Agencies That Don't Do This Will Die, How To Get 28x More Conversions With Cold Email, ChatGPT Raises $40B At A $300B Valuation, Shopify Doesn't Use KPIs Or OKRs, AI Isn't Actually Coming For Your Jobs, Marketing In The AI Era Is A Game Of Extremes

In episode #2951, Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss how AI is transforming business efficiency, improving cold email conversions, and the importance of first mover advantage. They also explore management strategies for adaptability and highlight the need for creativity and testing in marketing to stay competitive in the AI-driven future. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES (00:00) The Impact of AI on Business Efficiency (02:47) Cold Email Strategies for Higher Conversions (05:58) The Role of First Mover Advantage (09:10) Management Strategies and the Importance of Adaptation (11:59) The Future of Work in the Age of AI (15:00) Creativity and Testing in Marketing Prefer single topic episodes? Head over to our YouTube channel. To suggest a topic, go to https://www.marketingschool.io. For more content from Eric and Neil, check out Eric’s Leveling Up with Eric Siu YouTube channel and Neil’s Neil Patel YouTube channel. Connect with Us: Single Grain << Eric's ad agency NP Digital << Neil’s ad agency X @neilpatel, @ericosiu Instagram @neilpatel, @ericosiu Drop Us a Review If You Enjoyed the Episode!

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Finding customer information shouldn't mean digging through emails, call notes, and spreadsheets. HubSpot Starter Plan brings all of those details together, so it's easier to track what's happening with every deal, and what to do next. It pulls information from calls and emails. Then it gets to work, logging and summarizing them. Right after your call ends, HubSpot pulls next steps from your call notes and drafts suggested follow-ups. And it stays up to date for you, so you can build demand, win more deals, and spend less time on repetitive work. Your records, insights, and next steps are ready for you to act on. And you don't have to miss a beat searching for any of it. Try the Starter Plan for $10 a month. Learn more at hubspot.com. Let me tell you a story here. So I went to a Kings game, a hockey game earlier this week, first hockey game ever, okay? I was sitting next to my friend. And my friend runs a SaaS company, and he looked over to me. First thing he says, he's like, "Eric, we're gonna fire our agency."

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Like, that was after we said hi, the first thing he said to me, "We're gonna fire your agency." I was like, "Oh, so why are you gonna fire your agency?" He's like, "Well, here's the thing. We've been working with this agency for a while.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  If they're using AI, they haven't passed the efficiencies over to us." I'm like, "What do you mean by that? We're not getting an increase in the output deliverables, okay? Nor are they decreasing costs. Like, even if you give me one or the other, I'm happy. Or even worse yet, if they're not using AI, well, then they suck, right? And so, I think AI, so agencies that don't do this will die. What I mean by this is just really adapting. I look at it this way, and I think, you know, the internet to me, if you're not using the internet in the 1990s, you know, when it came out, 2000s or so, like, it's a tool, you're behind. If you're, if you're building a home, and you're not using the tools to build a home, for example, like a hammer, for example, or a shovel, like, you're behind. If you're not leveraging this stuff, it's just a tool to me, well, then you're behind.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  But like, also, by the way, if you're not passing efficiencies over to your customers, they're not stupid, they're gonna figure it out. And sooner or later, they're gonna figure it out. You probably should be figuring out how you pass your efficiencies over to your customers. It's not even just agencies. I think businesses that don't do this, you're gonna continue to get squeezed, squeezed, squeezed, so you might as well try to get ahead of it right now.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Yes, and when you're using this technology, keep in mind not everything will work out the way you want. So make sure you're okay with that. When I was building a home in Vegas, they're like, oh, we no longer put up a framing of a house. Because when you have a house, you have to build all the walls, this framing. They're like, we no longer do it manually. Look at this program that we use that maps it all out. And it just builds it all for you in a factory and then we just send it to you. So instead of it taking months, it took, it can take, you know, like a week or two weeks. So we hired this company called Forte in Las Vegas that in theory uses that technology and specializes it. And they tried it on us. We were the guinea pig. It took longer than if they just did it manually.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  Um, do I hate them for it? No. Uh, do I love how they tried? Yes, at least the entrepreneur in me. Uh, the resident in me wanted the home done as quick as possible. But you gotta also account for things not working out the way you want. And you better have backups. Because I was pissed when that happened. And if I owned that company, I'd be like, this is the first time I'm trying it out. I would have contingencies in place if it wasn't going to work. And some people don't do that, but if you do that, you're much more likely to keep someone happy and eventually figure out how to get it right. And then when you do get it right, you can show them and you can uh, show them the efficiencies on their end as well.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  And this is a situation where you're going to be testing a lot of things with maybe with your customers where you might say, hey, you can be our guinea pig, maybe you're a pilot for this and maybe we'll just charge you costs. Um, but just expect that mistakes are going to happen. Um, but it's, it's, you're better off doing that than not trying anything. I think the ones that are scared of this stuff right now. Um, I just like, how could you be scared of the internet? How could you be scared of tools like the industrial like farming and all these things, right? These are just things to make us more efficient. Yeah. Um, here, let's talk about how you can get 28x more conversions, 28 times more conversions with cold email. You want to know how?

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, how?

• 3:54Speaker 00

  You can probably guess. If you're to guess, what's one thing that would increase your conversion rate massively with cold email? What do you think it is?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Uh, don't send them cold, warm them up.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  So like if you already know you're gonna end up sending it to certain people, how can you pixel them? Show them retargeting ads and then send them a customized email?

• 4:12Speaker 00

  This is just cold email.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Just cold email?

• 4:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's it's very simple.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Send it from a Gmail?

• 4:18Speaker 00

  No, your offer.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, your copy.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, your offer. So this this actually was-

• 4:22Speaker 01

  But wait, how does it get 28x more?

• 4:24Speaker 00

  This is this is what um, this was written by a, this is a LinkedIn post written by Taylor Heron. We we actually use him for cold email infrastructure, by the way. Um, he's great. He sends like, what, four million emails monthly um, for his customers? And so we we go to him, he he's he like warms up domains for us and all that, and it's been great for us. Um, so he's like, look, uh, 28x more conversions on cold email campaigns. It has nothing to do with your cold email infrastructure. I was like, oh, that's a good hook. Okay, you got me. Um, I've been digging into some data to confirm a ton of my suspicions, but goes against a grain of salt what I hear gurus quote unquote talk about. Changing a front end offer alone can drastically swing your entire funnel, sometimes by a factor of 28 regarding of your cold email vendor. So what he's seeing is basically, um, it's just the offer at the end of the day.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  So he talked about Adam Robinson of RP2B, um, having a free forever tier, right? Or another one of his clients went from signing up 43 customers in a paid plan to only three in the next month. It's because they changed their seven day money back. Oh, they went to a seven day money back guarantee for their trial instead of a seven day trial that was already working. So it really does come down to the offer at the end of the day, and you and I know that already. But I think it's important that we keep, we're the chief reminder officers on these things.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Yes, and most people will not get a 28 times lift or 20x lift from changing their offer. You're lucky to get a 20, 30% lift.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  Which is still great.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  It is still great.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, and by the way, it's this is another shout out to 100 million dollar offers. Um, Alex's book, it's a great book on offers. I think anybody that wants to get into marketing, you should definitely understand that. And I think he charges like a dollar and 99 cents for it if you buy it on Kindle or something, so.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, on a side note, you see how chat GPT raised forty billion dollars at a three hundred billion valuation?

• 6:05Speaker 00

  I believe it. They need more GPUs.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I don't even think their revenue is at ten plus billion a year.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  They're on track for thirteen billion by end of the year, and then with the fifteen million dollar ARR by end of year. How do I know this? Because I listened to Brad Gerster this morning.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. I'm assuming he's an investor in it.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  He is an investor, yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  But their last year revenue numbers were like three billion or something like that.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Four or five.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Oh, four or five.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that's a triple, so it's, you know.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  That's crazy growth. They can keep growing like that, the LaVinci.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  I mean, they, they, the good thing for them is they, this is a good example of, um, first mover advantage. They were very much the first mover. So when you think about who, who, who is known in the software space, at least for soft, soft drink space? Coca-Cola, right? Pepsi is always like number two. Um, so when you have a first mover advantage, I think they have consumer like quite a bit like locked up right now. Um, and they're, they're going to be a strong business no matter what. So, um, that's another lesson to learn from chat GPT. If you can be first out there, then you're good.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't, I didn't know this. Uh, Coca-Cola is worth three hundred billion dollars. Pepsi's two hundred fifty-ish percent difference.

• 7:07Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Coca-Cola is fifty percent bigger than Pepsi.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  I thought Coke was way bigger, but Pepsi's done a good job over the years. I used to like Pepsi more than Coke growing up, but yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Same here, and that's why I Googled it, because I assume like, well, I like Pepsi better. Isn't it bigger?

• 7:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  But I'm biased because I prefer Pepsi over Coke.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Did you know that Shopify doesn't use KPIs or OKRs?

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Really?

• 7:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, so they use it for guidance, but basically what Toby said was, um, he calls, he says, good heart's law is real. The moment a metric becomes a goal, it's no longer a useful metric. No metric by itself is a complete heuristic for a complex business. There's a million different tensions in a company, and you can't keep all of them in harmony by optimizing for one thing. So he says they're extremely data forward. We have invested enormous amount of monies and time into systems that give us basically everything on our fingertips. But there's a lot of things that you can't optimize, right? So you like, he's like taste, quality, passion, love, hate. Um, you know, the, the, the sort of deep satisfaction that a craftsman feels when they've done a good job. Well, um, is actually a better proxy if you allow it to be. And I, I think to an extent I agree with that. Um, but, you know, he's not saying they don't use it at all.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  I think they don't treat OKRs and, um, KPIs as gospel. I think it's a backup to number one, and I've seen this in some cases. This is just another example. I mean, he's a publicly traded company CEO. So what do you think?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  No, I I've never really followed OKRs that often.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  No, you've never followed OKRs. Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  My team does, but I don't.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  I think the only thing you look at is like, how are we doing with new revenue, profit, right?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  I think I mentioned this on this podcast, if not, I mentioned it on past episodes. In the United States, not globally, just but just US, last year, we got six RFPs in Q1 of 2024. We ended this year in 2025, just in the United States with 13. But as we're going into it, from 2023 to 2024, we saw a little bit more than a 15% growth because our US went from 16 RFPs to 25. So it was one more than 50%, right? Instead of 24, we got 25. So I told the team, I'm like, we need to get another 50%, you know, because they say as you grow larger and larger, your numbers, your growth rate should start to decline.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  But you don't want to accept that.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was like, we need another 50% this year. So I was talking to my team and as we're going along in Q1, I changed it to, we need to hit at least double. And then when we got double, we're at 13 instead of 6.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, we need 14 by the end of Q1. And then I was on the phone, Nick, and he's like, dude, if I get you 14, you're gonna ask for 20. And I'm like, that sounds about right.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Dude, that's that's the problem with founders. Sometimes we keep moving the goalposts and that's a nice way to burn people out. It's true. But but if Nick, for example, has worked with you for a long time, he knows how to manage you. He would ideally, Nick, you just set the targets a little lower. That way, when Neil tries to double it, you know what I mean? You have to learn how to manage upwards too. Yeah.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  No, there's no targets. I randomly make up my own targets.

• 10:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  And I want people to hit them with things like that. I don't do the revenue targeting. I don't do churn targeting. You know, the people who are running the business from operations standpoint, do all that kind of stuff. But from marketing KPIs, I don't really put KPIs. When things are going good and you meet targets, I just keep changing the goalposts.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'm the same way too. And so, by the way, this is a good example of not necessarily everything you read around management books is. is true, right? It's like, oh, yeah, you should do OKRs, KPIs, because Google did them. Oh, um, you should, you know, for every one criticism you you put on somebody else, you should have five compliments. I tried that before, by the way. I I started making up compliments, right? And I was just like, screw that, right? Like, like, just be who you are. I think you read all these things, but eventually just learn that. Do what's right for you. Like, I remember I worked for a company. They implemented holocracy. You know what that is?

• 11:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  You know, okay, holocracy is Zappos way where they don't have any managers. They just read about it and then one day they just implemented it and then no more managers, right? All of a sudden ripped out the bandit, total disaster. That was also the same company that did four day work weeks, okay? But what happens with four day work weeks where your A player and your A players? I like to think of myself as an A player. I ended up working seven days a week, right? So you reading all these things and being susceptible to all this information and taking action on every single bit, the shiny knowledge syndrome thing. That can really screw up a business. So, yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Wait, let's go back. You were saying there was a four day work week?

• 11:36Speaker 00

  And you know this company.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  I I think I know which one you're talking about.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  It has to do with plants, right?

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Okay. Uh, so when you look at the four day work week, I know you work seven. Did other people just work four?

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  And was the CEO okay with this? And he was working four as well?

• 11:53Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, he's like, yeah, why can't we get all things done in four days versus seven uh versus like five days?

• 11:57Speaker 01

  You're a startup. There's always more to get done.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Someone's looking to eat your freaking lunch and they're looking to kick your ass and they've raised more money and their team is better. Why? Why would you shortcut? Why would you shortchange twenty percent of your time?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  So this company eventually went bankrupt.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  Uh huh. I tried to uh side and I tried to buy it.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Really?

• 12:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  He wouldn't sell it to you?

• 12:16Speaker 00

  Uh, he got a better deal, but I think he would have if if he didn't have this um other offer.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Cool. So when you look at the company declining towards the last, call it three to six months when they knew things were getting worse and worse. Did he start saying, hey, I need you guys to work five days a week?

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, it changed to five days a week. So when you do stuff like that, you can't roll it back. It pisses everyone off.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  And but then when people have no more paycheck, then they're even more pissed.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then they just blame you for being a terrible CEO and that's it. And so what happened in that situation was too many changes that were too um gargantuan, too like earth shaking. You can't, maybe you go for like one earth, earth changing change per quarter, but you do it like every week. There's a big change. You can't do that because people want stability too. And so even though you want like crazy goals and all that, it's not like you're pushing it on everyone all the time. You're only pushing it on your leaders.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, didn't this person then do something, some project and then go on Twitter and they got blown up?

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, it got, this will reveal him. So, yeah, I won't reveal him, but um he took a lot of money from a project. We'll just leave it that way.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then it didn't turn out well. It didn't turn out well. No.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Frictionless Growth Marketing hosted by Sonya Thompson shows how modern brands grow by removing the friction in their marketing and customer experience that pushes customers away every single day, often without leaders even realizing it. Each episode delivers practical insights, real brand examples, and conversations with marketing leaders, showing brands how to win with the new rules of growth, identity-driven marketing, cultural relevance, and frictionless customer experiences. Listen to Frictionless Growth Marketing wherever you get your podcasts. But um we have this other tweet from your partner here, your, your, um, your brother-in-law, Heaton Shaw,

• 14:13Speaker 00

  says AI didn't come for your job. So this is, here's, here's the reality with AI. AI is not coming for your job, for your jobs, guys. AI didn't come for your job. It came for your mediocrity. Most jobs won't disappear, but the people doing average work will. AI automates the stuff you thought was safe, not because it's technical, because it's predictable. I love that tweet.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's very true.

• 14:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. What do you think about it?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  I know, I, I agree. And I talked to so many people in marketing, they are almost at every event I go to, a lot of them are corporate events. Then one of the top questions I always get is, what do you think is going to happen to us X years from now? When they say us, they're talking about themselves and their colleagues. And my typical answer is, is if you don't adapt and you're struggling to adapt, you have to worry. And usually the people that ask me that question are the ones who aren't adapting.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, it's a very simple thing. It's, it's, oh, what, what do we do? Work harder, but oh, the moment you say that, oh my God, right? Like, oh, the thought of working harder, I can't do that. You know, I actually pissed off a lot of people. I was telling Noah about this. Um, so I got a message from someone in Finland, right? Um, and so they said, um, they were trying to schedule a call for, um, the software. And, um, they're like, um, you know, I was like, hey, does this time Pacific work? And they're like, oh, I only work, um, 12 to 5 P M. Finish time. And, uh, oh, by the way, what is that time zone conversion?

• 15:42Speaker 00

  And I'm like, one, you're too lazy to convert to time zone. Two, maybe you're

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Google it.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, freaking Google. Why are you asking me? And then, and then it's like, oh, and maybe they're working part time, which is great for them. But the moment I'm, I'm like, I just read 12 to 5 P M. Like, what is this, right? So I go to, I go to, I go to threads. I posted to threads because I knew I'm going to get a crazy reaction on threads, right? So I post the screenshot. Obviously I make them anonymous. And, um, I posted, I was like, this is why Europe loses, right? And then, oh my God, that, that thread post right now has like 200 K views on it. But my point is all the people that are responding are people that do not want to work. It's like, sounds like a good life to me and everything, but it's like, okay, great. Well, that's a trade off. If you're saying you don't want to be replaced, but you, you kind of have to adapt to this thing. Well, to adapt, you kind of have to work a little harder right now to figure out like, but by the way, if you don't want to adapt, that's okay.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  But don't complain when the people that adapt, that work harder, they end up getting the results that you wanted.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yes. It's like the people that always ask me the question in marketing, what's going to happen to us in the future? Most of them aren't adapting. The ones who are adapting, they're putting in the hours, they're testing stuff on the weekends, they're talking to their colleagues about new things. And I've talked to some of these individuals. At the same corporate events and they're just like, yeah, that person's lazy. And I was like, so what do you think is gonna happen? They're like, I don't know. I don't care. I'm adapting. They're gonna need me if they wanna adapt. So what do I have to worry about? Why do I even have to think about this?

• 17:04Speaker 00

  So they don't ask about like the people that adapt when they talk to you, they're excited about these things.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're excited. Like I send you stupid stuff all the time.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  Hey, check out the CIA prompt over here. Check this out over here.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Some of it's great too.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, some is great, but I just, I'm so excited about this stuff, right? It's like, it's like playing a video game. Um, I wanna close it off on this one.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  But going back to you.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  The attitude you have on testing new things, I wish more people in organizations had that attitude.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  I think most of them would probably be doing their own thing.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  No, I'm talking about testing new things.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Uh, there's a lot of people I know who don't have the risk appetite to be an entrepreneur, but they love technology and they're willing to test. If you're not willing to test, and when I say test, when you, when I'm giving this example of Eric, the CIA example that he's talking about. He's not only testing stuff related to marketing, but he's testing all things related to AI, including things like development. He's at the gym coding up a game using AI. I think it was Mario or something like.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  Mario and Minecraft.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Okay, so when you look at what he's doing, he's trying to understand how these platforms, how this technology works so that way he can figure out better ways to use it and his job, his business and all aspects of life. When people are willing to test and learn, they're gonna be more likely to find better ways to use that technology. When someone puts themselves in a box, oh, I'm in marketing. I only need to test AI for a specific marketing task. Well, if you do that, it's not gonna start giving you more creative ideas. The only way to get creative ideas is to test the application or the technology in all different possible ways and you'll quickly start coming up with out of the box ideas to just make things more efficient for your own industry.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  You know, people often will say, oh, how do I get more creative? Well, the way you get more creative is not just by learning. Learning is a prerequisite. You have to learn. But mainly you have to do. That's how you be creative, right? Um, so. Kieran Flanagan tweeted this, so he's the VP of Marketing at HubSpot or SVP, I guess. So he said, kind of similar to Heaton, he's like, "Marketing in the AI era is a game of extremes. Average no longer cuts it." So there you hear it again, "average no longer cuts it." "Only two types of marketers will thrive. One, standout creatives who craft unforgettable creative, that's number one. Two, engineer-led marketers who leverage AI to personalize and scale like never before. Why? Because software is multiplying, but distribution is shrinking." That's something that's worth talking about. "Distribution is shrinking. Attention is scarce and generic is invisible. We're entering the era of value.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  One, better software, lower costs. Two, better marketing, lower costs. To win, you must deliver extreme value. The middle will disappear fast." I think the "distribution is shrinking" thing is very real. Yeah, but anyway, that is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.