Raitis Purins
Founding Board Member | IAB BALTICS
Raitis is a dynamic professional with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and is a key player in the success story of Printful. As the driving force behind Printful's growth, Raitis has scaled the marketing team from 5 to an impressive 100 people, leading one of the largest marketing teams in Latvia and Europe. With a passion for leveraging industry-leading technology, Raitis has enabled Printful to fulfill over 1 million items monthly, earning the trust of millions of customers worldwide. Raitis' strategic vision and exceptional leadership have positioned Printful as a unicorn company valued at over $1B, revolutionizing the on-demand printing and warehousing industry.Connect with Raitis on LinkedIn to learn more about his remarkable journey and contributions.
In our case, the best performing marketing channel, I would say is partnerships.We are partners with different ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Wix,Squarespace and others. When their customers need to sell something and that is what printful comes in the picture and does that.
We offer you items to sell on your store without leaving your computer.The only thing you need is a design.We're a little bit different than a drop shipper because we allow anyone to add their unique touch, which is the design on the product.So no one is selling the same thing.Because if you already have if you are already interested in Shopify,then you're also more motivated to basically launch your store and add printful.And it's taking advantage of SEO. I believe that could be similar to the printing industry. When you need something to be printed, you're googling it.If you're on top of the result, then you'll get that customer,so you'll get that traffic and then it's up to you to convert them into revenue.
Word of mouth marketing is also very important.So if you have happy customers, they will generate more customers for you.If people see something unique - they ask a question, where did you print that? And by tis , they get referred to printful.This is a lot of people referring to us and we are helping them to launch their businesses.
I would say that it's a general pattern for every marketing team that works in ecommerce or online business.We all saw an extreme growth during Pandemic time.Of course, as we were doing great,we also scaled our marketing efforts and we needed the right size team in 2022 to actually continue operating in a much more sustainable way. So we had to look at what works, what doesn't work, what worked really well,and keep that as a part of our strategy.Also, every business had to make some decisions where to continue investing.And that probably was pretty similar for everyone in the marketing. This year with the market being down, we are putting efforts on converting channels only.
I still think the answer is SEO.Organic marketing. Organic search engine optimization sounds easy.But in reality, there is actually a lot of work and patience from all sides.For example - Pressure from CEO who expects to get results quickly and fast and business to quadruple in 3-6 months,but if SEO is done correctly as it should be,it's not easy to do that.SEO is like an evergreen machine that works constantly,bringing more relevant traffic and revenue for the company because the intention is already there when people are looking for something on Google or Bing.
It is not a tool but SEO is something I would mention again. Another channel we recently discovered is Influencers. I'm not talking about Instagram influencers who post pretty images ,but more about YouTube influencers,who educate their audience about options, how to run their ecommerce business,and how to earn money online.So for you to even be a successful store owner with Printful,to launch a successful store where you pick the right products,right designs, the right pricing, you should also be actually good at the marketing, at getting someone to your website who's willing to pay you that money for that product you market there.
So when the best influencers,teach and motivate their audience how to run a successful ecommerce,how to launch a merch line, how to launch a business, that help the customers to have take the right steps to make their store successful .
In our case, the best performing marketing channel, I would say is partnerships.We are partners with different ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Wix,Squarespace and others. When their customers need to sell something and that is what printful comes in the picture and does that.
We offer you items to sell on your store without leaving your computer.The only thing you need is a design.We're a little bit different than a drop shipper because we allow anyone to add their unique touch, which is the design on the product.So no one is selling the same thing.Because if you already have if you are already interested in Shopify,then you're also more motivated to basically launch your store and add printful.And it's taking advantage of SEO. I believe that could be similar to the printing industry. When you need something to be printed, you're googling it.If you're on top of the result, then you'll get that customer,so you'll get that traffic and then it's up to you to convert them into revenue.
Word of mouth marketing is also very important.So if you have happy customers, they will generate more customers for you.If people see something unique - they ask a question, where did you print that? And by tis , they get referred to printful.This is a lot of people referring to us and we are helping them to launch their businesses.
I would say that it's a general pattern for every marketing team that works in ecommerce or online business.We all saw an extreme growth during Pandemic time.Of course, as we were doing great,we also scaled our marketing efforts and we needed the right size team in 2022 to actually continue operating in a much more sustainable way. So we had to look at what works, what doesn't work, what worked really well,and keep that as a part of our strategy.Also, every business had to make some decisions where to continue investing.And that probably was pretty similar for everyone in the marketing. This year with the market being down, we are putting efforts on converting channels only.
I still think the answer is SEO.Organic marketing. Organic search engine optimization sounds easy.But in reality, there is actually a lot of work and patience from all sides.For example - Pressure from CEO who expects to get results quickly and fast and business to quadruple in 3-6 months,but if SEO is done correctly as it should be,it's not easy to do that.SEO is like an evergreen machine that works constantly,bringing more relevant traffic and revenue for the company because the intention is already there when people are looking for something on Google or Bing.
It is not a tool but SEO is something I would mention again. Another channel we recently discovered is Influencers. I'm not talking about Instagram influencers who post pretty images ,but more about YouTube influencers,who educate their audience about options, how to run their ecommerce business,and how to earn money online.So for you to even be a successful store owner with Printful,to launch a successful store where you pick the right products,right designs, the right pricing, you should also be actually good at the marketing, at getting someone to your website who's willing to pay you that money for that product you market there.
So when the best influencers,teach and motivate their audience how to run a successful ecommerce,how to launch a merch line, how to launch a business, that help the customers to have take the right steps to make their store successful .