All right, we're live again. All right, so we have a glitch. Hopefully people find us back there that are hunting. And
um I'm going to give me a second here. I want to send this one out on the uh on the bat signal
for those that might find it.
Hang on. And we're going good. Excellent. clock and welcome to the show, folks.
There we go. Let's post that up. And now we can get back to the show. All right, folks. Here we go. Are we having fun
yet? We are having fun. We are live and about to start the show. Always like
when everything comes a little bit um challenging.
All right, let's uh get this show on the road. And off we go. Oh, I need this one
over here. And now it's time.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for WordPress plugins A to Zed, not Z. H.
It's episode 72 and we are mastering email and SMS automation, boosting
WordPress ecommerce.
WordPress. It's the most popular content management and website solution on the
internet. And with over 80,000 plugins to choose from, how do you separate the
junk from the gems? Join us for a weekly unrehearsed conversation about the
latest and greatest in WordPress plugins. This is WordPress plugins from
A to Zed. Well, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you happen to be hiding out there on the
globe today. Coming to you direct from the Brewery Overlick in beautiful southern Vancouver Island. I'm John
Overall. Welcome to episode 72 of WP Plugins A to Zed, where we dive into the
tools and strategies powering WordPress success. Today we're thrilled to have Greg Zakowitz, e-commerce adviser to
Ominous End, joining us to unpack the gamechanging world of email and SMS
marketing automation. With nearly 20 years of experience, Greg has helped countless brands supercharge their
digital strategies. and he's here to share why automation drives 37% of email
sales from just 2% of sends. Which automations deliver the biggest wins for
WordPress businesses and how to thrive in the 2025's valued driven e-commerce
landscape? Whether you're running a Woo Commerce store or just starting out, this episode is packed with actionable
insights to boost your conversions and build customer loyalty. Let's get plugged in. Welcome to the show, Greg.
Thanks, John. Super happy to be here and I'm looking forward to this conversation we're going to have today. Yeah, I've been looking forward to it
too. I've been doing some research to try and get everything uh uh working the way it's supposed to. And well, we'd
like to start first off, you know, can you share a little bit of your journey starting out in email marketing from
2025 to becoming an e-commerce uh expert and uh what drew you to e-commerce and
marketing automations? Yeah, it's a really good question. and uh a little bit of luck, a little bit of
happen stance, a little bit of right place at the right time. And I guess they say you make your own luck. So I've been doing email for almost 20 years
now, 19 plus years, which is kind of crazy to think about, but uh and that has all been for the in the e-commerce
side. So way back when went to school for what most marketers do,
something other than marketing. Went to school for radio broadcasting. Uh marketing was my my minor and went to
work worked in radio for a couple years and then decided this is not where I want to spend my full time for
stability, for pay, for a whole lot of reasons. I jumped into a startup radio promotions company and we were traveling around the
country. It was like the original pop-up shop if you will, right, with radio. But part of that was collecting email
addresses from visitors in all these cities that we go to. And then we had a Yahoo store site where we could sell
some of the uh classic rock artwork that we did, but it also that you know we
would start emailing those people and then when we come back to town, let them know where we're going to be. So kind of drive instore traffic, if you will, the
uh the online store side, and then transition over to a multimedia
publishing company where all we did was emails. And this was kind of the wild west of emails. We were buying lists. We
were renting lists. We're doing all the things that I I will tell you today you should never ever do. And
there was something about it that was it was cool. It was like people were using it. People were responding to it. You
could sell products for hundreds of dollars. And you know, I just fell in love with it. So, I'm like, "Okay, how
do I learn as much as I possibly can about this?" And around the same time, uh, you know, I launched a just trying
it out, but I launched a gluten-free online store. Uh, so I figured out how to do a little more coding than I was
used to. Figure out how to launch an online store. You know, spoiler, it's a lot easier to do that today than it was,
you know, 15, 18 years ago. And uh, and kind of figured that whole stuff out there. And then that just kind of
snowballed from there. I became really good at the craft, was testing things, was segmenting, was launching stuff. And
I was just able to see how all those things came together. And then for the last 13 years, I've been dealing uh
directly with clients and with email providers, helping them grow and just following those trends along. And that's
kind of where it's got me to today. So 20 years in email and it's still cool. I
like it. Well, email is definitely where it's at. Contrary to what a lot of people think, the email list is your greatest draw.
Now, you've worked with lots of startups and other companies, scaling them to significant growth. What are some of the
most valuable lessons you've learned along the way to helping a business succeed in e-commerce?
I think everyone probably knows this now, but flexibility and adaptability. And sometimes it's easier said than
done. Sometimes you want to do more than you can actually do. You got to figure out how to do that. But it just moves so
quickly now, right? So you have new players, you have I mean, you mentioned the intro, you mentioned it. How do we
get through the apps that actually matter and do things? Because there's seemingly a new one that pops up every
day. So, uh, how do we keep our tech stack aligned? How is it all working
together? And to do that, you just need to be flexible. You need to be adaptable as best possible. And then, of course, we live in a world where AI is rapidly
plugging stuff in and using that as a tool, not being scared of it. Uh, but
trying to get that into your day-to-day processes, whether it's from a technology standpoint or just a workflow standpoint, but adaptability and
flexibility are the ones that you just got to go with it. Roll with the punches, look for the opportunities, and and just start uh start doing
whack-a-ole a little bit if you can. Well, yeah, you definitely got to keep doing the whack-a-ole stuff. Now you're
representing Omnisend here and Omnisend itself I actually I hadn't heard much about it until you contacted me and it
is another option for people using Woo Commerce and Woo Commerce sites. Can you
tell us a little bit about why and how Omnisend enhances WordPress business
marketing versus say other options that are out there?
Yeah. And we do have a a separate Woo Commerce and WordPress, they work together, but two different integrations
as well. So if you're not selling on Woo Commerce and you're just on uh WordPress doing something, whether you have a
education shop or whatever, content creator, blog or whatever, uh we have those that functionality available as
well. So what we do at Omnis is, you know, there's other email providers out
there. There's some really good ones. We're not going to throw shade at any of them. uh we are customerfunded which is
one of the things we always talk about. So we don't have investors, we don't have uh shareholders to appease. So we
always said we're customer funded here. So we provide value for our customers. So if we have this plugin, we have a
WooCommerce customer on there and we don't provide the tools or those tools don't work well for them, they're not
going to renew with us and we're not going to lock you into a year contract unless you want us to. Uh but you pay as you go. So that's where we prove our
metal for it. And where we kind of excel is by not really gating everything in
the the platform. So you have a lot of platforms where you pay a fee. You've got all these
tools. We like to say use a flamethrower to light a birthday candle, right? We'll give you the flamethrower, but you can
use it if you want, but you're only paying for the the birthday candle lighter, right? You're just the regular Zippo or whatever you're whipping out
there. So we have these tools available for you. automations, segmentation, reporting, popups, uh anything for list
growth, landing pages, all these type of things, they're available for you and they're available if you're on the free
plan. So, you can download us, no credit card required, install us, see if you like us, give us test run, uh and kind
of go up from there. So, we want to be able to scale companies that work with us. So, as they grow, they we can grow
with them. They don't have to replplatform, try to integrate, and we're always refining and making the
tool better. So, uh, we take customer feedback well. So, that's where we kind of stand. We listen to our customers. We
provide them with what they, uh, what they need, and we give a really good tool at it, and we're all super friendly. Yeah. And you just mentioned
the free plan that is offered by Omniscend. Now question on that one is
with the free plan and a small business who's just getting started with their WooCommerce store has got a couple of
products and online how does this help them to get moving forward how would
they get results or what would it help them benefit by doing and as you
mentioned breakly there you can they can as they grow you guys scale with them for what they get so describe a little
bit about that. Yeah. So, we have a lot of list growth tools on there, right? So, here's it's
the chicken and the egg argument. So, hey, I want to do email marketing. Mr. Greg tells me it's so good. I've got 10
emails on my list. And then, you know, we don't want to charge you for paying for a whole email provider when you have
10 emails or 20 or 100 emails on your list. So, we provide all these tools on there to help for list growth. So, if
you have a website, you can use us. You can deploy a popup, design and deploy a popup literally within seconds, couple
minutes. If you want to get creative here, it's live on your website. So that when you're feeding your online traffic,
whether it's coming from a paid ad, whether it's coming from a social media, uh you know, paid social, whatever it
might be, pop-up shows up, you start growing your email or SMS list on there.
So it's again chicken versus the egg argument. Uh but get us on there, start
growing the list. As their list grows, you have more tools available for you. And this is where the automation comes
in. And this is where you mentioned it mentioned it during the intro, right? 37% of all email marketing sales for how
many sent customers last year were automated message sales 2% of cents. They're timely, they're relevant,
they're effective for people. So let's say I have a small company. I've got a couple hundred people on my list. I have a popup. I can do some sort of auto
welcome automation for those people. So, hey, I know you're on my website. I want to maximize every piece of traffic
possible. I get you to sign up. Now I have a welcome automation going off to those people uh that introduces the
brand, maybe introduces product lines, whatever it might be. And I'm trying to guide that customer journey toward a purchase. And you can keep the steps.
Maybe they won't purchase right away, maybe they take the next step and then they abandon. We have automation that can target those people too. And once
they make the uh the purchase or conversion that we can do post-purchase messaging, but we have the tools
available so you can figure out what steps you want to do there. you can automate those things and you're not
having to pay say 200 bucks to use automation when you might send five a month or 10 a month or 20 a month. It's
all free for you, right? But then as you grow and you get to a certain threshold, then you might want to pay a month small
monthly fee, right? Just to get to the next tier or whatever. So, uh the whole our whole purpose is yeah, we know not
everyone's going to come in with huge budgets or huge number of employees or vast resources. We want to help you from
the small person. We want to help you as you get to the middle size and hopefully as you scale even larger to uh
enterprise, we want to be able to help you there. So, we can start you from ground zero. I'm just launching a
website today can help you grow those list to someone who's established and just wants something a little bit
better, something a little bit cleaner, maybe a little bit cheaper. Uh, and that's where we can fit it in there. So,
hopefully that answers your question, John. That answers the question any more details. That answers the question excellently and I'm sure that helped answer to
others. And that leads us on to what we're going to talk what I want to talk about next and that is talking about the
email and SMS automation. Now as was mentioned a couple of times now 37% of
sales from just 2% of sends. Why is automation so critical for say woo uh uh
WordPress businesses or Woo Commerce businesses especially the smaller ones? How does the automation benefits? It's
like I know I've started doing it on one of my own personal websites that I have a WooCommerce store on. I just haven't
finished setting up the automation. Are there ways that Omnisand helps get it
set up easier and faster for people or how does it work? And what are the big
benefits to this? Yeah, I'm going to go on a long answer for you. That's fine. Well, you can take a long
answer. Coffee. Do what you want to do. I've got the I've got the coffee here. I've got the They're They're waiting on
the planet working. you know, they can't beam back to the ship till the coffeey's gone. Perfect. Let's uh let's start with why
it works well. So, I I talk a lot about high intent messages or high intent stages of the
the shopping journey. And the shopping could be for an e-commerce product. Maybe you sell uh you know guides or
something like that or courses, whatever. Whatever it is you're whatever you are trying to get someone to do,
there are stages of that that journey. So, if I'm looking for say, you know, a mint green sweater or sweatshirt, I go
to the website, maybe I get see a social ad, I get over the website, but when someone gets to the website, there's
something in their life that took them there, right? That's how I always look at it. What is the intent? If it's an e-commerce site, well, there's an intent
that I need something or I want something. If I'm there looking, if you're an agency that says maybe that
sells maybe SEO services and paid ad services, right, I probably need help with my paid ads or my SEO on my site.
So that is a stage and then the further I get into that if I'm checking out different products or I'm checking out
other parts of the service or maybe different tiers or level plans right there's a higher intent there and then
if I put something in my shopping cart or I fill out a uh a form to get a guide book or white paper or whatever it might
be there's another level intent there. So it's those high intense stages where
you want to use the automated messages to target customers at the right time with the right message. The prover
proverbial right message right time you know right content. So when I look at
that I go welcome messages no-brainer right they just signed up for your email or they just signed up for your SMS
program maybe both. We want to send them a message and we want to guide them through that journey. If I'm shopping
specific products or specific pages on the website, this is where either uh browse abandonment or product
abandonment messages. And I'm sure everyone who's listening or watching today gets these from businesses, but
this is, hey, we noticed you checking out something. Come back and take a look. Right? But we never actually cart a product on the in the shopping cart or
take that next step there. But that whole goal is again, there's something specific I'm I'm eyeing there. So, we
want to target that person at that time. maybe give them more information about the product or the service or whatever it might be to get them back to the
website to put that in their shopping cart and then shopping cart abandonment or whatever that final stage is for you.
It's a no-brainer. They've selected what they want. They told you they were interest there. Now we just need to push them over the finish line. And that's
where setting those card abandonment messages, promoting those value ads, uh
all these different tactics we can do to convince people to come back, overcome their obstacles to conversion. These are
the high intent stages and these those three messages there is welcome, card abandonment and product abandonment.
Those will make up more than 80% of that 37% we talked about. Those are the majority of your automated messages
because those are the three highest stages of that journey. Uh you know everyone probably gets or has gotten at
some point like birthday automations. Hey Greg, happy birthday right? Here's 10% off your order this month or this
you know the next couple days. Those messages are well and good, right? They will help the age opens. Hopefully, you
can get someone back in the fold. Maybe they're looking to shop for their birthday. However, there's not a high
level of intent there. So, the messages are great. I'll tell you to do them, but that's not where I would start. You want
to start at those intent, those high intent stages. So, if anyone's looking be like, "Okay, I have a couple of these or I have one or I'm thinking about
doing this." I would just advise you to kind of look at, okay, what is what is the consumer doing at that point? and is
it high intent and if it's high intent for your business then yes I would automate those messages and have a
couple we could talk about the best practices or you know techniques or techniques for those things and go on to
about that as well but that's why they work so well and it's the it's that intent filter I always we look at to say
okay where do I start where do I approve where do I optimize where do I add to and those are the ones we want to go
after. Okay. And oh, and your other qu and your other
question, John, which I completely skipped over. Do we make it easier for you to set up? Absolutely. I should probably answer
that first. Quite all right. So, so part of our uh part if you log in
Omnisan or check out the website, you're showing it there. Yep. Uh one of the things you'll see is we try to make it as simple as possible for
anyone to use because there is, you know, with any new phone tool, platform,
whatever, there's a small learning curve involved in that stuff. So we try to make it easy for you. We really we have templates available where couple clicks
we will create it. So that includes workflows, that includes uh includes segments, it includes uh you know popup
forms, kind of whatever you're looking for. So say I don't have any of these things going up and I say, "Oh, Greg
wants me to tells me I need a welcome message and a product abandonment message." You could just go to the workflows, search welcome and we'll have
a bunch of options for you. Want one message, three messages, email, NSMS. You just click create. It creates it for
you. And you just plug in the the you plug in what you need to. You put the content in the emails. You can change the layers you want or and you can
customize them. So if you just want the shell, you can click it and then customize it however you want. You can
also build it from scratch if you want to. But we make it easy with every single type of automation. Tons of
different segments. Uh again, popup forms. We have all different sorts and steps and things like that. But we try
to templatize everything. So a couple clicks of a button, boom, you're done. And this leads me to another off
question here is integration into WordPress. How is the integration into WordPress done?
So as I told you I coded before I'm not a super technical wizard here. You can
we so we have a video on our YouTube channel. You can find that on the website. The the video is less I think
it's might be like four minutes long. You and it literally walks you through everything. So you just go to the app.
You download it and the the Omnisan will show up in your left rail there with all your other apps installed and you could
do it direct you could do the integration right through your WordPress account or right through WooCommerce. So
we make it super simple for you. So it uses it uses a plugin to integrate into WordPress then. Okay. And all of
the forms and everything you create are not kept at WordPress. They're kept on the Omnisense site. Is that correct?
That's correct. And we do have integrations with other uh WordPress uh
apps as well. So I think we have over 40 of them now. So I know a lot of people using WordPress love Gravity Forms. Great tool, right? But you can integrate
Gravity Forms with Omnisense. So instead of having to have that export a list, import that list to Omnisen, they'll
just talk to each other. Um so we have I think over 40 plus integrations with other WordPress apps as well.
Okay, that's uh actually quite useful for many people here. Now, another thing
that's gaining traction from time to time, not time to time, and I'm seeing it from multiple places, though I'm not
one to stick my phone number in there, is SMS automation.
Um, so people get text messages and how is this working and how is this changing
the landscape? Because of course, I know the younger generations love their texts. I don't happen to be part of that
myself. I am not part of a younger generation easier either. I might look younger. I
guarantee you I am not I am getting I talk about boomers all the time and I'm like man I'm gonna be
there pretty soon. Um so so SMS is it's a really cool
conversation. So it's been around for a long time. I was consulting clients in SMS over a decade ago. It's really come
into it its kind of mainstay the last couple years just because it's easier. The cost has come down a little bit. So
here's how I look at SMS is obviously country specific. If if the US has a lot more SMS uh adoptability than say you
know the EU or something like that just because of regulations things like that. So SMS it's a I consider it a must-have
tool for brands now. It's how people are communicating and the one thing so you
mentioned there we kind of joked about it for a second is like young people like it but honestly this spans
generational cohorts. So I always give the story uh I always give the story where my
mother is not a technology adopter. She hates online. I mean play for 20 minutes wants
to go to the store and I'm visiting her I don't know a year and a half or so ago and it's just like a lazy day and we're
ringing laying around and her phone's going off because she's old and she has volume on everything and then she starts
reading her text out loud because that's what she does. Love you mom. Uh, but
she's reading it from brands and I never in a million years like I would have bet my house been like, "No, she's not
signing up for SMS from brands." And she's reading it from brands and I'm going, "Oh, man." So this, so it
really does spend span generational cohorts. Here's how I look at it. A lot of companies will say, you know, I'm
scared to get into it because one, I don't know how to do it or they have the the assumption that their clientele
doesn't want it, right? And there's there could be some truth to that. So, here's what I always tell people. I
said, "Collect the mobile number on your popup form. It could be with the email. It could be a step a second step one.
Make the mobile number optional. They don't want it. They don't have to sign it. Don't trick them into be like, "Hey,
you want 10% off for signing up?" And then the second step is like, "Hey, to get your 10%, don't forget to hate that,
right? Just leave it optional." If people sign up for it, that is your indication that your audience wants to
hear from you. And if they don't, it's your indication be like, "Hey, my audience, my product, whatever I'm selling, it's not the right fit for
them." It's a simple way to get into it. And then even if you're not ready to use it, when you're ready to to kind of, you
know, push the on button, you have the numbers there to integrate with people. I always say if you start to get those
signups, the place I would start testing into it, we just talked about automations in high intense stages.
That's where I would deploy it first. So, you don't even have to send promotional messages. I would say, "Okay, I'll send an a welcome SMS. I'll
do a card abandonment SMS in that flow." And with Omni Send, you can put that all into one workflow and drag them around,
but it'll skip people without SMS. You can customize different paths. It's pretty cool. Uh, but that's how I would
use it. Use the high intent automations because we see very similar results with automated SMS compared to campaign SMS.
two two to one conversion rates. We see I think the numbers are 26% of SMS sales
on 13% of sends coming from the automation side. So it's it's comparable. So if you're
looking for a place to test it, collect the mobile numbers, make it optional, put it in those high intent automations
and see if it converts for you. And that's where I would go. And then if again, it could be your indication that
yeah, this works for my audience. Let's start sending one message every two weeks or something like that. and it's
might be your indication that hey, they're signing up for SMS, but they're not not really doing anything with it.
Uh, so that's where I would go with it. On the flip side to that, I would tell you, you know, email unsubscribes are
going to happen. It's the lifeblood of your program. That's why you always have to grow your list. You want people to unsubscribe that don't want to get your
emails because it impacts deliverability, things like that. But when someone unsubscribes, the
traditional path is then, okay, we need to import that into, you know, some retargeting platform for lookalike
audiences or to retarget them to come back to purchase again. What if SMS is their jam, though, and email is not
their jam anymore? Well, you've got these records tied together. You know what they purchased, you have the e-commerce data with it, and it's going
to be cheaper than running a paid ad to get that person to come back. So, you know, there's a lot of different nuances
to it, but it's a really good way to to kind of tip your toe in the water and
figure out, hey, is this working for me? Is it not working for me? And then, you know, figure out where it works best for
you. Yep. Absolutely. Okay. Now, another question here as far
as when they're setting up their emails and their SMS automate automations, what
are some of the common mistakes that people make that they could avoid?
to help them maximize their return on investment. All right, I'll give you two really
basic ones, but it still happens. So basic, people still do it, right?
Just send from name brand, make it your brand name. Some people will leave it blank. It'll say no reply or something,
you know. Um, so make it your brand name. Make your email, the images in your emails
clickable. I can't believe it's 2025 and we're still talking about this. I got one two days ago. We have internal jokes
about this. me and a colleague all the time. We're like, we'll share the email. Like, oh, they didn't make it clickable. It's such a good email, right? I got one
a couple days ago. Hold on. Back back that one up. Oh. Oh, images. Make make the images clickable.
Images. Yeah. Okay. I didn't quite catch that. Yeah. So, I got one a couple days ago and it was this be I think I forgot what
the product was. It was beautiful and I'm like, you know what? I just clicked on it and it just opened up the image and I'm like, oh no. Oh, no. Because
then you have to go to the website and you got to search for it. Yeah. That. So those are the two very basic ones. I'll kind of go a little more
maybe advanced on you here now. So the next one would be welcome messages.
I can have debates with people about this all the time. The best practice which I used to promote 15 years ago was
introduce your brand to them. Tell them your story. Tell them how often you're going to be sending.
I would tell you you're wasting your time if you're doing any event now. People are used to shopping online. and
they're signing up. A lot of times they sign up because they're they want to shop. Again, it's high intent stage. A
lot of times they sign up because you offer a discount to sign up for the email program. So, they're looking for
the discount. I tell people now, write one or two messages in a welcome message, but introduce your brand. And
by that, I mean, introduce products. Tell them why you're great. Use some social proof, maybe a testimonial or
showcase top rated or five-star products. Guide that person into something that they know is quality.
reinforced value ads and that could be for your expedited shipping, return policies, satisfaction guarantees,
whatever it might be for you. And then you know from there that second message
is around you know again introducing product lines. You could do it based on what they click on. Whole different
strategy level. Not that difficult, but um there. So, welcome series. That's your place where you can get someone
brand new, shows interest in your brand, high conversion rates. I mean, really high conversion rates on those messages.
And so many brands say, "Hey, I'm Greg. I started this because and here's my whole story." And I tell people, I'm
like, they don't care. Like, I'm sorry, but they don't care. It's not why they got your emails. They might care but
they don't care about like reading in an email. So if it is really if it is a
brand ethos for you and it is a legit part of your brand and one of those things that differentiates you from a
competitor. I tell people really small call out have it link there that goes to a web page
that they can read more about that if they want. It still conveys that you are say familyowned or whatever it might be
but then you also get the other info. So there's a way to balance that a little bit. So that's another mistake that I think people really miss out on uh is
that welcome message. That's high intent there for him.
Okay. Now we're gonna go ahead if you got something more. Oh, I was going to say beyond that
you'll be amazed right there. Best practices. I always tell people best practices are a guide. Take the best practice as a guide. It's
a starting point. Get your metrics, you know, re uh refined from there. But
you'll be amazed that you can send, say, a card abandoned email with 20 different looks and 20 different call outs and 18
of them can work, right? And that's kind of the beauty of email. It's just customizing for your audience. So I say
like those mistakes that people I could tell you, hey, don't do this with your abil cart. I mean, link the messages
there and link the images, but beyond that, you have a lot of room to kind of manipulate and test and try to refine
things that fit your brand's style. So, I don't want to go too deep into like this. Hey, this is a big mistake because
that's the beauty of email is you have a pretty uh large wiggle room. Excellent.
All right. Now, moving on to 2025 trends in and economic shifts and we'll fall
back to a little bit from 2024 of the Black Friday, Cyber Monday events of last year.
How would WordPress businesses adapt their email SMS strategies to stay more
competitive in the 2025 as things are changing and moving forward and also since you know email remains a top
channel uh with a 73 to1 return on on uh investment and
you know what uh why are the consumers preferring it for promotional messages?
I I think there's a lot there's a lot to really unpack here. So, as far as like consumer trends go, I think everyone who
reads, you probably see it in your own business as well, but anyone who's reading and following, you know,
the fluctuations with tariffs and economic uncertainty and, you know, job loss, whatever, right? Macro and
microeconomic factors. The one thing that's been consistent for the last 18 plus months, but we really saw it pop
during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, like the holiday shopping season, but it's continued this year, is this consolidated purchases, right? So,
customers are shopping for value. I am one of them. My grocery bills are skyrocketing almost weekly. Everything
is becoming more expensive and I'm looking to save money where I can. So, we've seen private label brands, you
know, increase from stores because consumers are shopping there. So they're trading down brand names when it fits
their lifestyle, fits the price point and fits the quality perspective. But what the one thing that is also doing is
it's consolidating those purchases. So you know last holiday season I keep
talking about omniscent data. So to put this at a high level perspective and these reports are all on our website. We
don't gate them. Uh but we sent over 26 billion marketing messages last year. So when I talk about messages and we're
sending it's pretty good pool size pool. Yeah, it's a pretty good pool.
So, we saw the overall number of orders go down last Black Friday, Cyber Monday
season, but the average order value increase. I think I forgot the number
off the top of my head. It might have been like 48% increase. So, we're seeing people purchase less but spend more with
brands are purchasing from. Walmart has kind of indicated in their uh recent reports that earnings reports that
they're seeing the same trends there, but we're kind of seeing this across the board. So, what this tells me is every sale matters. You need to capture them
to get them buy from you because they're buying from fewer brands. So, you need to be a little more targeted there. I
don't think this is going away anywhere soon. I think we're going to see this. If the predictions of more price hikes
because and lower inventories around Black Friday, Cyber Monday this year, you're selling products. I would expect
this to continue and maybe be exacerbated, but expect this to continue this year and probably in the 2026 until
things kind of settle off a little bit. But uh so what does that tell me as a
brand? Well, it tells me I need to really promote my value ads as best possible. Uh and that's going to be all
those things like shipping. So I always ask the question, why would they shop from you and not from someone else?
Especially if you're not the lowest price, right? So, a lot of independent brands, they can't compete with buyers
like Walmart, right? That can buy at scale. They can take the hit on the the retail
margin side because they've got media networks to kind of lift them up. Amazon, another one, right? Uh so, be
timely relevant with your messages. And I think this is the one thing where email to your other question there,
John, is why email over these other channels? And I would say other channels
are great. You should be using paid search. You should be using paid ads. You should be using paid social, right?
You should make it work together with the email. And the one thing where email is valuable from a brand standpoint is
it's first-party data. You collect it, they opt into it, they say, "I want to hear from you." But we're seeing open
and click rates continue to increase even though orders are going down just in a wide scale. Click to conversion
rates are going up. And what this tells us is that people when they're looking for a sale, they're going to their
inbox. They're searching either for brand name or they're just scanning their inbox of promotions. They're going
there because it's their time to buy or they're interested in buying and they're looking to the email to see, hey, what's the promotion today or what's the
special or what's this or what are the new products I should be aware of. So, it is a destination point now and it's
an active one where people are going to. And that's why I would say email is so important. They can ignore you on
Instagram or Tik Tok. They can blow by you. You can get lost there. you're not getting lost in the inbox as much as you
are there. And people are looking for that and they've signed up. They've shown intent there. And that's why we can continue to see it for 20 years
continue to perform because it is that opt-in channel. It's first-party data. And that's why it's so important. And I
think as now as feeds and streams become more populated with ads and you know attention is
shorter. I just say that because people are scroll happy, right? You go on Instagram, you go on Tik Tok and you're
scrolling a lot more. So your attention's shorter to individual pieces. They're used to seeing ads
there. They know it's an ad. They know it's not. And they can scroll by it or hit some email. They know what it is.
Like, "Hey, I want XYZ. What do I got here?" And they're going there and then they're opening and they're clicking.
Once they click, you kind of got them. We're seeing those once you click, we're seeing those conversion rates increase
over time, which is a good sign. Yeah, it is a good sign. It sounds like what uh brands and companies and
organizations need to do is they need to work on their brand loyalty or getting their consumers to be more loyal to
their brands. And in that vein, how can something like Omnisend be used to help
build a stronger relationship with their clients or their their visitors, their
site or whatever to keep bringing them back? And what sort of other pieces of
on the send such as does it help give you better designs because designs in an email help people or emails that will
open in whatever email platform people are looking at it whether they're looking at their web mail, their
outlook, their um what's the old the Thunderbird. I still have clients that use Thunderbird. So it's like there's
many different email clients or even the one on their phone, you know, whatever it happens to
be. how to ensure the email looks similar or the same when it's opened
across all these different platforms. I so
we have built in our our templates if you're using like the Wizzywig template in Omnisan. They are naturally
responsive design. So they have all the industry best practices built in them. So hopefully if you're opening on
multiple devices, open an email in Gmail on your laptop, then later you're like, I need to check
that out again. I'm on the go. and you open your phone or your built-in email client, whatever you're doing, hopefully those things render well. I think the
ultimate secret to email and it's not a secret is relevant content. Are we is the content readable? Is it scannable?
And that's the one thing, right? We talk about writing books in an email and be like, "Oh, let me tell you about this." But people want to see pictures. They
want to see quick little headlines. They want to see star ratings. These are things where you can have a
long email and have it be successful. It doesn't need to be super short, but it needs to be visually appealing where
people can scroll to see what they like. They know what it is. They can click on and they know what they're going to get after. Then I think that's the ultimate
secret for it. Uh so we have these tools built into the platform, which is great.
Uh the other part of that is, you know, as long as you're sending relevant content, and relevant can be kind of a
loose term here, but content that matters to the customer and ways you can do that. Not every email will be right.
I could, you know, a lot of people buy shoes from us and I send you a shoe email and you're not ready to buy shoes
yet. Doesn't mean that email is not relevant. This is where putting content blocks into the email and having it
populate with, you know, when we tie it to either Woo Commerce or your your platform to get that customer data in
there, but we can have product recommendations that are tailored to that individual, you know, specific individual and other lookalikes or, you
know, whether they purchased or not purchased. So, those are some ways to make your everyday emails more relevant
to the customer. The more relevant it is, the more they're going to want to open your messages because they know they're not they're going to get
something that is somewhat appealing to them. And some days it's going to be more appealing, some days it's going to be less appealing. That's okay. That's
where automation's for. The second part of that, we talk about customer loyalty
is it's still a widely underused tactic, but it is so powerful and important for
brands. And this is post-purchase messaging. Again, we talk about automated messaging. So, brand loyalty
is really hard to attain now. It's hard to keep even store, you know, even
brands like Apple are seeing a shift here. And part of that is just economic factors and things like this, but it is
hard. So, post-purchase of one of these automated messages where you might think
to yourself, well, they just bought. How effective can it be? Well, it can be effective from a sales standpoint. And
one thing I would tell you there is if they buy from a post-purchase series, you've now had two purchase because they
don't get that series until they purchased that one time. So now you're starting that that road. But it's all
about enhancing the customer experience. So when people say post purchase, they think, well, I send a product review message and I send my transactional
messages, my order and shipping confirmations and and then I send a cross-ell email to
them. All those things aren't really enhancing the experience. You know, I
would I mean, with the exception of the order and shipping confirmation, people love those things because it tells them about their order.
It tells them it's on its way. Yeah. Yeah. So, kind of important there, but most company most companies aren't
optimizing those to put a little bit of of sales content in there, which they should, but um you know, it's still
going to be, hey, can we automate one or two messages these people to help enhance that purchase experience? So, if
I buy, I don't know, a service or a product, can you send me something like a product care message? Hey, Greg,
thanks for a recent purchase. Hey, um, you know, here's the best way to wash
your or care for XYZ product. And you're giving content that makes them feel
valued. It makes it feel like they bought something or have something of value to them and that you care about
them instead of just, hey, it's going to go bad sometime and just reby from us at that point, right? So the next time I
want to buy XYZ or give a gift, right, this is a big thing. Hey, I know this company cares about the product. Here
are some things that I I could tell you how to wash them, right? And it's messages like that. And it could be
product care. It could be howtos. It could be uh you know, even just showcasing some toprated cross-ell
products, but you can you can put sales content in these messages, too. And you know, hey, here's how to care and wash
your lingerie. By the way, we sell lingerie wash bags and lingerie
detergent to keep it soft and, you know, from tearing or whatever. Like, there's easy ways to subtly cross-ell there,
right? And you can make it so effective and the message still just resonates that, hey, this brand gave me an exceptional
experience versus an ordinary experience. And there is a difference there. And that's what's going to be
it's that, you know, do we move the lever? And things like that move the lever.
Okay. Now looking ahead with 2025, what sort of emerging trends aside from
AI, it's been a massive emerging trend. Personalization should businesses uh WordPress
businesses watch or try to get ahead of add
I think the biggest one well I don't know what biggest but one of the most important ones I'm talking
about both sides of my mouth now. Uh, one of the most important ones is that customer value and I've mentioned it a
couple times about promoting benefits and value ads and things like that. I think it's really important and you know
it might be beating a dead horse at this point but I think it is so important for brands to really focus on that. So what
do you do with that? I would look at all the messages you send and find ways to kind of hard code some of those things in there. So if people seeing an email
they're seeing they're on your website, right? We want to make sure that we're hitting that message every single time.
Is it free returns or you know free shipping over 35? We'll promote that stuff right built into the header of
your message. Have uh you know customer service or product reviews. Have user
generated content whether it's testimonials or whatever. Hardcode some of that stuff into your messages to make
people feel like hey these other people got a good value from us. They like the product. I've got free shipping. I've
got whatever here. Satisfaction price matching. I think it's really important for brands to do that. And so I would
look across all your messaging, your website, your social ads, even your social profiles, and figure out, hey,
where can we kind of hardcode these things in to constantly reinforce this message? I think it's going to be really
important because again, I think that shift in consumer purchasing isn't going anywhere. And this kind of is one of
those obstacles to conversion or persuasion points there. Uh I think Black Friday, Cyber Monday, we've been
seeing it, you know, I coined this term. I don't know I coined I I've been using a term I don't know if anyone's using it
so I can't really coin it uh but probably a decade ago I said you know we're really at gray November now
and I think we're we're now at gray November right we're starting to see Black Friday Cyber Monday creep into
October I think this is a permanent thing so for the marathon yeah prepare for the
marathon u black Friday you're still going to have Black Friday Cyber Monday be your pinnacle days black Friday is
really now Black Friday week. Two years ago was really that tipping point last year. Everyone did it. Almost everyone
did it. But prepare for, hey, this is our best deal. It's going to happen all week and use a sense of urgency. Get
them before they go on price. That's actually that's actually been happening here in Canada Canada for several years where they do an entire
the entire Black Friday week of stuff. So, it used to be standard promotions in
the stores, but it's definitely moved online in the last few years. All right. Yeah. So, I mean, and then, um, I would
say the other one, we've just passed it, but keep it in mind for next year. Uh, you know, we've seen Prime Day, Amazon,
Target, all these stores kind of launch their big summer sales around back to school, right?
And I think summer Black Friday is now a thing. So,
late June, early July, I think you're going to have just as good a deal as you're seeing as Black Friday, Cyber Monday to get that sales thing. So, I
think we're going to have two kind of periods of Black Friday, Cyber Monday every year now. Interesting. I hadn't noticed that.
That's good to know. All right. Well, we still got a few minutes here, but what we're going to do at this point for those listening to the download, the
downloaded version of the podcast, this will be continued on the YouTube channel. So, there'll be additional
information. And for those still listening on the YouTube channel, hi out there to Ryan at InfluenceWP. Nice to
see you on the channel. Greatly, great to see you here. Anyway, come on back to the channel, our YouTube channel, and
catch the end of it and we're going to play the outro and we will be right
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or email her directly amber@wpro.ca. CA.
Thanks for joining us. Have a great day and we'll see you next week.
Too many things going at once. All right, so we're back on the YouTubes
here. For those of you that are actually listening, yeah, hit the like button, folks. I appreciate that. All right, so
just a couple of quick things here. talk about some practical tips for folks, you
know, what they can do that might help them out along the way or give them some
ideas. You know, for example, a WordPress business owner just starting with Omnisend, what is one quick win
email or SMS automation they can set up in a day to start driving uh sales?
Yeah. So, I'll give you the automation and I'll give you an email. Um, so automation mentioned before, you can
literally set these things up within a matter of minutes. So, you can do any of them. I would start with the basics. The
three we talked about, welcome message, card abandonment, and then product abandonment. Those are the three I do.
The very basic one, just starting out, get a welcome message. Introduce the products and kind of what your brand
offers. And that's the easy one to do. Chances are that content's already created on your website, so you just kind of need the to beg bar on steel and
put it in there. Uh, but that's the first thing I would do. Have a popup, right? and marry those two things
together. I think it's an easy win, but it starts that communication a little bit. So, that's what I would do there.
If you're looking for say a type of email, it tends to work
really well or even just a subject line to kind of tie those things in there. Uh, back and stock messages. So, if you
are, I don't know, the guy's, you know, the email subscribers brand new, maybe
they don't know something's out of stock. Maybe you it was out of stock per day or it's a new product line, right?
Or new additions. Back in stock automations convert better than any other message.
You just send brands just send fewer of them, but the conversion rate is I think it's more than double. It might be like
a 6.2 percentage conversion rate versus a 07 for a scheduled message.
It's nuts. But back in stock, it's newness. So if you have a new product drop, right, really good subject line. It's an easy
email. You have the content again because you know what's back in stock. But that's kind of an easy win for brands to play around with. Uh so that's
one email one automation. And then I'll give you a couple uh just real quick resources. These are free resources to
use. We talked about AI a second ago. U if you're just looking for a little bit of help. So if you go to web omnisense
resources section on the page, they have a whole tools hub and we have like and we have like an subject line generator.
So have subject lines created for you. based on the type of email or promotion you want to do. We also have a checker,
so if you write your own, you can plug it in there. It kind of grades these, scores you and gives you recommendations and suggested subject lines to improve
those. So, a couple quick tools that uh are free to use that you could just pop over and check them out.
Okay, those are some excellent tips there. Now, you've spoken about the power of personal or no, sorry, that
yes, power of personalization with uh 71% of consumers expecting tailored interactions. How can WordPress users
leverage Omnisend segmentation and AI tools to create personalized uh
campaigns? So segmentation I tell people can be
really simple, it can be really complex and usually it falls somewhere in the middle, but it's really up to the user
to define how they want to use it. We'll continue on the AI We'll continue
on the AI theme here. So, one of the challenges that brands use with segmentation is
creating a segment, right? It's like, well, what do I put in here? Who do I target? Do I have the right stuff? So,
Omniscent has AI built throughout its platform. Segmentation is one of those cool areas where you can casually talk
to the AI builder and say, "Hey, give me a set of customers or a set of
subscribers who do X, Y, and Z." Right? And you just spell it out and I'll suggest it for you. And then you have
the one button to create the segment for you. So you can refine from there, but it makes the time to create segments
super simple. So where are people starting out? What do you want to target? Probably website browse behavior
or maybe source. Uh and those are places to kind of tell you well where they come from. Did it come from a Facebook ad, a
LinkedIn ad, a uh you know Tik Tok ad? And then you can target them a little bit differently or were they checking
out XYZ pages of your website? gives you a little indication about what that intent is, what their interest level is,
and then you can schedule those out for you. Uh, really simple thing to do with segmentation as well. People forget
about people that buy from you, right? So, if I buy from you yesterday and you're sending me an email today, you
might just want to create a a segment of people who bought with within, say, the last three days or five days and just
suppress them from your promotional sends. Again, ideally, you have a post-purchase series, but let's say you don't.
Give them a couple day break, let them breathe, and then get them back on the promotion. So, sometimes segmentation can be as simple as this. This is who we
don't send to today. That's that's a very good point there is, uh, you know, I bought from you. Two days later, you're trying to sell me
again. It's like, wait, I just bought. I'm good right now. So, yeah. And the worst part about that is
say, say you we're running a promotion for 10% off and I bought from you. The next day you're
you're getting the 10% off. Yeah, that would that would suck. What am I I mean what I'm doing is I'm
contacting customer support and say, "Hey, I bought this yesterday. Can I can you credit me back 10%." Right. It's a
nightmare for customer service. So that's where that couple day break. Yeah. It just gives them a little little little relaxation there.
Yeah, that's for sure. Now, also you as a seasoned speaker and podcaster, what
is one piece of advice you'd give WordPress businesses, Woo Commerce businesses, and owners on ways they
could help stand out in the crowded e-commerce market?
I tell people, I don't know if this will help you stand out per se. I'll try to think of something off the top of my head, though. Uh, that's a really good
question, John. I will tell people, don't be overwhelmed. I I've talked
about all these automations you do today and segments and stuff and do this covered a lot. Don't be overwhelmed. Yeah. Uh because
that's the one thing you talk about all these things you're like. So I tell people start small, start simple. Say
you want, you know, a two three me. Let's just say three, a three message welcome series.
Well, so many people will look at that and go, okay, I need all three messages built at once. I need them to look
perfect. I would tell you no. Get the first message out. put it, let it do its
thing, then add the second message. You can just tweak it at any point and add the third one. And then if you want to
go back and pretty them up, you go back and pretty them up. But they're at least they're doing their job. And this the one thing just, you know, they like
Frankie says, relax if you if you're a friend's uh you know, friends watcher or whatever. But uh you know, just take a
step back, breathe, do one small thing at a time, and it's like compounding interest. It will start paying dividends
for you. So that's the one thing I would do to stand out. I think it's just value, right? Can you promote the value?
Can you provide content that's relevant to the customer as best possible? Can you do what you you know what is it? Say
what you're going to do. Do what you say, right? And you could do that from a business perspective as well. So provide
them as best relevant content. Small things like that go a really long way. And it makes the customer feel one, feel
valued, but two, they feel like they could trust you at that point. be like, "Okay, these guys these guys get it. They're
not sending me five messages a day, right? They're on top of their program there." All right. Actually, I So, John, I have one where
you can stand out. Okay. I'll try to make it quick for you. Yep. No problem. Customer Oh, customer service is a major one.
It is. It is one of the biggest differentiators for brands nowadays. I have a nice example of it. A local
farm company here that I order my meats and my dog food online from. They made a mistake in the delivery. forgot to
deliver the box of dog food. I reached out to them. Unfortunately, they were closed on Sunday, so I had to
wait till Monday, but Monday, they reached out right back to me and they delivered that box of dog food out later
that day. So, it's like it customer service is like an a number one, you
know, it's a great So, John, wonderful example, right? And what are you doing?
Right, we're talking about it on YouTube today. So, and so one, other people are
hearing the same thing. Two, you might share it with your family and friends. Oh, I definitely I I've gotten most of
my family and friends to buy from this uh farm. It's Barryman's Farm here, local local farm. So, they're they're
just a great resource for us. And I So, I'll give you a funny story.
This happened years ago. So, hopefully they're not mad at me anymore. So, ironically, so I live in Durham, North
Carolina. I moved here about 13 years ago. But Ironically, I came in for a wedding a couple years before that. And
I fly in, it's late at night. I've got a couple cousins from a different city flying in, and we're all getting around
the same time. So, I tell them, I said, "Hey, I'm renting a car. It's a cheap car. Just jam in the back seat. It's an
hour drive from the airport, right?" So, I wait around the airport for 20 minutes. We get it. So, I go to the car rental place
and the guy goes uh goes, "Oh, I see you got a couple people with you.
Do you want to upgrade it?" you know, I'm poor at this time. I got no money. And I'm like, no, they can jam in the in
the backseat for an hour. Like, we're fine. And the guy, he looks at me and he's like, "Well, we're out of compact
or economy or whatever I render. We're out of economy, so I'm going to give you like he gave me the upgrade because it's
the only car they had." And I tell this story to friends all the time, and I'm like, "You know what? This
company here, like look at this thing they tried to pull on me." On the flip side, they could have been
like, "Oh, you know, Mr. Zach was I see you have a couple people with you. It's late. Let me go ahead and upgrade you
for free. Yeah. And I'd be telling the opposite story here. I'd be like, "Oh, I'm going to go to them next time because they'll take
care of me." And now I don't avoid them, but they're not my first choice. Yeah. That that's the unfortunate way
that it sometimes works. Well, on that note here, we're going to give you opportunity to tell everyone where they
can find you um and where they can learn more about Omnisense's resources.
Absolutely. Okay, so Omnisend, pretty simple. Omnisend.com. I think every social handle is omnisense. So you can
find us. I'll tell people you can reach out to anyone in the company on LinkedIn or whatever you want to do here. We are
super friendly. We will talk to you. We'll pass you off to the right person. If uh if we're not the right person to
be chatting with and if we're not the right fit for your brand, we'll tell you. So we're not going to get you in
there for no reason. So omnisend.com, perfect way. Uh re some of those resources I talked about. So, our stats
reports, those AI tools, uh, you know, earnings calculators, all that type of
stuff. Stuff's all free. It's on our resources section of the website. So, check it out. And you can find the WordPress and Woo Commerce integration
info on Omniscent as well. Uh, as far as me, I'm on the primary social channel.
So, LinkedIn's probably the best way to get a hold of me. Also on Blue Sky if you want to check out Blue Sky. I know not a lot of people are on there, but
it's I am. So, but LinkedIn's always the best. And all of those links will be in the show notes, folks. in the show notes
will be up in the next 24 hours over at wpplugins.com.
And on that note, thank you very much, Greg. I appreciate your time coming on the show and for the interview.
This was a blast, John. Thanks. Appreciate it. All right. Well, that's all, folks.