Supercharging Your E-commerce Business: Innovative Email Strategies with Kyle Stout

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Today we're going to Tulsa, Oklahoma to talk to Kyle Stout. Yes, as in the beer. And we're going to talk to this email marketing guru about actually how he uses YouTube to get inquiries and how he needs to tell stories and not show how he does his email marketing and more besides. Kyle Stout. Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Well, it's my pleasure because, you know, we were talking before we started recording and it's fascinating how you're building the brand. You've got this company Elevate and Scale and really capitalizing on the fact I think something like 75% of people would rather receive an email than to see something on social media. So tell us about Elevate and Scale and tell us about email marketing and then we're gonna talk about how you got email marketing and the leads you're getting through YouTube. So Kyle, tell us about the business and what you're doing for people.

Okay, so with Elevate and Scale, we help— we primarily work with ecommerce businesses. We help them unlock hidden revenue and put their sales on autopilot without having to spend any extra money on advertising. And so my approach to email marketing is I really look at retention marketing as a whole. So we're looking at, okay, For all of the leads you're generating and all of the customers you're acquiring, how can we retain those people over the long term, continue to build relationships and get more repeat purchases, but also get more referrals? So in addition to email, you know, really highly integrated with email, we can also be doing SMS marketing and then creating rewards programs and referral programs.

Okay, really integrated. And you say, so it's not just email marketing, it's It's this suite of services. You said it doesn't cost anything else. Why not give us an idea, Carl? Because I think for most companies, the email list they've got is often sort of the treasure somewhere locked inside an electronic filing cabinet. How do you help people to do that? Take us through the process. You've got lists, you've got content. Take us through the process of what you do with a company so they can start to learn what they might be missing.

Okay. So the first thing I like to do is really map out their sales process. And the way I would define your sales process is just the step-by-step process that someone has to go through from being a stranger to being a customer. So for a lot of service businesses, it could be something where they land on your website, they fill out a form, maybe they get some sort of free training or a free PDF, and then maybe from there they're upsold into A consultation type of call. And then from there, maybe there's an— there's, you know, sending over a proposal and then they either sign up or they don't. And then same thing. So with an e-commerce business, it's what I like about e-commerce businesses, it's very straightforward, but every single thing is, it's a little bit easier to track all of the steps. So people, they show up on the website, they go to a product page, they add the product to cart, they do step 1 of the checkout. Mm-hmm. And then they do step 2 of the checkout and they're done. And what's awesome is that in between every single one of those steps, if you're using the right email software, you can have an automated sequence that really is just automated follow-up at that stage of the sales process. And most businesses just don't have near as many of these email flows that they could. So they might have one main welcome series and then maybe an abandoned checkout flow and that's it.

Kyle, that's fabulous. This sort of customer journey along the electronic sort of highway. What software would you recommend, or do you have a number of different ones for different applications?

Yeah, so there's a, there's a lot of good ones. Um, for e-commerce, by far my favorite is Klaviyo, and that's, that one's known as probably the most popular for e-commerce. If you are selling services or selling info products, I think GoHighLevel is a really great, great suite. So it's not only just the email, but it's going to provide you with all your landing pages, you can do your online courses, all that kind of stuff, all in, you know, CRM all-in-one platform, which is way more affordable than buying all the individual complementary software you would get to do that. Another one I'll mention just, just because it's really good is ActiveCampaign. But I would tell you, with anyone just trying to decide, I would say first look for something that really caters to your industry or your type of business. And then really just go with, if you're comparing 2 platforms and they look similar feature-wise, go with the one that you think that is easier for you to use. Because if you actually use it, you're going to get the results. And if you are just, if you let it sit there and you never do anything with it, there's no point. It doesn't matter how fancy it is if it doesn't get used.

Absolutely true. And most implementations of tech don't get used. Carl, many people would rather outsource, which is, I know, what they do to you. Can you give us an idea of how that works and also maybe some of the costs associated? Because for many people, email marketing is, you know, isn't really going to be their core strength, and outsourcing makes a lot of sense.

So there's a couple of approaches. So you could either you know, work with individual freelancers yourself. So that would mean hiring, and it depends on your level of knowledge for the strategy for email marketing. So if you already have a pretty good idea as far as what type of content you want to send, where it goes, all that, then you can get away with hiring a copywriter and then a graphic designer to design the emails, assuming you want to do designed, you know, HTML-based emails. And then you could really serve as the strategist and the lead for them. Now, if you just, if this is something where you're like, I have no idea what to do with this and I don't even want to take the time to learn, then it's going to cost more to hire out these different individual people yourself, just for the level of experience that you're going to want to have for the main strategist. And if that person is wearing multiple hats, they're just going to be charging a lot more. And that's where at that point it makes sense to work with an agency that specializes in your industry. And from there, there again, you're gonna want to have, you're gonna wanna look for one that provides all of the strategy. So they should not be looking to you to provide the strategy. That's a really common issue that people have when they hire out help for email marketing is that they're looking at this agency to provide the plan and the agency's looking at them to provide the plan. So you don't wanna get in that scenario. And then they need to have good copywriters, good graphic designers. And at that point, they should be able to manage everything for you, talk strategy with you, and make sure that you're aligned with everything. But they will be able to guide you as far as what they're doing and how they're going to grow the sales channel.

Okay. And is it a lot of money? Because, you know, no one ever really talks about how much marketing costs when it comes to email. You know, we talk about Google AdWords and Facebook ads, and it's kind of well known with rate cards. But What sort of expenses and should people be paying sort of for a weekly or monthly newsletter or quarterly? That would be great to know.

Yeah. Okay. So, and the price is going to be all over the place. It's really going to come down to quality, honestly. So you can outsource really cheap to, you know, countries, to other countries. But typically the level of work will reflect that. Now, if you're working with agencies that are doing high quality work, you're going to expect to spend on the low end $2,000 a month. And on the high end, if it's, you know, like a really big agency, it could easily be $7,000, $8,000 a month or more. Now, usually they're going to be pricing it based on the level of scope, which is how many emails they're creating per month. Every agency is different, but usually what it's gonna come down to, no matter how they package it, is how many emails they're producing for you per month. So the way that we do it is we have a scope where Some of those emails are allocated towards campaigns that are going out to the list and then some of those emails are allocated towards creating the automated emails. And then over time, once we've got all those automations really built out, then we focus more on all the campaigns that are going out and that's how we're able to really scale this sales channel.

Now, you've touched on something there, Kyle, about automation. I'll just sort of shift the conversation a little bit because you're plainly an expert in this, but people would like to reach out to you to talk about email marketing, we'll give your details at the end because, you know, it's also a show about you as an entrepreneur. You've managed to scale Elevate and Scale in a, in a business that is very personal. And how have you done that? Because that's something that I'd love to hear from you.

Yeah, so I mean, I've tried all of the usual things that a lot of agencies do as far as doing the cold outreach on LinkedIn, sending out cold emails, working the freelancer boards. There's been some hit or miss success with those things, but what I have found to be the best source of leads for me now is my YouTube channel and then also doing podcast interviews like this. And I find that the long-form content where people can really get to know you, your personality, They can learn more about your unique insights that whenever they show up on the sales call, they're so much more familiar with you because what they'll tell me is they found they saw some random podcast or video, then they went down a rabbit hole of either a bunch of podcasts or a bunch of videos, right? And then by the time they get on there on the call with me, they know the things I feel really strongly about and don't feel strongly about when it comes to email. And so they're signing up for my version of email marketing. It's, it's, they are already kind of pre-convinced for, or very familiar. They, they saw me in the podcast. I'm still sitting in my same home office, right? Like I talk the same the way I do on, on videos or podcasts. Like everything is just the same. So they're like, oh, okay, I actually feel like I know this guy. And it's a way smoother sales process at that point. It's more about just, just working out the details, talking about price, that kind of stuff. But they're already convinced on me. And that's what I love about video content.

Now that is fascinating. So here's an email marketing expert talking about promoting himself with video, and I'm, and I'm all ears because I personally have a lot of videos. But you have nearly 250,000 views, and you got 3,000 views on an in— on a video you aired just one month ago. What's the secret, Kyle, to getting videos? You've talked about people get to know you and so on, that's the outcome. But what about the content and the format? I see you've got some Shorts there, but can you just help us to understand your formula?

Yeah, so there's a few facets to it. So one thing I'm a really big believer in with content, so I've worked with a lot of companies as part of a content marketing team in the past. I do have experience with content marketing from previous businesses. So, and the one thing I would say that I always recommend to people is it's about the consistency of putting the content out. And so right now we're in a market where there's just so much content going out that used to be a game of quality. So if you just put out really high quality content, it would basically rise to the top. And that is still the case. People who put out the absolute highest of highest quality stuff, it's going to resonate and it's going to get attention quickly. But I would say now the game is more about quality and quantity. It's just a— it's just more competitive than it used to be. So I do— I put out daily videos. So I'm doing 3 long-form videos a week, and I do 4 short-form videos a week. And most of those short-form videos are just clips from the long-form videos. So it's not like It's not this, you know, it's not as much of an intense process as it sounds like. And even recording those 3 long-form videos, I batch record. So I just sit down and record all 3 back to back. I don't care. I could change my shirt and make it look like I'm wearing something different every time. I just don't, you know, I don't care to do that. I'll sometimes repost them in different order. So, you know, it doesn't look like it was all done at once, but it doesn't seem to matter really. It's more about, it's really more about the message. And that's the other important part here. Is we have a tendency to create how-to content, meaning if you're, if you're whatever you're selling, you have a tendency to put out content that teaches people how to do that thing. The problem with that is that that attracts other people who also do the same thing as you. So if you do email marketing, if you, if you run paid media, then you're going to be attracting people who are looking to learn to do that. And the business owner who's going to hire you does not want to do that themselves. They want to hire someone else to do it. So I do create some of that kind of how-to content, but what I like to do a lot of is more of the what and the why content. So these are what you should be doing and this is why you should be doing it. And then I leave the how up to me. So they have to hire me to get the how. And that's what I have found to be working.

I love that. So in that context, what would be a what, for example, for email marketing?

So it could be like, you know, are you— is your business making these 3 email marketing mistakes? Or, you know, this— these 5 things could be costing your business, you know, $10,000 a month, right? Like, you make it enticing and you, you, you always want to have like something that's kind of fun to catch their attention. But really what it's coming down to is just, you know, solid, good advice about what you should and should not be doing.

Oh, how interesting. That is fascinating, uh, Carl, because As you say, people are looking at producing content on which is kind of to show their functional expertise, you know, hire me. But actually, often I think people are giving away what they do for free, aren't they?

They do. And honestly, I've— I have given away a lot of it for free. And here's what's interesting is that the clients who are looking to hire you, it's not— you're not missing out on those clients by giving that away for free, because going back to what I said earlier, they don't want to do it anyways. So what you're really doing is you're training up other people who are trying to learn how to do what you do. And that could be, you know, it could be good or bad depending on if you have any offerings for them. But that's really not going to attract the best clients because again, they just, they don't want to do it. But they, but if you can really give them compelling reasons for why they should, their business should be doing email marketing and, you know, and have these different strategies in place. Now they feel like they're missing out by not doing it. And then you, because they've been watching your videos, they're like, well, I want this guy to do it for me because he seems to know a lot about it.

Carl, that's fascinating insight. Thank you for sharing that. And I personally will benefit from that. I know you mentioned some tools. Do you want to give us some guidance on which tools you're using for repurposing and sort of splintering off the content from one long form into multiple short form pieces?

Yeah. So there's one tool I've really been recommending to everyone lately because it's a huge time saver. It's called Video.ai. It's an AI repurposing tool and it's spelled V-I-D-Y-O dot AI. So Vidyo. I have no affiliate relationship or anything with this, but what's really cool about it is you can either upload your full video or it's even easier. You can just take the URL from your YouTube video, plug it in, and then it will automatically— the AI will select clips from, let's say it's a 10-minute video, it might pull 3 to 5 you know, 1 or 30-second to 1.5-minute clips of those videos. And then you can put your captions on there. You can do your— you basically can like, it'll pull out the clip for— it's super easy to get the clip out there, but then you can do your other on-screen editing. So putting on captions and graphics and stuff, um, and then just download them all. So for some of my videos, I, I do that where I've just— I'm getting clips from my old YouTube videos And then for some of the other Shorts you see on my channel, I actually have a video editor who's editing those.

Okay, I just shared that video on the screen share for anyone watching this. But of course, we'll put that link as well in the show notes. That's fantastic, Carl. Thank you. There's another one coming out of Australia called Magento as well, I think, that's offering to do something similar. So I'd be interested to compare that. We've got more and more of these amazing tools that we can use. Um, Carl Stout over there in Tulsa, Oklahoma is the founder of Elevate and Scale. I always ask clients, especially as everyone's doing so well, but I, I know as entrepreneurs we often have something in the closet we've done that we're not so happy about. Any things that you sort of have done that you would not recommend my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs to do when it comes to getting noticed?

Oh, well, so I don't know that I would say I wouldn't have done it, but I have done a lot of the cold emailing in the past. And I wouldn't say that it had any negative harm on me other than a lot of times just being a huge waste of time and money. So working with different agencies that offered those services and it just wasted a lot of money, didn't get results. I did get results from doing cold outreach in the past, but what I have seen over the last several years is a dramatic uptick in people offering these cold outreach services. So all of us, our businesses are on these different databases where people are scraping our information. And so, you know, just it could be based on a certain software you have tied to your website. It could be based on all kinds of things, right? So We're all on these lists. We all get these cold emails every day. If you're like me, you pretty much just ignore them, right? And but believe it or not, some of those emails do get through and they actually do lead to sales calls. And in the past, it did actually work a lot better. And I right now, though, I don't see it working from everyone I've talked to. It's really just ends up being a huge waste of time and money unless Just to be fair, to be totally transparent, the people I know who have been having success with it are building out these insane systems where they're literally they've got all these different domains. They're constantly churning through different domains, and they're sending out thousands of these emails every single day. And they've got this huge, robust automated system that's doing it all. But even then, it's like you know I I do I just kind of it rubs me the wrong way a little bit. Like I don't like what it I don't like the, um, what it does for your brand reputation.

Yeah, well, it's spam ultimately, isn't it? It's not— yeah, it's not wanted necessarily, right? And as you say, really, if you're trying to build a reputation, which you've done with Elevate and Scale for quality, um, and what you've done with YouTube is, is just plain smart. Kind of love that. If there's a piece of advice that you can give my fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs— I know we've dived into YouTube So that's great. Is there sort of in a slightly different dimension that you'd like to share about, you know, getting noticed and what you felt really moves the needle?

Yeah, I would say so. To backtrack really quickly to what led me to this piece of advice is the first thing is I had to solve the problem of getting out of working on my business so I could work in my business. And that was really the thing that allowed me to now put out so much video content was to build out really good systems in my business and to build a team. And to get them trained up with those systems so that I actually had the time and the mental capacity to create this content. And then for people who want to get noticed, in my experience and what I've seen with all of my clients, the most consistent thing that seems to work the best is video content. Like, if you're going to create content, I know a lot of people are uncomfortable with video, but I'm just— this is just what I've personally seen. So just Instead of sugarcoating it, this is really what works. Video content just really goes so much further to connect with people because they they can see you, they can hear you, they can get to know your personality, they can see your tendencies, how you communicate, all of that stuff. Whether they there might be some little things about you that even kind of annoy them, but at least they get to know you way more. And we're just we're human. We're always looking to connect with other humans as opposed to hiring a faceless corporation. We want to hire people that we actually like.

Carl Stout, you know, thank you for that. And you've shown us a wonderful amount of connection there with what you've been doing with solving the business problems. I will ask you just a quick question. When you say you've made systems, what software or video capture tool did you use to help make systems that your team who are around the world can follow?

There's 2 tools that I use every single day, my absolute favorite tools. One is ClickUp, which is a project management software. It actually, it goes way beyond just project management now. There are other tools like that. I just, that's the one I settled on. And there are people out there, I've hired a consultant in the past to help me really refine the systems in there because it is, it's a pretty advanced, it starts off simple, but it's a very advanced piece of software, honestly, that you can do a lot with. So that's where we're managing all of our projects. That's where we're doing all of our communication. That's where we've got all of my training docs are stored in different docs in there. So people can find if we're for a certain type of automated email, I've got strategy documents built out of like, this is the intention behind this email. These are the main messaging points we need to hit in this email. Here are some examples of this email, right? So I've got that for everything. And then my other favorite tool is a tool called Loom. Which is a, just a video, a screen recording software. And that is my favorite way. So if I'm giving feedback to someone on my team, rather than trying to type up a long email or wasting the time of getting on a meeting, I will record my screen and just kind of like, you know, show them on the screen, this is what I would change about this. This is what you need to do. And same thing, even with communicating with clients, I like to show them this is the progress of what's going on. Or if I'm doing reporting in a client's account, Mm-hmm. I literally take them on a video through their account so that way they can follow along on their own screen and they get to know how to actually read the analytics in their email account. And it's an amazing tool for communicating.

Karl Stout, we started off with you being a copywriter and now, you know, amazing the wisdom that you shared across, you know, strategy and video and technology. So thank you so much for joining me on the show. If you want to get a hold of you, how can they do that?

All right. Yeah, the best place to reach me is that if you want to book a sales call, you can go to elevateandscale.com directly. Otherwise, I'd say follow my YouTube channel, and that's where I'm putting out my best content.

Cast out, you couldn't— I think us your best content today. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Well, what a feast. Uh, we've covered so many topics with Carl in just such a short amount of time. If you've enjoyed this as much as I have, do please share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. And if you've got chance to review it on your favorite player, please do, because those reviews really help me to know what you think of the show, but also to help the players promote the show. So until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating, and thank you once again for listening.