How to Turn Your Social Fans Into Subscribers and Buyers with Jesse Clemmens

This week we are diving into a cool new tool that allows you to finally get those elusive social followers to take action, join your email or SMS list and start buying from you - all with automated DMs that are totally free of friction (and admin).

Jesse is the New York based co-founder of HiTide, the social SMS & Email list growth platform for Shopify brands. Before HiTide, Jesse scaled teams at two industry transforming martech startups with $800M cumulative exits. Other career highlights include time at Google as part of the early ad exchange team, and Meta where he helped build out Meta's multi $B ad network API business.

Check out GoHiTide.com now or drop the team a note at ask@gohitide.com

Transcript

0:02

You're listening to the e commerce impact podcast, where we share the latest marketing strategies to grow your e com store and have more impact.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 0:15

Welcome back to the e-Commerce Impact podcast. Today we have Jesse Clemons here to talk to us about how brands who have a great social following can use their social following to grow their email and SMS list and move people from being just a social follower to much more embedded in your, marketing ecosystem. So welcome along, Jesse. Why don't you introduce yourself to our guests and tell us a bit about your background and what brought you to where you are today.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 0:41

yes, I Much like yourself. I was at a big tech company before starting my entrepreneurial journey. I used to be at well, first I was at Google, but most recently I was at Meta working on ads platforms, connecting the kind of like Meta and Facebook ads ecosystem into the third party app developer ecosystem kind of story for another time,

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 1:02

awesome. How have you found the transition from being part of a big corporate and a big, huge corporate machine to like being your own boss and having your own business?

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 1:12

It's It's amazing. It's terrifying. It's best thing. It's the worst thing It's you know, all the all the various emotions and the journey of entrepreneurship. I wanted to do is build my own business and run my own business I'm, I'm happy.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 1:26

Yeah. Awesome. Okay. Let's dig into our topic. When we were off air, you mentioned the way that marketing has changed and like, let's dig into a little bit, like, why is it important To move people from social into your email system. Why should we even bother to do that at all?

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 1:42

There was, you know some of the Apple privacy updates, there's increasing regulation on the GDPR front. There was browser changes, email click changes, like email click tracking changes by Apple. A whole bunch of things that have just made it really hard for. Advertisers, but brands in particular to sort of definitively get in touch with their customers whether those are customers or potential customers. And so the whole, like, kind of like ecosystem in the last four or five years, not by any, like one massive change, but a series of incremental changes has become harder and harder to reach people. What all of these things have meant for Shopify brands is it's just really hard to get an impression in front of someone that might be interested in your product. And so I had been really interested in this problem. We realized that one of the big gaps that existed was most brands have a really powerful marketing vehicle in the form of organic social. And they also have these owned channels of email and SMS, but there is really not a great solution or, or, or a great product to connect the dots between the two and what, so what we ended up building with high tide was a bridge between, you know, starting with Instagram, a bridge between social and SMS and email lists so that you can convert your. Kind of like heist intent followers into subscribers for email and SMS. Where there's Brands kind of think of themselves as owning their, know, Instagram profile or their Tik TOK page, which, you know they, they kind of do, they own the logins, but it's almost impossible to reach in a way that's deterministic. And so shifting those same people that are following you on social into email and SMS, so that you can reach them in this chaos of the new marketing world is critically important.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 3:36

Yeah. Awesome.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 3:38

So one of the easiest examples and best use cases for high tide are often in the apparel industry. So the apparel industry in particular one of the, you know, greatest ways to market in 2024 and probably for, you know, at least the next couple of years are what are kind of effectively referred to as drops, limited edition stuff, whether that's. You know, a new color of a really exciting product, a collab with another brand you know, anything where there's this kind of like moment of a product arriving that you as a brand can hype up, it's a really great time to get people onto your social or email list so that they can be notified when that product is available. And so one of the ways that we help brands. And kind of like tag into their marketing strategy for these drops is through posts that are either You know oriented around the drop itself where they're basically saying hey, we've got this new thing coming. Here's when it's going to arrive They might even tease the product out without showing it They might say we're working on something new kind of like all the tactics that you're used to seeing from brands on instagram and then pair that with some sort of a event leading up to the big day, whether it's like a giveaway, maybe it's a a discount or coupon code for the product so that you have a list of people that are specifically interested in that product. He can get them enrolled in the process of that drop and then let them know when the product is available via SMS or email where we fit into the picture in this kind of like drop hype cycle. in a couple different ways, brands to use an example. We work with a great brand called freedom ravewear. They're a festival apparel brand and they have a bunch of collections that drop on a monthly basis. I think it's be wrong on this, but I think it's at least four or five collections that they launch a month and they're you know, constantly selling out of these collections. They have their own lines, and then they have lines that are collabs with influencers in the festival and, and rave space. and so the way that this playbook works out for them, they'll start to tease the product that's coming, usually through video assets or feed assets. They'll ask people to comment on that post if they're interested in, in that product, or ask them to reply to a story if they're interested in that product. And what Hightide does is we recognize through our integration into Instagram, we recognize that comment or that story reply or that direct message, basically anything that's like a moment of interaction with the follower, and we enable a brand like Freedom Ravewear to send a short direct message. So they might say, Hey, Jesse, thanks so much for your interest in the December drop. We'd love to let you know when it's available. What's your phone number? We'll get you signed up for our text list or what's your email? We'll sign you up for the drop And we'll send you a coupon code for this for the december drop And at that point our software is for you know, kind of simplifying it. We're Orchestrating the collection of that phone number or that email in a way that's regulatory safe person is then in the email or sms list and on the big day when that you know, freedom braveware collection drops in december The people that were most interested in it are going to get that email or text blast in a way that feels personalized, relevant, and timely, and you know, can drive sales that way.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 7:09

Cool. So are you saying they don't have to like fill in a form or click on a link? They just like give their email directly in the chat.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 7:17

That's kind of our superpower.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 7:19

game changer. Yeah.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 7:21

two things. One is to your, what I think you were alluding to is no forms. So it's just lower friction. So conversion rates are Often, you know, when, you know, From someone commenting on the post to actually consenting to email or sms marketing. They're like 60 to 90 percent depending on the you know on the offer second instagram encourages Content that has comments and replies or dms that come from a piece of content instagram is you know kind of rewarding on platform activity And the kind of general consensus is that Instagram does not reward sending people off of Instagram. So going to a link in a bio, navigating to find the link, going through, filling out a form on your phone, it's just not an ideal experience for a consumer, but it's also, Not you know, generally feels like it's not rewarded by the Instagram algorithm so that those posts and that content doesn't get out to as many people. So by removing

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 8:19

Amazing.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 8:20

and asking for engagement on the post, you can get your content out in front of a lot more people. And ideally those are the people that are most want to buy that particular product.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 8:29

Yeah. And is it GDPR compliant?

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 8:31

is. Yes. Yeah. So we, work to enable brands to collect. Their you know, their consent moment and then sync that phone number into their platform of choice, whether that's email, SMS, or both.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 8:47

Cool. Awesome. So, so you get their email address and then I guess you can put them into any kind of flow that you want to. So it could be like a customized flow, your normal welcome flow, a flow you've designed just for that purpose. And then if it's SMS, it's fine. It can be via Klaviyo or other tools like PostScript, did you say?

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 9:07

exactly right. So Postscript, Klaviyo, Attentive Yotpo, we have, you know, pretty much every notable SMS platform, a bunch of the email platforms as well. Because we're synced in via integrations into those platforms, we'll tag subscribers that are coming through the direct messages with that particular campaign. So if you're dropping, I don't know, the limited edition hat next month, we'll tag that person in the email or SMS platform. So you can then in your SMS or email platform, build the flow. So our part of the job is like moving the consumer, understanding their consent And then moving them into the platform and then marketers are, you know, welcome automations or email blasts or SMS blasts, what, you know, whatever the, whatever the end marketing motion is kind of no different than they were before,

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 9:58

So, and when the drop comes, can you also then DM them, the people that you've DMed? Like, can you continue the DM chat or are you taking it over to the, to the email platform or can you do both?

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 10:09

So you are in most cases, taking it over to email or SMS where you can reach that person definitively via email or, or or a text. the high tide platform is built on top of the meta messaging API, which is this thing that enables automated direct messages. People have been doing automated direct messages for years, but recently, in the last couple of years, Meta has rolled out this kind of framework for how to properly do them within the confines of the Instagram program around automated messages.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 10:39

yeah,

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 10:40

One of the rules is that you have you know, in the case of comments that are moved to private replies or direct messages. You have seven days to continue a conversation And so, as a brand using high tide you have up to seven days to to communicate with that person they don't reply again, for example And then you can dm them as you normally would if you have you know A cx or social person that wants to send manual messages and direct messages and then anything outside of that window You're likely going to send them the text blast or the email blast and drive sales that way

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 11:15

you probably could within the seven days like automatically DM them. It wouldn't be hard either to have like your social person just go through all the, depending on how many hundreds there were, to go through the DMs and like send a personalized message as well if it was a

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 11:29

Most cases, what, what the brands are liking about the high tech platform is you are taking people in an automated way with zero work, moving them into your channels where you already have a well oiled machine for emails and texts. And then relying on that, you know compounding work to drive sales We do have some people that go in and you know, do some manual Messaging after the fact and reach out to people but

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 11:53

yeah,

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 11:54

automated in In many cases

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 11:56

yeah,

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 11:57

and thousands of direct messages that are going out from posts that are

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 12:00

wow.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 12:00

engagement. Yeah

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 12:02

That's epic. So in the example of this brand, the Ravewear brand as a former raver, sounds pretty cool.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 12:08

Whatever they are. I'm like, wow, this is cool There's a lot of people that are really into this whole scene and culture almost

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 12:16

yeah, it was definitely, I moved to London in my early twenties and I did a lot of raving Unfortunately, it's not, not happening much anymore, but anyway so can you give me an example of like how much like revenue this is driven for the brand,

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 12:31

Average revenue per new subscriber is well above 20. So when I say new subscriber, I mean, a new email or SMS signup on average coming from these posts that are driving thousands of signups, it's

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 12:43

Wow.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 12:44

Which is really exciting because that's, that's like overall often these are the highest intent people. They're the people that are saying like. Something has popped up on the feed. They're like, Oh, I want that. I'm going to raise my hand for it right now without leaving Instagram. And then I'm going to get that SMS message right in my phone where I can purchase right through a click. So you know, it, it can be quite powerful if you have you know, an audience that is primed and ready, that is really just looking for, for, you know, an opportunity to purchase the thing that's going to be available.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 13:16

Yeah. Amazing. So. Changing tack a little bit, how you would approach using this tool for a more of a slow fashion brand, a brand who does two drops a year. So I imagine that doing promotional, you know, like sales and promotions through this could also be a good use of it as well as like new product drops. So how would you with your marketing hat on like approach for this,

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 13:41

So if I were onboarding your, the, the brand tomorrow, I would say, let's do. Basically three things. Number one, let's get your social profile updated with a bunch of what we call evergreen call to actions. So this, you know, as opposed to the drop scenario playbook that we're talking about before, this means updating your profile to entice people to sign up to your email and SMS list so that when the new products are available or when there's a promo or a sale or whatever, you can reach those people, not just through a post. The examples of those would be. updating your Instagram bio to have a call to action. Maybe it says DM us the heart emoji to sign up for our VIP access list, something like this. The second piece would be painting a story that has some sort of unique value add. So a story that's in your highlights that says, for example you know, unlock the secret. 21st piece of our collection, you know, see it, see it before anyone else. DM us the word secret to get access. And then, you know, maybe you also have what's called an icebreaker, which is a message that shows up when people go to DM the brand for the first time. There's a little button that Instagram enables. We can install one of those that says you know, get. 20 back, get 20 credit for your first order unlock now so that when people tap that message and start a conversation all three of these tactics are working on an ongoing basis. We call them evergreen because they're just kind of like always working. They're the equivalent of an onsite pop up. So, you know, almost every brand has a pop up. Now the pop ups asking for SMS or email. But many brands are not asking for consent right from their Instagram profile. And this is a great way to do that. getting the profile, and by the way, these are things that you could do without high tide that, you know, you could, if you wanted to make these updates and have a more manual process. So I'd recommend every brand does

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 15:41

Mhm.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 15:42

The second thing is in the In the marketing calendar, there's there are almost always events that you could enable as SMS or email collection events. So maybe it's the Black Friday sale. Maybe it's the, know birthday of the brand or the anniversary of the brand or something like that, where you can send people a discount code and generate that via direct messages when people are engaging with the content. any content moment on the calendar, you can layer this over. If there's a post, if there's a caption and a call to action and something compelling you can offer you can, you can make this work. And then the third and probably like the biggest biggest opt in generator overall for the high tech platforms are giveaways or sweepstakes that are built with this direct messaging method in mind. So maybe, you know, there's two collection drops a year. few weeks before the collection is releasing, we're going to give you know, gift certificate to three people that you know, comment on this post and describe how they found the brand and what their favorite all time piece from the brand was, turn it into sort of a gamified giveaway and and collect a bunch of opt ins that way where one of the steps to opting in is SMS or email signup. So it doesn't have to be this kind of like fast drop sequence. If you have a product that people want to buy, that is going to be available in the future, you can kind of hype it up

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 17:05

yeah, cause we do like, for instance, I mean, I recommend all my brands when they're going to run a sale that you do like maybe five days before you run ads to get people to sign up to hear about the sale. Same thing where you do the same thing with promos, but I hadn't thought about ways to do it via social and the way you do it, like with no friction, it sounds really awesome as well.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 17:25

One of the new tools that we've enabled on the platform is the ability to message people that are tagging their friends in ads or that are commenting on ads. So everything I previously described was kind of organic focused. Now you can also send one time direct messages to anyone that is commenting on an ad to invite them to Maybe it's your giveaway. Maybe it's, hey, did you know we're dropping a new collection on December 5th? What's your email address? We'll let you be one of the first to know. And so present an offer that way so that you have your organic strategy, you have your ad strategy, and then you have this kind of bridge in between that's also funneling people into your text or email channels.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 18:06

awesome, yeah, so he if you create some ads for Which are designed to generate lots of comments, or you could use the the optimization like goal of like engagement, and then you'd kind of get lots of engagement around it. And then it like feels really organic that they're kind of like being DMed by the brand because they don't realize that that's automated. So that's very cool.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 18:26

too. Like one of my favorite all time campaigns that a customer has run, there's a brand called Baskin lather. It's a New York based hair care brand. when they first onboarded, we saw them, you know, running campaigns like, wow, this, there's one campaign campaign in here. That's crushing it. Let's go see what that's all about. And I was expecting it to be a giveaway or a drop or something like that I just described. And instead it was It was a three by three grid of different hairstyles. It was like you know, braids, short hair, whatever. And there again, they're a haircare brand and it said something to this extent of like, which, which hairstyle are you rocking? If you could only rock one the rest of your life. people are commenting their chosen hairstyle and like, you know, it's kind of like an identity thing slash, you know, tribe thing. So like you know, people are going to raise their hand for what they feel passionate about. And because they're commenting, the post is getting out there. not transactional, but then the brand has the ability to reach out to all those people that are commenting and say like, Hey, you know, great choice. you know, here's five bucks off your next purchase on us. Great comment or whatever. And So

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 19:40

Amazing.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 19:41

that could easily be an ad as well.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 19:43

Yeah. Super cool. Have you ever had people use it like in, like in store at events, like in retail to like, I could imagine you could have a poster up saying DM us for like a surprise and then like people DM and then it automatically does whatever it does when it DMs.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 20:01

it's not a primary use case. The, we, we, we had a few events. They were like kind of smaller smaller things. The one that, the one that's probably more exciting is there's a, Platform for us based retail that's popular with CPG and specifically called AISLE, are you familiar with them? A I

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 20:23

No.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 20:23

E. So they're just kind of, I'm just using them as an example here of how you can bridge this stuff into retail. solution is for in store. I'm not sure if they would describe it this way, but at least one part of what they do is in store rebates for product purchases. So

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 20:40

Oh yeah.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 20:41

like, hey, get a free can of you know, Swoon product, you know, here in the U. S. that I don't know if it's global or not, but it's a, it's a beverage. Get a free can at your local Whole Foods. will Venmo you five bucks back to cover the purchase. If you go, if you go try it out, it's on us. And so we had a brand that was using high tide direct message automations to invite people for a free sample, where when they joined the text list, they then got that you know, the instructions for how to get the rebate, and then they distributed a whole bunch of product based on that flow. So that's like one exciting,

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 21:23

Hmm. Hmm.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 21:24

Another that we're working on right now is a a brand that has a, free, it's an apparel brand. They have a product kind of like gift with purchase product, and they're using, social to their, physical retail experience by getting people's phone numbers who are in the area and then sending them the offer and then driving foot traffic that way. So So it's, it's kind of on the outside of what we do, but it's a future expansion slash like exciting skunkworks type, cases.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 21:57

Yeah, yeah, I like it. I just think the whole thing is about connecting, like moving people from one place they follow you or discover you to another place so that you've got like, it's like going on more dates, basically. Yeah,

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 22:13

We're literally getting someone's phone number, like just being able

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 22:16

yeah, true. We're sliding into their DMs. Hmm.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 22:24

brand. Like when I say a brand, I mean like your average brand. Invariably when we launch, because we can see this data, you, one of the things that we were worried about when we first were working on this project was like, the people that are going to comment on the post and raise their hand for the drop, they're probably the people that are already signed up for the text list. Right. And I'm like, all right, let's try it anyway. But it turned out that an average campaign for us across the board has something like 60 percent met new. people that are following and engaging are not the same people that are already in, you know, there, there's overlap, but they're not necessarily the same people that are already on your list. So getting their numbers really important.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 23:05

Yeah. Well, if they're not on your list, that means I probably haven't bought from you before. So you need something to nudge them over the line.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 23:11

That is true, but there's also huge numbers of customers that have in the U S they have not checked opt in

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 23:21

Right.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 23:22

in is not, you know The, where the opt in isn't by default on. So there's tons of people that are also like on the email list already purchased many times, but they just have not given marketing consent for the text and SMS channel yet. So that's a cool moment too.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 23:36

Cool. Awesome. It was great to have you on. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience? Let us know where we can follow and find you.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 23:44

Yes our website is, is go high tide. com H I T I D E so go H I T I D E. com and I'm on Twitter, Twitter, my, or X, I guess now my handle is well, you can search me, Jesse Clemens. There's only one of me. So J E S S E C L E M M E N S. And I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn. So I'd love to chat.

squadcaster-958h_1_11-12-2024_084303 24:09

Awesome. The first ever Jesse on the show apart from me, of course.

jesse-from-hitide_1_11-11-2024_144303 24:13

Amazing. Amazing. There's definitely some name synergy here.

24:18

Thanks so much for joining us here on the e commerce impact podcast. If I can ask you one favor, can you please make sure you subscribe? And if you can leave us a review, it helps us have a much bigger impact with what we're trying to do here at the e commerce impact podcast. Now, if you're ready to take your e com store to the next level, then go to www. ecommerceimpactpodcast. com and click on the button to book a strategy call with me and my team. We offer a free order of your advertising and a custom growth plan. So you really have nothing to lose by getting in touch and jumping on a call with us. See you soon and watch out for the next episode in two weeks time.