48: Rethinking Email → How Smart Brands Are Building Loyalty, Not Just Sales

Email marketing doesn’t have to feel like automation overload. 

In this episode of Practical Rebels, Gavin Hewitson, founder of In-box, shares why the future of email is all about genuine connection.

We explore the difference between sales-driven emails and plain-text messages that feel like they’re coming directly from a founder. Gavin explains why small human touches like adding a thoughtful delay to post-purchase emails or sending messages that express gratitude can help you bolster your brand loyalty. 

For service-based businesses, we dig into how to deliver consistent value through education, not just promotions. We also tackle the hype around SMS marketing and uncover how to use it strategically and when you should focus your efforts elsewhere. 

If you’re ready to transform your subscribers into a real community, this episode gives you practical strategies to make email your most personal marketing channel.

Transcript

Introduction to Gavin Hewitson

Speaker 1 0:01

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Practical Rebels. Thank you for tuning in Once again. We have a very special guest with us today. His name is Gavin Hewitson. How are you doing today, gavin? Doing well, man. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be on here. Yeah, thanks for coming back.

Speaker 1 0:17

And for people who missed the first episode with Gavin, gavin is a owner and operator of his own email marketing agency called Inbox, and we collaborate with his team on a lot of our other email engagements with clients. And we bring him on here, obviously because he has all the expertise with email. And that's what we're going to be talking about today Rethinking your email and how a lot of the smarter brands out there are building loyalty through community and not just sales specifically through email. We're going to talk to Gavin about that. So, yeah, man, I'll just dive right in, I'm not going to keep the people waiting. We've been talking about community building in the email, in emails for marketing and in the inbox. Just talk to me a little bit more, just at a 30,000 foot level, about what you mean by that.

Speaker 2 1:04

Yeah, totally so. I mean, here's the thing With email marketing in general. I think a lot of people put an overemphasis on what brand connection actually means and so how we try and lean into what that means from a small business email marketing strategy perspective. It's actually about connecting the people and the founders behind the brand to the audience themselves. Now how we do that is we try and script emails in a way that it feels like it's a one-on-one conversation coming from the founder, and it's going to vary rather the type of conversation you try and have based on the customer journey.

Speaker 2 1:40

So you know, if you think about a classic example, one thing we'd love to do is interlace, you know, a series of plain text emails, especially in the post-purchase sequence, to try and create the connection between the founders.

Speaker 2 1:51

So we write, like a plain text emails that's coming from Jane at XYZ company saying hey, thank you so much for your first, second, third, fourth order, personalizing those in a way that it feels like it's a conversation between, you know, one human being and another. And so I think you know, community is massive, of course, but like really trying to dial in the relationship that the customer feels, even subscriber, that the customer and subscriber feels to the brand that's sending. The email itself is massive and that's usually done through the tone of voice and the way in which those emails are scripted right. I think a lot of people lean into their emails. They say we really focus on X Y Z. You know this means a lot to us and our team. Instead, just write it as if it's coming directly from the individual saying hey, you know, this is Gavin. I run my company this way because I really like to, you know, help you guys out with X Y Z. Just human voice, human language.

Speaker 1 2:48

Yeah, and I think that we've seen that a lot obviously just in content in general, just how the human voice is really like taking like front stage and center stage, rather just because of the, I guess like I hate to say it because it's everyone's talking about but the AI, the station of everything, and how it seems like there is no brand voice anymore and it just kind of gets lost in it. And do you think that people are just, whenever they're getting that more personalized experience inside their email inbox? What do you think that like first touch point looks like and why is that resonating more with people instead of, you know, the clickbait stuff and just kind of that really like super sales driven stuff?

Personalized Post-Purchase Email Sequences

Speaker 2 3:27

Yeah, I mean, listen to your point. Right, with the proliferation of AI and automations and really just the removal of, like, the human being from so much of this marketing stuff, all it does is make, or rather creates, opportunity. On the other end of the other side of things, right, like I've been telling people for ages now, I think human in-person networking events are going to become so much more valuable and you're going to be able to stand out so much more compared to someone's LinkedIn lead generation marketing strategy or anything like that. You know, to your point where you asked, like you know, what does that first touchpoint look like? It's really going to vary according to what the email or the individual subscribing. To your point where you ask, like you know, what does that first touch point look like? It's really going to vary according to what the email or the individual subscribing to your newsletter has done, right? So more often than not, if somebody's like subscribed to email marketing, the first thing they're going to be doing is getting through like a welcome series, and how we try and dial in that human connection is interlacing. You know plain text emails, and I want to make a distinction here Creative and plain text emails are two different types of emails. Plain text emails are emails written as if it's coming directly from me to you, kind of like how we write emails to each other, right? Creative emails are emails that have imagery designed to sell, highlight a product focus. Both of those have like really good value, but we like to replace plain text emails throughout each one of our journeys to once again make it seem like it's coming directly from the founder. You know, hey, it's me, john right Now. Where we interlace those in the welcome series is going to vary according to where they are within that welcome series, but you know we're always trying to interlace at least some plain text elements into the overall flow. That's the first interaction that the customers, or rather subscribers, are going to have Further down the road. It's the customer, right. So that's going to be.

Speaker 2 5:10

In the post-purchase thank you sequence, we always try and trigger an automation off of somebody placing an order and having it delayed by 20 minutes and creating a split based off of how many times they've ordered. First time customers go down one side, second time customers go down another side and we have a 20-minute delay whereby the order confirmation email will automatically come from Shopify. So there'll be no clash within, like an ESP, like Klaviyo, when you send the email. And it also makes it seem a little bit more human because in that email we say hey, thank you so much plain text email from the founder For your first purchase. It means a lot for you to support our small business.

Speaker 2 5:45

If you have any questions, x Y, z. What that does is the 20-minute delay prevents any clash with any other marketing materials or order update information that Shopify is sending, but also makes it seem like it's more of a human written email, because it would make sense for it to take 20 minutes for somebody to write an email like that. And that's where we try and, yes, plain text, but also we're trying to build that connection between founder company and reader.

Speaker 1 6:12

Yeah, like what you said about kind of it would take someone 20 minutes to write an email like that. So even on its face it feels a lot more natural than just getting something that spit out right away as soon as you get it and then it just like it feels as just like someone who gets emails. Obviously we all get emails, but it feels automated.

Speaker 1 6:28

This one it feels like a little bit more organic, right 100, yeah, yeah and do you, do you recommend, like putting I mean, we're talking about plain text emails is there any I'm trying to think about, like the content that actually goes inside that email, right? Is there an opportunity or do you suggest or have any like tips or tricks for anyone listening, for things not to do in that plain text email and maybe things to do Like do you want to offer up content, do you want to offer up a click through or do you just want to say like hey, I'm just here to introduce myself. Hope you, you know. Thanks for supporting.

Speaker 2 7:02

Yeah. So before we send in any email, we need to figure out what like the main, like the intention behind the actual email as a whole is. To figure out what we want to put in. There Sounds obvious, but a lot of people forget that, I think, with these plain text post-purchase emails, what we're doing here is we're not trying to sell, we're, at the very most, trying to start a conversation, which is a reply to the email, right? You know, the key elements that I have in these emails are to express gratitude, offer support and try and start a conversation in that order, right? So, hey, thank you so much. It means a lot. This keeps us going.

Speaker 2 7:37

That kind of copy obviously write it in your own tone of voice, you know. So that's your express gratitude. And then it's the second bit, which is offer support, and that can be something as simple as hey, just reply to this email. That's all you have to do. Just reply to this email and we'll get straight back to you if you have any questions, and then start a conversation. That ties into it, right? Like, hey, thank you so much Once again, any questions? So just having those three elements in the email is really going to help.

Speaker 1 8:03

So would you suggest, I guess, later on down the road, getting into, because I know one thing that we do at Hatchmark we kind of just we've switched up our email strategy recently to just with just our weekly newsletter, nothing automated, to just be kind of like value driven and content focused, and we're not selling at all in any of those newsletters, right, focused, and we're not selling at all in any of those newsletters, right. Is there anything in the automated series that you've talked about so far where you would get into, maybe like what's, like you know, tier one, tier two and tier three look like, or outside of that first touch point?

Service-Based Business Email Strategies

Speaker 2 8:35

Yeah, so the first touch point is going to be triggered off of somebody placing an order. How we typically approach automations is we also have another automation that's triggered off of somebody placing an order. How we typically approach automations is we also have another automation that's triggered off of the order being fulfilled or delivered, depending on what metric you can get into your ESP. So Shopify is typically going to have placed order, shipped order, delivered order, fulfilled order. We'll trigger an automation, typically off of a fulfilled order or delivered order, whereby we're going to create a sequence of emails that is different based off of what the reader has placed an order for. So if you look me up on YouTube, you'll find like information for this where I talk like in depth how I approach the post-purchase thank you flows. But really, what you're doing with these post-purchase thank you flows is you trigger it off of a fulfilled order and then you send people down different paths based off of either the collection or the item itself they've bought.

Speaker 2 9:28

What you do in each one of those pathways is going to vary according to the type of item. For example, we're working with a company that's a furniture store, so, depending on what collection they buy in, we both provide education on how to install and set up their actual products that they've bought, because we can see, by using trigger splits what item was bought when, and then we know exactly what items we want to cross-sell based off of that purchase, because if somebody's bought like a sofa, for example, the likelihood of them wanting to buy another sofa is incredibly low. So what we're able to do there is create a curated path based off of that purchase that we can then cross-sell tables, lamps, anything like that that allows us to really just automate the upselling and cross-selling process. That is really where retention comes down. So you're both educating, you're showing that gratitude like thank you so much, and you're cross-selling based off of the initial purchase.

Speaker 1 10:26

Yeah, I like that and so far, you know, that's obviously like. What we've been talking about so far is just based, I would say, like e-commerce focused If there are any like service-based businesses out there or maybe just like because, like I know, like us, you know people don't make purchases on our website, right, they just reach out. Do you have anything? You know people don't make purchases on our website, right, they just reach out. Do you have anything, you know? Does that change the tactic at all? I know it simplifies it at least a little bit on its face, but what would you say to those people who are more, you know, service-based, maybe B2B, and how does that change if they're not going through like Shopify or anything like that?

Speaker 2 10:59

Yeah, totally, I mean. The reality is service-based businesses, for the most part, are going to be somewhat bespoke in terms of what they're selling and how they're selling it and the interaction that the customer has with that service. I personally don't use automations based off of the post-purchase sequence. I also have a newsletter myself, whereby you know what all I'm doing is really just providing value and education, and I'm only sending emails to my engaged database to make sure that we're getting good deliverability Right, so I don't really curate my pathways in the post-purchase sequence.

Speaker 2 11:34

What I do have, though, is curating pathways leading up to the signing of a contract. So you know most of us, if we're in service or high ticket sales, you know we have a CRM that we're building out, which each, you know essentially deal stage in that CRM will have a well deal stage associated with it Pre-call, post-call, second call, third call, so on and so forth. I have automations that are triggered off of the different stages that a client, or rather prospect, lands within that deal stage, but you know, as far as like, what those things do. It's like education pre a call being booked, what to expect after a call has happened, so on and so forth. From a post-purchase perspective? Not really. I mean, our volume is so small for service providers for the most part, and you know high ticket sales we're. You know we'll be closing like 30 deals a month at the most. So I just wrap them into a regular content schedule.

Speaker 1 12:31

Yeah, and I think that's what we've been doing mostly is just in, like what you said, just value add content and just kind of like resist the urge to sell as much as possible and talk about and just kind of just say like, hey, these are free tips and tricks that we picked up and I think I feel like it's really helped with authority to people just start to like, over time, just recognize your business as without lack of a saying in any other way, just people who know what they're talking about right.

Speaker 2 12:58

Yeah, it's like kind of like word association, right, Like if you just put enough content and give enough value, eventually people are going to associate your business with the service that you sell. So I've just tried building myself up to the point where somebody thinks email marketing. They think Gavin Hewitt's inbox, you know, yeah smart SMS.

SMS Marketing Best Practices

Speaker 1 13:14

this is something that, admittedly, we don't use often, but I know it's a big part of this. Talk a little bit about SMS and how people can leverage that as a layer on top of email to send us home.

Speaker 2 13:26

Totally From a B2B or B2C perspective.

Speaker 1 13:29

Well, we can go back to B2C, because that's where we originally started and I think that's where a lot of this content is coming from.

Speaker 2 13:36

Totally so. For B2C, I think SMS 100% is important, but it's overhyped. So I'm going to show some, or rather speak to one of the biggest pitfalls I see when people actually try and include SMS into their marketing strategy, and that comes down to the way in which they capture the SMS subscription. Most of the time when someone subscribes to email marketing, they're doing so through the use of a pop-up, with their place in order at checkout. Most people, when they're designing their pop-ups, do it this way. They'll have offer, ask for the email address and then a second or third step will ask somebody for their SMS subscription. What that does is cause a massive drop-off from the amount of people who complete the forms, complete the sign-up form, which means a massive amount of people never get to the final step of their signup form, which is where you should be displaying the discount code. You want to give people the discount code and the signup form at the very end because that increases your on-site conversions. Most people will say, oh, you know, force them into your email address, or rather into their inbox, to read the discount code. That improves email deliverability, but it does so at the cost of your on-site conversion rates. On-site conversion rates are more important than email deliverability. So what happens is people ask for the signup form, or rather the SMS consent on that second or third step, and it prevents people from seeing that final step with the discount code which lowers your on-site conversion rates. People are prioritizing, in that case, sms sign-up rates for on-site conversion rates Terrible idea. You should be capturing the SMS as a separate pop-up form, okay to the email one, and it should only really be going to people who've subscribed to email marketing already. You're going to see a decrease in the SMS conversion rates, which is going to be expected, but you know you're also going to see a decrease in the SMS conversion rates, which is going to be expected, but you know you're also going to see an increase in your on-site conversion rates as a result.

Speaker 2 15:25

Sms I only like to use it for three different types of messages Sale, product release and product restock. It's the only time I like to use SMS market. Otherwise it's a little bit overhyped. A lot of people use platforms like Attentive and they think it drives amazing results for them. Forms like attentive and they think it drives amazing results for them, but the reality is, because it's double attributing both email and claiming false revenue because you know somebody opens up an email and then they get an SMS message. Typically, both of those platforms are going to claim the revenue. You know who knows? Right, yeah, but capture it like 100% capture SMS. But I really only recommend using it from a campaign perspective, for sales, product releases and product resales.

Speaker 1 16:04

Yeah, so as far as like, since we've started off this topic with community building, would you say that SMS is not the place to do any community building and to stick to email?

Speaker 2 16:13

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, here's the thing. Right, you have 160 characters for the most part, you know, and it's expensive part. And it's expensive SMS compared to email. In the US it's cheap, but outside of the US SMS gets very expensive. Now you can send SMS messages that are over 160 characters and the likes, but it's just going to double the price of each SMS message that you send. How effective are you going to be at building a connection between the brand and under 160 characters? I don't think that effective. I think just use SMS when it's four, which is like a very transactional piece in the overall customer journey and that's it. Yeah, that's fine.

Speaker 1 16:49

Yeah, so just like long term, what does this look like? I mean, we've been talking about community building, we've talked about providing value, making that connection. What do you see, at least from your perspective, where you're at, what this does for the overall I guess you know lifecycle of a customer and how often they're, you know, willing to come back whenever they feel that strong connection to that brand?

Implementation Tips and Final Thoughts

Speaker 2 17:14

connection to that brand. Yeah, I mean, really, with email and SMS marketing. You're playing with two things. Really, there's going to be a bunch of agencies that kind of disagree with this, and that's because they don't know what they're talking about. I'm right, I know, I'm right, but here's the thing. You're messing with two things. You're messing with subscription to conversion rate how many people go from subscriber to first-time customer and your retention rate. Email and SMS is primarily focused on those two things. Right, a little bit of AOV, a little bit of offer creation, a little bit of LTV, of course, but that ties into the retention rate.

Speaker 2 17:40

Email marketers should be focused on those things. How do I take subscribers and turn them into first-time customers and how do I take existing customers and turn them into repeat customers? Really, what you need to be focusing on the most is making sure that you're treating your customers and non-customers different in every single piece of communication. What do I mean by that? I could talk for hours about this. Check out my YouTube channel, but you know, really, it's going to vary according to. Really, you're just trying to treat people differently based off their purchase behavior. That is as high level as I can get. When you get more granular. It means sending different emails to different people based off those purchase behaviors, sending different offers to different people based off those purchase behaviors. The post-purchase sequence is really a flow that's going to cross-sell up, sell different products based off of what they've bought initially. Every other email outside of that should be educating, building trust, trying to drive sales, but also providing an incentive to get that first purchase across the line to maximize the subscription to conversion rate.

Speaker 1 18:40

Nice, yeah, and to your point, and I think that segues nicely into our kind of like, our closing statement here. This is so granular, right and it is. You know it's hard to say anything, you know, from a 30,000 foot view. And stay there, because it's not that simple, right, and we're trying to oversimplify something that's very complex. But you know, just for the sake of people listening, let's just say someone's playing with email marketing, you know, and they, they have a little newsletter and they have, you know, a little. They put out some content every now and then. It's a little inconsistent. What are your tips for that? That style of person who's just like right now I've just been sending out kind of the standard stuff, I've been trying to get sales through email. What can that person do, you know? Maybe starting next week, that can put them in a better position to start building that trust and building community through their email is this person in b2B or direct-to-consumer?

Speaker 1 19:36

Let's say, this person is local business. So you know, either in service or maybe you know, let's just say both for right now. Yeah.

Speaker 2 19:47

Okay. So for a B2B perspective, I'd recommend putting content out everywhere LinkedIn, twitter, youtube, all that stuff and then driving people to subscribe to your newsletter so that you're getting a fresh stem of traffic rather stream of traffic coming into your list. And then sending out an email once a week at the minimum, where it's just talking about what you're doing with your business as an individual and what you're working on that suits the client. Just educate, educate and talk about yourself. People love that. It's weird you wouldn't think so, but for me, in my newsletter I send out a newsletter twice a week I talk about where I'm traveling to and what I'm working on with email marketing and a strategy. I'm both educating for free, giving value, and I'm also creating a connection.

Speaker 2 20:31

What I'm trying to do with this stuff in general is really, just, like you know, just give as much value and free information and then sell my implementation for a fee. Right, that's B2B information for free, implementation for a fee. Like you can literally learn everything that I do. It's all out on the internet, it's all on Easy, every single strategy I use, right. But you know you're going to spend 40 hours implementing it maybe 100 in some cases or you can just hire me to do it. That's how I position my services and my B2B offers. Now, direct the consumer. Send one email a week, right? Create automations that automate the customer lifecycle. So that includes welcome series, abandonment flows, post-purchase flows, and then retention flows, and then re-engagement automations. Then send your campaigns and then those automations are going to largely take care of most of the work for you.

Speaker 1 21:24

Nice. Well, hey, man, thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with us. And yeah, just go ahead and talk a little bit about your business, where people can find you on YouTube and all that good stuff, if they want to learn a little bit more about email. And because I will say this, and this is just, this is not like you know. I guess it is a plug, but Gavin does a ton of great content. I watch all of it. He really knows what he's talking about. So, yeah, go ahead and shout it out.

Speaker 2 21:49

Yeah, well, thanks man, you gasassing me up over here. Yeah, I mean, hey, I just do email and SMS marketing, whether that be cold or warm, two different types of email marketing. But check me out on LinkedIn, twitter and YouTube. Youtube is probably the best place. I mean I put out like two new videos every single week. Look up Gavin Hewitt, I should pop up there. And yeah, I mean, god, check me out, shoot me a message. I love to chat about email marketing, even if you never want to pay me any money, totally fine, down to chat. But YouTube website, all that good stuff, and yeah, I mean, you'll find me, I'm out there.

Speaker 1 22:23

Yeah, yeah, man. I love the low stakes approach. Man, if you just want to talk, no pressure whatsoever, right? Yes, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. Hey, gavin, thanks again and again. If you guys have any questions about email stuff, reach out to us, reach out to Gavin. You guys know where to find both of us now. So, yeah, with that being said, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to like this, share it with a friend who needs to up their email game and realize that this isn't just something that you're going to get overnight, right? You know what I mean. Like, it takes practice and it takes consistency. That's the thing that I've noticed the most about emails. It's hard to get started and it's hard to be consistent, but it does pay off 100%. So yeah, any parting thoughts, gavin? Or we can go ahead and close it up, man, no.

Speaker 2 23:06

I think you nailed it, dude, and you're totally right, it is a work in progress, right, progress, right. It's never nothing is overnight.

Speaker 1 23:16

It takes a while, but yes, I hear you work in progress. Chip away at it, cool.

Speaker 2 23:18

All right talk to you later, gotcha.