Email Marketing in eCommerce

Matt: [00:00:00] Well, hello and welcome to the e commerce podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. We are in our August little series here where we're talking about lessons that we have learned from our cohort workshop experts and explain more about what cohort is in just a minute. But first let me welcome my sidekick for these conversations, uh, the show's producer, uh, Sadaf Beynon.

Did you like that? The sidekick. I liked it. Yeah. Yeah. Sadaf the sidekick. Oh, yes. So welcome to the show. It's great to have you. Uh, if you are watching the podcast, you will notice that I'm wearing the same t shirt that I wore last week because it is a fairly, it's a fairly distinctive t shirt that I'm wearing.

I'm wearing a tie dye Goonies t shirt. Um, and that's, if I'm honest, that's because we're batch recording. It's not because I only have one t shirt. Uh, and so we're doing episode four today. And after we've recorded this, we are going to do next week's episode, episode five straight after. Uh, just [00:01:00] full disclosure, I'm full, uh, full honesty, full transparency, because you know we like to be fully transparent here.

Um, so yeah, so why don't you, uh, explain what cohort is set up this week, because I think I've probably talked about it enough, and I think people want to hear your voice more than they want to hear mine, so go for it.

Sadaf: Um, so cohort is a series of, uh, workshops that we do. Am I getting this right? We need to cut this.

Matt: I'm totally not cutting this.

You are cutting this because I am I just

Sadaf: need another coffee right now. So I'm like, what is going on right now? This

Matt: is really, so ladies and gentlemen, let me explain what's going on. Sadaf does actually know what cohort is, I do want to be clear. Oh my gosh. Um, but, Sadaf and I were scheduled to record these podcasts.

And, um, she's in Canada at the moment, on an extended vacation. I'm in England, so the time zones have screwed her up a little bit. And so, we were due to start, and Sadaf sent me a text message [00:02:00] saying, I am really, really sorry, I have overslept. So. turned up to the, to the call like 30 minutes late. And bless you, the coffee's not quite kicked in yet, has it?

Sadaf: It hasn't, no, I'm so sorry. I'm so

Matt: sorry. It's just that level of professionalism that I quite like. So we'll see whether that final cut makes it into the podcast because Sadaf is in fact the show's producer, has the power to cut those things. Me, I'm going to leave it in, but that's just me. I'm not, I'm not hitting the pause button.

We're just going to carry on. So if you are tuning in for the first time, we are a little bit more professional than this on the e commerce podcast. We are having a little bit of fun to be fair over the August episodes where Sadaf and I are just chatting about lessons that we've learned from the cohort.

Cohort, by the way, uh, Sadaf Beynon the Butcher, Beynon the Butcher,

uh, is a monthly mastermind group that we run and every month [00:03:00] we, uh, we have. Uh, we have experts come in, uh, people that we know from the world of e commerce. They come in, they do a workshop, super practical, super helpful. And all we're doing is talking about some of the lessons that we have learned on e commerce, from the e commerce cohort.

If you'd like to know more about e commerce cohort, do check out ecommercecohort. com. You can find out all the information that you need to know there. And if you're in e commerce, do come and join us. Right. That is a slightly more professional introduction. Yeah. Thank you, Matt. I think we rescued that. I don't think anyone noticed.

Sadaf: No, not at all.

Matt: Come on sidekick, wake up. So let's, let's talk about what workshop are we talking about today?

Sadaf: So we're talking about email marketing, which was delivered by Daniel Budai. He's also been on, um, on the podcast as a guest as well.

Matt: Yes, [00:04:00] Budai, Dan, uh, Dan from Budai Media, um, delivered a workshop called the 10.

Commandments of email marketing, I think was the exact title. Um, and this was great. And I remember this because of the, the opening, uh, slide from his presentation was Moses standing there with tablets, you know, the 10 commandments. Uh, and so I thought that was very good. And that sort of stuck into my head.

Um, so yeah, he's, he did the 10 commandments of email marketing, didn't he? Um, and so he went through these 10 things. And again, on Cohort, the way it works is you go through this workshop, super practical. And my advice to everybody doing it is listen, pick four, no more than four things that really stick out to you.

Because. Um, your brain won't really cope with more than four. You're a bit like sat at first thing in the morning without coffee. It's just not working. not working as it should. Um, but stick with four, um, uh, or less. Uh, is the, is the, is the [00:05:00] tip. Three to four is, is usually a good thing. You can normally work on three to four things on your business

that month. So you would have listened to Dan's workshop. You'd have gone through the email marketing, gone, what three or four things can I implement in my business this month that's going to have the biggest difference? It's going to help me move the needle, um, and it's something that we can consistently do.

So we kind of go through that a little bit. So yes, Dan's workshop, the 10 commandments of email marketing

Sadaf: so, Matt, maybe we can start by talking about the role of best selling products in your email marketing.

Matt: Yeah, because this came out, didn't it? This came out in one of his, um, in one of his things. Dan mentioned this comment, which I thought was really interesting.

And email marketers, listen up, because we're all guilty of this. His comment was, if people don't buy it online, why are they going to buy it when you put it in your email? And so what tends to happen is we... We have some stock of some products. People aren't buying it on our website for whatever reason. So our stock is not going down as quickly as we think it should.

So we then go, I'll tell you what we [00:06:00] should do. We should throw this in an email and email it out to people just to let them know and see if they'll buy it. Um, only to discover actually sales of it are pretty low and the conversion rates on those emails have been pretty low. And this was something that Dan pulled out from the data.

He's like, if people don't buy it online, they're not going to buy it from your email. And so if you want your email marketing to convert, which you do because the more people that open your email, the more people that read it, the more that signals to the email providers such as Google. Gmail being the main one that the email is interesting that people want to read it that people want to open it So your deliverability rates go up, you know your your spam Filters go down as such whereas if you just deliver nonsense and people can't even be bothered to read through because it's like well That's the product.

I didn't want to buy on the website. It's in the subject line of your email I don't want to buy it now. Um, i'm not really that interested. It does have an impact on your Uh email score for one for better expression So dan was very much [00:07:00] like, you know, your best selling products play a pivotal role in your email marketing Don't just use email marketing to try and sell The stuff that is pretty rubbish and that no one wants to buy anyway, because it just doesn't work Uh, and so yeah, that was a role of best selling products.

Does that make sense? Is that have I answered that? Okay I think I have. I'm just reviewing what I've said in my head. I think that's okay. I think Dan would be happy with that answer.

Sadaf: So promoting what's already popular is.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, You're wanting people to buy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So go with what is popular, um, rather than just trying to offload your crap for once for better expression.

Sadaf: Yeah. Yeah. So things that aren't as popular where what they just don't appear in. In the email, but do they do upsells? Like, how do they, how

Matt: do they? It's not that you can't market those. I mean, obviously you've got stock and you need to get rid of it. Um, the, the, it's not that you don't market it. It's not that you don't try and [00:08:00] sell it with your cross sells or your upsells.

It's not that you don't try and put it in bundles. It's not that maybe you'd take that products and do a gift with purchase. You maybe rebadge it. You maybe rebrand it. You maybe talk about it from a different point of view to try and get people more interested in the product. So I get that there are other things that we.

can do and that there are other things that we should do. I think what Daniel was saying and what I wholeheartedly agree with is that that product should not be the sole purpose of your email. And we've done it in the past. We've had products where we've got way too, we've ordered way too much stock.

We've just got it in and it's not going as fast as some of the other products. And so we've done emails to try and shift that product. And it's just fallen flat on its face. Um, so we've had to do other things to try and get people interested in that product. To try and move it. To be a bit more creative than just trying to blank bang it on an email and hope that people buy it.

Which is, you know, it's never really a successful strategy, is it? But, um, but that would be, that would be, [00:09:00] yeah, um, my advice. Find other ways to market that product. There's a thousand other ways to do it. Just don't rely solely on email. You know, about that product to be the source of the sale. Of course, there's going to be someone listening to this because, you know, we've got a lot of people listen to e commerce podcasts now, thousands of listeners all over the world, which is awesome.

Wherever you are in the world, you're awesome. Absolutely awesome. Love the fact you're listening to the show. Keep listening. We do enjoy it. Um, one of the interesting things is somebody's going to email me in and go, Matt, you're totally wrong because I had this product. We couldn't sell it. I sent an email out and I sold out overnight.

So I appreciate there's going to be the outliers. I appreciate there's going to be the one that is the exception to the rule, but it's not the rule itself. And so it's, it's, again, it's not me saying don't test it or trial it. It's me just saying, be, you know, ask yourself the obvious question. If people are going to, aren't going to prepare to buy it online, are they really going to be prepared to buy it in an email?

I don't think so. Are they? So yeah, [00:10:00] that was the whole point.

Sadaf: Yeah. Cool. Um, all right. So switching gears a little bit. He also talked about SMS marketing. And, um, it's relationship to email marketing.

Matt: Yeah. It's interesting. Or customers count emails or... Yeah, no, he, he definitely with SMS, he, you know, talked about the link with email and SMS.

Um, and I know he's a big fan of doing email and SMS together, um, and running those campaigns together. Obviously, you don't send the same information in the SMS that you send in the email because you've not got that many characters, um, but you can and should run the campaigns alongside each other. Um, and don't see them as two mutually exclusive things.

Um, see them as something that's interconnected if you can, uh, and when you do, you usually get more. So you get the conversion from, if I just run text messages, I'd get conversion X. If I just run emails, I'd get conversion Y. When I run them both together, I don't get X plus Y, I get Z, if that makes sense.

You get something new, which is bigger and better than the, [00:11:00] you get this sort of synergistic effect. Um, and so, and I know SMS is one of those things that's. It still scares a lot of people, actually. It feels a bit cumbersome. It feels like, I don't know if I want to do that. Um, I know exactly how you feel.

Um, we today, actually to this very day, just signed off, uh, for one of our e com businesses doing SMS marketing. And I've always been a bit twitchy about it. I know Michelle at the office who heads up that. A side of the business, she's, she's like, we're going to do SMS marketing, but I've got this rule, this rule, and this rule that everybody has to sort of listen to.

Uh, and so, yeah, it's, um, it's an interesting one. It's an interesting one. SMS marketing and email. Yeah,

Sadaf: so diversifying those channels, you're getting, you're getting a whole new, um, batch of customers. I don't know if the batch is the right word, but, uh, Zed, you're getting Zed. You're getting

Matt: Zed, yeah. Yeah,

Sadaf: not XOR, you're getting Zed.[00:12:00]

Matt: Hey, well done. That's algebra.

Sadaf: First thing in that. Was there anything else Matt that stuck out to you in that workshop?

Matt: Obviously not had his coffee either. yeah. I mean, one of the things we've been talking about a lot is Uh, in, in our company and we're trying to get up and running and it came out again through this workshop is this whole idea of customer account emails.

What I mean by this is, um, we have got so used to automation now that we just like everything on autopilot. So if customer does this, a sequence fires off, you know, they get 10 emails over the next 10 days. So I have to spend time writing one email, uh, one, the sequence, but once it's written, it's gone, right?

Dush, the way it is. All automated. And news [00:13:00] letters, automated, they're just going to go out, bang, just the way it is, alright? One email is going to 10, 000 people, or however many people are on your list. And so, email has become, I think, synonymous in some respects with quick and easy. It's like we just want to get it, don't get it out, get it, don't get it out.

Where customer account emails differ and what I'm intrigued by is this old time print, this old school principle of customer account management. So pre internet, which I appreciate for some listeners is very hard to imagine. But I grew up in a world where there was no internet and the first part of my career.

A lot of it was customer account management. It was a lot of calling people going, Hello, it's Matt here. Are you happy? Um, and just trying to figure out where they are, and if there was anything else that we could do, or any services or any products that we had that could help them. So when we were doing saunas and steam rooms, we would, um, contact the customers and go, Hey, listen, do you want any [00:14:00] essence for your steam room?

Which is the stuff they pump in which makes it smell nice. Uh, it's been six months. Can we send an engineer out to service it? And so with customer account, It's that old customer account management. It's that, how do you, how do you deliver that in a world that is? Occupied with automation that is just so set on automation.

And so we're looking at ways now to use automation to help us a little bit, but also to bring back some of that old school customer account management skills. You know, we're just emailing customers and saying, Hey, so we now do it where Jen or Michelle or Anna Grace. So they'll be assigned when we get a new customer, they're assigned a customer account manager, that customer account manager will send them an email going, Hey, Anna Grace here, I'm your, uh, account manager, just wanted to reach out, connect, say hi, you got any questions, then do reach out to me.

And I'll tell you who started doing this, um, that I've noticed, Apple. Right. [00:15:00] So, um, I am an Apple business customer. I think I've single handedly keep the share price above where it is at the moment. The amount of Apple products we, uh, we purchase. But we have a, we have a business account, and they have account managers who call me just every six months, just out of the blue.

Matt, how's it going? Do you need anything? And what happens now is, if I want to buy anything from Apple, rarely do I go on the website to buy it. Um, I just email my account manager. Um, whatever his name is. Let's say Dave for the sake of argument. Dave, listen, this is what I need. This is what I need it to do.

What do you reckon? He's going to email me something back saying this is the spec you need. Here's the invoice. Click this link, pay for it and I'll make sure you get it out next day. I don't have to do anything. They've sort of taken care of everything for me. And as a result, I, I mean I'm quite loyal to Apple as it is.

You know, I'm sucked into their ecosystem. Um, but the fact is that I... I now have someone that I can talk to at Apple. So I've [00:16:00] made, it's funny, isn't it? Cause it makes you feel a little bit more connected, a little bit more special maybe. Um, and so we're looking at doing this customer account management email thing, certainly with our high value customers, tying it back with what we talked about last week or 10 minutes ago about Neil Hoyne.

Um, and. Do you know what I mean? Just investing more in your high value clients, so maybe this is one of the ways that we could do that. And so, that's a really interesting thing that we're trying, that we're developing at the moment. We've tried all kinds of different things. We're going to keep trying all different types of things.

But I'm really excited about it as a concept because I think it could work really well if we get it right without being overwhelming on the customer service team. It's got to be key.

Sadaf: Yeah, yeah. Sounds like if, um, if it's done right, it can be an excellent customer engagement tool, can't it?

Matt: Yeah, yeah, it can.

It can. I just really like the idea of Kelly or whoever, you know, one of our customers just emailing Anna Grace, going, Anna [00:17:00] Grace, listen, I've run out of this. Can you sort something out for me? Uh, because she's, you know, in a rush between something or other and Anna Grace goes, Yeah, Kelly, no problem. I've sorted it out.

Just click this link. It'll take you straight through to the, you don't have to log in or anything. It's going to take you straight through to the payment page. So you just. You know, pay with apples. It's all done and dusted. Anna Gracey, Matt Kelly. I've got the order. It's face gone out today. Don't panic.

You'll have it tomorrow. I mean, just something like that, I think would be wonderful, you know, and the technology is there to make that happen. So trying to get that work properly is, is, is fun and games is a technical challenge, um, but I think we're getting there and I think it'd be an interesting thing.

Sadaf: Yeah, definitely. Um, so I think we can wrap this episode up and, uh, move on. So do you want to do your, your thing?

Matt: Last episode, if you were listening to [00:18:00] the last episode, ladies and gentlemen, this was where Sadaf just went, we're done, time out, that's it, let's press the end button now. And then afterwards she went, oh yeah, wait a minute, you're supposed to do that whole closing thing, aren't you? And so, yeah, this is the professional producer here, ladies and gentlemen, and, um...

We always, and I completely forgot about it as well, to be fair, but yes. So should we do the professional closing thing? Thank you so much for joining us. If you would like to know more about e commerce cohort and how it can help you and your e commerce business, check out ecommercecohort. com. That's all one word, ecommercecohort.

com, it's a whole bunch of information. on there that will help you, uh, figure it out. And, uh, of course, if you've got any questions, you can email in and let us know. And of course, if no one's told you it's day, Sadaf what do we tell them? See if you're awake. Go for it.

Sadaf: You are awesome. I am awesome. We're all awesome.

Matt: It's just a burden we have to bear. It's a burden we have to bear. [00:19:00] It's a little catchphrase. That's right. We're created awesome. It's just a burden we have to bear. So yes, You should do that more often. Uh, I feel it's um, it's a skill that's definitely Definitely there. I guess it just needs to be brought out a little bit more maybe a little bit more practice Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's it thank you so much for joining us have a fantastic week and I hope you're enjoying your August We will be back next week for our fifth And final August episode, but until then have a great week.

Bye for now.