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George Hartley - Smartrmail, A Solution For Communication At Scale

icon calendar 2021-08-19 | icon microphone 66minutes Listening Time | icon user Debutify Admin
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George Hartley is the CEO and Co-Founder of SmartrMail, an email marketing app that helps eCommerce stores get more sales.




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George Hartley: [00:00:00] Email itself will be its own experience in the inbox. And it won't just be done clicking links out to a website anymore, or a social app or anything. Email will be the experience. And so, um, I don't think it's far away where you'd be able to, you know, e-commerce focus where you just be able to kind of transact stragiht from your own email inbox.

You'd be able to kind of just live within the inbox. And what that'll mean is the relevant email in the stuff that you like and engage with will be way more powerful. 

Joseph: [00:00:37] You're listening to Ecomonics, a Debutify podcast. Your resource for one of the kinds of insights into the world of e-commerce and business in the modern age. This is Joseph. I'll be presenting a wealth of industry knowledge from interviews with successful business people and our own state of the art research. Your time is valuable so let's go.

Remarketing has been a constant throughout this program and for good reason, the colder the customer, the more it's going to cost. My guest today, George Hartley, brings smartrmail to the conversation. Valuing ease of use and integration with us entrepreneurs in mind. And for what it's worth that's what I've selected for my business. I can't help, but wonder what exactly that is worth. So email podcast@debutify.com and let me know. 

George Hartley. It is good to have you here on Ecomonics. Good morning too. I know you're you're in Australia. Um, so how you doing this morning? How are you feeling? 

George Hartley: [00:01:33] Thanks for having me on, um, yeah, it's good. It's a chilly day here in Melbourne and, um, yeah, it's, uh, sort of kicking off and, and talking all things email and e-com. 

Joseph: [00:01:46] Same here. Before we do that, in Australia, it goes into the winter season now, right?

Like here in Canada, it's turning, uh, it's turning warm and you're having the opposite effect. 

George Hartley: [00:01:55] Yeah. And, um, you know, the days get shorter as well. So obviously most of our customers are over in, in, uh, north America and then Europe. So, um, yeah, we sort up here in Australia, we do tend to tend to staying up, stay, stay up late into the cold evening.

Um, while you guys are, you know, kicking off into summers, but you know, we've been doing this for like many years, so I'm used to the chilly cold nights working while everyone looks like they're having a good time in north America. 

Joseph: [00:02:24] Well, you know, we've, we've waited all year for it. And, uh, there's a, there's a slight degree of paranoia to the weather because it's, oh, this is nice.

But then the sun goes down and all hell breaks loose. All right. And with that warm up, let's go to the opening question. George, tell us what do you do and what are you up to these days? 

George Hartley: [00:02:42] Yeah, so I'm the co-founder and CEO of smartrmail. Smartrmail is, an app to send better email for e-commerce. Um, we have been building out smartrmail for the last five years.

Um, and so basically if you're a kind of, um, it's, you're selling stuff online, you know, you're on Shopify, big commerce, any of these platforms and you want to, uh, do better marketing to your customers using your own data. Um, kind of do a step up in emailing from just bulk newsletters. Well, we're the best tool for that.

Um, so yeah, we, you know, I mean, me and the team, there's 15 of us. We've been building this out, uh, since 2016 and, um, yeah, it's been awesome, you know, Obviously e-commerce has been growing strongly that whole time. And with COVID it took a big leap forward as well. So, um, it's been a really kind of cool space to be in.

Um, but my background actually, um, before that was in e-commerce as well. So this is, this is, uh, the second startup I've co-founded, um, you know, before smartrmail and actually that sort of, the idea of it came out of it was that first startup that's still going strong, uh, called blue thumb here in Australia.

Uh, blue thumb is Australia's largest online marketplace and, um, I co founded that back in 2012. Um, my brother still runs that and it's growing that and yeah, the, the sort of the idea for smarter mail and like a better email retention tool using data came out of what we were doing with blue thumb. And that was, um, emailing out to our browsers and customers.

Um, and yeah, not to ramble, but the kind of the whole genesis of please do we're pro ramble here. Well, the whole genesis of, of why we kind of, um, why we even came about was, you know, we, we would try to solve, um, trying to solve retention basically for blue thumb. So someone will come to blue thumb and they'd look around looking for art and they might add something to cart or they'll click on a few artworks or add a few to, to a wishlist.

Um, but say so they've had an abstract that way to their cart, um, sending this person recommendations of other abstract artwork. Um, wasn't a great solution because art is a very, very personal thing. And the, the sort of the key insight, and the only thing you can really use to say, Hey, if does this person, like, what other artwork will this person like, is what they've done on your site?

Um, and so we did try a few third-party email tools to kind of do better, um, email retention, marketing, and we ended up just sort of rolling our own one. Um, you know, I I've sort of years ago got a master's in computer science and I did intelligent web systems and we had to do these kind of, um, recommendation systems, I guess, like, you know, really basic, um, machine learning stuff.

And so, yeah, we, we sort of decided, oh, why don't we try and build our own, roll our own system. And it kind of worked. It actually was a really good retention channel for blue thumb. Um, sending people recommended artworks on via email based on what they'd done. So why shouldn't this should exist for like anyone else who's doing e-commerce, you know, just cause you're like at a 10 pissed and online store, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have like a, uh, like this powerful tool.

Um, yeah. And so that was the whole genesis. We sort of thought we'd have an MVP ready in three months back in 2015. And it took about, I don't know, 14 to launch from Shopify and e-commerce and, uh, yeah, the rest is kind of history. 

Joseph: [00:06:22] You know, there, I think there's a fair question in there. Um, for, for, people just wondering, like the disparity between the projection versus the result.

It's I think, I think it's something curious. Um, so, uh, but I'm going to put a pin in it. Maybe we can, uh, we can dig into it after, but there was a number of things that stick out to me with what you described up into and including what I just said. Um, one of them is that serendipity of it being an art based platform, I think provided a higher degree of, um, awareness, like you were saying, you are being a subjective median, um, versus, I don't wanna start throwing other niches under the bus, but you, if you take something that where the emotional range is much more specific, so say pets, for instance, the emotional range for pet is pretty much, aw, that's cute.

Or, oh, that keeps my, my animal from abandoning needs. Pretty much those two, as far as I understand, whereas art is actually a distinctive way of emotions. You have people who will deliberately buy something that depresses them because they just want to convey that, um, that mood on the wall. So you have this challenge of what I would say is the most, um, disparate.

Um, or really the most diverse array of interests, um, and, and trying to figure out how do you then decide what to, what to show people. So, uh, this ties into the fact that your, your, your email, um, uh, system is data-driven. So how were you unearthing the data exactly from, from the art platform? And I guess at our broader, broader perspective in general, how do we, um, collect the right data to make the right call to what we'd say to our customers?

George Hartley: [00:07:58] Sure. And yeah, the is, is a good problem to start on that because yeah, people have this absolute emotional connection. There's sort of, not much rational about what you love and also it's completely unique. So, um, the one one-off pieces, so it doesn't, it's not like you have a really popular t-shirt line that, that you have a ton of data about this one product, right?

You can only take user data. And also, you know, blue thumb has 250,000 outpaces like individualized care use. You can think about it that way. So was a great one to kind of solve this and then you come back. So for someone who has a lot less complexity, um, but yeah, I guess what, what pieces of data sort of most important to drive?

Um, intent? Well, we, um, we, in a way we, we sort of are constrained because we work with other platforms, so we. We do rely a little bit on the data that comes through the API is of the, of the platforms we plugged into. We'll also do some on page tracking as well. But the key stuff we look at is, is past purchases, um, as add to cart, um, product clicks and then time on product pages.

And it's just a big mix of that. And we actually kind of send it to, um, a recommendation engine that we've been tuning for the last couple of years. So I actually don't know what the exact right mix is. We sort of just tend to tune the, the, uh, the inputs and it tells us the best outputs, I guess, over time.

And it kind of does it at an aggregate scale as well. So, you know, for us, because, you know, we have, you know, um, 11,000 stores and we're going for many years and, and yeah, just tons and tons of data points. Um, Yeah, it, uh, it, it, there, there the case of inputs, I guess you'd say. 

Joseph: [00:09:54] Okay. Well, I, I would like to, uh, take a moment and also ask, um, you know, what was the inspiration for blue thumb?

I know we're not gonna wanna spend too much time talking about it, but I would like to know what was the mindset and why you're driven to do the art platform. 

George Hartley: [00:10:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it was, uh, my brother Ed and co-founder Phil. Um, we wanted to do something online. We sort of liked marketplaces. This was back in 2011.

Um, I was a failed musician, uh, sort of, um, at one point in my life, I'd been an indie musician and I'd run my whole kind of career on, on, on SoundCloud and I put career and kind of air quotes. Um. 

Joseph: [00:10:33] I'm a failed comedian, so I empathize. 

George Hartley: [00:10:38] It's funny. I'm not sure if comedy has, has a, has a platform to run your career either, but, you know, as a musician art, uh, sorry, music had the SoundCloud, which was this amazing platform and it kind of like allowed you to do so much.

Um, and it was, yeah, it's a really just opened my eyes to what, what, um, what, uh, yeah. Uh, a platform for creativity can really do and, uh, yeah, it was pretty inspired and a sort of, we're talking about, you know, what, what, um, I guess, nature, we wanted to work in and chucked around wine. Like I liked music, but I couldn't see a way to improve on SoundCloud.

And then, um, you know, had a couple of good friends at school growing up who were visual artists and, and were visual artists at the time. And my dad was like an amateur painter and had been all our lives. And we thought, well, you know, why not fine art? You know? Um, and yeah, it, it just seemed like it was needed, you know, artists needed this and we thought, we assumed that buyers might need this, you know, to go into a gallery is still a pretty intimidating experience.

It's not something I like doing or feel comfortable. We thought there might be a lot of people who won't like nice original art for their homes, but don't, you know, don't, don't buy it because there's no access to it. So that's, that's sort of why we blazed. Um, and we all had jobs at the time as well. I feel, um, ed and I, and we, and we did it as a kind of side job for a year or two and yeah, it just started to grow it, grow it, um, bootstrap it. 

Joseph: [00:12:16] I will say I haven't been to an art gallery too often, but it can be a, it could be an interesting place to feel like, am I doing this right?

Like my, I think for me, the thing that the biggest takeaway that I get from like an art gallery, and of course I'm being brief about this is the same takeaway that I get when I watch a theater presentation versus watching a TV show, um, TV shows, they convey the reality and work because they have the luxury of editing and CG.

Whereas theater is all about engaging the imagination and connecting with the, um, the kinetic energy happening on stage in that moment. And so, like, I remember I went to a Van Gogh exhibit and I don't, I I'm assuming there was some restorative work between now and, you know, Made the, the, the art, but still to be able to see like the individual key brushstrokes that he had put into it, and to know that those actions, that kinetic energy had transcended time.

Um, that, to me, it was like the thing that I, that stuck out to me from my experience, but, um, you know, for, for every Vango exhibit, there's like 50 where there's like a carpet pale and people can't tell they're supposed to use it. 

George Hartley: [00:13:21] Exactly. Right. You know, and that's especially like contemporary art, right.

It's, it's this sort of overwhelming intimidating minefield for, for me and a lot of others. So yeah. It's um, you know, where you sort of, yeah, we, we started blue thumb too. Um, you know, Do the opposite basically may make art available for everyone and also to give, um, artists who are up and coming a chance and actually blue thumb, kind of, it's very mission driven.

You know, it's building the home of Australian artists and it's, you know, you've got this running total of, of, um, artists who've started as, um, part-time artists and had to work and become career out of through blue thumb. And, you know, that's really exploded, um, over the last year or two. So it's nice to see.

And I kind of think that a lot of, a lot of those folks. You know, they don't get that first shot at getting gallery representation. And so we sort of wouldn't have had the opportunity to become full-time at their passion. Um, so it's really nice to see blue thumb letting them do that. Um, yeah, it's, it's the largest art marketplace in Australia now, and it's still growing really strong.

Like COVID, it just went bananas. So it's been good. 

Joseph: [00:14:33] Well, um, people want to have, uh, uh, images, especially of things that they haven't been able to go to in a while. Um, I think the thing for me that, that, that, uh, strikes me as a really significant, especially for our entrepreneurial audience is, you know, laying down the foundation for one business, it can bring out different problems, good problems to solve, which can then lead into the next business idea and so on and so forth.

So I know another grenade I'm going to put the pen back in is because that's our grenades work is, you know, if, if this is starting to inspire ideas, for words, you won't want to go next. So let us do, we'll see, uh, we might get back to that one. 

So to my audience, uh, you all know that over time I've been, um, you know, picking and choosing some, oh, I so much read to this, this podcast as a buffet where I get to see the full vast array of options.

And I'd be like, I'd like that, uh, uncomfortable with that. I'm going to try that. Um, and I am super tempted to, um, uh, to actually use, uh, this, uh, software. Um, I haven't made up my mind on which one I wanted to use prior to, but, uh, this one speaks to me and, you know, the arts background too always works for me because I have my own, uh, my own arts background as well.

So what what's step one? Um, I get, I get this installed. I haven't, I, this isn't hypothetical by the way. I hadn't sold anything yet. Um, but I want to get this ready because what I want is to know that I have as strong of a brand as I can muster so that when those first few customers roll in, I can take the most amount of, um, okay advantage of it, better terminology than that, but we're going to go with it.

I want to make sure that they're getting the best experience they can. And emailing is such a significant part of that, or just the retention to speak more broadly. 

George Hartley: [00:16:16] Yes. So we've designed step one based on our experience in e-commerce. Um, and so our experience in e-commerce was we were chronically under under-resourced for, uh, um, time and, and actually really a little bit of experience in all the channels we're trying to, we're trying to work at.

We sort of, you know, it was just a couple of people kind of growing this thing and a bunch of generalists, you know, we didn't have, you know, our own SEO expert, our own retention expert, those sorts of things, you sort of have to wing it. Right. And so, and the other point, there is just always running out of time.

And so we've designed smart amount to be a really fast and fast to set up fast, to get kind of designed and going, but also fast to use, um, while you're composing and editing and those things. So number one is like speed. And I'll talk about that in a sec. And number two is, um, a lot of smart defaults and smart, um, drafts flows and setups.

Um, so the whole point is, you know, you know, you might have a store and maybe you've been doing sort of weekly emails or something like that. And maybe an abandoned cart. Well, you know, that there's a lot more, you can be doing with retention, but, um, you might not know what, um, what best in, in practice and best practice looks like.

So what we give you is you sign up and when I say fast, uh, we, we pull in all your store data from whatever platform you're on. Uh, we also ran a magic designer. And so what we do is we actually scrape your store while it's installing. And we pull in your fonts, your colors, and we set a design automatically that, um, as best as we can matches how your store.

You can obviously edit that there might be some missing gap here or there, but yeah, we, we scrape it. And so you kind of have these default designs that look pretty much like your store, you know, with colors, fonts, um, button kind of layouts, all those sorts of things. Um, and the whole point is, you know, you shouldn't have to think about that.

You have a nice and fairly minimal, but nicely matching design for all your emails. You can obviously edit, um, And then the key thing is we give you like a bunch of really useful default flows. So there'll be like a winback flow. There'll be like an abandoned cart flow with kind of splits based on whether the customer is a previous purchaser or not.

Um, you get, uh, like a handful of segments that you should be able to use and connect straight into Facebook as custom audiences. If you want to do retargeting marketing against those segments, all those things, they're all sitting there ready for you to go. You can go in, turn them on, make your edits or whatever.

Um, yeah. So while you're installing, well, you know, the, it takes a few minutes, you'll see spinners and things happening. We're kind of getting all that stuff set up for you in the background so that you kind of take that next step without really having to engage an email marketing agency if you don't want.

Um, and I guess that's the big difference between us and some of the other e-commerce, um, competitors in email. Um, there are some other good competitors that have been there for many years, that sort of, you know, like their products and whatnot. But if you look at the reviews or if you look at, um, someone using sort of a side-by-side comparison, you know, the time to get a good result on, on a competitive software is it's just a long time and you need that expertise to really understand what to set up.

Um, we kind of want to get, uh, people there quicker, um, and especially, you know, people yeah. Leveling up, you know, without having to kind of engage. 

Joseph: [00:20:02] Well, I, you know, it, despite the digging that I had done it, didn't occur to me that, um, that there's a lot of automations even before installation is complete, uh, to the point where it recognizes, uh, what, you know, what my brand, my brand is my color schemes.

My color scheme is blue and white. You know, it's, uh, but there's also the specific of like the, I guess the was the hex key to it just wanted to make sure that I don't like, okay, hang on a second. Did I get that right? The right blue stuff like that little subtle things like that too. It's good to know that that's being looked at.

You guys do have a, uh, you do have a course on the, uh, on the shopify.com, so I can obviously recommend checking those out. Now, the, the, the emails that are sent out here, I imagine these are basically like the main ones that people go to the most. But I also don't think that these are like the, be all end, all that there are other, um, maybe slightly less prevalent emails that might be more significant on a niche to niche basis, educational emails, social secure emails, replenishment, which if I had to guess is like, you're out of something, you know, here, you need to get more of it.

They might, they might. Am I right? 

George Hartley: [00:21:18] Yeah. And, and so, you know, we, we give people as much as we can for sort of defaults, but you know, people, people sell everything online. So if you're selling, um, secondhand Rolexes where, um, your, you know, replenishment or your repeat customer average rate is maybe three years, it's very different setting up like a replenishment email series based versus say, if you're selling, um, protein powder where people order every month.

Um, so yeah, this sort of, we, we talk about different, different types of, of, um, Uh, I guess, best practice email flows. Um, but yeah, they're definitely, it's, it's a general course and, um, you just need to take into account your audience and your products. Um, and so I think there's a few other examples in there as well, you know, Tesla's on Shopify that they're types of, of, uh, emails when bats and whatnot.

They're very different, you know, someone, someone selling something that is more consumable. 

Joseph: [00:22:19] Right. Yeah. Yeah. There was a, there's a feel of the one' there too, but, um, uh, what we can do is we can put a link to it in the comments. People can check it out on their own time. I'm always like, what am I going to do when I have somebody for an hour?

Am I going to just make them like recite the chorus? Nah, it's all good. Okay. So, so set up, um, not only am I. Just like sort of surprised and impressed at how, you know, how much of the groundwork is laid out. Um, so what I assume that step two is now to start composing these emails for, for my position right now, this is kind of the beauty of remarketing is if I'm able to start getting traffic to the store, uh, that's already a win, it's already a success because now they have turned into potential assets. They might be conversions later. Um, they, but now the whole full, hopefully I want to, you know, I want to get them on my newsletter. So, um, with composing emails, I look at these templates and I imagine, okay, I think I want to do, you know, an abandoned cart email.

That probably is probably like one of the first ones I want to do. You know? Um, I want to set up, um, informative emails as well as start educating people about the brand. You know, we could, we could talk about, I guess, like some of the best practices you've seen of how people have handled the, their email marketing, so we can get into that.

But, uh, my question is largely about the composition of the email itself is I'm picturing, like, to me, I'm always picturing like what Grammarly does almost where it's almost like it's keeping track of what I'm writing and it's actually making some suggestions and adjustments to tone and what I want to convey.

So in the interest of speed, you know, what is, uh, how, how long would it take to write the typical email? 

George Hartley: [00:23:53] Yeah, that's, that's an interesting one. Um, we, we, we provide, uh, like, uh, basically default copy in, in all these email flows. Um, but the, you know, it's, it's not going to match your brand tone of voice, um, at all.

What it, what it has is, is it's, um, it's almost placeholder copy, like it reads well and, and, and it will work for you if, if you don't have time, but really what's best is to, to change that copy and match, match how, how you communicate your brand. Um, the key thing is we, we have all of the merge fields, so all, all of the suggested data for each email will already be in there and you can write around it or delete it and redo it.

But, um, I guess the, yeah, we, we sort of, we don't go as far as sort of, um, ML to suggest a punchy subject line. Um, yeah, we're not that advanced, unfortunately, I wish we were. Um, and yeah, there's, you know, that that's where sort of the art remains, I think in, in email marketing and any marketing obviously is, you know, we, we focus as hard as we can on like, um, powerful tools that are simple to use.

Um, however, in the really engaging subject line can, can make such a massive difference in, in your open and click and eventually sales rates. And, you know, that's something. Yeah, we, we actually can't help you with, and it's kind of, that stands for the magic of you and your brand. Um, but what we do is by providing the faults, we kind of give you the idea of what, what is a good starting point for how many emails, what you can be talking about in each one, um, and where the customer is on that journey.

So we might provide a, so for example, we provide a default for, um, customers who, uh, abandoned cotton never bought from you. And there are more emails in that series. And the third one has like an author or a discount code, um, to give them people that nudge. Whereas if it's splits where the someone has bought from you before, um, we won't suggest that that final nudge of a discount because converting that person who's bought from you before is, um, is a much easier task.

So it shouldn't require that. Um, yeah, so we, we sort of give those, those kind of cues and the actual composing a really engaging email. Well, that's still, still up to you as the, as the shop owner, fortunately. 

Joseph: [00:26:26] Right. Yeah. I'd say when we get to the point where that kind of thing is automated at that point, I think automation has just taken over and we can all get into spaceship.

So I'm not, I'm, I'm optimistic about that at some point, but, you know, we'll, we'll see if I survive long enough to see it on full unfold, but one of the things that I found, uh, very illuminating, and this was much earlier on, in like my own e-commerce, um, uh, journey is you can talk about the advertising.

The formula in advertising is so structural. And so, uh, in meshed in marketing and sales, and however broadly we can speak to it, uh, that once it gets on the Facebook is still basically the same premise is like, you know, See it on TV ad. Um, can I, do I still, can I still recall it to my heart? I'm not like amazing.

I, you we're calling off by heart, but I try, I try, you know, a hook, all that new, good benefits over features, call to action. And I think to some degree, that's also true about these different email templates is that there are formulas and there are structures that have proven themselves in time, in the same way that email has proven itself, uh, that is still relevant today.

If for them rather crucial, um, to, uh, in my estimation. So I think that's kind of like the, the, the starting and stopping point where it's about the formula. It's about the structure. It's about what has proven to be effective, the steps that are effective, and then people can come in and they, they, they change the tone, they change the, the wording.

Um, but I, I suspect that people don't veer too far off you're really from, um, uh, from the, the structure that's conveyed in, in not really, again, speaking broadly, not just with you guys, but I really think in general. 

George Hartley: [00:28:02] Yeah. And I guess the one thing that sort of really stands out when you look at, um, the stores that, that have, um, massive success with email marketing on smartrmail.

Um, and you know, when we mentioned that, so on the dashboard, you can actually see what percent of your revenue for your store is coming directly through email clicks. Um, and so when stores starts getting above 25% of their revenue attributed directly from email clicks, you can see that they are really doing email, right?

The thing that stands out is the design of their emails. Invariably is quite minimal and simple. Um, Often it might have it'll it'll always look well-designed, I would say almost always. Um, and this is me generalizing based on, you know, our top emails. Um, I can sort of go in, I could try and pull out a bunch of data.

It's hard to reconcile that with email design, but yeah, minimal, um, yeah, sort of, I guess not, not overly busy is the other thing that, that tends to stand out. And the one other interesting thing is, you know, we, we have tons of different types of automated emails you can, uh, enable turn on, um, in Spider-Man the one that drives the most revenue still.

And by a fair margin, double more than the next type of automation is actually, um, product recommendation emails, um, that are automated to go out at intervals. And the funniest part about that is that is a part of our app that has less design flexibility and, um, the actual, how the products are laid out.

Um, yeah, that's just because it's like an, an older part of the app where you sort of haven't finished the editor, like everything else. It's actually still quite minimal and it's yeah. More than double revenue per email on those emails than the next hire. So I don't know what that tells you, but basically, you know, it's kind of strong product focus and it's super, super minimal looking, um, emails.

Yeah. I guess, you know, uh, has always been, uh, the relevancy of the content in these emails, um, is, is the most important thing for us to provide. So yeah, we sort of work on that. Um, so you're doing bulky mail, but it's actually, uh, customized to your audience and then yeah, it's, um, It's not overly designed, I guess the ones that tend to generate revenue, um, that the highest rate. 

Joseph: [00:30:38] Some of it has to do, and I'm not the expert here, but I think some of it, well, you know, we're working my way and we're like, I do get to talk to a lot of people. But anyways, I guess, you know, some of it has to do with the ratio of, um, value provided to the recipient of the email, um, versus the, I guess, the call to have that value reciprocated in by way of a purchase.

So like, I don't, I wouldn't want to send like a product recommendation every week because I don't have that many products. But what I do have is a lot of ideas and a lot of ideas that I want to convey, you know, over time they get a bunch of those emails and then a product recommendation comes in and then at that point they say, oh, well, you know, 'cause I I've warmed them to the concept.

Right. It's been selling them on the brand and working them over that way. And so that I think is probably a great deal of how these are done, um, uh, for one equitably, but also, uh, in a way that gets people, the results that they want. 

George Hartley: [00:31:34] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I completely agree. And sort of, I guess sometimes it's easy, you know, while we're designing the product, we sort of have a very transactional hat on, you know, we're sort of saying, hey, what data can, what more data can we use for, uh, that stores can kind of send a customized, um, flow email with.

Right. Um, but yeah, taking a step back yeah. In engaging a customer or potential customer in your actual brand and, and sort of, you know, providing, providing content that actually engages with them, not just selling of course, you know, that that's going to convert and especially over the long haul. And I guess on a more practical note as well, you know, we, our tools are very much focused on retention, I guess, you know, someone's purchased once, you know, keeping them coming back, you know, it's your kind of owned audience, you know, the, you know, um, what else can you send them the is, um, relevant to them, but, uh, there's another really important part of email in e-commerce and that is, um, capturing potential new customers and effectively improving your conversion rate, um, by turning them sort of slowly into customers.

Um, and the way I kind of think about that in e-commerce especially is, you know, if you're, if you, uh, you know, selling stuff online and you convert say 1% of your visitors, um, so you have a 1% conversion rate, well, that's actually not too bad, you know, it's, um, you know, let's say 2% conversion rate. Well, that's, that's really great in e-commerce.

Um, so, but what that means is is nine years. Visitors out of a hundred are bouncing and not buying that day. Um, so if you work at capturing those, uh, customers say with a pop up or like smart, um, on products, uh, product page, email collection, and you may be convinced another 5% of them by the pop-up or the on-page product, uh, email collection into your email funnel.

Well, that funnel should convert at a pretty high rate. If you have the right kind of flow on there, maybe you convert 25% of them eventually after a few weeks, So, what you've effectively done is turn that, say 1% conversion rate into, you know, 3% over time. You know, that's, that's, that's massive for e-commerce.

So thinking about email, um, in that frame as well is, is super important. Um, and I know, especially sometimes sort of first time e-commerce founders get, you know, get a little bit hesitant about, say on page popups to collect people and I kind of get it. They can be a bit annoying. Um, but if you do it in the right way and you offer people real value for giving you their email address, you actually treat it like a kind of relationship, not just give me your email. Um, you know, whether it's a discount or whatever, um, yeah, it's, it's super important, super effective. So that's the other part of, of email and what's smartrmail can do, um, as well that people should be thinking about, especially in this is e-commerce for it. 

Joseph: [00:34:49] So one thing that I, I can't help, but wonder about, and the way I'm asking this is, um, not so much for you to feel like you have to be the arbiter on this subject, but I think it has more to do with a case study is, and what you've observed is how far I can reuse content.

It's like I say, for instance, I write something in a blog and some people, they might not come back to the website. They might not even know that there was a blog, which was probably more my fault, but I would like to know that I can reuse my blog content in an email, just so that it's more worth my time to be able to disseminate that material into multiple sources.

So have you seen. Uh, disaster over this, or have you seen the, this turns out to be like, oh, this is actually pretty good. Most people don't seem to care. They just want it. 

George Hartley: [00:35:36] No, I've never seen a disaster where someone says, oh my God, I've read this article already. How dare you send it to me? And on the flip side, I would assume that most new people signing up for your email address probably haven't read your greatest hits on your blog.

Um, so, uh, yeah, I, I that's, that's a great easy, first step is if you're setting up say, uh, a flow or a funnel, um, aimed at new subscribers, just pull out the evergreen content, you know, the greatest hits the stuff that you know is popular on, on your blog over time and put it in that flow. It's like, think about it as, as kind of building a relationship.

I know it feels one sided, but it's not. These people are engaging if you send, um, you know, six, six pieces of content from the last few years, over six weeks, um, to new subscribers, Um, yeah, it's a great way to engage, um, people for longterm. 

Joseph: [00:36:27] Well, we always want to, the idea is to look for ways to excite the creative mind as a seller.

Like for me, I would think one thing I'd like to try to do is do like a highlight of, of several blogs, just like snippets from each one, say, you know, read the full thing here, go to this and go to this, let me go to this one. And so then that way I'm showing like an array of some of the writing that I've done over the course of the year.

George Hartley: [00:36:49] Totally. And that makes complete sense, you know? Um, and, and it, and it does come down to the sort of how, how you communicate as well, like your brand voice, what your customers expect from you. Um, yeah, so totally pulling a whole bunch of that content into, um, like bigger, bigger kind of emails. Definitely can make sense.

You know, we, we, like I said, we're sort of more e-commerce focused. Um, so, you know, I'm not really the expert on, on the kind of long form email content. Um, I just know it as a consumer of it as well. Yeah. The, the, obviously the, the sub stacks and, and the blogs I engage with. Yeah. I, I, I love going deep on them and I love getting long emails.

Joseph: [00:37:33] Yeah. I mean, for me, I, there, there was a window where I kind of went scorched earth on, on emails. Cause I had signed up for so many of them. And then I just like, you gotta go, you gotta go, you gotta go. And one of them, they were clever slash insidious. I don't want to call them out or anything, but they had so many different sub-brands where I would unsubscribe to one.

And then the next sub brand like would send another one. I unsubscribed to that and another, then another, then another. And as you got to the point, great email in the back, please for God's sake, stop sending me these. And that actually worked. So they must've had a keyword search and be like, all right. If somebody gets irate, just let them go.

George Hartley: [00:38:09] Yeah. I wouldn't recommend making it hard to unsubscribe. I'd like, you know, talked a lot about, um, kind of. Yeah, strategy and, and like a whole bunch of stuff here. Um, your inbox kind of health is actually super important. That's something that, um, people don't think about enough, I'd say just because it's kind of boring and technical, but that, that can be kind of a really, really big deal.

If you have engaging emails, you get this positive kind of feedback cycle. Um, you know, for example gmail is smart, right? So they look at, um, how your general kind of open, um, and engagement rates for your sending domain, uh, sending IPS and say, you know, over time, these guys have good, uh, engagement rates. And so, uh, it's more likely to hit the inbox.

Um, maybe even go from the kind of promotions tab into primary tab. Um, uh, but on the flip side, if you make it hard to kind of answer subscribe, or you do funny stuff, you know, like you change brands and keep emailing the same list, what happens is you get a whole bunch of people not opening yet a whole bunch of people marking as spam, and then that's the opposite cycle.

And then it's more likely it'll go into spam in more other people's, um, inboxes and it can really, really cook your, um, your emailing in general. So yeah, that kind of good hygiene is super important for the longterm. 

Joseph: [00:39:37] Yeah. And, and, and, you know, and touching on the inbox from the, uh, from the user side, I think one of the unsung advantages of having like a healthy inbox ecosystem is its ability to archive a significant amount of data.

Now. Um, uh, uh, open up the can of worms, which I am constantly, um, restraining myself not to do, but like I do, I do subscribe to some political podcasts. Then mean the new cycle changes rapidly every, every, every 10 minutes, you know, uh, something happens and it's very difficult to keep track, but I've kept on to every last one of those emails from, from each episode of the podcast, which is every day, uh, five days a week.

And so even though I don't really like, I have a high engagement rate and what I do have is this treasure trove of, of news articles have links of, of, of insights. Um, all of which that I, that I can access at any time. So like one thing I would like to see at least as far as the email side go is for there to be a little bit more, um, of a.

Uh, of, uh, of storage and our archival process where it, it allows for emails to eventually you become like, like miniature books. Like if I were to get constant emails from, uh, from, uh, from smartrmail, and over time, I would want to collect all of that to the point where I now have like this PDF, like 42 pages worth of like, you know, different, um, how smartrmail updates.

So there, I think there is a lot that needs to be done on the recipient side to encourage all of this content, all this free, valuable content. Um, to become more digestible for the consumer. Another example, I'll just say real quick. And then I would love to get your take on it is manta sleep. Uh, the sleep mask company, they, they send information about sleep every, you know, every week.

And I don't read all of them. I, I just don't. But imagine if it was all consolidated into one PDF and I just had myself like a three hour, like how to, how to fall asleep without so much melatonin in session, that would be fantastic. But I'd love to hear your take on like, you know, being an email company, what would you love to see or, uh, you know, some of the practices, what would you love to see change or be improved on as far as emails?

George Hartley: [00:41:44] Yeah, well, it's, it's kind of weird. Like if email itself predates the world wide web, you know, it was like late sixties invention. Um, it's amazing. It's, it's the cockroach of the internet and, and, and like the other cool thing is it's completely, um, open protocol. No one owns it. Just, just like TCP IP. It's kind of.

Email is for everyone. And obviously there's been a bunch of like bad emails stuff. That's happened over the last kind of 10 years with spam and whatnot, but it's cool to see a bunch more, um, I guess, progress in email in the last sort of two or three years. Um, and I'm not just talking about sub stack, it's kind of like superhuman and even Gmail and a few other kind of, um, inbox apps that are kind of trying to improve on the fairly stock standard email experience.

And what I kind of can see happening is just like, there's kind of headless commerce coming. You know, you won't be going to someone's website to buy stuff. You just buy it off a social link. You kind of wherever you are. I can see that coming with email as well. Email itself will be its own experience in the inbox.

And it won't just be done clicking links out to a website anymore, or a social app or anything. Email will be the experience. And so, um, I don't need as far away where you'll be able to, and, you know, um, e-commerce focus where you just be able to kind of transact straight from your email inbox. You'll be able to kind of, yeah.

Just, just live within the inbox. And what that'll mean is, um, the relevant email and the stuff that you like and engage with will be way more powerful. Um, so yeah, I, I can kind of see that coming really soon. Um, And yeah, we're kind of, we're thinking about that a lot as well. And it's, I don't know. I just liked that.

There's a lot of, you know, we've been in email for, for many years and it just feels like recently there's this resurgence of interest in it, which is really cool because yeah. It's always been the cockroach of the internet. It's just nice to see it get like a little bit more people, a bit more excited about it too.

Joseph: [00:43:58] Yeah. And I think a lot of that has to do with, um, you know, how the content is consumed. I think at this point, Mo most people it's, it's funny, cause like can remember which, uh, which developing country, this is where like they don't have access to running water, but they all have iPhones, something along those lines.

I just seemed amusing to me. Um, you have to have tablets, uh, obviously a lot, um, an increase in, in touch technology. And so just the experience of, uh, going through this information, I'd say has ramped up, especially in like in the last five years. Um, well, I mean, one of the things that I'd like to share on for me is I, and this is coming from, uh, from my podcasting background is, you know, there's all these distribution platforms.

There are some major ones, there's a minor ones and then there's stuff. And I've always felt like that needs to be fixed. There really needs to be some way for some catch all to consolidate all of we're, regardless of where a platform is hosted, regardless of where I prefer to subscribe to some wave where it's to seamlessly be fed into my, uh, my device.

And I'd like to see the same thing happen, um, uh, with emails, but also with messages altogether. So more like this. So imagine looking at a tablet and just seamlessly going from like, okay, this, this is the text message. I was next on my feed. Oh, TikTok was next on my feed. Oh my stocks let's next on my feed.

Oh, my crypto. I mean, the, the downside is that it's going to fully control us. And at that point, no, one's getting out of bed, but if we can be disciplined, I think it can, it can allow the strength of each, um, whether it's to medium, to, uh, to, to stand on their, on their own terms. Because of the problem is a lot of, I think the ability for somebody to read an email, it happens to be like, when they're they get it, like if they happen to be on their lunch break, they're like, oh, you know, I'll, I'll check this out later.

And then I go to my inbox and I've got like six messages. I'm like, okay, I'm not reading, I'm not reading these guys. And next thing I know it's, it's, it's archived or bust. 

George Hartley: [00:45:51] Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that's a sort of an interesting one as well. And it kind of, I'm not sure how easily solvable that is. I kind of going back to, you know, a, a, a kind of a global.

Messaging kind of layer. Yeah. Like people have been trying to do that with products. You know, I know there's a few that I've seen. It's an interesting one. I don't know where that, where it's going with that though. I don't know if ultimately it's the kind of platform that you most consume that will try and fix that, but then again, you know, how long is it until we don't have phones and, and, you know, we just kind of VR AR in a way around the world.

Um, so I'm not, I, I've no idea where that's going to be honest, but, uh, yeah. It's when it, when it happens, I reckon it will be not, not how we think. Um, cause it seems that, you know, there's, there's massive jumps, uh, um, easy to predict. Right. Um, but, but yeah, going email, uh, sort of having that sort of recency problem, um, yeah, that's, that's really real, you know, especially when with people who get a lot of email or who have a lot of newsletters or whatnot, um, yeah, if it's not times right, it can kind of just be missed and gone and that's gone.

Um, we, we try and help our customers, uh, you know, is sort of building out, um, smart zen frequency type tools. Um, that kind of, so, so we do, we do this sort of automated content stuff already based on customer data. Um, it'll be automated sending based on, um, any data we have about when that particular customer, um, has opened the last emails and try and time it better against that, um, that that's, you know, that's a fairly hard problem to solve and we're trying to solve it.

Yeah. We've been sort of ML stack, um, So, yeah, we're trying to do a small thing on, on, on our end, but in the end, it's sort of, it's more, I guess, around the, the inbox side of things and yeah. Again, I don't, I don't know where the world's going on that one, but yeah. Instead of have to wait and see. 

Joseph: [00:48:05] Yeah. It's, it's definitely an interesting problem and it calls for an interesting solution.

So, um, you know, it just want just to give manta sleep one more shout out, um, you know, they've helped me get to sleep. I'll say that much is the way they brand it. Uh, you know, it's called the sleep scape, you know, issue number one, issue two issue three. And what would they do is they get, they tend to brand it as like, almost like it's a, it's a miniature magazine.

And I think that's, to me. You know, taking the strengths of other mediums as well and working into the DNA of the message. So, um, if I, you know, I don't have a, I don't have a tablet that I use routinely, but imagine if I did, that would probably be the most enjoyable experience possible. All having like these, this miniature magazine and sent to my inbox.

So, uh, I mean, a lot of it will also fall on the, on the brand as well to figure out, you know, how do we get people to be excited to see your email? So, yeah, it's a, it's a heck of a challenge. Yeah. I appreciate you. I appreciate your take on it. I liked getting into the philosophical territory.

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Now to get back to the, a granular question. So you had said earlier that number one email was the product recommendation email, um, and by a significant margin too, I was wondering about. Um, but in order, I think to make the best comparison, at least in my own mind, whether that's now or when I'm having my usual, how do I get to sleep?

Struggle is what's, what's the number two email. What's the, even if it is far off, you know, what's what's number two. 

George Hartley: [00:49:55] And, and this is, this is, um, by clicks into revenue. So, you know, that that's just one way to judge, is this a good email? Um, you, your email updates on newsletters or whatever they, they, you know, they might be more popular in a way, you know, people might engage with them more, but they might not drive immediate sales straightaway.

But the number two is the abandoned carts, the smart abandoned carts. Um, so they convert very highly, obviously because there's a high intent. Um, and yeah, but the number one for revenue by margin is those product recommendation emails. 

Joseph: [00:50:29] Yeah. I mean, okay. The only takeaway that I can come up with at least, you know, on the spot is the, where, where that falls into, uh, where that falls into the funnel, because you have people who are warm, they have purchased.

And so anyways, um, yeah. Okay. That's just that, that checks that out. Okay. So I gotta keep on for you. I think this is a cool question, but I don't know what kind of answer it could yield, but we're going to go for it. Do you notice any significant differences between the brands that say use Shopify versus ones as they use woo commerce or big commerce or some of the other platforms.

George Hartley: [00:51:01] Yeah, definitely. Um, big, big differences. Um, oh, big differences. Yeah. Huge. And, um, this is only based on our experience of users. So, um, the people who obviously Shopify is, is the biggest platform by users. So, um, you know, we sort of hard to generalize on what a Shopify person user is like, but people on work commerce, um, they tend to have more questions about our API.

Um, they tend to, I think, cause we're commerce. One is a customizable tool and a free tool. I find that they tend to pay us less as well. Um, you know, we've got more free plan users on, on woo. Um, you know, it's cheaper than Shopify, I guess. Um, And they tend to ask more questions around T's and C's and all sorts of stuff like that.

Um, so yeah, there's a few, there's a few insights about the differences and become, uh, become as customers, uh, on average, uh, a much bigger than our Shopify customers, you know, number of, um, number of people in their subscriber lists. Um, so yeah, they, they sort of, they tend to be on a higher plans, paying us more.

Um, but we, we have a lot less, so, um, you know, I guess yeah, Shopify that, that growth rate you can see in general, it's, it's been sort of astronomical. So that's, that's our biggest market. Um, And followed by woo. Sorry, not we followed by big commerce. 

Joseph: [00:52:44] And, um, so that actually raises another really good question too.

Um, now mind you, when I had, uh, planned this one out, I was thinking specifically for Shopify, but you know, the more information, the merrier, which is what you notice about businesses that have been able to cross that threshold for being on the free plan to the pay plan is. I, I mean, I, I, I imagine that a large degree of it is the strength of the emails, um, by way of working with your company.

Um, I would also say, which I think is fair is that there's probably other factors too, you know, they're advertising, um, they're, they're just the customer service, whatever that happens to be, but overall, what, uh, what have you noticed that has been like the key indicators of ones that frankly, to put it in the most frank way possible is the ones that can finally pay you. 

George Hartley: [00:53:32] Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And that threshold is at a thousand subscribers. So, um, we sort of pay a bit of attention when someone has say 900 or 800 plus subscribers, um, check, check, sort of, ah, they're going to be hitting that threshold where they sort of don't qualify for the free plan anymore. And I guess, yeah, this is just me pulling out some random observations, but I do tend to see a fair bit that they have pretty strong social presences are often it's instant.

Um, so they might have a decent. Uh, it's the following and the kind of, you know, be putting a bit of work in there and perhaps, um, they'll be using smarter emails, their first email tool, email, hasn't really been a channel, um, that they've used. Um, and so what we can see pretty quickly is our, you know, we, we can help you spin up, um, another channel that, that brings in more revenue or gets you more repeat sales very easily.

Um, so there's, there's not, you don't see much pushback on people when they hit that threshold. If they have a bit of that momentum and it's normally they have momentum on a social channel normally, and they bring you an email, that's sort of the, the switches we see. Um, yeah, so, you know, a lot of, and you can say pretty fast growth rates in some of these stores as well.

They'll go go from like 800 subscribers to 5,000 because they. As soon as you see results on this new channel. Oh, okay. You know, I thought email was dead. I thought it was for boomers. Um, well, no, it's actually like, it can still is a great way to engage with your audience, even if your main audience is sort of 17 years old.

So yeah. That's kind of what we anecdotally see a fair bit of. 

Joseph: [00:55:24] Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, you you're, you're, you're swimming in evidence, so even I would, uh, I would take your, your anecdotal, uh, your anecdotal stories as, uh, something significant to pay attention to. I have you for, I got you for a bit, for a bit more time.

Uh, not a heck of a lot. Certainly not as much as, as I would like, but you know, the brakes personally, I have an affinity for affiliate marketing. So like I've dip my, my head into a lot of different, um, head, no people don't dip their heads to dip their toes compost and get it together. They dip their toes into different.

Um, so when I, you know, with SEO, I try my best to understand it. I really truly do. Um, but I'm pretty sure if I were to go back and watch my footage, you can see me drooling at the mouth a little bit. Whereas with affiliate marketing, I, I really got it and it excites me to use it because it actually compels me to use my creative side, my, my writing side, my promotional side.

Um, have you seen, um, affiliate marketing? Um, and to, just to describe exactly what I mean by that is like I send an email, I'm promoting somebody else's product, just because I really believe in what they're doing. And I stick an affiliate link in there. Have you seen people do affiliate marketing by way of email or have you seen that pretty much like is relegated to the website more, more often?

George Hartley: [00:56:34] Yeah, it doesn't come up much, um, for us and I guess because people are mostly using us to, to speak to their audience who will buy direct from them. Um, so yeah, obviously affiliate marketing email is huge. It's just sort of, not really, uh, kind of niche, I guess. Okay. 

Joseph: [00:56:53] Yep. Fair, fair enough. I just thought it was a, I mean, for me, like I said, affiliate marketing is just something I'm a big fan of.

So, you know, um, when, when, when opportunity, uh, uh, calls, uh, give it a shot. Okay. So I'm going to bring back a question that I had tabled earlier and, uh, cause I don't have you for much time left. So what I'm wondering is are you starting to identify problems that perhaps another, uh, idea could be the solution to, um, where do you see your, where do you see yourselves going? 

George Hartley: [00:57:23] Yeah. Um, well definitely like  we sort of, we we've built this kind of powerful automation platform and a bunch of really cool kind of composing visual tools that happened to me an email. Cause that's what we were using and understand, but, um, and yet at the end of the day, it's a marketing automation platform.

So I would love to add in more channels, um, to allow people to kind of automate their messaging to their customers, not just on email, they're not just collecting emails. Um, the kind of most obvious one there is sort of SMS. Um, there's sort of held off on that for a little while because I hate bulk SMS, like the rest of the world.

Yeah. I guess we sort of automated SMS that's targeted based on, on your kind of user journey. Like that makes sense to me. Um, the bulk SMS, you know, I never really wanted to do so we sort of put that on the back it. 

Joseph: [00:58:28] Sorry, just a quick question for you. Have you, uh, heard of a car loop, but not. No know how it okay.

Yeah. I got a chance to speak with them a while. Like I've talked to other SMS people, but, um, car loop is a conversational one, so they actually focus on having people on the other end. So, um, yeah, they, they, that you might, you might have, have an affinity for them. I'd uh, I'd, I'd have a look into it. Sorry.

I didn't mean to cut you off. I just wanted to. 

George Hartley: [00:58:51] Yeah, no, I will check them out. Um, and the other thing is, you know, w we integrate with a bunch of cool tools, so like, um, you know, review apps and, and kind of, uh, support apps and all sorts of stuff that are in e-commerce. Um, we don't want to build that stuff.

We just want to integrate with the guys who are doing it well. Um, and so, yeah, you know, uh, Protocol has been to start building integrations into good SMS providers. Um, yeah. We'll add in SMS as well for abandoned carts and some of these like key key sort of automations. And then, yeah, there's just so much more to do.

The hard thing is prioritizing it, right? 

Joseph: [00:59:30] Yeah. Yeah. Fair. I didn't, I didn't even get a chance to ask you about, you know, the, the projection of like, oh, go do this in three months, 14, 14 months later. So I didn't, I didn't even get to get that one yet. 

George Hartley: [00:59:41] Well, that's just software development, isn't it? Like, you know, you, you've got this crude MVP that you think is almost there and then you realize it's a long way from almost there.

Yeah. It's it's um, yeah, there's lots of it. And also like, I don't know, this is, it's hard. It's having an entrepreneur in a space where there's it's so changes so much and you see so many glaring problems. You're like, I could solve this, I could build this. And it's like, it's sometimes it's really hard when, when you finally get a great idea to do something else, it just kind of not do it.

Joseph: [01:00:21] Yeah. This discovery is addictive. Like it's, it's that, it's that beginning phase of it. That's the most addictive thing. And then you get into the frustration side of it, and then it's very easy to go back to discovery rather than power through and get to the next phase after frustration, which is mastery.

George Hartley: [01:00:37] Yeah. But also prioritization is just so hard. Like, you know, we, we've got so much more to do on smart avail and like, you know, momentum, all this stuff. But like, you know, it's sort of, we went through, we went through the process of, um, applying for a revenue based finance loan from, you know, the big names there.

Do it, you know, did all that, just kind of to see what it is, what that offer all the sorts of things. The process was to be honest, kind of clunky. And, you know, you look at pot who sort of growing quickly and that they do kind of, they turn your MRR into ARR, which is a great idea. And I'm just like, why can't they be a debt market place?

That's maybe define that marketplace. You know, you can put bang across, you know, USD as well as, you know, put money in you. You have money, you want to get a good return. You plug into SAS, any comments on the other side, plug into Stripe and zero on these tools. And you, you have, uh, you know, you say, I'll give you 8%.

Loan based on these terms, you know, why doesn't that exist? You know, it is such a niche. Like it's such a needed idea when you see how clunky the current process is. And the first time I've been through that and I'm like, oh my God, this could improve. And you know, I can't work on that. If someone listening wants to please do it because it should exist.

And it's like, you have to have these things, these ideas that come up and you just can't, I have to stay focused, but yeah. 

Joseph: [01:02:04] Yeah, well, I mean, I've got to respond to that super briefly cause we gotta get you on out of here, but I certain practices they do benefit from being, um, more protracted. Like the difficulty of getting the loan is an inherited advantage, even if it's not intentional.

So that's, that's it real quick. So w with that, I think our audience there is I I'm, I imagine we might've missed a couple of key features about your, about your service. Um, if so, I leave it to you. If you want to use a little bit more time, just let us know about them otherwise. Um, we can send our audience over and I'm happy to say you can sign me up.

Uh I'm I'm I'm giving this a go for myself. Cause I, like I said, at the beginning, I got skin in the game and um, I got, I still got pieces to put together, so I'm happy to say this is definitely gonna be a piece for me. So with that, uh, the floor is yours. Once more. If you want to let us know how to find you and anything else you want us to let us know about the service and if there's like a Chinese proverb or a piece of wisdom, you like, feel free to share it.

But you know, we're, uh, we're on the clock here. So, uh, have the floor as much as you like, and then we'll get you on out here. 

George Hartley: [01:03:08] Fantastic. Cool. Um, yeah, definitely sign up, get on some out of Mayo for sure. I'd love to have you on there. I love your feedback too. Um, yeah, if people, you know, if, if folks listening, uh, uh, you know, in e-commerce and, and want to try smartrmail, um, yeah, just find us at smartrmail.com.

That's smartrmail. Um, Or if you actually sort of want to go a bit deeper on email automation. Yeah, we did a course with Shopify, um, a video course, you know, you can just Google Shopify, email automation course, and you'll see us there. And, you know, we take you through kind of the deepest set up on, on best practice there.

Um, and yeah, if, if you want to find me as well ranting about stuff in the world, um, I'm on Twitter, uh, GT Hartley, uh, that's my handle. Um, yeah, that that's kind of, yeah. Happy to leave it there. It's been really great chatting with you. Um, and it's like, it's nice to have some far ranging kind of questions as well.

It's been, it's been a nice way to start the day. 

Joseph: [01:04:17] Yeah, I get, it gets, uh, the opens the brain wide up. It's a, it's a special reality for me. I come from a very, very quirky line of a line of work. So, uh, oh, doors open by the way, give yourself a cup of quarters more than happy to have you back and, uh, keep the conversation going from there.

So, uh, to our audience, as always, it's an honor to be able to collect and give this information to you. To my editor, Micah. Um, one, thank you for all you do, and to, um, link it to Shopify. Uh, this is just so you know, uh, just put the course in the, in the notes. That's for her and, uh, to everybody else take care and we'll check in soon.





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