Starting a Klaviyo Email Marketing Digital Agency

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Hey Yall,

I wanted to start this thread for anyone who needs that extra motivation to start their path. I know I've benefitted from these kinds of posts figured I add back that value.

My goal is to get more into Dropshipping. Dropshipping was my first attempt at the Fastlane journey. But, a series of failed attempts put me back on the drawing board. I haven't given up!

I'll be following @Sean Marshall post on starting a digital agency for the next 90 days.

The niche I'm shooting for is: email copywriting set up using Klaviyo, with a specific focus on eCommerce.

My projected #'s:

• 1k for the first month
• 2k the second month
• 4k the third month

I know this doesn't compare to what others may strive for, but I've set financial goals in the past and have always bit off more than I could chew. I'll lowball to establish momentum before anything else

What to expect from these posts is:

• I'll post how many pomodoros I do on a given day. (I work in 25-minute pomodoros, but 90% of the time I do two back to back and then take a 10-minute break.) I'll break down the category of each Pomodoro for extra context
• I'll do a round-up of my pomodoros per week
• A breakdown of #s. Cold emails, conversions, and generally any valuable information I can provide or would be helpful

The most dangerous form of inspiration is when someone is three steps ahead of you and you don't even know it. So, to clarify, I'm not starting from scratch. Where I'm starting from:

• I've got a computer science degree
• I'm 31, been out of college for 4 years
• I've started roughly 6 businesses from, content writing, dropshipping, SEO, and programming freelance. I've had some successes here and there, but nothing much
• I've been studying

My end goal here is to make the public commitment towards getting a business off the ground, my biggest problem is hiding behind a screen from fear. I've wasted too much time not putting my offers in front of other people's faces.

If there is anyone else trying to start their own business, let me know! I'd love to share this journey.

No point wasting any more time, let's get started!

 

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[B22]

Good luck man! I'm following you.

Recently I also started an email marketing agency for e-commerce businesses. Still working on getting the first customer though.

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Good luck man! I'm following you.

Recently I also started an email marketing agency for e-commerce businesses. Still working on getting the first customer though.

Thanks, man! I appreciate the follow. Getting the first customer is always rough. I wish you luck in getting your first customer. Could be right around the corner.

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Day 1 breakdown:

To increase my chances of closing the sales calls, I want to have a way of demonstrating my services. The niche I'm targeting will be eCommerce businesses' where I can add some obvious improvement(low hanging fruit) to their automated email systems and then close on a retainer for daily/weekly newsletters. I'm assuming that some might not even know what the hell Klaviyo is.

The portfolio piece will be a dropshipping Shopify store with all the Klaviyo flows in place. (welcome series, abandoned cart, and so on.)

Pomodoro Count: 8
Pomodoro Categories:

• Research [x8]
  
  • I found the dropshipping product and confirmed the market for it along with other criteria. I'll be spending the next couple of days getting the website up. I won't spend any more time than I need to during this phase.

 

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[Black_Dragon43]

Hey Yall,

I wanted to start this thread for anyone who needs that extra motivation to start their path. I know I've benefitted from these kinds of posts figured I add back that value.

My goal is to get more into Dropshipping. Dropshipping was my first attempt at the Fastlane journey. But, a series of failed attempts put me back on the drawing board. I haven't given up!

I'll be following @Sean Marshall post on starting a digital agency for the next 90 days.

The niche I'm shooting for is: email copywriting set up using Klaviyo, with a specific focus on eCommerce.

My projected #'s:

• 1k for the first month
• 2k the second month
• 4k the third month

I know this doesn't compare to what others may strive for, but I've set financial goals in the past and have always bit off more than I could chew. I'll lowball to establish momentum before anything else

What to expect from these posts is:

• I'll post how many pomodoros I do on a given day. (I work in 25-minute pomodoros, but 90% of the time I do two back to back and then take a 10-minute break.) I'll break down the category of each Pomodoro for extra context
• I'll do a round-up of my pomodoros per week
• A breakdown of #s. Cold emails, conversions, and generally any valuable information I can provide or would be helpful

The most dangerous form of inspiration is when someone is three steps ahead of you and you don't even know it. So, to clarify, I'm not starting from scratch. Where I'm starting from:

• I've got a computer science degree
• I'm 31, been out of college for 4 years
• I've started roughly 6 businesses from, content writing, dropshipping, SEO, and programming freelance. I've had some successes here and there, but nothing much
• I've been studying

My end goal here is to make the public commitment towards getting a business off the ground, my biggest problem is hiding behind a screen from fear. I've wasted too much time not putting my offers in front of other people's faces.

If there is anyone else trying to start their own business, let me know! I'd love to share this journey.

No point wasting any more time, let's get started!

I believe @Champion is doing this already, may want to check out his progress thread. If you need any help feel free to post your progress thread on the Facebook group (check the side of the forum), and I can provide feedback in more detail there.

What you need to develop first is a reliable process for getting customers. Once you have that, you've got the bedrock of a successful agency in place. It must be a repeatable process, where you know that if you do XYZ, you can get a customer. Not a random process.

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

I believe @Champion is doing this already, may want to check out his progress thread. If you need any help feel free to post your progress thread on the Facebook group (check the side of the forum), and I can provide feedback in more detail there.

What you need to develop first is a reliable process for getting customers. Once you have that, you've got the bedrock of a successful agency in place. It must be a repeatable process, where you know that if you do XYZ, you can get a customer. Not a random process.

You're right. The idea for posting Pomodoros came from @Champion posts. It's been a huge help!

I posted on the forum. I tried my best to fit the general format of the forum. Let me know if I need to change anything.

@Black_Dragon43 I won't lie, it is naive of me not to consider the customer getting process to be the bedrock of the agency. I appreciate the feedback. I'll spend a lot more consideration about that system before anything else.

 

[NinjaBartender]

Interesting thread! I like the idea of a portfolio shop - How will you show the emails to the potential clients?

As for getting clients, I found that highly personalised cold emails still work well. Shopify store owners get an awful lot of unsolicited emails, but if you stand out by showing you actually looked at their shop and didn’t send the same email to hundreds of people, you stand a better chance of getting their attention.

In your case, you could make a list of shops, sign up to their newsletter and start the check-out process (thereby triggering any abandoned cart emails). You could then take notes of what emails you get and when in a spreadsheet, and if there is anything you could improve on, tell them in your cold email.

I also like this site for inspiration: Really good emails.

Good luck!

 

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[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Interesting thread! I like the idea of a portfolio shop - How will you show the emails to the potential clients?

As for getting clients, I found that highly personalised cold emails still work well. Shopify store owners get an awful lot of unsolicited emails, but if you stand out by showing you actually looked at their shop and didn’t send the same email to hundreds of people, you stand a better chance of getting their attention.

In your case, you could make a list of shops, sign up to their newsletter and start the check-out process (thereby triggering any abandoned cart emails). You could then take notes of what emails you get and when in a spreadsheet, and if there is anything you could improve on, tell them in your cold email.

I also like this site for inspiration: Really good emails.

Good luck!

Thank you! I'm figuring that I'll be showing the portfolio shop once I get into the sales call.

I've been bouncing around a couple of ideas:

• Showing a gif scrolling through the entire Klaviyo strategy to show that there is substance there
• Putting up coaching services on my website where I've got mini-lessons on what makes an effective "Welcome" series and such. (I won't actually offer the services until I have some consistency behind my back. I think that this is just an avenue to demonstrate what I know and offer free content to prospects without talking their ear off at first contact.)

I completely agree with personalized email being better. Do you have any rules of thumb or templates that you follow? I usually pull at least two unique points from their website and give my brief thoughts on them. That's as far as my thinking goes. Could also use some tips!

Great advice, man. I'll keep a Google Sheet with the info and post it here to see what the #'s say. I appreciate the help!

Funnily enough, I've been using that website to hand copy the classics. The Billion Dollar Letter and Dollar Bill letter are must-reads.

P.S. I attached a dinky gif shuffling through the stack of notes I accumulated on that website lol

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Day 2 breakdown:
Current Profits: 0/1000
Pomodoro Count: 2

• Setup [x2]
  • I purchased the domain, started the Shopify store, and started slogging away at the website.

I got lazy. I wrote off the day being curious if I would follow through with the post despite not doing as much work as I should have. And, well, yeah, I feel embarrassed posting this. I've got to step it up if I want to get to $1k for the first month.

 

[BizyDad]

Day 1 - didn't contact anyone.
Day 2 - didn't contact anyone.
Day 3 - ?

Your goal is a modest one. What is the pain point your are solving? Find people with that pain point and solve the problem.

Talking to those people ahead of time will help you craft that website copy better.

You are an email marketer. What do you need a website for?

Don't delay. Send 50 emails today.

 

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[NinjaBartender]

I've been bouncing around a couple of ideas:

• Showing a gif scrolling through the entire Klaviyo strategy to show that there is substance there
• Putting up coaching services on my website where I've got mini-lessons on what makes an effective "Welcome" series and such. (I won't actually offer the services until I have some consistency behind my back. I think that this is just an avenue to demonstrate what I know and offer free content to prospects without talking their ear off at first contact.)

I completely agree with personalized email being better. Do you have any rules of thumb or templates that you follow? I usually pull at least two unique points from their website and give my brief thoughts on them. That's as far as my thinking goes. Could also use some tips!

I wonder if you overthink this... At the end of the day, your clients' pain point is that they lose money by losing sales that could have happened via abandoned cart emails, newsletters etc. That's all they really care about. If you can solve that problem, the gig is yours. I don't think they care about the strategy at that point, or ever. In fact, the end goal is that they pay you to just do it and take the pain away.

Have you considered to offer your services for free or cheaper so you can get a testimonial and/or case study that you can refer to?

As for cold emails, I don't use templates, and I actually use a similar strategy, mentioning a couple of things that I notice to improve on. Other tips would be to keep it as short as possible, and make it all about them and their problem, not about you. Sometimes, I also throw in something to make it more human, like mentioning the weather, or if they have something interesting in their About page, I'd refer to that. Also don't be afraid to follow up if they don't reply. Sometimes, it takes a few emails to get them to come back to you.

Exciting times!

 

[Andy Black]

Like @BizyDad said, you don’t need a website. I decided to start a landing page productised service on Monday and sold my first today. All I did was post to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. (It tickles me that we’ve sold dozens of landing pages over the years without a website never mind a landing page.)

Thoughts:

1) Don’t convince people they need Klaviyo. Help the people already paying for it.

2) Consider NOT having goals such as hitting X “result”.

What’s the big domino you want to topple?

Work backwards from there and figure out what domino you need to topple to set off the chain reaction.

Start as close to the end as possible too. (e.g. don’t build a website).

It might be to send X emails, or post Y times on social media.

3) Personally, I’d focus on just getting that first sale, and not worry too much about making it a repeatable process yet.

4) I recommend you don’t start with cold anything. Reach out to your current network first?

Check out the inbound/sales braindump linked to in my signature.

Also check out “Just Start Already”. I posted something similar on Monday to let people know about us thinking about selling landing pages.

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

I wonder if you overthink this... At the end of the day, your clients' pain point is that they lose money by losing sales that could have happened via abandoned cart emails, newsletters etc. That's all they really care about. If you can solve that problem, the gig is yours. I don't think they care about the strategy at that point, or ever. In fact, the end goal is that they pay you to just do it and take the pain away.

Have you considered to offer your services for free or cheaper so you can get a testimonial and/or case study that you can refer to?

As for cold emails, I don't use templates, and I actually use a similar strategy, mentioning a couple of things that I notice to improve on. Other tips would be to keep it as short as possible, and make it all about them and their problem, not about you. Sometimes, I also throw in something to make it more human, like mentioning the weather, or if they have something interesting in their About page, I'd refer to that. Also don't be afraid to follow up if they don't reply. Sometimes, it takes a few emails to get them to come back to you.

Exciting times!

Yeah, I think I am. I tend to overprepare out of insecurity. I'll try and carry that idea moving forward. I need to cater my services more along that vein and just make it an easy decision for them.

I have had some testimonials before. I should really consider that as a system within itself. I'll spend more time thinking about how I can ask for testimonials once I get a more solid foundation on the business.

Gotcha, gotcha. Just curious. Pulling current events is a good idea. I can see that a lot of people getting spam and pulling current events makes your writing seem more conversational versus chat botty.

 

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[Andy Black]

Did you check out the “Just Start Already” or “Inbound/Sales” links in my signature?

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Like @BizyDad said, you don’t need a website. I decided to start a landing page productised service on Monday and sold my first today. All I did was post to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. (It tickles me that we’ve sold dozens of landing pages over the years without a website never mind a landing page.)

Thoughts:

1) Don’t convince people they need Klaviyo. Help the people already paying for it.

2) Consider NOT having goals such as hitting X “result”.

What’s the big domino you want to topple?

Work backwards from there and figure out what domino you need to topple to set off the chain reaction.

Start as close to the end as possible too. (e.g. don’t build a website).

It might be to send X emails, or post Y times on social media.

3) Personally, I’d focus on just getting that first sale, and not worry too much about making it a repeatable process yet.

4) I recommend you don’t start with cold anything. Reach out to your current network first?

Check out the inbound/sales braindump linked to in my signature.

Also check out “Just Start Already”. I posted something similar on Monday to let people know about us thinking about selling landing pages.

I actually had to consider this response, overnight.

My justification for starting the website was, what I thought, customer-driven, but after thinking about it, it's motivated for my own convenience and familiarity.

Once I start speaking to customers, for all I know, they could tell me what kind of case studies they want. That could throw this "specific" website I have in mind into the trash.

1) You are absolutely right about this. It's hopeless to spend a conversation trying to convince someone what Klaviyo is. Instead, I'd rather have someone know what it is but wants someone else to do it.

I understand your point. And that Mother Teresa quote in your signature helps illustrate that.

When I considered what domino I'd want to tackle, what I could do now, I considered what gave me the most emotional response.

The idea of talking to customers and attempting at selling myself, well, makes me want to puke. I understand that's the answer in itself and that's what I've got to do.

So, with that said, the defined goal would be: Get X calls scheduled. It's getting late into the week. I'll shoot for getting at least one.

4) This is where I've stumbled the most. I haven't made any attempt at trying to network or anything. I've been taking active steps to get myself out there. (This goal is intrinsically motivated by wanting to move to Manhattan to work on my network and why I started posting here.)

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Did you check out the “Just Start Already” or “Inbound/Sales” links in my signature?

I have and it's fantastic advice. It's a lot to chew on. I've got them printed out so that I can reread them to fully understand the points. Thank you for the post and recommendations! It means a lot.

 

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[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Day 3 breakdown:
Current Profits: 0/1000
Pomodoro Count: 4

• Setup [x2]
  • Setting up importing products and Shopify apps.
• Design Research [x2]
  • Worked on picking apart other cleaning brands(Dyson, Irobot, etc.) and seeing what the general theme is.

At first, I was just continuing with the portfolio project, but based on the feedback I've been getting, I think it's time for a pivot.

It's always a fine line when taking in feedback and following your own intuition. Hell, even pursuing entrepreneurship in a family of specialized labor is going against the grindstone for me. But, in this instance, all the thoughtful responses ring clear to me.

If I followed the familiar path, I'd just end up where I've already been and that isn't working.

If I want to solve problems for customers, I first have to understand who my customers even are. Nothing would benefit me more than simply finding and speaking to them and understanding what they say their problems are.

For the time being, I'll scrap the portfolio project and go straight to speaking to clients.

My first order of action is to find databases/domain lists to scout prospects.

I appreciate everyone who's helped!

 

[Andy Black]

The idea of talking to customers and attempting at selling myself, well, makes me want to puke.

I did a podcast about “Sales For Techies”. It’s somewhere in the “Let’s Chat Sales” thread:

HOT! - EXECUTION - Let's Chat Sales

I started a podcast with Brendan McAdams who has years of experience as a sales pro. Join us in our first episode to learn how we: Figure it out as we go along. Find Product-Market-Fit, one customer at a time. Allow niches to reveal themselves as we engage the market. We also discuss, among...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

I did a podcast about “Sales For Techies”. It’s somewhere in the “Let’s Chat Sales” thread:

HOT! - EXECUTION - Let's Chat Sales

I started a podcast with Brendan McAdams who has years of experience as a sales pro. Join us in our first episode to learn how we: Figure it out as we go along. Find Product-Market-Fit, one customer at a time. Allow niches to reveal themselves as we engage the market. We also discuss, among...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

I'll check it out on Spotify!

 

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[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Day 4 breakdown:
Current Profits: 0/1000
Pomodoro Count: 6

• Audit Form [x2]
  • Not trying to build a robust system just yet. This is more of quickly figuring out what criteria's I'll consider for each potential prospect. I'll spend more time on this system when I've got a more concrete idea of what clients are willing to pay for.
• Building Prospect List [x4]
  • Scouring my social media for tips for finding prospects. At the moment, I'm using My IP Address - Shows IPv4 & IPv6 | Blacklist IP Check - Hosting Info to find all Shopify domain registered websites and working from that list. I'm not going to even bother with the top listers as I'm sure they've got millions of dollars already spent on marketing.

For now, the remainder of this week will be brainstorming how I could find clients. I feel myself tunnel visioning a bit too much, so I'll take a step back tomorrow to give myself some more headspace.

 

[NinjaBartender]

Another way to find shopify stores is via builtwith, in case you hadn't seen that one yet.

You could also join shopify groups on facebook. Groups will probably not allow self-promotion, but many people there will have their business in their profile, so you can find their store that way and then contact them outside facebook if you feel you could help them. It's also a good way to see what pain points around email marketing people have.

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Another way to find shopify stores is via builtwith, in case you hadn't seen that one yet.

You could also join shopify groups on facebook. Groups will probably not allow self-promotion, but many people there will have their business in their profile, so you can find their store that way and then contact them outside facebook if you feel you could help them. It's also a good way to see what pain points around email marketing people have.

That's a great idea! Much appreciated.

 

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[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Day 5 breakdown:
Current Profits: 0/1000
Pomodoro Count: 0
I'm taking a break for today. Starting a new challenge and taking in all the feedback is definitely pushing this goal forward a lot, but it's new and a bit draining for now. I expect to get more used to the process in a couple of weeks. For now, I'll brainstorm some other ways I could find out more about my market.

I hope yall enjoy your weekend!

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Day 6 breakdown:
Current Profits: 0/1000
Pomodoro Count: 0
I'm taking a breather during the weekend. No updates for today.

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Day 7 breakdown:
Current Profits: 0/1000
Pomodoro Count: 0 (I did an hour-ish of work, but didn't record them as pomodoros)

Just a heads up, these posts are done in retrospect. (I'm doing Pomodoros today, but the update will be tomorrow.)

Looking back at progress from last week, I completed in total:

• 20 Pomodoros
• 0 Sales Calls
• 0 Email Sent

Looking back at how much I accomplished, well, there isn't much, but I understand that the rate of progress is what matters in these situations. Comparing my effort from last week vs. my first week posting here on the Fastlane Forum, it's a big improvement. I'd like to throw out the thanks to everyone who's helped so far! But, what that ultimately means is that I've got to make some considerable improvements this coming week.

Now, time for some goals for this coming week.

Here are the goals I'm going to shoot for:

• 30 Pomodoros (40 Pomodoros is ideal, for me. Consistency is more important than quantity.)
• 25 Personalized Prospective Emails Sent at a MINIMUM
• 1 Sales Call (I hesitate to increase this number as it's not something I can control. But, if I land a sales call, I'll definitely up the anty, immediately.)

 

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[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Day 8 breakdown:
Current Profits: 0/1000 (Days Left: 20)
Pomodoro Count: 6

• Personal Writing [x3]
  • I was running into a bit of analysis paralysis and had to sit down to write it through. As much as I'd want to pull the trigger and send immediate pitches for my services, I want to make sure that the value I'm providing goes beyond the price tag of the service. I'm not here to squeeze out every dime from my clients. I'll be shooting for adding actual value to their business.
• Prospect List [x3]
  • I made the mistake of tracking businesses' by their newsletters only to find out that a majority of them have no timed sent emails, effectively losing contact altogether. I'll be sure to record prospects even prior to gauging their email campaigns. I pretty much wasted a day of work. Bummer.

 

[Andy Black]

I’m wondering if it would be more helpful if you tracked the number of emails sent, personal messages sent, Facebook group comments replied to, etc?

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

I’m wondering if it would be more helpful if you tracked the number of emails sent, personal messages sent, Facebook group comments replied to, etc?

Currently, the goal is to build a prospect list for 100 potential clients(should only take a couple of days). From there, I'll start following some goal numbers such as 5 sales calls per week when I know what my conversion rates are looking like. I'll be sure to post an update with that info.

 

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[Andy Black]

Currently, the goal is to build a prospect list for 100 potential clients(should only take a couple of days). From there, I'll start following some goal numbers such as 5 sales calls per week when I know what my conversion rates are looking like. I'll be sure to post an update with that info.

What about making X number of daily outbound emails or calls your goal?

The sales calls is a lagging indicator of doing enough outbound calls/emails.

 

[ChrisLeeHoskins]

Day 9 breakdown:
Current Profits: 0/1000 (Days Left: 19)
Pomodoro Count: 5

• Planning [x2]
  • I'm focusing on the lowest-hanging fruit for clients. What I can tell is that people are making beginner mistakes, but not enough to justify an entire service. Who knows, as long as it gets fixed, that'll be good enough? Had to do some brainstorming about the tools I'd use to set up meetings and analytics for emails.
• Prospect List [x3]
  • I'm starting to get into the flow of how I'm finding prospects. It's getting easier. Just slugging away building the list.