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If you are seeking new ways to increase your ROI on marketing with your commerce platform, or you may be an entrepreneur who wants to grow your team and be more efficient with your online business.
Talk Commerce with Brent W. Peterson draws stories from merchants, marketers, and entrepreneurs who share their experiences in the trenches to help you learn what works and what may not in your business.
Keep up with the current news on commerce platforms, marketing trends, and what is new in the entrepreneurial world. Episodes drop every Tuesday with the occasional bonus episodes.
You can check out our daily blog post and signup for our newsletter here https://talk-commerce.com
Brent Peterson (00:01.89)
Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Rytis Laris. He is the CEO and co-founder of Omnisyn. Rytis, go ahead, tell us your day-to-day role. Actually, first pronounce your name correctly and tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions.
Rytis Lauris (00:16.037)
Hey, Brent. Yeah. So thanks for inviting. Really great pleasure to be here as a guest at your podcast. yeah, so my original name is Urytas, but that's original pronunciation, but that's perfectly fine. I don't get insulted if someone mispronounces it. That's perfectly fine. Yeah. So I'm co-founder and CEO of Omniscent. Omniscent is marketing automation platform for those who sell online. So for online stores.
I know, your listeners, of course, are those who understand what e-commerce is and why marketing, why retention marketing, why email and SMS marketing is important. But usually then people ask me to explain them in plain English. So I say, look, if you sell online, usually for first transaction, you lose money because you pay for Google or for Meta more than you actually earn from the customer.
So that's why it's critically important to do retention marketing and email is unbeatable channel. SMS is very effective, push notifications are very effective as well to invite your customers to purchase again. And that's how you earn money.
Brent Peterson (01:28.206)
Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for that. And how about passions? Do you have a passion in life?
Rytis Lauris (01:33.857)
I like reading books, all kind of, not only business related, but novels as well. what else? I play squash. Okay, education is my passion. Actually, I'm quite deeply involved in non-governmental activities that are education related, and especially secondary education. I believe that...
Universities are important, but the fundamentals you set in the young age are critically important for anyone's success in life.
Brent Peterson (02:11.374)
Yeah, very good. Excellent. Alright, so before we before we get started, you have gracefully gracefully volunteered to be part of the free joke project. So I'm going to tell you a joke and you just give me a rating eight through 13. So here we go. I've got a good one for you today. I started saying mucho to my Mexican friends. It means a lot to them.
Rytis Lauris (02:34.821)
10. Somewhere in between. Maybe. Not great, not terrible from my point of view. Sorry, Brent, I didn't want to disappoint you, but... Okay.
Brent Peterson (02:43.253)
Yeah, that's all right Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right so No, don't worry. Yeah. No, that's a good. That's a good score for me I usually get sevens and the base is eight. So we're right on Great so tell us a little bit about the journey how you started OmniSend and sort of what was the
Rytis Lauris (03:07.331)
Hmm.
Brent Peterson (03:08.62)
What was the motivation to do that?
Rytis Lauris (03:11.663)
So on this end was a spin-off from digital marketing agency. So the motivation was basically while running digital marketing agents and it happened already 11 years ago. not, I mean, some time have passed already. So yeah, so running a digital marketing agents and serving online stores, e-commerce customers, we saw that, okay, there are a couple of things here. First one is that...
The entire customer journey is happening online. That means that you have way more, like your customers leave more traces than other businesses. And you can collect those traces, segment on that, automate based on that, and run a way better marketing for them, way more relevant, way more timely, et cetera. So that was kind of like first assumption that we made. And then back in the days, there were only like generic email service providers.
when it was specialized for e-commerce. Exactly all around that time, were more more players coming to serve this specific e-commerce market. I'm talking about email service providers. We only launched email. The second was, serving this specific market e-commerce, is there growth potential? The second assumption we made is that e-commerce will be growing for upcoming many, many years in the quite significant growth.
at a quite significant rate. yeah, so seems like both assumptions were proved to be right after more than 10 years, 11 years. So, yeah, so that's why we started on this.
Brent Peterson (04:48.962)
That's great. tell us, you you've mentioned email, but now we're moving into more touch points for customers and it is Omnichannel, Omnisend. Tell us all the different touch points that you're encompassing now.
Rytis Lauris (05:02.573)
Yeah, so we started with email, now we have email, SMS, we have web push notifications, which actually web push notifications, I would say underrated channel. It is really effective, it really works well for those who use, but not that many of our customers use this channel, but for those who use it, it's proved to be very effective. And yeah, so all combined, we used to serve, we used to serve WhatsApp.
Facebook Messenger, Viber, but we discontinued those. WhatsApp seems like more and more customers are willing to use it again because we changed a lot of their policies and their capabilities, mean WhatsApp side. So highly likely, highly likely that at the beginning of 2026, we will get back to WhatsApp as it's becoming more and more coherent like marketing channel, not only one-to-one communication channel. yeah, so and you know.
All is the best when you combine those channels and you communicate with brand not only via email and with readers, not only via SMS, but once you combine. So A, you allow customers to choose their most preferred channels. B, the best when customers prefer to communicate with them via a few channels and you put all those channels in a single campaign and a single automation. I mean, it's not separated. Let's say this is email automation, this is SMS.
This is just automation after someone left a product in the shopping cart. This is automation then after when someone purchased from you and you combine those different channels on the single automation. So this is proves to be the most effective.
Brent Peterson (06:46.158)
Some of the data you shared prior to this you said that automated messages make up 37 % of email orders and only 2 % of the sends. Can you explain what that means to the average user?
Rytis Lauris (06:59.887)
Correct, yeah, that's correct. So basically that means that there's way more traffic, that means that there is way more noise coming from trigger-based automated messages. So those are like the most popular are Abundant Car Reminder, Welcome Series, Browse Abundant, Post-Purchase Emails, Segment Change, some VIP customers change to maybe at-risk customers, et cetera change. So those are triggers, so those triggers trigger a campaign.
full automated campaign that you set up once and you don't kind of do on daily basis, on weekly basis, review just time to time, it's very important. And yeah, so that means that you'd send just like few memos to brand instead of sending like a bulk campaign and promoting every product you have in stock instead of just promoting very specific products that for that specific customer is interesting. that's why you only send 2 % of traffic.
and it drives 37 % of conversions for our customers. So I think it's just like, you know, great proof why everyone who sells online should use automations and why they are super effective. And on top of that, one thing that I would say, I have no doubts everyone who is listening to your podcast does automation. I have no doubts.
But what is important, at least what we see among our customer base, usually it's like two, three automated flows, but it's better to use 15, 18, 20 automated flows. Every lovely touch point, every lovely customer journey touch point should have an automated sequence attached to it.
Brent Peterson (08:47.31)
So I think what I hear you saying, at one extreme are the users that just have one big huge email list and they just send it to everybody once a month or whenever. And the better case is to get very granular with your customers and send them exactly what they need at the right time when they're active, they want to get it, right? Is that what you're saying?
Rytis Lauris (08:54.735)
Just a bulk campaign. Yeah.
Rytis Lauris (09:08.407)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And you can use automated flows exactly for that. And it's not that you as a marketer think that today you want to promote...
TV sets. It's customer who shows an interest and intent that someone is looking for a TV set now, but not looking for a new phone now. This is kind of all the data Omnisend is collecting and other tools like Omnisend are collecting and helping you to automate your communication with customers. That being said, campaigns are still effective and they're still important to be sent, but alongside the more automations you have, the more
Brent Peterson (09:42.798)
Yeah
Rytis Lauris (09:51.801)
dollars or euros or whatever currency you earn while you just slip. Automated Tools does the job.
Brent Peterson (10:00.824)
Yeah, read that you are in the US, there's an average of $2.96 per email in your automated campaigns or in an auto or granular automated email compared to 10 cents on a regular just generic email campaign. So that's a huge difference, right?
Rytis Lauris (10:15.973)
Absolutely, absolutely. Massive difference because again, you send way fewer messages and they are way more timely for customers contextually. That's why they have way better engagement rates and way better conversion rates. So that combined fewer messages, better conversion rates, all that combined, the results to what you just quoted are just insane. Insanely good, I mean.
Brent Peterson (10:46.822)
Are there some tools that clients can use to identify the points in which they should trigger those automated emails that you mentioned that every touch point in the customer journey should have an automation to it? Is there ways to identify that? And again, you started something simple and then keep adding and going more complex.
Rytis Lauris (11:07.375)
Yeah. So for those who sell online, at least in Omnisense, there are a lot of presets. So all the best practices, all those key touch points identified already and there are just presets you can click on the dongle, just enable them and then edit from there. Yeah. So of course each business has its own specific cases, cetera. And customer journey is not always the same, but yeah, it's so...
So basically all the mains are there already in place and it's easy to start utilizing. You don't need any separate tool. On top of that, of course, this is what we are currently working on. like AI assistant here to help you to identify where potentially you are losing your revenue because you underutilize the capabilities of the tool and maybe you miss some.
touch points in the customer journey and you do not automate communication with them. So it will come soon in a couple of months.
Brent Peterson (12:13.74)
Yeah, I think most people still think about ChatGPT as something that helps them write better emails, but really the magic behind it is using that data analytics section, the pattern recognition, to find those segments for you. Talk a little bit about how the tools are changing, and you just mentioned something that's things that are changing even the next couple of months, but how tools are changing, how marketers use.
Rytis Lauris (12:26.543)
Mm-hmm.
Brent Peterson (12:41.182)
any system and employ AI to assist them.
Rytis Lauris (12:41.189)
Mm-hmm.
Rytis Lauris (12:45.605)
Yeah, absolutely. each tool, Omniscient, ChadGBT, generic tools like ChadGBT are specialized tools like Omniscient, of course, are employing. mean, ChadGBT is by default is just AI tool, but they expand the functionality. So I would say kind of there are two vectors that are important here to touch. So one is like the habits of the marketers.
So within the tools, think that marketers expect more advice what to do next. So we touched that already. let's say, you know, we already have live reforms, let's say. Yeah. So if we identify that your form is not the best, we advise you that maybe you would like to do something. Yeah. So maybe you have to change, et cetera. And the second thing is how marketers use is really then to do.
whatever advice we get is, okay, so can you write a copy? Do you mention? So sometimes they use ChadGBT, sometimes they have embedded solutions, native solutions, just like Domnisant, we have a subject line tester, subject line writer, AI assistant or copywriter, AI assistant in place. So all those capabilities customers are usually using it. mean, marketers are using it. So, and it's a really great...
Great to see that. As well as kind of like transforming some more difficult or more... marketers are either creators or like number people or creative people, right? Do different kind of marketing. So let's say probably the most used and most popular and well accepted capability, AI capability of an Omniscient is segment creator.
So for those who are more visual and more creative marketers, it was always painful. You know, this logic or, and, if, then, etc. So logical junctions was always difficult to navigate. So now you just prompt it in human language. Can you build me a segment of everyone who bought in the past three months and spend more than $100? Boom, the segment is there in play. So this is the most...
Rytis Lauris (15:08.569)
the accepted and used AI capability within the tool. Second, however, second like big, big chunk of AI adoption is how our customers, like those people who are purchasing, consumers, how do they use AI? So of course, like more and more AI tools, gigantic AI tools are coming into play when searching for goods. It was kind of Google's and...
Amazon's, know, Monopoly mainly, a little bit of Meta maybe, but just those two were dominating whenever I need any product, I have a Google or go to Amazon mainly. Now things have started to change and I believe it will be changing as we see, we are kind of rising of more and more leads, ChadGBT is generating, Claude is generating, et cetera. yeah, and especially kind of like ChadGBT just recently launched in...
with Shopify and Etsy, like checkout in chat basically. You should not even leave chat GBT conversation window and you can purchase from that. So that's definitely a fundamental change in how people purchase things. Still, I think, and this is just my opinion, but I strongly think and believe that...
buying decisions will be pretty emotional decisions. And personally, I'm not the big fan of thinking that agents will be buying everything and will make all the buying decisions for us in the future. I think it will still remain an emotional task or exercise to purchase something. But of course, agents will help us or will help us to restock for...
for whatever we use and maybe we need recurring purchases, et cetera. that's my point of view.
Brent Peterson (17:12.226)
Yeah, we had an interesting conversation at Shop Talk a couple weeks ago with a VC person who talked about that websites are not going to go away, but the importance of certain types of websites, especially in products, is going to reduce as Amazon becomes more of the marketplace and people buy from there and now you'll be able to buy directly inside of JetGPT that
Rytis Lauris (17:39.205)
Okay.
Brent Peterson (17:39.672)
Types of maybe direct consumer brands are gonna be very still important. They have a website and they wanna maintain a brand, but using ChatGP to purchase something could be, well, is already the next thing out there, right? Talk a little, yeah, go ahead.
Rytis Lauris (17:47.523)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Rytis Lauris (17:54.085)
And I agree, and I agree. So you still will have to own your online store, Shopify or any other platform. But basically there will be different interfaces. One for me as a human to browse, to choose and to make a purchase. And second for my agent, for my assistant that is...
AI assistant, not a human, to be able to browse, to choose, and to purchase.
Brent Peterson (18:30.264)
What do you say to the merchant or the entrepreneur who feels still that they don't need to get people anymore, that AI is going to automate everything, including all your content that you're creating? I saw that happen last year where a lot of people let people go. And there's a Klarna thing that I published on Wednesday.
How important is the human part of this still?
Rytis Lauris (19:02.309)
that Klarna is rehiring. yeah. And again, but I think that what is important here that Klarna is rehiring people for a bit different role than it was once they let people go. So the role has transformed and that's what we say inside the organization for our colleagues.
Brent Peterson (19:05.346)
Yeah, they're rehiring, so that's exactly the lesson learned, right?
Rytis Lauris (19:32.663)
employees that AI will definitely take your job as it is today. and you will have, especially those who are individual contributors, will have to become managers of AI agents and AI assistants. So, I believe that still, I kind of strongly believe in like superiority of
humankind, something like this, if that's, is political correct to say that? But look, it's something similar, like AI for me is equal to invention of a steam machine or to electricity. So the human labor was replaced with machines, but steam engine, with, but I mean, still.
we still need people and humans in factories. We need more people to produce machines that will produce the products. We can produce more, et cetera. So I strongly believe that this AI change is something similar, that it's super scary. Maybe we will not be needed, et cetera, but I believe that we will be needed because then everybody does marketing with AI and all the copyright is AI. Someone...
has to stand out. And who will stand out? The one who that will be different. And if all everybody's using Chad GBT, Chad GBT cannot create like 100 million unique copyrights. I've read like the one post on LinkedIn like that I liked a lot the other day. it was something among the lines. I've read like, I'm hiring, I've read...
whatever, 100 resumes in the past couple of days. And you know, I feel like I'm reading a brown text. Why is it brown? Because the brown, you're to get brown color if you're going to mix all the colors you have. So, read that something is like, you know, it's all this brown color. So, that's kind of, I think. Yeah, so definitely A, you have to employ AI and it's inevitable. You have to do this.
Rytis Lauris (21:56.197)
And you have to change so you have you us as human beings have to change how we work as a specialist have to change definitely how we work because the job we do today will not be relevant tomorrow or maybe after one year but But we will still be relevant and I don't believe that you know humans will have you know Only free time and no need to work and no need to create value
Brent Peterson (22:24.77)
Yeah, that brown analogy is perfect. You could use another one where it turns everything brown into some foul word that we shouldn't say on the air. definitely, think people are recognizing content that's generated by AI because there's so many phrases that are just borrowed and continuously used over and over again. And that if you don't maintain your own brand voice, you're going to lose out to, well, you're going to be the same brand as everybody.
Rytis Lauris (22:36.739)
Yeah.
Brent Peterson (22:54.704)
else right?
Rytis Lauris (22:55.905)
Exactly. And someone will stand out.
Brent Peterson (22:59.534)
Yeah, great point. So we have a few minutes left as I close out the podcast. I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like. What would you like to plug today?
Rytis Lauris (23:10.117)
So of course my own tool Omniscent. So you know, if you are not using specialized e-commerce marketing automation tools, so definitely you have to switch to Omniscent just immediately because you're going to see just the increase of your results immediately. And if you are using the leader in the market as we are second,
tool, most popular tool in the e-commerce market if you're using the leader. You're just overpaying a lot. We're to get to the same with Omnisend and we'll save some cash for you. That's the reason why you should switch to Omnisend.
Brent Peterson (23:43.342)
You
Brent Peterson (23:53.378)
Great, yeah, tell us how they get a hold of you.
Rytis Lauris (23:56.262)
I'm 42.
Brent Peterson (23:58.378)
Tell us how they get a hold of you. I appreciate you telling me your age. Yeah, I'm also I'm 32. But yeah, how did they get a hold of you?
Rytis Lauris (24:06.373)
I'm sorry. just... Yeah. Omniscient.com, all myself. prefer LinkedIn. So read the stories on LinkedIn.
Brent Peterson (24:09.11)
No, it's okay.
Brent Peterson (24:17.998)
That's awesome. I'm going to try to, I'm going to get your first, I'm going to do your first name again. What is Loris? All right. Co-Founder, CEO and Co-Founder of OmniSense. It's been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here today.
Rytis Lauris (24:30.437)
Thank you.
Brent Peterson (24:32.951)
All right, good. Yeah, that was fun.