Ep11 How To Use Email Marketing To Discover, Nurture and Convert Clients With Strategic Marketer Bex

Email marketing is often overlooked. 

And yet, it's one of the most powerful forms of marketing that exists (and my favourite). 

If you want to have more passive marketing, create outside of the realms of a 6 second video and sell your service more sustainably, then email marketing is for you. 

In this week's episode we Marketing Strategist Bex, who works with small businesses on their email marketing strategy and design. 

As The Lifecycle Marketing Manager for Kayla Itsines' global women's fitness brand, Sweat (epic, I know!) she has a decade of experience building marketing automations, email campaigns and retention strategies.

Basically, she really knows her stuff and has knowledge you are going to want to hear.  

In this episode, we cover:  

→ where to start with emails and how to cover the basics to ensure you are connecting to the right clients 

→ how to streamline your email strategy with segments and automations that do the heavy lifting for you 

→ how to use emails to grow and nurture your community to be ready to invest in your service

I'd love to hear what you thought of this episode!

Head over to Instagram and let me know:

www.instagram.com/consciouscreatorco_

Transcript

So the customers that are potentially gonna leave you and you need to consider these in all these stages. And that's how you can kind of build your segments out, really. But I was just trying to, like, simplify it from the if you're starting at the beginning. But yeah, you'll be talking to these customers all very differently. So if you've just signed up, for example, you're saying you've signed up to an offer or something on Pinterest. You won't necessarily know the brand or the business, or the person whoever it is you've signed up for.

It is that personalised element. I always call it like opening the loop, so I always start my subject line with something that makes people wanna go. Oh my god, I wanna know what's in this email. And I was wondering if we could speak a little bit on that of, like, what are the kinds of do's and don'ts with the emails? Because it's one thing having all of your workflow set up, and I was super helpful the way you explained it there.

So what works for my brand won't work for your brand? And I never want to say no, absolutely don't do that because I really don't know. Like that's why, as email marketers, we always kind of play a little bit naive. Because humans are fickle at the end of the day, like we change our mind frequently.

We react to things very differently all the time, and we react to different brands differently because we have different kind of respect for them. Like Patagonia built up this whole ethos, right? But then if Coca-Cola tried to do the same thing, we'd be like, wait a sec, we don't believe you. So it's kind of remembering that. So in terms of the do's, I'd basically say, test, test, test again.

Just test on every single email, even if it's something really simple, like a subject line change. Or you've changed the colour of the CTA buttonne. Or you're testing different content, or you're testing a gift versus an image or anything. And I think you can learn a lot from that as well, or the learnings that you find in your emails. You can then take on to performance marketing and your paid advertising. So I think there's a lot of value in that.

Testing is an absolute do. In terms of don't, I would say don't spam people like email's already got a bad reputation of being spammy. And not less is more. Because I don't think you should completely back off. But people don't want to hear everything that you have to say. And I know that sounds so harsh, but I always find there's a constant battle when you're working for a business.

They've got a really important message and you're like, Well, yeah, but only this percentage of people are kind of showing that they care about that message. So, for example, we're going into Black Friday, Black Friday messages. Only certain people have said, Oh yeah, I'm really keen to hear about an offer, so those are the people you should be directing the offer, absolutely.

You can have a little story in a newsletter that's going out to everyone. But you don't have to bombard the people that have said to you, I don't want to hear about offers with offers because they've litreally told you. So I think the don't is frequency in this sense. Like, don't send too many emails and be very observational of what the customer is telling you, and be very aware of the frequency of emails. And the do is just test, test all the time, as much as you can, as much as you want to do. And I think that's what's the beauty in it as well. I think I'm a very curious mind.

So sometimes I'll just be sitting there and I'll be like, Oh, I wonder if that CTA looks good in pink. I wonder if people will like that. And then I test it and it sounds so minimal. But that 1 that could be a make or break for your company. So these 1 actually is so important, and you can create the 1 incremental increases in email. I love that so much.

I'm also really big on testing and I see it as fun as well. And I do think there has to be an element with all marketing, but especially with email. Because you can see not just how many people have unsubscribed, but who has unsubscribed as well. And I was speaking to a client about this the other day. That she was like, I'm really trying not to let it hurt my feelings. And I was like, I know what you mean. Cause I think we've all had that moment where we've clicked on our unsubscribes and gone. Oh, like, you can see, you've lost followers, but like, you get a lot of spam followers on Instagramme.

Like, it doesn't really hit the same as that unsubscribe. And I think I'm really big on taking some of the personalization out of marketing, not within your content. We need more personalization within that, but also seeing it as a business. Like you say, you test and you go, Okay, that didn't work, people didn't like that.

People didn't buy from that. And you almost need to develop that thick skin, I guess, and I don't have a very thick skin, so I do find it really hard. But around, like, we actually are just testing it, we are just trialling an error. We are just seeing what works, seeing what doesn't, not making it mean something. But actually, like you've said, there's so many different things you can do.

Okay, that didn't work, let's try something else. And almost seeing the fun in it. And I love that you can feel your genuine passion for that, like you actually enjoy doing it so much.

I think also it's really important to add there as well that a lot of people forget that they've unsubscribed from you. So please do not take it too to heart. I don't know if I've just built up a thick skin, but I've been working with like databases of like 7 million, so a couple of thousand people unsubscribing is barely a drop in the ocean. And I think you kind of start seeing that as a bit of a perspective as well.

And also just understand that people are receiving so many emails daily, the same as social media. And like, they're just potentially trying to clear up their inbox and they just hit unsubscribe, or they just didn't recognise you. And I think that's where the branding element is super important, just make it so clear and you do this really well.

And I like, you know, it's an email from you, you've got your branding sorted on your email, and you know, it's from you. From first glance, and that's the thing you need to capture Somaeone from first glance. So whether it's like you always have a picture of yourself at the top or something, or you always have your logo at the top, I'd always recommend having something that's like, really recognisable. So if people are engaugeing within your brand, they will see the email and they'll be like, Oh yeah, no, okay, maybe that email didn't hit today and I'm not interested, but I love following this person.

And so I'm not gonna unsubscribe, I know from personal experience, I've unsubscribed from brands just because I haven't instantly recognised it. And then they've said something on social media, like, Oh, sign up to my mailing list to get this offer, and I'm like, Wait a sec. Why don't I have the offer? And then I realised I've unsubscribed, and then I go back and resubscribe just because I kind of didn't realise.