Underrated Shopify Apps and Marketing Strategies with Paul Drecksler of Shopifreaks

In today's episode we interview Paul Drecksler, founder of Shopifreaks, the internet’s #1 rated e-commerce newsletter and talk about:

• the biggest opportunities for Shopify businesses today, that didn’t exist a couple years ago
• most exciting Shopify apps 
• underrated marketing strategies most Shopify brands should be doing, but aren't?
• what the future of e-commerce looks like in 5 years
• advice for new Shopify startups just getting going
  
  

Products mentioned in this episode include:

• Guayasa tea
• Design Packs
• Order Editing app
• Redo
• ASOS
• Depop
• Poshmark
• Throne
• Firework 

Transcript

Dan (00:02)
All right, welcome to the Shopify happy hour where every episode you'll hear from Shopify founders, operators and experts on growth marketing strategies, lessons learned from the trenches and other nuggets of e -commerce wisdom shared over a different drink each episode. Today, I'd like to welcome Paul Drecksler, creator of Shopifreaks .com, which is the internet's highest rated weekly roundup of the top e -commerce news stories that impact your business. If you have not checked it out yet, I highly suggest you do.

The roundups are amazing. In addition to that, he is founder of Travel is Life and principal consultant at Ideas Focused. Paul, welcome to the podcast.

Paul (00:41)
Thanks for having me. Glad to talk to you face to face and glad to be here.

Dan (00:46)
Of course, fantastic. So let's kick things off. mean, most important thing first, let's talk about what we're drinking. Yeah, tell us what we're doing today.

Paul (00:55)
I've got mine too. So what I sent you Dan is a drink called Guayusa I first discovered this about five years ago when I came to a town called Tena, Ecuador. Ended up living there for many years. Didn't know at the time that we were going to, you know, create a home out of this town. But it is the entrance way to the Amazon jungle.

And so every restaurant in Tena serves this drink called Guayusa. It's a special tea, a black tea that's only grown in this region of the world. It's delicious. It's super highly caffeinated, more than coffee, I believe, if I'm not mistaken. But every restaurant in the jungle that you go to has a pitcher on the table. It just comes with your meal. And they...

take it very seriously too. So I remember at one point on a radio show they were like, so you've been in Tena for six months, who makes the best wayusa? And they had just given me their special blend of wayusa and I was like, what am I supposed to say? was like, everybody makes a good wayusa. Well, flash forward, you know, several years later, my wife and I bought land in the jungle. We're reforesting a good portion of it and we're planting and growing our own wayusa. So what you are drinking is not our homegrown wayusa.

But right before I left a couple months ago was the first time I was able to produce some tea leaves from our own tree And when I get back, I'm sure we'll have a ton of it though. What do you think about it?

Dan (02:18)
That is amazing. So I actually haven't tasted it yet. I just pour water in about three to five minutes ago. And according to the package says two to five minutes. So I'm super excited. Also excited because, you know, I've seen the name before, but I didn't know how to pronounce it. So Guayusa, that's the correct term. So it's kind of a soft G and then you, or is it just a Y at the beginning?

Paul (02:23)
Perfect.

Guayusa, pretty much, yeah, Guayusa It's a ceremonial tea, also. So if you go to some of the indigenous communities in the Amazon, in the mornings, they'll start with a ceremony where they drink the Guayusa hot, they breathe it in, but it basically gives them energy for the day. It's funny how we could be separated by continents and generations, but everybody likes to start their day with caffeine no matter where they're coming from.

Dan (02:39)
Guayusa awesome? Awesome, yep.

That's fantastic. I'm about to drink and I've got my, I'll bring it up here, my mug with Lionel Richie saying hello is a tea you're looking for. So thought it was going to be appropriate for the day.

Paul (03:15)
Very nice. Yeah, I recommend anyone who hasn't I didn't realize it was sold so easily in the USA It's really blown up some celebrities have brought attention to it in the past few years And so I bought yours on Amazon because I'm in Ecuador right now, so I couldn't ship you any directly But give it a give it a shot. It's a great great drink great coffee alternative as well

Dan (03:33)
So I just have it. So first of all, thank you for shipping it to me. It's delicious. it's grassy, slightly herbal, but also sweeter than expected. So what's nice is, you know, I drink a lot of green tea and different varieties of green tea. This tastes more, yeah, a little sweeter, a little earthier, and it's delicious.

Paul (03:45)
Hmm.

Dan (03:56)
So thank you much. Would highly recommend anybody to try this. you know, I'm a, as a fellow marketing guy, I'm always reading copy on any package or tea bag. And yeah, what's really cool is so real quick.

Paul (03:56)
Awesome.

Dan (04:12)
Summary of what they're saying. So the exotic combination of caffeine and antioxidants of pure, why use a tea will help you perform your daily activities while taking care of your health. Enjoy it whenever you want to wake up and revitalize your mind and body. And on the box it says it has twice the caffeine as green tea, which is great because sometimes I drink green tea, but I want more of a kick and sounds like this will do it. So fantastic.

Paul (04:34)
you're right. I focused on the flavor.

I focused on the caffeine level. I forgot about the antioxidants. So it's an extremely healthy tea. People in the jungle are healthy folks. We live like during COVID. We were there for a long time and they drink a lot of Guayusa, obviously. And I forgot the name of an alcohol, but every day they would take a shot of this alcohol that had antioxidant properties as well.

Dan (04:57)
Yeah, this is delicious. Would highly recommend everybody try it. Super, super good way to start the morning or the afternoon. So thanks much. yeah, let's move on to some marketing stuff. Love the tea and it'll be a nice way for us to get this going. Let's talk shop. So let's kick things off with shop of freaks. So I discovered shop of Shopifreaks probably a few months ago. And since then, you know, I've been getting the newsletters and checking out on LinkedIn, all the summaries and...

Paul (05:05)
Yeah.

That's Talk Shop.

Dan (05:23)
It's a fantastic roundup. mean, it covers so many different different platforms and just the Shopify and e -commerce broader e -commerce ecosystem in general, how that all relates to retail. There's just lots of nuggets of wisdom in it. And it really helps to open your mind, you know, because especially with digital marketing, when you're in it all day, every day, it's either it's easy to get very focused on one platform specifically, or even just a few platforms. But the roundups are amazing because you kind of expand people's point of view and

Paul (05:47)
for sure.

Dan (05:53)
and

help to frame the Shopify ecosystem from a broader viewpoint. So how'd you get started with it? How long have you been doing it and how'd you get started with it?

Paul (06:05)
Thank you, by the way, I put a lot of time and energy into that newsletter every single week. A lot of effort goes into making it as high quality as I can. know, nothing AI generated about it at all. It's me, you know, adding some no fluff summaries, also a little bit of perspective when I have it. You when I don't, I don't try to pretend like I know things I don't. But actually what happened was, so with my travel company, things slowed significantly, as you could imagine during the pandemic at the start of it. And so a lot of the income

we're generating from travel related activities came to a halt. Simultaneously though, the agency that I've been running for the past couple of decades blew up. I've never been busier in my life since the pandemic started. Everybody who was not doing e -commerce started and then everybody who was doing e -commerce but not taking it seriously enough began taking it seriously. And so from the agency side of my business just absolutely blew up. And honestly, it's still that way today. I thought it was going to be a wave that I rode for

you know, during the pandemic, but we're four years later. I've still never been busier in my life than on the agency side. But every week I was doing all sorts of research for clients, helping them strategize. And I was like, you know what?

I should start publishing my homework effectively because a lot of the bigger newsletters that I published or that I read, they covered tech news and there was a little bit of overlap with e -commerce, but they tended to skip over the stories that really mattered to my particular business. So everything was like Elon Musk, Tesla, it's like the big headline stories in tech that grab clicks. But then from the e -commerce side, I'm like, I kind of want to know about that integration with Amazon and Pinterest.

affects me but you won't find it in any of the bigger publications and so I started shopper freaks just as a way to satisfy that niche of people like me and what it ended up turning into is it was very Shopify focused at first and then after a few months I kind of pulled the audience and I was like hey guys should I focus just on the Shopify stuff or lean into this lower section which is the broader ecommerce news and the

the answer was overwhelmingly focused on e -commerce. so anyway, that's kind of the story. It's grown organically since then. What happens is someone from one company signs up, and then a week later, I get like a surge of signups from that same company email address. They share it in their Slack channels and stuff. And so I take it as a big compliment. Folks have told me they use my newsletter as talking points in their weekly meetings with their teams. A couple professors have reached out and said, we regularly use your newsletter in our...

e -commerce classes on a college level and I'm like that's amazing. So that's kind of my background on how it got started.

Dan (08:52)
That's awesome. Well, very much appreciate you doing that. The roundups are fantastic. You've got over 10 ,000 subscribers. It's a free newsletter. So what's the best way to sign up is at shopoffreaks .com.

Paul (09:03)
shopfreaks .com, yep.

Dan (09:05)
Yeah, and that's awesome that universities are using it too because just teaching, you know, teaching.

like behavioral psychology and marketing psychology, that will never go away. But the platforms do matter. And it's, I imagine, will be very difficult for professors to stay in touch and keep their students abreast of new industry events and happenings and integrations unless they are connected to something like this. awesome. Well, thanks for sharing that background and for the newsletter and for walking through.

Paul (09:35)
I actually I guess lectured

I guess lectured at a college class one time after they read my newsletter and I gotta tell you it was one of the most fun things I've ever done in e -commerce because you've got all these college students who are working on their class projects and their own startups and just like how eager they are to learn and listen and adopt new strategies versus working with significantly older adult clients sometimes you know how it is they they're like a lot of pushback so I just I really enjoyed that I hope I can do it again one day because I really like

helping young people get started with business.

Dan (10:08)
I love it. love it. Yeah. It's funny how demographics can change mindset and you know, we've, you know, sometimes we'll, we'll connect with clients who are a bit older, who are pretty progressive. Other times, you know, younger people are a little bit less. So it's kind of crazy, but that's awesome. Now the college kids were open -minded and, and,

Paul (10:22)
That's true.

Dan (10:27)
super, super interested. So, okay, so let's talk a little bit about Shopify. So, you know, your point of view from Shopify and e -commerce in general and technology, marketing technology, you're looking at a whole lot of different things when you're looking at the ecosystem and scanning the news and trying to figure out what is most important for marketers and people in e -commerce today and also, you know, how it relates to Shopify. So what do you see as the biggest opportunities for Shopify businesses today that did not exist even

a couple years ago.

Paul (10:59)
Yeah, and you know, there's definitely overlap with the opportunities for Shopify merchants versus merchants and other platforms. It's just hard to have a conversation about e -commerce without obviously including, know, Shopify at this point. But I think to answer your question, the biggest opportunities I see is just the amount of channels and the accessibility of those channels today. Now, some of those channels have existed for a while, but just

post pandemic, how much more...

capital has been infused into some of these businesses, how much they've grown and scaled what used to be a micro channel has now become graduated to a niche channel. And so I think Shopify specific, just the fact that every SaaS developer, every platform, every acquisition channel is trying to get a piece of that Shopify goldmine right now. And so they're making their tools available first to the Shopify ecosystem. I've always been a little bit jealous on Android. I feel like every time a new cool app comes

out they're like available for Apple and I'm like what about me Android and it just and so that's that's how it is with Shopify right now if a lot of times people are like yes we have broad ambitions to work with multiple we don't want to put all our eggs in Shopify's basket but they see that the path to scalability quickly is to get started with Shopify and so for merchants what that's equating to is just a lot of like I said micro micro

marketplaces and also social media. I don't want to call TikTok a micro anymore. mean, they're huge. But in the past few years, ramping up e -commerce with TikTok has been a big opportunity. With the fashion side, you've got ASOS, Depop, Poshmark. If you've got like a gift that gravitates, that resonates with influencers, you've got Throne. So mean, the unlimited options of like...

Let's not just go after the main saturated expensive channels, Google, Meta, know, let's focus on, or even Amazon, honestly, at some point. Nothing against Amazon, but you got to pay to play on Amazon. So while you're slowly competing with everybody, there's all these micro channels. you know, that to me is the biggest thing with getting started. If I was a brand new shop, I wouldn't be like, how do I compete on Meta? I'd be like, where is my audience already? And the benefit of Shopify is they probably integrate with it.

Dan (13:23)
That's fantastic, it's fantastic tip. So question for you, just kind of expanding on that because yeah, we see it all the time, know, Google ads, meta ads, they can work incredibly well, but those platforms are much more saturated now than they were a year ago. Media costs continue to rise, competition increases as it's easier for anybody to start an e -commerce brand. So there's more competitive competition. So if you were going to advise, let's say a new Shopify startup.

on some of those micro platforms, how would you suggest they get started? Like which platforms should they look at? You mentioned some categories and some platforms that would apply to each of those, but what would you, like where should they start?

Paul (14:05)
I think on a discovery side, if you're like, okay, I'm going to now, know, if you're deciding on which categories to focus on, starting with looking for your product is the way to go. So if you do a Google search and I mean, if you're selling a sports memorabilia item,

Search for similar items. What's popping up? You know, that's where I would start obviously from there you get into some more logistic and technical research How much of a commission do they take do they integrate easily with with Shopify or is there like a third party? Inventory system, you know that I can integrate as the middleman good basically You you don't want to be running catalogs and every single one of these channels So you got to find out which ones work the best but that's how I would start just from a discovery side is Where are people already? What are people already finding and then?

work backwards from there and say now let me narrow down these 12 options.

Dan (15:00)
Gotcha. Fantastic. Yeah, that's great. I think, you know, for, for years, I think it was easy for people to launch ads on Meta and, or Google ads and those platforms had made it easy for e -commerce brands to spend money. But just because it's easy to launch and everybody else is doing it doesn't mean that that's necessarily the place to go to. Brands can definitely scan that scale there. but as tracking becomes more complicated, as more and more users are opting out of, you know, advertising or cookie tracking, going after platforms where

There's kind of a niche audience there already. It's definitely a smart move. So I like that a lot. Okay, another question for you. So what Shopify app or app category are you most excited about right now?

Paul (15:44)
I took some notes on this question. was like, there's some I love and there's some I hate. And so starting with the love side, I really like apps that let you personalize your store in a way that doesn't involve AI.

I don't mean like personalized to each individual customer, but personalized to your store, like to your brand. So I actually just started using one that I really like called Design Packs. That's basically instead of using a whole page builder like Shogun, any theme you have, you add this app to it and it brings you like whatever they have 200 different.

sections and blocks that you add to your existing theme. So instead of using a third party app, you're building your store right within the theme editor of Shopify. But so now it's like I'm in the theme editor, add multi -column, add test, like you have your built in theme sections. Now you can just add, now you see all these other sections that you installed. So I was using it today. I like to build off of the Dawn theme just because I'm a developer. So it's easy for me. Here's a free theme, does what I want, build. But then today I was like, I want to go code something. And I was like,

Wait, I'm just going to use this. So for a few dollars a month, I have this beautiful video background that's now easy for my client to edit and change the video through these design packs. Anyway, that's not brand new, but I think that the way people are utilizing...

these individual tweaks to make their storefronts and their templates unique to their brand, I think is a really smart thing to do. And a lot of those capabilities are somewhat newer with Shopify 2 .0 and with these new complimentary products and all that jazz. then, sorry, I can get into the hate or if you wanted to comment on that.

Dan (17:32)
Well, I was just gonna say that, you know, I think we've all been there when we have been working to build out a Shopify store and you find a theme that you love, you're like, right, this can be perfect for this client and you go to build it out and everything's great. Then you're just like, wait, doesn't do this one. We can't add this one section here. That's not native to this theme. And everything else is awesome. We want to have this one particular section. It's not there. So what you're, you know, having more building blocks within the theme environment.

Paul (17:53)
Mm

Dan (18:02)
But yeah, that's awesome, because then you can still use a theme you're comfortable with or that has most of the capabilities you're looking for and then just add on a bit without having to do lots of custom coding or use a third party that where you kind of have to start from scratch and build something fully custom. And yeah, with drag and drop it's a lot easier than doing custom coding, but to do that within the current theme you're working on would make it a lot easier. So, okay, well, you mentioned that as a category you love in a specific app. What about some that you're not so stoked about?

Paul (18:16)
for sure.

Well, two more that I love. This isn't just on the design side, but I really like some of the apps that are coming out that are taking, just improving small things about the customer journey and about the process that I know one of them, I think you follow Hamish McKay on LinkedIn. He's got the order editing app. Have you seen that one?

Dan (18:35)
Okay.

I so, yep.

Paul (18:55)
So basically you install his app, it's Shopify Plus right now at the moment, but the customer sets their order. Now they can log into their account and using his app, they can change their shipping address. They can cancel their order, switch it out for a different product. So all these things that used to involve an interaction with the brand.

Now they're bringing that kind of capabilities too. And honestly, you know, I hope, I know he's building a good brand, company right now growing quickly. I hope he gets acquired by Shopify and that they don't just, you know, copy it because when you see something so simple like that, you're like, why isn't that built into the platform? Like that's amazing. But I, so I like stuff like that. The other app I'm impressed with recently is called Redo. It's called getredo .com and they offer free return shipping protection.

So for between 99 cents and $1 .99, depending on this volume of returns your company does, your customer has the option at checkout to say, add free return shipping for 99 cents. So what happens is they're almost like an insurance policy. So if the customer goes to return, redo pays for the return instead of the customer. And the customer...

So most people, they're especially doing a $100, $200 order, probably just gonna be like, yeah, I'll pay the dollar, I don't care. But they do it in such volume that it counteracts the cost of it. So I don't know if you've seen that one, but stuff like that. I just love these simple, brilliant ideas that are really adding to customers. Because on the order editing side, you

Letting people cancel their order means you're going to get less returns because before people were just lazy about, don't want to call customer service. So they waited for it to get there. Then they issued a return. That's costly. Letting people have the return protection that also takes it. So I like these little small things that are just adding margin into each company because this margin is the difference between profitability for a lot of these DTC brands.

Dan (20:55)
And it's just these very simple pain points that we're all kind of used to as consumers or Shopify operators, marketers, whatever. There's a little touch points where we've all gotten used to it. It's like, well, of course nobody can cancel their order. just that it's not native Shopify.

but that one person went out and solved that one specific problem and it's gonna have an impact across likely thousands or tens of thousands or more stores. So yeah, love when people just find a very specific, hyper specific problem and go solve it and make it easier for everybody else. So cool. Is that your love list?

Paul (21:26)
That's my love list. Real quick, my hate list. I'm getting so tired of AI chatbots. You don't know how many companies reach out to me and say, I want to talk to you about my startup. And it's like, let me guess, it's an AI chatbot. And a lot of them are just like...

I'll get on the calls and some of my first questions are, which model are you using? Because if you go to their website, they talk about the AI as if it's some proprietary thing that they've built. And honestly, a lot of the times you're like, this is just kind of an app wrapper on ChatGPT, or this is an app wrapper on this other large language model.

And I don't as a customer. I don't like using them. I don't like chatting I hate when you ask a question to a chatbot and those stupid little dots pop up making you think that the chatbot is typing take just come on get get through this and I think it's just so many come brands are trying to focus on like I Don't want to miss out on AI So what are all these like AI layers that I could just add to my store so that I don't miss out on AI and I'm like God this is such

a waste and it's annoying and you're missing the low -hanging fruit of creating a hierarchy on your store that just makes a navigable website. So I'm a little bit of an AI hater, but I'm just a little bit overwhelmed with it recently. It's been so much.

Dan (22:46)
Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, I get that. We've used some of those on some client shops and we've seen mixed results. I think it comes down to a bit on how complicated the product set is and what questions typically have during the purchase pathway. And if there's a few objections that typically come up for a specific brand, answer those outside of the AI.

And as long as you can track the data and see what people are asking address that on the product page address that on the home page You know, maybe even dress it in any retargeting ads But yeah, we've seen mixed results with it I think there will be a big step up with it once the visuals improve once there once we're at the point where there's okay We've got a hologram who is speaking to you who are you were attracted to or there's somebody who you can relate to visually and that's the interaction you're having instead of just like a text

Paul (23:31)
Mm

Dan (23:34)
but then I think we'll see some lift with that, there's gonna be, it's gonna take some effort until time and advancement in technology until we get there.

Paul (23:42)
You who

just joined as my latest sponsor of Shopifreaks of Freaks is Firework, firework .com. And so I had actually been following them for quite some time before they approached me about sponsoring. And so one of the stories that I covered from earlier this year, I think, is their product called AVA, A -V -A. And it's exactly what you described. It's like this digital avatar that sits there and sucks up your store and has a conversation with you. And it was cool. know, again, I'm just...

Dan (23:49)
Okay.

Paul (24:09)
I'm on my computer so much I hate every second matters. So for me it's a little bit slow, but I know it's improved over the past few months too. I'm not an AI hater by any means. I use ChatGPT literally every single day. I see the value in AI and I see the value of what AI can bring with personalization to stores. So I don't want to discourage anyone from getting involved in the AI train. I'm just saying in terms of the ridiculous influx of, it's like with the amount of crypto coins that came out at one point there was...

thousands of coins in the market and now they're all gone. That's, you know, most of these AI comps, the funded ones might pivot and do something else other than a chatbot and the non -funded ones are just gonna disappear into the horizon. And we'll end up with a few solid players and some really good AI solutions, but, whew, in the meantime.

Dan (24:58)
I feel it's always nice to say good things about the AI, about any AI at the end of a conversation just for years down the road when it ends up taking over civilization. It'll be like, well, they were speaking highly of us. they will be tortured less than the others. That's why I use please and thank you every time I'm in any of chat GPT or any other AI platforms. Cool, okay, so, yep.

Paul (25:08)
Ha ha ha.

Fair enough.

That's so weird, I do that too, just out of habit of the way I type emails.

Dan (25:26)
Yeah, I have full on conversation. like, I just think that, you know, Pi .ai, know, him and I are very good friends. very polite with each other. Okay, so any other categories or unless any pop out, you know, another question I have for you is, so you're obviously working with lots of different Shopify and e -commerce businesses, sounds like at different growth stages. What do you see successful Shopify businesses doing that

unsuccessful businesses are not.

Paul (25:58)
I think this answer really applies to a lot of size brands too, not just small but mid -size as well too. It's concentrating very intently on a few select channels as opposed to trying to dabble in a lot of different channels. That's actually one of the things that I've offered for years and years. Now, the job has gotten a little bit more difficult.

Positive thing for merchants, there's so many channels. Challenge for consultants is that now the amount of channels that you could bring to clients' attention has increased significantly. But I've just seen too many companies be like, well, yeah, we have this social media manager. She does her Instagram posts. Then we're working with this company, and they're doing the Google Ads. And they're just spread so thin between all these channels, none of them which are really doing great.

and none of them that they're diving into hard enough to scale. And I know it does take sometimes some experimentation to try things before, how do know if it's a failure or not until you try? But I just think instead of spreading your limited budget across 10 different channels, see if you can really hone in on a few, one or two or three, that way you have some budget when you find that winning ad or that winning combination to scale up. That's the biggest mistake I've seen.

Dan (27:22)
Gotcha, so if you're, let's say if you're an early stage brand and you're getting started and you're testing a few different channels, what signals would you suggest they look for? What would you be looking for to help determine whether it makes sense to continue down the path, to stay hyper -focused on, let's say they're running across three different channels and.

They're three months in, three to six months in, and they want to improve performance, but they don't know if it's better to continue down the path they're on or let's say move on from one or two or three and start testing others. What signals would you be looking for in order to determine if they stay focused and just try to go deeper on those platforms or expand to others?

Paul (28:08)
I think some of the signals themselves might be pretty obvious. You've just got your normal metrics of success on whether this channel is making us money, if it's scalable, if we've tapped out in this channel or not. But I think a lesser, less frequent conversation is not just on like the KPIs of the website, like how's our conversion rate, how's our...

LTV and all that just but internally to some of these brands that I've seen and this maybe this is more common than I realize I only work with you know my stories are anecdotal with my set of clients, but I've seen just multi -million dollar companies in revenue There's like three people behind the scenes. That's it. It's insane. You know and so the the

in -house resources, the internal capacity of this already overworked team is oftentimes a bigger constraint than the abilities of the platform because with any good marketer, let's say you're TikTok, let's say you're Google Ads running promotions, let's say you're doing meta, a marketing agency by itself still needs interaction with the brand. We've got to work with your company to find

to do promotions that work with the rest of your marketing. So when everything is just like really fragmented and you've got seven different agencies running it, each one, it's not that they're bad agencies, but are they getting the attention that they need? And so that's one place I just recommend that companies look internally, is like what internal resources can we dedicate?

because maybe we just need to focus on providing the resources and the assets to a small set. And that's no indication of whether or not that agency could scale up your Google Ads or your Met Ads. Maybe they could, maybe the TikTok agency is amazing, but you're not given many video content, turning into stories to work with about your brand. So that's where I would like to start is just the internal dialogue and what can we commit to.

Dan (30:01)
Love it. Yes. A study, I think it was last week, I forget which poll or study it was, survey on digital marketers across lots of different agencies and same questions like year over year and people are overwhelmed because there's so many platforms and marketers are asked to do more with less.

Yeah, there's more competition, there's more platforms. People are getting stressed out because there's so many places to potentially grow a business. So the challenge for a lot of people is, you know, where should they focus their efforts and when do they say, hey, this platform didn't work, we should start testing others versus just continuing to go down the path. And it's a hard question, but I like that part of it.

Paul (30:40)
And letting it go too.

It's one thing to say this isn't working, but it's like, you just, you have a sunk cost at that point that you've put into it. So do you step away from it completely and you're like, well, maybe we should, we'll let it keep running for a little while. It's like, know when to pull the plug and when to not. And the other thing with the testing side of it is one small tip is just.

Let's say with Amazon, example, you're a DTC brand, you're like, hey, we're missing out on money on Amazon. It's overwhelming to think we're going to take our entire product catalog and put it on Amazon. So start with your top 10 selling products. It becomes much more manageable and affordable to get an agency to execute 10 products than it is your collection of 1200. Let each channel start paying for itself.

Dan (31:26)
Love it, love it. Yeah, well, when we're talking with clients and we're starting on new channels, often, you we want to look at all the KPIs in platform. We want to see how that's affecting overall sales and profitability. But we're also looking at, you know, this is where the art in marketing comes in a little bit. Like, what are people exactly saying in comments on the specific ads and how are they reacting to ads? And it's not just about the number, but are people like, are we really having an impact on somebody's life with the creative that we've built out for this brand?

getting in front of the right people and are they really responding well to the product set or is it just kind of a me to product where there's you know, a hundred others that they could buy anywhere and you know, the content that we're getting back from potential customers is just not very high quality. So yeah, there's always, you know, engagement stats we would suggest looking at KPIs in platform and on Shopify, but it's also like you have to get inside a customer's mind a little bit and just see what they're, you know, how they're reacting to a brand.

and a platform and then adjusting strategy based on that. So speaking of marketing strategies, what is one underrated marketing strategy that most Shopify brands should be doing, are not?

Paul (32:39)
This is the quickest answer I will give you because it is my most definitive answer. So strategic partnerships with other like -minded brands, 100%. I'm a huge proponent of affiliate marketing. That's been a big part of my business for the past decade, setting companies up with affiliate programs, helping them find the right affiliate partners. But there's always such a focus on influencers.

more so than anything else now, but also on bloggers and things like that. And I recommend that companies go to other like -minded customers, companies that already have their ideal customer and run affiliate promotions with those other companies. And the way I break it down is, say you've got this influencer, they have a hundred thousand followers. How many are in your region? How many can afford your products?

How many are in the market for your products right now? How many are actually going to see the post in the first place? Once you start slicing it, 100 ,000 becomes like 12. I'm just kidding. It becomes a very small slice. I would rather work with another brand that has a customer list of 1 ,000.

people than an influencer that has one. I know those 1 ,000 customers have put their money with their mouth, have developed a buyer -seller relationship with that merchant. Anyway, that's to be the least tapped channel, but also the highest ROI producing channel for a company in the world is just strategic partnerships. What do you think? What's your answer to that question?

Dan (34:24)
you're flipping it on me. Okay. So yeah. So I love the answer of going after partnerships because, yeah, a lot of brands are not doing that. So I, I'm a big fan of zigging when others are zagging. And if everybody's just focusing on focusing on PPC and other retention strategies, you're going to have more competition. so, you know, I'm pretty bullish on direct mail.

I think lots of brands are not testing it, but when we have tested it, it's worked very well for the right brands. So for brands that have a wide product set or have a high repeat purchase rate for a narrow product set, direct mail is fantastic because, you know, the way I look at it is, you know, how many emails are we getting a day? No matter what your job is, you're getting from dozens to multiple hundreds of emails per day that we're just filtering out.

Paul (34:51)
Interesting.

Dan (35:20)
I get home, even if there is, you know, junk mail and bills, maybe I get seven pieces of mail. And when I do see a piece of direct mail that is beautifully designed, that's high quality, I might not buy from it, but I'm certainly reading it, consuming the content. And yeah, the marketing nerd in me is kind of studying it. But even outside of that, it does have an impact. It is an important touch point. It does reinforce a brand message. It certainly stands out.

Paul (35:42)
and

Dan (35:50)
much more than nearly any digital marketing that I am exposed to. So yeah, that's an area that I'm bullish on. I think for the right brands, certainly worth an investment.

Paul (36:04)
I've read a little bit about it. I'm always on the digital side, so I've never tapped into it that much before, or really at all. You know what would be really interesting is combine those two worlds that we just talked about, a co -marketing strategic partnership with companies, offsetting the cost of this physical direct mail campaign, and also spreading the love amongst, let's say, three or four brands, spreading love between customers and offsetting the cost for one another.

Dan (36:32)
For sure, I love it doing some type of, let's say, lookbook for men's fashion. You get five men's fashion brand, all the go -in on a direct mail piece. Or where you're talking about where direct mail are from one brand, but then they've got an affiliate promotion for another, for a partner brand. Yeah, well, those can be awesome.

Paul (36:40)
Brilliant, love that, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, in fact your

that your lookbook idea is so brilliant we should just quit this podcast right now and start that out this afternoon

Dan (36:53)
Look at this, let's go do

it. Let's go do it. We'll call it the why you still look book. By the way, we're about, I don't know, 30 minutes or so in 35 minutes. The caffeine and focus is legit. Like I'm feeling a nice little, you know, so it's 4pm Eastern time and I usually wake up pretty early in the morning. So this time of day, like I'm just, I'm powering through, but I'm usually not highly focused, but this stuff is kicking in. So yeah, tastes good. It's definitely.

I'm definitely picking up some honey notes on the end of it, which is really cool. But the focus is real. So great recommendation. All right, so a couple other questions. So five years from now, what do you see e -commerce looking like and how does Shopify fit within that ecosystem?

Paul (37:26)
Hmm.

Nice.

Man, I'm a big fan of Shopify. I've been using them for a long, long time. And on the investment side of it, I'm so bad with time. So I know this is going back seven years, 10 years. Shopify used to hover around $99 for the stock price. And this was, again, about a decade ago, maybe we'll call it. And I remember it was around $123. And Jim Kramer gets on TV.

And it's just like Shopify is a scam all the scammers are using it to run their scam stores and he just spit so much nonsense about Shopify and Stop just I'll say tanks it goes from you know, 123 to like 98 and I'm like this guy's an idiot. I I Work with shop by every day. I know that bought a whole bunch. So I can't think Jim Kramer enough, you know for that thing but

Dan (38:38)
Yeah.

Paul (38:40)
Ever since then, it's just like what I respect so much about Shopify is that they're making the right investments so that they can get a piece of a much larger pie. mean, it's true they messed up along the way and they bought the deliver and all that jazz, but I, we're talking about letting go of things that don't work. I mean, how many companies will do that a year later? But that work sell.

right off the loss. So I see Shopify just being a huge part of the commerce ecosystem, not directly just through their platform, but through all the investment plays. At this point, Shopify is an ETF. And when you're investing in Shopify, you're investing in a much larger community. Some of the ecosystem, like some of the projects that they invest in, have their hands in BigCommerce and Amazon and all these other platforms as well that Shopify is now getting a piece.

But what's coming though in five years, I'm a little bit, obviously I do think e -commerce is gonna grow, that's inevitable. But I see it following a similar path of what social media did, which is social media used to be unique. Facebook did this, Twitter did this.

TikTok was short form videos, YouTube was long form videos, and then slowly but surely, you know, Facebook adds reels and then Instagram adds reels and then TikTok adds video or photos and then, and next thing you know, you've got just like all these major platforms that function identical to one another. And it's annoying because I want a unique platform that does one thing. And so what I see, unfortunately, happening with e -commerce is following a similar trend.

And two quick examples, know, Amazon is becoming more DTC -like. They're putting out more abilities for brands to have their own dedicated storefronts. They now want brands to treat their Amazon storefront as their DTC site. On the flip side of the coin, you have Shopify becoming more market -like, marketplace -like, no matter what they say. That's what's happening with their shop app.

Also Shopify is getting more into the acquisition side of it So now they're offering audiences and segments to help leverage the network that they have and I'm not hating on them for it It's inevitable, you know, but Walmart's blowing up. So what I see happening is just All these e -commerce one last example Amazon is now becoming a Temu clone. They're like, alright Well, we'll just make our own internal Temu Temu on the opposite side of the coin is is launching warehouses in the US and so all these

companies are just becoming the same. And Jeff Bezos said, I'm gonna slaughter his quote, two decades ago, he was like, one day in the future, there's going to be four or five Goliath sized Amazons. And people are ultimately gonna pledge their allegiance to one of these shopping ecosystems. He's like, we're paving the way right now, but it's not, you we're not gonna be the.

We're going be a market leader, but we're not going to be the only market leader in the future. And I see that taking shape more now than in the previous couple of decades. So I think in five years, we're going to see more consolidation and more lookalike marketplaces. And eventually, you're just going to be like, I have my Walmart Plus subscription. I'm just going to shop there because everything I need is on all of these things.

Dan (42:10)
Makes sense, once they have the customer, they lean into it and then sort of everybody can reap the reward, but then as you lose out on competition, it'll be interesting. Yeah, we'll see where things go in five years. It's gonna be interesting for sure. Okay, so we're gonna move on to speed around in a minute, but before we do, last question, and this is not Shopify related, so this is anything in life. What is one thing you do in life that you do better than most people just naturally, and how do you do it?

Paul (42:39)
You know

things. I like to travel and I like to start businesses.

That's it, or projects nonetheless. And so the last 20 years of my adult life has just been dedicated to both those things. I work to travel and I start things. And so what do I do maybe better than other people? I move incredibly quick and I'm willing to fail on a project. I have zero embarrassment about starting something and then not having it work out and then starting something else. I work with a lot of folks that are just like,

on that path to perfection and I'm like stop it just do it just do it

Dan (43:29)
Have you always been like that or have you had to work at it?

Paul (43:34)
I guess as an adult, yeah. Once I started, I started my first company in college. I didn't know how to start a company. I didn't know how to write software. I didn't know how to advertise on Google. Turns out was the second year Google AdWords ever existed. I didn't know that at the time. I was 19. But yeah, I just started and the rest is history.

Dan (43:54)
Awesome, awesome, love it. Okay, now we're gonna move on to speed round. Each answer, just got a few questions, 30 seconds or less, and we'll kick it off. What is one of your most recommended books?

Paul (43:59)
Okay.

Books.

so many books they all all crash and murmur. One that I read recently that I really enjoyed, I hope I get the title right, is the Sell Everywhere. Do know which one I'm talking about?

Dan (44:31)
I'm not sure who's the...

Paul (44:32)
It's relatively...

I'm sorry, I'm gonna slaughter this one. It was a newer book that just came out, but it was all about the different marketplaces, Amazon... I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the name right now, but that's a great one. I read a lot of psychology books and I read a lot of marketing books too. That's pretty much what I gravitate towards.

Dan (44:55)
it for the for the book you're referencing if it's if it's not sell everywhere we'll put in the show notes afterwards so we'll fight we'll find out the name of it but what did you what did you like about

Paul (45:06)
I like learning about history of e -commerce instead of just strategy. I get over having someone else tell me what to do. I want to read about news and stories and then come up with my own ideas. And honestly, that's why I think...

I get so much value out of doing Shopifreaks Freaks each week. I come up with ideas for my businesses and my clients, reading, putting news together. So I really like stories and the timeliness of newer books. What are they like? Like newer books that document a recent event. I like those kind of books.

Dan (45:37)
Gotcha. Awesome. Okay. Next question for the speed round. What is, and I kind of violated the speed round by asking a follow up, but that's all right. We'll go to the next one. What's an under the radar product or, what's an under the radar product or brand you've used and like, but most people don't know about.

Paul (45:46)
Sorry, I just couldn't remember the name.

The most I don't shop a lot I've spent the last 20 years living remotely and having one bag for my gear and one bag full of clothes I have seven of these exact blue t -shirts and so as involved as I am in e -commerce. I really don't shop very much at all So I was thinking more on the the tool side of it for my business Everybody knows these three things I'm gonna say but this is what I live and breathe Google Calendar Excel notepad.

the three tools I use more than any other tool every day.

Dan (46:27)
Perfect.

Love it, those are effective. Name one tip you use to stay motivated.

Paul (46:40)
As I became an adult, you know, and had a baby last year, obviously the time you have for friends and networking becomes less, it just comes to the territory. And so I call on the phone my friends every year for their birthday for the last 39, you know, 30 something years or whatever. And I try to...

reach out to people, not on a professional level, sometimes sass, but just pick up the phone and call people. And those having conversations and learning about what someone's doing face to face or on the phone really just keeps me excited and keeps me motivated. really, working remotely especially, personally I enjoy talking to people instead of just doing emails all day.

Dan (47:26)
Awesome, Well, where can people connect with you to learn more?

Paul (47:31)
Shopifreaks .com will be the easiest. As soon as you sign up, you just get an email from me that says, hit reply and introduce yourself. And so I read every single email that comes through. Everyone's always surprised when I write back, but I really do read every single one of them. But then you'll have all my contact information. Otherwise, just pauldrecksler .com, D -R -E -C -K -S -L -E -R. I'm an open book. You can find me pretty easy online.

Dan (47:55)
Fantastic. All right, so to wrap it up, Paul, thank you so much for giving back to the e -commerce community, compiling an awesome roundup of industry happenings, and for joining us on the Shopify Happy Hour, and for the tea recommendation. Guayusa is amazing. Super cool, super cool drink. And thanks for joining us, Paul.

Paul (48:15)
Thank you for having me.