Making Email Your Best Revenue Stream – Val Geisler (Fix My Churn)

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About this episode:

In this episode, we talk to Val Geisler, an email marketing expert and founder of Fix My Churn.

Val is known for being the go-to resource for “all things email marketing,” but we give special attention to two areas in this episode:

1. The must-have campaigns and automations to reach “good enough” 
2. Intermediate strategies for converting and retaining more of your subscription customers

In other words, we share how to check the box for the 20% of email marketing strategies that will get you 80% of the financial results.

We also included a little surprise for our loyal listeners – a live email campaign teardown. Val walks us through her real-life purchasing experience with a brand in the personal care space and shares her thoughts on what they get right as well as where they can improve.

So, if you’re looking for a playbook for leveling up your email marketing, or if you want to learn from the actual experiments and campaigns being run by an active brand, this is the episode for you.

BONUS Resource:
Make sure to check out Val’s Dinner Party Strategy. It’s a collection of resources to help you build an email welcome series that will create an army of loyal customers.
Want to be a guest on our show? Have feedback or ideas for how we can improve? Send your thoughts over to podcast@thegood.com. We’ll be keeping an eye on that inbox. 🙂

The Ecommerce Insights Show is brought to you by The Good, a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) consultancy specializing in helping ecommerce businesses accelerate their growth through better research, testing, and design. Learn more about our team, our work, and our services at www.thegood.com.

Episode transcript:

[00:00:52] All right, Val Geisler. So welcome to the Ecommerce Insight Show. So excited to have you on today. All things, email marketing, I’m really excited to just dive into some of the tactical aspects, but also the higher level strategy behind it. And some of the more  intermediate or advanced tactics versus the fundamentals.

[00:01:07] So before we get into all of the stuff that we’re going to nerd out about today, what are a couple of sentences about who you are and what you do for the folks that don’t already know? You. Sure. 

[00:01:15] Val Geisler: [00:01:15] I, Val Geisler, I run a email marketing agency called Fix My Churn. We focus on retention. For subscription-based brands that started out with SAS.

[00:01:25] And then we have worked with more and more e-commerce brands over the years, as e-commerce brands started to realize that a lot of SAS principles apply. To what they’re doing, SaaS is inherently subscription-based and more and more e-commerce brands are becoming subscription. So we work with them on email marketing campaigns and how we keep customers that we’ve already attracted.

[00:01:45] So it’s typically emails, sometimes SMS, sometimes affiliate programs and referral programs. So how has like 10 sentences, but that’s 

[00:01:53] James Sowers: [00:01:53] perfect. It’s not a strict limit. It’s just a guideline. But from the outside, looking in, it feels like you guys lean pretty heavily on automated sequences that kind of happen in the background.

[00:02:01] Val Geisler: [00:02:01] It’s the core of what we do for sure. So most of our work revolves around. We kind of get in under the hood and look at what you already have working for you. And that’s a, an audit that we do of your existing email campaigns. A lot of brands have.

[00:02:15] Good campaigns in place and even flows. And we can use what already exists and then build on it from there. But we do focus on those life cycle campaigns. The flows is what we do with more often than anything else. Flows being post-purchase abandon carts.

[00:02:32] Those kinds of. Have a S a series, a number of emails that go out over a period of time. Those are the things that we really focus on more than anything else. We do work with some brands on ongoing campaigns as well, because you want to have a consistent message once a week, twice a week, campaigns that go out and the flows that customers are probably receiving in conjunction with those.

[00:02:54] So. And then we also work on transactional emails, a lot transactional emails, receipts, and order delivery confirmations and all those things. A lot of brands, let those go and just send whatever is standard and standard is not good enough anymore. And it never really was, but it’s definitely not anymore.

[00:03:14] I think it’s a huge opportunity for brands to go in and make some personalized messaging in their transactional campaigns. So we do a lot of that too. Just kind of like looking at the overall, what is the messaging going out from the brand to the customer and especially in like an inbox channel and  how do we improve on it?

[00:03:32] We’re optimizers. We like building things from scratch, but we’re really good at taking already existing things and making them better.  

[00:03:39] James Sowers: [00:03:39] love that overview. It’s really interesting. You mentioned the transactional emails because I wish we could publish this episode this week, because Tuesday on the podcast, we talked about confirmation emails like shipping confirmation order confirmation 

[00:03:50] like those kinds of things end up being. Off the shelf templates that most founders go with at least as a starting point. And there’s a lot of opportunity there because they get a lot of opens and reads just by the nature of the subject matter. That’s in them. So not using them to nurture the relationship or present a CTA of some kind.

[00:04:07] It’s kind of a missed opportunity. So it’s interesting. You bring that up.  So in terms of like, we’re talking about campaigns, right? Is there a campaign that jumps out at you as something maybe you’re working on right now. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a campaign for a client, but maybe a project that you’re working on for your business or whatever.

[00:04:20] Like what is some kind of subject matter that you’re digging into right now that has you excited? That’s maybe coming around the corner. 

[00:04:26] Val Geisler: [00:04:26] Yeah. I think one thing that we’ve been working on with a couple of clients is that idea of invite to subscription. So we have clients who have subscriptions and obviously not every single customer of theirs is on the subscription.

[00:04:39] I don’t know a single brand that forces subscription quite honestly. So you’re always going to have a number of customers who are not on it. And yet there’s very little  in the way of campaigns that. Say, Hey, come join the membership. And here’s why, and an actual invitation talking about the benefits of the membership, talking about what is in it for them.

[00:05:00] It’s not just about padding your membership with lots of members who will are going to turn immediately, but it’s about educating your customers around. What the benefits are of the membership, what they have already been telling you that you want more of the problems that they’re facing, and then showing how the membership solves for that

[00:05:17] so, you know, giving an opportunity for customers to hear about subscription more often, I think is a really big miss for a lot of brands. And so we’re doing that with a couple of clients right now where. Sending invites. For example, we have a company we’re working with who is doing like a black Friday preview for the, they have a membership, which they want to build on their membership more.

[00:05:40] And so we said, well, let’s encourage people to join the membership prior to black Friday or prior to, you know, the weekend before, which is when the members are going to get the preview. Let’s send a few campaigns to people who aren’t members. Prior to that and talk about the membership and what value they get from it.

[00:05:58] And then also let them know like, Hey, they’re going to get a preview. If you join the membership, you’re gonna get a preview of black Friday. And there are items that there are limited quantities of and members might sell them out. And if it’s something, you know, you want, and you’re going to get a black Friday deal and you want to wait for that during the membership, you’ll have access to it early.

[00:06:17] You’ll make sure that you don’t miss it from being sold out during membership. Sale only those kinds of things. Like why would we not encourage people to join it? If the whole goal is to grow the membership? Yeah. 

[00:06:28] James Sowers: [00:06:28] That’s one of those big crossover elements between the SAS part of your life or your practice and the e-commerce it’s like e-commerce is just getting savvy to the fact that, you know, subscriptions are a great foundation to build a business on top of because it’s recurring revenue and it’s a longer life cycle and it’s a higher customer lifetime value in general.

[00:06:46] So it sounds like what you’re doing is maybe trying to identify those folks who. Maybe they bought from you three or four times and it’s like, okay, if you’re going to keep coming back to us to buy this, why not put it on autopilot? Why not? Let us replenish your consumable good every month on autopilot.

[00:06:59] And just, it’s not really an upsell, but just change the way that you buy from us from one-offs that you have to think about to something that just shows up at your doorstep every month and keeps you supplied. Is that 

[00:07:09] Val Geisler: [00:07:09] fair to say? Yeah. And it’s interesting, you said consumables because I think a lot of brands feel like.

[00:07:15] We can’t do subscription or membership because we don’t sell a consumable product. Of course,  if you have a consumable product and you are not offering subscription, stop listening right now and go set that up on your website because it’s such a missed opportunity. If you have a consumable, even if you don’t, I mean, Bombus has a membership.

[00:07:33] Like they sell socks. You’re not going through a pair of socks every month or even three or four, which I think is how, you know, you can buy multiples of socks every month from Bombus and Mandy’s and you know, there’s so many cases of very successful brands, selling memberships. So there’s a company that I was just speaking of is a t-shirt company where you get a t-shirt once a month and it’s at a discounted rate.

[00:07:58] And then you also get a discount on any other products on their site. So they sell t-shirts and accessories and things like that. And they have several hundred members and their once a month t-shirt. So there is an opportunity for almost every brand out there to at least trial, some kind of membership or subscription.

[00:08:16] You don’t know if your customers want it until you offer it. And this brand, they had this idea on like a Thursday, they threw together an email on a Friday and said, Hey, we’re gonna offer this membership thing. And within the weekend they had a couple hundred members of it and it just grew from there.

[00:08:32] So if you have a solid repeat customer base, then you definitely can. Create some kind of membership our subscription and maybe your membership isn’t product related, but it’s something that they can belong to that helps them feel like they’re part of a community. 

[00:08:49]James Sowers: [00:08:49] I’m glad you mentioned that.

[00:08:49] Cause that’s where I was going to go with that. It’s like, it doesn’t have to be oriented around sending a product every month. It could be, you pay a monthly subscription for a membership and you get exclusive products that the general public doesn’t see, or partner products with like sister brands and you come together and you have like a co-branded something and that’s only available to members or even as simple as like.

[00:09:06] Recognizing them on their quote unquote birthday from when they first purchased with you. And first became a customer. You’re just sending them a care package or something at the end of the year. Like here’s a little gift from us. Those little like touch points, I think can also be effectively a subscription, but really they’re paying for access to that type of thing.

[00:09:21] And so a great way to nurture a relationship with a 

[00:09:23] Val Geisler: [00:09:23] customer. And subscriptions don’t have to be monthly. You can do quarterly, you could do annually. So like thrive market, for example, has an annual you pay to get a discount on all the products that they sell. The only way you can buy from them in the first place is to be a member it’s kind of like Costco online.

[00:09:40] And then they also have exclusive brands that sell only on their website. So if I want. Whole 30 salad dressing. I can only buy it through thrive. So now I have to be a member of thrive and then I also get a discount and they do a great job of sending emails that let me know how much money I spent on my membership and how much money I’ve saved over a period of time since I paid for that membership.

[00:10:00] So they do a lot of celebration of like when you’ve crossed that threshold of now you’ve paid back your membership in the amount of money you’ve saved on things you weren’t going to buy anyways. 

[00:10:10] James Sowers: [00:10:10] Awesome. I love how you always have real world examples because I talk about these things like conceptually or philosophically, and then you’re like, no, these people are actually doing it.

[00:10:16] Go sign up or go look and go watch over their shoulder. So you’ve done a ton of interviews out there about kind of the blocking and tackling the fundamental elements of email marketing.

[00:10:24] If somebody wants to learn more about that side of things, that early stage kind of just getting started. Listen, notes.com search. Valgeisler go to vows website, fix my turn.com.  I’m sure that there’s some educational material up there in addition to just information about the services, but we’re going to focus more on the intermediate and the advanced kind of tactics. So let’s start where most people’s experience with a brand. Begins. And that’s like lead capture for lack of a better term. Like how do you get somebody on your list? How do you start growing your audience? Personally? We’ve talked ad nauseum about these pop-ups with a 10% discount.

[00:10:54] And that’s like how a lot of brands are, you know, they’re hitting the easy button in a sense. They’re saying this is easy to set up. I can have it done in 15 minutes and it starts capturing emails and it’s fine. People seem to like it. To me that feels like, kind of phoning it in a little bit, but I’m curious what your opinion is in terms of  the incentive, the tooling, the timing, how do you present a compelling offer to grow an audience?

[00:11:14] That’s maybe not just going to be a bargain shopper, they’re going to be a lifelong consumer. They’re going to be a brand advocate.  How do you form a stronger relationship with a better fit customer versus just let’s open the funnel wide up and get as many people in the door as we can. Yeah.

[00:11:26] Val Geisler: [00:11:26] There’s really two schools of thought, right? Like you have to decide, are we going to be a discount brand or are we going to be a brand that stands on something else? So whether that’s community, whether that is the product itself, like being best in class, there’s all different ways that you can think about your brand.

[00:11:44] I’m not saying it’s bad to say we’re going to be a discount brand. If you want to be the brand that has a sale every other week. Great. Go for it. It does work. And I sometimes think like, You and I are marketers and a lot of the people listening are marketers or brand owners. And I feel like sometimes we think all of our customers are the same as us.

[00:12:05] So they’re tired of the same things we’re tired of. And it, unfortunately, it’s not true. They’re not tired of the 10% discounts or the discount for abandoning a cart. We have trained. Entire world of consumers to expect a discount when they abandon a cart to expect a discount when they sign up for your email, even to expect discounts for black Friday, that we as brands as a whole.

[00:12:34] Have trained consumers to expect these things. There is a contingency of brands who are saying we’re done doing all of that stuff. And if you’re going to hang out with us, then you’re going to get something different. You can’t abandon a West Elm cart and get a 20% off discount code within the hour. It just doesn’t happen.

[00:12:54] They might test that on occasion, but it’s not something that you’ll regularly experience, right? There’s all kinds of brands that aren’t going that route. And the difference is they’re creating exclusive content. West Elm has its own brand to stand on, but smaller brands. I’ve seen everything from the added to our exclusive Instagram, like our private Instagram channel.

[00:13:16] If you have a gen Z audience, that’s really compelling, get access to our exclusive podcasts that only subscribers get, we have blog posts that, or recipes that only our subscribers get that never published on our blog. Something like that. Can be really compelling too. And in the long run provided greater value for your customer than a 10% off discount, because when it comes down to a 10% off for most products covers the cost of tax.

[00:13:45] So I don’t think consumers are incredibly compelled by 10 or even 20% is becoming kind of standard. So there’s a certain point where consumers  they expect something, but they’re also kind of tired of it. They’re used to it. 20% doesn’t feel special anymore. I mean, even talking to brands about black Friday and they’re like, well, we’re going to, after 20% off site-wide I’m like, that’s not going to do it for you.

[00:14:06] That’s not special in the inbox. So you have to think about how can I be creative and what is the value that my brand provides. We have  a client who sells products in the health space. It’s something that it’s a food product. And so something that happens a lot in the health space is that people feel very alone in their problem that they’re facing, whether it’s like a, probably not anymore, but early on in the like gluten-free experience, a lot of people felt like they were the only person who was gluten-free and they were the problem person at every dinner.

[00:14:39] And, you know, now that’s become a bit more mainstream. However, there’s always that problem, that some people feel very alone in what they’re dealing with. And if you can create some kind of community for them, where they feel less alone, that changes the way that they experience your brand.

[00:14:55] It changes the way that they think about how they spend their money. And when there are alternatives out there. Sure. Can they pick something up off the shelf when they’re at target next time? Probably. But. Are they going to do that on a regular basis? Does target make them feel like they’re part of a community or does your brand do that and will they order from you because you’re showing up in their inbox because you’re giving them value  those things make a big difference.

[00:15:18] Convenience isn’t necessarily. And especially with the pandemic convenience, isn’t necessarily the number one seller. 

[00:15:24] James Sowers: [00:15:24] Yeah. Having something land on your doorstep is pretty convenient, almost more convenient than just running by target on your way to daycare or whatever you might be doing.  

[00:15:30] Val Geisler: [00:15:30] We have been at this pandemic lifestyle for long enough that new habits have formed in people.

[00:15:38] So. I’m not saying that like, in-person retail is going away. It’s certainly not, but people’s habits have changed. They’ve set up subscriptions for things that, why turn it off? Why am I going to stop getting paper towels delivered to my front door when that’s already happening? Like, let’s just keep that going.

[00:15:57] And. It’s not a temporary thing. There might be a little lift, but e-commerce, isn’t going anywhere. And so capitalizing on what is otherwise a pretty fraught situation is a great thing for e-commerce because you can say like, let’s pull people in now while they’re kind of tied into e-commerce and need us so that when they have an option, they choose us.

[00:16:20]James Sowers: [00:16:20] I keep saying if, if e-commerce gained 50% of volume, we’re not going to go back to where we were. We’re still going to be ahead 20 or 30, maybe even after the world opens back up. And so it’s our opportunity to take advantage of that extra attention and interest from the average consumer. Right. And so if I kind of try to summarize what you laid out there, which was great, it feels like you have three levers to pull in terms of growing your audience.

[00:16:43] You can reduce price, you can add value or you can for lack of a better term, make them feel special, right? Like that might be exclusivity. There might be joining a community of people that look just like you there’s something there. So in terms of. I’m picturing this up in my mind, like the exit intent pop-up it’s either get 20% off.

[00:16:58] Give us your email. It’s get a recipe book, give us your email. Or it’s like join our community or get access to exclusive products that aren’t available anywhere else. And those are kind of the three models or frameworks maybe to consider. And in my mind, it’s more valuable to be creative about the second and third option and not just default to discounting because that’s the only one that reduces your profitability and reduces your margin right out of the gate.

[00:17:22] It 

[00:17:22] Val Geisler: [00:17:22] does. And then it also doesn’t leave you much more to offer. So then your abandoned cart sequence becomes the same thing that they already were offered. Why would they now take you up on it? When they didn’t in the first place, you know, so you don’t really have anywhere to go. If the first thing you offer upfront as a discount.

[00:17:41] James Sowers: [00:17:41] Yeah, and let’s face it. Walmart’s built a pretty good business on being a discount brand, but it’s not right for everybody. And sometimes it’s good to stick to your guns and stand your ground there. Yeah. 

[00:17:49] Val Geisler: [00:17:49] I mean, I recognize that I’m an email marketer, but there’s a brand that I follow that they’re like, we have a big surprise for you.

[00:17:56] And I’m like, it’s a 40% sale because they do one every single week. And. Great. It works for them, but it obviously does there, they wouldn’t exist anymore, but I’m onto it. And I’m sure a lot of other people 

[00:18:09] James Sowers: [00:18:09] are too. Wife’s she’s there with bed bath and beyond, or Kohl’s she’s like 10, 20, 30% almost. Doesn’t get me excited.

[00:18:15] I know sooner or later a 40% comes. Right. And that’s when I go and I do the big haul shopping. So. I don’t know how that shakes out in terms of lifetime value for a bunch of smaller purchases at a higher price or one really big purchase with a 40% discount. I don’t know, but I bet it’s probably, you’re not coming out ahead for that steeper discount.

[00:18:31] And that’s just not a behavior that you want your consumers to. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, and then take advantage of the very best deal you offer. I don’t know that doesn’t feel like a healthy practice. No, because 

[00:18:39] Val Geisler: [00:18:39] that’s not them tied to the brand. That’s tied to the discount. 

[00:18:43] James Sowers: [00:18:43] Yeah. That makes sense. And there’s only one way to go and it is downstairs. Yeah. Okay. So if we get our list built and we start growing this audience, I imagine email marketing is a lot like other things where there’s like an 80 20 rule. Right. And I kind of hate that because people, I think people apply it to too many things, but the principle is like, you can invest a little bit of time, energy effort and get.

[00:19:03] Most of the results that you could get from doing a full spectrum best in class kind of email marketing strategy. Maybe that’s not fair to say that that’s a layman for me coming into you with that idea. But if a founder is sitting there listening and they’re like, okay, I’m bought in, I’m going to do email marketing.

[00:19:18] What are the 20% kind of activities that they should be checking the box for to get most of the potential out of email marketing? 

[00:19:25] Val Geisler: [00:19:25] Yeah. I mean, I think it’s a really good principle , to apply with email because what happens more often than not is that people will hear, okay, here’s this in-depth email strategy and you start to talk about segmenting and tagging and so many details that go into email and.

[00:19:44] I think it scares away a lot of people, instead of doing something, they end up doing nothing because it feels like that’s way too much. I can’t do all of it. So I’m not going to do any of it. It’s that concept of like the days you don’t feel like working out, if you just say I’m going to do 10 minutes and then 10 minutes and you’re like, okay, I’m going to just keep going.

[00:20:01] You have to do a little bit to be able to do more. So I like the 80 20 principle for email. I think that the 20% that most people are missing, that’s going to give those 80% results is being personal. So there’s so many different ways to do it. Yeah. Being personal. Most of the time for the clients we work with means attaching a person to the brand.

[00:20:27] So you’re not just sending from the good you’re sending from James at the good, right. So it’s really easy to walk away from a brand it’s harder to walk away from a person, even if I don’t know you, you’re in my inbox and you’re a name and you’re talking to me like I’m a person that opportunity is.

[00:20:44] So huge in e-commerce to attach a person to a brand. This is where the SAS principles of email apply a lot in e-commerce. And it’s one of my favorite things to bring to e-commerce is let’s use more text, let’s attach a person to the brand, whether that’s the founder or someone in customer support that they talk to a lot.

[00:21:06] Maybe it’s a product designer it depends on the topic of the email. But attaching a real human to the email and then doing more storytelling. So storytelling goes a long way. A lot of times we’re just like we spend all this money on photos and our packaging, and like, let’s just show that off in every single email.

[00:21:26] And I’m not saying images don’t have their place, but. Doing storytelling and talking about using the imagery in relationship to a story. So in the background of a picture of somebody like using the product , you know, you can show someone pouring your. Soup into a pot and that’s Jennifer and here’s Jennifer’s story about how busy she is and her four kids and running around doing soccer and school pickups and her full-time job.

[00:21:57] And the soup is an easy thing that she knows is healthy. That makes everyone happy that she can put on the table in a few minutes and have a healthy dinner. Telling that story is so much more compelling than a picture of your packaging. I know your packaging is super cool and you put a lot of thought and money into it and it’s, it’s really great.

[00:22:15] It is, but it’s not what your customers don’t care about. The packaging, the way that you do. 

[00:22:21] James Sowers: [00:22:21] Yeah, I think that’s an obvious default for a lot of e-commerce founders to have, especially if they’re a founder and they’re not like an e-commerce manager at a bigger brand or something like that. It’s like, they’re product people at heart.

[00:22:30] That’s why they started an e-commerce business. They love apparel. They love food. I don’t know whatever they’re selling. So it’s easy to latch onto the product and the product super important. Right. But in terms of building your actual emails, when you get into your ESP and you start building these things out, Yeah.

[00:22:44] If you have a new product launch, that should probably be graphic heavy. If you have a promotional campaign around the holiday, that should probably be graphic heavy, but we’re talking about like, somebody joins your newsletter. That first email probably doesn’t mean a big picture. It probably needs like a team photo or a photo of you and your family.

[00:22:58] And it’s like, here’s why I started the company. Here’s what’s important to me. Here’s my moral stance. Here’s  why I stand behind my product and all the different values that it has. And here’s maybe like a handwritten signature at the end. Right? Like, that’s kind of maybe the personal touch that you’re going at.

[00:23:10] It’s like, and I’m glad that you expanded on your original point because I was kind of getting a vibe that it was like one person. I know that’s not what you meant, but I want the listeners to know that it’s like a person, right? Anybody from your team, if you have a small team, your customer support certainly can be in there, your lead marketer, your person on your manufacturing line.

[00:23:26] I don’t know, like whatever the context of the email is like, Put a name and a face to it. And that includes the from address, right? Not hello@abccompany.com. It’s val@abccompany.com and she wants to talk to you about, you know, our products or your shipment that’s on the way or whatever. Like, I think that’s probably more what you were going for, but I want to lay it out explicitly because I don’t want anybody to get confused.

[00:23:45] Like it doesn’t always have to be you, the founder doing everything, everything, everything you don’t have to necessarily be the face of your brand. If you don’t want to. But bring your team to the forefront and the product will stand 

[00:23:54] Val Geisler: [00:23:54] on its own. The one thing that we do a lot is, and everyone can just steal this.

[00:24:00] So that welcome series is very important. When somebody joins your email list, the default is to just have them join your now like quote, blast list. And then they just start getting the same emails as everybody else. You need to have a welcome series. That’s like a few emails that is introducing the brand.

[00:24:17] Why you created it, who it’s for. The people behind it, using those stories. That’s your time to build a relationship. They just enter their email address into your website. That’s their highest point of interest aside from purchasing from you. So you need to use that time to tell a story. The other thing that you can do with that is.

[00:24:36] It trains them to open your emails when you send them letter style emails, when you send them emails, like every day for five days or every other day for 10 days. And like you’re giving them reasons to open the email. It’s something that they want to read, something they want to experience and see. And then it’s more likely that they’re going to open your sale emails because they feel more connected to the brand.

[00:25:00] And one thing that we love to do in those welcome series is. We typically have that initial welcome email come from the founder, unless the founder is very adamant about not being involved. We have it come from them. And then what we do is we set up the next email. So we say, Hey tomorrow, Jessica is going to show up.

[00:25:18] She’s going to be here. She’s our customer success lead. She’s incredible. She talks to our customers every day. She’s going to come tomorrow and talk to you about a few people who have had great experience. You know, the results that they’ve seen from our product or tomorrow, Jessica is our product designer.

[00:25:37] And she’s going to come tell you about why she makes the choices behind the fabrics that she selects. Setting up the person that’s coming in the next email and what they’re going to come talk about, gets the reader, excited about it and interested in then the next day, when they see Jessica from your brand, in their inbox, they’re going to go, Oh, I already know what this email is about and I’m going to open it.

[00:25:57] So it’s just like, it also makes your team feel really cohesive. And like, these are people who care about each other. And then, you know, maybe Jessica and it is Steve and there’s like this whole exchange. Right. But building that kind of connection when your reader sees, Oh, our team’s all super connected and they’re connecting me to the team, the real life experience of walking into a room and knowing one person and a whole bunch of other people that they know too, but you don’t know those other people and they don’t introduce the other people.

[00:26:29] And you’re like, uh, okay. Hi. I’m Val, nice to meet you. What is your name? That’s a totally different experience than walking into a room, seeing a person, you know, and they go, well, you’re here. Let me introduce you to all these people. That’s such a different experience the first time. I don’t want to walk back in that room, but the second time I’m excited then to go back in that room, the next time.

[00:26:49] Yeah, this 

[00:26:50] James Sowers: [00:26:50] feels like something that’s been around since the Dawn of time in other channels. And we need to bring it over to email in 2020, because we’re living in a technical age. But I mean, people used to expect to receive a newspaper on a regular cadence and sit down and read it a magazine. Now they’re doing like Netflix series and they know.

[00:27:05] Well, maybe not Netflix, but like a TV show that, you know, every Thursday night you’re tuning in to see what happened to your favorite character. Right. And we’re seeing this with podcasts now, too, like cereal, like those things are getting published weekly and they have you with this cliffhanger, like tune in next week to see what happens next.

[00:27:19] That’s kind of a similar concept here. We’re talking about a tune in tomorrow where we’re going to send you an email and introduce you to a new player in our story, right. Or a new aspect of our business or whatever. So I really love that because I think that’s like, And established kind of consumer behavior that they’re doing in other areas of their life that we’re bringing over to e-commerce that we’re bringing over to email marketing.

[00:27:36] The other thing that stood out to me there is like the storytelling element. And you mentioned that earlier. I think that is one area where. The software side of the house is really nailing it in terms of case studies for their customers, but maybe e-commerce hasn’t gotten there yet. And I think those customer stories can be super compelling.

[00:27:51] Like the people that leave you the five star review and just rave for like five paragraphs, about how much they love your product, get them on the phone. Try to record a video interview, try to record an audio snippet, and then pull that over to your welcome emails and tell the story of how your product legitimately changed.

[00:28:05] Like don’t fabricate anything. But if it’s organic and it’s natural, use that in your marketing, use that in your abandoned cart emails, right? Like somebody didn’t buy today because maybe they were on the fence. If they hear from a Val and her experience and how she loves the nutritious and convenient way to feed her family, when she’s in a rush, boom, that might be all it takes for somebody to go back and finish that checkout.

[00:28:25] Val Geisler: [00:28:25] You get that like, yeah. All human beings want is to feel seen and heard. And they can do that with email. You can help them feel like, Oh, that’s me. I just didn’t connect that piece myself. But now I hear this story and that is my story. And that builds that, that feeling. I mean, people they want to trust you and they’re not going to spend money with you until they trust you.

[00:28:45] And the best way to build trust with someone is to help them feel seen and heard by you. Right? So, yeah, I mean, it is that like, we are already doing this in so many other places. And if you’re listening to this and feeling like. Well, I I’ve never worked in the SAS. I have no experience in that industry.

[00:29:00] Go look in your inbox at the emails that you’re getting from the SAS products you use, are you using Shopify? Klayvio MailChimp, the commerce postscript. All of those products are SAS products and you are probably getting their emails. So go look at what they’re doing. Search the inbox for that name and.

[00:29:20] Kind of walk it back and say like, okay, well, what in what they’re doing? Can we do with our brand? So I think a lot of people get hung up on like, well, I don’t have experience in that brand and that kind of industry. And it’s something we heard a lot before we worked with more e-commerce brands, like early, when we started working with e-commerce, we got a lot of like, well, what’s your experience with e-commerce?

[00:29:39] And I’m like, It doesn’t actually matter what matters is our experience with subscriptions and you have a subscription. We work with subscription brands and we can bring what we’re doing in SAS and e-commerce. So you don’t need a case study on any commerce brand that we worked with. You can know that.

[00:29:56] 99% of what we’re doing. The SAS applies to you and it’s fun. We take abandoned car series and apply it to our SAS customers. It’s super 

[00:30:02] James Sowers: [00:30:02] fun, right? Yeah. In many cases, SAS is ahead of e-commerce. So it shouldn’t matter that they don’t have a portfolio piece or you didn’t have a portfolio piece. It’s like, let me just tell you, this industry is light years ahead of you guys in terms of retention and repeat purchase incentivization.

[00:30:16] And so we’re just applying those advanced principles to something that’s maybe a step or two behind. Yeah, for sure. Cool. So I know you can rattle this off the top of your head.

[00:30:25] So if somebody’s listening and they’re like, I’m kind of doing email marketing, haven’t given a whole lot of attention. What’s like the punch list of make sure you’re sending this category of email, this cat like welcome series, abandoned cart, we’ve touched on, but like, what’s in that 20% in terms of those fundamental must have email campaigns or sequences.

[00:30:40] Yeah. 

[00:30:41] Val Geisler: [00:30:41] Your welcome series is the dinner party strategy. So I’ve talked about this a lot on lots of other shows and workshops and all kinds of things. So you can Google it. There’s also a downloadable on our site. Fixed my turn.com/. T D P S for the dinner party strategy. So you can go download that and follow it.

[00:30:59] It’s a workbook. So you can go through it. It talks through a sexually a talk that I’ve given and I turned it into a workbook. So you don’t have to watch my talk. You can just follow the workbook. So that would walk you through the emails to send in a welcome series. So that’s when they join your email list before they’ve purchased the other key sequences.

[00:31:15] Yes. Abandoned cart post-purchase flows. So I think again, that’s a missed opportunity, so. There’s two kinds of post-purchase flows. One is from purchase until delivery and too many brands are relying on transactional emails. Only during that time. The problem is, is that over the course of the last year, delivery times have been very delayed.

[00:31:39] So they’re taking longer and longer to get there. And customers are sitting out there in limbo. They’ll get a, like, out for delivery email and they’re like, Oh yeah, I forgot. I even bought that thing two weeks ago because it’s taken that long to get here. So you can use that time or maybe they do remember they bought that thing and gosh, when is it getting here?

[00:31:58] And I really want that, like, they start to have regrets. Buyer’s remorse is real online and you need to do everything you can to avoid that. So send recipes to get them ready to use your product. As soon as it lands in their doorstep, send stories of other customers. If you use a certain like. The sustainable practice to build your product.

[00:32:20] Talk about that, you know, tell the stories behind your brand, give them resources that are going to get them ready to use the product immediately. So like Brooklinen does so they sell sheets and they send an email. Post-purchase predelivery about how to wash the sheets, to prep them, to use them. So they’re saying like, Hey, you’re going to get your sheets and you’re gonna wanna throw them on your bed, but don’t because they’re going to be even softer if you wash them.

[00:32:44] And here’s this very specific way that you need to wash our sheets for the best results. So that way the customer is ready, they know, okay, I’m going to have everything out of my washer, as soon as the product gets here and we’re going to get these sheets in so I can sleep on them that night. So there’s all different ways you can go about that, but that’s the first post-purchase flow until delivery.

[00:33:02] What often exists in that flow, which I don’t want to see is referral requests. So your product has not landed at your customer’s door yet. Don’t ask them to send other people to you. They haven’t had a chance to use your product yet. So take that out of there. Just do educational. Once the product has arrived at their door, then you start them on a separate post-purchase flow.

[00:33:21] This is continuing education from. Previous it is then a week or so after they’ve had a chance to use the product, then asking for that referral request or inviting them to share their link where you know, that give 20 and get 20 thing. That everyone does 

[00:33:39] so there’s that continuing education. You don’t want people to feel like they have bought from you. And now all they are is a credit card. You want to keep talking to them as though they have not yet bought from you because they haven’t made their second purchase yet. They haven’t joined a subscription.

[00:33:55] There’s so many other opportunities for them to engage with your brand. So there’s those two post-purchase flows. We have been in car welcome series. And then when you do have a subscription retention, there’s a whole separate sequence that you can set up. That is content. Just to keep people coming back, maybe that’s like, Hey, your order’s coming up.

[00:34:15] Get a RPU is an amazing tool for this. Your order’s coming up and Hey, before we ship it, do you want to make any changes? Whenever I get this email, I’m so excited because I get to decide how much to the product I want. I get to go say like, okay, I’m good on this one for now. I want a little bit more of this one, actually, you know, we just moved.

[00:34:38] So last month I was doing a lot of like, let’s just wait because we’re moving and I don’t know where the package is going to end up. So giving your customers control like that does not mean they’re going to spend less money with you. It means they’re going to spend more because they feel like they have some power and also you don’t have to deal with cancellations and stopping shipments and refunds that you’re going to get.

[00:34:58] If you don’t give them a heads up. 

[00:35:00] James Sowers: [00:35:00] Yeah. There’s nothing worse than having to go to customer support, to cancel or pause an order, like being forced to go and wait on the phone or go through their live chat or something like that. It’s like, if you can empower your consumer to take care of that themselves, like, I love that model too, because I’m thinking like for a coffee brand, it’s like, okay, maybe I only need.

[00:35:16] One bag of beans per month, but maybe one month my in-laws are coming into town and I’d like to send one home with them or have a little bit of extra or a couple of different flavors because they like light. And I like dark, whatever. That could be a context where that’s all I get a RPU comes in and says, before we send your shipment out for next month, do you want to add anything to it?

[00:35:32] Do you want to change anything? I was like, yeah, give me an extra bag and give me the dark roast this time, because that’s what I know that my mother-in-law prefers to drink or whatever. So maybe that’s a good use 

[00:35:39] Val Geisler: [00:35:39] case. Or you’ve been going and grabbing coffee instead of making it home. And so you have a lot sitting there and you don’t want to just have it bags, piling up, seeing product piling up is not a good thing for your brand, for your customer.

[00:35:53] That’s just them saying like, wow, I’m really not using as much of this product because I thought it was so you want to give them the opportunity to control it and yes, please, please, please do not force them to contact support, to cancel if they want to cancel. Make that as painless as possible, it’s currently as painful as possible with most brands.

[00:36:13] There are a lot of brands that are doing like short change, your subscription, change, what product you want. But if you want to cancel it, you have to email us or call us. And nobody wants to do that. That’s really annoying. I’ve done it now in the last two months, at least twice. And it’s annoying every time.

[00:36:28] James Sowers: [00:36:28] Yeah, I wish I had the study in my back pocket, but I saw a study once it’s like a customer that loves your product and the experience on average tells three other people, but a person that has a bad experience. And I was like 10 it’s like astronomical. How many more people they tell about their bad experience versus the good ones.

[00:36:42] So you definitely want to avoid that, especially in terms of. Canceling anything that involves money, right? Like pausing, shipments, canceling payments, canceling subscriptions, like treat them with respect and dignity and make it as painless as possible. Like you said, because if it is painful, they’re going to go tell their friends and family about it.

[00:36:57] And then you might’ve lost a future customer through that. 

[00:37:00] Val Geisler: [00:37:00] Yeah. And, you know, especially right now, like we don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives. It most likely has nothing to do with your product and everything to do with whether they have a job right now or not, you know, their household expenses and people are paying more for childcare right now because schools are closed.

[00:37:16] And so there’s all kinds of reasons why people are making financial decisions that they’re making. And we can’t assume it’s because of our product and that they aren’t ever going to come back. 

[00:37:26] James Sowers: [00:37:26] I was going to get us into like, kind of the upper end of the spectrum in terms of sophistication, but I definitely want to get into the audit too.

[00:37:32] Cause I think people are really going to enjoy that. So maybe we’ll pause here, we’ll shift over to the audit and we’ll make sure that we have enough time to capture the insights there about some of these kinds of fundamental tactics or intermediate tactics we just talked about. So you want to kick that off?

[00:37:44] Okay. All right. So what brand are we diving into for our audit today though? So this is a 

[00:37:49] Val Geisler: [00:37:49] brand called burst oral care. They are a toothbrush and accessories company, I use this product. And so I want to talk about it from like both the customer’s perspective and a marketer’s perspective.

[00:38:04] So there are opportunities with burst, for sure. There are also some things that they’re doing. Right. So this is kind of our full history with burst. My first experience with them was purchasing from them. And that’s the case for a lot of your customers. They’re not signing up for your email list first, or, you know, engaging in some other way.

[00:38:22] They’re just coming in purchasing. So there’s a number of your customers who follow this path. So the first email I got from them was my order has been processed. And so it says that the order has been processed and great. I want to know that for sure. Then you can see that now. Luckily it was only two days.

[00:38:40] Of course, this was the end of 2019 last year where shipping was a little more reliable, but it wasn’t only two days later. But the next email I got was that the order was on its way. And we’re hope you are as excited as we are now. The thing that I’m seeing here, and like we just talked about. Is, there’s no kind of welcome sequence.

[00:38:57] This is all transactional. Your order is processed. Your order is on its way. And then it does take quite some time to get here. So it’s from the 22nd to the 31st, it actually arrives. Now tell us what you think. Like it literally just arrived. The delivery person, just put it on my doorstep and hit the button.

[00:39:14] And then this email was sent through the transactional software. So I might not even be home. I don’t know what I think yet. So let’s just wait on those requests right now. Also there’s no kind of welcome sequence. So like how to get the most out of your burst fresh man, I would have loved to have seen that after it had shipped before it got to me versus like a full week after I had received the toothbrush.

[00:39:37] Why would I not want to get the most out of it from day one? Why do I need to wait a week to find that out? So. That kind of story that this one email right here, how to get the most out of your burst brush could become a whole sequence of emails that happens from the moment this email lands until through the arrival of the product.

[00:40:01] So there’s that opportunity. And later on, there’s this Brittany, you see her a couple of times, Brittany from burst, I would encourage burst to use more. People in connection to their brand. They also are kind of testing this like first oral care versus burst. But then when you see the pattern, actually, please review your recent burst oral care purchase.

[00:40:22] That’s the only time they’re using burst or oral care. When they’re asking for this review over and over again. So obviously that’s a different software. So you want to also make sure that you’re checking across your different send software, that it’s consistent the, from sender, the email address, even the way that you write the emails is consistent.

[00:40:41] That one thing doesn’t sound like a robot and everything else sounds human. So they’re doing a great job though, of, , being very welcoming that are brushing with burst. Their emails are very nice. They are. Template. And what I love is that they have texts separate from the images. So that’s really important too.

[00:41:00] A lot of brands are doing one image emails because it shows the same way in every single inbox, but it’s a real accessibility nightmare when images are not displayed and they see nothing. And I’ve shared those a lot , especially on my Twitter account. When I see those, it’s very frustrating, but. This email came November 20th.

[00:41:18] Let’s see. When did I order? I ordered October 20th. And so a month later, they’re finally answering my burning questions about the brush. Why would we not do that sooner? So like, I want to know these things prior to getting my brush. It gets me excited places I can share different ways that they can stay connected to your brand is really, really important.

[00:41:39] Can I 

[00:41:39] James Sowers: [00:41:39] just get a couple of questions in here, especially about these early days? So how do you think about that difference between an email coming from burst? Or burst oral care versus Brittany. So like, it feels to me like the order confirmation, you would probably want to come from your brand. So they recognize the brand and they tie it back to the purchase and they actually open it.

[00:41:58] Right. But then further down the line in terms of, Hey, I’ve gotten my product, I’ve had a couple of days to use it or whatever. Then maybe it’s time for Brittany, from customer support to come in and ask me how things are going right. Or something like that. So is that kind of the way that you would think about it is like certain ones lend themselves to coming from the brand because of the transactional nature or the timing, and then other ones lend themselves to a person because they’re actually checking in on the customer and their experience.

[00:42:25] Yeah. 

[00:42:26] Val Geisler: [00:42:26] I actually advocate for people being involved as often as possible. And that carries over into SMS as well. So a lot of transactional messaging is happening through SMS now, too. In addition to email,  I get SMS from several different brands and there’s one that’s like, Hey, it’s Adam.

[00:42:43] I saw that your package arrived today. Will you let me know if you have any questions about it? That’s so compelling versus a. Even like, I mean, shop pays a great app, but like just getting a notification, my package was delivered. Yeah. I know. I just picked it up off my porch or my ring doorbell just showed it to me or like there’s so many ways I know that information, but to ask for engagement, I think is really important from a person.

[00:43:05] James Sowers: [00:43:05] Have you heard about this tool called ? Yeah. I’m, I’m a super fan of Bon. I don’t think I’ve talked about it on the show, but like. Basically, it’s an app that lets you send personalized videos to customers that you could trigger. Like immediately post-purchase send a notification to somebody on your team.

[00:43:19] They whip out their phone, open up the bond jar app. They say, Hey, Stacy saw you made a purchase. The same kind of concept. You were just talking about the SMS, but it’s video based. And I just don’t one of those the other day. And it was the founder of the company. Somebody bought a watch strap. The founder happened to also be located in Chicago and they said like, Hey, I’m right down the street from you.

[00:43:35] I’m in this neighborhood. My favorite restaurant is this. I bet you like it too. Thanks so much for making a purchase. It means the world to me, especially as a small company, whatever, like, I don’t know exactly what they said. I’m paraphrasing, but that kind of personal touch. I know someone’s going to say that doesn’t scale and it’s like, okay, that’s fine.

[00:43:49] Right. You don’t have to do it for everybody. You do it the best that you can, but every time that you do it, Imagine the impact for that person. Right. And so I think that’s just so savvy and bond. George is another way to do it. You can do it through SMS, or you can do it through email, but that personal touch, that personal check-in, especially if it’s not automated and it is manual from somebody on your team, you say, Hey, our goal is for each person to do five of these a day, like that’s progress.

[00:44:09] Right. I feel like that’s worth investing that time and energy into. It 

[00:44:12] Val Geisler: [00:44:12] is, and it doesn’t scale and sometimes the best retention tactics most of the time, but the best retention tactics don’t scale. Yeah. Listen, most brands are not like multi thousand people, either customers or team members, most brands can do something that doesn’t scale like a bunch of sorrow.

[00:44:29] And maybe you’re not doing it with every customer. Maybe you say, okay, well, our AOV is a hundred bucks. So if somebody is like, Two times our AOV. If we get an order, that’s 200 bucks, we’re going to send a bunch of order to that person. So you can set a standard for like, when you might do something that’s non-scalable, you don’t need to do it for everyone.

[00:44:47] But also if you have a handful of new customers every week, send them one, do something non-scalable yeah. In this case, Brittany is actually one of the co-founders. And this is one of my favorite emails where she is saying like, my dad points out when he sees an opportunity for me to do better at running my company.

[00:45:05] And here’s some feedback that my dad gave me about, you know, this is about their military discount. And so I love this like personal connection of she’s a founder, but her. Dad’s still like, Hey, I have an idea for your business as a business founder, I can relate to that. So. These kinds of letters.

[00:45:21] And like, again, this is telling the story of this particular person. I think that’s her dad actually. So, and she says she’s a co-founder. And like, it’s very kind of letter of style with the images, support the text more than anything else. So I think it’s such a huge opportunity, Brittany is the co-founder.

[00:45:41] So she. Should definitely be front and center, but yeah, there’s places where, like, this is an electric toothbrush. Like do you have a dentist that is an advisor on your board? Like have an email come from them. Like we work with a lot of food brands and they’re like, Oh yeah, we have this nutritionist who helps us with making sure descriptions are accurate or whatever.

[00:46:02] Like, great. Can we put that person on name on an email? Like let’s use all these. Experts that are involved in your brand, even if they’re contractors, talk to them and get their permission and then put them on emails. I 

[00:46:13] James Sowers: [00:46:13] guess I hate the term influencers, but influencers, right? Like if you have high profile individuals that use your product, or if like Ashton Kutcher is an investor in your company, like, let Ashton be an advocate for you right here in this sequence.

[00:46:24] You know, one of the things that’s jumping out at me as maybe a learning point here is like subscribe to your own emails. And  put them in a folder like this, because I’m thinking about email marketing strategy and there are a bunch of different perspectives, right? Like there’s your customer’s perspective where they’re getting one of these every now and then, and it’s mixed into their inbox.

[00:46:39] And so they don’t see like the trend line as much. Right. But then there’s this other view where you’re like in Klayvio or you’re in some other email marketing tool and you’re seeing the workflows and all the different, like logic and campaigns, and that can make your eyes roll in the back of your head.

[00:46:53] But then there’s this third view that we’re looking at now where it’s like, if you, as the founder or a leader at the organization, subscribed your own email list and put them all in a folder, you can kind of see the journey that a customer goes through and you can kind of see, like, man, we’re sending a lot of email or like, man, we use a lot of emoji or something like that.

[00:47:10] Like, and you can kind of get that consumer experience blended with the continuity of seeing everything together with no other noise from other emails or anything else that’s going 

[00:47:19] Val Geisler: [00:47:19] on. And not just that don’t just subscribe to your list. Do that, put those in a folder, um, make a purchase of your product and have it shipped to you and do  the whole thing and put those in a folder.

[00:47:32] Abandon a cart, cancel an order. Return to something. Do all of those things that your customers are doing and experience the full messaging that goes with that. Whether it’s marketing emails, transactional emails, SMS, all of the things that they’re going to experience, you need to have experienced 

[00:47:50] James Sowers: [00:47:50] hundred percent.

[00:47:51] I recommend doing that ideally quarterly, but at least twice a year, go through all those core functionalities because things break people, leave the team and you need to highlight a different team member. Better customer stories surface themselves, and you either layer them on as an additional story or you replace the one that you have with a more compelling one.

[00:48:07] Like it’s good to have that be a regular practice that you do for your time today. Is there maybe one more thing from this particular brand that you see and then maybe we’ll have you come back to do a deep dive longer form kind of audit or some kind of presentation around email marketing strategy, with a real-world example, like this one.

[00:48:23] Yeah. 

[00:48:24] Val Geisler: [00:48:24] So I think like the other thing that you can see here is just the fact that they’re testing, they’re testing, burst and lowercase they’re testing bursts. And obviously their branding is that their burst is uppercase. They do some fun copy things like first messages here, they’re playing around a little bit.

[00:48:39] And that is really important. My favorite clients are the clients who say, like, let’s see some emails. Fail because then we know what works and what doesn’t. We want to be sending to the point that we know what works really well and what doesn’t. And we want to be testing to that point too. If I talk to a potential client who like, doesn’t want to test anything, then they’re not going to be a client of mine because I have a testing mindset.

[00:49:00] I actually would be interested to , Sign up in another inbox or go through another customer journey with the same brand and see if I get the same experience, because it would tell me if, you know, things are being AB tested or,  let’s say on May 5th, this mother’s day mega deals, maybe there’s a different subject line that they tested on a different subscriber.

[00:49:21] So those kinds of things fascinate me. And it’s also interesting, like how my inbox marked some of them as important and others is not. So just those kinds of things, like you don’t have to think too long and hard about it, but it just, those things that I notice just to me, the biggest thing is that they’re testing and that’s really important for every brand.

[00:49:39] No matter how much or how little email 

[00:49:42] James Sowers: [00:49:42] you send to somebody who’s. Head of marketing at a conversion rate optimization agency. Yes. Testing is the only way to improve. So listen, we’re not naive to the fact that as a founder, especially you have a lot of other things on your plate. You’ve got product development, you’ve got logistics, you’ve got finances, you’ve got hiring, you’ve got other aspects of marketing.

[00:49:58] We’re not saying email has to be your life. But the fact of the matter is for most brands, emails, a significant portion of their revenue. It’s like 30 to 50% in ideal cases. Maybe even some more, I’m guessing you probably have a better number there than I do. So it’s significant is what I’m saying. And so it’s worth investing the time and attention into getting it right.

[00:50:13] And I think that’s really the core message we’re trying to share here today. So Val, I’ll give you the podium for the last couple of minutes here to round out. Any other comments you have, and also let folks know where they can learn more about you. We’ve talked about fixing my terminal. If there’s anything else you want to plug, this is your forum to do so.

[00:50:26] So 

[00:50:28] Val Geisler: [00:50:28] for sure, so you can always find me on Twitter. Um, if anyone has any questions or. Big huge takeaways from listening to this that you want to chat about. I’m on Twitter and readily available to chat there at LA valgeisler. DMS are black holes, so don’t DM me, but just tweet me and we can chat. So I love that.

[00:50:48] I love to hear that somebody listened to something that I spent time doing and that they got something from it. So, yeah. That’s kind of a pro tip for anyone that you like. If you listen to a show and feel a lot of impact from it, go tell that person that was on the show and tell the person who produces the show too.

[00:51:02] Like for sure, James and me at the same time. Yeah. And yeah, fix my turn.com. If you want to get that workbook for the welcome sequence through the dinner party strategy, it kind of talks you through how to create a welcome sequence. That feels like a warm welcome kind of how it’s called the dinner party strategy.

[00:51:19] Cause it’s like, if you would have a dinner party at your house, how you would greet somebody there. So that is fixed my chair and.com/ttps and, and that’s 

[00:51:28] James Sowers: [00:51:28] it. Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing that. Uh, the dinner party strategy, big fan. If you go download that, definitely search for Val online, she’s done podcasts, interviews, or presentations specifically about that strategy going into more detail. And so it’s like you have the document and the resources next to her personal explanation of it. And that’s where I would start. I think that’s a great place to start. If you haven’t gotten started with email marketing or it hasn’t been a priority for you, start with that, get your welcome series nailed in and then go back and layer on top of that and continue to get better.

[00:51:54] So, Ben, thanks so much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. Having on a show and yeah, really enjoyed our chat. Thanks for having me awesome. Hey everybody, this is James again. And before you go, I just wanted to invite you to join one of the coolest things I get to work on. As director of marketing here at the good it’s called the e-commerce insiders list, and it’s a private version of this podcast feed that gets you access to tons of additional bonus content, like extra interviews, Q and a sessions, website, tear downs, and anything else we can dream up.

[00:52:20] It doesn’t cost you anything but your email address. And we promise to always respect your inbox. This is just our way of forming strong relationships with our listeners and making sure that we produce content that is actually valuable to you and to your business. If you’re interested, you can join the rest of the e-commerce insiders by going to the good.com/podcast and dropping your email into the form at the top of the page, we’ll follow up with directions for how to access the private feed and you’ll be off and running.

[00:52:44] Like I said, this is one of my favorite things that I get the opportunity to work on because it lets me interact directly with e-commerce founders and leaders, just like you. If you’re interested, I’d love to see your name pop up in my notifications until then keep an eye out for the next episode of the e-commerce insight show.

[00:52:58] And we’ll talk to you soon.