Uber's $650m secret business, Deepfake CFO, and Email marketing hacks for 2024

0:00All right, guys, let me tell you about a secret business that Uber has. In fact, this secret business does$650 million a year for Uber. What do you think it is, Neil? Ads. It's not so secret. But anyway, here's the thing. How complex do you think their funnel is when it comes to, do you think they have like a, I'm kind of setting myself up over here, but let me just show you their funnel. This is what I'm saying. I'm like, sure. I think it's very complex based on the way you're positioning. Oh no, it's actually not complex. It's this Google form over here. No, you gotta be kidding me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:33Advertising. Here, you want to read it? Here, read it. advertising on Uber interest bar. Dude, put it in your email name, keep scrolling. That's it. And then you go down. There's a little more, I'm sure. But this goes to show you that if you want to build a great business, sometimes you don't have to overcomplicate. And actually, Neil, let me tie this in with what we're doing. So Neil called me last week. He's like, you know, we should do something for agency owners because we both have agencies, right? And so Syed helped with his name, by the way, Neil. It's called the Agency Owners Association, AOA.

1:02And so we have something very similar. Those of you that are agency owners, just go to marketing school.io slash agency and you can apply. It's a Google form that looks like this. We don't need to overcomplicate things and we'll tell you what you need to do next once you apply. And then we're basically going to try to figure things out. So yeah, that actually flows in well with these both things. Dude, you know, with Uber, I don't know how to use Uber Eats, but we both probably use it a lot. I use it every day. Yeah, same here. Almost every day. Almost. I see a lot of ads for restaurants that they know I would go to or think that I'll go to based on what I order.

1:38I think their system is a little bit more complex on how they're targeting. And they give me deals and discounts. So I just order. But their tech is complex. But the actual like getting into the funnel is so simple, which I love. That is so simple. I think they'll end up changing it once they end up generating more revenue. But yes, I totally agree with that. By the way, Neil and I have an agency owners group called the Agency Owners Association. All you have to do, just go to marketingschool.io slash agency. Once again, it's marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more. And now back to the show.

2:15Did you see this deepfake CFO thing? No. So here, let me read this. I saw the deepfake. I heard about it at least. Deepfake Taylor Swift, right? The nudes? She had some issues. pictures i think it was nude pictures or something and then people started blocking them was it microsoft or some of them started blocking with yeah well here let me read you this headline so an entire cast of deep fake people tricked a cfo out of 25 million dollars in the multi-person video conference it turns out everyone was fake so that's crazy right because a cfo like if he was tricked out of 25 million dollars what else is going to happen i see like random i'm sure you get these as well these random phishing attacks but we're getting to the next level now and this is where i think blockchain actually comes into play and alex sohanian from reddit was saying this he founded reddit and he was just saying this is where blockchain makes a lot of sense because you want to talk about protecting your identity you want to talk about verification and all that this is where it all comes into play now because we're gonna see a lot more of these deep fakes hopefully you don't lose 25 million hopefully i don't lose 25 million that's a lot and dude i can see people creating deep fakes of like a billionaire um like elon maybe not elon musk you have to go like you have to go to like b tier yeah yeah so someone who's like on forbes that has two three billion dollars so not as much as elon which is still a ton of money can't be famous though yeah can't be as famous and they create a video and target you and send it like hey i got this investment opportunity love what you're doing blah blah blah send some money over here and then boom, people are going to get scammed out of Bitcoin.

3:46Yeah. I remember living in Miami, I'll be hanging out with people and they just randomly asked me, I'll be sitting in a car with this guy. And he'd be like, hey, I'm putting money into the Twitter deal. Are you interested? And then he's like, yeah, you got to put up 500 grand. Can you send it today? I'm like, and he just kept asking me. And I'm in the car with him. The guy's driving. Can you send it today? Can you send it today? And I'm just like, dude, no. I'm not going to just 500 grand into Twitter. By the way, I love Twitter. I'm glad I didn't put 500 grand into it because you would have gone back like what?

4:16Not much right now. No, that would have been so expensive. Did I ever tell you that one of my old people that worked for us, who is a cook, I won't mention their name, got mad at my wife and said that Neil conned me out of Bitcoin or some cryptocurrency. I think it was Bitcoin. And my wife's like, what do you mean? She's like, I was having an affair with your husband and this was during COVID. And then my wife's like, this other person said they were having an affair with you. Yeah. They used to work for us. And my wife's like, how's this possible? It's COVID. And it wasn't just COVID. It was COVID lockdowns.

4:54Right. Yeah. So then she's like, well, it was more just through texting and we pretty much had everything over a TikTok. At that time, I didn't have a TikTok or was it Instagram? Either way, one or the other, but when my team was using it. So my wife's like, can you log in? And I was like, I'm like, honey, I got to go find my login. So I call some of my team members and my wife's like, no, no, it can't be my husband. He was here. And, uh, and my wife also knows who the person is because they worked for us, of course, but she knows what my type is and she's not my type, but she's just like, I was like, no, I didn't.

5:28And my wife's like, oh, cool. I trust you. I'm like, all right, whatever. This is a mute point. So then all of a sudden she's like, yes, I've even seen, uh, his body or whatnot. and he sent me pictures. And then my wife's like, okay, forward it to me. So one, I'm OCD. When I first met my wife, one of the reasons I knew it was meant to be is when I was at the airport, I would go around checking each and every single gate to figure out which seat is the cleanest so I can sit down on it. I'm like that OCD. And my wife wiped it down with sanitizer. She went into one of the stores, I cuts in, got some sanitizer and then I sat down.

6:02So then first off, this person sends a picture with them wearing shoes on the bed. okay so that's already a no go i don't wear shoes to their basketball shoes i don't own basketball shoes the third one and this is the real dead giveaway is it was a caucasian person i'm i'm indian so uh i'm pretty sure there's a difference in skin color yeah right yeah so then my wife's like this isn't even my husband this person isn't the same skin color even by not by a little bit like i'm talking about a lot of someone who's really pale in skin color i'm brown and tan right Right. Yeah. I'm not trying to be racist or anything.

6:37I'm just saying it's the reality. But no joke. She was pissed off because she said, your husband doot me out of$500 in Bitcoin. My wife's like, my husband wouldn't try to get$500. She's not trying to be rude, but like, I wouldn't try to run a scam for$500. One, I wouldn't try to run a scam, but two, you would go for more if you were going to run a scam. Yeah. Dude, I do dinners where sometimes it costs two,$3 ,000 or four or$5 ,000. And I was just like, whatever, it's a normal night. And I'm not trying to boast. I'm just saying that's a reality. A lot of it's business expenses. But nonetheless, you know, I got scammed and she ended up showing my wife the thread.

7:17I was on either an Instagram or TikTok or whoever's messaging. And then my wife's like, this isn't even my husband's username. And it was just someone, you know, faking as if they were me. She must've told someone that she worked for me and like, oh, they have money. Let me just give it. Even she started looking into it. That's the thing. So she caught it, but there's still some, like, imagine how much more sophisticated these are going to become. They're going to be so much more sophisticated because people are going to send a video of me and then they're going to try to fake people. But what was crazy about this whole ordeal and experience, the lady was still pissed off.

7:50And even when she's like, no, this is my husband, she's like, okay, what are you going to do to reimburse us on the money lost? They were like, nothing. We didn't do anything wrong to you. We're sorry about it. And she was really angry with me. And you say, my wife's like, you're getting mad at me when you were trying to have a affair with my husband, even though it wasn't my husband, but you were trying to have an affair with him. Here's the thing. I think for everyone that the takeaway here is one, be vigilant to things. Scams are going to become a lot crazier. There's going to be there's also like evil marketers as well.

8:21So you got to be careful. Three, you got to learn how to secure your stuff. Right. You got to protect yourself. Sure. You can have two factor authentication, good passwords and everything. but eventually you're probably going to have to have some type of token that can verify your identity and that's going to have some blockchain technology that's tied to it. So all that stuff comes back. We haven't talked about blockchain for a while, but now we're talking about it again. Blockchain is coming back. You see the A16Z? They started talking about blockchain? What did they say? They were just talking about, you know, there's a lot of potential there and fundamentals and the technology, the same old stuff that you hear.

8:53You know, so we have a mutual friend. he sent me something today and it showed like the nine best opportunities for this year investment opportunities which i don't usually pay attention to that stuff but the first three were ethereum second one was solana third one is coinbase right and then the rest of like defense stuff and then you have like food stuff like chew eat right yeah um i found that to be interesting so that stuff's not going anywhere and um you know we'll just leave it at that we don't need to talk about blockchain all day um we can end it off with this one over here so do you know um do you know this guys he's a friend of mine matt paulson do you know who he is no okay so you may follow him on instagram is that the plane guy he has a plane but he's i don't think he's a plane not instagram on twitter he yeah he just bought a plane yeah yeah he has like some newsletter financial business or something yeah i follow him on twitter so what's that good content he does so he says this um yahoo so basically these are some email marketing secrets for 2024 and beyond so So he says, here are 24 ways to get started.

9:48And these are email secrets for anyone that sends more than 5 ,000 emails per day. So more than 5 ,000 people. So I'm just going to rattle these off really quickly. And then we'll go from there. I'm just going to get the first 10. Number one, target a 20 % global open rate or 40 % open rate, including fake MPP opens. Cut down your segments until you reach this number. MPP is Apple's opens, I'm assuming. You know what MPP is? Okay. Okay, anyway, we don't know what MPP, Neil's Googling it, I think. So number two, use Kickbox, Never Bounce, or Bright Verify to verify every new email before adding it to your list.

10:23Do you do that? MPP, Mobile Measurement Platform. Okay. What was the second one that you asked? The second one is, do you use anything like Kickbox, Never Bounce, or Bright Verify to verify every new email before adding it to your list? We don't, but we don't have that problem because, knock on wood. we scrub our lists on a daily basis. Oh, daily basis. That's a lot. Okay. No, but on a rolling 30. Okay. That's pretty good. Yeah. So we look at all the people who didn't open in the last 30 days and then we scrub them. And it said daily rolling 30. So every day we look at the previous past. And that brings it to the third point, which is what Neil just said.

10:59So unsubscribe anyone who doesn't open any of your first 20 emails. And number four, your daily. 20 emails? I wouldn't go that far. Would you go 10? No, I would go like five. Yeah. Well, your OCD is a little different. OCD carries over into your email hygiene too. I'm like, they don't want your emails. They didn't open up the first five. You're like, I want to save money. Four, your daily sense should target 30-day active users, target 30 to 90-day active users one time per week, and greater than 90-day active users one time per month to reactivate them. I think that's pretty good. And number five, automatically remove hard bounces, spam reporters, and invalid emails from your list.

11:36Most email platforms do the last one automatically. Number five? no the one you just said it removes the hard bounces yeah oh no um number six is don't count fake email open so apple mpp which is what i just said as user activity number seven monitor email open and click rates by lead source stop buying from sources that lead to low open and low click rates uh number eight get rid of block bot clickers use cloudflare to monitor and prevent bot ip addresses from hitting your click tracking urls number nine last but not second last but not penultimate one, periodically check your IPs and sending domains for blacklist placements using multi, multi, I can't see your screen.

12:18Yeah. Multi RBL. So multi RBL. I have no idea what that valley.org. And so this will help you, uh, check your IP and sending domains for blacklist placements. So I'm going to spell it out for everyone before we go. If you've ever built a website, you know how tough it can be to keep a strong design while ensuring site performance is fast. That's where Framer comes in and it totally changes the game. Framer is the design first no code website builder that lets anyone ship a production ready site in minutes. I recently built a custom landing page in just a few hours, animations, fast load times, responsive layouts, all without writing a single line of code.

12:55It was easy to use and the end result was polished enough to look like a developer spent days on it. One of my favorite things is that Framer's AI handles translations with a single click. So your site can be up and running in multiple languages almost instantly. And with real-time collaboration, your whole team can jump in and work together. No issues with versions or miscommunication. Whether you're starting from scratch or using one of their templates, Framer lets you focus on design while handling the technical side for you. Animations, responsive layouts, search optimization, and all the things that matter.

13:25Ready to build a site that looks hand-coded without hiring a developer, launch your site for free at framer.com and use code MS to get your first month of pro on the house. That's framer.com, promo code MS, framer.com, promo code MS, rules and restrictions may apply. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started. The best part about it, it has everything you could need.

14:00Say you're ready to launch your own design studio. Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand style. Or if you need help with content creation, Shopify's got AI tools that write your product descriptions, craft page headlines, and even enhance your product photos. Shopify lets you easily create email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they are, whether they're scrolling or strolling. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into... With Shopify on your side, sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash marketing school.

14:33Go to shopify.com slash marketing school, shopify.com slash marketing school. The word multi, rbl.valli.org. So multi rbl.valli.org. And then last one is use Glock apps, Inbox Monster, or eDataSource to monitor your deliverability performance. Do you do that? Dude, this is just so complex. You guys send a lot of emails. I send a lot of emails. He probably sends way more than me and makes more from emails than I do because that's his business. I think it's his business, right? Because it's a financial newsletter. Yeah. So ours is really simple. We get traffic. we have spam checks on our end whether it's you know cloudfare blacking bots and our developer puts in some stuff where people are too aggressive they start getting captures and we collect emails we scrub our list on rolling 30 so every day we scrub it people didn't open in the past 30 we stop emailing them and it's really simple we send really good emails with great subject lines content with text-based copy little to no images technically no images short emails between 100 and 250 characters, one link, two max.

15:48Sometimes my team puts in three and I get a little pissy because I just feel that's too many and it starts affecting deliverability. And that's it. That's the playbook. And you calculate what's your ROI when you send the emails, how much revenue you're generating, which type of emails generate the most. Because sometimes the ones with the least open rates and least clicks sometimes make you the most money, believe it or not, like consulting emails. Hey, sign up for a pitch to get pitched by us on us doing your marketing. You're going to get way less opens and clicks, but it's going to generate more revenue.

16:20And then you can figure out what you want to do balance wise, but that's as simple as we keep it. All right. We don't do much more than that. I don't think you need to. That's a good place to end it. So please don't forget to rate, resubscribe. Maybe we'll go a little deeper in the near future and we'll see you tomorrow.