The Theo Clarke Podcast (2025)

02/10/2025

You think email is about writing the perfect one.

It’s not.

It’s about volume.

Most of your emails won’t land.

And that’s exactly the point.

You need to test a f*ck ton.

Subject lines, times, offers, angles.

The more you send, the faster you learn.

One email teaches you nothing.

A hundred emails show you the truth.

The winners pay for the losers.

But you only find them by pushing volume.

Stop waiting to get it perfect.

Perfection is just procrastination dressed up.

Hit send. Gather data. Adjust. Repeat.

That’s how email actually works.

Theo Clarke Podcast w/ Boyuan Zhao available on YouTube, Rumble & Spotify.

26/09/2025

Most brands still wait until November to launch.

That is when CPMs skyrocket.

Meta data shows CPMs rise 30–50% during Black Friday week.

Email open rates drop by as much as 40% compared to early November.

Consumers are overwhelmed—200+ promotions hit their inboxes daily.

If you enter at peak, you are paying more for weaker attention.

The smarter play is budget allocation, not calendar tradition.

Think of every customer having a $500 seasonal spend.

$250 is locked for big brands they already trust.

That leaves $250 floating—and it disappears earlier than you think.

By running in Q3, you’re competing with fewer advertisers.

Cheaper CPMs mean you capture customers before the rush.

Those buyers are also more profitable.

They convert at higher rates because they haven’t been fatigued yet.

And the purchases they make early often don’t stop them from buying again.

Early customers are statistically more likely to repeat.

That’s double-dipping the same wallet before giants even touch it.

This is why early “Black Friday” campaigns aren’t hype—they’re math.

You’re shifting acquisition into a window where cost is lower, intent is cleaner, and budgets are still open.

Theo Clarke Podcast w/ Boyuan Zhao available on YouTube, Rumble & Spotify.

22/09/2025

Split testing destination pages is one of the most overlooked levers.

Changing only where traffic lands can lift performance by 50% or more.

The assumption is simple funnels convert best.

But the reality depends on product awareness and traffic temperature.

High awareness products sometimes underperform on direct sales pages.

Because even warm traffic still wants validation before buying.

Advertorials act as a bridge between interest and purchase.

They reframe the offer, handle objections, and warm the click again.

Sending warm leads to a cold checkout funnel creates drop-off.

Because they don’t feel guided—they feel pushed.

Testing advertorial versus sales page versus checkout reveals hidden wins.

Often the counter-intuitive choice outperforms what logic suggests.

Every URL is effectively a new experiment.

You can even run hidden advertorial URLs only for ads.

That protects your main site while letting you optimize aggressively.

Mature brands master this nuance.

Beginners chase more traffic instead of better routing.

Traffic is expensive.

Destinations are cheap to test.

That is where disproportionate ROI hides.

Theo Clarke Podcast w/ Boyuan Zhao available on YouTube, Rumble & Spotify.

21/09/2025

Authority comes from perception.

Perception is manufactured.

Brands do not compete on price.

They anchor the price.

Positioning determines margin.

A commodity is forced to justify cost.

A brand dictates it.

The gap is positioning, not quality.

Market leaders sell trust before they sell product.

Logos become shorthand for authority.

Reputation compounds like capital.

Premium pricing is earned by belief.

If you want the higher end, you must signal it.

Visual identity must align.

Messaging must align.

Customer experience must align.

Every touchpoint must reinforce value.

When the market believes, you no longer ask.

You tell.

That is brand power.

Theo Clarke Podcast w/ Boyuan Zhao available on YouTube, Rumble & Spotify.

20/09/2025

Reviews are a conversion lever with compounding ROI.

But the platform you choose determines long-term impact.

Google reviews feed directly into search visibility.

Trustpilot carries weight in paid ads but costs more to manage.

The average Trustpilot business plan runs hundreds monthly.

At scale, each verified review can cost $10–$20.

That’s why many brands gate negative reviews with smart routing.

Direct unhappy buyers to support before they post.

It doesn’t eliminate complaints but it captures feedback privately.

The real missed opportunity is post-purchase outreach.

A simple VA call turns a one-time buyer into a repeat.

Data shows retention calls with a timed discount can boost LTV by 25–30%.

That makes the VA cost self-liquidating.

You’re not just getting feedback—you’re reactivating revenue.

Even the “survey” format builds trust.

Customers feel heard, not sold to.

That goodwill increases their likelihood of leaving a public 5-star review.

The flywheel is simple:

Reviews increase trust.

Trust increases conversion.

Conversion justifies more outreach.

That’s how review ops scale into profit, not cost.

Theo Clarke Podcast w/ Boyuan Zhao available on YouTube, Rumble & Spotify.

19/09/2025

China’s competitive edge isn’t just cost.

It’s scale, infrastructure, and tolerance for razor-thin margins.

Factories can run profitably at 10% margin domestically.

When those same goods hit Europe or the US, margins balloon to 40–50%.

That pricing gap is structural, not temporary.

Western manufacturers cannot compete on labor or supply chain efficiency.

What has slowed Chinese brands is mindset, not capacity.

Most focus on OEM or B2B contracts instead of brand building.

They assume Western markets are harder to pe*****te.

But DTC brands like Shein and Temu prove otherwise.

They enter with aggressive pricing, fast iteration, and massive ad spend.

Shein went from launch to $30B+ revenue in under a decade.

Temu spent $1B on US ads in year one alone.

Both show that when Chinese companies bring their domestic hustle West, the shift is seismic.

The real disruptor is not cheap product.

It’s operational tempo—speed of product testing, logistics, and iteration.

Western incumbents are used to quarterly planning.

Chinese operators are used to daily pivots.

If more manufacturers adopt that playbook, the margin advantage plus ex*****on speed will overwhelm traditional Western brands.

Theo Clarke Podcast w/ Boyuan Zhao available on YouTube, Rumble & Spotify.

18/09/2025

Google Shopping is intent driven.

Every search is a buyer showing purchase intent.

That makes the data more valuable than impressions on social.

Competitive research is your shortcut.

Titles, images, pricing, upsells—everything is public.

You can see which offers dominate placements.

And which ones fail to gain traction.

That tells you exactly how to position.

Most beginners skip this and guess blindly.

Secondary domains give you flexibility in testing.

They let you run higher-converting funnels without risking your main store.

Advertorial landers work because they educate before asking for the sale.

That increases conversion while lowering wasted spend.

Direct checkout in the ad can remove friction.

But you need to balance it with trust and compliance.

Shopify is safer for scale but slower to optimize.

The real advantage comes from iteration speed.

Test faster than your competitors.

Adapt based on what their data already reveals.

That’s how you gain edge with branded dropshipping on Google Ads.

Theo Clarke Podcast w/ Boyuan Zhao available on YouTube, Rumble & Spotify.

17/09/2025

Under $100K/month, the business problem is not retention—it’s validation.

Until product/market fit is proven, email flows don’t fix the bottleneck.

The average ecommerce store under $100K gets fewer than 5,000 monthly visitors.

That volume doesn’t support meaningful list growth or ROI from complex flows.

At that stage, 90% of revenue still comes from paid traffic, not owned channels.

The only essentials are technical setup:

✅ A popup to capture emails.

✅ A welcome series for new leads.

✅ An abandoned checkout flow.

Anything beyond that is wasted hours.

The real leverage is in testing more products and refining your funnel.

Another hidden factor is shipping speed.

If you don’t offer domestic 2–3 day shipping, retention is nearly impossible.

Consumers conditioned by Amazon won’t tolerate 10-day waits.

No amount of clever emails can patch a bad fulfillment experience.

That’s why sophisticated flows only make sense after $100K.

At that point, list size and traffic justify automation.

And operational risk (bans, DMCAs, supplier issues) is lower.

Until then, email is a distraction from the real priority—finding a scalable product.

Theo Clarke Podcast w/ Boyuan Zhao available on YouTube, Rumble & Spotify.

16/09/2025

Google Shopping is intent driven.

Every search is a buyer showing purchase intent.

That makes the data more valuable than impressions on social.

Competitive research is your shortcut.

Titles, images, pricing, upsells—everything is public.

You can see which offers dominate placements.

And which ones fail to gain traction.

That tells you exactly how to position.

Most beginners skip this and guess blindly.

Secondary domains give you flexibility in testing.

They let you run higher-converting funnels without risking your main store.

Advertorial landers work because they educate before asking for the sale.

That increases conversion while lowering wasted spend.

Direct checkout in the ad can remove friction.

But you need to balance it with trust and compliance.

Shopify is safer for scale but slower to optimize.

The real advantage comes from iteration speed.

Test faster than your competitors.

Adapt based on what their data already reveals.

That’s how you gain edge with branded dropshipping on Google Ads.

Theo Clarke Podcast w/ Boyuan Zhao available on YouTube, Rumble & Spotify.

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14/09/2025

Episode 35 of the Theo Clarke Podcast is now live!

The $13M Email Marketing Blueprint for Ecom Businesses | Boyuan Zhao

09/09/2025

Most entrepreneurs think the solution is working more.

But often the real unlock is stepping away.

When you’re buried in the day-to-day, you only see problems.

When you step back, you finally see the system you’ve built.

That’s why rest isn’t laziness—it’s strategy.

A single day of reflection can expose flaws, highlight wins, and remind you of the bigger picture.

And the irony is this: the months you unplug are often the months you grow the most.

Theo Clarke Podcast w/ Brandon Van Mierlo available on YouTube, Rumble & Spotify.

07/09/2025

Most ecom brands collapse because they never think about the “what if.”

What if your supplier disappears? What if your top team member quits? What if your brand goes down overnight?

Backup isn’t something you build after disaster.

It’s something you set up while things are still good.

You don’t need twenty options.

You need five reliable ones, already quoted, tested, and ready to step in.

That way when chaos hits, you don’t negotiate from weakness—you execute from certainty.

It’s the same with your team.

Relationships you build now are the safety net that keeps momentum alive tomorrow.

The brand that prepares wins, because when others scramble, you’re already moving.

Theo Clarke Podcast w/ Brandon Van Mierlo available on YouTube, Rumble & Spotify.

The Theo Clarke Podcast