How Boundless Labs ups email revenue from 0% to 30% a month

Join us for a juicy discussion with Chase Diamond, founder of Boundless Labs -- one of the world’s top e-commerce email agencies, where we’ll find out how he regularly increases new client email revenue from 0% to 15% to 25% to 30% a month or more.  We’ll dive under the covers of a killer email campaign for a weighted blanket brand that had an open rate of about  53% and a click through 4%  or 5% -- but that wasn’t the reason it rocked.  Then we’ll pick apart the anatomy of an email layout and point out the layout pitfalls that all too many marketers fall into…. and more. 

 Why testimonials suck compared to the social proof power of these platforms. How one Facebook ad ended up driving 60% of a client’s revenue.  How to solve catastrophic mobile app email mistakes from the top down. The absolute best incentive to get customers to leave favorable reviews -- it’s not what you think it is.What you can do to get out of your agency echo-chamber and into the mind and buying motivations of your best customers.

BIO

Since launching Boundless Labs in 2018, Diamond has helped his agency’s clients send hundreds of millions of emails resulting in over $40 million in email attributable revenue for high-profile clients like The Chive, IBEX, Original Grain, TUSHY and Vinyl Me Please.

TRANSCRIPT

Host:  Dylan Carpenter   

Cool, cool. How's it going everybody? Welcome to another episode of Rich Ad, Poor Ad. Today we have one of my buddies Chase Diamond online. He is one of the partners at Boundless Labs. He is the Chief email marketing (guy) --  done roughly $35 million plus in revenue for his clients, all via email marketing. So while we dive into the ad side, we're going to be mixing in some emails with this as well. They have some good email practices, bad email practices, and kind of all the shenanigans get involved there. But hey, Chase, thanks for hopping on today. I would love to have you dive into a little bit about what you're doing.  A little background there so people have some kind of insights there.

 

Guest: Chase Diamond 

Yeah, appreciate you guys having me. Thank you. 

Host:  Zach Johnson  Definitely. 

Guest: Chase Diamond   Awesome. So yeah, currently  run Boundless Labs, we're a team of about 12 people and we're specifically focused on email marketing for e-commerce. So full service email marketing agency, we work with about 35 to 40 clients right now. Most are selling seven and eight figure brands, an email typically accounts for about 20% to 30% of these brands’ revenue. So it's pretty significant. So at a high level, that's kind of what I do. And that's what I'm up to today.

 

Host:  Dylan Carpenter 

Oh, man, that's awesome. When it comes to a lot of the brands you take on, what percent of revenue are they sitting at originally versus kind of once you get your little wheels  spinning over there to end up at?

 

Guest: Chase Diamond   

Yeah, so let's say we kind of run the gamut. Some brands literally are doing almost next to nothing, right? So their email attributable revenues are sitting anywhere from like zero to maybe like 3%, right? So it's very minimal. And then some other brands that come to us or maybe doing 10% to 15%. They kind of feel like they've done everything that they've can, and they don't know what they don't know, right? So they're looking to bring in a second pair of eyes and ears and to bring in some experts to help them. 

So typically anywhere from just starting out to maybe 10% to 15% on the high end, and definitely over the course of maybe three to six months of working together, we're pretty consistently able to get these brands to be doing 20%, 25%, 30% of their revenue. 

And again, that's not for every brand, right? We've got some brands that are doing well higher, some brands are doing 40%, 50%, 60% of the revenue from email. And some brands are also doing 10% or 15%. Right? Maybe they started at zero. So it really just depends, but on average, it's about 20%  to 30% of the revenue coming from email after a couple months.

Host:  Dylan Carpenter 

That makes total sense. And what's the size of these kinds of businesses you are working with? Or have they been around the block a little bit?  What's the lifeline or timeline of the businesses you're working with there?

 

Guest: Chase Diamond  

Yeah, so in e-commerce, I think we've probably touched almost every single vertical. Everything from like CBD to skincare to haircare apparel, to fashion to jewelry, accessories, you name it. Most of our brands do in the ballpark of about one to $20 million in annual revenue. And they typically have been around anywhere from maybe nine months on the short end, all the way up to five, seven, maybe even 10 years for some businesses. So again, like it's that's really what I love about the industry that we all work in is that some of these brands become this overnight success and other brands that could have been more established and are growing steadily. So it's really fun to have this really well rounded kind of mixture.

 

Host:  Dylan Carpenter  

Oh, man, I love that. So I mean, from your point of view, what's been one of the funnest clients to work with? One you've had a lot of free reign on their messaging or you've been able to have fun with their copy. What's one of those dream clients you've been able to obtain over there?

Guest: Chase Diamond 

So for me, if you guys are familiar with The Chive, by any chance, they're like the men's millennial site.  They're really popular.  Not that they're not popular today, but they're really popular when we were like, maybe in middle school or high school. You guys know The Chive?  Like The Chive for me and all my buddies growing up, obviously, you know, as young dudes, it was like this coolest site ever, right?

Like, oh, man, that'd be such a fun company to work for one day. And somehow, in 2018, I got connected with their chief strategy officer. We had hit it off and I've been consulting with them ever since. 

So I work with them specifically on their e-commerce brand The Chivery. They're an eight figure e-commerce brand really leveraging the cult-like following of The Chive and they create tons of cool graphic tees and apparel and coins and they have really great partnerships with like Bill Murray and other people. So for me just growing up kind of like looking at this brand as like, “Oh, this is so cool”. And now being at a place where they look to me to  advise and consult them on email related practices --  has been really rewarding and fulfilling.

 

Host:  Zach Johnson

Oh The Chivery and  Bill Murray -- like you can't like can't go wrong with that. I wonder if there were any like failures when they were rolling that out? Because like I feel like that's been such a win.

 

Guest: Chase Diamond