E-Commerce Marketing: Shopify Data, Strategy & Selling Smarter with Carlyn Bushman #271

Carlyn Bushman If you don’t have something going for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, do something like it’s okay that you didn’t plan maybe six months in advance or two months. Don’t feel like it’s too late. Progress over perfection. Emily Reagan Today we are talking about e com marketing, how you can help product based businesses, those who have Shopify sites, for example, sell more of their products. I’m Emily Reagan, and I train virtual assistants to be marketing assistants and beyond. And this show is dedicated to helping you get better with your services, expand your knowledge so you can say yes to the client work, specifically those e comm clients. We’re talking about subscription box owners. We’re talking about product based businesses that are selling something, whether it’s Etsy, Amazon or Shopify. Today I have Carlyn Bushman, the founder of Carlyn Bushman consulting here. She’s the powerhouse behind the pop Academy, which you’ll hear all about. She is really all about the strategy, the business finances for product based business owners. She helps them scale and stay profitable. She has a background in corporate leadership, and really knows her marketing. I really enjoy nerding out with Carlyn about all things when it comes to mastering numbers, knowing what’s working in marketing and helping our clients do better, sell more and actually drive growth. Really hoping you can step it up when it comes to planning Q4 and annual sales for 2026 and thinking ahead with Black Friday. I know this episode is coming out right before Black Friday, but there’s still lots of good marketing insight when it comes to reviews, abandoned cart, emails and marketing that is working all right. Let’s jump into our episode. Hey, Carlyn, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to talk about ecom marketing with you today. Tell everyone Hello, little bit about you and how you got in this business. Carlyn Bushman Absolutely Emily, so nice to see you and be with you today. Thank you so much. I am Carlyn Bushman, founder of Carlyn Bushman consulting and the infamous pop Academy, which stands for progress over perfection. I am really about business strategy, which I know sounds big and theoretical, but it’s really me loving spreadsheets and numbers. That’s my love language and KPIs and all the really juicy stuff. So I try to make that fun. Along with that, I do a ton of educating, because I feel like education in this space, no gatekeeping. That’s one of my mantras. Is so important for any business, any founder, any CEO, it really drives confidence, and it’s transformational when I really can witness this like, how did you get in this space? I don’t know your startup story. I don’t know your origin story. So fascinating. We’ll we’ll keep it to a minimum, because I’ve got a lot of decades of experience behind me. Of course, like most of us, corporate, right? Corporate gave me a lot of training. I was in the C suite for a big medical device company, so I was and it was publicly traded, so all the numbers, right? That was very, very important. I think that’s what actually exposed me to leaning into some of that structure that I now use to serve my clients. And then I thought, after leaving corporate, doing some consulting, of course, deciding how hard could it be to start a product based business? Can’t be that hard. Oh, I’ve done corporate. So I decided to start a handmade business. There’s no saturation in that market. And I did it. And, wow, it’s hard. Emily, it’s so hard. What did you do? What was your product? It was a handbag with a patented Chain system that was made of or is made of aluminum and titanium, and it’s the only fully adjustable chain. So whether you are six two, whether you are pregnant, whether you are large, busted, whatever the case might be, it acts as the perfect cross body bag because it can adjust to any size that’s comfortable for you as a woman in many different versions of your life. I don’t know if I told you this, but in my dabbling decade, I was doing a little bit of freelance work, I just had this ambition to do something else, and I taught myself to sew. My mom was a quilter, and I just taught myself to sew as a brand new stay at home mom, I just quit my dream job, and I started an Etsy shop. I made slings. I made a lot of applique onesies with different airframe models because my husband, at the time was Air Force, and then I kind of niched into hooded towels that would have like a like, fun printed fabric on the hood. And I really enjoyed it, like I’m very ambitious, industrious. However, the profit margin was not there for me, so it was such, like a learning lesson for me. And I also started to dive into a T Shirt Company, and then had a fallout with a graphic designer. I could just tell he wasn’t going to be reliable. And at the same time, my freelance stuff was just like, cooking and cooking and cooking. So I ended up going all the way over here and, like, leaving my Etsy shop behind. But I know that so many of my listeners a have product based clients. They’re in e com. They’re playing in Shopify, or, like I was telling you before the call, like they also dabble. Emily Reagan Than other things like some of us have done, you know, MLMs or network marketing, or had our own e comm shop. And so I thought this conversation would be so fun to talk about ecom marketing, like, how can we best serve our clients? And what do we need to know, especially as we’re in q4 ahead of Black Friday, looking at 2026 like, what’s shifting? Like, I love these conversations with you, so I don’t even know where to start when it comes to marketing assistance and like, how they get involved, but like, let’s start at the beginning with what econ marketing really is and what our main goals are here. Great. Carlyn Bushman And Emily, I love knowing that about you, by the way, sometimes I think you know what that was our creative outlet. And I still, like, I still think when I like, look back at that, it is great, right? And leaning into some of the joy of what that brought you at the time, profit margins or not, right? Whether you had to think through that, right? Yeah, what is econ marketing? Well, it’s omni channel, right? As in today’s age, I think you can really say, and I know that’s a fancy word for saying, You better be everywhere. And I, I know we get really specific to say, pick a platform and really stay with that platform, if we’re talking social right, however, and as you go into q4 you really do depends on what your goals and growth like. You know looks like for you as an E com business, but you really do have to think about omni channel presence. It takes much more today than it did even three or four years ago, 17 touches, 21 touches, for you to get your product in front of the right consumer. Emily Reagan Yeah, I think about ads I see on the internet, and how I’m less likely to buy from a solo ad, and all the research I’m doing into that under eye cream to find out if it’s legit or, like, does it actually work, looking at the reviews, and I’ve been burned, right? I’ve been burned from the ad products like online like that, don’t arrive or aren’t what they appeared they should have been. So it’s a different landscape than it was a few years ago, Carlyn Bushman and I love what you’re saying, because I think what we have to do on most days when we’re in a marketing ecom space like that niche, right? Specifically, let’s run it back, and what you just shared was a story about you as a consumer. So if we give ourselves some space as e com marketers or owners of Ecom businesses. What are you doing as a consumer? So you just said, I need to look beyond just an ad to see if this is really legit. Is it going to do what it says? Or, in my case, when I’m looking at socials and I see something I have a tendency to not buy right from the social I need to go see, is there a legit website behind this brand, and I’m going to enter my email address and see if it drops into my inbox, and then I’m going to see if I get a follow up email. Am I going to get a discount code? What is this really going to look like? Right? So think about how you’re using social or these omni channel presence to purchase as a consumer, I think too often we think we know the right way. But as a consumer, you really have to figure out, what does it look like when you’re doing the shopping? Emily Reagan Oh my gosh, that’s such a good point. And I think about the discount code, promote code like sleuthing we do because we’re like, never buy the first time without a code, there’s always something well, Carlyn Bushman Emily, I also want to say, How often do you leave things in your cart? And because we’re in econ marketing and marketing, how often do you leave things in cart? You’re like, I’m gonna just see if they’re gonna send me a hey, abandoned cart notification, and we saw we’re holding it for you. If you want to buy it right now, we’ll go ahead and give you just a little bit more to be a first time buyer in our abandoned cart series. So that’s another nugget. Like, there’s people that are just waiting for just that. Yeah, Emily Reagan because we’re savvy, we know that that’s a possibility. You know what works on me now that I’m just, like, thinking about all the emails I get, oh, there’s only seven of this left. Like, you looked at this dress from favorite daughter. It’s cute denim. I like, still looking at it, and they’re like, there’s only seven left. I’m like, like, maybe I should just go ahead and pull the trigger and like, get it. And so that’s what’s going on in my brain right now with my most recent email. Carlyn Bushman That’s brilliant. So here’s a whole bunch of nuggets we’re already dropping. Right the omni channel presence, you know that they’re going to look at your ad, but what is that ad really going to do? Is it going to send them to purchase? Is it gonna Are you paying for a conversion ad when really, you know what they’re probably gonna end up doing is check you out on your website. Maybe check out if it’s, you know, a product under eye cream or whatever the case might be, right? The results page like, be thinking about that. And if you’re paying for a conversion ad during q4 which is really expensive, right? When? Really, you could get away with paying for either an awareness ad or an engagement ad. So these are just some things to think about and how you’re competing in a space that is really, really busy and noisy in q4 Emily Reagan Yeah, oh my gosh. Okay, I have so many questions, so many things to talk about, but let me have a little more comment. Checks, what are your clients actually selling? Online Carlyn, what are they selling? Carlyn Bushman Most of my clients are either in the beauty space. Ironic that you brought up eye cream, Home Goods and home decor, and then the third space really is apparel. So I would say those are the three spaces that I really see most of my clients falling into at this time, those three niches. So it’s really great that I’ve got some of those niches specifically because looking at trends and what’s important, when you mentioned eye cream, those are some things we do stuff a little bit different. We do marketing a little bit different for beauty space than we would do in apparel space. Emily Reagan Oh, interesting. Are there any other categories that you did not include that. Carlyn Bushman Oh, well, you know, there’s, like, food and beverage, right? So I do have one client that is food and beverage, you know, and she has a canned cocktail and a non alcoholic version, subscription boxes. So that’s kind of a conglomerate. We talked a little bit about that. So I have a client that’s in the subscription box, specifically space, yeah, there’s, I mean, there’s a multitude, if you think about it, footwear, I have one client who’s in footwear, right? Accessories, jewelry, things like that. That’s another client. So it can cover quite a large space. And I think you really have to approach, if you do marketing for ecom, businesses, really get to understand what that space is, that niche, as we like to say, Emily Reagan sometimes I see clients who I came from the creative world. I had a lot of designers and bloggers, furniture painters, and some of them were trying to add a product line also for that revenue, in addition to affiliate marketing, they’re always looking for new revenue streams, but they weren’t always, like hitting the numbers that they probably didn’t have, like the economy to scale for that. But I think what we’re going to talk about today can still help those people sell their products. And sometimes, as a marketing assistant, we’re behind the scenes when they start that, and we’re just kind of like, All right, go time. Like, how do we help them sell this? Because we want to see them be successful. So since this episode is coming out right before Black Friday, I feel like we have to have a conversation about this, especially so we can get our brains going, probably for 2026 to be realistic. But what are some selling tips, marketing tips, that we can utilize as marketing assistants to help our clients? Because you just said it, the ads are expensive. We’re all getting bombarded with all the deals, and what can we do to stand out and get more sales? Carlyn Bushman I mean, that is the million dollar question, right? And that there was a perfect answer for that. You know, I too would like to hear it, but I think there’s a lot of different things. First of all, I think at the forefront, as we’re talking about the timing of this episode, if you don’t have something going for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday. Do something like it’s okay that you didn’t plan maybe six months in advance or two months. Don’t feel like it’s too late. Progress over perfection, right? So that is what I teach, and that is what I would say, is, if you’re listening to this and you don’t have something, have something, the second thing that I’ve seen work really, really well is, don’t make it the same thing every day. So you want to be able to offer something for Black Friday, for Small Business Saturday and for Cyber Monday, like have different styles of sales. So maybe one is site wide. Maybe is buy one, get one gift with purchase. There’s can be a whole a number of different things, but I think you’ve got to keep it interesting to your consumer, as they are watching for these Black Friday sales, if they think of one thing, it’s site wide. They touched it. They’ve been there. They’ve done that in their office site. So as a small business, I would say you’ve got to keep it interesting. What do you think, Emily, Emily Reagan I love that I would not have thought to do something every day. Honestly, I was flashing back to my client who didn’t have or act together and was trying to get me to pull together a Black Friday sale, like Wednesday, and this is, like, that’s where my brain went. I’m like, Oh my gosh, but like, what a gift, if you as a marketing freelancer, could get ahead of the clients and help them, because we’re all like, drowning and we don’t have the capacity. But I love that idea of different sales, because otherwise it just all blends together. And so would you be doing, like, social and email for each day? Obviously, they need multiple touches because it’s so noisy at that time. Carlyn Bushman Yeah. And if you don’t have an SMS plan in place, absolutely do that right now. Like, whether you’re going to make that in time for Black Friday or Cyber Monday, it takes a little bit of time. You have to get verifications. You have to build that list. But if you’ve got 12 people that have given you their number and it’s been verified, send an SMS to those 12 people. SMS is the one thing that is actually out ranking emails sometimes and sales that I see on the back in the Shopify. It’s just the way it is, right? Because there’s so many filters that are set up in our email systems now, and we get inundated that it can easily go missed, and then you’ve got the whole thing, where is it going to spam, XYZ, right? All those things. So I highly recommend you know, even before your end of year sales, so many businesses do like an end of Year Anniversary Sale, maybe after the holidays, maybe going into January, have something like that set up to. Think, okay, my Black Friday Cyber Monday is not going to be perfect, but my end of year is going to be amazing. And it’s going to be amazing because, number one, I’m planning for it like right now, and number two, I’m going to have some type of SMS campaign that I can use to filter into the end of year, or whatever your you know, season sales might be, and it Emily Reagan just made me think of my client’s launch earlier this year. We went back, and I made sure we had that phone number on all forms, because his people just were not opening emails, and we had better luck with SMS. And of course, yes, it takes time. Plan on running into snags. I was doing mine in Active Campaign. Do you have a favorite SMS program that you like that? You recommend? Carlyn Bushman I do we use Klaviyo or Klaviyo? Not sure. I know, I’ve heard both pronunciations of itato, right? But I think Klaviyo does a really good job. So we’ve used a lot of their platforms for CPG, E, comm businesses, and we’ve been really, really happy with Emily Reagan it. Okay, cool. Is there any like tricks for those to convert like, I’ve gotten the like webinar alerts, like, hey, our webinar is starting. And I sometimes I’m like, Who are you? Like, I can’t even tell, but I wonder, with E comm or people like warm, do they know who the the number is? Are they used to it? Are there tricks to how you write the text so people actually click? Carlyn Bushman Yeah, I think you’ve got to have an image if there’s a way for you to include an image. And I know Klaviyo can do this if there’s a way for you to include an image. And when I’m talking about Klaviyo, I’m talking specifically ecom businesses. I’m not necessarily talking about service based businesses, yeah, I’m not talking about service based businesses, right? There’s a couple other platforms that are better, but for E comm businesses, I would say Klaviyo. For service based businesses, I like go high level, Active Campaign, right? There’s a few others out there that are really, really nice, but, yeah, you want to create the message so it actually has attention. You know, who does a really good job is? This is another thing, by the way, I’m going to back up subscribe to a few of your favorite brands and subscribe to their SMS. Why would we always spend our energy and time feeling like we need to reinvent, reinvent, reinvent, reinvent, right? So I receive quite frequently. I might add Alice and Olivia SMSs, they do a really good job. And what I do is I screen capture those so I can look at how they’re doing it. I figured they have the budget that is really large to be able to do stuff like this. So I’m going to take a look at what are they sending out? Like, there’s no reason I can’t learn from others that are doing a really good job in a space. Emily Reagan Ooh, I love that. Like, sometimes I see product descriptions and catalogs that are all like kitschy or funny or snarky or different. That always opens my mind. Are there texts like that? Are there SMSs like that? Carlyn Bushman They are and I love that you pointed that out, because why would we not keep joy and humor and our messaging? I mean, the minute you’re like, you sit at your desk and you see an SMS or you see an email or something like that, and it makes you kind of smile or laugh, like, there’s those where I’m like, oh, so clever, so clever. I love it, right? Emily Reagan I feel like I want to, I want to create a gallery or collection of these as, like inspiration, because I love, I love, like, reading that, and then I want someone to share it with. You know, like, thank you. This is so funny, but, you know, I guess that’s what my work group is for. But I like to analyze what’s working and then make it my own. Of course, we have chatgpt to help too. But if you start with, Oh, my God, there’s so many freaking screenshots on my phone Carla and, like, just, like, add copy ideas. And I know, like, now you’re telling me to add text, Carlyn Bushman take those screenshots and put those into chat GPT and let chat GPT to help you there too. And I think you’ve really touched on something important. When you’re using AI or GPT or Gemini or perplexity, or whichever the platforms you’re using, they’re really great, but you have to feed them the right prompt, as you and I, like we know this, right? So you don’t want to become like too universal. You don’t want to become too vanilla, right? So if you use these screenshots, and then you have your branding, that’s part of these screenshots, and then have some inspiration or assistance from Ai, that’s great. If you just go in and say, create something for me that you know sounds fun and interesting. Everybody’s probably doing that, so be careful when you do that. Like, really use what stands aligned with who you are and what your messaging is. And then give some examples. Just put the screenshot into GPT, and it’ll look at it. Emily Reagan Oh my gosh, I love that. Okay, back to the Black Friday. So I’m thinking about, like, different deals on different days. Is there an order that makes the most sense, like the site wide, and I feel very vulnerable right now because I haven’t helped any econ businesses, and I always get requests like, who do you know that does ads? Who does email marketing for that? Because it’s such a specific niche, and so I’m really discovering here with you, Carlyn Bushman of course. So the one thing that I want to really make sure of change your website homepage. So it’s really easy to have duplicates inside of Shopify. So when you get ready to have these sales, whether it’s your Anniversary Sale or, in this case, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, change that hero image, change the homepage. Don’t have just your you know, winter. Wonderland look, or whatever it might be at the time. Make sure you change it so duplicate it and start working on it if you haven’t done it. Of course, you know, I know we’re right on the heels of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, if you don’t have anything else, put in an announcement bar. That’s really, really easy. Here’s another really great idea, if you’re not sure what sale to do on which day, Shopify has so many and I lean into Shopify, but I know woocom And some of these other places. I think it’s Bigcommerce, Big E commerce, they have this tool as well, but I’ll lean into Shopify. If you’re in Shopify, there’s an icon in the upper right hand corner. It’s next to your notification icon, and it’s called sidekick. And sidekick is the internal AI piece of Shopify. You can ask sidekick anything and what I would do, since Shopify has all of your data, everything sits in Shopify. It knows your customer behavior. It knows your best products and knows your pricing. It knows, hopefully, your margins right if you put the details in. Ask sidekick, I plan on running a Black Friday Small Business Saturday Cyber Monday sale. I’d like to split it into three different sales over the course of the weekend. What do you recommend based on the info that is in my Shopify, Emily Reagan oh my gosh, it’s genius. It will, it will gather the data, until it Carlyn Bushman will gather the data, it will and it will make suggestions, and then you can take that and decide, because every business might be a little bit different. So to answer your question, Could you do a buy one, get one on, starting Thursday at midnight, or starting Thursday? Just post Thanksgiving dinner in the US, right? And then do you flip that to something a little more aggressive, before 12 on Friday? You know? I mean, think about the door busters. Think about like when you used to actually go stand in line to get into a particular store to get the before 10 o’clock or before 12 o’clock. And like you mentioned, selling fast seven, left, right, and using some of those things, but ask Shopify to help you identify because it’s going to be very specific to what it sees inside of your store. It is not just chat GPT. It is not just what everybody else is doing. And then you can take that information from Shopify and put it into GPT. Now it’s got real information about your store. So using tools like this, it’s a great starting point. Emily Reagan Is there a point when there’s like, too much, like, too many promos? I mean, is there like, a limit where we should be like, All right, that’s because, I mean, you could go crazy. And I am thinking of a friend that I was looking at her Black Friday, and she was a service provider, but she had like, seven different things happening. I was like, Oh my gosh, it was almost like too much. But is there like a sweet spot? Carlyn Bushman I think it can be overwhelming. So of course, stay laser focused. And the best thing to do is to test it right, to test it so testing and measuring right. I mean, that’s what I’m about. It’s the KPIs. If you did something last year, how did that turn out? That’s your benchmark. Of course. Inside of Shopify, you can get your Black Friday Cyber Monday from the year prior, so you can see what you did, what sold, what didn’t sell, what made a difference, what made an impact, and you can use that data as well. But I really think you want to be very clear, and you want to lean into what are your customers? What do they really want from you? Like, what do you think would really hook them into buying and increasing your average order value over the weekend? Right? You might put a bunch of things on sale, but do you also want to make sure your average order value is at a certain number? And I know I’m throwing in one more metric. So yes, if you’re going to test seven things over a period of four days. That’s a bit aggressive. That would be hard to measure. It might get diluted. So I would, if you haven’t done much, just start with three, four, Max. I would not go beyond that. Emily Reagan Okay, now I’m thinking like the rest of the year. Is there any data? Are there anything we can be running in the background as the marketing assistant to gather that data for Black Friday now, in my world, I’m thinking of like, voice of customer research and like getting all of the pain points in order. But like, what is the equivalent to that ahead of a Black Friday sale? Other than, you know, last year’s numbers, is there anything like sneaky or tricky we can do to, like, get ahead of the Black Friday demand? Like, what, what clients want. What customers want? Carlyn Bushman Well, first of all, there’s a couple things to measure. You know, that’s the abandoned browse, right? We talk about abandon browse. So you have customers coming to your website, they browse, and then they sign off. Okay, where did you lose them? So installing like a heat map is really great. Hot jar, Lucky Orange. Those are two names, so I would use some of those statistics before you head into Black Friday Cyber Monday. Because what we want to do is, did they hang out? Did they add it to their cart and never buy it? Okay? Then to me, I’m like, Ooh, that sounds like a retargeting opportunity. I saw you were looking at this because you were looking at this two months ago, three months ago, whatever it might have been, and they didn’t buy. I I’d retarget them in a separate email campaign. I would do segmenting without a doubt. So when you ask me to look at historical data, I’m going to look at where can I segment my audience? Because my open rate is going to be better, my click through rate is going to be much better. It’s really important if we’re talking email specific only, and then I know my customer. How great is it to see. Can you imagine, Emily, if we got an email and it said, I noticed you were looking at this eye cream. I thought of you because it’s now on sale, and it’s a great time for you to try it. You’re like, right? How easy. I’m like, You’re right. And thank you for reminding me. Yeah, that would be amazing, yeah? Emily Reagan Because I forget all the time, or, like, sometimes something goes wonky with the credit card, or a kid is distracting me, and I don’t want to get up off the couch. And so I actually appreciate reminders. I appreciate being told when things are on sale, because, I mean, who doesn’t want to save money? And it feel, makes me feel taken care of, you know, Carlyn Bushman right? And I know Amazon does a really and we’re gonna, I’m gonna talk about Amazon for a minute. Amazon does a really great job. So as you know, their prime days are scattered throughout the year. And one thing that I know, when I go to Amazon site, it will say to me, you purchased this previously. It’s now on sale. Do you want to buy it again? And it’s almost like, click, click, right? You’re like, that just happened? Oh gosh, yeah, I forgot it did that. I didn’t think about that. Wow. Okay, so I’m thinking about what else the marketing assistant can do to help their clients who are selling. Do you have anything like, I’m sure. I’m sure, because you work with all the clients like, what do they wish their assistants did and help them, on the back end, come up with creative ideas, I think so much of and I did this recently with a client, two clients, actually, where ahead of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, really. You know, you can do this any time of year, whoever’s on your team, whether you have a team of two, a team of five, maybe a team plus an agency, whoever the players are that are part of your organization or your company, I would ask them and create a deadline to submit 10 visibility ideas for your business. And again, these 10 ideas could be so broad, it could be from PR to email marketing to SMS to best trade shows, trunk shows, pop ups, speaking engagements, podcast episodes, whatever it might be, but I would lean into your team and have them all as a CEO, as I’m running a product based business, or any business for that matter, what a gift it would be if I had 20 ideas, 40 ideas, and that is 10 from each person, and lean into The creativity that exists on your team, you don’t have to think about this yourself. So if I’m working with a great marketing VA, if he or she can come to me with five ideas that are unique, that I haven’t thought of and or maybe repetitive and I forgot about such a gift, I’m like, Oh, thank you. Thank you. It’s the mental load, right? It is, and it’s what keeps us up at night, right? Where are the sales coming from? Can somebody else out there ever come up with a different idea for me or something I could try, yeah, Emily Reagan and take the lead on it after, let me actually implement it. And I like the creative like, things that are like, different, like, that’s really how we stand out. But this usually takes its own, like, special juice to get it going on top of the daily operations, right? Carlyn Bushman And it’s so easy Emily, to lean into daily operations. It’s kind of like, okay, I’m going to do these tasks. I’m going to do these tasks. I mean, I do it right? And then I mean leaving some space for the creativity of serving a client. It feels like a guilty pleasure, but really making time like that’s the one thing that’s going to actually lift the sales and sales, I mean, that’s what it comes down to, specifically when we’re talking about q4 Black Friday, Cyber Monday, anytime of year. But I know for E comm businesses, q4 is really important, yeah. Emily Reagan And I just think about opportunities that could really move the needle, like getting featured in a gift guide or partnering with an influencer. Like, they don’t just happen overnight. They take, like, setting it up in advance and working through details. And it’s not the same as, like, a cute, I don’t know, real idea that, like, you might be able to, like, do a trending audio like this trending that week. But some of those things that like high visibility take the coordination and the planning and the forethought, agree. Carlyn Bushman So that’s why you’ve got to have some short term and some long term, right? You’ve got to have some short sprints that have to happen right now because we’re in a sales mode. And then you’ve got to also be laying the foundation for the ones that require nurturing and relationship building details to follow up, like all those things, and just layering those into your calendar are really, really important now, like I always say, you can do anything, you just can’t do everything. So get really clear on the things you really want to focus on, and try not to let those operational things take the place of something that’s actually going to move it forward. Emily Reagan I know sometimes I like. Distract myself at like, easy leg training, and that’s, yeah, it’s self sabotage. Really Okay. Is there anything else that a marketing assistant could be doing? Do you hear your clients say, like, Oh, I wish my team did this. Carlyn Bushman I think providing great data to the clients proactively. I think that’s really important. I have found that more and more and more, and we’ve set up some things that are like automated dashboards. Now, every Friday, it drops into our clients inbox. All she has to do is click a link. She can see what’s going on and all the different places we’re measuring different parts of our business. So I think proactively sending your client, or, you know, whoever it is, you’re working with data that supports the business and the business grow and or if it’s flat or if it’s declining, the facts are the facts. You just got to address them, and I think, more consistently doing that if you can do that on a weekly basis. If somebody dropped things into my inbox on a weekly basis to share with me the health of the business, amazing that I don’t have to go ask for it. Emily Reagan Oh my god, I agree. I teach that in my UDMA school. I’m like, whenever you send that monthly invoice, it needs to come with some kind of report. And like, week over week, month over month, data is very valuable for us. So your dashboards that you’re talking about is that, through Shopify, is that, like a looker studio, GA four thing, or something you’ve like custom built for your clients. It’s Carlyn Bushman custom because every client might require a little bit of a different KPI that’s the most important for them in their business, right? So if they set out, I’m very big on developing, what is your strategy, two to three for the year, and then we kind of run that back and reverse engineer the milestones to show that we’re making progress towards that. So if yours is growing your email list, let’s take something really simple, right? So email list, then we’re going to make sure that metric sure that metric is sitting on your dashboard specifically so we can see month over month, active, subscribed, unsubscribed, right? Whatever those look like. That’s going to be really important to us. So that’ll be something, but somebody else might say, I want to make sure my social following is growing month over month, or whatever that looks like, right? And it might be both of those things, but we want to put some focus, attention and energy into what are the biggest things that client wants for that particular year to see their growth. And we’ll make recommendations, of course, as well. Emily Reagan Are there any other KPIs when it comes to Ecom specifically? You know, a lot of it is very similar to what I see inside meta ads manager, but you’re talking about average order value. Obviously, we want to track sales. Is there any other numbers that might be easy for a DMA to pull for their client? Carlyn Bushman Well, average order value is really, really good, because if you have the same amount of orders month over month, but you’re raising that average order value, that’s spectacular. Now I do average order value for d to c, and there’s an average order for B to B. So if you’re in an E com space, you want to also track the average order value for your wholesale clients. So keep an eye on what that looks like. And then the return rate depends on what kind of business in. But you want to make sure that you’re tracking the returns, because why are people returning your product? Right? You want to keep that under a certain number, of course, because you’re losing revenue, and it’s so expensive, with the shipping back and forth restocking, you have to demo out the item. And then the other number I want to make sure that we’re keeping track of is inventory. So what’s your inventory? Is it aging out? Do we need to move something? Is something not selling? How many days of inventory do you have left on certain products that’s really important? Emily Reagan Oh, yeah, because now you can create campaigns just from that alone. Exactly, exactly, okay. Oh my gosh, this is really fun to talk about. I feel like we’re always talking about funnels here, and then you bring up inventory. I’m like, oh, there’s, like, a whole new world. And I think it’d be really fun to help a small business owner have a legit, like tangible product, I don’t know. Like, sometimes this online space can be so funny, and we’re selling courses and membership and digital products, but like to have that tangible thing. I’ve had a couple of clients who have had books, and that has really been exciting for me to help with those funnels to sell them. So I don’t know, I find this if you think Carlyn Bushman about inventory, Emily, though it’s so interesting, because as service based businesses, we also have inventory, right? So you have inventory on your time. So if you’re going to take private clients, or you’re going to fill your course, or you’re going to do you know, whatever the case is, but let’s talk time, specifically, for service based business, time is your inventory. So if I look at the period of time over the course of Black Friday till December 31 Okay, how many hours is that? Now, back out, the holiday time, back out, family time, back out, whatever it is, and then back out, admin time, back out, XYZ. Now I’m left with 22 hours of client time, potentially, that’s my inventory. So now I have to make a really hard decision, do I take private clients in that space? Am I teaching in that space? What am I doing in that space? Now that’s my inventory, and I have to say, okay, how am I to line that up to either make my number not make my number roll that into the next year, you know, things like that. So yeah, it’s it’s interesting. And then you. Also have a product, right? Your digital course, you know, books, things like that, that’s your product, and you treat it like a hard good, like, that’s actually a product. And where you’re fortunate, where you don’t have to, like, have a three PL to stock the inventory. You still have quotas you want to make and moving that inventory out, because it does age out eventually it might not be as relevant as it was. So it does age out. Emily Reagan Oh, it does. Like I was just kind of laughing at my UDMA school and all the tech trainings. I have to go update now. I’m like, oh, man, totally ages out if you don’t do that. I’m thinking about a couple things when it comes to marketing, but since we were talking about marketing broadly and tracking, is there anything you see that’s like really working well right now for the clients that you have when it comes to marketing? I mean, it feels like such a like a broad term, but there’s so many options out there. And like you said, it’s about focusing on the right one. I Carlyn Bushman think video testimonials, video or audio testimonials, I think are going a long way. I think we’re moving into the age of where video is really important, if you and I’m not saying just the standard unboxing of the product on on socials, necessarily, but I know that it’s hard, but finding ways to have like that audio or video testimonial with sincerity behind it, right? Be willing to show up for your clients or customers when they’ve done an amazing job. I think that carries a lot of weight that I’ve seen recently trending much better than just the standard like written and even something like Yelp, right where we can talk about Yelp and the testimonials that are behind Yelp, and people are like, Oh, they’re a bunch of junk, and others are like, they’re a bunch of bots. They’re this, they’re that there’s so much controversy. So I feel like, at least with video or audio, you know, it is a human’s voice, I know that it can still, like, go towards the AI space, but it has a little bit more of an impact than just somebody writing something. Emily Reagan Oh, I see that with the under eye cream. I’m like, Okay, I watched this video, and then I’ve gotten I’m just gonna keep going back to that, retargeted for this person, and I’m seeing different users share their own words and demonstrate. I think that was a big part of it, demonstrating and working. Or I wish I could even think of what product it was. I think it was like the cover one I keep getting. And so it is interesting, because there’s definitely like a waterfall or like a conveyor belt of like content being shown to me. And I’m kind of down for it, but it’s interesting about it’s almost like, ucg, like, the way these these videos, they’re still written with a hook, you know, they’re still like, it’s not just somebody with a camera, like, go, like, you could tell that they had direction on, like, what needed to be covered there. So I think back my head, I’ll probably question too, like, how authentic is it? Or was this person paid to do this? But that gets me, like, honestly, and Carlyn Bushman I think you’ve pointed out something really interesting that I’ve seen trending as well the paid, the paid influencer, versus the just user generated content, like people just like, you know, doing it because they really believe in the brand, right? And I think everybody’s getting a little more discerning there to say, oh, pay, they’re paid, you know, and, oh, there’s, like, a real person, right? I think the other thing that we forget across the marketing, and I’ve talked about this a lot recently, is in general marketing, whether it’s service or product, you’ve worked really, really hard. Probably paid a lot of money to get clients or customers into your funnels or into your ecosystem, whatever that looks like, right? So we’ve worked so hard, it’s cost us a lot of money to land those customers or clients. But what about all the people that are already part of your world? Like, what are we doing for them? What are we like? Circling back to for those clients or customers, part of marketing is really about nurturing that relationship, dropping in and saying, Hey, thank you for always being in my space, you know. And maybe this is the time of gratitude, right? Maybe offering them something interesting, maybe, as we’re on the heels of, you know, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, end of the year. Maybe it’s gift cards. Let’s please not forget about gift cards. If you don’t have gift cards as a service or product based business, please do something with gift cards. It is so easy to just have those available and for people to be gifting your services or your products to other humans, because everybody is running into a last minute scenario that’s like, universal. We all run into that, like, you’re headed to a dinner and you need to bring a hostess gift, or you’re headed to, you know, a book club, or you’re headed to something where you’re like, Oh, I didn’t have time to pick something up. A gift card. Is just such a great opportunity to be able to share small business. Emily Reagan Oh, that’s so smart. I would not like I completely forgot about that. But, yeah, that’s what I buy my parents all the time, because it’s consumable. It won’t just sit on their shelf, right? Carlyn Bushman Well, and why not make it for like a business bestie, right? Why not make it for something in your service, based business as well? Why not have that as an opportunity for somebody to gift one of your you know. About your workshops or courses, like, why not? Like, why not do something like that? At least, don’t make it a barrier to entry to having sales on your site. Yeah, Emily Reagan what are the teams look like for most of your your product based businesses? Like, who’s on their team? Do you know that? Carlyn Bushman Yes, I do a lot of times, if it’s an econ business, there is a design and manufacturing team. So there’s, there are definitely individuals dedicated to the designing of the seasons, whatever that you know, container, or that you know, capsule, I like to say, looks like from tech pack to manufacturing outlets and sources to actual designs, fittings, all the things, prototypes, all the things, right? And then you’ve got a team that really is dedicated to some of the inventory management, like I was talking about, and that really comes our team does some of that. And then there are experts. As you grow, you might need a more dedicated team to that inventory management, because you do not want to let that slide, otherwise it ages out too quickly. And then you’re left with a bunch of stuff in your warehouse. And speaking of warehouse, you also want to make sure somebody’s managing, because they’ll charge you for shelf space so product’s not moving. You get charged for that space. Oh, goodness. And and then you’ve got the whole group there may be identified person or people, or the founder who’s dedicated to the B to B space. That’s the wholesale right trade shows, if you’re going to go to those sales rep style stuff. And then you have your agency side of the business, where it is social, email, website, affiliate marketing, all of those conversations. So it can be a variety of people. It can be one group to start with, and then as you grow you’re going to need to probably split that up, because it will become more than just a small, outsource role. Emily Reagan Yeah, thank you. No, I feel like that’s a like, Crash Course and what that client’s business would look like. And I think the smarter we are, we know what we’re walking into, even if it is within the marketing department. I imagine, like, Where does the, you know, customer service part fall into that? Oh, it’s Carlyn Bushman so interesting. You’re bringing that up. Emily, so with AI, there’s so many solutions for customer service that a lot of times you can actually, from a cost saving standpoint, employ AI right into your Shopify store. A lot of it can be automated, so you don’t have to have necessarily one dedicated person or people always staying on top of the customer service. So it really depends. You know, business by business, if you have an apparel business that could be a little bit different than a Home Goods business, you might see more customer service required in apparel space than you would maybe in the home goods space, right? So it and again, it can depend. I think the really important part, and I know you realize this too, is the communication between the different groups that support an income founder, I think, more than anything, you have to have a central space. I’ve seen this time and time again, where you either have a team meeting once a week to set the agenda for the week, or at least once a month. You know, I know once a week can sound a bit laborious, but once a month might be a good place to start, where you bring everybody together so everybody is aligned behind your goals for that particular time frame. Emily Reagan Yeah, I could see that being really tough. And how far in advance are your clients typically planning their your promo campaigns Carlyn Bushman in a perfect world, six to eight months really fabulous because it gives you a lot of time to, like, line everything up. But we know that manufacturing delays and when things are getting, like, stuck at customs and there’s a delay in a product launch, we know that it’s not realistic all the time, but if you plan it in advance, if all you have to do is shift the launch date, a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month, sometimes two months. That is more feasible than not having anything ready at all. So I plan ahead and then from a product based space, if you’re going to sell to other companies the B to B space, they buy six to eight months in advance. So you really have to have a separate launch strategy for wholesale than you do for DTC. Emily Reagan Okay, oh my gosh, yeah, wow. That actually sounds like a dream with people planning ahead that far like I think everyone, everyone listening is like, yes, we want clients who actually do that, but you have to with so many different people and departments involved plus product. I want to ask you two more marketing questions about testimonials and reviews. But first, tell us a little bit about your pop Academy and how you help clients. So maybe we have a client that we can refer to you to go deeper into E Comm, because sometimes things are, you know, sometimes we need to hire in the big guns to help our clients actually move forward and we are, you know, assisting in the back end. Carlyn Bushman Well, pop Academy is really set up for that business that has already found a manufacturer. It’s beyond back of napkin, right? So you don’t have to have had your product launch yet. Matter of fact, we’ve had several students inside of pop Academy who actually did their launches during pop Academy, which was incredible, because they have so much support. Yeah, it was amazing. And then I have businesses that are roughly top line of a million dollars. Ish, I had one that was in there. She was at 8 million, roughly top line, rough, right? So it’s really zero to 1 million is like the sweet spot. And we really walk you through financials, understanding your cost of goods sold, understanding, if you can wholesale products, understanding Etsy and fair and all those places, understanding Amazon, QVC, HSN, Costco, like some of those resources right. Then we go into Shopify. We really like the tech platform through the whole thing. And we really weave AI through the entire, entire course as well. So it’s really set up that way. And then we also touch on email marketing, organic, social, paid social, email marketing, all the things that have to do with it, affiliates, etc. So we cover a lot in 10 to 12 weeks. And it’s literally like homework. So the class is on Wednesday. Homework is due Friday, office hours on Monday, and it’s live. It’s not recorded. Emily Reagan Oh my gosh, I love that. Wow. It’s like an entire business, like you’re covering all the angles of it. And, I mean, I’m used to being in the marketing department over here, so I find like learning about all of it so fascinating. Carlyn Bushman It’s really meant to set you up to be able to ask the questions, when you hire more team, are you going to do this yourself? We really talk about the foundation of growing your business, starting and growing an Ecom Business, so that you have the questions to ask, so you can look at contracts, you can understand, how am I going to budget for marketing? What does that look like? How much money do I need to have to have inventory. I mean, we talk about money quite a bit. I mean, I really, really want everyone to get a good foundation. So when somebody says, What is your marketing budget, you can actually say it is x. If we do this this year, this is how much I can spend on marketing. And if we kill it, then I can, like, allocate or reallocate another 10,000 to marketing, because we’re killing it, right? But you have a plan so you’re not feeling like, I don’t know, I don’t know what my marketing budget is. I don’t know what my you know, inventory value is. Like, I want you to know that. I really want you to know all those things good. Emily Reagan Sounds so good. Like, you really set them up for success. You have a freebie too for us that we can share with our clients as well, and it is about grants. You want to tell us Carlyn Bushman about it? Yes, I’m happy to. So we It’s a living document, so it’s always updated, because we know fundraising in the space of service or product based businesses can be a challenge, and we have a running list of grants that with deadlines and all the things you need to be able to apply for the grants. And like I said, it’s constantly updated. So it’s a freebie. But then if you keep the link somewhere and you keep it open in one of your tabs, you’ll see that it’s constantly updated with the ones that have expired roll off and the new ones are automatically placed on. So it’s a really nice list to be able to just go back to. So what I would say is, once a month, keep that link open and one of your tabs somewhere, and then once a month, just hit refresh, and you’ll have a new list. So once you sign on, you always have that at your fingertips. Emily Reagan Oh my gosh, I love that. What a good resource. And then we can keep an eye out for our clients with that too. Thank you for sharing that. We’ll put the link in the show notes so you can download it and get this ever evolving grant list. And I want to ask YouTube marketing questions as we wrap it up, too. And I think about when I talk to other business owners and what they wish their team would do, and you kind of already touched on it, but being able to take the initiative of some of the marketing and cover the basis, so I know how important reviews are in testimonials. So do you have anything, or do you teach a system on how the team can gather that? Is there anything that’s like working well in this space, so a marketing assistant could plug herself in. Carlyn Bushman So if we’re talking about E Comm, specifically, we all get those, right? You get those. Please leave a review. Please like, and you’ll end up like, in this funnel. We’ve used the word funnel a couple times, right? And I think service too, like, please do this review. Et cetera, et cetera. And you know, there’s a lot of systems inside of whatever tech platform you’re using, if it’s Shopify, or you know that you can have judge me, that’s one of the apps that we use pretty consistently inside of there as well. It’s a good app. It’s one that we’ve vetted, that we have found to be the most beneficial at this point, it’s hard. I’m just going to be fully transparent. It’s really hard to constantly get reviews and have them incentive. You have to, though, you have to give something to your customer. They’re going to give you a review. There has to be some tie into a $10 $20 make it. Make it a funny number, right? Like, if you’re going into 2026 make it a $26 gift certificate. I don’t know, be creative, but we are still trying to crack that nut a little bit better. Our statistics are okay. They haven’t been great with getting consistent reviews. You have to be everywhere, though. This also requires an omnichannel presence, so it’s SMS, email, social and staying consistent and sending those review requests out there. Consistently, specifically for e com. Yeah, Emily Reagan I feel like a review. Sometimes I have good intentions, like, Yeah, I’ll do it, but if you hit me up on the right channel at the right time, I actually will. And it’s not, you know, it’s not that I don’t want to be helpful. It’s just there’s so many options. So I love incentivizing. I never thought about doing that for E commerce specifically. But yeah, I want something out of it. Carlyn Bushman Here’s what’s really interesting, diori as an example that athleisure brand diori, I think a lot of people know who that is by now, when they sent me a birthday so they sent me something for my birthday, and they’ve done this every year. The birthday dollar amount was $35 and the fact that I can share this with you today is so interesting because it was different, and they gave me a gift card for $35 to go to their website and buy something. Now, if you know vuori, most things are not less than $35 so they know that I’m probably gonna buy something maybe $42 and I, you know, I didn’t have to spend so much, but the fact that I can tell you, and I just thought of this as you were talking, that viori sent me a birthday gift certificate for $35 that is so different, that is different than the 10% off the 20% like, be different, be different. So people share a story like I just shared. So for anybody listening, you could go to viori, give them your birthday and they’ll probably send you a $35 gift card if they’re still doing that. So I think it’s really good if you’re going to do any incentives that are specific to, like, reviews or birthdays or something like that, be different. Emily Reagan Oh, yeah. I wanted to make a joke about, Oh, were you turning 35 like, how. Like, How thoughtful. Carlyn Bushman Yeah. No, no, February was clearly not around when I was 35 and I’m not even going to say how many years ago that would have been so, yeah. Emily Reagan But I mean, that would make me pull the trigger and buy the $100 joggers, because I know I’m getting 35 off. But like, Yeah, that’s so kind. And then I think Carlyn Bushman about, see, that’s your reaction. That’s so kind when they’re saying, that’s another sale. Emily Reagan Yeah, perfect. But then I think about, I don’t know my dentist from a couple, you know, states ago, sending me a happy birthday email, nothing. There’s nothing. I’m like, don’t even bother. Carlyn Bushman Don’t fill out my inbox. Don’t, don’t do it. Please, don’t do it. It’s one more thing I have to delete. Emily Reagan Give me a teeth whitening or, like, do, I know, do something for me or the just, just tell me happy birthday. I’m kind of annoyed. So I like having, like, something in there that’s really Carlyn Bushman so I think they should hire, I think they should hire one of your team members, because I think that would be a great case study to point out to them that it had the opposite effect. Don’t do that to me. Emily Reagan Yeah, I do like when they give me referrals, because as a military spouse, I’m like, oh yeah, this dentist. I’m more likely to refer that dentist now because I know that I’ll get a little kickback, even if it’s like a coffee gift card, you know, which will make my teeth yellow and make me need to go back. And just kidding. Okay, I want to also ask you about abandoned cart emails. I was actually reading about the strategy this morning. Is there any like emails that you see work in particular with that kind of sequence, like, I would love, I mean, any DMA could get in there and, like, help set that up. But like, what do you see working with E commerce? Specifically, Carlyn Bushman what I see not working is they’re too short. So what I think is so interesting, whether it’s a welcome series, abandoned cart, abandoned brows, but we’ll talk about abandoned cart specifically, I think they’re too short. We have a real estate agent, and I give her all the credit. As you might guess, her funnels are incredibly long. Like I had no idea until we started working with her, the length of our real estate’s funnels like to buy, to sell, et cetera, because she has to build this massive relationship with potential clients to be able to get them to know, like and trust her. And it’s going to take a lot of emails before they might say, Okay, I’m ready to sell my house, and you’re top of mind because of this, right? Well, I think we can take a lesson out of that playbook, because they really do have to build relationships. Why should a product based business feel any different, right? So abandon cart. I think they’re too short. I think we decide, oh, they abandoned it. We’re going to send them one email, and it’s an automated one, and Shopify built it for me, or Klaviyo or MailChimp or constant conduct or flow desk, whatever built me this, and they suggested too. I think you need to make it longer. I think you need to give your buyers a chance, because our emails get so full that abandoned cart 24 hours goes, and I’m like, Oh my gosh, I just missed that deadline shoot, and then you don’t buy, you don’t buy. So I think what I see that is working is make it longer, as you know you’re going to stand out if they’re still saying, Hey, we really want to send you some love. We know that you’ve loved this without being annoying. And just say as a gentle reminder, we’re holding this because we care, and we know you get busy. Just own what your customer is probably feeling, by Emily Reagan the way, oh my gosh, that’s so good, yeah, and I don’t want to be like, rushed into something anyway, so I think there’s like, a gentleness that would go over while this day and age. Okay, one thing I see online, I feel like we need to coin some. Thing for this, and I’m going to try to articulate it. But have you seen Viral Video, Short Form videos where it’s like the founder story? I don’t know if this is like Gen Z marketing, whatever, but it’s like an older person, and they really like, pull out your heart strings and then try to get you to like to then buy their product. Have you seen that? No, my God, I need to send you some of these videos. They’re so story driven. It’s like, it makes me think about the about section, and how many times when I’m looking at a brand and I’m like, I just want to know, is this a Chinese company? Like, who am I supporting here? Like, I’m starting to get more intentional about that, and I can be very apathetic. And so I’m looking at the about pages, I’m disappointed if I can’t find more about the story, or I don’t see the owner, but I’m just seeing more and more people on social or, like, brilliant social media managers out there doing this for older brands, and it’s making everyone, like, rally behind their mission. And it’s we need to, like, create a collection of that. But on the flip side, now I’m starting to see the spoofs of it, where I can tell they spliced in and it’s probably a Chinese company, and I’m going to hell for saying this, but they spliced in video of somebody else, and then they show a product, and I can tell they’re not even related. Carlyn Bushman Whoa, that’s so fascinating. So I have seen a lot more like you said, about founders and showing up and being more visible and telling their stories. And I’ve loved that, actually, and some behind the scenes, as we know that those always get the, you know, the most engagement for all the reasons, right? People are super curious about who actually founded the brand, right? And like you said, a lot of the larger nostalgic companies are coming out and doing things like that. I have not seen the spoofs yet, so I will have to go take a look at that. But I think it shouldn’t prevent us from really leaning into being the human out there behind the product or service that we’re, you know, sharing with our world, and why we’re sharing that with our world. I think that does go a long way. And I think there’s something to be said about community, and I think this is a big topic, too. I’m seeing a lot of Ecom brands build community with their product. And of course, that’s always I feel like it’s always been around a bit for service, but now I’m really seeing seeing product based businesses build communities inside of social platforms, and that’s where they get a lot of sales too, because that inner community gets like, maybe the first look at a new launch drop or something like that. And because they’re part of that community, they get first access to it. They get it first, and they feel unique. And, you know, it’s a certain thing, and then it goes public. So I think that’s sort of that new VIP list we used to use from email marketing, it’s now drifting over into the social community space. Emily Reagan Oh, I love that. Do you have any specific examples? Because my brain just went to Taylor Swift and the broadcast channel, and I’m getting like, updates there. And like, Yeah, I like her, but I’m not, like this totally like nerding about it, or like losing my wits over here, but I can see them dropping insights to her album coming out, and I’m like, Oh, that would be so cool if it was, like, even more VIP. But do you have any examples of that for E comm that we might be familiar with? Well, we Carlyn Bushman have clients that we’re doing that with right now, specifically as a test, but we are, we are building communities. So for instance, we had one and we had one client that actually launched her product during pop Academy, and part of her strategy was to start to build this community of moms. And as she was going through prototyping, and as she was going through the process, she would share what it looked like behind the scenes. She was picking out fabric colors for this particular product, her community would vote, do they like the yellow or the blue. Just gave me a very generic example. They vote on the yellow or whatever the case was. So they were invested in her next product launch. So imagine if somebody came to you, I’m going to use Alice and Olivia again, because I get their SMSs all the time. Imagine if I was in a community with them and they’re like, Oh, do you like this print for the upcoming fall launch? Or do you like this print? And you choose one of the prints. Can you imagine if you saw it up there? Like, yeah, that was the one I picked. They actually put it into our community, and I voted on that one. Like, now I’m bought in to Alice and Olivia, and if that print shows up, I’m probably going to buy it. I mean, depending on the price, and if I have a VIP discount or something, but it’s really great to be able to have that attachment to a brand at that point. Emily Reagan Yeah, you’re building buzz at the same time and buy in, and everyone likes to have their opinions valued and feel like they contributed. So oh my god, that’s genius. I love that you shared that that would be so easy to implement behind the scenes, because, you know, these decisions are happening in meetings, and so we could turn around and kind of exploit that use that as the marketer in the background. Carlyn Bushman Oh, and once again, it’s market research, right? Like, let’s ask our audience what they would prefer. And I don’t even do this as much as I should. This is like the behind the scenes stuff that we do for our clients, and like working with you on this and having this great conversation, and then I look at my own business, and I literally need to listen to this episode and write. Had a bunch of these ideas for my own business, because I spend so much time pouring into others for this. And I think, yeah, why am I not asking for some market research in this space as well? So yes, Emily Reagan oh my gosh, I love that. I’m reading the Mom Test. Have you read that book? It’s a little bit older, but it’s about some of those market research questions that you ask ahead. I see you writing it down. It’s by Rob Fitzpatrick, but it’s really smart. Like, the questions that you can ask, but you could always I messaged our friend Brenna McGowan. I was like, You should steal these questions and build them into a pre launch, like, no matter what you’re selling, because not only you’re getting market research, but you’re also like, you know, doing exactly what we talked about here, like including them in the product launch. And everybody, like, likes to feel like a special snowflake, right? Absolutely, especially with in today’s day and age, right? Like we said, so saturated. How are you gonna be a little bit different? How are you gonna take some of these great ideas, make them yours, but make them really yours, right? Yeah, I hope our listeners, I hope your brains are just kind of exploding with ideas. Right now, if you are working with ecom clients and product based businesses, will you DM Carlyn and I, and tell us, like, what your client is selling? We would love to hear. We would love to hear from you and what your biggest takeaway was from this episode. Carlyn, you have another you have a whole helpful YouTube channel where I know we can learn, like you’ve had a really good guest over there talking about this ecom marketing niche. Is there a good place to connect with you? Carlyn Bushman Of course. So very, very simple. Carlyn Bushman consulting my YouTube channel, Instagram, LinkedIn, website, all the above, right, you can definitely connect with me anytime. I am all about no gatekeeping. So as you might guess, ask me anything, and I will share anything I can with you to help you grow and scale your business. Emily Reagan All right, thanks so much for being here. Hey. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it gives you the empowerment, the encouragement to go in with an E com client and be able to help them. You can’t be all things in all departments, but we’ve given you some great ideas to run with so you can take the leadership and ownership and help do the marketing. Carlyn and I would really love to hear from you. If you do have product based clients, if you are helping them behind the scenes, what are you doing? What are they selling? We want to hear it. You can DM us on Instagram. I’m @emilyreaganpr, and Carlyn is @carlynbushmanconsulting. We want to hear from you. Don’t let this episode go into a black hole. Use it to expand your own network. And if you’re doing this kind of work behind the scenes for clients, then you need to be in our digital marketers work group. It’s our referral community. We share jobs, we nerd out on marketing, like things you’re hearing on this episode today, and we also support each other, because it is a little awkward and lonely when you are the Freelancer expected to run your own business and do the client work and live your life. So why not have a community of people who support you, encourage you, and help you get better? So you can apply for our digital marketers work group, we just let in a couple new members every month. So go ahead and get your application in now. I hope you join us in the next episode. Here’s to growing better, more profitable freelance businesses, Unicorns Unite.