Podcast Overview
“Although, can you ever have too many cushions?”
“Ask my wife, it’s definitely no.”
Welcome back to eCom@One with Richard Hill! In this episode, Richard Hill sits down with Moise Abubakr, Head of eCommerce at Rockett St George, a brand celebrated for its bold and personality-driven homeware. Together, they dig into the secrets behind building and protecting a truly unique brand, the power of niche marketing and how to keep your story consistent across all channels from product and creative to email and paid media.
You’ll also hear Moise Abubakr share practical strategies for high-performing email marketing, insights into understanding your customer psychology, how to approach working with agencies, and how to leverage both D2C and marketplace partnerships like their recent collaboration with Next. Whether you’re looking to sharpen your brand identity, supercharge your email CRM, or future-proof your marketing strategy in the age of AI, this episode is packed with actionable advice you won’t want to miss.
Time stamps:
00:00 Protecting and Growing Unique Brands
04:47 Importance of niche branding
08:30 Benefits of an agile in-house team
11:37 Empowering team through ownership
14:18 Working with agencies effectively
18:47 Optimising the welcome email flow
23:01 Improving customer conversion strategy
26:37 Tailoring email messages for audiences
27:59 Using data for customer targeting
33:11 Personalising marketing strategies
37:07 Understanding AI in Marketing
41:00 Expanding product range on marketplaces
43:11 Partnering with Next for expansion
45:51 Importance of community for brands
49:33 Encouragement to subscribe
Richard Hill [00:00:00]: Like I said, I go on the website, it's an incredible look, feel, brand that stands out straight away. As head of e-commerce, how do you protect that uniqueness?
Moise Abubakr [00:00:09]: It's very easy to protect because it's how we survive. For us, it is imperative that we stand out because in essence, that's how we end up reaching more people.
Richard Hill [00:00:18]: Obviously, you're a big fan of email.
Moise Abubakr [00:00:20]: It's just core to everything. What we used was successful campaign emails that we knew had already worked. And we saw a lovely increase on our revenue by the end of the year and subsequent year.
Richard Hill [00:00:31]: The most overrated e-commerce trend right now in 3 words or less?
Moise Abubakr [00:00:35]: AI, I would say, is the most overrated. Yeah, doesn't mean it's bad. So advertising has been around. Technology is the thing that's changed. The one thing that hasn't changed is who the marketing is going to, and that's the customer. And so if you're not spending more time thinking about them, but actually spending your time thinking about what channel put your next ad on, yeah, then I think maybe you're missing a key part of your marketing strategy, which is the, the customer.
Richard Hill [00:01:04]: Hi everyone, Richard Hill here. Welcome back to the Ecom at One podcast. Now today I'm joined by Mosi Abubakar, head of e-commerce at Rocket St. George, a brand that has built its identity around bold, personality-led homeware and standing out from the brand. In this episode, we get into what it really takes to protect a unique brand as you grow, why being niche can actually be one of your biggest advantages, and how Rocket St. George keeps that brand story consistent across product, creative, email, paid media, and the wider customer journey. Moisés also shares some brilliant insights into email marketing, customer psychology, marketplace partnerships, and why understanding your customer properly Still matters more than chasing the latest shiny thing. So whether you're trying to sharpen your brand identity, get more from your email strategy, or build a strong connection with your customers, there's loads to take away from this one.
Richard Hill [00:01:58]: Now do me one quick favor, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening to this episode so you're always in the know and never miss an episode. Let's dive in. Hi there, how are we doing?
Moise Abubakr [00:02:10]: Yeah, very well. Thank you. How are you doing?
Richard Hill [00:02:13]: Um, I'm very well because I'm in aircon, so it's really, yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:02:16]: Yeah, I've got, I've got about 5 doors open around me just to make sure there's enough air flowing around. Yeah.
Richard Hill [00:02:24]: So I think for the listeners, we are recording this podcast, I think on officially the hottest day pretty much in the UK that has ever been. Um, although I think in the next couple of days it's going to get even warmer and maybe scrape 40 degrees in the UK. So hopefully you survive.
Moise Abubakr [00:02:40]: Well, I mean, it's a— was it a red weather warning? That's today. That's the claim to fame for today.
Richard Hill [00:02:46]: That is today. So hopefully we both get through this. I'm okay. I'm in the aircon, which is— but let's hopefully— well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Absolute pleasure to have a chat. So let's get into it. I know you've been in ecommerce for quite some time, so I'm really looking forward to having a good chat. And obviously you work and with the brand Rocket St.
Richard Hill [00:03:09]: George. Fantastic set of products. I think I've already sort of earmarked far too much money than I should do on the website. I have it out preparing for this.
Moise Abubakr [00:03:18]: It's working. It means it's working.
Richard Hill [00:03:20]: Some lovely, lovely products. So I think before, if you're with us now, I would say you probably— I don't normally say pause at this level, at this stage of an interview and a podcast, but it's good. Yeah, I would say have a look at the site. Some unbelievable products. So obviously Rocket St. George identity is built on standing out from the bland sort of chain store homeware brands that are out there. You know, as head of e-commerce, how do you protect that uniqueness? You know, like I said, I go on the website, it's an incredible look, feel, brand that stands out straight away. You know, how do you protect that uniqueness when there's obviously a lot of pressure Um, you know, maybe to focus on in other areas?
Moise Abubakr [00:04:05]: Sure. No, no, I, it obviously, I think in, in the world of e-commerce, uh, growth and scale and all the things that you need to do are built on essentially appealing to as, as mass an audience as you can with an offering that we have on Rocket St. George. It is about our uniqueness. That's our USP. So for us, it is imperative that we stand out because in essence, that's how we end up reaching more people. I think if we ever tried to blend in with the crowd, we'd lose who we are, but we'd also lose the battle to get new customers. We'd lose the battle to make products that ever sold.
Moise Abubakr [00:04:47]: The fact that we are able to create stuff that people haven't seen anywhere else, won't be able to buy anywhere else, and certainly speak to a particular type of person means that we at the very least have an area of the market to ourselves. We can grow that way vertically in that sense, but ultimately we are protecting the brand by having a unique brand. I think that's something that a lot of brands probably worry about is how niche can you go before you start falling behind? And I've always believed that niche is actually the thing that helps you survive in, at least in the e-com world when a lot of other brands are competing with each other. If you're the one brand that people can say, oh, where do I get this leopard print dot dot dot? And they instantly think of you. That's a win. That's a win every day of the week. And so I, it's very easy to protect because it's how we survive. And it's very much supported in the brand.
Moise Abubakr [00:05:47]: So I'd never have to try to fight off people saying, you know, oh, we should really launch this plain mug because we know you can sell billions.
Richard Hill [00:05:58]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:05:59]: Instead, it's like, do you think this is too much? That's the battle we're fighting inside is, are we going a bit too wild? Because, you know, the story of the brand is it was created by people who wanted those products. So they're creating stuff that they love and sometimes the challenge is, Can you love it too much and will it appeal to other people? So yeah, easy.
Richard Hill [00:06:23]: Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant. So where would you say that sort of uniqueness, you know, I think obviously having that uniqueness, absolute sort of differentiator, but where does that come from, you know, and how do you keep, how does that communicate maybe down throughout the organization?
Moise Abubakr [00:06:40]: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's, a lot of buzzwords in kind of office culture, but the word culture is one of them. So what happens is when you are part of the team, you are immersed in the history of the brand, you're immersed in all the products. We do all our photography and design in-house. We do all of our PPC in-house. So a lot of the things that come out of the brand come directly from that head office, come from sitting next to the owners, having meetings with them, discussing why this particular product exists versus this particular product, how we could have gone down this route versus that other route. And a lot of the discussions, at least from a marketing point of view, are around the story of the product and the reason it exists in the first place. And I think that's fed in from the owners from top down.
Moise Abubakr [00:07:33]: So they will sit with their design team and they'll come up with these beautiful stories for these products. And then they sit us in on those meetings. I mean, Tuesday, I get the days, you know, all blend into one. But the Tuesday just gone, we sat down with one of the product designers on her latest range and she's working 3 seasons in advance. So she's already on, you know, autumn 2027, but she's still running us through the line, how we got to autumn 2027. And that's a really valuable thing for for me to have because when it comes to my job, knowing all of that stuff means I can create work that resonates with people but also makes sense to the brand. It doesn't lose the essence of why we do what we do.
Richard Hill [00:08:20]: So you'd probably put quite a lot of that down to that sort of keeping that brand and that message and that consistency, quite a bit of it down to the fact that you're doing a lot of that in-house or maybe all of that?
Moise Abubakr [00:08:30]: Yes, 100%. I think being able to turn around at your desk and ask a designer to make a quick change or talk to the person who's building your meta ads and say to them, you know, actually, maybe we should try this angle or this hook. Being able to do that in an office within, you know, before lunch and getting it done after lunch is rare because I know that, I mean, I've worked with amazing agencies and I think agencies are an extension of brands if you can find the right one. but the speed is the cost, right? So that's the thing that you lose out. And so we have an amazing in-house team that is so agile and quick at maneuvering that it means a brand story doesn't get lost. It doesn't get diluted because you're waiting and you may have forgotten an essence of it, or you have to write in an email which then loses the tone of what you're talking about, or in a Teams call or that sort of stuff.
Richard Hill [00:09:25]: Yeah, no, that's very interesting. So Maybe just give us a feel for the size of the organization for the listeners, because I think a lot of listeners may be thinking, okay, you know, you obviously got a fantastic brand, you know, from the outside looking in, you know, and you've got a group or a team of marketers that are sort of taking, you know, the creative side and, you know, the marketing as a whole. But then, you know, there is this sort of balance between having enough skill, passion internally in the organization, in the brand, but then having that knowledge maybe around the platforms and the changes, say you reference Meta there, you know, obviously it's so much change happening, you know, in the platforms around AI. Sorry, I've said exactly, we got, we got 10 minutes in without mentioning that.
Moise Abubakr [00:10:12]: I was hoping to, yeah, hoping to go further, but yeah.
Richard Hill [00:10:15]: So it's like, um, you know, how do you balance that sort of, um, you know, I guess the knowledge gaps maybe?
Moise Abubakr [00:10:21]: No, no, but which is it? That's exactly it. I think we, I've worked in previous places where a lot of the work was outsourced. So whether it is the PPC stuff, the SEO stuff, the design, stuff and it was a fairly small team that managed that.
Richard Hill [00:10:37]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:10:37]: This is, I think, a fairly small team still, but everyone has a channel. And whilst that is quite a risk because you're putting quite a lot of your eggs in one basket, so to speak, by doing that, what you have is consistency and you build a consistent thread of what that channel sounds like, looks like, feels like. But it also means someone can understand the changes that have happened within it. Historically, we've seen, like you've mentioned, it's not just Meta. Every version of every channel has suffered immense change and it isn't just post-COVID, it's been in the last year and it isn't all just AI either. It could be down to just the way you use that platform. Email is a great example of new things are being added all the time and people don't understand whether they need to use it or not. But what they do understand is what's worked for them and perhaps what could on their roadmap work for them in the future.
Moise Abubakr [00:11:37]: Within our team, at least in my marketing team, every person owns a channel and within that they have people supporting. And so what you get is very dedicated people because you've given someone ownership, but you also get that knowledge gap slowly being filled because you can't, you know, No one can be expected to be an expert overnight, but it is a— I'm incredibly proud of the team. I think everyone is very good at what they do, which makes my job immensely easy. But it also means that when changes happen, there isn't that fear. I think what we've found in the past with agencies is they will understand the change, we won't understand the change, and that disconnect means If they do something on an ad that you wouldn't expect them to do, you feel like, you know, what's that? You start questioning. And so it builds this kind of, it kind of tars the relationship a little bit. But within the team, they'll say to me that I've just gone to this Meta webinar and, you know, Andromeda is doing this now and we'll sit down, we'll talk about it because I'm lucky enough to have spent quite a lot of time in a lot of different teams that have absorbed enough to be able to at least talk about it. And we'll come up with a plan and we'll test.
Moise Abubakr [00:12:55]: And because I'm the one that's able to sign off those tests, I feel very confident in understanding that most of them are gonna fail.
Richard Hill [00:13:02]: That's okay.
Moise Abubakr [00:13:03]: And then you might hit on the one that does succeed and that bridges the gap to the next step that you're gonna take.
Richard Hill [00:13:09]: I think, yeah, it sounds brilliant because I think what you've done there is what you're alluding to and what you're saying is, you know, you've created this culture where it's a safe place to to learn, to test, you know, and to grow. So in theory, I would say you've got a fairly happy bunch of people that work with you, for you.
Moise Abubakr [00:13:26]: I hope so. I hope they watch this and don't start swearing at the screen.
Richard Hill [00:13:31]: They're like, no. Yeah, because it is sort of a, you know, we have this conversation every night, you know, obviously brands come to our agency, you know, obviously there's an agency behind the podcast and, you know, of differing sizes. And yeah, there's this point, you know, obviously most of our brands have a marketing manager and a marketing team. But then some of the smaller ones don't, you know. So then we, you know, we scale them to a certain level maybe, and then they start to hire. So then it's that balance between what they want to do or what they, you know, and where we come in. So, you know, it's like this—
Moise Abubakr [00:13:58]: Well, and—
Richard Hill [00:13:59]: piece where, you know, we may be doing everything at a point, you know, and that may— that continues with a lot of clients. But then, you know, we're liaising with a marketing manager and a team. But then some brands want to do more in-house. And I think, you know, especially on the creative side for sure. So it's this balance. I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all, you know. No, no, no.
Moise Abubakr [00:14:18]: I've certainly, I mean, in previous roles, we've worked with agencies where they really helped scale up the in-house resource and everyone who was working with that agency found a way to grow because of that agency. And ultimately it's about finding the right mix. I think for us, because we've always had it in-house, the strength has come from building that up. I love the idea of an agency coming in with expertise, but us holding the reins of the brand. And I think that requires a lot of kind of historical knowledge of what the brand is about. You need to kind of have a fairly strong understanding of what you're asking of an agency because vice versa, it can be quite unfair to an agency if you expect them to kind of read your mind. and understand everything from the ground up, having only kind of just known you via Teams calls. Like, that's a particularly tough existence.
Moise Abubakr [00:15:17]: But I think a lot of brands do expect quite a lot from agencies because they're paying them. So they think, oh, for this money I should be getting XYZ. But if you, if you look at it as an extension of your team, you wouldn't do that with an employee. You wouldn't do that with your, uh, a direct report. You wouldn't go, I expect you to be as good as me or to learn all of this. in a week.
Richard Hill [00:15:37]: Yeah, that's a great point. And obviously having an incredible or a thorough onboarding understanding of the brand and vice versa, you know, and I think that's a question we get asked, you know, how much time is gonna be required of us if we start working with you? And it's like, well, ideally quite a bit, but they probably, some brands don't wanna hear that because they're busy. So it's like trying to get a balance because of course as an agency, we wanna understand, you know, there might be 10 years of history and so forth and, you know, and maybe the team we're speaking to maybe don't know quite a lot of the answers to the questions because they're new or things have changed or—
Moise Abubakr [00:16:14]: Sure.
Richard Hill [00:16:14]: So it's trying to get a balance, but ultimately, yeah, you need a very strong understanding of that brand, strong onboarding when you're working with an agency. So, you know, it's that as you're gonna start off down the wrong track potentially and just not understand some of the nuances around, obviously there's all sorts of nuances, whether that's We don't say things like, you know, specific brand things, which are quite straightforward normally, you know, seasonality, you know, why there's some quirks around certain product sets and, you know, oh, we've got 100 grand worth of this in the warehouse, but we need to shift. Well, we would never know that if you didn't tell us sort of thing.
Moise Abubakr [00:16:48]: Yeah, exactly.
Richard Hill [00:16:50]: Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it's a good conversation because it's something we talk about quite a lot in the agency, that sort of you know, different, you know, depending usually on not just on turnover, but ultimately, you know, they get to a point where, right, we can look at hiring more senior people in their brand. Sorry. You know, then where does the agency fit? We do quite a lot of content around this because it's working together is the short version.
Moise Abubakr [00:17:16]: Yeah, I think it's key. I think it is the only way to really have a proper successful relationship with any agency that kind of represents you. I think if they don't feel like an extension of you, then that's not really helping you.
Richard Hill [00:17:30]: Yeah. And that's where the sort of long-term relationship comes in, isn't it?
Moise Abubakr [00:17:35]: Which is exactly what you want.
Richard Hill [00:17:36]: Yeah. Okay. So obviously my notes tell me, my researcher told me that obviously you've worked in a few brands, you know, and you've driven double-digit year-on-year growth at French Bedrooms. against quite a tricky forecast at the time. So what was the single biggest lever that you pulled there?
Moise Abubakr [00:17:59]: Yeah, yeah. No, that may be an obvious one. No, no, no. I mean, for people who don't know, Fraith Bedroom, luxury homeware brand focusing around bedrooms like the name suggests. When I joined them, I think it's fair to say that they were facing decline, year-on-year decline. So we were looking at The reasons why, I mean, the first things you do in this job is you kind of go in and look for what we call the leaky bucket. Like, where are you actually losing as opposed to where you could be winning? Fix those bits, plug those holes. And I think for me, that was where a lot of the change happened, was not necessarily a single channel, but a behavior and looking deeper into what the data was saying, looking deeper at what customers were actually, what their behavior was saying and making changes, very small changes.
Moise Abubakr [00:18:47]: to kind of divert them away from just leaving or not coming back for a second sale or whatever it might be. I mean, with email, I'm sure we'll talk about email because it's just core to everything. With email, for example, there were a lot of flows and automations that tried to do very complex things with a customer journey. So tried to predict a customer journey. If they did this, we'd show them this. If they did this, we'd What they kind of didn't look at was the first step in that customer journey, the welcome flow. So that welcome flow, like all traditional welcome flows, has like a maybe 10% off your first order, etc., and then a second email that says thanks for buying, whatever. I went in and changed that welcome flow from one email— no, it was 3 emails in essence— to 16 because— Because actually what my— and in essence, those 16 also made or tried to make it so that customers didn't see any of our campaign emails while they were in that flow.
Moise Abubakr [00:19:49]: So it was very curated what they saw because for luxury furniture, I'm sure this isn't just unique to French Bedroom, there is a longer consideration period. It isn't as quick as see the bed they want to buy by that day. Some people have the luxury of being able to do that and can, you know, buy a bed that day. A lot of people have to discuss it with their partner, have to measure up, you have to look at colors. There's a lot of work that goes in before someone comes back to buy. In that time, they would've gotten welcome to French Bedroom and then thanks, here's our story, goodbye. What I put in was discussing why we, the story of the brand, then discussing why this product was, you know, is a staple to us and the story behind that. And oh, it pairs really well with this collection.
Moise Abubakr [00:20:41]: And depending on what they kind of, what tags they triggered, they would fall into, oh, here's our sale categories you may be interested in, or here's our kind of newest collections or whatever it might be. But they would journey through that with these bespoke emails. But the trick of it, the reason it was so quick was we didn't create emails, new emails for those 16. What we used was successful campaign emails that we knew had already worked. So that was another thing was a lot of current creative gets used once and that's it.
Richard Hill [00:21:18]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:21:18]: Oh, it did really well. See, you wouldn't want to be here and it never resurfaces. What I thought was we've got a bank of years' worth of really successful campaign emails. Like, we segmented the top 20, so these are the ones that were making the most revenue or had the highest click-throughs or whatever it might be, and put them into that flow but updated them for, uh—
Richard Hill [00:21:40]: You make it sound so simple, but that is actually genius, isn't it?
Moise Abubakr [00:21:43]: It just also means you know where the— where your newest customer for 3 months is. You know where you've put them, at least with email. And so you know the messaging they're getting. You're you know what the expected behavior is. So if that behavior doesn't— if there's an email in that 16 that suddenly doesn't convert, swap it out. Like, it's so easy to track. But if you just send 1 or 2 and hope that that does all your work, you're kind of missing the point of what your brand messaging should look like, in my opinion.
Richard Hill [00:22:15]: Yeah, no, I think I would say rewind. is the last 3 minutes because I think just that simple, you know, I think going from maybe that typical 1, 2, 3, 4, you know, welcome email sequence to, you know, you had 16 there.
Moise Abubakr [00:22:35]: But then— Which could be too much, you could be overkill. But my view was if you don't test where the limit is with stuff that you know already works, a lot of new campaign emails are untested. So you don't know if they're gonna hit. these ones were proven. So to me, it felt like a safer bet to test with those. And yeah, you know, 16, depending on who your brand is, and we had a long enough consideration period that that felt okay.
Richard Hill [00:23:01]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:23:01]: But potentially, if you're selling products that convert within a week, you don't need that many. And ultimately, if you also look at— so you look at that and you go, oh, that makes a lot of sense, that works really well. Do that for all your other channels. all your other channels will have a version of that. Oh, that makes a bit of sense if we do that, that ultimately you're fixing stuff without having to do too much extra work. And luckily it worked and we saw a lovely increase on our revenue by the end of the year and subsequent year. But ultimately it comes from trying to understand, put yourself on the other side of that fence, you know, look at it from a customer's point of view. if I was that customer, what am I actually getting from you on a day? And is it what you want? Are some gonna be competing? Are some gonna be conflicting? And ultimately that kind of helped us at least get through that patch.
Richard Hill [00:23:56]: Yeah, brilliant. I think the listeners have definitely got a big takeaway there. I'm sure they can go and implement. So yeah, brilliant. Obviously you're a big fan of email. I don't need to ask you that.
Moise Abubakr [00:24:07]: Yes, very much.
Richard Hill [00:24:09]: But Obviously you've touched on, you know, what worked then, you know, and obviously I'm sure it's a similar story now with the French bedrooms, but, you know, maybe step the listeners through sort of some of the high-performing email sort of strategies that you use now.
Moise Abubakr [00:24:28]: Sure. I think they're gonna seem obvious to a lot of people. So if we just skip past the kind of welcome flow, abandoned flows, you know, the abandoned checkout, that sort of stuff. They're all ones you're expected to do. They're whatever email platform you're using, they're gonna be the default templates they give you. Great. What I found, and this is gonna sound slightly counterintuitive, is less is more. So we were sending 5 emails when I started, 5 campaign emails.
Moise Abubakr [00:25:01]: I think there is an oversaturation of messaging when you're doing that. You're not giving people enough time to digest what you actually want. I know there is a fight for the inbox and you want to make sure you stay relevant, but you also don't want to be annoying. And one of the strategies I implemented was testing sending fewer emails but on key days and at key moments, and then segmenting them to different key interests. And that saw, again, saw campaigns rise. That did really well for campaigns, and now it's the norm. For, for us. So what I think is a, a potentially really key strategy is trying to ask yourself on a, on a single day, what is the most amount of emails one customer is going to get from you? And that includes flows, that includes campaign ones on your major send day, whether it's a Friday or Saturday, you know, newsletter day, whatever it might be.
Richard Hill [00:25:53]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:25:54]: What is going to be the highest potential they're going to get? When I looked at that, there was a day that a customer could potentially get 5 emails from us back to back to back to back. And so to me, that's A, a problem for attribution. Who gets the sale if there is a sale?
Richard Hill [00:26:10]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:26:11]: B, who is actually making enough of an impact at that point? Where does the impact start and stop? And C, ultimately, I think that's gonna lead to more unsubscribes and it's gonna lead to people losing interest in who you are and seeing you as a mass kind of brand and, and not really what you want to be seen as. So look at volume, that's, that's a key strategy.
Richard Hill [00:26:36]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:26:37]: And then within messaging, try and understand what it is that you're trying to say. So it seems obvious, but I mean, in terms of you have, say, 100,000 email subscribers, not all of them want the same thing, not all of them at the same stage of the journey. So what are you actually trying to say with this one email? Figure that out and then go, is this applicable to all 100,000 of these people? If the answer is yes, great, because it might be like a Black Friday sale email. Yeah, but the answer might be, oh no, we're just talking about like cushions, but all these people have already bought cushions. Why are we— they might prefer a different email. And so just ask that question and it will save you a lot of time because it doesn't mean you make more work for yourself. It just means you send it to the right people and you're not bothering the wrong people.
Richard Hill [00:27:22]: So with that, maybe obviously, yeah, you've got your Black Fridays, the, you know, the to everyone, but then somebody comes in, you know, because most of our listeners will have, you know, the traditional, if you like, structure of categories, subcategories, you know, depends on collections, whatever. So they've bought the 4 or 5 cushions. So then we're saying, well, they probably don't need any more cushions. So we'll calm down on the cushions. Yeah. But when they've had some amount of with this product.
Moise Abubakr [00:27:49]: Although, can you ever have too many cushions? That's the other thing.
Richard Hill [00:27:52]: Yeah, ask my wife, it's definitely no. You can never have enough. Yeah, that's a true story.
Moise Abubakr [00:27:59]: There's also, most companies will have products that they know are key products, right? So they can track them. We had French Bedroom as an example. We have, you can get a wood sample of the bed. So we knew that people who bought that wood sample were slightly closer to converting. So they would get a completely different email flow based on that behavior. A customer will tell you what they're doing and there is enough data, first-party data that you can use to identify where their next potential step could be. And you could either give them a nudge that way or you can suggest it to them. There's a lot that you could do with the data that you have.
Moise Abubakr [00:28:38]: And I think with email, it is overwhelming. I can understand that for a lot of people, you are asking a lot of this one channel.
Richard Hill [00:28:47]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:28:47]: Messaging-wise. But you are also realizing, I think hopefully, that it is the closest one to connect to a customer. It's one of the few that actually reaches a customer in a place that they have control over, whereas all the other channels, paid, etc., it's kind of thrust upon them. They haven't signed up to get your Meta ad, but they might get your Meta ad. They haven't signed up to get your Google ad, but they might get your Google ad. And so you are closer to their desired behavior already. Just treat them with that kind of level of understanding that you would if you were the customer. Look at your own behavior.
Moise Abubakr [00:29:24]: What emails do you instantly just delete? Don't be one of those.
Richard Hill [00:29:27]: Yeah, 5 from the same brand in one morning is probably one of those.
Moise Abubakr [00:29:31]: It's intense.
Richard Hill [00:29:34]: Yeah, some great ideas there, Eze. Thank you for that. I'm trying to think on, I'm intrigued, like obviously you're a big fan of email. So maybe talk to our listeners about maybe that sort of the team that you have there that do the whole email CRM piece. You know, do you have a, you obviously got the strategy, the sort of technical side of the platform, and maybe talk a bit about the platform that you use and so forth.
Moise Abubakr [00:30:04]: Yeah, yeah, we're on Klaviyo and like I said, we've got our in-house team, we've got an in-house creative team as well. So photography team and studio as well as a designer. And the way it works is we come up with ideas together. We have an amazing person who does, who also does our PR and she does the content and idea planning for the emails.
Richard Hill [00:30:29]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:30:30]: Um, and then we have a designer who can make them, and that designer is so quick, she's making like 3 or 4 emails a day. That— it's, it's so— she's, she's speedy. But it all relies on having the right content, having the right understanding of what products are coming up. So we, we are very close with the product team, with the design team, we're very close with the photography team, so we know what shots we can get. We can ask for certain shots. We know what shots are coming up and what ones have worked really well. we know seasonality, so we talk to our, you know, merch team and kind of understand, oh, okay, we should be moving this product range or we should be looking at highlighting this product range. So we do that.
Moise Abubakr [00:31:08]: So it is very collaborative, but ultimately it sits around the reason the person who does our PR does it is because they understand the brand like in and out. So the language they use, the products that they pick are all tailored around, you who our customer is and what we know from their behavior they like and what they like together. And so our campaign emails very much feed that and then our flow emails use the behavior to then give them a little bit more if needed. And ultimately they work not to get in each other's way, but to support each other.
Richard Hill [00:31:43]: Yeah, brilliant. That sounds like one hell of a setup you've got there, amazing. Very, very—
Moise Abubakr [00:31:48]: Very lucky. I'm very lucky. I'm not complaining one bit. Very, very lucky.
Richard Hill [00:31:52]: Yeah. So you've worked across a few different verticals, if you like, fair trade, gifting, you know, high-end products, luxury furniture and so forth. You know, what would you say are some of the sort of transferable skills around sort of CRM retention programs that generally work across maybe a lot of them?
Moise Abubakr [00:32:14]: Yeah. I think like for me, it's easy to understand that like, I don't know, the thing I'm most interested in is human psychology, right? It's why people do what they do. And I think depending, it doesn't really matter what vertical you're in, but it does depend on what your message is. You need to understand what the customer actually wants, who that customer is. I think I'm very passionate about in the belief that if you understand your customer inside out, nothing you say to them will land badly, right? So you can test quite a lot if you understand who the customer is and if you understand what they're after. And whether it's fair trade, you can instantly understand what that customer is actually looking for. Whether it's luxury furniture, again, you can kind of figure out what the appeal might be there. Whether it's what at Rockets and George, it's all about quirky personality-led homeware.
Moise Abubakr [00:33:11]: So it's designing a home that kind of speaks to your personality instantly. If I ask you to kind of picture someone you know who that could fit, you would. So when you're building out any kind of marketing, if you're not picturing that person in your head and as if you're saying the marketing to them directly, and if you're not picturing what that reaction might look like, then maybe you're not doing it in the way that you should be. Yeah, in my humble opinion. But I, because I mean, I remember watching this marketer called Dave Trott. I don't know if you've heard of Dave Trott. He's kind of a, he used to be like a big marketing guy and he was giving the keynote speech at Brighton SEO pre-COVID and he was talking about how, you know, the very first adverts were in Pompeii, you know, they were on a wall in Pompeii saying market that way. And so advertising has been around.
Moise Abubakr [00:34:06]: Technology is the thing that's changed. The one thing that hasn't changed is who the marketing is going to, and that's the customer. And so if you're not spending more time thinking about them, but actually spending your time thinking about what channel to put your next ad on, then I think maybe you're missing a key part of your marketing strategy, which is, you know, the customer. So I think, you know, all of those different industries, whilst have their own unique selling points, have their own unique stories to tell and different products, they all still have to land with the right customer.
Richard Hill [00:34:39]: Yeah. Well, thank you for that. That really resonates. I think people get too wrapped up in the probably latest and greatest technology and so forth.
Moise Abubakr [00:34:48]: And reality, the next shiny thing. Yeah.
Richard Hill [00:34:50]: Messaging, the understanding and so forth. Right. We're gonna have a change of direction. I'm gonna hit you with some quickfire questions. You've got 5 seconds or less. 5 seconds or less. You ready? So email marketing or paid social, which would you keep if you only could have one?
Moise Abubakr [00:35:06]: Email marketing.
Richard Hill [00:35:08]: I thought—
Moise Abubakr [00:35:08]: Unsurprising.
Richard Hill [00:35:10]: Shopify or Magento for a brand scaling from $3 to $10 million, which one wins?
Moise Abubakr [00:35:15]: Shopify all day. I've done both and Magento is just a whirlwind of pain.
Richard Hill [00:35:24]: Okay. One word for the biggest mistake ecommerce brands make with their brand identity.
Moise Abubakr [00:35:30]: They dilute it. I think dilute, dilution.
Richard Hill [00:35:33]: Dilution. D2C direct website or marketplace channel, which scales a homeware brand faster in 2026?
Moise Abubakr [00:35:42]: Ooh, tough one. I'll land on D2C marketplace. No, D2C brand. Um, because as good as marketplaces can be, and I think there are some amazing ones to be on. It's tough.
Richard Hill [00:35:57]: And is that more because you've got the control on the website more so?
Moise Abubakr [00:36:00]: Exactly. And you can pivot faster and you're not kind of beholden to a number of different restrictions when it comes to marketplaces.
Richard Hill [00:36:10]: Brilliant. And then last one, the most overrated e-commerce trend right now in 3 words or less.
Moise Abubakr [00:36:19]: Uh, AI.
Richard Hill [00:36:20]: 2 letters, AI.
Moise Abubakr [00:36:21]: Yeah, I'll stick with it. Uh, yeah, we can expand on that, but yeah, AI I would say is, is the most overrated. Yeah, it doesn't mean it's bad.
Richard Hill [00:36:30]: Yeah, so thank you for that. So maybe while we're there with the AI, so maybe what are some of the things that you guys are doing? Obviously we could, we could do 2 hours on AI, I'm sure, but we're trying to keep the episode very much—
Moise Abubakr [00:36:43]: Yeah, we're trying to pull that. No, I, I think Look, AI is a great tool and I think if people understand it's a tool, they're in the right place, they're in the right headspace for it. I think a lot of what I'm hearing and a lot of what I'm seeing is it's a fix-all or it's the next great big thing. But actually that's not how marketing has ever worked. There is no next great big thing. There is just a new technology to put your current great big thing on.
Richard Hill [00:37:06]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:37:07]: And if people understand how it works and why they want to use it, also because it's such a broad term. When I say AI, you could be thinking of someone on ChatGPT searching for my brand, or I could be thinking of how do I rank on ChatGPT, or how do I get AI to do my marketing for me. There's a million things that you could do with it. And I think because of that, if you're not nailing down what you want from it and what you want it to do for you, then potentially you're just treating it like it is this, you know, unseen god that's going to fix all your problems. Actually, it's a great tool and we use it as such. I think it would be the same as when Photoshop came around. Hopefully you can't tell, but I'm old enough to remember when every image that you saw that looked slightly too good, people were like, Photoshopped it. And it's become a way to describe things that are actually just normal marketing things.
Moise Abubakr [00:38:08]: And if you were to put that same effort into a different channel, you'd get equally great results. Obviously it's growing and it will be part of the future to come, but at the moment you need to focus on everything else as well. And we use AI internally a lot, but in a lot of helping us to make decisions that don't become the answer, right? So they are good for ideation. It's really great for helping us with kind of strategy setting. So on email, for example, the AI time that you can pick, so it knows when the best time to send an email to a customer for a campaign. Great. And surprisingly, it's predictable, like predictive metrics on when the next potential order from a customer will come. That's also pretty good.
Moise Abubakr [00:38:58]: It's not 100%, but it's actually quite impressive. So there are tools in there that do really well. But if I had to run an entire team on just AI, it would not be anywhere as good as it is currently. And that's the, that's why I think it's overrated. I think a lot of people believe you can, and I think a lot of people see AI as being something that is both scary Or this amazing thing. I think currently it's actually just a bit stupid. We're getting the stupid version and we won't— we're quite far away from the really smart version. And that makes sense the way it's been trained.
Moise Abubakr [00:39:33]: It has to go to the middle. It can't go to the best answer. It has to go to the most common answer. So, you know, just, just be aware of that. That's all I would say. And if you are aware of it, you can use it as a tool really efficiently.
Richard Hill [00:39:45]: I think what we'll maybe do then, Moisi, is get you back on in maybe 12 months and we'll do an AI— we'll do more of an AI chat because I think we could go all in. So, um, from an e-commerce strategy perspective, obviously we touched on it in the quickfire round, you know, what, what does a brand benefit from, um, a wholesale or marketplace move? And when does it cannibalize the sort of D2C brand that you've maybe spent, you know, 10 years building?
Moise Abubakr [00:40:13]: Well, I mean, we've got, so, uh, again, for people who don't know Rockets St George, we've got an amazing partnership with Next. So we are on the Next website. Um, which for us is really great because our reach has expanded to, to so many more people. Next are also amazing in their logistics setup, so they can reach further than we can physically as well as, uh, on the internet. They are massively supportive. So if you can find a relationship like that, that's fantastic because it means you don't have to dull your brand for the marketplace. You don't have to sell the kind of the PG version of who you are on a marketplace. What it does mean is we can go further with our product offering because they do, for example, fashion.
Moise Abubakr [00:41:00]: So we've got a fashion range on there. They do obviously all these different things that we are now able to design for and almost use as a testing ground sometimes. Like we can see what's gonna do really well for us because they have such a mass appeal. Yeah, uh, we can also find ways to really be interesting because again, being on, on a marketplace forces you to ask questions about your brand. Because it, I mean, it could be as simple as, and I've done this before in previous roles where you just launch all your product catalog on this marketplace. Great, they've just given you more reach, but now you've got your products there as well. Or you could take it as an opportunity to start expanding product ranges, and look at opportunities that maybe don't really sit normally in your normal website, but you could see them working well in this broader range of, say, Next, but any other marketplace. And for me, it is having kind of the idea of product differentiation.
Richard Hill [00:42:04]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:42:04]: That helps, but getting that lovely reach because our products are designed to be unique, but that doesn't mean that there's only one or two people out there that they could appeal to. I think being able to reach those unique people further afield that don't know about us is such a strong brand building exercise that it would be kind of, I would say it'd be a great move for a lot of brands to try. In the quickfire round, I led towards our own website because I do think that is where your strength actually lies. That is your core strength. If you keep that website kind of strong, it makes your marketplace presence even stronger.
Richard Hill [00:42:45]: Yeah, yeah, no, fantastic answer. I think it's trying to get that balance, isn't it? Because, you know, as you've alluded to, you know, obviously that huge reach of some of these marketplaces, but then you're trying to— you've got to be careful what or not to dilute. But then also potentially using it to test, you know, some products that are maybe slightly Yeah, it depends on the brand, but slightly different or slightly off-brand, but just a bit more about, oh, no, no, but just slightly different.
Moise Abubakr [00:43:11]: And, or an extension of an existing range and trying to see how that could look and what could come of that. Because again, Next are such an amazing partner because they give us the freedom to do that, but they also support in the kind of logistics of it. So if we're, because they've got such amazing experience, if we've never built a particular type of product before, we can ask them and say, is this even feasible? Is this something that we could even do? And they'll go yes or no. But it opens that, going back to that, when you have a partner, they become an extension of you, but they bring the expertise in. And so that is a massive benefit if you can find a marketplace that can do that. Obviously, there are marketplaces where their sole function is to just stock your products, you sell your products. that can be a great revenue stream. It just can't be your major revenue stream because ultimately it is diluted from the start because you're against every other.
Moise Abubakr [00:44:09]: It's like a mini internet in itself.
Richard Hill [00:44:11]: Yeah. You've got no real control, have you? Is the way I see it. You know, things can change that you don't have control of potentially.
Moise Abubakr [00:44:20]: Exactly.
Richard Hill [00:44:21]: Exactly. Yeah. So brilliant. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure, Mozi. Last couple of questions. Sure. I feel like we could, I feel like I've rushed you along here. We could have, we should have done a sequel.
Moise Abubakr [00:44:33]: We could keep talking for hours, I'm sure. Although in this heat, I do feel like I'm just gonna go for a nice plunge.
Richard Hill [00:44:39]: You're doing well, you're doing well.
Moise Abubakr [00:44:40]: Gonna plunge into something, yeah.
Richard Hill [00:44:42]: Yeah, getting the cold shower in 5 minutes. So future predictions. So we're sat here maybe in 3 years and you may be talking about maybe some channels, strategies, that work today that maybe, you know, are not working in 3 years, you know, but then in the same respect, maybe there's some underrated channels right now or strategies that you think will be, you know, going strong. What's your take on sort of future predictions?
Moise Abubakr [00:45:07]: I think so. The McKinsey group, McKinsey and Company came out like a couple of years ago, last year saying that the big idea of the 2020s was community, community marketing. And it was all around the idea that people— you've moved past personalization now, and now you— people want community building. They want to feel like they're part of something. So I actually think that is where it's going to continue to grow. I mean, it's no surprise to me that we are seeing different channels that you wouldn't expect grow in a way that you wouldn't expect. I mean, people like Vinted are massive. And I think that is obviously the appeal is, um, sustainability and, and cheaper stuff.
Moise Abubakr [00:45:51]: But there is a community behind it. I mean, it— again, Reddit has become the go-to citation place for Google, not by accident. And I think it is because people are craving a sense of community. And that community could be in, in many different forms. It could be, you know, a football forum, sure. If you, if that's the community you want, or it could be other people who like this homeware style, like leopard print lovers could be a community as well. And I think if you are serious about your brand identity, if you're serious about the message that you want to put across, community is where you're going to do it. What that community looks like, I think is going to have various different forms.
Moise Abubakr [00:46:31]: But I think that is the area of kind of AI that is going to try and reach, but it might not be able to because it demands a humanized central core to it. And I think that is maybe why it might grow further than people expect, because I'm not an AI skeptic, by the way. I want to put that out there.
Richard Hill [00:46:50]: Yeah.
Moise Abubakr [00:46:50]: But I do think there are people who are, and they are going to have counter behaviors to AI, and community fulfills that. But I also think just naturally people are craving talking to a brand or discussing their favorite thing with their people. You know?
Richard Hill [00:47:07]: Yeah, that's brilliant. Yeah, I agree completely. I think having those places where you can have sort of genuine connection around the interest of the products, the, like you say, leopard print example. Yeah, brilliant. Well, I like to finish every episode, Mozi, with a book recommendation. Do you have a book to recommend to our listeners?
Moise Abubakr [00:47:29]: Yeah. So I was racking my brains because I thought, should I do one that's like, you know, marketing heavy or You know, Jane and Lucy, the founders of Rockin' George, have written a book. Look that up. It's a great book. It will make your home look so much better. But I thought, actually, no, in our current climate, there's a lot going on. A bit of fun. I'll go for a bit of a nice fun fiction.
Moise Abubakr [00:47:53]: I'm a bit of a kind of sci-fi fantasy nerd and there's an author, British author called Robert Rankin that I absolutely love. And he's got a book called The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse that I think is one of the greatest books ever written. I'm, I'm, I'm sad it's not taught. Well, that is a claim to fame. Yeah, but it is. It's— I, I love it. I think it's, it's a really fun read. I think we are— we're too deep in the age of everything is quite serious.
Moise Abubakr [00:48:25]: So if, if you can find something fun and easy, I think go for it and enjoy it. And for me, this is a very fun, easy read. Yeah. And if you like, kind of imagine Toy Story if it was a hard-boiled detective story. I'm ordering that.
Richard Hill [00:48:45]: As simple as that. Yeah, it's a great bit of escapism from the—
Moise Abubakr [00:48:50]: yeah, exactly.
Richard Hill [00:48:51]: Well, thank you, Moseley. It's been a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant episode. I feel that we should have carried on and kept going for sure. You know, I really appreciate your time. That was a brilliant, brilliant episode.
Moise Abubakr [00:49:02]: Thank you.
Richard Hill [00:49:03]: Thanks for having me. For those who want to find out more about Rockets and George, more about yourself, what's the best way to do that?
Moise Abubakr [00:49:08]: Yeah, rocketsandgeorge.co.uk. Maybe if you follow our Instagram, we're doing some very interesting stuff on our Instagram where that's where we're kind of experimenting with our lovely brand messaging. And then for myself, yeah, Moisés Rebaca on LinkedIn, I'm sure. You can find me there.
Richard Hill [00:49:26]: Yeah, we'll, we'll link it all up in the, in the show notes. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Moise Abubakr [00:49:30]: No, brilliant. Thank you for having me. It's been fun. Cheers.
Richard Hill [00:49:33]: Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast so you're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day, and I'll see you on the next one.
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