Email marketing is the ultimate money maker for eCommerce companies.

When you have email marketing dialed in, EVERYTHING else gets better. Your product launches improve, you can spend more on top-of-funnel marketing efforts, convert more abandoned carts, and give your customers a better experience. The list goes on and on.

Nick Flint is the lead Email Strategist here at OMG Commerce. He took his knowledge from building his own eCommerce brand while in college and scaled that into successfully running email marketing for brands for the past 6+ years.

Here’s the deal. Even if you think you’re doing pretty well with email marketing, there are at least a few things you can improve on. Grab your pencil if you know you have holes in your email game. You’re about to unlock some serious growth for your brand.

Here’s a look at what I cover with Nick in this episode.

• Three simple ways to make any subject line better.
• What to do with your winning email tests.
• The paradox of sending more emails.
• How to properly combine email and SMS marketing for better results (without bugging your customers).
• Two super-fast email hacks that you can digest and implement tomorrow.
• A simple, no-brainer way to improve your flows.
• Plus more!

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Mentioned in This Episode:

Nick Flint - nick@omgcommerce.com

ReallyGoodEmails.com‍

Email Charts‍

Klaviyo

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Transcript:

Brett:

Hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry CEO of OMG Commerce. And today we are diving into email marketing, your money maker, your work horse, the staple of any good eCommerce marketing effort. I've got one of OMG's best and brightest joining me. This is Mr. Nick Flint. He is our email strategist. He runs our email efforts at OMG. As we run email campaigns for clients this guy is the man. He's been in eCom and been running email campaigns for six years, which in internet years is like 60, and built his own brand. Built his own brand online, runs email. We've been so impressed with him. We're like, "Hey, you got to join team OMG." Thankfully he agreed. With that, Nick, welcome to the show and how's it going, man?

Nick:

I'm thrilled to be here today and glad you talked me on board to coming on with OMG.

Brett:

Me too. Email has been a really fun ride at OMG. Clients are loving it. It's obviously just a really powerful service. It's one of those things, we've talked about this a few times where I remember when I was coming up in the marketing game in the early 2000s, in the mid 2000s, there were multiple periods where people were like, "Email's going to die." Then some people said email is dead because the young people, the young whipper snappers, they're not using email. I was always like, "Well, that's because they don't have a job yet and they're not required to use email." They're not going to, but anyway, email not going to die, not going to die in the future. I think it's just going to be with us for a long, long time and it is a workhorse.

Brett:

Here's what I want to do, Nick. I want to kick off this podcast. I want to say what if someone only had two minutes to listen to this podcast, and I think after this two minutes people will for sure stick around; but if someone only had two minutes to listen to this podcast, what are two quick wins, quick takeaways that you would share how to make your email better?

Nick:

I'm glad we're getting this out of the way early because a lot of times they'll tease that juicy tidbit for the end. We'll go ahead and just present it up front in case someone gets interrupted, they can have these things to walk away with. The first one is just dialing in the subject lines. People they overlook them as an afterthought after they make the actual content within there. They're not going to see all that beautiful content you built if you don't have good subject lines. Instead of just saying better subject lines, we're going to have three things for you. If you toss the word hacks in the subject line, it always works better. So instead of three tips to wake up in the morning, three hacks to wake up in the morning, it works, more people open it.

Brett:

Healthcare hacks, hair hacks to make your hair thicker, fuller or richer or whatever. People love hacks.

Nick:

I think just the word tips is old and played out and it makes it feel like a 20 item list I'm about to read, but a couple quick hacks are the way to go. The next one is tossing someone's name in there. Klaviyo, they have this first name tag, go ahead and use it. We're launching this new product and it's perfect for you, toss that name tag at the end. People love seeing their own name, that's going to help out with your open rates as well.

Nick:

The last one is curiosity gap. How can you bridge that curiosity between them seeing you in their inbox to getting them to open that email, and then again getting them to click that email. Instead of just saying something like we launched this new shaker cup, say we solved your problem. I see that I'm like, "I didn't know I had a problem?" Your problem is that your drink was getting warm fast. Try to rephrase what you're telling them into some kind of a little curiosity thing, get them to actually open it.

Brett:

Awesome. Sometimes you can use numbers and things like that with it, right? Number something, you got curiosity. People want to know what those three things are, seven things are, five things are love that. We got subject lines as tip number one, what's tip number two?

Nick:

I know a lot of people have trouble getting enough content and they think it's this big process, but a really quick, easy win is just repurposing the emails you send out. Let's say you're just sending out one email a week on Mondays. What you're going to do is clone that, send it again on Thursdays. You're going to break it off into two different groups. People who didn't open it, switch up the subject line, switch up the content a little bit. Then people who opened it and didn't click it get a little more aggressive with the urgency, switch up the call to action within the email. That way you didn't have to come up with a whole new concept, but you're going to see some good results from having that second email sent out later in the week, just repurposing the first one.

Brett:

Love it. Sending the same email again, just repurposing the content of it, but changing the subject line and splitting your list into people that didn't click and people that didn't open. Correct?

Nick:

Yeah.

Brett:

Love that. So there we go. Two rapid fire quick hit tips to make your email better, but we're just getting started. We're just getting rolling. Let's dive in. I think the way we've structured this, Nick, is we're going to look at kind of three groups of people, people that have either haven't touched email marketing or just barely touched it? It's there, but it's an afterthought. People that are occasionally working on email, but they know there are gaps. They know there are issues. They know there are problems that are unsolved. Then kind of a third group who would say, "Hey, we're probably 90% of the way there or thereabouts. Emails pretty good, but we know there's more we can unlock and more we can make happen." Let's dive into specific tips here. Should we start with that first group first? Those that are really just not doing much with email right now.

Nick:

We'll kick it off with them since we're managing different brand's accounts, they all come to us from different starting points. When we're looking in there, it might be a Klaviyo account that has things turned on from years ago they haven't touched. They might not be sending any campaigns and they're just too busy running their business to think about emailing. Like you said, it ends up being like an afterthought. For those brands, if you're in that position right now as an owner or as the marketer for a brand, the first tip of advice, a little bit of therapy lesson is don't be scared. Just dive in. People will put a little bit too much pressure on everything, but MVP, minimum viable product just get that out there. You're nervous, you're looking at it your inbox. Just trust me if you send it out and it's not beautifully designed and perfectly crafted with all this crazy content, it's still going to work and it's still going to convert. First step don't be scared. No pressure here.

Brett:

A good email or even a mediocre email is better than no email. Email marketing definitely lends itself well to test and iterate rather than laboring over the perfect subject line. Test and iterate, test, test, test. Sometimes the subject line you labor over forever is not going to do that well. Sometimes the line you just throw out there is going to be the winner. You've got to be testing and you got to love that minimum viable product. Just get it out there. That's awesome. What other advice would you give to someone who's really just not doing much with email right now?

Nick:

Now that the pressure's off you and you're not scared to hit send, go ahead and start setting up a semi-consistent campaign calendar schedule. About one per week is a good starting point, like we mentioned you can always repurpose that, but you can worry about that later on. Just pick a day of the week where you're going to get a campaign sent out and just start getting into that rhythm. One is going to get you used to sending them and, two, you're training your customers to hear from you as well. Because when you're sending out these sporadic emails every couple of months with a sale, your customers aren't used to hearing from you and they probably forgot about you. All the email providers they're like who is this person? They never send stuff. You might be ending up in the promo and the spam because of that.

Brett:

I love that. It's almost one of these counterintuitive things where you're like, oh I can't email my list too much. I want them to open what I've got. I want them to really pay attention. If you email too infrequently one, the email service providers they're not going to trust or respect your email so deliverability is going to be an issue; and two, when someone just doesn't hear from you very much, when they do hear from you they're going to be like, "Oh wait a minute I forgot about them. This is just a reminder to unsubscribe." Versus people that email consistently and have quality emails and helpful emails and useful emails and deals and emails. That just makes everything work better, better opens, better deliverability. All of that works better. Awesome. What other advice would we give to this hey, we're just kind of getting rolling with email?

Nick:

Next up same thing. Just turn those popups live. Don't be scared to turn that live on your site. Again, people want this nicely designed one with the person holding the coupon code that's going to generate right there while the wheel's spinning in the background. Sometimes it's plain get 10% off, give us your email and start actually collecting those. Then if you didn't listen to the first piece of advice about start sending them out more often, at least you're going to have the emails so when you do start sending them out more often, you'll have people actually to send them too. Start collecting those opt-ins for email and SMS.

Brett:

Love it. We're getting consistent. We're being bold. We're just hitting send, we're making it happen. We're getting our deliverability increase and open rates increased and then we're growing our list. We got to be growing the list. When you do that it has a compounding effect. When you're making the email campaigns better and you're testing and iterating and making increasing opens, increasing click throughs, increasing conversions and you're growing the list that's when it has a compounding effect. That's awesome. What's next?

Nick:

As the brand owner, when you're turning these flows on, I like to go through them myself. If it's a popup, I'll go ahead and toss my email in that popup box just so I can go through it myself before the customers do. Then you kind of just see how it looks from their perspective. It might look slightly different within Klaviyo versus in your inbox. You can see the cadences for how it's coming in and if it makes sense to you. Actually anything like that, even post purchase. Go ahead and place an order on your site too. People will overlook that, because it's easy to toss your name in the popup, but go ahead and make a mock order. Place it, see how the order confirmation looks and then the welcome journey after you actually placed that order.

Brett:

How do you recommend people treat that checkout opt-in? Are you creating a checkbox always to opt-in to offers and stuff like that? You just add all purchasers to a list. What are you recommending there on that checkout opt-in?

Nick:

You have two options here. You have email and SMS. We usually leave the email enabled. They always have the option to uncheck it if they'd like. For SMS, you have to have some specific compliance language there, but usually we'll spruce it up a little bit, at least the first line to make it on brand. So it's not just like, Hey, we copy and pasted this, but the best workout tips you're ever going to get sent right to your phone, the compliance language, they can opt-in that way. Make sure you have the correct language on your checkout page. We have email turned on and they have the option to check SMS too.

Brett:

Awesome. Emails opted on, an option for SMS, because you got to be careful with SMS. You got to careful with both right. We don't want to be a spammer in any channel in any capacity, but especially text people are a little pickier about text. That's an intimate form of communication so you got to make sure you're compliant there. Totally makes sense. Awesome. Any last pieces of advice for this? I'm really just getting the ball rolling on email.

Nick:

One common mistake we see when people start to turn on Klaviyo and there's playing around with the flows is not turning off the Shopify abandoned cart messages. If you leave those enabled within Shopify, then it'll be sending out through that and through Klaviyo and you're double hitting them at that point. When you do get to the point where it's time to turn the abandoned cart live on Klaviyo, go ahead and turn that Shopify one off.

Brett:

Nice. Totally makes sense. Better to be in control of that, better for that to run through Klaviyo than to run through Shopify?

Nick:

Yes. It looks better and it's easier to see the data.

Brett:

Cool. Then what about unsubscribes? How do we want to treat unsubscribed or do you want to make it easy for someone unsubscribe? You want to make it hard for them to unsubscribe? What's your philosophy there?

Nick:

When the email providers they're looking at your sender score, basically they're saying are people opening them? Are they clicking them? Are they unsubscribing? Are they marking spam? What are the customers doing with these emails coming in? They view a spam complaint a lot worse than an unsubscribe because we expect our customers to sometimes unsubscribe. It happens. That's fine. What you don't want to do and I'll see some brands do, is they make it a six point font and they hide it at the bottom of light gray on top of the white. Just make it easy for them to opt out if they want to. Put something like, hey, getting inbox overload, you can unsubscribe, but you're going to miss our black Friday sale coming up or you're going to miss out on these amazing hacks we've been sending you. You can add a little blurb in there, but just make it easy for them to find if they want to opt out, just catch you later.

Brett:

If they want to opt out you, if they don't want to get your emails anymore, then you want them to opt out because if they're not clicking and they're not opening most of the time then it's hurting some of your deliverability scores most likely, and then it's not useful. You want to engage people to be opening. I have had this happen before, too, where I've gone to unsubscribe to a newsletter. I opened the email. I scroll down to the bottom to unsubscribe and then I'm like, you know what? That email was actually pretty good. Maybe I'll stick around for a little while. You never know if you're sending good content and you get someone to open it maybe you win them over even before they hit that unsubscribe, but make it easy. Okay, great. Those are amazing tips for people that are just getting rolling with email marketing. What about someone who they're like, "no, I've got emails, part of what we do and we talk about it as a team", but we know it's not optimized. That middle of the road email marketer, what are the tips for them?

Nick:

We can break this into percentages. That first group that we just talked about, they're doing zero through 10 or 12% of the revenue from email marketing. Next group that we're talking about they have someone managing it, but maybe it's one of the three jobs within the company, they're not fully dialed in on it. They're doing about, let's say 12 to 20 ish percent of revenue from email marketing. They're like, "All right, we have something here. We have some data, we have some flows set up. How can we just turn that dial up a little bit more just to step our game up." Especially when other ads start to let's say decline or they're getting more expensive just as our running a business. They start to turn their focus and say, "All right, email, how can we get this really dialed in?"

Nick:

For that group, the first thing to do is look at every campaign or every step of the step in a flow as a step by step by step process. What's the first step you want to do? Get them to open. We talked about some strategies with the subject lines earlier, but that's the first thing is to actually get them to open your emails. The second one, make it engaging enough within the email to get them to actually click and go to the next step. Then your landing page or whatever product page on the site is going to go ahead and take care of that sale. Hopefully you should also have that dialed in too. It's not just within their inbox. It's also their website experience.

Nick:

Coming back to that curiosity gap, how can we get just enough curiosity in there, get them to open up that email once they open it, how can we get them to click on it? Maybe we just launched this brand new flavor, tap below to see what it is versus like we launched banana, someone doesn't like banana they're not going to click on it. If they click on it to see what the flavor is, they're on your website already, maybe they'll go buy chocolate while they're there.

Brett:

I love this approach and I love what we're talking about here because we do a lot with top of funnel traffic, a lot of YouTube top of funnel traffic, performance max, Google search and shopping. A lot of times people will look at performance of their marketing efforts and think, I got to increase my conversion rates. Well, one of the best ways to do that is through email. We increase our opt-ins through that popup you just talked about a minute ago. Then we're increasing conversions from abandoned cart and some of these other sequences that we're talking about. We're looking at it kind of step by step. Getting them to open, engaging them to click, getting them to convert. What's next for this person that's middle of the road or a little shy of that with their marketing efforts?

Nick:

The next step is getting that campaign schedule really structured. Actually we have a template that we use for our own clients and we'll share it with the audience as well. Just go ahead and hit me up nick@omgcommerce.com and I can just send it to you to Google sheets so it's nice and easy to use nothing to pay for. Then you can just clone it and use it yourself. This can help you tie in everything else going on in your business. One, you can lay out the month ahead and say, "All right, what product launches do we have? Are there any big social posts coming up, any giveaways, YouTube videos as well?" Anything like that you can structure your email and SMS campaigns along with that. Not just in their own ecosystem now, it's part of the whole brand's marketing plan. Really getting that campaign laid out ahead of time so you're looking at the month in advance.

Brett:

Let me just get this straight Nick. You just gave people your email address and you want them to email you and you'll give them a content calendar for free?

Nick:

Exactly free.

Brett:

Love it. What's powerful about this and we've noticed this with our own marketing and for the podcast as well, there's been some times when we've released a podcast episode and we didn't email our podcast list, got busy, forgot, we're closing deals, things are happening. We see a difference in the listenership of this podcast when we send out an email versus when we don't. Same is going to be true for every business. You post a blog, it's going to get more engagement, more shares, more action if you email about it. There's a sale. There's an event. That type of thing. It's always going to do better if you email with it. Have that content calendar, which we're giving you for free, and then coordinate all your marketing efforts and email will make everything better and more powerful. What's next?

Nick:

Next up you're going to start doing a little bit of market research. We got two websites for you. I'll say them slowly so you can find them. I'm sure we can toss them in the show notes too.

Brett:

They will be in the show notes, yes.

Nick:

Reallygoodemails.com. What they do is they say they subscribe to a ton of different brands, so you can see what they're sending. What do they look like? What are they talking about? How often is it promotional? You can just get a good visual here. Especially when clients talk to us, they'll say, "I want my brand to look luxurious."

Brett:

Easy for you to say, luxurious.

Nick:

"I want it to look fun. I want it to look hip, colorful." If you can have those screenshots and actually look at them and say, "Oh, I want it to look like this." It'll help yourself and any email marketers you hire. The other one's called mailcharts.com. Same thing. You can go ahead and search by industry groups on this one. You can say I'm in the health and wellness space, I'm in the office furniture space and kind of see what are the other brands talking about and what are they sending.

Brett:

We'll link those in the show notes. I love those resources. Sometimes you want an idea for a subject line. You want an idea for a design. You need to see other stuff. Once you see those examples that'll spur ideas for you. Great idea, what's next?

Nick:

Next up is turning on a second popup on your site, but don't worry we're not going to be hitting people with two popups at the same time, we're going to spread them out. That first one is your welcome. They've landed on the site. You might give them 10% off, $5 off the first order, something like that. Set up an exit intent one on the way out. The way we have it structured is for the initial popup it's what you your phone number, what's your email and we'll give you 10% off versus exit intent we want to give them something else because one, the phone number might have scared some people away in the beginning and they didn't want to give that to us, which is fine; and two, people visualize and they see different offers differently in their head.

Nick:

Let's say a hundred dollar product 10% off, and $10 off is the same thing, but it might sound different to them. On the way out, "Hey, grab this $10 and save it for later. Give us your email." Then we have the exit intent going too. You can be capturing more information from the customers.

Brett:

You can test that because a percentage seems a little fuzzy, you got to do math to figure it out, but $10 is $10. Even though it's the same to, you might be different to the prospect, which is really interesting. What about, Nick, and we actually had this, you and I were on a strategy call with one of our clients, they said, "I don't want to do popups. I refuse to do popups on my business or on my site." We both feel like that's a mistake. What advice would you give to someone who says "No, no, no, not me. I'm not putting popups on my site."

Nick:

I'd say at least test it out for a little bit and see how it goes for your brand because if you're paying for paid traffic or if people are coming to your website, once they leave they're gone. Yes, you can have the pixel and you can re-target them on different platforms, but you could have gotten their information for free and used that to re-target them as well. I'd say at least test it out and you could do it in a classy, non annoying way. Just offer some value there too so people come to your website and they feel like they're leaving with something of value not just like, "oh, they got my email".

Brett:

If you think about it probably most, if not all of your favorite brands that you like to shop online, they're all doing this and you can set it up where these just show up to someone the first time they visit, if they come back or something you don't have to show it again. There's things you can do like that. What are you seeing, Nick, when we're successfully running welcome pops, exit pops, what kind of lift is that creating? What kind of growth is that creating for an email list?

Nick:

We're getting anywhere from 10 plus percentage sometimes from some of these popups. It depends on the traffic of a store. Look at your traffic and think, all right, if I'm capturing 10% of these emails, how many emails would I be collecting?

Brett:

Significant, this is where you could be adding thousands and thousands of email addresses to your list each and every month. That's just money in your pocket. You're creating happier customers, because they're connecting with you where maybe they wouldn't have if you didn't get that email address. Awesome. Love that idea. So a second pop up. What's next?

Nick:

Next up is breaking off some of your flows based off of different conditional splits. A good one for this is abandoned cart splitting it between purchasers and non purchasers in the past. Someone their first time on your site, when they abandon a cart, they're going to need a little bit more information. They're probably going to need a discount to buy from you. A little bit more handholding because they don't trust you. They don't know your brand yet versus the people who have been on your site and have placed in order. We're going to split that off to equals one plus order over all time and then, "Hey, thanks for coming back for more from us. We really appreciate it." You're like they actually recognize that I'm a repeat customer, I appreciate that. Then you can even make the discount code different like stock back up with code, stock up. Things like that.

Brett:

Everybody wants to be seen and known. I do love this because if you look at a cart abandoner we've all done that. We've all gone to a store, added something to the cart. We bail because sometimes life happens. Sometimes we never intended to buy in the first place, we just want to see shipping or other details or whatnot, but life happens. Sometimes you just need that nudge. You need that reminder and then maybe you need some discounts along the way too, to make someone say yes. I love that separation of someone who's never bought who abandons cart versus someone who has purchased, but they abandoned cart, different message for those two makes a ton of sense. That's awesome. What's next?

Nick:

Same thing based on what they purchased. If you have a ton of SKUs, it's hard to break off a flow into they bought product one of 800 and you build out 800. If you have a product doing at least like 25, 30% of your revenue, you could set that up as a separate, post purchase thank you flow. Especially if it's informational-based like, "hey, when your electric drill comes in, here's how you charge the battery for the first time" or something like that. Just add that little extra touch there saying, "Hey, you bought this product. This is the best way you're going to get the most out of it." This also helps out with your customer service side of things. You're setting that expectation for them and you're answering any questions they might have before they even have them before it arrives.

Brett:

I love it. One, people are pretty excited about the product usually they make a purchase. They're like, "Hey, I can't wait for this to show up, excited to use it or whatnot." Sending that email it's usually welcome. They want to get it. Then yeah, you're increasing satisfaction because you're showing them how to use it and you're reducing customer support, so really win-win. Awesome, what's next?

Nick:

Next up is going to be you have your flows built out, maybe you have some splits going on now, you can just clone a specific piece of that flow and just add a second subject line as an AB test. You can do this with the content in there as well and see what people are more interested in. Let's say post purchase thank you flow. We can have the first one saying, "Thank you for the order go ahead and follow us on Instagram to see our latest info." You could split that off and the second one could be, "Hey, thanks for your order. Go ahead and subscribe to us on YouTube. We put out a new tutorial every week." You can see at that point more people going towards our YouTube or Instagram. Let's say YouTube's the winner there, keep that. Then same thing on the next one, test out something new.

Brett:

We're always testing. It's one of those things where incremental increases, one or two or three or four or 5% increases in little areas. As you add that up over time really has a compounding effect and can create some massive wins down the road. Anything you'd want to elaborate on there as we start to test and iterate and create these little wins, what kind of impact can that have down the road?

Nick:

Klaviyo they have a new system where they will actually pick the winner for you after a certain amount of time, so you don't have to hop back in and actually manually do that. It's going to be a nice little set it and forget it thing. I like to do enough of a variation that there's pretty good difference between the two of them, not just a minor tweak. Instead it's little small lifts. Let's try a bigger difference here. Like I said, the YouTube versus Instagram is a big one there versus let's say you had an AB test where it said subscribe to our YouTube versus you should subscribe to our YouTube. It's a very small test. You're not getting a lot of info, there's going to be a winner, but it might not be significant. Get a little bit bigger with the testing on those.

Brett:

Got it. Makes sense. Let's take bigger swings. Let's find meaningful wins and let's lean into those and really move the needle on that. What's next?

Nick:

You can try out some different content in these emails. You might have been copy and pasting the same one over and over. A lot of times you are going to find a formula that works. Just make sure you test it first to get to that formula for your specific brand. Do they want something super image heavy there? Do you want that special design that everyone loves to look at or does plain text work more? This is really good for the brands that have a strong founder who's almost the face of the brand, because then Kevin Hart's emailing me not Kevin Hart's supplement brand. You have that connection there and so if it's plain text it actually looks like, "Hey look, the founder's writing to me." If you're using those name tags in there too, you can break it off into what product they bought. Play around with the different actually formats of the content itself.

Brett:

Awesome. What should you do as you find winners, as you find things that are clear winners, what are you doing then?

Nick:

Once we have winners in the flow, so let's say it's an abandoned cart six email flow. The first one converts the most, because most people get that, it's the highest intent. Then you'll start to see it falling off along the way and you'll see less opens, less clicks, less purchases. That just happens over time. It's kind of the natural progression of the flow. If you're analyzing it and you see the fourth email is talking about how fast your shipping is and it comes within two days and that's converting really well go ahead and bump that up to number two. Let's say you talked about here's your discount, we were founded in 2010, you should buy from us because we've been around for a while and then that fast shipping, but that's converting more bump that up and then go ahead and get that in front of more eyes faster.

Brett:

Love that. We're looking at the flow. The first email in the flow it's always going to be the winner most of the time so that's clear. Looking at emails two through four, what if four does better than two? Bump it to number two and it's likely going to do even better in that position. Think about a batting lineup or maybe not, no, never mind, because number four is best in the bating lineup. I tried to make a baseball analogy. I'm not a baseball guy, Nick, and look what I did. Move the winners up. That's what we're trying to tell you. What other advice would you give to this group of brands?

Nick:

The last tidbit we got for this group is go ahead and work on the transactional emails as well. I know a lot of times when you hop in the Klaviyo account and they have things like the abandoned cart welcome series, browse abandonment, but a lot of times they're still coming from Shopify for the transactional ones like your order confirmation, your shipping confirmation, gift card receipt, things like that. You can go ahead and customize those as well. Some brands will do it within Klaviyo. Sometimes you have to be a Shopify Plus account to actually pause the ones coming from Shopify though. If that's not accessible, I like using an app called OrderlyEmails and they will help you create the transactional ones. They'll have the templates in place. You can customize it to your brand to match the ones coming from Klaviyo. Then you can paste that into Shopify and Shopify will be sending those.

Brett:

OrderlyEmails that this is something, you're using that in conjunction with Klaviyo. Is that right?

Nick:

It's a separate Shopify app and basically they have all of the templates laid out for you, order confirmation, shipping confirmation, everything else. You have a few different themes to choose from and they'll have theme blocks or specific campaign blocks there and you can go ahead and switch those out and then you kind of match it to your Klaviyo branding.

Brett:

Then what about this third group that we talked about in the very beginning that email's going pretty well for them. They're doing, it's working, there're results there. First of all, how would you describe this group? Then what should this group of brands be doing with email?

Nick:

This group they've taken maybe an email marketing course before. They have some pretty focus to it, pretty dedicated from it. They're seeing some really good results. There only is so much you can kind of get from your existing list and get from your campaigns and your flows. At a certain point you are going to hit some kind of cap, but you can always get that little bit extra oomph to go ahead and squeeze off that last couple of percentages and give your customers a better experience.

Brett:

What are some of the tips, and we'll go through these kind of rapid fire, but what are the tips for this group of people?

Nick:

I know we've been talking about planning out your campaigns coming up in the future. A lot of people they'll forget about the ones they sent in the past. Go ahead and just look through your past campaigns, end of the month, go ahead and do this. What performed the best, what didn't, and then hopefully you were AB testing along the way. Look at which subject lines performed the best and which campaigns performed the best, as far as clicks and revenue goes, and go ahead and clone those for the future. A lot of times we see the back end of our systems and we're like, "I sent this last month. I don't want to annoy them again", but your customers are getting thousands of emails, they've forgotten about it already. You can exclude them if they made that purchase. Go ahead and just look at the best campaigns, look at the best subject lines and figure out how to use that info in the future to do a similar thing.

Brett:

Say we pick our winner from this month, we go ahead and run it next month, exclude people that have purchased from it the first time. Then are you looking at doing that several months in a row and then stopping or you do it until it stops working or what's your philosophy there?

Nick:

You can keep on doing it and it'll keep on working. It doesn't necessarily have to be the same thing. Let's say you have a t-shirt brand and you make cool designs and you post on Instagram, "Hey, you guys like A or B more?" You can go ahead and do that same thing over and over again. The next month you have two new sketches, A or B, go ahead and click on that.

Brett:

It's different content, but it's the same approach. Do you like this or do you like that? Asking customers, because customers love to pick a winner. They love to vote between this option versus that option. Really, really smart. Okay, awesome. What's next?

Nick:

Next is going to be, you're going to map out all of your existing flows. One thing, Klaviyo if you're listening, I'd love to see some kind of web roadmap going on that you could build internally, but we use diagrams.net for this. Basically at the very top of the diagram it'll say what happens, customer comes to website. They get the initial popup, exit intent popup or some other way we're capturing their information. Then where do those flows go? They showed some interest. They browse abandonment or they abandon their cart. How does that flow work out? Are people coming from Instagram stories as well? Map out all those flows, and you can step back, look at it and say, "Are there any glaring gaps here that we're neglecting to tell someone if they come into the exit intent, pop up and then never place an order?"

Brett:

That's awesome. What about with SMS? Anything you would do differently or recommend differently with this group related to SMS?

Nick:

This is when you're going to want to step up the SMS game as well and tie it in with your email marketing. One thing that we've seen works well is stacking the SMS campaigns with your email campaigns. Sending them out on the same day at different times. You're just poking someone twice about the same bit of information because you know how many times I have to be told, "Hey, can you go ahead and pick up your dirty shoes from the floor?" before you actually do it? Usually about two. Same thing here.

Nick:

If you have a new product launching in the morning, say, "Hey, it's dropping it's on sale until noon." Then say at 11:00 AM you're saying, "Hey, that thing we told you about, you have one hour left to get it." Giving that second poke and tying those campaigns together. Same thing with the flows here. As you're mapping them out, as you're looking at that customer journey, what kind of SMS flows do you have built out at this point? What kind of email flows do you have built out at this point? How can you time it together to make sure everyone's getting enough information if they're just subscribed to one and how to make sure you're not annoying them if they are subscribed to both?

Brett:

I love it. I love the combination of SMS and email together. Obviously you can't overdo it with SMS and you have to be compliant, but it is that second reminder and people do open their texts and they do see it. If you are a welcome guest and that welcome message, rather than being a pest, it can really change the game for your email marketing. That's awesome. What's next for this group?

Nick:

You're going to want to find ways to get customers to opt into both SMS and email. Like I said, let's say you have someone who actually buys from you, but you still have their old dead email. You got to find a way to collect that phone number. That could be up through a popup on the site, like a two-step popup, phone number, email. We've seen it in a post-purchase flow, or let's say the popup said, "Enter your email to be entered into our giveaway that we're doing the end of the month." The first email in there could say, "Hey, we'll double your entries if you give us your phone number too, click here to give us your phone number." That way you're collecting both bits of information. You can do this at checkout as well, ask for both SMS and email and that way you're getting more information on your customer. If their inbox they just never check it anymore, you're getting their phone number. If they change your phone number, you still have their email.

Brett:

Love it. Pushing for both of those. I think you got to do it. That's the next level strategy. What's next?

Nick:

You're going to want to make sure you're controlling the full journey for your potential customers and for your customers. That roadmap will kind of help you do this. You can visualize it and see how it's looking. I look at it as like I'm talking to my friends whenever I'm sending out an email, I make it casual, especially for texts too. I see brands get way too formal with it. It's like you're talking to a friend and have that same mentality when you're reaching out to them. Our products are so good. I'm doing them a service, getting these products into their hand. I'm helping them out by getting them whatever it is that you're making. Keep that in mind. You're not actually bugging them. If they want to opt out, they will.

Nick:

Control that journey and make sure to tease the next bit of info too. Post purchase thank you or say, "Hey, thanks for your order, make sure you keep an eye out for the shipping confirmation coming up", something like that to just plant that seed that, "Hey, you're going to want to hear from us and just keep an eye out for our name in your inbox."

Brett:

I love this approach because if you think about it in this way, if you really believe in your product and you believe you're making someone's life better, easier, simpler, you're adding enjoyment, you're removing pain from their life, whatever your product does; then you owe it to your customers to communicate that with them enough so that they actually purchase, and then they actually use it properly, and then they actually repurchase. Make it easy. If someone wants to peace out, then let them do that. You owe it to your customers to communicate enough and to communicate well. In the process, if you do that, you are going to make a lot more money, and like we talked about, when email is rocking, when email is working well, top of funnel YouTube works better. Facebook works better. TikTok works better.

Brett:

All of your marketing efforts work better when email is dialed in and here's what I would wager, Nick. I would wager even people listening to this podcast who would say, "You know what? We've got our email game dialed in." I bet you're missing things. I bet there's still things that you could do better because there's always room for improvement.

Brett:

Nick, this has been fantastic. Thanks for coming on. Again for people that are listening and they want that free resource once again tell people what that free resource is, and then how they can get it?

Nick:

That is going to be a Google Sheet template for the upcoming months ahead. It'll have a nice way for you to lay out all of your campaigns for email. If you do an SMS, you can have those on there too. Social media posts, you can tie in blogs or product launches. I'll also record a quick, little, one-minute video explaining it when I send that over to you so you can get my explainer and the campaign calendar itself.

Brett:

Awesome. Email marketing is a service we offer to OMG Commerce. I'd love to talk to you guys if anyone is interested. We are almost at capacity, so potentially not any open spots, but go ahead and reach out. We also offer email consulting. Happy to help there if you got a team, you got game when it comes to email, but you want a little extra help. You want some Nick Flint in your email, we offer some email coaching as well. With that, any parting words of wisdom, Nick Flint? I remember, we were talking about this the other day now Nick, if people are watching this video, you're a buff guy, you're a fit guy. I know you work out. I know you run, but you're also I always learn something from you every time I talk to you about some life hack, some product that makes your life better. You've got all these cool things you're buying and using. Tell us two cool purchases you've made that have made your life better.

Nick:

I can think of some, what price point are we looking at? 20 bucks or two bucks?

Brett:

Let's go sub 100. If you have one that's a little bit over a hundred hey, we got some successful merchants listening to this show so let's go big too.

Nick:

We'll kick it off with the $20 one. If you've got a friend with a birthday coming up, but they're not that great of a friend, you got $20 to throw at them, get them a projection alarm clock and get yourself one too.

Brett:

Projection alarm clock.

Nick:

Email's not dead and neither are alarm clocks.

Brett:

What is a projection alarm clock?

Nick:

It goes next to your bed on the nightstand. And it basically just projects the time onto the ceiling. When you wake up in the middle of the night and you're like, "Is it 2:00 AM or 6:00 AM?" You can see it. Then you got to go one step above. I used to keep my phone near my bed so I could check the time in the middle of the night, which was waking me up because I would see some texts. You leave that in the kitchen. Now you have your time projected on your ceiling. You don't need to have your phone next to your bed.

Brett:

Dude, I like that. For months now, probably a few years I keep my phone, it's still in my room, but it's like across the room and I turned upside down. Then it goes into sleep mode so I don't see a text, but I do wake up sometimes and wonder what time is it? I don't want to get up and go grab my phone. Projection alarm clock. Very, very interesting. What if we want to spend a little bit more? What if they're a good friend? What if they're a friend and we really like them or we just want to buy it for ourselves? What's another item on your list?

Nick:

If you got like that treat yourself energy going on. Your paycheck just came in. You're ready to spend a hundred bucks. I'd say go for some bone-conducting headphones.

Brett:

Bone-conducting headphones. That sounds interesting. Do you have a pair there handy? Can you hold this up and show us or did you leave it in the other room?

Nick:

It's in my backpack over there, but they're close by. Basically what it is, it's headphones, instead of going in your ears, they go like right here on whatever this phone is called and it conducts the sound through there. Only you can hear it. No one else around you can, but it leaves your ears open. Let's say if you work in a warehouse, you want to be able to hear things or you're out running on the street or biking. You still want to hear things, but you can also listen to your music or this podcast on them.

Brett:

This podcast, listen to this podcast with bone-conducting headphones and then buy yourself a projection alarm clock as well. I love that idea because sometimes you get sweaty. Sometimes the AirPods fall out or sometimes you don't want to get hit by a car when you're running. Actually I run inside. I actually don't run at all. I just work out inside, but you still want those. You want to be able to hear what's going on. Love that idea. Nick Flint, you delivered the goods my friend. Good email wisdom, some good life improvement purchases as well. Thank you very much, man. You rocked it.

Nick:

Of course. Thanks for having me.

Brett:

Absolutely. As always, thank you for tuning in and we'd love to hear feedback from you. First of all get that resource from Nick Flint, email him. He wants to be email buddies with you. Also, leave us that review on iTunes if you haven't done so. It makes my day, helps other people find the show and with that until next time thank you for listening.

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