#105 Jason K Williamson From E2 - SMS Marketing Can Blow Up Your E-Commerce Sales

We’re beyond thrilled to welcome Jason K Williamson, the founder of E2, as our guest for this episode of The Ecom Show.

E2 is an email and SMS marketing agency that helps Shopify eCommerce brands scale. They create tailored automations to help boost sales and revenue and help businesses profitably scale.

Today’s episode is special since we’ve got two email and SMS marketing experts, Jason and Daniel Budai, our podcast host and CEO, to break down everything e-commerce businesses need to know about SMS marketing.

If you’re an eCommerce brand looking to learn more about SMS marketing, tune in to this episode and uncover:

✔ Jason’s Background In Digital Marketing.

✔ The Crash and Rise Of SMS Marketing.

✔ The Trojan Horse Method Of SMS Marketing.

✔ How SMS Marketing Can Skyrocket Your Sales.

Jason’s Background In Digital Marketing

Jason’s story starts far from the world of digital marketing. He’d completed his schooling and apprenticeship as an electrician and was just one step away from getting his fully qualified license when he decided to switch gear and start afresh in the world of sales and marketing.

Jason had always been interested in lead generation, and he’d been avidly following Russel Brunson, the famous digital marketer, to see how he could apply his learnings to generate more leads as an electrician. Jason poured in all his savings and then some to attend an event where Russel was a speaker. At the event, Jason met several other speakers in the field, and after receiving some advice from one of the speakers, he decided to pursue email marketing.

Jason taught himself email marketing and provided his services to a teeth whitening clinic for free; this helped him kickstart his career. Three months after setting up Klaviyo campaigns and experimenting with popups using OptinMonster, Jason was able to generate $60,000 extra revue for his client. Not only did he start getting paid for his services, but he also received several referrals that kickstarted his email marketing agency.

One of Jason’s clients, Joshua Tatum, offered him an incredible opportunity to scale his operations, and that’s the point where everything pivoted in his career. Here’s how he describes his journey taking off:

“So he says to me, 'Look, you can be an electrician for the rest of your life, or you can come work with me; I’ll give you a couple of months to get your stuff together. And then you can go ahead and do your business.' So I threw all my stuff in the back of a bag and drove like 18 hours to Sydney to stay with a guy I’d only met online to start my business. And literally, whilst I was driving to Sydney, I got about four phone calls and landed three or four new clients. So it was kind of like that massive action, I put everything into plan A, and my plan B was to make plan A work, and it just kind of took off from there.”

The Crash and Rise Of SMS Marketing

Jason had several years of email marketing experience under his belt when the founder of Oodie approached him to take over their SMS marketing. Jason helped the brand set up Postscript, which is the SMS marketing equivalent of Klaviyo, and began running campaigns. Oodie already had a large volume of website visitors, and in the early days, they were easily able to capture both phone numbers and email ids.

In just six months, Oodie was able to capture over 100,000 subscribers and generate $500,000 in sales from abandoned cart recoveries each month. However, SMS marketing keeps changing, with new compliances being frequently introduced. It became increasingly difficult to capture leads as compliance became stricter, and Jason suddenly saw a drop from $500,000 a month to just $50,000.

New compliances made it compulsory for brands to have the visitors knowingly subscribe to receiving promotional SMS via a separate check inbox; this deliberate extra step is what led to the crash in the growth of SMS marketing. Jason realized they needed a new strategy to pivot out of this situation and fell back on one of the most powerful tools in email marketing - Pop-ups!

But there needed to be a careful strategy to execute this because while you want to grow your SMS marketing list, you don’t want it to hurt your email marketing campaigns. And not to forget, phone numbers are far more private than emails. You can’t just walk up to a stranger and ask them for their phone number; chances are they’ll say no! However, people are more open to sharing their email IDs. This is where the Trojan method was born.

The Trojan Horse Method of SMS Marketing.

“I was going through a drive-thru one day to order a regular meal, and the lady at the cash register asked me if I’d like to upgrade for just $1. I agreed without a second thought because my buyers’ resistance was already so low. I realized that because they had broken through that wall by already getting me to spend, upgrading my order was much easier. And that’s the exact same thing we do with upsells. And I thought to myself, How can I take that exact same philosophy or that same mentality into the popup? How can I get the SMS? Whilst also getting the email and thus the Trojan horse was born.”

The Trojan Horse is basically a method where you entice a visitor by providing them with a discount to sign up on your mailing list; you then include a secondary offer to upsell your SMS list to the same user. Like, say for example, if you provide 10% off for subscribing to your email list, you then give your customers a choice to upgrade because customers love to feel like they’re in control. This could be a secondary banner where you provide 20% off for joining the SMS club.

It’s a win-win for both you and your customers. Your customers receive a bigger discount, and you receive a new lead on a platform that offers a 98% open rate.

You can also apply the Trojan horse method by offering your customers convenience in place of a bigger discount. For instance, once a customer opts-in on your email discount banner, you can simply offer to send them the code via text message instead.

How SMS Marketing Can Skyrocket Your Sales

SMS marketing has 98% open rates. This automatically increases your click-through rates as well. For instance: In a list of 100,000 people, you’re likely to receive a 5-15%. I just did a launch for a conservative US apparel brand where we sent out communication about a limited edition launch to a list of 400,000 people, and we got an open rate of 20 to 25% on the email. However, the click rate was only 0.3%. We also sent out SMS broadcasts to promote this collection. And we saw a click rate of 28% from the 3500 messages we sent out.

SMS marketing can help boost your eCommerce sales since it’s reaching your audience on a device they spend most of their day on, and unlike emails, your message isn’t getting lost in spam.

Here are Jason’s top two SMS marketing tips to help you design your next SMS campaign:

1. Use Postscript: This is one of the best SMS marketing tools available to eCommerce stores looking to expand. They offer advanced analytics tools, an easy-to-use interface, and several options to customize your message.
2. Optimize Your Popups: Design your popups to be optimized for mobile users. Also, have a strategy to capture your customers' phone numbers along with their email ids in the popup. Creatively using images with real people using your product works better than just showcasing your product. Sell your customers the lifestyle your product offers; it’ll drive more engagement.

If you’d like to know more about Jason, you can reach out to him on LinkedIn.

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