Why Ecommerce Email is More Than Just Email? with Adam Butt

Andy Splichal:

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count podcast. This is your host Andy Splichal, and we are happy to welcome this week's guest to discuss today's topic, which is why e commerce email is more than just email. Today's guest is the founder of Noticed, an e commerce agency that provides a holistic approach to growing your business. A big welcome to Adam Butt. Hi, Adam.

Adam Butt:

Hey, Andy. Pleasure to meet you and really appreciate you having me having the podcast today.

Andy Splichal:

You bet. Thanks for coming on. Now, you grew up in Liverpool, England, correct?

Adam Butt:

Correct. It's the place of the most famous band in the world, as everyone probably sure.

Andy Splichal:

For sure. Now, I'm not sure how it works in Liverpool. I've never been to Liverpool, but over here I would have to say your last name could have been a problem back in school. How was it growing up in Liverpool?

Adam Butt:

So I grew up in a would say isolated neighborhood where we were. My dad is Pakistani and my mom was British. My mom was from Liverpool, so I kind of a multicultural background, if you would want to call it. So where I grew up, it was predominantly an area where you wouldn't really have much diversification in cultures. So that was always a challenge growing up for me. So it was definitely growing up seeing a lot of different people who had that exposure to different cultures. That was just something that was a struggle growing up. So I would say it's a tough city.

Adam Butt:

It's a city with a lot of history. As you know, the Beatles are from there. For any soccer fans out there, we've got the greatest football club in the you know, there's a lot there, but I would say it's a fighting city. Our ancestors are Irish, that's where we're from originally. So most people, when they speak, teams speak. Are you from Ireland or Scotland? So it's still there, I guess today, our accent. But I grew up in humble beginnings. We lived in government housing our whole life.

Adam Butt:

We struggled with money, didn't really have much, and I'm the oldest of four and really just growing up, I would say it was a very tough life. It was definitely one of those where you had to kind of sink or swim, if you want to call it, and if you really wanted to come out on top, you had to kind of push through the ceiling and see what you were made of. So that was kind of what it was like growing up.

Andy Splichal:

Now today your company noticed it specializes in email and text messaging, but I see that you also do much more offering services such as replatforming and even website optimization. I would assume that you added these services on, but because to be successful on an email, it needs to convert, visitors need to convert and maybe some of your websites for your clients weren't that good. Is that why you added these different services?

Adam Butt:

Yes. So it was an evolution, to be honest with you, Andy. It was when I started Freelancing back in 2012 and 13 and I was basically building informational websites for non ecommerce businesses. Drupal WordPress, you probably remember the old template monster websites, I used to build them on them. So I ended up moving into ecom around all 2013 and having really some success, bit of my words, some successful brands that I helped scale at the time and that kind of just got me the bug of moving into ecom. So when I launched noticed in 2015, it was purely based out of the fact that we were going to be a concentrated ecommerce agency, just working with direct consumer brands. At the time it was mostly B to B to B was still kind of the thing before 2015. And then you started to see this emergence of D to C brands coming up who had a really different thinking of how they wanted to connect with consumers.

Adam Butt:

So I got in pretty early in 2015. We wanted the first shop of my plus partners in the world at the time. I caught them to the tech very early. We were using Magento before that and I never launched and noticed and it was just pretty much me at the time. We were 95% fixed revenue as a business, just websites, that's all we were building. And then as I was starting to work with more of these brands, they were getting larger. I started to really realize that in order for us to really support them holistically, we had to really start to bolt on these additional services while not compromising on quality. So today we've evolved into, I would say, a semi full service agency.

Adam Butt:

But our goal is to really get to a full service, closed loop omnichannel model. So we provide site redesigns, replatforms on Shopify Plus, and Headless. We do all the conversion optimization, we do all the email, SMS, and all the retention marketing for our customers. So we're kind of as much as we can be within what we do. But our model is centered on really making sure we're hiring agnostic specialists. So we don't hire people who don't come from ecom backgrounds. They all have to come from ecom, whether it's band side or agency side.

Andy Splichal:

I would have thought you started the other way, you would have gone email marketing first and then done web development, but you're coming from web development and then to email marketing. What percentage of your clients do, what do you do one off projects still where you're replatforming somebody or are you pretty much doing retainers with monthly emails?

Adam Butt:

So it's definitely, I would say more of the latter. We're about 85, 80% reoccurring revenue today. As a business, it took a long time to get there, but in terms of our breakdown, about 50% of our business is email, SMS, retention marketing, and then about 30 to 35 of it is conversion optimization, site support, et cetera. Really trying to improve the buy in funnel for customers that are coming through acquisition marketing or recombing through the retention funnel again. So that's kind of like the breakdown of our retainer. Then we have 50% to 20% of fixed, which is mostly site builds, small engagements. That's kind of our real model. And yeah, that's kind of where we are today as a business in terms of revenue breakdown.

Andy Splichal:

So let's start and talk about the email marketing piece. Where do companies do you see if a client comes in and they say, hey, take over my email marketing? Where do you see what type of emails do companies get the biggest bang for their buck?

Adam Butt:

Our team today on the email side, we're about 25, and I believe in that side, we only specialize in Clayview and a few other smaller ESPS. But I think the one key thing that I've seen with our testing, like we've went through a lot of iterative, a B, testing internally for our teams to look at, okay, content versus design, animation versus non animation, GIF versus non GIF. And I think it really depends on the brand and their customer base, like what they're engaged in. But I think the common theme that we found is if you're really, truly trying to connect with your consumer through retention, marketing channel like email. I think outside of tactical, technical aspects of what you need to do for email, I think the key part is the external part of it, of how it looks and what it's coming across. I think what we've seen be the most successful in comparison to a Saturday email versus a more of a dynamic email is that if you can really bring the brand messaging, the core essence of the USB, of the product and who they are and really make it that community feel brand. And I think that's the authenticity piece is the brand they're made out of an authentic problem they're solving. It will already come through in the email or marketing or whoever else the channels they're trying to hit.

Adam Butt:

So when that happens, we've typically found that gifs animation, that's typically where we get more higher click through rates. We typically see a much higher level of revenue attribution when it comes to types of emails. But I think again, it all comes down to the brand and the messaging and really making sure you got that down. I think that's what really separates the brands that we've seen that do really well when it comes to connecting with their customers again.

Andy Splichal:

So you had mentioned Cleavio, is that the ESP, the email service provider that you guys exclusively use, you recommend clients use, or do you use others? Where are you with using an ESP? What ESP?

Adam Butt:

So we've been with Cleaview now since 2017. A lot of the traditional ESPS like Mailer, and why am I forgetting it Branto. They're definitely there still. Branto is not there, of course. I think we all know it was a product that was phased out. But the big thing when it comes to ASB is finding ESPS that are really centralized on the data. And I think that's what was missing with previous ESPS. Clave, you do a really good job of having this balance of feature set and data sets.

Adam Butt:

And you've probably seen what they've recently just launched a full dashboard of Attribution across their platform that they're trying to hit. That multichannel approach of understanding our customers, actually engaging with email, SMS, direct mail, whatever items that they're trying to hit, that's something that they've really been good at. So we primarily recommend Clayview. That's our channel of choice. We use Postscript and attentive for SMS. But I think the biggest problem, Andy, is I think outside of the ESP itself, email for me personally is going to be a diminishing channel in the next several decades. A lot of people.

Andy Splichal:

I've heard this for good part of ten years, but why do you think over the next what did you say? Over the next ten years or over the next few years?

Adam Butt:

I would say realistically, in the next decade plus, we're going to start to see a decline. I feel like the decline. If we look at metrics and again, I'm not going to pop numbers out of my hat, but if we looked at the engagement rates of email, this SMS versus Slack and all these other ancillary channels, I'm pretty sure we're going to see a pattern that there's less engagement in email than there used to be. And I think the reason why is because data is more accessible than it ever used to be. Back seven, eight years ago, we used to do cold outreach clients and that was not really a thing back then. I get like, I just got 40 spam emails today of outreach. And I think that's the problem is there's just so much accessibility for people to start to hit that inbox that it just becomes overwhelming and the engagement just declines. And I think that's really why a lot of brands really need to look at retention marketing very similar to acquisition marketing.

Adam Butt:

And this is something that I get really into with understanding how you're actually going about your acquisition or retention strategy. For me, I've always asked myself, why is it on the acquisition side that we target five to six channels to contain a customer in that funnel? So we've got AdWords, we've got social, we've got influencer, we've got affiliate, got all these different channels. But the problem is we don't adopt that same method with retention on acquisition. We're trying to reduce CAC, hit as many channels, we can keep them in the funnel and then eventually get them to convert. But we don't adopt the same philosophy or mindset and retention.

Andy Splichal:

So let's talk about that. Let's talk about retention and specifically the emails, because we're talking emails, can you send too many emails to existing customers?

Adam Butt:

I think there's a balance. I think, again, it all depends on each brand. Every brand is different. Like you're going to hear from one retention marketer that brand A and beauty, their engagement rate is much higher through more frequency of emails, whether it's every few days or weekly or biweekly, whatever it is. And another brand, their audience might be completely different. I think that's where you've got to look at the data and see, okay, is the engagement low or high because of the frequency, or is engagement low or high because the messaging or the approach is wrong? And that's where you got to look at a B testing. And I think a B testing becomes an important part then, where you're trying to separate what is actually true versus what's not true when it comes to how you're sending those emails. And that is for me, my biggest focus when I'm trying to look at these brands in a way that's going to help them push that channel forward.

Adam Butt:

But again, I don't think it's the complete holistic model of what brands should be focused on.

Andy Splichal:

You know what I'm curious about, when you take over a new client, somebody comes with you, let's say, for the email and the SMS. Do you prepare a marketing calendar for the entire year or how far out do you plan what emails you're going to send?

Adam Butt:

It's twofold when we're ever doing that, we have a monthly content calendar, which is typically planned 30 days in advance. And I would recommend that I think most brands today, especially anything that's 5 million plus GMB for a brand, they're typically doing that. But you said we do 30 days in advance. 30 to 60 days in advance. 30 is the bare minimum. Yeah, is probably the bare minimum. But when it comes to the annual side, you should have a systemized strategy of what you're planning throughout the year. So if you're a beauty brand, what are the peak holidays for you that you need to prioritize ahead of time? What are the key seasons that are going to be important for you? I think that's a big part of how you'll get ahead of looking at that ahead of time and looking at how you're going to segment that data.

Adam Butt:

Because a lot of brands, I find when they're trying to launch a campaign that's a seasonal campaign, they haven't segmented their data enough, which should be happening several months behind time. And then when it comes time to launch a seasonal campaign, they're not really getting the revenue lift that they want because they're not really planning on an annual basis. So we do recommend clients to plan on an annual basis, which we do support them with.

Andy Splichal:

What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see companies making with email marketing?

Adam Butt:

I think the path for me with this, and again, I'm trying not to focus on this on email is because there's so many companies doing email out there and I think there's a twofold answer here. So I don't want to take this in a different direction. I think email is really only one channel of many channels a brand should be embracing. I think that shouldn't be just the full focus of a brand. For me, I am trying to really understand where the consumer is at and trying to identify what channels are they going to be hitting. And I think going back to the acquisition side, if a brand truly wants to do well, they've got to have a complete harmonious holistic retention approach. So if you've got one customer who's probably high engagement in email, you might have customer B, who's high engagement in SMS, you might have customer A who's high engagement in direct mail you might have customer D. Sorry, I'm not knowing my alphabet right now, Andy, but customer day, who actually want to talk with WhatsApp? Or another channel.

Adam Butt:

I think it's important to meet the customer. Where they're at? And if you want to reduce CAC, if you want to increase RPR, want to increase LTV, that for me, is how I would launch a DBC brand today, and that is adopting a multi channel approach both on acquisition and retention because ultimately most brands are shooting themselves in the foot. And the reason why that is is because they're trying to get higher LTV, they're trying to get more RPR just to let everyone know it's repeat purchase rate. But the problem is they're not doing the things where they need to be done to the customers. They're trying to meet where they are the way it should be. And I think that's the big low hanging fruit that I see a lot of these brands missing out on and that's what we're trying to really do now here at Notice.

Andy Splichal:

So I was going to ask what should a company look for when looking to outsource their email marketing to an agency? But it sounds like it shouldn't be just looking to outsource your email marketing to an agency, but you should be looking to outsource many things that go along with email marketing.

Adam Butt:

Yeah, I think the theme I always see with brands is that again, this is dependent on the size of the brand. But if you're trying to find an agency that is going to take over your essential marketing efforts, the problem with the market today is there's so many specialists but I think looking for an agency that has relevant target market or ICP ideal customer profile. If you're a beauty brand, go and find the best Clayview beauty agency out there who just focus on that reason why is because they're going to know your customer and be able to communicate probably better than anyone else. So looking for those agencies who actually have an industry specialization, a platform specialization and I think the biggest giveaway is really looking at what tech they're doing. I'm very surprised by how much a lot of brands are not looking at the tech of an agency is are they using legacy tech or are they using new tech. That's normally a really easy indicator of knowing. Is that agency really where you want to be as a brand? And I think that's one of a qualification criteria I would look for. Another part would be just when it comes to talent, looking up their talent, have their talent got a track record in retention marketing or are they more generalist? I think those things are going to really help a brand minimize their risk of hiring the wrong agency and ensure that the hiring agency actually understand it and get it.

Andy Splichal:

Now you said you launched your agency Noticed in 2015, is that right?

Adam Butt:

Yeah.

Andy Splichal:

So I'm curious, one of my favorite questions, but have there been any business books that have helped shape your agency, guided you as you've created it or how have you been able to build such a large agency in a relatively short amount of time? Although eight years isn't that short.

Adam Butt:

I'm hitting 40 soon, so it feels like I'm getting old. I think one of my favorite books and I think it's more about understanding the journey is it's called Shoot Dog by Phil McKnight. And what I learned from that book, it took Phil McKnight nearly two decades before the company actually got close to even going to IPO and really being at the level that they needed to get to. It was a decade plus before he actually started to make it. And I think the part of me that I took away from that story of reading that is like, the hurdles you go through business is the same hurdles we go through in life. And for me, there was times we were in 13 when I was actually just freelancing. Wasn't 13. That was 13.

Adam Butt:

I was like 40 grand in debt. I'd sold me car. I never had a car, none of that. And I think a lot of companies, when they start a business, they're thinking about, okay, I'm just going to just throw the towel in and try and really look for what's next. What I learned is once you get past that cave, which is like this growth cave, and then there's the next growth cave, and there's another one, it's that kind of like that mid stage where you really start to get tested. And for me, that was the most challenging time. I remember I was sleeping in the office in 2020. That was during COVID I was sleeping on the floor for nearly a month because we went through a full influx of changes in the business.

Adam Butt:

The talent was highly in demand, et cetera. And those times are what really test you. And I think that's what really is the opportunity, where you can kind of break through the ceiling or you end up going the other way. But that's kind of my biggest learning curve, is just pushing through and stepping back and really understanding what you need to change. And most of the time, it's a lot of things that you're doing as the owner, and that's my insight on it.

Andy Splichal:

So today, who is the perfect client for notice? Those companies that you can really help take to the next level.

Adam Butt:

So today we work with brands that are typically generating anywhere from ten to 100 million GMB. Our main industries that we focus on are health, wellness, beauty, cosmetics. We have a lot of defocus in food and beverage. We work with brands like Liquid Death. Lemon perfect. We work with Selena Gomez on the beauty side, so they're kind of our four main industry verticals. We're typically trying to find brands that have a really strong organally where they can actually work with an agency. That's something that is a challenge a lot.

Adam Butt:

I come across a lot of these even established brands don't really have solid foundations internally where they get an attraction on their partnership with an agency to kind of scale it quick enough. So we really look for strong orgs team members that actually understand what they're looking for, what the objective is, and they're going to kind of take a step back and let the agency run with it. I think that's a big part of a problem in the agency world is when you're working with a client, a client comes to hire an agency to do a job, but there needs to be someone to steer it and need to be someone to manage it. And I think a brand needs to really know what they're looking for. Do they want to manage and steer or do they want to steer the direction of where the agency is going? And I think that's a big problem I see regularly with a lot of brands where the mindset is more of a top down approach versus the bottoms up approach of how they're really trying to get the best out of an agency partnership.

Andy Splichal:

Now for your clients, are they all sending their traffic directly to their own website or do you work with any on sending traffic to like an Amazon store?

Adam Butt:

So it's a combination. The interesting thing that we've been seeing is that a lot of these brands that really treat this site and the online brand as more of a gateway, I would call it. So using know Liquid Deaf have been a client for ours for three years now and they've had crazy growth. I'm sure you've seen it. I think they're going through an IPO round. I think they're trying to do an IPO in the next few years. But the part for me, which is a thing that a lot of these older brands aren't getting is that D to C today for some of these brands is just a gateway to get eyeballs on their brand, whether it's a commercial or an ad platform where they're driving the customer from. Their objective is simple, get the customer to the site, have a really strong brand, have a really compelling message and have a really cool product that they just want to try.

Adam Butt:

And if they can get them to buy through the site, which most Amazon now because Amazon has fast shipping plans as we know. So some of them are partnered, liquid Beth as an example, partners with Amazon and they've been really smart when it comes to their objective is to use as more of a trial for a customer. They just want them to try the product. As soon as they try the product, they know that there's a four, five, six times more likely chance that when they go to Target or Walmart next time and they see that same can, they're going to pick it up again. And that's typically the way I'm seeing Amazon versus site getting used. You've got more brands that are fully focused on driving DVD because their customer is going to go through that channel again. But then you've got these other brands and these other products where the customer can buy online or they can buy offline. And I think that really depends on the type of industry and product that they sell them.

Andy Splichal:

Yeah, no, those are all great points. Now, how does your fee structure at your agency work? I assume there's one off fees for replatforming as well as then a monthly retainer for other services.

Adam Butt:

Yes. So it varies on agency, but typically for us, for example, for a replatform or redesign, if it's a client coming from anything outside of plus two, plus we typically charge around a six figure range. That's typically where we start for a replatform. For redesigns, if you're on shopify, we can start from anywhere from 50 up. That's typically where we play, just because the way we're set up as an.org Is, we have parts. So if you come on and replatform with us or a redesign, you're getting a specific team members that specialize in that a PM, a Strategist, a designer, two devs who truly understand the platform, and the actual business of ecommerce. So you're getting that. And then on the retainer side, retainers typically start at a minimum of like six k and they go all the way up to 30 40,000 per month.

Adam Butt:

It just depends. But yeah, it just depends on the engagement with the client. That's typically where we play around.

Andy Splichal:

And how can an interested listener learn more about working with you?

Adam Butt:

So if you want to connect with me, you can find me on LinkedIn. My name's Adam Butts. So you can't forget the name. Our company domain is Notice. It's a D on the end. And yeah, that's how you can connect with me.

Andy Splichal:

Well, this has been great, Adam. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up today?

Adam Butt:

No, that's everything. I really appreciate you getting on a podcast and giving me the opportunity to speak.

Andy Splichal:

Great. Well, thank you for joining us.

Adam Butt:

Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it.

Andy Splichal:

For listeners, remember, if you like this episode, please go to Apple podcasts and leave us an honest review. And if you're looking for more information regarding Adam or his agency noticed, you will find the links in the Show Notes below. In addition, if you're looking for more information on growing your business, check out our Podcast Resource Center, available at www.makeeachclickcount.com. We have compiled all of our different past guests by show topic and included each of their contact information in case you would like more information on any of the services discussed in previous episodes. Well, that's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing, and I'll talk to you in the next episode.