Marketing + Margaritas Episode 2 - Email Marketing

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We made it… to record our second episode of Marketing + Margaritas. Sit back or carry on working (because that’s the cool thing about podcasts) and have a laugh with us as we share some of our most valuable insights on everything email marketing – well as much as we could fit into thirty minutes!

EPISODE 2 SHOW NOTES

Topics we cover in this session >>

·         What is email marketing?

·         Why use email marketing?

·         How to track the success of your email marketing.

·         Writing subject lines for your enewsletters

·         How to compile an email marketing list

EPISODE 2 TRANSCRIPT

Hello everyone and welcome to Marketing + Margaritas with Alanna and Jade.

Today, we're talking about email marketing.

What is email marketing?

Good question.

Email marketing is when you're sending an enews, service updates, catalogues or sales promotions, by email to your client database.

Why should we use email marketing?

The benefit of email marketing is that, in my mind, I still think of email as being one of those places where if you do a really good subject line, and someone opens your email – it’s one of the few places left digitally, where it's just a conversation directly between you and your audience. If you're on Facebook or you're in a magazine or all those other platforms, you're competing. There's a bunch of other people who are also trying to grab the attention of the person you're talking to. Whereas when you open an email, it's just you and your reader – it’s a lot more of an intimate experience. That’s not to say that they're fully 100% focused on you - all of us scroll through and scan, delete emails, etc, on our phone – but if you do it well, then it's an opportunity to really connect with somebody, and when it comes to marketing, that's a pretty massive thing.

So talking to someone one-on-one is the main benefit of email marketing?

Yeah, but also, if you think of Facebook and that type of thing, you can build a massive Facebook following and they can change the algorithm - and your reach and engagement can just be gone in a day. If Facebook shuts down, you don't own your Facebook audience.

We had a client the other day where we were running Facebook ads for them and they were like, “We got around a thousand clicks, and we want to know who those people are”. And I’m like, I can't tell you that - that data is private. Whereas your email list, that's yours, that's an asset for your business. If you grow from 100 people to 1000 people to 10,000 people on your email database, that's a massive asset that not only can you utilise for your business, etc but also if you're going to be selling your business, that's something tangible that you're passing on.

If you’re using an email marketing client, like Active Campaign or our favourite, Mailchimp, you also get the data from it. Anyone can send out an email or put a Facebook post or whatever – well, at least with Facebook, you've got insights, but there’s some older school email marketing clients, or some that have a program for customer management that might have an inbuilt email newsletter function - if they don't have that data, or if they're not actually telling you how many people opened it, what they're clicking on, who they are, then you’re really missing a big opportunity.

If you are selling an actual product or you're hosting an event – so say the local Chamber of Commerce is hosting an event, and they're sending out their monthly newsletter and they've got a few different events in there. For example, in Mailchimp, I can see not just how many people opened it, but I can see specifically who opened the email, and then I can see who clicked on the event. If I was to look back and go, “Okay, RSVP’s are closing tomorrow - I know there are a bunch of people who said they were interested and they haven’t RSVP’d yet. Who are they?” I can go into my Mailchimp, go into my reporting, and actually see, “Okay, here are 50 people that clicked on the event and these 10 haven't RSVP yet,” I'm going to give them a quick call.

Absolutely, so having that insight is awesome. You can really use it to your advantage.

So, can I just say another benefit of email marketing? When you're actually looking at your data - not just particularly looking at the people - but if you look at the broader context, you can see what kind of topics, what kind of information your audience is interested in.

So, you can tailor what you're actually sending out?

Yeah, so you might think that latest pesticide for slugs is really exciting, but no one else gives a shit. You know? So maybe don't talk about pesticides in your next eNewsletter.

But yeah, slugs aren't really a regional Queensland issue.

Oh, really?

No. But good note though!

I'm a huge Kmart fan and I love how Kmart do their email marketing as an example of what to do.

Just note - not sponsored by Kmart.

Yeah, because that’s so going to happen.

Oh, look, wishful thinking! Continue, continue…

With Kmart, what they do for their subject line is they will put out what specifically is going to be in that particular email. It could be like winter clothing, or kids toys, or whatever it is. So, for me as the consumer, it's really easy for me to go, “Oh no, kids stuff, I don't give a crap because, you know, children blah…,” whereas it might be, “Our latest range of kitchen homewares,” which I'm all about because, you know, I'm such a cook. So that will be what grabs my attention. So then when I get into that email, if they’re putting certain products in there, and there might be certain jars that could be one of them - they might find that of the five products they had in there, eighty percent of people clicked on the jars one. So, they might go - alright, cool. Next time, we're actually going to do an enews, or eblast, or whatever you want to call it, specifically about different types of jars, or labelling your jars, or some pantry inspo, or something like that with jars.

It helps when you step back and look at it from a wider perspective. It also helps you learn what your audience is interested in, so you can give more of that to them. Not just on your email marketing, but also your socials.

Yeah, absolutely.

If you've got three different blogs in any newsletter, and one of them gets a hell of more clicks than the other, then make sure that you're distributing that blog everywhere else because it's proven content.

Okay, awesome. So pretty much what you're saying is we don't have to, in every newsletter, go - we do service 12345678910 and bombard them with just an overview of everything you do. You can really boil it down and give them the specific information about one thing?

Yeah, basically, I mean, it's really up to you and how your business works. And that's the next thing that we're going to get into - is email marketing something that can work for your business, your audience, what you're trying to achieve? For example, we do a weekly newsletter called Wild Oats and that's for regional business owners. We do a mix of content - it could be an event that's coming up, and it could be a social media tip, and it could be a new app that we found but it's just kind of a variety of content that we think would be interesting. Whereas with the Kmart example, if we wanted to, we could actually be doing it so that it's like, “This newsletter is all about Facebook stories”, then the next one is all about “How do you start blogging”, that kind of thing. So, it's really looking at your business - what you want to achieve and who you're trying to target.

When you think of email marketing, there's probably not very many industries that it wouldn't work in, to be honest. It's just finding the right method, the right structure, the right frequency that works for you and your audience.

Right. And that goes back to any marketing activity. You’re actually looking at your audience, how your business is structured, and what your business's goals are and going from there. Is that right?

Yeah. Hundred percent. Like for us, we go - okay, so we're a marketing business, so obviously, we're predominantly talking to business owners and marketing people. Our audience are small business owners, regional business owners, that kind of thing. So what are their characteristics? When it comes to email, what are they looking for? Are they wanting to sit down and read a long saga about how to use Facebook stories from start to end? Or are they looking for snippets and quick, actionable advice? That's why we do a variety of topics because not everything will be of interest to everybody. So we try and cover a bunch of bases. If you look at Wild Oats and there are, say five pieces of content in there to click through to and just one of those is something that interests you, and it gives you just even one new idea, that newsletter has done its purpose.

Absolutely.

Done its purpose? Reached its purpose.

Reached its purpose.

Reached its purpose..? It's done well.

Good job Wild Oats! So on the other hand of that, when going back to your jars story, you can just look at wholly and solely one thing. So, if you're launching a new jar, it's this you beaut jar, really cool lid, we're just gonna go - Hey Jade! We at Kmart - not sponsored yet - have this new jar! Look how cool it is looking at all its features.

It's got a chalkboard label built in. I mean, come on who does not want this? Oh man, I love chalkboard labels. You've seen my pantry. You know it's true.

Yeah, I'm sure you can all imagine that now, too. So we can talk about one product, we can talk about the features, we can talk about the price, where to find more information, where to buy it, how to find it locally - so you can just focus on one thing, or you can have three to five things that you've got that are quick and easy for the reader. That in my mind is putting on your consumer hat. So, looking at it from your business's audience perspective, and going, “I signed up to this newsletter, what is my expectation from it as a user?”.

And what do your customers want? What are they interested in? How can you add value to them? So Kmart, for example, their stuff is low cost, it's quick and easy to access, there's not a lot of purchase barriers for that. They're a massive company, so for them, it really is just ‘here’s a showcase of some new products’ - because they're always launching new stuff. ‘Here's a showcase of a few products’ within a particular theme. Either the subject line tells me whether I'm going to delete it or open it. And if I open it, then I know I'm just going to only see a few things. I'm not going to be overwhelmed with a whole massive catalogue but it's just a few things that it could potentially be interested in and then once I click through on something, chances are I'm going to go through and find more things that I'm interested in anyway.

So that's how Kmart does it as opposed to, a regional business that is servicing just their local area. They’re not just going to be like, “Here! Here’s five things you can buy from us right now. Yay!” They want to be building a relationship. Their audience might actually be looking for maybe one or two personal insights from the business owner and what's happened with them that week, or a personal story about something that they tried in their business that worked really well or didn't work well, or something new that they're launching. Not just the fact that they're launching it, but the fact that it's why it's meaning something to them.

So, I'm thinking of like an electrician. Things like Google Home, and automated lighting, and all that sort of stuff is becoming quite popular and everything now. So say, as an electrician, you just do domestic stuff at home - you do rewires and I don't know, fixing crap in the walls, whatever they do. But say a new service that you're launching is that you can wire up someone's home, so that their fans and lights etc, can all be voice activated by Google - which is upgrading to a smart home.

If it's someone who's a bit older and stuff, that might be really appealing because they can turn on the lights before they get inside and make them feel more secure.

Air conditioning in North Queensland – it’s cool before you get home.

Yeah, and have to run around and turn things on and stuff like that. So when they're launching that new service, they're not just like, “Smart homes. Get one. It's the newest thing - you should be right there.”

They can actually write a bit of content, saying that a lot of the clients that we work with are people who are a bit older, busy moms and stuff, who already need eight arms to just carry the groceries and kids into the house. We've decided to learn all about the best ways, the most efficient ways, the most affordable ways to install smart home technology into any home. If this is something that you're interested in, we've got a variety of packages, so it's not just like Kmart where it’s like, here's a jar with a price.

Yeah, it's knowing your business's audience and how you can help them. Like you said at the start, you're talking directly to that person. You’re tailoring that message to your audience.

Someone might read that and they might not go, ‘Oh, I'm just going to go out and buy this right now.’ If you put a bit of thought and effort into it, and you think of what is going to be interesting or educational or informative for them, it'll get them thinking.

And one day when they're coming home and the kids are running around like crazy, and they're sweating and they've got to get dinner on straightaway and they’re like, “Holy crap, how nice would it be if the place was just freaking air conditioned ten minutes before I walked in the door?”. Just something simple like that and then that's when they'll remember - ah, these guys have been talking about this for a while about different ways, tips for making your smart home more energy efficient, all that sort of stuff. Maybe I should give them a call and just get a quote.

It doesn't have to be a novel with every weekly or monthly enews. It can just be dot points on ten reasons as to why this will make your life easier.

Yeah, exactly. It might even be that in the email, it's just a really nice image with one or two intro lines and the first couple of points, and then they click through to your website to read the full list. It doesn't have to be a heap of content in the newsletter as well. When you think of email marketing, like I said - enewsletters, eblasts, the reason why there's so many different names for these kinds of things is because there's so many different structures and formats and stuff that you can do.

Again, it's thinking about what your business is, who your audience is, how you're trying to help them, what they want to see from you, and basically just having a crack from there.

Absolutely. That's so exciting. The part I really liked and the idea that we talked about in our first podcast about Facebook in theme days, is that this content can pull across. If something's gone really well, and it's a service or a topic that's been really interesting on your Facebook, you can do that as an eblast. It can just be like you said - a photo and a couple of sentences about, “Hey, we did this, how exciting.” You’re creating that personality, you're talking one on one, you're creating that relationship.

That's an excellent point, Lani. It's one of those things where we talk about, as business owners, when we're trying to do our marketing and everything is how we make things as efficient as possible. So we're not spending hours and hours doing stuff - one thing is using proven content. If you've got your theme days happening on Facebook, then you might find that during the month there’s three or four posts that just went off. So then when you do your monthly newsletter, rather than creating a whole bunch of new content, you look at your Facebook analytics, you pull those four pieces of content, you pop them into whatever your structure or format is, maybe add a bit of an intro and boom, you're done. You can have an enewsletter done in under half an hour with content that you already know is popular and relevant with your audience.

Don't think of it as repeating yourself. There'll be people that haven't been following your Facebook, that will be getting your enewsletter, or they didn't stop long enough to actually read the full post. It's not repetitious, they might get something completely different out of it that they've missed. So, it's a really good way to reuse that content.

Get longevity out of it. But seriously, if I see a really cool image of how a house is styled or something and then a month later, I see that same image with three quick tips on how I can do that, I'm not gonna be like, “Holy crap. I've just seen that image twice. These guys are shit. That’s it.”

Delete.

Yeah, exactly.

No, it's not going to happen.

No. We get sick of our own stuff well, well, well, before our audience gets sick of us, trust me.

Absolutely.

Unless your stuff’s really shit.

No, it’s not. You guys are doing great stuff. It’s all good stuff!

We talked about two different strategies that I just wanted to touch on again. One is doing an eblast for a new product or a service or something you just want to keep top of mind for your clients. Say we're coming into summer, so air conditioning, like all our electricians, and air conditioner service providers are run off their feet. But they could be doing an eblast like, “Hey we've got this new air conditioner that’s you beaut because xyz.” They can do an eblast, say once a week on a product or service. As Jade just said before, doing a monthly end-of-month enewsletter, which actually has a couple of different things in it. So that would be a good way to test your audience, if you're getting really excited and capable timewise, to do a couple of different newsletters.

Again, like we've said in that first podcast, too -  it’s not necessarily that you have to start off with the end all and be all. At the start, if it's just easy for you to start doing a monthly newsletter, start seeing what results you're getting, that's great. Then you might throw in - okay, I'm just going to do a random eblast when we've got something particularly exciting to announce or talk about and see how that goes for a while. Then you might go - okay, I'm going to do a fortnightly eblast and my monthly newsletter, and then you might notice that your engagement or unsubscribes start going up… no, your engagements are going down and your unsubscribe start going up, you know what I mean. That’s when you’re like cool okay, that's too much. I will now go back to doing my random eblast and my monthly newsletter.

Which leads us to a good point - how do you test and track what is going well?

Not only is having an email marketing client kind of necessary when you're sending out bulk email because you don't want to be getting hit by spam filters and blocks and all that type of thing.

By email marketing client, You mean the likes of programs such as Mailchimp?

Yes, yes. Sorry, gosh, why doesn't everyone just have marketing jargon speak in the head?

Just add a glossary on the end to this.

Yeah, right. Say you’re using Mailchimp, then you can use that data to see right back to the basics of what days people open through more, what times are getting more open rates. Then you could also have a look at what topics get more opens, what subject lines might be getting more opens. If you look at - say you've got three months’ worth of fortnightly newsletters, and you go - okay, I've got four that really stood out for open rates. So, before the people even got into the newsletter, these four, just from this subject line…

Everyone opened them

Right, so if I look at those subject lines, what did I have in common? What makes them different from the others? That's how you improve at marketing. That's how you get good at doing your marketing. It's not just doing something one off and being like, why didn’t that work? I did an enewsletter, why isn’t there a thousand people opening it? You've got to learn from what you're doing.

Okay, so deep dive, writing a subject line for an enewsletter freaks me out.

Serious?

I can do social media until the cows come home. But like, how many words? How are we going to get this clickable? How do you do it, Jade?

I don’t know. I just have a play with it. I think that writing subject lines is kind of similar to writing blog post headlines. It's sort of like…

It has to be grab-worthy?

Yeah. It's something that's going to grab people's attention. You can put a bit of what's the benefit in it for them. But I think for me, all the clickbait and all that kind of stuff where it’s like, five tips to earn $100,000 in three months, all that kind of bullshit - I think just the more clear and transparent you can be. I mean, that might not be trendy marketing or anything but for me, I just think that if you're very clear about what people are going to get when they open it, then that to me, not only does it just make sense from a reader's perspective, but it also builds trust.

You know, I don't want you to promise me the world. And then when I open it, I'm like, wow, that's the same thing I've heard from everybody else for the past five years.

If you're going to be talking about how a smart home can actually lead to more energy efficiency, then if that's something I'm interested in, I will open it. I guess, that's fairly generic to say, make it clear and stuff, you still need to do things like making sure that your grammar, your punctuation, it makes sense, all that kind of thing. Your subject line probably needs a bit more attention, I guess, in that way. I mean, you should be proofing everything before it goes out any way.

Absolutely. The two sets of eyes rule is a great one to abide by. You will often miss your own mistakes because your brain wrote it and your fingers screwed it up.

It was right in my head, but it just didn't come out on the other end properly.

Yeah. So, two sets of eyes, read it with a fresh perspective.

I will write a subject line or blog heading or something that I think details perfectly what the content is about. Then someone else will read it and be like, what does that actually mean? And I'm like, wait, everyone knows these words, come on!

This might actually work for you. Because like, what is that? Let me click it and find out what it is. Don't make your subject lines too convoluted, though. Well try it, see if it works, you can go test and track.

I just think clear, easy, transparent is the best way to go. I can't actually remember how many characters show up in a subject line.

It probably depends on the service provider.

With Mailchimp, for example, you can put in your subject line but you can also write custom preview text. You know when you're sitting in your inbox, and there's the subject line, and then you can start to read the start of the email. In Mailchimp, it'll either just pull the first couple of lines from your actual email, or you can use that preview text as a bit more of an attention grabbing sort of thing. The subject line might be, “Five ways to landscape your garden while saving with water saving strategies,” or something like that. And then the preview text could be like, “Here's three homes that we've recently set up where they wanted to conserve water, cut down on water bills, but also have a really beautiful and lush garden.” So, it kind of expands a little bit and if I was interested in setting up my garden so that it was really beautiful and lush, but I wasn't paying through the nose for water, then I'm going to open it. If it doesn't interest me, then I'm not going to open. With the subject line, I just think clear, transparent - that's the best way to go.

Awesome. Okay, so last question, which probably seems like a first question. How do you compile an email marketing list of emails? So where do you get all your contacts from? What's a good way to source them and get them together, if you are new to a newsletter?

Okay. Obviously, there's the Spam Act, which, because I'm not a lawyer, I can't discuss all the legalities and stuff of it. But I know that the most legal way to do it - I'm 100% certain that this way is legal…

It’s not that legal, but the most likely legal way.

Well no, this is the only way that I know that is one hundred percent legal.

Copy.

Is putting signups for your newsletter everywhere. Not for your newsletter - for your email database, you know what I mean. It could be having a sign up on your website, having a sign up on your email signature, on your Facebook cover having a pointer to it.

Doing a post on your social media?

Yeah, hundred percent. Say, doing an Instagram story and talking about your top tip for xyz and then going, ‘If you want to hear my other top tips about this, go sign up for our newsletter, we're going to be giving you the lowdown on everything’. Which leads a little bit into lead magnets - I'm not going to deep dive on that because it's like literally probably five episodes on its own, but I just love lead magnets, so I'm just going to give a quick little preview now.

You should see your face, it’s like a kid in a candy store.

It’s so exciting! But a lead magnet is a piece of really tempting content, so something that people would pay for, and you offer it for free, in exchange for their details. That can then lead into nurturing sequences and all kinds of things but on the most base level, they sign up to your newsletter. So, you've given them something of amazing value for nothing, straight up.

Like a free download of something.

Yeah, a checklist or a five day challenge, or your favourite tips for how to do something or whatever. But you've given them something of value straight up, so that's a really nice way to start the relationship. Then after that, they're getting this consistent, interesting, valuable, well thought out content from you on email, regularly.

So, they're hearing from you on a consistent basis. That's how, again, in marketing, we build trust, we build relationships, and who do we buy from? People that we know, like, and trust. Friends that we know, like and trust. Email marketing is one way, I think, of doing that actually really effectively and has got a whole bunch of other benefits to it.

If you're launching something - your conversion rates are just so much higher if you've got an engaged email database. There's just so much value in having an email database that - well not just having - but also that you take care of, it's not just like, “Oh, we've got to get an enewsletter out this week.”

No, don’t just rubbish it because you've got a schedule if you don't have anything worth telling anyone about.

Put some time, thought and effort into it because if you really take care of that database and have really strong relationships with the people who read your newsletter fairly consistently, they know that they can expect a certain quality standard from you. Then that means that whenever you do have something to sell to them, they're probably really keen to buy from you. They really want to work with you because you've already proven yourself multiple times over. But I mean, that's only if you take care of it.

Alrighty, so we hope that has explained what, how and why to use email marketing. If you're interested to find out more about it, feel free to get in touch. Otherwise, stay tuned for another episode of Marketing + Margaritas with us next time.

Cheers!