By Deyvi Mardelli - Guest Author

“Building a seven-figure brand is easy when you find the right product and offer; the hard part is how to keep it.”

In 2020, I spent several months planning for a product launch, but all my attempts were unsuccessful. However, I finally found a good product and offer that completely transformed my life. In the world of E-Commerce, sometimes all it takes is one great product and knowing how to market it effectively.

After making my first seven figures with my brand, I realized I needed more than just regular advertising for my website. Building a seven-figure brand is easy when you find the right product and offer; the hard part is how to keep it. To make my e-commerce store reliable, I needed to create an ecosystem around it. Even though I had some ideas for making it work, I knew I couldn't do it alone.

Among the things that I understood was that to maintain the success of my business, I needed strategic planning, a strong presence on various channels, and a reliable backend with post-purchase offers. Additionally, I required a competent team to assist with email and SMS flows and campaigns and enhance the customer journey before and after making a purchase. That's when I got introduced to Obeth Seguinot and ED Digital.

At the beginning of 2021, my partner and I met with the ED Digital team and decided to embark on a journey with them. Their extensive experience and support in their field helped us to improve our email and SMS revenue. To give you an idea, we increased our revenue generated by email and SMS from 5% to around 14-15%. I will provide more detailed information about this later in the article.

Strategic Planning for Success

For planning, data is everything. When we started, we didn’t have our own data. All we could look at was what we could see from other competitors. This limitation made the planning harder when we wanted to hit a number since we didn’t know how far we could push or the results to expect. 

But before a plan to hit a big goal, a number at the end of the month, or any day record, the planning was simple: make a good offer and creatives that allow us to have a good conversion rate and a good average order value (AOV). These were my main key performance indicators. The goal was to make it produce $2 to $2.5 for every dollar I spent on advertising. For example, if I spend $100 on advertising to introduce 100 people to my website, I aim to produce, on average, from $200 to $250 from these 100 users. For some people, this could mean a cost per click (CPC) of $1 and an AOV of $60 with a 3-4% conversion rate. The formula may differ for others, but the goal was to produce a 2 to 2.5 return on ad spend (ROAS).

After making the previous formula work, we started to collect data and work based on the data. It’s easier to work based on data from the previous five months. The more data you gather, the easier it gets. If you collect, analyze, and use it in your favor, it all starts to make sense. After five months, I began to set up daily and monthly goals. Also, I started to plan which other stuff I needed to apply to make six figures a month in each different season because I can tell you, it’s not the same to hit six figures in Q4 than six figures in Q1.

Note: Planning not only means calculating how much you can make based on your average sales in the past. If you don’t do what’s necessary and don’t develop, you may not achieve your numbers in a different season. Planning means getting a list of tasks to fulfill every month (and how to do it) to expand the brand, for example, making new content creatives, introducing the brand in different sales channels like Google and Amazon, having a good amount of inventory, and getting it in advance with better cost, getting a team that can bring up our Email and SMS, etc.

Presence on different channels

When we started, we mainly focused on Facebook and Instagram advertising. I can still say that these two platforms are the best to find cold traffic, but cold traffic and one channel can’t be everything when you want a successful store.

Expanding to different channels did not happen from one day to another. I started to make creatives for other channels, to test various advertising methods, and to be meticulous about the returns coming from every way I tried to invest. It needs keeping track and doing it step by step, channel by channel, and back and forward, testing-error and again. I wouldn’t recommend to anyone without experience like me at that moment to make it all at the same time. Even if you have the knowledge, you start to understand that it needs time and a lot of work, so in the end, it is better to make it channel by channel if you are alone or, even better, learn how to do it but, make the basement of the channel and hire people that can help you to grow it!

To summarize, our structure ended up like this: 75% Meta, 10% Google, and 15% Email & SMS.

The Role of a Strong Backend

After noticing a decline in our conversion rate following the high season, I realized we needed to improve our backend. I wondered how to go about it and found the solution simple. We needed to focus on two things: First, to ensure that our backend could achieve a better average order value. Second, to confirm that our customer journey was complete, with better pre-purchase and post-purchase flows through emails and SMS that would encourage prospects to return to make a purchase. If we do things right, we can even get customers to make a second purchase!

In the first step, I introduced something called bundles. Customers could select 2, 3, or 4 products and receive a 10% to 30% discount depending on the quantity chosen. This helped us increase our average order value, but we needed more. We needed something else that could cost us less, give us a high return, and create a sense of urgency for customers to take advantage of a great offer.

For that, I found two great things; the first was an APP for post-purchase offers from Zipify called “One Click Upsell.” This app gave me the option to set a flow of upsells and down-sell offers after my customer had made their order, and that brings me to the second thing, which was a great accessory to complete our product. These two things together, plus the bundles, helped our AOV increase around 15% to 20% depending on the season and helped us obtain part of the extra profit we need to keep scaling and maintaining our store.

Now, the last part I needed, and the more complex.

Understand your customers and develop a better customer journey

I fully understood the importance of repeat customers when I met Obeth. He made me realize that relying solely on one-time sales or interactions is not enough for a successful long-term business. Some customers will purchase from you multiple times after their initial purchase, and some may not buy from you on their first encounter but require multiple messages and interactions before making a purchase.

Consider this scenario: If someone has only seen you once or a few times online, they may hesitate to purchase from you. While some people may buy from you if they see you offering a good product that resonates with them, other potential buyers may think twice before purchasing. To address this, ED Digital implemented various methods to collect data on these non-buyers who were still leads. We followed up with them using tailored messages based on their interaction with our store to close the sale. However, this process takes work; it can take months to develop and refine. But if you put in the effort, you will gradually see an increase in your conversion rate.

Our defense strategy has improved! By sending different messages, we converted some people who weren't buying into buyers. However, how do we encourage them to make another purchase?

With the help of ED Digital, we started to plan the post-purchase journeys and campaigns via Email and SMS, using different tools like Klaviyo and Wonderment. This element is crucial to keeping the business. Combining excellent product quality, fast shipping, and good campaign offers over time can ensure you a 10%, or I’ve seen even 20% and 30% of revenue only by Email and SMS.

Our business maintained steady growth month after month by leveraging a combination of flows, educational emails, new product launches, offers, and promotions offered by ED Digital. We only needed to make one or two monthly calls to set up the plan, check its progress, and make any necessary modifications.

But I would rather stop explaining here because this post may never end if not. 

If you want to develop and maintain your business for a long time, follow some of the tips I mentioned earlier. Keep learning, connect with people who have more knowledge than you, and build a strong team. Who knows? Maybe Obeth can assist you in achieving your goals, too.

Deyvi Mardelli is an entrepreneur from Venezuela, who has made a significant impact in the e-commerce industry, boasting over six years of experience. Armed with a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Master of Science in International Business Management, he has driven his ventures past the $18 million mark in revenue, backed by astute investments of $8 million in paid advertising through Meta and Google. His strategic approach to online sales has culminated in exceeding 200,000 orders in the United States and achieving seven-figure revenues with Zipify across multiple brands. Specializing in building and mentoring brands on Shopify, Deyvi combines extensive experience with innovative strategies to stand out as a dynamic leader in e-commerce and digital marketing. His academic insights, paired with hands-on expertise, fuel a forward-thinking vision that not only looks to anticipate the future of digital commerce but shapes it, with the main goal of offering value to partners and clients alike.