A Conversation with Ronald Kimmons of Wingfire Media
Entrepreneur and launch specialist Ronald Kimmons joined host Matthew Dunn to talk about marketing, email, launches and the challenges (and opportunities!) of being nimble and agile. Ronald's a bit of a Renaissance man, speaking some 5 languages in addition to "launch." This gives him some unusually deep insights on the cultural "fit" issues of marketing, email and product launches. Great fun!
What The AI Thinks We Said:
Matthew Dunn
Good afternoon. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the future of email marketing. My guest today Ronald kimmins. co founder of wing fire media. I love that name. Ronald, welcome. Tell us a bit about your company.
Ronald Kimmons
Thanks. So yeah, we got started back in 2016, it's me and my wife, we are, we are partners. And we started as kind of a generalist, digital marketing firm, we got into ads we did, we actually helped local businesses for a while. And we quickly realized that what we were really good at was helping people with info products. So usually coaches course creators are also people with some something with software tools, that sort of thing. With info products, that's where we really shine, and also helping them to do launch campaigns for those info products. And yeah, so like, right now all of our clients are people who have an an info product of some kind, usually a course, or, or a, like video series courses, coaching programs, things like that.
Matthew Dunn
So what, what makes a good candidate candidate for you guys fundamentally for wing fire, but for like for a launch approach?
Ronald Kimmons
So when when I talk about what's in you, you see, and of course, when we say launch, we're referring to Jeff Walker sounds like Jeff Walker wrote a book called launch, it's kind of really, he's really been influential in, in the industry. Um, and I tend to use language a little different from from what he does, but it's the same basic principles, you know, I talk about your alpha launch and beta launch, and then a main launch. And people will come to us. They typically are people who have done an alpha or beta launch, and have sold their offer a little bit to their email list or to their social media following and so it's been tested somewhere on the markets, it, it, it has, it's something that has sold, and they've gotten some feedback to help them to refine it. And now they want to take a big time. Okay, okay. And, and we help them to do that. And we so we help them we pick it up from there, we help them in the main launch. And we can walk people through the earlier phases of you know, alpha launch beta launch, but the main launch is really where we shine. And that's, that's where we provide the most value.
Matthew Dunn
I ran across. I ran across. One of many I'm sure videos by by Jeff Walker, who you mentioned, must have been three or four years ago, and I'm looking at the footage, I think it was at his house. He was talking about his house. And look, I'm like, that's the peak right above my mom's house in Durango. And sure enough, Durango Cutler. Yeah. I
Ronald Kimmons
remember him talking about in the book talking about being in colorado.
Matthew Dunn
yazma. Right. That's where that's my hometown. So he's like, Okay, good taste.
Ronald Kimmons
Yeah, one of the one of the one of the examples that he uses book is when he wanted to buy a house there. Yeah. And, and he needed, like, he needed six digits. To do it. He didn't have it. And he's like, Well, I have a list. And so he did a launch to his email list. got the money and bought the house again. Yeah, that's Yeah, that's, that's the power of watch. It's That's
Matthew Dunn
awesome. Yeah, that's true. I mean, a launch is a launch. And you mentioned alpha beta, main lines, but I mean, walk people through some of the some of the basic concepts that distinguish a launch from let's say, you know, content marketing and or campaigns that run forever and ever, like there's a time bound element to it, right? Yeah,
Ronald Kimmons
yeah. So yeah, there are three, three main three main characteristics of of a launch campaign, first you have, you have a new offer, and it could be something that you've offered in the past. But it's just like an updated version, with maybe new features or something, but there has to be something new about it. That you're launching. Yeah, that's the first thing second it needs its or this is true for main launch, not for alpha or beta launch, but for main launch, it needs to mix both your organic marketing and you pay traffic so you have on both your your social media following and your email campaigns and, you know, ads and you're doing these things together and it's part of a concerted efforts. So that's, that's the second thing. The third thing is that it is it's, it comes in a limited time period. Like usually when the way we do our launches, you everything builds up to this presentation that is either a challenge, you know, multi day challenge or or webinar. And at the end of that, the client will pitch. They'll pitch their their offer their course, whatever it is, okay? And then people have a certain amount of time to take that offer. Usually it's between three and 10 dates. Yep. And when that time has passed, it's The offers gone like there may be something similar in the future, but it may cost more may have fewer features. Yeah, or something like that. It's it's that that we tell our clients you stick to that, you know, don't create false scarcity, you know, this, this, this is a limited time offer. And when this time is over, it's done. You're not offering it anymore. Okay. Um, okay, but yeah, those are the main three, three characteristics of a launch.
Matthew Dunn
And and what? How do I, how do I phrase this? Well, one of the things about information products is that the creative work for that is up front front loading, right? It's not a, it's not necessarily something you do, because the client said, hey, I've got a question, or I've got immediate problems, like, I mean, I've, I've created courses, for example, it's a lot of work. Yeah. And then you end up with a bunch of words, but you're writing books, video, footage, graphics, whatever, in the can. And then nature of the internet nature, digital distribution, copies of that don't have a huge cost basis. It's like, it's like software, right? All your money's in the development stages stuff. And yet, time bound methodology and scarcity, which you mentioned, sort of say, you know, this thing that could be copied from the server, hypothetically, for free forever? Has a time bound? Ah, that must be because that's what gets audiences to move.
Ronald Kimmons
Yeah. And see, and one of the one of one of the things in people, people get wise to marketing tricks over time, you know, and then people and, and people can see right through this very false, false scarcity narrative where there's no x now, or it's over. And they can see like, you know, it's I mean, there's, there's no reason for that time that boundary to be there. But that's why we, we typically advise our clients to create a reason for it. Yeah. Okay. Because like, if like, if this is if this is a course, for example, you can there's no marginal cost. So you can sell that to as many people as you want. But as a bonus, maybe add a one on one consultation. Right? And that's something that you're not going to be able to offer that everyone's scarcity. Yeah, you know, and that is your scarcity. Look, I'm not I'm not willing to keep doing this forever. So I'm going to, I'm going to offer this to everyone who buys within this period. Yeah. And after that, I'm not doing it anymore. I you can still buy the course. But I'm not doing the one on one conversation anymore, that sort of thing. Yeah. And so you create a real reason for it. And you make it feasible, and you make it make it rational, and people will identify with and say, Oh, yeah, I would totally, I would totally be like that, too. I wouldn't want to keep doing that forever. But but to offer it as a special thing for people who took the offer in the launch period, then then, you know, that's that's a good idea. Right? And I
Matthew Dunn
would assume that the, you know, emotional load of the the factors that are creating scarcity, pay play in a bunch. I mean, decisions tend to be what's phrase emotionally driven, rationally justified.
Ronald Kimmons
Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, and I mean, buying is always an emotional decision. People, people will just, I've seen people describe themselves as so what's, what's the word as the word just slipped my mind? As I can't speak English anymore. We'll come back to the people describe themselves as people who who are, who do not respond to kind of low level emotional innuendo and things like that. But But the thing is, that, that everyone, you talking about you CEOs of Fortune 500, fortune 500 companies, for everyone, buying is an emotional decision, it can be backed with rational reasons. But it's always going to be an emotional decision, there's always going to be emotion there. Because you're you're trying you buy because you want someone to solve a problem. Yep. And that problem has an emotional influence on you, you know, right and also to buy is to in the end, regardless of rational reasons to buy is to trust. Yeah, you're always going to be extending trust to this person you're giving money to. And the decision to extend trust. While it may be rationally valid. Yeah. It's always going to be an emotional decision. Yeah. So. So yeah, I mean, in marketing, there should be a rational basis for everything. But there should also be you have to realize that it's always going to be emotional, and there's nothing wrong with that. Because, honestly, without emotion, none of us do anything in life. Right? Like that's we, in the end, emotional motivation is is is what gets us to do all the things that we do. And that's okay. It's just that we shouldn't be completely, completely dominated by our emotions. It's all
Matthew Dunn
right. And I suspect I'm curious your opinion of this, are people ever more guarded about their emotional capital and ever more cautious about the the levers that move them? Because we're we're certainly bombarded a lot.
Ronald Kimmons
Yeah. And we're bombarded a lot in people. There's, I mean, there's a lot. There's a lot of people, you know, on the internet who, who promised the world, yeah. and deliver nothing. We, and I, and I like to see that actually, I like to see that people are a little guarded. Because it shows me that they are more rational, that they're a little more rational. Because I want rational clients, right? I had, I was in talks with with someone just just recently, he was looking to do a launch campaign. And, and they were, they saw our, some of our case studies and results and things and they and they liked that. But they're, they're those little hesitant, you know, they were talking to some other some other people and said, Well, you know, like someone else and tell them well, we could do a launch in in a month, and they came to us, they say hey, they said they can do the whole thing in a month. And we told them look, we've actually done a launch in a month than before. And that's the only launch that we've ever done that didn't go well. Wow. Okay. You know, yeah. And so I said, Look, I mean, maybe they can, but I'm not going to tell you that we can because because from where we stand, that's not a good idea to try to get the whole thing done. Right. Right. Right. And, and, yeah, so they and they took that and they digested it. And about a week later they came back to me and said hey, I want to work with you. Because they you know, they were this was a rational person who realizes that there's a lot of people out there Yeah. Who are just willing to say whatever to get a sale and and so I like to see people who can see through you know, the the very, very thin veil of cheap marketing.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This of which is which is a lot, right. Yeah. He knew he knew blast filters. I used to be I spent some time doing custom explainer videos or early on for very many companies were doing that and we had a very sound methodology for that. And I got picky about clients and I got picky about what was realistically possible very much what you're saying and we like we need this in three weeks. I'm like, no, it's like sorry, what caused somebody else but you want it done well, it's gonna take time because you actually don't know what you want to get across to people the hardest part is going to be you getting your own clarity which I'll help you with. But if you want it in three weeks, go find somebody else right I just I don't I can't do a good job. Not gonna do the job. Kind of a thing. Yeah, yeah. Now coaches, coaches and interesting seems like a seems like a boon niche. Am I wrong about that?
Ronald Kimmons
Yeah. Well, it's it's an interesting thing, because there's a lot of people trying to get into it. Yeah, because the barrier to entry is low. And but but you know, there's also there's demand Yeah, there's demand it's it's it's a it's a significant demand. And the business is there. Interesting. So yeah, is it a boom industry? Yes. I'm just I also see a lot of people struggling either because they, they can't invest in marketing or because they don't have certification or something like that. But But yeah, I would say I definitely say it's a booming industry. And yet I see a lot of people struggling in it, even though it's a booming industry because because there's a lot of differentiation between people who know what they're doing or and can invest in people who don't know what they're doing and don't invest.
Matthew Dunn
Right Right. Right. And who knows, right that know what they're doing part I I'm a little I'm a little sanguine about coaches who don't have a track record. You know, it's like, if you never play football, and you're gonna be football coach, you're gonna have to explain that when to me cuz I find it really hard to swallow. You know, I'm gonna coach entrepreneurs and I've never built a company.
Ronald Kimmons
Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And you know, I mean, you can say like, for example, I mean, if you have a coach, an Olympic athlete with a coach and that coach did not right win Olympic gold himself, right? He probably was an athlete at some point, you know, and he probably is a better coach than that athlete of his that he coached who who went and won the gold you know, yeah, in the end it's different to coach and to do it are different but yeah, there should be some basis there in in in that specialization. I mean, they're coming out from if it's all theoretical Yeah, yeah. Then then yeah, like that's this is not something you should work someone you should work with.
Matthew Dunn
No, no, no, no, not at all. It's just I really, I've really noticed the rise of coaches in the sort of coaching as a space in the last less than a decade seems like just like, up it goes like this and and you're right, and I'm gonna imagine a pandemic kind of accelerated. Yeah. Yeah,
Ronald Kimmons
it's attracted to be able to work from home, having clients through, you know, through through zoom chats and things like that. It's there's a lot about the industry that is attracting people and you can really help people coaches like, life coaches, business coaches, you know, they the ones who are good really do help people a lot. Yeah, a lot. There's a lot of value that that can be delivered there. And that feeling of Oh, I want to help people for a living. That's Yes, that's a very big motivator. But but but yeah, it's, it's, it's a it is a completely unregulated industry. True. And we're seeing which the kind of little problems that you're that you're talking about like that, that's what happens whenever you have an unregulated industry.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've always said I'm in regulated industries myself, because that's kind of where the edge tends to be. But it, you know, like, the front, the frontier, you know, guys in a frontier, were a mix of, you know, cowboys and charlatans and snake oil salesmen. And the same thing happens every time. There's a new frontier. It's like just the nature. That's really good comparison. Human human human nature, I guess. Yeah. Now let's let's go in a different direction. How many languages do you actually speak? Oh, well,
Ronald Kimmons
the the different levels of proficiency I get I I'm fluent in Mandarin. Yeah. And Manish as well. Yeah, I used to be that I could sit in meetings in light and make notes and Chinese characters. You know, I can't do that so much now. Yeah. It's been a little out of practice. But I did do that at one point. Spanish pretty good. You know, I lived in Chile for a year and like I picked up, I picked it up pretty well. Yeah. Portuguese to like, I read books in Portuguese. Wow. My wife is Brazilian, she, she's a little impatient about talking to me in Portuguese. She just likes to kind of just just talk to me in English. Because English, of course, is stellar. Whereas my Portuguese is still. Yeah, it's still improving. And my recent or past couple years have I really been working on this as Indonesian. I've
Matthew Dunn
been I've been learning Indonesian. I noticed that any LinkedIn profile? Too
Ronald Kimmons
big like it a lot. Yeah. It's it's as as Asian languages go, it's relatively easy. Yeah. No, like, compared to Mandarin. Yeah. It's like it's not tonal. You can use it's just Latin letters. You know, it's very, totally phonetic. So I think it's relatively easy. While in that regard, I still haven't been to Indonesia. I want to go. Wow, okay. Yeah, it's all self taught. But yeah, and I read books and language lessons and stuff. And I, for a while there, I've been having weekly conversations with someone in Indonesia. Yeah, practice. Yeah, but because that's really the only way to learn. You have to you have to converse with people.
Matthew Dunn
You have to converse with people. What do you think of? tools like Duolingo for acquiring or polishing language?
Ronald Kimmons
Duolingo I I've used Duolingo. I like it. I wouldn't say that. It's my favorite tool like that. It's definitely useful. I think it helps you to make a nice little foundation. Yeah. But if you really want to learn you got to find someone to speak to you. Yeah, yeah, that's you have to regularly have conversations. And that combined with like, you know, two or three times a week going and going and talking to someone for like half an hour. You can definitely learn a language that way. It's just that you can't, I don't think you right rely on Duolingo by itself, but or anything similar, but but it definitely helps definitely helps to get that foundation in place. Interesting
Matthew Dunn
and interesting. I've moved my whole family to the south of France for six months is a decade ago, but unfortunately, my wife's pretty darn fluent, if we all leaned on her so much that the other three of us didn't do so well in terms of acquiring any French like, hmm, we'd probably done better if we weren't going Hey,
Ronald Kimmons
what did he say? Yeah. It Yeah, it helps. It helps to be you know, to basically to jump in the water and swim for yourself. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
And to have like to have to get it done. Yeah, yeah. You gotta get it across and refine and use the feedback loops and all that other stuff. No, I just I was really struck by that. So you know, so many of us in in the US don't acquire additional languages and points to points to you for doing it. And Chinese not an easy lift to learn from Yeah, you
Ronald Kimmons
know, after learning Chinese I was like, anything else is gonna be easy.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. That's under it is total correct? Yeah.
Ronald Kimmons
Yeah. Yeah, it's total. Wow. And, and so like, and I actually I've also, I've also studied Arabic a bit. I actually studied Arabic for two semesters before I went to Taiwan and, and I haven't really gotten back to it. Yeah, I think I can safely say I think of all the languages I've studied. Arabic is the hardest. It's harder than Mandarin.
Matthew Dunn
Even though the Japanese is extremely
Ronald Kimmons
different. Yeah, it's it's Yeah, I know. Japanese is hard. It's really hard. I haven't I haven't really studied Japanese either but the other thing like with Mandarin when I tell people it's like Mandarin is like comparing Mandarin and Arabic, Mandarin is like, like you get to a wall, and that is tones and characters. But once you kind of you can get over that. It's not so hard after that. Whereas with Arabic, it's like the slope that continues forever, where it's just keeps being difficult the whole time, you know? Because like Arabic, Arabic grammar is just wild. Yeah, actually, me. Yeah, it's structured the structure of the language is is what like, like in Chinese, Chinese is relatively, the structure is different from English. So you have to learn that but it's not instant. It's but it's not really. It's not really complex. Okay? Whereas, whereas Arabic is very complex, like there's no like there, for example, there there's no verb conjugation in Mandarin, okay? Whereas in Arabic DEF CON, you have to conjugate for, for male or female, you have to conjugate for singular, dual and plural for every verb, you know. And then, of course, all the different time conjugations. Yeah, it's, it's wild, it's pretty wild.
Matthew Dunn
Now, do you find? Do you find that skill with languages to be something that's an asset for business? Or is that do just life and interest at the moment before?
Ronald Kimmons
2016? You know, I worked. I worked for a translation company. That's, that's what I did. And before that, I was a translator. Yeah. So I mean, like, I've used it professionally, but since starting this company, it has not been useful at all is not okay. Now, but but like, but I have ideas for, for making it useful. Like I know, my, my next step, maybe I want like I'm things that I'm thinking about are like, like, marketing, marketing, software tools, and to other countries and things like that. And, frankly, you know, some of our clients have been, have been people who needed who needed marketing done in, in like, Latin America. And so like, we've run campaigns in Spanish, we actually run campaigns in Dutch to Well, um, but but I was not directly doing those myself. So it didn't really help. Yeah, but but our team, you know, our team is multilingual, which, which helps and, and, and, yeah, it's, it's been, it's, it's a, I would like, I would like to get more involved in especially in Asia and get doing more marketing in Asia in the future, we'll see, we'll see what develops
Matthew Dunn
large, large percentage of the human race there. So that's a very good idea. This is this is a, this is a bit of an intersection and maybe an esoteric question, but speaking multiple languages having lived in other other countries as you have do you do you think that some of the motivation structure principles that underlie a launch would would require substantial modification to launch in a different different country?
Ronald Kimmons
No, like, there are many aspects of marketing that's, that's change with localization, you know, but it's more a matter of the specific messaging you use. Okay? And not the launch structure. Okay. Not the launch. Like all of the basics of the launch structure, I imagine would just be the same but but there would definitely be you would definitely need to look closely at the messaging and what what things we focus on and the messaging for that culture because Yeah, yes, that is that's where the difference is
Matthew Dunn
sort of a sort of a sort of a tone not not in the acoustic sense but just sort of a tone and nuance and not necessarily the the skeleton of the thing Wow, fascinating fascinated him in opportunities there I created it, I created a course a good number of years back and it doesn't get a whole lot of time and attention but it got some got some numbers I think that one's on Udemy and I get inbound requests fairly regularly from other online course providers they're like they clearly go down through the rankings on some of the big ones and then go approach the course owners and say Hey, would you like to list it here as well and increasingly those are coming from outside the US those requests because there's market
Ronald Kimmons
yeah there's market there's market Yeah, I was I was just talking to I went to a to an event recently and and talked to one of the big names in and marketing industry right now and he he said yeah, that he licenses his his stuff out like to South American to like to in South America and another in other places. Yeah, it's definitely it's it's it's a big thing. And there's a lot of money to be had there. It's also something that I think it would be easy to crash and burn. If you don't get the message right and and it's really fascinating to look at the marketing failures that have happened over the years by major companies Chevy trying to go to Chevy Nova yeah that's the size but even but trying to go into other markets like there's there's the one in China does my child outside the door on here? five kids wailing Oh my yeah like in in China there's I think there's Pepsi is either Coke or Pepsi I'm pretty sure it's Pepsi. Yes. And
Matthew Dunn
the price of x tadpole? Is it that one? is the one
Ronald Kimmons
I was thinking of, was that they said to do it? Did it would bring your ancestors back from the dead? And just like, what, like where did what anyway?
Matthew Dunn
Well maybe see Same, same true other direction, right? I get I've opened boxes and read the instructions and said, we're not the first language of the writers, right? And made sense to them. It just didn't translate particularly well to the language I happen to speak. So it's okay. I'm a big fan of, I'm a big fan of communicating visually. And I find that that helps considerably with with cultural obstacles. I'm sure there are cultural loadings on visual communication as well. Don't let there's not a scholarship on that that'd be an interesting avenue to pursue. So email, what does email and email lists fit in the in, you know, world of things you do for clients?
Ronald Kimmons
Email is I mean, it's, it's really important. Um, you see, and it's important for me to note, like how we have evolved as a business in that, when we, when we started, we're just like, okay, we do ads. That's what we do. We help you with that. But we quickly realized, if someone comes to us and asked us to help them with ads, what they're really asking us is to help them with marketing. And we've had instances when clients didn't do so well, in almost every case. The problem was that like, it wasn't that we weren't doing as well we were, but we were doing what works and it worked. But then their back end just wasn't there. And sometimes maybe they thought that it was they thought they had a good back end but but it just wasn't it just wasn't there like I remember at one point we had two clients both named Victoria and they at the same at the same time, they're getting the same number the same numbers like we look at the front end at their ads looking at their ads and they're they're getting very similar numbers but one of them was making about $60,000 a month and the other ones barely breaking even and the difference was that she had a good back end sales price back in the marketing process and a good sales process whereas the other one did not know she had emails but they just weren't really on point and she wasn't so good on sales calls it her her sales process involved a sales call and she just it's hard for her to do that and it makes a real difference it makes a real difference but but yeah and and that's for just ad campaigns because in a lot of our clients we just run ads for them we don't just do launches indefinitely you know Yeah, but but when we do launches when we do launches the the launch campaigns involve multiple email campaigns and then we have we have we have hype campaigns it's getting people just just building up hype getting people engaged and then we have registration campaign to get people to register for the webinar challenge. We have a countdown campaign campaign once they've registered then they continue to get emails counting down because we don't want to register and then forget about it. Yeah, so then account countdown you will usually send them emails every day until the day of the event and then we have the sales the sales series that starts when the event ends and you know it goes for three days or 10 days or however long and then a lot of time we'll also have a follow up sequence where after the the main phase has ended and that main offer is not available anymore but there there is still some other offer they can take then we'll have a follow up sequence right in which they can which they can take that offer and so it's yeah it's it's it's central email market is central to launches there is no launch launch campaign and not not the way we do not the way Jeff Walker does it without email an email is absolutely vital. I mean, we're bringing in people with ads. Yeah. But but if you don't engage with them on an email, through email campaigns, like you're going to lose them. They're not they're not going to show up
Matthew Dunn
is the common carrier if you will, right. Yeah, it's the one reliable point person to person.
Ronald Kimmons
And it's funny me I've seen people say oh, email marketing is dead. That's it's just baloney it's it's so it's just an n i literally I saw a people say this with different aspects of digital marketing a lot they'll they'll say such and such as that, like I saw, I saw a forum posts from 1995 saying, oh, SEO is dead? Okay. All it happened was some there have been some slight change in the market. And they said, Oh, SEO is that no, it's just that digital marketing evolves a lot. Yeah, but the basic principles and the basic tools tend to remain the same. Yeah. You know, and email marketing. Yeah, you know, it's gone through a lot of evolution, like 15 years ago, email marketing 15 years ago is very different from today. Yeah, quite a bit. You know, like, we've had the, you know, the can spam and there's been a lot of development on on the end of email providers, you know, cutting out cutting outs, you know, spam and fluff and stuff. But marketers have to be able to work with that, but the email marketing is not dead. The the basics of it, the bait, the long and short of it is that the barrier is higher. Right? You have to, you have to be better at it. Which is great. Because when you are better at it means you have less competition.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah, yeah, that's fair. And and I think email seems to be a surprisingly self policing domain. There's, there's a lot of there's a lot of effort to keep quality up, despite the fact that there's no central command and control. And fortunately, I think like, it's harder and harder for the really bad actors that, you know, the spammers the high volume, you know, turn or burn the people who didn't realize you're not supposed to buy a list and send you know, a million people something they didn't hear from you. And so have you heard about the oncoming shifts? shift that Apple is making with email? And how that's likely to handle measurements?
Ronald Kimmons
emails, specifically? Yeah. Fill me in?
Matthew Dunn
Oh, yeah, this is so this would be good Intel. I'll be very curious about your sort of snap reaction on at their worldwide developer conference in June, on Apple's ticket to the list of things coming down the pike in iOS. And the one they mentioned about email that kind of went boom, in the email, sort of email marketing space is that Apple will be prefetching and anonymizing the IP for all image content in email, including pixels. So you will not have a you will not have reliable did this person open this mess? Right? We're not if they're on an iOS device.
Ronald Kimmons
Now, I know that, like with ads, we've already developed workarounds for you know, for Apple's actions there.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. You know, we
Ronald Kimmons
like we like with our clients, we, we we use various tools to do server side tracking and things. Yeah, um, I am not as knowledgeable as knowledgeable about emails, do you see something like that evolving for emails?
Matthew Dunn
You know, candidate technical reaction is sort of one of the domain experts on this. Know, for that immediate paying of the HTTP pixel request, I gone is gone. And we spent pretty much two months straight, beating the bejesus out of them to see if there was a whole, you'll see a shift to measuring stuff that was more important in the first place, you know, click throughs, conversion, buys purchases, that kind of stuff. But it's a rare email platform that doesn't have open rate somewhere near top of page. Yeah, and come September October. That measure is going to start to mean less and less and less than the real gurus in the space who said look, it was always an indicator not a super reliable statistic. But was different buddy treated it like it was Yeah, it's like kind of this pedometer of campaigns if you will, yeah. And it's uh, yeah, it's it's, it's gonna go at the, the kind of insidious thing about it is that since what they're doing is what Apple's decided to do is just go ahead and load everything on. Everyone's open rates gonna go way up. Yeah, right, because close to 50% of emails open on an iOS device.
Ronald Kimmons
Well, I imagine though, that that what this is going to cause is that is that we're going to just kind of stop looking at, at open rates, but we're going to look at at metrics that are ultimately more relevant. Well, you know, we're going to, we're going to be looking at at, you know, conversions when looking at and, and we can track it and when, like, if you want to know and this is, you know, this basic No marketing. But if you want to know, did this email campaign create these conversions? Or did this email campaign? Well, if we send if we have two different if we have two different targets for them two different landing pages, then then we can
Matthew Dunn
track that. I mean parameterize the URL? Yeah. Or something as simple as that. Yeah.
Ronald Kimmons
So so we don't know the open rate, but we'll still know. Is it working? You know, yeah, that kind of thing.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. There's a there's a well known well respected industry guy named Chad, Chad white. He's at Oracle now is it Litmus for a long time. And he had a very thoughtful article about this last week, and he said he felt like Apple's decision kind of goes against the implicit social contract. You know, I signed up for your list for your launch. And if I signed up, I'm sorry. Yes. I want to hear from you. Yeah, and Chad Chad's point was that the sort of conversational nod that okay, I haven't acted but at least I read this that feedback loop being taken out Yeah, does risk does risk a lot of Wilson more blindly. Right? Because we don't have like having a conversation on the phone versus you know face to face zoom you know, I can see that you're nodding and agreeing and you didn't speak and we're losing that nod. And I don't think I don't think that opinion is gonna change what Apple does. Yeah, it has made people start to think about this a little bit.
Ronald Kimmons
And my reaction to Apple just in general as a marketer is like you know, I can rant about them being evil or whatever that's not going to do anything but what what I can do is evolve and and yeah, they're there they're doing this it's just like it's just like when Google updates their algorithm You know, it doesn't make SEO go away but in the end result has been great for the internet because there's a lot less trash Yeah, yeah, yeah, on the internet now, there's a lot less stuff just out there just to fill it with with with keywords you know, there's people have to create better content now and in the end, a lot of what Apple does is going to do the same thing not necessarily everything but but a lot of it you know, it's going to make life harder for marketers, it's but it's going to create a better internet in many ways. In many ways, not necessarily all the time. But by but it is also going to be giving Apple themselves more power, because that's why they do what they do but but we can still evolve and that's the thing about barriers when you put barriers in business in any aspect of business when you put in barriers the people who can get over those barriers are the ones who are going to win and and everyone else is going to be even better for them than it would have been if there have been no barriers yeah because it cuts out their competition
Matthew Dunn
well it's also the nature of the evolution of a of a frontier to our earlier yeah geez like you know eventually have zoning and roads and right away and barbed wire and we're just you know we're we're gradually starting to do that in the digital wilderness as as we realize that not everything is equally okay and not everyone's going to act in you know, in the greatest interest of the greatest good and and so on. And you know, I'm an I'm an apple fan in many ways, I've got way too many Apple screens staring at me sitting here but it's pretty heavy handed at the same time and you know, as a as someone who understands the the technical pieces underneath it, I'm like, really had to pick on that you couldn't think of something better to do? Come on? No, well, yeah, well, it will affect it like in the in the like in the launch and launch and digital marketing domain. I think one of the unanticipated side effects of that one's going to be that the conversational nod signal for things like triggered campaigns and marketing automation is like, let's get it it's not going to work or it's not going to work the same way. And there's going to be a fair amount of Oh, crap, like we we had that wired up so that if someone opened these three, then this happened. And we don't know that or now they're getting a bunch more, because they're always open. That's what the signal is going to say is that they always open. Fascinating. Yeah, yeah, we didn't we didn't realize that privacy would be the edge and the frontier of this bold new world. It's kind of it's unexpected. I mean, that looks looks natural now but 20 years ago, no one was really saying a whole lot about it. Yeah, yeah. So what what next for wing fire? Where do you Where do you Where do you Where would you like to take what the company does? Maybe international kind of touched on that?
Ronald Kimmons
Yeah, this this possibility. We're, what we're working on right now. Is is we we We just recently did a launch of our own to our list kind of shifting from, from a done for you service more of a done with you service. And, and we we have our first crop of have done with you clients that we're working on right now and and what we're looking to do with that is to kind of start people off more at that level done with you to make cost them less. And we're able to provide value and also help, they can also learn while they're while they're doing it, you know, and then and that way, it's very valuable to them. And then once they've been doing that for a certain amount of time, take them up into more of the done with you. The done with you level that's that's we're working on right now. And also we're pushing harder to get more launch clients because that's where we feel that that we deliver the most value. And that's where that's where that's what we're really, really good at. And that's that's where we can really differentiate ourselves, people if you
Matthew Dunn
were to and I said there's, you know, several 1000 people, hypothetically listening to, you know, listening to us talk while they're driving or doing the dishes or something like that, like, what are some of the trigger things that that make a really great fit customer for you, you know, is it someone who's just struggling or they tried launching and they flopped, or they don't even know where to begin? Or what, like,
Ronald Kimmons
they, they should have a good idea of the problem they want to solve. And they And ideally, ideally, they should have already done a beta launch. Not necessarily interesting. And that's not a necessity. But they ideally they should have already pitched to their email list and gotten some people to buy it like a lower price and got some feedback there. But But then, you know, they've done that, and they've got it. So they have this good idea that a lot of clarity on what they want to provide. And they've gotten that that feedback, helping them to really solidify that. And now they just, they just want they're looking for that inflection points. Okay. And, and that's what that's what a launch does. That's what a launch brings. So yeah, there's people, people who have a good idea of you they have their offer put together, they've tested it. They maybe haven't gotten a whole lot of sales, maybe they've gotten some, and now they want to get a lot.
Matthew Dunn
Okay. Okay. And you help them? Since it's not done in three weeks. Right? Yeah, you help them put all the planning plumbing mechanisms in place before doing Yeah, that a building that well, you know, while the numbers are dropping?
Ronald Kimmons
Yeah. So like, like, as, as I said, you know, we have, before we even start getting people registered for the webinar challenge that we use on our launches, you know, we we have them in launch camp, and it's already in the in the hype campaigns. Yeah, we're sending out hype messaging. And, you know, we do that for weeks to get people engaged. It because it takes time to build that up. And we're and we're also engaging people on on social media platforms, a lot of time will, in that initial phase will, for example, we'll run video ads for engagement. And then what we do with that is, we can take that and create an audience because we create an audience from the people who watched the video, but and then we're able to follow up on that with our later messaging that's actually trying to get them to take action on Okay, cut for the event stop.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. So Interesting. Interesting. You're not you're not going to get to stop learning in the niche that you've carved out for yourself.
Ronald Kimmons
Yeah, it's I mean, it's gonna keep evolving, it's gonna keep changing. I mean, it's, it has already done that to him, but just since we've been doing it, and it's gonna keep happening.
Matthew Dunn
Good, good. Good, good, good attitude. And that'll stand to stand you in good stead. I think where there were that I mean, you'd launch this 20 2016 did you say? Yeah,
Ronald Kimmons
we we, we started and yeah, running ads for people in 2016. Yeah.
Matthew Dunn
Okay. Did you know Did the sort of abrupt 610 year kicking toward the future of the pandemic? changed? What did that change most for you and put it that way?
Ronald Kimmons
Well see, it's it's interesting because with our business, when the pandemic had we were already moving toward massive action. And so such that I don't really know like, exactly how the pandemic affected our business because there were other factors that were affecting our business a lot. You were headed there already. Cuz we had at that time, right? When the pandemic was was getting in full swing, that's when we were spending a lot of money on ads and getting a lot of clients, you know, and so we really saw, you know, we saw significant in the, in the the darkest days, and when everyone was locked down, like we saw a significant upsurge in in clients, and I think that would have happened without the pandemic. Okay. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn
Interesting. Interesting. I
Ronald Kimmons
can't really say if it would have been more or less, I'm not really sure. But what I can say is the pandemic didn't kill us for sure.
Matthew Dunn
Yeah. Yeah. Last question. Not everybody can work well with their spouse sounds like your sounds like you're making a work.
Ronald Kimmons
And yeah, well, it's it's, it's very important to just do what your wife says.
Matthew Dunn
Happy wife happy life.
Ronald Kimmons
Yeah, well, the long the short of it is is that is that she is one of the foremost people out there when it comes to AD ad campaigns, you know, running, actually running out ad strategies and ad campaigns running ads, and she actually knows that a lot better than I do. Oh, nice. And we focused on different aspects of the business. Yeah. And and I'm technically the CEO, but she as the CMO of
a marketing company, yeah. Basically acts like the CEO a lot of time Yeah, so
Matthew Dunn
yeah, yeah, yeah, gotcha. Do you put some guardrails in place so that you stop talking business of when you're away from the you know away from the business it's gonna be
Ronald Kimmons
um there's no there are no hard barriers I would say Yeah, um, there are times when either she or I will specifically say okay, let's not talk business right now. Yeah, we definitely do that yeah, we don't have any hard rules about like okay we only talk business between this hour in this hour we don't do that we end up we'll end up talking business like late at night driving the car yeah you know it's it happens a lot it's just it's a very normal thing
Matthew Dunn
yeah make make make sense. Don't Don't run a business with my spouse she said like there's no way I could stand to be around you that much. But every worked out of a home office for a long long time it you get you get some habits and rhythms of knowing when to park it or when it you know it's kind of full so how was your day and fill me in on that and that's actually a legitimate question kind of thing so and and everybody's going through that as we've as we've changed the definition of office and work quite substantially on yeah helps to have the physical space to like you you mentioned that you know, the door was shut when the kids wanted at least yeah having the door is a big deal right? yeah really useful thing at times Yeah. Cool. Well, it's a pleasure picking your brain and learning about what you're doing I think it's wonderful and sounds like it's sounds like it's on the way up and along waist Yeah,
Ronald Kimmons
yeah, we're really excited you know, we we know we can we can deliver a lot of value with with launches. We have done it you have done and you know how to do we know how to do it and so yeah, he's
Matthew Dunn
it wing fire. media.com is that the URL? Yeah, we
Ronald Kimmons
fire media.com
Matthew Dunn
waiting for media calm. Well, cool. There you go. We'll wrap on that one. My. My guest today has been Ronald kimmins. co founder, CEO of wing fire media calm Ron, thanks so much for the time.
Ronald Kimmons
Thanks for having me. You've been a pleasure.