Introduction Hi, e-commerce friends. Let me introduce you to Kerri McDonald, who was the speaker at Ad World Conference in 2022 and invited to speak there this year. Kerri dove head-first into e-commerce over four years ago, driving her first brand to eight figures status as a director of marketing in less than three years. She co-founded The Greenhouse with her partner in 2020. Centered on e-commerce, email and SMS marketing, The Greenhouse has quickly grown into an agency where clients take root and flourish, generating over 10 million in revenue for its brands and the first year. Kerri, welcome to the show.If you want to connect with Kerri, we have a Facebook group. Kerri will be also part of that group. And this is only for e-commerce owners so feel free to join us.  Highlights https://youtu.be/6htxGYlQ8CQSo I would say if you're just looking into getting started into SMS, I would definitely focus on making sure you have a strong email list first. If you don't have a strong email list and a strong email channel, then it doesn't make sense to pick up another channel that requires more of your attention and more of your strategy. (8:25)Best practices, number one, focus on growing the list. Because you're only going to be as successful as you're growing the list. So when I say build your email list first and then leverage the email list to try to get them into an even deeper form of your community. So if they're already in your email list, try to get them on your SMS list as well. (13:30)So how are you acquiring leads and customers? So acquisition is the first step in the journey. And then you have conversion, how are you converting those customers? And then you have retention, how are you retaining those customers? So you have these three buckets, and the thing is that all three buckets need to be strong. There are different channels that help with each bucket. (23:15) The Beginnings I've been in the e-commerce space now for about five years. Five years ago, I was a teacher. But while I was a teacher, I realized it wasn't the right career path for me. But I was always a very creative person so, when I had time off, when I was teaching, I taught myself graphic design and I started an Etsy shop. And those skills landed me a position in graphic design at an e-commerce company.I was able to transition there. Working for an e-commerce startup, there's a lot of opportunities for growth, learning, etc. I really took that opportunity about three months in. I was designing the emails and then I started sending the emails, and then moved my way up into the company and eventually became director of marketing and the brand grew to eight figures, nine figures, pretty quickly.It was a really good experience in e-commerce, just being director of marketing for a large brand for three years, managing agencies, managing a marketing team, building the tech stack, everything like that. Getting hands-on experience with a brand was by far the best way that I was able to learn about marketing and learn about e-commerce in general, just learning what a brand goes through on the inside.After that, I was working with the company and I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit, starting my own Etsy shop even back in the day. I've just always wanted to pave my own path and I knew I had it in me. While I was working with the e-commerce company, my co-founder, who's also my boyfriend, my business and life partner, we started a clothing company and we just wanted to try that out on our own to see how it worked and what the logistics were, building it on our own. But then we were met with some challenges with COVID and the supply chain, and we couldn't get the product. We pivoted to the agency space because I knew email and SMS really well.And so we said, "All right, if e-commerce is going to be difficult right now during COVID, maybe we can pivot to a position of helping e-commerce businesses.