Making The Most Out Of Email Marketing

As industries go, retail is pretty cutthroat. Yes, there’s loads of potential customers, but there’s also a ton of competition, often with very little differentiation. All of which leads to very tight margins. So for marketing to work in retail, it’s got to be effective and efficient. And with some research suggesting that email marketing delivers an ROI of 36 to one, what better place to start, which is why I’m so pleased to be joined by Nicola Paul, an e commerce digital marketing specialist to discuss how businesses can make their email marketing a success.

Nicola, welcome to the podcast. Hi David, thank you for having me on. Great to see you again. Nicola, for everyone who’s not familiar with you, could you give a bit of an introduction to who you are, what it is that you do and how you ended up working independently? Sure, so I have been freelance e commerce specialist for seven years now.

I am possibly quite niche because I offer a full suite of digital services specifically around e commerce rather than just one like particular marketing elements. So for my clients, I cover email marketing, e commerce optimisation on their website, paid social media, consultancy around social media and just really giving them that full, service really that kind of helps them to optimise their sites.

my background is actually in fashion e commerce, which is how I got into what I’m doing. I was working for a quite a small independent fashion brand that was based in London. And I found myself covering the full area of e commerce at that point. So customer service, setting up their warehouse, picking and packing, running their photo shoots, things like that.

So I think I’ve applied that knowledge from being, like really stuck into the elements of what an online retail business looks like and apply that to what I’m doing now from a marketing perspective. It’s, interesting you mention, that you offer a range of services because a lot of freelancers, a lot of independent consultants that I’ve spoken with have chosen to specialise in one particular facet of marketing.

So you might have someone who all they do is search engine optimisation, someone else will only focus on pay per click, someone else will only focus on email. By offering a more holistic suite of services, what benefits do your clients get from, that approach? I think what I’ve seen, with clients is I, often don’t think that one specific element exists in a vacuum, so I think, applying a full strategy across your, paid search, your email marketing, your organic content, for me to be able to provide that full service, it means I’m echoing those brand elements and strategies across like their sort of full marketing campaign, which is where I think my clients have seen benefit from that.

Yeah, I can understand it’s a lot easier to make it feel and be consistent and well integrated as a marketing campaign and message. I think so, yeah. And I think, for example, I think there’s a lot of changes going on with Google and paid search at the moment. So I think it I always encourage my clients not to put all of their eggs in one basket and just focus on one, one element, whether that’s their social media or their email that.

there is such a huge importance around spreading your activities across different areas to bring your customers in through different channels. Yeah, there’s that saying, isn’t there? If the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem starts to look like a nail. I’ve definitely noticed that with certain SEO agencies.

It doesn’t matter what problem you go to them with, the only answer they’ll come back to is you need to invest more in search engine optimisation. Absolutely. Yeah. look, the theme for today is about making your email marketing really, work for you, really work for your business, really sing and deliver results.

so let’s say you start working with a new client. I know that you don’t only offer email marketing, but perhaps you’ve decided that email marketing is an area that needs to be developed. Where would you begin? I think The very first thing I always speak to clients about is, digging into what their customers are looking for, like what they’re motivated by.

So that kind of helps you to drive your strategy in terms of why the customer is likely to sign up for your newsletter. I think more than ever, as a customer, you’re bombarded by data at all angles, whether it’s signing up to emails, Looking at social media, SMS marketing. I think digging into that strategy around why, a customer is going to come to you and sign up for your content is the first sort of discussion point that I would have with them.

And that then helps you to develop your content strategy for what your emails are going to look like and what the contents are going to be so that you’re engaging them. And with, the clients that you’ve worked with, are there any examples that spring to mind where they’ve come up with really innovative ways of, or really enticing reasons why someone would want to sign up for a marketing newsletter through, through their offering?

I think what I’m seeing more than ever now is that there’s, very much a shift away from just that standard discount offering. I think there will always be people who are looking for bargains and who are looking for those initial sign up and save a percentage off your first order.

But quite often I think those, subscribers tend to be less engaged once they’ve had that initial offer. So we’re, I think people are seeing more success and some of the stuff I’ve been working on with my clients is, how you engage those people with, a different offering. So whether that’s exclusive access to new products, it might be, competitions, it might be unique content that you’re only getting as a subscriber.

So I think those are the sort of things that are now engaging people more. Brilliant. And then, aside from, newsletter style emails, and I might come back to that later on, because I know that is very valuable. In fact, I had a client recently mention, that they, were speaking with one of their clients who just dropped into the conversation how valuable that they’re finding the regular newsletters.

Newsletter flow that they’re receiving and it’s that in itself is it is a metric that unless you speak with the clients Maybe you never really see because all you’re looking at is opening click through rates, but you’re not necessarily aware of the value. That’s the recipients Late gleaning off it but aside from the newsletter style emails What other approaches have you seen businesses take to engage via email?

I? think for me Automations are like the most, like the easiest, not easiest, but they’re so valuable because they are basically triggered from the data that you have about your customer already, or the actions that they are taking. for example, if I purchase something online and I’m getting a follow up email to say oh hey, you’ve just bought this, we’re getting it ready for you, I’m getting excited because I know my order’s going to come soon and I’m looking forward to receiving it, things like that mean you’re not just a sort of statistic that’s forgotten about as soon as you’ve placed an order.

It’s that consistent engagement and Encouragement that you’re going to come back and become a regular customer. So I think automation is really like the biggest way that you can connect with people on a sort of ongoing way, and whether that’s like a birthday email, maybe asking for a review, it’s maybe referring a friend.

there’s, there’s so much potential within automation. And There’s absolutely quite a lot of work in setting them up, but once they’re all there in your suite, they’re just almost like ticking over doing your hard work for you, which is amazing. And then with that sort of transactional style email that you mentioned, so someone’s made a purchase and you’ve sent them an email confirming their purchase.

Have you seen, perhaps you’ve implemented yourself, some, other messages within that transactional email that might actually deliver some more value to the client and also the recipients as well? Yeah, I think, quite often those transactional emails can have more in there that just add a little extra value of interest.

It’s not just, Oh, Hey, your order’s going to arrive in two days. Thanks. one of my clients is in sports. we’ll. send up a sort of follow up email and say Hey, like you’ve just bought a tennis racket. Did you know the best way to care for it? like how often you need to restrung or, how you should clean it and things like that.

So those kinds of things are adding value, but without another, it’s not just, would you want to come and buy something else from us? Because you’ve already purchased. It’s a sort of added value to engage them. and in order for that to work. Presumably you’ve got to be quite diligent with how you’re segmenting your list.

How do you go about doing that? Yeah, what I would say now is I think that the tools for email marketing are amazing. like the, sort of data linking that you can get. most of my clients are on Klaviyo and link through to Shopify. So the. the data that transfers back and forth between them that is slightly terrifying sometimes I think but you know they can see as soon as you’ve logged in you can see what a customer has looked at what customers purchased how long ago it was all of that sort of stuff and that helps you set those triggers around if customer has x has bought this then send them this email but if they’ve bought something else they get that email you know so it’s it takes quite a little bit of figuring out and setting up, but once that’s all in there, it’s amazing.

Are there any particular triggers you found to be especially effective at driving sales? I think abandoned carts are always, they’re very much a classic one, but they’re, always really helpful for just that kind of, I think in e commerce, like abandoned carts are always that holy grail thing that people are trying to.

to fix and you’ll never get a fix on them because it’s the nature of how people browse, but I think those are always really popular. I think birthday ones also work really well. I shop quite regularly with sweaty Betty, the, the sportswear brand and every birthday they send you 50 percent off one item and that’s awesome.

like literally right away I’m on the website buying something. Even if I don’t really need anything, because it’s 50 percent off, you’re like, yeah, I have to, I can’t let that go. it’s such a great discount that you feel super special because it’s your birthday. So I think those little things can have a really strong impact.

Brilliant. And then, when it comes to the sort of more technical side of things, deliverability, how are there measures that you can implement, put in place things that people should be doing to make sure they avoid spam filters or also being filtered into the, kind of other promotional tab within Gmail?

Yeah, I think, that’s always going to be, An issue, but the recent, so there was an update that came out in February with Google and Yahoo that required, email authentication of your domain. So I think as long as you’ve gone through those steps, I would say that the, email providers like Klaviyo, MailChimp, OmniSend, etc.

are quite on it if there are updates that you need to be aware of. just keeping an eye out for any notifications like that and making sure that you’re following any steps for authentication. beyond that, it sounds counterintuitive, but I think making it super easy for someone to unsubscribe to your emails is really important because if it’s, if someone doesn’t want it to have your email anymore and they can’t see that button, it’s easy for them to mark you spam and obviously that.

can go against you if you get a few of those. So it’s, if, I think sometimes people get caught up on how many people they have on their email address or worrying if someone’s unsubscribed, but if they’re not going to engage, then it’s better to not have them. Yeah. Do you, have any rules that you implement around subscribers who are just not engaging with emails?

Yeah. I think, List hygiene is really important. you can do a thing called a sun setting flow, or automation where you would essentially, send out an email to say, Hey, we’ve not heard from you for a while. how can we, re engage, how can we bring you back? And if that’s, if they’re still not engaging with that, then you just go through the process of cleaning people from your database.

Because I think, It’s very similar to social media. I think quite often people worry about having the biggest number possible of subscribers or followers, but for me, that engaged number is way more important. Are there, any rules of thumb that you use, and whether it’s a, someone hasn’t opened or clicked on an email for the last X months, or perhaps it’s they’ve received a 10 emails but haven’t opened or clicked on any of those that you find to be appropriate for cleaning lists.

I think generally, I would look at a sort of six month rule but I would also caveat with the fact it depends on your industry because if you’re a seasonal product or maybe something that people tend to gift at Christmas then have a little bit of leeway there You know, I work with a, gin brand, so quite often that tends to be a Mother’s Day gift or a Christmas gift.

So you know, maybe come sort of November people haven’t engaged for a while, but there’s always an opportunity to re engage come Christmas again. So I think six months is a good general rule, but also be aware of your customer’s purchasing habits too. Yeah, makes sense. And. we’ve talked quite a bit about the transactional emails and various triggers that you might use.

We started off the conversation talking about newsletter style emails. Where’s, what’s your view on whether people who are making a purchase, being funneled into the, they’re now going to receive our newsletter forevermore. What are the considerations around that? I think again with that, the biggest thing is, a balance of not being too sales focused.

I think the goal is always to get a customer to the site, but it doesn’t always have to immediately be, Hey, come and buy this thing from us right now. I think if you’ve got some, blog content or something interesting that people want to know more about, that’s a good way in. It doesn’t always just have to be purely sales pushed or here’s a discount or.

Things like that, there’s other ways to drive people in. And what metrics might you be looking at to understand the success of a campaign? I look at click through rate quite a lot because, again for me, it’s driving people to the site. conversion rate, obviously being in e commerce, is really important to see.

like the revenue that’s being driven from emails, particularly if it is around a key campaign for something like whether that’s Black Friday or Christmas or Mother’s Day or something like that. But for me, click through is very much engagement led, which is the goal that I would look at from an email marketing perspective to see a success.

Yeah, I’ve, I know when I’ve been working on email campaigns for some clients, I’ve, I don’t totally disregard it, but I take it with a very, large pinch of salt, the open rate stats that I’m getting. And I’m chalking that up to different people’s, I don’t know, spam filters in there. It’s predominantly for B2B organizations.

I think a lot of spam filters will automatically open every single email and just make sure that it’s, there’s nothing malicious in there. Yeah. And I think, The open rate, as well, can be down to something really as simple as, you were on holiday when the email came through and you missed it, or, the, the subject line, you have this tiny little space to engage your full mailing list and there are some people, for example, my, some of my clients are doing Father’s Day marketing at the moment.

That’s just not relevant to some people, therefore. They’re not going to open it. So you’re, never going to catch every single person with, that subject line. Although it was obviously good to test that. But, yeah, for me the engagement within the email itself once they’re in there is much more valuable.

Yeah. And if you’ve got any tips or, advice around the subject line, cause as soon as an email lands in the inbox, really that’s the only thing that someone’s going to see, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. I think the biggest thing for me is not being misleading, I think sometimes, newsletters almost try to be like really sensational and almost slightly click baity to make you open it, and then when you open it you’re slightly disappointed.

I think just keeping it really short and sweet and, test it as well, All of the email platforms offer A B testing on subject rate, subject line, sorry. So I think that’s the, best way to test out what your, clients are looking at, your customers are looking for.

you emojis. I not such a fan of them, but it makes my toes curl. Yeah, it’s a personal preference and I think it depends on your branding as well, but sometimes they don’t always. I’ve seen years back, I think, as well, like when you look at them in an inbox, yeah, there’s definitely a level of emojis there.

I think that there are accessibility issues with emojis as well. So anyone who’s struggles with their site, that presents another challenge. Have you, or what’s your views on the personalization in subject lines? I’ve seen years back, I think, just simply adding someone’s first name in the subject line.

that did, you used to deliver quite a decent increase in the open rate as far as I could tell. My experience has been that’s dropped off, but I don’t know if you’ve seen something similar. Yeah, I think it’s useful to an extent, but because everyone does it now, it doesn’t always work. I’ve had emails addressed to Paul before, which is my thing, which is, like it shouldn’t.

bother you, but because of the job I do as well, you’re I’m not going to open that email on principle. But, yeah, I think personalisation is becoming way more advanced now that, when you sign up to a newsletter, if you’re being asked something about your preferences, and then that kind of helps.

form what the content of those emails look like. I think that is the more advanced level of the name. so for example, with my gin brand, when the customer signs up, the way we ask them, like, how do you take your gin? So is that a gin and tonic? Is it a cocktail? Do you like it neat?

Straight from the bottle. Yeah, absolutely. and that helps me. to inform like almost the next stage, because if we were sending them like cocktail content or things like that, yeah, that’s almost like the more advanced level of personalization beyond just Hi David, here’s an email for you thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think going to start wrapping things up before I let you go, like just maybe one tip from you for say a business who’s just starting out with their email marketing strategy. Yeah. Anything that you think. they should be thinking about to make sure it starts off right. Yeah, I think, just going back to thinking about what your customer really is motivated by when they’re shopping with you.

that helps them, that helps you drive the content of those newsletters to keep them engaged. that’s, for me, the most important thing that you’re not just thinking about. sending out things into the void that they’re not going to engage with. Like really think about your customer persona and what they’re likely to want from you and make sure you’ve got a really good sign up option on your website or your social media so that you’re actually getting them in the door.

Yeah, okay, all makes sense. Great tip, thank you very much. I am asking everybody for a book recommendation. Yes, I’ve got my book here. This is, it’s Mary Portis, who is, a total retail icon. It’s called Rebuild, How to Thrive in the New Kindness Economy. And she wrote that book during lockdown. And essentially, it’s all about the shift from pure profit into how we are now buying into brands rather than just buying from them.

And it’s how we think about, how we live our lives and the impact of like the social economy, brands that are looking after the planet, brands are looking after their people. And it’s just a real shift away from like just hard marketing. And it’s all about, what we can do as small businesses to do good things in the world and be better, basically.

Excellent. I will go and check that out. Thank you very much. after the podcast, how can people connect with you? Sure, so I am on Instagram at yellowbirddigital, or you can find me on LinkedIn, Nicola Paul. Brilliant. Thank you so much Nicola. One final question. Yes. Yellowbird. Why did you choose that as your name?

Yes. I have always loved the color yellow. Yellow birds are symbols of joy apparently. So that’s how that came around. I’m not wearing yellow today I usually am when I’ve got the yellow backdrop though. Yes but yeah, I just have Brought yellow and bright things into my business and people always seem to remember it, which is cool.

Love it All right. Thank you so much. Nicola great to speak Thanks, everyone