A Conversation With Sam Saifi of RevenueLabz
" Don't fall in love with the paycheck, fall in love with the client." That's one of the bits of sage advice from Sam Saifi, founder of Revenue Labz.
Sam shares his journey into email by way of copywriting in this email-and-marketing focused conversation. While Sam operates from the UK, the majority of his clients focus on the US market as well. Revenue Labs "with a zed" specializes in e-commerce DTC (direct to consumer) clients, particularly those based in the Shopify ecosystem.
Sam's got a refreshing enthusiasm for email — given that it's older than he is, that's kind of fun! He and his team focus on the trackable, scalable, measurable and own-able aspects of email. Sam and host Matthew Dunn also delve into text messaging for marketing purposes.
The "Labs with a zed" label isn't accidental; Sam shares some terrific advice about a testing-centric, data-centric approach to scaling a DTC brand. If your company is in the DTC space...this is a great conversation for you!
Matthew Dunn: Good morning. This is Dr. Matthew Dunn, my guest today on the Future of Email, Sam Safie of Revenue Labs zooming in all the way from London. Good, good afternoon, Sam. How are you?
Sam Saifi: Hey, how's it going, Matt? Good afternoon. Good morning for you. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on Matt. And yeah, really, really excited to dive in and, and share some cool
Matthew Dunn: stories.
You know, for some reason the UK is like this hot spot for email and email marketing. I, I, I, an undue proportion of people that I've had a chance to meet and have a chance on to having this podcast been from the UK. Why, what do you think?
Sam Saifi: I think it's something in our tap water, Matt, that makes us love us.
I think I think the marketing industry in general is, is, [00:01:00] is rapidly growing globally, especially because you see all of these new faces coming up and new marketers, especially people that are teaching, you know, course creators. And I think the economy as we can clearly see is shifting that bug has been caught in the UK as well.
And I think now people are starting to realize that, Hey, like, you know, there are. Other areas to explore other than maybe what was first seen as traditional, you know, the traditional career path and marketing is something that helps you exercise your creativity as well as, you know, the numerical side to it too.
So
Matthew Dunn: why do you, why do you think marketing, I agree with the observation and I've got my own thoughts, but marketing growing, why? It's a good question. I think,
Sam Saifi: You know, with tools like Shopify, right, that are rapidly growing, I think there's never been a better time where people are more empowered to start their own businesses.
And I think the moment people enter the arena and kind of start their own business, the first thing they realize is, okay, I need customers. And that generally creates the need of, okay, well, I need to learn how to market and, [00:02:00] you know, be top of mind and. You know, a lot of people think marketing is just literally just, you know, driving sales, but a lot of it is like top of mind awareness, you know, working the funnel.
So yeah, that's
Matthew Dunn: pretty much why. Well, good. I'm glad we can talk about Shopify. Now your, your company Revenue Labs, is it fair to say an agency fundamentally?
Sam Saifi: Yeah. So we, we operate as an as a boutique agency. So I like to say we're not big enough to the point where you're going to get lost or a client would get lost in, you know, lost in the service, but we're just compact enough.
So people get that, you know, white glove service. Yeah. Yeah. We are a retention agency.
Matthew Dunn: And do you focus mostly on, cause you mentioned Shopify, do you focus mostly on direct to consumer kind of brands? Exactly. Yeah. So
Sam Saifi: we, we work
Matthew Dunn: with TTC brands primarily. Okay. And then give me the geographic split for customers, your customers.
Yeah, interesting.
Sam Saifi: So the vast majority of our customers sell into the U. S. I think about 60 percent are also based in the U. S. But we [00:03:00] have, we have some entrepreneurs that are based in Thailand and on the other side of the world as well. But they mostly sell into the U. S. as well. So it's pretty diverse
Matthew Dunn: if you ask me.
It sells into the US and I, I know it's, I think it's still the biggest economy measured by whatever you want to measure that by. And there's certainly a place where email, which I think we'll probably end up talking about is used a lot, but It's an intriguing moment in the world that you can be sitting somewhere in like Thailand and say, I think I'll start a direct consumer brand and sell into the U.
S. Wow, right? I know. Now this was possible not that long ago.
Sam Saifi: Hundred percent. And you know what's I think also, I think the reason the U. S. market is so ahead of the rest of the world, in my opinion, is because Amazon has created a beautiful ecosystem where, you know, all of your orders are communicated via email or the updates communicated via email.
So people are naturally very used to just looking at their email for orders, updates and offers. So that's what the DCC [00:04:00] world has kind of jumped into.
Matthew Dunn: It did. So your feeling is that happened faster earlier in the U. S. and Amazon played a big role?
Sam Saifi: 100 percent in terms of making the customer already comfortable with shopping via email and trusting the
Matthew Dunn: channel itself.
Yeah. And trusting the channel. Yeah. I'm I get, I get to brag or flash my gray hair or something. My Amazon account is over 25 years old. Wow. I've lived in Seattle. I still live close to Seattle, but I lived in Seattle. I I'm, I'm, I'm an early adopter for sure. I heard about this crazy company selling books and they had me books, right?
And I've never been, I've never been concerned about things like, Adopting the new, but 97, 96 was pretty early to buy something on the web. Yeah. And I look at what they've done since then. And then the explosion of, I think, a really important [00:05:00] counterbalancing ecosystem in Shopify. And it's remarkable. And then now I get, I live out in the woods and I see Amazon trucks go by.
Whoa, it's really, we're living in the future. What's next? George Jetson's car becoming a suitcase? You probably don't know the reference, but okay. What got you interested in marketing?
Sam Saifi: Yeah, good question, Matt. So I was actually working a corporate job in sales. So I think I think the biggest stat in my life currently is how many times I've been had profanities against me from CFOs because I was the funny story.
So I was I was a cold caller, right. And I'd call CFOs to sell FX services. And FX is pretty much seen as the toilet of finance. So that's where I. Got got my story started. And during that time, I think it was like four, five, six months, I had to make a hundred cold calls a day. So that really taught me aciduity.
It taught [00:06:00] me work ethic. Exactly. So when you have to sit down and grind a hundred sales calls a day, you know, it kind of brings out this inner, inner hunter in you in, in a, in a strange sense. Right. As I was doing that, I quickly did a calculation and I'm like, I can't even afford a down payment on this salary in the next 50 years, let alone pay off a mortgage.
So, and I was very lucky to be exposed to a few people early on in my journey. I don't know if you know, Iman Gadzi, he, he's somebody that I actually knew here in London when he was 16 building everything he So he kind of helped me understand, let's say, what was possible in the online world.
So following that, I was Googling during my lunchtime at work, how to make money online, believe it or not. And that sent me down a rabbit hole. I got I remember getting a YouTube video from, from someone called Alex Cattoni. And that was the program I ended up investing in to learn copywriting. And that was my start into, into learning marketing.
So [00:07:00] I started off as a copywriter.
Matthew Dunn: Okay. Okay. Not, not, not an easy thing to do. Copywriting. Yeah. Backtrack to the sort of boiler room calling for a second. Cause it's a, that's a, that's an interesting thing to have done. Obviously not an easy thing to have done, but I had one of those calls. Yesterday, you know, middle of the day, I'm, I'm working my tail off, phone rings.
I make the mistake of picking it up, right? And again, this is right into the, right into the script. And I was you know, I was hurt. I'm like, you didn't even ask me whether I had time for this conversation. And I'm sure you have a quota of stuff to pound out, but why do you think companies still do that?
Sam Saifi: I think it's a volume game. I think When it comes to cold calling, there's two approaches. Number one, I think you're looking for that 3 percent of audience that is ready to buy now and potentially looking for a solution. Number two, I think it's also [00:08:00] how you approach a sales call. So most people would go into the pitch or anything.
What I used to like to do was I used to like to ask like, Hey, is this Matthew? And then I would ask or confirm whether they're the right person in the position I'm speaking to is that way. They don't know if it's, you know, a sales call or not, right, because you're just confirming. So the reason why companies still use it, in my opinion, is it still does work, you know, to some degree, maybe less so as it used to though.
Matthew Dunn: Hmm. Okay. Okay. I mean, it's like, it's kind of the opposite of marketing, right? In that, right. In, in like super effective marketing, who is it? Oh, I'm blanking on where the quote came from, but you know, if the true marketing is knowing your customer customers needs so well, that what you do really solves the problem.
You don't need to sell them. If, if you like, if you, if you, if you truly understand what they need, want, need, and what problem you can lift off of their shoulders, like they'll, they'll like say, give it to me. Like Amazon doesn't, here's an example. Amazon [00:09:00] doesn't have to do that much marketing. To get people to use Amazon on it.
Why? Because it, it's a lot better to have it show up on the doorstep than drive to town to buy it. It's a lot easier to say, wait a minute, somewhere in the universe, someone must have a left man handed monkey ranch. Oh, I'll just go search Amazon. Oh, look, left handed monkey ranch and it'll show up. Right?
So you, you, you, you, you jumped from the one side over to the other side. What aside from copywriting, which is a hard skill to learn, what was the biggest thing you had to, you know, get in your head about helping your customers as a marketing expert? Yeah, good
Sam Saifi: question. I think from a, from a copywriting perspective, it was just really getting a deep understanding of customers.
And I think there's a, a goldmine that I used to use when I was a copywriter. It was something called Google discussions, which was a, it's like a extension, right? And whatever topic I type in, if I hit the discussions tab, it would load [00:10:00] all of the forums. Yeah. Pertaining to that topic. Yeah. So I would go in and I would actually read articles of what real people are writing and complaining about.
Matthew Dunn: Standing your market. There you go. Okay. Yeah.
Sam Saifi: So just, just the different ways where you can really gather information, for example, through forums, because forums are normally anonymous. People kind of go there to journal their, their really deep thoughts. So when you really, and then when you read enough of these articles or, you know, enough of these posts, there's like a very thematic experience where you start to see like, okay, like this.
Yeah. Yeah. These three areas are recurring in 70 percent of the posts I read. So if I can 80 20 my writing to target those, you know, three core areas, for example, I'm now deeply appealing to a vast variety of people. Because again, you can't appeal to everyone, but you can definitely appeal to the majority.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah, very, very smart. The sort of the forum is a bit of an x ray. Exactly.
Sam Saifi: And then the next bit is structure. So once you have the info, how do you structure that information and then how [00:11:00] do you deliver it to your client? And that's where I think results happen in email and copy in general.
Matthew Dunn: How, how early did email sort of click as the channel that you thought would be effective to, to focus on because it's right on top of your LinkedIn says email and SMS.
Like, how early did you go? That's, that's the right one.
Sam Saifi: Yeah. Good question. So when I, when I started copy, obviously there's different types of copy. There's ad writing, there's sales page writing landing, like the whole lot. Right. Yeah. And I, so even before my sales job, I was looking into internet marketing.
Cause I think at that time it was like booming. Right. So at that point I was just a pure consumer of information and I would read all of these emails, but I didn't realize that there was like, it didn't click to me that there's someone actually writing this and getting paid on the other end for it. I thought the business owner was doing it.
Right. I didn't really understand how things work behind the scenes. So I actually got my start in email itself. And that was a channel I chose because sales pages were way too long. They took. Ages of research and then structure. Yeah. [00:12:00] I guess there was an inherent lazy side, where I was just like, what can I do fast and impactful and I can just do it on repeat, right?
And email seemed the most, let's say, franchisable thing to do, because you're writing short skits, sprint stories, little value, your job as an email writer isn't to sell, it's to usher somebody and pique their interest, to take them to the place where they're going to be sold to. Right?
Matthew Dunn: Right, right. It's the conduit, it's the conduit, not the, you know, not the spigot, so to speak, right?
Exactly.
Sam Saifi: Exactly. And when I saw what email can do from a channel perspective, I was just like, this seems incredible. It's trackable, you know, it's, it's, it's scalable. And as somebody's list grows, you can attribute revenue to the things you write. So, you know, I really liked, I really liked that part
Matthew Dunn: of it.
Nice. Interesting. And writing skills, copywriting skills. Way undervalued in email. It's not just about hitting send over and over. You don't have something to say in that message. People sniff that [00:13:00] out really fast and just ignore it, delete it, unsubscribe from it. Right. Exactly. So working with working with the kind of DC and, and Shopify based brands that I think you're targeting.
You must end up touching Klaviyo quite a bit. Oh yeah, definitely. Is it Klaviyo or Clavio? We live on Klaviyo. You'd think I'd know. Right? Yeah,
Sam Saifi: yeah. I've, I've, I've heard both. So I'm, I'm pretty, I'm at a 50, 50 percent spot. I say Klaviyo. Yeah. I used to say Klaviyo, but now I say Klaviyo. Okay.
Matthew Dunn: Klaviyo. We'll go, we'll go with Klaviyo.
So fairly common system for your customers to have their lists on. Yes. Yep.
Sam Saifi: Definitely. Exactly. So they will have lists and then we would go in and, and just, you know, nurture that list and maximize the potential from the list.
Matthew Dunn: And one of the, one of the things about that, that ecosystem, let's see if I can say this succinctly relatively small brands, relatively small DTC companies in, from what [00:14:00] I've seen talking to a lot of people in this space, frequently have a better ecosystem with a better marriage between their commerce platform and their email platform because Shopify and Klaviyo talk back and forth very, very well.
And without naming names, you can spend, you can spend a zillions, big brands do spend zillions on really large ESP platforms that don't have that kind of tight, what did the customer do and what did they do last week and what's their history, those kind of tight links. Frequently, the ESP is its own little lonely silo with nothing but email information, which I think would make the job harder.
Klaviyo Shopify. You tend to have a pretty good view, my understanding at least, you tend to have a pretty good view of, of the, the results of the email and the commerce activity, and it's the same customer, right? Yeah, exactly. [00:15:00]
Sam Saifi: Because of the APIs, it passes along data really, really well. So I always say, right, like one thing about DTC email specifically that I love is it, it literally nurtures both sides of your brain.
So the left side, right side, the left side, like, you know, one side for creativity where you're looking at visuals and you know, like, like beautiful art and then the other side, which is the data. I forgot which side pertains to which, but you know what I mean? Like the data tells you how good your creatives are.
So, yeah.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you end up you end up diving into left and right brain for your accounts, obviously.
Sam Saifi: Exactly. Yeah. It's like, you know the EOS principle visionary integrator, right? You have a visionary in you and we all do to some degree. It's about visualizing, okay, like what can I add in this customer journey and where can I add it?
And that, that unleashes like your inner artist, right? And then the other side is your integrator. We actually diving in and you're like, okay, how did this perform? What, you know, what, what, what are the [00:16:00] numbers telling me? What's the, what's the picture that's being painted. And then you can make decisions based on that.
Got it. Got
Matthew Dunn: it. Okay. See, email's a lot more fun than people think it is. It is, yeah. It is. You also work with SMS, right?
Sam Saifi: We do, yes. So we do SMS as well as email. That's a channel that's coming up now, very
Matthew Dunn: much so. That's what I was going to ask you about. What do you, what do you think? What do you think is going to happen?
Yeah, very interesting question. So SMS
Sam Saifi: at the moment is a brilliant channel. Very high ROI. One thing I'm noticing is in Europe. Maybe SMS is not as effective as it is in America, because in Europe, right, we use WhatsApp a lot more than text, exactly. So I think WhatsApp is definitely more of a channel to focus on in the future for a European or Middle Eastern market.
And then when you go into the States, you know, everyone in the States communicates via, you know, iMessage or something of that sort. So I think text works well there because that's what they're used to as well
Matthew Dunn: in America. And, and [00:17:00] filling a gap for me. If you have a, you have customer focuses in Europe as a market or Middle East how rich is WhatsApp as a marketing channel?
Can you do more than just text messages? Yeah. So I think what,
Sam Saifi: like, to, to be totally transparent, I haven't really dived very deep into WhatsApp yet. It's something that I have my eye on, but one thing I do know about it is it, it allows for multiple types of media, like, you know, on WhatsApp, you send your friends images and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. You can be very creative with it. It's a very similar channel. It's just, you know, more intimate based on the, the region
Matthew Dunn: really. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, I, I've got, I've got relatives and friends in Europe and for sure you go, you know, Oh, them. Yeah. What's up? Not as you said I I'm and the iMessage or whatever comment that I want to, I want to follow that thread a bit U S experience and [00:18:00] this, this great historical accidents.
Why this is the case in a U S experience being SMS centric. has led to the blue bubble and green bubble camps, right? The iPhone's the dominant mobile. platform here, but it's not 100%. And the messaging experience between iPhone to iPhone and iPhone to anything else. The first one is relatively rich and you can do things like media and videos and images.
But the minute you've got other people involved on other platforms, it kind of falls apart. And really the fundamental common layer is still straight up ASCII text. I subscribe to a couple of a couple of brands. I actually like their t shirts among other things. Text messages. Partially it's a professional experiment.
What are these guys going to do? And the content's pretty piss poor. Yeah. [00:19:00] It tends to be, look, another sale. Hey, great sale. Got a sale going. Like, wow, that's all I could think to do. And it's straight ASCII text. There's no rich media, there's no video, there's no, there's no anything. That could change this year.
If Apple's support of RCS, Rich Communication System Standard, which Google has been pushing for, for a couple of years now. If Apple, if Apple's pretty robust about how they talk to SMS, The messaging market in the U. S. could suddenly become viably rich and interesting and not quite such a ASCII telegraph style channel.
I, I think, I think it could be kind of explosive if it's actually a robust experience and I think email marketers are really well positioned to [00:20:00] understand what to do with that channel. With SMS.
Sam Saifi: Reactions? Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think, I think there's a lot of limitations with SMS at the moment in terms of the characters and, you know, if you look around, most brands playbook is just use SMS as a supplement, you know, for your email and just, you know, shoot out a sale every now and then when you have it, right?
You know, by nature of the channel and the limitations, you kind of have to be very direct because you don't have a lot of room to, to play around. But I think what you could do with SMS. Is make it more of an experiential I don't know if you can say experiential experience, but you can do like product treasure hunts and you could gamify the whole thing.
You could have SMSs, but like being sensed from different different people in your team who are fighting to give you a better product. Like, you know, you could really, really think outside of the box when it comes to SMSs. Cause when you think of the base, SMS is a channel. That is coming usually from your friend, right?
Your friend normally texts you. So how can we get that understanding of what the channel is already used for? [00:21:00] Play on those emotions and then create marketing experiences out of that. This is where I see it going in the future,
Matthew Dunn: personally. Interesting. And actually that's a much more fun vision than, Hey, another sale.
I mean, my, my observation about the few brands that I allow SMS from word used intentionally is that they basically trained me. To wait. If I need, you know, if I need more socks, I'm not going to jump on their store and buy socks. I'll wait a week. I'll wait two weeks. Sooner or later, they'll go, Hey, we've got a sale on socks.
And I'll go, Oh, right. Pull the trigger. And they probably, I'm sure they're conscious about that. I'm sure there's a loyal customer worth more kind of thing. But seriously, they just trained me to wait for the cycle to come around. Yeah. And that, that, that ASCII only, text only, really short [00:22:00] message experience, it is hard to vary that.
It is hard to find a tone that's not just interruptive, kind of peremptory sale and immediate action focused. But I can't imagine that many people will tolerate, you know, lots and lots of brands pinging their phone with that kind of stuff. Yeah, if it,
Sam Saifi: yeah, once you sign up to too many brands, you know, it can definitely get annoying, which is why, yeah, exactly.
Which is why I think the only way to stand out is do something different and think outside the box because the competition is pretty low at the moment. Like, I think, I think you and I both know that. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn: it really is. And it is, is cost part of that. My understanding is that text messaging is pretty, especially expensive in the market where you live.
I mean, it's expensive in the US, but it's really expensive in the UK, isn't it? Yeah, it's, yeah,
Sam Saifi: it I think that's another factor as well in terms of how expensive it is. If you have a [00:23:00] big list, it can cost you a bit to push it out, but ROI is there, but again, it's, it's like a lot of brands are just a bit hesitant because it's not as proven, but then you hear stories of people, you know, like I think Van Oaks on a podcast was saying for every dollar he spends, he gets like 12 back.
So I think there is a lot of interest in this space, but for some reason brands. aren't really pushing onto it as much as you'd imagine. It's not got the adoption you'd imagine it would get, in my opinion.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, I'm not, I'm, I'm glad to hear you say it. I'm not surprised that you've got the same observation because it, it's like it's talked about, but there's still kind of a, I don't know, maybe partially because there is a price tag.
Like if you made a big mistake, big list, it'd be an expensive lesson. You make a big mistake with an email list. It's a relatively inexpensive lesson. Exactly. A hundred
Sam Saifi: percent. And then also there's the idea of you're sending either, you know, if you're sending pure text, it's obviously a bit cheaper, but then the moment you want to [00:24:00] start adding creatives in, it now turns into an MMS, right?
So now you're spending more per MMS. So some clients are just like, okay. Or some brands would generally be a bit hesitant, but in my opinion. I think every brand should give it a try, because if it doesn't work, you can cut it off. And, you know, the tech, like you don't have to run a massive test. I mean, you know, the upside is some incredible ROI.
And, you know, you test it with a small cohort. The downside is you just don't use it. It doesn't work. So, yeah, I think definitely it's worth a, worth a
Matthew Dunn: swing. Worth a swing. And, and, and, and worth, I think, stepping back and saying, how do these two channels. Play off each other coexists rather than, rather than, you know, sort of compete for volume.
I, I got my wife a present for her upcoming birthday. Hey, she can't hear. I got my wife a present for her upcoming birthday and the place I bought it sent the order confirmation via text. So I've got an email, you know, I've got an email, [00:25:00] but the, I think it was a package tracking update ping yesterday, like, okay, I'm actually kind of glad to know that the thing's going to get here on time.
That was the right use of that. I didn't need the receipt via text, I got that in email, sounds like a pretty good balance to me.
Sam Saifi: Exactly. And that's why it's the best used at the moment as a supplementary channel. So for example, I would personally use SMS from an 80 20 perspective. What are the 20 percent of messages that are urgent that make up SMS?
the biggest leverage across 80 percent of the funnel. So for example, if you add something to cart, if someone's subscribed to SMS, it's probably better to send them an SMS reminder for the add to cart followed by an email because it's more urgent, right? Right. You get more eyes. So in this case, if someone's added to cart, that's a high level of intent.
They're raising their hands saying they want your product, right? So sending an SMS in that situation. That's where you can really leverage it, right? On top of that, [00:26:00] with a campaign, if I send out an email campaign, and there's a certain cohort of people that will not open it, following up those people with an SMS, as long as it's an important sale, see how you're now not annoying people?
You're kind of, if you don't see me here, maybe you'll see me here. It's more that kind of approach. That's
Matthew Dunn: a very sophisticated move that you might be able to do in a Shopify, Klaviyo world. But literally knowing, knowing who opened fast enough, knowing who didn't open fast enough to follow up with a text.
That's hard at scale in a lot of systems, unfortunately. So yeah, kudos to you for getting to play on the play with the really cool toys. Yeah,
Sam Saifi: definitely. The beauty is we said, well, Let's say our first abandoned cart email on a schedule to go out 30 minutes after someone abandons their cart, right?
We always test with times. Every store will be different based on what's the optimal time. That's where split tests come in. In this case, what we'll say is, okay, let's, let's trial half an hour. So if someone [00:27:00] has not opened and this is the beauty with ESPs, right? Clavio, a lot of ESPs have this ability. So if someone has not opened an email in 30 minutes, send SMS.
So, you build it off logic, which is really fun. Yeah,
Matthew Dunn: yeah. Okay. What talk to me a bit about growing your agency. I mean, you're successfully in this space now as you look back over the, over two years, I think that you've, you've had this running, like, what are some of the big lessons? I wish I'd have done this different, or I'm glad I did that.
Yeah,
Sam Saifi: great question. So when I, one thing I'm glad I did was I didn't dive straight into doing an agency. The fact that I did copy first gave me an understanding of the nitty gritty of marketing itself. So I could leverage that knowledge to actually build the agency. The second thing that I did was I didn't start an agency.
I actually started by white labeling somebody else's service when I was totally new in the space because. Yeah, because I, I, [00:28:00] I wanted to make sure that I saw how things were done correctly from a functioning perspective before I would go out on my own and do it. And it was actually my first ever mentor.
I would have an agency right with our own website and then we would find the clients. And then basically he would do the fulfillment of the results. And that's exactly how I got my start. And then I, I told him that I, you know, my goal is in the next three or four months to, to make my own thing and, you know, have our own fulfillment team.
So after I'd say it was five or six months it was pretty much time to go at it. And by that time, what I had learned is. You know, taking understanding how to actually sell and understand people's problems from a very deep perspective when it comes to email. So that multiplied by continuous repetition really helped grow.
And then I could identify the right team to take us to kind of where we are today. Right. In terms of lessons that I've learned. Number one, from an agency perspective, the biggest [00:29:00] leverage you can have is looking after your clients. Because if you build a good base of clients and you look after them well, you will never technically have to hunt for business.
It just becomes a luxury, right? There is a little bit of an asterisk there because In an agency, there is, you know, churn is part of the game. So what I say is sometimes you'd sign on a client that might be struggling on their front end. And as an email agency, we don't really have much control over their advertising, right?
Sometimes it's budget. And sometimes, you know, I always say sometimes brand owners are their own worst enemies because they have a certain notion of how things should work, but the reality kind of dictates otherwise. So when you boil all of these concepts together, I'd say pillar number one is always prospect and always, you know, do your marketing and stay top of mind because you always want to be putting your name out there and never stopping.
Number, number two, don't fall in love with the paycheck, fall in love with the client. When you can do that. [00:30:00] It is, you know, the, and, and this was actually a quote from, from my first copywriting mentor. And this is what he had put in a Google doc. He said, don't fall in love sorry, don't fall in love with a paycheck, fall in love with a client.
And that has been my mantra pretty much moving forward. There was a, there was a period of time, Matthew, where I did stop prospecting. And the only way that we were getting customers was through referrals of doing a good job. And that's when I realized the power. Like I, in the first half of building the agency, it was just through word of mouth, doing a good job.
Clients introducing us to their friends and then partners introducing us to more of their clients because we did such a good job. Yeah. And now the goal is to really, you know, start the acquisition side of things, but The beauty is we've proved concept. Our retention rate ourselves as a retention agency is over 18 to 20 months, just keeping somebody on board and
Matthew Dunn: counting.
And counting. Have you ever fired a client?
Sam Saifi: We have actually fired a client. And I think the time [00:31:00] we fire a client, right, is when there's a discrepancy. When, when somebody hires us, we're the expert. And they've hired us because their channel isn't working. I think it's kind of tough to work specifically with a client who hires you and then tells you what to do, if that makes sense.
Matthew Dunn: Oh God, yes.
Sam Saifi: Quite transparently, those are the relationships that tend to, you know, not work out long term because you're not allowed to operate in your zone of genius, which is what you've been brought in to do. So if we have fired a client, that would pretty much be the predominant reason. Okay.
Matthew Dunn: Okay. Different, different, different kind of agency, but I've, I've had the same experience in this conversation.
Like, you know, like you're paying us cause we actually know how to do this. And if you want me to just take dictation, sorry, I'm overqualified. See It's
Sam Saifi: an empowering feeling, right? In a weird way, like, you know, it's an empowering feeling to be able to walk away from a relationship that you see no fruit [00:32:00] for both parties.
Right? Not just for you. It's
Matthew Dunn: better, right? It's better for both sides in the, in the long run, because someone who can't take their hands off. Like, would you do this for, for the surgeon work, you know, operating on you? No, no, no. Cut there. Cause I think that's where it should be.
It's funny. And, and, and congrats by the way, like that's, that's a heck of a, that's a heck of a long retention cycle to have. And I suspect it'll keep going up from, from how you're approaching stuff, fall in love with the client, not the paycheck. I quite liked that mantra. Thank you. How do you find customers?
In a different geography. Is that a challenge? You're in the UK. You got customers in the US. A lot of them, right? A lot of them.
Sam Saifi: Yeah. To be honest, the world, the world is online, right? I kind of see online as one country all in itself. Like we're all positioned in different areas, but we all kind of commune to the same place.
Right? So when you're on LinkedIn, you know, someone can be anywhere around the world, but we're all on the same platform and the same [00:33:00] interface. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So like when, when, and also it's like. As I've, as I've embarked on this journey of entrepreneurship, I've, I've made a lot of friends and colleagues and, you know, incredible people based all around the world.
And then the funny part is when you actually present yourself while in front of them, you actually establish a real connection. You know, now there's a lot of business opportunities that come from that as well. So, you know, partnerships are massive way for agencies to grow and yeah, like our partners are incredible and I don't think, yeah distance or country has ever, ever come between that really.
It's
Matthew Dunn: It's heartening, right? That, that you can, you can establish, grow, build really, really solid relationships that, that, that both parties gain from. And ignore the geographic boundary. Again, this wasn't possible 20 years ago, right? A hundred percent. You know, we're sitting, we're sitting here across multiple time zones, having a face to face conversation.
Sam Saifi: [00:34:00] Exactly. Looking at it, looking at this here and like, dang, that's cool. A hundred percent. I was actually part of a an agency group, but there was a few agency owners. And I remember I typed in a message, looking for a developer because one of our clients needed a developer to fix their landing page.
A few people reached out. There was one specific person that reached out and you know they sent me their developer. So that was a really nice thing. And then I, I remember DMing that person in the Slack channel saying, Hey, like, thank you so much for sending them over. They've done such a good job for my client.
I'd love to connect with you as well. We got on a call. And turns out I was actually flying to Dubai in two weeks, and they were also flying in Dubai for two weeks. So we decided to meet up, hang out, have dinner. We ended up going to the UFC together, which was in you know, in Abu Dhabi at the time. So we went and watched the UFC together.
And now, you know, it's incredible how things just start and flourish online. And, you know, I think it's a mindset. If you feel distance or time is a blocker, it will eventually be a [00:35:00] blocker. If you're proactive about it, it will never be a blocker. You can do Zoom meetings. Yeah. I feel like I'm sitting in the room with you right now, right?
Yeah, no,
Matthew Dunn: no, absolutely. I I had the experience of first conference I went to post pandemic. There was a colleague was there who I had only met and talked with on Zoom. She was actually a guest on this podcast as well. But that was the first time we'd met live, but it'd been multiple years of building a relationship virtually.
And she walked into the bar where people were gathering and it was this funny moment. I was like, my emotional inclination is to give her a hug because we had this great relationship going. But literally we'd never met physically. before. I just waited. And she was the one that initiated the hug, which was kind of cool.
I thought, God, that's kind of remarkable that we were at that, you know, that point of a close relationship and had never physically been in the room together. [00:36:00] Right. Like, wow. Yeah.
Sam Saifi: Same here. It's like, I've, I've had friends, colleagues, all that stuff that I've met where I've never met before. But it's so weird because when you meet them, it just feels like you're just carrying on from your conversation.
Yeah.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Look, we already, look, we already know each other. We were talking about this. We're talking about that. How's this go? Yeah. Yeah. All of that.
Sam Saifi: The only thing that does get me is people's height because when you, you can't see how, you know, you can't really tell someone's like someone's presence.
Yeah. When you're talking on Zoom. So, for example, there have been times where I thought someone was, you know, way taller than they are, but then they're a bit shorter and vice versa. So that's the only thing that's just like, Oh, that's interesting.
Matthew Dunn: I'm usually the tallest guy in the room. So I'm kind of used to that one.
You can sort of tell, sort of on Zoom. Yeah. New, new new contact, actually two hour long conversations. I don't like, I asked my, my buddy who'd met him live. I said, He's relatively short, isn't he? He said, yeah, I actually meant live. He's actually relatively short. Like there's a proportion [00:37:00] thing that's really subtle.
And I suppose camera angle matters and stuff like that. So I take it, you think this remote thing is going to work out. Yeah, absolutely. I
Sam Saifi: mean, it's, it's, it's never been a blocker. It was a blocker initially, as in I thought like, Oh, like how can I sign client? But then once you've gone and done it once, twice, 10 times.
20 times. It's just like, okay, it's just, you know, it's the way and the pandemic did help that. I
Matthew Dunn: was just going to say the same thing. I was, I, I, I, like, I kind of appreciated that outcome of the pandemic. Cause I've been working mostly remotely for 20 plus years, but you couldn't get people, excuse me. You could not get people easily on a video conference five, six years ago.
Sam Saifi: A hundred percent. People are more like, you know, if you think about having to go out, travel to a place, like it takes, you can condense time so much
Matthew Dunn: just by it. You can. Yeah. And now that we've all kind of gotten [00:38:00] over it, I mean, people used to be, Oh, I don't want to be on camera, my hair, I don't have the setup or, or what, what, what used to irk me was the 15 minutes.
Of tech support just to get the call started and like, come on and, and now post pandemic, this is so normal that it's just, it's, it's jarring how fast that changed. A hundred percent.
Sam Saifi: It's like, Oh, you want to, you want to meet in person? Like people still do
Matthew Dunn: that? Yeah. Well, you flip that over though. I'm assuming you go to some things where you do end up working with people connecting with people live.
Yes. Yeah. Of course,
Sam Saifi: nothing replaces life connection because you crave it as a human, right? But social beings by nature, when you're cooped up in a room taking meetings, you know, you actually feel like, Hey man, like I'd rather actually meet you, you know, share a laugh with you in person rather than continuously engaged, you know, like online.
So there [00:39:00] was an element where, because of social, you know, the social nature of, of, of humans. So going out to conferences, meeting your friends are super crucial.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Important. And, and we're going to have to keep, we're going to have to keep remembering that. Somehow I didn't, I didn't want to forget asking you, and this is a dovetail back into it, I guess.
Music is one of the things you really want live. You spent some time working with in, in music and music. Management, right? Yeah.
Sam Saifi: So this was actually before my sales job. So after, after university, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and I'm going to caveat this very quickly, you know, in your year one or grade one, you have like those grade one calendars of what the kids want to be when they're older.
Right. So I remember my mom had showed me this little thing. And all the kids in my class, everyone was like, I want to be an astronaut or, you know, like, like a kid has audacious dreams. Mine was a guy with sunglasses with a briefcase that [00:40:00] said, I want to be a businessman. I don't know why, but you
Matthew Dunn: were headed that way.
I love it.
Sam Saifi: That was, you know, that was the vibe that grade one Sam was on. So long story short, I remember I was at a this was a time where I would be, you know, like going out and stuff and explore, you know, young 21, you know, it is. And we were at like this rooftop lounge and. Literally it was packed and there was only one seat left and it was next to the person who I would end up managing, right?
So I sat down there said, hey man, can I sit here? It's like nowhere else to sit and I was waiting for a friend of mine to come. We ended up talking and he He told me what he did. The next day I actually was invited to an opening of an outdoor lounge area at a hotel through a friend of mine. And my friend was sitting with the owner and I just said, hey, like, do you have a performance, you know, for the night?
Because I'm always thinking network, right? Like, I've been drilled into me, like, how can I add value to somebody I've met? Like, this is just the way I always think. So I thought to myself, okay, like, They, and she's like, oh, I don't have any performance. Like, do you know someone? [00:41:00] And a light bulb went off in my head Nice.
Called the person I met. Literally I said, I said, Hey, man. Like the day before? Yeah, yeah. Like, you have two days before this event. Like, are you, are you, you know, like, are you, are you okay to do it? And he said, yeah we all made it happen and it was a brilliantly successful event and it really bought, like that was the centerpiece to their launch.
And that's what got a lot of people coming back. So after that he asked me, Hey, you know, can you manage me? And we went on a journey, got investments, flew out to Los Angeles, recorded with some incredible people and that was a good that was a very interesting year and a half of my life. I made no money, but.
It was great fun.
Matthew Dunn: Well, you you, you, you, you brought away invaluable lessons, right? Exactly. You know, lack of money in the, in that corner of the universe aside. You
Sam Saifi: could create your life. You are the artist and you, you know, [00:42:00] you have the brush and you're limited only by your minds. It's a hard
Matthew Dunn: it's a hard business.
Music. Yeah. Yeah. Really hard, hard business. Even harder now, I think than than a decade ago or something like that. So my hat's off to the, to the folks that actually. I'm going to stick with it and do it. Wow. That, that said a lot. This says that story says a lot about you. Like that's, that's really cool.
What, what, what did you, aside from the fact that, you know, getting paid is not a bad, not a bad idea. Any regrets about leaving it, the sort of arts world? No,
Sam Saifi: not at all. I think my mentality is, you know, Whatever is meant to be mine will be mine, even if it's a thousand miles away, and whatever is not meant for me, even if it's between my lips, it won't be mine.
So, you know, if I look back, I would never be where I am now, had I not left it, right? You know, I'm very happy with where I am now, the trajectory, the amazing [00:43:00] clients that we're working with, the amazing connections have built. You know, I, I always say like, I, my whole journey, I've just stood on the shoulders of giants.
And a lot of people say I'm self made. And I totally don't believe in that because I think every single person had one, two, three, four, five pivotal people in their lives that changed the entire course of whether we're going to go. So for me, it's really important just to have self awareness and say, look.
I'm here because this is exactly where I'm meant to be in this moment and just be respectful of the people that got you here and always, always, always, you know, nurture those relationships because you'd never be here without that.
Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Nice. Well, that is a hell of a capper. I think we should, I think we should stop with what you just said.
Because you actually quoted Isaac Newton. Respect, man. Okay. If I've seen far, it's because I stood on the shoulders of giants was was Newton. And I think it sort of made its way into, into English after that. But So I think you're going to stick around this I think you're going to stick around this space.
Yes. [00:44:00] Yeah.
Sam Saifi: So we're actually building something. One, one problem we identified is, you know, there, there are a few brands, let's say from the zero to 2 million GMB range and these brands they, they struggle with email, you know, they can't money best bet is not on an agency that charges you to, you know, that that's more of a accelerator than a zero to one situation.
So the problem we're looking to solve is how do we take people from zero to one? And that's why we're building the software. It's called magicals. com. So really proud of that domain name. I think we got the 1 percent of the domain names that were available with one word. So yeah, we, we got that and we're actually building an AI platform that generates.
AI emails immediately entirely on brand. So that is the next that is the next journey that we're slowly stepping into. And yeah.
Matthew Dunn: Interesting. Yeah. Get rid of AI. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go, go AI. And see, look at that. We, we waited until like 45 minutes in to end up [00:45:00] talking about AI. Cause I don't know about you, but I was getting tired of that being every conversational topic.
Like, come on, it's not the only thing happening in the world right now. But when do you, do you have a target date for launch already launched?
Sam Saifi: Yeah, I think, I think with SAS, like that, you know, I think when it comes to launch that there isn't usually like one day where you unveil the curtains and you launch, right.
Because quite realistically Nobody gives a, nobody gives a squash about it, right until you make it and get attraction. So our goal is to continuously launch, iterate, make it better, get feedback, build on the feedback and just go through an agile model where we're continuously just getting feedback iterating.
Start off with a very close cohort of, let's say a hundred people that we can just very rigorously field test this with more of a white glove approach. And then using their feedback, we'll then evolve it into self serve eventually. So that's the, that's the game plan, roadmap. Nice. I'll be very
Matthew Dunn: interested to see how that to see how that arcs, [00:46:00] arcs out.
That's Yeah, 100%. It's a much needed, that's a much needed gap to fill. Exactly. My snap response is 100%. Yeah. Cause, cause that zero, you know, zero to one, that is, that's a tough stage.
Sam Saifi: It is a tough stage. And what I, what I was thinking is like, you know, Alex Hormozy, I'm pretty sure.
Matthew Dunn: Oh, absolutely. Sure. You
Sam Saifi: know his value equation, right?
It's like a dream outcome times perceived likelihood of achievement divided by effort and sacrifice time delay. So when I look at it, I thought, okay, so their dream outcome is we want beautiful emails being sent out with a good cadence. If we build this right, it's a very high perceived likelihood of achievement.
There is no effort and sacrifice because you click a button and it's done and there's no time delay. So, you know, you'd have to wait weeks for it to be done, it's done there and then you schedule 30 a month in advance of all of your campaigns, fully designed, branded, copyrighted. And then also it will be data driven.
So [00:47:00] it will read the data of what's performing. Not only in your industry, but for your brand specifically, it will feed the AI generative engine this data so that it makes more of what's working. So we're really putting a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this, but I really do want to disrupt, disrupt the space with this.
Matthew Dunn: Good for you. Wow. Love it. I'm a, I'm a sass guy. So it's going to get me going. Cool. Sam, we should wrap up, but I am so delighted that we had a chance to connect live, meet live, have this conversation. It seems like it's not going to be the last one we'll have. Where does someone come and find you if they say, Oh man, that's someone I need to talk to.
You
Sam Saifi: can find us you can either find me on LinkedIn under Sam Saifi or just hit up our website revenue labs with a Zed or a Z in America, revenue labs with a Z dot
Matthew Dunn: com. All right, Sam Saifi, revenue labs. We are out. Thanks again. Thanks Matt. Thanks.