Wilco de Kreij — How To Engineer Viral Email List Growth

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Flowchart with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf.

Joe.

Hey.

Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast presented by Evergreen Profits.

Oh, hey.

We need to make sure we tell people this is the Evergreen Profits podcast more, I think.

Yeah, but I like the name Hustle and Flowchart.

Yeah, so we're the Hustle and Flowchart podcast presented by Evergreen Profits. And from now on, we always say that whole thing when we announce our podcast.

Okay, sounds good. All right, who do we have on the show today?

All right, so today we've got a really awesome guest. He's got a ton of great software tools and we're going to talk to him about the launch model and why he used to do the launch model and why he no longer does the launch model. And we also talk about viral list building, how to use viral tools to make your list growth just explode. So really, really cool stuff. Our guest today is Wilco Decry. I think that's how you pronounce his name. Wilco Decry is the founder of Upviral Connectio IO, which has some great Facebook management tools like Connect Explore and Connect Leads and a lot of cool stuff that puts your Facebook targeting on autopilot, puts it on steroids. So we have a lot of cool conversations that we dive into with Wilco today. And, you know, it's really about list building is. I think the kind of core is how to really put that list building on steroids and make it just grow really fast.

But it's not your mama's list building.

Not your mama's list building.

It's something new and fresh. It's something that we're going to give it a try more. So we've done a little bit of it, but we've done it ineffectively. Now we know what to change because we talked to Wilco and now you're going to listen to Wilco.

Go. Hey, Wilco. Thanks so much for joining us today. How are you doing?

I'm doing good, thanks. Thank. How are you?

Good, good.

We're excited to do this show because we actually use a lot of the tools that you make and use some of the strategies that you teach. So it should be fun to see where we can take this thing.

That's awesome. I was actually telling my wife, like, this is the one podcast I always listen. So the pleasure is all mine.

Oh, that is awesome.

That is cool. I didn't know that, man. Yeah, that's a crazy Thing about podcasts, you never know who's really listening until you start talking to them face to face.

Yeah, I'm a big system nerd. I love systems and processes. So, yeah, your podcast is the obvious choice. Right.

That's what I would like to say.

We try to make it be at least.

Right.

Awesome. Well, let's start by going a little bit back in time and talking about how you got into marketing and how you got into business. Because I've been using tools like Upviral for years and years and years now. I don't even remember when it came out. It feels like I've been using it and playing with stuff like that for a while. So how long have you been in marketing and how did you kind of get started and get into the SaaS world and kind of tell us that story?

Yeah, sure thing. So it's actually a long story, so I'll make it short, but it actually started when I was 16, so that's like 15 years ago. Currently 31, which is like ages ago, I guess, in the online world. So back then, like, online shopping wasn't a big thing, at least not here in the Netherlands. And at that point, like, you know the movie the Matrix, right, Where every, every character has their own own pair of sunglasses. So I was a 16 year old boy and I was like, I want to have one of those. But in the Netherlands we're nowhere to be found. So started looking online and I found a, I found a company in the US who were selling them and shipment costs were like, to the roof. So I figured, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna set up some ads where people are not like paid ads, but like on a free ebay kind of website here in the Netherlands or people could basically order these sunglasses at my. But they had to pay me first. And after, after they paid me, I could actually put the order out, wait two months to have these sunglasses come to my place and then send them to those people. Right. I was hoping to maybe sell like maybe like 20 or so so I could maybe have a free sunglass. And what happened is that we like, we sold for like I say we, but what I mean is me, my parents, they helped me out, but we sold just over €17,000 worth of sunglasses. And they were like four or five euros each. So there were like thousands and thousands of sunglasses. Like, did not expect that to happen. And that like, I sort of stumbled into that and that really opened my eyes on like what's possible. And obviously you Know, I got excited. I didn't make any money because I didn't think about taxes and all these other stuff that you don't think about being a 60 year old kid. And I realized I learned that I don't like the physical, like the actual making the packages and like dealing with customer support. But I did absolutely love the marketing side of things. So over the next couple years I kept doing that, importing various physical products and then I started to on the Google AdSense bandwagon. I'm not sure if you guys been there as well. Have you done a lot with Google Adsense?

Yeah, we still do to this day. We still have it on some of our sites.

Yeah, that's actually true. So what I started doing is I would say a bit gray hat ish. I started working really well and this is like once again this was over 10 years ago. I was 18, 19 and probably like that like 13 years ago. And it went really well. At some point obviously they shut down my account, which they should have. So I went back to zero. Then I started doing a lot of affiliate offers here in the Netherlands for like not the digital kind of products, but more like for actual real world products. Started doing a lot of paid traffic using Google AdWords until they changed their algorithm and went back to zero. And that's when I started like, hey, I want to do something international like outside or outside my country here in the Netherlands. And I ran into some issues like typically on Facebook and I hired someone to create a tool around that. Like this is still years ago and at some point to cut the short I started selling that tool and I realized that I really liked selling software and that's really like where things took off and I just, I've been doing that ever since but basically creating various software products that help other people do more, be more effective with their marketing and I could go on for ages, but I don't want to bore you to that. So that's.

I love the fact that you almost went on both very far sides of the spectrum. So selling physical items, which there's so many things involved there to now SaaS where it's extremely scalable, you still have customer service, but there's so many better elements at least in, or at least it sounds like it suits your personality a little better.

Yeah, it definitely does.

So what was the first SaaS product that you put out? Because I know you have sort of a suite of tools now. What was the first one?

That's a good question. The first one wasn't so for as a service, it was like actually a WordPress plugin, which I wouldn't count as SaaS, but still. And that was called WP for FB. WordPress for Facebook. I'm not sure if you guys ever heard of that.

I haven't heard of that one.

It's like years ago and it's actually not mine anymore. At some point I actually sold that business, but it was basically like back in the days at Facebook, you could have like a Facebook fan gated page on your Facebook page. So people had to like your page before they could access another page inside your Facebook page. Sounds, sounds weird and technical, but basically that WordPress plugin made it easy.

It's actually funny, like I'll make it short, but like the very first time I created that, I actually gave it away for free. And I said like, hey, enter your email address. Was my first time I started building a list, enter your email address. And right after, if people would actually share a message on Facebook, they would get some extra template. And you already see where I'm going with this. Like that was the first time where I sort of realized what you can do is if people, if you ask people to share something, that's actually where a lot of my current business has actually started on. So it's all from, you know, putting things into practice, I guess.

I like it. And that's. And now talk about kind of the progression. I'm curious to hear the progression of these SaaS products that you've developed or.

Just software in General? Software and SaaS products, you know, what was that sort of progression of tools that you released?

Yes, sure thing. So with WordPress Plugin, the biggest downside is that like there's always some other plugin or template which you know is just not compatible or people don't know how to install or just not compatible with a certain server. In other words, a big time, big headache for like custom support. So it was an obvious choice to move to SaaS where basically they just get a login and either it works or it doesn't basically. Right. It's that simple. There's nothing like it doesn't work on this server or that server. It just works or it doesn't obviously work. So what I started doing is I started launching various products. A lot of people in the sort of quote unquote online marketing industry or Internet marketing industry. What they do is they create a product, they launch it with like a lot of affiliates involved and they create a huge buzz around it and they just, they offer a Crazy good deal, over a couple days. And because it's just a couple days, everyone has the incentive to jump on top of it because the next week the deal is going to be gone. And the problem is, like, a lot of people, what I did was like, right, So I launched this product, the launch is over, made a lot of money. What do I do next? Well, I create a new product. So what did Wilco do? I did the exact same thing. I figured, you know what, I'm gonna launch, I'm gonna launch a product. And I didn't want to be like all the other guys. All the other guys, they launched a product like every two months or so. So I'm like, no, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna launch a product every six months. I wanna create epic products that are worth it and that are well developed and sustained or whatever. But still, even if you launch a product every six months, a new product, I mean, the first year, sure, that's fine. Second year, all right. And then third year, you're sort of going to drown because now you've got like six, five or six products that you need to maintain, that you need to get updated and like, you cannot just, you know, spread. Spread your attention between like five or six products and expect it to be awesome. Yeah, right. So, I mean, the money is good as a lot of, you know, but like, it's not a business model. I would say it's a trap. I mean, you guys probably seen this happen a lot of times, right?

Oh, yeah, we've been behind the scenes and we've also, you know, had our own launches. And it's extremely stressful. It is good money, or can be if done properly. But it seems like everything's always kind of last minute. You know, there's always something that you're like, ah, crap. Yeah.

That is like every single launch we've ever been a part of, there's something that slips through the cracks until like three hours before you're supposed to open the cart. And then the night before launch, nobody gets any sleep because you're making sure everything's like just perfect for when the cart opens. And it's. Yeah, it's stressful. And from an affiliate standpoint too, you know, we're affiliates. As one of our largest revenue streams, we actually pretty much shy away from anything that has an open and close date. Because if we're gonna put in a ton of work to promote a product and to build out email sequences and to create content around this product, we don't want that product to shut down in four days. We want all of our hard work to pay off in perpetuity.

Exactly, exactly. And just like you said, it's so stressful, it's insane. It's funny, actually, because it was so stressful. And like I said before, I'm a maniac in terms of systems as well. So before I made a decision to move out of that launch team, what I actually did is I pretty much broke it down into a process in detail so that I could actually have it all prepared. So actually, the last. I think the last two launches that I did, which are quite a few years ago, they were all set up in advance and there was nothing I had to do. And even so, there's always something that you didn't think of and it just blows up. I mean, one of my launches, Amazon S3, the hosting that everyone seems to be using, it went down. I mean, it never goes down, and it goes down in the middle of my launch. I mean, that's the downside of the launch is you're putting months and months of work. You're trying to cram it into, like, five days, and all the work that you're doing is gone right after, just like you just said. So, yeah, it's terrible.

And, I mean, from an outside perspective, too, you know, a lot of people look at these launches and go, man, look at all the money these guys made on this launch. Now they don't have to work for another year, you know, because they just made all this money on a launch. But what they don't see is there's affiliates getting, you know, close to 50% of that money. There's contests, there's copywriters, there's video creators. There's, you know, there's. There's so many people behind the scenes that have to get paid that the numbers that you see that people talk about when they show their launch numbers are usually not quite as sexy in reality as what, you know, what it appears to be.

Yeah, exactly. I see a lot of people, they're doing launches with multiple people. And that's the exact reason why I always did, like, a solo launch, because it literally breaks down your profit, like, massively. Sometimes, like if someone is launching with, like, three, three partners, so for, like I said, 50% to affiliate payments and then at the end split it by three. So, yeah, there's hardly any money in that.

Yeah. And something that I ran the calculations back in the day when we were doing launches and just compared it to, if we were to decide to just do paid Facebook ads or even Google Ads. And like you said, it's 50% typically straight to affiliates. If you're just using that to drive all your traffic for a launch, that is a lot of money that's going right out the door. Whereas paid traffic, most likely you're not paying that much.

But if it's under that, I mean, just imagine what kind of evergreen launches, or at least promotions you could do and keep a lot more money.

And the worst thing of launches as well is you're actually getting the worst kind of customers because it's not about the product. It's all about the fact that it's lifetime, because a lot of these offers, they sell it at a lifetime offer. So besides that, like, you're getting the worst kind of customers who are just buying it because it's a good deal and not because they actually need it. And secondly, like, it's not a sustainable pricing. So actually, like that. I remember the last time I launched it, I made a decision to, like, to stop with the lifetime licenses and to start recurring. And that was a hard change. But, like, it is like, if you want to move away from the launch cycle and start an actual business, you just need to do that, at least if you're into software.

Mm.

So what, what was the. It sounds like that was like a. It was like a compounding breaking point for you to make the change. But how did you actually shift into not relying on this launch model anymore?

To be honest. To be honest was actually hard in terms of, like, because you, at some point when you're doing all these launches, you're surrounded by people who are doing all these launches as well, and people who expect you to do. To do this kind of launch and to expect you to sell, like, lifetime licenses. So I remember at some point, I don't know what the trigger was, but at some point I told myself, I want to do recurring. Like, that was the goal, right? And I know it's short term. I'm not going to make a lot of money. Like, all my profits are going to dry up for a while and I have to stick with it. And I remember at some point I got. Actually got multiple affiliates. They were like, hey, can I. Can I set up a special offer for my audience with a lifetime deal? And I said, no, I'm not doing it. And some of them actually pissed off and actually burned some bridges because they're like, why wouldn't you give my audience a good deal? I'm like, I can give you. I can give You a good deal. But it has to be recurring. Like, I'm not doing any lifetimes, even though I know that on the short term it would make a lot of money for me. Like I could. Some of these affiliates, they were like big hitters, if you would call them. Like, they could bring the heat and they could do a good amount of sales in a short period of time. But it wasn't about the money for me. It was like, as soon as I allow myself to sell a lifetime, even if it's just one, like, I make no exception to friends, whoever. Like, nobody gets a lifetime because if I make that exception, then no, that's the. Then I sort of slid back. I mean, it's sort of like you want to stop smoking and you go for one cigarette. Like, you have to, you have to stick with it, even though if it's hard, but you know that on the other side of the world it's actually going to be better, which it is. But you just have to go through that initial period.

That makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. And in the lifetime offers too. We were actually talking with somebody during Traffic and Conversion Summit, you know, as of this recording, Traffic and Conversion Summit was last week, and we were talking to somebody there who has a company that helps people get into FTC compliance. And there's actually a lot of sort of FTC implications of calling a product a lifetime product, because it's. It's sort of unclear. It's lifetime of the product, lifetime of the buyer, lifetime of the seller. There's. There's a lot of gray area there. And the FTC really does not like people calling anything a lifetime product. So, you know, just based on the fact that the FTC doesn't want people doing that, you know, is probably a good enough reason to try to figure out how to shift away from that anyway.

Right, right, exactly, exactly. And yet. Yeah, exactly. It.

I have a question now that you're more focused on, on promoting these products on an evergreen basis, how do you ensure that, that the sales stay consistent as far as scarcity goes? Because one of the biggest things about a launch is that people buy, buy, buy due to the scarcity, they know they've only got seven more days to buy it, six more days to buy it, five more days to buy it. Then obviously on that final day of the launch, that's always the biggest sales day, because everybody knows this is my last chance to get it. How do you sort of make sure with an evergreen product there's still kind of a buying frenzy going on? If you don't have that same scarcity element to it.

Yeah, so that was actually something I had to figure out as well because usually I always had like the vsl, the long term sales pages. So I actually needed to change that. So initially the first test that I did was I started doing like the three part video sequences and running ads that did not work. Like I did a lot of different tests and the one thing that I found that's working best for me is our webinars and I mainly do evergreen webinar so using Everwebinar, you guys, you know about it. And because I didn't want to change the price, I didn't want to give people a discount on things, I figured what's the best, what's the next best thing to do? And that is to add extra bonuses and to take those bonuses away. So I've actually created various products that every now and then I release which are all like training session, training courses around a viral and I do a special offer. Basically I tell them like, hey, if you buy a viral right now, then you get this for free. And I actually remove that after a while and then you know, a month later or so I'll add another one. So by adding things as a bonus for free and taking that away, you can still drive scarcity without changing your pricing.

That makes sense. I like that. And that's similar to how we run our own affiliate promotions as well. Not being the product owner but keeping the scarcity kind of hot and kind of creating these mini promos. I guess we kind of do them once per month or so. Similar fashion to what you just said there. So that's pretty cool. Now that you're not doing the launch so much, what's your traffic source or how do you make sure you're always getting enough traffic to kind of stick, sustain and keep growing?

Yeah, sure thing. So initially I did a lot. My main truck was actually upviral itself. So we use up viral to get people to share, to share our campaigns with others. And last year, that being 2017, we started doing a lot of Facebook ads which actually turned into our number one traffic source at the moment. Number one being Google Facebook ads, number two being YouTube ads probably. And this year I actually wanted to add in affiliates back in because I sort of like after I stopped the launch model, I've never really leveraged that channel anymore. So I want to tap into affiliates as well this year. And we're also setting up a lot of content marketing at the moment. So not getting a lot of traffic out of that yet. But I'm envisioning that to be one of the main traffic drivers by the end of this year as well.

Yeah, yeah. With the content marketing stuff, it's definitely more of a marathon than a sprint strategy, because we've gotten to a point now where the content marketing has actually become our number one source. Even more than our list. We can actually broadcast to our list and it'll still drive less traffic that day than Google will drive to us through SEO. So, you know, over time, it just kind of builds up and builds up and builds up, and the next thing you know, the content is what is driving all the traffic. So I definitely want to.

And by the way, for those who are listening, if you want to have an awesome resource, you guys, like, we all know who that are. You guys have created an epic video about Trello and your content marketing process added to the show notes. Because that is an epic video that I highly recommend everyone to watch because it's just, you know, it's basically our content process to the ladder. So thanks for that.

I love that.

Awesome. Yeah, we'll definitely add it to the show notes now. You actually touched on something that I wanted to kind of dive in on. And we didn't actually plan on talking about this, but I wanted to ask about it real quick. You mentioned YouTube ads, and YouTube ads is actually one of the things that Joe and I have experimented with quite a bit in the past, but we've never actually managed to get profitable with it. So I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole, but I was kind of curious if you had any sort of quick tips or, you know, what works for you on YouTube ads.

Yeah, sure thing. So first thing I did when I started was actually copied my best performing Facebook ad. And the Facebook ad is quite good looking, right? Like the blurry background me in the like, well edited and all of that. So I figured, you know, that one's going to work on YouTube as well. Did not work at all. And then I started doing some research, see what other people were doing. And I saw some videos. They were like, they had. They were like watched over a million times and they looked like crap. Excuse my French. But like, they did not look good. So I literally went outside, grabbed my iPhone. I actually made it a bit shaky on purpose, right. And I recorded the video on my phone just real quick. And that one actually was profitable. I'm like, wait a second. So I think my point that I'm trying to say is like, don't make it look professional, make it look real and authentic. That seems to be working better on YouTube ads.

Got it. So you would literally just kind of go outside with an iPhone and sort of selfie shot, hold out the phone with your hand and shoot a video.

Exactly. Yep, yep.

I love it. That's what it seems like these days with a lot of ads even is if you just look like you're more authentic, it's real, you're not over polished. Because that's when people start questioning. It's like, oh, big brand. Or they just kind of put some objections in their mind. But if you're real, I mean, that's the kind of stuff we're starting to do with our content as well. And it definitely resonates a lot better.

Definitely, definitely.

So just for example, when you're running Facebook ads, for anyone who's listening, for example, we have a viral. Right? We could run ads from a Facebook page called Viral or from a Facebook page called we'll go to cry my personal name. Right. With my face on it. If we target a cold audience, people have never heard of us before. The Will could Cry page, the one that seems like a person, always outperforms the branded one. And as soon as it's actually retargeting the one that's branded, the one that's about a viral, always outperforms the non branded one. So that's a quick tip right there.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, we actually do something very similar with a lot of affiliate promos that we do. That's kind of one of our little sneaky tricks that I don't know if I've actually shared on the podcast before, but we do something very similar with Facebook ads where my personal profile is the first touch that people see. So for example, let's say like ThriveCart, we'll promote ThriveCart and I'll have an ad that says, hey, this is one of my favorite tools. Here's why I like it. And it's just a, you know, my name, my profile pic, and a little description of why I like ThriveCart. If they click the link, then they start getting retargeted from our branded page with retargeting ads now that they're already familiar with the brand.

Exactly.

Very, very smart.

Do we want to move? Let's see what else on the launch model, because I'm curious, because this is really up our alley. We're all about just creating. Obviously the name is Evergreen Profits, but literally that's how we love to run any Kind of promo of ours. Is there anything else that you think is. Got to get it out. Got to tell us.

Yeah, well, like, like I said, when I change the pricing model, I think you will also. You also need to change. I also needed to change, like, basically the whole business before it was really about can I sell it? Like, can I create an offer that's tempting enough that people open their wallet and will will just pay me for it? And what happened after, like, didn't really matter. And that's why actually, you guys made me smile at the very start of this call when you said, like, hey, yeah, we've been using a viral. And I'm like, yes, that is, like, I don't want to hear people say a viral. Because in the past, I heard it quite a lot. Oh, yeah, I have a viral. I really should use it. Like, my goal is to get people to freaking use it, right? And that's really a big change right there. Like, it's not about getting, you know, selling something. Selling something is easy, relatively easy, but getting people to actually use it and actually provide value at an ongoing basis, that's way harder. And. But that's needed if you want to get. If you want people to not just open their wallet, but, like, if you want people to happily pay you a recurring fee every single month, every single year. Because if they don't use it, if they're not getting actual value out of it, they're not going to keep on paying. And also with that, it can be just a quick fix. Like the WordPress plugin that I mentioned before, it was really focused on a specific Facebook feature that Facebook would just literally blow out of the water. And it's gone, right? It's temporary. It was not something that's ever been. While at viral, for example, we focus at making sure people want to share your campaign. Now, if there's one thing for sure that's never going to change is that people will share things with others. Word of mouth has existed for, like, years and years, and it's going to exist 100 years from now as well. Like, if even if Facebook suddenly disappears as a whole, people will still find a way to share things with artists. They're sent through WhatsApp, to Instagram, through whatever, right? So also make sure that you have a strategy, you have a plan that's not just relevant today or tomorrow or this year, but also next year or even in five years or 10 years from now. So those are definitely two things that I needed to change. Make sure it's actually Real value. People actually use it, make sure it's not just temporary, but it's actually long term. And once you have all of that, you sort of need to figure out how to position it and how to actually sell it instead of just selling based on hype, which is. Yeah. Different as well.

Yeah. I'm curious actually, now that you moved to the recurring model, which we've had for a long time, what do you. How do you keep them sticking or actually, I guess the way you get them to stick is how do you know you getting them to actually use the software? I guess how do you initially get people to consume upviral and get kind of hooked with using it?

So kind of what's. What's the onboarding process to make sure they're actually using it?

Yeah. To make it sticky.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. To be honest, like, I don't think we're like, I'm not, I'm not think. I don't think basically, I think there's still a lot to improve on that still. But something we've done is like we have a good onboarding sequence which takes them to the steps of what they need to do. For example, right now we're building a more like inside the app as well, so that it's really like, it's really just a fluid change. Like initially, a couple of years back when you started viral, it was not easy, right? And we were just adding a lot of features and extra benefits and we realized that adding features is not what people want. People want to want to have something that basically there shouldn't be any friction, they shouldn't have to decide. So we basically went through everything, the whole dashboard, like, what decisions can we move away? Like just remove them or what decisions can we make for them? Or like, basically it should be as easy as possible. And obviously there's a bunch of other things that you can do, like gamification, for example, which currently we're not doing, but also just making sure they're like giving them a sense of they're being. They're part of something. So for example, in our Facebook group we would talk about viral hacking and we are all viral hackers. Right. And I think we should. We could do more on that, but like, basically, basically making sure they feel like being part of a cult could definitely have an impact on that. And you'll see that, you see, for example, Russell Brunson does that a lot with clickfunnels. It's not just about the tool, but he really tries to build sort of like a culture around it which makes people want to be part of the family. Yeah, there's a bunch of things you can do and still a lot of things to implement.

It's kind of like creating your own language, creating your own community. Yeah. Did you have a question, Matt?

No, I was going to switch into a different question. I do want to talk about upviral quite a bit and we'll get to that in a second. But you mentioned at the beginning that you're a systems guy, so I'm curious if what sort of systems do you have in place.

That make your life easier and help your business keep running? Are there any one or two examples you could share of systems that you put in place that have been pretty game changing for your business?

I'm not sure if there's one or two, maybe a tool that I actually shared with you guys previously, one on one, but it's just too good. Not to mention as you guys are, I'm a big fan of Trello. There's a lot of different systems that you can use as an alternative but I just like the simplicity of it. But it doesn't allow for a lot of automation. And there's this one tool, it's called Butler for Trello and it just basically puts Trello on steroids. And basically what you can do is like if someone drags, for those who are using Trello, if someone drags a card from this to there, then all of a sudden this person is added, it adds this checklist and it adds a duplicate card on this and this board. Like everything just happens automatically and that's just. So that's not really a system, it's more like a tool to create systems or to help the systems and processes move along.

I actually like that on the Butler thing. Just real quick I actually went in there and inside of Trello there's like little add ons that you can do and there's like an add on for that Butler. But you said that I think this was a conversation we were having through private messenger on Facebook. But you said there's one that's not the add on version, it's like a different version of Butler. So where would you, where do you go and find that one? Because I couldn't figure out where.

Like if you go to Butler for Trello and Low, I'm not sure, I think I'm still at it. Basically the first time they started was before they had an official integration. So you basically had to add a new user called Butler or Bottle of Trello, whatever. Some kind of user which is just a bot. And then you. Then you would literally write as a card like you said, like, hey, if someone moves a cart to the list, blah, blah, then do this. Add the label, add. Like you would literally write it all in the actual Trello board. And that one has just a lot more flexibility. And later on they added the official integration, but they haven't, they don't have all the, all the things there. So I can definitely send a link your way. And also it's there their limits of what you could do with the free plan. It's actually a lot higher. Like in the one inside of Trello, you'll need to basically right away have the paid version. But for example, the other one that I'll send you a link to link for, I'm using that quite a bit and I'm still in their free plan and there's a lot more opportunities and possibilities there.

Very cool. Yeah, definitely send that link over and we'll share it with anybody listening. Because when I went and looked, I kind of googled it real quick. I mean, I got to be honest, I didn't put a ton of time into it, but I did google it real quick and I couldn't figure out where the option was because all I kept on coming up with was details about the one that was built into Trello that you just kind of add in. So that'll be super helpful to have that link.

Yeah, no worries. So I remember, like when I started doing process, processes and systems, I was like, I need to systemize my whole business. I actually started using a lot of different tools and what I realized over time is actually removed most of them because simplicity, you know, that's more important than, you know, having all the right tools, like, oh, this tool is good at this thing, specific thing. And like, because it makes it complicated as well. And if it's complicated, people stop using it. And it's not just about me, but also other people in the business. So whatever, you try to keep it as simple as possible. That's definitely something I'd advise as well.

Yeah, that's really cool you brought that. Obviously you took the words out of my brain because the way that Matt works, he's our systems guy, I love systems in theory, but they need to be easy and I need to kind of create a habit out of it. So Matt's really good at with Trello. That's why he made that video. And it was amazing. I could never recreate that video, but he's got that habit down I know, it's. His brain is just fires like, okay, let's go to the Trello board. Whereas I'm over here. You know, if there's too many tools in the mix, there's just too many moving parts. I'm just like, oh, man, which one do I focus on? You know? And Trello, that has been a game changer for us is to try to trim the fat and just kind of keep with what's necessary.

Yeah. And over time, we've actually done that same thing. It's like a. It's like a constant expansion and contraction. Right. We'll add tools to the mix. Add tools to the mix. Add tools to the mix and be like, okay, this is overwhelming now. And then we figure out what we can cut down and simplify. And it's just been this process of constant, like, add, add, add, add. All right, what can we get rid of now?

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, for the most part, it's pretty funny because we end up doing 90% of our business in Google Docs and Google Sheets. That's where we spend most of our time. Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Trello.

Yeah, that's funny. I actually removed Google Docs for most part as well.

Oh, yeah?

Did you? Wow.

Well, what do you use instead for sort of like internal documentation and things like that?

Trello, just all Trello. We literally have a board where we just have like, every card is like a certain document or like steps.

That's interesting.

We can experiment with that. It's peaking my interest.

Yeah. Because I mean, just like you, we want to have less places to check into on a daily basis. And right now there's probably three or four different places that we're checking into to make sure we're keeping up with everything that's going on. And obviously the best way to do it is to have just one or two places to check into on a daily basis. So that's really smart.

Yeah, well, let's.

And I also use Slack as well.

Slack's amazing. Yeah, I know a lot of stuff can get lost in Slack too, but Trello, that's the. You could search it up fast. Let's start moving into the viral kind of how, I guess. Is that what you wanted to kind of transition, Matt?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I want to talk about up viral and viral list growth. And let's just start by explaining what up viral does. And, you know, we don't have to make this like a pitch fest or anything, but let's just. Because I know you mentioned that in your in your little. When we you filled out the calendar, you said you don't want it, you were worried about pitching. But yeah, you know, let's just talk about what up viral does and how it benefits people and what they can do with it.

Yeah, sure thing. So actually I'll continue with the story I was just talking about when I created that first WordPress plugin, right? So just to recap what I did is I had, I created an opt in page and after I had basically a Facebook share to get. So people click on that Facebook share button so they would actually share that with all their friends and then they would get like, I believe it was some extra templates. What was interesting is that I got hundreds of shares but not that many subscribers altogether. Over a course of like couple months, I think I got a couple thousand. But nothing straight back I was like, wait a second. People want to share if they get an incentive. I mean, if I give you guys a thousand dollars to share something right now, you probably say yes. But like to prove the point that if people, if someone is properly incentivized, they will share. But the problem is like a share is pretty much worthless, right? Because people share it on an empty account or they removed right after. Or even if they actually share it, they don't really try to convince their friends to subscribe. I mean, if I would just, with my personal friends, if I would just have an English message written, then they would know like, oh, it's not actually him. Like if it needs to be Dutch. If I actually try to convince them, right? That's when I saw what Dropbox did. It was just amazing, like super clever. They gave everyone their own unique invite link, saying like, hey, it's not like sharing, I don't care about your share, but every single time one of your friends signs up through your invite link to Dropbox as well, you will get extra storage. In other words, you'll get something of value in return of that. And that's what blew up Dropbox. I mean, ask anyone, how do you know Dropbox? Everyone will say, well, I got it from a friend because that's what they did. And when I saw that, I was like, wait a second, that's interesting. So I hacked something together where people would also get a unique invite link. And I said like, hey, if you get, I don't know, three or five and at least expect people to subscribe as well, to actually subscribe, enter the email address, then you'll get this, this, this free thing I got for you. And what happened Is like people started sharing it everywhere. Like not just once, but like multiple times. Like on Twitter, I saw people, like frequently every single day until they got enough people to actually, you know, subscribe and get that thing for free. I was like, wait a second. So that's really where it all started. So to answer your question, what is a viral. Well, it does exactly this. So you can run viral campaigns, which means, for example, a contest or sweepstake where people have a chance to win, but also just like a giveaway. Say, like, hey, if you get three for friends to subscribe, you will get this and this and this. You will get a discount coupon or ebook or whatever. And every single participant will have their own unique invite link. And you can incentivize people to spread the word for you. And guess what happens if people do that? Then their friends are going to see, they're going to click, they're going to subscribe, and they're going to get the exact same thing. And that's when it all starts to go into a, what we call a viral loop. So I hope that. So I hope that sort of explains and I love it.

And that's. It reminds me of back in college. Just quick story, we were actually hired by as a school project to craft a viral YouTube campaign, or just a viral campaign in general. And back in the day, it's like we tried to make a science out of it and to make it predictable and all that. We actually made it work, but it took like a couple years instead of like a semester. But with upviral, it sounds like, I mean, you have that thing down pat, because I remember Dropbox for sure. And then you start to see all these other brands kind of hop on board with the same idea. You're like, okay, there's something here to this whole contest, this kind of giveaway idea. And my question, I guess with this is, is there a way that you can filter or how do you see the quality of leads that come in with doing this? Do you see? Because I would imagine some people are sharing it with people who maybe aren't quite relevant.

Yeah, like the most important thing in terms of the quality really comes down to what you're giving away. So let's say I'm in the SaaS. If I would say, hey, I'm going to do a contest and you will get a free iPad. If you can win a free iPad, you might say like, hey, so techie people, they're the right kind of people. No, it's the worst thing you can do because it's not targeted at all. So you need to create something that actually is relevant to your ideal customer. Typically, we actually see three things that whatever you're giving away should be. So first of all, it should be valuable, right? So if my rule of thumb is if they wouldn't be willing to pay for it, they're not going to share for it as well. Right. It needs to be exclusive as well. So it needs to be like, if they can get the exact same thing, just put a quick Google search, for example. Like, if there's an easier way to get it, they're not going to do that as well. Same thing, like, if you would sell something and they know they can get it somewhere else, they're not going to buy it. Right. So obviously there's many ways to make it exclusive. You can brand it, you can do all kinds of things to make it more exclusive. And obviously it should also be socially accepted, Right. I mean, you could do all of this for some kind of an adult shop, but I'm going to guess that most people are not going to put that on Facebook. Right. So it needs to be socially accepted to talk about it as well. And then like I said, in order to keep the quality of your list high, it needs to be something that's really relevant to your ideal customer, to your ideal avatar that you have in mind. And obviously not everyone is going to turn into a customer afterwards. That's only obvious. But what you're giving away is like, is like the biggest impact or the biggest factor for the quality of your list.

Got it.

Yeah, we're actually having a discussion about this same topic with somebody a few days ago. And, you know, basically the example we gave is we tried to run a contest once, and I think a MacBook Air or something like that was the contest what we were trying to give away. The problem was Everybody wants a MacBook Air whether they're relevant to our niche or not. And so we just had. We just. We built a massive list really fast of completely unqualified leads that didn't end up buying our product when we went to go sell them something. So, you know, that's, that's kind of the problem that you could go down if the product isn't relevant to the niche you're actually trying to build a list in.

Exactly. And let's say you guys would actually give away, for example, a coaching session. Rest assured, like, no offense, you will not get as many leads. But you know that people who are going to share for that, they're going to like they want your stuff. Right.

So, yeah, interesting. Yeah. So, I mean, I guess you can go wide with it and then use a product that's maybe outside of. But you know, it's obviously it's still valuable, exclusive, socially accepted. Or you can go a little thinner, I guess, with it, with the targeting, if you really wanted to.

It also depends what your market's in. I mean, if you're like in a mass market, B2C, you can. You probably just. You're sort of fine if you at least have the right demographic. Like, even if it's more wider, but you can still get away with it. I mean, we got people who are into B2C. Like for example, Guy, he had over 100,000 leads in the first month. Are they all going to be super relevant? Probably not, but because it's a mass market product, it's still going to be worth as well. For sure. Sure.

Now, where would you recommend starting with doing a campaign like this? Would you go to your customers? Would you go a little wider with just the general audience? Obviously it kind of depends.

Or would you go cold traffic like Facebook?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, like, personally, I'm a big fan of that last part. So what I would actually do is I would actually start with a very specific Facebook audience, like as targeted as possible. I would start with a little bit of traffic and here's why. So I'm actually going to go a little bit into theory here, but there's a thing called viral. Viral coefficient. Do you know if you guys ever heard of that?

I've heard of it, but I couldn't explain back to you what it means.

Yeah, so basically what it means is like, it's like a complex formula. I'm not going to explain it all here, but basically what it comes down to is that it basically decides whether something is going to go viral or not. So basically, if one person comes into your funnel at the very front and they enter email address.

X percentage is going to enter the email address and X percentage is actually going to share and from that expense, amount of people are going to click on it. And like that sort of is the loop. Right. And if that one person coming in in the very first step, if that on average is going to result in less than one new person, even if it's just like 1.99, it is not gonna go viral at all. And as soon as it's over one, it goes viral. Like that's the sort of the tipping point. Right. So a lot of people, they think when it's about Going viral. Oh, I need to be clever, need to be lucky, to be funny, need to be whatever, like. But it's actually like, it's a mathematical thing that you need to optimize. So I'll give an example in one of my campaigns where we, I started off with a little bit of Facebook traffic, Facebook ads. And what I did like initially, it did not go viral and you can say, well, I'm going to start a new one. Well, we actually did is we split tested both the opt in page and a lot of people know how to do that. We also split tested the thank you page. And what's interesting is like, at one of them we said like, hey, you, like, if you share this with like five of your friends or like five of your friends actually sign up, you get free lifetime access to this tool. Right? And the other, the other variation, we said something like, hey, right now you're on the waiting list. But if you share this with like X amount of people, if X amount of people actually sign up, you beat the waiting line. Like you don't have to wait and you get instant access. Right. Which one do you think work better? Like getting a lifetime license to that tool or just beating the waiting list?

I would say beating the waiting list.

Yeah, by like 2.1 times better. Like it was like a lot, like a lot better. And like by split testing the opt in page and by split testing that, the thank page, we then made sure that like it went, just went over the tipping point, right, Just by testing with a little bit of Facebook traffic. And that's when we like, once we implemented the winning variation, that's when we drove more traffic and that's when they blew up and like everyone was sharing and etc. Etc. So my strategy would always be to like start small, do some testing, do take your learnings. Because people think that going viral is just like, click, click and then boom, it blows up the Internet. But if it would be that easy, like, everyone would do it. So you need to get used to like, hey, what do people actually share? Do they want to share this or not? And just get a bit of a feeling. And then once you actually have that, that's when you sort of open up the floodgates and you drive up. But also obviously it needs to fit into your strategy, right? Maybe you already have a big audience and obviously that's the low hanging fruit. So then you can obviously just send out an email and everyone will automatically be, basically you can literally send out an email and in that email you can have to every single person, like click here to share on Facebook and every single person on your email list would actually share their own unique invite link. So they don't need to actually first go into your brow campaign, enter the email address, or right away they can click on a pay to button from the email that you're sending from Drip Active campaign. Whatever.

I love it.

That's awesome. Yeah. And it makes a lot of sense too to test with cold traffic first because your list is obviously warmer traffic that knows you. So by testing with cold traffic and getting a cold traffic offer that works really, really well. Well, if it works well with cold traffic, it's probably going to work doubly well with your warmed up traffic that already knows who you are.

Exactly. Exactly the point. Yep.

It's kind of similar to how we do our promos too. Like any product we used to launch, we stopped selling our own marketing products. But when we did that, yeah, it would always be a test with Facebook, Facebook ads or even Google Ads if we could. And if like, yeah, if we can make that roi, then it's game on with our own list. Obviously you could scale ads. I just love how scientific going viral can be now because going back, like I said in college, that was, I don't know, probably eight years ago now. It was literally just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something would hit.

Was that the video with the people playing with their balls?

Yeah, chocolate balls.

Hey, that was. But it worked. But again, it was completely unpredictable.

I can see how that won't go viral.

Yeah, that was the point. I'm curious about, what would you recommend for the duration of these things? Is there an ending time? I'm assuming there is or do you have these evergreen?

Yeah, sure thing. So once again, it really depends on what kind of campaign you're running. So for those who are in BD to see what I see, a lot of people, what works really well is more like a contest sweepstake kind of thing. So where you have like a specific time or like usually two or three weeks is usually best. And at the end of the period, someone actually wins something. So it's really like a contest. But for personally, for example, I mean a B2B or at least not like in a market where people do a lot of contest. I prefer to have like it on an evergreen basis. So it's not something where people can actually win something, but it's just something where people can actually they unlock something or reward after they actually invite enough people. So have you guys seen the launch of Connect Leads a few years back. I'm not sure if you have.

Yeah, we actually promoted it.

Did we?

Oh yeah, no, we connected. We promoted Connect Explore. So Connect Leads, that was like.

Connect Leads was actually the first product of Connect. And what we did, like you obviously know the three part sequence, like the Jeff Walker product launch formula, where basically you drip out three value based videos before the actual product goes live. Affiliates can promote it and people can see it and you build a bit of a relationship, people are excited about the product and then at the end of those three videos, after a couple of days, you then release a product, Boom, here it is. Spent your money. That's usually how it works and how most people are doing it. So what I figured to do is instead of creating three videos, I recorded four. And basically one was a hidden special training video. And at the end of each of those three videos I said like, hey, you know what, thanks for watching this video. Below you'll find your unique invite link. If you get three of your friends to sign up as well and watch these videos, then guess what? You'll get that extra rating bonus video with this and this and this in it. So that was at the end of video one, at the end of video two, and at the end of video three. And what happened was that it was not just the fact that people started sharing and I got a lot of people on my list. But what's funny is that I got a lot of extra affiliates as well because there was just a buzz going on in the Facebook groups. I got people hitting me up like, hey, my customers are asking me or sharing about this tool, like, what is it? What's going on? This is all in the days before the actual launch of people were having time to actually promote it. So that turned out to be our biggest launch in the history of our business. And a lot of it was just because of the buzz it created in the week before the launch. Obviously that's not Evergreen. That was like a one week period. But we have a similar setup at a recurring base as well.

I could see because we're talking about Evergreen Promotions and definitely with Upviral, you know, using some kind of campaign like that, what you just described, giving value, incentivizing people to share that for something in exchange, that it's like a perpetual launch that you can then create for.

Your business, whatever your perpetual traffic stream at least. Yeah, for sure.

Yep. That's why I love it.

No, it's good stuff.

Yeah, I mean that's how we've used Upfire to be totally transparent, we've never actually used the contest functionality. I've always used that sort of viral sharing. Share this with five friends and you get, you know, X video or X ebook or, you know, some sort of thing that we're giving away of value if you share it with X amount of people. So, you know, that's, that's how I've always used it and I absolutely love it. I actually wanted to know, do you have any sort of case studies of clients that have used upviral that have managed to just have like really, really big wins? Are there any stories you could share with us of other people that have used upviral that have of, you know, put 20,000 people on a list in a month or. I don't know if that's extreme or what, you know, expectations.

That's actually not that extreme. But like, like, I know like one guy was funny. I didn't know actually what industry he was in, but I, like, it was just funny. He emailed me saying like, oh, this is the best thing ever. Like, I'm super happy with apparel. And like our list is like, like it's growing and like, and like a week later or so I got, I got, I got a very frustrated email, like, oh, this dude. The worst thing ever. Like, I was like, wait a second, what's going on? So I started going back and forth, right? And what he did is like he did a giveaway where people can actually unlock something and he was giving away physical products, right? Because he didn't think it would blow up that much. And then within two weeks or so, he had over 200,000 email subscribers.

It just blew up. He did not know how to handle that. So that's obviously not the best case scenario. But it did show what was possible.

If you're going to do a viral giveaway.

What he did, he actually ran a contest and he didn't have any audience himself, so you could also run Facebook ads. But basically what he did is he reached out to various, I think it were like communities of forums, online forums with the exact same target audience. And he basically struck a deal with multiple of those people, multiple of those sites, saying, like, hey, I'm going to run a contest. If you promote it to your audience, then I'm going to promote to the whole list. You know, he sold on the idea, like, it's going to go viral, it's going to be big to that whole email list. I'm going to promote your product as, you know, as a thank you and various of These sites actually drove the initial traffic and from there it just blew up. And he's actually, he got, if I remember correctly, just over 114,000 subscribers in his first month doing that. And he's been doing a lot of contests after that as well because obviously, yeah. Been working well for him.

Yeah, I love it. And then my brain always goes to, okay, how can we now. Now that we have all these visitors? Because I actually just went to Upviral actually and I saw you have a whole case studies page.

Joe's reading the case studies on your website right now.

Yeah, as you were saying that. But I'm like, okay, cool. You could bring a lot of visitors to a website with this, obviously. How about retargeting? You know, you obviously have a Facebook pixel on there, a Google pixel now. You can, you can literally look like you're everywhere to your most engaged people.

Yeah. It doesn't necessarily just make your list go viral. It makes your pixel go viral as well. And you're retargeting pixel. Right.

This is cool. Matt, we need to do more of this.

I know. Shit.

We will.

Very cool.

Is there anything else that something that we're missing or haven't asked you? I always like to kind of say that because there might be something that's on your mind.

No, I don't think so. I'd love the Heraldian sides of tnc, so I'm looking forward to that. But I, I'm guessing you guys do a podcast on that.

We will.

I'm sure we will. I mean, we actually weren't inside of tnc. We went to TNC hallways and all the masterminds and networking events and parties and all that stuff, but we never actually made it inside any of the conference.

That's usually how it works. Right.

So yeah, there is a lot of good takeaways though. And yeah, I think it's a good idea we do do a podcast because it opened up our eyes to ways to leverage our time and ourselves better and it's kind of where our direction of the business is going.

So yeah, that would definitely be an episode more about, you know, this year it's going to be more about business acquisitions and merging with other businesses and JV with other people. And that was sort of our, our, our big thing from TNC this year was kind of stuff. Yeah. Growing a team and, and acquiring businesses have been our biggest focus lately.

That's awesome.

So that'll be a follow up episode.

Right. Well, cool. I guess let's wrap this thing up here and we always like to ask. And you know, because you've listened to all the podcasts, I know you've listened to every single podcast, every single episode. Episode. What's a good book that you kind of go to often? Maybe it's every year or every. Whenever you're just feeling stuck on something. Like it's kind of your go to resource. Do you have one? Yeah.

Well, I hate to say, but, like, I think. I'm pretty sure others have said the exact same thing, but Expert Secrets from Russell Brunson, I actually use that one quite a bit because it's basically the outline of a lot of the webinars that I'm doing. So Expert Secrets is definitely, definitely one of them.

Yeah, that's. I mean, the two Russell Brunson books have probably become the most recommended books on this podcast and for good reason. I mean, they're absolutely amazing books. They're books that you could flip open and get the same value from one book that you'd get from a course that somebody back in the day would have sold for $2,000. So they're excellent books, both of them.

What's the other one from? James Schremco. Work more, make less.

Other way around, make more, work more, make less.

Yeah, Schramko, we actually did hang out with him last week. He came out to our party and yeah, that guy, that book right there actually was just referencing it to Matt the other day or yesterday. We were talking about, okay, how can we grow profits for one of our clients? And it's like most people just think, raise the price. It's like, no, there's actually like five or six other things you can do. And that's the type of stuff that James outlines in the. That book. Super actionable. You could use it as like a guide for your business. It's really cool.

Exactly. Highly recommended.

Yep.

Cool. So upviral.com, that's the software that we've mostly been talking about on this episode. But do you want to kind of list off some of the other stuff? Is it connectio.com or is it connect IO? What was the.

It's actually connectio IO to make it kind of confusing.

Okay. Connectio IO is the other suite of sort of Facebook related tools, right?

Yeah. All for Facebook advertisers.

Very cool, Very cool. Is there any other websites that you want people to check out? Do you have a personal brand website or a social media profile?

Actually, I really try to zone in on these two things. I think that's just way more effective. So that will be your last tip. Like, if you're working on, like, three, four or five different projects, I've been there, I've done it, and I thought it was the best. But, like, cutting it back to two, and even now I believe that if I would cut it back to one, it would be even better. But cutting it back and just focus on one or two things, it's the best thing ever.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So upviral.com, connectio IO that's where you can get all of your various cool tools. And thanks so much for hanging out and chatting about this stuff with us today.

Thank you, Wilco.

No worries. Pleasure's all mine.

Awesome, man. We'll talk soon.

Talk soon.

All right. Thank you. And I hope you just enjoyed this episode you just listened to. Now, right now, before we sign off, I have a few things I would love for you to do. So the very first thing is to go find our guest on Facebook and tell them that you loved their episode with us. That's going to help them just feel good about themselves, but also it's going to spread the word a little bit more for us. Go find them on Facebook. Everybody's on Facebook. And go say that you love their episode and maybe one cool thing that you learn there. The second thing is to go to itunes and subscribe. Subscribe to our podcast. Just look up hustle and flowchart and hit the subscribe button. And the very last thing, the third thing is to leave us a review on itunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast and help us spread the word more. That's how more people are going to get this awesome knowledge, this, this cool podcast training and a whole bunch of other cool, free training that we give out@evergreenprofits.com so that's about it. Go find them on Facebook, go subscribe on itunes and leave us a review. You would be amazing if you did that, but you're always amazing. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

You're awesome.