transcribe for this episode.
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In this episode, I talk through how conduct some essential segmentation using Google Analytics.
I say essential because this is it -- RFM -- the mack-daddy of database marketing that dates back to the early catalog age. These three metrics will show you who your best customers are, where they are coming from, and ultimately how to grow your top and bottom line.
RFM and GA – Learn It, Embrace It, Profit From It.
Screencast
Highlights
00:29 – Intro to Google Analytics segments – Why Drew uses them, and why you should too
00:54 – "Whale segments"
01:31 – RFM – A key trio of metrics that will help you discover your best customers
02:36 – Setting an RFM t…
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Apr 15, 2016
Podcast 15: How Emmanuel Eleyae Grew SatinLinedCaps.com to 7-Figures Off Influencer Marketing (A Million Dollar Case Study)
SatinLinedCaps.com's Emmanuel Eleyae, explains how he used influencer marketing to grow his $1 million dollar retailer using nothing but a paperclip, a ball of wax, and Youtube.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Cheatsheet + the transcribe for this episode. Click here to download.
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Multiple surprise guests... Why adding a nurture sequence increased Manny's revenue by 44%...
Highlights
What door-to-door sales taught Manny about Marketing
How video influencer marketing sold Manny's first 1,000 units.
Using Famebit for influencer marketing
Why adding a nurture sequence increased Manny's revenue by 44%
Manny explains what small tweaks to their website increases sales
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing newsletter (sign up to unlock freebies)
Satinlinedcaps.com
Famebit.com
Reelio.com
Ecommercestruggles.com
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you'll find a text transcribe below, and you ca…
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Apr 8, 2016
Podcast 14: How Michael Jackness Grew ColorIt.com to 7-Figures Off Niche Selection, Contesting and Facebook Marketing (A Million Dollar Case Study)
How Colorit.com 's Michael Jackness grew a Million Dollar eCommerce business in 1 year using niche selection and Facebook marketing through ads.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Cheat Sheet + the transcribe from this episode. Click Here to download.
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You know, usually there is a fair amount of luck involved when someone achieves extreme growth. They stumbled into the right niche or made the right strategy partnership.
Highlights
How the death of affiliate marketing led Michael to build 4 eCommerce stores
The importance of reviews and how quality products can sell themselves
Testing your products on eCommerce MVP’s
How viral contesting can work in a tight-knit online community
Facebook Marketing – Using Facebook insights for detailed audience data
Micheal’s SEO Strategy for success
How eCommerece is an 8 cylinder engine
Micheal's TWO pro tips for rapid growth
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing newsletter (sign up to unlock fre…
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Apr 1, 2016
Podcast 13: How Josh Manley Grew IronFenceShop.com to $1 Million In One Year Using Adwords (A Million Dollar Case Study)
How IronFenceShop.com 's Josh Manley reveals how he ramped up a 7-figure business using AdWords.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Mindset Cheat Sheet + the text transcribe for this episode! Click Here to download the PDF.
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In this podcast I continue to explore the various sets of circumstances that contribute to epic early traction online.
Highlights
Josh explains how listening to consumers led him to build a 7-figure company
How IronFenceShop.com got their first sale and set up their sales funnel
Phone conversion rates vs. email conversion rates
Why tracking data down to the keyword level will put you ahead of your competitors
Josh's tips for making your ecommerce retailer successful
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing newsletter (sign up to unlock freebies)
Google Callroom
Ironfenceshop.com
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you'll find a text transcribe below, and you can also downl…
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Mar 25, 2016
Podcast 12: Sam Gastro and MyGiftCardSupply.com — A Million Dollar Retailer Case Study
How Sam Gastro, founder of MyGiftCardSupply.com about how he grew his $1 million dollar retailer. Tons of insights on how to use retention (not acquisition) to grow...
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Cheat Sheet + the Episode 12 text transcribe. Click Here to download the PDF.
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I've been fascinated by e-commerce retailers that are able to bootstrap to 7-figures within a short period of time.
Highlights
How Sam acquired his first 100 customers
Using retention/word of mouth to grow to 7 figures
How to treat your best customers differently
Sam’s one actionable tip on how to grow your ecommerce business
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing newsletter (sign up to unlock freebies)
Mygiftcardsupply.com
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you'll find a text transcribe below, and you can also download it for later.
→ Read the Transcript
Drew: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Nerd Marketing P…
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Mar 18, 2016
Podcast 11: A Million Dollar Ecommerce Business Boils Down To These Three Equations
Three business growth equations need to hold true for any growing business. I review all three and show you how to work them to your advantage.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Cheat Sheet + the text transcribe from this episode. Click Here to download the PDF.
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher
Highlights
The 3 Core equations to scale up your business
How to make sure your LTV > CTA
Using the formula ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) > Revenue/Spend
The science behind Pressure/Time
Plus - A bonus equation!
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing newsletter (sign up to unlock freebies)
Toggl.com
Seven Essential Metrics for Ecommerce Startups (with Templates) a post from my archive
Introducing: Customer Value Optimization, The Formula for Epic Growth another post from my archive.
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you'll find a text transcribe below, and you can also download it for later.
→ Read the Transcript…
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Mar 11, 2016
Podcast 10: 6 Steps to Building a Million Dollar E-commerce Business, Part 2
The 6 key success factors and actionable insights that allowed us to grow a million dollar online retailer in a single year. Part 2.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Cheat Sheet + the text transcribe from this episode. Click Here to download the PDF.
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Metrics, CRM, and Technology
Highlights
Developing a Metrics Mindset
Building your business around your best customers
Embracing technology and finding the right resources
How "going all in" will make you successful
Recap!
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing newsletter (sign up to unlock freebies)
Duoplane.com
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you'll find a text transcribe below, and you can also download it for later.
→ Read the Transcript
Drew: Hey everybody. Welcome back. I'm joined with my former business partner, Sina Djafari, and we are discussing how we built our e-commerce retailer to $1 million in revenue over the first ye…
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Mar 4, 2016
Podcast 09: 6 Steps to Building a Million Dollar Ecommerce Business, Part 1
The 6 key success factors and actionable insights that allowed us to grow a million dollar Ecommerce business in a single year.
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Cheat Sheet + the text transcribe from this episode. Click Here to download the PDF.
How were we able to create a Million Dollar Ecommerce Business in about a year?
Highlights
The self-perpetuating cycles that drive growth in early companies
How your retailer can find the untapped demand of your customers
How to make integration with your suppliers work for everyone
Why merchandising is your best marketing tool
Reducing customer acquisition costs
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing newsletter (sign up to unlock freebies)
The Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne
Sina Djafari's company Duoplane -- order management for ecommerce stores
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you'll find a text transcribe below, an…
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Feb 25, 2016
Podcast 08: The Million Dollar Mindset -Vision, Focus, and Habits
Business strategies matter, but you can't grow without the right 'growth' mindset. These Three Mental Mindsets Allowed Me to Build a Million Dollar Retailer.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Cheat Sheet + the text transcribe from this episode. Click Here to download the PDF.
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In this episode, I talk about the "million dollar mindset" that contributed to my success in growing my online retailer to $1mn in revenue in just over a year. I hope they help you along your way.
Highlights
There are three personal factors that enable you to build a successful business: vision, focus and habits.
What wins in ecommerce is pressure over time.
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing newsletter (sign up to unlock freebies)
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you'll find a text transcribe below, and you can also download it for later.
→ Read the Transcript
Hey everybody, welcome to the Nerd Marketing Po…
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Feb 18, 2016
Podcast 07: Tripwire Marketing Case Study – 15% in sales virtually overnight
Your customers are sending you signals. If you listen to them and run tripwire marketing, you will make money. How much? In this case study, 15%. Virtually overnight.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Cheat Sheet + the text transcribe from this episode. Click Here to download the PDF.
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I want to do a quick study here on some of the Tripwire Marketing we’re doing at an 8-figure client. I think that this Tripwire Marketing has literally created $2-3 million in incremental revenue going forward over the next year and I want to show you why I think that and some of the tests we’ve run to produce that.
Screencast
Highlights
Alert marketing is basically setting up alert tripwires to identify deviations and customer behavior.
It's much higher ROI to spend up on the customers that are about to leave as opposed to spend generically across all of your customer base.
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing newsletter (sign up to unlock freebies…
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Feb 11, 2016
Podcast 06: How to Implement Tripwire Marketing – Build a Killer Retention Program in Seven Simple Steps
A case study showing how to implement a great, easy customer retention program that you can use at your own retailer. Juice up the profits by segmenting your users (I explain how).
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Cheat Sheet + the text transcribe from this episode. Click Here to download the PDF.
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Ron has a gym. No one is showing up. In just 60 days, Ron packs the house. Here's how he did it.
Highlights
Trip-Wire Marketing is the ability to market to the customers who deviate from typical customer behavior.
It is super profitable.
Juice up the profits by segmenting your users (I explain how).
There are seven steps to a customer retention program: timing, create the offer, pulling the list, setting up tracking, delivering the promotion, monitoring, and calculating the ROI.
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing newsletter (sign up to unlock freebies)
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you'll…
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Feb 4, 2016
Podcast 05: An Intro to Tripwire Marketing: Understanding Customer Behavior and Deviations
What is tripwire marketing? An introduction to the concept of tripwire marketing and why it is a great way to approach your marketing campaigns.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Cheat Sheet + the text transcribe from this episode. Click Here to download the PDF.
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Your customers are sending you signals. If you listen to them, you will make money.
Highlights
Tripwire Marketing requires you to define standard customer behavior for your business, and thenidentify customers who deviate from that behavior.
This allows you to focus your marketing to make it the most effective it can be.
You have to identify the customers who will defect before they do to win them back.
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing Newsletter (sign up to unlock freebies)
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you'll find a text transcribe below, and you can also download it for later.
→ Read the Transcript
Drew Sanocki: W…
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Jan 28, 2016
Podcast 04: The Best Way to Think About Your Customers. Behavioral Segmentation
The prevailing means of customer segmentation and why that's basically useless online. Then, I show you how you should think about segmenting your customers based on behavior.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get the text transcribe from this episode. Click Here to download the PDF.
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher
How you think about your customers will determine whether you can grow online.
So you best think about behavior.
Highlights
There are two ways to profile your customers.
One is based on demographics and lifestyle.
One is based on the customers' behavior.
The latter > the former.
Links / Resources
The Nerd Marketing newsletter (sign up to unlock freebies)
Transcript
Prefer to read rather than listen to the podcast episode? No problem, you'll find a text transcribe below, and you can also download it for later.
→ Read the Transcript
Hey, everybody. My name is Drew Sanocki. Welcome to the Nerd Marketing Podcast, the only podcast on all the internet where you can hear Drew Sa…
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Jan 21, 2016
Podcast 03: Discount Ladder Case Studies: Win Back Campaigns
Easy-to-implement discount ladders from top retailers. A specific version of discount ladder: the win-back campaign. You can model this approach across abandoned cart campaigns, welcome campaigns, etc...
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: Get my Million Dollar Cheat Sheet + the text transcribe from this episode. Click Here to download the PDF.
Bonus Content
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Highlights
Win-back emails: single emails sent to customers who haven't bought in a while to try to win them back
Anti-defection discount ladder: series of emails aiming to bring back customers who stopped buying
Examples of discount ladders
Links / Resources
Continue learning about Discount Ladders in Episode 1 (Intro to Discount Ladders) and Episode 2 (How to Get Started with Discount Ladders).
If you plan on implementing a win back campaign, you'll also probably be interested in what I have to say about Dynamic Ascending Offers.
Check out some of my other Case Studies – a couple of my favorite…
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Jan 13, 2016
Podcast 02: How to Get Started with Discount Ladders
I walk you through how to set-up and run effective discount ladders. I zero in on using these ladders to create a killer eCommerce retention program in just four easy steps.
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EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: If you want my summary playbook for setting up your own discount ladder, just sign up for my email list and I'll send it to you. If you aren't using them, you should be.
Highlights
Discount ladders can help you retain customers
There are four steps to setting up effective discount ladders
Step 1: Determine your discount intervals
Step 2: Set your promotions
Step 3: Start testing monhtly
Step 4: Identify your most profitable offers
Links / Resources
Continue learning about Discount Ladders in Episode 1 (Intro to Discount Ladders) and Episode 3 (A Discount Ladder Case Study).
If you plan on implementing a discount ladder, you'll also probably be interested in what I have to say about Dynamic Ascending Offers.
To learn more about data-driven strategies that…
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Dec 30, 2015
Podcast 01: How to Keep Customers Around Longer and Buying More—the Magic of Discount Ladders
An introduction to the discount ladder method of running promotions and how it can keep your customers around longer and buying more.
EXCLUSIVE RESOURCE: If you want my cheat sheet checklist for setting up your own discount ladder, just sign up for my email list and I'll send it to you. If you aren't using them, you should be.
Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher
This initial episode I introduce the 'discount ladder' method of running promotions and show you how it can keep your customers around longer and buying more.
STOP spending promotion dollars to create a transaction, when the customer would have bought anyway.
Highlights
Most retailers discount too much and why
What is a subsidy cost and how to reduce it
How to run promotions when you don't want to discount your brand
Three advantages of a discount ladder
Links / Resources
Continue learning about Discount Ladders in Episode 2 (How to Get Started with Discount Ladders) and Episode 3 (A Discount Ladder Case Study).…
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