[00:00:00] Matt Cromwell: Hey everyone, welcome to the show. I want to, uh, ask you a quick question. Let's imagine for a second that you know a successful SaaS owner who has been living their life, being successful in the world, um, outside of WordPress, and they come to you and they say, Hey, I want to start marketing to the WordPress community.

[00:00:48] Um, you know, what's weird or different about them? What would you tell them? Do you even know what you would tell them? Sometimes I don't think we even understand how unique and different and special the WordPress community and the WordPress market is, um, because we've been in it for so long. Um, but today we get to ask that question.

[00:01:08] So, uh, I'm Matt Cromwell and this is WP product talk. Uh, I'm from Stellar WP.

[00:01:14] Zack Katz: And I'm Zach Katz with Gravity Kit and Trusted Login.

[00:01:18] Matt Cromwell: And today our topic is the unique challenges of marketing to the WordPress audience.

[00:01:25] Zack Katz: And that's why we've invited Rytis Lauris today. Uh, Rytis, thanks for joining us. Uh, please introduce yourself and what you do.

[00:01:33] Rytis Lauris: Thanks for inviting really great to be a part of WordPress community and, uh, uh, guest at your show. Um, yeah, so I'm Rytis Lauris as you already Zach introduced me. I'm co founder and CEO of Omnisend. Which is a marketing automation platform for mainly for those who sell online. So either physical goods or bookings or courses, et cetera.

[00:01:58] So yeah, we help to retain your customers and basically to communicate with your existing customer base via email, SMS, web push notification. So marketing automation, we help you sync synchronized data with your website, with your online store, with your LMS tool. And based on those. On that data based on triggers, we hear from your customers, from your visitors, from your buyers, automate marketing messages, and basically invite customers to get back to you and purchase again and again and again, because usually the first purchase is a loss for you if you sell something online, because you pay for Google and Meta more than you earn.

[00:02:37] And it's very important for, to invite your customers to come back and then to purchase again in order to make a profitable business. So that's what we do.

[00:02:47] Zack Katz: Awesome. That sounds like something that every product owner would need.

[00:02:52] Rytis Lauris: Oh yes, I have no doubt, you know, and once we started like email, um, 10 years ago, uh, email marketing, and we said, okay, we will take this specific niche.

[00:03:02] Those who sell online and we will create the unique experience for them and we'll create more value than the generic email marketing tools, like, you know, constant context or MailChimp's of the world. Like people were a bit skeptic about that and said, come on, email, it's so old school. It's going to die soon, but, uh, you know, 10 years for it.

[00:03:24] Um, and it's still the most effective retention communication channel.

[00:03:29] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely. Uh, folks, if you are here watching live, we would love to answer your questions live on the show. Just use the chat. the comment area, uh, and, um, we will highlight them and ask them, um, as we go. So, um, like we do every week, um, we want to kick off with talking about why this subject is so important.

[00:03:49] What's so important about understanding the unique challenges of the WordPress market, uh, in particular? Um, we actually put me as first. first for this one. Shoot. Um, I honestly, I, I thought a bit about it and I'm, I'm actually really excited mostly to hear from, from, from Rita's honestly. Uh, but as I've been thinking through all of our stellar WP products, thinking about my journey with give WP and the unique aspects of WordPress in particular, the thing that, that we've always, focused on the most is this idea, um, of the wordpresser, um, that is a DIYer.

[00:04:30] And what I don't love about that is I feel like that that has been evolving or changing in a lot of different ways. Um, so much of, of how we always approach our products was thinking of the The person who really likes to get their hands dirty, who likes to, to work on their website a lot, who likes to tweak and fiddle and change stuff.

[00:04:50] Um, and that was how a lot of our products were built from day one. Um, but the WordPress market itself has been changing quite a lot. Um, and that idea. of that ideal wordpresser, um, I think is different now. Um, I've heard quite a few people say that, that people don't care about fiddling anymore. That, that the way that Squarespace and Wix have influenced the market so much, that Means that we need to just be delivering these products that just do things for people automatically that just are great out of the box that are designed gorgeously.

[00:05:25] Like back in the day, every product was just like a big long screen of settings. That's like what every single product was in WordPress, um, settings, and then a whole bunch of actions and filters for the devs, you know? Um, but, but more and more it's, it's become like, you need to be able to handhold them.

[00:05:42] You want it to look amazing. Uh, it needs to be able to have lots of flexibility without being bloated. Um, it's kind of like, I feel like we're being, being put into a impossible corner in many ways. Um, and we need to fit all of that into the WordPress admin area somehow magically. Um, but I think like figuring out exactly.

[00:06:06] What it is that makes a WordPress or a WordPress or today, that question has gotten a lot more challenging overall. Um, so like, why is it important? Well, because it's changing so much. Um, I don't know that I have a really good answer about where things are landing in terms of the majority of the market, but I know that figuring out the audience and what makes them tick or what makes them buy has never been more relevant than it is now.

[00:06:30] Um, that's my take, uh, personally. Um, but, uh, uh, Regis, what about you? Why is this subject so important for you and OmniSend?

[00:06:40] Rytis Lauris: So there are multiple angles, but maybe just to follow up to what you just said. So, uh, and maybe just for context a little bit for, for, for the audience here. So OmniSend is already 10 years in the market.

[00:06:53] We are second, the largest, Uh, email automation, marketing automation, uh, tool in, in the Shopify ecosystem. So we've been there for quite, quite many years in Shopify, BigCommerce, uh, Equid, Magento to some extent, but then Magento basically went out of the market. It went so, so upmarket enterprise level, uh, that to what you, so we kind of have, Quite a lot of experience in those like world guard and ecosystem.

[00:07:20] So, and to what you touch here about this technical aspect. So that's what we feel. And that WordPress is still a bit more technical. And, uh, what do I have in mind? Just like very anecdotal, like evidence here, like the plugin for itself. Yeah. So in Navicus, Navicus systems, uh, now we have, like you mentioned Wix, we have Wix integration as well.

[00:07:43] So in Navicus systems, nobody cares about, your plugin actually. This is just a very technical thing, integration part, which I don't want even to know about its existence. Yeah. And WordPress is different, you know, there are developers who will look into it. They, they really care about the, the, the security stuff.

[00:08:02] They really care about the convenience. It has to be, I mean, yeah, we are SaaS products, so we are not, Open source by ourselves as a platform, but our connector is open source and there are developers from the community who really are keen to learn what is, you know, in it, is it, is it safe? How does that work at such a quality of it?

[00:08:23] And they care about it. So, so that's where the unique thing starts. Uh, and to just maybe following up to what, what you said that the redefinition has to be done, uh, but at the same time, definitely, uh, there are. More Geek, geeky people in the world. And I mean, by, by the, in a good terms, you know, but, but we choose WordPress because just the one to touch it's similar, like Android to, to, to, to Apple.

[00:08:51] Yeah. So system, uh, to, to super close the way you can't do anything can just follow, follow the rules. So that's probably kind of the, the, the initial starting point. If, if you are on the advocate systems and you would like to enter, or you, maybe you're new to WordPress. So from our experiences, that's where we'd start.

[00:09:09] That's where you start basically, you have to adopt your product to WordPress needs. Because it, it, it barely is like, you know, that one size fits all ecosystem, although we serve very similar kind of customers, but each ecosystem has its own requirements. They have very, there are some technical limitations, so advantages as well, including WordPress.

[00:09:33] Yeah. So let's say one of the, the. very much requested feature from our customers is like discounts that would automatically generate discounts. As you know, we mainly serve those who sell online. So playing with discounts and sending some campaigns to, to boost your sales is one of our strategies our customers use a lot.

[00:09:53] So let's say with WordPress is a bit more difficult in comparison. So to Tobaccos. Platforms to do that, but it's still being requested by, by, uh, WordPress customers, you know, and sometimes we just have not, not, not, not to blame WordPress, uh, but at the same time to explain that, okay, those are limitations that we cannot, uh, cannot maybe overcome by ourselves.

[00:10:14] And that's, that's a feature which unfortunately cannot like deliver it to you. And you have some, uh, some limits, but at the same time, there is, there is more flexibility to you as already. I mentioned with a plug in connector, all the third party apps as well. Um, yeah, but we can continue. A bit later.

[00:10:35] Matt Cromwell: Absolutely. Zach, what about you? Why is this such an important subject for you? I,

[00:10:41] Zack Katz: it was fascinating hearing Rita's say that the. The conceptualization of WordPress is completely different than something like Wix or Squarespace, where something either just works in Wix or Squarespace, and it's just a feature, and you enable it, or you have an integration, and that just works, so you don't need to worry about it.

[00:10:59] That was fascinating to me, because we are so, uh, feature driven. We are so like technical in our consideration of how things work and like, Oh, it's a custom post type. Who cares what a custom post type is? So, uh, for me, the complexities of the WordPress space are one of the things that make it unique. Um, I was talking with somebody from the Drupal space.

[00:11:24] Uh, at WordCamp US last year and hearing what that entire environment and culture is like was fascinating. And I don't remember exactly what she was saying, but it was, um, it was a very different environment and the feel of WordPress, I think, is something that takes going to WordCamps to understand. It takes joining hosts out of Slack, WordPress.

[00:11:52] org Slack. Uh, to understand what it's like to be part of the community, and that's not something you really get. If you go to the WordPress subreddit, uh mm-Hmm, , that's you, you kind of get a hint at it. But then you go to the wordpress.org plugin support forums, and you start to understand more. You go to, uh, you read WordPress, Twitter, and you start to understand a different side of it.

[00:12:13] There's an entire culture of norms and expectations of a product owner inside a WordPress space. That is very different from the commercial open seas, uh, that you might like wordpress square space and wix. Those are monetized platforms. Wordpress is an open source platform that has a very deep culture and community that, uh, you can ignore at your peril if you're coming into the wordpress space.

[00:12:42] Rytis Lauris: Absolutely completely agree. Exactly what you said. So, yeah, so we started like with, uh, with this technical alignment or fulfillment of the needs, but definitely like the community is what makes WordPress unique. That's like, for sure. And to be, to be honest, I was really, uh, myself and like, the organization was like blown up, like, of how different it is, uh, that to the team.

[00:13:08] True community exists here. So, and I would say probably, I just tried to kind of find a distinction worse to describe it. So there are ecosystems, uh, and the WordPress is an ecosystem, but there is a community within this ecosystem and the communities do not actually exist in other ecosystems. Those, those are still ecosystems we have.

[00:13:30] They have, uh, influences, they have podcasts, they have developers, they have agencies, et cetera. But there is no, this community feeling, understanding, or like a sense of belonging is, is either non existing or way, way, way at a way lower level, I would say, so that's definitely what makes a WordPress unique and personal.

[00:13:50] I love it. Uh, it's, it's, it's truly, truly, truly great because this is where like work camps, um, I've been to as we are still kind of new here. So I've been to free work camps so far. So I, uh, the US, Asia and Europe, uh, sponsoring Asian and European. Once I'm looking forward for for for the US in Portland one.

[00:14:15] So again, like those events, uh, not even similar to anything else what I have experienced in the past. So that's awesome. It's really unique.

[00:14:24] Matt Cromwell: Yeah, we just, I did want to do a follow up and hear a little bit more specifically from you on why. Um, you all OmniSend decided to, um, start to invest into the WordPress, uh, market, invert into the WordPress community.

[00:14:42] Um, you've been really a lot more Shopify focused for this time. Um, and, um, what, what was it that provoked this, uh, this change? Um, and the one followup I have on that also is. Has it been worth it so far? I know it's only been a short time, but like, um, yeah,

[00:15:01] Rytis Lauris: yeah, it has, yeah, it's worth it. Yeah. So the answer to the second part is easier, so let me start there.

[00:15:09] So yeah, it's, it's worth it. This is truly the fastest growing platform for us. Uh, among, among, uh, all, all, all the platforms we serve and, uh, and kind of like to, to do, to be honest, like one of the main reasons, uh, to, to, to make this decision to go into more actively or actively in general, because we had a kind of low quality connector for quite a while, but we didn't even like maintain it, et cetera.

[00:15:37] But we start seeing that the growth on WordPress is still better than on other. Platforms that we do not invest. So there are primary platforms. We invest heavily and we see results and there are other platforms that we don't invest much on nothing. And then WordPress really stood out and we kind of tracked it.

[00:15:59] Okay. For, for quite a few, few, few months, even like more than a year. So something just happened that, uh, that, that, uh, to be honest, we were kind of maybe saw WordPress at some point as like yesterday technology. I would not deny this, and maybe that's why like five years ago or so, we did not make this decision to actively come into the ecosystem, but it kind of proved to, to at least keep its position, you know, not, not to lose its position.

[00:16:29] And it doesn't matter that, that despite the fact that. There is a tough competition in the market and there are strong competitors, well funded competitors, but, but WordPress still thrives. And, uh, yeah, so that was kind of like, you know, from a little bit of skepticism to kind of maybe denying for ourselves the skepticism and then seeing that actually this is organically growing market for us.

[00:16:54] So why should not we invest into this ecosystem, uh, more on. To see if we can really accelerate this, this, this organic growth, which was already quite good.

[00:17:06] Matt Cromwell: Yeah. I will say that, um, I, uh, I have a little thing I do on my personal blog that I call shiny new plugins. Um, and, um, I'm going to see if I can share my screen super quick, just because it's fun.

[00:17:21] Um, Yeah. Um, so it's shiny new plugins and I, I cover new plugins that are on the wordpress. org repository and, and if they're interesting or whatnot. And this was the very first one I did to re kick off this blog, uh, idea. And I covered OmniSend because I, I noticed that. There was a brand new free plugin, uh, connector for OmniSend and, uh, and I was like, Oh, you all should be watching this.

[00:17:49] It's a multimillion dollar company. Uh, they just released a WordPress plugin. Um, and then much later I noticed, uh, I, I did a follow up to that and, uh, and showed that, um, um, That you had already grown to 30, 000 active installs and in about like a month, I think it was, uh, and I just double checked and you're up to 100, 000 plus active installs for that connector plugin already, um, which I think is amazing.

[00:18:16] And because I really want to highlight what you said a minute ago when I said, is it worth it? You said, Absolutely. It's worth it. It's the biggest growing segment that we have. Um, and so WordPress going from like no integration with WordPress to just throwing that integration on the free. org repository, you're already seeing significant growth there.

[00:18:38] Is that right?

[00:18:39] Rytis Lauris: Yeah, that's right. So thanks for, for featuring us, uh, early on. Uh, uh, so, and then, and then the following, yeah. So, yeah, so you really spotted those, those numbers really right. That's awesome. Just can

[00:18:53] Zack Katz: agree. How are the customers different between Shopify and WordPress?

[00:18:58] Rytis Lauris: Uh, maybe kind of like the main difference.

[00:19:01] I would say they're not like two different in general. It is not that you would say, okay, this is like completely different universe. No. Uh, what is a bit different? So the variety is a bit bigger. And WordPress. So we have like WooCommerce, uh, like who sell mainly physical goods, which is the most similar to a Shopify ecosystem.

[00:19:22] On top of that, we have like learning management systems. We have booking plugins that, that all of those kinds are still, maybe when you would not call those e commerce, but. They are online businesses. They have online transactions because, and this is kind of probably one of the things that has changed in the recent, like five, four, five years that when Somnuson started, we actually, e commerce was just mainly selling physical goods.

[00:19:52] But, uh, but, but, but like, like more and more business actually on the COVID accelerated that a lot is actually going online and, you know, let's, let's Let's take an example of booking an, uh, appointment, uh, to your doctor, if it's your doctor that you go every time. So still you go online, you open the website of your doctor, you book it, you quite often even pay for service.

[00:20:19] So basically if you're in search of something new, so you start exploration online. So you Google, you'll maybe go to Reddit, whatever, but some. Recommendation sites you find in some forum in Facebook groups, some recommendations you go online, you explore, you make a decision, you need a social proof, you read reviews, uh, you make a decision, you pay for the service.

[00:20:43] Uh, it could be like barber, it could be a doctor, et cetera. And just instead of, of you, uh, of you being delivered with a parcel, you go to the doctor, but that's the only difference. And all the post purchase and post delivery, post delivery communication is back online and post delivery experience is back online.

[00:21:05] So what we see kind of Shopify, let's say, or eCommerce platforms, we are mainly focused on those selling physical goods and like WordPress, maybe just because of its open source, uh, origin, et cetera, the variety of customers, those who do different kinds of online businesses is, is bigger. It's an opportunity as well as a bit of a challenge because of the use cases are a bit more different.

[00:21:31] And then the variety of is, is broader. So of course our customers expect us to, to cover a broader variety of use cases and then to work as properly, equally good with, uh, physical goods to, to tickets, to, to bookings, to, to courses, et cetera. Nice. So that's probably the main difference.

[00:21:50] Matt Cromwell: Hmm. Um, next we want to talk a little bit about all of our personal experiences with the unique challenges of the WordPress space.

[00:21:59] Um, so, um, Zach, I'd love to hear, uh, on your own experiences. What in, uh, your vast experience with WordPress products have you had that's Like unique about WordPress.

[00:22:14] Zack Katz: Well, I started in WordPress, um, as mostly an SEO exercise because I, I was looking at, uh, really strong domains and wordpress. org had, it was a very strong domain and the readme, uh, files for plugins at the time were do follow.

[00:22:32] Uh, and I said, that's a PR nine website that is going to be able to link back to my clients. I was doing websites at the time. So I, I realized, okay, I have these clients running WordPress. Uh, they could have a plug in on dot org and have a plug and read me that links back to their website with very optimized text and, uh, provide value to the community.

[00:22:57] Yes, but also provide a lot of SEO juice back to my clients. I really optimized those readme files and Mika said, Hey, knock it off. You're a spammer.

[00:23:09] Matt Cromwell: It wasn't wrong.

[00:23:16] Zack Katz: And I have since watched the plugin guidelines grow. Much longer. I think that I might've inspired a couple of them. Yeah. That's that cat's rule.

[00:23:27] Matt Cromwell: So

[00:23:27] Zack Katz: I didn't, I did a bunch of bad stuff, uh, until I slowly learned what it meant to be part of the WordPress community. I think the transition there was going to the, my first WordCamp, WordCamp Denver, 2009 saw Matt Mullenweg talk state of the word. Uh, it was great and I realized, Oh, I'm, I'm spamming the community that I actually do care about.

[00:23:50] This is, this is not just a business enterprise. This is a community and I want to be part of it. And that really, that shift happened. And I went from like, I don't know, capitalist 1. 0 to like open source contributor 2. 0.

[00:24:03] Rytis Lauris: It's, it's, and it's like very good angle to Zach what you mentioned. Cause I would, I would say, I would imagine, okay, I would guess that, you know, You would call yourself Grove Hacker, but the community treated you as a spammer.

[00:24:18] So yes, one

[00:24:20] Zack Katz: weird trick will get you banned from the WordPress

[00:24:23] Rytis Lauris: directory. So that's kind of like, uh, you know, coming into the new ecosystem. So of course we start asking people, those who are for, for many years, we have experience, et cetera. So, okay. Okay. So how, how actually to navigate it? Yeah. So we, we need help because in general, we understood that.

[00:24:43] Could be different. Yeah. And then we start checking, talking to people. And then yeah. We realized it is different to, to ecosystems. And it's kind of like one of, one of the things that, you know, what we were worried about, uh, don't be too aggressive. Yeah. Uh, and like multiple examples then, then, then. The companies that come, come, come to the ecosystem, if they are too aggressive, they, they are being like rejected by, by WordPress ecosystem.

[00:25:10] And, uh, yeah, so that's kind of like, you know, what we as a company, I mean, we're still. I mean, we are still for profit company as you are. And, and, and, uh, that's where, where to really load balance, uh, where you still like market yourself and, and, uh, where, where it's like still good, where it's maybe just, uh, where it's growth hack, where it's spam.

[00:25:34] So it's just, it's just, it's defined, or maybe, or maybe just like we're giving examples, so I can know we've come with a. Too big budget and maybe start kind of overloading everyone and being like super aggressive one to, to, to, to put your swag everywhere and to be too visible, which again, is not being well accepted by them by the community.

[00:25:54] So that's kind of another lesson that we learned and truly, I mean, like, you know, coming to the work and with such a T shirt is still good or not. So, yeah. We tried, seemed like people accept it well, that it's not too aggressive and it's okay. But that's, that's one thing that you definitely have to learn, especially if you're coming from other backgrounds.

[00:26:14] So yeah, that's really resonated to me to what Zach you told about your first experience. And how did you

[00:26:19] Zack Katz: decide to sponsor WordCamp? Uh, was like with that in mind about not being too aggressive and not being too commercial?

[00:26:28] Rytis Lauris: Yeah. So again, we're kind of like, uh, first time we went with a team already with a smaller team, but went to work camp us, uh, we've heard that all those work camps are really like flagships, free flagships are different one to another, but, but in general, we kind of like understood that they might be different, but the community is actually gathering there.

[00:26:54] Uh, and there are people who. travel overseas. There are people who just go to those like national, like regional, uh, work camps, so the, the, the flagships, et cetera. So if you want to present yourself in front of eyes of the community, so you have to sponsor. I think that is just inevitable. So yeah.

[00:27:14] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:27:15] Yeah, WordPress folks love t shirts. So bring, bring good people will be at your booth for

[00:27:21] Rytis Lauris: sure. So we've got some, some, some good, good, uh, the best swag I will, I will give you a tip. So our, um, just the bags there again, the, the, the, the, the same quite, quite, uh, like bright green color, it's written good things inside.

[00:27:39] Zack Katz: Very

[00:27:39] Rytis Lauris: small logo of OmniSend, very small logo of OmniSend, but small again. So it's not kind of, doesn't look too promotional, uh, but like good things inside and it's, it's a positive emotion and people love wearing those. And it's

[00:27:51] Matt Cromwell: true, actually. I think I came home from WordCamp Europe with like four new bags actually.

[00:27:57] Uh, but they are good and it's like always have a bag for going grocery shopping now. So,

[00:28:02] Zack Katz: uh, And is the swag scene different in Shopify? Are there, are there actually conferences for Shopify? Like what's the, what's the surrounding?

[00:28:10] Rytis Lauris: No, there's nothing like that. They, they, they used to be, there is one, there is one like for, they try to make it like developers only, which, uh, there are still agencies that coming, et cetera.

[00:28:22] But then it's kind of like, you know, the, the, all the talks are just. Developers focused. So there are still someone who tries to make some, some business in it, et cetera, but, but then it's a bit weird, et cetera. It used to be Shopify unite prior to COVID and it was like big and very similar to what WordCamps are like.

[00:28:40] It was like all developers, uh, solutions, agencies, even customers, merchants, in this case, those who sell online, but, but they kind of, uh, they tried to move with it online. I would say it was a failure and then since then, there are no, no, no conferences at all. So in other systems, in other systems, we operate, we don't see anything, uh, similar to what word cams are.

[00:29:09] Matt Cromwell: Interesting. Cause word cams are also just so vibrant. There's so much life there. There's so much. enthusiasm and excitement. Like I know personally, I know people in the WordPress space that I've known basically only because of WordCamps, but I've known them for like 10 years now. Um, they're, they're not just even just casual acquaintances.

[00:29:29] There are people that are like, I'm looking forward to hearing about what's going on in their life. Um, it's, it's. It's not just a hobby or just a passerby thing. It's like a significant event, uh, for a lot of people.

[00:29:41] Rytis Lauris: Um, agree, agree. So even kind of myself, like on the, from, from personal standpoint, already have people, which I really looking forward to meet, to meeting again, like in, in, in Portland, so, um, so because we met like already for, for two or three times in the work camps and, you know, so it's quite, it's, it's, it's.

[00:30:00] There are some friends that they meet like twice per year, once per year. So if we meet like three times per year, it's already quite, uh, quite often.

[00:30:08] Matt Cromwell: That's awesome. Yeah. Well, I'll say for my story time, um, that the biggest thing that I've noticed over the years that makes WordPress different, um, is just the way in which our products are distributed into, uh, Uh, highly, uh, unpredictable environments.

[00:30:27] Um, like anytime I talk with any anyone who does digital products that are SAS based for the most part. Um, they will, you know, talk about it in a certain way that makes it really, really clear that they don't have any of the problems that I have. Um, that they're like, well, we control the environment. I, I do not control the environment that my product is in in any way.

[00:30:51] Um, and we, we have to develop. defensively all the time. We have to code in a way that's always anticipating problems, uh, that we can prevent, um, and that we can, uh, avoid in different ways. Um, I can remember, um, the day that we decided with GiveWP, we had, so GiveWP is a donation, uh, platform, um, And, um, our forms are the most important aspect of what we do.

[00:31:20] Um, and with themes and other plugins and, and even email plugins, uh, they all do things to the donation experience that are sometimes unpredictable. Um, and the biggest one we had a, A lot of hard time with was, was themes, themes would, would force all kinds of interesting, challenging, difficult styles onto labels or onto fields or onto select boxes or, uh, any of the things that we depended on to make payments with.

[00:31:51] Um, and we made a decision that we were going to change the entire approach that we did our forms. And we're going to start embedding our forms on websites in an iframe. And to me, that was like, Anathema to good web development. I was like, you cannot put something in an iframe. Um, luckily my, our development team was a lot smarter than I was.

[00:32:11] Um, and they really found a great way to have our cake and eat it too. So that it is in an iframe it's protected against all kinds of crazy styles, but also empowering our users to be able to customize it in amazing ways, but just. Having to have that conversation, having to be like, how can we ship this product in a way that we have a lot of confidence that it's not going to break?

[00:32:32] Um, like that alone is, is a very unique aspect of WordPress. Then, of course, supporting products like that, um, having to basically, um, like the trajectory of, Technical support in WordPress has was for a long time. How do we draw really thick boundaries on what we do and don't support? It was like, this is my responsibility.

[00:32:54] I can't take responsibility for everything else that's going on out there all the time. Um, and if you come in and you say, yeah, your product doesn't work because of X, Y, and Z, I might say, well, X, Y, and Z is your problem. So go talk to them. And that's just a terrible customer experience. And so lately it.

[00:33:14] Tides have changed a lot of folks are starting to just say, we're just helping with WordPress folks, no matter what, like, if you come in, you can't have success with my product. I don't care if it's a theme problem. I don't care if it's a caching plugin. I'm just going to help you because I need you to have success with my product.

[00:33:30] But that means. highly technical people on your team who really know what they're doing because they're not just supporting your product. They're supporting all the millions of permutations of what WordPress can be for people. Um, that Wild West environment is like, I think the most unique, one of the most unique things about developing building, having a business in WordPress, um, that That's so many other folks just don't understand it all.

[00:34:01] Zack Katz: Yeah. The technical responsibilities of a developer on WordPress are exponentially larger than in other ecosystems. And I had an app on Shopify years ago called Contactified, which I was trying to connect Shopify marketing lists with constant contact. And I, it was great. I, I loved the experience of building on such a contained platform where I could, there weren't even hooks for me to get, make changes to templates.

[00:34:31] It was so locked down and yet there was an app store where people could install and activate and pay me. effortlessly. It was really refreshing to have that added like that focus to the product. But when you get into WordPress, there are coding standards that you need to learn to handle the lack of and the addition of So many different, uh, plugins that can modify things in unexpected ways.

[00:35:01] Nothing is type safe, nothing is, uh, you can't assume security in any part of the plugin. Um, how, how did you have to change your support and your development team Rytis, uh, for, to, to accommodate those changing, uh, environments?

[00:35:24] Rytis Lauris: So support team, uh, we did not change much. So basically it's just like dedicated some people who are more into, into WordPress and probably kind of like a little bit of disclaimer.

[00:35:37] So our own website, Omnisend. com was always run on WordPress. So we do it now, but just. Yeah, because website builder and there's OmniSend focused on mainland, those who sell online, but, but there's still a need our own website. So, and then prior to OmniSend, actually my first experience with WordPress, but it didn't drag me that deep into the ecosystem or community.

[00:36:02] It was that I used to run digital marketing agencies. So, uh, that's where the OmniSend is been off from digital marketing agencies. So we were creating websites for our customers. One of the services we provided and we're creating on WordPress. So no, so that's, that's kind of my first relationship.

[00:36:20] WordPress happened like 12, 13 years ago. Uh, but, but yeah, just due to, due to, it was reasons of focused on the customers who sell online, we, we drifted away a little bit. Uh, yeah. So. Regarding getting back to your question. So yeah, we, we had already developers, you know, WordPress and who love WordPress. Uh, and then, then, then we just, okay.

[00:36:43] So who would like to focus a little bit more on, on, on maintaining WordPress integration, WordPress plugin, keeping the standards, et cetera. So yeah, you're right. So the documentation, uh, is, is, is you have to, to, to be careful. Keen on like more aspects in comparison to other platforms. Um, so, so basically just, yeah, dedicated some people from existing team, uh, mainly who, who had experience and who like WordPress and then just refocus them.

[00:37:15] In regards of support, you know, probably kind of, I was listening to you and, and, uh, and probably that's another thing that we have to identify and, uh, learning, which to be honest, maybe never, never kind of, uh, pointed that loud, but, um, I would say there are two words of WordPress in general. Um, so there is a community, uh, which is big, but even bigger pool of customers, uh, those who actually don't care much about WordPress as well.

[00:37:47] You just go to their hosting providers. They, they, they take the hosted WordPress solution and they do not develop. Yeah, so there are those, uh, like truly like technical people, et cetera, who, who hands on develop all the higher agencies to develop on behalf of them, et cetera. But nowadays it's so easy to go to any hosting.

[00:38:10] I mean, maybe not any hosting, but a lot of hosting providers that. Have out of the box solutions and basically WordPress is more the, the, the content management system that is running in your background and you don't even care too much because you choose, let's say, uh, Hostinger or like Bluehost, et cetera, uh, as a primary source.

[00:38:32] That's where we land. That's where we start your online journey and they just offer WordPress as a back end. So this is, again, this is a big, big group of, of, of WordPress users as well. That's. are not technical, but don't care about WordPress that much, and they do not belong. community, although they're still on WordPress.

[00:38:52] Matt Cromwell: It's actually like a good, I would call it a chicken and the egg kind of problem. Um, uh, in the sense of like, do, do, uh, WordPress users, um, start their discovery by, finding a web host, um, or do they discover WordPress and then go looking for a web host? Um, that relationship, I think, is really complicated also, um, because I think if they were like just swarming to just adopt WordPress, then, you know, Then we would see all that adoption on wordpress.

[00:39:32] com most obviously, because it's like, that's, that is the place where you can just be like, well, this is obviously WordPress and they're going to let me spin up a WordPress website right here. Um, but the fact that so many hosts. WordPress so incredibly seriously and put WordPress as front of the offerings that they are providing, um, suggests that, that folks are looking at for, for web hosting in the first place and, and landing on, on WordPress.

[00:40:01] Second, um, I think it's a, it's a really unique question. Also. Um, and I, I've had a lot of different conversations with folks about how significant hosting is for, uh, discovery or not. Um, I, I tend to be more of like, I think WordPress drives discovery a lot stronger than, Hosts do. Um, but it's just kind of my feeling.

[00:40:26] Zack Katz: Uh, the reason I got into WordPress at all was the reason I think a lot of people started getting into WordPress. It was on cPanel and for those people who know what cPanel is, hosts used to provide a good host, in my opinion, had a thing called cPanel where it allowed one click installation of a bunch of different software.

[00:40:48] And WordPress, Joomla, eventually Drupal, but like, um, all these like forum softwares, there were all these one click installations where you, you sign up for a host and then you can kind of test out different ways to get a website. And I installed WordPress and it was the clear winner for me. That's how I found WordPress, is through the host, through cPanel.

[00:41:12] I don't know if that path is the same today, but, uh, it's interesting, to your point, Matt, like, uh, what drives it. In my case, it was the availability of, uh, one click install.

[00:41:23] Rytis Lauris: Yeah.

[00:41:24] Zack Katz: Through a host.

[00:41:25] Rytis Lauris: Yeah. And maybe, maybe Matt, you kind of like, I would say kind of third angle. Yeah. Which again, this is not kind of a hard statement on the half, like to, to, to, to date it back.

[00:41:37] But like, uh, what, what kind of have another feeling that, that people actually start more and more looking just to how to go online, how to create a website online. Yeah. And they just don't ordinary like market or a small business owner. They do not have a clear distinction. What WordPress is, what hosting is.

[00:41:57] Matt Cromwell: Yeah.

[00:41:58] Rytis Lauris: I just need a solution to go online. And, uh, and, and then I basically Google and whatever I found first, uh, or second or third. Yeah. Or maybe what, what kind of review did they find? So if, if someone recommended me to go WordPress or someone recommended me to, to, to choose the specific hosting provider and, uh, or, or Wix.

[00:42:20] Yeah, as, as, uh, I was just talking to

[00:42:24] Zack Katz: somebody that, uh, recently was asking chat GPT, they, they have a certain different, uh, like a certain spec that they need to have done. It recommended Django. And I was like, okay, that's, that's an interesting solution. But like, in addition, in addition to like search engines and hosts, you also now have, uh, LLMs that

[00:42:46] Matt Cromwell: are making recommendations.

[00:42:47] Exactly. Yeah. So

[00:42:49] Zack Katz: maybe you should get into Django next.

[00:42:52] Matt Cromwell: We do have a good, interesting comment here in the comment section from Peter Ingersoll. Um, he says, a big issue with talks about marketing WordPress is the lack of hard data. That's another unique one. You know, when you're a SaaS, you own the platform, you own all the data.

[00:43:09] It's like, even if you don't have it handy, you have all the data. You just have to go scrape it correctly and things like that. Um, but most of the time, The, what, what Peter continues saying is most of the popular stats are inferred or the margins of error aren't clear. Lots of assumptions are made and important things are missed.

[00:43:26] Uh, he actually goes on into another comment and says, even defining someone as a WP user is problematic. What kind of user? How do you make decisions without knowing numbers other than your own? Or is it just about volume? I mean, it's really true in terms of like, who is the WP user? There are lots of folks who use WordPress who don't even know that it is WordPress.

[00:43:46] You know, the, the church secretary logs in and does their, the work that they need to do on the website. Um, not even caring about. Whether it could build a page or a post or not, um, or somebody who's a volunteer for an organization, uh, just has to log in and get something done. Um, they are technically a WordPress user, but they're not necessarily somebody who makes a decision about things.

[00:44:09] Um, But the the folks who are running businesses, um, I think they tend to be the ones that we think of the most, um, running some sort of business in one way or another. And you need to enhance your WordPress website. Um, but I think the way in which. Plugin, uh, data in particular. I don't know if that's exactly what Peter is speaking to, but the way in which plugin data is obfuscated, uh, we don't know with certainty, uh, exactly how people discover our plugins on wordpress.

[00:44:39] org, uh, which terms are being used to search wordpress. org, uh, At all, uh, which kind of terms have the most volume? These are the types of like bread and butter types of data that podcasts have all the time for like Spotify and things like that. Or, of course, Apple marketplace has things like that as well.

[00:45:00] The Android store, the Google Play Store, all of the people who build digital products on all these other platforms have this data all the time, and it's very instructive for them. Um, We've got almost nothing on that front. Um, very, very little, um, agree,

[00:45:19] Rytis Lauris: agree. Uh, but. Like, uh, yeah, you mentioned examples of, of, uh, of, um, of like Apple or Android, et cetera, Google play.

[00:45:31] And, uh, those are really great examples, but I would not say that in other systems leads again. Those e commerce or like Wix or Shopify did not provide so much more data in comparison to, to, to what WordPress, WordPress do. And, uh, yeah, a bit more, but I would not say that the gap is like really massive.

[00:45:52] And each of those platforms are really truly well behind, uh, Apple or Google or Spotify. Well, that's good to hear because that's not, that's not the dialogue

[00:46:01] Zack Katz: inside the community about. The data sharing, it's, uh, yeah, we think we think we're in the dark compared to other platforms. So that's interesting.

[00:46:08] Rytis Lauris: Yeah. And, and of course we, we may be kind of, um, again, like on this and maybe we're in a bit, in a better position because we are source ourselves. So at least at some point we are able to track almost everything about our. Customer's behavior.

[00:46:24] Zack Katz: And we

[00:46:24] Rytis Lauris: look at those, those numbers that are being, so probably what is the missing from, from like some marketing standpoints.

[00:46:31] Yeah. So this, this ability to really track what are the search terms, especially in the wordpress. org is like crucially important to, to understand how do people search. So in, in our case, for example, what we do, so basically we proxy, we kind of make an assumption that what works in the other systems highly likely works the most in WordPress as in terms of search.

[00:46:52] Search terms, and they, uh, very similar to what works in Google. So if you do a, at least a little bit of SEO, uh, or paid ads, et cetera, and you are aware of for, for, for what work, what kind of keywords do work for you on, on Google. So that would be my piece of advice. And that's our lesson that, that, you know, you can, you can proximate and you can make assumptions that, that very similar on, on WordPress.

[00:47:19] Uh, second. Yeah, sorry, please. Yeah, maybe the 2nd, just a little piece of advice. So the numbers that that are being, uh, maybe a little published on press again. Those are kind of like, helps for comparison purposes. So you always run in some competition and truly, you do not care that much if, uh, if give WP has.

[00:47:41] It's higher install numbers in comparison to Omnisend because we compete in, let's say, email marketing keyboard. And where, where, where our position in like general, like plugins market, we don't care too much because again, we assume because email marketing keyword is the main keyword for us on Google and Shopify for weeks.

[00:48:02] We assume that it is the same on, on, on WordPress. So that's what we're trying to optimize the most. And we, we still have those numbers help us to. To compare, to compare ourselves with a competition within that, uh, that's field

[00:48:15] Matt Cromwell: for sure.

[00:48:15] Zack Katz: And, uh, that's great advice for marketing. Uh, I'd love to hear your best advice for product owners, uh, who are looking into entering the WordPress space overall.

[00:48:27] Like what's, what's your one great piece of advice.

[00:48:31] Rytis Lauris: So probably if you are operating in America systems, um, so that's, that's the main thing, like have is a community. Um, Angle in mind and probably the main advice would be ask people. So what comes with community? You have so many people whom you can ask and who are really, really willing to help you.

[00:48:50] So a lot of things that I share now, some of those we learned, but a lot of things were just given as advice free of charge, uh, by the community members. So that is really in general community is really, really welcoming and really willing to, to help you. So probably that would be my, my, my initial advice.

[00:49:09] If you are just. new, absolutely new for the business, uh, and maybe just considering to, to, to build your plugin, to build your SaaS product or whatever. So that's a general advice, which I give for anyone who is maybe considering to start your business, just do it. The best time to start your own products is it's now.

[00:49:31] Matt Cromwell: Love it. How about you Matt? Um, when it comes to the unique challenges of the WordPress, um, Ecosystem. I think in many ways, uh, my best advice is to keep it simple. Um, because I've seen so many new product folks. Um, I think I'm thinking specifically of product in the WordPress admin. Um, I've seen so many new products come out and just be like giant, big and flashy.

[00:50:01] Um, and you know, things that are very salesy and, and work. In other places, they'll try to use some of those sales tactics, you know, it's open source. It's WordPress. You can hook into just about everything. And people will be like, Oh, I could take over this whole screen just because you can doesn't mean you should.

[00:50:19] Um, and in general WordPress, the WordPress user. the typical WordPress user feels like the WordPress admin is theirs. It belongs to them. And if you start putting your stuff in front of their face on something that is theirs, they get kind of offended and bothered. Um, so kind of look around for best practices when it comes to how to build your product in the WordPress environment.

[00:50:44] Uh, keep it simple, clean. Focus, stay within your domain. Don't jump into like all of the edit screens. Uh, don't start putting your JavaScript in every single page. Definitely don't do any calls to home because, uh, that'll be problematic with the. org, um, things like that. Um, keep it simple, clean, um, best practice.

[00:51:09] Zack Katz: And mine would be to read the plug in guidelines if you're making a plug in. Don't be spammy.

[00:51:16] Matt Cromwell: Don't

[00:51:16] Zack Katz: be spammy.

[00:51:17] Matt Cromwell: Early Zack days.

[00:51:20] Zack Katz: And read the community code of conduct. That will give you a sense for Uh, what is expected of a community member? They're pretty simple. Like, don't be a jerk. Mm-Hmm. , uh, I don't think that's literally a, a line for the code of conduct, but it might as well be Yeah.

[00:51:36] But support. It's a good, pretty good summary. Yeah. Don't be a jerk. Uh, read the support forum guidelines. Uh, if you're going to be providing support, like there's a lot of. Uh, gotchas that you wouldn't expect. Like it's, it's pretty hard to actually provide, uh, support for a paid product that has a free version.

[00:51:55] So learn, learn what the nuances are there and watch wordcamp. tv talks. Like if you type in wordcamp. tv, it'll take you to wordpress. tv. You'll get a sense for the vibe a lot easier than reading an article. So maybe even start with watching WordCamp talks, and you'll, you'll get a sense for WordPress pretty, pretty well, I think.

[00:52:17] Matt Cromwell: That's awesome. Great stuff. Well, that is a wrap. That is all we got for this week. Uh, Rytis, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. Um, did you enjoy the talk?

[00:52:28] Rytis Lauris: Absolutely. Thanks for inviting and maybe just a closing remark. So as I state, listen to the device. So you just got a lot of great advice from two people who are very, Oh my gosh, I love that community.

[00:52:42] So

[00:52:44] Matt Cromwell: yeah, there's content out there. People are given advice all the time lately. It's been great. Uh,

[00:52:50] Zack Katz: where can people find you online?

[00:52:52] Rytis Lauris: So omni send.com, the product, and with cell, I, I prefer using LinkedIn. Mm-Hmm, . So Rita, Lori, on LinkedIn

[00:53:01] Matt Cromwell: we have, uh, Rita's, uh, LinkedIn link on our website, on his bio page by the way.

[00:53:07] So feel free to go to wp product.dot com and find this episode there and you'll find Rita there as well. And next week, uh, we are, uh, actually just got this, uh. Confirmed a little bit ago, Alex Standifird is going to come on and talk about growing your affiliate program. So I'm excited for that one. We haven't talked about affiliate programs all that much on the show.

[00:53:26] And I think that's an important one. So I'm looking forward to having Alex next week.

[00:53:31] Zack Katz: It is. And a special thanks to PostStatus for being our green room. If you're enjoying WP product talk, do us a favor, hit like, subscribe, share it with your friends, reference this show in your newsletters, your blog, or your own podcast.

[00:53:44] Uh, but most of all, we hope to see you next week. Thanks and bye. Bye everyone.