On this episode of the Thrifty Titans Podcast, we dive into the world of email marketing and AMP emails. We deep-dive into how traditional email marketing often misses the mark and how AMP email marketing platforms like MailModo are changing the game.
Our guest, the co-founder & CEO of Mailmodo, Aquibur Rahman shares his story about how he discovered the untapped potential of AMP emails. We also explore the importance of building trust with potential customers, the interdependence of marketing and sales and discuss the different tactics and channels used to build a strong lead pipeline.
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00:00:32
Saikat Pyne: Hello. Hello. Welcome to the U Incorporated podcast with me. Second,
00:00:37
Saikat Pyne: it's a pleasure to have a with me. Aib is
00:00:40
Saikat Pyne: the founder and CEO of mail modo. It's a very
00:00:45
Saikat Pyne: popular email marketing platform. Do check it out, guys. Links
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Saikat Pyne: will be in the show, not
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Saikat Pyne: mail. Model has made sending interactive emails a phenomenon among
00:00:57
Saikat Pyne: marketers in India and around the world.
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Saikat Pyne: And, uh, and the team have done a great job
00:01:04
Saikat Pyne: of marketing male model with a lot of organic content
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Saikat Pyne: as well, something that a lot of B to B companies,
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Saikat Pyne: especially a companies.
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Saikat Pyne: So in the course of the episode, I'm going to
00:01:15
Saikat Pyne: speak to a about how the idea for Milmo came
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Saikat Pyne: about and how a marketing tool really does its marketing.
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Saikat Pyne: Welcome to the show.
00:01:27
Aquibur Rahman: Hey Z, thank you very much for having me here.
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Saikat Pyne: Could you take us through what mobile modu is
00:01:33
Aquibur Rahman: about? Yeah, So Mail is a new email marketing platform
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Aquibur Rahman: where we focus not only on simplifying the workflow for
00:01:41
Aquibur Rahman: users but also on improving the R O. I from
00:01:45
Aquibur Rahman: email marketing by adding
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Aquibur Rahman: interactive Web like experiences like forms wis. Calendar shopping cart
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Aquibur Rahman: all within the email itself so traditionally, when a marketer
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Aquibur Rahman: sends an email to users, they have to first open it,
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Aquibur Rahman: then read it, then click on a link, go to
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Aquibur Rahman: website log in there, take several other steps to complete
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Aquibur Rahman: those actions, and at each step there's a friction. There's
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Aquibur Rahman: a drop off, and that's why there's a lower conversion.
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Aquibur Rahman: So we help marketers remove all Therien by breaking the
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Aquibur Rahman: end action within the email itself. Something like a landing
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Aquibur Rahman: page inside email.
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Saikat Pyne: Lovely, lovely. How did the idea for Male Moor really
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Saikat Pyne: come about to you?
00:02:24
Aquibur Rahman: OK,
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Aquibur Rahman: I was a marketer myself. I used to head marketing
00:02:28
Aquibur Rahman: at Clear Tax, and it's like a TurboTax for India
00:02:32
Aquibur Rahman: at Clear Tax. Our main growth channel used to be organic.
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Aquibur Rahman: We used to do a lot of S U and
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Aquibur Rahman: email marketing. So with S U, we used to get
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Aquibur Rahman: very large amount of traffic and sign ups, et cetera,
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Aquibur Rahman: and so acquisition was quite easy. But engagement was difficult
00:02:49
Aquibur Rahman: because no matter what, we used to do
00:02:52
Aquibur Rahman: it at the end, we used to improve the open
00:02:54
Aquibur Rahman: rate of the email, but the engagement was very low,
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Aquibur Rahman: mainly because of the same reason that people didn't have
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Aquibur Rahman: anything to do inside the email, they could read, they
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Aquibur Rahman: could probably we could be probably on top of their mind,
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Aquibur Rahman: but to take any action, they had to go inside
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Aquibur Rahman: the clear application. And that was a problem that had
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Aquibur Rahman: been like was stuck to me.
00:03:18
Aquibur Rahman: And in 2019, Google launched something called a MP email,
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Aquibur Rahman: which makes it possible to connect your databases and your
00:03:27
Aquibur Rahman: systems your API. S with the email and bring all
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Aquibur Rahman: kind of interactive, Web like experiences within the email. So
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Aquibur Rahman: that excited me a lot. He since for tickets, nothing
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Aquibur Rahman: has changed in email, but this is something completely new,
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Aquibur Rahman: and this is going to change how email marketing is
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Aquibur Rahman: done or how users use emails
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Aquibur Rahman: in future.
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Aquibur Rahman: And I wanted to be on top of it. I
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Aquibur Rahman: wanted to use this new technology and build for marketers
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Aquibur Rahman: and solve the problem that I used to have myself
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Aquibur Rahman: a lower engagement from is
00:04:02
Aquibur Rahman: so I think, deeper. I wanted to. I so my
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Aquibur Rahman: hypothesis was that it will help marketers improve conversion. So
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Aquibur Rahman: I went to a few companies, asked them, Hey, we
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Aquibur Rahman: will do it for you and test whether it increases conversion,
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Aquibur Rahman: conversion or not. And to our surprise for the initial ballot,
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Aquibur Rahman: we got 2 to 3 x higher conversion compared to
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Aquibur Rahman: normally M.
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Aquibur Rahman: And that boosted our moral. And we thought that, hey,
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Aquibur Rahman: we should build a completely no code email interactive email
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Aquibur Rahman: platform for marketers where they can create such kind of
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Aquibur Rahman: interactive emails and send to their users. So that's how
00:04:39
Aquibur Rahman: my model got work.
00:04:41
Saikat Pyne: It's only right now that email marketing is seeing this
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Saikat Pyne: ness of sorts as social media platforms dial down organic reach.
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Saikat Pyne: Why do you think there was no innovation per se?
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Saikat Pyne: On the email marketing front?
00:04:58
Aquibur Rahman: There's actually two factors there, like one from the technology providers,
00:05:02
Aquibur Rahman: et cetera. But before that, marketers, they focused on acquisition
00:05:05
Aquibur Rahman: side like they have a new user, they have to
00:05:08
Aquibur Rahman: bring new customers.
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Aquibur Rahman: There are very few marketers or very few companies who
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Aquibur Rahman: focus on retention and engagement of their current users, so
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Aquibur Rahman: they always have to bring a new customers or new users.
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Aquibur Rahman: But they don't realise that the bringing new users or
00:05:21
Aquibur Rahman: new customers very costly. If you have to advertise on Facebook,
00:05:25
Aquibur Rahman: Google etcetera. But if you can retain users for longer
00:05:28
Aquibur Rahman: periods you can cross, sell or Upsell them. That meant
00:05:32
Aquibur Rahman: mindset has not been developed among a lot of marketers.
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Aquibur Rahman: So that is one of the reason why probably a
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Aquibur Rahman: lot of marketers have not have not used email marketing
00:05:44
Aquibur Rahman: in a capacity that they can do. There are a
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Aquibur Rahman: lot of different, like big marketers who are using emails
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Aquibur Rahman: and getting a lot of revenue from it. But the
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Aquibur Rahman: majority don't do that.
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Aquibur Rahman: Second, that the market in general is a broader space.
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Aquibur Rahman: And there are a lot of companies doing a lot
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Aquibur Rahman: of things so often being
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Aquibur Rahman: like distracting or not very motivating for somebody to innovate
00:06:13
Aquibur Rahman: or something that is already there for it. They always
00:06:15
Aquibur Rahman: want to create something new, so that is probably the
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Aquibur Rahman: second reason why they have not innovated a lot. Third,
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Aquibur Rahman: I think that the players who have, like, who are
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Aquibur Rahman: leading in this model the email client, the Gmail Outlook
00:06:30
Aquibur Rahman: and Apple mail of the world.
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Aquibur Rahman: For them, it is also a small thing. They are
00:06:34
Aquibur Rahman: building OS and browsers, et cetera, and probably email. Improving
00:06:40
Aquibur Rahman: email client experience is not out of priority for them,
00:06:43
Aquibur Rahman: so a lot of problems that email has to. It
00:06:47
Aquibur Rahman: is because the Gmail outlook at Apple Mail of the
00:06:51
Aquibur Rahman: World are not evolving the email interfaces.
00:06:56
Aquibur Rahman: So if you can, if they can improve the email interface,
00:06:59
Aquibur Rahman: it can be much better user friendly for users. Other players,
00:07:03
Aquibur Rahman: like Mail Modo and other email marketing platforms will come
00:07:06
Aquibur Rahman: and be on top of
00:07:08
Saikat Pyne: Got it. This is slightly off our topic, but do
00:07:11
Saikat Pyne: you see consumers willing to pay the average Indian consumer
00:07:15
Saikat Pyne: even the average US consumer ready to pay for an
00:07:18
Saikat Pyne: email service?
00:07:20
Aquibur Rahman: Any purchase is always value versus price and or need value,
00:07:26
Aquibur Rahman: price and what is available in the market. So as
00:07:30
Aquibur Rahman: long as there's something like an A G M or
00:07:32
Aquibur Rahman: art in the market, which is free, and it serves
00:07:36
Aquibur Rahman: most of your purpose or telling as you provide something
00:07:40
Aquibur Rahman: significantly better,
00:07:42
Aquibur Rahman: people are not going to pay for it. Companies like
00:07:44
Aquibur Rahman: Superhuman try, Spike hair, dot com, et cetera have providing
00:07:50
Aquibur Rahman: some additional features or some additional benefits, and there is
00:07:54
Aquibur Rahman: a consumer market for them. Like somebody is focused on privacy.
00:07:58
Aquibur Rahman: They want to do hair dot com or somebody focused
00:08:01
Aquibur Rahman: on productivity, they would go for super human. So if
00:08:04
Aquibur Rahman: you add a value, you would have a market for sure.
00:08:08
Aquibur Rahman: Not 100% everybody, that's for sure.
00:08:12
Saikat Pyne: Got it. Coming back to mail Modo when you realise
00:08:17
Saikat Pyne: that there's this product challenge with email marketing and D
00:08:22
Saikat Pyne: MP emails, and doubling down on N P meals is
00:08:25
Saikat Pyne: the solution. What were your next steps in terms of
00:08:28
Saikat Pyne: checking out a product strategy for mail mode.
00:08:31
Aquibur Rahman: So we had this hypothesis that can improve the conversion rate,
00:08:36
Aquibur Rahman: and we wanted to test that episode because so that
00:08:39
Aquibur Rahman: was my. I also talked to a lot of other marketers,
00:08:43
Aquibur Rahman: and they seemed intrigued. Our initial hypothesis was it will
00:08:47
Aquibur Rahman: increase conversion by 20 to 30%
00:08:49
Aquibur Rahman: but when, And that's why we wanted to test it.
00:08:53
Aquibur Rahman: So when we tested it, we got 200 to 300%
00:08:57
Aquibur Rahman: increase in conversion. How do you build an M V. P?
00:09:00
Aquibur Rahman: So we talked to a few marketers who have been
00:09:06
Aquibur Rahman: got ready to experiment and compare like Apple to Apple
00:09:10
Aquibur Rahman: comparison with a traditional email. So where we kept everything same,
00:09:14
Aquibur Rahman: including the subject line, including the content of the email
00:09:17
Aquibur Rahman: et cetera. But in traditional email, we kept a just
00:09:20
Aquibur Rahman: a simple button. But in the e MP email, we
00:09:23
Aquibur Rahman: had a form where people could take action within the
00:09:26
Aquibur Rahman: email itself. So the traditional email used to take the
00:09:29
Aquibur Rahman: user to the type form page, while the AM PM
00:09:33
Aquibur Rahman: if we can fill the within the email. So we
00:09:35
Aquibur Rahman: compared that how much conversion we got in the traditional
00:09:39
Aquibur Rahman: email and how much conversion responses we got in the
00:09:42
Aquibur Rahman: AM PM, and that was, like significantly different.
00:09:47
Saikat Pyne: Do you foresee more businesses? Uh, focusing on email marketing
00:09:54
Saikat Pyne: as marketers and creators become aware of how social media
00:10:00
Saikat Pyne: platforms are dialling down their organic reach? Or do you see,
00:10:03
Saikat Pyne: in some ways, there's still going to be money continue
00:10:06
Saikat Pyne: to be poured into social media? So I
00:10:08
Aquibur Rahman: would say that these are totally different
00:10:11
Aquibur Rahman: channels and there's no comparison between social media and email marketing.
00:10:14
Aquibur Rahman: Social media is more for acquisition or building audience or
00:10:19
Aquibur Rahman: getting new audience in the way. But email marketing is
00:10:23
Aquibur Rahman: engaging a captive audience like these. This is your community. Basically,
00:10:27
Aquibur Rahman: these are the people who know you. These are the
00:10:29
Aquibur Rahman: people trust you that they have given you their email. ID.
00:10:32
Aquibur Rahman: They trust you that you would give them good information,
00:10:36
Aquibur Rahman: valuable information and probably not a spam.
00:10:39
Aquibur Rahman: Then, on the other hand, social media is completely different,
00:10:43
Aquibur Rahman: has a completely different purpose. Algorithms you work with right
00:10:47
Aquibur Rahman: and which is basically to ban your audience and some
00:10:50
Aquibur Rahman: of them would become. They become your captive audience by
00:10:54
Aquibur Rahman: providing your email ID
00:10:55
Aquibur Rahman: In the social media space, you are always in the
00:10:58
Aquibur Rahman: control of the social media provider, the Facebook total linking
00:11:01
Aquibur Rahman: of the world, where there any change algorithm can move
00:11:04
Aquibur Rahman: you up and down in terms of engagement in case
00:11:08
Aquibur Rahman: of email marketing. More or less, it is your audience.
00:11:11
Aquibur Rahman: You can engage them whenever, what or however you want
00:11:14
Aquibur Rahman: them in social media. The reach, et cetera, will also
00:11:17
Aquibur Rahman: go down when it will shift from one channel to
00:11:20
Aquibur Rahman: one platform to another platform because there's always
00:11:23
Aquibur Rahman: trend, like Facebook was there for very long. Then people
00:11:27
Aquibur Rahman: move from Facebook to Instagram. Then people move from instagram
00:11:30
Aquibur Rahman: to tiktok, right, so you need to keep building audiences
00:11:33
Aquibur Rahman: at different places. But emails have been there since the beginning,
00:11:37
Aquibur Rahman: and it is going to be there for a very
00:11:39
Aquibur Rahman: long time. So if you have Asian audience on email,
00:11:44
Aquibur Rahman: it is going to be there for a very long
00:11:47
Saikat Pyne: got it. Now let's dial down to mail Moto the product.
00:11:52
Saikat Pyne: How do you acquire your 1st 100 users? First
00:11:55
Aquibur Rahman: 100 users were like like if I talk about first
00:11:58
Aquibur Rahman: five or 10 customers, it was mainly through personal outreach
00:12:02
Aquibur Rahman: to people who take that.
00:12:06
Aquibur Rahman: So the first 5 to 10 customers we got through
00:12:09
Aquibur Rahman: personal arteries to people who we knew earlier, and they
00:12:14
Aquibur Rahman: had they were running some company, or they were the
00:12:16
Aquibur Rahman: founders of some company or marketers at some company. And
00:12:19
Aquibur Rahman: in the initial days it was like, hard to convince
00:12:22
Aquibur Rahman: because everybody uses some kind of a marketing tool and
00:12:25
Aquibur Rahman: we had to convince them, Hey, you need to try
00:12:27
Aquibur Rahman: this because it is going to give you better results,
00:12:30
Aquibur Rahman: Better R a et cetera.
00:12:32
Aquibur Rahman: The 1st 10 customers we got through personal network. I
00:12:37
Aquibur Rahman: also used to consult a lot of startups before starting
00:12:41
Aquibur Rahman: mail model, and they used to trust me to support
00:12:44
Aquibur Rahman: my services, et cetera. So I also reach out to
00:12:48
Aquibur Rahman: them and talk talk about this product and how it
00:12:51
Aquibur Rahman: can help their businesses.
00:12:53
Aquibur Rahman: So after the 1st 10 customers, we created case studies,
00:12:57
Aquibur Rahman: et cetera, and we, uh, then started building our audience
00:13:02
Aquibur Rahman: on LinkedIn. And from there a lot of people got
00:13:06
Aquibur Rahman: interested because we to show
00:13:08
Aquibur Rahman: use cases of a MP email. We used to show
00:13:11
Aquibur Rahman: the results that our first few customers got and people
00:13:14
Aquibur Rahman: got interested in it. So they started coming to our
00:13:17
Aquibur Rahman: ourselves to us themselves. OK, I would like to try
00:13:20
Aquibur Rahman: it as well. So it was more on in one.
00:13:23
Aquibur Rahman: But it was also based on the plan and trust
00:13:27
Aquibur Rahman: that we were building over LinkedIn
00:13:30
Aquibur Rahman: and other social media platforms, and we started creating content
00:13:33
Aquibur Rahman: around and slowly, then no email marketing. So we started
00:13:37
Aquibur Rahman: talking to customers. We realised that
00:13:39
Aquibur Rahman: people still face a lot of problems in in mail market,
00:13:42
Aquibur Rahman: not just engagement, but also open deliver, et cetera. So
00:13:46
Aquibur Rahman: we started talking about those problems. We started talking how
00:13:49
Aquibur Rahman: to resolve those problems. So that's how we build the
00:13:53
Aquibur Rahman: audience then, And that audience then started talking about male
00:13:57
Aquibur Rahman: mode as a product. So a lot of word of
00:14:00
Aquibur Rahman: mouth happened. And then people started coming and getting
00:14:05
Aquibur Rahman: at the demo and of the product and trying the product,
00:14:08
Aquibur Rahman: and some of them became custom.
00:14:12
Aquibur Rahman: What I realised that this is a like in the
00:14:14
Aquibur Rahman: initial days. It is a factor of building trust, because
00:14:19
Aquibur Rahman: when you are young, when you're a starter, nobody asks you, Uh,
00:14:23
Aquibur Rahman: you could be like shitty product. It can harm my business.
00:14:28
Aquibur Rahman: You can fool my data. How do I trust you?
00:14:31
Aquibur Rahman: So a lot about building that trust and a lot
00:14:35
Aquibur Rahman: of things that we did
00:14:37
Aquibur Rahman: knowingly or unknowingly helped us build that trust. So when
00:14:42
Aquibur Rahman: we started talking about the product that we were building
00:14:46
Aquibur Rahman: on LinkedIn, that was through my personal profile so people
00:14:49
Aquibur Rahman: could see that in the face this guy has done
00:14:51
Aquibur Rahman: marketing in part. If this guy is talking about something
00:14:56
Aquibur Rahman: would be something useful. So that was a treasure. Then
00:14:59
Aquibur Rahman: we started sharing the case studies and use cases and
00:15:03
Aquibur Rahman: the videos of the actual email, so people thought that OK,
00:15:07
Aquibur Rahman: this looks interesting. So that further build the trust. Then
00:15:10
Aquibur Rahman: we started talking about the email content related to email
00:15:14
Aquibur Rahman: industry and building on that so that further added the trust.
00:15:18
Aquibur Rahman: So
00:15:20
Aquibur Rahman: then we thought that what else can we do? So
00:15:23
Aquibur Rahman: we realised how we how
00:15:26
Aquibur Rahman: anybody or we purchase a product. So when we have
00:15:30
Aquibur Rahman: B to B scenario, when we have to buy a product,
00:15:33
Aquibur Rahman: we either we go to somebody who is already using
00:15:36
Aquibur Rahman: some product. How do you do email marketing? You will say, Hey,
00:15:40
Aquibur Rahman: I use mail model. Then I will also probably use
00:15:43
Aquibur Rahman: mail model, or I will go to Google and search. Hey,
00:15:47
Aquibur Rahman: what are the best email marketing tools? Or I will
00:15:50
Aquibur Rahman: go to a community and ask What are the best
00:15:52
Aquibur Rahman: email marketing tools or what other people are using it.
00:15:55
Aquibur Rahman: So those are the ways people discovered products, so we
00:15:59
Aquibur Rahman: got into all most of them. So we started building
00:16:02
Aquibur Rahman: our social presence
00:16:04
Aquibur Rahman: to the first category. People started using and they started. Second.
00:16:09
Aquibur Rahman: We started building content for S C. O. And slowly
00:16:12
Aquibur Rahman: we started ranking text time. But we got there and
00:16:16
Aquibur Rahman: we we wrote content not just that. A buy an
00:16:19
Aquibur Rahman: email marketing tool or buy an A MP a market
00:16:22
Aquibur Rahman: tool we wrote content.
00:16:24
Aquibur Rahman: It caused the problems of an email marketers right from
00:16:28
Aquibur Rahman: how to fix open it, how to fix the spam,
00:16:30
Aquibur Rahman: how to fix the email, how to design a better email,
00:16:34
Aquibur Rahman: et cetera. So all of that and when people face
00:16:36
Aquibur Rahman: those problems, they read our content and our content provided
00:16:40
Aquibur Rahman: them value. They
00:16:42
Aquibur Rahman: trusted us, and they
00:16:44
Aquibur Rahman: eventually tried our product. So similarly, we got into certain
00:16:49
Aquibur Rahman: communities founders, communities, marketers, community, et cetera, where we help
00:16:54
Aquibur Rahman: with people. We didn't sell our product. We helped them
00:16:58
Aquibur Rahman: solving their problems whenever they fail. And that's how they
00:17:01
Aquibur Rahman: got to know us. And they trusted us. And when
00:17:04
Aquibur Rahman: they needed
00:17:05
Aquibur Rahman: an email marketing tool, they came to us more or less.
00:17:08
Aquibur Rahman: It is about building trust building relationship. And that's how
00:17:13
Aquibur Rahman: we sold to probably 500 or even 200 customers.
00:17:17
Saikat Pyne: Got it. So initially it was about cold. Reach out
00:17:21
Saikat Pyne: via referrals
00:17:23
Aquibur Rahman: was more of warm. Reach out people who were connected
00:17:25
Aquibur Rahman: somehow
00:17:27
Saikat Pyne: OK via referrals among people that you would know, and
00:17:30
Saikat Pyne: then that eventually led to some inbound interest. Let us
00:17:33
Saikat Pyne: dig a bit deeper into
00:17:37
Saikat Pyne: what you think is the role of marketing team at Milmo.
00:17:42
Aquibur Rahman: Yeah, so
00:17:45
Aquibur Rahman: I think now, if I have to describe the role
00:17:47
Aquibur Rahman: of the marketing team. It is to build awareness and
00:17:52
Aquibur Rahman: build trust and help people understand that there's a better
00:17:56
Aquibur Rahman: way of doing it.
00:17:59
Aquibur Rahman: How it has changed over the last 23 years is
00:18:03
Aquibur Rahman: initially there was a lot of set up, like like
00:18:06
Aquibur Rahman: setting up content, setting on a blog and setting a website,
00:18:10
Aquibur Rahman: what to write on the website, what to write on
00:18:13
Aquibur Rahman: the home page, et cetera, how to what? To write
00:18:16
Aquibur Rahman: on social media, post et cetera. So I think the
00:18:20
Aquibur Rahman: first one year was
00:18:23
Aquibur Rahman: into a lot of set up, even a lot of
00:18:25
Aquibur Rahman: do for doing S C O. A lot of technical
00:18:28
Aquibur Rahman: has to be set up. Pages be page
00:18:34
Aquibur Rahman: in the last one year. It is about how to
00:18:37
Aquibur Rahman: scale like we build on social media. But OK, we
00:18:41
Aquibur Rahman: got
00:18:42
Aquibur Rahman: started our followers, et cetera. But how do we scale
00:18:46
Aquibur Rahman: from there? What new people want to understand with people's problem,
00:18:50
Aquibur Rahman: et cetera. So that is how the role of Com
00:18:54
Aquibur Rahman: marketing team at has been changing, and probably the next
00:18:58
Aquibur Rahman: phase would also be hate. We have got to hear
00:19:02
Aquibur Rahman: what next we need to do what new channels we
00:19:05
Aquibur Rahman: need to add.
00:19:08
Saikat Pyne: Got it. Mail Model is one of the few B
00:19:12
Saikat Pyne: two B SAS companies that has invested very heavily in
00:19:16
Saikat Pyne: terms of creating resources that are not directly affiliated to
00:19:21
Saikat Pyne: the brand. In the sense that there's no mail model
00:19:24
Saikat Pyne: logo plastered across all,
00:19:27
Saikat Pyne: uh, resources, you host the mail Moto Academy. There are
00:19:33
Saikat Pyne: bunch of videos, live streams, interviews Q and A emails.
00:19:37
Saikat Pyne: There are the podcast. There's eBooks checklist. There's something called
00:19:40
Saikat Pyne: Humans of email, which I was pleasantly surprised to find out.
00:19:44
Saikat Pyne: So tell me a bit more about the content machinery
00:19:49
Saikat Pyne: at Male model and how the content machinery goes about
00:19:54
Saikat Pyne: figuring out what would work
00:19:56
Aquibur Rahman: for the brand marketing in general, our purpose, and not
00:19:58
Aquibur Rahman: just to sell. That is very short term goal that hey,
00:20:03
Aquibur Rahman: I need this kind of pipeline. I need the number
00:20:06
Aquibur Rahman: of leads or I need this number of sales.
00:20:08
Aquibur Rahman: If you do that, you will be. You will keep
00:20:11
Aquibur Rahman: struggling to grow because
00:20:14
Aquibur Rahman: you will not be able to scale that month or month.
00:20:18
Aquibur Rahman: So it is very important that you
00:20:21
Aquibur Rahman: build more awareness and brand as well, along with building
00:20:27
Aquibur Rahman: your pipeline because people who get to know you now
00:20:31
Aquibur Rahman: they may not need your product right away, but they
00:20:34
Aquibur Rahman: will probably need your product six months on the online.
00:20:36
Aquibur Rahman: They will probably need your 12 months online, right? And
00:20:39
Aquibur Rahman: they if they don't need it, probably their friends would
00:20:42
Aquibur Rahman: need it. For example, you read something related to like,
00:20:46
Aquibur Rahman: human or female? Or do you present for some growth
00:20:49
Aquibur Rahman: charges to copy writing?
00:20:51
Aquibur Rahman: But you know that there's a male model and mail model.
00:20:53
Aquibur Rahman: Does this and somebody asked you, Hey, I'm thinking of
00:20:57
Aquibur Rahman: using a new tool. I'm really struggling with my current tool.
00:21:01
Aquibur Rahman: You will say, Hey, why don't you try? A male
00:21:02
Aquibur Rahman: model could try.
00:21:04
Aquibur Rahman: So that's how the growth happens. That's how the growth likes.
00:21:08
Aquibur Rahman: The fly will run in the long run and keep
00:21:12
Aquibur Rahman: giving us growth out. Probably most other fast growing sales
00:21:16
Aquibur Rahman: companies have done this. You take example of notion you
00:21:19
Aquibur Rahman: take
00:21:20
Aquibur Rahman: example of or other companies so they have all done
00:21:25
Aquibur Rahman: similar things. Notion didn't always say, Hey, how to be
00:21:29
Aquibur Rahman: more productive, right? They also like how to build a startup, right,
00:21:34
Aquibur Rahman: how to do the marketing
00:21:36
Aquibur Rahman: right because they know that these are the people who
00:21:38
Aquibur Rahman: are going to use notion, and their problem is not
00:21:41
Aquibur Rahman: always that hard to be more productive. Their problem is
00:21:44
Aquibur Rahman: also to build their startup, make money and grow their business,
00:21:48
Aquibur Rahman: et cetera. And if I had them, they would trust me.
00:21:52
Aquibur Rahman: And they they I will always be on top of
00:21:54
Aquibur Rahman: their mind. And they will always come back to notion
00:21:57
Aquibur Rahman: cases with mine all that they
00:22:00
Aquibur Rahman: didn't actually started marketing, just the just the design software
00:22:05
Aquibur Rahman: a buy. They solved problems, and they helped their users
00:22:10
Aquibur Rahman: solve problems. And that's how they they gain their trust.
00:22:13
Aquibur Rahman: They gain their user trust. And that has been our
00:22:15
Aquibur Rahman: focus as well that Hey, we want to build awareness,
00:22:19
Aquibur Rahman: build our leave, our brand positive image of our brand
00:22:23
Aquibur Rahman: in your mind and help to solve your problems. Whether
00:22:26
Aquibur Rahman: or not you are going to give him money just
00:22:29
Aquibur Rahman: using it, it will come
00:22:31
Saikat Pyne: got it. The other thing that I'd want to ask
00:22:34
Saikat Pyne: QR K is around the relationship between the marketing and
00:22:38
Saikat Pyne: the sales team. This is a point of contention, often
00:22:42
Saikat Pyne: in B two B companies, regardless of whether it's or
00:22:45
Saikat Pyne: not where it is, quote unquote sales heavy and the
00:22:49
Saikat Pyne: marketing team is often relegated to creating tax for the
00:22:53
Saikat Pyne: sales team. So tell me about how marketing and sales
00:22:58
Saikat Pyne: works in tandem at mail.
00:23:01
Aquibur Rahman: OK,
00:23:02
Aquibur Rahman: yeah,
00:23:03
Aquibur Rahman: so marketing and sale feed into each other, but they
00:23:07
Aquibur Rahman: work very independently. So a lot of people So what?
00:23:13
Aquibur Rahman: Where this problem happens, I think they should think about.
00:23:16
Aquibur Rahman: They should divide marketing function into multiple functions. One function
00:23:19
Aquibur Rahman: could be completely focused on demand generation, which should work
00:23:22
Aquibur Rahman: probably with sales team to give them a pipeline. But
00:23:26
Aquibur Rahman: there should be another function, which is more on content
00:23:28
Aquibur Rahman: marketing or brand building or thought leadership building.
00:23:32
Aquibur Rahman: We should focus on completely on building long term awareness,
00:23:36
Aquibur Rahman: long term business building and not on just demand for
00:23:41
Aquibur Rahman: the sales team. Probably dividing the team into two parts
00:23:45
Aquibur Rahman: would could work. There's also marketing function that that is there,
00:23:49
Aquibur Rahman: which can help sales team in a and do in
00:23:52
Aquibur Rahman: many of those things and not distract your marketing team
00:23:56
Aquibur Rahman: from doing the actual awareness building or brand building activities
00:24:00
Aquibur Rahman: that you need to do.
00:24:02
Saikat Pyne: Arch, you're also in this very unique position where you
00:24:06
Saikat Pyne: are marketing to a bunch of people who are, in
00:24:11
Saikat Pyne: fact marketing products to the rest of the world. Yeah.
00:24:14
Saikat Pyne: So how is marketing to marketers different from marketing to
00:24:19
Saikat Pyne: the average consumer?
00:24:20
Aquibur Rahman: Yeah, So I think there some nos to all kinds
00:24:25
Aquibur Rahman: of audiences, even not just
00:24:28
Aquibur Rahman: like how developer behave, or how a salesperson behave or
00:24:32
Aquibur Rahman: or a marketer behave is generally different, and how you
00:24:36
Aquibur Rahman: market them would depend a lot, not on them. So,
00:24:39
Aquibur Rahman: for example, a lot of sales people are active on LinkedIn.
00:24:43
Aquibur Rahman: They would like to go to that. So if for
00:24:46
Aquibur Rahman: a product which sells to sales people,
00:24:50
Aquibur Rahman: you probably should attend a lot of events or maybe
00:24:54
Aquibur Rahman: get active on LinkedIn or talk about how to do
00:24:57
Aquibur Rahman: better things, et cetera. On the other side of it,
00:25:00
Aquibur Rahman: there are developers
00:25:01
Aquibur Rahman: who probably don't want to go to these events. So
00:25:05
Aquibur Rahman: if you are a you know, if you're a developer
00:25:08
Aquibur Rahman: centric product and you just it probably is not going
00:25:11
Aquibur Rahman: to help you a lot. If your direct buyer or
00:25:14
Aquibur Rahman: a user is a developer, you probably try to be
00:25:16
Aquibur Rahman: more active on community and keep pushing open source projects
00:25:21
Aquibur Rahman: right or have a like in closed group communities and
00:25:25
Aquibur Rahman: help each other. So the
00:25:29
Aquibur Rahman: but depending on the persona, your marketing activities or marketing
00:25:33
Aquibur Rahman: channels are going to be very different.
00:25:35
Aquibur Rahman: In general, we feel that markets consume a lot of content,
00:25:39
Aquibur Rahman: and markets are generally open to try new things. They'll
00:25:41
Aquibur Rahman: want to try new things they want to do growth,
00:25:44
Aquibur Rahman: hacking and all. And probably that is something that we
00:25:48
Aquibur Rahman: are using that Hey, you want, we keep trying new article,
00:25:51
Aquibur Rahman: For example,
00:25:53
Aquibur Rahman: we launched a state of email in January. Then we
00:25:57
Aquibur Rahman: launched some marketing calendar in February. Then now we are
00:26:01
Aquibur Rahman: launching something they call it Tar Mode checker for email.
00:26:04
Aquibur Rahman: These are the things that it's not directly related to.
00:26:08
Aquibur Rahman: Male model. But these are the things that marketers want,
00:26:12
Aquibur Rahman: and our content marketing team is building those to build
00:26:17
Aquibur Rahman: relationships with these marketers.
00:26:19
Aquibur Rahman: And and then nobody is going to pay for marketing
00:26:22
Aquibur Rahman: calendar but probably will leave an impact in their man. Hey,
00:26:26
Aquibur Rahman: there's a male model team who creates amazing content, amazing marketing.
00:26:30
Aquibur Rahman: We should go and check them out.
00:26:32
Aquibur Rahman: It is
00:26:34
Aquibur Rahman: like building a community, but without a one physical space
00:26:39
Aquibur Rahman: or one a slack or one discord group, right? It
00:26:43
Aquibur Rahman: is building a community where people are connected somehow.
00:26:48
Saikat Pyne: So what's the marketing mix for Milmo? Look, right now, yeah,
00:26:52
Aquibur Rahman: So we may focus mainly on organ charges. We don't
00:26:55
Aquibur Rahman: do paid marketing. As such, we do some kind of
00:26:58
Aquibur Rahman: experiments around pay marketing to promote a few certain thing.
00:27:02
Aquibur Rahman: But 30 of it is, uh, content marketing, which is constitutes,
00:27:06
Aquibur Rahman: of all kinds of influencer, collaboration, partner collaboration, social media
00:27:11
Aquibur Rahman: and community. Second is S C O content. And third,
00:27:14
Aquibur Rahman: we do, um, a bond on reports and email reach
00:27:18
Aquibur Rahman: out to people. So these three are the main sources
00:27:22
Aquibur Rahman: of our marketing pipeline or the lead pipeline, not one,
00:27:26
Aquibur Rahman: but lead pipeline building. And through these channels, we we
00:27:31
Aquibur Rahman: get
00:27:32
Aquibur Rahman: some kind of like an equal number of lead, and
00:27:35
Aquibur Rahman: then our some of them directly buy our product or
00:27:39
Aquibur Rahman: some other ones to talk towards sales team or on
00:27:42
Aquibur Rahman: boarding team for certain help. And we help them, and
00:27:44
Aquibur Rahman: we they buy their product. So that's how we that's
00:27:48
Aquibur Rahman: how we work.
00:27:50
Saikat Pyne: Got it. And on that insightful note, guys, it's a wrap.
00:27:53
Saikat Pyne: Thank you so much for being on the show. A
00:27:55
Saikat Pyne: really appreciated you taking time out.
00:27:57
Aquibur Rahman: But
00:27:58
Aquibur Rahman: thank you very much, Sakar. I love talking to you
00:28:00
Aquibur Rahman: and lots of a very thoughtful question.
00:28:03
Saikat Pyne: Lovely, lovely guys do tune in next week for the
00:28:06
Saikat Pyne: next episode of the U Incorporated podcast. See ya.