Simon Devlin
speaker
125 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Simon Devlin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And then what happens is you hear in the newspaper, which is happening a lot in Australia at the moment, I'm sure it is in the United States, much love restaurant closing its doors. And that's after three years, four years, five years. And that's because the owner's been sitting on this two-legged stool and not wondering every morning whether – is it going to be a busy day?
Is it going to be a busy week? Is it going to be a busy month? And business just continually goes up and down like that. But with different systemized return paths, with all kinds of different return paths, which include membership continuity, that completely changes. You can pay your rent –
It's my goal with the embassy that we actually are making the repayments on the building from our continuity program. So then that changes the whole dynamic.
it's insane the revenue from that we never could have matched in bringing new people in the front door ever you know what i mean it's crazy and that's the and that is the true lifetime value right that that is the thing i actually um took our framework and wanted to know whether i could take it online so i'm i kind of the opposite of going back from off down yeah right so i was like okay
could I do experience and engagement? So I knew I could do return path and I knew I could do offer, but could I take the experience and engagement online and therefore get the same kind of jet fuel propulsion into my return path? Sorry, I keep hitting the mic. And so I decided to create a completely separate cigar business. So Devlin's is our business. And call it something completely different.
Create an attractive character out of thin air. A guy by the name of Joe Box was called cigarbox.com.au. And the attractive character is this guy called Joe Box. Is it somebody you know or is it like a cartoon? No, no, cartoon character. You know, he's really Aussie. G'day, mate. How are you? I'm Joe Box here. And so when we write copy, that's how we write it all, right?
Like in g'day, everything's, yeah, how are you, mate? You know, it's kind of Crocodile Hunter meets, you know, Cigar Guy, right? Anyway, so we created this attractive character. And then the only, and cause you can't advertise. So you can't advertise cigars. Yeah. Cause it's anywhere. Just Australia in, in definitely in Australia because the tobacco product, right? So it's illegal to advertise.
So we couldn't do, we couldn't drive traffic. And I, and I was not going to use my existing database to, right? So because I wanted to be a completely separate business at different price points as well, mainly focused on the East Coast of Australia. So the only thing that we could do was SEO and word of mouth. So we had to make sure that every person that came in stuck, right? So
the first time, first thing that I did was like, okay, how do we, how do we change that whole experiencing? Like you buy something online and there's no human interaction and stuff arrives and all the rest of it. So I created something that I call a lifetime value call. I initially called it a stick call, but, but basically what it is is it was a welcome call.
So the first time you ordered from cigar box, you would actually get a phone call from a team member. And, and originally it was me being Joe box. And, um, And literally just welcomed them to the Cigar Box family. So welcome to the Cigar Box family. So it literally, I'd call you and you'd answer and I'd say, G'day, is that Russell? And you go, yeah. Okay, it's Simon Devlin here.
Well, I wouldn't say Simon Devlin. I would say it's Joe here from Cigar Box. And just saw you placed your first order with us and wanted to give you a call and welcome you to the Cigar Box family. Now, it was not an add-to-cart call, which goes against the grain a little. That's plugging the experience part you're missing. Exactly.
And then we would just say to them, hey, just to let you know what happens, what's happening, we're packing your beautiful cigars today and we'd always make sure we ship same day. And we're going to send that out and you're going to get an email letting you know about all of that. And, you know, do you have any questions? And they'll be like, oh, wow, thank you so much for calling.
Like I've never got a call before when I've purchased something online. And often they'd have questions, and often they would do their own ad to cart, but it was completely different. And then I would say to them, whereabouts are you on your cigar journey? And they might say, oh, look, I'm just starting out.
And we'll say, do you want us to send you some fact sheets on carting and lighting or enjoying your cigar? I've been smoking cigars for a long time. We'd say, hey, do you want us to send you a fact sheet on pairing your beverages with cigars? And they'd go, oh, wow, that's amazing. And then they'd get a follow-up email straight away, and then they would actually go into a 11-email welcome sequence.
as well and when they got their first order it have a handwritten note in there with uh with a little gift a cigar cutter as well Now, just that welcome call, people would write reviews before they even got the product, like off the charts. And these reviews, I was like, I don't know if I can use them. It looks like I wrote them myself.
And things like, I have never experienced service like this online before. This is old school service, that sort of thing. So then when we started making offers in our return path, like our weekly Ligador, The uptake on it is huge. All because they have a different interaction. And the other thing that happened is...
you don't get as many calls, people calling up saying, what's happening with this? What's happening? Because you've built a level of trust that they haven't felt before. So in fact, so much so that one of the other things that we do with that whole experience and engagement is sometimes they call up and they're like, hey, my parcel hasn't arrived. It was sent with Australia Post.
I can see that you guys send it. I know it's not your fault, but is there anything you can do? And we were like, yeah, no worries, let us follow this up. And they might say, oh, I followed up with Australia Post and they said, if they haven't received it in two weeks, then, you know, call us back. And what we would do is we would offer to resend the entire package.
And generally it's like $300 or $400 worth of cigars. And they'd be like, oh, okay, you just resend the whole thing? And I'm like, yeah, we just resend the whole thing. And when the second package arrives... You let us know and we'll give you a postage to send it back to us. Now, there's a lot of trust there, right? You're trusting that people will send it back.
The reason why they send it back is that first welcome call. Now, what actually happens is this. The second package always arrives the day after the other one. It's like they kind of push each other out of the system. And then we call them and we say, hey, you can send it back or we'll give you a 10% or 15% discount off the second package and you can keep it.
Showing 81–100 of 125 · page 5 of 7
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