10 years ago I was in Spain with my now wife. I was teaching English as a second language and loved it. 

However, after teaching for 3 years I realised unless I opened up my own school I was already at the top of where I could go. That didn’t sit well with me.

Before Spain I worked in China for an online retail business run by an old yorkshireman. At the time I knew he could have done things a bit differently but I was more into soaking up the incredible world of China.

So, I thought I’d give ecommerce a go myself! Without any idea in the world on how to set it all up I dove right into selling Christmas lights on eBay to the Spanish market. You know, the typical entry point 😂. 

I would purchase the LEDs from China and get them sent to my flat in Madrid. I’d pack up the orders into my camping backpack and bike them up to the local Correos (Royal Mail in Spain). Seeing those orders come in every day got me hooked!

I wanted to sell more products but knew our little flat didn’t have the space. I heard something about dropshipping. 

So, I found a supplier who had a huge selection of products and would ship them all for me directly to the customer. I ended up listing everything they had on Amazon with just about no optimisation at all. But, it worked! I started getting 30+ orders a day and it was paying my bills. I was over the moon.

Then one day disaster struck. Over a month-long period all my packages started to get flagged and stopped at customs and held for weeks on end. To this day I am not sure why. It was a logistical and customer service nightmare. Refunding left right and centre. I don’t know how but I managed to, but, I kept my Amazon account running.

This was when I decided to take it more seriously and actually buy the stock and set up a little warehouse. I focussed on camera products as they were lightweight and of decent value. That ticked along for a good year or so until I discovered private label FBA on Amazon.

I took a course on how to sell my own branded products on Amazon and found 2 winning products. Microfibre towels and travel money belts. That business grew to nearly $1m in revenue in its second year with just those 2 products. I couldn’t be happier! I was making great money and it was all on autopilot! So I thought.

In 2017 I had my first daughter. I had a great business and I just thought it would keep running itself. I was in for a rude awakening. Little by little the competition for my winning products started creeping in. Undercutting my prices. Hijacking my reviews and listings. It started to become a daily task of putting out fires just to stay on page 1.

Then Amazon started to get strict and a little bit insane. Other seller accounts got banned for apparently no reason. One particular instance they completely shut down all my microfibre towel listings because it simply had the words “prevents microbial growth”. They decided to lump this into the pesticide category which was strictly controlled. That nightmare lasted a month.

Bit by bit I started to fall out of love with Amazon. The money was great but the satisfaction was nil. I didn’t want to become skilled in managing Amazon problems. I wanted to learn skills in growing a business.

So, in 2019 my wife and I set up our Shopify store selling eco-friendly products. In 2020 the pandemic hit and eco friendly was all the rage! Our store boomed and in our first 2 years on Shopify we ended up doing nearly £1m in sales. Not quite the same as the Amazon numbers but the satisfaction was high!

I learned how to run Facebook ads, Google Shopping ads, write SEO content and optimise for SEO. And, more importantly, I learned about email marketing. Valuable skills that I could bring to any business.

I took a course on email marketing and it ended up accounting for 45% of all our revenue through the Shopify store. This is when I realised just how essential email marketing is. 

You own the customer. Not like on Amazon. Not like constantly paying for ads on Facebook or Google. Once they signed up I could email them as often as I liked and the orders would come in.

I ended up growing our list to over 40,000 active subscribers during this period. Happy days right?

Unfortunately not. The international markets were about to change and with that the desire for eco friendly products as well.

When the pandemic started to die down and customers started spending their money on going out again our sales dipped a bit. Nothing too much to worry about, but we had to shift some things around.

Then the war in Ukraine started and the cost of living crisis was well under way. Normally I am never one to blame the markets for poor sales, but this was too much to ignore. People fell out of love with the eco friendly movement, focussing to spend their money on more cost saving alternatives. And, let’s face it, eco-friendly products are more expensive and often less effective than their counterparts. Our suppliers were hit first and started closing down one by one.

With the sales dipping and now having 2 extra mouths to feed I realised I had to do something immediately to get extra income coming in. So, I decided to get a job. I found an ad on Indeed looking for an all rounder in ecommerce for a local golf retailer. I went for 2 interviews and I was hired.

In the beginning I was supposed to run the facebook ads, the google ads, write SEO content and set up the email marketing. I thought sure, why not, I’ll do it all! Impossible. I was doing a little bit of everything and gaining nothing.

That’s when I decided to focus purely on email marketing. The golf business had an agency who ran their Google shopping ads and that ticked along bringing in some good traffic.

I set up their full automation and started sending 3 campaign emails every week. That’s when the growth started.

I started in July 2022 and August 2022 was 26% up from the previous month. It grew again in September by a humble 5% on the previous month. I then started to add more automation and increased the campaigns to 4 per week. October sales were up a further 12% and considering golf is a spring/summer sport I took this as a massive win.

November and December were the biggest months the business had seen. Up 33% from the previous 2 months. Of course you would expect that in Q4, but the growth rate couldn’t be ignored for a business that had been trading for 6 years already.

As of writing this, September 2023, year to date the business is up a staggering 114% YoY. That isn’t a typo. Since I started working for them the business has more than doubled. And they’re on track to do over £2m this year in their online store alone, and the growth isn’t stopping.  Just the other day they had a record day hitting £9.3k.  In the middle of September! 

Now, I wouldn’t say that is 100% completely down to email marketing alone. Along the way I helped optimise their site. I added in some Shopify apps to help grow the average order value and increase conversion rate. I helped with their google shopping strategy by segmenting their campaigns by product type. And loads more little tweaks here and there that helped add up.

But, email marketing does make up 33% of their total business. That also includes their physical brick and mortar stores. All in all email marketing is now bringing in over £100k per month.

The main lesson I learnt here is that owning your own customer data is the most powerful thing in ecommerce.  

No algorithm or platform can take it away from you.  

You can say whatever you like, run whatever promotion you like and you’re talking directly to people who are interested in your business!

Without building your email list you are constantly at the whim of mega corporations who don’t even know your business exists and can simply click a button and get you banned or drop your traffic without a second thought.  

So, I started to think I actually know what I am doing! I can grow businesses. I know what levers need to be pulled. I know what gaps need to be filled. And I love it. Since then I have worked with more businesses by setting up their email marketing automation and offering my consultation and I have seen their growth already well on its way.

And thus the birth of MisterEcomm has been laid forth upon you!

I took what I learned from my own Shopify store and applied it to a completely different business. A business, which until I started, barely paid email any attention. Now it’s their most profitable channels. And, in less than a year, the ROI on the email marketing channel has been in the 1000’s%.

I’m not saying I’m the best email marketer out there. But, I know what I’m doing. And I have a system that works for businesses both small and large.  I also know how email marketing ties in with every other aspect of an online shop.  

Now, I want to share that system with you.