The death of email has been boldly proclaimed and then retracted so many times I’ve lost count over the last 10 years. Finally, I think most people agree that email marketing is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future.
This episode is a double-header in terms of topic but still delivered in the same amount of time as usual. It’s a “two topics for the price of one” special! Itay Paz is an online marketing veteran of 25 years. He’s also the publisher of the Morning Dough newsletter and an SEO expert.
Morning Dough is one of my favorite newsletters. It’s one of the few that I open regularly. In this episode, we talk about how and why eCommerce brands should be using email marketing beyond just transactional emails.
We also talk Web Core Vitals and how Google is going to use certain core performance metrics to score your site. How your site scores in Google’s eyes will have a direct impact on both your SEO and your paid ad performance.
- How to land on a newsletter strategy that fits your personality and your brand
- Tips for getting your emails opened and read
- How often you should send emails and how to avoid spam and promotional folders
- What are Web Core Vitals and why you should care
- How to test your site in 60 seconds to see how it performs what Google’s Web Core Vital
Morning Dough
Mentioned in this episode:
1440 Newsletter (1440 Daily Digest)
Episode Transcript:
Brett:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we kind of have a two part special for you. Two major topics that I believe have a big impact today, but will also have an impact into the future as we look at a privacy first internet, and SEO is always going to be important to a certain degree.
Brett:
My guest today is Itay Paz and Itay is the founder and CEO of Morning Dough, which is one of my favorite newsletters. It's a daily online marketing newsletter. He's also an entrepreneur and a veteran digital marketing, he's an affiliate marketing SEO email marketing, content marketing, conversion, optimization, monetization. He knows his stuff. And so, today we're going to be diving into two topics. One, how to build a good email newsletter. And I believe this was super important, whether you're an e-commerce merchant or service provider, or regardless of what you do online, especially as privacy kind of takes over. Having a good email list and having a good email plan I believe it's critical. And then we're going to talk about a really important topic. It's a slightly nerdy topic, but it's really important, and that's a core web vitals and how that's going to impact your organic traffic now and into the future. So with that quick intro, Itay, how you doing? Thanks for taking the time and thanks for coming on the show.
Itay Paz:
I'm good, and thank you for inviting me.
Brett:
Yeah, it's great to connect with you. I don't even know how I found your newsletter, but I remember after a week or so... A lot of times I subscribed to things and then I realized, why did I do this? This was such a bad idea. And my inbox is full, so me and my assistant were unsubscribing. But your newsletter, I don't know how I got it. And then I'm like, this is great. And I'm sharing stuff from the newsletter with my team, it's just really valuable. So, maybe just a quick insight on what is Morning Dough. And then I'm just going to pick your brain on email marketing and newsletter creation, and I think it'll be a lot of fun, but what is Morning Dough?
Itay Paz:
So Morning Dough is a daily newsletter that curates the best online marketing news on a daily basis, we sent five times a week. And the great thing about it, or the two great things it's curated manually. At the end of the day someone is doing the work manually. And second thing is, this someone has 25 years of experience, meaning myself. So-
Brett:
That someone is you.
Itay Paz:
Yes, me.
Brett:
You are the magic behind.
Itay Paz:
So I'm actually the person that wants... Well, we have a system that actually curates initially all the titles and have it, and then we take it into a smaller list because some of the things are duplicated and written in many places. And then there's a 300 titles list, and from that I select personally the things that's interesting to me. And we just put it plain and simple. People can read it in less than two minutes. You get what's going on. If you need to read more, you read more, like you said, you can transfer it to someone else, but it's really cool, very simple, clean format, and we get reviews just because it's so simple.
Brett:
Yeah. And the thing that I noticed and the reason I started consuming all the time was I opened it in three days in a row I was like, oh, that's the stuff I'm interested in. Those are the articles I need to look at. Hey, here's what Google's doing with moving away from cookies. And here's some privacy changes, but it was some of the best articles and you'd have the tiny snippet so all you want to do is the headlines and snippet great, otherwise click through and read it. So, really great stuff. Kudos to you. I'll link to it in the show notes, I think you should check it out.
Itay Paz:
Thank you.
Brett:
But let's talk about building an email newsletter because... And I kind of alluded to it a minute ago, but as we get into this privacy first web and then some of the ways that we target people with our advertising it's going to change a little bit, I think there's still be plenty of opportunities to advertise, but it's going to change a little bit. I think people have kind of predicted the death of email for a decade or something, and now finally people have stopped or it's like, okay, yeah, email is going to be here probably forever. And the most successful e-commerce companies I know they have a large email list and they utilize that list, they communicate with that list effectively, and they monetize well. And so, let's talk about if you're advising a merchant or service provider like myself, the agency something, what are the tips you would give in building an email newsletter?
Itay Paz:
So, I'll give you the tips and you mentioned earlier that everyone should have it. It's very effective. It's so effective. Every research done shows that it's also cost effective, so the investment you make in your dollars coming back few times more than any other investment in online which is very important. So, creating a newsletter is pretty simple. So don't be stressed about it. Some people say, "Oh, I don't have writers, or I do have writers. It's complicated, we don't have time." And it's totally understandable. You need to remember you want to build some kind of an email marketing it's like a muscle. What I mean, as you strengthen it, right? You do the exercise again and again and again, then the muscle gets adjusted to what you do. Same way goes to email marketing.
Itay Paz:
So your audience, as long as they keep on sending them emails and they open it, they get to used to opening your emails and that's the easiest way for you to get your current customer to buy more, or just people that registered into one of your opt-in or one of your either deals or relearn discount, whatever it is coupon, and then you can email them as well. Now, in order to do that you need to do one simple thing. When people subscribe to your newsletter and we'll talk about what type of newsletter, the most important thing is always to tell them what they get and when they get it. Because if you just subscribe and now you mail, let's say once a week or once every two weeks, and then suddenly you say, "Whoa, I have a big promotion. So now I'm sending every day an email." These people will opt out and probably complain about you spamming, although you're not spamming because they did give you the permission apparently.
Brett:
They opted in but now they feel you're spamming them.
Itay Paz:
Exactly, because the button is very simple, just click spam and that's it. So it's always good to tell people, "Okay, we're going to email you four times a week, two times a week, once a week." Tell them what you're going to do. And I wouldn't recommend it to be less than once a week, just for one fact that they want to remember who you are. So if you send them once a month and then they forgot who you are, this is why I'm sending them.
Brett:
Yeah, that's one of those counter-intuitive things of email marketing, right? Where people think, oh, I can't email too much. I'm going to email every month or two. I remember when the lockdown's first or COVID was kind of first hitting and everybody sent out their emails of what they're going to do about COVID. And it was like, oh, I forgot I subscribed to that. Cool, I'm going to unsubscribe. I don't need to be on that list. This was the first time you've emailed me in a quarter or something, I don't need to be on this list. And so yeah, if you email too infrequently it's just going to be a reminder for people to unsubscribe. So you're saying no less than once a week?
Itay Paz:
Yeah.
Brett:
Okay.
Itay Paz:
You want to be in their minds, they remember you, and also you can actually segmentize the list. So if you have people registering to get send me deals, so that's a different list than the newsletter and they get the deal. And you tell them, "I'm sending you the deal as soon as they're out. So if there's a deal at two o'clock and then you have another, whatever special coupon offer tonight, you might send two emails, but you tell them that they'll be happy because they're looking for this deal. They're looking for coupon. So it's very simple. Now, if you go to transaction emails, it's a completely different thing. It's normally the systems, the transaction people buying confirmations. These are not the things we're talking about, but these are also something that is important for you to set up if you haven't until today.
Itay Paz:
And lastly, of course is what we call the newsletter. The newsletter is a simple format, you can select one, two or three simple formats that you mail with. Usually either updates news about your company, your products, what you do, and it could be also earn, or you can have a newsletter which is what we do is curation. So we don't have our own products. So we deliver news about the industry. So for example, if you're an e-commerce store selling, let's say fitness products. So if you send a weekly newsletter that has five, six, 10, depending on your market, of course, curated titles or information about special research that's done about something, or a new video that was released by someone that is relevant, or if there is a special event for fitness, the day of the fitness or whatever it is.
Itay Paz:
So you can curate and put this information your audience will love it because you're actually making it fun, right? If I love fitness and going to the gym and doing this stuff so I like to read about it. So you're actually giving me service by just pointing me and telling me, "Hey, here's an interesting article to read. And this is how like you said you got the newsletter for the Morning Dough and you said, "Oh, this is what I'm interested in." And we didn't try anything. We just curated for you, and it's high value. People perceive it as high value. It doesn't matter if I wrote it or I just curated it, it's the same thing.
Brett:
Yeah, I love that. And so, how do you see this playing out for an e-commerce store owner? So, I run an e-commerce store. So let's say it's an apparel brand. What tips might you give me for creating a great email newsletter? And would you recommend that email newsletter be a once a week thing, a minimum as well? Or how would you advise an e-commerce store owner?
Itay Paz:
I would still do that, because if you're doing an apparel and if you're doing digital marketing you probably have a blog to that, then you probably have some different blog posts. So maybe, the collections of the week or a certain season is coming, or a holiday or why do women love to wear hats and what hat you want to wear which event. So you have the content there. You don't have to send them out to other content you can... And that's what I said, or you can actually say, "Here's what we wrote about hats or the new season. " Whatever it is. And you can also say, "Here there's a new event for whatever it is, the new fashion week, and you give the link to whatever it is.
Itay Paz:
So it's perfectly fit for you just collect the information and the things you're already making, you don't need to say... Well, you can write from scratch and use it, all right? You can have the... Okay, so I'll go back to the start. You can have a newsletter which it looks like a blog. So basically, you're writing a newsletter. It's a blog post, it's a long one. You write it nice, and that's one way to do that. The other way is just directly to the content you already create anyway, and you don't need to make all the efforts of writing in again the new stuff, you just package it differently and push it to your audience. Does that make sense?
Brett:
Yeah, it totally makes sense. And I think one of the keys here is thinking about repurposing content, right? So, I host this podcast and so, we're cranking out three episodes a month. And so, we transcribe these podcasts and we email our list of podcast so that they can check it out and people will dig into the content that they want, and then we can sometimes create a blog post about the topic of the podcast. And so now we've got multiple ways to use that content and then to share that content, and I know my buddy Ezra Firestone with one of his companies, he does a weekly digest where he highlights, okay, here's some cool things from our blog, here is something cool on social media, in our community, and here's an article, too. Right?
Brett:
So it's kind of similar to Morning Dough, but it's a curation of what's already in their ecosystem. You can do something very similar, I think for an e-commerce brand. So I think the cool thing about content is that it's very intimidating at first and it feels you're just going to burn out, and how could you ever create one email a week? But once you start understanding the structure and what goes there, it really can become kind of fun. And it's not as intimidating or as hard as it sounds.
Itay Paz:
Just to share with you. So when we began the Morning Dough, and it went through different formats, but it took us about, I would say one day to craft. So it was one day worth to craft to one newsletter, just because the process wasn't there, but once we did figure out what works for us, what's good for us. If you like to write, I would say write. If you like to curate, curate. If you have content already ready, then use your content. But once-
Brett:
If you like to speak do a video and have it transcribed and then use that.
Itay Paz:
Exactly.
Brett:
Yeah, do what fits for your personality.
Itay Paz:
It takes us only one hour, for me one hour today to craft a newsletter. Well, maybe a little bit, one and a half hours. That's it, it's very short and it fits to what I like to do. And I want to say one more thing, you need to know your audience.
Brett:
Yeah.
Itay Paz:
So if your audience are... Let's say you're a e-commerce store that sells business suits. So your audience are probably business people. I would imagine their time is usually very limited. Just giving you an idea, try to be shorter to the point versus if your audience is, I don't know, you sell a website for, I don't know, something that fits to the elderly people. I have no idea what could it be. I don't know, bow ties. I don't know, something like that.
Brett:
The bow tie shop. I like it.
Itay Paz:
Yeah, it goes to the elderly people. They love to read, they have more attention-
Brett:
Elderly and hipsters. Hipsters like the bow ties as well. So you don't get the young crowd, but anyway, we we'll stick with-
Itay Paz:
I meant in terms of the attention span, think about the attention span of your audience. For me I know that the audience for Morning Dough they are all marketers, business people, so they read faster. There's so much content, they don't need me to write them a long newsletter. They will never read it. I don't want to read it, so why should they read it as a digital marketer?
Brett:
Yeah. Yeah.
Itay Paz:
So the same thing, think about your audience whether they like to write, read, and how much time they have, and just build a format that works. You can even ask them. Many times we ask people, and we got the reply. People said, "Hey, listen, this was the long word." And then we shortened it. And we shortened it and we shortened it, and then we were left with just the line, which is a snip like you said. So you just amend it and fit it to your audience.
Brett:
Yup. Yup. I love that. So any point you would point as a great example for a newsletter that people can learn from and potentially copy, or be inspired from? Obviously your newsletters' great. I'm also thinking of e-commerce brands and I'll mention a couple that I think people should subscribe to and learn from. One is called Huckberry. So Huckberry is a men's apparel line, and they're always just telling a great story about a new desert boot or a new jacket, or a bomber jacket or something. Just their fascinating stories sort of... If you remember the J. Peterman catalogs from long ago, and J. Peterman was kind of made fun of in the show Seinfeld back in the day.
Brett:
But, Huckberry is kind of like that only like not cheesy, but they're telling stories about price. I love their newsletter, I open it a lot. Everyday California, good friend of mine Chris Lynch, he's been on the podcast before. They sell cool apparel based in San Diego. And so it's kind of a so Cal brand, they've got a great newsletter. I mentioned is it Boom by Cindy Joseph, I think sign up for that watch what they do with their email marketing. Who else would you recommend people watch and pay attention to?
Itay Paz:
Well, in terms of e-commerce I can't really pinpoint the specific website for e-commerce.
Brett:
Yeah.
Itay Paz:
But I would say first of all, and before I name a couple of names, go in like you said, registered to view even in your niche and see what people do, look at the formats and find what works for you. Don't copy the format . Well, you can copy, but I mean, do-
Brett:
Be inspired by but don't copy..
Itay Paz:
We began by copying something that the format that the other people do, and we said if that works for them and they have millions of subscribers, happy ones, we should do the same. But we felt it... Eventually, that didn't work for us. So just find something that looks good but fits to you, so one of the formats that we as the Morning Dough. So there's the Morning Brew, it's completely different industry, but they have a very-
Brett:
I like the Morning Brew, too.
Itay Paz:
Yeah, they have a cool... It's a longer format.
Brett:
It is.
Itay Paz:
Much longer format and they have their own writers, but to get inspiration, definitely also the hustle, and that also it's 1440 newsletter. And it's also a great one. So this two I would definitely subscribe to get some information and see how it looks in the format.
Brett:
Yeah. I'll second the Morning Brew. So I'll link to both Morning Brew and Morning Dough. Those are the two newsletters that I pay attention to the most different formats. Yours is curated, Theirs is more of a long form, you just kind of read what's in the email, but really good stuff. So what are tips and tactics for... How do you get people... How do you keep people consuming your newsletter over and over again?
Itay Paz:
Well, the thing is all about the content you send. But some people would say it's all about... You see the open rate, for the many people see the open rate if you do a sequence or something, you see their open rate goes down and down because over time people don't read it. And we tested so many titles, just idea to see is the title actually affecting the subject line. Yeah. Yeah.
Brett:
Correct.
Itay Paz:
Subject kind of email. Yeah, sorry. And about two and a half weeks ago, I had a day that I couldn't figure out what's the best title. I didn't find something that is, oh, wow. So I said, "Let's put Monday mornings roundup. That's it. And we saw that the open rate was the same as the other emails, then I see the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and we found out that it's the same thing. So how can it be? Right? It's crazy, and that goes to what you say, how you make people actually consume it. It's all about what you put inside, right?
Brett:
Yeah.
Itay Paz:
So if I take for investors, okay, let's look at the investors. And we have Berkshire Hathaway CEO, right? And he writes a newsletter, it has one paragraph. It says, here's my weekly tip. It doesn't matter what the title will say, the subject of the email, if you're into investing you'll read it, right? Because there's gold inside. So that's the same thing. What we try to do is see if we give enough value that we'll see that the same people still open, it doesn't matter what the title is and what the subject of the email and that works well. So going back to e-commerce or anyone else, it's all about the value you put inside.
Itay Paz:
If you make it a sales promo, pushing just... It's okay if you told them in advance it is like that, but if it's an user for updates, then make it fun. Like you said, make it enjoyable so people will like to read it and they will open again and again. They'll have a smile and say, "Oh, this is really important for me. This is interesting. Oh, there's a new gadget or there's new product that is coming up soon. I can now preregister. Cool. Pre-order give me the details." So it's all about what you put inside, make it fun, make it effective so people get to open and again, and again. Once you do that... It's a cool secret. Once you're able to make them open again and again, at least once a week or more, then you can actually send more emails. So we're sending them out five days a week. I don't want to call it get away, right? Because it's not getting way. But I can send another two, three emails just with a promotion or anything and no one will complain.
Brett:
Yeah. No one want to.
Itay Paz:
They're getting enough value from you. That's what I'm saying. Put the value, people will open your emails, your promotion emails, whatever you send with the value inside. And like we discussed earlier, it could be interesting things, links, your information, whatever it is.
Brett:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the curation process can be simple if that's something you enjoy, making a collection of things that are interesting to you and that you think will be interesting to your audience. And now you've got a curated newsletter and the Morning Dough is proof that that can be super powerful. I think, where people get into trouble is when they start crafting an email newsletter or any type of content because they feel like they have to, right? I'm supposed to create an email newsletter, so I'm going to. And then it can feel forced or staged and there's no real purpose here, but if you're delivering value, if you're giving great tips or ideas, if you're entertaining a little bit, if you're delighting the person that reads the newsletter in some way, yeah, once you get into a habit of opening an email, people will stick with that. Do you have any kind of quick tips though on subject lines? Cause people always like tips. I know some of the things we've found that help is lists, so seven ways to XYZ, or a secret to do this, Any kind of formulas or structures, or tried and true subject lines you go back to?
Itay Paz:
So first of all, emails with numbers, people always open. Numbers, it could be figures. Okay, it could be-
Brett:
People just want to know, right? It's like curiosity type of thing.
Itay Paz:
Always, and that's why also short titles could be very intriguing, like really, for example, or this is true or whatever it is, people are intrigued to see what's inside the email. So definitely, short and intriguing, and numbers are always winning. I can tell you also empty emails, empty subjects also work, but not every time. Once in a lifetime.
Brett:
Five days a week they're all empty subject lines. Yeah.
Itay Paz:
But also they know it's you. Yeah, and also having re RA it's the return email again, do it smartly. Don't put it as a spam thing because people don't like it. Also forward, right? So, if let's say you're sending me an email and it's very interesting, I will do F, well, W, right? In the subject, and inside I'll say, "Here's an email I got from Brad and he was talking about that and that, and I'm putting a quote from what you're saying, so people will open it again. It's all kinds of things that on the top people are looking, and another factor that is really important is the sender.
Brett:
Yeah.
Itay Paz:
So an e-commerce store usually don't have a face. Most of them.
Brett:
Usually it's the brand.
Itay Paz:
Right? It's Amazon, Amazon. Does Amazon write from Jeff? Powell Jeff? No.
Brett:
Yeah.
Itay Paz:
So we always try to put... Well, I'm putting my name and Morning Dough. So I'm getting again, remember the muscle we were talking about that people get to know me and also the name, they're opening an email from Itay as well so they have the personal relationship. When I ask them, can you tell me your advice about something they understand and not answering to the best team or best regardless team. It's someone. Have someone sign on it. It's not a big deal, and it's humanizing the emails. So people love to open emails from people, not from companies, or it's better in many ways.
Brett:
Yeah. Make it personal? I totally agree with that, totally.
Itay Paz:
One more thing.
Brett:
Yes, please.
Itay Paz:
Put some favicons or icons if you can.
Brett:
In the subject line?
Itay Paz:
In the subject people love it as well and open, but I would say if you build a sequence and some people build a sequence, and you say by the way, it doesn't need to be... It could be a evergreen sequence of newsletters, and I would always test the emails are there actually inbox or not because you can either send emails but you're writing something that triggers the spam box, usually Gmail, and then it throws all the emails to the spam. So, you definitely need to check your emails before you do it. There's lots of online tools that you can actually use to do that.
Brett:
Yeah. So those are there tools you can use to test your email before you send it to hopefully avoid the spam box or junk box.
Itay Paz:
Absolutely. So we actually just started to use a cool tool. It's a great actually thing that you can use, and I'll let you know in a second. I need to find the name, but while I'll do that, first of all, I would start with sending an email even to myself, everyone almost have a Gmail box, right? So just go and just do that. Very simple, go to your inbox and look at it. The second thing is, there's something called Glock ads, GlockApps. Sorry, glockapps. G-L-O-C-K apps.com. You can put this as well later, I'll send it to you.
Brett:
Sure. And basically, they have already a list of Gmail and Gmail, Hotmail, all the different types of emails. And before you send an email, you can actually send it to them and they spread it to the list and you get to report what's your problem, where are your problem, and if you have a problem.
Brett:
Nice. That's great.
Itay Paz:
So it's good as you grow as always to have something, a feedback about your emails how they're getting other than reaching the box because you sent an email and said, "Oh, no one reads my newsletter. Oh, it's not that they don't read it. You're not right. And it's also affecting your other emails, for sure.
Brett:
Yes.
Itay Paz:
And one of the ways always, it starts people register firstly and use their newsletter, or getting coupon or making the first purchase, or where I always ask them to wipe list the email of the store, the email that you're sending from. So just in the first email or in the thank you page you tell them, there's a process exactly saying you can write online a white list email, and it will show you what you need to tell them in Gmail, you need to drag it into the inbox and not fall into promotions because you don't want your emails in the promotions box.
Brett:
Right. Right. Totally makes sense. Awesome. Any other tips for structure tools, any other little nuggets that people might need as they dive in more to email marketing? So I love clean emails, but definitely people love photos. People click on images more than on other things. So do add photos into the emails. Definitely, I will do that. I would do what we call list hygiene, which means, and sometimes it's hard for a business to say, okay, I have 10,000 subscribers or emails, and now I need to throw 3,000 to the trash or just remove them to the list. Yeah. It's a vanity number, right? I don't want to go backwards, I want to go from 10,000 to 7,000. But in reality, it's a really good move.
Itay Paz:
Yes. And I'll just give it a quick explanation of why it is because at Gmail, which is the biggest email provider or mail provider is looking at what's the percentage of people opening your email versus the number of actually emails you sent. So if you sent them 1,000, let's say they're all Gmail for example, and you have 3,000 openers, then you have 30% open rate and... Okay, GMO says that's the number. Now, if you clear the 3,000 that hasn't opened email, let's say for the past 30 or 60 days, now we have a 7,000 people list, but there's still 3,000 opening it because these are the same. So now your percentage is whatever 40 something percent. So it says, oh, this is a good email. So that the less chances he will throw it to the trash, sorry, to the spam folder or to promotions, it's more likely to go into the inbox. So it's really tough when people do, you said, "Oh, I'm going backwards." but it's just a number that you don't care. You care about actually, what's the end result. And what's the end goal, which is getting the results and getting the money into your pockets, right? Sales.
Brett:
Yeah, exactly. It's understanding, yeah, the metrics that matter. And then, it's so true in every part of business, what are your vanity metrics versus what are the metrics that really matter? And they've really moved the needle. And in this case, open rate matters, deliverability matters. And so list hygiene, cleaning up the list I know that's another super important.
Itay Paz:
I want to share one more cool thing that you can do in your email marketing and use that, or even if you don't have the newsletter, you can do it through email marketing. So I would say it's what we call JV or affiliate marketing.
Brett:
Yeah. Love this. Love this.
Itay Paz:
So you can actually work with other store owners that have the same audience. Okay? Let's say not the same product specifically you sell, but similar audience. And then what you do, you just sell, promote each other's products. You can still get commissions as an affiliate anyway. So it's extra income on people that buy stuff you don't anyway have. So if you have closing for pets, so think about a store for closing for pets,
Brett:
So pet toys or whatever.
Itay Paz:
Yeah. Yeah. So he has the same audience. You can cross promote each other and you can make lots of money. We, in some, in some ways, and again, depending on the structure we even find ourselves sometimes having in the thank you page. So someone subscribed to my gift or whatever it is on the thank you page, so thank you for subscribing to my list. And I also suggest you should subscribe to this list, and it gives them an option to subscribe to someone else let's say Brad's list. And the same thing you do Brad when someone subscribes to us and thank you I say you should subscribe to that lists.
Brett:
Exactly.
Itay Paz:
It doesn't harm each other, it's just making more. And suddenly, you find out every day you get subscribers without doing actually anything.
Brett:
Yeah. Yeah. It's the common counting effect. Yeah, sometimes people are too guarded with their list, and obviously you should protect it because we want to deliver value, but sometimes they're too guarded. Right? Think about ways you can do joint ventures and add more value. I mentioned Everyday California a little bit ago, a friend of mine and a client. So they sell apparel, but they also do adventure in San Diego, and so they partnered with a group called Sunday Scaries, who is CBD gummy company. And so they both did a cross promotion, rather. They have, in fact, even did like this was a deeper level, they had a co-branding, they created a product called Everyday Scary. So it was kind of the combination of Everyday California and Sunday Scaries and they made it Everyday Scary, but then they both emailed their list and the boost it was super fun, and it fit for both brands, and it gave them both a lot more exposure. It's a compounding or expanding effect and it was really successful.
Itay Paz:
And this is also bringing another ideas to do an online event. And I'm not talking about doing an online event, hey, like a seminar for 10 hours, but the webinar. We're talking about newsletter, but if you say, I'm not talking about that, but here we're jumping on a call and today I'm interviewing a trainer for dogs. So my audience would love to, right? They buy close to my two dogs or two pets, and I'm bringing someone to talk about training your dog to whatever, to bring your newspaper. And that's huge value, you can later on also repurpose the content and turn it into other stuff, but I'm just saying here's the value, a weekly value that you can have 10 minutes conversation or 15 minutes conversation about something and share with all your audience. It's very simple, it's just there.
Brett:
Yeah. I love it. I love it. So thank you, Itay. Tons of value on newsletter creation, email marketing, and like I said, I truly believe this was going to grow and it's super important now. It's going to grow in importance and the smartest marketers, the most successful e-commerce brands they're going to have a good email list. and then they're going to grow that list and they're going to use it and monetize it well. So let's pivot a little bit and just hear for the next six or seven minutes or so, let's talk web core vitals. And that may be a totally foreign concept to people listening, or some people may have already read up on it. But for those that don't know, what is web core vitals?
Itay Paz:
So, web core vitals are a set of specific factors that Google consider to be the most important when it comes to your website overall user experience. And it goes to something... The first thing that everyone knows is all about speed, right? That's the most important thing is if people say, "Oh, how fast it is going up?" And if it goes one second or two seconds, or millisecond, it's a huge difference for Google and other search engines. So it's all about the user experience, and Google is having here a set of parameters that it checks your website and tells you is your website is moving fast enough and is it good enough for the audience. And according to that, Google decides whether to send you more traffic or less traffic, or the same traffic, and they are not talking about it yet, but I can tell you definitely, it's also going to affect the ad side. So if people buy advertising, right? If someone click on an ad and it slowly goes up, usually what the person does go back, right?
Brett:
Yep.
Itay Paz:
And Google never charge for this back or for this click because it's not a valid click. So Google wants your website to go out fast, otherwise it doesn't really make sense. That's where it came in about at the beginning, right? When more advertising people is talking about paid speed. That was the thing, paid speed. Now it's more about lots of parameters that goes into how the pages upload, what's ways, how the things are looking, which elements are moving and not moving, how fast is the first layout that the user is seeing. So it's sort of small things, but eventually, they're coming from the backend of the website, it's not something that, well, the user sees it, but eventually Google looks at the hardcore codes of the website.
Itay Paz:
And if you're building your website based on Google traffic, eventually I would say Facebook, but Google traffic, either SEO and eventually will be paid. This is something that you have to take care of that. The first thing you need to do is go to right on Google speed test, and that will jump you the first result will be Google speed test. Of course, it's there Google, put your URL and click submit or whatever the button says, and give it to take like minutes and then you'll see your number. Your number should be green. Green is usually 90 and above. If it's not green, you need take care of it, because sooner or later it will happen. Google said it will be in May, so in a couple of weeks. And now they're saying it will be in June. I can tell you from our experience and what we see it's started already three months ago.
Brett:
Yeah, yeah. It's happening some now, it's going to continue to happen. And there are lots of speed test tools, right? Lots of tools you can test out there, but use Google's, right? Because that's the tool that they use. So if it's going to impact your Google ads or your SEO use their tool, because that is the standard that they use. And I 100% agree with you, Itay, this is going to be more and more important. And I think you have to look at what is Google's mission here? What is Google trying to do? One, they're trying generate really relevant results, right? So whether it's organic or advertising, they're trying to really understand the intent of the query, the intent of behind the searcher so they can deliver the most relevant options.
Brett:
And they want to delight the user so that the user keeps coming back and keeps clicking on more ads and then uses Google all the time. And so, there's a couple of things that Google is fighting against, right? They're fighting against poor experiences. They're fighting against that slow page load. They're fighting against pages that the bots crawl and they like but then users look at it and they're like, "This page is terrible. It's filled with ads, it's filled with stuff that's not relevant." Whatever. And so, Google is fighting that, they're also fighting ..SEO people as well.
Brett:
I've been doing SEO since 2004 and I know you've been doing it forever as well, Itay, and things have certainly shifted. And so, Google part of their war is against the furious SEO people so they can deliver those relevant results that delight customers. And so, yeah, we focused on the ad side now. So we're running a lot of YouTube ads, Google search ads, shopping ads, and then we see it to page speed is super important. So, any other tips here? Because I want to create some clarity with this, but I also know it's pretty technical and pretty nerdy. So if we dive too deep, we'll create sleepy listeners here, but any other tips or anything else that you would put around web core vitals?
Itay Paz:
So unfortunately, like I said it's technical thing so we can't actually say, hey, click there, do this code or whatever it is. There's a process that needs to be done. It's a methodology. It takes usually a few days to create it, and putting the time to make sure that the website completely has the best as possible user experience and the core web vitals are going to be in the top notch. It's a process, like I said, it's a few days up to a week to prepare then it takes Google another 30 days to actually understand what you did. This is how it works. It looks at the average. I think the best way to say this is something that interesting people they can just reach out to you or to ask and we'll try to help them.
Itay Paz:
The thing is we got to it when we... I think we're the only news writers that are around out there they're doing SEO. Most of them just writing their content, they do email marketing where. I came from the SEO or in an email marketing. So we did SEO, and as soon as we understood there's a need, we started to fix it. Then once we fixed it, we saw that the numbers of people getting to our site and the SEO goes up immediately, seven days, we started to see the ramp ups, which is amazing. So, it's very simple. If you are getting traffic from Google paid ads, or you're doing SEO, you have to fix it. Just look at the numbers, if you're an under 90 they can reach you and we can connect and try to help them.
Brett:
Yeah, and the page speed tool gives a few tips and things like that as well. But yeah, it's one of those things just you're just going to have to address and so use that free tool. And then if you need help we don't offer a service or anything related to core web vitals. I mean, certainly we're happy to talk to anybody. But Itay, you do. So if someone does say, "Hey, I checked my score and I'm a 70 or 60 or 40, or sometimes we have people coming to us they're like 20s and 30s. And we're like, hey, we can run ads to your pages but it's going to be, we're going to be fighting a little bit of an uphill battle. So let's work on fixing this, too. How can people either find out more resources from you or find out about the service? How can they check that out?
Itay Paz:
They can just reach out to me either online, LinkedIn, Facebook, or go to the Morning Dough, and my email is itay I-T-A-Y @morningdough.com. It's very simple, or you can just... Once you subscribe, you get an email. That's an email from me. It's an automated one but once you reply back it goes through me. I see the replies.
Brett:
The emails actually go to you, and I'm an assessment for that. But that's all I got because I got the email and I was like, I'm just going to see if this is a real guy. So I email Itay is real, okay.
Itay Paz:
Yeah. It's funny. Sometimes people, this is really your email. Really? Your email is so simple, like you will email jeffbezos@amazon.com you might even get to them, but no one is actually emailing because there's no chance that he's using this email, right? So this is really my email, just write itay@morningdough.com, or through the social media, just connect to me and I'll be happy to see if I can help you fix the issues with your core web vitals as we did for ourselves.
Brett:
Awesome. Itay, thank you so much. This has been extremely valuable. Like I said, I'm very bullish on both of these topics, email newsletters, and email marketing and general, web core vitals, both critical right now. So check it out, Morning Dough and Itay at Morning Dough if you want to connect with him directly. Oh, that's .com. I skipped that. And so with that, Itay, thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun.
Itay Paz:
Thank you, Brett, for having me. I love it. Thank you.
Brett:
Yeah. Awesome. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We would love to hear from you, what would you like to hear more of? Any guest suggestions for the show? We'd love to hear from you and connect with you. Also, make sure you sign up for the email marketing for this show, we talk about new episodes and also new blog posts and guides where we're cranking out some amazing content right now that we don't want you to miss. And so with that, until next time. Thank you for listening.
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