Aurelien Amacker - How To Build An Email List For Free

Hey, how's it going? It's Olly here. Very warm welcome to the Ecommerce Freedom Podcast. So just before we dive in, I've got two special new resources for you. First resource is a PDF with 15 smash hit products on it, ready to go. Examples of products you can sell on Amazon. So you can use this for inspiration or you can just see, you know, what types of products do really, really, really well. I've even included revenue examples so you can see the amount of money that each product is likely to generate. The Amazon Marketplace. If you want to grab this free PDF, just go to ecommercefreedom.com and you'll see a link at the top of the page where you can grab the PDF. The second resource I want to give you is a free Amazon Accelerator call. The whole point of this call is for us to have a quick chat and we'll gather up a little bit of information about your situation and together we'll develop a plan for you to build an Amazon business that either works as a side hustle for you or could replace your job and will take into account your situation, your experience, your background and give you a clear set of action steps to go ahead and build the business. If you want to book one of Those, go to ecommercefreedom.com go to the top of the page and click Amazon Accelerator call. You fill out a quick form and you can book the call. All right, thanks so much for joining me for another episode. This one's going to be good. And enjoy it. Hey everyone. Very warm welcome to another episode of the E Commerce Freedom Podcast Podcast. So it's Ollie here on a very swelteringly hot day in Stockholm, having to keep the windows closed because there's traffic right outside. But what that does means the temperature slowly starting to rise. So if I pass out halfway through this interview, that'll be why?

Don't, don't.

I'll try my best. So that voice you hear there is Aurelian, who is with me. Reliance is the founder of System IO. So Systeme IO is a platform you can use to build funnels, to set up your entire business, to get your marketing going, to build an audience, to make sales online, to do upsells, bumps, cross sales, all those things that we love when we're selling stuff online. And the reason I want to get Aurelian here with me today is so we could talk about how you can actually build an audience, build an email list to go alongside your, your Amazon business and how you can do that for Free. So, Aurelian, it's an absolute pleasure to have you here. How are you doing today, man?

I'm great. Thank you for having me today.

You're very, very welcome. So before we dive into all the juicy bits about how to use funnels and things within an E commerce business, I want to hear a little bit about your story, man. So dive in. Tell me what led to you wanting to build this platform and what happened in the years running up to actually making this thing go live.

Yeah, it's a good question. So actually I've been doing Internet marketing since 2010. So at that time I met some bloggers. So I'm French. So I met some French bloggers who were making, you know, a bit of money with their blog. Like €500 per month, €1,000 per month. So I had a blog about personal development that nobody was reading. Like, nobody, you know, like, If I got 10 visitors in a day, I would like, pop a bottle of champagne, you know, But I was like, oh, maybe that could work. So actually I didn't want to go back to work, like in a corporate job. So I actually declined an offer for a really well paid job and I started working full time on my blog and I started making money. You know, it wasn't much, but like, you know, like €100 the first month, like €200, stuff like that. And after six months, I was able to make €1,000 and I was traveling in Eastern Europe and yeah, I wanted to go to the next step. So I found out that some people were actually selling courses, you know, online courses. So I built one about how to make money blogging. I launched it, I actually worked with marketing consultants. That wasn't cheap. Like, I invested over €20,000, which was like half of my money at the time. And we built a product together, an online course. We sold it through webinars. We made €10,000 and I went to Colombia to spend the winter. And the following year we did a big launch with affiliates and we did €550,000 in sales in two weeks. Wow. Yeah, I know it's a crazy story when people, you know, it's always the same reaction. But you have to know that I didn't actually got to pocket half a million. Far from that, like after. So you have to pay. So you have the refunds and then attrition people who pay with installment plan, who stopped paying. You have vat, affiliates, all the expenses related to the launch. So in the end I was left with around like €120,000, which is great, you know, Now I joined Jeff Walker's Mastermind Group. So Jeff Walker is the creator of the product launch formula. So that's the kind of like the marketing strategy that we use to do that huge launch. But I never embraced that model about launches because when you hear about it, you know, like, you can do our entire year of revenue during two weeks. You think, oh, it's great, when actually it's the opposite. It's not great because it's so much work, so much stress and, you know, you feel that you don't have a business, you know, because after the launch, revenue goes down drastically. And yeah, I never liked this model. So I left after three years and I went on my own. So I was like, just, you know, doing some videos on YouTube, like blog posts, building my email list, creating a lot of small courses and trying to find my own thing. And I wasn't happy with the existing tool. So I started thinking about building a software. And I struggled. At the beginning. I lost some time and money, and then I found the right team and we started building the product in 2017, launched in 2018, and two years later, we have almost 5,000 paying customers. So, yeah, that's the story.

Wow, that's crazy, man. I can't even think of where to start when it would come to building a SaaS company. You know, building a software sounds, it sounds very complicated. I'm assuming you had a very big burn rate every month to spend on building the software and all the beta testing everything. To me, it just goes way over my head, man. I'm happy to just buy and sell stuff on Amazon and coach people.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, it's very challenging. So it's funny because, like, in the French market you have. I know four people try to do the same because, I mean, the idea wasn't like genius, you know, it wasn't crazy. It wasn't like a genius idea. You know, it already existed. And I know like four people who invested like between 100 and maybe €300,000 and who failed. And I failed the first year. Like, I had a company in Morocco doing the development and we were going nowhere. So I lost one year €30,000. But yeah, we were spending money, but I was actually using money from my business because I was selling my online courses, doing around €30,000 per month. So in 2017, actually we lost like €10,000. But, you know, it wasn't the end of the world. I mean, it was. Okay, so we bootstrap, like I'm the only founder of the company.

That's awesome man. So no investors, nothing else. Just selling courses, generating the revenue yourself, putting it into the business, building up from the ground. That's, that's so inspiring man. That's amazing. So thank you. No, it's true. So, but today a lot of people listening to this are thinking, well you know, I don't want to build a software, I want to sell e commerce products and I want to sell on Amazon. So what I wanted us to talk about today is things that you actually have experience in for two reasons, right? And building this email list of customers to sell your e commerce products to. I mean, you know this two reasons, probably more. Number one, because you built a business and you've sold a load of products and you sold your software, right. So you've obviously had to build an email list to do those things. But also you've actually built the software that enables people to build the list. Right. So people can actually use that software to build the list. This is why I thought you were really perfect to have a chat about this stuff. So I, I would love for you to just tell me a few things that having an email list has helped you with over the past 10 years.

Yeah, so it's a great question. You know what, I'm an email marketing guy. I mean my email list, that's the core of my business. Like everything I do online, you know, can be like. So I don't, I don't do like I have a lot of affiliates right now. I don't do a lot of content myself but back in the days, you know, I was doing YouTube videos and blog posts, stuff like that. But everything was made with the purpose in mind to build my email list. So for me it's very, it's so important. Like when I look at an online business, like I had some customers that was like helping, like I was coaching them and the first thing I would look at is, was actually the number of new opt ins per day. That's so important. And in my business like every day I look at how many people subscribe to my email list the day before. So Today it's around 700 people, 700 leads. And I'm always paying attention to this indicator and trying to make it improve.

Such an important key metric, isn't it? And how have you found. So obviously now your business is doing crazy amounts of revenue and you're bringing in 700 leads a day. How does it compare? So when you were doing like, I don't know, like you mentioned you were doing 30k a month.

Yeah.

Roughly how many leads were you getting back then?

Yeah, it's a great question. So I think that it was around because I had a side business, like a blog about learning English that was like, you know, kind of to prove people that I could, like, build a side business.

Awesome.

So it was, it was getting many more leads, but they were less valuable. So my web marketing business, what I was doing 30k per month, that was not that many. You know, I think it was like, I'd say 60 per day.

Yeah. See, that's the funny thing, isn't it? When you look at any business, the business owner focuses on so many things. You know, maybe Facebook followers. Instagram likes all these other metrics which, you know, tell a story, but nothing quite tells a story of how successful a business is as the number of leads coming in every day. I think you can instantly tell how big a business is when you see the daily leads that are coming in. So it's the same with an E commerce business. You know, once you've got, say, a couple products selling on Amazon, if you really want to scale and supplement the income coming in from Amazon, getting these leads coming in, getting these emails coming in really, really does make a massive difference. So let's talk a little bit more about the benefits of having an email address because I know a lot of people. Sorry, an email list. Right. Because we've all got an email address. You know, a lot of people are probably listening to this show thinking, well, I just want to sell some stuff on Amazon. Right. I just want to sell a product and I just want to get it to sell. So why would we bother also creating an email list alongside selling on Amazon?

Yeah, that's a great question and it's so important for our listeners because I believe that as a business owner, you have to pay attention to the risk you're facing. And if you're only relying on Amazon to sell online, you're taking a big, big risk. I think you agree 100%, man.

Yeah, I mean, Amazon, look, I think it's the best platform to test things, to get things moving. But, you know, if they wanted to, they can pause your account. Right. At some point. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen. So, yeah, certainly a risk. So, yeah, carry on.

Yeah, you can, you can get kicked out or, you know, your Amazon rankings can go, you know, sour. I mean, you can lose some rankings and stuff. So I think it's great. You have to, you know, try to use the platform as much as you can. But I think that to hedge your risks, it's better for you to kind of diversify and try to build your own source of leads. So, for example, you could use a freebie, like a free PDF, a free guide, a free video. The format doesn't matter much. It's really about the promise that you're doing to the prospective lead. So you're giving out this free content in exchange of his email address. And it's a way for you to build your email list. As a business owner, you should pay attention to the risk you're facing. So I think that it's very important to diversify, try to build your own customer list, because that's the most valuable asset in your business. And then it comes, you know, your marketing, your offers. So, yeah, it's very important, definitely, man.

And one of the great things about it as well is I can think of many times when I've been in, like, sticky situations in business where I've got like a unexpected tax bill that I wasn't expecting, or I need to just basically I need some cash. And I've gone to my email list and I've promoted something and I've been able to generate pretty much exactly the amount of cash I need, you know, whether it's 10, 20, 30K, you know, within a week. Just because I have a massive audience full of people who are ready to buy things, you know, so it not only does it make you, you know, make things more stable, but it just gives you so much more opportunity to solve problems. Right? Because in the business there's always problems. Let's say you need to order some more stock from China and all of a sud, the rates for shipping go up. Well, let's say you need to spend more on marketing, you know, if you've got access to get more cash at any time. Well, yeah, who wouldn't want that? So let's talk about how we'd actually make this happen. So let's say we've got a product on Amazon. It's doing 10k per month in revenue. Right? Or maybe even 5k per month in revenue. What would be a good first step to say, okay, I'm getting these sales of Amazon. How do I begin to build a list? How do I begin to get customers to actually buy stuff from me on my own funnel?

Yeah, exactly. So you have different ways. I'm not an expert at selling physical products because I've sold mostly digital products like online courses, coaching programs and software. But, you know, you have different ways so it depends on the source of traffic, like where you can find some traffic for, you know, for your, like to get your leads. But then I would try to identify who is my ideal customer. Who is this ideal customer that's buying these physical products on Amazon. So who is he? Is he a he? Is he or she, how old? What does he do for a living? What are his dreams, aspirations? What are his fears, emotions? So I would try to start with this, you know, who's my ideal customer? And I would be like, okay, so what are his dreams and aspirations? And then what are his fears and pain points? And I would try to set up like some free guide, free content that would help him either reach his goals, you know, achieve his dreams or solve his pain points.

Yeah. So let's say we were talking just before, just before the episode started. We were talking about. An example is like a moth trap, right, on Amazon. For some reason it's a very, very hot selling product. Just a little piece of, I don't even know what it is, piece of fabric with some pheromones on it or something that attracts moths and then traps them. So let's say your idle customer is someone who wanted to buy moth traps. So you would get maybe one of their biggest frustrations, one of the emotions they're feeling, which is, I just want to get rid of moths from my house. I want them to stop eating my clothes. I've got loads of holes in all my T shirts. Right? Yeah, I want to get rid of these moths. So we could create a PDF, you know, I don't know, nine ways to get moths out of your house or something like that. Is that what you mean?

Yeah, exactly. Like how to get rid of these insects. You know, I didn't get the exact name, but as I see what they are like. So how to get rid of blah blah, blah. 9 Ways to the 7 Best Ways to get rid of Blah blah, blah. You know, like some, you know, some headline with a benefit and some mysteries so that people are enticed to take action and actually get it.

Yeah. And they put their email in in exchange for the PDF and then now you've got them on your list, right?

Yeah, exactly. And you can actually set it right after the opt in. Like that's something that we do a lot. So right after the opt in you sell them straight to a sales page and this works, this works great. But then you have to come up with an offer that's really irresistible. So lowest price possible, best deal possible, and then you can actually upsell them right after the payment. So you can do like one click upsells, you can do it with system IO, you can actually add down sales. So down sales are upsells that are presented to the buyer only if he declined the previous upsell. Okay, so you can maybe, you know, like the first upsell could be like so your insect trap. Trap. And then the first upsell could be like, hey, you know, do you want more? Like, you know, like you can get like three for the price of two. And if people say no, you're like, oh, you know, maybe it's, it's a lot of money. I understand. What about this three payment plan? Okay, so yeah, you could totally do this, for example, with the system attire.

Awesome. So you think of your ideal customer. They want to get moths out of their house. You send them to a landing page. First of all that says, hey, here's something really cool that's free, you can download. Just give me your email. Alright? And this is maybe seven ways to get rid of insects from your house. And then after they do that on the thank you page, there's a sales page there straight away that just says, here's another way you can instantly get rid of all of your moth problems. Your insect problems. Buy this heavily discounted irresistible offer for this moth trap. And then they buy that. And then after they bought it on the next page with one click, they can instantly buy several. And on the page after that, if they want to, maybe if they don't buy it and they say no thank you, they could maybe buy less or get a payment plan or something. So this is really, really powerful because one of the big questions people have when they're looking to build their email list is, you know, how. Well, yeah, okay, I've got to get emails, but how am I going to send that much traffic to the landing page? Well, I've got this PDF and I've got all this stuff. I can't send anyone to it because I'm going to have to spend 50, 100, 200 pounds or $200 a day on advertising. And the awesome thing is if you're selling stuff straight away, you can actually make back the money you spend on advertising from these sales. So it's just a great way to actually get moving. For free, right?

Exactly. Yeah, you can build your email list for free.

So powerful, so unbelievably powerful. And then what happens is you make sales of the product in the process, which is good. But even if you just broke even on those sales, now you have an Email list. And every month, every week, you can continue promoting to people, you can continue offering them different products, maybe different designs of moth traps or maybe complimentary products. Like instead of a moth trap, it would be like a fly lamp for outdoors or something else, like some other kind of trap for some other kind of pest or maybe something else to go inside the cupboard with the insect trap.

Yeah.

There's just so many things you could do. And then you're starting to think now about building a brand rather than just selling one product. So this is awesome. So, so let's say people wanted to get started and let's say they thought, well, I'm looking for a software. Aurelian seems like a cool guy, maybe I'll try his one out. So how would we go about building a funnel like this inside System IO?

It's very easy. So with System IO, our entire business relies on System IO. Like everything we do, we use System IO. So we have a list of about. So I don't know, like 80, I mean I cleaned it recently, but I think it's around 80,000 people. We send 4 million emails per month on our email list. Wow. And this month we're going to do €250,000 in revenue. So that's the software, the courses, the coaching program. So that's mostly in the French market, but we launched in the English market and we're getting more, more and more new English speaking customers. So.

Amazing.

Yeah, it's great. People are very happy about it. We get like amazing feedback that people sell the time. It's easy to use because actually, you know, the theory says that you should get, when you want to build your online business, you should get the best landing page builder. You know, could be like clickfunnels, sleep pages, I don't know. Then you should get the best autoresponder, like maybe activecampaign and maybe the best, I don't know, like membership site builder if you want to sell like some online course. But you know, the thing is in entrepreneurship, especially when you're big, when you're starting out, you have very limited resources. Like you have little time on your hand, little money. So actually it's so much work like to have to pay and set up and integrate these different tools. So if you have everything under one roof, it makes things so much easier. And that's the feedback we get all the time. It's that it's so much easier to use. So that's what we use. You can build like all kind of sales funnels. You can manage Your email list and, you know, newsletters, email campaigns. You can build your blog. Actually, that's a feature we launched a few months ago and we run our own blogs with our own tool. You can set automation rules, you can create a membership site, you can run your affiliate program. So, yeah, you have a lot of features and you can try it for free. You just go to System IO. I mean, I will give you a special link only that you can give to your audience. So they get 30. 30 days instead of the regular 14 days. And yeah, you can try it for free. You don't even have to enter your credit card details. So, you know, we want people to be able to try it out and, you know, see if that works for them. But yeah, we got it.

People could just get something set up. Maybe like a landing page or something. They could sign in for free. No credit card details. Just. Just try it out. Yeah, try creating a page. Try collecting some email addresses. Try creating a PDF and just see how it goes for 30 days. Yeah, that's awesome.

You know, Oli, if you don't mind, I have a quick freebie I would like to share with your audience regarding, like, email list for E Commerce. Are you interested?

100%.

Yeah. You know, like, actually, when the, you know, the COVID crisis started, I have one of my best friends, he's in France. He actually sells Spanish ham. Okay. So physical products. So they sell to, like, in fairs, okay, Markets fairs all around France, and they supply restaurants and they also have a website. But the website, I mean, I think they made the year before, like €100,000. So it's not. It's not big. Okay? It might sound like big, but it's not. It's not big. That's not their main way to sell. And when the COVID crisis hit, his business took a very hard hit because restaurants were closed and were not buying his ham anymore. And it's funny, you know, because it's only like, oh, okay, so I'm gonna send an email to my list. Okay? He's got an email list of customers, okay, People who purchase, like, either at the fairs, but like individuals, okay, Consumers or through his website. And he showed me his email, I was like, hey, that's you. You E commerce guys. You always make the same mistake. Like, you just send one email. No marketer would ever do that. You know, I'm an email marketing guy, okay? I send. I told you. We sent 4 million emails last month, so I would never send just one email, okay? It doesn't work. It doesn't work like that. So I gave him a very simple structure to promote an offer to his list. And I've been promoting offers on my list like pretty much every week for, you know, almost like the last 10 years. So I told him that. So the first email. So that, that's interesting for people in your audience who wants to build their email list and then make money out of it after the initial purchase. But this is something, this is also something that you can actually sell as a service to restaurants and business owners. And my friend started doing just that because it works so well. So I told him. So the first email, that's the opportunity. Okay, so for example, in your case, you have a big discount on a product. So that's short email, Hey, 30% off, blah, blah, blah, this product, you know, and email, hey, I would like to let you know we have a big discount, blah, blah. So that's the opportunity. That's the first email. The second email, it should be some kind of content. So don't send another email to say the same thing. You know, it's annoying. Try to add some value. Try to add some content. So could be like an answer to a frequent question. Oh, Nadia asked me, do we have to pay for shipping? No, you don't. You know, shipping is included if your order is above €50, whatever, you know, can be like a case study, can be a inspirational story. Can be, you know, like some testimonials, can be like how to, like how to do this, how to get rid of your of insects in your house. Actually, you can send as many content emails as you want. Okay, I had launches lasting for as long as two weeks. But then you have the close. And the close, you have to send two emails, one in the morning that says it's the last day to enjoy the offer. And very important, don't mess with this. Don't miss on this. You have to send another email at around 7pm, okay. That says these are the final last hours. So my friend, he made something. He made €40,000 in one week. And he was sending me message, you know, on WhatsApp, it was like, oh, €20,000, €25,000. He actually wrote to me, I love you. Okay. I was moved.

Amazing.

Yeah, no, no, it was great. He made €60,000 the first month because he kept making offers. And since then he's been doing between 30 and €40,000 per month. And I told him, you know, like, you have so many e commerce people who have an email list and who don't use it, and that's a huge opportunity because you have like a. I think it's called an under utilized asset. And you can just go after them and offer them to actually run promotions on their list, selling their products and you charge some money. And actually he started sharing on LinkedIn. Hey, I have this marketing friend who gave me some advice and I made some promotions on my list. I was able to make 60,000 the first month. And yeah, he got contacted by people on LinkedIn and he sold one consulting gig for €300 per month to help some guy, like some, I think it was like some olive producer to sell his stuff. And the guy like made, I think they made €4,000, you know, the first time they made a promotion on his list. So, yeah, it's very powerful. It works great. Simple structure you can use to promote stuff on your list. And you can actually go and go see like some businesses and do this for them and help them make money out of their email list because they all have an email list that they're not using.

This is a big, big market, isn't it? Because it's so funny because I've done this exact same thing. Like, people listening will be like, yeah, I probably noticed Ollie does that all the time. You know, maybe once a month or something, will offer something, do a few content emails and there'll be a thing that's closing and they'll be like, yeah, actually, I recognize that. And they'll probably start to realize, actually lots of other marketers do it as well, but it's only marketers that seem to do it. Like, if you go to like other websites and sign up to other email lists, they'll send you like almost like a brochure as an email once a month, like Walmart or whatever, but that's it, you know. And yeah, they're leaving money on the table. So this is a really underutilized market. And, and you can go up to businesses and just be like, look, I can make you some cash. If you have an email list, I can make some cash. And it's gonna be a whole new way to raise capital. It could be a way to raise capital to buy new stock to sell on Amazon. So yeah, that's amazing. Thanks so much for sharing that, man. That's. That'll be really, really valuable.

Yeah, I hope it helps.

Awesome. All right, man. Well, look, it's been amazing catching up today. By the way, if you want to have a play with some funnels and you want to maybe go try set up a landing page and you want to do it without having to commit any money or any credit card details or anything. Just go to systeme IO, that's system with an E on the end IO. Is that the right address, Aurelian?

Yeah, that's what it is. And I will give you a special link, Ollie, that you can share with your audience so they can actually enjoy 30 days instead of the regular 14 day free trial.

Perfect. So in that case, if you go to ecommerce freedom.com find the podcast episode with or Ellie and it should be right at the top. You'd'll see the link in the show notes and then, yeah, you can enjoy a whole month free without having to commit. Have a play around, see if you can get some leads. I reckon you could get a hundred leads in a month if you share it on Facebook, if you share it with people you know, get things moving and who knows, you could build a, send out a, an email campaign like the guy who did sells ham did. Alright, who knows how much you could bring in? All right, Aurelian, thanks so much for being on the show today. It's been really enlightening. You've shared so much wisdom and yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much, Oli, have a great day.

You too, man. Speak soon.