The Ecommerce Influence Podcast

Are you ready to scale your business and ship internationally, but feel intimidated by the complexities involved? Are you currently shipping abroad, but struggling with all of the different contracts, customs, and taxes? If so, we’ve got a fantastic episode for you today.

Shipping outside of the United States can be a huge component of scaling your business, but there are many challenges related to finding the best courier in every country, understanding different regulations, and having proper documentation. EasyShip is a shipping platform that takes care of all of these issues and helps ecommerce businesses ship all over the world.

Tommaso Tamburnotti, co-founder of EasyShip, joins us this week to talk about international shipping for ecommerce. We discuss the process of moving from domestic to international shipping, common inventory issues, and how to stop leaving money on the table by not taking advantage of the international market.

Episode Highlights:  

  • 7:21 Understanding how Easy Ship came to be and how they’ve helped many ecommerce brands go international.
  • 14:21 How to identify international markets and scale your business.
  • 19:25 Why the language barrier shouldn’t keep you from testing international sales.
  • 21:53 The international markets you should be considering.
  • 23:15 The 5 main steps you need to take to start shipping internationally and how Easy Ship simplifies the process.
  • 30:53 How to overcome the customer service nightmare of getting a product stuck in customs.
  • 33:53 Why there is currently a huge opportunity for US brands to start selling internationally.
  • 32:23 The two main problems that Tommaso sees with US brands when they sell internationally. 

Links and Resources:

Direct download: EI_145_Tommaso_v1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am CDT

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with all the information out there about how to grow your business? I know I do, it’s a freaking jungle out there.

There is so much noise out there telling you to build this, optimize that, or to invest in some new shiny marketing channel it’s difficult to choose where to direct your attention..

It’s easy to get distracted from the simple fundamentals of how to grow your business. If you’re feeling stuck and are looking for inspiration on how to jumpstart growth, this episode is for you.

This week we share the three levers you should focus on in order to grow your business, the simplest and least expensive way. These include: number of customers, average order value and frequency. We talk about how to calculate each of these, and how, as well as how much, you need to increase them by to double your business over the next year.

Episode Highlights:

  • 4:42 Lever #1: Reviewing your product pages to identify opportunities for increasing the number of customers.
  • 6:05 How the creation of a “best-sellers” page can ensure you are not leaving money on the table.
  • 7:28 Lever # 2: Increasing your Average Order Value.
  • 10:28 The data is in and this is the minimum AOV you should be targeting for to see success with Facebook and Instagram advertising.
  • 13:37 Lever #3: Increasing your purchase frequency.
  • 17:20 Here is Austin’s formula for figuring out purchase frequency and how to scale it up over the next year.        

Links and Resources:

Direct download: EI_144_Flash_3_Simple_Levers_v1.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am CDT

This was one of my favorite episodes to record in the last year. I’ve often struggled with work-life balance and am no stranger to trying things that haven’t worked. This week we bring you a refreshing interview with my friend Victor Delacruz about the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life.

Victor Delacruz is the founder and owner of ChristianPlanner.com. Victor shares his journey as an ecommerce entrepreneur - from youth pastor to Air Force Captain to Jazz Piano student at NYU to the business owner he is now.

Victor talks about the benefits of having a solid daily routine for optimizing your personal and professional life, and the importance for finding what works best for you. He shares the challenges he has faced within his personal and professional life, and the game-changer tactic he used for growing his email list, gathering customer testimonials, and getting tons of user-generated content that was repurposed for social ads and a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Episode Highlights:

  • 5:28 The path to success sometimes starts with a journey towards failure.   

  • 13:04 How Victor came to the decision to start again after his many setbacks.

  • 13:26 Step 1: Doing the research and understanding the audience size and opportunity in front of him.

  • 14:30 Why the key to a great ecommerce site starts with a simple name.

  • 16:00 How a single open ended question in the first email of Christian Planner’s email sequence lead to hundreds of responses and the growth of the brand.

  • 17:40 This is how Christian Planner gathered user generated content to create a video that helped them raise money, gain followers, increase email subscribers and new product ideas.

  • 28:18 The one thing that Victor learned in the military that has helped him grow in his business.

  • 32:00 Exploring neurofeedback, floating and other methods to get a mental edge in a distracting online world.

  • 38:15 The daily routine that helps Victor stay on track and the “have-to-dos” that he uses to measures his growth & success

Links and Resources:



Direct download: EI_143_Victor_Delacruz.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am CDT

Do you want to be ahead of the curve when it comes to testing new Facebook advertising strategies? Then this episode is for you.

We’re always looking for ways to increase Facebook ad performance and drive more revenue, and today Andrew shares four things he recently learned that are having a big impact for his clients.

We cover how to use value bid optimization to target not only the people most likely to convert, but also the people who are most likely to give you highest return on ad spend, the importance of experimenting with your bidding windows within conversion campaigns, how to set up better social proofing tied to your product catalog ads, and how to review your customer lifetime value within Facebook analytics in order to test the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Episode Highlights:

  • 3:18 The value of ROAS optimization and why you might just want to give it a chance.
  • 6:20 When you should be adjusting your bidding window to increase scaling opportunities.
  • 8:45 Why tagging a product AND social proofing your ads is a double dose for success.
  • 10:55 Facebook’s Lifetime Value analytics and how this data is a game changer for growing the value of your customers over time.
  • 13:54 The key formula for growing your business in ecommerce.  
  • 14:13 How you can test a few of Andrew’s findings on email as well.

Links and Resources:




Direct download: EI_142_Flash_4_FB_tips.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am CDT

Do you want to know what it really takes to build a $100 million business and brand? Then this episode is for you.

Building a successful multi-million dollar business is a marathon, not a sprint. Jake Kassan, founder and CEO of MVMT Watches, was one of my first clients when he was just launching the brand back in 2013. He joins us today to talk about how things have changed since then, and how MVMT has grown to what it is today.

MVMT strives to be a best in class brand and best in class in all around marketing, and Jake shares the strategic approach to marketing MVMT uses to achieve those goals. He also talks about how having a strong team is essential to scaling your business and shares his experience hiring a CMO and supporting team, and what you need to know to do it.

Episode Highlights:

  • 7:48 How building relationships with customers through direct sales online helped MVMT scale.
  • 10:25 The best success comes in stages and this it what each stage of growth has looked like for MVMT over the last 5 years.
  • 12:15 Jake’s #1 tip for successfully scaling a business (hint: it’s not email or Facebook ads).
  • 13:42 What MVMT would do differently if they had to do it all over again.
  • 18:12 As an entrepreneur, Jake believes it’s important to always be testing and working through those results to find success.
  • 19:25 The basic math MVMT used to scale in the beginning and how they look at “spending-money-to-make-money” now.   
  • 21:30 Where MVMT is testing for acquisition and where they’re seeing success.
  • 25:23 What you need to know when growing your team so you can successfully scale your business.
  • 30:10 How MVMT solidified their appeal with customers through user-generated content.
  • 33:40 What Jake loves most about building a lifestyle brand.
  • 36:41 Every business goes through low times, here’s a few MVMT went through in order to grow.
  • 42:20 Why Jake feels it’s so important to network with and learn from other founders. 

Links and Resources:

 

Direct download: EI_141_Jake_Kassan.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00am CDT

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