#293 – Unlocking The Power Of After-Purchase Sales For Increased Profits with Shawn Hart and Seth Stevens

In episode 293 of the AM/PM Podcast, Tim, Shawn, and Seth discuss:

• 02:00 – One Of The Best Ways To Increase Your Profitability
• 03:00 – Shawn And Seth’s Backstory
• 06:30 – Creating A Post-Purchase Experience
• 09:30 – It’s All About Building An Email List
• 15:30 – Looking For Monthly Recurring Revenue Products
• 18:40 – Discover And Get In Front Of Your Customer’s Journey
• 21:30 – How To Get People To Engage With Your Offer
• 27:00 – What Is The “Mafia Offer”?
• 31:20 – You Need To Own The Asset
• 34:00 – How To Get Their Book For Free

Transcript

Tim Jordan:

We all wanna know the secret sauce to selling more online, and as we’re trying to figure this out, we make a lot of mistakes. We do a lot of dumb things, and frankly, nobody starts off with immediate successes. The way that I have found to become more impactful and more successful in business is learn from the people that have done it before me, our guests today are gonna talk about acquiring customers that we may have forgotten about. I’ll explain what that is, but just to give a little bit of credibility, these guys have launched 53 brands online. They’ve sold 17 of them and they have done over 150 million in sales since 2014. Lot of information to be shared in this episode, listen to the end. It’s gonna be a good one, and here we go. Hi, I’m Tim Jordan and in every corner of the world, entrepreneurship is growing. So join me as I explore the stories of successes and failures. Listen in as I chat with the risk takers, the adventurous, and the entrepreneurial veterans, we all have a dream of living a life and fulfilling our passions, and we want a business that doesn’t make us punch a time clock but instead runs around the clock in the AM and the PM. So get motivated, get inspired. You’re listening to the AM/PM Podcast.

Tim Jordan:

Hey, everybody, welcome to the AM/PM podcast. I’m your host, Tim Jordan, and today, of course, we are talking about all things eCommerce. Now, when I think about the typical selling journey, selling a product online, I think about trying to get that customer to look at my product, come to my webpage, come to my Amazon listing, whatever it is, and make the decision to purchase it. They finally purchase it. It gets shipped. And 30 days later, they haven’t returned the product giant sigh of relief. I’m done. I’ve accomplished my mission and sold that product. And now it’s time to go out and find another client. What I’m starting to learn now is I’ve been doing things all wrong. If I start analyzing the cost of acquisition for a customer and it’s going up and the lifetime value of our customer, hasn’t gone up as well. We become less profitable.

Tim Jordan:

So in addition to some things like trying to reduce our cost of product and trying to reduce our acquisition cost, one of the best ways to increase your profitability for your business and to create stability for your business is to make sure that you have a plan in place to continue engaging with or acquiring that customer after your sale, regardless of the platform or the marketplace that you’re using. So today we have Shawn Hart, we have Seth Stevens that have a lot of experience in this matter, and they’re gonna be sharing really some cool stuff. I was actually going through with them before we hit recording and learned some stuff just in like the pre podcast interview and it’s gonna be good. Now, when I started off this interview, guys, I was talking about you guys creating 53 brands selling 17 of ’em done over 150 million in sales, but the majority of your experience isn’t necessarily even in just selling products. It’s a lot of digital marketing in general, right. So if you guys would say hello and let’s answer that question. Where did you guys come from and how did you get started in this crazy world?

Shawn:

All right. Great question, Tim. Thank you for the introduction there. My name is Shawn Hart. I’m from central Indiana. Just happened to be the exact same small town that Seth is from. Although we didn’t know each other until after we were both well into adults and Seth actually came and worked for me as an intern when he was in college in my marketing company. So a couple of years after I sold that business, Seth reengaged me and we decided to join in business together in early 2014.

Tim Jordan:

Now, Seth, was that a good decision or do you still sometimes regret it?

Seth:

You know, every night you gotta wonder Tim, but yeah, overall it was a great decision. Go ahead, Shawn.

Shawn:

Yeah. So basically Tim, what we discovered was that the initial sale that we make, where we convert our value for our customers’ dollars is just the beginning of what should be and could be a long and prosperous, and profitable relationship. So we’re all about making, not only bringing new customers into our funnel but more importantly, making each customer more valuable and keeping them around longer, so.

Seth:

Yeah, Shawn, so when I came in and worked for you in as an intern in college, the one thing that I noticed was, you know, being in your marketing department, I got to see how you were generating sales. And one thing that stuck out to me was you paid a huge amount of attention to the customers that you had already served one time and you would sell them more of the same. So just like what you were saying, when we would reengage those customers using old-fashioned marketing, like postcards and newspaper ads and things like that, we were able to generate sales from the exact same type of customers. And then we were able to use that same type of strategy when we branched off and started building brands online.

Tim Jordan:

Now, Seth, I’m not calling you old, but we know that you guys started really selling on Amazon about 2014. And I suspect your internship was well before then. So the stuff you’re talking about with re-engaging existing buyer stuff, this is pre-Amazon stuff. This is like just traditional good business marketing. Right?

Seth:

Right. So I was in college in 2010, and 2011, working in Shawn’s marketing department, selling heaters of all things. And we were using postcards back then. But I go on and do a different career and, and then have this fateful conversation with Shawn one day, Hey, I would like to do something more along the lines of what you were doing, building a real business. So we get together in 2014 to start building brands on Amazon. And the world’s a little different, but the fundamental marketing aspect of it is the same of taking care of your customers, nurturing them, and then following up with them to make more sales and generate more revenue, Shawn.

Shawn:

Absolutely. So, Tim, I think what Seth is getting as the thing that really set us apart is that unbeknownst to us, we assumed that all eCommerce sellers were putting an effort into building a relationship, but we started right out the gate because in my previous business, which Seth interned in, we depended on the ability to create what we call backend sales. So we started on Amazon. It was just a no brainer. That’s how we began. And it took us almost a couple of years before we realized what an enormous advantage that was given us over our competitors.

Tim Jordan:

And I started selling in about 2015 and nobody talked about this. Like the only thing that people talked about when it came to a post-purchase experience was what are the terms of service for reaching out to these people? Like, can we ask them for review? Can we try to get them to give us this five star review? Or are we even allowed to use these addresses for anything? So, like, I think that the industry was thinking very small. We were thinking about, you know, the bubble of Amazon and what we’re allowed to do, where you guys came in with some different experience in traditional marketing, you probably saw Amazon as a sales channel, not the be all end all. And we’re using those traditional practices within Amazon. And it’s curious, you just said that nobody else is really talking about this and it shocked you that nobody was because you thought this was standard and this may have had something to do with your probably abnormally large number of sales revenue and success on Amazon. You think so?

Shawn:

I do. And if I recall right to him the very first year out, Seth was putting in sweat equity while he was still working in his cubicle for his postcollege job. And so he put in sweat equity the first year, while I actually put inequity in a form of inventory. And then after that first year, we did about 3 million in sales the first year. So in January of 2015, we sat out to do 50 million after we put together our think tank of our trusted confidants and what we realized early on, and this may shock you, Tim, 41% of every dollar that we were selling was coming from our existing customers through our follow up marketing 41%. It was ridiculous. Right, Seth?

Seth:

Yeah, Shawn and something that we didn’t know was happening was these third party platforms like walmart.com and amazon.com specifically. They were rewarding us when we were sending that traffic through email and text marketing back to our listings. They were rewarding us with more keyword ranking. So we didn’t know it, Tim, but every time we sent an email, we would generate sales and generate conversion, but Amazon was moving us up in the search results page. And Walmart does the same thing. So not only did we take those same direct response concepts from the heater business, like sending out a postcard where we were able to generate sales, but we were able to do it through email and text. And then the platform actually rewarded us with more sales. And that’s what got us to 10 million the next year in 2015, Tim.

Tim Jordan:

And I think that a lot of people are gonna assume based on what we’re talking about, that this is just Amazon, or this is just Walmart hacks. I understand talking about the history of where you got started. It’s important to talk about Amazon, but this is not just a platform specific method. I think that when I was talking about the misconception I had about my job being done after the sale that applies to direct to consumer, it applies to affiliate marketing. It applies to nearly everything right now, when you actually found that data like 41% of your revenue of your sales or your profit was based on repeat purchases, right. Was all of that done in a way that was easily replicatable was it automated or was this back in the day when you were still trying to figure out, Hey, it’s Amazon, do we do insert cards? Do we drive people with landing pages? And then what was the decision process as far as, all right, we’ve acquired this audience member, this client, and we want to drive them to a purchase decision again, do we drive them to Amazon or do we drive them back to a Shopify site? Like, talk to me about how that strategy developed.

Shawn:

Yeah, definitely. So when the 41% first came to light, it was during one of many buyer calls because our entire business model was to identify a product, create an offer, leverage the Amazon platform to grow that product to what we considered mature and then sell the brand. That’s why we sold 17 of these. So I remember we were on one of our very, I mean, it seemed like we had one every other day, the first business that we listed for sale the broker would bring buyer calls. So as we were going through the due diligence process of selling our first brand, it became apparent to me how excited the buyer was that we could allocate 41% of our revenue to our existing customer base. And now this buyer was looking at lots of Amazon brands, but he kept coming back to us. And so at that point, right there, Seth realized that we were onto something that no one else was paying attention to. Not only were we building the list, but we were monetizing the list, cuz so many people in e-com Tim, as you know, were building lists, but they’re not tapping into that list for ongoing revenue. It’s right then and there Seth, when we took it seriously, wasn’t it?

Seth:

Yeah. So originally Tim, what we had planned to do, and it’s like a lot of platform sellers, they build a list or they try to capture an email address because they want to get a review because they think that gaming the system will give them an edge. Well, it may give you a short term edge, but what we found out was those people on the other end of the transaction that nobody wants to pay attention to, are real people that are real customers and will buy many more times. And so this is a crazy example, Tim, but we used to sell bed pillows and I don’t know about you, but I only have one for myself, but we had customers after re-engaging them through email and text that bought 27 different times and 25 different times and 24 different times. So the LTV of some of our customers was massive and people don’t really consider the fact that their customers if given the opportunity or prod it a little bit, would buy at full price a lot more from them. And then you made the point, Tim, that this do does not only apply to platform sales. This applies to everything we’ve ever done. We’ve done coaching businesses and we’ve taken more than a thousand people to China and we’ve done membership businesses and we’ve done digital products. And when we go back and look at the revenue, the revenue’s always between 41% and 67% comes from after the initial transaction. So you’re right. It doesn’t, it applies to all of the businesses we’ve ever done.

Tim Jordan:

And you mentioned something about selling your companies and these potential buyers being excited. Now I dabble a little bit in the MNA that the acquisition space. And one thing that’s really exciting is when you look at like a typical product business and you see the typical multiples that are offered for the profitability of the revenue of a product business, and then you look over at like a software business and what’s crazy, and one reason why so many people wanna get in software right now is the software is valued as much higher or at much higher multiples. People are willing to pay a lot more for software. And it’s largely because they understand these buyers understand that a software company that has a subscription is really measured in MMR or MRR, or Monthly Recurring Revenue. So what they say is this is more stable. I don’t have to like keep pumping gas into PPC spend to sell a product. I actually have a product here that’s being sold where every month I’m swiping the credit card, so the LTV is higher. And before we started recording, you talked a little bit about it. And I wanna dive into that. Now this concept of turning a product sale into something that resembles Monthly Recurring Revenue, which will of course give you more profitability, but also increase the valuation of the business.

Shawn:

Yep. And a lot of folks in our industry, unfortunately, Tim are really selling themselves short because Seth and I, and that took me 30 years to learn the importance of Monthly Recurring Revenue. Seth, fortunately, learned it at a younger age, but the majority of the folks in our industry are just leaving so much money on the table. We won’t look at any product, even if it’s a physical product that we launch on Amazon, we won’t even consider anything physical or digital, unless there is a membership or continuity program attached to it. Like when it comes to Monthly Recurring Revenue, think about your monthly alarm service, your monitoring service, your internet, service, your cable bill, your phone bill. Basically what this enables you to do as a seller is go make an offer and sell that customer one time and theoretically get paid forever.

Shawn:

We won’t even consider looking at something that doesn’t have some sort of monthly of recurring revenue. And I discovered this kind of accidentally the first time I sold my first business when I was 27 years old and I was a single father at the time. So not perfect, but I wanted to stay home with my daughter and be there every day she got off the school bus. So I started selling adult briefs, you know, diapers and bedpans and things like that that were billable through insurance companies. So what that enabled me to do was tap into my direct response skills to drive sales, drive phone calls, and inbound to my office. And we would sign someone up who may be suffering from urinary incontinence and we would sell them 150 diapers every single month for the rest of their life. And the insurance paid for it. That’s when it clicked for me. I’m like, wait, Monthly Recurring Revenue. Let’s sell them once and get paid forever. Right, Seth.

Seth:

Yeah. And so what we’ve done a lot of times with the physical products, Tim is, you know, if you look at, you know, we used to sell weighted hula hoop, it was a product that a lot of women like to use to exercise. Well, that product is not a Monthly Recurring Revenue product. So what we did was we actually built a membership area that was digitally delivered that our hula hoop buyers would opt into and join for a small monthly fee where they would get fitness videos, they would get coaching. So there was a revenue component of it that was monthly recurring. And that piece of the business was a much higher profit margin because it was digitally delivered and replicatable so you’re right. That piece of Monthly Recurring Revenue is a massive, massive reason why we’re able to grow much faster and have the success that we’ve been able to because without that stable cashflow, without that extra profit, we wouldn’t have been able to invest into growing more product lines.

Tim Jordan:

And that was one thing I was gonna ask you is how do you take a product that someone’s gonna buy once and turn that into a repeatable like a repeating purchase customer. Like how does that happen? And you just mentioned some other ways to drive people into a different funnel, right? You can put them in a funnel for something like an app subscription or something like that. But also I want everybody to understand that if you have a product that people are gonna purchase, once you should be working on building a brand of complementary products that still fit that same avatar, right? So if I’m selling a dog collar, just because they’re never gonna buy that same dog collar again, doesn’t exclude you from the content and the advice we’re giving you today, this just means that you better also have a leash and you better have some sort of puppy pads and you better have some sort of cat sweater, right?

Tim Jordan:

Because as long as you’re acquiring them, you can continue to sell them different products. And a good example of that are subscription boxes, right? If I would actually get if every subscription box that I got had the exact same thing in it. So what they’re doing is they’re grouping products that are probably going to be liked by the same avatar, the same person and every purchase every month, or every subscription box has different products, but they’re still the same person. So if you’re listening to this and going, well, I don’t sell adult diapers or I don’t sell consumables. It doesn’t mean this doesn’t apply to you. And if you think that trying to get a subscription service for a weight loss app or something like that to go through your hula hoop, seems a little outta the question, just consider the fact that as long as you have complimentary products and you’re continuing to them, these different products for the same type of person, this still works.

Shawn:

Yep. Absolutely. And I think when the light bulb if you will went off for us, we discovered our broker was smartly getting higher multiples. Now it’s a different world today, as you know, Tim when it comes to multiples. But back in 2015 and 2016, we first started selling our brands. You know, a lot of our friends were selling for two times a 12 month earnings. And we were getting three and a half, four, five times earnings.

Tim Jordan:

And that was huge back then.

Shawn:

Yeah. It became apparent to us that the buyer was allocating a huge portion of that to our customer list. So think about this. It’s not really, or ever about the product that we’re selling. It’s not about the hula hoop or the diaper or the pizza cutter. It’s about the person. And when you can discover a customer journey like we spoke about a couple days ago, if you can get in front of that customer’s journey, because all consumers are on a different journey, maybe you’re on a weight loss journey, maybe you’re on a religious journey. Maybe you’re learning to fly or learning to captain a boat, or maybe you’re learning to fish without running into bridges. Whatever that journey is, there are certain products that become obvious next step in that journey, no matter what that is. So if you can think about your brand in the sense of what journey is that customer on, how can I step in front of that customer’s journey and siphon off a little bit of that revenue and be the go-to resource. Even when we sold treadmills back in 2015, when you and I indirectly met in Orlando, I launched a treadmill using Facebook ads to my Shopify store. We did over a million in sales the very first month, even with something as simple as that, we created a 5.99 continuity program that would offer updates and exercise tips, and extended warranty to our treadmill buyers. And 60% of those buyers took the upsell. Some of those buyers are still today paying 5.99 per month for updates. That’s how powerful this is Seth.

Seth:

Yeah. And I think what you said, Tim and echoing your customer journey, comment, Shawn, about building out your brand. So to go back to the pillow example, we had a bed pillow, but you’re right in the customer journey of that particular person, they were interested in getting better sleep. So we also had sheets. We also had a wedge pillow for acid reflux. We also had all these complimenting products, right, that supported that particular person in their journey. And that’s how we built the brand. That’s how we decided the products because when we would send out an email about our bed pillow, we could have a follow-up email that created revenue, the following month, selling them a sleep mask or selling them an ask reflux pillow. It didn’t have to be the same product that they have to buy over and over. It’s not about only selling supplements that people consume in the buy again, it’s about supporting that one customer on their journey, in whatever you are serving them in.

Tim Jordan:

And Shawn, I appreciate you bringing up the boat crash. I was reminiscing about the last time we were together and you’re thinking about two times ago that we were together. For those of you that are wondering what on earth, if he’s talking about Shawn got to be kind of present when I had a little run in with a bridge with my nice new boat and he likes to remind me of that’s right. Well, the last time we were actually together, Shawn was in Paris and we were staying at a private castle, like a thousand year old castle, this amazing mastermind that we were at a very high ticket, small, and you were talking about some of this stuff. And one of the things that I kept wondering was okay like I get it.

Tim Jordan:

You know, I get it, Seth and Shawn, I get it. We want to acquire these customers. And I think that most people listening to this understand that there are ways to acquire them through call to actions where you get their email addresses, you get ’em cooked up with pixels or all of those things. And towards the end of this podcast, we’ll talk about how you can get like free information from Shawn and Seth about how to actually do that. But the thing that I kept wondering was how do you get people to actually engage, right? Like how do you get people to actually take this product that they’ve purchased off Amazon, they open the box and they go, okay, in addition to this product, I’m going to actually take another step to let these people track me and acquire me and put me on their list. And you basically describe this process of having an offer that these people could not refuse. These buyers absolutely could not refuse this offer. So, you know, without getting too deep into the, the nitty gritty, which again, those of you listening will have some resources for you at the end to actually get those nitty gritty details. Tell me about this concept of an offer. You can’t refuse.

Seth:

Yeah. So a great point, Tim, everybody forgets when they’re e-commerce that the transactions that they’re generating every day are serving a real person on the other end of the line. And those people are having actual feelings about what they’re experiencing. So you mentioned opening up the Amazon box and then what is actually happening in the customer’s mind at that point? Well, it’s gonna be different depending on what they actually purchased. So if they bought a pizza cutter, they’re probably not gonna take action on a warranty if it only costs them $9. So every single product has to be thought through. So thinking about your own product, what would your customer be thinking or wanting in the moment that they just got your product? I’ll give you the example, Tim, of, of a, an insert that got our customer’s attention and worked better than any other insert I’ve ever done.

Seth:

And it was about that same pillow product. Fortunately, it’s the same product. So it was a shredded memory foam pillow. It was vacuum sealed and it was compressed like a little tiny ball and it looked like it was going to explode. So they would open up the package and it would be vacuum sealed and it’s clear and it looks like it’s gonna blow open their face. So on that pillow, Tim, we actually put a sticker and it said it was a stop sign sticker. And it said, stop before you open this pillow, watch these important instructional videos. And 88% of our customers came and opted in to see these instructional videos. So they got better results. They knew how to adjust it. They knew how to actually put it into their sleeping routine in the best possible way to get better results. So we delivered value when we got the opt-in. So not only did we do a better job for the customer, but we actually got their attention and were able to capture them into our own acquisition funnel. So, Shawn, I know you have some thoughts around this.

Shawn:

Well, just like you said, Seth, it’s, it’s about delivering value, and Tim, I think where a lot of sellers make the mistake, you approach this as what’s in it, for me, the seller, what can I get you to do for me? And in reality, the end user, your product doesn’t really care about you or your brand or your small family company. All I care about as a consumer is what’s in it for me. So if we come from a position of value and say something like, like Seth’s example there, before you use this pillow, do that. What if you purchase a pizza cutter or a bedpan or a wagon wheel or a dog leash doesn’t matter. And I said, look, before you use this product, check out this instructional video so that you can avoid the top three mistakes that some of our other buyers have made when using this product. That’s not about me, that’s about you. And then once we get you into that funnel, you’re on our slippery slope. And then each subsequent step leads to the next obvious win for you, the customer.

Seth:

And then Tim, the second half of your question, there was about mafia offer. Shawn, do you wanna jump into mafia offers?

Shawn:

Absolutely. When a mafia offer is basically an offer that the customer cannot say no to. So if I provide you with so much value, if I say, Tim, if you come here and do this, I’m gonna give you this and give you that, and I’m gonna refer this and I’m gonna ship you this. And I’m gonna give you that. I mean, once I put so much pressure on that offer, even if it is just an opt-in, if my only goal is to get you to go from the physical product, into my opt-in page, if I give enough value that you can obviously see a win for you, the end user, then there’s so much pressure there that you cannot say, no, there is an offer out there that will even get you Tim Jordan to opt-in on my pizza cutter if I make it so obvious, you know, if you buy my pizza cutter and I say, Hey, look, if you opt-in here with your phone number, I’ll text you a coupon where you can go to dominoes and get a free pizza worth 15 bucks. How you gonna say no to that for a 5.99 pizza cutter, that’s a mafia offer.

Tim Jordan:

And when I was in Paris, one of the things that was most shocking about some of your methods is how you can create offers to get people to opt-in without actually costing you any money. I thought that was like pure genius because a lot of people think that the only way to get a post purchase reaction or post purchase engagement is to give a really big discount or give a free product or give a warranty. And all of that stuff does work. There’s value in that. But when you can actually get someone to opt-in using somebody else’s dime, that was pretty important. So the other thing that you do that I suspect you do well when you’re trying to create engagement, in addition to just acquiring that customer and giving them an offer of something they can’t refuse is you actually have to raise the perceived value of that purchase, which will increase their desire to continue engaging with you because that perceived value should stretch onto that brand too. And I know Seth, before we start recording, you were talking about this crazy Tylenol example of that. Can you explain that?

Seth:

Yeah, so I think it pairs into what’s a mafia offer and a mafia offer has to speak directly to your avatar. It has to speak to the problem that your customers having in the moment and have a lot of value attached with it. But I’ll just talk about the targeting first. So you don’t probably realize this, but if you walked into a CVS and you’re looking for a relief from some pain, you might look in the Tylenol section. Well, Tylenol’s there. And then you have Tylenol PM and then you have Tylenol headache and all these different Tylenol, right? But you don’t really know which ones for you, unless you have a specific problem. But if you go into CVS and you have a migraine and you see Tylenol migraine sitting there on the shelf, it speaks to you. That is a mafia offer to you. What you don’t really think about though, is if you spin all those bottles around the ingredients of the product is exactly the same. So Tylenol is calling out a specific customer at a time, not only to increase their shelf space but also to increase their conversion in their offer to a specific type of customer. So, Shawn, I know you like to talk about how can you make a mafia offer as a tire shop, right? If you’re selling the same set of tires, what does that look like?

Shawn:

Well, at the end of the day, we’re all busy. We’re all consumers, but as sellers, Tim, we all seem to make the mistake that we think we are our own customers. Well, in reality, we are not our own customers. We don’t know what the customer’s looking for. So we have to throw out a lot of hooks and a lot of bait, you know, there’s your fishing analogy, but it’s like Tim if you’re walking through a busy shopping mall, which I know they don’t have many of those in Huntsville, but we do have one here in mobile. And you heard somebody say, Hey you, well, who cares? It’s like here in a car alarm, go off. You know, no one looks, but if I said, Hey, you Tim Jordan, you’re like, who is that? Who knows me here. Right. And what Seth is talking about is that mafia offer has to speak to you specifically and scratch that itch that you as a consumer are experiencing along your customer journey.

Shawn:

So what we’re able to do is throw out tons of mafia offers, positioning our products on these different platforms to speak to a specific segment of any one audience. And that’s how we capture the lion’s share of the orders. And then that mafia offer is followed up with something that gives you so much tremendous value that you’re willing to opt-in with an email and or a phone number to redeem that value. You know, that’s the reason why every time you go to McDonald’s or a fast food place, they always say, they’re gonna give you a free hamburger or a free value meal if you just download their app. Well, why do they want you to download the McDonald’s app it’s so that they can market to you because they know they have a way to reach you right in your pocket, in the most personal way possible to send you offers to increase your lifetime value.

Shawn:

That’s all we’re doing. It’s not magic. It’s just good old fashioned marketing. And I think if you’re watching this or listening to this podcast, no matter which channel you’re selling on, if that channel’s allowing you like your analogy yesterday, Tim, when we were talking, if Walmart allows you to put your product in front of their customer, guess what? It’s their customer. Don’t treat that channel as your business, Walmart, Amazon, Roquette, and wherever you’re selling, it doesn’t matter. The platform becomes a profitable customer acquisition channel versus just a transaction machine for you. And that’s the big difference.

Tim Jordan:

And I also think that we as maybe solo pers and side hustlers and e-comm folks overcomplicate things, right? We think that the world is always progressing in a way that we always have to look at the latest, the greatest, the newest, the most tech-savvy complicated thing. And I think what a lot of people, myself, and probably a lot of our listeners do is forget that just good old fashioned marketing works. And I know that a lot of your post-purchase sequencing and post-purchase actions are somewhat old school, right? It’s an email list, it’s SMS, text messages, it’s postcards. It’s like physically printed things, right? Do you think that our industry is trying so hard to stay new and relevant and updated that they’re forgetting that like some of the stuff that’s been around for two or three decades still is just as powerful as it used to be.

Seth:

So Tim predominantly, right now we use email and text marketing because we own the asset. If you build a list on Facebook Messenger, you don’t own anything because Facebook can turn it off. If you build a social media following, you can get your account turned off. Amazon can turn your account off at any time, but no one can take away a CSV file of your customers, emails and phone numbers. You can always have an asset to engage those people. They know like, and trust you. And you have a way to communicate with them. I can call your phone anytime Tim, because you’re in my Rolodex, right? That’s the same thing with our real customers and what people are missing a lot of the times is they think that they have to be a TikTok star and a Facebook guru and be on Twitter and all these things. But really, if I can deliver a personalized message in your inbox where you’re sitting, you’re laying your bed, reading your emails in the morning, and I’m speaking directly to you. And it’s just me and you, one on one, I can deliver a very, very powerful marketing message right there in front of you and get tremendous results. And the best thing is I can send emails forever for almost free and communicate with those people. And I’m in control. I own the asset, which is pretty rare in today’s eCommerce landscape, Shawn.

Shawn:

You know, at the end of the day, there’s a real human being on the other side of that transaction. If we can interact with that person, create a mutually beneficial relationship that will ultimately lead to more sales and higher reviews and less product returns. You know, I still have a list of over 70,000 people, Seth, from that business over a decade ago, I would bet you, and we should actually test this. If I send that same ugly postcard, we’ll probably see a windfall of sales. You know, even if half of those addresses are no good at the end of the day, that is an asset. That person, that name, that phone number, that physical address, that email address is an asset of your business. That is an asset that makes your business more valuable and allows you to compete in a way that the other sellers are not even thinking about. And I think that’s the big difference, Tim.

Tim Jordan:

I agree. So as we come up to the close of time here I wanna do two things. One is I wanna give you guys an opportunity to kind of speak to us, the audience with kind of a last word of advice, as we are thinking now about the value of gaining that audience as a long term audience. And additionally, maybe have a point about understanding lifetime value is higher than we originally sometimes think, which means that we can actually spend a little bit more to acquire those audiences, right? A $1 cost per click, isn’t that big of a deal. If it turns into a customer that buys from you 10 times. But first I wanna at least acknowledge to our listeners that we’ve talked about a lot of theory, and we’ve talked a lot about like some overarching tactics or overarching tactics guess the right word, but we haven’t been able to get into like nitty gritty specifics. Now I know Shawn that you guys wrote a book called?

Shawn:

Private Label Millionaire Secrets

Tim Jordan:

Private Label Millionaire Secrets, and I’m not even gonna pitch this book to you guys. You don’t have to go out and buy it because Shawn is basically giving it to you for free. So if you go to postpurchasepro.com/ampm, is that right?

Shawn:

That’s correct.

Tim Jordan:

postpurchasepro.com/ampm. There’s a digital download version. There’s also like an audio version. Is that right?

Shawn:

We’ll give the PDF and the audio 100% free.

Tim Jordan:

100% free where you will kind of be shown the actual specifics of how they get all of this stuff done. Now, of course, you’re gonna go through an opt-in process and you’re gonna be on their list, but do it because it’s worth it and see how they operate. Like use that as a chance to kind of see what one of these funnels looks like. If you’re not familiar with that yet, but never hurts to have a free book and Post Purchase Pro is a service that essentially does a lot of this after market client acquisition for you. So when you’re on the website, check that stuff out, and see if it’s a good fit for you. So before we sign off, I’d ask both of you to answer those questions that I just asked you a minute ago. You know, drop another bomb on us before we sign off.

Shawn:

All right. So basically at the end of the day, it’s all about what you’re doing with the customer, right? If, if you’re just focused on transactions, let’s say that every day you wake up and you pray that whatever channel you’re selling on fill in the blank, whether it’s Amazon or Walmart or whatever the new fled deal is when you’re watching this 10 years from now if you’re relying on that channel to send traffic to your order, then what you’re doing, Tim is you’re waking up every single morning, unemployed looking for a new job. If you’re able to orchestrate a situation where you can capture some data, you’re already paying for the data. Anyway, if you’re selling on Amazon, we’re paying 15 points to capture that customer information. If you can capture the right data, that becomes an asset that you can tap into over and over and over again.

Shawn:

And I know it sounds sleazy. Let’s send an email message. Let’s send a text message, but I think you don’t realize is that just because you don’t pull into McDonald’s every single time you see the golden arches doesn’t stop. Mcdonald’s from advertising to you, right? That’s right on again, that message resonates. And you whip in there and you grab a happy meal for the kiddos after soccer practice, but not every time what we’re doing in marketing is we’re attracting more eyeballs to our offers. And then once they’re in our funnel, we’ll convert them to sales in a mature manner. Like we’re not gonna just say ram an offer down your throat every day. We’re gonna speak to you in a conversational tone. We’re gonna provide value to you ongoing so that we nurture the relationship because over here, Post Purchase Pro we say, right, build nurture, then profit in that order.

Shawn:

And that’s the way it has to be. We talk about all of those strategies in a lot of detail and Post Purchase Pro, or I’m sorry, in Private Label Millionaire Secrets, but believe me, Tim, you don’t spend the time and energy to write a book so that you can sell it for profit. That’s not what it’s all about. It’s about the rising tide lifting all boats. There’s your third boat analogy for the call. This is about transferring to you. The knowledge that’s taking us collectively 40 years to accumulate. And you get all that free in this book, Seth.

Seth:

Yeah. And Tim, what the data shows from all of our data point collecting and research is that the product or service that anyone is most likely to buy is the same product that they’ve already purchased. So if you’re sitting there thinking to yourself, well, no one would ever buy another one of my products you’re wrong. And the data shows it. So, and, and you don’t have to know the reason why somebody’s going to buy more from you. It could be that they’re giving a gift or they want another one for their spouse, or they have a second home or an RV. It doesn’t matter. The data shows that they’re going to buy another one of your units again. But here’s the thing. It’s probably not going to be from you unless you step into that conversation. And here’s the best part is once you’ve sold to a customer, one time you have their trust.

Seth:

You have already delivered for them. They owe you reciprocally, right? They feel like they’ve gotten more value out of the relationship with you than you’ve. You’ve taken because otherwise, they wouldn’t have given you the money. So if you can develop that relationship with a customer and actually step back into it through email and text, because you own the media, you own the traffic. They’re not only going to thank you, but you’re gonna make way more money. Because just to your point, Tim is the LTV matters a lot. If I have to pay $20 to acquire a customer, and my product only costs $20, that’s a losing proposition. But if I sell to them five more times, then that situation becomes a completely different scenario. So at the end of the day, what you want to do is start building your audience. Whether you sell on Amazon, whether you sell on Walmart, whether you sell on Shopify, it doesn’t matter. What you wanna do is care about building your audience of real customers so you can actually engage them ongoing, Shawn.

Shawn:

Definitely. So, Tim, it’s not up to us to answer the question. Will my customer buy more? It’s up to us to ask the question and let the customer speak for themselves. And I think the results will amaze you.

Tim Jordan:

I love it. I love that this isn’t some new hacky trendy, you know, thing that we’re talking about. It’s just talking about using really just good, honest business principles in the eCommerce world. That’s been proven for a number of years and you guys are still actively doing it right now. And, and adding a little credibility with the backbone of 153 million in sales that you’ve done for yourself over the past few years. And we appreciate you sharing this information. Again, guys go to postpurchasepro.com/ampm to get a free copy of their book, where they’re gonna show you the actual nitty gritty details of everything that we talked about today. And they’re hitting up a lot of e-commerce events. Shawn was telling me he wants to actually slow down on that, but you guys track him down on LinkedIn or Facebook. Send him a message and tell him to keep showing up to these things so that you guys can shake his hand and follow what they’re doing on social. Cause there’s a lot of good content they’re putting out. We think all of you for listening, if this was a good episode, make sure to leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you’re listening to share this around to your groups, your communities, your audiences, all of the folks that would find value in this. And we’ll see all of you on the next episode.

Shawn:

Thanks, Tim. Thanks.

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The post #293 – Unlocking The Power Of After-Purchase Sales For Increased Profits with Shawn Hart and Seth Stevens appeared first on AM/PM Podcast.