The Unofficial Shopify Podcast

Less than one month after launching her first Shopify store, I interview Julie Elster about her experience so far. Julie Elster is the owner of the one-month old Disney World-planning info-product empire Double Your WDW. In 2015, she achieved viral success among freelancers when she started (and just ended) Just Tell Julie, an accounts receivable service. We'll find out: what’s working & what’s not, her marketing plan, the unexpected reaction from family and friends, her unfair advantages, why she had to blow up her last business, ...and more in this candid interview in our pajamas. Tune in for more details! Resources Double Your WDW Instagram: @DoubleYourWDW Contest Opt-in Page Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn what's Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn’t?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme Improve your shop’s search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager

It's not too late to drive additional revenue with holiday SEO. And it's easier than you think. In this episode, we walk through each step of the holiday SEO planning process in detail. We'll learn how to engage in thoughtful keyword research, create optimized content for the season, and even the right way to link to your holiday content properly. Dale Bertrand runs Fire&Spark, an ecommerce marketing agency in Boston, MA. His clients include Citizen Watch, Ministry of Supply, Makerbot, Raymond Weil and Bulova. He has two decades of experience applying his graduate school work in artificial intelligence to digital marketing. Dale started his career building high-performance computing systems for the National Security Agency. Now, Dale is a specialist in search engine marketing, online advertising and analytics. In his spare time, Dale enjoys tennis, skiing and urban adventures with his two kids. We'll find out: How to find and target effective keyword phrases How to best create holiday landing pages in Shopify (without spending hours on writing) How and why to market your holiday pages year-round The minimum viable strategy for Holiday SEO Tune in for more details! Resources Fire&Spark Google Keyword Planner Keyword.io Dale's Holiday Season SEO article Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn what's Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn’t?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme Improve your shop’s search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager

Want to do seven-figures in revenue and work four hours a week? How about getting there in two years? Today's guest has done just that. He's sold 170,000 golf clubs resulting in $6.3 million revenue last year with just three employees and a four hour work week. We're joined by BombTech Golf's Tyler 'Sully' Sullivan who shares with his story, what's worked, what hasn't, and how you can emulate his success in your own store. Early on, I would make videos that were terrible, but I put my face to the brand and made it personal. Attaching myself to the brand was one of the key reasons why I was able to scale up the business. You'll Learn The mindset shifts that enabled Sully's success How community engagement was pivotal to building going from zero to seven figure Sully's advice on how to vet a fulfillment center How delegating everything in his business led him to a 4-hour work week and increased sales Why design doesn't matter as much as you think. How doing email really well has been critical to their success (and the three tips that have driven their success) Why personal branding is necessity Tune in for more details! Resources BombTech Golf Klaviyo Case Study Sully's amazing about page Ecom Growers - Sully's email marketing consulting business. Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn what's Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn’t?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme Improve your shop’s search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager

Learn how Facebook Messenger marketing with chatbots gets My Wife Quit Her Job's Steve Chou incredible results that blow email marketing out of the water. Steve's getting: Open rates 5X better than email Click through rates 8X better than email Revenue per subscriber 3.5X better than email Steve lays out his success for us. Steve runs an ecommerce store with his wife at BumblebeeLinens.com where he's tested chatbots in the wild. In addition, he runs the popular blog and podcast MyWifeQuitHerJob where he teaches others how to start a profitable ecommerce business. You'll Learn Why the quality of messenger subscribers is better than email The easiest way to get messenger subscribers How Steve uses chatbots to answer customer service inquiries How to not violate Facebook's Messenger Terms of Service The amazing way to improve your Facebook Ads' effectiveness with Messenger How to mix Facebook Messenger with email Tune in for more details! Resources Steve's Facebook Messenger Marketing for Ecommerce post The Ultimate Guide To Messenger Marketing and Facebook Chatbots ManyChat Bumblebee Linens My Wife Quit Her Job. Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn what's Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn’t?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme Improve your shop’s search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager

Do giveaways work? Are they an an effective strategy for both growing your email list and increasing your sales? Yes! In a published study from ColorIt.com, giving away $447 dollars worth of product resulted in: 6072 Email Subs 6176 Tweets 5000 FB Likes 2500 More Twitter followers 159 Orders During The Contest 85 Orders After Contest Ended $3.47 Per New Customer Acquired What's the secret? In this episode, My Wife Quit Her Job's Steve Chou reveals the exact step-by-step giveaway strategy to grow your email list and increase your sales. Shopify merchants will hear how giveaways are an effective strategy for both growing your email list and increasing your sales Steve runs the popular blog and podcast MyWifeQuitHerJob where he teaches others how to start a profitable ecommerce business. In addition, he runs an ecommerce store with his wife at BumblebeeLinens.com and an annual conference called the Sellers Summit. His latest business venture is GoBrandWin which is a platform that facilitates group giveaways for brands. You'll Learn What to give away Strategies to promote giveaway When not to run a giveaway Steve's exact Facebook ad & email strategy Tune in for more details! Resources https://gobrandwin.com/ [https://gobrandwin.com/advertise/](Apply For GoBrandWin's Next Giveaway) https://mywifequitherjob.com/ [https://apps.shopify.com/viralsweep](Viral Sweep) Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn what's Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn’t?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme Improve your shop’s search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager

Approximately 70% of your customers will abandon their carts... if you're lucky. That's why the most profitable email marketing workflow you can possibly run is an abandoned cart sequence. In today's episode, we'll cover the best practice four email sequence guaranteed to help you re-engage customers and recover revenue. After that, we'll talk through three out of the box ideas that are proven to work. Adii Pienaar, founder of Conversio, joins us today to explain. Prior to Conversio, Adii was co-founder of WooThemes/WooCommerce, where he made his early entrepreneurial mistakes while learning about building software for ecommerce stores. You'll Learn The current state of abandoned carts in ecommerce The best practices for abandoned cart sequence you need to implement today Three out-of-the-box ideas to test in your sequences Tune in for more details! Resources https://conversio.com/ - Email marketing and reviews for your store. https://kickbox.com/ - Email list hygiene service [https://adii.me/](Adii's blog) Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn what's Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn’t?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme Improve your shop’s search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager

Is your business just a vending machine? And is that vending machine on fire? Consider this: Facebook ad costs have gone up substantially since last year. CPM’s have increased on average 35% since last quarter. If a significant portion of your qualified traffic is coming from paid traffic, your business is actively on fire. Today's guest thinks so, but he's got some ideas on how to solve it. In today's episode, you'll learn how going beyond basic rewards programs can help you stop discounting and start building a community of loyal customers. Steve Deckert is the founder of Smile.io. They power reward programs for 20,000 merchants across the globe. Use Smile.io to reward your customers for completing profitable actions. You'll Learn Why your store maybe a vending a machine (and what to do instead) How to build a VIP program How to reward customers for micro actions like writing reviews Tune in for more details! Resources https://smile.io/ - Sign up for the Smile basic plan or above & mention the Unofficial Shopify Podcast, and get one free Smile app integration. Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn what's Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn’t?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme Improve your shop’s search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager

In this episode, we’re talking about how to bulletproof your online store from data disasters and security issues that are more common than you think. Mike Potter joins us to discuss. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Rewind.io, an online backup service for SaaS apps. His company is trusted by thousands of ecommerce merchants to backup their Shopify and BigCommerce stores. There’s a saying that entrepreneurs like to move fast and break things. To that, Mike Potter would say: “go ahead and break things - just make sure you have a backup.” Since launching Rewind in 2015, he’s talked with hundreds of merchants who really did break their store - whether it was their fault or not - and helped them get their site back to normal. Having experienced data loss himself, Mike is passionate about helping small businesses to better protect their data and digital assets. You'll Learn The state of backups in Shopify Top 3 risks to your store How to mitigate those risks Best practices to lockdown your store Backing up your store manually and automatically Tune in for more details! Resources Get an exclusive extended 45-day free trial of Rewind 1Password Increase Shopify Security With Two Factor Authentication Backups and duplication Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn what's Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn’t?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme Improve your shop’s search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality are no longer the stuff of science fiction. Apple and Google's mobile operating systems already ship with software components to support AR, hardware prices for VR are rapidly dropping, and the industry is expanding. VR, AR, and 3D is already here and even in use today by merchants on the bleeding edge of technology. Soon 3D and virtual reality could be seamlessly embedded into your Shopify store. (And it'll cost less than you think.) In this episode, you'll hear about how AR & VR will change how we shop, and come away with inspiration on how these new technologies can provide more engaging experiences for their buyers. Daniel Beauchamp, Shopify's Augmented and Virtual Reality team lead, joins us to discuss it. Daniel’s team explores how these technologies change the way we shop and run our businesses, both today and in the future. You'll Learn What's the difference between AR and VR? How is AR / VR going to change the way we shop? How will merchants be able to use this tech on Shopify? Are these technologies only consumer-facing? How can merchants use it? Tune in for more details! Resources Magnolia Market on the iTunes App Store - Built with the Shopify Mobile Buy SDK and ARKit, you can easily preview a selection of products in your home in incredible detail. Tapcart - Turn your Shopify store into an iPhone app Fashion Nova on the iTunes App Store Medium: Shopify VR - Experiments, thoughts, and lessons learned from Shopify’s VR team. Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn what's Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn’t?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Improve your shop’s search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme

(Video of this episode is available on YouTube.) Everyone's looking for the silver bullet to grow their business. Growing globally through internationalization is may just be the only way to get that big win. It's a scary proposition. International expansion sounds like it should be wrought with challenges and complexities. Joining us to discuss it is marketing wunderkind Andy Bedell. In this episode, he teaches us the exact step-by-step process he developed while helping grow KeySmart into a top 100 Shopify store and Facebook advertiser using internationalization. You'll Learn When & why go international (there are two reasons that surprised me) How to decide if your product is a good fit Tackling shipping The free "MVP" solutions to tackle currency conversion How this year's newest Shopify features will make it easier & better than ever Exactly how to approach Facebook ads What should scare you about not going international Tune in for more details! Resources Translate My Store Langify Multi-Currency for Shopify Payments Local Payment Methods for Shopify Payments Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn what's Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn’t?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme Improve your shop’s search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager