Perry Sheraw

^{Joe Fox (00:00.799)}
Hey everyone, Joe Fox here. I'm the host at Retain Grow Thrive and also the president at Growave I'm super excited today. I've got a really, really, really, really cool guest on Perry who has an amazing background in email marketing automation has seen all of the changes that have happened throughout the years in that space. So I'm sure the audience today are going to get a lot of value. Perry, thank you so much for joining us today.

I know we're just catching up about how the holidays were. It's early 2026. There's going to be a lot happening this year, but can you tell us Perry, because your experience is so vast in email marketing and automation and business and PR and everything in between. Tell me a little bit about where you're at today and how you got.

_{Perry Sheraw (00:47.266)}
Yeah, well, I started in print journalism in the 90s. I was a news reporter at the Cincinnati Inquirer and kind of witnessed the transformation of journalism at the time they weren't embracing digital at all. And I was the first one of the first people in the newsroom with an email address had the first police blotter sent digitally instead of going over there and writing it down from the police blotter in the station. So.

^{Joe Fox (01:06.503)}
wow.

_{Perry Sheraw (01:14.552)}
really witnessed that transformation or lack thereof, honestly, because that's what happened to journalism to me. And then ended up moving to the Caribbean, having my first retirement, doing two years as a boat captain and scuba instructor, then realizing, okay, that's a nice lifestyle, not a living. Happened to be in a place that had a lot of large companies that had headquarters here.

^{Joe Fox (01:31.113)}
Well...

_{Perry Sheraw (01:41.422)}
for different tax incentive programs under the US flag and ended up with a mergers and acquisitions firm that had national campaigns and just really rose up in 10 years under that in marketing, marketing automation. At that point is where I ended up Frankensteining Sage Sales Logix, which was like a digital Rolodex CRM style.

you know, just basically Frankensteining that into something that collaborated with marketing by using the equivalent in those days of MailChimp, right? And just basically making sure those signals connected so that sales would not be in a position of just being super cold on those calls to business owners. And that's when I fell in love with marketing automation.

^{Joe Fox (02:31.338)}
I love that. That's such a cool journey and touch it and touching off that off the topic of marketing automation and everything like that. We'll have to chat about the diving thing because I'm a very big diver. But now that I live in Texas, you know, I can't do so much of that. There isn't much good diving in Texas compared to Australia. But that would have been that would have been fascinating. And what and what a cool experience. But diving into that, I mean, there's so much to unpack there, Perry. What

do you think in that journey was the biggest pivotal change that you saw happen in the automation side of things? mean, obviously that, looking at that Frankensterning of those systems together, and now there's so many choices that people can use for their automation software and everything like that. I feel like every day there's something.

_{Perry Sheraw (03:21.912)}
Great.

^{Joe Fox (03:26.11)}
you know, new popping up or the big players are building different integrations into different things. But what, what do you feel was the biggest change that you saw in that marketing automation space?

_{Perry Sheraw (03:26.582)}
Yep.

_{Perry Sheraw (03:37.602)}
Yeah, well, in around 2002, when I was a beta user for HubSpot, I was like, this is what we've been waiting for. You know, it was so huge to really combine in a way that didn't require a team of developers to really combine marketing activities with CRM activities and create a customer profile. You know, that sounds so simple now, but just to be able to have that happen.

^{Joe Fox (03:46.738)}
Yes.

_{Perry Sheraw (04:06.574)}
out of the box, I was blown away. I would say that was the biggest transformation moment in the early 2000s.

^{Joe Fox (04:16.775)}
Absolutely. I think that's such a good point. mean, in in a prior life in Australia, I owned an agency. We're a HubSpot partner. Very, very big. You know, I was very, very big fan of HubSpot. think it's kind of changed a little bit now. I'm probably more of a Klaviyo fan, you know, kind of now, but I think, you know, you're a hundred percent right. Like HubSpot really was that turning point for marketing automation and being able to actually have data and systems that talk together and

instantaneously sinking of information versus, you know, having to wait a couple of days for connections to kind of talk to each other. So that's, that's really cool.

_{Perry Sheraw (04:53.229)}
Right.

Right, right, exactly. And now that is, I mean, that is now just exponentially so much more dramatic with AI. You know, I mean, if we fast forward to now, of course, I don't want to jump too far ahead in our conversation. But, you know, when I think about that moment, to me, we have passed that moment in AI now.

^{Joe Fox (05:09.052)}
Yes.

_{Perry Sheraw (05:24.414)}
And I think we are now just all, I don't know, I'm on a lot of different podcasts and I talk about AI with a lot of different people from different disciplines, different industries and different channels, that sort of thing. And no one knows. We can't even comprehend how dramatic this transformation is gonna be. It's like electricity, someone said.

^{Joe Fox (05:43.206)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (05:51.304)}
Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's like, it's the, it's like the fifth industrial revolution in a way. think the, you know, I was talking to a guest earlier this week and they really focus on, you know, kind of optimization of LLM. So optimizing chat GPT and everything for brands to be discovered so that people can click through and purchase.

And the statistic they gave me was insane. I'll probably butcher this. So I apologize, but the statistic was something like 40 % of, Google traffic. So Google search engine trafficked now doesn't even result in a click, because so much, so much of that search traffic has now been moved into LLMs like chat GPT. But now the crazy statistic, that they mentioned

was that someone is five times more likely to purchase something recommended to them through an LLM versus buying through Google. So like that to me is just insane looking at it from a, marketing perspective. And to your point, Perry, I don't think any of us know where this is going to go in terms of, you know, AI, because I also envision, you know, from a, from a marketing automation perspective.

We're seeing, know, Klaviyo implement, you know, more more AI into their tools. Obviously from the front end side of things, we're seeing Shopify, you know, really heavily embed themselves with AI, like Sidekick, and then obviously, you know, their partnerships with OpenAI and ChatGPT, et cetera. But what do you think, Perry, you know, having a really, really good, you know, understanding of marketing automation at its core?

_{Perry Sheraw (07:25.635)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (07:41.204)}
and having a really good understanding of seeing where this technology journey has gone. What are your predictions for this? I know it's hard to say in concrete, this is exactly what's going to happen with AI and automated marketing, but what are your predictions? Let's just say for the next 12 months.

_{Perry Sheraw (07:58.646)}
Yeah, I would say that we are going to and i'll piggyback a little bit on your last guest brian gonzalez and or at least the last podcast that I saw at this time. I I do agree that Purchases are going to start being made out of LLMs know, they're gonna that's gonna be figured out. and I believe that the true

^{Joe Fox (08:19.557)}
Yes.

_{Perry Sheraw (08:26.946)}
benefit, I'll say the true transformative benefit, which has to be happening now and will continue and probably be so far ahead by the end of 2026. My true prediction is that the scalability at even the smallest business owner, the opportunity to scale and to really provide omni-channel, highly personalized campaigns is just going to be off the charts compared to where it even is today.

And I think tools like Klaviyo and tools like HubSpot, but really tools like Klaviyo because it is already so personal with your buying choices. Tools like Klaviyo are just going to drive that charge.

^{Joe Fox (09:06.606)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (09:10.119)}
Yeah, it's interesting the way that we are all trying to understand this because I think this is the interesting thing I found is, you know, experts such as yourself, experts, mentioned Brian who, you know, been in the e-comm and the marketing automation space for so long. know, and I think it's very interesting that we are all having

similar thoughts and similar, you know, predictions, but all of us, like, can't give you a timeframe on it because it's just moving at such an exponential space. And I think that's truly fascinating because I feel, you know, when I look back at just, you know, digital marketing in general and e-commerce, there have always been these, you know, big changes like

SEO and Google ads and, you know, Facebook and Meta and all of these sort of changes, but they were kind of predictable and they were kind of, you could really almost put them to a timeline because, you know, a lot of the time the companies would advertise what that timeline was and it would either match that or follow very closely. But I feel like because AI is just continually expanding and growing and improving on itself.

None of us truly can say, you know, this is exactly where it's going to be at this time. And that's both exciting, but also a little bit terrifying. I personally think.

_{Perry Sheraw (10:42.496)}
Yeah, I think you have to get it. You have to just jump in. mean, companies have to jump in and utilize these tools. I know there's a fear factor. There's always been a fear factor with any change and this is no different. And I feel like business owners and marketers, marketing managers, you know, they should be utilizing at a minimum a chat GPT for content to really identify a great

baseline email strategy and then companies like mine can come in and help optimize and you know use tried and true methods to elevate their experience and you know larger companies should make sure that their folks are definitely tapping into these LLMs and not just using one, know, utilizing multiple AI tools. Some people think they're checking a box with chat GPT but

^{Joe Fox (11:34.275)}
Yes.

_{Perry Sheraw (11:40.974)}
you know, the last six months has shown me that the true value is combining them.

^{Joe Fox (11:47.085)}
Absolutely. I had this conversation recently with a friend, not on the podcast, but I said, LLMs remind me of mainstream media. You need to be able to go to multiple sources to actually get a true perspective of what's going on. Because if you, if you lean too far into, into, you know, one and not the others, you're going to end up with a skewed, skewed opportunity to get the most out of it. So I agree a hundred percent there.

_{Perry Sheraw (12:16.622)}
agreed.

^{Joe Fox (12:16.696)}
Perry, you touched on a really good point there. I want to, you know, kind of dive in a little bit for the audience. Obviously, you know, we have, a large percentage of our viewer base is part of our 15,000 strong customer base, e-commerce brands, you know, on Shopify, a lot of them use Klaviyo They're kind of, you know, spread out all over the world, all different types of verticals, everything that you can think of from, you know, pet accessories.

right up to, you know, very expensive electronic items with brands like Sony, et cetera. can I, I would love to just, you know, if we, if we scale that back, we looked more at kind of like the SMEs and medium sized businesses that are, you know, probably maybe sitting there being like, well, what direction should we take our marketing automation and everything in, in 2026?

Are you able to give a few pointers of things that you think are like table stakes that that brain should be really focused on at the moment in marketing automation?

_{Perry Sheraw (13:22.294)}
Yes, specifically when we're talking e-commerce, Shopify, Klaviyo that sort of thing. mean, starting at kind of the C-suite level, I would say that, you know, take a basic pass using AI, right? And say, what should my marketing automation, you know, infrastructure look like? And it'll give you some bullet points, right? You don't have to, it's like I said to somebody,

Not long ago, I mean, you don't need to know how to necessarily change the oil in your car in order to drive it, but you should know that it needs oil, right? And so if you take that kind of, right? If you take that kind of approach to using AI to strategize, then you just basically get some bullet points. That gives you at the C-suite level, something to talk to your marketing managers, your CMO about if you're not.

^{Joe Fox (13:57.048)}
Yeah. Great analogy. Yeah.

_{Perry Sheraw (14:17.364)}
Or you know, you know what? mean as you work your way down whoever you're talking to in your organization however, the hierarchy is arranged and so, you know start there start by understanding what the basic nuts and bolts are right and Then you're going to start to you know, all of this has to be adapted to your own unique set of circumstances A lot of people will say marketing is marketing but audiences aren't all just audiences, right? Audiences are very unique

^{Joe Fox (14:43.063)}
guts.

_{Perry Sheraw (14:44.942)}
based on the type of vertical and the size of business that you're dealing with. So all of that's got to be tailored down. This is just some good talking points, right, where you start there. Marketing managers should be making sure that they are scaling out their content, utilizing AI to be able to produce more valuable content. I mean, you should only be limited by what you can actually edit yourself, right, or edit with your team because somebody has to read the stuff.

^{Joe Fox (15:10.637)}
Yes.

_{Perry Sheraw (15:14.366)}
You can't just... No. No. But that should be the only limitation. you're editing, you should have an editing block of time that just helps you just plow through some of this material. Because once your tone and voice is kind of set and maybe you optimize your LLMs to produce something that sounds like the proper tone and voice...

^{Joe Fox (15:14.542)}
Yep, Con just put it out there. Yeah, yeah.

_{Perry Sheraw (15:42.254)}
Then you're going through and you're editing blocks and you're really weeding out the best content and you're producing, producing, producing. And that content is so tailored to your audience if you do it right. And then you are looking through at that marketing management level, you're looking through the variety of flows that you should have live. And there are always flows that you should have live that you don't.

And you know, so you want to make sure that you've got your checklist of e-commerce flows that should be live. Okay, great. Let's say you get an A plus in that. Well, guess what? What should that performance be in your industry? You can utilize AI now to say, these are the benchmarks that I should be hitting. You don't just have to rely on, you know, cobbling together kind of sort of MailChimp says it should be this and

^{Joe Fox (16:09.655)}
Yes.

_{Perry Sheraw (16:34.222)}
They're only really talking though about open rates and we all know open rates have had their challenges in the last couple of years. you you should really be drilling down and creating your own benchmarks, utilizing these multiple LLMs and then identifying, you can always identify, you know, the third email and an abandoned cart is underperforming. Let's turn that, let's A-B test that and turn that dial because I've now not taken

^{Joe Fox (16:52.747)}
Okay. Okay.

_{Perry Sheraw (17:02.638)}
a month or put it on the back burner, I've actually been able to analyze this so quickly, what is performing and what is underperforming, I can drill down into that email and really dial up revenue, honestly. mean, attention equals revenue when it comes to these flows.

^{Joe Fox (17:17.862)}
Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, thank you so much for that. And I think that that really covered, you know, the, the, the audience of the podcast, because we do have those different varying levels and those sorts of things. But I also now kind of want to dive in Perry is what does, what does your ideal customer look like? you know, say for example, you've given out some amazing insights and some amazing information here, but

Let's say, for example, the CMO or the marketing manager is like, well, we didn't get an A plus, we're an F, our benchmarks are terrible, we need help. What does the kind of process look like working with someone such as yourself? you know, what part of the journey do you usually kind of step in when you're working with brands?

_{Perry Sheraw (18:17.486)}
Well, we have started, I mean, we've done a lot of startups with medical device companies. We've really covered a lot of bases. We've done supplements, medical device. Our Nexus really originated in San Diego, so that brought us into that world a little bit more. we have, I think due to the nature, I'm just curious, right? And so we are...

bit vertical and platform agnostic. Although we do drill down into Klaviyo a lot more now because of the Klaviyo Shopify relationship being so robust. so ideally though, we're dealing with starting off with an either if it's not a startup, we're starting off with an audit of what you do have. And a lot of times we'll find that people have just kind of done the basic turn on of the out of the box template.

^{Joe Fox (18:56.737)}
Yes.

_{Perry Sheraw (19:14.872)}
for Klaviyo and that's great. You know, that's better than nothing. I think, you know, perfect is the enemy of done. And so you just have to get started somewhere, but we'll start out there and then we'll identify the low hanging fruit, which usually fall into somewhere in the welcome series, van and cart or the post purchase journey, which I know that your company is instrumental.

^{Joe Fox (19:18.549)}
Yes.

_{Perry Sheraw (19:40.29)}
in a robust post-purchase experience. And we'll drill down into those and optimize each touch point there. Add in SMS. A lot of times we're not meeting folks with SMS, you know, in play, especially in the med device world because of some HIPAA compliance issues or that type of thing. A lot of times people in med device will just stay away from it completely, even if they don't have to.

^{Joe Fox (19:40.608)}
Yes.

_{Perry Sheraw (20:08.334)}
because there are circumstances where SMS can really come into play and be very valuable. And so we will do a full audit of that whole setup, optimize also, as you know, the actual integration between Shopify and Klaviyo can have optimization opportunities that people don't think about. And so we dive in and do that. So sorry. The vice. The vice.

^{Joe Fox (20:29.524)}
Yes. Yep.

Yeah. No, no, that's okay. That's okay. We can get, can scratch that part out. That's no problems. I, no, no, no problems. I have two cattle dogs, so I completely understand. So if, if UPS or USPS shows up anytime I'm recording, I have to do the same. So no, no problems at all. Um, that's actually a really good place to pick up from. I, um, I want to double down here, Perry, just quickly like.

_{Perry Sheraw (20:38.465)}
Okay.

Sorry. Okay.

Wow. Okay.

^{Joe Fox (21:02.517)}
while we've got this break, the best, do you, where's the best place for me to direct the audience to get in contact with you and to be able to, you know, get engaged with you and everything like that. Cause I kind of want to steer us into that in the next part.

_{Perry Sheraw (21:20.726)}
Yeah, perrysheraw.com is the best place.

^{Joe Fox (21:23.156)}
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Perfect. So we'll just, we'll pick it back up from, the Klaviyo Shopify, mentioning how there's ways to optimize that if that's okay. Perfect. so yeah, you're a hundred percent right, Perry. I think there's so many opportunities that people kind of like miss out just by not having

_{Perry Sheraw (21:36.856)}
That'll be great.

^{Joe Fox (21:48.874)}
that master knowledge of Shopify or of Klaviyo or of the both. And I agree there's so many missed opportunities for brands to get those optimizations correct from the beginning, as well as focusing on flows and all of those sorts of things as well. I couldn't agree more. And I feel like we could talk forever here because we've covered so many cool topics, but I really wanna, you've provided a lot of value.

for the audience today, Perry. And I want to make sure that our audience is able to connect to you after this. But just before we kind of dive in where to where people can connect with you and how people can reach out to you, Perry, what is one thing like if you were to say, you know, say, for example, it's a new Shopify entrepreneur who's entering the ecosystem, you know, let's say, for example,

They've had a bricks and mortar presence. They create, you know, an amazing product could be in any vertical. What is the, what would be your starting suggestions, you know, for, that level of, of, customer or merchant or entrepreneur who's looking to start their marketing automation journey. What do you see as crucial step number one in your mind?

_{Perry Sheraw (23:12.76)}
Well, step number one is make sure that you have signed up for Klaviyo. And I'll just say step 1A, please create a pop-up that captures the email address.

^{Joe Fox (23:17.993)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (23:26.215)}
Yes. Yes. I could not, could not agree more. It's interesting to see even some big brains don't have that, which is, which is fascinating to me.

_{Perry Sheraw (23:36.542)}
Exactly. And it's sort of like inviting people to your house by paying for all these ads and whatnot. And then they show up and they'll let you know, you've left the Right. Right. Right.

^{Joe Fox (23:46.717)}
Yeah. Yeah. All the doors, all the doors are locked in love, buddy. So the lights are off. Yeah. Yeah. They talk. They're talking to you through the ring camera only. I love that. I love that. look, Perry, thank you so much for, you know, coming on today. I definitely can see us doing a part two of this. I think there was so many amazing topics we covered, and I think there's so much more we could dive into. And I know the audience got a lot of value out of this and I really appreciate you.

_{Perry Sheraw (23:56.296)}
Yeah, exactly.

^{Joe Fox (24:16.285)}
taking the time to kind of address things from, you know, C-suite all the way down as to, you know, some quick tips and quick wins. But I also want to make sure, you know, that if there's audience members who are like, I really need some help with this, no matter what stage of the journey or what size of business they're at, where is the best place that people can connect with you,

_{Perry Sheraw (24:39.69)}
at perrysheraw.com. We offer a free consultation. There's a big button right there and a pop-up. So if you get there, you can sign up to be on our mailing list. But yeah, perrysheraw.com and we'll get right back to you and be ready to help.

^{Joe Fox (24:47.614)}
Awesome.

^{Joe Fox (24:58.074)}
Awesome. Perry, thank you again so much for coming on. I really enjoy having these conversations. I definitely look forward to doing a part two of this. think touching on some of these predictions and some of the things we spoke about around AI and automation and everything will be really interesting perhaps around the holiday season just to see what it looks like from a 12 month snapshot and see how much things have increased.

Probably, I would assume we under predicted, but that's just the way AI is, guess.

_{Perry Sheraw (25:32.686)}
That's right. That's right. Yes, I'll look forward to that too. Thank you.

^{Joe Fox (25:36.291)}
Awesome. Thank you so much for joining Perry audience. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Retain Grow Thrive. As you can see, that was a really cool episode where Perry dug into a lot of really cool tips for marketing automation. Obviously Perry like Growave We're big fans of Klaviyo. So if you're new to Klaviyo, I highly recommend connecting with Perry and getting things set up correctly from the beginning.

I will make sure that every single link that was mentioned is in the show notes. But thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you have a very successful 2026. If there's a guest that you'd like to see on the podcast, please comment below and we'll do our best to get them on board. But until then, thank you very much from myself and the entire team at Growave.