CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2136

Hey *|FNAME|* … DUDE! Who Stole My Smokes? … on Shopify

Hello -

I’m an easy-going boss. So, no wonder my staff felt completely comfortable snickering when I said that I was going to profile a Vape Shop on Shopify for this week’s email blast. The office jokes ensued.

“Hey Zach, I can Hooka you up with a lead for the newsletter.”“The new FDA regulations will make that business go up in smoke.”“That business is a drag, dude.”

In light of this rampant humor, I’d like to take this opportunity to announce three unexpected new job openings at TaskHusky. Not really … a sense of humor is on everyone’s job description here, especially mine. But vape shops are one of the biggest categories on Shopify. No joke. So, I went looking for the #1 vape shop on the Shopify platform. I found it, and it turns out this business is lit. Turns out that vaping is still BIG business online Why is this all making me think of the profile we did of Kanye West and Yeezy Shoes last week? Anyway … Happy selling … dude,Zachary

One thing worth pointing out right away is that our Shopify teardown target this week relies on strong reseller and affiliate programs and an extensive mailing list to drive sales.

That made me think of Chase Dimond.

Three things I want you to know about Chase:

1. He has the name of a super-spy from a James Bond film — I mean come’on! Can “

” even be a real name?

2. He’s a friend and fan of this newsletter, which obviously means he has taste, style, and good humor.

3. He's an email marketing expert with a gem-quality newsletter of his own. I subscribe and you should too. Tons of practical insights with a focus on winning the email marketing game.

Seriously … roll the dice and subscribe. You’ll thank me later.

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This Week’s Target: EightVape.comCompany ProfileE-cigarettes — vaping — gets a lot of bad press. But like all vices, bad press can be a good thing. So even with the lawsuits and regulations and CDC warnings, the e-Cigs and Vaping market reached $13.6 billion in 2017 and will grow to $26.6 billion by 2025. So much for warning labels. EightVape.com was founded in 2015 by three old friends. Since the company is private, we do not get a glimpse into sales figures. But the figure we do know are very impressive — they are the 27th most popular Shopify store and ranked in the top 30k or so of all websites anywhere in the world. For comparison, that translates to about 607,000 site visits in July 2021. And to understand the power of smoke, there are a dozen vape shops in the top 100 of Shopify-land. Incidentally, they are NOT a Shopify Plus site. Just regular ‘ol Shopify for them. They may be grandfathered into a previous pricing plan to make this work. The Shopify Theme They UseThe super-duper top-secret website spy tools we deploy have once again said that this is a custom theme. This is surprising since it does not readily appear to have any twists and turns requiring such special and expensive treatment. The Good StuffYes, the graphics are garish. Yes, the art is cheesy. But this is a VERY important object lesson for all eCommerce merchants … know your audience. This site is successful because they do a good job, sure. But they also know their target audience. Whether you agree with vaping or you think it is a bad thing. The lesson here is that EightVape knows who buys vaping supplies online and they speak to them where they are — literally and figuratively. Needs ImprovementRemember how last week the Kanye West site had the best speed rating I had ever seen … ever? Well, the EightVape site has the slowest page speed I have ever seen. On a scale of 1 to 100, they are scored a “3.” But remember … they do not rely on SEO (see the marketing section below). That means that slow page speed is less impactful on them than it is on other sites. Though I am certain that they are hurt a bit on conversion. As successful as this site is, I am a bit shocked that I do not see any Express Payment options. I think that at PayPal would be a natural option for this market. Apps They DeployWe ran a scan to see what Shopify apps & supporting services they are deploying. Get a load of this list:

  • WooHoo — Gamification for conversions.

  • Carro — Marketing automation.

  • Secomapp — Conversion optimization.

  • Springbot — Retargeting.

  • CrazyEgg — user visit and engagement visualization.

  • Smile IO — Customer loyalty and rewards.

  • Back in Stock — Inventory alerts.

  • Extend — Extended warrantee program.

  • Pixelpop — Email Subscription collection.

  • SEO Manager — It’s obvious, but does not seem to be working well in this deployment.

  • AgeChecker.Net — A site like this NEEDS age verification.

  • VerifyPass — An identity verification system for those in uniform.

  • NoFraud — detects and prevents chargebacks.

  • Sezzle — installment payment app.

  • Gorgias — Customer support.

  • DoubleClick — Retargeting ad platform.

  • AdRoll — another retargeting platform.

This may not be a complete list, but it’s a fairly hefty one. And there is a lot fo slowness in all that code.

Marketing Stuff They DoDue to the plethora of negative press on this industry, running conventional social ads or Google paid ads is problematic. In fact, they haven't even posted on their Facebook page in more than a year — zip, zero, nada. So, this brand focuses on a lot of other things. Last year at this time, local governments were regulating and puffing up their chests to make a show of being against e-Cigs and vaping. I can see this impact in the traffic analytics dropping at the time. But since conventional advertising was getting harder and harder to get approved by the technology monsters, they focused on a 4-prong customer acquisition strategy:

  • Aggressive email marketing to their existing customer base

  • Paid affiliate marketing

  • Reseller marketing

  • Retargeting display ads

These tactics do not rely on fickle Mary-Mark Zucker-butt to approve or disapprove of an ad depending on how he feels in the morning. Reseller and affiliate strategies are also impossible to regulate, track, and cancel. What’s more important is that it appears that traffic and sales are back on an upward trajectory. There are quite a few industries that should take note of what EightVape is doing here in the face of adversity — whether it is deserved adversity or not.

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