2277 - Transform Your Customer Retention Strategy with Expert Email and SMS Insights Aspekt's Nikita Vakhrushev

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0:58With us right now, Nikita Vakhrushchev. Nikita, you're the founder and CEO of Aspect. You're found on the web at aspectagency.com. And that's Aspect with a K, A-S-P-E-K-T, agency.com. Nikita, it's great to have you. Appreciate you for having me on, Josh. Excited to chat about all things business, emails, and everything in between. Absolutely. And listen, I'm going to throw a curveball at you. We didn't talk about this ahead of time. I'm so sorry. But the first question I'd really love to ask before we kind of get into the meat of things is, you know, it's always fun talking with other founders, you know, other achievers, leaders, and, you know, either hobbies or shows or movies or anything that you're geeking at, gaming, like anything that you're currently geeking out on.

1:44What have you been into lately when you're not at work? Oh man, that's a solid question. My girlfriend and I have been, I think we've been working through this game called Peak. It's like a new game that came out. it's like a very co-op game and you basically have to climb a mountain it's it sounds so boring but you have to climb a mountain essentially and um you have to go through four different stages you have like the beach the forest the the alpines which is like cold terrain so you're going through all the different seasons and you have to climb up this big mountain and one game can last up to like two hours um if you get to the end but you usually fall and die there's a lot about a bunch of like different like boosts and power-ups and all that so we've been playing a lot of that after work well this is so cool my my my wife and i we love playing mario party together we got a switch too and i'm telling you man i think couples who game together uh stay together and have fun together um yeah in fact i just looked it up so it's on steam it's like seven dollars 99 cents in the it's a perfect co-op game and similar to like how you have a nintendo switch we have a steam deck So each one of us have a Steam Deck.

2:56So we just play it on mobile, like on our couch. Oh, how fun. Oh my gosh, that's so cool. I'm telling you, to our friends who are listening, find a game that you can play together. Because, you know, it's like, oh, you know what else you do? It's nice to kind of work that in, you know, to the routine and stuff. So very cool. Nikita, thanks for the heads up. I got that saved here. So Nikita, tell me about Aspect Agency. So obviously, email and SMS are your superpower. Love to tell us all about it. Yeah, so we specialize in pretty much doing a full-on white glove service for e-com brands or like direct-to-consumer e-commerce brands that are looking to add a lot more revenue to their back end.

3:42So a lot of brands right now, they're focusing on the shiny, sexy thing like TikTok shop or Google ads or Instagram, Facebook ads, but a lot of them neglect and ignore the back end of it. So they get customers through the door, but they have a hard time keeping those customers and retaining those customers to purchase again and again. And that's essentially what we specialize in, setting up the back-end systems on the email and SMS side to make sure that we're getting as much money as possible for the businesses through an email list that they already own. That seems like a no-brainer to me. I mean, especially when you think about how much work and effort we put into acquisition.

4:21can you tell me maybe I guess just help me understand like we're not obviously talking about email marketing to attract new clients. It's more like, hey, they've opted in and now we want to make sure that we really build this relationship together. Yes, exactly. So we're already working with a warm list. It's not cold emailing where you have to go through a lot more verifications to send out and you have to open up like hundreds of different email inboxes. These are people that have already consented to receiving marketing material and promotions through whether it be their email address or their phone number, so through SMS messaging.

4:58Yeah, well, so what is it that Aspect does that may not exist otherwise, or what your future clients may be currently doing that you guys are able to just kind of knock it out of the park on? I think the biggest leverage that we provide to any brand that we work with, whether it's the done for you services, so completely doing it for them, or the done with you services, our consulting services, we have an edge on the strategy side. So I think this pretty much goes for all agencies that take over a specific part of the marketing stack or maybe anything else that's running in the business is we have a lot of tenure within the e-commerce side of things.

5:44So we've been in this for five, six years now, and we've been running email only for about five years. So we worked with hundreds, if not more than hundreds of accounts at this point. So we know exactly the patterns to look for for a client. So it's like, OK, like we're not getting any revenue from our automations. It's like, OK, we need to we know pretty much the first few things to check to see what systems are broken. And there we can set up whether it's new automations or new emails or new copy or new subject lines. to make sure that we're grabbing the attention of a potential customer, helping them understand the brand, the business, the product, why it works, and then help convert that customer or the, I guess, a subscriber into a customer through the emails that they're getting and the communication that they're getting.

6:32Yeah. Okay. I have to ask you this. Look in your crystal ball. What do you believe is the future of email and SMS? SMS in particular, boy, there have been a lot of rules, I guess maybe one way to say it, over the past year. And it is, I mean, for a business owner who may really be struggling, you know, trying to jump through all of the hoops, it's hard. Now, as a consumer and as a consumer advocate, I really appreciate it. Like right before our call, you know, I'm like having to swat like, you know, four spam messages. You know, SMS is very frustrating for me. And I actually literally was thinking about like, can I just change my number to like start fresh so I don't have to get this?

7:23But then again, someone else probably had that number, so I'm going to get their spam. I don't know, dude. SMS really frustrates me. That said, I love to get the kind of communication that I want to hear. It's just, you know, it's almost like, you know, going to a regular mailbox where 95 % of it is just junk and garbage. And, but man, I really want that 5%, like a discount code for a restaurant that I want to go to. That's right. If I were to look into my crystal ball and look through the future lens of like, okay, what is this industry going to evolve into? You're not the only person getting those text messages.

8:02I get like five or six of them a day. And it's very frustrating because it's like job applications. And it's like, you clearly like, yeah, I'm unemployed technically, but also like I have my own business. But I think with SMS first, there's probably going to be similar to how email has a promotions tab. I think SMS is going to have its own promotions tab, or at least I would probably see Apple spearheading this because they're very consumer privacy focused, even though they're yes and no in a way. Like we're privacy focused, but also not when it comes to like our own data. So I think Apple will probably spearhead a promotions tab or some sort of promotions box where it automatically detects any sort of promotion and it just goes into that through that filter.

8:46On the email side, And similar to how Europe has enacted like GDPR rules and you have to have double consent on emails. In the U.S. and for most part of the world, you don't need to have double consent. So what that means is when you submit an email address into like a pop-up on a website, that is single step consent. You consented by submitting your email address. Double consent means once you put that email address in, you will get a follow-up email in your inbox right away saying, do you confirm to subscribe to this company's email marketing? So that is over in Europe and that's a standard now.

9:24Whereas in US, it's more lenient, probably for the capitalistic nature of things. So I think, yeah, having promotions tab in SMS and having double consent on email would probably be the next things that are going to be rolling out. Yeah, well, very cool. And so what would be some examples of folks that you've worked with and what was kind of their before and after? Yeah, we worked with a, I'm trying to figure out because they're all very good. But we've had, we have a lot of good case studies. As far as the types of brands we work with, it's all over the place, as long as it's e-com focused and that they're on Shopify or WooCommerce or any of those e-com platforms.

10:06We worked with a big outdoors brand. They're in Walmart. They're in every Cabela's Bass Pro Shop. like they're massive and like yeah it's a 50 year old business but when we were brought on they were doing about a hundred grand a month in email marketing it was doing great like it was chugging but there was a lot of money being left on the table as far as new customers coming in or new subscribers coming in and they just weren't getting as much juice worth of squeeze so we re-strategize everything on the back end re-strategized their automations re-strategize how their campaigns are set up and how their audiences are segmented.

10:46So we're sending the right message to the right customers. And that brought in a lift of about an extra 200 grand per month just from email marketing. So they went from 100 grand a month to 250, 300 grand a month within, I think, like four or five months of working together. Yeah. So it's very powerful, especially when you know how to use it. And now they just like are consistently at that base mark because like, I mean, we've set up the system and all they have to do is just get more customers. So as the brand scales, the email revenue scales as well. Yeah. So Nikita, I would imagine like having a conversation, what generally happens on a conversation?

11:29It seems to me like this is one of those offers where it's like if you're in the right room with the right person in the right situation, it's kind of a no brainer. my speculation is, is that ROI is probably simple to discover. Is that, am I guessing correctly? Yeah. Yeah. 100%. I try to make it as a no brainer as possible. Like you're paying us three, four, five grand a month and we're making you 20, 30, 40, 50 grand a month. So like, it's a pretty big ROI. And especially when you expand the brand, the email side scales with the business because you're having more and more customers come in and more subscribers come in.

12:09So that means more people are getting emails and the feedback loop starts. So I think the biggest problem that I do face on a daily basis is just agency trust. At this point, every single, I wouldn't say every single brand, there's probably some very non-jaded brands out there, but every, for the most part, every brand that I've come in contact with have been burned by some sort of agency in the past. And that trauma just carries and lingers through every conversation that they have. And they come in with a skeptical mind, which is understandable. You need to do your research. You can't just say yes to every vendor that comes knocking at your door.

12:45So I think there's a lot of skepticism behind the trust in the ability of the agency to handle that account, but also the trust in the results side. For me, I'm can confidently say like when we audit an account. Like, Hey, you're at this stage. I'm confident we can get you to this stage, but we need to work on these things first. And that's what we're going to be working on initially. And then we'll slowly start to work on, you know, growing everything else. So like, if I can have that honest conversation, then I know like they're bought in. So it's a lot of just gaining trust, trying to resolve any past trauma that they have around agency relationships and making it a no brainer for them of like, look, you're going to pay us this much, but you're going to get eight to 10x more on the back end and do you really have another channel that you can just turn the lever on and have an 8 to 10x return very unlikely so it's like we already have this list and you're sitting on a pile of cash let me unlock that for you sounds like a great offer um so nikita um in terms of a company tell me about aspect itself and like like what the team is like you know uh the resources you bring to the table?

13:54Yeah. Right now, I mean, just being an agency, it's very people focused. So it's very important on who you hire. We have, I think, five people on staff right now. So we're very, I don't think we're small. We're pretty midsize as far as agencies go. We have account strategists. We have one account strategist. Yeah, we have two designers. We have an admin and then we have a editor. So all of them play a certain function and they're We're also like the strategist and the designers are directly on hands with client. Admin helps with any supporting tasks, whether it's exporting lists, importing lists, getting reporting done, setting up meetings, that sort of thing.

14:34And then our editor helps with like the social media content and bringing clients in and just raising awareness about the brand. everything is done in a certain spot because what I noticed with traditional email marketing agencies they have one designer one copywriter and one setup person and then a strategist handle like 20 to 30 client accounts and to me that seems so overwhelming trying to handle that many accounts and also being good at your job so for us we have a lower client capacity per designer about five to six clients per designer, and then about 10 to 12 clients per strategist. So they're able to go deeper into the client accounts and spend a lot more time on those client accounts.

15:17How critical is it that the, like, what are the standards, like how have the standards for design evolved for email communication over the years? significantly i mean look at emails yeah look at emails from like 2016 17 18 to now everything is a lot more flashier there's a lot more design elements it's like almost looking at youtube thumbnails from like 10 years ago like before then you can just have a simple photo and an object and like that could have like a five to ten percent click-through rate versus now when you look at youtube thumbnails they're almost like masterpieces with like 40 different photoshop layers and like different highlights and shadows and depth.

16:00So when it comes to the email side, you need to follow the market trends. So we kind of need to have the same experience of like, your website looks polished, clean and professional. We need to match that same exact image on the email side because, you know, if your front end looks great, but your backend is not, people are going to notice. And it's like, well, do I really want to trust this brand? If of like, they're just sending me non-designed emails. Yeah, yeah. Well, Nikita, our friend that's listening, where do they go from here? Yeah, I put out weekly YouTube videos on anything email and SMS related.

16:37So if you wanna learn more on how the infrastructure side works and get a little nerdy with me, check that out. But other than that, just follow us on our website, just aspectagency.com, A-S-P-E-K-T, agency.com. And if you want a free audit, friends of the show can just submit that they came in from this podcast and we'll provide you a free audit on all things email and SMS. Awesome. Nikita has been a great conversation. Again, Nikita Vakhrushchev, founder, CEO of Aspect, your website, aspectagency.com. Thanks so much, Nikita. Appreciate it, Josh. Have a good one.

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