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The $100K Email Strategy Most Ecom Brands Ignore – with Michael Rathman
In this episode of Ecom Growth Insider, I sit down with Michael Rathman, the founder of AdSumo Digital — an email & SMS marketing agency helping DTC brands add millions in revenue without increasing ad spend.
We go deep on the real strategies brands are using in 2025 to turn email into a high-ROI growth channel — even if you’re just getting started.
💡 What You’ll Learn:
- Why most brands are underutilizing email and leaving 6–7 figures on the table
- The 6 essential flow emails every ecom brand should set up today
- How to turn browsers and non-buyers into loyal customers using automation
- The right time to invest in email & SMS (based on your monthly revenue)
- Plain text vs. designed emails — what’s actually working now
- Campaigns vs. flows — how to split your focus and maximize both
- Real-world strategies to build connection, drive repeat purchases, and grow LTV
- How to use founder-led storytelling and voice notes to write authentic, high-converting emails
- Why building a personal brand is one of the biggest ecom growth unlocks in 2025
🔗 Links & Resources:
Michael on Twitter: @MichaelRathman7
If you’re a DTC founder, CMO, or growth marketer looking to scale smarter — this episode is a must-listen.
📩 Subscribe, leave a review, and follow the journey at EcomGrowthInsider.com
Transcript
Welcome to Ecom Growth Insider, the show where we go behind the scenes with direct-to-consumer
Speaker:founders, marketers, and growth experts who are scaling e-commerce brands to seven, eight,
Speaker:and even nine figures. I'm your host, Andrej Tomachowicz, founder of Holowgrowth. And on
Speaker:this podcast, we cut through the noise and get to the real strategies that are working right
Speaker:now. In today's episode, I'm joined by Michael Rathmann, the founder of AdSumo Digital. an
Speaker:agency that's helped brands add millions in revenue using email and SMS. We talk about
Speaker:the exact flows that are working in 2025, how to turn browsers into repeat buyers, and why
Speaker:most brands are leaving six to seven figures on the table. Welcome back. I'm here with Michael
Speaker:Rathmann. How are you doing? Doing good, man. How are you? I'm doing great. So Michael's
Speaker:the founder of AdSumo Digital. It's a boutique email marketing agency that helps e-commerce
Speaker:brands scale profitably through direct response, email and SMS marketing. And they're doing
Speaker:a great job. I've seen some of the insights, some of the results they're able to generate
Speaker:and they're crushing it in the e-comm space. So to kick things off, what's your story?
Speaker:How did you get into the world of e-comm and email marketing? Yeah, awesome. Thanks for
Speaker:the intro, man. I appreciate it. Glad to be here as well. Ecom has always been interesting,
Speaker:man. I first found Ecom probably like every other person our age on YouTube. when, it
Speaker:went from like watching cool, you know, this is my life as a young millionaire video is
Speaker:how to make money online to finding Ecom and drop shipping and those kinds of things. And
Speaker:I dabbled with that when, you know, in like 2018, I started a drop shipping store. or 2017,
Speaker:I was still in high school. spent all my money on some ads. I got two sales. One was my mom
Speaker:and one was some random lady in Ohio. And then I ran out of money for ads. I went and got
Speaker:a job. you sell? It was, my brand was called Pet Express. And we were selling those comfort
Speaker:dog beds that had like the crease and the edge. you can put the dog was comfort. was, I sold
Speaker:one for like $72. It was cool. It cost me like. It cost me like $6. was back in the old days
Speaker:too. It was just Oberlo and Shopify connected with the AliExpress pictures on the product
Speaker:page and on the ads. Cause I didn't have any, I didn't order the product. So it was amazing.
Speaker:But that first Shopify notification, man, know, eight in the morning, I woke up, eight, oh
Speaker:one, I heard the cha-ching and I like, what in the world was that? And that was like my
Speaker:first taste of online money. And that's when I kind of like fell in love with. e-comm and
Speaker:kind of became obsessed with it. Tried a bunch of things between then and now landed on wanting
Speaker:to get into copywriting and two years ago that snowballed into starting an email marketing
Speaker:agency for e-commerce brands. Because I know the e-commerce brands out there listening
Speaker:needed more than just a Google Doc with some words in it. They needed the Klaviyo strategy.
Speaker:They needed to, you know, come up with campaigns and just to copy on a doc was not enough. So.
Speaker:that quickly snowballed into an actual email marketing agency, which we are today. Nice.
Speaker:And why, why email marketing? Because I mean, with copywriting, you could also go into ads,
Speaker:landing pages, websites. I don't know. It kind of just happened naturally. was like the first
Speaker:thing after I was like, I'm going to do copywriting and email copy was just, was just next on
Speaker:the, on the bullet point list down. And so that's where I started and that's kind of where I
Speaker:stopped because I also really started to like the, the, the business model of an email agency.
Speaker:other words, the, the kind of brands were helping, um, where, know, as an email agency, emails
Speaker:only useful for brands that are kind of already up and running and kind of getting some results.
Speaker:So, um, that, that working relationship with brands that are already doing well and we're
Speaker:coming in taking something that they already. You know, they're already spending money on
Speaker:ads. They already have a list that they're not utilizing. Uh, it was just, it was, it was
Speaker:nice and easy to sell at the beginning as well. Just saying, Hey, you have this email list.
Speaker:It could be generating you XYZ. I've never done this before for anybody, but you know, you
Speaker:know, I'd be willing to, help your brand do XYZ and you already have it, you know, no ad
Speaker:spend or anything like that. Um, so it was an easy pitch in the beginning. And then,
Speaker:um, It was just more interesting than ads. I'd never been an ads manager aside from my two
Speaker:sales back in the day. So, Clayvio just came up first and we stuck with it. Nice. And would
Speaker:you say that most e-commerce brands neglect email marketing or that they put too much attention
Speaker:on ads and the other aspects and not enough on email? I think they underutilize it. But
Speaker:a lot of the times I'm seeing it's for the right reasons. You know, if a brand's coming to
Speaker:us and they're doing 150K a month and they've neglected email, five, seven out of 10 times
Speaker:it's because they scaled so quick that the founder stopped running the emails because it was too
Speaker:busy. He, he maybe they, they maybe send one a week. Um, you know, if they're, if they're
Speaker:on top of it, maybe they're still sending one a month. Um, but it's all a lot of the times
Speaker:because they, they scale too quickly or. Um, and some cases they're like, Hey, we're at
Speaker:50, 60 K a month, but we've been in business for 15 years. have a list of 40,000. We've
Speaker:never emailed them. So a lot of the times it's because focuses elsewhere and you kind of need
Speaker:to do that in the beginning. talked to so many brands that are, you know, under 20 K a month
Speaker:and they're like, Hey, I want to get into email marketing. I'm like, Hey, I'd love, I love
Speaker:that for you, but like, I'd much rather see you spend that money on ads, uh, and, find
Speaker:a good agency out there. like Andre or anybody that you can find it and get the site traffic
Speaker:to your website. Then email marketing becomes profitable and ROI positive. But yeah, so
Speaker:a lot of the times it's for the right reasons or they just waited too long to get into it
Speaker:from that first scaling episode they had. Yeah, that makes sense. At what point would you
Speaker:say it's a no-brainer that the brand should invest into email marketing? Is it based on
Speaker:the traffic, based on the revenue? Yeah. Yeah. A couple of things there. would say email marketing
Speaker:as a whole, we'll talk about in the beginning, I would, I would at least have a pop-up on
Speaker:the website. If you're pushing traffic to it, if you're spending money on ads, if you're
Speaker:paying influencers, you're getting traffic to your site already. You have to have a pop-up.
Speaker:The pop-up is going to collect the emails, get them on your list. If not, you're wasting the
Speaker:traffic that you're spending to get on your website. You know, I think top 10 Shopify conversion
Speaker:rate. It's like 2.56 % and you're in the top 10%. That means 97.8 % of people or whatever
Speaker:it is aren't buying. So what are you doing with those? You got to capture them. That's bare
Speaker:minimum. That should be from day one once your site's actually launched and getting traffic.
Speaker:Go on Klaviyo. You don't have to pay any third parties. on whatever you can find. Klaviyo
Speaker:is really cheap if you don't have an email list. And even up to your first 10,000 subscribers,
Speaker:it's pretty cheap. Um, Other than that, far as full scale email marketing, I also, I've
Speaker:been referring, I've been, I've been telling people to, you know, in the beginning, just
Speaker:get some plain text emails out there as a founder from the founder, write a plain text, welcome
Speaker:email, write a plain text, abandoned cart, write a plain text, abandoned checkout, plain text
Speaker:post purchase. Just get the basic stuff out there. Think, think what six emails can I write
Speaker:first email of your main flows? Um, write them from the founder, plain text, no design
Speaker:that costs you nothing but two, three, four hours of time. They're going to be in there
Speaker:in your Klaviyo account that you already have because of a pop-up. And you're actually going
Speaker:to make money from those. Plain text emails work really well, especially when they're really
Speaker:authentic. You don't have to be a good writer. It's probably going to be better if it sounds
Speaker:a little busted from the founder. So get those going. That costs you nothing but a little
Speaker:bit of time. Aside from that, 50 to 80K a month is when you're like, okay, my flows, should
Speaker:be doing 30 % of my sales. You know, at a certain point that's, that's 15 to, whatever thousand
Speaker:dollars a month. That's when it starts to become reasonable to look at getting your flows rebuilt,
Speaker:getting consistent campaigns, sending to your list. If you're at 80 K a month or more, if
Speaker:you're at a hundred, K a month or more, and you're not doing email marketing, that's, that's
Speaker:just a lot of, a lot of money sitting there every month, just waiting to be. captured from
Speaker:the people you've already paid to acquire on your website and on your list. So that's kind
Speaker:of the benchmarks there, but there's so much you can do before having to hire an agency.
Speaker:Yeah. And the first thing that you mentioned was like the pop-up just to get subscribers
Speaker:on the list. What would you say is currently like the best offer that you can do to get
Speaker:like a high percentage of people to sign up to the list? Yeah, my favorite, if the client...
Speaker:can do it if the brand can make it feasible. And if it's more profitable is a free gift
Speaker:with purchase. know there's a lot of one-stop shops out there that don't have other products
Speaker:or complimentary products, but that works really well. And then a lot of brands are shifting
Speaker:to whatever's more profitable right now. You know, if you're normally getting an 8 % conversion
Speaker:rate on your pop-up, but you can get a 5 % and save a lot of margin. Probably a good time
Speaker:to do it with all the terrorist situations going around. That's what we're kind of seeing. Aside
Speaker:from that, because I know that could, be gone in a couple of months. Um, whatever's more
Speaker:profitable is really the best offer. You're going to, you're going to test as many offers
Speaker:as possible. You're going to have, you know, seven losers for every two winners you find.
Speaker:Um, so you're going to have some losers. You're going to have some down months on your conversion
Speaker:rate cause you're testing. Um, but quick pop-up like tutorials, like just a little micro commitment,
Speaker:ask a question. Yes or no. Or collect some data, you know, what are you shopping for? Are you
Speaker:here to, you know, I always refer to mud water. It's a, it's a coffee replacement that has
Speaker:some mushrooms in there. Some people come because they're ditching coffee. Some people don't
Speaker:want to do caffeine anymore. Some people want to explore the mushroom benefits. Those are
Speaker:three welcome flow opportunities you can kind of use to, boost conversion rates because your
Speaker:messaging can be specific, but that all stems from a pop-up. So simple yes or no question
Speaker:or collect some data, email SMS, show the code on the pop-up. Don't push them to your email
Speaker:because someone on YouTube that does email marketing said to only send the code on the email because
Speaker:then it's attributed to email sales. Put it on the website so they can buy right away is
Speaker:kind of the goal. Yeah, that makes sense. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Do you
Speaker:have any experience with using like exit intent pop-ups on e-commerce sites? Because I've
Speaker:heard Alex or Mozi say that for them, The exit intent pop-ups make like 30 % of the overall
Speaker:lead volume that they're getting. So like a crazy high amount of opt-ins from those pop-ups
Speaker:that only appear when someone tries to leave the page. But I've never really seen those
Speaker:be used on e-commerce sites. Yeah, I would say for info funnels, I could see those ripping.
Speaker:There's some e-commerce brands out there that do it well. Clavio's exit intent pop-up is
Speaker:so finicky. You might set it up and you might not even be able to get it to trigger. And
Speaker:then you factor in if you're on an iOS device, it kind of treats you as a new user every time
Speaker:you hit the website. And so it's very finicky, but I'm assuming Hermosy works with, you know,
Speaker:if there are e-commerce brands, I know there's some e-commerce brands that follow him. They're
Speaker:kind of like influencer info products, e-com brands. Um, with, I'm sure something like
Speaker:ClickFunnels, if you're running a ClickFunnels page for your e-commerce brand, exit intent
Speaker:pop-up with a fat offer. Cause you know, they're about to leave super, super beneficial. We've
Speaker:done some things as well where, you know, we only collect the, uh, the email and then we
Speaker:do like, like a second pop-up, um, where this person's already an accountant, Klaviyo. They've
Speaker:already made an email and now we're trying to get the SMS at a different time. So maybe the
Speaker:second or third time they've, they've browsed the site, you give them a different offer with
Speaker:an SMS that's worked well, but yeah, exit intense. It's, it makes so much sense, but I just,
Speaker:it's, there's so few that are done properly and, and for econ brands and play via Shopify,
Speaker:it's just not, perfect yet. Yeah, that makes sense. mean, with, e-commerce nowadays, also
Speaker:like the majority of the traffic is coming from, from mobile. And I think with mobile, you can't
Speaker:do exit intent. Yeah. can't browser cursor. Yeah, that makes sense. Now I'd like to hear
Speaker:your process when like a brand comes to you, let's say they make like 80 to 100 K per month.
Speaker:And you look at their Klaviyo set up, their email marketing. Like what is the first thing
Speaker:that you look at? Yeah. So a lot of the brands in that position are coming to us. Whether
Speaker:it's, our emails are doing 20 % of our sales and I'm currently managing them and I can't
Speaker:afford to spend my time on that anymore. Or they're coming to us and they're saying, hey,
Speaker:email those 2 % of our sales and we know it's a missed opportunity. No one does it right
Speaker:now, but we know it's important. Then we kind of figure out, sometimes the brand is, the
Speaker:biggest benefit sometimes the brand sees is just, it's professional. You know, they set
Speaker:up fiber flows and they just have the customers perceive the brand so poorly that it's like,
Speaker:first things first, let's get things looking good and hopefully performing better. And then
Speaker:let's focus on performance. But when we come to, when we audit these accounts, we think
Speaker:about them in a couple of different ways. Deliverability is always first. You know, if your emails are
Speaker:hitting spam, no one's going to see them anyway. It doesn't matter how good they are. Then we
Speaker:look at flows, pre-purchase flows, specifically abandoned cart. abandoned checkout, welcome
Speaker:flow. Those are your revenue generating flows. Our philosophy with email is the 80-20 that's
Speaker:gonna get you all of the results. There's welcome email one, abandoned card email one, abandoned
Speaker:checkout email one. Those emails combined are gonna generate you more sales than welcome
Speaker:emails and all of your other flows, like three through eight combined. Those are just the
Speaker:ones that get sent the most. They have the highest buying intent, so they convert the best. Then
Speaker:we go post purchase. It's also really important, especially if you're a repeat business, a repeat
Speaker:purchase potential business, what's your post purchase journey like? You know, some people
Speaker:forget to exclude, you know, 30 day past purchasers from campaigns and maybe they're selling the
Speaker:same product to them over and over again. Customers get annoyed, they unsubscribe. Are you educating?
Speaker:You know, there needs to be a proper post purchase journey to complete your customer journey.
Speaker:That's not, maybe it generates you not a lot of sales. but it's a complete journey. It's
Speaker:gonna get you reviews. It's gonna get you good comments on Instagram and stuff because people
Speaker:like the journey, the process. Then we talked about campaigns. That's the other 40 to 70
Speaker:% of your email marketing sales, depending on what kind of brand you are. Are you sending
Speaker:enough frequency? What are you sending? Are you sending the right people? And all that
Speaker:kind of factors back into deliverability with those campaigns as well. But the biggest thing
Speaker:is some brands do some of that. Some brands do none of that. When we come into an account,
Speaker:we kind of visualize what are the levers we can come in and pull and make a difference?
Speaker:What's that estimated ROI going to be? And is it an eight to 10 X what they're going to
Speaker:pay us as an agency to unlock that revenue? And if that ROI potential and eight to 10 X
Speaker:is there, that's when we start talking about the potential of working together. And it's
Speaker:really just the basics, man. It's, it's, you know, the flows, deliverability. Are you growing
Speaker:the list? I didn't mention that one list growth because we kind of just talked about that.
Speaker:The list grows super important. And then are you sending the right messages to the right
Speaker:people, the right times with campaigns? Nice. And when it comes to the split between flows
Speaker:and campaigns, I think you briefly touched on that. Like for most brands, is it like a 50-50
Speaker:split where the revenue should be coming from or what do you see for most of your clients?
Speaker:That's a good question. And a lot of the brands that have those questions are like sitting
Speaker:around that 10 to 20 mark. as far as email revenue percentage every month. And it's hard for
Speaker:them at sometimes it's like, you know, what's not working well? Is it flows? Is it campaigns?
Speaker:The way we see it, it's different for every brand based on the kind of products they sell
Speaker:and the kind of business they have. Historically, campaign sales for e-commerce brands are a
Speaker:lot of repeat buyers. We have one brand that sells, it's a CPG brand, they sell Whole Foods.
Speaker:People buy in bulk, they have $183 AOV. people buy every three months, often. So our campaign
Speaker:sales do 78 % of their email marketing revenue, even though the flows convert really well,
Speaker:it's just a lot of campaign sales. And every third month, we see an extra 30 to $50,000
Speaker:come from campaigns just because that bulk three month cycle is kind of coming back. So one
Speaker:month might look bad on campaigns, but we're right there with flows and we're still at 37,
Speaker:38%. Every third month we hit a 45 to 58 or 45 to 48 % from campaigns or total email revenue.
Speaker:And a lot of that's extra from campaigns. have some clients that are more white label drop
Speaker:shipping type brands. One purchase, one customer, no one ever buys again. Campaigns are tough.
Speaker:Campaigns are tough. You're going to have to send a lot of volume. You're going to have
Speaker:to send your thing about your list as non buyers. What is your best offer to non buyers that
Speaker:you're willing to give them? How many times can you send that to your list, but also not
Speaker:train them to look at discounts? You know, if you have a buy two, get three free. You got
Speaker:to reuse that quite often to drive those sales because you're not getting any repeat buys.
Speaker:That's where we typically see campaigns or 30 % flows or 70. 50 50 is good to shoot for until
Speaker:you kind of figure out, okay, I just know campaign strategy wise. there's not a lot of repeat
Speaker:buyers. So I know that my flows need to do the heavy lifting. And that's where you kind of
Speaker:start to figure out what's best for your brand and where you should be putting your focus.
Speaker:Something we could talk about as well is a lot of brands don't know whether their email marketing
Speaker:should be acquisition or retention. And that kind of plays into that. Yeah. I mean, you
Speaker:already mentioned that there are some brands where people just buy once and they never come
Speaker:back. And from my understanding, from what you just said, They should still focus on email
Speaker:marketing and it is still like a good, channel for them, but it's just for acquisition and
Speaker:for getting like the first time customers, but not for retention. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so,
Speaker:so for example, we have a couple of clients that, that are high AOV, a couple thousand
Speaker:dollars, not a lot of repeat potential buys because there's not any other real products
Speaker:on the website to, to sell them. And so their strategy, we have a proper, it's a high AOV
Speaker:product. So there's still a proper post purchase journey to make sure that the customer gets
Speaker:the experience you would expect having spent $7,000 on something. But where the strategy
Speaker:comes into play and we're still able to generate campaign sales because it's, it's a lot of
Speaker:micro topic educational type emails, but for the flows, the strategy is, is those pre-purchase
Speaker:flows, abandoned cart, abandoned checkout, browser abandonment, site abandonment, welcome flow.
Speaker:How can we make those the main priority? Can we split the welcome flow based on what they're
Speaker:browsing? Are they browsing this type of collection or this type of collection? And split off
Speaker:the welcome flow that way so it converts better. Browse abandonment. What collection did they
Speaker:browse? Let's get specific. We can break all those flows down an extra way. Whereas if you
Speaker:have... You know, 250 SKUs, your welcome flows is going to somewhat be broad or your brand
Speaker:and your about your browse abandonment might be somewhat broad because you have so many
Speaker:options. If you're a high of product with a lot less SKUs, you can afford to spend that
Speaker:time and break down those flows more specific so that the messaging is better, so that they
Speaker:can convert better. And then on the campaign side of things, you know, knowing everybody
Speaker:on that list is going to be a non-buyer because they're not repeat buying. You know, what are
Speaker:the objections you need to get across the table and, and what are the things that they need
Speaker:to see to become a first time buyer? Um, we do a lot of education, a lot of linking the
Speaker:blog posts on those campaigns. And what are your thoughts on creating like crazy long email
Speaker:flows? Um, because like one client has been showing us their like email marketing setup.
Speaker:And for a very long time, I've been trying to convince them to outsource it. I even put them
Speaker:in contact with you guys, like I think probably half a year ago. But for reason they still
Speaker:want to do it in-house. And what they have been doing is they don't have time to do email
Speaker:campaigns. So they just created a welcome flow that is I think one and a half years long.
Speaker:And basically every week or every two weeks, there's like one flow email in there. And it
Speaker:just goes on for, yeah, more than a year. So what typically happens there, I'd be interested,
Speaker:I think from what I remember, they're not doing bad with email. Yeah. I don't know if you know
Speaker:the updates there, but I don't, but I think they're doing pretty all right. Yeah, but it's
Speaker:like the overall percentage of revenue is good, but it's like 95 % flows because they're not
Speaker:sending any campaigns only on Black Friday. Yeah. And so the interesting thing there is
Speaker:like, what could be happening if they were sending three to four campaigns a week on top of that?
Speaker:I'm not against having a really long welcome flow at a certain point. It stops becoming
Speaker:a welcome flow and you just, it's, it's now automated campaign emails. Um, if it's set
Speaker:up properly, if someone abandoned the cart that are, they're out of that welcome flow because
Speaker:of that filter. someone browses a product, they're pushed down the funnel out of the welcome flow
Speaker:in the browser management flow. So now that year long flow is broken and no one's receiving
Speaker:those anymore. If that's how it's set up, if it's set up to where, you know, no filters,
Speaker:then they get that welcome flow along with all the abandoned carts, abandoned checkouts. And
Speaker:it's kind of like sending campaigns and flows, but I would be curious if they, they built
Speaker:out that the eight email welcome series based on. you know, proper welcome flow structure
Speaker:and then set three to four campaigns a week instead of the long flow. I'd be interested
Speaker:to see what the results were, especially because I know that business has potential for repeat
Speaker:buyers, which is also another thing that welcome flow is triggered when someone joins the list.
Speaker:Once someone purchases, they're no longer in the welcome flow if there's profile filters
Speaker:that exclude them. So a lot of things could go into that. I'm against that like overall
Speaker:approach. It's just not the most optimal way, especially if you want to split off your welcome
Speaker:flow based on that zero party data you collect on the pop-up. It just gets a little messy.
Speaker:Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And let's say a brand is like completely overwhelmed, just
Speaker:wants to do the absolute bare minimum when it comes to email marketing. Like which flow
Speaker:should they do first? What should they focus on? Yeah, so we build our flows in three stages
Speaker:because there's not one flow that's better than the other. It's flow emails that are better.
Speaker:Let's count. Welcome email one, abandoned card email one that you can use as abandoned
Speaker:checkout email one. So we'll count that as one email. Site abandonment, browse abandonment,
Speaker:potential buyer's flow. Someone browsed a product three times in the last week, pretty high intent.
Speaker:And then a post purchase flow. for overall buyers, the thank you email. There's six emails
Speaker:right there that I would set up. Those pre-purchase flows, email one, those are gonna generate
Speaker:you more sales than the back half of all those other flows combined for most brands, for
Speaker:most brands. And then I would write, at least with AI, could probably get away with writing,
Speaker:you could probably spend the time and write two campaigns a week, plain text only. and
Speaker:send two campaigns out a week and do those five or six flow emails. And you'd cover the bases
Speaker:up until you get to, you know, that 80, 100K a month mark. Nice. Now, the important part
Speaker:there is those triggers. You'll set up those flows. You'll probably use the templates from
Speaker:Clavio. Be aware the abandoned carts actually a start at checkout, all these kinds of little
Speaker:things. You don't know the profile filters. There's videos on YouTube from wonderful guys
Speaker:like us. There are videos on YouTube to set up those flows, triggers and filters, plenty
Speaker:of guides. So you should be good there. But those are the six emails that I'd set up. Okay.
Speaker:So in your opinion, it makes more sense to have like from every flow, one email rather than
Speaker:really focus on one flow and make it perfect. Yeah. If there's one flow, let's say you're,
Speaker:you're like, that's such a dumb idea, Michael, I don't want to listen to you. Set up your
Speaker:welcome flow. Um, it's, it's going to be, if you have a pop up, if your list isn't growing,
Speaker:um, then a lot of times your welcome flow isn't, isn't more profitable than an abandoned cart
Speaker:flow. Um, but, but yeah. Yeah. There's the emails are more important. Um, if everybody
Speaker:pulled up their Klaviyo accounts right now, they'd probably see the welcome email one and
Speaker:abandoned cart email one is a bulk of their flow revenue. Yeah. And like going back to
Speaker:the, to the plain text emails, like I see those crush and I see so many brands are using
Speaker:them nowadays and Yeah, I think it's just because it's still like something different.
Speaker:Like a couple months or a couple years ago, I think every brand was only doing like designed
Speaker:emails, beautiful looking, high quality designs. And people tend to like those plain text emails
Speaker:more or equally as the designed ones, just because they're more authentic, more interesting
Speaker:and also look like a normal email that someone sends you. Yeah. We've also seen those crush
Speaker:for, some of the brands. Yeah. The, keyword there is authentic. That was like the start
Speaker:of 2025, I wrote an email out to my list. That was all about authenticity. And I was like,
Speaker:you know, that's why plain text I think are working. The plain texts that are working for
Speaker:our clients are these like super specific, micro topic storytelling, direct response style emails
Speaker:where it's like, we're educating through a story. And it's, in a very interesting, like authentic
Speaker:approach. A lot of our clients are also sending us voice notes. I'll expose some sauce here.
Speaker:We get our clients to send us voice notes, updating us on their, on their brand, their
Speaker:business. We have one client who sells hats, ripped us a voice note the other day, got
Speaker:into a couple wholesale deals. He's, he's in buckle. He's in a couple other store locations.
Speaker:Um, real excited about the growth, you know, he was just out of stock for a while. We got
Speaker:some stock and things were going well. Um, turn that into a couple of plain text emails
Speaker:and every month those plain text emails are the top performers and he's getting emails
Speaker:back and they're like, dude, I love your brand and your story so much. And he's like, that's
Speaker:so cool. I'm not even sending them. People are interested in my story, not the brand, but
Speaker:the story of the brand and my story. And it's because. Consumers in 2025, I believe, are
Speaker:craving authenticity. There's a brand for everything. There's a hundred million brands for everything.
Speaker:What is going to get me to buy? It's my connection to the brand. It's that world building as you
Speaker:think about a brand like Kill Crew, their shirts and shorts and t-shirts and stuff. You're buying
Speaker:into the world that they've created. So when I buy something from a brand and someone asks
Speaker:me, what kind of brand is that? And then I tell them the story of the brand versus, it's from
Speaker:Amazon. People want that now. People are researching. People want to find the stories. People want
Speaker:to find the founders on social. They want to see where they came from, where it's made,
Speaker:how it's made. And the people giving consumers that content through all kinds of content,
Speaker:but also through plain text are just reciprocating really well with their audiences and almost
Speaker:taking that world building approach to how they talk to their audience. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker:we also see that on the ads side of things where like founders ads and like videos or
Speaker:ads where like the founder talks about the brand, talks about the story, talks about how they're
Speaker:building the brand right now. Or those are just like the best performing creatives oftentimes.
Speaker:And kind of nowadays, if you start an e-commerce brand, In my opinion, it makes things significantly
Speaker:easier if you at the same time start a personal brand or at least are willing to also like
Speaker:create content, document the journey. And I know a lot of brands don't want to do that
Speaker:or a lot of founders don't want to do that. And it also works without it. Um, but it's
Speaker:just, it makes everything easier because people love those authentic brands. They, I feel like
Speaker:people think that there's brands. And then there's creator led brands and like, doesn't
Speaker:have to be such a daunting thing to talk about what you do. I think we probably also go through
Speaker:some of this as well. know I definitely do where it's like, I should share more about what I'm
Speaker:doing and what we're working on. Cause it's interesting. We just end up not doing it sometimes,
Speaker:but for an e-commerce brand. And I'm sure Camillo talked about this on one of the last podcasts.
Speaker:I need to go and watch it. is, is like marketing and ads needs to feel like content we're consuming.
Speaker:And as a business owner, you know, I see so much content from business owners, but it's
Speaker:more fascinating to someone who probably doesn't know about business or it's, it's more intriguing
Speaker:to someone who doesn't know like, Oh, I know what that person does all day. This is their
Speaker:laptop and work just like I do. But when you start to create that content of simply documenting.
Speaker:what's going on where your first warehouse, you know, look at me, I'm packing orders in
Speaker:my, in my garage. People actually really care about that. I, the brands, the last five brands
Speaker:that I've bought from are from a founder led video that I was like, that's actually a sick
Speaker:brand. He also happens to be a sick, sick person. Um, and now when someone asked me about that
Speaker:brand, if someone asked me about that brand, I feel some sort of. connection to it. It's
Speaker:like, oh, I almost feel like this is my friend that I bought a brand from or a product from.
Speaker:And that is, I feel like what consumers want and it's simple content. It's, it's documentation
Speaker:rather than, you know, super specific curated content. Just like, just talk about what you're
Speaker:doing. Those are the brands you go on TikTok. Um, there's what's the person I see all the
Speaker:time on, um, they reference them all the time on creator led brands. It's like a bikini brand.
Speaker:She just posts content about running her bikini brand. She's from Canada, I think. But it's
Speaker:simple content. It's like, here's me working in the office today. It's like, I did nothing,
Speaker:but like it was a fun day. dude, that's so easy to post and people want it and watch it. And
Speaker:I'm sure you see some of those social posts that your clients do that turn into ads, that
Speaker:can be turned into ads. Yeah, definitely. No, I totally agree with that. And I mean, it's
Speaker:with the content, I think it's similar to the like plain text emails where it's not as much
Speaker:about like how much effort you put into it. It's just about like sharing something valuable,
Speaker:something interesting, something real without editing a lot without, yeah, putting a lot
Speaker:of effort into it. Yeah, there's, so one of our clients, we do a mixture of all of those
Speaker:things. We'll have the really nice plain text that that we wrote and then we'll have like
Speaker:the most, like just a brain dump of like founder thoughts. And those emails are like choppy.
Speaker:They're kind of somewhat manic in a way on an email person. Like you would read that email
Speaker:from AI and you'd be like, dude, where are we at with this? What's going on? But then you
Speaker:read it from the founder and it's like, we're working on this. We're doing that. I'm so excited
Speaker:for this launch. We just restocked this. You guys don't even know what's coming. Um, and
Speaker:you send that like. grammar mistakes, commas, everything's messed up. And those will rip
Speaker:the best sometimes. So I would say a lot of people talk to their email list as if it's
Speaker:an email list rather than just a group of people that like what you're doing. It's all it is.
Speaker:It's all it is. It's not a corporatey thing. It's just like, it's an extension of your
Speaker:content. And I think the brands who think about it, that way you get the best results. Yeah.
Speaker:That's so cool. And I mean, when our clients also like create record content, record ads,
Speaker:we always tell them that they should just think about talking to like one person, to one customer
Speaker:or one potential customer, or even imagine that they talk to a friend and just tell them something
Speaker:about the product and not how they think they should talk to like thousands or millions of
Speaker:people, but just to like casually speaking to one person and it makes it way better.
Speaker:And that's something that I actually just wrote an email about this specific to high AOV brands,
Speaker:but we can talk about it broadly is like your email marketing is essentially just an extended
Speaker:conversation with someone who's interested in buying your products. And if you think about
Speaker:that, like, like a car sale, maybe not a car because buying cars is fairly normal. So there's
Speaker:not a lot of talk. There's still some, but let's say it's more like a white glove. You know,
Speaker:we're going to buy this house. Let's sit down and discuss buying this house. Um, and the,
Speaker:your, your flows are, are where they're at in the buying journey. So one might be like, I've
Speaker:never considered buying a house before, but today I am. So one might be like, dude, I've
Speaker:been searching for a house for a year and I just can't quite figure out which one I like.
Speaker:Some people might say, Hey, I'm, actually moving from this house. I just sold it. Now I got
Speaker:to buy this house. Um, but I'm nervous about financing. There's different things. The flows
Speaker:are. The conversation streams based on where they're at in that buying journey. You're having
Speaker:that conversation. You're picking up from where they're at, abandoned cart. You know, I don't
Speaker:really know if this is going to work. I don't know, you know, what shipping is going to
Speaker:be like. I don't know what return policies are like. Well, start the conversation there
Speaker:and work closer to the sale. A lot of people don't think about flows as, as those conversations
Speaker:as a sales process. And then sometimes they think too much about it on campaigns. We send
Speaker:campaigns, the goal here is one email, one idea, one goal. Sometimes clients think when they're
Speaker:sending those emails, they have to pack everything, that whole sales process, that whole flow sales
Speaker:process into one campaign email. And then it's a word vomit that you can't keep up with. The
Speaker:goal with those campaigns is to educate, to nurture, to build social proof, build your
Speaker:perception of the brand, but sell the click. get them to the website, get them to a blog,
Speaker:get them to a product page, get them to a landing page and do the rest of the educating and selling
Speaker:there versus the campaign. And then if they don't buy, they did something on the website.
Speaker:Now they trigger the flow that triggers the conversation that they need to be having. And
Speaker:when you think about it like that, it's like, oh, it's just a longer sales process split
Speaker:up in different conversations, which is the best way I think to think about it. Yeah. I
Speaker:see a lot of similarities to ads, where also a lot of people think that like one creative,
Speaker:one ad has to do like all of the selling, even though that's not how it works. Like the ad's
Speaker:purpose is only to get them to click, to get them to go to the website or to consume the
Speaker:content and then guide them forward in the buying journey and not to do like everything. Yeah,
Speaker:my, my favorite ads are the info product ads that are like, like, Oh, you viewed this and
Speaker:you didn't buy it. Like those are always the funniest ones. Cause they're like, so directly
Speaker:like talking into your soul. They're like, dude, you didn't buy it. You didn't buy like what's
Speaker:going on. And it's like, damn dude, how'd you know? Uh, it's just a nice little retargeting
Speaker:ad there. Um, but, yeah, I think about it the same, like the ads I feel like are very much
Speaker:the same. You're just picking off where they're at in the buying journey. And sometimes you
Speaker:create that buying journey to start. Oh, I've never seen this before. What's that click?
Speaker:Now you're in the ecosystem. You're in the world. It's just like a spiral web. You're just getting
Speaker:them in and you're giving them enough content to, eventually get to the conclusion of whether
Speaker:or not they would benefit from buying your product. Yeah. And I imagine, imagine you judge every
Speaker:single brand you interact with on a, daily basis in terms of their email marketing. Um, would
Speaker:you say that still does email marketing impact your buying behavior from a brand? Not. As
Speaker:a personal consumer, think all of my clients are the same way. Like when, people ask what
Speaker:I do, it's like, Hey, you know, those, those random pop-ups that you get on websites. It's
Speaker:like, give me your email for 10 % off. They're like, yeah, like we send out those emails.
Speaker:They're like, Oh, but that, is not the sentiment, the sentiment for, all consumers out there.
Speaker:I mean, your brand should be generating at least 30 % from Klaviyo most times. Um, as a consumer,
Speaker:I don't. sign up to emails, I don't check my email inbox like that, my personal, right?
Speaker:And most business owners probably don't. So when we have those conversations, we're like,
Speaker:oh, that's just so annoying. I'm like, I mean, it's annoying for me too, but as you see, like
Speaker:the direct correlation of more emails to more recipients equals more money. Who am I to say
Speaker:that you shouldn't be buying something from an email, right? So as a consumer, doesn't
Speaker:sway me just because I don't look at it. But do you know what'll sway me? An Instagram ad.
Speaker:100%. That's what's getting me the ad. I'm an ad to buy person. I'm not an ad to email
Speaker:person. Um, cause I know when I clicked that ad, I'm, I'm almost in already. So, so that's
Speaker:how I think about it. um, the consumer mindset is just so different and you really have to,
Speaker:I know a lot of brands when starting to write their own emails, they, they miss everything
Speaker:because they know so much. It's like, Hey, say that's assumed you know that cause you're the
Speaker:founder of the brand. you know, let's educate everybody else on it. So I think the consumer
Speaker:mindset is just totally different. Yeah. And I also think that like, at least with ads,
Speaker:a lot of people think that they, they're not impacted by it and that they didn't buy because
Speaker:of the ad or whatever. But in reality, they saw the ad and it reminded them of something.
Speaker:It handled one of their objections and in the end led to the purchase and they just don't
Speaker:realize it. And the best ads you don't even look at as ads. the, love, love looking at
Speaker:software ads or I love getting software ads because I had searched the software before
Speaker:and I know what I liked about it. So I'm interested to see what the ads about to show me. And,
Speaker:and I will see the software ad for something that's a competitor to the, to the software
Speaker:that I wanted to use. And then I'll be like, Oh, actually I need to go back and sign up
Speaker:for that other one. So there's like so many things you can say. You were like doing your
Speaker:own thing, but it's really nice every now and then to just, just get a little reminder, like,
Speaker:Hey, you, browse this or you were going to buy this or like check this out. You were checking
Speaker:this out. Um, yeah. Ads, ads sway everyone. don't think we can claim that they don't. A
Speaker:good ad sway everyone for sure. At least gets you thinking like, what is this? Yeah. And
Speaker:going back to email and SMS, like, where do you see the trend going? Um, especially with
Speaker:AI and everything this year and next year. think things only get better, man. AI is so
Speaker:amazing. You know, we have custom agents for every client. So it's trained on their brands
Speaker:and, know, 250 plus care, 250,000 plus characters of market research and onboarding form. And,
Speaker:you know, we scraped Reddit for all these reviews. There's so many things that you can do with
Speaker:AI. And as far as like trends, um, I think things continue. People still crave authenticity.
Speaker:People still crave real brands that deliver great products. I think as a brand owner,
Speaker:if you have a great product, it's your obligation to tell as many people as possible about it.
Speaker:And if you don't feel that way, you probably don't have a great product. You should be
Speaker:feeling as if everyone should have one if it's right for them. And so the biggest thing
Speaker:is like the more recipients you can reach with the right message, the more money you're going
Speaker:to make. I think with AI and everything, I don't think there's one person that benefits
Speaker:more than potentially an e-commerce brand owner. know, getting to 50 to 80K a month, you've
Speaker:never been more helped with AI. know, that first landing page copy, that first ad created from
Speaker:Canva, that first five variations of that, that first welcome email, that first campaign.
Speaker:Even the first ad creative itself, all that can come from AI. So your, your, your zero
Speaker:to one is so ridiculously cheap. Now you don't have to find the, the, you know, the design
Speaker:agency to come up with the packaging or buy the first, you know, you know, you don't have
Speaker:any revenue, you know what you can do so many things yourself now with AI that I often think
Speaker:as an agency owner, you know, I feel helped by it, but as an econ brand owner, that zero
Speaker:to one, that zero to 50 to 80 to a hundred K. You're just like, you just now have so many
Speaker:things that can help you. I think it's never been a better time to start and it's never
Speaker:been a better time to spend some of that time into, you know, with AI and just figuring out
Speaker:what you can do. Yeah. So exciting. It really, it really is. Every week's different now, especially
Speaker:with the AI stuff. Yeah. Now the last question, if you could tell every e-commerce brand owner
Speaker:to just implement one thing today. When it comes to their email marketing, what would it be?
Speaker:If you can write one email a week, 30 minutes a week, spend on email, you can get, know,
Speaker:whether that's a campaign, whether that's this week, I'm going to write the welcome flow,
Speaker:email one, banner card email two, or email one. After, after a month or two, you're going
Speaker:to have your basics. If you really care and you really want to be successful and you want
Speaker:to set yourself up, just, just take, just take. two, three, four hours to write six emails
Speaker:and one campaign a week. Your pocket's not going to hurt. It's going to be, it's going
Speaker:to be feeling nice. And you know, after the first time you write with AI and stuff, it's
Speaker:going to be quicker. So it might take you two hours. That two hours is so infinitely valuable
Speaker:for those six flow emails that we talked about earlier. And in the occasional manic brain
Speaker:dump founder plain text email. You might feel like no one cares. You might feel like people
Speaker:don't want to hear from it. You might feel like it's annoying It's not and you're only gonna
Speaker:make more money from it. So I think those two hours are Immensely immensely valuable. I think
Speaker:that's that's the difference between Getting to 50k a month and an already generating, you
Speaker:know a couple thousand dollars a month from email over the last eight months Which is which
Speaker:is nice. Nice to have a couple extra thousand dollars every every month from something that's
Speaker:52 hours. So I think it just sets you up way better once you get to that 50, 80K a month
Speaker:mark. Yeah. Love that. Now, where can people follow you and how can they start working with
Speaker:you? Yeah, they can look us up on our website at sumodigital.com. Maybe there's a link below
Speaker:and then my Twitter is MichaelRathbun7. You can find us on YouTube as well if you just
Speaker:search MichaelRathbun email marketing. That's probably the best spot to find us on our website
Speaker:or on our YouTube channel. Awesome. Yeah, that was great. Thank you for a lot of very valuable
Speaker:insights. Thank you, Yeah, have a great rest of I've got to do these more often. I love
Speaker:talking to the ads guys, man. All the homies run ads as well. So a lot of good conversations.
Speaker:Nice. Love that. Awesome, man. Take care. Take care.
