Have you ever wondered how to perfect your email marketing strategy? Well, there's no one better to learn from than R.T. Custer, the man behind Vortic Watches, an expert in leveraging email marketing to its fullest potential.
In this episode, we dive deep into the nitty-gritty of e-commerce and how to master the game. R.T. shares his unique approach, tips, and secrets about the art of email marketing that has propelled Vortic Watches to unprecedented success.
Topics We Discussed:
📧 The pivotal role of email marketing in e-commerce
🎯 How to effectively use Klaviyo for email marketing
🔑 Understanding the importance of customer segmentation
📈 Tracking leading indicators like open rates and clickthrough rates
🔎 R.T.'s take on using AI, like ChatGPT, for email content creation and testing
R.T. Custer is not just a watchmaker, but a marketing maverick who has defied norms to create a unique niche in the watchmaking industry. His story is an inspiration for anyone looking to break into e-commerce, regardless of their product or industry.
Want to connect with R.T. and learn more about his innovative marketing strategies? Check him out on LinkedIn and join his community of e-commerce enthusiasts. It's a chance to learn from the best in the business.
Hi, It's Isar the host of the Business Growth Accelerator Podcast
I am passionate about growing businesses and helping CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs become more successful. I am also passionate about relationship building, community creation for businesses, and value creation through content.
I would love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a DM, and LMK you listened to the podcast, what you think and what topics you would like me to cover 🙏
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Isar Meitis (00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Business Growth
Accelerator.
This is Isar Matis, your host,and I've got a very special
topic for you today.
I'm very passionate aboutmarketing in general and about
how to grow businesses, but thestory today is a very special
story.
It's a very special storybecause I don't know anybody
anymore who makes stuff in theus.
(00:21):
It's mostly offshore anddefinitely I don't know anybody
who makes wristwatches here inthe US and that makes it even
more unique.
And our guest today, RT Custer,is that's what he does.
He makes wristwatches here inthe US very successfully, really
unique watches.
And you ask yourself, how thehell do you sell wristwatches
(00:42):
that are US made to a populationthat doesn't even know you exist
because you're not swatch orBrightLink and.
It's all about good marketingand what R.T.
Learned through the years thatmay be the most effective part
of marketing is the stuff thathe really owns.
Meaning not social media, butrather his email list.
(01:02):
And our entire conversationtoday is gonna go around how to
leverage email marketing as anincredible lever for business
growth regardless of what you'retrying to sell, even if you're
in a small niche business ofselling us made wristwatches.
And I think that's true forprobably any industry out there.
If you figure out how to developthe relevant email list and you
(01:25):
know how to use that to buildrelationships and grow trust
with your audience, you will beable to grow the business based
on that.
And then nobody can change analgorithm and screw you the next
day.
And hence, I think it's veryimportant to literally anybody
listening to know thisinformation.
(02:39):
Before we jump into today'sepisode, there's something I
want to share with you.
I've launched another podcast.
The podcast is called LeveragingAI And if you like this podcast,
you're gonna love leveraging AIbecause it's a very similar
approach.
I interview really smart peoplefrom the AI world practitioners
and experts who share how toleverage AI in order to grow
(03:01):
your business and advance yourcareer.
So pull up your phone right now,whatever platform you are using
in order to listen to thispodcast.
Search for leveraging ai, checkit out.
I think you'll find itfascinating.
There's a really fascinatinginterview with ChatGPT as the
guest.
It's unique and different andfun and interesting, and we talk
about the impact of AItechnology on businesses and
(03:23):
society as a whole.
So look for leveraging ai.
And if you enjoy it, subscribeto it and also write me a note
on LinkedIn and let me know whatyou think.
And now to the episode with RTCuster and rt, I'm so excited to
have you today.
Welcome to the Business
R.T. Custer (03:39):
Growth Accelerator.
Thanks for having me, sir.
I'm excited to share the story.
Isar Meitis (03:45):
Awesome.
Let's start with when did youfigure this out?
When did you know what, becauseyou have such a unique story, I
don't usually do that, but howthe hell did you get to selling
wristwatches?
R.T. Custer (03:57):
my business partner, Tyler Wolf and I had
some crazy ideas on the golfcourse back at Penn State, when
we were studying, and they allcentered around wristwatches.
We did a ton of research tryingto figure out, like you said,
there aren't many, if any,wristwatches manufactured in
America and we were passionateabout made in U S A and so we
said, okay, if we're gonna starta wristwatch manufacturing
(04:18):
company, let's try to make it inAmerica.
And we did a ton of research andwe stumbled on the history of
what we call the Great AmericanWatch companies.
And about a hundred years ago,hundreds of millions of pocket
watches were made in U S A.
This was like the railroad era,so like the 18 hundreds.
And then the early 19 hundreds,everybody had a pocket watch
(04:38):
that was, what was in our pocketinstead of cell phones back
then.
And that was really the only wayto tell time besides the clock,
and certainly the only way totell time on the go.
And today, fast forward, ahundred years.
Most pocket watches are scrappedby pawn shops and places like
that for the gold and the silverof the outside case of the
pocket watch, leaving the insidewhat we call the movement dial
(05:00):
in hands or all the guts of thepocket watch, scrapped and
useless to most of the world.
And we had this crazy idea toupcycle those old pocket watches
into wrist watches.
And since no one makes Americanmovements all the gears and
springs for a mechanical watchin the usa, when we upcycle
(05:20):
these old ones, now we have atruly made in USA product
because we figured out and wethought we would be a little
easier to figure out how to makethe case and the crown and all
the outside of the wristwatchhere in America.
and we did.
So long story short, we put thatidea on Kickstarter back in 2014
and we've sold every watch we'vemade since we call it the
(05:41):
American Artisan Series.
And our company's called Vortic,V O R T I C, like Vortex and
TikTok.
And that's what we do.
It's like a beautiful clash ofold and new.
Isar Meitis (05:53):
That's incredible.
Like literally an amazing story.
Let's talk about marketing andemail marketing specifically.
When in your journey, youfigured out that this was the
big thing for you.
R.T. Custer (06:06):
Yeah.
so at some point, I want to say2018 or something like that, I
was emailing all of ourcustomers individually.
we didn't really, we had a smallemail list of basically just our
customers and prospects that Ihad met at trade shows or
something like that.
And
Isar Meitis (06:25):
so we're talking a few hundreds of people,
R.T. Custer (06:27):
give me a scale, maybe a thousand, 1500,
something like that.
Yeah.
And cuz we had been in businessfor four or five years at that
point.
So we had collected, yeah,probably one or 2000 emails and
I was just, conversationallyemailing those people, talking
about watches and more reactiveand less proactive and not
reaching out to them.
And I had a conversation withTyler and he said something to
(06:50):
the effect of what if wepromoted you to the point where
you're not doing all thisday-to-day stuff?
We, we hired someone to do thecustomer service and talk to all
these customers and then I couldspeak to thousands of people
every time I hit send instead ofhundreds of people, meaning
email and social media and justtrying to get the word out, and
(07:11):
try to speak to lots and lots ofpeople.
and that started the journey.
And then obviously like overthose next couple years, I was
trying to figure out how to growthe email list and I did all
kinds of stuff to, to grow thelist, which we can get into.
And then the, it really caughton in 2020.
(07:33):
We pivoted, as I'm sure a lot ofcompanies did in 2020, but we
were doing, prior to thepandemic, we were doing a lot of
custom made to order watches,and anytime you can send us your
grandpa's pocket watch and we'llturn it into wristwatch.
We call that Convert your Watch.
It's a really cool service.
But we were doing a lot ofcustom stuff for, just Hey, I,
they wanted a very specificpocket watch.
(07:54):
I work with them via email andkind of figure it out.
During the pandemic, peopledidn't want to pay in full
upfront thousands of dollars fora custom wristwatch and then
wait six months.
People wanted instantgratification.
And so we pivoted and we starteddoing this thing called watch of
the day.
And in June of 2020, we made onenew, one of a kind watch every
(08:15):
day.
and I think at that point wewere five days a week at some,
at a certain point we went tosix days a week.
And since all watches areliterally one of a kind and a
unique piece is what we call itevery day, we had a new story.
We had a new watch to talkabout.
And so we posted that online.
Typically they sold reallyquickly, but
Alessandro Bogliari (08:32):
I did this thing called the weekly Roundup
where I sent one email a weekand I said, here's the five or
six watches that we made thisweek.
Here's all of our watches of theday.
And that sold out the otherwatches that we hadn't sold just
organically on socialimmediately.
And it just caught on.
And so starting, I think I wasjust looking at my email
software, I think it was August,2020, I started sending a weekly
(08:55):
email newsletter on Tuesdayafternoon, and then I built a
custom flow or a, an automatedwelcome series and for almost
three years, I was doing oneemail a week and having a
welcome series to, to welcomeall the new, subscribers in and
take them on the journey of ourcompany so far.
(09:17):
And that's really when, I wouldsay from 2018 2019 when we had a
2,000 email subscribers, by2023, we now have, roughly
40,000 subscribers.
Wow.
and that's just all from focusand intention.
Isar Meitis (09:34):
I have a lot of questions.
I'll start with the first onejust to get people's attention.
What percentage of your salescome from email
R.T. Custer (09:41):
subscribers, if Yes, it's great.
Great question.
Yeah, and I just, I pulled up mynumber so I could answer cuz I,
I figured that would be aquestion.
in since year to date, so rightnow it's early May.
year to date, 42% of our saleshave come from email marketing,
and of that 42%, 71% have comefrom campaigns or my weekly
(10:01):
email newsletters.
And 30% have come from flows orthose welcome series.
Yeah.
Isar Meitis (10:08):
Incredible.
By the way, these are crazy highnumbers.
And by the way, these areassumed direct numbers, meaning
if somebody's been reading youremail and then not clicking on
the email, but coming to you tobuy something with a, you don't
even know.
So the number is probablyactually higher than the 40
something percent you werementioning.
R.T. Custer (10:24):
Yeah.
so we use Klaviyo and Klaviyouses cookies and all kinds of
other things besides your emailaddress to figure out, got it.
Who you are.
And then, because I have youremail address on my email list,
and then you use, as long as youuse that same email address to
make your purchase.
Yeah.
So what you just said isaccurate.
Unless they're using the sameemail address that I have on my
(10:46):
list to make the purchase,which, you're correct in that
those numbers are low.
I'm sure other people usedifferent emails to make
purchases, for all kinds ofdifferent reasons.
So I definitely, I would say ifmy software is telling me 42% of
our revenue, I would bet it'scloser to 50.
I think that's probablyaccurate.
Isar Meitis (11:02):
So half the sales come from email marketing.
Yeah.
Incredible.
So let's really talk, let'sbreak this down into different
steps, right?
The first step is, let's figureout how you grew your email
list, right?
You said you went from 3000 to40,000 in a couple of years.
That's a lot of people, and it'sa lot of people.
(11:23):
You're not talking about how togrow on social media or the
coolest kind of coffee orsomething that a lot of people
are interested in.
It's like unique wrist watches,which has its benefits, right?
It's a.
Pretty niche kind of world.
Yeah.
But you still need to find thepeople and attract them enough
to come and sign up.
So what was your process orprocesses or ways you've used to
(11:44):
grow your email list from a fewthousands to a few tens of
thousands, just two years.
R.T. Custer (11:48):
Y so great question.
Number one is consistency.
So in order to grow, you have tokeep the people that you have
and keep them engaged.
And I think a lot of ourbusiness is word of mouth and
people telling their friendslike, Hey, you gotta check out
Vortic Watch Company.
They make one of a kind watches,like it's an old pocket watch
(12:10):
upcycled and a wrist watch.
It's just the coolest thing and.
And so people go, and then, andI'm sure other people say, Hey,
hop on their email list.
That's the easiest way to, toconnect.
And obviously we have all kindsof popups and stuff like that,
but you have to keep themengaged.
So that's number one.
And so to do that, you have totell good stories in the emails.
You have to have a distinctreason to send the email every
(12:31):
week, which we did.
we were making one new, one of akind watch every day.
And so I had that roundupconcept of here's the last few
watches we made.
And I was never spamming peoplebecause they wanted to see the
watches that we made that week,because either they're shopping
for a watch or did they justthink what we do is cool.
And then I also.
I follow Sam Parr and theHustle, which is, he sold the
(12:55):
hustle to HubSpot and he has aamazing podcast called My First
Million if you Don't Follow Him,but The Hustle was one of the
largest email newsletters forentrepreneurs.
And one of the things that, thatthey did, that I stole,
innovation wise is they said,let us tell you what's happening
this week, but first here's, aquick note from our sponsor, but
(13:16):
first here's a quick reminder ofour event.
And so I use that same strategyto say, Hey, all the watches
that we made this week arebelow, but first.
Here's this thing that's comingup, or here's what we've been
working on this week, or here'sa YouTube video of me, on a
podcast talking about the newthing.
or check us out at the tradeshow that's coming up this
weekend.
And so that's like theoverarching strategy that I use
(13:38):
to always tell a story everyTuesday when I hit send on these
emails besides just sendingpeople watches they could buy.
And so that's number one is justlike retention.
It's like you have thesecustomers, you gotta keep'em,
you gotta keep'em engaged andkeep that number always going up
to actually get that numbergoing up.
I did a few things.
(13:58):
One is just all the basics.
So going back to basics on thestuff that an ad agency or a
marketing guru tell you to do.
So we use Shopify for ourwebsite.
There's all kinds of apps andplugins.
for the first three years weused, an app called Campaign
Monitor for our emaildistribution, or that's a, They
call it an email serviceprovider, an E s P.
(14:19):
So that was the app I used tosend the emails.
Now as of January this year, Iswitched to Klaviyo, which I
highly recommend.
It's just a lot more robust.
But those email serviceproviders create really easy
ways for you to add popups andflyouts and things on your
website.
the, it's called an exit intent,right?
So you go up to click the x onthe top of a website and all of
(14:41):
a sudden you get a popup, and itsays, Hey, before you leave, hop
on our email list so you don'tforget about us.
We installed all those basicthings to try to make sure we
obtain someone's email addressthe first time they're on our
website before they leave.
Isar Meitis (14:54):
I gotta ask you a very specific question about
that.
Yep.
me personally, every time apopup shows up on the screen, I
don't even see what's in it andI click out of it.
Yep.
What were successful hooks thatyou had to get people, because
it's usually an exchange, right?
Most people will not say, Hey,sign up to our email list.
I'm like, why the hell would Isign up to your email list?
Yeah.
So usually you gotta give them areason.
(15:16):
You gotta give them some valuein return for them giving you
the email address.
What were the most successfulhooks you had on those pop-ups
to get people to actually signup?
R.T. Custer (15:25):
For us, it's a little bit different.
Our business, I feel reallylucky in that we make the
coolest watches on planet Earthand the product really sells
itself.
And so for us, we tried to keepit really simple and we just
said, Hey, our watches sell outreally quickly.
We make just one a day.
And when they're sold, they'regone.
Don't miss out.
Get on the list.
It's the only way we distributethese in this information.
(15:46):
If you're not on this list,you're not gonna be able to buy
the watch that you want.
And that works.
That worked for us for years.
So on,
Isar Meitis (15:53):
on a bigger scale.
Scarcity, right?
Scarcity works.
You create scarcity and peopleare like, okay, emergency, I re
if you want this thing.
Yep.
And
R.T. Custer (16:02):
that's the way to get it then.
So That's what we did.
and that worked for us, and Ithink that works for similar
businesses to ours.
The other thing I've done andthe other way I've used to grow
the list is sweepstakes andgiveaways.
So we are very againstdiscounts.
The only discount you can get ona Vortic watch is if you've
served the United Statesmilitary.
You get 10% off with codemilitary.
That's the only way you can geta discount.
(16:24):
And we verify that you'veactually have served our country
and we thank you for yourservice and give you a discount.
If you have not served ourcountry, you don't get a
discount on our products.
And we feel really stronglyabout that.
So we always did either addedvalue or, a sweepstakes or a
giveaway.
And so for years, when I went totrade shows, events, on the
website, those popups, I'vetried it all kinds of different
(16:46):
ways.
I've partnered with otherbrands, but we said okay, we're
gonna do most of that time, Idid two giveaways or sweepstakes
a year.
I did like a Father's Day thing.
Most of our clients are incustomers, are men, and and then
I don't know, I'm a dad, so Ilike dad jokes and like that we
had a lot of fun with some ofthose Father's Day sweepstakes.
You get to watch a suit, shoesand like a bunch of socks, stuff
(17:08):
like that.
and so we always did like a biggiveaway and the only way to
enter the giveaway is byentering your email address in
the software.
Yeah.
So that's one.
And then we always did anotherone around the holidays.
And I use that for two ways.
One, to grow the list and two,to keep people on the list.
So for my holiday, yeah, theycould've gotta stay to win.
Exactly.
So in order to be entered to winthe sweepstakes, you have to
(17:30):
stay on the email list.
And, there's pros and cons tothat methodology.
our, when I had about five or10,000 people on the list, Our
open rates were above 20%.
Now I have 40,000.
Our open rates are slightlyunder 20%.
And so when you have a lot ofpeople that just throw their,
(17:52):
the, we all have an emailaddress we use to enter to win
stuff.
Yes.
And then we just really almostnever check it.
Yeah.
so I, I have a fair amount ofthose people on the list that we
just constantly clean up.
if you haven't opened an emailin the last 90 days, I'm
probably gonna just manuallyunsubscribe to you, or I'm gonna
add you to a separate list to,to clean that up.
Yep.
but sweepstakes, giveaways,things like that are really good
(18:12):
for list growth.
The other thing I've seen peopledo that, that we don't, and
that's why I address withdiscounts, is discounts really
work.
so if you're a brand that canoffer 10%, 15% off, by signing
up for the email list, thatworks.
I just, I bought, a jacket theother day and I signed up for
the email list, got 15% off, andthen bought the jacket and I
(18:33):
probably would've bought thejacket anyway, but that just
made it a no-brainer for me.
I'm like, yeah, you know what?
that's really interesting.
I'm gonna get a discount.
And then now I'm on that guy'semail list and so I'll probably
buy more things.
So
Isar Meitis (18:44):
I wanna touch on a few things you said, as a quick
summary on maybe behind thethings that you talked about.
And they're all very important.
One is, and I'll start with whatwe talked about in the
beginning, it's all aboutproviding value.
Like you won't provide value topeople.
They will either unsubscribe orstop reading your emails.
So that's number one.
Number two is finding uniqueways for people.
(19:05):
Give them a real reason to signup.
But I think with everything yousaid, and I agree with you a
hundred percent, if you givethem the right reason to sign
up, meaning it's not a hook justto get your email.
It's, I wanna provide you valuesomehow or give you access to
stuff you won't have access tootherwise.
And so on.
That's the real value becausepeople just sign up for the
sweepstake are not gonna openyour emails.
(19:26):
So it doesn't really matter thatthey're on the list.
and the last thing you said thathas to do with that, and it has
to do both on the technicalaspect of the actual health of
the email platform as well asyour ability to communicate with
the people properly, is yougotta constantly clean up your
list.
Yes.
Yep.
And so if people are not openingyour emails, remove them.
And usually what you do is youopen a new branch in your email
(19:49):
platform and you put them inthat branch.
And that branch is like givingthem chances to come back and
open emails and you literallywarn them and say, okay, I'm
gonna give you, this is yourlast chance and I'm gonna give
you this and give you that.
And if they don't, to justremove them from the list
because it really hurts all yourstatistics and it's very hard to
really understand what's goingon and really hard to understand
(20:10):
whether you're doing better orworse because you grew the list
with a lot of people are notrelevant is Part of that, how
much are actual relevant people?
Yeah.
And with those people, I'mactually doing better or worse.
So you gotta, not to mention thefact that you're paying for all
the emails that you send.
So if you send in 40,000 emails,if there's 7,000 emails you
don't need to send, that's 20%that you're paying for.
(20:31):
For no good reason.
So yeah, there, there are a lotof reason to clean up the email
list.
I think this was all very solidadvice.
Let's start talking about thenewsletter themselves.
Okay.
You gave a little bit of contexton what kind of stuff you put in
the email, but really how do youeven approach it from a
strategic perspective?
Meaning do you have a calendarwith a ho, with holidays?
(20:55):
Do you have specific times ofyear that people buy more, like
you said, father's Day.
and under that, let's startdrilling into what's actual the
tactics of in each and every oneof the emails.
R.T. Custer (21:05):
Totally.
So first thing with an emailnewsletter is consistency.
If you are not, if you want tosend an email newsletter and you
wanna make this part of yourbusiness and you don't send an
email at least once a week, thenyou might as well not do it.
That's my take, that's my hottake if you disagree.
But I don't think at this, in2023, that is not spam.
(21:28):
We all have subscribed to thingsthat send us multiple emails a
day and still remain subscribedto those things because either
we want a discount or we're acustomer of that brand, or we
just delete them cuz we don'teven care.
sending one email a week I thinkis a must from a frequency
standpoint and keeping yourconsumers up to date with what
(21:49):
you're doing and who you are.
Basically staying top of mindwith your customer.
And so for us, we sent one emaila week for the last three years
in January, I started sendingtwo emails a week.
And you can see, 40% of myrevenue is from, from emails and
that is working, but it ispotentially decreasing our open
(22:13):
rates and potentially could harmour brand if we don't do it
correctly.
so one of the things that I useto justify sending more than one
email a week is we're puttingout a lot of content.
And so that's what youmentioned, a calendar.
I would say once you decide howfrequently you want to send,
which like I said, I would sendonce a week, I think that's a
really good place to start.
(22:34):
It's also just a good cadencefor yourself if you're doing
this yourself.
You just, you always have thesame time and day.
Once you figure that out, thenit's okay, let's map this out on
a calendar.
What am I talking about everyweek?
Yes.
Start with holidays.
Basic stuff.
holidays coming up.
If, again, if you do discountsor sales or promotions, you can,
it's like car dealerships.
It's here's the Labor Day saleand the whatever day.
(22:56):
it just, there's all kinds ofways you can promote.
for us, we release specialwatches on holidays.
Oh, nice.
And so like most recent was StarWars Day May 4th.
Yep.
and on May 4th we released anall black watch.
That was just really cool.
And it was like very Darth Vaderesque, and I sent an email on
that day, and we sold that watchin minutes and it was really
(23:17):
cool.
And our web traffic spiked whenI sent that email.
And people, commented andanswered the email and said, oh,
I missed it.
like, when are you makinganother one?
next May 4th probably.
But yeah.
you have to have a reason tosend and then you can create
content around that cadence.
So for us, for years, about twoyears, we've been doing a weekly
(23:38):
YouTube TV show, called Custerand Wolf Building a watch
company.
and that's myself and mybusiness partner, and we sit
down and.
Basically just talk about behindthe scenes, all the stuff we're
working on.
And so we have a YouTube videothat comes out every week.
And so we have a distinct reasonto send an email every week to
say, Hey, check out our newYouTube video and look at all
(23:58):
the watches we made last week.
Yeah.
and so that's what we've beendoing.
Tons of ways.
You can do that as anotherbrand.
You can, if you don't haveconsistent content or events or
things coming up, I would layout all the reasons you could
talk about yourself and talkabout your brand.
sales events, new products, newthings in life.
(24:19):
You can highlight similarthings.
You can highlight, currentevents happening in the world.
all kinds of stuff like that.
you can basically like once amonth or once every other month,
you can add just a quick andeasy email that says, Hey, if
you're not, go follow us onsocial, and take your email
subscribers and try to get themto go follow you on Instagram or
(24:40):
YouTube or something like that.
there's huge lists of ideasaround that kind of stuff.
What I would recommend is if youdon't know what to send an email
about, don't just google likeemail topics, cuz that can get
really convoluted and boring.
look at social media calendars.
There's so much free contentabout what to post on Pinterest,
(25:02):
what to post on Instagram.
And those are like, they'retrying to get you to post every
day.
And so now you get 365 examples,you just need 52.
And so you can take that andsay, okay, here's 365 ideas
from.
This social media contentplanner, I'm gonna pick the 52
best and those are my 52 emailsthat I'm gonna send this year.
(25:23):
that's what I would recommendaround, what am I sending?
and then I just, I want to hitconsistency again.
Pick a day and a time and sendit.
At that day, at that time, everyweek for years, I did Tuesday
afternoon.
There was one that I missed.
And on Wednesday morning I wasgetting messages, like texts
from friends and investors andpeople are like, Hey, are you
(25:44):
okay?
I didn't get the email.
It's a big deal.
Like people look forward tothose emails.
And for me, I just, I did someresearch and I said, okay.
Tuesday probably has a reallyhigh open rate as compared to
other days of the week.
I would avoid Mondays andFridays and weekends.
People are getting so manyemails and they're not at their
desks.
(26:04):
For me.
we have a predominantly maleaudience that's probably 40
plus.
and that has, like a fairlysizable income.
And so at Tuesday, at noonMountain time, 2:00 PM Pacific
Time, they're probably at lunchor taking a break or, at their
desk, and they get an email fromthe watch company that they
follow and they're like, yeah, Icould take 5-10 minutes and read
(26:25):
this.
that felt good and that workedfor us for years.
Now that I'm sending two emailsa week, I send Tuesdays, Tuesday
afternoons and either Thursdayafternoon or Friday morning.
and I'm testing those.
Isar Meitis (26:38):
So I love what you're saying.
I want to touch on two points.
One is how important it is tohave a plan.
Cause if you have to figure itout on the fly, A, it's gonna be
really difficult and you'regonna feel like you're chasing
this all the time and you'rebehind the eight ball and not
really doing what you need to bedoing.
And B, you will, not send asgood as emails as if you have
(27:03):
time to think about it and planthem.
yeah.
So that's number one.
Number two is ideas don't haveto come from you.
Yeah.
You can, a lot of people havereally successful email
newsletters by sharing news fromthe industry.
Yep.
And that's very easy to do.
You go to Google and say, okay,what's interesting happening?
Not to mention now with likechats and bard and stuff like
that, you can know what are theinteresting things that happen
(27:24):
in this and that industry thispast week?
And now we can put thattogether.
And people in the industry who,or care about the topic you
wanna talk about, will want youremail, because that's gonna be
their weekly digest on what'sactually going on.
And then you can sprinkle intothat the stuff that you're doing
and the stuff that you wannatalk about.
So I, I love all the stuff thatyou mentioned.
(27:47):
How do you measure success?
Like how do you say, oh, thiswas good, this was bad, here's
what we need to improve on andso on.
R.T. Custer (27:57):
That's a great question.
So few ways.
One is get yourself a good emailservice provider like Klaviyo.
there are a lot of great ones.
Flow Desk is another great onefor, unless you're, if you have
a physical product and you're onShopify, in my opinion, you
should use Klaviyo.
It's a little more expensive.
But, Shopify actually investedin Klaviyo.
They have an officialpartnership, on the order of a
(28:19):
hundred million dollars.
And so they play nice with data.
It's well integrated.
Yep.
It's very exactly, it's verywell integrated.
And so there's a lot of data youcan get directly from the email
service provider like Klaviyo.
you can also get a ton of datafrom Shopify in, where did this
sale come from?
And there's lots of ways you cantrack, and I am not an expert on
(28:42):
data tracking, so I'm not gonnapretend that I know, like how to
set up the right u t m and allthat kind of stuff.
but I trust the dashboards.
and the dashboards tell me thebasics on what I need to know.
As, as far as all those numberswe rattled off and the.
Beginning of the podcast.
The other thing you can do is apost-purchase survey.
And I have one of those andthat's really good.
(29:02):
And I would recommend keepingyour questions in your
post-purchase survey more aroundwhere they originally heard
about you, at least the firstround of questions.
But the way we're structuringour post-purchase survey now,
and that's just if you go onVortic watches.com, you go all
the way to checkout and youpurchase a watch right after you
click by, it's gonna give you asurvey at the top of the page
(29:23):
along with your receipt below,and it's gonna say, Hey, how did
you hear about us?
And then when you answer thatquestion, it'll ask you another
question and it'll keep askingyou questions for a fuke be if
you're willing to share thatinformation, massively valuable
for us.
And most people are, they arewilling to share that info.
And so that post-purchase surveyis awesome.
You want to know how theyoriginally heard about you, but
(29:44):
then two, three questions later.
If they're still answeringquestions, you can say, what
made you decide to make thispurchase email?
Social media, advertising,whatever.
And, you can also leave some ofthose blank so that people can
just type.
And that's massively valuable.
People are really free with thatinformation.
And we have a lot of people,like I was just looking at our
(30:06):
post-purchase survey datayesterday actually, and we got a
watch on Kevin O'Leary, Mr.
Wonderful.
From Shark Tank.
Yeah.
And he did a video that hasalmost 2 million views on
YouTube about our watch.
And in that post-purchasesurvey, the word Kevin comes up,
I think 500 people filled outthat survey, at least the
(30:28):
numbers I was looking at.
And I bet I saw that at least 10times.
I saw Kevin O'Leary or Mr.
Wonderful, or something likethat.
which means that person justtold me they originally heard
about us because they watchedthat video, or they saw that we
got a watch on Kevin O'Leary.
And that's really valuable.
So it's okay.
How do we use that informationto make decisions?
(30:48):
And I think that's what you'regetting at Estar is like how do,
if you have that data is power.
How do you use that power forthe right thing and make really
smart decisions based on thatdata.
And the only way you can do thatis if you collect that data
properly.
And yeah, email service providerdata, Shopify, your website
data, Google Analytics is reallygood too.
That's interesting, but a lot ofother facets there.
(31:11):
And then post-purchase survey ishuge.
the last thing I'll say isperiodically make your subject
lines and your call to action inthe email a question, especially
in flows like the automatedwelcome series.
Ask a question as many times asyou can within reason.
I would say if you're doing itin your weekly email newsletter,
(31:32):
don't do it more than once amonth, cuz people will just get
annoyed by that.
But ask a question.
People will think that you, thefounder of the company, sent
them a personal email that wasbeautifully designed and that
didn't go to 39,000 otherpeople.
And they will answer that emailand answer that question.
And so that's not statisticallyrelevant data because you're not
(31:55):
gonna get too many answers.
But that is, I call it feel gooddata.
it's just like I'm asking thisquestion and I have two or three
people answer.
Okay.
People are paying attention,people are reading the email,
they're not just opening it.
And a small percentage, eventhree people took the time to
sit down and say, Hey, rt, greatquestion.
I heard about VTE because ofKevin O'Leary.
(32:15):
Or I saw your watch on JohnKrasinski on Jack Bryan, or, I
saw an ad on Instagram orwhatever.
and that's how I found out aboutyou.
Ps they'll say all these other,I have a watch, great customer
service.
your guy Kyle, just killed it.
great job.
Keep it up.
that's really feel good data forme.
Isar Meitis (32:32):
So I wanna touch on the last topic you talked about,
because I think it's massivelyimportant and I think too many
businesses ignore it because ofthe first point you touched on.
So there's two types of data,right?
We have quantitative data andqualitative data.
Yes.
And today's day and era, you canhave all the quantitative data
in the world you want cuz it'sall digital.
(32:53):
You can track what they collect,when they collect, how long they
visited, what pages they'veseen, how long they spent on
each page, see where their mousewent.
Like literally from a qualquantitative data, you can get
it all.
What quantitative data tellsyou.
It tells you what happened.
Yep.
It doesn't tell you why ithappened.
Yep.
And what tells you why ithappened is, Qualitative data.
(33:18):
Yes.
And the bigger problem withqualitative data is a, it's not
automatically collected.
You have to be very consciousabout asking for it.
And the second problem probablyjust got solved in the last few
months is how the hell do youanalyze it?
So let's say you ask everysingle person for a review of
whatever sort, or how did youhear about it?
okay, now let's say you're abigger brand and you don't sell
(33:39):
a watch a day, but you'reselling 10,000 things a day.
Yeah.
How the hell, I'm gonna trackthat.
the way you track that today isthat artificial intelligence
today can do this for you foreither free or almost free.
And you can use tools.
I use a tool called, numerous AIthat basically is an extension
of Google Sheets and or, Excel.
(34:01):
And you can drop all the data inthere, which is probably where
it lives anyway.
And now you can literally ask itany question about that data and
you will give you the answers.
How many people mentioned.
Whoever, how many people use theword podcast?
How many, and you will buildthe, or what are the main
buckets you would put theseinto?
(34:22):
And it will tell you on its own,because it's Chati PT running
within Google Sheets, tellingyou whatever you wanna know on a
huge amount of data in seconds.
So you don't have to read any ofthat.
It will analyze whether it'spositive or negative or like
whatever you want to know in afew sentences you can find.
So it solves the problem ofanalyzing a large amount of
(34:43):
qualitative data and then likeyou said, this is where the gold
really is.
Yeah.
Because if you understand, let'stake your case as an example,
that using high profileindividuals that are successful
male in your case, in order topromote this thing is the most
successful way to promote this.
Okay.
How do I get this on more famouspeople and how do I find a way
(35:06):
to tell an interesting storyabout it?
That they will actually sharethe story.
But this really gives you theinformation of why people are
taking action.
And I love your idea of whatmade you make the purchase,
right?
Think how powerful that is toknow that information.
And you don't need 10,000 peopleto tell you that you need a
hundred percent, because thatgives you valuable enough
(35:27):
statistics saying, okay, this isthe biggest driver.
and with these two questions, bythe way, those very particular
questions, how did you hearabout us as OpenText Field and
what made you make the purchaseas an OpenText field will tell
you everything you need to knowabout how you're generating
demand and how you're capturingdemand, which are the two most
important things for anybusiness who's selling, whether
(35:48):
a service or a product.
So I absolutely love, the pointsthat
R.T. Custer (35:52):
you raised.
Yeah.
and just one clarifying point onthat.
Cause I have had thatpost-purchase survey live on our
website for years.
And I haven't looked at it in along time, but my business
partner and I were talking aboutthese subjects and just like
attribution, like where are oursales coming from?
Cause we, we had a really goodmonth last month, and so far
this month we're doing great.
And we're just trying to figureout okay, we're, we changed a
(36:14):
bunch of stuff, what's working?
And we're going through all thatdata right now and it's really
fascinating.
what I, listen, I was listeningto another podcast, it's called
10 Years in the making, by theguy who started retention.com,
which is pretty cool.
and he had a guy named ChaseDiamond on there, which is a, I
don't consider myself an emailmarketing expert.
I'm just really passionate aboutit and I love it.
Chase is an email marketingexpert and he's a much bigger
(36:36):
scale than I am.
but he said start when you startout like your first.
Few hundred, responses that youget to that post-purchase
survey, leave them open-endedand let people just type things
in.
And then use a service, like yousaid, numerous or a word cloud
service to figure out what arepeople answering.
And then at a certain point, andat a certain scale, when you're
(36:58):
starting to get thousands ofresponses, you want more qual
quantitative data.
And so you should take that openresponses and then create
dropdowns, and save and make itjust one of four things.
And people just click on one offour things and now you get at
scale more statisticallyrelevant data and you don't have
to run it through those servicesand figure it out.
(37:20):
You can just look at and say,okay, the last 30 days of PO pur
post purchase survey data, 25%of our customers came from an
Instagram ad suite.
That's working good validation.
you can make decisions fasterwith that, easier to access
data, if that makes sense.
So
Isar Meitis (37:35):
I'm probably not as successful in email marketing as
this guy, but I would stronglydisagree with the tools we had
today.
So until that's fair.
Four months ago when you had tomanually go and go through that
data to put it in buckets andanalyze it and it would
literally take you hours.
I would agree.
I think the value of hearingwhat people have to say in the
way they wanna say it, what youget with a dropdown is huge
(37:57):
biases.
First of all, people will picksomething.
A lot of people will randomlypick something just because you
put a thing in front of them andthey will click and you'll see
in every time you do a dropdownmenu on a large scale, the first
option gets a lot more clicksthan anything else.
Practical people click on thething and they click on the
first one just because they wantit to go away.
So actually having OpenTextmandatory fields that now you
(38:18):
can analyze very easily probablywins.
hands down.
But I'm not saying I'm an expertbetter than this guy.
I'm just saying my personalopinion
R.T. Custer (38:25):
about it.
And he was coming from like aneight and nine figure Shopify
store.
Yeah.
So they're getting probably10,000 orders a day or something
crazy, so I agree with you.
And for my brand, we're, sincewe're getting, very small amount
of total orders, I prefer theopen-ended data, and I agree
with you.
It's not that hard to gothrough.
it, I think there's a lot of,there's a lot of context that's
(38:46):
needed to make these decisionsand, probably some grain assault
that we can add here to say, Irun a fairly small business, and
if you're running an eight, ninefigure Shopify store, Y you
should probably talk to somebodyabout email marketing that has
done that kind of scale.
Yeah.
I mostly speak to like mymastermind for instance, is
(39:07):
people that haven't quite madeit to seven figures yet.
And so my audience and thepeople I speak to are, are at
that scale or even, or maybe myscale, if that makes sense.
Yep.
Makes
Isar Meitis (39:17):
perfect sense.
There's a bunch of other thingsI want to ask you, so we'll make
a quick, rapid fire, segment.
Yes.
Yep.
rapid fire number one, what'sthe leading indicators like, are
there other stuff that's notsales related, like open rates
or clickthrough rates orsomething that you measure and
have you found it to really be aleading indicator?
R.T. Custer (39:38):
You're always measuring open rates, click
through rates, unsubscriberates, spam rates, obviously
purchase data.
typically in dollars, notpercentage or rates.
There's another thing that, thatKlaviyo has that I really like,
which is a dollar in revenue perrecipient.
Yeah.
Which is cool.
And so you can track like fordifferent segments, how valuable
(40:02):
is this segment?
and that's neat.
And so those are the thingsyou're tracking.
Are they leading indicators?
I think so.
For most businesses, my businessis like I said, weird, because
we make a very different thanniche product to, like you said,
that.
I wouldn't say they'renecessarily leading indicators
for me, but it is really helpfulto, to look at, especially open
(40:26):
rate data.
and so for instance, the, whenI've been sending two emails a
week, my Tuesday email I send tomy entire list.
It's roughly 40,000 people.
My open rates is, 16 to 18%.
and so that's, what is it, 5,000people or so on that email that
I'm sending the second email ofthe week.
(40:47):
In order to not spam people, I'mnot sending it to the same list.
I created a segment called 90Day Engaged, and you only get
that second email this week ifyou have clicked on or opened an
email in the last 90 days.
And those in theory, are my moreengaged people and followers and
things like that.
Those open rates are closer to40%.
(41:09):
and the list is about half thesize.
And so I'm speaking to the sameamount of people.
When you do the math, it's 5,000people and it's probably the
same people, but it might notbe.
And my mass email to everyone isprobably re-engaging those
people.
And then the other one isbringing them in and hopefully
making'em make a purchase.
But yeah, I would say of allthose leading indicators and
(41:30):
data open rate is the one that Ipay attention to the most.
Yeah, I agree.
Isar Meitis (41:35):
So last question before I let tell people where
they can actually buy your coolwatches or follow you or do your
mastermind.
What tools do you use other thanKlaviyo to maybe come up with
subject lines or AB test orfigure out other stuff, the
content.
(41:56):
Do you use any AI stuff to writeit for you?
What other tools you use inorder to create this magic?
R.T. Custer (42:01):
So I love chat, G p t, for pretty much all of that.
I'm a good writer.
I really enjoy writing, and Iuse, my own, I don't really use
chat g p t to edit my ownwriting as much as I like maybe
should.
Typically I'll put my writinginto chat G p t and say, rewrite
this and make it more concise.
(42:22):
Yeah.
Or use, I forget what it'scalled.
talk to me like I'm fivelanguage, basically Yeah.
Yeah.
make it really simple andstraightforward and precise
language.
So I like using chat G B T forthat.
And I'm sure there's all kindsof other plugins that are
probably better at that, but Ijust use the main chat, G B T.
And then yes, subject lines onchat.
C b T are clutch.
(42:42):
There's also, I don't think Ihave it here, but I bought a
book on Amazon that's a thousandsubject lines, just a a thousand
subject line ideas for emailmarketing.
There's all kinds of books andeducation and blogs out there to
talk about subject lines.
when we're talking about subjectlines though, in order to get
ideas, one of the best ideasthat I've had, and that I've
(43:03):
shared a lot, is if you'resending a weekly email
newsletter that's 52 subjectlines a year.
Yeah.
And that's 52 pieces of contentyou have to come up with.
And I know we spoke to this, butI would say, If you're
struggling with that, make alist of the 52 frequently asked
questions that your audience andyour customers have for you.
(43:25):
Yeah.
And then answer those questionsonce a week.
Yeah.
And that's huge.
And you can just free write, putthat into something like chat c
bt and say, write me a subjectline for each one of these 52
questions.
some of'em will be questions,some will be as straightforward.
All that kind of stuff.
That's huge.
And then if you're doing anautomated welcome series that,
let's say it's 10 emails long,pick your 10 best performing
(43:48):
flows, or your 10 bestperforming subject lines and
emails and content, and,probably your 10 most frequently
asked questions.
And those are your automatedemails that everybody gets when
they join your list for thefirst time.
So that's the stuff that I use.
And you're really, to answeryour question, I like all the
standard stuff like Klaviyo,Shopify, that kind of stuff.
(44:08):
And then I just use chat, T P TI try to keep it really simple.
Fantastic
Isar Meitis (44:12):
rt.
This was really fascinating.
I think we shared, we, youshared a lot of really valuable
information.
if people wanna buy yourwatches, follow you, do your
mastermind, see you on socialmedia, what's the best way to do
that?
R.T. Custer (44:26):
Totally.
So my platform of choice isInstagram.
I'm just Rt Custer on Instagram.
You can also find me rtcuster.com.
That's how you can connect withme.
Vortic is V O R T I c, Vorticwatches.com.
Check that out, hop on the emaillist so you can see everything
that we just talked about, liveand inaction.
And then, yeah, I co-host a andco-lead a mastermind called Fast
(44:50):
Foundations.
And so I love talking aboutemail, but I mostly teach and
talk about marketing in general.
and you can find more aboutthat@fastfoundations.com.
Amazing.
Isar Meitis (45:01):
R.T., thank you so much.
This was really great.
I appreciate your time andsharing your knowledge.
R.T. Custer (45:06):
Thanks having me.
Sorry.
Super fun.
Hello and welcome to the Business Growth
Accelerator.
This is Isar Matis, your host,and I've got a very special
topic for you today.
I'm very passionate aboutmarketing in general and about
how to grow businesses, but thestory today is a very special
story.
It's a very special storybecause I don't know anybody
anymore who makes stuff in theus.
(00:21):
It's mostly offshore anddefinitely I don't know anybody
who makes wristwatches here inthe US and that makes it even
more unique.
And our guest today, RT Custer,is that's what he does.
He makes wristwatches here inthe US very successfully, really
unique watches.
And you ask yourself, how thehell do you sell wristwatches
(00:42):
that are US made to a populationthat doesn't even know you exist
because you're not swatch orBrightLink and.
It's all about good marketingand what R.T.
Learned through the years thatmay be the most effective part
of marketing is the stuff thathe really owns.
Meaning not social media, butrather his email list.
(01:02):
And our entire conversationtoday is gonna go around how to
leverage email marketing as anincredible lever for business
growth regardless of what you'retrying to sell, even if you're
in a small niche business ofselling us made wristwatches.
And I think that's true forprobably any industry out there.
If you figure out how to developthe relevant email list and you
(01:25):
know how to use that to buildrelationships and grow trust
with your audience, you will beable to grow the business based
on that.
And then nobody can change analgorithm and screw you the next
day.
And hence, I think it's veryimportant to literally anybody
listening to know thisinformation.
(02:39):
Before we jump into today'sepisode, there's something I
want to share with you.
I've launched another podcast.
The podcast is called LeveragingAI And if you like this podcast,
you're gonna love leveraging AIbecause it's a very similar
approach.
I interview really smart peoplefrom the AI world practitioners
and experts who share how toleverage AI in order to grow
(03:01):
your business and advance yourcareer.
So pull up your phone right now,whatever platform you are using
in order to listen to thispodcast.
Search for leveraging ai, checkit out.
I think you'll find itfascinating.
There's a really fascinatinginterview with ChatGPT as the
guest.
It's unique and different andfun and interesting, and we talk
about the impact of AItechnology on businesses and
(03:23):
society as a whole.
So look for leveraging ai.
And if you enjoy it, subscribeto it and also write me a note
on LinkedIn and let me know whatyou think.
And now to the episode with RTCuster and rt, I'm so excited to
have you today.
Welcome to the Business
R.T. Custer (03:39):
Growth Accelerator.
Thanks for having me, sir.
I'm excited to share the story.
Isar Meitis (03:45):
Awesome.
Let's start with when did youfigure this out?
When did you know what, becauseyou have such a unique story, I
don't usually do that, but howthe hell did you get to selling
wristwatches?
R.T. Custer (03:57):
my business partner, Tyler Wolf and I had
some crazy ideas on the golfcourse back at Penn State, when
we were studying, and they allcentered around wristwatches.
We did a ton of research tryingto figure out, like you said,
there aren't many, if any,wristwatches manufactured in
America and we were passionateabout made in U S A and so we
said, okay, if we're gonna starta wristwatch manufacturing
(04:18):
company, let's try to make it inAmerica.
And we did a ton of research andwe stumbled on the history of
what we call the Great AmericanWatch companies.
And about a hundred years ago,hundreds of millions of pocket
watches were made in U S A.
This was like the railroad era,so like the 18 hundreds.
And then the early 19 hundreds,everybody had a pocket watch
(04:38):
that was, what was in our pocketinstead of cell phones back
then.
And that was really the only wayto tell time besides the clock,
and certainly the only way totell time on the go.
And today, fast forward, ahundred years.
Most pocket watches are scrappedby pawn shops and places like
that for the gold and the silverof the outside case of the
pocket watch, leaving the insidewhat we call the movement dial
(05:00):
in hands or all the guts of thepocket watch, scrapped and
useless to most of the world.
And we had this crazy idea toupcycle those old pocket watches
into wrist watches.
And since no one makes Americanmovements all the gears and
springs for a mechanical watchin the usa, when we upcycle
(05:20):
these old ones, now we have atruly made in USA product
because we figured out and wethought we would be a little
easier to figure out how to makethe case and the crown and all
the outside of the wristwatchhere in America.
and we did.
So long story short, we put thatidea on Kickstarter back in 2014
and we've sold every watch we'vemade since we call it the
(05:41):
American Artisan Series.
And our company's called Vortic,V O R T I C, like Vortex and
TikTok.
And that's what we do.
It's like a beautiful clash ofold and new.
Isar Meitis (05:53):
That's incredible.
Like literally an amazing story.
Let's talk about marketing andemail marketing specifically.
When in your journey, youfigured out that this was the
big thing for you.
R.T. Custer (06:06):
Yeah.
so at some point, I want to say2018 or something like that, I
was emailing all of ourcustomers individually.
we didn't really, we had a smallemail list of basically just our
customers and prospects that Ihad met at trade shows or
something like that.
And
Isar Meitis (06:25):
so we're talking a few hundreds of people,
R.T. Custer (06:27):
give me a scale, maybe a thousand, 1500,
something like that.
Yeah.
And cuz we had been in businessfor four or five years at that
point.
So we had collected, yeah,probably one or 2000 emails and
I was just, conversationallyemailing those people, talking
about watches and more reactiveand less proactive and not
reaching out to them.
And I had a conversation withTyler and he said something to
(06:50):
the effect of what if wepromoted you to the point where
you're not doing all thisday-to-day stuff?
We, we hired someone to do thecustomer service and talk to all
these customers and then I couldspeak to thousands of people
every time I hit send instead ofhundreds of people, meaning
email and social media and justtrying to get the word out, and
(07:11):
try to speak to lots and lots ofpeople.
and that started the journey.
And then obviously like overthose next couple years, I was
trying to figure out how to growthe email list and I did all
kinds of stuff to, to grow thelist, which we can get into.
And then the, it really caughton in 2020.
(07:33):
We pivoted, as I'm sure a lot ofcompanies did in 2020, but we
were doing, prior to thepandemic, we were doing a lot of
custom made to order watches,and anytime you can send us your
grandpa's pocket watch and we'llturn it into wristwatch.
We call that Convert your Watch.
It's a really cool service.
But we were doing a lot ofcustom stuff for, just Hey, I,
they wanted a very specificpocket watch.
(07:54):
I work with them via email andkind of figure it out.
During the pandemic, peopledidn't want to pay in full
upfront thousands of dollars fora custom wristwatch and then
wait six months.
People wanted instantgratification.
And so we pivoted and we starteddoing this thing called watch of
the day.
And in June of 2020, we made onenew, one of a kind watch every
(08:15):
day.
and I think at that point wewere five days a week at some,
at a certain point we went tosix days a week.
And since all watches areliterally one of a kind and a
unique piece is what we call itevery day, we had a new story.
We had a new watch to talkabout.
And so we posted that online.
Typically they sold reallyquickly, but
Alessandro Bogliari (08:32):
I did this thing called the weekly Roundup
where I sent one email a weekand I said, here's the five or
six watches that we made thisweek.
Here's all of our watches of theday.
And that sold out the otherwatches that we hadn't sold just
organically on socialimmediately.
And it just caught on.
And so starting, I think I wasjust looking at my email
software, I think it was August,2020, I started sending a weekly
(08:55):
email newsletter on Tuesdayafternoon, and then I built a
custom flow or a, an automatedwelcome series and for almost
three years, I was doing oneemail a week and having a
welcome series to, to welcomeall the new, subscribers in and
take them on the journey of ourcompany so far.
(09:17):
And that's really when, I wouldsay from 2018 2019 when we had a
2,000 email subscribers, by2023, we now have, roughly
40,000 subscribers.
Wow.
and that's just all from focusand intention.
Isar Meitis (09:34):
I have a lot of questions.
I'll start with the first onejust to get people's attention.
What percentage of your salescome from email
R.T. Custer (09:41):
subscribers, if Yes, it's great.
Great question.
Yeah, and I just, I pulled up mynumber so I could answer cuz I,
I figured that would be aquestion.
in since year to date, so rightnow it's early May.
year to date, 42% of our saleshave come from email marketing,
and of that 42%, 71% have comefrom campaigns or my weekly
(10:01):
email newsletters.
And 30% have come from flows orthose welcome series.
Yeah.
Isar Meitis (10:08):
Incredible.
By the way, these are crazy highnumbers.
And by the way, these areassumed direct numbers, meaning
if somebody's been reading youremail and then not clicking on
the email, but coming to you tobuy something with a, you don't
even know.
So the number is probablyactually higher than the 40
something percent you werementioning.
R.T. Custer (10:24):
Yeah.
so we use Klaviyo and Klaviyouses cookies and all kinds of
other things besides your emailaddress to figure out, got it.
Who you are.
And then, because I have youremail address on my email list,
and then you use, as long as youuse that same email address to
make your purchase.
Yeah.
So what you just said isaccurate.
Unless they're using the sameemail address that I have on my
(10:46):
list to make the purchase,which, you're correct in that
those numbers are low.
I'm sure other people usedifferent emails to make
purchases, for all kinds ofdifferent reasons.
So I definitely, I would say ifmy software is telling me 42% of
our revenue, I would bet it'scloser to 50.
I think that's probablyaccurate.
Isar Meitis (11:02):
So half the sales come from email marketing.
Yeah.
Incredible.
So let's really talk, let'sbreak this down into different
steps, right?
The first step is, let's figureout how you grew your email
list, right?
You said you went from 3000 to40,000 in a couple of years.
That's a lot of people, and it'sa lot of people.
(11:23):
You're not talking about how togrow on social media or the
coolest kind of coffee orsomething that a lot of people
are interested in.
It's like unique wrist watches,which has its benefits, right?
It's a.
Pretty niche kind of world.
Yeah.
But you still need to find thepeople and attract them enough
to come and sign up.
So what was your process orprocesses or ways you've used to
(11:44):
grow your email list from a fewthousands to a few tens of
thousands, just two years.
R.T. Custer (11:48):
Y so great question.
Number one is consistency.
So in order to grow, you have tokeep the people that you have
and keep them engaged.
And I think a lot of ourbusiness is word of mouth and
people telling their friendslike, Hey, you gotta check out
Vortic Watch Company.
They make one of a kind watches,like it's an old pocket watch
(12:10):
upcycled and a wrist watch.
It's just the coolest thing and.
And so people go, and then, andI'm sure other people say, Hey,
hop on their email list.
That's the easiest way to, toconnect.
And obviously we have all kindsof popups and stuff like that,
but you have to keep themengaged.
So that's number one.
And so to do that, you have totell good stories in the emails.
You have to have a distinctreason to send the email every
(12:31):
week, which we did.
we were making one new, one of akind watch every day.
And so I had that roundupconcept of here's the last few
watches we made.
And I was never spamming peoplebecause they wanted to see the
watches that we made that week,because either they're shopping
for a watch or did they justthink what we do is cool.
And then I also.
I follow Sam Parr and theHustle, which is, he sold the
(12:55):
hustle to HubSpot and he has aamazing podcast called My First
Million if you Don't Follow Him,but The Hustle was one of the
largest email newsletters forentrepreneurs.
And one of the things that, thatthey did, that I stole,
innovation wise is they said,let us tell you what's happening
this week, but first here's, aquick note from our sponsor, but
(13:16):
first here's a quick reminder ofour event.
And so I use that same strategyto say, Hey, all the watches
that we made this week arebelow, but first.
Here's this thing that's comingup, or here's what we've been
working on this week, or here'sa YouTube video of me, on a
podcast talking about the newthing.
or check us out at the tradeshow that's coming up this
weekend.
And so that's like theoverarching strategy that I use
(13:38):
to always tell a story everyTuesday when I hit send on these
emails besides just sendingpeople watches they could buy.
And so that's number one is justlike retention.
It's like you have thesecustomers, you gotta keep'em,
you gotta keep'em engaged andkeep that number always going up
to actually get that numbergoing up.
I did a few things.
(13:58):
One is just all the basics.
So going back to basics on thestuff that an ad agency or a
marketing guru tell you to do.
So we use Shopify for ourwebsite.
There's all kinds of apps andplugins.
for the first three years weused, an app called Campaign
Monitor for our emaildistribution, or that's a, They
call it an email serviceprovider, an E s P.
(14:19):
So that was the app I used tosend the emails.
Now as of January this year, Iswitched to Klaviyo, which I
highly recommend.
It's just a lot more robust.
But those email serviceproviders create really easy
ways for you to add popups andflyouts and things on your
website.
the, it's called an exit intent,right?
So you go up to click the x onthe top of a website and all of
(14:41):
a sudden you get a popup, and itsays, Hey, before you leave, hop
on our email list so you don'tforget about us.
We installed all those basicthings to try to make sure we
obtain someone's email addressthe first time they're on our
website before they leave.
Isar Meitis (14:54):
I gotta ask you a very specific question about
that.
Yep.
me personally, every time apopup shows up on the screen, I
don't even see what's in it andI click out of it.
Yep.
What were successful hooks thatyou had to get people, because
it's usually an exchange, right?
Most people will not say, Hey,sign up to our email list.
I'm like, why the hell would Isign up to your email list?
Yeah.
So usually you gotta give them areason.
(15:16):
You gotta give them some valuein return for them giving you
the email address.
What were the most successfulhooks you had on those pop-ups
to get people to actually signup?
R.T. Custer (15:25):
For us, it's a little bit different.
Our business, I feel reallylucky in that we make the
coolest watches on planet Earthand the product really sells
itself.
And so for us, we tried to keepit really simple and we just
said, Hey, our watches sell outreally quickly.
We make just one a day.
And when they're sold, they'regone.
Don't miss out.
Get on the list.
It's the only way we distributethese in this information.
(15:46):
If you're not on this list,you're not gonna be able to buy
the watch that you want.
And that works.
That worked for us for years.
So on,
Isar Meitis (15:53):
on a bigger scale.
Scarcity, right?
Scarcity works.
You create scarcity and peopleare like, okay, emergency, I re
if you want this thing.
Yep.
And
R.T. Custer (16:02):
that's the way to get it then.
So That's what we did.
and that worked for us, and Ithink that works for similar
businesses to ours.
The other thing I've done andthe other way I've used to grow
the list is sweepstakes andgiveaways.
So we are very againstdiscounts.
The only discount you can get ona Vortic watch is if you've
served the United Statesmilitary.
You get 10% off with codemilitary.
That's the only way you can geta discount.
(16:24):
And we verify that you'veactually have served our country
and we thank you for yourservice and give you a discount.
If you have not served ourcountry, you don't get a
discount on our products.
And we feel really stronglyabout that.
So we always did either addedvalue or, a sweepstakes or a
giveaway.
And so for years, when I went totrade shows, events, on the
website, those popups, I'vetried it all kinds of different
(16:46):
ways.
I've partnered with otherbrands, but we said okay, we're
gonna do most of that time, Idid two giveaways or sweepstakes
a year.
I did like a Father's Day thing.
Most of our clients are incustomers, are men, and and then
I don't know, I'm a dad, so Ilike dad jokes and like that we
had a lot of fun with some ofthose Father's Day sweepstakes.
You get to watch a suit, shoesand like a bunch of socks, stuff
(17:08):
like that.
and so we always did like a biggiveaway and the only way to
enter the giveaway is byentering your email address in
the software.
Yeah.
So that's one.
And then we always did anotherone around the holidays.
And I use that for two ways.
One, to grow the list and two,to keep people on the list.
So for my holiday, yeah, theycould've gotta stay to win.
Exactly.
So in order to be entered to winthe sweepstakes, you have to
(17:30):
stay on the email list.
And, there's pros and cons tothat methodology.
our, when I had about five or10,000 people on the list, Our
open rates were above 20%.
Now I have 40,000.
Our open rates are slightlyunder 20%.
And so when you have a lot ofpeople that just throw their,
(17:52):
the, we all have an emailaddress we use to enter to win
stuff.
Yes.
And then we just really almostnever check it.
Yeah.
so I, I have a fair amount ofthose people on the list that we
just constantly clean up.
if you haven't opened an emailin the last 90 days, I'm
probably gonna just manuallyunsubscribe to you, or I'm gonna
add you to a separate list to,to clean that up.
Yep.
but sweepstakes, giveaways,things like that are really good
(18:12):
for list growth.
The other thing I've seen peopledo that, that we don't, and
that's why I address withdiscounts, is discounts really
work.
so if you're a brand that canoffer 10%, 15% off, by signing
up for the email list, thatworks.
I just, I bought, a jacket theother day and I signed up for
the email list, got 15% off, andthen bought the jacket and I
(18:33):
probably would've bought thejacket anyway, but that just
made it a no-brainer for me.
I'm like, yeah, you know what?
that's really interesting.
I'm gonna get a discount.
And then now I'm on that guy'semail list and so I'll probably
buy more things.
So
Isar Meitis (18:44):
I wanna touch on a few things you said, as a quick
summary on maybe behind thethings that you talked about.
And they're all very important.
One is, and I'll start with whatwe talked about in the
beginning, it's all aboutproviding value.
Like you won't provide value topeople.
They will either unsubscribe orstop reading your emails.
So that's number one.
Number two is finding uniqueways for people.
(19:05):
Give them a real reason to signup.
But I think with everything yousaid, and I agree with you a
hundred percent, if you givethem the right reason to sign
up, meaning it's not a hook justto get your email.
It's, I wanna provide you valuesomehow or give you access to
stuff you won't have access tootherwise.
And so on.
That's the real value becausepeople just sign up for the
sweepstake are not gonna openyour emails.
(19:26):
So it doesn't really matter thatthey're on the list.
and the last thing you said thathas to do with that, and it has
to do both on the technicalaspect of the actual health of
the email platform as well asyour ability to communicate with
the people properly, is yougotta constantly clean up your
list.
Yes.
Yep.
And so if people are not openingyour emails, remove them.
And usually what you do is youopen a new branch in your email
(19:49):
platform and you put them inthat branch.
And that branch is like givingthem chances to come back and
open emails and you literallywarn them and say, okay, I'm
gonna give you, this is yourlast chance and I'm gonna give
you this and give you that.
And if they don't, to justremove them from the list
because it really hurts all yourstatistics and it's very hard to
really understand what's goingon and really hard to understand
(20:10):
whether you're doing better orworse because you grew the list
with a lot of people are notrelevant is Part of that, how
much are actual relevant people?
Yeah.
And with those people, I'mactually doing better or worse.
So you gotta, not to mention thefact that you're paying for all
the emails that you send.
So if you send in 40,000 emails,if there's 7,000 emails you
don't need to send, that's 20%that you're paying for.
(20:31):
For no good reason.
So yeah, there, there are a lotof reason to clean up the email
list.
I think this was all very solidadvice.
Let's start talking about thenewsletter themselves.
Okay.
You gave a little bit of contexton what kind of stuff you put in
the email, but really how do youeven approach it from a
strategic perspective?
Meaning do you have a calendarwith a ho, with holidays?
(20:55):
Do you have specific times ofyear that people buy more, like
you said, father's Day.
and under that, let's startdrilling into what's actual the
tactics of in each and every oneof the emails.
R.T. Custer (21:05):
Totally.
So first thing with an emailnewsletter is consistency.
If you are not, if you want tosend an email newsletter and you
wanna make this part of yourbusiness and you don't send an
email at least once a week, thenyou might as well not do it.
That's my take, that's my hottake if you disagree.
But I don't think at this, in2023, that is not spam.
(21:28):
We all have subscribed to thingsthat send us multiple emails a
day and still remain subscribedto those things because either
we want a discount or we're acustomer of that brand, or we
just delete them cuz we don'teven care.
sending one email a week I thinkis a must from a frequency
standpoint and keeping yourconsumers up to date with what
(21:49):
you're doing and who you are.
Basically staying top of mindwith your customer.
And so for us, we sent one emaila week for the last three years
in January, I started sendingtwo emails a week.
And you can see, 40% of myrevenue is from, from emails and
that is working, but it ispotentially decreasing our open
(22:13):
rates and potentially could harmour brand if we don't do it
correctly.
so one of the things that I useto justify sending more than one
email a week is we're puttingout a lot of content.
And so that's what youmentioned, a calendar.
I would say once you decide howfrequently you want to send,
which like I said, I would sendonce a week, I think that's a
really good place to start.
(22:34):
It's also just a good cadencefor yourself if you're doing
this yourself.
You just, you always have thesame time and day.
Once you figure that out, thenit's okay, let's map this out on
a calendar.
What am I talking about everyweek?
Yes.
Start with holidays.
Basic stuff.
holidays coming up.
If, again, if you do discountsor sales or promotions, you can,
it's like car dealerships.
It's here's the Labor Day saleand the whatever day.
(22:56):
it just, there's all kinds ofways you can promote.
for us, we release specialwatches on holidays.
Oh, nice.
And so like most recent was StarWars Day May 4th.
Yep.
and on May 4th we released anall black watch.
That was just really cool.
And it was like very Darth Vaderesque, and I sent an email on
that day, and we sold that watchin minutes and it was really
(23:17):
cool.
And our web traffic spiked whenI sent that email.
And people, commented andanswered the email and said, oh,
I missed it.
like, when are you makinganother one?
next May 4th probably.
But yeah.
you have to have a reason tosend and then you can create
content around that cadence.
So for us, for years, about twoyears, we've been doing a weekly
(23:38):
YouTube TV show, called Custerand Wolf Building a watch
company.
and that's myself and mybusiness partner, and we sit
down and.
Basically just talk about behindthe scenes, all the stuff we're
working on.
And so we have a YouTube videothat comes out every week.
And so we have a distinct reasonto send an email every week to
say, Hey, check out our newYouTube video and look at all
(23:58):
the watches we made last week.
Yeah.
and so that's what we've beendoing.
Tons of ways.
You can do that as anotherbrand.
You can, if you don't haveconsistent content or events or
things coming up, I would layout all the reasons you could
talk about yourself and talkabout your brand.
sales events, new products, newthings in life.
(24:19):
You can highlight similarthings.
You can highlight, currentevents happening in the world.
all kinds of stuff like that.
you can basically like once amonth or once every other month,
you can add just a quick andeasy email that says, Hey, if
you're not, go follow us onsocial, and take your email
subscribers and try to get themto go follow you on Instagram or
(24:40):
YouTube or something like that.
there's huge lists of ideasaround that kind of stuff.
What I would recommend is if youdon't know what to send an email
about, don't just google likeemail topics, cuz that can get
really convoluted and boring.
look at social media calendars.
There's so much free contentabout what to post on Pinterest,
(25:02):
what to post on Instagram.
And those are like, they'retrying to get you to post every
day.
And so now you get 365 examples,you just need 52.
And so you can take that andsay, okay, here's 365 ideas
from.
This social media contentplanner, I'm gonna pick the 52
best and those are my 52 emailsthat I'm gonna send this year.
(25:23):
that's what I would recommendaround, what am I sending?
and then I just, I want to hitconsistency again.
Pick a day and a time and sendit.
At that day, at that time, everyweek for years, I did Tuesday
afternoon.
There was one that I missed.
And on Wednesday morning I wasgetting messages, like texts
from friends and investors andpeople are like, Hey, are you
(25:44):
okay?
I didn't get the email.
It's a big deal.
Like people look forward tothose emails.
And for me, I just, I did someresearch and I said, okay.
Tuesday probably has a reallyhigh open rate as compared to
other days of the week.
I would avoid Mondays andFridays and weekends.
People are getting so manyemails and they're not at their
desks.
(26:04):
For me.
we have a predominantly maleaudience that's probably 40
plus.
and that has, like a fairlysizable income.
And so at Tuesday, at noonMountain time, 2:00 PM Pacific
Time, they're probably at lunchor taking a break or, at their
desk, and they get an email fromthe watch company that they
follow and they're like, yeah, Icould take 5-10 minutes and read
(26:25):
this.
that felt good and that workedfor us for years.
Now that I'm sending two emailsa week, I send Tuesdays, Tuesday
afternoons and either Thursdayafternoon or Friday morning.
and I'm testing those.
Isar Meitis (26:38):
So I love what you're saying.
I want to touch on two points.
One is how important it is tohave a plan.
Cause if you have to figure itout on the fly, A, it's gonna be
really difficult and you'regonna feel like you're chasing
this all the time and you'rebehind the eight ball and not
really doing what you need to bedoing.
And B, you will, not send asgood as emails as if you have
(27:03):
time to think about it and planthem.
yeah.
So that's number one.
Number two is ideas don't haveto come from you.
Yeah.
You can, a lot of people havereally successful email
newsletters by sharing news fromthe industry.
Yep.
And that's very easy to do.
You go to Google and say, okay,what's interesting happening?
Not to mention now with likechats and bard and stuff like
that, you can know what are theinteresting things that happen
(27:24):
in this and that industry thispast week?
And now we can put thattogether.
And people in the industry who,or care about the topic you
wanna talk about, will want youremail, because that's gonna be
their weekly digest on what'sactually going on.
And then you can sprinkle intothat the stuff that you're doing
and the stuff that you wannatalk about.
So I, I love all the stuff thatyou mentioned.
(27:47):
How do you measure success?
Like how do you say, oh, thiswas good, this was bad, here's
what we need to improve on andso on.
R.T. Custer (27:57):
That's a great question.
So few ways.
One is get yourself a good emailservice provider like Klaviyo.
there are a lot of great ones.
Flow Desk is another great onefor, unless you're, if you have
a physical product and you're onShopify, in my opinion, you
should use Klaviyo.
It's a little more expensive.
But, Shopify actually investedin Klaviyo.
They have an officialpartnership, on the order of a
(28:19):
hundred million dollars.
And so they play nice with data.
It's well integrated.
Yep.
It's very exactly, it's verywell integrated.
And so there's a lot of data youcan get directly from the email
service provider like Klaviyo.
you can also get a ton of datafrom Shopify in, where did this
sale come from?
And there's lots of ways you cantrack, and I am not an expert on
(28:42):
data tracking, so I'm not gonnapretend that I know, like how to
set up the right u t m and allthat kind of stuff.
but I trust the dashboards.
and the dashboards tell me thebasics on what I need to know.
As, as far as all those numberswe rattled off and the.
Beginning of the podcast.
The other thing you can do is apost-purchase survey.
And I have one of those andthat's really good.
(29:02):
And I would recommend keepingyour questions in your
post-purchase survey more aroundwhere they originally heard
about you, at least the firstround of questions.
But the way we're structuringour post-purchase survey now,
and that's just if you go onVortic watches.com, you go all
the way to checkout and youpurchase a watch right after you
click by, it's gonna give you asurvey at the top of the page
(29:23):
along with your receipt below,and it's gonna say, Hey, how did
you hear about us?
And then when you answer thatquestion, it'll ask you another
question and it'll keep askingyou questions for a fuke be if
you're willing to share thatinformation, massively valuable
for us.
And most people are, they arewilling to share that info.
And so that post-purchase surveyis awesome.
You want to know how theyoriginally heard about you, but
(29:44):
then two, three questions later.
If they're still answeringquestions, you can say, what
made you decide to make thispurchase email?
Social media, advertising,whatever.
And, you can also leave some ofthose blank so that people can
just type.
And that's massively valuable.
People are really free with thatinformation.
And we have a lot of people,like I was just looking at our
(30:06):
post-purchase survey datayesterday actually, and we got a
watch on Kevin O'Leary, Mr.
Wonderful.
From Shark Tank.
Yeah.
And he did a video that hasalmost 2 million views on
YouTube about our watch.
And in that post-purchasesurvey, the word Kevin comes up,
I think 500 people filled outthat survey, at least the
(30:28):
numbers I was looking at.
And I bet I saw that at least 10times.
I saw Kevin O'Leary or Mr.
Wonderful, or something likethat.
which means that person justtold me they originally heard
about us because they watchedthat video, or they saw that we
got a watch on Kevin O'Leary.
And that's really valuable.
So it's okay.
How do we use that informationto make decisions?
(30:48):
And I think that's what you'regetting at Estar is like how do,
if you have that data is power.
How do you use that power forthe right thing and make really
smart decisions based on thatdata.
And the only way you can do thatis if you collect that data
properly.
And yeah, email service providerdata, Shopify, your website
data, Google Analytics is reallygood too.
That's interesting, but a lot ofother facets there.
(31:11):
And then post-purchase survey ishuge.
the last thing I'll say isperiodically make your subject
lines and your call to action inthe email a question, especially
in flows like the automatedwelcome series.
Ask a question as many times asyou can within reason.
I would say if you're doing itin your weekly email newsletter,
(31:32):
don't do it more than once amonth, cuz people will just get
annoyed by that.
But ask a question.
People will think that you, thefounder of the company, sent
them a personal email that wasbeautifully designed and that
didn't go to 39,000 otherpeople.
And they will answer that emailand answer that question.
And so that's not statisticallyrelevant data because you're not
(31:55):
gonna get too many answers.
But that is, I call it feel gooddata.
it's just like I'm asking thisquestion and I have two or three
people answer.
Okay.
People are paying attention,people are reading the email,
they're not just opening it.
And a small percentage, eventhree people took the time to
sit down and say, Hey, rt, greatquestion.
I heard about VTE because ofKevin O'Leary.
(32:15):
Or I saw your watch on JohnKrasinski on Jack Bryan, or, I
saw an ad on Instagram orwhatever.
and that's how I found out aboutyou.
Ps they'll say all these other,I have a watch, great customer
service.
your guy Kyle, just killed it.
great job.
Keep it up.
that's really feel good data forme.
Isar Meitis (32:32):
So I wanna touch on the last topic you talked about,
because I think it's massivelyimportant and I think too many
businesses ignore it because ofthe first point you touched on.
So there's two types of data,right?
We have quantitative data andqualitative data.
Yes.
And today's day and era, you canhave all the quantitative data
in the world you want cuz it'sall digital.
(32:53):
You can track what they collect,when they collect, how long they
visited, what pages they'veseen, how long they spent on
each page, see where their mousewent.
Like literally from a qualquantitative data, you can get
it all.
What quantitative data tellsyou.
It tells you what happened.
Yep.
It doesn't tell you why ithappened.
Yep.
And what tells you why ithappened is, Qualitative data.
(33:18):
Yes.
And the bigger problem withqualitative data is a, it's not
automatically collected.
You have to be very consciousabout asking for it.
And the second problem probablyjust got solved in the last few
months is how the hell do youanalyze it?
So let's say you ask everysingle person for a review of
whatever sort, or how did youhear about it?
okay, now let's say you're abigger brand and you don't sell
(33:39):
a watch a day, but you'reselling 10,000 things a day.
Yeah.
How the hell, I'm gonna trackthat.
the way you track that today isthat artificial intelligence
today can do this for you foreither free or almost free.
And you can use tools.
I use a tool called, numerous AIthat basically is an extension
of Google Sheets and or, Excel.
(34:01):
And you can drop all the data inthere, which is probably where
it lives anyway.
And now you can literally ask itany question about that data and
you will give you the answers.
How many people mentioned.
Whoever, how many people use theword podcast?
How many, and you will buildthe, or what are the main
buckets you would put theseinto?
(34:22):
And it will tell you on its own,because it's Chati PT running
within Google Sheets, tellingyou whatever you wanna know on a
huge amount of data in seconds.
So you don't have to read any ofthat.
It will analyze whether it'spositive or negative or like
whatever you want to know in afew sentences you can find.
So it solves the problem ofanalyzing a large amount of
(34:43):
qualitative data and then likeyou said, this is where the gold
really is.
Yeah.
Because if you understand, let'stake your case as an example,
that using high profileindividuals that are successful
male in your case, in order topromote this thing is the most
successful way to promote this.
Okay.
How do I get this on more famouspeople and how do I find a way
(35:06):
to tell an interesting storyabout it?
That they will actually sharethe story.
But this really gives you theinformation of why people are
taking action.
And I love your idea of whatmade you make the purchase,
right?
Think how powerful that is toknow that information.
And you don't need 10,000 peopleto tell you that you need a
hundred percent, because thatgives you valuable enough
(35:27):
statistics saying, okay, this isthe biggest driver.
and with these two questions, bythe way, those very particular
questions, how did you hearabout us as OpenText Field and
what made you make the purchaseas an OpenText field will tell
you everything you need to knowabout how you're generating
demand and how you're capturingdemand, which are the two most
important things for anybusiness who's selling, whether
(35:48):
a service or a product.
So I absolutely love, the pointsthat
R.T. Custer (35:52):
you raised.
Yeah.
and just one clarifying point onthat.
Cause I have had thatpost-purchase survey live on our
website for years.
And I haven't looked at it in along time, but my business
partner and I were talking aboutthese subjects and just like
attribution, like where are oursales coming from?
Cause we, we had a really goodmonth last month, and so far
this month we're doing great.
And we're just trying to figureout okay, we're, we changed a
(36:14):
bunch of stuff, what's working?
And we're going through all thatdata right now and it's really
fascinating.
what I, listen, I was listeningto another podcast, it's called
10 Years in the making, by theguy who started retention.com,
which is pretty cool.
and he had a guy named ChaseDiamond on there, which is a, I
don't consider myself an emailmarketing expert.
I'm just really passionate aboutit and I love it.
Chase is an email marketingexpert and he's a much bigger
(36:36):
scale than I am.
but he said start when you startout like your first.
Few hundred, responses that youget to that post-purchase
survey, leave them open-endedand let people just type things
in.
And then use a service, like yousaid, numerous or a word cloud
service to figure out what arepeople answering.
And then at a certain point, andat a certain scale, when you're
(36:58):
starting to get thousands ofresponses, you want more qual
quantitative data.
And so you should take that openresponses and then create
dropdowns, and save and make itjust one of four things.
And people just click on one offour things and now you get at
scale more statisticallyrelevant data and you don't have
to run it through those servicesand figure it out.
(37:20):
You can just look at and say,okay, the last 30 days of PO pur
post purchase survey data, 25%of our customers came from an
Instagram ad suite.
That's working good validation.
you can make decisions fasterwith that, easier to access
data, if that makes sense.
So
Isar Meitis (37:35):
I'm probably not as successful in email marketing as
this guy, but I would stronglydisagree with the tools we had
today.
So until that's fair.
Four months ago when you had tomanually go and go through that
data to put it in buckets andanalyze it and it would
literally take you hours.
I would agree.
I think the value of hearingwhat people have to say in the
way they wanna say it, what youget with a dropdown is huge
(37:57):
biases.
First of all, people will picksomething.
A lot of people will randomlypick something just because you
put a thing in front of them andthey will click and you'll see
in every time you do a dropdownmenu on a large scale, the first
option gets a lot more clicksthan anything else.
Practical people click on thething and they click on the
first one just because they wantit to go away.
So actually having OpenTextmandatory fields that now you
(38:18):
can analyze very easily probablywins.
hands down.
But I'm not saying I'm an expertbetter than this guy.
I'm just saying my personalopinion
R.T. Custer (38:25):
about it.
And he was coming from like aneight and nine figure Shopify
store.
Yeah.
So they're getting probably10,000 orders a day or something
crazy, so I agree with you.
And for my brand, we're, sincewe're getting, very small amount
of total orders, I prefer theopen-ended data, and I agree
with you.
It's not that hard to gothrough.
it, I think there's a lot of,there's a lot of context that's
(38:46):
needed to make these decisionsand, probably some grain assault
that we can add here to say, Irun a fairly small business, and
if you're running an eight, ninefigure Shopify store, Y you
should probably talk to somebodyabout email marketing that has
done that kind of scale.
Yeah.
I mostly speak to like mymastermind for instance, is
(39:07):
people that haven't quite madeit to seven figures yet.
And so my audience and thepeople I speak to are, are at
that scale or even, or maybe myscale, if that makes sense.
Yep.
Makes
Isar Meitis (39:17):
perfect sense.
There's a bunch of other thingsI want to ask you, so we'll make
a quick, rapid fire, segment.
Yes.
Yep.
rapid fire number one, what'sthe leading indicators like, are
there other stuff that's notsales related, like open rates
or clickthrough rates orsomething that you measure and
have you found it to really be aleading indicator?
R.T. Custer (39:38):
You're always measuring open rates, click
through rates, unsubscriberates, spam rates, obviously
purchase data.
typically in dollars, notpercentage or rates.
There's another thing that, thatKlaviyo has that I really like,
which is a dollar in revenue perrecipient.
Yeah.
Which is cool.
And so you can track like fordifferent segments, how valuable
(40:02):
is this segment?
and that's neat.
And so those are the thingsyou're tracking.
Are they leading indicators?
I think so.
For most businesses, my businessis like I said, weird, because
we make a very different thanniche product to, like you said,
that.
I wouldn't say they'renecessarily leading indicators
for me, but it is really helpfulto, to look at, especially open
(40:26):
rate data.
and so for instance, the, whenI've been sending two emails a
week, my Tuesday email I send tomy entire list.
It's roughly 40,000 people.
My open rates is, 16 to 18%.
and so that's, what is it, 5,000people or so on that email that
I'm sending the second email ofthe week.
(40:47):
In order to not spam people, I'mnot sending it to the same list.
I created a segment called 90Day Engaged, and you only get
that second email this week ifyou have clicked on or opened an
email in the last 90 days.
And those in theory, are my moreengaged people and followers and
things like that.
Those open rates are closer to40%.
(41:09):
and the list is about half thesize.
And so I'm speaking to the sameamount of people.
When you do the math, it's 5,000people and it's probably the
same people, but it might notbe.
And my mass email to everyone isprobably re-engaging those
people.
And then the other one isbringing them in and hopefully
making'em make a purchase.
But yeah, I would say of allthose leading indicators and
(41:30):
data open rate is the one that Ipay attention to the most.
Yeah, I agree.
Isar Meitis (41:35):
So last question before I let tell people where
they can actually buy your coolwatches or follow you or do your
mastermind.
What tools do you use other thanKlaviyo to maybe come up with
subject lines or AB test orfigure out other stuff, the
content.
(41:56):
Do you use any AI stuff to writeit for you?
What other tools you use inorder to create this magic?
R.T. Custer (42:01):
So I love chat, G p t, for pretty much all of that.
I'm a good writer.
I really enjoy writing, and Iuse, my own, I don't really use
chat g p t to edit my ownwriting as much as I like maybe
should.
Typically I'll put my writinginto chat G p t and say, rewrite
this and make it more concise.
(42:22):
Yeah.
Or use, I forget what it'scalled.
talk to me like I'm fivelanguage, basically Yeah.
Yeah.
make it really simple andstraightforward and precise
language.
So I like using chat G B T forthat.
And I'm sure there's all kindsof other plugins that are
probably better at that, but Ijust use the main chat, G B T.
And then yes, subject lines onchat.
C b T are clutch.
(42:42):
There's also, I don't think Ihave it here, but I bought a
book on Amazon that's a thousandsubject lines, just a a thousand
subject line ideas for emailmarketing.
There's all kinds of books andeducation and blogs out there to
talk about subject lines.
when we're talking about subjectlines though, in order to get
ideas, one of the best ideasthat I've had, and that I've
(43:03):
shared a lot, is if you'resending a weekly email
newsletter that's 52 subjectlines a year.
Yeah.
And that's 52 pieces of contentyou have to come up with.
And I know we spoke to this, butI would say, If you're
struggling with that, make alist of the 52 frequently asked
questions that your audience andyour customers have for you.
(43:25):
Yeah.
And then answer those questionsonce a week.
Yeah.
And that's huge.
And you can just free write, putthat into something like chat c
bt and say, write me a subjectline for each one of these 52
questions.
some of'em will be questions,some will be as straightforward.
All that kind of stuff.
That's huge.
And then if you're doing anautomated welcome series that,
let's say it's 10 emails long,pick your 10 best performing
(43:48):
flows, or your 10 bestperforming subject lines and
emails and content, and,probably your 10 most frequently
asked questions.
And those are your automatedemails that everybody gets when
they join your list for thefirst time.
So that's the stuff that I use.
And you're really, to answeryour question, I like all the
standard stuff like Klaviyo,Shopify, that kind of stuff.
(44:08):
And then I just use chat, T P TI try to keep it really simple.
Fantastic
Isar Meitis (44:12):
rt.
This was really fascinating.
I think we shared, we, youshared a lot of really valuable
information.
if people wanna buy yourwatches, follow you, do your
mastermind, see you on socialmedia, what's the best way to do
that?
R.T. Custer (44:26):
Totally.
So my platform of choice isInstagram.
I'm just Rt Custer on Instagram.
You can also find me rtcuster.com.
That's how you can connect withme.
Vortic is V O R T I c, Vorticwatches.com.
Check that out, hop on the emaillist so you can see everything
that we just talked about, liveand inaction.
And then, yeah, I co-host a andco-lead a mastermind called Fast
(44:50):
Foundations.
And so I love talking aboutemail, but I mostly teach and
talk about marketing in general.
and you can find more aboutthat@fastfoundations.com.
Amazing.
Isar Meitis (45:01):
R.T., thank you so much.
This was really great.
I appreciate your time andsharing your knowledge.
R.T. Custer (45:06):
Thanks having me.
Sorry.
Super fun.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.