Here’s a mini-case study from a self-described ‘absolute idiot.’
In 2020 Stanley Tussy started an ecommerce brand with great success. Covid helped the business to gain traction and in the first-year revenues were nearly $2 million.
Stanley says that’s when he got lazy and complacent.
Thanks to the pandemic, ads were cheap, and he was happy to generate 100% of his revenue and sales through paid ads.
But when things went back to normal after Covid, ad costs rose, and his business experienced a massive decrease in profit.
The one thing he neglected was as he says, “The most BASIC and FUNDAMENTAL thing for every business,” – sending out emails.
He had an audience and customer base that he built through paid ads, and yet because of his complacency he did not send out a SINGLE promotional email until 2023.
Emails were something he thought he would do later once he’d grown the business more.
Now emails account for 35% of his revenue and net 70% of his sales. He could operate at break even or even at a loss acquiring new leads and customers because his email revenue will more than make up for that. He says, “I’m basically just printing money at this point, and my open rate, click rate, and placed order rate are going up with each new campaign I send out.”
And his emails are simple: A logo, a simple image with a promo code using a Canva template, 4-5 lines of text talking about the promo and how subscribers will miss out if they don’t grab it.
He spends more time creating the subject line than the email itself and uses a swipe file to create a subject line that will work.
The money he’s lost is an estimate based on last year’s revenue, and just thinking about it makes him feel ill.
Stanely says, “At the end of the day, success in ecommerce or in any industry, in my opinion, is really just about the fundamentals. You need to put in the groundwork by first creating or branding a product that fulfills a need/want in your niche, promote the hell out of it through paid ads/posts, and then cultivate a relationship with the audiences you’ve built through these channels.”
The one takeaway he wants everyone to remember is to not make the same mistake he made and neglect promotional emails. He says if he were starting over, he would be sending emails from Day 1 and promoting his product on social media as well.
