Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast.
I think I've I've lost track of how many times I've been.
On I don't often hear AI and e-mail in the same conversation.
In the AI age, people really still want that human support.
One thing I love though, is you're taking it back to the
basics of marketing. We've seen some people try some
bad decisions and work for once or twice and then they have to
dig themselves out of the spam folder.
My poor wife, every time she's shopping online, I'm saying, oh,
how did you get there? What do you, what do you see on
this page? You know I can't never turn it
off. Yeah, I do the same.
Hello, welcome to another episode, the Winning with
Shopify podcast. Firstly, thanks for your emails.
I do have a horrible cold and it's still got it.
So we had to hear. I'm quite nasally today and be
drinking lots of waters throughout this episode.
But yeah, if you've not seen him before, my name's Nick winning
Shopify podcast. We talk about winning with
Shopify and we talk about a lot of e-commerce matters as well.
A lot of the content we've got applies to all platforms, but
Shopify was the name on it when I started hosting it.
I don't want to change it because he's gonna change your
brand. And my very special guest, who
I'll introduce now, as well as Brian from Saguna.
And Brian, last time you're on, we spoke about someone changing
their brands. So the irony, I just managed to
pick up on that. But Brian, welcome back.
How are you? Yeah.
Thanks so much, Nick. I'm looking forward to it.
It's good to be back. I think I've I've lost track of
how many times I've been on but always look forward to our
conversations and I'm I'm excited about the topic today.
Absolutely. And like I was saying to you
before we hit record, you're, you're our second most frequent
guest we've ever had on the show.
So it's great to have you here. I don't, I don't think you're
you are speaking. I was going to say we need to
shout out the podcast. It's not the webinar.
The webinar is in my notes. So we need to talk about that
today as well, everybody. So on the 26th of February,
which will be a few days after this has gone live, we are
running a webinar. Brian, myself are both going to
be on it. And we're also going to be
joined by tax clouds who are most amazing software,
especially in the US. You're trying to deal with your
tax, tax matters. So definitely click on the link
below. We've been chatting about on our
emails. I think you guys have emailed
out. I think tax cloud emailing about
that as well. Can try and get a good crowd of
people together live on that webinar.
We'll also be available on the podcast and YouTube afterwards
as well. But today, world exclusive,
there's a new thing called AI. I'm joking.
Obviously we all know what AI is.
We're going to talk about e-mail and AI.
But before that, I'm going to give Brian, which I never
normally do this on the show, but I might start every week.
We'll see how this goes, see how Brian responds to this.
I'm going to give Brian some quick fire questions.
So if you've never seen Brian on the show or heard from Brian
from Saguna before, we're going to get to know Brian really
quickly and we're going to get to know Saguna and we're going
to jump into our e-mail and AI say Brian.
First question, nice and easy. What's your favorite chocolate
bar? Oh, favorite chocolate bar.
Oh man, I am a big fan of a salted caramel bar.
So this is a little bit more. We're going to go a little bit
more into like kind of the chocolates, the truffles.
Salted caramel's a strong start. Salted caramel, you know, you
need that sweet and the savoury, the, I think the balance of the
flavours there, absolutely. And you get that salt flavour
slightly after as well, don't you?
It's nice, yeah. That's right, it's the finish,
so. Yeah, nice and right.
You're going to a coffee shop. What are you ordering?
Oh, cortado, absolutely. And not the not the American
cortado. I don't need 16 ounces of milk.
I'm I'm looking for my my nice traditional cortado.
I can't believe I ordered a large latte in Starbucks.
I don't normally drink lattes but I just want to see how big
it was when I was in San Francisco and they literally
gave me a trolley like they were like trying to wear this thing
out. It's.
Roughly the size of your head, right?
Roughly about. The size of your.
Head so. Yeah, nice.
I mean, it's very similar to mine.
I like that a lot. Current favorite song or
playlist you're listening to? Oh man, favorite.
Let's see what is it? 12 to 12 by Somber Song?
I had a buddy who sent me that and it's tough to not just want
to dance and and move a little bit to that one, so.
I like that there's a lot of doom and gloom in the world.
We need something you can move to, something that could beat
the baseline, like. Yeah, definitely.
And final question for me to ask you a couple of questions about
Saguno. What is your secret?
But weird food loves. What's something that makes
people cringe? But you're like, you know what?
This just hits the spot. Oh, geez, I don't know, I think
maybe this is the Americans might not cringe as much, but I
don't know how how other other folks would feel about it.
But here it's again, we're huge hot sauce fans.
So there's a new Taco shop that opened up and they have the
Diablo sauce that I had to get just a pint of that to go.
So I've been putting that a little bit on, on everything on
my fillet, cheese steaks, sandwiches and my eggs and
anything else that I can say, you know what, I can put hot
sauce on this. So I think a lot of people look
at that as overkill, but that's just the right right about to
see. Branded hot sauce and I
honestly, I gave it to my father-in-law.
He loves spice. I cannot handle it.
I, I went to an agency dinner last week and the spice was just
too much for me. But let's find out about Saguno
quickly. But a context as to who who you
guys are listening to on the show with, with me obviously
from Brian's side. What year was Saguno founded?
Oh man, let's see, I'm gonna have to do the math.
I haven't had enough coffee for that right now.
We just had our 9th birthday, actually.
Nice, nice. So we had our 9th birthday last
week, Chris. Treated you all.
He did, we had cake. Of course, you know, you got to
help with the, the milestones. I don't know what's going to
happen for the 10th birthday, but that'll be very exciting.
So you know, we have kind of three main apps we are
exclusively building for Shopify.
So we have our our primary app, which we'll talk mostly about
today's e-mail marketing and that's what was my background
before I joined Seguno. And then we also have our bulk
discount code app, which we'll I think we'll be talking about
next week if you if you had a webinar.
We spoke a lot about it last year as well, which, yeah, it's,
it's an incredible bit of tech and some of the data behind why
you should do it that way is, is really impressive.
So yeah, sorry, the third app. No and the third app is a Canva
connect for or Shopify connector canvas.
So connecting your Canva designs directly inside Shopify, quite a
bit of content mobility there. And that's, that's a really
awesome app. We, we actually, I don't know if
I'm supposed to tip my hat to this, but we just tipped over
50,000 users on that app. So an incredible utility for
anyone who's using Shopify and Canva, it's an absolute no
brainer and at the price of free 99 a great deal.
So definitely check out on that as well.
And I'll be, I think your colleague sent it over to me to
talk about on Tuesday, tea break talks as well.
So if you want to hear more about that, I'll be sharing some
of the info and a link as well to, to get involved in that,
which would be amazing. 2 quick questions then.
So next one is what's your starting price?
If somebody wanted to use the DNA for e-mail, where'd you guys
start? Yeah.
We started actually just $35 for 2500 subscribers.
So we have a nice low entry price really designed to kind of
help the merchant who's growing, who, you know, you go from the
one person trying to do everything to the one person
who's getting their e-mail program going up and running,
you know. So we need to really focus in on
on the growth and arming the rebels as Shopify loves to do.
And that's where we start. I love your Star Wars
references. Kind of pride in the show that's
about the Rebel Alliance or something.
Yeah. Oh, man.
Well, yeah, I'll see what else I can sneak in there for you.
But you know, we, we scale as you grow.
But at $35, you're getting full support.
You're getting all of the features, you know, that
includes our deliverability analyst, that includes the full
support team and support team here, all the features and
everything, even some some AI prototyping and stuff that we're
working on now that you'll look at access to at that point.
So just a little teaser for later in the show.
Amazing, amazing. Thank you.
And I mean you've kind of covered this a little bit and
you're obviously one of you're our own e-mail sponsor and have
been for like years now and for good reason, like just three
bullet points. Why are you guys the best when
it comes to an e-mail platform for Shopify?
Oh man, yeah, let me just boil down nine years of product and
growth into 3. Bullets, what?
Every three years? Go for an average.
Yeah, I think, I think what people appreciate about us is,
is the ease of use in the product, you know, were built
directly into Shopify, no learning curve, no complexity of
did I hook this up right. So there's there's the product,
the resources we're we're committed to to helping our
customers. You know, we only do as well as
they do. And you know, you see that
echoing throughout the Shopify ecosystem.
And the last thing it's the support.
You know, the team here is incredible.
We don't just answer your question and and Tosio link
we're actually checking in, making sure did you accomplish
what you set out to do. And I think that in the AI age,
people really still want that human support.
So we're here, we're happy to help all of our customers
achieve their goals, so. And, and I can vouch for that as
well. Some of the clients we've
introduced to you guys, like you've, you've ended up chasing
them and come to me and be like, I've still not heard from so and
so like, can you give them a nudge?
Like I'm trying to help. Like, you know, we don't make
any more money out of this. We just want them to grow.
Like, yeah, I mean, the, the team are amazing.
And I think, yeah, faceless technology can only take people
so far. And, and actually having someone
like like Brian at the end of the e-mail inbox or phone to
talk to and ask questions is, is, is so powerful.
Let's talk about AI. Everyone's heard of AI,
Everyone's heard of e-mail. I just want to interrupt today's
episode to talk about some big news for Shopify merchants.
Yopo, which you might be using is Sun setting as e-mail and SMS
products. You may have got an e-mail from
them. And if you haven't, this might
be the first time you're hearing about this.
So if you have been using them, then you might be wondering
what's next? Well, our sponsor Saguno has
recovered. Saguno is the most deeply
integrated e-mail marketing platform for Shopify and make
switching really, really simple with hands on onboarding,
migration help and deliverability expertise.
Right now with code WWS 20, you get 20% of your first three
months with Saguno. So don't let your marketing skip
a beat. Switch to Saguno today at
saguno.com/winning with Shopify. I said to you before we hit
record, Brian, I think it's, I think it's a good point actually
that I don't often hear AI and e-mail on the same conversation.
I hear about people shopping on AI.
We hear about AI tools that can speed things up.
How's AI changing the e-mail landscape at the moment?
Or how should people be using AI in e-mail?
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I, I just want to make one
thing clear that I, for one, welcome our AI overlords.
So, you know, if they're listening, I do welcome them and
wish them well. As they're not the Imperial
Guards, they're part of the River Alliance trying to help.
Us. That's right.
No, I think AI and e-mail is coming through in a couple
different ways. We've been talking about the
tools for years now and people said, oh, I can do all this with
AI. Look how much more productive I
am. And you know, then it's the
distrust of is this a real video?
Is, is Nick even a real person? Or is this an AI bot that
somebody designed or? Someone talk about nonsense on a
podcast for so many years now. It's a training model right
there. Yeah.
But now what we're hearing on the e-mail side of things is
we're getting back into kind of the fear of the unknown, right?
And so a lot of folks are thinking of AI in emails almost
just the next extinction event, right?
So if we keep having these extinction events in e-mail, I
think I'm on my fifth one by now in my, my own time in e-mail.
You know, when you lose tracking or you lose your Gmail's adding
promotions tab, it's the end of marketing as we know it and AI
sorting and, and summarization, it's the end of what we know.
And the, the truth is that, you know, e-mail still has the top
ROI of any marketing channel and it will continue to be the most
cost efficient because you're talking to your customers,
you've got your, your audience right there.
You know, you're not just sending your message out into
the ether. So I think when you understand a
little bit more about the way that AI is interacting with the
content and also how the inbox providers are using it, and then
also how your customers are using AI to view your content,
it, it takes away a lot of that fear.
And it's just kind of going back into, you know, the basics that
hopefully we'll we'll dig into a little bit more here.
Yeah, yeah. And I guess with that inbox, for
example, I think I mean, one of the first points we we're going
to talk about is filtering how, and I assume that's what was
meant by the question around like an AI filtered world.
Like when you send emails out to people now, how does AI actually
do the filtering process? Like is it in the spam filter?
Is it they filter things in people's inboxes?
Is it there like loads of us are starting to use the functions of
like, you need to follow up with this person, It reminds you to
do things like that. And you're like, Oh yeah, I sent
that. You know, I sent that contract
months ago. They still don't signed it.
And see, you know, there's all these things it's supporting
with. Like how is it affecting
specifically when brands are trying to send emails out to
communicate with customers is either at mass or 1:00 to 1:00?
Yeah, absolutely. So there, there are more AI
tools that we're we're seeing evidence of in the spam
filtering and that's really more of if your emails are getting
through to your provider or to your recipients or not.
And we get that kind of on the inbox provider level.
So they're using these tools just like we are to be better at
their jobs. They're better at detecting what
spam, who's an engaged contact, who is doing something crazy and
they need to protect their inboxes, you know, protect the
inbox from these senders. But then really that is up to
just you doing the right thing and those best practices that we
always talk about. But then when it does get
through, what people are afraid of now at this point is kind of
the growth of the the next level from the promotions folder.
And that's kind of you're doing a lot more sorting, a lot more
prioritization. Things are moving around in the
inbox right now. You know, there are Gmail app,
Apple Mail app, which is most of the American inbox providers.
You know, there are Superhuman, there's all sorts of these
different providers that are starting to bring more of the AI
in there. And what they're doing is
they're kind of organizing based on what they think that
recipient wants to see. So there's kind of the layer of,
hey, we're going to apply our AI filters to all of your mail.
And then for Nick's inbox, what do we think Nick wants to do?
He wants to be reminded about that contract that he still
hasn't gotten paid for, right? So we're going to move that to
the top. Hey, contract lapsing.
They're looking at the content and kind of mainly 3 things,
right? So the, the pieces that we're,
we're kind of looking through here and I'm, I'm trying to
remember my notes. It's, it's going to be a little
bit more in terms of your previous engagement, right?
The machine learning of when you receive like this, where you
open it, you're clicking it, you're responding to it.
OK, that's going to bring you out of kind of the promotions
folder or the shopping folder and into the inbox.
All right. And then it's going to try to
read the content and that's where you start to see some
interesting things when you're reading the content.
We're finding a lot more in terms of clear call to actions
and urgency. Discount expiring now, discount
expiring tomorrow. That's right up at the top or
Bill do today, right? And this is, these are for all
different types of emails. Those are going to get moved to
the top because they need to catch your attention.
Then those are the urgent ones to deal with right now.
And then finally, it's going to be more explicit feedback is
going to play into that. So if you yourself move an
e-mail from promotions to primary, well, then they're
going to learn that they're going to move that up the filter
up into the, you know, the models and try to use that bit
to learn for the next time. But those are kind of the three
main factors that are going to tell you where your inbox, your
emails landing in the inbox, if it's in the promotions tab.
And then how are you going to get the call out there?
Now the the knee jerk reaction, and I know you were thinking
about this is, oh, I'm just going to put a lot of misleading
content in my emails to say, do today, you know, but try to
trick the AI. Well, if there's one thing you
don't want to try to get into that argument with, it's the the
AI. We'll learn from you quickly.
So we've seen some people try some some bad decisions and it
work for once or twice and then they have to dig themselves out
of the spam folder and it's harder than ever to do that.
We've had plenty of conversation in the past about how to
rebuild. Yeah.
So, but yeah, there's that's the the unknown, but it's really not
that when you think about those three factors, it really doesn't
get that complicated. One thing I love though is
you're taking it back to the basics of marketing, which is
like all the, and I've been saying it's a lot about AI
actually, the more AI is evolved and the same with SEO that we
work on, on Google. It's like AI and Google are
there to try and get the the right things to the user and
stop the wrong things reaching the user.
So if you're the wrong thing, I'm trying to remember the, the
chap's name. He, he was, I think he was one
of your customers. We had on the show years ago.
He was selling lots of sport memorabilia, lots of signs like
American football helmets and stuff like that.
Yeah, Todd, that was it. And, and was it totally, totally
sports or something or total sport?
And Todd was saying, yeah, he was saying like if people
unsubscribe, great, I don't have to waste money, time and energy
contacting them and they're not interested.
I know my market. And he was sending 2 emails out
a day, one about last night's game and then tonight here's
someone out just ahead of the game that's happening.
Like what do you think is going to happen with this player and
this player and these two teams and what's going to go on?
And, and by the way, we've got a lot of this signed stuff.
If you want to go and check them out, you check it out on the
website and buy it because like people are really engaged that
he engaged at the right times, twice a day, but the right
frequency for his audience because sport, you guys have
such a different calendar. I've been following basketball
since I saw I can't remember what they're called.
The guys in San Francisco. They're, they were yellow and
purple basketball team for those guys they like.
Since watching them, I've been following it a little bit and
you guys have sport almost every single night.
It's like one or two games a night so that it's on every day.
Whereas in the UK we have like loads on one day and then
nothing for like 4. Like rugby.
Here you have one, one weekend of games, Saturday, Sunday and
then nothing. But again, like he's, he's
optimized that e-mail journey for his audience.
And I think that's the key here is if you do something like that
and the engagement's really high, AI is going to promote you
even further. It's going to work even better
for you. But like I know you said before,
Brian, that if you're not the right content, the brand isn't
sticking with people, the timing's not right.
You've not segmented your audience and send the right
messages out. Well, then you know you
shouldn't really be in people's inboxes anyway.
So as much as it's painful from a business point of view to the
revenue drop, which is it's kind of what you're saying, isn't it?
When it comes to the actual content, it really is about AI
is trying to promote the good stuff to people.
And if you've not really worked that out, it's like your
business isn't ready to scale. Like stop trying to push
something that's not quite ready.
Like you've got to understand that customer the and then get
the product right, get the time coming out on those, on those
marketing messages. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
Remember the the main feedback loop for AI is engagement.
If if you continue engaging with your when's the last time you
had a conversation with ChatGPT and they just kind of ended
like, well, that's all goodbye. Yeah, they want to keep asking
that question. So inbox providers are not
trying to get their users out of the inbox.
They want to see which content is most relevant for them so
they can use that data for other things.
I'm sure it's all totally above board.
They don't want to sell you more ads or anything like that.
But you know, it's the, it's the, the feedback loop that
we're seeing is, is what you're giving.
And then they're just going to carry that forward.
So if you're sending content that is engaging to your
contacts, then they're, you're not going to get punished here
or you get punished is when you fall in love with the list
number more than the engaged contacts.
You know, so if you think, oh, I've got 100,000, I'm so proud
of that. And then I take a look at it and
say, well, actually you've got 20,000 and 80,000 weighing you
down. Then that's a hard pill to
swallow. But what that means is that
you're more likely to get to the inbox when you focus on those
20,000. So we're seeing, we're seeing
actually that play up a lot, you know, and that was one of the
things I'm talking about with how there how the inbox
providers, Microsoft and Gmail specifically, are really
focusing more on that in with your sending reputation to
determine if you're getting to the spam folder, if you're
getting balanced or if you're getting through to the the inbox
for the AI to sort you there. So those are, those are big
things. Absolutely.
Nice. There's a flip side to this
though. We're talking about AI filtering
the inbox. Obviously, as I mentioned at the
start, AI is fantastic tool for all sorts of things.
Like you mentioned a Canva integration where there's AAI in
Canva and you can say, hey, do this for me.
And I've been modifying all sorts of images.
Like we've built a prototype for Growth Vault in September and I
put some the screenshots if anyone wants to go and look at
it. Shameless plug wwspodcast.com
and go and click on the Growth Vault 2026 in the in the top.
Menu and the screenshots of it there is a platform that exists
but those screenshots I got ChatGPT to modify and put
certain talk topics the color scheme and it even said like
what sort of person I want on some of the thumbnails and
things just to show what it's going to look like to give a you
know this is this is our vision of what we're trying to achieve
and asked ChatGPT to modify a screenshot of a system that's
not ready yet to make it look ready and make it look finished.
Yost have just launched something that is absolutely
game changing their new AI brand insights tool is now in beta and
it's built to help you track your brand's visibility
sentiment, and credibility across AI platforms like
ChatGPT. As search expands from Google to
AI answers, this tool gives you a clearview of how your brand
shows up, combining sentiment, visibility and mentions.
It's designed for marketers. If you want enterprise level
insight without the enterprise price less than $400.00 per
year. And here's the best bit.
Yost Black Friday sale is now on.
So starting November 27th, you'll get a 30% discount off
all annual plans, including the new Yost SEOAI Plus.
Head to yost.com to learn more and grab your discount.
What other tools should people be using in in e-mail than just
just beyond image generation in in Canva?
Like what other stuff can people use for timing segmentation
content? Like, you know, what are some of
the things that available? Yeah, absolutely.
I think you called that one out really well and I would
encourage you to review that image and look for any extra
fingers or any of those fun little tell tale signs.
I think my favorite one I saw recently was a something about
measurement and it was 2 rulers side by side.
And it's like our ruler and their ruler and it's supposed to
be superior. And then all of a sudden you
look at it and you're like, why does the why does it go 11237?
And you know, yeah, I can can make those little mistakes.
So people, we had 6. Figures on a basketball player
on our website for probably the best part of like 8 or 9 months
and we knew that. We knew it was there before
anyone even noticed, before everyone even said like, you
know, one of your images the guy's got, the guy's got a few
extra fingers and we joked initially saying, well, that's
just how he was born, you know, that's just how he how he was
made. It was like, no, no, it's an AI
image. It's like he also had a
completely skinned, you know, like totally flat skin complex,
perfect lighting or like no humans lit like that.
That's ridiculous. I think that's the big thing.
No, there, there's still that that it's almost like the
counter movement right now, right?
We saw a lot of the kind of the uncanny valley, the AI generated
images and now people are really trying to identify things that
are authentic, right? And you know, how many times is
that an AI image or can I trust that video that was posted by
someone of is that a real video or not?
You know, AI for me is a wonderful brainstorming tool and
I think it's great for coming up with concepts.
It's great for image proofs. You know, there are image
generators, but I think really what it comes down to is making
sure that what AI can do really well for you in canvas is help
you just style something. I wouldn't put it into a into a
fake setting. You know where you're going to
start to get into those weird little things there, but it then
content generation too, right. So you can help you just say,
hey, brainstorm this. I want to be really direct.
Find me a a fun little pun, a little quip.
You know, let's make this, let's make this cat team.
Somehow it's working meow jokes into everything that we can.
You know, there are fun little things that we can do with it,
but what people are craving right now is really that
authenticity. And so, you know, when I'm
looking at using an AI tool, I'm making sure that I'm not using
any of those tell tale signs. And I'm using it kind of working
through here. And then I'm bringing across it
is fantastic for speed, right? I mean, how fast can you come
out with a, a new proposal for a new customer, a new account that
you have, Hey, I want to do this audit.
These are the things I've thought of.
What does this mean? What else should I look at?
It's really great for research. And I think one of my favorite
tools that I'll be keeping a close eye on is Shopify's
sidekick, because Shopify obviously is all in on the AI
training, right? That's all the all the news you
hear. About Awesome sidekick.
Yeah, it. Is getting better so much faster
too right so you know Shopify has all your data you ask it
questions you're not having to worry about if the data is
feeding across. I think sidekick is really great
at helping identify customers that are likely to churn
customers that are likely to repeat purchases.
I use Shopify to plan my promotion or Sidekick to plan my
promotions of, hey, what's my AOV right now?
Great. I want to put a discount above
that AOV. What are two tiers above that so
that I can plan and I can increase my card sizes?
There are little questions that you can ask just to do things
more intelligently. And I think that that makes a
huge, huge impact in in just the efficiency of business.
Yeah. And I think just just add on
sidekick for everyone. Some of the things that I've
been using it for a lot. And a good example was 2 days
ago, I was, I was in Dublin with one of our clients.
We're actually going to always say who they are.
Yeah, didn't ask if I could, but we're going to have them on the
show in the next few weeks. They're sending me, they send me
a couple of products I'm going to wear on the show because
their stuff is amazing and beautiful.
And so I was with those guys and every now and then someone would
say, like, Oh yeah, we're going to invest loads of money, like
revamping this thing. And I'm like, why you doing
that? And they were like, well,
because it's important. The brand is going to look
amazing. You know, we're going to get
videos and everything. And I was like, OK, you know,
Sidekick, how many visitors have we had on that page?
Like I used to use GA 4 for everything and I'm using Gemini
and GA 4A little bit to ask questions as well and say,
what's the answer to this? And it creates like Sidekick, it
just creates custom dashboards for you, like on the fly.
So one of the things that came up is we said, all right, we've
added Klarna. So you could like buy now pay,
you pay in instalments, 0% interest, it's great.
And we were sort of saying how many people had started using it
and psychic couldn't quite answer the question.
But it got me so close when I was, I was asking it, when
somebody uses Klarna, what, what is their repeat purchase rate?
What percentage of those guys buy at least a second order
versus the ones that just pay in full?
Because the ones that pay in full can afford the product.
So they should be easier to convert long term was my theory.
And again, I haven't quite got the data yet.
The meeting was only yesterday, but we're going to find out.
But it said like it doesn't have access to a couple of the secure
bits of information relating to individual customers, which was
fair enough. But trying to find out some of
that information really quickly. One of the guys said, yeah,
we're optimised for mobile because like everybody does it
on mobile. And I checked the data and was
like, well, it's 65% on on mobile.
So you're right. But 35% desktop and desktop
convert 3 times not same client but another conversation only
the week 3 times as as many customers and desktop convert.
We need more desktop traffic like mobile is great but we need
more desktop traffic like it converts 3 times as much.
So we could pay double the click cost on giga ads for desktop and
still make more profit and you start drilling out.
But again sidekick was just giving me the answers and same
with Gemini and GA 4. It's just so fast.
Yeah, I love that. That's still the, there's still
a difference between this is a is this a phone purchase or a
laptop purchase? And oh man, if you're over a
certain price point that phones going down, the laptops coming
out. Yes, One thing is changing a lot
is we we work a lot in B2B as well and both ecommerce and lead
Gen. So in B2B ecommerce, we're
seeing so many more mobile devices buying things and we're
actually seeing customers that have done like a big order on a
desktop, then order like just little products here and there.
Now that they've built that, that trust and this company's
great. They're like, oh, I'll just jump
on, I'll just jump on the website quickly and, and you
know, buy another two of those. Like I bought 400, we've got 2
new starters. We need two more desks, Let's
get two more desks. So it's been fascinating seeing
that that balance as well. We had a client that sells off
his furniture and they did the whole thing mobile first website
on Magento. And firstly Magento, like what
were they thinking? And they called us after they
built the Magento site, but then we were like, like you've,
you've only had I think 3 orders and then all of the rest of your
orders have been on desktop in the last year.
Why on earth did you go mobile first?
You almost should have said if you're on the mobile site, like,
you know, click this button and e-mail yourself a link to this
page and look at it on a desktop, you'll get a much
better experience. You can see all the different
factors you need to, etcetera, etcetera.
So. Yeah, it's.
Interesting seeing that balance. I think that's a really good
call out in that, you know, there we still read the big
highlights that we know and we've heard that, you know,
mobile shopping is bigger and bigger.
But what Sidekick allows you to do is then ask that question for
your store and to confirm that your data shows that same story.
And I think there's still ways to go for Shopify to get all of
the data buttoned up. But you know, there are really
interesting things that you're just seeing more and more
capability. I think last week Shopify just
allowed just enabled metafields to be used as filters in, in
their analytics. So you're going to start to see
more apps put more of their data in there.
Your Shopify reporting is going to get stronger.
Psychics can get stronger. It's just a really, I think a
really bright future for, you know, operators that are
thoughtful about how they're, they're building their brand,
they're building their site and they're approaching their
customers and segmenting their customers.
Yeah, yeah. And I, I think, I mean, bringing
it back to e-mail, the amount of questions you could ask Sidekick
about like segmentations and things.
One, one thing I love about AI is you can ask it a closed
question, which is like what's my mobile versus desktop
conversion rates and order values and all that sort of
stuff. But you can also ask it an open
question, can't you? And say, based on my current
segmentation of customers, like you could ask Sidekick and based
on my current segmentations, have I segmented them right?
Am I missing something that is there any data in my customers
like in my customer data that means I should e-mail or
advertise or optimize the site differently as a result?
And it, it will start to give you some incredible insights
like the percentage of people that put a gift note with their
order. And it's like we're a gifting
business and we didn't even know.
We just thought we were selling products, but how?
I mean, how's AI changing the way people actually engage with
e-mail as well? Like we've spoken about the
emails arriving in inboxes. How's AI changing both the way
customers engage with e-mail and then therefore come and shop?
Yeah, yeah. That's interesting.
I think the e-mail piece is, is the one that I have been most
curious about personally. You know, it's, it's tough.
My, my poor wife, every time she's shopping online, I'm
saying, oh, how'd you get there? What do you, what do you see on
this page? You know I can't never turn it
off. Yeah, I do the same.
Which e-mail? What did you like about that
e-mail? And so I've been spending a lot
of time in my own inbox watching the AI summaries.
And I think that that's something that people are going
to have to retrain. So, you know, for, for the past,
we've had our subject line or our preview text, right?
And the preview text is our little teaser that we're putting
in there. And we've been hearing for years
that eventually that preview text is going away and the, the
inbox is just going to make their own.
But I haven't seen people adopt that or adjust to that just yet.
One of my favorite ones that I was looking at yesterday was
even Nike. So, you know, it's it the, the
preview text is kids, children promotion denim available free
shipping over 50. And then I start to open that up
and I say, all right, what are they looking at here?
How are they deciding what's in that?
Because that's, that is a big, you know, difference that you
can stand out in the inbox because of that, that little
teaser line, right? And So what I'm starting to find
is that folks that are they're not using clear text.
They're that preview text, that AI summary is just missing the
mark completely. So you know, the in terms of
design and how you can control that clear language, really
calling out the products that you want.
It's going to summarize those and it's going to highlight what
it thinks is the most impactful thing.
So don't bury your promotion, don't bury the the your
products. Don't bury that It's a it's a
brand new or limited time or restock.
You know a lot of those, and we were talking about it earlier
when people are trying to work around and, you know, put
misleading subject lines and misleading content about your
order ships soon and you know what order I didn't order and
they're like, exactly you didn't order yet, but you should, you
know, those only work for so long, But the the reality is
limited time run or limited inventory.
Those are real things that hey, that thing that you looked at
is, is in there. And there are a couple different
ways that you you play into that.
There's the, the browse and the abandonment automations, but
really making sure that your design and your copy are very
scannable, you know, give the, the bots the information that
they're looking for. The second part of that is, you
know, we've been at Saguna, we've been doing this for years
and we're starting to see Gmail catch up and turn it on for a
while. But there's a, a shopping
feature in the promotions tab called Gmail annotations where
they will actually look and grab key products and the expiration
of that. And they put all of that
directly into the preview. So you don't even have to open
up the e-mail in order to see what the product is, what the
discount is. We do that automatically.
But you know, AI determines if they are going to render that or
not. If you haven't looked into Gmail
annotations, really cool thing. Definitely an overlooked feature
and a big benefit to anybody that's really afraid of the, the
promotions folder or how AI is scanning it.
I think those are the big ones. The the other piece that you
know, we're seeing more of again, is is that feedback loop
that we were talking about earlier, how people are engaging
it with your emails. If you're getting the opens, the
clicks, you know, if you're really trying to get your emails
into primary, you want them to think about, well, why would
Nick's e-mail be a primary my inbox?
It's because Nick and I will exchange a bunch of emails.
So asking for things like feedback in an e-mail of hey,
we're so excited that you just made your first purchase.
Please respond here, let me know how it goes.
Send me a picture of your, your beautiful new piece of furniture
that you just purchased or the, you know, the new outfit or
anything that we can do to try to get that authentic again,
authentic engagement is going to help with the inbox placement
there and how people are engaging with that.
So I I found an amazing. Campaign just off the back of
that well you just said I found an amazing campaign a while ago
where there was an automatic e-mail that went out and it and
it you can decide which side of this line it's on that like you
know thank you for your purchase oh you haven't purchased yet or
like or whether it's on the side of the line of going like that.
It's just really nice engagement when you talk about trying to
get the the customer to reply from their inbox to, you know,
to to your e-mail debate domain to build that, that two way
connection. They had an it went out from
someone in customer service. It was a real person and they
would alternate who it came from on the emails, but it would come
out and it would just be like a very simple like, Hi Brian, I
hope you're well. I just wanted to check your
order arrived. OK and that everything was
packaged well. Could you let me know what you
thought of it? And that was it.
But they had that as like a, they're 10 people in the
customer service team. And it was just also between the
10 people. Oh, it's such a simple, fast,
easy way to get that engagement. And I, I thought it was great
just to start a conversation. But as you've described, like
with AI filtering the inbox now that means you're, it's like,
oh, look, this brand's emailing Brian again, it's like, put it
straight at #1 in the inbox. And I think it's such a
powerful. Oh, absolutely.
And that that customer. Experience, you know, there's,
there are so many positive benefits from that, right?
There's the cut the repeat customer rate, I'm sure shot up
sky high. You know, the, the marketing
efficiency shot up the open rate probably jumped because those
those emails are landing better for those customers.
But, you know, those are things that we've always said that we
need to take better care of our customers.
But now AI is kind of holding us to those best practices, right?
It doesn't have to be anything crazy revolutionary.
That's just something checking in that you would say, hey, I
care about my customers, I'm going to respond to them.
They respond to me and I says, oh, this is a good interaction.
Absolutely. They'll bump it right up to the
top of the top of the inbox there.
Yeah. Yeah.
My. Something had fascinated me.
I haven't looked at it yet, but my wife ordered something a
couple of weeks ago and it was like a very sentimental gift for
like several people in the family and she'd ordered
multiple of them and only one arrived and the pack slip said
she was due multiple of them and she sort of phoned customer
service and she was a bit grumpy.
But about a minute into the conversation on the phone, she
was like, she's like, oh, you're going to send me another one
next day delivery and a discount codes like, oh, thank you.
So she was a bit grumpy at first go.
I've ordered these like I need them quickly.
They're like, don't worry, another one will be with you
tomorrow. I what was fascinating she then
she didn't like the next day I saw her browsing their website
going maybe we should buy some other stuff.
And I wondered how many people have had a bad experience, but
then customer service have put a Cape on and saved the day so
quick. There's actually because of the
engagement. And this is like it's, if you
did it over e-mail, you would get that same thing we're
describing of that reciprocal e-mail conversation that, and
then the spam filters and AI filters go like there's another
e-mail from your favorite. Like you e-mail them all the
time. Like, you know, like these guys
emailed you again. And it's, it's actually a sales
e-mail going like, Hey, buy some new products.
But it's like the AI is always getting excited going, you
bought a product last time. And here are the featured
products that I pulled out into the preview.
Like it's really, really smart. But I just thought, yeah, I I
haven't looked at any clients yet, but I wonder how many have
like made a return, contacted customer service and the
lifetime value is now higher. Not that you should do always
never send enough products or deliberately send the wrong
product out or something. That's but I mean, last
question, like if we come down to land on this, and I love
questions like this, it's always I love that.
Like if you're going to start out questions.
So Brian, you're an e-commerce brand, you're starting out from
scratch. You're like, right, I'm
obviously going to you're obviously going to use Saguno.
There's no question about that. Best software in the world going
to use Saguno. So you plug Saguno in to be as
AI friendly as possible. And it's to be as streamlined
with AI as possible with the whole e-mail process getting in
people's inbox. But you're obviously you're a
new brand, you're starting out. What are you thinking in terms
of how you're going to approach it?
What sort of stuff are you going to do?
And certainly people listening here, like I might change e-mail
providers where I just started recently or we've been going for
years, but we want to hit the reset button an e-mail like,
what would you do first? Where would you start?
What you thinking about? Oh man.
Well, first of all, I think I'm going to do, I'm going to have
to come back and we're going to have to do marketing lessons we
learnt from our partners. You know, we're just going to be
the shopping behavior of, of our wives and how those work out.
But let's say I'm, I'm starting a, a new E com brands and I'm
starting the e-mail program. I think there are a couple of a
couple of pieces that I'm looking for.
And really what I'm going to try to do is hammer on engagement.
You know, the the AI tools give us so much option for for
personalization in creating content faster than ever before.
And So what I'm what I want to do is I want to find the best
way to get them the most relevant message there.
And this isn't this isn't a brand new, you know, here's a
whole new thing behind it. It really just goes again back
down to to that best practice, right.
So it's not every customer is a in a monolithic, you know, box.
They all are the exact same. No, I, I get one e-mail, you get
1 e-mail. We have different tastes and
preferences. So asking your customers that.
So I'm going to try to get more of their preference from, from
that sign up point, even when they come in.
And then I'm going to start to pull in all that different data
that Shopify is looking for. So lately I've been having fun
with Sidekick of saying, find me all the customers who view this
product or purchase this product or have this tag.
And I'm building these more dynamic groups so I get a better
view of the customer. I think that's the big thing in
terms of how I'm going to start to bring my customers in is I
need to do more with identifying what's most relevant to them.
And it doesn't have to be anything crazy.
Shopify is collecting that data for you.
Just think about what, how you're, you're splitting those
out from there. I'm going to try to make sure
that I'm getting the the first engagement right.
We talked about if you're getting that reply, you're
getting that response. I'm going to really make sure
that the most relevant messages that are set up.
You know, that is going to be the the welcome series that you
know, This is why you want to this is about my brands that you
can trust me, I'm going to have my user generated content, my
authentic content in there. I'm going to be asking people
questions and feedback. But I think there's from there
we can we can get into quite a bit more, right.
So it's about matching what I can do when I'm not working in
the shop and picking and packing boxes with my brand new brand
with what my my strategy can maintain.
But getting yourself on that solid footing, I think is really
just again, collecting better data on who my customers are so
I can get them a more relevant message.
And then leaning into those those most relevant messages for
them, whether that's the the automation series or if when I'm
getting to my newsletters, I'm breaking them out to give them
the the more relevant products. So yeah, I'd almost.
I guess if I had to summarise what you, what you've said, I
guess in one single action, if if like emails completely alien
to someone, if because I agree with you on like automation
flows and stuff. But then I guess it's a level of
like you've got to be educated enough to know how to set up a
flow and what flows you're looking for and that kind of
thing. I'd almost say like the first
100 or even 1000 orders that come in, do some of the things
you've said, but almost just do them manually.
Just like literally send them an e-mail and be like, hey, you are
my first customer, congratulations.
And and say that up until the 100th, hey, you're our 83rd
customer. We have just launched.
Please could you send me as much feedback as possible on your
product that you bought? So I'd love to know everything,
what you use it for, what's bad about it?
Please let me know. And always try and keep that in
the DNA of the business as much as it then starts to grow.
Is that that whole thing? Say, yeah, I, I, I met a founder
a while ago. It was for a tech company.
But I said to him, like, what's the biggest challenge you've got
at the moment? And he said, he said, you know
what? I'm happy to put the hours in
and I'm happy to like graft my way through this kind of first
growth stage. But he said, I don't know what
to focus the graft on. Like do I make the products
incredible and people just find it?
Do I focus on sales and marketing, even the products not
very good? Like, and it was this whole kind
of balance. And I sort of said to him, I was
like, get the product to a point where it just works and then
convince someone somewhere to use it.
And you can either go for a numbers game where you could
just do, you know, just get that one customer who believes in it
and say, like, you can have it for free.
If I can get a case study, like we shouldn't be commerce widers
have have some free products. If I can get some reviews and
some feedback back and I want every three months when you let
me know how it's going, like for the first year and I'm and as
long as I can use your name as content, like, you know, Jill
bought this product and she said this, this and this about it
and, and therefore we've modified it to do this.
It's like now there's something people to actually engage with
with that same product launch. So but I love what you say, like
just getting those things set up initially and trying to get that
reciprocal engagement before anything else.
I think makes a lot of sense on it.
Brian, thank you so much for joining.
Appreciate. Yeah, we're going to do this
quick fire questions every week now.
So future guests, you've been warned.
I'm going to come out with some new ones.
I've already written 2 down we're going to use next time.
But Brian, thank you so much. If people are listening to this
and going, all right, Saguna sounds amazing.
There'll obviously be a link in down down below in the
description, but how else can people reach out with you guys,
engage with you guys? Obviously there's webinar next
week, but how can people reach out and kind of have a
conversation with yourself? Yeah, absolutely.
We'd love everyone to to. Start a trial.
There you go. No, no commitment there.
Built directly into Shopify. So you can go to seguno.com and
you can learn more about us there or you can find us in the
Shopify App Store. Just search for Seguno S e.g.
Uno Seguno e-mail marketing. And if you have any questions,
you know, you put a put a question through to the team.
It's going to land in now my inbox or, or one of the team
members here. We really love working with with
all of our merchants and and learning more about them.
So yeah and then I hope to hope to see you guys at the webinar
next week. Sounds like it should be a lot
of fun for us. Amazing, And I'm so excited for
the webinar because it's. One of the few webinars I've not
had to prepare anything. I'm just hosting, which is
great. So Brian and Ryan, which rhymes,
which is awesome, but Brian from Tax Club joining us as well and
Brian there. So if you want to come hang out
with us and there'll be some live Q&A and stuff as well.
So if you guys want to actually engage and if you've got a
burning questions, nothing to do what we're talking about next
week, then do let us know next week's theme as well.
Hidden threats that may be costing you big.
We've put a bit of an American on the end with the word big.
One of my English clients was like, why have we got that?
Is that? But yeah, come along guys.
There's so much that could threaten a business this year.
We're going to be uncovering some of the bits certainly in
there in the tax space and also in the e-mail space as well.
But thank you so much Brian for joining us today It's been
amazing thanks for everybody else tuning in from home.
We wouldn't be doing this without you guys.
It'd be a completely pointless exercise and I certainly
wouldn't put this much energy and time in and hope you can
join us again next week. I will be back again on Tuesday
with Tuesday tea break talks and we've got some incredible guests
lined up. There's a few face to face
studios. We've tide as well around town
in London. So we're going to be in some
really cool content over the next few months.
And we're going to be at conference in May, which I'll
talk about more as we get closer to that as well as you come meet
me if you're in the US. But thanks joining him back
again on Tuesday. This episode of winning Shopify
is brought to you by tax cloud. It's the busiest time of year
for e-commerce. Your stores buzzing, orders
flying in and growth is at an all time high.
But with all that momentum can come new sales tax exposure that
you might not even see coming. That's why now is the perfect
time to take a closer look at how you're handling sales tax
and make sure your business is set up for the growth that
you've earned. Tax Cloud as our trusted partner
for sales tax compliance built for growing Shopify brands.
They handle regulations, filings, and ongoing compliance
working directly with the states on your behalf across the US so
you can stay focused on running your store.
They've got a five star rating in the Shopify App Store and
listeners winning Shopify get free migration and boarding when
you make the switch. To apply for that and learn
more, you can go to taxcloud.com/winning.
That's taxcloud.com/winning.