Remarketing/Marketing and Audience Layering to Help Build Funnels and How to Utilize Your Shopify
Denym Bird leads growth for A2X, the world's leading eCommerce accounting connector that helps sellers on different platforms, such as Amazon and Shopify, simplify their finances. Denym is also an award winning full-stack marketer and entrepreneur with over six years of experience in lead generation, customer acquisition, and marketing automation for global B2B and B2C companies.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Denym started a food delivery directory for New Zealand called Delivereat, which helped over half a million Kiwis connect with the 1000+ independent businesses that were delivering during lockdown.
In this episode…
It goes without saying that the eCommerce landscape has experienced rapid growth in the last couple of months, mostly attributed to the COVID-19 outbreak. However, even before the pandemic, eCommerce sales in the U.S. had been on a steady rise for the last 10 years, as shown in the graph below:
This digital acceleration means that there is more competition and, therefore, a greater demand for expert eCommerce marketing skills. That’s where Denym Bird, lead of growth at A2X Accounting and founder of Delivereat, comes in.
In this week’s episode of the Sales Tax and More Podcast, Michael Fleming and Ellie Moffat interview Denym Bird about the best marketing strategies for eCommerce businesses in 2020 and beyond. They discuss the effects of the pandemic on the eCommerce space, tips for boosting your business with Facebook Shops, and the best practices for modern email marketing. Stay tuned.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Denym Bird discusses the rapid growth of eCommerce and everything digital due to the COVID-19 pandemic
What you need to know about Facebook Shops and its partnership with various eCommerce platforms
Denym shares the most advantageous marketing tactics for eCommerce sellers in 2020
How to leverage your email marketing campaigns
Where to learn more about Denym Bird and A2X
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Connect with Michael
Sponsor for This Episode
Sales Tax and More assists companies and their trusted advisors like CPAs with sales tax needs. They offer consulting and research, registrations, returns, and so much more. Over the years they have assisted thousands of sellers both foreign and domestic with their tax issues in the United States and in Canada.
To learn more about their services, visit https://www.salestaxandmore.com/.
Make sure to register and join the Sales Tax and More Webinar to get access to complex materials on tax in an easy-to-understand format.
Episode Transcript - Audio Version
[0:10] Intro: Welcome to Sales Tax and More, your go-to resource for all things state tax-related. Now, here's your host, Michael Fleming.
[0:26] Mike: Hi everyone, Mike Fleming here, Founder of Sales Tax and More and today's co-host of the Sales Tax and More Podcast where we talk about everyone's favorite topic, which is of course sales tax. We also talk to very influential smart people who we believe will be of interest to our audience from time to time. Today, we've got Denym Bird and he's got a wealth of information about eCommerce and different marketing techniques. So we're going to introduce him in a little bit here. But before we do that, I want to introduce you to Ellie Moffat who is my co-host today.
[1:03] Ellie: Hey, everyone, it's really great to be here. Excited to have Denym on the podcast today. A real quick introduction for Sales Tax and More. Sales Tax and More is a full-service consulting and solutions firm. We have a really great team here of experienced tax professionals who are very dedicated to filling any of your state tax-related needs. So we do a lot of returns, registrations, consulting research, and like our name states more. So if you have questions about our services, please reach out and ask. We'd love to answer those questions. And, Mike, let's go back to you and keep it rolling here.
[1:37] Mike: All right, thanks, Ellie. I've known Denym for quite a number of years now. I was just trying to think it probably four or five years and I know to be very smart, very accomplished. I'm always excited to see what he's going to do next. And he actually started you know during this COVID-19 lockdown leading food directory. And he was telling me about it. It's amazing how quickly he got this up and running, how quickly it caught on and how quickly he sold it. So, real smart guy real, you know, inventive. I'm so glad he's with us today. Maybe he can tell us a little bit about touch on that little bit. But primarily we have Denym here because he leads growth from A2X. And A2X is the world's leading eCommerce accounting connector. You know, sometimes these marketplaces like Amazon or Shopify, you know, you can sell a lot through them, but getting information out of them to do your accounting is very, very tough, and that's what A2X does. They make it easy getting the information out of these different platforms, so that it's a lot easier doing your accounting going forward. So overall, Denym specializes in engineering and implementing lead generation strategies that scale businesses from B2B and B2C using digital methods. Denym, do you want to say a quick hello here.
[3:15] Denym: Yeah, hey Mike and Ellie. Thanks for inviting me along. It's been a real privilege. I've been working in the digital space for a long time now tinkered around with lots of different stuff and obviously in my latest tinker with this directory for online food, and New Zealand born out of a problem of waiting in line that waiting in lines at supermarkets and just needing to find a way to get stuff particularly food delivered here in New Zealand during the lockdown, so created that and scale up very quickly. A little bit of luck because obviously everyone else is having the same problem at the same time and managed to sell it within four weeks. So pretty, pretty big creation of something and exit of something probably the quickest I've ever had in my entire life. But I'll tell you that I've worked quite a lot in the eCommerce space for, you know, B2B clients, particularly in the software area and A2X and other software companies and then also in the B2C space in terms of selling directly to consumers as well. So, you know, I'm pretty excited to share some insights I have, that hopefully will be useful to symbolize.
[4:21] Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And who better than you to help explain some of this? Now, I've heard that we've experienced something like 10 years of eCommerce growth in the last couple of months. Do you want to comment on that? How that can happen?
[4:43] Denym: Sometimes it is, you know, I think I think like, what's become very clear to all of us right now is that COVID has forced an acceleration of everything digital, everything online and, and the best way, the best way to sort of articulate that was I was looking at some data the other day from, from the U.S. Department of Commerce, particularly around the percentage of retail sales that have been spent online. So all money that's been spent in the United States, and how much of that is being spent online. So, back in 2009, around 5.6% of your dollar cents, so about, you know, $5 out of every hundred was being spent online. And that was sort of accelerating over the past 10 years at quite a steady pace. And so the past 10 years have tripled. So in 2019 16% of all dollars was spent online. So that doesn't say retail was dead or anything like this. You know, that just shows it you see this exterior city acceleration, right? Within eight weeks of sorting COVID. By the end of April 27% of all dollars spent in the United States was spent online. So you had an estimate and within two months You know, a doubling sort of a 15% growth and, and money spent online, you know, as a percentage of retail. And I think like, you know, there's definitely an element of being an outlier because people still go out and spend a lot of money and retail, but I think there are two key elements that will make this trend, one that will continue. And the two key elements of that is that I think, because everyone was forced online, there's this ecosystem that is already there that has enabled a lot of this online buying and selling. An example is Shopify, and also Amazon. These are two really big aggregators. And what's a platform to enable an aggregator of products is having really strong network effects that make them feel very sticky to use and continue to use, you know, for example, if you're you know, when you want to buy cheap goods, you know anything really goes on Amazon. And you consistently go back to Amazon because there's no that's going to be cheaper, you know you're going to get delivered. And so the other side of that is another ecosystem of enablement is Shopify. It not only gives you an online store, but it gives you payment processing as well for that store super easy. Gives you inventory management for that, and also like a never-ending list of plugins and add ons for tax accounting, marketing. You know, I like to think of it like the iPhone for in my business.
[7:38] Denym: Yeah, yeah. And I think like ecosystems of enablement like that, like help further accelerate and sort of help further accelerate that growth. And then the other side of that enablement, is that because of it enablement is happening, consumer habits are shifting, because buying things online, is now so much easier. And so because of that, you know, buying online slowly becomes an expectation of business. If you want to be in business, you need to offer an online option and online ordering. And it's because of that, because buying is becoming so much easier online because of these ecosystems of enablement. If you don't have an online offering, or you don't have an ability to buy something from you or connect with you online, you're going to be left behind because consumers now becoming so much more comfortable with buying online spending money online, that if you're not doing it, you're leaving money on the table.
[8:39] Ellie: Yeah, I think that's something that people feel. I mean, they really feel that it's an expectation and business owners. They know that an expectation as well. And then I'm, I'm going to jump into this next question here. Facebook made an announcement about Facebook shops, and we know they're working with apps that benefit eCommerce sellers like Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, etc. If you wanted our audience to know one important thing in regards to their own marketing efforts and connecting these two platforms, what would it be? What would you tell them? What should people be looking out for?
[9:15] Denym: Yeah, so I think the sort of the becoming of like Facebook shops is a really interesting one, I know that they've already integrated the experiment with us with Instagram, so the products and tagging that you can do inside your own Instagram profile, but you know, Facebook and Instagram are, you know, really, really big platforms, as we all know, everyone uses them. But this sort of new announcement is really interesting because what Facebook is doing is they've essentially officially partnered with Shopify to basically get access to the huge ecosystem of tools to be able to connect and support merchants and it's kind of the missing link because Facebook is like the world's biggest discovery platform. It's how you discover new things, right? It's how you discover what your friends are up to. It's how to discover where to go. You know, and so Instagram is very similar that you know, it's a place where you discover new things. And so creating a shop on that platform means that the buying process now for anyone that says anything interesting means that your product can be discovered a lot easier now, and then within the same sort of expecting white light app experience of being literally in the Facebook ad or on your desktop. You don't have to leave that experience, you have to leave the store. In other words, the festivals turn their platform into a store for discovering new goods for you. So I think that the thing is, is like, you know, for your listeners, definitely like to learn about Facebook shop and get your set up as soon as possible if you don't already have one and if you do have a Shopify store already, then definitely connect your account with Facebook shop, because they sort of slowly rolling out over the web. So I think getting on there and then leveraging as much as possible, but is gonna be another land grab. Really and that's it's a brand new one. So I think it's going to be a part of
[11:16] Mike: Yeah, absolutely. We've been talking about some of the advancements that Shopify has made here. I want to mention real quickly, sales tax, because since we've had the Wayfair decision and economic nexus sales tax is such a big part of eCommerce out there in the past, you know, I'll be real honest with you Shopify. As you know, the sales tax system has been a little bit clunky, a little bit tough to use. And, you know, sometimes your customers would complain, but they've spent a lot of time and energy and they've really upgraded their system and I'm pretty impressed with what they've done recently and they've also invited us to be one of their sales tax Shopify experts so we can help set it up. And in everything else, we're one of five companies at this point that have been granted this Shopify expert. But to me, it's really important that you know, not only do you get the marketing pieces in place, but since sales tax is so important, it's gotta make that easy. And it does now and I couldn't always say that so. But getting back to some marketing, what are some new marketing tactics for 2020 that would give you or our audience an unfair advantage in eCommerce when it comes to sales and marketing?
[12:40] Denym: Yeah, not definitely. I think one of the first I'll give you is a couple of funny fun ones, some high-level ones, and some, like some actual tactics to use, in the fact that this high level one is just, it's just learning about these aggregators, right? And if you're not already on them, get on them and, optimize for them. So like, you know, Google Shopping as an example here, so Google announced that they made Google Shopping basically free for anyone to use during COVID. It was something that was going to be released later this year. But I thought to bring that forward during COVID just to help everybody outright, so that's a really good one. So connecting… it's very easy to do that within Shopify or within some of the other sort of eCommerce platforms as well to connect with Google Shopping. Well, Shopify also just recently announced integration with Walmart marketplace as well. So getting onto their Etsy, Amazon, obviously, you know, getting onto the aggregators, because that's where people are going to shop. And that's, like, that's, that should be smart advice. It's good. It's good advice, but I think the other pieces are like to create, a competitive advantage for you, you need to really focus on brand marketing. And so because people will search for your brand like that's something that you can control. As you know, you can't control what happens on the aggregators, right on Amazon like Walmart or the like, because they can shut you down at any second, right. And so that's why you do need to focus on creating a moat yourself through brand marketing. And so there's a variety of brand marketing tactics that you can do. You know, PBC so pay per click on Facebook and also the platforms and paying for those eyes and leveraging that. And one of the sorts of tactics I'm really enjoying at the moment that I think is working quite well is creating quite a simple raising awareness and remarketing funnel.
[14:35] Denym: So what that is, is basically it's a multi-level funnel, and it's not very many levels. It's only like three levels. And you have one, the first level is a, it's not directly selling your product. Let's say we're selling shoes. And it's basically you create the first one which is you create an audience of people that have interests to shoes or purchasing shoes or have built these audiences off of your, your own sort of if you've got if you've got an established store or really off of people that have purchased shoes from you before, like look alike audiences on Facebook and Instagram, and inside of this sort of layer, which we call a prospecting layer, we would target them interesting, interesting articles or interesting content that is relating to shoes, but not directly selling shoes, right? It could be sizing guides, or, you know, fashion trains, or, you know, all this kind of stuff. And I like to call this kind of stuff like satellite content. This is stuff that is, like interesting to your audience, but you're not directly selling the audience, right. And so this is stuff that sort of, like could be a podcast, but anything really into fashion, anything like that. You want to kind of build a community around that sort of way to target that. And so that's, that's really interesting, because you can go quite broad with that. And it's not directly selling so like the sort of the objective of this layered campaign. Is for them to just engage with that content, like it, comment on it, read it, or listen to it or watch it. And then what that then we into the second layer. So anyone that has done that action, so anyone that has engaged with this content, we have like a re-engagement layer. So this is where we want to re-engage with this person, you know after they've done this. And that's when we're starting to build a connection with your brand. So we can build these audiences again, and Facebook and Instagram and on and on, Google Display Network as well, where people basically have engaged with your previous content.
[16:39] Denym: Now they kind of get more they get to know your brand. So this is where you're going to run ads and content with… familiar with you and your brand and what you offer. And the objective here is for people to come to your website to potentially purchase some goods right or you know, or basically this is an introduction to you know, this is not a hard sell. It's just talking about the key benefits of what you do. And again with the objective to come and view your website and look at your products. And then the final step here is people that don't know themselves objective is to do that. Then the final layer is the remarketing heart sell layer. This is people that have been to your website, they've looked at your goods, and they have not purchased anything from you. So this is when and this layer again, you would target in within those ads, specials, promotions, somebody to help get people over the line. Yeah, because they've come to your website through the rest of the sort of funnel and they have yet to purchase from you. So you kind of want to know, you want to do something to help them get them over the line. You know, and something that forces that to happen. And so through, you know, free shipping, promo discounts, you know bogo sort of thing works quite well for that kind of thing that's see, that's, that's a really interesting funnel that I've been rolling out and seeing a lot of success with. And I think one that will give you a good advantage, it's one that you can set up, you know, you can set it up once, and you can feed lots into the top of that content piece. So that's only you can experiment a lot with because as soon as people engage, they get pushed down to the second land as soon as they come look at your products, they look, go to the third layer, and it's sort of one that you can set up. Even if you don't have a lot of volume in your store or you don't have, you know, not super established, you can set it up with quite a small budget across its three layers. And, and it will, you know, it'll continue to deliver for you as you scale up and as your kind of brand grows and everything else at the top of it grows as well. So that's a good one to set up and scales quite well. But two more for you.
[18:56] Mike: Before we get into the second ones, do these only work in New Zealand do these work worldwide?
[19:01] Denym: Oh, sorry, no, these work worldwide. I mean, I-
[19:09] Mike: I was focusing on your accent here, and I love it. And maybe, you know, maybe we need to expand this to let people know that this works everywhere. So I want to hear more what, what about these other two funnels or ideas that you have?
[19:24] Denym: Yeah, yeah, no, they definitely work everywhere. So long as the content inside of them is relevant, right? So the audience you're talking to. So, the other two is, this is gonna sound old school but like, you know, email marketing is quite powerful. But like, obviously, they do email marketing, you need to have a good email list. And having fresh emails in your list is one of the best ways to get the most out of it in terms of leverage and cash, and will sell game sales for them. And what I want to mean here is like people aren't going to sign up to your email list, unless it's meaningful. An example here is, you know, with another company I work with Paint Vine, we have basically a little pop up email whenever they are about to leave. It's not just like with a coupon code, because you know, nobody really cares about your coupon code, unless they want to buy from you. And the coupon codes an easy one because it's the price and paying for that thing, but like, if someone was gonna buy for you, anyway, they're gonna give you your email. So you just use kind of like leaving money on the table there. For them to like, give you an email, you need to kind of give them something that makes it worthwhile connecting with you long term. An example here is Paint Vine as an events business. And so we do like we give away like a free ticket every week in a drawer. And so the email is like, hey, like, give us your email and, you know, we'll put you in the drawer to witness for tickets. You know, next week, you know, so there's like, an element of scarcity there. And it's something that's like worthwhile connecting with, right. So that's just one little tactic. And you can do that in the same way, if you sell a product, it could be, you know, get a free sample or, you know, potentially exactly the same, you know, going to the draw to win this product for free. So, that's something that some create something more engaging to want to connect with, to, like, get thrown on that email list. And then obviously, leverage the email list and all sorts of other campaigns. But yeah, I think creating a good magnet is key for email lists, and, with 2020 like, just create something meaningful that matters, like people that people actually care about and test it as well. Because, it wasn't as much as people just care about a coupon code. I missed out on the buy. It's like yeah,
[21:53] Denym: And lastly, I think this one I think is going to become very, very important in 2020 is conversion rate optimization? You know, we've heard about it before. I mean, really, you know, trying to optimize for your conversions and everything else. And I think as things become vastly more competitive online, because, you know, before we talked about how many more merchants are coming online, that's, you know, that's a good thing for, you know, the overall ecosystem, that's bad for you, because there's going to be lots of other people selling the same thing as you. So you need to basically understand your like, on-site funnel as much as possible, right, you need to understand how people get to your website, what pages they visit, and then what that page is if there's a prior to the purchasing and what the purchasing experience is, like, you know, this is old adage, it's like you can't manage what you can't measure. And so, you know, everybody's setup is different in terms of how they, how they've structured their website and how you know how it works. I mean, the flow is obviously is very simple, put something into the cart and bought, but everyone's got does a little bit differently and what you really need to understand yours, like just like better than anyone else, and you know a great way because again, understanding it means you need to measure it really well. So you need to use it tools like crazy EEG, or hot jar or other sort of snapshot tools to see how people are interacting with your website and every stage of them and I literally record sessions to see you know, what people are doing when people are dropping off you know why people are dropping off because that will enable you to improve those flows to then help you know because you know a few you could sometimes miss something on your website because as it gets bigger and bigger. That could be bits that are failing that you don't even know about this, you know, hit that could be costing you, you know, thousands of dollars. You know, another simple way just to you know, if you don't want to do all of that, just get some of your friends to sit down and try and buy some stuff off your website, give them a coupon code. You know, just don't tell me where to find them afterwards or whatever. But just literally get them to sit down and literally watch them use your website, you'll be fascinated with how people interact with it when they're on the outside. But when you're on the inside, you feel like you understand that this works here and there. But when you see other people use your website, they do odd things that you didn't, would never have anticipated. So understanding those things will give you the insights that will make you… give you the unfair advantage to be able to compete with people that are not doing it, that kind of stuff. So yeah, it's probably one of the best ones. So those are my tips.
[24:32] Mike: Well, thank you. Those are very, very valuable tips. I certainly learned something so thank you. If anyone in our audience wants to get a hold of you, are you available to speak with people directly or if so, how do they do so?
[24:46] Denym: Yeah, just find me at denymbird.com You can find me over there.
[24:54] Mike: Okay, and I know we do a lot of work with A2X and you’re very influential with A2X and in charge of their growth right now. How do they get more information about A2X accounting?
[25:10] Denym: Yeah so if you're looking for basically a way to connect your eCommerce store so Amazon, Shopify at the moment into your accounting system yeah just head over to a2xaccounting.com. It's the gold standard in eCommerce accounting, it's one of the best tools to basically disseminate and, you know, file through the correct information into your accounting system. So you have the right data to work with.
[25:37] Mike: Absolutely make your life a whole lot easier, I can guarantee you that. Well, Denym we really appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge with us. I always enjoyed listening to you. And we got to have you back at some point in the future here, but for now, thank you very much.
[25:57] Ellie: Thank you very much and before we close out I did just want to spell Denym; name for everyone. It's D-E-N-Y-M bird.com. So if you're listening and you're trying to find your way there, I just wanted to make sure they have that spelling available.
[26:16] Mike: So good point, I would not spell it. That way I'd be searching the web forever. So thank you Ellie. In the end always remember if you need any help setting up the sales tax portion of your Shopify store or any of the different platforms you sell on or have any other types of sales tax questions, need sales tax returns done. You know, registrations just reach out to salestaxandmore.com. We're here to help. Thank you, everyone. Till next time.
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