This eCommerce company had its entire email database in its source code
Prior to taking a more tactful inbound marketing approach I was cold emailing and calling over 50 eCommerce companies a day. I knew there had to be a better way so I started asking better questions?
I asked myself:
- Who was I selling to?
- What problems are my customers facing?
- What keeps my customers up at night?
This lead to developing buying personas for my ideal eCommerce partners. (Owners and Marketers of Medium to Large eCommerce Stores seeing between 5,000 to 60,000 daily visits.)
Finding eCommerce Talent
If you are an owner of an eCommerce store you are struggling to find ecommerce talent at economical costs. You may have tried outsourcing before but realized that it doesn’t always work out as planned.
You have different marketing companies who specialize in their niche, the agencies that do offer everything, typically outsource all services that they don’t specialize in. This means the eCommerce store owner is paying tens of thousand of dollars for a service they could be getting for a fraction of the cost.
If you are a VP of marketing or VP of eCommerce it’s tough to run an entire eTail department with so many changes happening every day. Merchandising, User Interface, Digital Analytics, Responsive Design, SEO, Social Media, Shipping, Tax Regulations, who has time to analyze thousands of eCommerce emails, just get the darn monthly newsletter out and we are doing ok right? The short answer is no.
Companies were so hasty with their emails they were breaking privacy rules, spam rules, and just setting the precedent for a lousy user experience.
I found it amazing how resources are dramatically shifted towards customer acquisition rather than customer retention. I was compelled to do research:
- Average Email Marketing Manager Salaries – 64k a year according to Indeed.com, and the demand is definitely there with over 8,995 results for Email Marketing Manager jobs on LinkedIn.
- Email Marketing Laws – Avoid being fined up to $16,000 per each separate email in violation by reading and following CAN-SPAM Act
- Email Privacy
- Email Lawsuits
- Email Best Practices, such as sending emails to a purchased list or rented list (I have had to turn down 3 customers who wanted to pay me handsomely to email their rented list)
How I Found A Fatal Mistake in the eCommerce Store’s Source Code
I started subscribing to eCommerce email campaigns (about 200 back than) It lead me to analyzing source codes and eCommerce platforms.
Continuing my analysis I’d analyze the eCommerce company’s source code and use Wappalyzer to quickly gauge what their analytic platforms were, and what CMS their site was built on.
The Warm Email To The Director whom is Too Busy To Talk
An executive passes my information along to a director who is too busy and won’t get on the phone.
My Response To Finding $ in Their Source Code
Hi why the long form, oh and the thousands of emails in your source code.
The Casual Response To Violating All Their Customers Trust
If you find a $1 million dollar error on my site I’m sending Mariachi Los Camperos- Popurri to your office.
I at least thought I would get them as a client, but 6 months later their email campaigns and shopping experience haven’t improved, and it’s mainly because the company they partnered with while impressive has so many different services and offerings that their email campaigns are mainly integrations with other ESPs. This is the reasons you need an in house email marketer that stays on top of trends or you outsource to a company that focuses exclusively on eCommerce email marketing.
- I wonder how many people came across the emails before I emailed their eCommerce department?
- I wonder if I should have emailed their CEO, actually doing that now.
- I wonder if the customers who had their privacy violated have a right to know that their emails were comprised, perhaps additional supposedly secure information could have been compromised?
My findings were extremely valuable
I created a nice excel doc and right when I finished both my posts.
What would you have done if you found tens of thousands of emails inside the source code of an eCommerce site?
