A Conversation With Reinis Krumins of AgencyJR

Reinis Krumins of AgencyJR is living proof that email is a multi-generation channel that's NOT going away. As he shares in this conversation, email 'amplified everything else you do online.'

It's fascinating to hear someone younger than email share his own discovery of the channel. Whether it's "because you buy stuff" (receipts, logins), or because you apply for a job, or have a job...email is unavoidable.

Reinis operates out of Europe; his perspective on how email interacts with messaging is informed by that, as apps (particularly WhatsApp) are predominant, unlike the SMS-centric North American market. America, as he says, is something of an outlier!

This is a great conversational glimpse into the mind of a marketer in another market.

TRANSCRIPT

A Conversation With Reinis Krumins of AgencyJR

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[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, host of the Future of Email. My guest this morning is Reinis Krumins of Agency, Jr. Reinis. Terrific to connect

[00:00:20] Reinis Krumins: with you. Likewise, likewise. Happy to be here.

[00:00:23] Matthew Dunn: And, and I, I gotta tell you, I didn't warn you about this in advance. I'm gonna pounce all over you, man, because you're under 30 and you're in email.

God, love you. Yes. How come? Yeah.

[00:00:35] Reinis Krumins: Um, I'll, I'll make the long journey sh short. Yeah. Um, I started doing online business when I was 13. Mm-hmm. , well, kind of freelancing, doing graphic design and then got into social media marketing. Um, and then after Facebook ads, what we saw when I was doing Facebook ads was there was a lot of competition in space, but there weren't many people doing emails.

I actually had a client that needed [00:01:00] email marketing. We set up something for them. Mm-hmm. and I realized, No one I know is doing email marketing, so why am I just going after Facebook ads, which is where they already are a lot of better people than me in the space. Uh, let me just go after. The same people just with email marketing with a different service.

And, uh, I partnered up with my business partner, Jacob, and now we've, we've grown to a pretty significantly sized team. We were at, at around 50 people at its peak. Uh, to date, we've worked with over 250 clients and, and we've sold in. A bunch of countries basically throughout entire Europe, in, in America, Canada, uh, South America, Mexico, Brazil, uh, Spain, Portugal, all over the world.

Japan even. That's

[00:01:48] Matthew Dunn: awesome. I'm, I, I really am, I really am intrigued because I've, I've been in, I've, I've been in and around. For a long time since before you were born? No, no [00:02:00] exaggeration, . Um, no, seriously. So I kind of get why I'm oriented to it, but email and I'm, I'm curious about your, you know, your, your perspective having gone on that journey.

It, it is, it is the older technology. It's not necessarily on the top of everyone's list when, when they think in terms of marketing in the digital space, but it does things. Uh, many other channels

[00:02:25] Reinis Krumins: don't. Yeah, for sure. Like if we look at email marketing, before I was born, a lot of people were buying lists and doing spam.

So that's, that's when it's kind of like started. Yeah. Um, then can spam act, et cetera, et cetera, that got shut down. Mm-hmm. and then email was looked at as this like old school method. There were still affiliates and people like using it. Yeah. And then I. Around like 2005, 2007, people were discrediting emails like, It's, it's dead.

It's gone. Like, no one used email. We're going onto next thing, next thing, next, next thing. But, um, it's the same thing as I [00:03:00] guess in, in, you know, the previous century with direct mail where there are different communication channels. Obviously you have TV and radio, but you still have, you know, people will open their mailboxes, they will get letters, and if you do it, People will still buy.

Yeah, it's, it's not a marketing channel. And especially right now with what's happening with iOS, 14.5, iOS 15, you like, you need to be omnipresent. You need to be on multiple marketing channels. So email is one of them. SMS is another one of them. And that will supplement what you do on paid media because email is.

When people say it's free, it's not really a hundred percent free, but what they mean is you don't have to pay per click. You don't have to pay per impression. You have your email list, you pay for that once a month and you can send them, message them, uh, whatever you want, right? Whereas Facebook, you have guidelines, you have restrictions, you ad account, get shut down, email something you can help, uh, make you more money, so then you can spend more on ads and generate more sales or [00:04:00] hire another person.

Have them, you know, create better content for paid advertisement and just increase the, the earning level of your, of your business really, because emails, uh, supportive marketing mechanism, it, it amplifies everything else you do,

[00:04:13] Matthew Dunn: amplifies everything. Well, and, and I'd feedback what you just said, and, and I've, I've thought and wrote about this a fair amount.

Um, It's partially market structure. You know, Facebook, as you mentioned, you were, you were in, in that space. Social media more broadly, someone owns the channel, the contact frequently, the, the, the standards, the mechanisms, and the control ultimately. Um, search, which I haven't, I haven't had a guest to talk about SEO yet.

That'd be an interesting point of comparison. You know, for lack of a better word, Google colonized the web quite a while back, and you, you, you pay the piper to get your website found, and that's not true. There's no gatekeeper [00:05:00] really parked on the front of email. There are. There are some controls and we'll talk, We can talk about spam a bit, but, but you know, if your customer says, Yeah, I want to hear from you, then you go, Okay, I'll send you an email.

We're done. Right? Yeah. It's really different. Um, yeah, for sure. Was it, uh, was it a bit of an aha? I, I'm, I'm making the generational inquiry again. Was it a bit of an aha to say, Wait a minute, there's more to this old school channel than I might have thought?

[00:05:30] Reinis Krumins: Yeah, yeah. It all sort of with a, uh, with a Waled brand and, uh, for them, This is kind of ironic.

So one, one part I skipped out on was, uh, chat bots. I was also doing chat bots and congruence with, with, uh, with Facebook ads, with many chats when it really got started and what everyone was saying in chatbots space is like, email marketing is gonna be dead. So I had. I had no, um, I had, like, I didn't really know email marketing existed [00:06:00] before I got in the chatbot space because then people drew attention about how bad email is, how bad SMS is, and chatbots are gonna be the next big thing because higher open rate, y y yada yada.

And from there, one our clients in emails and they, they knew, um, that. I was talented. I could get along with like new skills and set things up, and I decided to take the opportunity and I did. And after just going through a couple of YouTube videos and courses initially, I basically made them like seven K the first month.

Uh, and they were doing like maybe 60 ish k, which like, okay. Right. There's something here. It's, it's not an insane amount of money, but, you know, for like a week of training and then going in, in inviting emails and setting up, Yeah. Um, I mean obviously I did have some copywriting experience beforehand and that helped, but that was kind of like, huh, There's like, people are gonna buy from email.

It's not that because if it was dead, there would be like maybe [00:07:00] one, two sales and that's.

[00:07:02] Matthew Dunn: What's the, um, I'm switching gears a little bit to come back to that, but what, what, Describe email habits where people look, how often they read and so on, among your friends and

[00:07:16] Reinis Krumins: acquaintances. Ooh. Um, I would say that I wouldn't be able to say, because I don't really talk about them both emails.

I typically look at the data we see. Okay. The main habits we see is that people would typ are more likely to open emails in the morning because they, they get to their work, they open their inbox and they go through the emails, but they're more likely to buy typically after, uh, after works like 5, 6, 7, 8:00 PM Okay.

Um, But we've seen, This is just a a bit of a twist, twist and a turn. I was talking to Mattas from Suan agency and what they found, what worked. Sending them at the, Oh, something is switched up. Your

[00:07:59] Matthew Dunn: mic [00:08:00] is switched up.

[00:08:02] Reinis Krumins: back. Uh, what worked very well for them is sending emails at the peak, uh, the peak sales hour.

So if, let's say you typically see on Saturdays 12:00 PM. You peak sales, you send emails at that time because people are more likely to possibly be on their phones at yada, yada, yada. Mm-hmm. . Um, but going back to the habits, those are the main ones we see. Um, I, this is not really an email habit, but more of an SMS habit.

Um, Uh, I was talking, I was on a panel with Clavio and they had a data point, which I'm not sure they've released yet. I think they're gonna be releasing it later, this later in November. But they said that people who, after a survey for SMS subscribers, people are only subscribed to four to five. Uh, SMS lists with emails have a lot more.

Uh, and this means people on email, they're more open to offers. They're just looking at the brands they know and seeing what kind of offers they have. Obviously you have some, some people who haven't opted in. [00:09:00] Um, and like for them, they might delete your emails. They might unsubscribe. Yeah, that's, those are my main, those are my main, uh, behavioral patterns that I've noticed.

It's not too in depth because we primarily are more looking at the data. You know, at the end of the day, your buyer's gonna be different. If I look at my friends and my acquaintances, yeah. They might not be my ideal buyer, so it might not be the most relevant information. Yeah.

[00:09:28] Matthew Dunn: What I've noticed, and I, I talked with, uh, a previous guest about this a bit In, in, in.

In the States at least. Um, and I watch, I watch my sons live through this. Um, you can, you'll, you'll rarely find a 13 or 14 year old who doesn't have a smartphone these days, Okay? Doesn't mean they have an email account, but there's an on ramp here, uh, around the end of a high school period, 1718 in the states.

[00:10:00] Um, If they're college bound or something else, post high school, all of a sudden email starts to matter. It's like it's, it's still such a pervasive tool in the workplace. Mm-hmm. that there's a point where you can't duck dealing with email. You can't say, Ah, email. I don't need that. Yeah, you're gonna end up using it.

[00:10:21] Reinis Krumins: Yes. Because like, look, the question is how do you log into anything? Mm-hmm. , it is your email. Mm-hmm. . So everyone, like if, even if you are, even if you have an iPhone. Yeah. Just get an iCloud account. You need an email. Yeah. To log into YouTube. You need an email. You need an email, Social media. You need email.

So if you're advertising to them Yeah. They have an email. Yeah. They have an email.

[00:10:43] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Um, and, and, and they check it, right? For better or worse. Yeah. Yeah. They check it. Not all the.

[00:10:49] Reinis Krumins: Yeah, kid kids don't, because I have a little sister as well. For them I needed to create, create an email account. They're never gonna check it.

They are gonna check social media and everything, but as you said, as later down [00:11:00] line. Yeah. You maybe even, you just start buying stuff online. Yeah. You start to get emails in and like you might start with brands you really, really love. You really enjoy. Yeah. So then you just check for it for some offers they might have.

Yeah. And then there might be a brand that. That, that you checked out once abandoned a checkout with, and they start sending you emails, there's another one. Then you have colleges, you have school work, you have, you know, you're sharing documents between you and your friends. Um, and then obviously you, you're, you're an active user of, of your email account.

All of a sudden, all of a sudden it, it is something, it's something just ingrained in infrastructure.

[00:11:34] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, one of, one of the things, one of the things about the set of technologies that make the internet work is. For better or worse, we did not put an identity. In the internet, like we didn't, And email, email is the closest to the defacto, um, identity layer that that stays in the con, reasonably in the control of the individual.

So as [00:12:00] you said, logins, receipts, you know, transaction confirmations, shipping notifications, all of that stuff like that's, that's the go-to channel. It does have a little, it does have a baby brother or a competitor now. And you already mentioned it and I did wanna talk to you about it. Cause I know you've got expertise.

You and your, your, your partners have expertise in this area and that's, that's sms. Um, you did a case study recently, if I recall right, with a partner about email, SMS and how they're complimentary, right?

[00:12:30] Reinis Krumins: Oh, yes, a hundred percent. It's, uh, it's the same thing as. You know, Google and Facebook, you can call them competitors, but they're really not because you know the people who purchase from you.

Some people are gonna be more avid email checkers, some people are gonna check the sms. Uh, the same thing with, you know, your social media strategy. You might have a Facebook ad, They might see your ad, but then they go to the search. They type in your brand's name, but they type in your products name.

Mm-hmm. . And then if you have an ad there or you have good [00:13:00] seo, um, you're gonna show up as a search result. Yes. So it, it, it's, it is a complimentary, complimentary tool. We had a client that we were doing email marketing for, uh, and just through abandoned checkout, just through the popup, we collected around 50,000.

Uh, 50,000 phone numbers. Mm-hmm. and all of a sudden, like that's not a channel we can use. And that's especially important for big sales. Black Friday, Saturday, Monday, and, and just everything in general. What we typically see, how we leverage email and SMS is um, if we typically send around. 12 email newsletters a month with sms, it might be like once a week or twice a month.

It's a lot, lot, lot less frequent. Yeah. But it's more hard hitting. It's when we have that cool angle, it's when something, uh, happens in the world and we can take advantage of that and turn it into like a quick advertising because sms, it's gonna be like a message this long. Right. So it's primarily just gonna be a pitch.

Yeah. And people don't want to be pitched all the time, so [00:14:00] we just. Towards more important, uh, more important causes, more important goals. So when. We need to talk about a bigger sale when there is a really good angle, like for example, the Will Smith slap. I, I saw brands sending out a gift with this slap, and then just like we slap 15% of the brand.

Cool. Right. You know, you kind of make your customers laugh and you get them in the store. That's kind of how, how we leverage SMS with email. It's, it's a lot more broad where we can, for example, give like three tips on how to. For example, uh, three best, three best mountains to ski on. And then you can have those mountains.

And at the, at the bottom of the email, you can tell, Hey, look, if you're gonna go skiing, you need to wear, let's say protective gear. You need to wear skiing equipment. The, these are for example, You know, the, this is the jacket you need, the helmet you need, et cetera, et cetera. You can be a broader, uh, more valuable and you can send emails more frequently.

You,

[00:14:57] Matthew Dunn: you, you hit on it [00:15:00] briefly and I want to go back to it. Um mm-hmm. in part, to, to explore practices in the, in the multiple markets that you work in. Um, SMS versus mms. Sms text only, not visual. Mms, Mostly North America, if I'm not mistaken. Correct. Yeah. So one of the gating factors for SMS marketing to me and a very big one, is that it's not visual.

It's textual. Yeah, right. Show me a picture of a mountain. That's one thing. Talk about a mountain or write about a. This is a different thing, different reaction.

[00:15:42] Reinis Krumins: Yeah. I would say we typically send out mms. I do have to say in Europe, we don't do SMS at all at the moment. Primarily because it's very complex to do it.

Uh, regulations change country by country. Yeah. And regulations are very, very strict on SMS because giving out the phone number, it [00:16:00] feels like you're giving out your social security number. It's a lot more private than in an email because, It's a lot easier to change. You can have multiple email addresses.

Yeah. With sms it's more valuable to a person. Yeah. So, but in Europe it's, it's, it is a lot more difficult to send out email, uh, send out text messages because if you look at the tools, yeah, you really don't have much support in terms of the tools. Interesting. So we primarily keep it for, for us there.

Yeah. Uh, we might look into into Europe, but then we have to go country by country and find, find personalized solutions. Yeah. And really in Europe, a more powerful tool is WhatsApp. Yeah. People are gonna be using WhatsApp and that's one tool people use. Uh, regulations. I'm not too sure. I know their tools that use it.

However, WhatsApp, from what I've heard from, from people that I know run SMS marketing companies, it gets very expense. Yeah. So then, um, that's something we're, we're gonna be looking into right now, where our hands are full, uh, full with, with emails in this semester right now. ,

[00:16:59] Matthew Dunn: Well, [00:17:00] WhatsApp, we're right, we're right back to where we started though.

Cuz WhatsApp owned by Facebook, right? Yeah. So we're right back to a gatekeeper and if it's an effective marketing channel, you'll end up paying the gatekeeper.

[00:17:12] Reinis Krumins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Uh, like look, I, as I said, I was doing chatbots and many chat. Looked like a great opportunity mm-hmm. for you do marketing messages.

And I, I stopped and I switched email right before Facebook really eliminated it. Yeah. Um, yeah, many chat is good and chatbots are good for, for legion. But that's really all, they're good for anything else. And like you can't really send out messages at mass. You kind of can, but you can't, Uh, regulations are like, from Facebook's side, they're very, very strict.

It's, I don't know how easy it is to get banned, but just from what I know, I'd say if you wanna do aggressive marketing, it sounds like it might be easy for you to get banned. Yeah. Um, trying to kind of like bypass some of their, some of their. [00:18:00] But, uh, yeah, with, with him I have a lot more freedom.

[00:18:04] Matthew Dunn: Yeah.

Interesting, interesting. So WhatsApp, you, you pretty much expect someone that you meet within the next week to have a WhatsApp

[00:18:12] Reinis Krumins: address. Oh yeah. Well, in Europe, everyone has a WhatsApp account. I know in America you use iMessage in Europe, everybody. Yeah. Like, I mean, if you come to Europe, like come to a conference in Europe Yeah.

The group chats, people talking, they're gonna be telegram telegrams getting more popular. Yes. But most of the times it's WhatsApp. Like if I, if I have opened up my WhatsApp account, we just have a bunch of groups with, uh, with our friends. Communicating, have even client chats here, just like, it's just a lot of group chats.

Interesting. Uh, and everybody talks on WhatsApp here.

[00:18:44] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Interesting. I mean, there's, there's some, there's some really, there's some fascinating history to how the, the, the, the different geographic markets sort of morphed and evolved and, and ended up with such differing habits [00:19:00] because, as you said, Um, states WhatsApp account rare.

Like I have Signal Telegram, but I'm a geek. I'm an early adopter, so that doesn't count. Um, yeah. And then iMessage, we've got this, we've got this strange coexistence writing on the top of SMS in the phone number of your, your, your Apple messages friends, and then your green bubble Android friends and the two don't really play along very nicely together.

Yeah, Yeah. And for marketers, It makes texting a, a, a slightly bizarre channel because it's not super predictable that you can't really say what, you know, what kind of device someone has. Um, it's expensive and I know it's even more expensive, uh, if you can find a, a region in Europe to sms. So I, I, I think I see a lot of friction on messaging channels that makes it unlikely that.

Completely supplant email and I think you'd probably agree with [00:20:00] me. Yeah,

[00:20:01] Reinis Krumins: yeah. It's, it's a different marketing channel. Again, it's like saying Google will workplace Facebook. Um, Yeah, yeah. Not necessarily, you know, they're different . Um, it's one thing, one thing that's a fun fact about, sorry, sms. A lot of people say SMS has 97% open rate.

Bullshit. You cannot track open rate on sms. Like, just like if, if I, if I had to give you a mechanism on how you track open rate for sms, you don't, you don't. There is none. Yeah. Yeah. On emails, you have a pixel, right? The, the, the pixel tracks when someone opens it. You used to. Thank you Apple. Yeah, actually, actually with this iOS 15 hasn't been the biggest issue, uh, for, for tracking.

The reason why is because from my personal experience as well, shopping, uh, the biggest concern people had is that you would have like fake email addresses that forward email and it's always a hundred percent open. Yeah, that still is a concern, but if I shop online, I like if I wanna [00:21:00] have a receipt. I typically still enter my real email and it doesn't give the automatic option as as like I thought it would.

Yeah, it does give the automatic option for applications like when you log or create apps. Yeah, so they're having issues, but e-commerce, I haven't seen that issue. That's number one. Number two, most email service providers. They were already dealing with bots and anti malware softwares and everything before Apple.

So the reason why people talked about Apple being an issue for tracking is because what would happen is, uh, and this is still what they are doing, no matter if, if, you know, we have your cloaked or hidden email or not, which was the feature I was talking about previously. Uh, but what they do is once anima comes.

They would open it just like whatever, through their servers. I don't remember technicalities. Sorry. Yeah. They would use a cloaked email and then forward it to you. That was a feature I was talking about previously. Yeah, but when you receive it in your inbox, it would still be open [00:22:00] just so you couldn't track the IP or where the location is and whatever.

Yeah. So. What most email service providers have already done before Apple because of anti malware softwares, is they don't count either the first or the second click. They might not depends on software, it might not count. The first click might not count the second click and only tracks the third click as the actual open because the first clicks there, No, it's gonna be some software.

Yeah. Yeah, So, So then tracking isn't as bad. Yeah, it definitely was. Wasn't good. But look, this means that previously email marketing tracking wasn't good, neither. So it, it was, it was never good. Like clicks. Clicks have been always a thing you can always count on because you for sure know they have clicked.

Um, maybe, you know, it might be a robot clicking the email just, just to check where it takes you, but open rates have never been the most accurate thing. I, they,

[00:22:56] Matthew Dunn: they, they haven't. And then, uh, you know, M [00:23:00] mpp and, and, and earlier on, 2012, I believe, uh, Google Image Proxy. The, the pixel mechanism as a measure of opens, uh, was always a bit suspect.

And my, my contention is that measuring opens is an absolute, was dumb. It's a statistics issue anyway, but leave that one aside. Um, yeah, the, the, the ball that we keep chasing there though is that to invest in marketing. It helps to have feedback mechanisms that tells you what's working and what's not.

But those feedback, feedback mechanisms, um, frequently are, are frequently open to abuse, right? Knowing too much or being too invasive. So we end up with regulations or gatekeepers locking down what you can do. So we keep looking for new measurement mechanisms so that we're not just blind. Broadcasting. Um, it's, it's [00:24:00] a, it's a funny process and I know you're, you work in a lot of, uh, domains where privacy laws are stricter.

US privacy laws not as strict, at least for now. seems to be changing a bit. Um, I don't, I don't, I don't think we'll ever stop kind of chasing that rabbit to try to do the job of marketing for, for a. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting puzzle. Is there an equivalent, I mean, is there an equivalent challenge in the, in, in messaging?

Like in, in, in WhatsApp, what you mentioned, if you, if you market through that channel, like what kind of feedback mechanisms do you have?

[00:24:36] Reinis Krumins: I wouldn't know at the moment. Okay. I haven't tried WhatsApp. It's something I, I know there was a company. Snooks, something like that. A German company does that, does it very successfully.

Like if you find them on LinkedIn, you, they're gonna be all over their WhatsApp messaging and how they do it, their case, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Uh, but I don't know. Hmm.

[00:24:55] Matthew Dunn: Okay. Okay. Interesting. We'll stick with, we'll stick with email for the time because at least, [00:25:00] Yeah, at least you can, at least you can move and navigate there.

Um, back to email. Then, uh, you focus on, you have focused on for a while on e-commerce companies, correct? That's right. It's kind of a natural fit e-com and.

[00:25:18] Reinis Krumins: How come, like, look, um, just the flow, Like if someone's gonna go to the site, they need to go to the checkout, they need to enter email photo receipt for the order confirmation.

Yeah. So it's just natural use email there. But we also use email for, for info products and softwares. So those are kind of like, they're smaller segment. Clientele we work with. Mm-hmm. , but, uh, I guess everything online. It's like having a real house address. Where are you gonna, you know, get your, get your package, get your mail to Yeah.

That's your email address. Yeah. Obviously you can ask for a phone number. Yeah. But we're like, just socially, we're just ingrained just to put our email address as like the main thing. Like through logins, [00:26:00] through everything, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, that'll be my answer. It's just like the way, the way the internet has been built.

The

[00:26:06] Matthew Dunn: thing about email. That versus phone. Okay. Since you branched it, like we're okay with some slippage and some, uh, some slop and some volume in email where we wouldn't tolerate easily. Mm-hmm. , Um, on our, on our phone messaging client, you, you mentioned it earlier, you said three to four people will subscribe to three maybe.

Uh, text message. Yeah. I signed up for a couple, a couple months ago just as an experiment to, to, to talk with guests about SMS marketing, and I signed up with a couple of companies. I bought things from them over a couple of years. Mm-hmm. . I'm like, Okay, I'll put, I'll put myself on their list. It, it's, it feels like email from 10 years ago.

Like all they do is hammer the sales. Completely Unpersonalized gets me in the habit of, Of waiting. [00:27:00] Waiting for a relevant sale instead of becoming a steady customer. At full price. Yeah. Of like, I think it's backfiring on them, honestly, a whole bunch. And I would, I would. Delete it if it wasn't a business experiment, because it's mostly annoying.

Like, okay, there's a daily popup from blah, blah, blah, golf company, right? Mm-hmm. , like, I don't care. .

[00:27:21] Reinis Krumins: Yeah. I, I agree with you. That's what I said previously, like, that's why our email, Sorry. SMS frequency is very low. Yeah. Uh, it, it is just a medium where you don't expect to be contacted as often. No. You expect to have.

So like difference in email and SMS is like on SMS you expect to have a more active conversation. Yeah. On email you either have like a more official conversation. Yeah. It puts more time into, or you just get the messages Yeah. That you read and it's like a letter, You know, you read it, call in the Ben onto the next one.

Yeah,

[00:27:54] Matthew Dunn: yeah. Or go to the promotions tab when you're shopping.

[00:27:57] Reinis Krumins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. [00:28:00] So, so that's, that's, that's the, um, that's what I would say is the main difference also on, on how, how the content's being consumed. And also, like on sms you can't have as many words. Like you're not gonna be writing an essay.

Yeah. Because if, if you open an essay on a phone Yeah. Um, it's gonna be very difficult for you to, for you. , understand what it's about or, or even read it. The the text is gonna be big. It's gonna be a long message. And it's like, I don't know, like a, like a psychopath, psychopath, stalker following you around and telling you, I don't know what, what color, uh, underpants you're wearing in the morning.

Uh,

[00:28:38] Matthew Dunn: I, I had had a, had a guest a few weeks back. Scott, Scott Cohen. Well, we're the, uh, top topnotch email marketer and we were talking about the cost of SMS marketing. And a week after that I got an SMS message from a political campaign cuz we're elections tomorrow here in the US mm-hmm. and 800 [00:29:00] words plus a picture.

And I sent it, sent it to Scott and he said, Yeah, that was, that was 11 or 12 cents. For you like that was an 11 or 12 cent investment just for you asking for a relatively modest donation. Think. It's gotta be tough to make that pencil out, like, Wow. And did I read all 800 words? No , no. Like gimme a break, scan, delete.

[00:29:25] Reinis Krumins: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

[00:29:26] Matthew Dunn: yeah, yeah. Just nature of the medium. Yeah. Short, short. SMS starts with the word short, doesn't it? ,

[00:29:31] Reinis Krumins: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Like, uh, that's the biggest mistake people make with these kind of platforms. You don't. Selling the message. You wanna sell the click, you wanna get people to click. Yeah. You wanna get people to go to the landing page.

Yeah. Because if, uh, like sometimes we have done tests between long form copy and short form copy. I do think long form has a place, so don't eliminate it entirely. Yeah. But if you use long form it, it doesn't have to be a long. Form just to be a long form, right? Its [00:30:00] goal is to sell the click at the end of the day.

Mm-hmm. , because people are not gonna be entering their credit card details or even giving you a donation on a text message. Um, well actually on text message, I think you might, you could be able to give a donation, but still at the end of the day, your goal is to get them to the cta. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:16] Matthew Dunn: I was going, uh, it might might happen a little bit, but it's a really edge case thing.

Like in theory, if you were a company that had really good penetration with. , you could do the, you could do the deep click thing where the text launched your app, but I wouldn't bank on that, or I, I don't think I would invest in it. It's just we're, we're a little too protective right now.

[00:30:38] Reinis Krumins: Uh, it might be a good idea for attention, but that's where most people mess up and they, they don't use these platforms properly.

This platforms used for attention. Yeah, like if, if you have an app and you have someone who hasn't logged in in the past three days, someone, Hey, look, go back to the. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Hey, hey. Like you unlocked something, something here. Go back to the app. Yeah. That's how you could use it. But if you just [00:31:00] use, it's cold outreach.

It feels like spam. It feels like, uh, it might work. Um, but, um, Not, not the, not the most effective way to

[00:31:09] Matthew Dunn: reach people. Gotcha. Agreed. Well, so I don't want to, don't wanna chew up your whole day, but I did wanna ask you about your agency a bit like, yeah, e-commerce clients, we talked about where, where do you see, where do you and your partners see growing Agency JR.

[00:31:26] Reinis Krumins: Uh, good question. I'd say just doing the more, the same thing, but better. Okay.

[00:31:31] Matthew Dunn: Cool. Cool. And you said you were just recently in Dubai at a, uh, I would assume a business conference.

[00:31:37] Reinis Krumins: Yes. We were talking about our seven figure Q4 email marketing strategy. Um, That, that was a great time. We met a lot of, a lot of og um, speakers, some that were speaking at the affiliate world, um, and, and other massive conferences.

That was a great time. Had had fun with them. Met a lot of great marketers, Chatted marketing, chatted life, [00:32:00] uh, and was around great people. So that, that was an amazing

[00:32:02] Matthew Dunn: experience. And ended up with more WhatsApp addresses. I'm thinking. . .

[00:32:08] Reinis Krumins: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You, you,

[00:32:10] Matthew Dunn: you like one incredibly useful thing outta I got outta this.

I've gotta dust off my, uh, WhatsApp account. If I'm gonna, if I'm gonna connect with more people outside the states.

[00:32:21] Reinis Krumins: Yes. Yes. If you, if you come to Europe. If you come to Dubai, I think even Korea, like everyone's on WhatsApp, everybody. Americas, I think from my perspective, I believe it's kind of like an outlier.

Yeah. You are starting to use more like telegram. I see a lot of Americans hopping on

[00:32:36] Matthew Dunn: Telegram. Telegram and, and signal's got some take up as, as well. But, um, Apple's got an, Apple's got such an interesting foothold with iMessage cuz I, iOS iPhones are so, are so dominant here that Apple effectively has, Oddly enough, they're, they're counterbalanced to [00:33:00] Facebook's footprint with WhatsApp.

And I, I don't think man on the street is necessarily gonna switch, at least in, in the States. I, I think we get, yeah, enough of what we need out of the SMS clients that they'll continue to have the foot, the, the, the stronghold.

[00:33:19] Reinis Krumins: Yeah. I actually Googled this, uh, seven, eight, seven eight 2% of smartphones in Europe are Android.

Right. And in, in the us. Uh, In the US I don't find clear data. I need to dig a bit bit

[00:33:37] Matthew Dunn: more. Well, judge judging, uh, if you look at, uh, 54%, 54% iOS, I was gonna say over 50% because, um, litmus measures about email opens, validate that over and over. And I realize you can have Gmail client on an iPhone, but leave that aside, 54%.

Interesting. And the, um, The economic, [00:34:00] uh, you know, sort of the, the economic value of the 54% is higher than 54%. Oh yeah. More expensive. More expensive, uh, device. Typically Apple, Apple choose up something like 80% of the profit in the mobile market. Even though they have right, that, that percentage, uh mm-hmm.

penetration because like they've just done a beautiful job putting the pieces together and, and grabbing the profitable high end. So Yeah.

[00:34:31] Reinis Krumins: And customers getting into over.

[00:34:32] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, for sure. And wait, which do you use Android or

[00:34:35] Reinis Krumins: iPhone? Uh, I'm on iOS. I, I love. Uh, when I was on Android, I was, I wanted to switch to iOS.

That was, I, I look, actually fun fact, I got into business because I wanted to buy an iPhone on six. There you go.

[00:34:49] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, I get it. . I get it. I, I, I, I, I, I did that with, with, with Max back way back in the day, and I've got Apple devices all over the place here. I [00:35:00] do find, I do find Android just as a technical guy.

I find Android. Intriguing and fun. Like you can, you can break stuff and try stuff that you can't do on iOS, but then I, you know, I, the device, I take out the door with me. It works. Yeah. ,

[00:35:15] Reinis Krumins: it just, it just works. That, that was a challenge with iOS I found now, now it's in like a tech. Podcasts, but, uh, Apple products, they, they work, they're just like consistent.

The, the only challenge I found with, with laptops, I do prefer Windows. I am on a Mac right now. Interesting. But with, with, with laptops, I found that PCs work better than, than Mac for me. Mm.

[00:35:34] Matthew Dunn: I, I. Worked at Microsoft for nine years. So I became a bonafide Windows expert. And then when I left after a couple years, I kind of went, well, I like the Mac better.

And, and, and now it's interesting. What, it's interesting looking at the division there cuz, cuz the fact that a Mac is fundamentally a Unix workstation, like there's some, there's some sort of super geeky [00:36:00] reason. That, that, that I find the Mac likable and windows annoys me, which is like, you wouldn't, you wouldn't think that, but, Oh, well.

Well, we did get to wander all over the field, but what a good conversation and very educational for me, I, I, I, I, I love, I love having a glimpse into a completely different market. This webcam is just annoying. It will not stay focused. If someone, if someone says, Ooh, we need to talk to these guys, where do they hunt you down?

[00:36:30] Reinis Krumins: Uh, agency jr.com/call. So agency is an agency, J as in Jacob, R as in reus.com/call. You'll find me there.

[00:36:42] Matthew Dunn: There you go. Well, Ryan is, it's been a delight. Thank you for making the time. Yeah, thank you for having me.

[00:36:49] Reinis Krumins: We're out. All right.

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