A Conversation With Andy Seeley of Creatively Disruptive

Andy Seeley's agency "Creatively Disruptive" connects businesses to their customers and markets. Andy sat down to share his insights about digital marketing, agency life and the challenges of business online. He's refreshingly candid about the predictability of marketing: "I can give you a hundred percent money back guarantee that we'll get your results outside of the fact that YOU are part of the equation." Andy's insights into email and ecommerce are informed and on-point — if you play in that space, this is a great episode!

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: This is Dr. Matthew Dunn hosted the future of email marketing. My guest today, beaming in from Arizona is Andy Seeley, CEO of Creatively Disruptive. Welcome. Thank you. Tell people a bit about. Oh, it's a fun place to start. Yeah.

[00:00:25] Andy Seeley: So Creatively Disruptive, we're a team. We've got a team of about 15.

[00:00:32] Um, we specialize in funnel building basically, using Google, Facebook, email marketing, like the holy Trinity, so to speak. Um, and then,with conversion rate optimization. So making sure that your website actually converts the traffic that gets developed by those three things that work together. Um, we're really good at building that machine.

[00:00:55] Um, and we generate either e-comm sales, like through you. If you've got an e-comm site that, that generate sales directly all through small business or, or business lead generation where you want to get inquiries to do business with you. And that's basically what we do. We we're pretty good. We have clients from.

[00:01:11] Australia and New Zealand where I'm from New Zealand all the way through the United States, Canada and the UK English speaking world is where we do our business. Majority is in the United States. Yeah.

[00:01:24] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And you, you mentioned e-comm e-comm is a big sector. Cause I think I saw that on the,unaccompanied.

[00:01:29] Andy Seeley: Yep. We do a lot of e-comm work. I would say from a standpoint of numbers of clients to, you know, we, you know, that's,like we have like the, say a hundred clients. We have probably, 25% of the Murray com, but it's a big part of the business because it's. A lot of work, right. Um, we have a lot of smaller clients as well that,don't take as much work, but they, from a numbers standpoint, they, they make up the numbers.

[00:01:58] But I would say the majority of our revenue probably is from econ. Um, mainly because we can, we take, we are performance driven, so we have a retainer. But if you worked with us, we take a portion of, of, of the sales, if it gets over a certain number. So yeah, we, we, we like to have skin in the game. No,

[00:02:17] Matthew Dunn: it was just going to say nice to, nice to see an agency with,with skin in the game.

[00:02:22] Cause,it makes everybody's behavior sort of motives line up. Right. And

[00:02:28] Andy Seeley: that's a, Yeah. I like to say that digital marketing has got to the point. If you've got a good product and a good service, it's a mathematical equation. It's not like, well, let's see if this works. Or man, I wish I could have some magical marketing person sprinkle some fairy dust, then maybe something will happen.

[00:02:48] That is actually a very complicated math equation that you can go through. And if you've as long as the service and the product is wanted, but you will get results if you do it. Correct. Nice.

[00:03:01] Matthew Dunn: Well, that's a, that's a good, that's a good assurance right there. And you wouldn't be saying it if you hadn't lived it.

[00:03:06] Um, what are, what are, what are the, what are the challenges in doing what you do?

[00:03:13] Andy Seeley: Um, I think, I mean, this is going to sound really bad, but who cares? So I guess, I always say. We could guarantee results with people. I can give you a hundred percent guarantee, Matthew, on your sunglasses e-comm site or whatever.

[00:03:30] If you had one, I can give you a hundred percent money back guarantee that we'll get your results outside of the fact that you're a part of the equation. So you make decisions as a business owner, you do different things that we don't have control over. We don't control you as a part. You are.

[00:03:48] Uncontrolled part of the equation that I can't guarantee. Um, and I think most good agencies probably would feel the same way. And that's oftentimes why we can't. Right. And, and I, and I'm not saying that you, you know, you're a crazy nut job. We might do some crazy nut job things. It might be something. You run out of stock, right?

[00:04:09] I'm not buying your sock, but you run out of it and we can't sell it. And then Craig starts cratering. Cause you know, with, with the algorithm, it's a thing that once it stops going, you want it to keep going. And it's about, it's a job of just keeping. Keeping the thing rolling. And the more you keep it rolling, the easier it is.

[00:04:28] If you keep stopping it and then starting it and then stopping it, it slows down its growth and it makes things a little bit more difficult. So, you know, and it might be out of your control. One of our clients right now is having major supply issues because they get the products from Mexico. Yeah, and we all know we all, we've all heard of the issues with the supply chain, just getting it across the Pacific and even getting it from Mexico is difficult because the Mexican manufacturer get some pots from China.

[00:04:57] Right. And get some parts from different parts of the world. And that's not necessarily because the whoops are a bad class. That's just, that's out of our control, right? As a ma as your marketing company, we couldn't, we don't control that. So if we could control every part of it, I feel that most good marketing companies could probably guarantee this services.

[00:05:17] Um, and we give, come about as close as that you can with that performance element, right. We like, Hey, yeah, we bet on you. You know, we think you're a really good company that can do really, really well. We'll take a small retainer to just make sure that you're engaged with us, but then. If we knock it out of the pot for you, we're going to, we're going to be rewarded as you

[00:05:37] Matthew Dunn: are.

[00:05:37] Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that, that,that's a, that's a refreshing approach. And as I said, alignment and motives, a lot of Shopify. Platform customers, I would think in the e-com space,

[00:05:49] Andy Seeley: commerce and Shopify, we like Shopify. Um, Shopify has a lot of flexibility that works well with a lot of the platforms I'm talking about.

[00:06:00] Email marketing Clavio works well with Shopify. Woo commerce as well, but also works well with, with Facebook and so forth. So integration is really important thing. Listen to Gracian that, that is that doesn't break down at one o'clock in the morning when you have some crazy, you know, black Friday deal running, you want everything to work well together.

[00:06:24] And, your Shopify seems to be one of the most, you know, integrated. Platforms for econ.

[00:06:34] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. It's quite a, quite a conference as well, but it's quite a, it's been quite a success story watching Shopify

[00:06:41] Andy Seeley: buy the stock. If you bought their stock a few years ago, you'd be doing quite well today.

[00:06:46] Matthew Dunn: That's true.

[00:06:48] They're they? They they're, they're a nice balancing force for the, you know, many, many, many small businesses. Sitting on top of their tech platform versus,you know,Goliath, Amazon being the obvious one,running their own systems. So it's,

[00:07:07] Andy Seeley: I do think even though Amazon is the hundred pound girl or specie in the United States with such.

[00:07:15] I mean, I've got, you know, and I, I have this love, hate relationship with,Amazon as a marketer. I hate them as a consumer. I love them. I buy lots of stuff from them. I don't not buy from them because I'm a marketer that hates them. I still buy stuff from them. Right. Um, but the reality is I, even though they're a thousand pound gorilla, that's out there.

[00:07:37] I think if you've got a unique, cool product there, hasn't been a bit of time to be able to very easily compete. Product, I'm put it on there and market it yourself, have control over the whole thing. You have those customers that are coming to you, be your customers, not Amazon customers, because that is obviously and talking about email marketing, which I know is you think it's very hard to get involved in the email marketing game with an Amazon.

[00:08:05] Yeah, you don't own the platform and you don't own the, the experience you don't own. Now the, the Amazon experience is good, but it's a little bit like if you bought your sunglasses, we'll say that you've got that sunglass company again. If you're a supplier of Walmart, those are Walmart's customers.

[00:08:22] They're not. Yeah, you've got one customer and that is Walmart. Walmart decides they, don't not going to be happy with you and they don't want to work with you anymore. You're out of business. That's the same with Amazon. That's the way Amazon is. Yeah, but if you build, if you've got these really cool sunglasses that are very unique in the way they've made and whatever it is, there's something special about them.

[00:08:41] Hold yarn website that allows you to develop your email lists that allows you to be able to do your own marketing and have control of your own space. And no one can take you out. Yeah,

[00:08:50] Matthew Dunn: yeah, yeah. I do think it is. And I, and I, I agree with you and, and, and the, the data foothold you're keeping for yourself as well in the equation.

[00:09:03] You suggest it as opposed to saying we're doing. Sorry, I'm not picking on Amazon. I'm a global customer as well, but you know, if they, if they say, if they see, you know, pink, triangular, sunglasses selling like crazy next year, they're going to sell them themselves. Oh yeah. So you, you just handed a market research for.

[00:09:22] Right.

[00:09:23] Andy Seeley: And that happens all the time. I've seen that, like, if you have a product that they see is booming. Yeah. Even though it's your product that you're selling to them on their platform and now making 40% on it. Yeah. If it's doing well enough, They're going to go to their own manufacturers and make the sales and keep 60% of it, 70% of it and puts you out of business.

[00:09:43] And you're being exactly with Amazon. But I mean, I actually think the reason why most people need to be doing their own email marketing and make need to be doing with their own website platform and their own sales portal with e-commerce is to have control over the customer. Right? Because most times you don't have as much control if any control, if it's a sale on.

[00:10:05] Well, I want, I like to know that I'm getting sales from these areas. I like to know that,that, you know, maybe most of my sales are coming from Florida. Right. That kind of data is interesting. Right. I mean, if I'm spending, if I'm getting loads of clients, I'm doing nationwide advertising and it just seems to be Florida is where everybody's purchasing my product and I'm getting no sales in Washington.

[00:10:28] Right. With Facebook and Google, I can pinpoint Florida right now, unless you've got billions of dollars of advertising span. That's kind of information. That's really good because you know, you can't advertise the 320 million Americans. I want I'd much rather niche down a little bit, at least in location and actually have my.

[00:10:48] Advertising dollar be a little bit more powerful and a little bit more of a small space. Um, and then you saw Kelly thing, the email and the beauty of email, obviously, you know, as you know is, you know, it's, it's,it's the whole platform. You're not going to have like Facebook, you know, you're talking about big conglomerates that can cause us problems as business owners, Facebook, tomorrow might shut your account down.

[00:11:09] You can't advertise anymore. Google could do the same thing for whatever reason. Yeah. Sometimes I've seen that even because your, your personal account, right. And this might get a little political saying this, but your personal account might be saying stuff that Facebook doesn't like, and because it's attached to you or.

[00:11:28] Business account. Yeah. That actually duties the water. And then suddenly you're, you're, you're getting red flagged a little bit more and maybe things come up, you know, and you know, that kind of stuff doesn't happen in the email marketing space, as long as you're not, as long as you're behind, you know, behaving within the spam rules and, and making sure that, you know, the people on your list, the people that want to be there want to hear from you as long as you're doing.

[00:11:51] Pretty much can do whatever you need to do.

[00:11:54] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, and, and as you, as you've implied accurately ownership of that permission relationship in that channel is between you and in those, those prospects of those customers, you not paying someone else as a gatekeeper in the middle. And we, and

[00:12:12] Andy Seeley: we almost successful clients.

[00:12:14] And when I say most successful at highest ad spin clients, because no one spends a lot of ad spend. If they're not successful, you, we have a couple of clients that are spending 170,000 a month, right on ad spend. Um, 30 to 40% of their revenue is coming from. Well right now the 60%, but it isn't coming from email.

[00:12:36] Sometimes it's not even as, it's definitely not as profitable because they're spending a lot of money on Google and Facebook and these platforms to be there. But that that 60% is also building up your email because all of that 60% is fill this feeding, that email list. And that email list is tremendously profitable because outside of paying a platform for a number of emails on the platform, which, you know, depending on the platform can be.

[00:13:02] Cheap or expensive, but it's definitely not the same cost as a hundred and hundred thousand ad spend on Facebook. Well,

[00:13:09] Matthew Dunn: it's not, it's not it's it lists variable message. If it's message variable, it's pretty small. Right. I want to send twice a week. Doesn't necessarily mean your costs when. Through the roof, because the cost

[00:13:23] Andy Seeley: usually is based on how many subscribers you have, right?

[00:13:27] So if you have a hundred thousand to 10,000, you're probably spending more on the platform, but to reach a hundred thousand people on Facebook will probably be. More than the reach, a hundred thousand people of that kind of level. Like somebody who's already engaged really loves. You already wants to do business with you reach a hundred thousand a day, month on email.

[00:13:45] That the difference in cost to you as a marketer is

[00:13:50] Matthew Dunn: night, night, and day, night and day. And. The message from you is from you, you're in control of the design, the context of it's read all that stuff, right. It's not

[00:14:01] Andy Seeley: when it's sand when it arrives when they get it. Yeah,

[00:14:04] Matthew Dunn: yeah, yeah, no, no algorithm in the middle.

[00:14:07] So to speak. Um,

[00:14:09] Andy Seeley: platforms is so powerful now. Um, or when I say so powerful that the really well thought out. Where they give you a lot of really good data. Like what day is the best day to send these emails out? What time of the day is the best data, send these out to get them. Some of them have, you know, optimization systems where you don't actually choose when or what time you just say, I'll leave it up to the platform to send it out.

[00:14:32] Um, and it's, it's powerful. I mean, heard a lot of our clients are getting very 30, 40% open. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, because it's, it's one because these people have opted in, obviously. Sure. Um, but two, because you know, it's being sent out at the right time. It's the, the information has been, we've been able to collate to see what people like, what people don't like.

[00:14:57] And we, you know, we, we can see. Sculptural the message to make sure it's much more likely they're opened. Right. And there is that rule that I know you've probably spoken about on other of your podcasts, but, you know, it's that give 10 type one kind of role, right? So give 10 very valuable emails that are very helpful to your customers that that gives them added benefit that you're not asking for a sale, right.

[00:15:20] There might be an easy little link to buy something if they want it. But you're not saying, Hey, He has a speed. You know, you're not sending out 10, 10% off offers or, Hey, here's a special deal, blah, blah, blah. You're giving actually life improving information. And then the 11th one, you might send a, Hey 10% off this great.

[00:15:41] Yeah, we've just been talking 10 emails about walking in the rain right now. We're in a salary or a raincoat, right? Yeah,

[00:15:48] Matthew Dunn: yeah. Yeah. You, you have, well, you have the opportunity and the latitude to, to earn, add value to the relationship, earn the attention. Over time and repeat attention over time, which definitely adds up.

[00:16:01] I was, I was discussing with a guest this morning. Uh, the notion that even if someone doesn't read your message, the fact that they see your name or your company name, and they see the subject line and like over time that that has

[00:16:14] Andy Seeley: value. And that's why the, the. Your your, your, your headline where your, your subject line is really, really important.

[00:16:24] Right. And don't throw that away, make that thoughtful. Yeah. I was just talking to my PR company that contacted me with you. Right. And I'll like, you know, again, maybe I'm giving too much information, but they'll like, Andy, you know, recently you you're, you know, you always like a few days late in paying, you know, what's going on.

[00:16:45] And I'm like, I never see your emails anymore. And they're like, what do you mean you don't see my emails anymore? I'm like, I'm like, I always see yours, Jessica it's Jessica is her name Jessica. Or we see your emails, but I never see any invoice that comes through from you. So we did a little search and sure.

[00:17:02] She just changed something. And what's been coming through is her PI company's name more than press, but I associate here with Jessica. And that's in the headline. And I said, that's the problem. I'm seeing more than Prius. And I, I know that that's your company, but I'm not associating that with you. And I'm just not opening it and not looking at it.

[00:17:22] And I'm not thinking about it. Can we just change it back to that so we can get it taken care of? Um, because I like to look at these, especially here, my PR stuff, I like to look at those kinds of things, come through myself instead of just sending it off to our bookkeeper. So yeah. You know, just that in itself shows the power of making sure that your name on the email is, is, is something that is gonna, you know, make them go, oh, that's that's that?

[00:17:49] I remember it because literally she made that one change and I stopped opening her invoice.

[00:17:55] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. There you go. Which you know, not a bad message to get opened on her side. Where,where do you, where do you, where do you, if at all. Uh, text messaging fitting into the lifecycle for your clients.

[00:18:11] Andy Seeley: So I was talking to you offline about one of the biggest things I think.

[00:18:16] He has a Knicks game changer and email is still part of that process of getting someone to reach out to you or getting, getting a inquiry. Right. And, you know, what the disconnect is is that as that, that communication between actually me speaking with you as a potential customer, cause you ha. Most businesses still need that humor, some kind of human interaction, right?

[00:18:42] Unless it's e-commerce, if it's, if it's a leak, if it's like a landscape company, if it's a. You know, if it's an insurance agent, if it's a real estate agent, at some point, someone's got to talk to somebody right. When they got to have a, have a relationship and start doing business with each other. Yeah.

[00:18:56] And we're a lot of times the breakdown is between the lead being generated or the inquiry being generally. And the actual conversation happening. Um, because as humans, we are people we sleep, we eat food. We not always looking at our leads to see if they're coming in. Um, and you know, We, you know, like I might get a lead that comes in on a Sunday night.

[00:19:23] No, one's dealing with it until Monday morning, right? During that's enough time for that person that sends that inquiry to maybe call down a little bit, be a little bit less interested. So my sales person calls them on Monday morning, a little bit more likely to not answer it, but a livable, well I'll, I'll just, I can't be bothered.

[00:19:40] I'll deal with that later. If my sales person called the Memorial. Or email them the moment, what texted them, the moment that they sent the inquiry is probably a high likelihood that they will respond to that. Right? So a lot of the, the disconnect is in that, in that, in that immediacy kind of transition, but also you can get leads at a very low cost for almost any in industry.

[00:20:05] The problem is, is the quality of the leads, right? So a lot of times with marketing companies like myself, we'll build a. Yeah, intricate like friction producing things to actually weed out the people that aren't so serious about doing business with us. So I will, you know, we'll have people jump through a series of hoops, which might be asking, quit asking them questions, taking the towels, getting them to look at a calendar booking in the calendar, all of that kind of stuff.

[00:20:30] The problem is is that it might take you cost of a lead from $30 to 300. Right. Which you know, again is, is cost. Um, but usually the lead is a, maybe a slightly higher quality, but you still need to sometimes have to chase those people up manually. And that, and some of that gets lost with, with some of the stuff that started to come out and I'm starting to see, this is the next thing as there's definitely some thumb sad.

[00:20:57] Software as a service programs are starting to be developed for really taking advantage of very smart AI that is allowing lead follow-up to be done automated immediately consistently and relentless. To actually take those 300 leads where if me and you had them, we'd start calling through these leads and stop feeling, sorry for ourselves.

[00:21:19] After about 40 calls that we've made and we stopped, half-heartedly half asleep doing what we're doing. And you know, by the time we get to 300, we maybe have got 20 calls. Because, and we go, oh, this was a whole bunch of wasted leads is what a crap. This is crap. Why would I even do business with this company anymore?

[00:21:37] The reality is, is because we are humans and we do 20 calls and we don't get any answers or whatever. We stop feeling bad for ourselves. When we start getting lazy and maybe skipping some stuff or whatever, we're not calling immediately. The system, the relentlessness of, of, of AI could mean that instead of getting 20 of those 300 books, we get a hundred of those 300 books just because it's taken out the, the human softness, so to speak.

[00:22:04] Right? Yeah. Um, and we've seen that starting to be something and we're, we're actually working on some things right now. Um, to see if we can, really supercharge that. And we've got to test that and we do a lot of research and, I guess you'd call it research and development on using all the different.

[00:22:26] Processes that there are out there and building them together. Like we were talking about having Clavio, working with Shopify and Shopify, working with Facebook and stuff. That's a very simple way of connecting things, but when you start bolting on all the other stuff, it becomes a little bit of. All the pots that you're brewing your magic juice from.

[00:22:48] And that's oftentimes the difference between a really good marketing agency and one that really does doesn't do well because they don't understand that that mix of all those ingredients that can make a really good, effective, marketing plan or marketing strategy turn into revenue because ultimately all marketing is about.

[00:23:10] People hate marketing. No one wants to do marketing, no business owner. No baker decides I'm going to do, but my I'm an open, a bake, a bakery, and ah, I'm so excited to do some marketing. That's not what they think. It's I want to make money. Right. So any marketing must ultimately result in revenue and if it doesn't, then it's bad marketing.

[00:23:33] Um, so that breakdown on lead generation where that human element has to come in. So say a real estate agent gets a lead, someone interested in buying a house that real estate, instead of chase that lead, right. Got to chase them to get them. That person might, might not answer five days in a row, all sorts of different reasons.

[00:23:52] It might be that they're not interested, but there also could be that they've got a sick kid that they're on vacation, that they've got this, they've got that. Right. And if you can take out that. That human element, where we start going. Uh, maybe this person just doesn't want to do business with me. I'm going to maybe not try as hard and we can turn it into an automated system that has kind of relentless, but still feels like a human, right.

[00:24:16] Um, it's a pretty magical and, and there's a system that we just found, which,we're working through. Um, and I actually, when I reached out to them to actually say, Hey, I'm interested in maybe trawling your product with some of our clients and so forth. They responded immediately. I reached out to them on Sunday, on a Sunday night at nine 20.

[00:24:38] They responded immediately. I was like, man, these guys are good. And they sent me a nice message. It seemed like a person was talking to me. I was like, oh, Hey, how's it going? And I,we're doing good. So that you're interested in now product. I was like, yeah, I really am. I said, would you like to talk to us next week?

[00:24:53] And I said, yeah. And they said, when would you like to talk? I said, Wednesday. I said, okay. Uh, they said, yeah, Wednesday looks good. We are, we've got availability at five, six and seven. When would you be available? And I said, you know, six works best for me. And that's what I'm literally writing in. So it's all stuff that.

[00:25:08] I'm talking to somebody, they said, you know what, Andy, we've got six o'clock works for us. I'll put you in, we'll send you an email and confirm this. Right. I sent the email and confirmed it was all the air. And I was in I'm like, oh, this was really good. I really liked that experience. And I was really excited right away.

[00:25:23] Cause I just saw the ad and got involved with it. Yeah. Um, next day. Got a phone call, right. That didn't answer it, but it went to voicemail. There was a live voice, a human voice saying, Hey Andy, great. I'm looking forward to speaking to you on Wednesday. Um, talk to you then, got an email, got a text next day.

[00:25:41] And looking forward to talking to you different same voice different type of message. That like you were saying the same thing, but he didn't say the same thing. If you know what I mean? He said it. Anyway, come to find out. When I actually get to the thing, the guy who was actually thinking I was talking to, I never had spoken to it was the AI talking to me and I thought it was her.

[00:26:01] I thought it was a person. Yeah. And that's how good it's become. So there's that kind of stuff that I think will be the solution for a lot of people down the line. It's very, it's kind of expensive right now. Cost up. It's yeah, we bought the license to it. It's cost us six grand. So it's not really there for everybody right now, but I think that's where it's headed.

[00:26:21] Right. So, sorry, when you send out your email marketing campaign to try to steer up some interest from past people that have maybe worked with you before anybody that may be responding. You can actually have an AI system that stops responding to the mall, especially if you've got a large email list and you might get 20, you know, you might have a hundred thousand people that you send a message out to and get 3000 people respond.

[00:26:44] That's a lot of work to do, right? The bail, you can have one. One or two salespeople and see the 20 dot dialing and smiling you had have two or three really good closes. Yeah. Or just getting bookings booked into their calendar.

[00:26:59] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's,it's also an opportunity. The same, the same,change in technology advancement technology capabilities strikes me is quite applicable to service as well.

[00:27:16] Andy Seeley: Yeah, I see AI being, I excites me and scares me at the same time, multiple different things. One is like they could become a overlords. That's just from a human scared standpoint. Um, but you know, I love the iPad I'm seeing come through, but I also could see how AI ultimately could put me out of business.

[00:27:39] Matthew Dunn: Right? The scenario you painted is, is, is a bit daunting in that. Yeah, it's more, it's,it's more efficient. It's more, it's more efficient than not getting a response, but,sometime down the line, I, I could see, I could see prospective customers being even more reluctant to sort of pull the trigger, knowing that they're going to get reliably.

[00:28:06] Bye Robby, the robot, right? It's like, I mean, building your email address is enough of a pain in the ass right now. You know, you're going to get ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, when it was like, I don't even remember why I signed up for that, but I'm still getting messages from them. Right. It's like if it starts to be a more efficient looks human,and his relentless follow up, it's going to be, I, I, my, my reaction is I'm going to be even more aware of.

[00:28:35] Uh,

[00:28:36] Andy Seeley: from a market standpoint that I'd say about that is that the only people that would be coming through would be one who, people who are serious about

[00:28:42] Matthew Dunn: actually self filtering, filtering that's yeah. That's

[00:28:45] Andy Seeley: fair. Which is good, which is a good thing. Right? Because there's a way it's always, the frustration is having people who've filled out a whole bunch of information, then you ended up calling them and talking to them and like, I'm not interested in this.

[00:28:56] I wasn't interested in. It's like, yeah,

[00:28:59] Matthew Dunn: well, some of them was.

[00:29:04] It's not the low quality lead is a high quality person. It's their actual interest or attention or availability or whatever. That are low. Like this isn't actually, whatever widget I'm selling, isn't actually enough of a priority. It was yes. And a really

[00:29:22] Andy Seeley: good example of that. I can actually give you an example of that.

[00:29:25] We had a gymnastics gym that was still actually a client of L's that we do marketing for and they contacted us and said, you know, we're getting loads of loads of leads, but these leads are crap. No, one's interested. Yeah. We're like, that's weird. That's weird. So we actually called the. No south, we were like, we gotta, we gotta find out what's going on with these leads.

[00:29:46] And we, we called the leads and across the board, what ended up happening is they said, well, we were interested, but they didn't call us for about four days. And we just signed up to another. Well, we just signed up to soccer, but we signed up to this, so they were interested, but, and that's the thing about leads is that leads cold down, right?

[00:30:09] You want, you want to get on a lead as soon as possible. And that's where I think the AI comes comes in. I mean, the other good thing about the AI is that if I want to opt out, I can say. Um, right. So you end up getting to that. Yes. Or no thing, which is something from a sales and revenue driving is really, really critical when I say this to everybody that I work with or consult with is that, you know,what's great is yes.

[00:30:34] Right. We all want, yes, what's good. Is that. We should be trying to get that if we don't get a yes, but we're saying you can get as a, maybe you'll let me think about it or his unlimited access to my voicemail or smartphone. Cause that just eats up time, right? Yeah. So what I like about where I is going is that takes out time out of the, the smiling and dialing kind of stuff, which is hot, you know, soul destroying, so to speak for a human to do.

[00:31:02] Um, and it relentlessly pursues the person until they say. Right. All right. And then stopped and it's gone and they move on. And I think if we, as, as users, let's say let's take ourselves out of the marketing space and actually be the Pearson being pursued. If we learn to say stop, then it's okay. Right. I'm okay with being pursued by signing that I have an interest in that I can opt out all the time.

[00:31:27] I decide that

[00:31:28] Matthew Dunn: I want to, I was on a discussion with email marketers, couple of weeks ago. And we were, they were talking about,unsubscribing and preference centers, you know, like, is it, is it better to say,like I got, I got a message from someone that basically said click this link. So I know you're still reading my stuff.

[00:31:49] Yep. And some of the email marketers, like, that's not a great idea. Why? Because, you know, if you don't click the link, does that mean the boot you off the list? Because you're adding to their, you know, their numbers in their ESP possibly. But if, if they don't think there's any value to having you in there in the long run, they're probably mistaken because you were interested enough to say yes in the first place.

[00:32:13] You haven't said no yet. So leaving the door open is probably mathematically in their interest. This, this problem is going to get worse with,with Apple's, impact on open rate measures. Right? You're not gonna, you're not going to have a less, less, less and less about who's actually

[00:32:35] Andy Seeley: reading. I do think like, it'll go back.

[00:32:38] It'll put step us back from an analytics standpoint a little bit, but I think still. The ultimate is how many people stay subscribed. Right, right. Um, because I want people to answer.

[00:32:54] Matthew Dunn: That's your yes and no funding

[00:32:56] Andy Seeley: either we continue or we don't. Right. And I, and that's okay. Um, it's my job to actually get to a yes or a no.

[00:33:02] Um, and, and I'm subscribed means you're not interested and move on. That's fine. And that's why Google and Facebook, and that's why having a system that feeds itself. So you, because the email marketing is great. As long as it's being. Right. And some things building your, your, your, your fresh list right.

[00:33:23] Of new people. Um, and that means you can pursue those unsubscribes unsubscribes. What you don't want is unsubscribes because they're pissed off with you. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, you know, so making sure that you're not sending an email every other day, although we did once have a client that recently actually left us, that would send an email.

[00:33:43] And her, her followers loved her, but she was a very unique thing. They loved her, they love getting emails from her. She got very low unsubscribed. Right. But she had very rich content. Um, and, and the people that subscribed to her email list were, were fans evangelists. So to speak. That's a very different thing.

[00:34:05] If you're an E. Yeah, an insurance agent. My advice has maybe seen one email or two emails, your one email a week maybe. And just give it a little bit of business advice. Well, they

[00:34:18] Matthew Dunn: even have know some, someone who can send something every day and, and gain that loyalty for, for them. It's a content. Yeah.

[00:34:27] Channel first, you know, marketing is, is right. Yeah. I suppose. I mean, there are, there are email newsletters. I get that I read every day, but it's because of what's in the message, not because of what's on the other end of the hyperlink. Right. They have to be pretty good to get that level of tension. And it that's a lot of work that's a lot,

[00:34:49] Andy Seeley: but you know, if you're, if you're pursuing the unsubscribe by.

[00:34:55] You know, weeding out those that really should be doing a real, very interested in doing business with you and not you think that's not a bad thing. I think sometimes email marketers or email campaign managers get a little bit too concerned about having too many unsubscribes. And I think as long as you know that your content isn't annoying.

[00:35:14] Yeah. And you're not operating in an annoying way. Then the unsubscribe is actually a win. It's not a loss. It's actually not a bad thing at all. It should be seen positively.

[00:35:22] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Phillip philosophically, I agree with you. I don't see. I don't see that as predominant practice in the email marketers that I speak with,are a lot of them, a lot of them Virgin neurotically, needy, when it comes to their lists, you like keep people at any cost.

[00:35:42] A lot of

[00:35:42] Andy Seeley: the though is the email marketers only. I'm less concerned because most of our clients, when they work with us, we start supercharging their lists. Like, cause we, we never, we don't have any email or any clients. Right. So if someone works with us, They've got a Google campaign, quite sophisticated Google campaign running, which captures all of the high intent people that are searching for help.

[00:36:06] Right. That those, those people go onto the website, regardless of Iowa's 14 and everything, you know? Sure. These are really cool things, but you know, we're still, you know, I find the soul maybe 30 or 40% of the, of the population when it comes to phones. Terribly horribly. I mean, it's affected things, but it's not like you're the death nail of marketing.

[00:36:31] Um, so all those high intent, Google. People go to our website, our Facebook page picks it up. We remarket to them through our Facebook page and Instagram. So whenever you decide to look at your mum's cat or see what's happening to your, your brothers and sisters and other states or countries, you're going to start seeing that stuff that you have in a high end tin interest in you.

[00:36:53] Didn't click on it and go to a landing page or whatever, and it captures your information that then feeds you. Your email marketing and then your email marketing, you know, usually over time will ultimately do the tray. So if you've got that kind of system, then that's actually not a bad thing to have those unsubscribes, especially if you're paying on a platform that's PA that you have to pay per X number of subscribed emails, right.

[00:37:20] Because you don't want to have. 300,000 emails and be paying for 300 emails to be spoofed when only 50,000 in the marriage, she really customers of yours. The rest of them are people that have no interest in, you know, business. Right?

[00:37:34] Matthew Dunn: Right. Well, the contextual thing that makes, that makes that behavior tough.

[00:37:40] And then it should be is the relatively bad actors that make unsubscribe difficult, tend to build a habit. Of not unsubscribing, even when you should, like, I look at my inbox and I go,that again, I know, I know

[00:38:01] Andy Seeley: let's say they should end up going to spam and then Google flags them and then they get taken out.

[00:38:07] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. They, you know, but, but that's a different, you know, that's a different overload. Do I want, do I want Google in charge of what I actually read? No. Right, right, right. You know, so yeah. It's, it's a tough and, and email recipient. I've been thinking about this for a blog post email recipients are don't own up to their responsibilities very much, right?

[00:38:28] Like if I sign up for a list and I'm really never going to read it, I should get off my book. And unsubscribed. I really should. You know, do I, not always partially because it's historically more difficult than I want it to be. And it's not worth five minutes of fighting with fighting with a website, say, no, no, I really don't want to hear from you.

[00:38:48] Right. The mechanism itself, email itself does not have a feedback loop built in to do that. There's no way in email itself, purely to say drop. Right now you could build a reply bot that said, if you reply to this address, we'll drop you. But no, one's going to figure that out. I think, I

[00:39:09] Andy Seeley: think just my advice to anybody that is thinking how they should stay up their email.

[00:39:14] If they've got a system that's constantly feeding new interested parties into your email list. So actually make it easy, like click the unsubscribe button and the button comes up, says, click here to unsubscribe, click there. Then it should be as easy as that. Um, which I make don't. Are you sure unsaid face?

[00:39:33] I you sure you can give us some feedback bubble? No, don't just move. Just move on, get the new person. And like, when I back in the day, my first job in the United States was working as a sales manager for camp. Right. You know, CarMax the auto Superstore that was founded by circuit city, which no longer exists anymore.

[00:39:59] My, when I like it as part of your initiation to be a sales manager, you have to show that you can sell cars, right? And so for one month, your sales man sales Pearson. And I was like, you know what, if I'm going to be a sales manager in this store, I want all of them to know that. I, I know my shit and I'm going to be the top dog for that month.

[00:40:20] And you know, my job was in the beauty of comics is it'd be this constant flow of people coming in. And that's one of the great things about comics is always people coming through the door. So the idea is that you, you, you get somebody, you walk them through the process, you try to help them find a cough.

[00:40:35] There's no car that they want to find and they want. They don't leave. Don't leave. Don't try to keep them and do all sorts of different, you know, gymnastics to try to keep them on the lot and try to keep them involved. And Hey, if you can't find the car that they want and they want to leave, let them leave and get back on air and speak to the next person and move on.

[00:40:52] Get that. Yes or no. Yeah. The great thing about comics is that they almost had every, every single car that you could ever want. And I ended up selling like 30 cars that month. So I did really, really well. The, the, the idea there again is just help people. Yeah, give them what they want and if they don't find it or don't want it, let them leave.

[00:41:14] They really want to come back. They'll come back, but let them leave and move on to somebody who you can help. It's this constant obsession with wanting to be liked and wanting to have the biggest lists and all of this. It's not about that. It's about the effectiveness and it comes down to, from a business standpoint, always what I said before.

[00:41:36] Yeah. See the making your money or it's not, if it's not making you money, something that you're doing and the way you're operating is not

[00:41:43] Matthew Dunn: right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And if it's not, if it's not valuable to the clients, that's a root problem. You got. Revenue is all

[00:41:51] Andy Seeley: who, who ever gets excited about doing an email marketing campaign?

[00:41:55] Maybe some people do. Yeah, but really as a client, if I'm doing, if a client wants their email marketing campaign to be done by me, they're excited when it develops. Yeah, well, not really excited. That's a wonderful HTML designed email that goes out and I'm like, oh gosh, this was the best thing since I split it.

[00:42:15] And then no one buys anything. Right. I'm not happy with that.

[00:42:18] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah, because the, the, the objective, the, the, the business objective there was w Mo move the.

[00:42:26] Andy Seeley: Right. And it might not be that individual email, but it might be that flow. Right. You might have those 10 good things that warm people up and make people feel good about you.

[00:42:35] And then that one ask, right? So those are living. That's ultimately the goal of those live and emails that have gone out is to get us a payday is to generate revenue. Yeah. If it's not doing that, then re-look at how you're operating because you're not doing it. Right.

[00:42:52] Matthew Dunn: So, and I was like, it sounds like it's valuable for you to work with clients over time, like to get to know their business and really systematize some of those things.

[00:43:02] Cause it's not a, it's not an overnight fix. Yeah. So,

[00:43:06] Andy Seeley: so if I'm talking to any of your listeners that are thinking of, of going the agency, It's really important that you stick with an agency for a period of time, because some things do take a little bit of time and, and there is a, that funnel does take time to fill up, but once it gets going, it can really stop taking off.

[00:43:25] But what that means also is that means when you're choosing your agency, be very thoughtful about that process of coming on board. Don't get excited by a couple of one or three meetings where they tell you everything. They, you want to hear, look at the process of how they bring you on board. Look, to see if they're really interested in you.

[00:43:48] Right? The, the suck is if I'm gonna use like New Zealand kind of two. The suck is out there, all the ones that come in and say, I just want to know the price. Just tell me the price of how much it's going to be to work with you. I just want the price. Yeah, whatever. Just tell me the price. Those are the suckers, right?

[00:44:05] Because they're gonna end up working with an agency that doesn't really know what they're doing and the agency's just going to go. What's the price that you want? Well, I didn't want to pay $2,000 where I want, I want to pay. Okay. We'll take a thousand dollars from you to do some work for you and that person.

[00:44:19] It's taking whatever, whatever that person can afford possibly. Cause that's why they're so fixated on costs and they can't really deliver. They don't really know what they're doing. They didn't have the expertise. And the reason why the willing to take a thousand dollars is because they need it to pay their mortgage because I don't have enough clients look at agencies that are very interested in you and your business before you spend money with them.

[00:44:46] Right. That goes through processes to actually find out about who you are and what your goals are, because the reality is email marketing is not like, even though it sounds kind of complex and we've probably made it sound complex, email marketing, Google ads, Facebook ads. These are things that are somewhat complex.

[00:45:05] But if I got a smart young college grad and within six months, three, maybe three to six months, we could turn them into a very good. Female marketer. We can turn them into a very good Google market or we could turn them into our very good Facebook market. So it doesn't take. Nine years like a doctor to learn how to do Facebook marketing.

[00:45:25] It's not rocket science. Right. Right. What's important though, is knowing the client and knowing what, and I think you mentioned this knowing the client what's important to them and understanding them. Um, so when you're selecting an agency, which I think most people should, it's getting so complicated now that either you need to hire a specialist internally and really you end up needing to hire four people internally because you need a conversion rate, Optum, Optum, your optimist.

[00:45:51] That's a weird, you need a good. Specialist, you need a Facebook specialist and you need an email marketing specialist. And those often times are not the same people. It's very hard to find that same person being able to do all those things. Um, and you're probably paying them five to $10,000 a month each, right.

[00:46:08] Depending on how good they are. Um, and you know, you can hire an agency and pay a fraction of that and actually have all of those. Yeah. Um, and I think it makes sense because I think the average person just cannot be, you might be really good at Facebook ads, or you might be really good at email marketing, but you're missing parts of the puzzle.

[00:46:30] Matthew Dunn: I'm sure. Yeah. Or you or you, if, if you're jumping into that and then jumping out at you'll you'll you'll, you'll miss the rhythm. It gets the relentless

[00:46:41] Andy Seeley: machines. Again, Matthew, if you're selling sunglasses. Yeah. There's other things that you're doing the marketing, even though as an e-comm sunglass sales guy, the email that the marketing is a very big potty of business, right.

[00:46:53] Marketing is a massive part of e-com, but there's still logistics. There's still delivery. There's still customer service. There's still manufacturing the store that you got to take care of. Yeah.

[00:47:01] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I it's a good day. Is that is that that's a good note to wrap on, cause it really, it underlines the, the value that a, a solid agency can bring to a long-term relationship.

[00:47:15] But I,

[00:47:15] Andy Seeley: I will say there's a lot of crappy agencies out there. So my, my, my tip to everybody is when you're interviewing agencies be looking for the agency that is interested in you, that is interested in your business. That asks the important questions that sometimes my ask emotional questions. That, oh man.

[00:47:35] You know that that's pretty deep, like, look for that, embrace that because Daniel know that you're looking for that you're working with an agency that actually cares that actually really wants a result, not just the result that they think as a result, but the result that you want. Right. We actually take it to an nth degree that even the first time you spend money with us.

[00:47:55] You know, we're still deep digging deep into what you have got going on. Like, like a architect might look through a house before, you know, renovating it, right. You can get a plan together to know what you're dealing with. Before you start spending money. You don't spend money on fixing house before, you know, what's wrong with.

[00:48:13] Right, right. Yeah. That kind of stuff you want to be looking for when you're searching for your agency.

[00:48:18] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. I had a, I had a guest on a few months back who runs an agency in the east coast and he was describing how much they invest upfront in the book on a client. He said where he's a, we go way underwater.

[00:48:34] There's a resources invested in a new client because we can't succeed. If, if we don't really know them that well, so we've gotta be willing to do that. You know, banking on a long term and a longterm relationship with them and being able to do something that requires that level of knowledge of them. And if

[00:48:52] Andy Seeley: enough, the user or the.

[00:48:55] As we go finds the right agency, then give them the time to build out all the things that they need to build out, to start running the data through it, to start looking at the trains and all the numbers to actually make, to optimize what's going on. And then once you do that, I mean, she's, I've, I've seen clients, we've literally had clients go from 5,000 a month to 900,000 a month.

[00:49:17] Wow. Right. And the problem is no longer marketing. The problem is she's where do I get a warehouse? How do I find delivery drivers and all that kind of stuff,

[00:49:26] Matthew Dunn: right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Got it. Got it. Well, where if someone's listening to this going, I really want to talk to these guys, where do we send them? So go to

[00:49:35] Andy Seeley: CreativelyDisruptive.com is that this the best thing.

[00:49:38] There's a whole bunch of information on there. We've got lots of, lots of stuff going on there. Um, you can reach out to us, at, I think it's info at creatively, disruptive.com. If you want to reach out to me directly, feel free. Hopefully you've got like a bazillion listeners, so I'll have a million emails tomorrow.

[00:49:56] Um, as Andy at CreativelyDisruptive,dot com, you can reach out to me directly. Um, I have an Instagram page. I think it's a small business sales coach where you can search for me, Andy CLE from on Instagram. You'll probably find me somewhere in there. I do have a Twitter account called Andy disruptive.

[00:50:18] Yeah, but I never go on it. Cause I'm, I'm done with, with Twitter. I can't stand Twitter. I hate the, the, the angriness that people have tried each other on there. Like

[00:50:29] Matthew Dunn: I'm with you on I'm with you on Twitter and not going there for me. For me, it's the, it's the, it's the noise. It's it never shuts up. Right.

[00:50:41] It never actually hits a conclusion or builds a structure and says insight. It's just like, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn. I

[00:50:49] Andy Seeley: done. Never go to, I never go. Like every time I go onto Facebook or Instagram, there's something that either makes me smile. Yeah, we'll go more. I go, Ooh, that was interesting. Yeah. I think I follow some good stuff and I engaged with some good stuff.

[00:51:04] I've never gone to Twitter and gone. That was great. Yeah. I've always gone to Twitter and gone. Oh my God. What did I come and have a look at that for? Why did I bother? So don't send anything

[00:51:14] Matthew Dunn: to me guys. Dandy on Twitter. Who might my guests wrapping it up has been Andy Seeley CEO at Creatively Disruptive. Andy.

[00:51:22] Pleasure to speak with you. Thanks for the time. Thank you.

[00:51:26]