welcome to the e-commerce playbook
brought to you by IWD agency where we
share tools tips and tactics from
industry leading experts to help you
take your e-commerce game to the next
level now here's your host Joe McFerrin
all right welcome back to the e-commerce
playbook
my name is Joe McFerrin I'm with IWT
agency I'm here with Bradley he's the
director of marketing WD agency we're
here to talk about some marketing today
some some email marketing we hear from a
lot of our customers that come to us say
hey you know I'm trying to figure out
email marketing and it's just not
working for me I don't think it's a
maybe it's something that used to work
in the past but it's not working anymore
or it just doesn't seem to have a good
conversion right what are your takes on
that yeah we do hear it all the time
people come to us with various marketing
channels that they're frustrated with
one of those being email marketing and
they'll say you know we send out emails
but no one clicks on them yeah we send
out emails and people click on them but
they don't turn into sales so you can
and therefore email marketing doesn't
work for us right yeah and so then my
follow-up question is always well how
are you segmenting your list are you
segmenting for lifetime value or
customer recency or the types of
products right you know been Brian and
you know not surprisingly a lot of times
I hear no we're not doing that yeah okay
well the problem isn't that email
marketing isn't working for you is it
you are working for you know marketing
they're blasting of the same message to
the full audience and not personalizing
it at all absolutely so you know you
want to send the right email at the
right time to the right people and
that's kind of the formula that makes
pretty much any kind of marketing work
you know whether you're targeting ads or
you're targeting emails you want to make
sure that it's hitting the right people
with the right message and you know
another thing that people often overlook
in terms of email marketing is beyond
segmentation retargeting and remarketing
with emails so you know we often
implement abandoned cart sequences and
if
that is you know abandon card sequences
or email sequences designed to reengage
people who have added a product to their
cart but never you know went through
with the transaction yeah
and it's one of the easiest conversion
rate hacks out there absolutely
low-hanging fruit is that you know so
any time when IWD agency is working with
the marketing client we like to go you
know we try to attack those low-hanging
fruits first right and sure something
like email marketing with abandoned cart
sequences as a no-brainer it's easier
ROI absolutely people have already
expressed that interest in that product
and there's lots of reasons why people
might may not follow through after they
add something to the cart all right it
could just not be the right time maybe
they're busy yeah maybe they got
distracted maybe the absolutely dollar
came and jumped in their lap or so ya
know it's funny is one of my best
remarketing ads that I've ever run in
terms of ROI is just the headline it's
just the life get in the way
I sure distracted something yeah and
people you know it really resonates
that's exactly what happens exactly you
know yeah I do still want to buy it and
thank you for reminding me exactly yeah
so in a lot of people you know they just
don't want to go through the steps
necessary on a mobile device to complete
a purchase I sure you know one of the
great things with abandoned cart emails
which also can be extend to other forms
of retargeting for display ads or
whatever is that you know we can do
cross device retargeting so if you were
on your mobile device when you added
something to the cart well now we're
gonna send you an email while you're at
work on your computer and now you can
convert there right so perfect
yeah with email marketing there's so
many great tools out there that people
can use to make these automated things
you know easy to set up sure easy to
implement it doesn't take a lot of time
but it needs to be done well and needs
to be done right yeah and you know do
things for proper email marketing it
seems like out-of-the-box mississippi
magento shopify bigcommerce they they
they have some basic email marketing
function built into them but as far as
going to the next step and really
segmenting the audience and really
having some more powerful tools do you
recommend
getting a third-party app or something
like that yeah absolutely and this could
be dependent on the client you know so
some of our larger clients are on more
marketing automation software and
Salesforce cloud and that kind of stuff
that may make sense for them but in
general I'm super impressed with Clay vo
it's a email marketing platform that
makes segmentation super-easy they do
great things with abandoned cart
sequences so it's a very kind of wisi
wig editor that you can drag and drop
things into place and in sequences
another cool thing that they do is
abandon browse emails so this is someone
that was literally just on your site
browsing never actually added a product
to the cart
I mean engage those people that's what I
call super power and so Colicchio has a
lot of features built just for
e-commerce absolutely I mean they're
ecommerce focused they have integrations
with Shopify Magento big commerce and
actually I just got an email before this
conversation today that they just
released a SMS feature for a text
message are you engaged really nice yeah
cool there are other tools that you
recommended outside of clavia yeah I
mean you can still do a lot with
MailChimp yeah you know if you do it
right MailChimp has some good automated
automation built into it they're really
good about list management and and you
know audience management but it all goes
back to the idea of segmentation like
you have to make sure that you're
separating your audiences correctly and
you think of it as a more kind of
holistic approach so you know you have
your promo emails you have your
re-engagement emails you have your
newsletter whatever that may be and they
have to all work together in an
integrated strategy and then of course
email is just one part of the bigger
whole of digital marketing yeah should
also be an integrated strategy because
if you're reading gauging people with
these emails for abandoned cart and
you're sending them to a website with a
poor user experience or a poor user
interface then you're kind of shooting
yourself in the foot because you might
have a great email marketing campaign
but you need to work on your conversion
rate optimization sure right exactly
yeah if your websites not converting
emails are not gonna help you sir
absolutely and so as far as you know
outside of abandoned cart type emails
what artists do you know like
anniversary emails or major holidays
what type of other
segmentation emails ah do you typically
see sure I'll give you a great example
recently I was talking with a client of
ours you don't know who I'm talking
about I won't list them by name yeah but
they do auto parts mm-hmm and one of
their biggest businesses is new tires
and so this is kind of an interesting
concept it's like they have a pretty
general idea of a time frame after
someone purchased as a set of tires from
their website when they may need a
rotation sure when they may need a new
set of tires right it's usually like
five or six years after right you know
hopefully you're a rotating tack so it's
a way to yeah but yeah I mean so that's
a great example even though it's a long
time frame of being able to kind of like
set up automation in advance like in
advance of knowing when people arrive I
need to really up on whatever product it
is exactly right so once again so you're
not just blasting everybody but you're
looking at the previous order and you're
saying okay in three to six months
they're gonna need a tire rotation yeah
let's go ahead and remind them or
absolutely I'm sure you know tires
probably the tread probably gets less
phone number and they need to have a new
tire replacement you know every couple
years and say you got that in your
database as well absolutely and then you
know we had another client that we were
talking to recently that does wine
subscriptions and you know they know
they have a pretty good idea when people
are gonna run out of the wine that they
bought last time but yeah I like wine
I'm gonna keep ordering right it's about
hitting those people at the right time
if you drink a bottle a day and you
bought up in a case of 12 you're gonna
run out 12 days this works pretty yeah
yeah so yeah you know I think smart
marketing is what it's all about and you
know hitting people with that right
message at the right time
makes your email work yeah and and you
know what when you do it that way it
doesn't feel intrusive to the person you
know people I think a lot of time people
are hesitant to do email marketing
because they're like I don't want to
spam my customers Yeah right now a lot
of people say it as spam but if you're
if if your customers love your brand and
they want your product and they don't
necessarily see it as spam absolutely
right so you know if you can keep them
happy with the brand keep them engaged
then email marketing can work for I
haven't met a client yet that it can't
work for it but yeah right right
especially if they're not doing any of
it they're not doing anniversary
reminders they're not doing the
abandoned cart reminders they're not
doing any kind of email marketing then
it's such like he says to be such easy
low-hanging fruit to get a decent ROI
off the bat it's great yeah but then to
keep continue to optimize it as good as
well so that's actually a really good
point so you know setting it up is one
thing looking at the results hopefully
you're looking at your analytics and and
making data-driven decisions as you go
forward because it's never a set it and
forget it thing yeah you know right even
if you see good traction well a lot of
these tools like clavia have really neat
features where if someone has not opened
the email then you can send it again or
if they have opened it you send them a
different message or you test different
headlines or what are some other like
features that you've seen it or really
you know I've been working for you yeah
I'm glad you brought that up so I like
to use tools like Clay vo and that's one
of the reasons because they have built
an a/b test so the example you gave is
great like if people didn't open it the
first time maybe we'll send them a
different email if people did open it
and they've spent over a thousand
dollars in the lifetime of their
customer relationship with your company
then send them a different email someone
else yeah I mean so you can get really
granular with how you target people yeah
and Morgan either you get the better it
works
yeah and then you know again going back
to what we just said you know then you
back out the data and you say well that
worked in that work so rinse and repeat
right yeah yeah that's awesome
well anyways it I think that's a pretty
good high level of awesome email
marketing techniques and tips any final
notes about the topic I would only say
that you know don't give up if you think
the email marketing isn't working for
you shoot me a message too badly hit hi
WD agency comm off and a healthy yet go
oh Allah
thanks for dying today thanks Joe
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