Sendlane

Vice President of Partnerships

Vice President of Sales

Senior Director, Business Development; Head of Sales

Building agency and technology partnerships to enable scale and create opportunities for Sendlane.

Series A - 20 Million

Director Of Strategic Partnerships

- Launched Commerceroundtable.com
- Agency/Tech partnerships.
- Seed Stage

Strategic Partner Manager 📧

Viking Coders

General Manager

Consultant

Digital Marketing Consultant

vp, sales @Sendlane

If I hit you with 5 SMS messages over 5 days..

vs. 

If I hit you with 5 emails over 5 days. 

They are NOT the same. The 5 SMS messages stand to bother your clients and negatively impact your brand value in their eyes vs. the same practice in email. 

Why?

1. Email is asynchronous. You send. On their time they check. SMS is more of a real time channel. Leg buzzes. They look. 
2. The SMS "spam" is newer and because it's newer, it's more annoying. 
3. You are IN THEIR FACE. 

Keep this in mind. You are IN THEIR FACE with your SMS messages. 

Instead of sending 5 messages. Send the first message, Look for clicks. If they click - retarget in email first, then bring it back to SMS. 

Don't turn SMS into one of those card guys in Las Vegas. You don't want to keep whistling at your customers and being like..

Hey you..offer...offer. 

Upgrade the way you do SMS to match modern marketing and stop treating it like a piggy bank. 

SMS is the most pure brand leverage in terms of messaging out there. 

They asked you to message them. They expect you to message them. Don't abuse that trust they put in your brand.

Amir Torabi

How can marketers maintain customer trust when using SMS?

It was early 2023.

Sendlane is headed to the Whalies.

The award show put on my the team at Triple Whale. 

Our strategy of going to the market at events had just started.

So talking in public was a new experience for our company. 

Not for our founder, Jimmy, but for our company. 

So he goes up. 

Topic is deliverability. 

The room is barely paying attention. 

Now this crowd was one with energy so not surprised that they wanted to talk and mingle. 

But Jimmy kept on his topic. Didn’t get flustered. 

Didn’t make jokes or awkward call outs to the noisy group in the back.

Just kept on topic. Spoke a bit louder. And not once fell off the energy or passion. 

And something kind of awesome happened. 

People started to listen more. The room started to get quiet. 

The substance cut through the noise. 

The ideas didn’t sit on the surface but pull the listener into the depths.

All forms of content seek the same result. 

And sometimes there isn’t some secret strategy or perfect setup. 

Sometimes you just have to maintain. Keep focused on your plan and value. 

Then turn the room.

We’ve been turning rooms ever since.

How can I turn the room during a presentation?

What do I need to know about deliverability?

If you haven't refreshed your email/SMS automations in more than a year - Then the question is why?

Not that you need to fix something that isn't broken, but here is the question. 

If marketing is iterative, and we know that content can go stale - why isn't this true for your automations? 

Sure an abandon checkout is a pretty clean, simple, single CTA motion - but how many emails are you running? Do you think your cadence is perfect as it is?

We see clients really do well when they give some love to their automations when they move over to Sendlane. 

They reconsider things like copy, images, CTAs, cadence, and other factors that can ultimately determine the result of your performance. 

Set it and forget it sounds good on it's face, but forgetting means you are not running optimally. 

Give your automations some love and attention. And question the performance on how we can optimize from current performance!

Asked what advice he would give merchants - Harvey said Mission. 

Mission.

Why do we do what we do.

What do we actually do here?

He qualified by saying he’s not trying to be cheesy. 

A room full of “ecom people” who are running scaling businesses. 

He qualifies bc it’s seems so banal. 

But it’s not. 

Interesting when highly successful entrepreneurs are asked: “what’s the secret?”

The answer generally goes to the fundimentals.

Why is it important for a company to have a clear mission?

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Some of the best agencies I've seen in this space approach their pitch to merchants with such precision. 

1/ Financial modeling showing what areas of opportunity you have based on the growth goals you want to achieve. 

2/ A deep understanding of unit economics.

3/ A deep understanding of the vertical you serve. 

4/ A well put-together plan and benchmarks against them. 

And the best ones are generally introduced. Because if someone is willing to stake their reputation on the outcome of someone else's work, then the level of trust is built on something. 

We work with some of the best agencies in DTC, and Im happy to help you find the right talent! 

Why is trust important in agency introductions?

What are the key strategies for pitching to merchants?

Honesty with your customers is something so critical. 

Good products are never a result of lying your way up. Your customers will not stand for a falsely positioned product. 

Good marketing is never dishonest. It might sell you the dream, but it can’t be rooted in nothing. 

Good partnerships never came from never giving and only taking. Promising but never giving. That becomes a dishonest process. 

Honesty is how you can improve everything. 

Honest feeedback from your customers, listened to by you - one of the most powerful ways of building. 

In all organizations of any size - we are all seeking truth. 

We are looking to make the right decision. 

How do you seek truth in your business?

The founder of Bai coconut water was not a first time entrepreneur who just hit it big. 

He wasn't the first coconut water on the market either. 

He did eventually sell his brand for +1B. 

Simple takeaways on why it worked for him.

He did: 

1. Define your why (sounds so simple): 

We sell a tasty drink! 

We sell a tasty drink that uses coconut! 

We sell an alternative to sugar based drinks that is healthy for you. <-- This is the why. 

2. Go deep with your why. Make it a part of your story across the board. It's not just a part of the thing. It is the thing. 

3. Define the outcome. <-- Everyone needs goals. I'm not talking about your metrics. Talking about the outcome for the brand. Holding growth true - what does success look like?

So if you follow these three simple steps - you too will be a Billionaire! 

Just kidding. 

I mean maybe you will. I don't know. 

What I do know is that Linkedin posts tend to edge on the simple. It's short form social media content at the end of the day. 

Some people PACK these things filled with unbelievable value. 

Others post simple stuff like this. 

Thing is: Value is found through contemplation and application. 

We are often psyching ourselves into something right?

If you read this. You already have your why defined. But you look at it and scoff at how this Billionaire can tell us these simple things that are responsible for his growth. BAH I bet he had help. I bet he had a great team. It was easier back then. 

Step back for a minute and think about how much perception is dictating your choices. 

Go revisit that why and ask yourself if it has real meat on it. 

It's easy to get hyped on things as it is to be a naysayer or precious about things. 

Human nature is hard to counter bc it requires you to step outside of yourself. 

Not easy to do. 

Try it though. 

Really fucking try. 

How can defining a 'why' make a brand successful?

What does holding growth true mean for a brand?

How can coconut water be a healthy alternative to sugar-based drinks?

What is contextual tagging? 

Well first tags aren’t a new idea. 

A tag can be placed behind a link. It can be placed in an automation workflow. 

It identifies the meaning of an action.

It takes that and places it - permanently(unless it’s purposefully removed via some automation) - on the users profile. 

It shapes who they are and what they are interested in.

It’s not the same as just “make it a segment”.

This is data that creates a user avatar. 

The team at Obvi used it to identify key topic interests around their product. 

They sell collagen products and multiple approaches to the value prop. 

Health and vitality for example was a part of their retention content. 

When they started tagging users on what they actually clicked on in the email- the pattern shifted to weight loss as the primary topic of interest that drive clicks. 

So they shifted their email strategy to focus on weight loss with great success.

Tags allow you to get hyper personalized and build customer avatars that you then can leverage to drive meaningful retention strategy. 

If you aren’t using it today - it might be due to how your platform implements this type of feature - or just outright doesn’t have it.

What is Obvi and how did they use contextual tagging?

What was the primary topic of interest that drove clicks for Obvi?

How can customer avatars be leveraged to drive retention strategy?

Choices. 

There isn't some standard, perfect, one-size-fits-all motion in retention marketing. 

That's the dirty truth. 

We have clients who will break literally every rule in retention marketing and still drive massive value in email. 

Why? 

Brand. 

Heavy text? Heavy images? multiple CTAs? Single CTA? Highly segemented? Broad targeted? 3 email cadence? 6 email cadence?

All of them can be valid. 

How well is your brand represented, and is it to the right audience?


Kicking off the start of the quarter with our agency partners! 

We are doing Partner Palooza! 

Our agency partners are joining us for a series of sessions on how to get deep with us. 

How to best leverage the tool to ensure they are able to deliver for their clients. 

This is how you build eco-system. 

We don't need to go wide if we go deep. 

And if we go deep, we can ensure we deliver for our clients and partners! 

What are some of the best partner programs you are a part of and why?

Who are the agency partners participating in Partner Palooza?

How can agencies best leverage the tool to deliver for clients?

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