Improve Customer Engagement With Effective SMS Marketing Strategies With Aaron Orendorff

Aaron Orendorff is the Head of Marketing at Recart, a text marketing app helping businesses grow through personalized AI text messages. He is also the Founder of iconiContent, which provides B2B content strategies to generate qualified leads and scale businesses. As a member of the Forbes Communications Council, Aaron’s literary work has been featured in the New York Times, Mashable, Business Insider, and Success Magazine, among others. Before Recart, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Shopify Plus and the VP of Marketing at Common Thread Collective, an e-commerce growth agency.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

How Aaron Orendorff’s diverse professional background developed his communication skills
Why conventional SMS strategies are ineffective — and how to use them advantageously
Aaron explains the five foundational messaging flows
What SMS strategies improve customer engagement and sales?
SMS strategies to avoid
How to separate self-worth from business success

In this episode…

Marketing is designed to communicate with consumers in hopes they purchase your products. SMS messaging is a marketing channel many brands pursue, but the majority do so ineffectively — negating its intended purpose of increasing sales revenue. What SMS strategies should you implement to reach target audiences, and which methods should you avoid?

Most brands spend their marketing budgets on mass messaging campaigns — known in the industry as batch and blast — which can be expensive if improperly used. Marketing expert Aaron Orendorff explains that brands can determine SMS campaign success by the amount of new leads added to their messaging list. Finding a messaging cadence and incorporating follow-up messages to consumers who abandon their carts can generate more sales and significantly increase revenue.

On this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris welcomes Aaron Orendorff, Head of Marketing at Recart, to discuss why brands struggle to produce favorable results from their SMS marketing strategies. Aaron shares insights on using SMS strategies effectively. He also explains how the five foundational messaging flows improve customer engagement and increase sales.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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Sponsor for this episode...

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:03

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now, let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:15

Hey everybody, William Harris here. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt. I’m the host of this podcast where I feature experts in the D2C industry sharing strategies on how to scale your business and achieve your goals. Today's guest is Aaron Orendorff, a personal friend of mine. He was formerly the Head of Marketing at — oh, he currently is the Head of Marketing at Recart. But previously, he was the Editor in Chief over at Shopify Plus, he was the VP of Marketing at Common Thread Collective. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, Mashable, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Lifehacker, Business Insider Success and nearly every content marketing publication under the digital sun. Aaron, I'm excited to have you here today.

Aaron Orendorff 0:55

With that intro.

William Harris 0:56

So am I. Yes. And I was thinking about who introduced us and I think I think it was Tommy Walker. Am I correct? Does that sound right to you? It has to

Aaron Orendorff 1:05

be this was back in the day when Shopify Plus was just becoming a thing people forget that we were writing yes is about what is cloud commerce. What does it mean to be a SaaS like that was that was a thing we were writing about right, seven, eight years ago, and you dropped this massive piece on a migrate over to Shopify Plus that I think you got a lot of heat for.

William Harris 1:28

Right I did. Oh, Magento did not like me. When I wrote that, at the time, Shopify did not even have a 10 by 10. Booth at IRCE right internet retailers Conference, which I think now is called RICE. R-I-C-E has changed a little bit. It's gone through some iterations. But you know Shopify was was they didn't even have a 10 by 10. Booth and wrote this article, it's I want to say like 7000 words about migrating a large website from Magento over to Shopify Plus, and I can remember people in the e-commerce space thought I was absolutely nuts. They're like Shopify, that's for small businesses, you're an eight figure store, what are you doing going to Shopify? But I remember Tommy really liked it because he was there. And I ended up on a call with the entire C-suite of Magento. Where they're like, Okay, hey, a lot of things you said, were fair, let's talk through some of them. And, you know, let's, let's see where we can go from here and how we can make Magento better. And I remember giving them some thoughts and ideas. And I think they took some some of that advice, and some of that they didn't and I'd say that leaves them where they are. They're, I love some of the people at Magento. But I still don't think that they've leveled up to where Shopify is that

Aaron Orendorff 2:35

these young bucks, these young kittens and cats, they don't know. They don't know what the world was like low freakin seven years ago. I mean, it really is, it's wild to think that such a stir that somebody would have the gall to move to Shopify Shopify Plus, what's that? Right? I just don't

William Harris 2:53

know. I do want to go ahead. And real quick. We're gonna get into good stuff in a minute, but I want to give our sponsorship message here. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 of them that IPO recently. And we were ranked as the 12th fastest growing agency in the world by Adweek. You can learn more on our website at elumynt.com that's E-L-U-M-Y-N-T.com. Well, okay, and so let's talk about when we were young bucks, and when you were you know, starting off there and and like what has brought you to where you are now at Recart like, like, short journey path of going from, you know, you could go even before what you were doing at Shopify Plus, I'll let you tell the story wherever you want to, but either before Shopify Plus or coming from Shopify Plus over to where you are now at Recart, what's this backstory here?

Aaron Orendorff 3:49

I've lived three distinct professional lives. And the first one was in a mix of religious circles I went to seminary I got what's known as a Masters of divinity did not grow up in a religious home with definitely Aaron from 15 years ago. It's called Aaron today an absolute heretic. So we should be clear about that. Those are, those are my roots. When it comes to the way I think about communicating, successfully burned that life to the ground a little over a decade ago. Now. I jumped into online writing at the same time as teaching. So I don't know if you even know about. I was a college professor full time remember that you were a college professor for a little Yes. Yeah. So I walk in these worlds. But the unifying factor of all of those worlds is this idea that the point of communication is to affect change. Yeah. That there's something to be said for rallying the base preaching to the choir, retaining your existing customers, those sort of things, but I've always been absorbed in this world of the idea is to get what's in my head, out my mouth or my fingertips into somebody else's in a way that makes them say yes, or at the very least, huh Tell me more, that has encapsulated everything. Because in fact, I'll shout this out. I taught the speech one on one course, as well as advanced speaking, advanced communications. And I'd love to open that course with, Okay, why are you all here, and that would always be dead quiet, and somebody would try to suck up, right. And eventually we'd give the idea that you're here because they say you have to be to get a degree. Some of you are knocking this out from the jump, some of you are here on your last leg, and you're just you're scraping the end of the requirements barrel, none of you want to be here. Let's start with that as the reality. So let me pitch you for the next 40 minutes about why you should love this class wide, it's going to pay off. So it's always that idea of communicating to effect change. That's my heartbeat.

William Harris 5:43

That's huge. You know, I feel like there's a lot of times where we see people get frustrated that other people aren't taking the action that we want them to take, when we haven't done a very good job of communicating why they should actually care or want to do this. We see this in the advertising world all the time we see customers, you know, as an advertiser, well, why don't I have a better kick? Well, because you're not saying anything unique about your product at all whatsoever, or whether that's, you know, a class or when this happens, Let's even say so you're ready to jump in, I'll hold and then I'll get somewhere else I was gonna go, no

Aaron Orendorff 6:13

and good. People have to, you have to want a thing to be true. Before you're gonna get any mental or emotional energy to it. There has to be something where I have a pre existing set of desires a story that I live within something that I'm afraid of, and something that I want to accomplish in every area of my life, down to where I hope we go to eat dinner tonight, or what movie we see and watch, right? There's like, there's something I want and I'm afraid of. And it's not until I see how the thing you're talking to me about overlaps, encapsulates cross references, digs into and helps me fulfill the thing that I actually already want to I'm going to give you even that's the thing is even the mental and emotional energy to pay attention in this attention economy, right? You gotta have a reason to care. And that reason, and this is 1,000%. self centered. It's absolutely, yeah,

William Harris 7:03

yeah. Which is sad, but true. And I would say this is even true for social causes, where oftentimes, it's like, wait a minute, is your marketing message as a social cause? Right now? Is it bringing people who don't currently support your cause into this? Or are you only reaching out to the people who already think the way that you do? And I see this all the time, where it's like, why don't they get it? Well, you're not talking to them in a language that they understand yet. And so you can say, well, they need to just get with the program. Maybe? Maybe that's true. How about you try to talk to them, though, in a language that they understand.

Aaron Orendorff 7:33

It's about what you want to accomplish? Right? Such a fundamental question in all of life, what do you want, and what you're doing, expresses more of what you actually want than what you would say. The actions you're taking are perfectly aligned with what the desires of your heart and psychology and deepest you're doing. And so if the doing isn't getting what you say you want, then the idea is okay, I either have to be honest about the thing that I actually want, which is fine, go do that. Or I have to radically rethink if this end, if I'm trying to get some from trying to get that. Yes, that nod that the next three seconds, pay attention to me go from the headline to the first line to the third line from trying to get that CTA like, whatever that thing is, what do I actually want to accomplish, and then align my actions with that and bake my own desires back into that deeper, so that I don't get distracted by the things that pissed me off or irk me or complain about to no good and like, they're just don't get it. Now. That's a huge problem.

William Harris 8:38

Right? Yes. So let's bring this into a SMS messaging, this is a natural transition, right. But there is there's a lot that can be said for how this fits within the messaging that you're sending to your customers at every level. So from an advertising perspective, but also the messages they're sending after they've purchased from you and whatever. So one of the things we're talking about is, you know, sometimes some of these SMS messages are these campaigns are losing some of their effectiveness over time, the markets getting more crowded, maybe haven't reached a tipping point yet, but what are the things that you're seeing that are warning signs that these things are becoming less effective SMS is less effective? And how can we begin to fight against that to be more effective in what we're sending out?

Aaron Orendorff 9:22

What's fun about my career, and my career has been defined by as long as I'm a step or two in front of my audience. I'm safe. I don't have the exhaustive answers. And over the last six months coming into Recart, that's been an absolute drinking from the firehose on a whole new level and nuance to marketing that is primarily centered on driving purchase behavior, creating an imperative to act now, that is the nature of text messages. And it's the nature of text messages in the way that we use it as a communication channel and so it believes right on over into how people interact with it with brands, right? We go back to like the thing that you want making the thing that they want front and center. So when I first joined up with Recart, we had done an exhaustive study through, there are just some smart data engineering cookies over there. And they basically set the SMS landscape right off of a company called store leads, that ranks all the Shopify as well as other platforms, and buckets them into things like sentiment and traffic and growth and social followers to try to create this overall score, and then rank them from one to 150,000 to 500,000. And then you identify your ideal customer persona based on those ranks, who do we serve best? And what blew me away when I first came into Recart, was that it's not until you hit that top 1000 Literally the 1000 biggest Shopify stores in the world that you see majority SMS adoption outside of 1000. Yeah, the closest it was was like up to 55 60% of the top 10,000. Yeah. And then it drops down into like, you're at 17 20%, for anybody at the 50,000 to 100,000 viable, growing businesses, but just right, it's shocked me because I live in this marketing world where I pay attention to it. I'm aware of it. So I think everyone else is doing it. Right, right. So here's the here's the really wild part is, in those last six months, we've continued to do these updates in these studies. And that adoption curve has peaked accelerated, been inundated. They're still not majority adoption at the plus 50,000 rank and beyond for those smaller medium stores. But it's it's it's ramped up so quickly that the issue is now becoming what once was a sacred space, where you had real estate to spare is now just as crowded as any other where there's competition, and people are that much more protective over who they will give their phone number to then their email, because it's, it's still so in your face, it still elicit such an immediate response. So the primary problem, then now is where most brands spend, the majority of their money is on campaigns, one off messages, Bastien blash, or batch and blast for a better app. So the majority of your money goes into those to the tune of like 80 to 90% of most budgets. Whereas 65 to 70% of the revenues coming in off of automations, which immediately creates like the number one lesson, I want to say on this SMS front is number one. Number one is maybe this sounds obvious, but it's list growth that will determine the success of your SMS marketing, fresh leads coming in, do everything you possibly can, under your power to hone Hone, Hone separate desktop from mobile pop up experiences, test the crap out of whether or not a single tap directly into the messaging app on someone's phone that then sends them a message, you send it back that feels like a native experience, test the crap out of whether or not you should go email first, then SMS should you combine the two into one. Should you do phone entry? Does your audience what's the what's the churn rate even between that first message sent and the double opt in confirmation on it, right? There's so much meat left on the bones where folks are looking at the Pay Attention all day every day to those email opt ins. And then SMS takes like a backseat. And when it comes to the clutch moments like Black Friday, Father's Day, Mother's Day, new product releases, that's where that purchase imperative pays off with a channel like SMS and it can make or break the difference in real Outlander success during those big moments, especially to say nothing of just ongoing interactions, communication brand building with your audience. So that's the number one is go forth and test the crap out of separate desktop versus mobile. All right,

William Harris 14:20

it makes sense. That said when you're talking about list growth and list building one of the my favorite types of list growth, even when we're talking email was the best email address you can get is somebody who actually just purchased from you. Same thing for phone number, right? That's the best one they actually have a an affinity towards your product, you know that they're qualified because they just bought it. Especially if you have something that has, you know, repeat purchases and abilities there. When it gets into the people who haven't purchased before. I've never been a huge fan of going too hard at acquiring some of that information from people beforehand. Because for me personally now this is just a personal thing. I find it kind of annoying to get a message? When I'm like, I haven't even really kind of got like, does that really truly convince people to buy as opposed to something else? Like, like seeing an ad or whatever that they might see

Aaron Orendorff 15:14

such a good phrase you just use there. You. You said I don't like. Right? You right? And you know, I'm going with this. Absolutely. And here's the thing too, because I think this is also okay, let's let's go if number one is lips, less growth will determine the success of your SMS marketing. Number two is I know we could say something like your preferences will will kill. Right ill hippo and it's especially acute among marketers where every time I see like something good cool get released about SMS marketing. What people love to rally around is conversational commerce. delivering content delivering Choose Your Own Adventure via SMS with responses and you know, like press one for this what? What character friends are your sex in the city are like now I've just dated myself as well. Yeah, when when, like, on the one hand, customers are far less sensitive than we give them credit for. So they have a threshold for spam. That, would you like the basic idea is push right up against that for list churn versus revenue growth separating new from returning revenue from returning customers push right up against that threshold on what how can we push and then start moving into the Okay. Like for list growth, right, welcome flow. One and done will make you think SMS marketing doesn't work, where you'll share, you will this robust email flow that comes out looks for preferences even before somebody's purchased what what pages have they viewed, let's exclude them when they abandoned a car, let's exclude them when they make that first purchase along the way. Whereas with SMS, it's like hit him with a discount, leave it alone. And when we see time and time again, is that first message in your welcome flow is absolutely going to be the money maker. But it's the 24 hour delay, contact card 24 hour delay, review 24 hour delay or some content related upgrade about the product benefits themselves. It's this creating a staggered experience right from the jump, that one conditions your audience to get good content from you. But it's the sort of offeree promotional purchase imperative content that does perform really well in SMS. But what it's also doing is it's just, it's such a be real. It's so it comes and goes. And I do this constantly with friends. Right? If you text me if you DM me, and I don't respond to it in the first 30 seconds, and having seen it as soon as it's marked red, it's gone. As anybody who's really smart, do you send a follow up? All right, you've got to check back in with and that's exactly what you should be doing with SMS to as well is it particularly as people, you can measure things like click through rates and start segmenting throughout your welcome flow to just be like only send this third message to people who have clicked one of the first two, and then give them a second if they haven't yet for that next one that comes 48 or 72 hours after it. So it's just a matter of like getting that same sort of attention and adopting it the same way you think about doing it in your own personal life, not as a marketer, but as a human.

William Harris 18:30

Well, and I think the best way that I like to look at this from a human perspective, then and this is something that I talked about with my team all the time, even on the ad side, as well as how do you romance your customers or romance your leads, right? If you send that first message, if that first message that you send to them, they haven't made a purchase from you before is just a buy something, it's a booty call. Like that's all you've done, right? Like there's you've just done nothing to establish a relationship at all with this person. But if you if you if you're if you're nurturing people along the lines of something where, you know, you're, you're asking them about, like, you know, what they, what their preferences are, what they like, and you're, you're establishing some kind of a relationship with them. I think that that gives you a little bit more of an ability where you're saying, hey, let's let's go hang out. Like there's obviously some synergy here. There's something that we like about each other. And I find this is true on the post purchase side as well. This is where I focus on a lot more on the post purchase side is, you know, after they've made that purchase, if the first message that you're sending to somebody is buy again, and they're seeing they're getting a text message and email and they're seeing ads that say buy again, and you've done nothing to confirm and establish that relationship with them. You're you're you're limiting your growth because you're focused on the here and now and you're not looking at the lifetime value of that customer.

Aaron Orendorff 19:39

I would say given the booty call. Cuz here's here's the reason why. That first one is right, because what people say over and over again and what they respond to is it's what is the fundamental offer inside the pop up or that's merchandise on your website and it matches the pop up. What is the fundamental offer? You're going for nine times out of 10 that's going to be some sort of discount. Maybe it's 10% for the email 15% event signup protects, give them the discount immediately. And give it to them both barrels, don't do the, hey, let's send an email, wait an hour to see if they open it that's becoming less and less reliable anyway, it's given to them in both channels, they can respond to the one they want most. And whatever that thing is, you promised, hit it. Now like that, if they don't respond to that first message, that's when you then start thinking about, Okay, what does what does this person actually need? Yep. And that has everything to do with the type of product, the SKU range that you're covering? Did you get them to tell you about their preferences on the intake on male versus female fashion apparel, that sort of piece? Like, what do you know about them? And how can you then begin cultivating that relationship? Is it fit? Is it reviews? Is it social proof? Is it just a really like you've got a strong brand identity, I think people like Chubbies, or liquid dat, where a lot of people are coming into it with a really high expectation of what they've experienced on the creative front on social media, or even on the website itself. And you've got to fulfill that promise, then next to continue that that momentum, but given the bit like listen, yeah, given the booty call first. Let them take you up on it. If that's if that's what they're into, and then start thinking strategically about what does this person actually need to then begin to develop the relationship? So this

William Harris 21:23

is part of what you call like, the five flow? Am I right? Like you have your five flow? Is that part of what this is?

Aaron Orendorff 21:28

Yeah, yeah. So like, the bread and butter is welcomed flow, that is at least three to five messages long, and has a one week delay at the end for whatever that final message is that amplifies either the discount or the offer in some way. Especially if between every single one of those messages, you're filtering out anybody who's abandoned a cart, or made a purchase. Yeah, so you want to have these conditional checks along the way. cart abandonment, next out the gate, sync it so that you're just handing them this is what you left behind. Sure, no additional discount, do not give away any more margin than you need to, especially if they're not a existing customer. If they're a new customer, they've already got the discount you set them up with often all they need is that reminder in Texas, one of the easiest ways as long as you're sending them directly back to a rebuilt cart that also includes whatever that often incentive was abandoned cart. Once you have their information, you can also then start doing things like a browse abandoned message that comes alongside that, that's not going to be as targeted because it's just looking at what their most recent pages are that they were on, if you can tie it to a collection. Excellent. It gives you a bit more breadth in that browse abandonment to kind of shoot shoot a wider shot about what they might be interested in. Yep, fulfillment, fulfillment is a huge one. And it's not just you've placed an order, here's the confirmation. Shopify now has they just released eight or nine different events inside of Shopify, for all the different stages of fulfillment. From shatters to order delays, order is on route to it's, you know, all of these to sync that up with your SMS platform. Because the big benefit of that is once somebody has placed an order, that's when they're at their promised to want to hear from you. Because they've given you money and you haven't given them the thing they gave you money for

William Harris 23:23

you got their attention, you have

Aaron Orendorff 23:25

their attention, you've got a captive audience. And it's like, the more robust you make that fulfillment flow, and like a program like wonderment is beautiful at this, like the custom landing pages they will make. So you don't just have to go to the order fulfillment page, you can do upsells on those pages, you can make the emails gorgeous and fully branded, instead of just like out of the box. But if all you're doing is giving them an update every single time something happens, you're creating this Pavlovian response to when this brand texts me, it's something I'm interested in. And the more of those touch points, you can pack into that really prime real estate window before the thing they gave you money for arrives, the the better your open rates, the better your click through rates are from then on. We've just seen it over and over again, when someone implements this, this really thorough fulfillment process taking advantage of every piece of data that you can offer them. It has compounding effects later on during that initial reorder. And then I would say like fifth, fifth this thing through your natural reorder window, your natural upsells down cells so that you're not going in for the ask too soon. But if it's replenishment if it's based off of a starter kit or full size, like getting smart and savvy about what the person's ordered, based on product conditions to set those delay for when is the next time to strike. And then essentially you're sending them into a smaller version of the welcome series to begin with.

William Harris 25:02

Sure. I feel like if you ring a bell right now, maybe I'll start salivating right? That's my Pavlovian joke right there. But but it is true where, you know, there's even a lot of this where you you look at sales people can be really good at this idea of getting people to say yes, right? Where you say, Okay, I want you to say yes to this thing, which is maybe to sign on this line. But I'll ask, you know, maybe it's insurance or something. You're like, Hey, do you care about your family? Yes. Do you want to make sure that your family is safe? Yes. Do you want to sign this paper for this insurance to make sure your family safe, you're kind of conditioned to that. And the same thing is true, where it's like, if you're sending the messages, that you're conditioning people to want to not open your messages, you're conditioning them to not want to open any more of your messages as you can. But if you send them a message that they want to get that they're excited to get they want to open, they may even want to interact with, you're conditioning them to want to open the rest of your messages here on out it to be a part of that conversation.

Aaron Orendorff 26:06

That yes, ladder, that's such a great onsite tactic. It's a great from add to lander to product page to then whatever the post purchase follow up is that yes, ladder is such a good or often you'll hear people talk about the micro yes, they get you to the macro. Yes. Those are great psychological principles. And that's interesting. I think the place that so the other one is I don't know if I'd put this in like the five foundational flows. But depending on your product, like this is incredibly true for anything that's consumable. CPG, especially true for beauty and supplement brands, which are really still growing strong in the e-commerce D2C space is to is to give somebody a really thorough step by step, sometimes even day by day onboarding process to your product. Sure, and you're leaning into that same exact Pavlovian. Now I've got the thing, how do I make sure I use the thing, right to get the best results. So you get this powerful two for one of like, you're continuing that trust to be an advisor, earning your space in their inbox and on their phone. But you're also helping them sidestep the issues. You know, people have questions about struggles with, like, Great example. Okay, one of our one of our largest brands is a women's supplement brand. And I'm not even allowed to say who they are. They crossed 160 million in ARR. And they're aiming at like, 100% year over year growth and this climb. Absolutely. Right, that is impressive. And so we took their email flow, and a custom landing page for first time orders for their Hearos skews. And we rebuilt that in text form. And the thing that blew me away, is one of the messages is all about storage. And how you don't have to put it, it doesn't need to be refrigerated. Sure. I'm like, Why? Why would they be mentioning it doesn't need to be refrigerated. Like this seems like a and it's it's the psychological hack of what they realized was with their audience, a lot of people one thought that it goes in the fridge, and then they forget about it. And they don't take it at regular intervals here. Yeah, if it's out of sight, it's out of mind. So they're telling them you don't need to refrigerate it. And then there's this like, so put it next to your bed or on your counter. They're literally telling people where to put it as an example of like an FAQ. Yeah. And it increases the visibility of the product in the home. And it increases reorders.

William Harris 28:28

I love it. So let's talk about some of the good, bad and ugly of the way that this is being used. That's a great example of how it's being done well. And I liked that idea of of sending something over after people buy it to be able to make sure that you guide them towards the best usage of this. What are other ways that you've seen SMS being used, that you just floors, you and you say they've got this figured out?

Aaron Orendorff 28:52

It's a very simple one. But if you are, if you're one and done campaigns are one and done, meaning we do a regular cadence of two messages a week, one to existing customers, one to non purchasers. Sure, right. And then we set the whole thing over again the next week. And maybe we do some spike peak moments, but you're, you're sending out a pretty good cadence of two a week, not to the same audience. The easiest, simplest thing to do is every other week, or even on top of every single one of those messages, is to tie a second message to it that gets delivered 24 hours later that if you do an MMS for the first with like some gift, and it's branded and it's longer, and it's more storytelling, and it's got an explanation to it sort of thing, just a second message that's a pure SMS that only goes to people that click the first message, didn't abandon a cart and didn't purchase. This leads into that ethereal nature of it, where you people hit it, then they forget about it. and this will be like eight to 10% of every audience. So it's really minimal send, it's way smaller, it's SMS, it's super inexpensive. And it can two to 3x your campaign revenue just by entering that as a regular cadence into the process of before you send another new message, just clean up that ROI from the first just scoop it off the table, right? And then absolutely understand your primary reorder window and exclude recent purchasers, as often as you can, especially from the first Yeah, more expensive messages. That's one of those two together can especially as margin, and efficiency just becomes, you know, the flight to value versus growth at all cost. Right, massively improve the returns, and the efficiency of your overall program.

William Harris 30:53

First of all, thank you for pronouncing GIF with a hard G. I'm right there in team hard G GIF. Second of all, though, what about some examples of where this is being done poorly, where you look at this, and you think that's a terrible strategy? almost quit your SMS program? Or maybe it works because the size of the business or something along those lines?

Aaron Orendorff 31:15

Yeah. I'll go into extremes on this front. I've mentioned them before, they're the brand I love to hate when it comes to SMS marketing Forever 21. I will never answer your messages. Or that it can because it is and I'll send you like, I just love doing this. I'll record a screen we can like show it we'll do this is one of the promos of like, perfect. It is like, once a week. Hey hole, go effing buy something. I have no time for you. I'm not even paying attention to your purchase history. And she's like, bam, bam, bam, bam, like, It's the ugliest scroll in my phone. And here's the thing. I Forever 21 scale. Yeah, they would not be doing that. If it wasn't efficient for them and paying off. So you've got a large enough audience with so many new visitors that our site like their list groups got to be off the chart. And so it's like, we can churn, it's fine. We've got whatever window of six months that somebody's really active with us, and then they're gone, or they're in forever, like, whatever. They know what they're doing. And so on the one hand, people see that and they go, Oh, that's terrible. That's ugly. So let's do the, let's not do anything like that. Right? We're scared to like look like spam with our audience to send them an offer or text them more than once a month, or at the big seasonal sale. Right? So like the knee jerk reaction to that is to think Oh, it's so ugly. Don't do that. Right. So that's like, like the one that I I love to hate on the one hand. But then the other opposite extreme of that is you'll look at folks like I mentioned Chubbies is great at this native is really good at Yes. Go subscribe to liquid deaths SMS, Jones wrote their duty. Yeah. Me, too. But the thing about those is, you've got to understand that they've got lifecycle managers who live and breathe, and they are specialists and they are naturally conversational. And they're content creators that are on those fronts that are fueling that in a way that is just not accessible for most brands. And so if you try to do this conversational commerce thing, one, the return simply aren't going to be there. For most brands, most customers do not want to join your family or have a friend. Yeah, they just want to know when the new thing that they're interested in gets released. And when the price is right, sure, that's what they want to know, keep in mind, all of them that don't feel like you have to build out this, you know, especially I know, I harp on this quite a bit that, you know, text one for this too, for that. There are places that content lives, well, interactive content lives well, and people go to consume long form content longer than 60 seconds, right on YouTube and on TikTok or you can build relationships in those places. It's far less expensive than real estate, like an MMS, where you're just gonna have to pay for it, pay for it, pay for it. And you're either gonna get burnt out because the level of lift is so high, or you're just gonna get straight up in trouble for it, and you're not using the channel for what isn't intended for.

William Harris 34:30

It reminds me so much of let's just say the early days of even UGC on social media for a while it was like don't post something on Instagram, unless this is the absolute most amazing, breathtaking photo you've ever taken in your entire life. Right? And it was like, How dare you post that and you know, look at your Instagram feed and it's like, that's out of order. What are you doing? And we've gotten away from that and a lot of different places where TikTok is almost the complete opposite of this in many ways where it's just say what you want to say say it in a fun way have some font be it's okay if it's a little bit greedy. Same thing for UGC. It works, even though it's ugly, maybe because it's ugly. And that's maybe then it sounds very true from a text message perspective where think about what people want, when they signed up for the text message. What did they actually want? They maybe didn't want you to become their best friend, their BFF, right? They wanted to know these things. Just stick to that, and they'll be happy with that. But if you try to turn that into something that it isn't, then you're like, the creepy guy who it's like, look, we're friends. We're not more than friends. Stop trying to message me like we're more than friends right now.

Aaron Orendorff 35:34

Exactly. And it's, it's those two extremes that hamstring brands and especially retention teams thinking, I've got to live up to this expectation of an amazing experience where I do, we're having conversations back and forth, and we're being snarky and yeah, I just don't have that sort of energy or the opposite of when the social media was scared. We're gonna churn or they're gonna have a bad. Yeah. And just to realize, the middle ground is teach your foundational flow setup. Yeah, get a regular cadence where people hear from you exclude based on your reorder window and send those follow ups for click, but didn't purchase reminders. Yeah. That sort of just that bread and butter, along with the list growth. That's how you unlock 15 20% SMS as a channel for overall revenue. Yeah.

William Harris 36:25

It makes a lot of sense. Don't overthink it? Well, okay. So this is this is very short form content. And when I think of typical Aaron Orendorff content, I'm your fanboy. You know that I've said that, in many ways, where it's like, there's very few people that I think Man, he really writes very well. This is this is a difference from you now, where you're really getting into a lot of short form content as well. Do you still love long form content? Are you still doing anything with long form content as well?

Aaron Orendorff 36:53

It feels like this feels like I paid you for the first question. And now I'm paying you for the second one. You just like teed me up.

William Harris 36:59

But here's the thing, you and I talk often enough. So yeah, here's what everybody needs to understand is it's like you and I, we still talk almost on a weekly basis to each other. So it's like, I feel like I know a lot of these things, I know what's already in your mind. So I am throwing you softball. So I know what I know what you want to talk about.

Aaron Orendorff 37:16

My heart still beats for long form written content that mixes existing organic and CPC searched man. So I can key into what people are out there looking to try to solve or fix with an original take on that for thought leadership. Uber data all wrapped up in let's make it practical and example heavy. That that little like, especially if you're watching this on YouTube, you get the clip on this, that little like hand gesture thing and like the three in the circle, that's how you make content that grows your business. Yeah, it's true for e-commerce. It's just it's, it's Uber really true. Now that GP teach, you know, the bar for mediocre content sure just got lower. Which means the better you the more you still commit yourself to serving your audience in the way that I just described. The more you, the more you will stand out. And it's a gift to them to be that answer in a time of need when they're looking for something and then finding those distribution channels that interrupt not just existing demand, but to create it as well. And those unique ways.

William Harris 38:31

I love it. I want to transition into who is Aaron Orendorff a little bit. So this is one of my actually my favorite part of of these interviews is getting to know you as a person. And I feel like there's a lot that I know about you but a lot of people may not know what I know. Um, what do you fear?

Aaron Orendorff 38:54

My God, my fear, okay, so I've got like, I've got three daughters, 1712 and 10. So the right answer is supposed to be I fear, their future not being what they wanted, etcetera, etcetera, that does not dominate my mind share in my heart share. What I'm afraid of is I'm just a writer who somehow tricked a few people into thinking he was also a marketer. And those chickens are going to come home to roost. And I'm going to be roundly shamed publicly for ever having the gall to think I can lead marketing and I will become destitute. You ask me, What do I fear? My gosh, yeah, it's, it's really it's impostor syndrome. And it comes on strong because, you know, I haven't run an e-commerce business. I haven't sold physical products on the internet. As part of it. I got jumped into Shopify Plus at the right time, when there were so few people in the room that could do Do writing and content well, that I just I was given these opportunities that far exceeded probably where I was at in my career. And it was amazing. And I had to learn and I had to level up to get into there. But having that as the baseline experience of just being like a freaking step ahead, and then having those times to where I just step in it, I, you know, it's that that's the that's, that's the what at the core of Aaron is really afraid of is being exposed.

William Harris 40:28

I think I can relate to that. I think everybody who is in the limelight in any way, shape, or form doing something can relate to that. I laughed, which may have seemed insensitive, but I hope you understood, the laughter was coming from out of like, that's so far from the reality that I could ever actually see. Because I've seen your writing and your marketing abilities to them. Like, it's not even, it's not even a real thing. And so I'm laughing, hopefully with you in the appropriate way. But I hope that you understood that that's where it's coming from. Because I you are you are an incredible marketer. And but I can understand those same feelings that I think most entrepreneurs and marketers we struggle with, we see a lot of great things out there. And so I can relate to that.

Aaron Orendorff 41:15

Oh, that's such a good we use, we are inundated with great things. Because the algorithm tosses those great things to the top. Yeah. What you're seeing on a daily basis, is the cream of the crop at a time in human civilization. When creation is at its apex. Like, give yourself a break. Dear listener, yes. It's what you experience as the majority is the minority.

William Harris 41:47

Right? I feel like you and I have talked about this a little bit before. But let's say that you are in this space where in Let's even say, heaven forbid, not you. somebody's listening. Let's say that you move forward, and you do fail at what you tried to do. It's gonna happen, right? Let's just say that there's a market recession, that far fest fetched. And let's say that your business doesn't grow the way that you would plan it to. Let's say you have to lay people off. Let's say you actually have to fold up shop and you close the business. These things are very realities. How do you decouple your self worth from your success in your business or what you're doing?

Aaron Orendorff 42:32

I have to anchor myself in something that is so much bigger than me. I get dwarfed and right sized? I can only answer that question from my what emotionally resonates and it's existentially true for me. The neat thing about this is another one of our mutual friends, Jacob McMillan, he was talking to me about this two, phenomenal copywriter, phenomenal marketer just. And for him, we had this unlock mom, I was talking to him, because he was talking about in the sense of he finds his solace in absolute nihilism, that when he is struck by The Outlandish statistical impossibility of him existing in a universe that is going nowhere careening from nothing into nothing, and will one day not exist, the infinitesimal likelihood of him existing in this thing, and the vastness of the thing in which he exists, that does not nothing he does matters. Sure. And he's like, when I when that reality hits me, I can breathe. And it struck me because I realized, like, we're using two different vehicles, like I would use spirituality and I would talk about God as my way of doing that. But for him it was, but it's the same like mechanism of yeah, that I have to be just anchored in something so much bigger than me. I've got a really robust built out set of spiritual disciplines in my life and honest relationships that I live in that are brutally honest. I have a lot of inventory taking and I know that it those things during the hard times are where that's the only way I find relief.

William Harris 44:25

Yeah. I'm right there with you. For me, it's the magnitude at least have a creator a God who cares about me, despite whatever I contribute to a marketing campaign or not, right like that. That's like the idea of there's a song talks about fully known and fully loved and it's that idea whether it's like that I believe that there is an entity that God fully knows me and fully loves me despite all of my down Cummings. And so it's not a matter of like, what if I fail as much cuz it's like I already have already have failed in so many ways. And I'm still loved in spite of all of my failures, that's actually freeing. But to your point of what Jacob was saying, the nihilism there as well. It reminds me of a verse in it not to take this into, you know, spiritual messenger, but a verse in Ecclesiastes, and I'm going to misquote it, but it was very comforting to me when I was feeling very down and frustrated, something to the effect of, if, eventually, everybody that you had a strife with and anger with or anything, they'll also all be dead. So literally, there's going to be a point where it's like, every interaction that you had, it's all gone. None of that lifts on or lasts. And let's even say a couple generations from now, I don't know anybody that my grandpa had beef with. Anybody that micro had beef was right. You know, it's like, like, there's like generationally, like all of these things. They're gone. And so to your point, even of what Jacob saying, from an idealistic perspective, that it's so vast and in almost inconsequential.

Aaron Orendorff 46:03

And you can I think some people do this with hobbies, friends and families. Sure. But it comes down to that, like something outside of you. Yeah, that is independent of that success or that failure? Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I got a little choked up when you were talking to us now. Because that's the only reality like, I can only speak to what I know. And that is it. Either. At the end of the day, this trapdoor opens at the bottom of this universe, and I fall into absolute nothingness. Or there are the hands of a sovereign, loving being, that were always there and will catch me. And that's like, some sci fi stuff to talk about a Marketing podcast. Let's go right Listen, like, you got to do what you got to do to make it through. Yeah, like,

William Harris 46:56

Absolutely. What about if I was in an office with you or I was hanging out with you? What would I find out about you, that I otherwise wouldn't know about you? If I was just hanging out? You know, online? Because it's like, online, you only see like this little frame here. Right? But it's like, what would it was? What would I learn about you that I would learn if I was hanging out in person with you that maybe other people don't know? I am

Aaron Orendorff 47:25

so prone to shiny object syndrome. They would never see it from what looks like the consistent content and strategies and coordinated efforts that I launch, how much of that is just I saw something and like went after it. Yeah, that is I there's this feeling, I think that I, the people have about me that I put out a lot. And I lead a lot. And I like I don't like I don't actually put out that much. I don't have that much foresight. I just when I see something shiny, and I go after it. And I strike and I push and then I figure out how to connect that the next thing? Yeah, how much of what I actually do is just happenstance is would shock you, it would be embarrassing.

William Harris 48:08

I think there's something to this, and this is going way off, I have no business talking about it. But I'm gonna say it anyways, there's something to be said for let's just say gut intuition that I don't think that we really fully understand scientifically as well as we should yet. But I would take this into even let's just say quantum mechanics in the way that that is tied in towards things. And so I think there's a lot of things that our gut might have intuitive knowledge about that we don't necessarily process with our brains in the same way, outside of three dimensions going into, I think they say topologically, our brain functions almost in 11 dimensions. There's a lot of things that like, you know, we might know, but without knowing why we know. And so you're just saying you're just maybe good at being able to run with whatever you're feeling within your gut. And I think that's a very good thing. I think a lot of other successful people have felt that way as well.

Aaron Orendorff 48:56

The trick is, here's the trick, the trick, what separates that from being productive versus harmful is it has something has to get released out into the world, if it's a product, if it's just a post, if it's a new email, if it's a, the way that shiny object syndrome will undo you is if you chase it things and then hold on to that, sure. And it doesn't see the light of day. The trick is you got to in that moment, put it out whatever it is, right. And that can be true for like, reaching out to folks, whatever it has to take external life. And then you've got all the fish in the world for shiny object. It's when you don't that that'll devour you and it'll really hurt your team too. If you're a leader that's doing that, if it's not actually manifesting in some way that's external to you and to the team to the company

William Harris 49:49

like that. Aaron, this has been absolutely incredible talking to you. I appreciate you sharing your wisdom sharing your time with us if people wanted to connect with you. Work With You. Follow you what's the best way for them to reach out and stay in touch?

Aaron Orendorff 50:04

I hit me up on Twitter is where I'm most active Aaron Orendorff. You can do LinkedIn. Like a few things that I put out comment on a few things and then come in for an ask of any kind just don't do it in the opposite direction. But I'm low hanging fruit. If you butter me up, my egos are fragile people. Take advantage of it. Absolutely.

William Harris 50:27

I appreciate that. Well, thank you again for jumping on here and walking us through some of these things.

Aaron Orendorff 50:32

Happily, my friend I mean that and thank you

William Harris 50:35

everybody for listening in. Hope you have a great rest of your day.

Outro 50:39

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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