Nikita Vakhrushev 10:53
So basically, it’s called Amazon arbitration. And they just take over that same exact listing by posting like, hey, I have this exact same item.
Jeremy Weisz 11:03
Wouldn’t they be losing money. So I mean, it’s not like they were doing it much cheaper than you.
Nikita Vakhrushev 11:08
From what I noticed is the only reason I found out they’re doing it cheaper and worse than me by the reviews, because people would post reviews of a T-shirt that I didn’t sell them. And it looked horrible. It was just like the worst cheapest, like Gildan type quality with like the worst, or like it was a misprint. So it was just, I think it was like Chinese competitors that came in because they saw me, I was like number two listed for that some of the T-shirts. So I ended up just pausing that and starting my own Shopify store, or just doing the Shopify store route instead of going through Amazon. And then that led me to another YouTube rabbit hole of like looking up how to do marketing. And that kind of like sparked the whole entire thing that I’m doing right now.
Jeremy Weisz 11:51
It’s a little bit different. When you have a marketplace, feeding your customers, it’s seems a lot harder to then have your own Shopify store, and you got to drive traffic there.
Nikita Vakhrushev 12:02
Yeah, it went back to that same thing of 20 sales a day back to two sales a week or two sales a month. It was a rough two, three months until I figured it out. But I was able to train myself up on Facebook ads, email marketing, SEO, basically bootstrapping everything, and learning everything online, to be able to get back to I think, thing a peak we were doing, again, like 20 sales a day, I think we were able to get to like 10k a month in total sales at one point for the t shirt store before I had to like close it down.
Jeremy Weisz 12:34
What made you decide to go double down on the agency?
Nikita Vakhrushev 12:39
So I had a lot of friends that were also in the email or an email, they were in the marketing space, or they were trying to start their own store. And they’re like, hey, we need help with like setting up our Facebook pixel, can you help us do that? I’m like, this is like five minutes to work, of course. And then I charge them like 100 bucks to like do that. Or they’re like, hey, can you manage our ads? It’s like, yeah, for sure, I can do that. It’d be like 500 bucks a month. At that point. It’s like pennies. But you got to start somewhere. And that’s where I started, I started to build up a clientele base through friends and family and relationships that way. And things didn’t really take off until I discovered Upwork, which is like a talent platform where I was able to take the case studies that I got from my friends and put them on Upwork and grew that way to then after Upwork being able to generate leads on my own through like cold email or referral partnerships or LinkedIn, and so on and so forth.
Jeremy Weisz 13:30
It’s interesting, because I found several agencies have grown to be pretty large, and they had their first initial clients from Upwork.
Nikita Vakhrushev 13:41
It’s just an easy platform, I call it like get pizza, or want pizza, get pizza marketing. It’s like, if you want pizza, you’re going to look for to find that pizza, and you will get it. So it’s like if someone is looking for a Facebook ads expert, they will find someone on Upwork and you just have to apply and apply for the gig and you might as well get it at that point.
Jeremy Weisz 14:02
I mean, there’s a lot of competition and people like within the marketplace. So I don’t know if this is the appropriate one but mystic sense.
Nikita Vakhrushev 14:13
Yeah, Mystic Sense, actually, funny enough was one of our first clients that came from Upwork. And I think they came in around like August of 2020. And they’ve been with us for like two years now to three years and they’ve been such a pleasure to work with. They’re one of our first like success stories where we were able to really knock it out of the park for them. We generated them almost like half a million dollars in sales through email and Facebook ads at the time. So they did super well. And we generated them at least like another 6000 new customers for them. So it was a real pleasure to work with them. Unfortunately they were taking all their efforts in house end of last year, but it was definitely a lot of fun working with them.
Jeremy Weisz 14:59
What do they sell?
Nikita Vakhrushev 15:01
So they’re a platform actually, they help match normal people like us to psychics and mediums, really on their online platform.
Jeremy Weisz 15:09
Wow. That’s interesting. Did you ever using them, that you helping them or no?
Nikita Vakhrushev 15:17
No, I didn’t end up using. But I know a few friends that I referred them over to they’re like, this is a great platform. It’s one of those niches where like, how is this making any money? And then you look at the analytics on the back, and it’s like, wow, I should probably start a competitor site about this.
Jeremy Weisz 15:34
It probably gives you a lot of ideas. I mean, as an agency, I’d love to talk that route about taking in house. How do you educate them that, from my standpoint, anyways, I always feel like a lot of times, unless they’ve grown huge, just to keep the expertise. But yeah, obviously, you have specific expertise, oftentimes it costs less, you don’t have to have full time staff. And they have to then project manage everything. Also, how do you explain to someone and not everyone’s gonna listen, that, it may be better just to keep even if you they’ve grown to keep you as the provider?
Nikita Vakhrushev 16:22
Yeah, it’s a really good question. Because sometimes you kind of can’t control that. And as much like positive reinforcement you try to give to the client or as much education you give to them saying, like, hey, look, we’re going to be the better option here, without trying to sound like it’s in your best interest, they’re still not going to listen, and they will still go their own way. Like, for example, at one of our success stories, good, clean love, we were able to generate an extra 20 to 30k a month for them through some of the optimizations that we made. They had a full in house team that was doing email marketing, but they weren’t generating the results that we generated them. Because, otherwise, they wouldn’t have hired us. But unfortunately, they had to move on and, not work with us after a few months, because they’re like, Okay, cool, we can probably do this in house. And at the same time, for me, it was a little frustrating, because it’s like, okay, if you had it done in house, then why did you hire us to begin with, so it’s like, you’ve hired us for our expertise, we were able to get you those results, but it just didn’t work out?
Jeremy Weisz 17:29
Do they just feel like you’ve done so much heavy lifting? We can take it from here? Or what is their thought?
Nikita Vakhrushev 17:38
I think it’s a lot of office politics. And I don’t really want to get into the details of that, because it’s, I don’t know, it’s all it’s on them. But I think it was just a lot of office politics. And they didn’t want to work with an agency, and they wanted to keep the employees that they had, even if it was inefficient for them.
Jeremy Weisz 17:56
Yeah. I find at least sometimes with companies. Sometimes the team has so much to work on internally, that an extra resource outside is helpful that they can focus on other work that they need to be doing. I don’t know, if you’ve you found that,
Nikita Vakhrushev 18:14
Honestly, those are some of the best relationships we’ve had with clients is, if we’re on more of a consultative base, like, for example, Mossy Oak, one of our biggest clients that we worked with, we were on a very consultative basis, where they’re like, hey, look, we need another fresh eye to look at this. They have their own internal marketing team. They’re like, a 20 $30 million brand. And they wanted us to take a look at the DTC site and see what they’re doing with their email marketing, how could they improve on it? We did that. And we worked with them on a month by month basis, like, hey, look, these are the things that you guys are doing, right? These are the things that you guys need help on. And here’s how we could do it. And we were able to supply them with different templates, different strategies, different tactics to help elevate their email marketing and their SMS marketing purely just by having like, weekly calls and auditing their back end, and letting their team do the fulfillment.
Jeremy Weisz 19:11
Who’s an ideal client for you? That you know that they want to like? Okay, just come in for like a month and do some heavy lifting, and then you’re gone like a longer term client? What does that client look like? Maybe size wise or type of company?
Nikita Vakhrushev 19:25
Yeah, we love working with clients long term, because we know that’s where the real gains are made through long term relationships. It’s like, yeah, you can do the one and done but a lot of the times, the longer that we work with a client, the more optimizations we can make and funny enough, sometimes you can even squeeze out an extra 10% of revenue by working with them long term. So in that case, we typically the brands that we can help them most are usually doing anywhere above $50,000 a month in revenue, and usually cap off at around $500,000 a month in revenue because That’s when they tried to take things in house. So within that sweet spot, that’s where we help out. And they usually have at least 10,000 email subscribers that they work with, or that they have on their list. And that by optimizing things around those 10,000 subscribers, at least, we can see most of the gains made through our services.
Jeremy Weisz 20:22
Are there certain industries you like to work with?
Nikita Vakhrushev 20:25
As long as it’s an e-commerce? Like, if it’s a direct to consumer brand, or if it’s an e-commerce brand, that’s usually the types that we work with? Most of them are on Shopify, or WooCommerce. And they typically have Klaviyo, MailChimp send lane or Omni send as their email service providers.
Jeremy Weisz 20:43
We’re looking at right now, Mossy Oak, right? And you’re looking at where these are, specifically, what we’re looking at these are emails not web pages, right? Yep. So let’s talk about some of the elements that work, maybe we’ll talk about some of the mistakes people make. But which one should we talk about there is, you know, the first, second or third column and some of the elements that you recommend people, including in emails?
Nikita Vakhrushev 21:09
We can go with the turkey target line, which is the one you’re hovering on, is the Zoom In button at the top, there you go. So basically, this one is actually a lead generation form. So we would Mossy Oak, their biggest season of sales is usually during turkey season. And you’re almost there. Sorry. It’s turkey season. And that’s where they get most of their sales, because that’s when people buy the most gear to go out to hunt turkeys.
Jeremy Weisz 21:40
Week see full color, black and white and orange bulls eye with these Turkey on it.
Nikita Vakhrushev 21:44
Yeah. So on their main website, they have a pop up saying like, hey, do you want a fried turkey target to practice with? And this is the email they get immediately after they submit their email. So it’s a turkey target. I got you. Yeah, it’s like a PDF that prints out on a normal sheet of paper that you can use as a practice. And this has done super well, because number one, it’s free, it’s printable, it’s free. And for me, it’s a it’s a way to interact with your consumer base without doing any work, pretty much all you have to do is just make a quick design of the turkey target. And you get more email addresses opting into your email list.
Jeremy Weisz 22:24
Okay, so we see that at the top, and then what’s next? What else do we see here?
Nikita Vakhrushev 22:30
Yep. So once we provide them with what they asked for, which is that Turkey target, we then move on to getting them turkey season ready. And you can see that clearly on the call to action here on the video version, where we talk about some of the most popular gear that people buy when they go out turkey hunting, which is that flat, the flex mesh mask, which helps camouflage their neck, or the leafy hoodie, pullover, all of those things are very catered to this specific email, because we know people that are getting that target are most likely hunters that are going to be participating. And maybe they have gear that’s a year or two old, this is the best time for them to upgrade their gear. And we see a lot of success with this specific email because it’s a nice parlay into sales.
Jeremy Weisz 23:17
I’m curious, Nikita from this, I’ve heard varying opinions on this and like, oh, we should only have like one call to action that we’re pointing people towards? What did you find? Obviously, I’m curious why, you know, there’s several options here. As opposed to you could just focus on the turkey targets. I’m sure you’ve tested as many times and you’ve seen results for people are thinking, hey, I thought I was supposed to put one thing in there for people to focus in on, what are your thoughts on that?
Nikita Vakhrushev 23:51
A truly depends on the email that you’re trying to do. If it’s educational, I think one call to action is more than enough. But in this case, this is purely a transactional email and transactional in the way of like, hey, you want to Turkey targets here, the turkey targets, but since you’re here, you might as well just check out these items, and when it comes down to these types of emails, I think it’s not about the one call to action. It’s more so one topic. That’s what we try to focus on because we’ve worked with brands and they would be saying like, okay, here’s a food and beverage brand, for example. They would say like okay, here’s a recipe for like peach cobbler, but also check out these kitchen accessories, but also check out our social media. And also check out this podcast that the CEO did, that’s like four different topics in one email. Ideally, we’d want to break that off into one specific subject per email into four different emails. And that is going to be driving a lot more engagement, a lot more clicks and eventually a lot more sales for your brand.
Jeremy Weisz 24:56
I mean, it also depends on where they are in the sequence. Sounds like these people specifically were interested in these Turkey targets. So that’s a fresh thing that they see. Can you talk about the different sequences just like if we zoomed out for a second different sequences that people should consider when they’re thinking about doing email?
Nikita Vakhrushev 25:15
Yeah, so there’s, I mean, I can talk about this for days. But I don’t want to bore your audience too much. The Big Three is the big three sequences, or automations, or flows, whatever you want to call it, they’re the most important ones. And number one is the welcome series, which is an introductionary, see automation for your email subscribers to be introduced the brand. So this is where they learn more about your brand, what you do, what makes you different, and any promotions that you want to sprinkle in there, as you go along. Then you go into abandoned cart, which is purely transactional. This is someone that has, saw that you, let’s say you have a phone case brand, they put the phone case in their cart, they’re about to checkout, but something came up and they didn’t finish checking out. This is a transactional email. And this is more so to remind people about hey, you left something in your cart, don’t forget it, then we would want to back that up with testimonials as another email after that. And then maybe even more testimonials after that. This is more so a reminder for people to finish checking out and that one does really well. And the last one is a post purchase series. This is an email that you send out after someone’s purchased. And this is crucial, and most people don’t take seriously enough, because they’re mostly focused on getting the customer. And it’s like, okay, cool, we got the customer. It’s like, all right, cool, whatever, you still want to nurture that relationship. So after they become a customer, you still want to say like, hey, thank you for purchasing, you know, you’re supporting a local business, or you’re supporting our family, whatever you want to write there. After that, we then want to get into how to use the product. You know, if your product has specific instructions, you want to introduce the person to like, hey, here’s our wiki guide on how to use the product, or here’s our YouTube series on how to set this product up. Then we also encourage users to go ahead and submit a review or submit user generated content for us that we can use on the website or testimonials that they would want to submit. And lastly, if they’re interested, we also have upsells after that, which also generate more revenue. Of course.
Jeremy Weisz 27:28
Nikita, I love you walking through that. Because again, we’re talking e-commerce, but this applies to any business, right? Do you have a welcome series, an abandoned cart, maybe it’s only specific to e commerce, but you could still, I guess do retargeting or something if they hit your site, and then retarget them with something. And then post purchase, you know, and talking about user generated content and reviews like that applies to whether you’re a SaaS company and agency or anyone for that matter?
Nikita Vakhrushev 27:56
Well, look, I mean, I practice what I preach, if you go on the website, and you click on newsletter, you submit your email and your phone number and your info, you will get an email five minutes later introducing me and who I am and talking about what you’ve just signed up for. And then a week later, you’ll get another email. And it’s a very educational series, because that’s what we do. We want to educate users on how to use email properly. And that’s why people sign up for the newsletter. But at the same time, if we have a lead come in, let’s say you’re interested in email marketing, we had a call, they’re added to the quote unquote, abandoned cart folder in my email to follow up with on every Thursday, like, hey, how’s it going? Do we want to move forward with this, or here’s a resource I found that you might find useful is a good way to bump up and follow up with prospects.
Jeremy Weisz 28:42
Yeah, I know, under each of these categories, a welcome series abandon and the post purchase, there’s a lot that goes into each one of those, I know that you do an audit for people. Where do you find is a common one of those that people are missing the boat most in?
Nikita Vakhrushev 29:00
They have them set up because the thing is, they’re not missing him, since they’re the most basic three automations, they haven’t set up. The thing is they don’t have them set up correctly, or they only have one email set up for that automation. So for a welcome series, we usually build out a welcome series for a client that’s anywhere between nine to 12 emails long. That’s a two month long campaign pretty much for abandoned cart. Usually, it’s one email, we build it out anywhere between four to five emails. And with post purchase the same thing. It’s anywhere between four to five emails that we build out versus one email. So we’re just expanding the touch points that we have with the customer. Because we know that those touch points are going to lead to more sales, and they’re going to generate more revenue, because they’re getting more impressions from your brand and who you are.
Jeremy Weisz 29:46
I want to talk about tech for a second. I know that you’ve talked about apps and tech. You’ve talked about Klaviyo before I’m curious your favorite tech.
Nikita Vakhrushev 29:58
Yeah. Klaviyo Klaviyo however you want to say that’s by far our favorite user, or that’s our favorite email service provider. Number one because it’s very easy plug and play with e-commerce based brands and since that’s our main niche, that is the main tool that we use, but there’s also other tools like MailChimp. MailChimp okay for you know everything else. Like if you own like a power washing business, you know, MailChimp is fine for you. But if you’re looking for e-commerce specific Klaviyo is great. Omnisend is great. Sendlane is great. It’s a cheaper alternative to Klaviyo, which is good as well. But I’d say Klaviyo is number one, when it comes down to the tech that we use
Jeremy Weisz 30:40
Any other favorite e-commerce apps? I’m sure there’s, I know there’s people probably use Shopify or Bigcommerce, or one of those, are there any favorite apps that you have in those platforms?
Nikita Vakhrushev 30:50
Yes, Shopify is perfect for setting up your store and building off of that. The great thing about Shopify Klaviyo and all these different apps is they’re really easy to integrate with all the other things in your tech stack. So you know, let’s say if you’re just starting off with Shopify and Klaviyo, you got the bases covered there. But if you want to add a review, or review software, all you have to do is just go to the Shopify app store and add it on and go from there. As far as getting emails opted in, I would recommend Justuno, it’s a great platform for getting emails opted in, they do pop ups, as well as they do pop up surveys, that sort of thing. And there’s another one I’m missing, Privy. Privy is also good popup software that I highly recommend. And Octane AI is good for quizzes as well.
Jeremy Weisz 31:43
What about, we talked about the welcome series for email, I want to switch to SMS for a second, do you get pushback at all about building SMS series from companies and saying, well, we don’t want to be intrusive, or are they on board.
Nikita Vakhrushev 31:59
It’s funny, because sometimes even have pushback on the amount of emails that we send, but on the SMS side, we try to be as non-invasive as possible and as natural as possible. And when it comes to using that platform, or that marketing channel, number one, because, even sometimes when I get too many messages from a brand, I get a little bit pissed. And I and I reply with stop. So we try to send out at most once a week, if not once every other week, an SMS text message. And if we are sending more than one a week, we want to make sure that we’re segmenting the users correctly. So here, we don’t want to send to the same exact person twice in a week, we’d want to send out let’s say to the engage list once and then two people have been purchased once and people that purchased once. So that way no one gets double dipped. And when it comes to SMS, we do get a little bit of pushback, because they don’t want to be as invasive. Like you mentioned, we want to make sure that we’re hitting the audience. But we’re also not doing it in a way where it’s not bothering them. And we do that by making sure that the content is relevant, or the content is something that people would want to actually open and read. And number two is that the frequencies and high which I just talked about.
Jeremy Weisz 33:11
What will be an example of a relevancy where they be excited to get that text message?
Nikita Vakhrushev 33:17
Everybody loves money off. So whenever it comes to sales and promotions, those are really good. Obviously, when it comes down to educational, we try not to do too much educational because there is a character limit. And if you go over that character limit, you have to pay extra per send. So whenever it does come to education, it’s usually a short blurb about let’s say a new study that the company just released or a new video collab or maybe even a new podcast that the company just released, plus the link to that specific thing where they can read more about it.
Jeremy Weisz 33:53
Are there certain platforms that you like, from SMS perspective?
Nikita Vakhrushev 33:57
Yeah, so Klaviyo has an in platform SMS channel that you can use, I prefer using Klaviyo for everything number one is because you have all the data in the same place. And number two, you can integrate it into your existing automations. So for example, in that abandoned cart series, if we have a client that wants to do SMS as well, we set up an SMS message as like another version of a follow up. So if you abandon something in the cart, you get an email and you get an SMS so you’re more likely to recover that cart with SMS as well. But aside from Klaviyo we love to use SMS Bump, PostScript and Attentive are all good platforms.
Jeremy Weisz 34:42
Yeah, I want to talk about niching right. Originally when we talked about Mystic Sense, you were I think, doing a little bit of everything. Talk about the evolution of your services.
Nikita Vakhrushev 34:57
Yeah, so when I started off with the e-comm store, I knew I was trying to learn everything all at once, which was email marketing, Facebook ads, Google ads, Bing, ads, SEO website design. And luckily, I had a good foundation of understanding how things work within each different marketing channel, which is a Google ads is completely different than Facebook completely different than email. So that really helped me out when I transitioned all my skills into Upwork. Because sometimes a client would be like, okay, we’re looking for Facebook ads. But we’re also looking for a different person for email, I’m like, well, I can do both. So that really helped with generating clients that way. And it was great as a freelancer because I knew what I was doing. And I had creative control over everything. As I started to expand my team and started to hire on people, those services got more and more complicated, bigger, we were working with bigger retainers, bigger brands, a lot more communication touchpoints. And it got to a point where we were doing I think Facebook, Google, TikTok creative services, conversion rate optimization, email marketing, you know, it’s like six or seven different services, all fulfilled by like, a team of five, for like six clients, you know, it gets really, really complicated, and the money was good, but also, you know, you had to pay a lot for the wages and all the different software’s. So, it got to a breaking point where I was stressful, I’m like, I’m working way more, I’m making way less, because of all the different employees that have had to pay. So I’m like, okay, cool. How do I switch this up? So I looked at it, and I’m like, okay, cool. Email marketing is by far the best retention of all of our services. But Facebook ads do ensure an anywhere between three to six months on average. And with email marketing, we had clients that stayed on anywhere between nine to was it like nine to 12 months, if not 14 months and beyond that. So we’re like, Okay, well, email marketing is by far the best for retention. What about our results, so with clients that were doing Facebook ads, our results were about, like a 60% success rate, meaning for six out of 10 clients, we would knock it out of the park for the four, unfortunately, we couldn’t, you know, help them get to that same point, which is not really good when it comes down to agency services, with email marketing, pretty much, nine out of 10, if not 10, out of 10, we would knock it out of the park for and we wouldn’t have anyone be upset at us for we wouldn’t we wouldn’t mess up any email jobs. So like, okay, cool. This retains clients more, and we do a great job at it. Why don’t we just focus on this specific niche within this specific e-commerce niche. And we did just that we started to slowly offload our Facebook clients and only focus on getting email clients. And it’s honestly been the best thing I’ve ever done within the business. Because we are able to predictably add revenue for our clients, we know what to look for, we know how the relationship is gonna go. And at the same time, it’s a lot easier for us to fulfill because we know what to look for within these brands. And the strategy for the most part is pretty much the same for every client.
Jeremy Weisz 38:09
Yeah, like how you think about that, Nikita, because you think retention, and results, what do we have the best retention? Where do we get the best results and go from there? And I hear, it takes discipline to do what you did, right? Because I hear agencies who they may get demand from a client, and I know if this happens to us, like, okay, I love you, I want to work with you. But we want a provider that does everything. And the person will have to either go okay, can do everything, or we’re not a right fit.
Nikita Vakhrushev 38:43
Yeah, I say no more than I say yes. 100% because of that, and it’s like, okay, cool. Yeah, if you want an agency with everything here is a contact for that partner. I know a lot of agencies that do everything. But if you want someone to absolutely kill it with email, we’re your go to guys.
Jeremy Weisz 39:01
Yep. Let’s talk about hiring and training. Before we hit record we’re talking about that’s a big focus for you. You’re hiring. When you bring people on, you’re training them, what do you find the best methods to when you bring someone new, to get them on board and train them is quickly as possible.
Nikita Vakhrushev 39:20
So it’s funny that you mentioned once you get them on board, because we do all of our training, funny enough before we even onboard them as a potential hire. Because the way that I structured my hiring, I think I learned this from KY backs, who is a specialist in working with agencies and generating them clients. Basically, the way that he hired was he would have the standard like LinkedIn posts or like the LinkedIn job application or the indeed job application, and you would have to apply through a link and that link is either hosted on your website or a landing page or whatever. Within that link. You would have a video of anywhere between 10 to 20 minutes long going over the entire position that you’re looking for, as well as educating them about the culture that you have, the company that you’re building, what the goals are, what the mission division, the principles are, as well as the compensation, everything that you might ever question about this job position is answered by me in this video. So when we’re hiring, I have this 20 minute video with like a slide deck going over everything they might need to know. So once we do hire them, they already have the expectations set of like, look, this is how we work. These are our principles. If you can’t follow them, get out, we’ll find a different person. I’m not that cutthroat, I promise. But that’s usually how it goes.
Jeremy Weisz 40:43
Yeah. Let’s talk about the onboarding of a client. And kind of the phases you take people through, I’m going to share this for a second. That was when I was looking on your website. And it talks about onboarding of a client and how it works.
Nikita Vakhrushev 40:59
Yeah, so most agencies take, you know, weeks, if not months to onboard a client, our goal is to get someone fully onboard within the first five business days, as we get off the sales call, I send them the agreement, I send them the invoice that gets signed, that gets paid. Great. Here’s to the next five days, I’m trying to get you on board. So that way, we can start delivering results for you as quickly as possible. One of our core principles in our company is speed is king. And we want to make sure that, speed is the best currency when it comes to working with a company. And a lot of opportunities can be missed if you’re too slow. So that is very well played into our onboarding. And a lot of the onboarding is, again, like those video series are, we have like a five part video series conducted by me going over again, the company culture, the expectations, how to set up your Slack channel, how to set up, how to give us access to your play view account, or your email account, how to work within the database that we set up all the emails, everything is instructional, so that way the client can spend maybe like an hour or two hours at most watching through these videos, getting acquainted with everything. And then usually three days after that we have a phone call where we get all the information that we’re missing. And pretty much the week after that we start working with them and start designing emails.
Jeremy Weisz 42:20
And that’s the launch phase. Yep, exactly. I have to just say, one of my favorite parts of your website is right here. I love this. I don’t know why more people don’t do this.
Nikita Vakhrushev 42:36
I got it from like Twitter, some guy on Twitter was like, hey, thanks for reading my thread. And he would point up and down to like retweet it. And I’m like, this is a great idea. I got to do it.
Jeremy Weisz 42:44
Yeah. Again, if you’re listening the audio, just look, you’ll have to go to the video and see exactly what I’m looking at or you can go to aspektagency.com and check the page out. But I love that. I want to talk about because you mentioned values are big for you and the company and how you came up with this.
Nikita Vakhrushev 43:04
Yeah, a lot of them. It’s a mishmash. And it kind of goes back to a name I mentioned earlier, Sam Ovens. He introduced in his course, he introduced the whole point of company principles. And at the time, I was just I think two years in I had no idea what he was talking about. I’m like, I didn’t even know companies have principles. So it was like a list of 10 different principles. And then over the time, I realized, okay, these six are the most important ones, when it comes down to our business and the kind of culture we want to create within the company. So number one, like, as a person myself, I like to do things very quickly, very efficiently, and very correctly. So speed is king came from their brutal honesty, I’m very transparent with everyone that I talk to, if I see someone messing something up, I will tell it to them straight to their face. I tried to do it in a nice way where I’m not trying to hurt their feelings, or you’re trying.
Jeremy Weisz 44:00
Do you say to them in Russian first and then and then say it nicer in English.
Nikita Vakhrushev 44:06
No, I don’t see any point in yelling or getting aggressive with anyone. So I tried to just be as honest as possible without hurting anyone personally, owner mindset, it’s a remote position, we try to make sure that they understand that okay, you’re your own boss, essentially, I’m not going to be looking over your shoulder. Same thing with you taking accountability. And also evolving as a person which goes into grow or die. You know, you can’t, you’re either moving forward or you’re going backwards. So you got to either grow as a person or grow as an employee or you’re eventually going to be cut from the team.
Jeremy Weisz 44:44
So how do you say this brutal honesty this in Russian chestnuts. It’s basically like honesty. Love it. So I have one last question Nikita, first of all, thank you, thanks for sharing your expertise, your knowledge, your journey. And I want to encourage people to check out aspektagency.com. And last question is really, we’ve talked a lot about your journey. And I’d love to talk one of the cases that we were talking about before we hit record was Retainers Direct. And what were some of the things you did with Retainers Direct.
Nikita Vakhrushev 45:33
Retainers Direct is by far one of my favorite clients, Tanner, if you’re listening, big shout out to you. That’s our main point of contact at Retainers Direct. And he’s one of the co-founders, basically, we took them from generating, I think it was like $500 a month in email revenue all the way up to like consistent 20k months, and email revenue. So they had basically none, they had email set up, but I don’t think they were working properly. And the past agency that set them up, the emails weren’t doing the job that they were supposed to do. So we came in there, we clean, clean things up, implemented brand new automations started sending out campaigns on a more consistent basis. And we were able to generate them a substantial amount of income to the point where it’s a sizable chunk on their p&l now.
Jeremy Weisz 46:20
So there’s a couple of things we’re seeing here, what worked for them as far as some of these campaigns?
Nikita Vakhrushev 46:28
So those are specific emails that we send out on a bi weekly or weekly basis. And I think out of all of those three, the middle one worked the best because it was educational, people have a lot of hard time trying to trust a brand that isn’t Invisalign in the space, basically, because Invisalign is such a huge brand.
Jeremy Weisz 46:48
Is this a teeth whitening solution?
Nikita Vakhrushev 46:52
No. It’s a retainer, actual retainer, okay, it’s a cheaper alternative to Invisalign. So you see, like, even me saying that it already automatically seems like Invisalign is better because of retainer, like, because of the way I worded that. So we wanted to make sure that we educated our customers and our prospects into understanding why it’s better to choose us. And one of the best ways we did that was teaching them on when they should be replacing their retainer, because you need to do it every two years. And if you don’t, you’re more likely to develop bad side effects if you don’t. So this educational email actually generated us I think it was like two or $3,000 in sales because of the nature of the email.
Jeremy Weisz 47:33
I love it. First of all, Nikita, thank you, everyone check out more episodes of the podcast to learn more, and I want to be the first one to thank you and thank everyone off. Thanks, Nikita.
Nikita Vakhrushev 47:45
Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you, Jeremy.
