Email Marketing in eCommerce

Ever wondered why your email marketing campaigns fall flat whilst your competitors seem to effortlessly convert subscribers into customers? Daniel Budai from Budai Media has identified the fundamental mistakes that are sabotaging your email performance. His workshop on "The 10 Commandments of Email Marketing" revealed insights from thousands of campaigns that could transform your email strategy overnight.

Daniel brings serious credentials to this conversation. Through his agency Budai Media, he's managed email campaigns generating millions in revenue for eCommerce brands across various industries. His data-driven approach and practical insights come from real-world testing across thousands of campaigns, making his advice invaluable for any eCommerce business looking to improve their email performance and customer relationships.

The Product Selection Principle That Changes Everything

Before diving into tactics, we need to understand a fundamental truth that most email marketers ignore: if people don't buy it online, they're not going to buy it when you put it in your email.

This insight challenges the conventional approach of using email marketing to shift slow-moving inventory. Daniel's data reveals that products struggling to sell on your website will similarly underperform in email campaigns, creating a double problem: poor conversion rates and damaged email deliverability.

Research shows that email engagement signals directly impact your sender reputation. When subscribers consistently ignore emails featuring products they don't want, it signals to email providers like Gmail that your content lacks relevance. This creates a downward spiral where fewer emails reach inboxes, reducing overall marketing effectiveness.

The Best-Seller Strategy Framework

Daniel's approach centres on leveraging your most popular products as the backbone of your email marketing strategy. Here's his systematic framework:

Lead with Winners - Feature your best-selling products prominently in campaigns. These items have proven market demand and higher conversion potential, ensuring better email engagement rates.

Create Conversion Momentum - High-performing products generate clicks and purchases, which improves your overall email metrics. This positive engagement signals to email providers that your content is valuable, improving deliverability for all campaigns.

Build Customer Confidence - When subscribers see products they recognise as popular or desirable, it reinforces their decision to stay subscribed and increases trust in your brand recommendations.

Strategic Inventory Management - Rather than using email as a clearance channel, implement other strategies for slow-moving stock: bundle with bestsellers, use as gift-with-purchase incentives, or reposition the product messaging entirely.

One client saw email click-through rates increase by 40% simply by restructuring campaigns around their top 20% of products rather than trying to push underperforming inventory.

The Power of Channel Synergy

Daniel emphasises that email marketing shouldn't operate in isolation. The most successful campaigns combine email with SMS marketing to create what he calls a "synergistic effect."

This isn't simply about sending the same message across multiple channels. Instead, it's about creating complementary touchpoints that work together:

Email for Detail - Use email for comprehensive product information, storytelling, and visual content that requires more space to develop.

SMS for Urgency - Leverage text messages for time-sensitive offers, quick reminders, and immediate calls-to-action that benefit from the immediacy of SMS.

Coordinated Timing - Sequence messages strategically so they complement rather than compete with each other, creating multiple touchpoints without overwhelming subscribers.

Brands implementing coordinated email-SMS campaigns typically see 25-35% higher conversion rates compared to single-channel approaches. The key lies in understanding each channel's strengths and designing messages accordingly.

Bringing Back Personal Touch

Perhaps the most innovative insight from Daniel's workshop involves reviving old-school customer account management principles in a digital world obsessed with automation.

While automation handles the heavy lifting, successful brands are finding ways to inject personal touch through what Daniel calls "customer account emails." This approach assigns account managers to high-value customers who proactively reach out with personalised recommendations and support.

Apple exemplifies this approach with their business customers. Rather than forcing customers through complex websites, account managers handle requests directly, creating a seamless, personal experience that builds exceptional loyalty.

The implementation involves:

Strategic Assignment - Identify high-value customers based on purchase history, lifetime value, or engagement patterns.

Proactive Communication - Account managers initiate contact to check satisfaction, offer assistance, and suggest relevant products.

Streamlined Purchasing - Create direct paths for customers to purchase through personal recommendations, bypassing traditional website navigation.

Relationship Building - Focus on understanding customer needs and preferences to provide increasingly relevant suggestions over time.

Implementation Without Overwhelm

The beauty of Daniel's approach lies in its scalability. You don't need to implement all strategies simultaneously. Instead, focus on the fundamentals that will deliver immediate impact:

Audit Your Current Campaigns - Review your last 10 email campaigns. Which products were featured? How did they perform on your website versus in email? This analysis often reveals the product selection patterns that need adjustment.

Identify Your Email Champions - List your top 20% of products by revenue and conversion rate. These should become the foundation of your email marketing strategy.

Test Channel Integration - If you're not using SMS, start with a simple abandoned cart sequence that combines email and text messages. Measure the combined performance against email-only campaigns.

Pilot Personal Outreach - Choose 10-20 of your highest-value customers for a personal account management trial. Track engagement and purchasing behaviour compared to your standard automated sequences.

The key is consistency over perfection. Better to implement one strategy well than attempt all strategies poorly.

The Deliverability Connection

What makes Daniel's approach particularly powerful is how it addresses email deliverability—the invisible foundation that determines whether your campaigns reach customers at all.

Email providers like Gmail track engagement signals: open rates, click rates, time spent reading, and deletion patterns. When you consistently send emails featuring products people actually want, engagement improves across all metrics.

This creates a positive feedback loop:

Better product selection → Higher engagement → Improved deliverability → More emails reaching inboxes → Better overall performance

Conversely, emails featuring unwanted products create negative signals that can land your entire email programme in spam folders, regardless of how well-crafted your messages might be.

Your Email Marketing Action Plan

Ready to transform your email marketing from a clearance channel into a conversion powerhouse? Start with these immediate actions:

Week 1: Analyse your last month of email campaigns alongside website sales data. Identify which products perform consistently across both channels.

Week 2: Create a "champion products" list featuring your most reliable performers. These become your email marketing foundation.

Week 3: Design one campaign featuring only champion products. Measure engagement rates compared to your recent average.

Week 4: If you're ready for SMS integration, set up a simple abandoned cart sequence combining email and text messages.

Remember: your email list is one of your most valuable business assets. Treat subscribers' attention with respect by showing them products they actually want to see, and they'll reward you with engagement, purchases, and loyalty.

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.

Email Marketing in eCommerce