Watch Rytis Lauris of Omnisend exclusively on Founderpath. In “How Omnisend Broke $50M ARR Focusing On Content & SEO,” explore the practical strategies…
Featuring Rytis Lauris · Published September 6, 2024
Rytis Lauris explains how Omnisend built organic traffic in a highly competitive email-marketing market. He covers SEO team operations, authority building, AI Overviews, and cross-team collaboration.
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Omnisend and the competitive market
“how are they getting customers more efficiently than their VC backed competitors and that's what I wanted him to teach and that's exactly what he's teaching today I'm not going to spoil the beans let's just give a warm Round of Applause to the CEO of omen Rus Loris Rus come on [Applause] up thanks for being here man I got it right right 5 million 5 yes and what will you finish this year out you think yes we'll see we'll see this year is a little bit more challenging but it's”
“click not for sign up not for paying customer but just for one single click goes up to 60 bucks yeah so okay on high seasons on low Seasons around 40 30 bucks for one single click so really really tough competition and uh yeah so definitely investing in organic is what helped us grow okay so key principles key principles uh what our team applies our content in SEO team applies initially we focus on outcomes not”
“domain Authority is high sometimes it takes you just couple of days to get ranked in top 10 position with a some keywords of course if the highest competition keywords still takes times but but it it really really becomes easier so domain Authority it's very important thing um so the single tax itic that worked for us or the main tactic by far that worked for us is really really building a big pool of referring domains and referring backlinks yes so you see now we have”
“engine in Google nowadays if people are Googling this AI overviews is the top result that is being shown and here you can see you know omnisend is not already in the first position yeah we are listed there in the in the list down below a little bit but like you know bra hopspot other players are listed as a top player so we really have to overcome this one and how to do that this is this is a trick question this is a trick question and um uh you know and initially what”
“personal life he's talking to his CNBC so Google Sees okay that Bernard is a truly like respectful person and he writes good piece of content afterwards so it's important so that's another thing which was not uh was as necessary in the past but actually became very important recently um and backlinks still matter backlinks still matter so if you if you want to to come High into high positions with your own content you write good”
how are they getting customers more efficiently than their VC backed competitors and that's what I wanted him to teach and that's exactly what he's teaching today I'm not going to spoil the beans let's just give a warm Round of Applause to the CEO of omen Rus Loris Rus come on [Applause] up thanks for being here man I got it right right 5 million 5 yes and what will you finish this year out you think yes we'll see we'll see this year is a little bit more challenging but it's
always the Q4 is what defines the year so still we are only entering into the season the high season for us this is a very high seasonality and very clear seasonality stage is yours Co us up thank you thank you okay so hello everyone so thanks for staying here not going for a lunch so 20 more minutes uh yeah if you can start countdown thank you thank you very much so and thanks Nathan for inviting me and I will be talking about SEO so what Adam showed
how to use AI to to ride listicles I would disagree to some extent or maybe at large so I will explain you uh soon why is it so okay so yeah 50 million AR I'm co-founder and CEO what do we do we do um we do do we do marketing automation for those who sell online so basically if you online store we help you to communicate with your existing customer base by sending email SMS messages web push notifications yeah you
get the customer you need to retain the customer and that's what where omniscent comes into play um yeah and one of the our marketing tactics which is very important for us and that helped us to to to grow to a certain stage is uh SEO on content yeah so this is probably kind of used to be for quite a while the second largest driver initially we truly belonged as you see we launched a company 10 years ago so in 2014 uh we started doing SEO in
201 18ish 2019 something like this so for initial few years is we really relied on App Stores like Shopify App Store becommerce uh WordPress app stores Etc then we started investing in in various other uh channels and activities to acquire our customers so content at SEO became number two now it's a little bit being outperformed by agency Partnerships so maybe next year or sometime ago I uh sometime in in the future I can talk about about why agency Partnerships and freelance Partnerships
overtake uh overtake other uh go to market channels but let's get back to this so definitely like content and SEO help you drive traffic to a website Drive traffic to your blog and then convert into signups and of course into paying customers okay so in then next 20 minutes I will be talking initially about about omnison about competitive uh Market we are at then the first three years so that's that's the guaranteed thing that's what we did that's what worked for us that's what I recommend
and the third part is about today this definitely AI generative AI it's disrupting SEO industry and the searching industry in general so there are will I will share some insights some learnings but of course there are there is a stage of experimenting again and not as certain as it used to be in the past okay so uh a little bit about ourselves so competition is truly tough yeah so clavio mimp they are probably the main competitors for us those who serve directly exactly the same
customers as we do but at the same time we talk about SEO and the competition within the keyword space we do have players like HubSpot who is not our direct competitor we you have players like marqueta who is not our direct competitors but at the same time we compete for the same keyword email marketing is very broad space email marketing software email email Etc is a very broad space so we compete with those big guys so keyword difficulty goes as high as 97 and PPC value for
click not for sign up not for paying customer but just for one single click goes up to 60 bucks yeah so okay on high seasons on low Seasons around 40 30 bucks for one single click so really really tough competition and uh yeah so definitely investing in organic is what helped us grow okay so key principles key principles uh what our team applies our content in SEO team applies initially we focus on outcomes not
outputs doesn't matter how many articles you write it the only single medic that matters how much new revenue does vord bring so we we have ok across entire organization as a planning methodology so okar is usually if you're aware about okar methodology it's always about Moon chot yeah you put the the high ambition High ambition targets Etc in many cases you fail but sometimes you uh you you reach those and this is where the the Breakthrough moments actually
happen and SEO is a math it's not much creativity there there is a lot of calculations there is a lot of analysis keyword analysis competition analysis is and then very very pure calculation how many articles have do you have to write how many backlinks do you have to collect how many referring sources do you get have to get in order to reach the set position on the search uh what is important here to say we always relied on internal team we
never hired agency and this is that was a strategic decision we made and until today we keep doing this the team SEO team is very small even today there are only five people and at the same time we have a pool of Partners so freelance mainly freelance as are very small agencies that do write content for us and then do uh generate backlinks for us and AI is a good replacement for writing content I will touch in the third part so okay so first three years we just
started doing uh investing in content SEO our brand Authority is um almost at zero so you know we have to start somewhere so if someone of you in in content SEO at the same state stage a similar stage early stage so this is the piece of advice that I will give you to you okay so initially initially took us all almost three years to get uh from 0 to 40,000 visitors to our website and blog yeah now 180 but as always it
always compounds it always accelerates and initial initial stag is always the most difficult in business in Revenue in in website traffic growth Etc um so what are the few things which I learned at very beginning yeah so to be honest like being a a Founder CEO I thought okay I've heard like rumors okay you just write a good piece of content and Google bot will come read it love it and will recommend
to the entire world no yes the good quality of content is mandatory you should not be any uh at any point writing shitty content good quality is mandatory but it's not enough at all so SEO is not a free play at all uh you could be a good writer but if you don't buy backlinks if you don't buy referring other domains it will not work so first thing in-house team not
agencies why inhouse team because agencies they have multiple customers and they are not that deep into your industry not deep into your business you cannot actually put the truly ambitious targets Revenue targets for outside outsourced agencies if you Outsource everything yeah yes we we do Outsource agencies mainly Freelancers mainly small boutique agencies to write content and to build backlinks uh but the rest is being done the keyword search what we
want to achieve the target setting is being done uh inh housee since the very beginning and this is one of the good decisions that I would that I'm really proud of that we made and that's what I would recommend for everyone who is maybe just starting and um so one tactic to increase the domain Authority domain Authority even until today in the world of AI it truly matters if your domain Authority is low uh it will take you months to get your good piece of content to be ranked top in the top Google positions if your
domain Authority is high sometimes it takes you just couple of days to get ranked in top 10 position with a some keywords of course if the highest competition keywords still takes times but but it it really really becomes easier so domain Authority it's very important thing um so the single tax itic that worked for us or the main tactic by far that worked for us is really really building a big pool of referring domains and referring backlinks yes so you see now we have
like almost 100,000 backlinks that are referring to omnis and.com or block omnis and.com uh at the same time 11,000 unique websites do refer to omnison including like the ones like Bloomberg CNBC CNN Etc so Forbes so really really like the best ofor domains can you get get those referral links from those best Authority domains at very beginning no you can't it just takes time yeah and you know the best thing probably that we
have MailChimp referring to us um like you know competitors do refer hopspot referring to us yeah so competitors uh di competitors so at least the keyword competitors do refer to us and I will say how it happens so backlinks really really matter and for us it's really initial three years we focused on building backlinks uh shall you backlinks yes shall you buy from the low Authority uh website please don't do
that because Google recognize it um and then you can be penalized yeah so if there is something for cheap in the market usually there is a trap so tips how to build backlink so um just outreaching yeah and pro potentially you as CEOs maybe marketers Etc you keep receiving emails oh I would like to post this this this content on your blog you might find it span yourself but believe there are a lot of people who actually accept your content to their blogs to
their websites if you provide a good quality of content that's okay you don't put your name on it it's it's like ghost riding but you still get the backlink and this is what you uh want to do that another thing that works really well doing various researches in our case we at least once per year we do email marketing growing up what's happening in our industry whatever you know uh conversion rates clicks opens what a benchmarks Etc uh or we just do something like the recent like super
successful research about why Americans are buying on temo the Chinese Marketplace it has been quoted by Bloomberg NBC Forbes founder etc etc a lot of trusted sources so if you provide interesting content journalist will take not from first time sometimes you have to provide first piece second piece third piece so this is where you get the high quality free backlinks so you buy mid range backlinks you basically uh get
good quality by providing a good quality researches so that's about kind of building authority now when you get to to the authority level and it's today you know AI generative AI chbt Gemini U changes the landscape a lot so what I'm going to share now it's small like experiments again what we experiment what works what doesn't work it's not set on Stone yet because the industry itself is evolving
very very fast this year so initially what happens so more and more people actually do search not within the search engine it's on chbt you ask what is the best email marketing Solution chbt on Gemini and this is and this is just a real example yeah if if you ask what is the best email marketing platforms and for e-commerce focused platforms where are two recommended there is Cav and there is omnison C is way bigger this is a public company but at the same time
main competitor so if you are not listed here in this answer you're gone yeah so people will not uh visit your website will not explore you so this is very important to get into the results and to get into the brain into artificial intelligence as we can get into the brains in our true customers or prospective customers we need to do the same to get into the brain into artificial intelligence uh at the same time and at the same time even the Google uh Google is embedding Gemini as a default search
engine in Google nowadays if people are Googling this AI overviews is the top result that is being shown and here you can see you know omnisend is not already in the first position yeah we are listed there in the in the list down below a little bit but like you know bra hopspot other players are listed as a top player so we really have to overcome this one and how to do that this is this is a trick question this is a trick question and um uh you know and initially what
happened initially that uh that Gemini especially and Google CH gbd was was like maybe more accurate but gini was totally inaccurate and we took they they basically browsed the websites that in like in thir sometimes you know third fifth 10th page of Google search and they they made like Gemini made made conclusions based on that website data but now the recent research shows that basically if you want to be recommended
by a AI tools you have to be in the top search positions so Gemini now now puts into the a overviews the results from the from the content they get from top 10 Google search positions so still what does that mean but basically you have to do SEO play in order to be listed on Google in order for uh artificial intelligence to take those websites as a trusted source and to recommend you once
people are asking what is the best email marketing solution for e-commerce so basically that's where we get back to the like more traditional um traditional uh SEO Play Still you have to be listed in various listicles um so top 10 content is the King this is your goal to get and again the keywords there are so many keywords yeah I'm referring here and I'm showing examples of the most competitive keywords but there are hundreds of other
keywords and in your case that are not as competitive and you start and that's okay you know so another thing which really really truly became super important nowadays and what was not the case in the pass to collaboration between teams and look at this example if you search for like email marketing software um a lot of top 10 results they are affiliate plays now you can see here PCM this is an affiliate play email vendor selection affiliate play uh fores
is listed there zapier to some extent is Affiliates yeah so what does that mean that your content and our SEO team is not actually capable to get into those listicles because they ask you to pay to be listed there yeah to pay Revenue share to pay up front etc etc and they only have like six or five recommended software in those listicles so it's even the competition it's not only the money you can buy the the position there you have to convince them so in our case what does happen like seot makes
analysis look we have to be listed in all top 10 results couple of those are our competitors so we will will never be listed there or even sometimes we make an agreement with competitor look we list you number two of course you will list yourself number one but we you list Us number two we list you number two in exchange let's do that yeah and this is how you start dominating those results at the same time SEO teams go to affiliate team and say look there are four affiliate affiliate websites we
need to get into those listicles and then affiliate teams team does the job to in order to get into those listicles and that's how help SEO team to to drive their results second thing what is very important you know the content which is owned by you if you want in those top 10 positions to have at least one article which is on your own website on your own blog what Google requires more and more is actually to be authentic so the the writers the offer has to be the real
people and they have to be authorities online so this is just one example we have few colleagues from from whom we make like celebrities that internet algorithms would understand that this is Bernard is a real person he is you know writing about himself he's talking on webinars he's talking uh uh he's uh he's on podcasts as a guest yeah so I'm one of those faces and like other employees are other faces who write content afterwards even like you know about his
personal life he's talking to his CNBC so Google Sees okay that Bernard is a truly like respectful person and he writes good piece of content afterwards so it's important so that's another thing which was not uh was as necessary in the past but actually became very important recently um and backlinks still matter backlinks still matter so if you if you want to to come High into high positions with your own content you write good
piece of content uh the offer writes good piece of content the offer has to be Authority um the quality of the content is good but still still you need back links to refer yeah you can wait organically but usually have to accelerate this process in order to to to have referring links and domains into your good piece of article so that's basically and you know about the listicles what what Adam who was talking prior to that about this like AI writing
listicles uh and and content so um we are skeptical uh yes we do use AI to help us to assist to right piece of like content good content but AI should never be the full full full uh or the only offer as Google just penalized so many websites that were producing a lot of good content good content sometimes even very good content but a Google was already able to recognize if it's AI
full AI written content I don't know how AI maybe is catching another AI yeah uh but there were so many websites penalized and like you know we had one experimental branch of website which was a full AI written it just got down to zero no results at all like penalized to zero not so that was that is our experience and my advice would be not to rely too much on AI writing your your
content um okay so for the future um adapting to AI SEO World definitely it will continue it just experiments I shared what works now but it can be disrupted you know know coming few days uh being able to set uh to attribute SEO effort will be more challenging just because if someone search on Chad gbt or Gemini and then enters uh your direct link into your browser um it's very hard to attribute that's what we see actually
the the the growth of direct traffic is is it's growing there is the growth so highly likely people search on AI collaboration across teams it will the Need will increase and you know General brand awareness which to be honest H myself as a Founder was a little bit skeptical about you know General brand awareness initiatives I always left the marketed that is very very attributable that is very like tangible it's very easy to calculate everything Etc but you
know uh now I believe that in the world of AI General brand awareness will become more important it's the same as a like human brain yeah if artificial brain will not see you as a market player they will never recommend you that's it yeah they have I mean they so Gemini chat gbd other solutions they have to see you as a decent market player otherwise they will just not recommend you doesn't matter if it maybe very there are some sources who you who
list you yeah so in the last for 20 minutes so you know doesn't matter if a competition is tough you can do and you can even like while bootstrapping without without like overfunding just you have to be efficient you have to look at SEO or entire Marketing in my point of view as a math more than as a creativity and of course like AI is disrupting the world and and it's disrupting content at SEO but uh you can still conquer it so this is our small team so thanks them for doing a great
