Jimmy Kim

Founder @ Sendlane, Co-Host of ASOM Pod

📖 Read our content on eComEmailMarketer.com
📺 Watch our podcast on YT: Send It! Podcast
🎪 I host 1,000+ people IRL every year at Commerce Roundtable
📚 I have a 25+ hour course and community
👻 We have a database of 1,500,000+ top emails from the top Shopify stores 
🚀 I help B2B businesses get more targeted traffic, awareness and leads 
📍 Find me on X @yojimmykim
🤝 Book time with me on MentorPass

I post on social with learnings and insights based on my 17+ years as a seasoned digital marketer, specializing in lifecycle marketing, Email and SMS Marketing, Content, and Retention Marketing in eCommerce, DTC, and retail.

CEO & Founder

Started as an internal tool in 2013…became a business in Aug 2017.

Unified email & sms (soon Reviews!) for eCommerce

Remote Company. Backed by Five Elms Capital (Series A & B) and Zing Capital (seed) 

In-N-Out Burger has 15 menu items
Five Guys has 40

In-N-Out does $1.8 billion in revenue with 400 stores
Five Guys does $2.3 billion with 1,700 stores

But here's the crazy part:

In-N-Out makes about $4.5 million per store per year
Five Guys makes about $1.3 million per store per year

In-N-Out generates 2.7x more per location with 2.6x fewer menu items

The reason?

When you try to serve everyone, you dilute what you're known fo

In-N-Out is famous for burgers, fries, and shakes. That's it.

Five Guys has hot dogs, veggie sandwiches, grilled cheese, and nobody remembers them for any of it.

For your store, this means:

- If customers can't immediately tell what you're "the best" at, your catalog is too wide
- If your homepage shows 8 product categories, narrow it to 3 hero categories
- If your bestseller only represents 15% of revenue, your assortment is too scattered

The lesson to me here is: You become memorable by becoming focused.

Because more can often creates confusion, depth creates identity.

Your customers don't want you to sell everything.

They want you to be the best at one thing.

Marketer of 18+ Years, 4x Founder. Former DTC/Retailer & SaaS Founder. Newsletter. Podcast. Commerce Roundtable

Hamid Azzawe

Netflix spent $17 billion buying content last year.
YouTube spent $0.

YouTube's revenue: $31.5 billion
Netflix's revenue: $33.7 billion

Almost identical. 
Completely opposite strategies.

Here's what Netflix figured out too late:

People don't want more content. 

They want more REASONS to talk about content.

YouTube doesn't make anything. 

But their algorithm makes sure you're always watching something your friends are watching too.

Netflix makes everything. But you're watching alone.

The difference:

YouTube's top 10 videos get shared 4 million times each.
Netflix's top 10 shows get shared 400,000 times each.

10x difference.

Because YouTube's content is participatory. Netflix's content is passive.

You don't just watch MrBeast. You talk about whether you could survive his challenges.

You don't just watch Squid Game. 

You... watch Squid Game.

Netflix finally learned this with Wednesday:

They didn't spend more on marketing. They created a dance that could be replicated.

That dance got posted 3 million times on TikTok.

Earned media value: $187 million.

Cost to create the dance: $0.

The lesson:

Content isn't valuable because it's expensive. It's valuable because it's shareable.

For your brand:

- Stop creating perfect videos nobody shares
- Start creating templates people can remake
- Give people a reason to tag their friends|
- Make your thing participatory, not just consumable

A skincare brand tested this:

Old content: "Here's our founder's story" (47 shares)
New content: "Tag someone who needs to hear this" with a relatable struggle (12,400 shares)

Same budget. 
260x more reach.

Your content doesn't need to be better.

It needs to be easier to participate in.

Here’s what quietly breaks retention for most eCom brands:

They treat email, SMS, and push like separate channels.

So the customer experience looks like this:

- Email says one thing
- SMS says another
- Push arrives at a random time
- None of it feels connected

From the customer’s perspective, it feels noisy.

But the real problem isn’t “too many messages”.

It’s no shared memory.

Every channel behaves like it doesn’t know what the others just did.

Here’s what actually works better:

Think in conversations, not campaigns.

A real conversation has:

- Context
- Timing
- Continuity

So instead of:

“Send email flow → send SMS flow → send push flow”

You design one sequence, then decide:

• Which channel delivers which part
• Based on what the customer already saw or did

Example (post purchase):

Day 0:
Email: “Your order is confirmed. Here’s what happens next”
No SMS yet. Nothing urgent.

Day 3:
SMS: “Heads up: your order ships tomorrow”
Short. Pure utility.

Day 7:
Email: “Before you use it, here’s one thing that prevents most mistakes”
No selling.

Day 12:
Push or SMS: “Most people notice results around now. Is that true for you?”
YES:  product reminder
NOT YET: usage tip

Notice what’s missing?

No duplicated messages.
No channel overlap.
No “just checking in” nonsense.

Each channel has a job:

Email = explanation
SMS = timing
Push = nudge

This only works if your system knows what the customer already received, clicked, or ignored.

If your email tool doesn’t talk to your SMS… or your SMS fires even when email already converted…

You’re not running retention.

You’re running interference.

The brands doing this well aren’t sending more messages.

They’re sending fewer, better sequenced ones that feel intentional instead of automated.

That’s why unified messaging matters more than clever copy.

If you’re curious what this looks like when email + SMS + automation actually share context, Omnisend does this natively for eCommerce (without duct-taping tools together).

Worth understanding how it works, even if just to rethink your flows, go check them out. 

Retention isn’t about louder messaging.

It’s about remembering what you already said and acting like it.

I'm a proud partner of Omnisend and these use cases can be performed on their platform with ease, with great customer support and more! 

I recommend them for your email, sms, and marketing automation needs. 

Mention this post to get 3 months free.

Omnisend

Allan Muteti

There is one thing founders underestimate as they scale...

Sales tax... let me explain 👇

Sales tax doesn’t break all at once.
It breaks slowly.
Then all at the same time.

You don’t wake up one day with a “sales tax problem.”

You wake up after:
- Adding a new channel
- Launching a new product
- Expanding into a few new states
- Hitting a revenue milestone
- Updating your billing system

And suddenly you’re dealing with filings, notices, penalties, and a system that needs constant babysitting.

Here’s how I think about sales tax strategically as brands grow:

1. “Set and forget” doesn’t mean no humans

It means no manual work.

You still want experts involved, just not on every filing, every SKU, every state.

If your team is constantly fixing things, re-mapping products, or double-checking reports, that’s not automation. That’s stress with a dashboard.

2. Reliability matters more than features

When you’re doing real volume, you don’t need 100 bells and whistles.

You need:
Accurate calculations every time
Filings that go out on time
Nexus tracked before it becomes a problem
Integrations that don’t break when you scale

Most platforms look good at low volume.

Few hold up when things get complicated.

3. Growth shouldn’t require constant course-correction

Every new channel shouldn’t mean re-architecting your tax setup.

If launching a product or expanding into a new state means:
“Cool, now we need to redo our entire compliance workflow”

…that system won’t scale with you.

Your tax infrastructure should absorb growth, not fight it.

4. Trust > promises

A lot of teams have already been burned once.

Hidden fees.
Slow support.
“We’ll get back to you” answers when it actually matters.

At a certain stage, trust becomes the real feature:
- Transparent pricing
- Fast responses
- People who understand tax and ecommerce
- A system that just works in the background

That’s why I like what Kintsugi is doing.

It’s built for scaling brands that don’t want to think about sales tax every week, but also don’t want surprises when they grow.

If you’re expanding channels, states, or revenue, it’s worth trying before sales tax becomes the thing slowing you down. 

Get 3 months for free by mentioning this post: https://lnkd.in/dNNiZjZ2

I am a proud partner of Kintsugi and the brilliant AI founder Pujun Bhatnagar - try Kintsugi for all your tax needs today!

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