It's Always Day One

Juliana Jackson - Round 2

June 29, 2021 It's Always Day One Season 1 Episode 54
It's Always Day One
Juliana Jackson - Round 2
Show Notes Transcript

Juliana and I talk about the impact iOS15 is going to have for brands communications. We then warm up a little and get into how you can optimize your email flows and segmentation to provide richer experiences.

In this episode we discuss:

  • Apple's iOS15 update
  • How to communicate with your customers via email
  • Why % discounts on your website landing pages aren't working

You can find Juliana on LinkedIn here.

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[0:00:01] George Reid: Welcome to us Always Day One. My name is George Reid, a former Amazonian turned amazon consultant. Each week on the podcast, you're going to hear industry experts, brand owners and amazon employees share their answers to the basic yet fundamental questions you should be asking yourself about your amazon business now. Let's jump in. Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of It's Always Day One today, I'm delighted to welcome back juliana Jackson onto the show to talk a little bit about IOS 15 and understanding our customers and whether or not we're meeting their expectations, julianna. Welcome, Welcome back on, How are you today?

[0:00:41] Juliana Jackson: Hi George, I ma I'm sleepy. But other than that, I'm fine. Thank you for having me again.

[0:00:49] George Reid: Don't worry. It was

[0:00:51] Juliana Jackson: was it a popular demand? It

[0:00:54] George Reid: was probably demand for me mainly. Um you want some time linked in is filling me with enthusiasm on a regular basis about topics I don't fully understand and one of those which terrified me, which is partly why I invited you. One was about the changes coming with IOS 15. I, I'd hammer on quite a lot in my emails And in all my content about the importance of building assets off of Amazon and owning a bit of your traffic in order to send traffic back to Amazon, you've got to own something right. And part of that is email. You scared me a little bit the other day when you were talking about IOS 15 and some of the impacts that could have for brands and the emails that they send. I'd love for you to explain a little bit to me. I haven't the audience of what changes we can expect and then perhaps go into a little bit about how we can address those changes. His email providers, not providers, email senders.

[0:01:55] Juliana Jackson: Yeah man. Uh I think everyone was surprised last week. Uh I uh was I think Tuesday when the announcement announcement was made, can I remember john sent me an adam roman a link and told us about it and at that time I was very busy because I I, you know, I have a lot of stuff going on in the company right now and I wasn't paying too much attention and later I opened, I was like yeah yeah, I'll get on it john and then I got on the on the link and I started watching some videos about it and I was like shit because basically Apple right now is on some privacy mission but I think in my opinion and this is me just being consideration, I think Apple is moving towards commerce more and more so just like amazon Apple is looking to basically monopolize all the data in regards to their customers and users so they can use it for themselves rather than sharing it with, I don't know everyone else. So, as you said earlier, which is a really cool point if you sell on amazon, you know that email is the only place you have to get in touch with your customers because you don't have access to, You know, more data. So now that I always 15 is happening, that's gonna make your job even harder because you won't be able to see how people interact or you don't interact with the emails that you you sent. I think it will, I think to to understand I always 15 a bit better. I mean this is my opinion as a strategist. There's a lot of views on the update in the market And I think it's great to unpack and uncover all of them. But this is just my opinion as a strategist. I think uh, to look at I always 15 we should talk a bit just a second about I always 14.5 because this is when apple started, you know, the whole privacy thing. And uh basically when um when this happened facebook, you know, the people that were doing advertising on facebook, we're in trouble because they wouldn't be able to profile or in target users based on the interest as accurately as they would, they would have done it before. So people were opting out, uh, I don't have an iphone, I have another iphone that I used to use for a clubhouse. But once I updated to I always 14 5, you know, they ask you would you like to be tracked

[0:04:28] George Reid: and

[0:04:29] Juliana Jackson: Only 6% I think of Americans decided that they want to be tracked, which is very, very low because I remember when everyone was talking about this, it was mad postal link. Like yeah people want to be tracked. They like person like that. No that was me by the way. I made that sound so no they did not. They did not want to be uh to be tracked. And uh I remember when uh when uh all of this started the managing there were not many changes in terms of the Casper the accusation class. But now as of recently Maybe like one month, two months ago the C. P. M. S. Have really really increased. And the people that the people that are affected I've seen more are from the luxury from fashion. For people that were highly dependent on it. Their C. P. M. S. Are huge. I've seen people $500. I've seen people with 1000 like it's really bad. So you know just to give you like the context here, ads were bad, right? With IOS 14 5. So this gave the email, marketing people and the agency is an opportunity to tell everyone well, you know what I mean? Let's, let's focus on email because you know, this is uh, the ads are, you know, are not going to work as well anymore. So everyone was promoting email and you know, as uh, it was stupid because people were like accusation and people are like, no attention is like you were asking someone like, would you rather have A level or not? It was stupid conversation like that lasted for months and months at least on anything. And I remember I wrote a newsletter about it and I said that this is like the Kardashians of e commerce, no opposition, no retention. Like people were having the most ridiculous conversations with this. So now, basically what happens with that always 15 is that, uh, they announced that they're going to remove the possibility for email service providers for USPS to be able to tell if the emails that you send are opened or clicked or whatever. So this is gonna be a very big problem for email marketing agencies or for brands that do their own email marketing because they cannot tell if the emails that they're sending have, you know, they might have like deliver ability issues or interaction issues because a lot of people right now are just using segmentation based on open rates. They're using segmentation based on click click to rate. So it's gonna be very, very hard because if you are, uh, I guess functioning until this moment, just on open rates and click through rates as the, you know, the metrics of success for email, it's going to be very hard to focus on those moving on from the next four months because you won't have them. So, I mean, the solution that I I think that, you know, uh that I that I suggested for this is that you have to focus on two aspects like the technical one, which we can go into the deeper afterwards.

[0:07:49] George Reid: Say that again, focus on day one,

[0:07:52] Juliana Jackson: You know, on the technical one. I mean,

[0:07:55] George Reid: yeah,

[0:07:56] Juliana Jackson: like there's two aspects of the solution is the technical part and then it's the creative part. We can go into the technical part as well. And uh as for the creative part is that you have to make sure that when you do create emails for these people that, you know, bought from you, for your customers or your subscribers or whatever. I mean, if you're not creative, it's not you're not gonna survive anymore, because your scope is to make emails that make customers or subscribers or whatever interact with them, Right? Like, you have to make sure that you're producing engagements and you cannot produce engagement if you're not, you know, creative and imagine, like, we get, I don't know, 20 emails per day from all these brands, 2030 hundreds of emails per week. So you really have to stand out in someone's inbox to make sure that that person interacts and buys for me. And uh, that's the creative aspect. So, yeah, I mean, right now, everyone is uh there's like two sides of the, of the audience that are talking about this is the people that say, no, everything is fine, we are good, nothing is gonna happen, you know, we will do what we always did. And uh then it's the people that, you know, really uh you know, like I worried that are trying to find solutions so that their clients work for themselves are not affected by these changes that are going to happen because really What's going to happen with IOS 15 is going to affect companies and agencies that we're just basically doing the most basic ship in terms of strategy because the ones that are smart, the ones that we're doing it right. The ones that were doing, you know, more granular segmentation, more creativeness and more customer experience focused strategies are not going to be affected because they know, you know what to do to make sure that everything is gonna work. The ones that are gonna be affected are going to be the ones that, you know, the agencies and companies that were doing basic ships instead of you know, what

[0:10:09] George Reid: would you interject there a little bit? Not because your language and I don't care about that.

[0:10:15] Juliana Jackson: I just uh

[0:10:19] George Reid: when you define basics that would be someone having one email list for argument's sake. A brand having one email list and having everyone inside

[0:10:28] Juliana Jackson: of that and

[0:10:29] George Reid: then perhaps maybe they've gone early launch list which they created from some time ago and put some people in there. Would that would you define that as basic? Yeah that would that be in your eyes? Come

[0:10:44] Juliana Jackson: on. You don't want to you don't want to say the word. I I said basic shit. That's the scientist.

[0:10:52] George Reid: That shit.

[0:10:52] Juliana Jackson: Okay so what I would define as basic shit is that uh that's a good one that you said like you just bless the whole email with the same stuff email list. But it's also it's also like um more than that like you can segment like a lot of people just segment on open rates on click rate, the click through rates or just like about two times high a OV but one time smaller, you'll be like very very very very simple segmentation that you can do in into claudio. But the thing is that this I guess the basic chicness comes from people not being able to be creative and they think that they see email as a transactional stop transactional thing. Not necessarily a channel that you can use to engage with your audience to build the relationships and you know, build trust and maintain trust. There's the people that use email as a transactional channel which is uh you know, I mean of course email email should should obviously triggered transactions. But if you are so obvious about it, you know, like 20% up last three pieces by them out. Like. Yeah of course it's this is what happens unfortunately and uh

[0:12:10] George Reid: what's a better, we've obviously identified the shitty areas which is just simple segmentation. But how would you be looking at your list when you're advising brands at the moment? What what different things would you be doing for them to segment more effectively? And then my follow up to that is how does that counteract the fact that you're not going to be able to see what the open rates are in the success of each of that um List or segmentation?

[0:12:42] Juliana Jackson: Yeah, so my my advice for this, so it's mine, anyone else's um is uh is also actually focused on RFM modeling because I think we talked about our FM the last time. I don't know that I've been talking about the FM for the last years, three years. Um The thing is this like what I told people and without plugging my tool by leveraging my tools, integration with Claudio. You can use your existing data to push, you know, flows based on predictive buying cycles, right? Because we do predictive analysis and then you can do email campaigns with the reduced frequency. So like you're not going to bless people continuously with campaigns and you have to lead in, you know, to the engagement as the you know, performance, the key performance indicator, you know using the RFM modeling because in the RFM, if you remember correctly, you separate people based on recency frequency and monetary value. So recency is going to become very important because you know when the customer was last I active from a transactional perspective. So the way that you can uh see activity, you can see if your list is vibrant and alive. You can look at when they bought the last time because that's the main indicator of them being alive. So using the recency from RFM can help you determine when with the customer last time active. Because it's one thing to open your email and not click on it, but it's one thing that they go on their own on the website. Which happens a lot of times because I ignore everyone's emails. But if I want to buy something from a brand which is gonna type their website and just go and buy it. And that's the activity. You know, like I've been active. I just bought from you. So as I was saying in the beginning, the secret, I think in my opinion, I think in my opinion, then you never invite me so early in the morning. I'm sorry for everyone who's listening this have the, it's it's very early in the morning. Um But see I can still talk about this shit at eight am, so we're bringing

[0:14:46] George Reid: you back on point before you lose your mind a little bit. So

[0:14:48] Juliana Jackson: I'm sorry man. I

[0:14:50] George Reid: understand, I understand the thought post recently frequency and monetary value. So on a practical sense then if you were looking at an email list, we're sending out communications Based on how recently active someone was, um, or how valuable they are or how frequent they're coming back to you and by again. So if they're buying paint a customer for instance, they've bought in the last 30 days and they happen to buy every 60 days how you then tailored communications. So a customer like that.

[0:15:23] Juliana Jackson: Yeah. You have to adapt the flows, right? You have to adapt the flows based on this type of behavior, right? Because it's not only gonna beat him, it's gonna be maybe a bigger, you know, sample size of people. So you have to do this nice clothes based on this predictive exactly buying cycles that are more relationship building type of flows. And the thing is that what I suggest and I advise my clients to do is to use quizzes inside email is to use um different types of surveys. The different type of quests, like you send the customer on a quest to find something on your website and then he received something back or I don't know, this is something that a friend of mine that does email marketing came up with. Like he is working with the company that does this uh mythology or outfits and whatever. So they send the clients on a quest to find the start. The fact so they can unlock a viking cloak like shit like this, you know? Which is cool because if that's your audience right, is that your audience? You have to make sure that you create something entertaining for that audience. Because if your audience is people in this case right now that like mythology and cosplay, they're definitely gonna want to unlock a secret artifact from your shop, right? Or a secret clothes.

[0:16:46] George Reid: Hey folks, it's George here. I'd like you to check out my new site, georges dot blog. It's where you can find all of my famous weekly emails as well as how we can work together to repeat. That's George's dot blog. Now let's carry on with the episode. I mean that's that's one specific example and the quizzes, I can see make make sense as well. I guess you're giving them more of a reason to open. But then

[0:17:12] Juliana Jackson: how does a

[0:17:13] George Reid: challenge? How does that tackle the challenge for those? You're not gonna be able to see these metrics? So in Claudio or I use active campaign when I look at my email open rates. Is that just gonna be completely wrong now and not, not be accurate in the slightest. So I've got no idea if that email is a good email or bad email, ugly email. I've got no idea. Right. Is that

[0:17:38] Juliana Jackson: I mean if people, if people decide that they don't want, I mean, this is going to happen to people that you safaris in the mail app on the iphone max or whatever.

[0:17:51] George Reid: If

[0:17:51] Juliana Jackson: they don't use the mail app and if they use gmail right on chrome, You will still be able to track them. So 35 I know in America, right? So 35% of Americans are using the Safari browser and then it's going to be hard for you to track in the mail app if you are not using so far because there's a lot of people I have Mac and I'm not using Safari to save my life, use chrome. So if you mail me on chrome and I'm using Gmail, you'll still be able to track what I'm doing, but you won't be able to track it if it goes specifically to this uh, this uh, channels. So, the, exactly as you were enquiring, see, I'm waking up because I'm using smarter words. So exactly as you were enquiring, um you have to create content that makes people do something or you have to send them to a page that you can track right. Like you have to send them in a way outside the email to be able to track them in another place. Like, let's say you're sending them on a quest, you send them on the landing page and you got their asses there, you know, you're sending down, you know, like the secret is to make them want to click and go somewhere else. You won't be able you're

[0:19:10] George Reid: more you're more focusing on the clicks at this point than awareness, because you're not gonna have any idea on the awareness speech, you're focusing solely on how are we creating compelling um content inside that email, which makes them want to click if. So we're gonna see those figures come through. So we're sending out 1000 emails and this month with those 1000 emails we've had 100 people visit this page which we created for that email. Therefore we know that we're getting a rough 10% click through, right? So we're doing our job. Is that one kind of thought process of getting some data behind the effectiveness of these email outreach campaigns?

[0:19:53] Juliana Jackson: Yeah. And you know what? The only thing that you missed is the quality card. Because once of of course I am pro segmentation. As you know, I'm pro segmentation and pro segmenting using our family. I don't think there is anyone more vocal about that than me. But you know this is just numbers. This is just quantitative data. The qualitative data is very important because if you are able to collect data about your customers in terms of interest in terms of uh I don't know timelines for them to purchase like different customer attributes right? In your whatever you're using radioactive campaign amnesty and whatever. If wants to collect all this qualitative data about their experience, about what they want, about what they want to achieve, what's progress for them and so on. It's going to be much more easier for you to tailor these campaigns that you're sending or disclosed that you're sending. So they can be, you know, more, I guess eager to let you see if they're there. Right? So it's of course it's what you said, but I also want to add that pre and post purchase. You can collect a lot of data, qualitative data that can help you build better ways to communicate with these people.

[0:21:08] George Reid: So let's say to put it into more layman terms, even for myself and to clarify that I've been noticed it. So I obviously send amazon related

[0:21:18] Juliana Jackson: emails

[0:21:19] George Reid: every single week about what I learned about amazon and I sent podcast emails. I sent creatives emails. Would your theory then be instead of me having at the moment, I just have a landing page with the email in it. What they're going to get your email, press the button, that's it your advice even to be, to be customer like myself would be our small questions and risk getting a higher drop off and not getting the email, which is likely going to be the case. If you're asking for more, you're gonna get more pushback, more friction. But you're encouraging people like me and brand owners to go Ask five questions during that email, um, email phase and asked them are you interested in amazon advertising? I may ask, are you interested in this? What do you like most short former long form content, do you like this? And with the brands, they'll be going, okay, what's your dog's name? When is your dog's born? When which dog born? What food do you typically feed your dog? And you're asking that sort of information? Um, if your dog brand, of course you sell toys for Children, it may not be

[0:22:31] Juliana Jackson: the most sensible

[0:22:32] George Reid: thing. Um, but you're asking that upon sign up and you're going, you know what I'm going to get lower conversion rates on my sign up to email,

[0:22:40] Juliana Jackson: but version traffic is going to be higher,

[0:22:43] George Reid: which then allows you to send much better emails. So you know, you're gonna be able to engage them better. Hey George, I can see barnaby is turning three this week. Is he still on his dry food or is he moved to wet? Let us know. And we kind of a special surprise for him for his birthday boom. And you're putting on the information you've already got. It's a much more engaging email which encourages to click through to the site where they can then track those clicks. Is that kind of what you're getting at?

[0:23:16] Juliana Jackson: Yeah, exactly. And you put it out very, very well and it's also better ad man like all these data is gonna help you do better as that cost Youlus And I remember John is saying the really cool thing, he said something that these changes that happened when I was 14.5 and I always 15 are forcing at people and email people to work together. It is so true, so so true because you have to work together, you need each other and like all these segments that you use and you are I guess activate via email, those are great segments that you can do lookalikes on or re target so you have to like this is forcing people to work together in a way to be able to get out of this hurdle because I mean man, I look it's you know, the internal alignment problem is huge, N e commerce, everyone is very silent like every brand that I encounter, they have a different consultants or companies that they work with for email one for adds their own team that does everything someone else for fulfillment, someone else from amazon, like every time I have a call with someone to sell some shit, they bring their whole team and a dog to like it's so hard, you know, it's, it's so hard to, and by the way I have heard the name, barnaby in like, I don't even know where I heard that, I don't even know where I heard this dog name and what movie because it's just, it's just activated me right now. Like I don't even

[0:24:44] George Reid: know. So my phone just kind of reinforce it one more time would be when we think about collecting that email. Obviously we want to build that email list ideally we want highly qualified or high quality leads coming in and we can get that by collecting more information on sign up, which all makes sense with that in mind. That would you go to yourself, have your sign up page where they give you the email and that is then subscribed and then hit them with a second page, which asks for the information. And that way you're kind of, you're covering both bases. Does that make sense? You're still getting the email?

[0:25:27] Juliana Jackson: Whereas

[0:25:28] George Reid: if the email wasn't collected until the very last question was answered, then you can run the risk of losing the email, right?

[0:25:38] Juliana Jackson: Yeah, it's true. It's true. It's like, I think the question here is, I mean, do you want to risk losing the email? Right? But in a, in a way, so like from a strategic point of view, I would say, fuck it to get their email anyway. From a strategic point of view. But from a consumer point of view, I want to be able to consent with everything that you have going on so I can give you my email and in a way, in a way that's not that's scalable right now, if I think about it, I think you are far better off as a brand right with people that are qualified than state and you know, get over that small friction and still give you the email because that's a more qualified pipeline than would be people that fuck those guys. You

[0:26:28] George Reid: know, you

[0:26:29] Juliana Jackson: asked me two questions. Nobody got time for that. I have to scratch my ass today so I cannot answer these questions. So, I mean, I get it. You know, like people just want to not give their days all right. They just want to put their email there, get their 15% discount and move on with their day. But I mean it's not going to work like you have again, you have to be creative the way you can be creative and find out what's the best what creative means for you. Because everyone has a different type of I guess. Uh everyone should define creative based on how their business functions. Right? So again, if you do enough qualitative research on the customers, on your customers journeys on the positioning of your brand on the you know the products that you have like once you know so much about yourself and how people view you, it's going to be much more easier to take all that information and you form your decision is better when it comes to create a sign up page, right? Because if you see some patterns in the buying behavior, some patterns in the website, behavior in some patterns in your historical data and transactional data you have to mix and marge this old and create a great positioning right? And the best way to do that is by using all this data. Like you can you can ap test then come up with a lot of shit from your head. But like while guessing instead of using this data that you have and a lot of companies are sitting on data that they do not know they have that they can use to do better. And just to give you like a very very simple example of a client that I cannot give the name. But it's a subscription client that sells health product. And they used to have the the classics 10% to give me your email. But we did a lot of surveys for their customers. And they were having a very big issue when when they were buying the first time because they didn't know if the product the supplements they were they were selling were the best ones for them, Right? Because it was a different one for men. It was a different one for women because they have different metabolism, metabolism, metabolism. It's a hard work. Yeah. So people were not sure, you know, if it's fits. So now with the whole sign up, um We are I mean we told them to say to to ask people like uh you know, do you want to buy what's right for you? And then they say yes and then they go, you know, they give their email, it's just like a quiz. A five questions. Are you a man or a woman?

[0:29:00] George Reid: You

[0:29:01] Juliana Jackson: know like do you suffer from any disease? And I don't remember exactly that this is

[0:29:07] George Reid: a

[0:29:08] Juliana Jackson: so I don't want to like if I tell you everything but you know what I mean? Yeah I'm not allowed to talk about this client. So but it's basically like this if you you have to be creative like a lot of people ask the right question. I look at Pete wiper. So Peter piper is my favorite e commerce brand period. They sell some sunglasses. There is saying if you go on the website on their website is like a you know what click their website right now.

[0:29:35] George Reid: I love being I'm fully aware with them.

[0:29:37] Juliana Jackson: Yeah like those guys know how to ask you for data. Like I will give them my my social security number if they ask it. I was like you know what? Fuck it take it. I trust you bro. Like that's the thing. But they found out who's their audience. They found out who's buying their products and who is responding to what they have to offer, right? So if you find out from your customers, you know what the, why are they buying from you? What are they expecting? What progress they're trying to make in their lives. Then whatever you do via email, via ads via website we are sign ups is going to improve. But you have to ask the right questions and you have to create space in people's heads to ask questions as well, if that makes sense.

[0:30:18] George Reid: Yeah it kind of butters up the whole process really makes it run a lot smoother.

[0:30:23] Juliana Jackson: Yeah man. Like it comes down to fucking talk to your customers,

[0:30:28] George Reid: not just after you've made that purchase with aggressive follow up emails doing, doing so beforehand. Um Juliana has been a wonderful 30 minutes much longer than I thought it was gonna be. But I know I'm going to go away and certainly think about high collect emails from, from people looking to join my list. It's definitely on my things to do today now. Thanks a lot for your time. I appreciate that and Concerning about IOS 15 but still good to know how to react.

[0:31:00] Juliana Jackson: You shouldn't be man, if you have clean data, if you focus on the right mix of qualitative and quantitative, you'll be fine. Like people just only the basic shit, People have to be worried. You're not basically, you

[0:31:15] George Reid: don't know what my back ends like. But yeah, I'll take the compliment.

[0:31:17] Juliana Jackson: I'll survive thinking that you and thank you for having me

[0:31:23] George Reid: Hey guys, just a quick one. If you are enjoying the podcast, I either have some actionable next steps or new ideas. I'd really appreciate. If you could one subscribe to the show and leave us a review. These are really, really important to us, as you probably know, being in the amazon world and two. If you're looking for additional support with your brand, head over to the website, it's always day one dot co dot UK where we've got links to other resources as often our guys speak soon.