Ramon Van Meer from Alpha Paw

Sam: Ramon, welcome to Beyond the Inbox. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.

Ramon: Yeah, thank you for having me. It’s awesome.

Sam: Can you tell us about your background and how you got involved in the pet industry?

Ramon: Yeah. I’ve been buying and selling internet businesses for 13 or 14 years.

I started very small. I wrote a small blog and sold it on Flippa.com for $500. Then I bought another website for $500, grew that, and sold it for $2,000.

They were very small acquisitions at first, and then they became bigger and bigger.

Around 2015 or 2016, I started a blog about soap operas—the daytime television shows—and grew that to 35 million page views a month. I sold that business in 2018.

Then, with the proceeds from that exit, I bought my current business, Alpha Paw, which is a pet ecommerce business.

So I’ve been doing internet marketing for a very long time—from email to SEO to online PR. I’ve done, or at least tried, almost everything.

Sam: I have so many follow-up questions.

I want to ask you about the origins of Alpha Paw.

I know the website was originally purchased for $125,000. It was called Sausage Dog Central.

Can you tell us about the specific problem that website solved?

Ramon: Yeah.

When I looked at the listing, I already knew I wanted to get into the pet space, so I was searching for an ecommerce business in that industry.

Then I came across this listing for Sausage Dog Central.

It was a website focused on Dachshunds, which are a breed with small bodies and short legs.

Small pets and dogs with short legs can have joint and spinal issues because jumping on and off furniture—such as sofas and beds—can be very bad for them.

It’s almost as though you or I jumped down from one floor to another a hundred times every day. Eventually, it’s going to hurt our joints.

Sausage Dog Central had designed a dog ramp.

It’s a fairly simple product: a ramp that dogs can walk up and down to get on and off a bed or sofa.

When I first saw it, I thought, “What is this? Who needs a ramp? Is this just for lazy dogs that don’t want to jump onto the sofa?”

But it’s actually designed to help prevent injuries.

Very small dogs sometimes physically cannot make the jump because the furniture is too high.

A lot of our customers also have overweight or older dogs that are simply too heavy or too old to jump safely.

That was the business I bought.

Sam: Can you tell me about the decision to rebrand Sausage Dog Central as Alpha Paw and to pivot toward what you’re doing now?

Ramon: Yeah.

We did some testing and started thinking about how we could scale it.

When I bought the business, it was called Sausage Dog Central and was very specifically focused on Dachshunds.

But there are only around six million Dachshunds in the United States.

The product can also be used by many other breeds and can be extremely helpful for them.

We thought that, if we kept the name Sausage Dog Central, there would eventually be a ceiling on the business.

So we decided to rebrand it to something more generic.

That’s when we came up with Alpha Paw and the PawRamp, which could be marketed to any dog breed.

What’s interesting, though, is that I sometimes think our conversion rate was higher when we were SausageDogCentral.com.

No matter what we tried, we were never able to beat those conversion rates again.

I think the reason was that, when it was Sausage Dog Central and someone who owned a Dachshund arrived on the site, they thought, “This ramp was made for my dog and my breed.”

That was probably why the conversion rate was always higher.

Sam: And that was the conversion rate from a first-time visitor to a first-time customer?

Ramon: Yeah.

We’ve thought about whether, instead of having Alpha Paw cater to all breeds, we should create breed-specific mini-websites.

We did some testing, but the operations and backend became a nightmare.

You need multiple Shopify accounts, multiple email-platform accounts, text-message accounts, and everything else.

In some cases, you can bundle parts of it together, but you still need to create different emails and content for each mini-site.

The manpower and bandwidth simply weren’t worth it for us at that point.

Sam: It’s interesting that you mention the idea of having mini-websites.

One thing that really stands out when I go to the website is your content strategy.

I look at the blog and see that you have different guides for different breeds.

I’d love to know more about the strategy behind that.

Ramon: My background is in internet marketing in general, but mostly content.

I’ve run a number of content sites.

I wanted to use that expertise to drive SEO traffic to our direct-to-consumer ecommerce website.

The idea was that there is a huge amount of search volume from people asking questions such as, “Can my dog eat strawberries?” or, “My dog keeps barking at the lights—what can I do?”

There are millions of searches across all of those keywords every month.

The theory was that we would create a strong content strategy, rank for those keywords, and have someone read an article and build trust with us.

Then they would see our products and think, “Hey, maybe I’ll buy one.”

But theory and reality don’t always match.

That’s the beauty of internet marketing: you always have to keep testing.

The conversion rate from our blog traffic was very low.

So we pivoted slightly.

We still focus on ranking more pages in Google and other search engines, but instead of trying only to convert that traffic into buyers of our physical products, we also do lead generation for pet-insurance companies and use display-banner ads.

We monetize the traffic in different ways.

Sam: That’s so interesting because I thought you were going to say you converted first-time visitors into email subscribers and then sent them down a funnel.

Is that something you’ve considered?

Ramon: We do that too.

For example, we have a dog-food-recall email list.

Dog-food brands frequently have issues that lead to recalls.

People can join the newsletter, and every time there’s a nationwide or significant recall for a particular dog-food brand, they receive a notification saying, “Be careful—brand X has recalled all products from these dates.”

We have different types of newsletters that we try to grow.

But it’s still a very long funnel.

Even with that, the conversion rate isn’t as strong as traffic with direct purchase intent or search traffic with high buying intent.

Sam: I imagine that, in the long term, all of this content will serve you well from a branding perspective.

Maybe pet owners search for different queries and keep seeing Alpha Paw.

They see that you have experts contributing to the content and think, “Every time I come to this website, I find useful information.”

I imagine it will serve you well in the long term.

Ramon: Yeah.

There are a lot of indirect advantages to focusing on content.

As you said, there’s branding and authority.

Maybe someone doesn’t buy right away, but later they see one of our ads.

We retarget people who visit the blog with ads for our products.

We also have people signing up for newsletters.

For any business, the more distribution you can get—especially if it’s diversified—the better.

We don’t want to focus only on Facebook ads, Instagram ads, or influencers.

We try to build across a diverse set of channels.

Sam: You mentioned retargeting and Facebook ads.

What type of copy and creative is working well for you?

Ramon: It changes every week.

But, in general, what has worked over the past couple of years is pointing out a problem.

It also depends on the product.

We have different types of products.

We sell ramps, pee pads, beds, and blankets, so the messaging is different for each.

For the ramps, we might say, “Did you know that a significant percentage of Dachshunds develop a condition called IVDD?”

Roughly one in three Dachshunds develop intervertebral disc disease.

The surgery can be very painful, the recovery is long, and it can cost up to $8,000.

We’re not claiming that the ramp can cure or prevent it with absolute certainty.

But one factor that can increase the risk is repeatedly jumping on and off furniture.

So the message is: Here’s the problem. This could cause a lot of pain, tears, and expense. Here is a product that may help reduce the risk.

That type of messaging usually works.

We have another product that’s a dog booster seat for the car.

There, the messaging might be about dogs jumping out of windows or being thrown forward during an accident.

Those types of ads perform best for us.

Sam: I really love that you address such a specific pain point.

That leads into my next question: How does Alpha Paw differentiate itself from competitors?

From my perspective, sitting here listening to you, it feels like you truly understand my potential pain points as a dog owner.

That’s very different from a large retailer simply competing on price.

Ramon: Yeah.

The ramp, for example, was designed by people who had that specific pain point.

They had several Dachshunds and had dealt with IVDD.

It really depends on the product.

With pee pads, there are pain points, but they’re not as severe as something like IVDD.

The messaging for pee pads is lighter.

It might be, “Are you tired of walking into your house and having it smell like a public bathroom? Here’s a solution.”

Sam: I want to ask about specific email-marketing tactics that are particularly effective for you.

When someone lands on the website, makes a purchase, and becomes a first-time customer, what types of automations do they enter?

Ramon: We have several, depending on which product they buy.

If they buy a ramp, we also ask about the dog’s breed and collect other information.

That customer goes into a specific flow where we talk about other products that may interest them.

If they bought a ramp, they may be concerned about IVDD, especially if they have a smaller pet.

We can then talk about supplements and related products.

We also send several emails that are focused on providing value.

We might share other things they can do themselves, such as making sure their pet gets enough exercise every day and has a healthy, varied diet.

We don’t sell dog food, but we can still offer those tips.

If someone buys pee pads, they enter a more general flow where we talk about dogs and relevant products more broadly.

That’s what we try to do.

Sam: What about automations based on behavior?

If I make a purchase today and then don’t make another purchase for 30 or 60 days, do you have something in place for that?

Ramon: Yes.

I don’t know every detail off the top of my head because I don’t manage the account day to day, but we have those automations in place.

If someone buys a box of pee pads, and we know they have one dog, we have an estimate for how long the average person takes before needing another box.

Then we send reminders saying, “It may be time to reorder your pee pads,” or the same for supplements.

We send replenishment reminders based on the product.

Sam: I’m going through your funnel right now and receiving your emails.

It’s really nice to see how on point you are with email marketing, especially your campaigns.

I think I received a Mother’s Day campaign recently.

Can you talk about how you think about email campaigns, how often you send them, and everything in between?

Ramon: We send as many as we can get away with without damaging the quality of the list.

If I had my wish, we could send several times a day.

But we try to strike a good balance between promotional messages and messages that provide value or share feel-good stories.

Every week, we send an email newsletter with some of the best blog posts or stories from that period.

It could be a story about a puppy that was in a shelter and walked 200 miles back to its previous owners.

We also talk about our donations.

We’ve donated hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of pet food to shelters, and we share those stories in our emails as well.

Then we do the standard things many direct-to-consumer brands do.

If Mother’s Day is coming up, we build a campaign around that.

After Mother’s Day, we move to the next holiday or seasonal event.

At the end of the day, for us at least, what still works best is discounts.

Unfortunately, pricing and discounts remain very effective.

Sam: You mentioned that you have a team.

How many people are on it?

And where is your genius zone? Where do you most enjoy spending your time right now?

Ramon: We have a very small team of five people, with a couple of freelancers here and there.

Customer support is handled by freelancers, but we have five in-house employees.

I personally enjoy the growth and marketing side.

I like coming up with creative ways to get more targeted traffic to the website and convert those visitors.

For example, we created a Dachshund quiz inside Facebook Messenger.

It asks, “How much do you know about Dachshunds?”

Then it opens a Messenger flow with multiple-choice questions, such as, “Where does the Dachshund breed come from?”

At the end, we ask whether it’s good for a Dachshund to jump on and off furniture.

Then we explain why that can be harmful and introduce the ramp as a potential solution.

I enjoy working on those kinds of strategies.

Sam: Who are some of the marketing people you look up to?

How do you stay abreast of what’s working today?

Ramon: That’s a good question because there are multiple people in different areas.

I follow a lot of people on Twitter, and I get so much value from it.

If you’re not on Twitter, I definitely recommend it.

I also have a lot of friends who are direct-to-consumer founders, and I’m in several WhatsApp groups with them.

Those are extremely valuable.

Because they’re closed groups and none of us compete directly with one another, people are more open about sharing what is working.

Someone might say, “Over the past two weeks, we’ve done X, Y, and Z. Here are the results. It has been amazing. You should try it.”

I also like Nick Sharma.

He writes a weekly newsletter that is very helpful for us.

For now, I’ll stick with Nick Sharma as my answer.

Sam: Nick Sharma is great.

Ramon, I’ve read some of your threads as well and really enjoyed them, especially the one about you purchasing the WWE fan blog.

That was an interesting read.

Switching gears, you bought the website several years ago now.

How has the pet industry evolved over time, and how has Alpha Paw adapted to those changes?

Ramon: We had COVID.

I bought the business in 2018, and the first two years were amazing.

Everything was scaling quickly, and we could barely keep up.

Then COVID happened.

At the beginning, it was still good because more people had to shop online.

They couldn’t—or didn’t want to—buy their pee pads at the supermarket or pet store.

I don’t remember whether pet stores were closed everywhere, but regardless, more people were shopping online.

Sales were strong at first.

Then the supply-chain problems began.

Container prices went from around $3,000 per container to as much as $30,000.

FedEx and UPS increased shipping rates, and there were major shipping delays.

Several times, we had containers stuck at sea for four to eight weeks without knowing when we would receive the inventory.

It was a very difficult year.

Our margins were hit especially hard because the ramp takes up a lot of volume.

Only around 1,600 ramps fit in a large container.

When the container price rises from $3,000 to $25,000 or $30,000, that creates a huge dent in the margin.

In the same period, the iOS 14 update happened, followed by many other platform changes that didn’t help marketing performance.

2021 was definitely challenging for us.

In 2022, we focused much more on bottom-line profitability and staying lean.

We asked how we could become more efficient as a company.

We didn’t stop caring about top-line growth, but profitability became much more important.

Now we’re in a much healthier and better position than we were in 2021.

Sam: What does 2023 look like for Alpha Paw?

Ramon: We launched a cat-litter brand called Genius Litter around 18 months ago.

It has grown very quickly.

Earlier this year, we launched it in every PetSmart store, and we’re also going to launch in Canada.

That’s very exciting, and we’re focusing heavily on that brand.

For Alpha Paw, it’s more about maintaining and focusing.

During the first couple of years, I tried to launch all kinds of different products.

I’m not saying it’s impossible—many companies do it successfully—but I think it’s easier for us to focus on fewer products and go deeper.

Every time we launch a product, it needs creative assets, email flows, text-message flows, and everything else.

I’ve learned that, for us, it works better to focus on fewer products.

Sam: Can you explain what it means to have fewer products but greater depth?

Ramon: Looking back, it seems like common sense.

If you have a team of 10 people and the only thing they need to focus on is selling more ramps, that’s very clear.

But if you have poop bags, pee pads, beds, blankets, and ramps, the team becomes less efficient because attention is spread everywhere.

With fewer products, we can be more efficient and genuinely try to scale those products.

That’s especially important this year because we don’t know what’s going to happen.

There are macroeconomic questions, inflation is still an issue, and no one knows exactly what will happen with the value of the dollar.

Things still don’t feel completely stable.

I think companies, especially in this environment, should stay as lean and focused as possible.

They should also focus on channels they own.

With Facebook ads, for example, the iOS update wasn’t even Facebook’s decision.

Apple made an update that affected every advertiser.

Something similar could happen again in another form.

We’re focusing on channels that we quote-unquote own.

With email, you’re still dealing with spam filters, internet-service providers, and other variables, but you have more control, in my opinion.

Sam: Absolutely.

This has been a fascinating conversation, Ramon.

Where can our listeners learn more about Alpha Paw?

Ramon: They can visit alphapaw.com.

They can also find me on Twitter.

If you have any questions, I try to be as active as possible there.

I check my direct messages, so feel free to reach out.

I’m always happy to connect with people.

Sam: Perfect. We’ll put those links in the show notes.

Ramon, thank you again for taking the time to join us, and all the best in the future with Alpha Paw.

Ramon: Thank you. Thank you for having me.