eCommerce Podcast

The creator economy is booming, and there are plenty of opportunities for those who know how to join in. In this episode, Tomer Hen joins Matt to talk about the creator economy and the best practices for successfully launching a personal consumer brand. TOMER HENTomer Hen is a serial entrepreneur with over a decade of experience in the Digital Marketing industry. During this time, he founded the first mobile marketing school in Israel, created the first Israeli Mobile Marketing Summit, and has spearheaded notable campaigns with leading fortune 500 brands, including Amazon, Audible, and Mastercard. Backed by his expertise and a growing portfolio, Tomer was recognized as one of Forbes’s 30 promising entrepreneurs under 30. In 2011, Tomer founded MobCo Media, a user-acquisition and performance-driven intelligence company. With over 500 campaigns in more than 160 countries, MobCo has cemented its position as a front-runner in the ad tech space.Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:Today, the world is becoming more and more authentic, and people are looking for authenticity. We have an interesting mix of technology and the internet. And self-expression and authenticity are the keys to unlocking this Creator Economy. The most successful creators are those who are themselves.There’s a huge difference between selling a product and building a brand. People choose to go after a brand because they believe in what that brand stands for and that it serves them in a unique way and makes them feel special and cared for.Creator Economy is about finding a community you want to serve and building a brand around them and not vice versa. It is not about making money. People are very sensitive about why you do what you do. And when you realise it's all about who you serve, and not what you sell, then that's the main advantage for your brand.For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.

Hiring is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to scaling your business. Without talented people in place, hiring efficiently and finding top-notch talent proves challenging--to say nothing about what happens if they don't get along or have different skill sets that prevent them from working well together! In this episode we'll be talking with Yoni Kozminksi who can help you avoid these pitfalls by sharing his insight, processes and systems to find the right talent for your business. ABOUT YONIYoni Kozminski is an entrepreneur and business consultant with over two decades of experience in scaling businesses. Over the years, he has helped develop digital strategies for some of the world's biggest brands, including Mercedez-Benz, Mastercard, Sony, Medtronic Diabetes, Mondelez International, and more. His experiences eventually led to the creation of Escala and MultiplyMii - two companies that help businesses achieve massive growth. Besides being an awesome entrepreneur, Yoni is also a seasoned podcaster! His 'Successful Scales' Podcast is centred on questions related to growing, selling, acquiring, and scaling a business and what comes with it. If you're looking to take your business to the next level - you don't want to miss out on his wisdom!Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:To build a business that stands the test of time, you have to invest in your culture and delegate accountability to your people instead of tasks. One of the number one mistakes that people make when building processes is they take a bottom-up approach, but it’s looking on the high level and understanding how everything integrates inside of your business that will help you succeed in building out an effective process. As soon as you get to the level where you start to feel stretched, that's when you should start enacting some of these processes, but you want to actually get to them sooner rather than later. Starting with a Word doc or an Excel spreadsheet and simply defining everything might be a great place to start. You want to build more time in your day so that you can focus on the things that are going to have the most impact in your business and in your life. When you look to build systems in your business, you must first consider where you are investing your time and then understand where you can give ownership and accountability. The perfect system is one that brings perfect harmony between people, process, and technology. Enjoying listening to our conversation about scaling your business with talent :-)For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.

Black Friday is coming up and a lot of people are wondering what the best way to take advantage of the sales is. This bonus episode is going to answer all your questions about Black Friday so you can be fully prepared.ABOUT CHLOEChloë Thomas is a globally recognised eCommerce marketing problem solver. Author of several bestselling books, keynote speaker, and host of both the award-winning eCommerce MasterPlan Podcast, AND Keep Optimising Podcast.Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:There's a movement against the big blanket discounts that only last for 24 hours and things like this. Everyone now feels like they have permission to create the promotion that works for them. And then the second side of it is, as an industry we have got much savvier at organizing the operations side of it - changing the postage methods, changing the messaging on speed of delivery, working with our couriers, our 3PLs, our own inhouse warehouses - to be ready and to manage that bump when it comes.Black Friday doesn't have to be for everyone. If you've got good reason not to do it, don't do it. A good reason could be that it doesn't fit with your brand or it doesn't fit with your sales model or that you only have limited stock. There is a big customer intention to spend money on that day, whether you run an offer or not. So you will probably see a sales uplift even if you don't do anything. Use social proof to build and retain customer loyalty. Social proof comes in so many different flavors. You've got the overall score of the site; you've got actual quotes from actual customers to put in places. You can also take some control over what appears on the homepage and what is on your emails by including place that you've been featured or where you've been quotes. Tell your story too - how long you've been around, how many orders you've shipped, how many happy customers you've had. Reveal the humanity behind the business.For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.

Running a business that relies on delivering products from warehouse to customer can be daunting, especially when your company is growing quickly. In this week’s episode Harry Drajpuch talks about ways to build a scalable fulfilment infrastructure and avoid the common pitfalls. ABOUT HARRYHarry Drajpuch is the CEO of Amware Fulfilment. He's a 30+ year logistics industry executive with a breadth of experience in executive management. In his previous role as COO of Amware Logistics, he was responsible for technology and the performance of eight nationwide fulfilment centers. Prior to that, Drajpuch was President and CEO of Weber Logistics, where he had full P&L responsibility for 15 distribution centers and a large regional truckload fleet. He also served as COO at third-party logistics provider Kane Is Able.When he's not shaking things up in the boardroom, Harry will be likely off flying his plane - he’s an instrument rated pilot too!Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:The eCommerce industry has changed drastically over the years. It’s a volatile industry and as an eCommerce entrepreneur, you have to adapt to the customer’s growing expectations in terms of speed of delivery, quality of service, product customisations/personalisations, etc. The ability to adapt with the changing demands of the customer will help you differentiate yourself in the marketplace and stand out from the crowd.The pathway to success begins with the right people. You have to ensure that the people in your organisation and those that you hire have the right attitude. Be selective in your hiring, look for people that want to do something a little bit differently, that see it as a challenge, and are willing to put themselves in the customer’s shoes to ensure they deliver excellent service, every single time. And then create a positive atmosphere that walks the talk, that supports and appreciates them. As your business grows, you must think about whether or not you need to outsource your fulfillment and what it’s going to cost you. Outsourced companies are a little more efficient and when you outsource, you generally save money and you can scale very quickly. Once the back-end is taken care of, you can focus on getting your message out to people to buy. Enjoying listening to our conversation about fulfilment infrastructure :-)For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.

In a world where people are increasingly conscientious of the environment, it is important to be aware of the impact your product has. In this week’s podcast, Austin Simms joins Matt to help us explore the different ways our products can reduce our environmental impact and make an effort to become more sustainable.ABOUT AUSTINAustin is the co-founder of Dayrize. After 20+ years spent working in senior positions at major corporations like Nike, Philips and Brooks Running, Austin had a desire to use his skills to address climate change. With a strong commercial background, he believed that putting the power in consumers hands was important to make real change. He recognized that the first thing that consumers needed to make positive change was access to information to make better decisions, which is why he started Dayrize to make impact assessment transparent for business and consumers.  Enjoying listening to our conversation about the environmental impact of your products :-)For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.

Shopping used to be about finding what you wanted at a price that suited your budget. But with AI-powered product recommendations, the process has become much simpler and more enjoyable!In this episode we chat with Oliver Edholm who tells us how this technology is changing both consumers' shopping experiences as well as businesses'.ABOUT OLIVEROliver Edholm is the Co-founder and CEO of Depict.ai. At 15, Oliver dropped out of high school. At 16, he moved across the world and hustled his way into an ML research position at the National University of Singapore. At 17, he founded Depict and joined Y Combinator to revolutionise the way we discover products online. Now at 19, Oliver leads a team of 35 employees at one of the most cutting-edge Ecommerce startups in Europe.Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:If you want to get started out with AI, your traffic and the number of SKUs that you have must be at a reasonable level before AI makes sense for you. Several 100 SKUs and probably a couple of 1000 people at least visiting your website. The more the data, the better the AI tends to be the rule of thumb. Depict can work with more sparse data sets, which have less data. Product information is incredibly useful when recommending a product like going to a physical retail store and asking the salesperson for advice. Almost all existing recommender systems ignore that. Depict can apply incredibly smart image recognition algorithms, understanding subtle patterns, which was impossible a few years ago, but is now possible. When combined with the user data, it can generate really good results.There are a lot of buzzwords around AI and many people exploit that fact. The way to avoid gimmicks then is to become really good at asking yourself, what problems do I need to solve and does the solution actually solve this problem? And then don't care if it uses AI or not. Simple solutions tend to work surprisingly well, a lot of times. Enjoying listening to our conversation about AI product recommendations :-)For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.

Entrepreneurship is one of the most difficult things to do well, but it's also incredibly rewarding. You'll want this episode for all your entrepreneurial needs because in today’s talk with Omar Zenhom he shares some valuable lessons that any entrepreneur should take note of as they start their own business or grow an existing company!ABOUT OMAROmar Zenhom is the co-founder and CEO of WebinarNinja. He founded the company in 2014, and it has since grown to become one of the world's leading webinar platforms. Over a million people have attended a webinar on WebinarNinja, and it has been named as one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in 2018.In addition to his work at WebinarNinja, Omar is also the host of The $100 MBA Show. With over 2,100 episodes this iTunes Best of 2014 podcast has been downloaded over 197 million times and ranked as a top business podcast in over 30 countries. Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:In the modern digital world, it’s easy to think that you need to copy someone else to be successful. The danger with that is you can end up being just another guy and not really making any difference. Running a business is hard work. So, when you are building one, find something that you really enjoy and run it in a way that works and makes sense for you. When it comes to content marketing, there's so much opportunity. Teaching is the new selling and there are so many ways to turn your eCommerce store into more than just a store. It's a community, it's a movement. People are just excited about what you have because you're not just showing them the product, you're showing them how it fits in in their life.Blogging is still one of the most powerful ways to get traffic to your website because of the power of SEO. Even though we're in the digital age with video and audio, text SEO is still the most powerful way for people to find you. People don't just go from “I don't know anything about your product” to “I want to buy it now” instantly. There is a process of education, there's a process of them envisioning themselves and their lives with your product.Enjoying listening to our conversation about successful entrepreneurship :-)For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.

This episode is all about learning how to use acquisition as a growth strategy for your business.A lot of people think that the only way to grow a business is through organic growth - but that's not true. You can also grow your business by using acquisition as a growth strategy for your business and there are a lot of different ways that you can do this. In this video, Matt is joined by Stephen Speer and together they explore the topic of business growth through acquisition. They discuss what it means for a company to grow by acquisition and some of the key benefits and considerations involved in this type of growth.ABOUT STEPHENStephen Speer is the founder and CEO of Ecommerce Lending. He has over three decades of lending experience, and has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs achieve business success through acquisition. Stephen is an ecommerce leader, guest speaker, and M&A instructor. With his firm, he has funded over 350 transactions totaling over $400 million- making them the top lender in the country in this very specialized niche.Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:If you have an eCommerce business, you should definitely think of growth by acquisition. When you buy a business, it’s already been brought to a certain level and with the right business acumen you can really catapult the business and continue to grow. And if you're able to grow a portfolio of similar businesses, running them the same way, ultimately it can be a great way to grow and succeed.Usually, sticking to your lane and buying businesses you’re familiar with and running it roughly the same way is a great way to ensure success. Through leverage financing, smaller businesses can even acquire larger ones, as long as the buyer has the right business acumen.As much as acquiring an eCommerce business is a great idea, it is not really a straightforward process because there are a lot of moving pieces. At Ecommerce Lending, Stephen and his team help build a team around their clients to ensure they do have post acquisition success. They’re not just a lender, but offer a lot of ancillary services to help their clients succeed post acquisition.Enjoying listening to our conversation about growth through acquisition :-)For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.

If you're like most business owners, you know that customer retention is key to your success. In this episode, Daniel Budai joins Matt to talk about the secrets to email marketing that will keep your customers coming back for more.ABOUT DANIELDaniel always had a knack for business, but it wasn't until he started learning about marketing and e-commerce that he truly found his calling. As a former geology student, he never would have guessed that he would end up owning a 7 figure marketing agency, Budai Media. But Daniel realized early on that most eCommerce business professionals lacked the skills to implement emails professionally. And that's why he founded Budai Media with the sole purpose of helping eCommerce brands build strong relationships with their customers.These days, Daniel spends most of his time drinking Americano and running Budai Media and , but when he's not working you can find him playing basketball or spending time with his wife and two kids. He loves Americano and travelling around the globe. Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:The Budai Media helps eCommerce businesses with direct response marketing such as Email, SMS, and Messenger marketing and loyalty programs focusing on customer retention. If you're in a business that thrives on repeat customers, then tracking metrics such as average days between transactions is quite important. If you are a big brand with a big list of subscribers, tracking metrics such as RFM can give you valuable insights and help you segment your customers into various categories. Tools such as Reveal or Metrilo can help you with that.Building a solid Email flow and introducing your brand to your customers is a great way to increase Customer Retention. Also, don’t just offer discounts, but come up with creative ideas such as offering a sample product, hosting a Facebook Live, running a great customer loyalty program, or even providing live consultations to your top customers. Enjoying listening to our conversation about email marketing :-)For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.

Wanna learn how to take your product and turn it into a successful direct marketing campaign? This episode is for you!A lot of people think that direct marketing is only for big businesses, but that's simply not true. You can use these techniques with any size business. So whether you're just starting out or you've been in business for years, listen to this episode and start generating more sales using direct marketing.Cody Bramlett joins Matt on the eCommerce Podcast to discuss how any business (no matter its size) can take a product into direct marketing. Cody talks in depth about what this process looks like for eCommerce businesses. ABOUT CODYCody Bramlett is the founder of a multimillion-dollar nutritional supplement empire. After years of struggling as a personal trainer and gym owner, Cody's life changed when he solved his father's chronic inflammation problem with his own custom-formulated products. This empowered Cody to start growing his company, Science Natural Supplements, to help other people get pain-free, lose weight, and overall just feel great about themselves! As a result of starting and scaling Science Naturals, Cody now also teaches other driven entrepreneurs how to profitably start, scale, and sell their own nutritional supplement brands through his coaching and mastermind called, Supplement Millionaire.Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:If you have a great product, you can start generating more sales by using long form sales pages, which can either be text or video, that’s telling a compelling story of how your product has transformed people’s lives. And the way to you can drive traffic to this page is using affiliates. Joining different community groups and coaching programmes can help you find the right affiliates that work for you.You will need quality writers to make your content stand out and to do that you must find out what you want and why. Once you have your product, you can then look at pages that are doing well and reverse engineer them. The people who visit your site do not know you or your product. So you want to build friendship and give them a great deal to build their trust and confidence in you.Cody has built a programme called Supplement Millionaire and teaches people how to launch and build a direct marketing, affiliate-based supplement brand or health brand in that space. He helps a huge plethora of people from diverse spaces start and build a health or supplement business online.Enjoying listening to our conversation about direct marketing :-)For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.