How to Optimise Engagement Through Customer Lifecycle Marketing

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular
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well hello and welcome to the ecommerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson it is great
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now tonight we have uh i say tonight because tonight is there's a recording time it may not be
tonight when you're listening to this i appreciate that but as we're recording it is tonight uh i have a very special guest joining
me on the show uh a beautiful lady called kathpay but before we get into our conversations
with kath and before we talk about this whole thing to do with life cycle marketing what is
it how does it work how's it going to help me and all that sort of stuff which i'm super excited about
let me just take a moment to thank tonight's show sponsors let me give a big shout out to one of
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light bulb agency we'd love to put you in touch with those guys so tonight we have uh the
very special guest kath pay like i mentioned earlier who has over years
of email marketing experience which is amazing because i didn't know email had been around for years but apparently
it had um and has been on the dma email marketing council for over
years which is you know it's one of the governing bodies here in the uk cath is recognized of one of the world's
leading email marketers and trainers she lectures as she lectures at university all that kind of good
stuff has worked with brands like ebay tommy hilfiger adobe and even argos which is the third
apparently biggest e-commerce website in the uk we found out when we interviewed john and so you know all i can say is wowzers
uh you know this is going to be good stuff so without further ado let me bring on to the screen the amazing and
talented kath good evening how are you doing
yeah good i think i'm good now we've got over our sound issues
the comments came in thick and fast oh warren's just put here i mentioned uh you would have heard my little preamble
there cath before we get into that warren uh i noticed had a picture with a
with a baby apparently that's his granddaughter bella rose so cute very cute yeah yeah bella rose
fantastic isn't it so warren happy happy granddad is listening hey warren how you doing
okay so kat thank you for sitting patiently waiting for it to uh to all kick off and get started i don't know
uh whereabouts are you in the uk right now oh you're in london and uh in liverpool
we're only like two and a half hours apart but in liverpool it is stinking hot right now in my little broadcast studio space how
how's it down your part of the world it's been absolutely gorgeous i've had the i've got you know the big sliding
bifolding doors open all day long i just closed them because i've got a park behind me
and i thought i'd better you know for sound i've got to close them and so now i'm
sort of suffering a little bit because [Music] i need a bit of air but it's okay okay
so if you if you start to droop or you start to pass out
i'll be the same way i've opened my window here hoping that some air will come through
and we'll crack on with that so uh kathy it's great to have you thank you for being on the show now i said in the introduction that you
have been involved in email marketing for years is that a typo or is that
actually correct i think it's actually years
wow so yeah no it's strange so really really quick story i had a web
design agency back in sydney in australia and one of our clients said
um we really need to um do some there's this new thing called
email and everything would be great because we've got a fantastic database we'd like to be sending them emails
and so i said okay well you know i'll have a look at it with my programmer and so before you
know we developed an system and sold it to all of
our clients and it just it just shot off so before i knew when i
was actually an email marketer i no longer went to some agency because it just took up all of my
time so i was yeah so one of the older or original esps
in in the industry so been around for a while wow okay
so you've uh so it was i'm just thinking years ago was
this was like pre-millennium yes wow okay yeah okay so
i'm i remember when i was at university in the mid s email had just started to become a thing
i mean i think i think that's when i got my first email address so uh yes yeah i mean seriously
when i was there i mean one of the reasons because easy mail was one of the original ones
for me to go in and make a sale i would literally walk into the company like big names going to the company and saying instead
of sending all of your emails using bcc and sending them in batches
you can send them all at the same time and not only that you can actually track whether they open and whether they click
yeah sale was made right there and then wow back back in the early days right
exactly well it used to be that easy it used to be that easy and everyone was that excited to get your email i mean
i remember those days where you were like oh emails amazing and then it was like now it's like email
so what's happened do you think it's so exciting it's still exciting do you do that thing kath i'm going off
a little bit off script here but do you do that thing where you subscribe to
all your competitors email newsletters and do you get there sort of bombarded
with a whole bunch of emails every day which you're studying and looking at for tips and ideas and
all that sort of thing well one of the services that we offer at holistic email marketing so my consultancy is that we do audits
and when we do audits we sign up for our clients competitors right so because of that
i am inundated on a daily basis i don't unsubscribe because it still is of interest to me and i still find like
i'm literally just um in the midst of handing my manuscript in from my book
and it's going to be published in in like mid-october or later so all of these examples are great you
know uh fuel for thought and everything like that and yeah i am one of those geeks that tend to
study emails and i go oh i like that as long as it's not just me kef as long
as i'm not on my own that's uh so did i hear you you're writing a book
that sounds exciting what's the book uh it's it's about
holistic email marketing so it's not named after my agency my agency is actually named after
the philosophy that i developed back in okay so um and the holistic approach
is um or the philosophy is basically it's more than email right because you
know as we're here doing e-commerce right so we all understand how important the actual customer journey
is to to to us as marketers and and traditional ways of approaching
email marketing has been very much to look at it as a siloed channel right and then we'll
also have ppc and siloed social and all the rest of it and so what was happening back then in
around there was a lot of talk about multi-channel omni channel all of those
and was very much a brand centric perspective saying how can we make all of these channels work together
for our benefit for the company's benefit right not for the customer's benefit and i
went that screwed that's that's wrong that's the wrong approach we need to be putting the customer first we need to be looking at
their customer journey following that and working out what channels fit best
into servicing the customer throughout the journey right so essentially that's the
in a real nutshell that's the holistic key yes it's very much looking at that
and the reason why we focus on email marketing is because email marketing is the backbone of digital marketing
it's you know the workhorse it's the push channel it's always all the way through the customer journey
all the way through the customer life cycle email is there driving traffic back to the website
and all the rest of it so yeah yeah yeah it is you're right in the sense that email is
um it is the one thing that is that um at every phase isn't it of the
customer journey on your website it's the order confirmations it's the email marketing it's that hey your order has arrived kind of email
it i see what you're saying there is a it is the one thing the one out of all your marketing tools it is the one thing
that drives everything yes yes and and you know it's it's it's um like you were saying then so
it's the customer service side of things but it's also the marketing side as well so you know it's got different facets as
well wow okay and so you lecture in this stuff i read in your bio
yes well i have historically i'm too busy now but i i used to i used to lecture for
manchester university um and uh i'm actually setting up some online
training courses as well which would be great yeah specifically though
on email marketing um but yeah so i've taught for i started teaching
around about so i've been teaching for years and i absolutely love it i love
imparting any knowledge of that i have of email marketing
but i think one of the main things that everyone always keeps telling me about because i speak a lot too internationally
is one of the things that i really comes across is my passion and you know and then they get excited
by it they pick that up and they go oh i'm gonna re-look into email marketing because it's a little bit more exciting
than i thought it was so yeah that's really funny how people come away with that oh it's
actually a bit more exciting than i thought and do you find then that with the clients that you meet and the people that you meet that actually
they've lost their their love of email marketing their excitement of email marketing
yes um and it's kind of they're looking for the next thing and it's just almost like a pain in the bum
now email marketing isn't it yeah it's it's a shame because uh you know as you
know so i've been in the in the industry for over years so i've seen it evolve
and it's now at the point where customers are actually looking at as a very value-packed channel so they look at it
to bring them the offers the deals to transactional emails and everything so email isn't going anywhere as far as the
customer or the consumer is concerned as far as a marketer though i can get i
literally can talk to you for an hour i've got a whole chapter on this um in the book but essentially there's a
there's a big problem with email in how people regard it in particularly the
c-suite right or the decision-makers and that's because it is that workhorse it delivers the
highest return on investment year after year after year after year right it literally does
consult the last years it's it's like the top one but you can achieve it with spending
very little budget right so it's a very cost cost-effective channel and everyone you know the c-suite and they're saying why
should we invest more money into it it's already outperforming all the other channels it doesn't make any
sense no we can't really deliver any more so we'll just leave it as is and what yeah what that does um
you know and we're really only working at a tiny bit of its potential there's so much more that email can be
delivering than it already does but it's it's about changing that mindset
so that they understand there is more that it can be giving but it needs an additional budget and
now back to the marketers so the marketer is there and they're struggling on a day-to-day basis because they're really
because it is that workhorse because it does bring in you know the revenue and the conversions and everything
yeah they're generally struggling churning out you know it's just like a conveyor
belt right getting those campaigns out and they don't get to do the exciting
things they don't get to do the you know the things that's going to actually
free up some of their time so that they can do the more strategic or the testing or anything like that
they're just literally doing things over and over again and it
gets a bit repetitive it gets a bit boring um so you know i think there's there's
it's only when sort of you know they'll go and listen to someone like myself speak or teach or something
they start to sort of step outside of their daily life and they realize there is actually more to email than
what i've been led to believe yeah okay it is exciting yeah yeah so i i hear what you're saying
actually can you can resonate with it you know because email marketing has been around since you know the beginning
of e-commerce since the beginning of digital and so it's almost it is the backbone it is the spine but i
think people have forgot about it and they have put it on the back burner haven't they they've sort of
they've sort of left it in their thinking how does this then tie in email marketing with um
what you call lifestyle marketing uh life cycle not lifestyle life cycle marketing um and this
holistic marketing approach how does it all tie together sure so life cycle marketing is
basically um life cycle marketing is actually a form a very easy form of personalization
so from the e-commerce realm right um generally what you'll do is you'll have people coming to your website who are
prospects you don't know them you have no idea who they are where they've come from or anything like that right
it's only when they subscribe that you actually start to get a little bit of inkling you get permission
you can start to then be sending them emails hey you know those welcome onboarding
those kind of campaigns and you can start to find out you know even be monitoring what they're clicking and
be segmenting based upon what they're clicking that's planting information all of those all of that kind of good good stuff
there so that's the prospects and then you've got your customers who have actually come
and purchased for the first time right now if you speak to any retailer that's probably about of their database right time bias
and they are a wonderful um you know low hanging fruit but not all
retailers actually will make take advantage of this so now we're talking about
that particular segment which we can then be um sending a second purchase program
to to encourage them to incentivize them to say hey you know you've made your first
purchase fantastic do you like it great here's some more so you'll start doing that
and in fact there's brands out there who have actually gone and done that and i've done this from my clients you're gonna
you crunch the numbers you go and have a look and you realize that it's actually at
the fourth purchase that they become regular reliable you know um buyers
fantastic so what we're going to do is we're going to implement then a fourth you know so we'll do a third
purchase program and a fourth purchase program because our desire is to get them to being regular buyers
well you know so can i interrupt um when you say uh third purchase program and fourth
purchase program just in case people don't know what that means just explain quickly what you're referring to then
so i'd like to refer to start at the beginning if someone comes
to your website and they actually sign up to your email and they say i want to hear about you i want to get your offers and everything
i didn't call that a um a welcome email what i do sorry
no where is grab a drink um i'm making lots of notes which is why i keep looking down i've
got a fashion pen and paper so what i do is i like to call programs
after the objective right so for me identifying the objective and
staying focused on the objective for that program is absolutely key for its success so in my
mind actually calling a welcome program a welcome program
isn't really calling upon the program the objective okay it's
an objective it's not your main objective your main objective with the welcome email is actually to get on them
to make the first purchase yeah right the sooner they make it the better so let's rename that and call that the
first purchase program okay so after their first purchase
you want to send them a second purchase program and which is focused on getting them to make their second
purchase and then a third purchase and a fourth purchase so a program then is uh a either an email or a series of
emails engineered to um lead the customer to make that objective so if
it's a second purchase program you're going to send them an email or a series of emails to get them by a second time
is that right is that how i'm interpreting what you're saying forgot that yep that's it awesome you can be doing
it manually but of course it makes a lot more sense to be automating it oh geez especially if you've got more
than four customers yes so you know this is this and this is where
life cycle marketing is it's all about recognizing these certain you know um so
you've got your you've got your um your prospects and normally it's acquisition it breaks down into and you
can break it down to however you want to do it whether it's my new to whether it's more bigger sections
but generally with the clients that i work will work with acquisition we'll work with conversion retention and
then reactivation so we work with those full okay so so what we're talking about then
is we are sort of breaking those programs into those different parts of the life
cycle now obviously we want the majority to be in the retention yeah because that's it because and
that's where our loyal loyalty programs will be and all the rest of it but that's essentially what
life cycle marketing is is making sure that we are talking to our database our email database
differently recognizing that everyone's at different places within the life cycle
yeah and that's generally based upon actions or even inactions that they've taken i.e if they haven't purchased in a
while then they'll be in the reactivation um so so that's really what what life cycle
marketing is it like i said by its innate nature it's personalized because you're
recognizing them and and you it means either overtly or covertly you don't necessarily have to
say hey you know you're a regular buyer but you may want to on occasion you know one of our favorite
customers you know exactly you know um but you know for things like you know
oh you you've made your first purchase great great to have you on board you know that's lovely because
people do love to be recognized they do they do and they love to be invited back after this
i mean we have what you would call a first purchase program we have that and actually when we
instituted that beth did it a few years ago um i was really shocked actually by how
well people responded to it uh it was really really fascinating um
so would you if i go back to these sort of four um i'm gonna call
them buckets i don't know what you call them but these sort of four buckets you've got acquisition conversion retention and reactivation
yes in life cycle marketing then have you got uh your database in one of these
four buckets and that's how you've identified them yes it generally is the case but
generally it will be like i said if you will have it automated
there will be tags and it they will move in accordingly um so so it's all you know
you need to be setting it up as sadly um as as as possible in order to make
things streamlined for you but i have some smaller clients who have you know they just manually go and pull
out the reports and you know email them and everything but they're in the minority okay so
do you have different programs or different email sequences than for each of those four stages and
you identify how you're going to move people from one bucket to the next bucket i'm really sorry if bucket is the
wrong phrase stage stage it doesn't matter yeah yeah so
so your whole lifestyle marketing uh life cycle i keep calling it lifestyle i
don't know why i'm really sorry life cycle mark am i the only person that does that by the way
oh it's been a long day so life cycle marketing then is it it's about getting people to go through
this funnel these funnel of different stages but staying in this retention obviously not going into reactivation but staying in that area where they
become um repeat regular customers and and for each business i mean you make
you mentioned in your example the fourth purchase program so when someone sort of purchased from you four times they sort
of they fit this tipping point and they're likely to keep buying from you quite easily yeah um that's obviously going to be
different for different businesses right sorry that's that's for a particular client it's not necessarily typical for
everyone you need to find that out for yourself exactly so you need to go figure out where that tipping point is
and that that just comes with experience and and just sort of looking at data i take it yes so if you were gonna
um start your own e-commerce business i tell you let
me give you an example kath because you know maybe you'll relate to this my eldest son
is just about you know covered willing to head off to um uh saint andrews he's
going to do units and andrews and me being the dad that i am i've said awesome how are you going to pay for
that right um and so he is going to start up his own e-commerce website obviously
that's going to help him and he's going to finance his way through uni hopefully doing the website
what advice would you give him on how to get started with email marketing with this sort of
lifestyle marketing life cycle marketing i should just put a pound in a swear joy every time i say
[Music] so he's a startup he's a young startup that wants to get going
what's the best way to get started okay so he has to understand about the
customer journey so he will need to do a bit of uh you know sort of prep beforehand or of course speak to
his father and get a little bit of heads up on on how everything works but essentially
the way we always start with with recommending for all of our clients newbies up to experience because a lot
of experience do not have this in place and that's creating a strategy and what you do there is you start with the
he would start with his what's his business objective what does he want to do right yeah so that's that's where he
that's his starting point and from then he's going to then break into those four
stages so he'll have acquisition he'll have conversion retention and win back or
reactivation and what he will then do is put a marketing objective for each of those
ones as well so what do i want to do with my acquisition segment
that's actually going to help me or how can i be using my acquisition segment to help me
to achieve this uh business goal so so that could be well i need to
make x amount of you know um um new subscribers i need to build my
list right so i need to have you know subscribers within six months always try
and make your objectives as smart as possible um so so you do it that way and then you
work your way down with conversion and and uh and then retention and then the reactivation you work out and you
could have multiple objectives for each of those and then what you do is you work out
what the strategy and then that then you come to the tactics now at the very beginning
you said something about bells and whistles or silver bullets or something like that and what i tend to find is that
marketers love the practical they love equipment email marketers in particular love the
practical and so what they tend to is gravitate straight away to the tactics now we were talking about
the first purchase program second purchase third purchase right they are tactics yeah so right
but the the the first purchase program that is a tactic that's actually going
to help you with the um uh with the uh conversion right so it's the second and
third and fourth so that's their conversion they will come under the conversion one
so what you need to do is realize that um they are um
tactics that you don't want to start with you want to start with the business goal then the marketing
objective for each of the life cycle stages then work out what the strategy will be and then the individual tactics
now if you start at the right place which is as i've decided it's so easy because you seriously you
cannot it straight away as soon as you start saying a a marketing objective right
so let's give this an example let's go with the acquisition one sure right i need to get
subscribers within six months what's the first thing that comes to
your mind as soon as you say that you start to think how can i do that
yeah yeah how can i achieve that right and now you then start well i'm going to be
doing facebook ads i'm going to have a pop over you know on the website i'm going to be doing some ppc okay
or the rest of it and your mind is and all these tactics are coming out as opposed to starting with the tactic
and you're kind of going oh okay what else can we do you know you're standing at the right place and
it feeds into it yeah absolute value about advice yes so pretty soon you have you you've created
your strategy you've identified all of your programs and then it's just a matter of identifying
which of the programs you need to be all the tactics you need to be implementing you know first yeah and
prioritizing yeah i would suggest
i just want to emphasize this because if you're listening to the show and you didn't get this um the
simplicity of this idea is super powerful and one of my big learnings over the many years i've been
doing this and that is strategy first tactic second because it's uh let the strategy guide
the tactics rather than the tactics guide the strategy because you just go from shiny thing to shiny thing the
latest gizmo the latest gadget and idea and there's no common thread in your marketing whatsoever
and it's and you don't really i find you don't have time because everything changes at a million miles an hour you don't have time to establish anything or
get anything set up um but what you're saying is bang on right get the strategy first
and then figure out the best way to do that so you've got to build your email list
what's the best way to go and get you know people on your email list maybe facebook advertising well okay so
now i've got to learn about that and figure out the best way to grow an email list through facebook advertising rather than coming in and
going oh i want to do pinterest marketing or whatever it is without figuring out why or where that fits in
exactly exactly and that's it so often you know as a consultant i go in and i see that
there are these disjointed programs because they've just read an article and said oh you should do that great let's
do that oh you should do that oh okay we'll do that and then they're disjointed programs
but they're destroying for the customer as well and that's where the holistic perspective comes in it's about the
customer we want to give them a lovely connected journey um hence why we want to be starting with them
and if we're starting focused on the strategy we're focusing on them yeah right
because that's the other thing too that i i say and that's really really simple it's a very very
simple concept think of it as being two sides of the same coin right one side
is it's your brand and your so your sons are objectives
right he wants to make sales so he can save money and go to uni the other side
the people who come to his website what do they want to do they want to buy from him right because
he's got products and everything that they think look good fantastic so the old way of doing email marketing
because remember it's a push channel very powerful is basically push push push push push
push our sails and that's when consumers tend to tune out because they
kind of go yeah yeah whatever whereas if we actually were to go around the other side here
literally walk around take the customer by the hand and say how can i help you to meet your
objective how can i help you to buy the product that you want what is it that you're needing from me
right you're helping them it's very customer service oriented there people love customer service you're
focused on them making it more meaningful to them more applicable more palatable to them
and they then go and convert because you've met their needs you've serviced
them right so you then by default have made your you know your objective
has been met as well so it's it's an easier way of doing it rather than this whole you know
push push push and fingers crossed that they convert so how would you how would i mean that
sounds great and i get the push channel is basically sending your email newsletter out but how do i get around the other side
of the table and with with with the email marketing how do i do that in a way that's going to connect
like you say with that whole customer service side of things so the very obvious one
is and you you pull up your inbox and you'll see them that's it's we've got a sale on today um
we we have these awesome products right versus
you can you can make some great savings today you know um hours
sale or something like this so what you're doing is you're literally turning it around to
meeting and addressing their the benefits for them as opposed to
we so it's just very much customer-centric rather than brand-centric
you of course need to be aware of why they have subscribed what it is that they're wanting
generally you know if you've if you've got an e-commerce site you understand what your products and everything and you
you'll probably have them in the categories you'll understand what their needs are and and you can be you know meeting their needs that way um
so it is it's just again it's like everything that you possibly can put the customer
first so even when it talks about subject lines even in the packaging of the the the copy the
call to actions all of that start thinking instead of maybe instead of you know shop now
maybe explore the range yeah is email the best place for a very strong
call to an action shop now think about it right
with email being a push channel we're actually saying to them have you considered why not
you know have a think about look here some new products that we're suggesting because we're
suggesting um this isn't the marketing ones obviously not transactional but we're suggesting so maybe they're
not quite ready yet for that very strong shock now one whereas when they're there they're doing
a bit of search they're going oh i need a new radio okay great so i'm going to do
a bit of search here it is they're you know more intense the higher intent and so therefore you
can have a stronger call to action so things like that is also very very much um
part of this way and also part of um you know understanding how you can make
it more palatable for them to be uh that sounds great i mean what you're
in effect doing is you're saying these are still the business objectives you still want to sell you will still want to promote your product
what we're asking you to do is reframe your business objectives in language that connects with your
clients with your customers makes them feel special makes them feel unique very don miller i don't know if
you've come across don miller the story brands the customer is the hero yeah really he's his whole thing is
too many brands are out there too many brands are out there peddling themselves as the hero you know
we're great yeah um whereas his his whole theory is
um he uses a star wars analogy which is why i really resonate with you know concepts but he uses a star
wars analogy as like you the brand are not luke skywalker your client is luke skywalker
you're obi-wan kenobi they're the hero you're the guide help them become better and win do you
see what i mean and so it's it's what you're saying isn't it in a nutshell and it's like reframe it to the customer language
and you'll do you'll do well that's it the bottom line is you've got to
understand how humans work and humans are incredibly self centered
so we do we need to make you know they're not sort of going oh i'm going to buy from this brand to help this
brand well maybe in terms of coverage we've got a local shop we are going to be buying from them
to help them right yeah but that's unusual but in germany speaking it's not a good marketing
tactic long term no no and they don't buy just to help you right
they buy to service the need that they have and and so therefore okay let's let's make
it about them it's already about them let's realize that it's about them and you know help help them help us
basically yeah no it's top advice i always like the exact i'm gonna pick on accountants
a little bit because that's always my my go-to when we talk about this topic
i did this live once on stage and we googled accountants in liverpool and the first one that came up the whole
website was you know we've been around years we're amazing at doing tax where this we're that way the other
and they had a they had their logo the logo was massive on the screen and then their
hero picture was a picture of their building and on the side of their building was their logo just you know i mean it was
just hysterical the whole hero section was one big like worse two big logos and then it had
one of these sort of scrolling images um and so the next one was somebody holding one of their business cards with
their logo on like super pleased and proud of their logo and i said to everyone in the audience i
said do me a favor everyone just raise their hand how many of you care about their logo yeah nobody put their hand up
no and not unless they were from that company yeah so what and this is one of those big things
it's a big it's a simple thing i go about it all the time the amount of ecommerce websites have huge logos on the website whereas
one thing you notice about apple amazon all the big sites their logos are tiny because no one cares
yeah that's it and it's just reframing what you do your site your email your language in a way that connects
with the customer i like that i like that that's good so we've got strategy over tactics or strategy drive
tactics and we've got um customer centric
be customer centric uh focus on the customer being the hero the how can i help you
approach to email is there anything else that you'd want to throw in here
where to where to begin or where to stop i don't know
so many places so many places um yes so the helpful marketing um
that's that's a key factor but there's also and this is why i've done a study on
this um it's called customer experience email marketing right okay
again so within those three main facets that we found that fall under the customer experience email
marketing and understanding that the customer experience in my marketing is is crucial because people do want to
have that good experience you mentioned apple before right we are now expecting you know and that
like okay we're going to you've been the one in covent garden maybe yeah so you go there and i absolutely
love it and they come straight to you and say what would you like today and i'll take you to it and then you don't even have to
check out it's a wonderful customer experience people are now consumers are now
expecting that even on the website in email and all the rest of it and that
made me start to think well actually email often is the is the beginning of the journey it's the
one that's because because we're pushing the the messages we're pushing the products to them we're actually kick-starting that
customer experience yeah to them right and so we want to make sure that that customer experience
um is is is fair and equitable or the same all the way through that journey so from
email through to the website through to um you know then the whole website
experience and then the emails again and everything so we went and had a look at um the three
main facets of it which are helpful right being awful
customer-centric and personalization okay so they're the three and we
actually did some um there's a study of white paper on our website
and basically we found out that those brands who were more personalized more
helpful and more customer-centric actually got higher engagement within their emails
okay so there are three keys then to higher engagement in your emails yeah so when you say be helpful what do
you mean so pretty much what we were talking about beforehand
is is being being it just comes under being helpful so if you think about it um
[Music] you can have it i mean there's been some
great examples i've written a lot about them during covert because suddenly everyone's realizing that empathy and
helpfulness is actually quite necessary during these times and certainly humanity has made an
appearance in email marketing for the first time ever i think really you know or humanity in
a fair amount shall we say yeah you'd have two brands um
and and so that is that's absolutely wonderful to see you know this whole humanity but that's
really what it is all about like um there's one brand um wool overs and they
sent one of the early on in during covert they said wow you know this has really
hit us hard as a business yeah you know they're just transparent and everything they want fluffing it up
but you know what we're here for you if you just want to have a chat you don't have to place an order you
know betty's on the phone or something waiting for your call you know just just you know yeah that was
absolutely lovely right so that is obviously quite extreme and i'm not saying we need to be doing
that every day or every email or anything like this but that that's a very um uh obvious
overt example it's a real example of somebody being super helpful in difficult times isn't it
yeah so i and it's see if we if we think about it right now
my perspective on email marketing is is quite unique in some ways
i tend to think that at the point of subscribe to the newsletter
right i want to sign up for your deals because you you have gone and spent time phrasing the benefits as to why they
should you know sign up you haven't just said sign up you've actually said you'll be the first
to hear blah blah blah get some special deals all the rest of it and i as a consumer go there and i
say oh yeah i'll have some of that that sounds good right so what's happened is that the brand has made an offer and i have
accepted what does that normally mean that means the transaction has taken place
right no money has passed you know exchanged hands like that but a transaction has
happened regardless now the brand is there going to be delivering every single
email that they send it's going to be delivering upon that promise that they made at the point of the original transaction
so now we're looking at every single email that we send marketing emails transactions everything are actually
transactional service based emails now what's the key factor with either a
customer service based email or a transactional based email they're helpful aren't they yeah you
know when your product's going to be arriving they're letting you know how much you spent they're letting you know
you know um hey you also might like to have this or if it's a card abandonment one it could be a you know
hey you also you you left this in your cart can we help you they're very very customer focused and
customer service oriented and that's really just the whole thing you made a promise they took you up on
the promise now deliver upon that promise deliver the value and and be customer
service oriented about it and look at every single email that you send
you're delivering upon that original promise that's brilliant i'm just writing this
down it's um it's a simple stuff isn't it but
as i say simple it's a simple principle but i'm gonna if i did a survey of everybody who listens to this show how many of
them are actually doing that uh it wouldn't be that many i wouldn't have thought
no but once you actually get it same as the two sides of the same coin
once you get these principles they actually free you up no longer now
are you going to be saying oh oh my goodness i've got to spam my you know my database again oh my goodness
because now you're realizing what content you want now you're realizing the purpose now
you're more focused on delivering the goods and such you know deliver upon
that original promise and so you it's it's like you've got now yeah
i i don't know it just gives you clarity yeah yeah and actually the customer i think if you if you have helpful
emails um customer centric personalized helpful emails your three principles which i really like
um if you have those i dare say your unsubscribes are gonna fall because people will stay
connected they're gonna open them more so your open rates are gonna go up whereas the spammy ones um i
i don't know how many i had today i think i deleted about at my inbox without even thinking about who they were or
where they're from um but a few companies over kobit like you said have actually been been
delivering some helpful emails and i will open every single one of those emails yes which i find quite fascinating and
um why do i do that and they will normally have some kind of helpful content or tutorials or something
in their emails so whenever i see their name i'm like i'm telling google mail
make sure that goes in my inbox yes rather than just in the promotions tab you know what i mean and so
and it it all makes a huge difference you know every as tesco says every
little every little helps you know all of these things all help with your deliverability your better
deliverability helps with your better conversion rate all the rest of it yeah absolutely
um warren's just put here snap matt i hate spam
oh yeah i know how you feel warren we all hate spam no one really likes it let me tell you um but it i find we talked about this at
the start of the show i i thought i was like one of these shadows that just did this but um i find looking at spam
and going why did i not open that email what was it that meant i was just going to skim over and
delete it i deleted i don't do it every day but every now and again i'm like why did i why was that email involved in the what's it
missing it caused me to open um some amazing lessons you get out of doing that do i
mean it's um i find that quite fascinating yeah absolutely yes whether it's the the phrasing or
whether it's sometimes it's just the timing you know you can't you're just deleting it because it's not of interest to you at this
particular time but the reason why you haven't hit spam you know this is spam
or you haven't unsubscribed it's because you still are emotionally connected to them
or shall we say even emotionally you're not ready to say goodbye to them yet um because they will serve a purpose
at some stage later on um so you kind of you know that's that's fine you still have have
them in your inbox but then other ones are just like yeah i i get them and that's
okay i'm sure i've already unsubscribed why are you still there yeah yeah yeah i need to read that's
that's dangerous territory right there um i get
um i get personalized when you say make emails personalized i get that you know
and tailor that around pages that they've looked at on the website products they've purchased from you in the past and all that sort of stuff and i can i
can get my head around that that's practical how do you split out um
and when i say this i need you to make it simple so i can understand it cath right um how do you split out the difference
between being helpful and being customer centric what are some of the subtleties between those two
things yeah um helpful is really um
there there is a huge crossover so customer centric it really depends on how you choose to
carve it up right because that all comes back down to you um and i could show you some examples i'd
have to call upon the report which i don't have on hand i can send it to you that'd be great
um so a lovely well okay there's this one that was um
no it wasn't train line it was a particular train and it was an email and it came through
and it was one of those so it was an update you had done a booking but it wasn't the transactional email it was
the email that came afterwards it was still regarded as being a marketing email and
it basically said you know okay um are you ready for your trip your trip
is going to be here um shortly um you know you can take this much luggage you can do this
don't forget you need to scan here blah blah um and whilst you're there
here are some sites that you could be seeing and you know so basically you had a mix of
personalization because they knew exactly where you're going to had that very very helpful helpful content hey you're going
to be going there would you also like to be looking at this but then it was all about the customer so the customer
centricity factor so that that was kind of like wrapping all of them together and that to me really really
spells out you know if if you can nail it if you can get which of course you can't do with every
single email but you can get sort of certain elements of them yeah yeah and
it's it's good i think whenever you have a little check when you whenever you send an email out like
whenever we send emails out i have a little a little checklist in my head which i go through that i want to look at
to mean and i would i guess we can put on that checklist those three things is it helpful customer centric and is it
personalized yeah no that's great um
so is there any kind of software that you would
recommend or that you use or because i know that there's a lot of email providers out there like we've used
active campaign we've used mailchimp we've used purewe've used i mean mark ash is coming on the show we've got
all kinds of things you know all these different systems out there are there any ones that you prefer that you like that that you would
recommend uh we are esp agnostic um so we don't sort of promote one over
the other i personally though also always say
i can give some tips right so the tip is um the first tip is is understand what
you want to do so have your strategy written because that's going to give you
really really good insight as to what tactics you want and therefore what technology you need because it's really
easy to get carried away with the bells and whistles with an esp coming because there's some amazing technology out there obviously
email marketing and some of the best technology oh yes unbelievable yeah so
they come and they've got these bells and whistles which are brilliant but do you know what if you're not going
to use it then don't pay for it so that's what you need to do you need to find out well
actually that building with bells and whistles it's not in our strategy so so you know there's no point in paying
extra for it and then also when you're doing that if you are going to be doing either an rfp
or if you're just going to be doing demos you can say to them listen i have these
particular scenarios based upon my strategy the tactics and everything that i've gotten
identified i've got these particular scenarios i would like you to show me how i would accomplish them with your
system all right so it means that the demo is going to be more personally meaningful to you and your particular
situation which gives you a a heads up and also that way you can compare apples with apples because if you just let
a demo happen as it would organically happen from the you know the vendors
perspective then you'd be shown different things because they're going to always show you their bells and
whistles and what they think that their strengths are and so you don't necessarily compare apples with
apples whereas if you get them to all show you how to go and create an
automated program right fantastic so you know this one here takes six steps that one there
takes three steps and that one takes four and a half right we can now make a decision that's
again very helpful top advice i like the fact you're um uh platform agnostic i think that's
probably the best way to be uh in this day because again they all change super quick one you'll say this
one's really cool and then the next day the other one will be cooler um which is why it's good to know your strategy
yes and there are some amazing platforms as i said out there and it depends on your budget it depends
on what you need it for there's there's a platform out there for everyone so and and that's why i'm not kind of
sort of to say okay these are totally awesome you know i'm good friends with most of them you know mark and i are very good friends and all the
rest of it so it's it's not you know it's it's just the way it is i think it's
best just to do it on an individual basis yeah no that's top advice so if you
if you're not uh going with one specific platform so at the beginning you've got your strategy you've figured out your
tactics you're using that to guide your platform if i come out of it at the other end
what tips do you have for measuring success how do i know i've been successful what would be your
advice then yeah okay this is great so because um e-commerce is is the key key
topic here um besides email obviously but the e-commerce is is where we're talking
about conversions you know we're pretty safe to say conversion is the key metric that
we're going to be looking at right so i'm a big believer in
making sure that your metric that you're measuring your kpi the one that you're saying okay this was
successful you know maps back to the objective so if your
objective is the first purchase program to make the first purchase well then do you know what what's your objective what's your metric
going to be first purchase thank you really really really simple
and and that's how i see it as being obviously acquisition will be different
because it would be subscribers but but again it's it you know it's so much easier when you name the
program after what your actual objective is and then that helps you to map that what the actual
metric of success is going to be um and there's yeah there's this uh
i've written a lot on this about um some people call them vanity metro
vanity metrics which are in email marketing you know that opens and they clicks and i said to you at the
very beginning i was selling my you know my my system on and they're great
they're great indicators they're good for benchmarking your regular campaigns and
everything but they're not generally a good measurement for success particularly when we're talking about
e-commerce unless you're going to be sending what's called a nudge campaign
and a nudge campaign is simply a um hey you know we're not going to force
a sale on you you know but we're basically just saying you know it's a nice it's just it's a
it's a feel good email it's a uh it is very much generally a helpful email but it's not
focused just on the sale you will make sales from it right and on that basis you would
probably be looking at the opens and the clicks or something but generally speaking with e-commerce you'd be looking beyond that
which means that you need to make sure that your esp is integrating with your e-commerce system or you're measuring
you know you're actually looking at google analytics and you have that connected and all the rest of it
so you can be measuring them accordingly now i'd like to also put in little a little um
nod here to testing right i'm incredibly passionate about testing
so testing i think is is the key to success okay and again when you're testing it seems
very logical from everyone's perspective to be testing it and using opens and clicks as being the metric of
success but again i recommend go with
the real one the conversions because there's been too many tests that i have seen where what happens is um yeah and we'll
take this as as a an obvious one because i i don't know how many
hundreds and hundreds tens of hundreds of times i've seen tests like this
you're testing um a short subject line versus a long subject line right and that's what they call it short versus
long for some reason email marketers love testing that and you end up going with the short
because the sure has more openness but actually if you were to have gone through to the clicks and then gone
through to the conversions you'll find out generally speaking the long will
actually give you higher conversions now there is rhyme to to this so you know
short ones generally mean that you're more generic it's what you know hey we're going to
salem yeah versus uh we have a sale in women's wear
yeah all right um so you know in off or something like
that so a sale is going to get everyone's attention they're going to go great in every you know they go click through
and then they go oh it's women's wear i'm a man it's no good for me right i'm not interested and they drop
off but you've got a really great high open rate but then the women's wear is actually
going to be attracting the right people who are going to end up converting and so those are the kind of things that
you want to be taking into consideration and understanding that you know the the
metric of success really should still be mapping back to the objective of that campaign
i like that that's really good and so do you i mean again a little bit off piste here just um as you were talking kath it's like
do you find that in your emails if you're starting to qualify the prospect so you're
qualifying the prospect or the recipient of the email you're qualifying them with the subject line what you're writing about
in the subject lines the longer ones tend to have higher conversion rates you're qualifying in your body copy
um do you deliberately do that when you create emails yes yes yes so we
we we generally and like i said i test this all the time it
it depends on what the objective is so if the objective is say if you're a publisher and your objective is that you actually get
rewarded on uh open rates because that's what your advertisers pay you then you go short every time you know maybe well
i'm not saying that as a general rule but i'm saying it's something for you to be testing right um but it it so it's
it's up to you to work that one out but yeah absolutely and the way we do testing so we call it
holistic testing which is slightly different to regular ab split testing not surprised
me in the least and what it is so the whole the whole
idea with holistic testing is that you have to start with a hypothesis now most email
marketers do not do hypotheses they just don't because the systems that
we've been talking about which are fantastic um they're not actually great systems
for testing and they don't allow you to actually be putting down that they just say okay subject line a
subject line b and so they'll be just testing the actual um you know copy as such right
so we believe in actually putting a hypothesis down first of all so we could take that
you know short versus long as as a very basic hypothesis
um i can't remember why was i talking about this oh you're talking about how the holistic approach is different
yes so essentially what it does then is it goes we use the hypotheses and
then you you need to be measuring it again you know correctly but what it's going to do is it's going
to enable you to actually identify the reason why it won
now that is the learning and that's really crucial now that's no different to
most like if you're going to do a conversion optimization you know course or you're
doing on your website right that's basic principles but what we
go further on to say and this is not what's happening in email marketing in the first place but what we go further
on to say is then we can use email as the testing channel
as the starting point to then be finding out about our audience and what works and then using those
insights as a starting place on your landing page okay yeah bear with me with this right
because i'm with you push channel our database is our target
market we can even break it down into those life cycle segments and test them individually as well so we're testing
what resonates best with those particular you know segments or we can do it as a whole
and it's very cost effective and it's immediate right it's very very quick we don't have
to wait we don't have to be throwing thousands and thousands of pounds at you know google ppc or like that
to be driving traffic because we've already got it sitting there and then we can go and say great well
we've we've found that this to be so now let's go and refine this on the landing page so i'm not saying we don't
do it but we can do it now the other thing too about the holistic one is unlike a typical a b split test
for email where you will only test one factor at a time now again bear with me with this right
testing one factor at a time in email and you understand how important
that subject line is there's three steps to conversion get them to open it up and that's really
calling upon the from name and subject line get them to click on the email which is the body of the email
and get them to convert on the landing page right without the first one the subject line
you're not going to get two and three so the subject line is incredibly important if you could only ever test one factor at a time you'd only ever
ever test subject lines right it's incredibly limiting so what we
believe is that if we're testing a hypothesis
and let's say loss aversion versus benefits or savings versus benefits
right so we're now testing motivation so now we can have a subject line that
is testing that that's stating the benefits versus subject line that's uh um
stating savings the copy would also be the same the image could also be the same the
call to action could also be the same the landing page are also going to be the same
so now we have got an email that has got four factors all supporting the same
hypothesis about the the you know the um the benefits and everything
and versus the the other one and so you're more likely to have a robust result
as well because you're not just testing one little factor you're testing throughout the whole thing yeah that's
great yeah so that that's that then frees you up so you can be testing subject lines
every time absolutely you're also testing other things as well and you're you're testing for long term results and
findings rather than just an immediate this email versus you know okay this
email on this particular campaign which is a a momentary you know one-off so how do you
um if you're going to start testing um what sort of numbers do you need to test
what's a if you if i only got an email of say a thousand people is that enough to split test or is that
do i need more i mean yeah it's a great it's a great question
that's where holistic testing helps you as well because you're using a hypothesis you
can test that same hypothesis and i'm trying to remember what it was was benefits versus
so you're testing that same hypothesis multiple times but each time your subject line's going
to be different your call to action might be the same or it might be different but either it doesn't matter and your products are
different but they're all still supporting that hypothesis which means that over a period of time
you're going to say okay we're now up to a statistically significant result and we can call the winner
because of it it's not a hundred percent accurate but it's a downside better than not testing at all
you know what i mean yeah no totally the mistake everybody makes is just to write one email
yeah one subject line whack it out there and oh that didn't perform very well no maybe you didn't perform very well
just want to point that out okay i'm getting my head around this so
if i was gonna if i was gonna say to you right kath i wanna see some examples
of companies that have got this down packed i wanna go and
subscribe to their email newsletters and see what comes in who would you recommend i think
um so can sleep do a fantastic job oh sorry
soak and sleep so can sleep okay yes yep it's not a well-known brand great
products um but they do a fantastic job i think bowdoin do a great job as well
there's um a few brands i'm always terrible at being put on the spot when it comes to brands
wool overs i think actually do it they do an okay job as well um i'm just trying to think of the ones
that i've dealt with recently um yeah but definitely i think
so you know and that to me is actually a really good example because
they're not a big brand they haven't got a huge amount of budget they haven't got a huge you know email
team but they got it right you know and to me it's not like it is gaap who's got you
know a big budget and he's got multinational you know you know exposure and everything like that
so i take that as as a sign if these guys can do it then you know everyone else is
standing a pretty good chance of doing it too well i'm gonna sign up for their newsletter now so i've i've not heard of them
before so i'm definitely gonna go sign up uh and add them to my little list so thank you for the tip
um kath listen it is there are so many ways that we could go and i'm aware of time
and i appreciate you being with us how do how do people connect with you how do
they get hold of you if they want to if they want to reach out what's the best way to do that um okay so i am on linkedin um
uh cathpay so it's you know linkedin.com forward slash in cafe
i'm um on twitter at cathpay as well um you can always get
me by funny enough by email
yes yes um so that's kath holisticemail.com
and the actual website is holistic emailmarketing.com and um yeah and i will be actually
having um a website being made in the next couple of weeks we will be sort of you know
launching or doing the pre-launch for the book so if you want to go to cafe.com but put
a little note in don't do it yet because there's nothing there yet um
then you can always go and sign up and you know and you'll get to hear about when the book is released
fantastic and what's the title of the book going to be oh my goodness okay so it's holistic email marketing and then
the subtitle the subtitle let me think we have for
you on the spot now the subtitle is um
a practical philosophy to revolutionize your business and increase sales or something like
that i think i think it's the end bid okay fantastic and when's the
publishing date yeah i think it's around about um i'm hoping towards the middle mid
october but most likely towards the end of october okay so when it's published just drop me a
note and then we'll tell all the podcast guys that it's uh that it's available because i'm sure people will actually want to
know uh if they've listed this pog i think oh yeah yeah no we should definitely get that book so yeah it'll be great to have and the
content of the book is it is it uh in more detail the kind of stuff you've talked about tonight yes the kind of stuff i talk
about tonight i give examples i go into more detail i also have a lot more stuff as well
sure and how how painful was it writing a book it wasn't painful
because i i talk about a lot you know i write about it a lot it's not like i was like
there's this concept that i haven't i normally had already written about it
or spoken about it a lot so it was very natural my big problem is really
have i got everything out there have i
that's why we have a sequel i think is the uh i think i think it will be yes careful listen i
really appreciate your time thank you for coming on the show and sharing your expertise i've got lots of notes again i love doing these
podcasts talking to experts like yourself and making lots of notes um and looking forward to getting those
implemented but really appreciate you being here thank you so much uh kath uh all the best with the book
and the new courses that are coming out wonderful thanks very much no problem at all thanks kath thank you
okay wasn't c fantastic now if you are like me
you should have a lot of notes in your book and stuff that you can implement
straight away uh make sure you sign up to soak and sleep for example and see that make sure you
do connect with kath through linkedin and through twitter we'll have the links to all the social media link all the social
media links kath mentioned we will put of course in the show notes along with notes from tonight's podcast
and you can download those for free click the links to cath for free on the show website which is
matt edmondson.com do check that out everything will be there so
i hope you got a lot out of the show tonight thanks for all of you being commenting on facebook live and it's been great that you've all
been here really appreciate your time make sure like i said at the start of the show you subscribe wherever you get your content
from uh whether it's a podcast or whether you come join us on the facebook live or whether you just go to the website and
watch the youtube video you know we're we're a bit like kath we're kind of content agnostic however
you want to consume it that's how you consume it just make sure you subscribe right so you can stay informed when regular
content is going out it will be great to connect with you great to get to know you my thanks once again to kath really
appreciate you being here thanks again for listening i shall be back very very soon
with another ecommerce podcast but in the meantime wherever you are in the world
stay safe and we'll be back very very soon all right god bless you and bye for now
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