We’ve all been there—an inbox full of unwanted emails that are immediately deleted. To avoid the virtual trashbin, it’s vital to know the fundamentals of effective email marketing.
On today’s episode of Marketing Matters, Morgan and Sarah are discussing the key aspects of email marketing, so you don’t become the very thing you avoid: an annoying marketing email. We learn how to bring value through emails, then test and segment to improve your strategy. Tune in to learn how to make your emails stand out in a crowded inbox and truly connect with your audience.
Highlights:
- What are the pros and cons of increasing your email marketing budget?
- How should a consumer’s attention span affect the design of your emails?
- What are the fundamentals of email marketing?
- How can A/B testing optimize your email campaigns?
- What strategies should you utilize to bring true value to your email recipients?
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00:00:00:20 – 00:00:30:23
Sarah
We’re excited to be bringing you this podcast produced by our company, ATV Marketing. ATV Marketing develops high quality and cost effective marketing materials for a wide range of businesses. Our relationship driven business model and customized marketing solutions makes us the perfect partner for small businesses looking to grow. I’m Sarah, creative director of Marketing. Join me here with the rest of my team on marketing matters every other Monday to discuss business to business marketing topics.
00:00:31:01 – 00:00:50:02
Sarah
Now let’s get into the episode. Hi everyone. Welcome back to Marketing Matters, a podcast where we discuss all things marketing related and how it applies to your business. So I am Sarah for newcomers. This is Morgan. We’re so excited to be. Here we go.
00:00:50:04 – 00:00:51:08
Morgan
Morgan Yes.
00:00:51:10 – 00:00:52:12
Sarah
What are we talking about today?
00:00:52:15 – 00:01:00:17
Morgan
Oh, my gosh, This is another thing that I have a lot of interest and experience in, and that’s email marketing and kind of just the overview of it.
00:01:00:18 – 00:01:02:16
Sarah
Yeah, let’s do it. We have some stats.
00:01:02:17 – 00:01:14:06
Morgan
MM hmm. Okay. So according to HubSpot, 37% of brands are actually increasing their email budget now. So is this a good or a bad thing, Sara?
00:01:14:08 – 00:01:22:04
Sarah
Okay, well, I’ll give my opinion and you can disagree with me, actually, maybe I don’t have the thoughts in general. Lots of.
00:01:22:05 – 00:01:22:20
Morgan
Opinion.
00:01:23:01 – 00:01:34:15
Sarah
I guess so. So first, when I saw that stat that we were going to talk about that, I thought of the fact that they’re increasing budgets, then that means there’s more emails.
00:01:34:16 – 00:01:35:11
Morgan
Mm hmm.
00:01:35:13 – 00:01:57:18
Sarah
I guess theoretically you could have just, like, better emails, but yeah, pretty sure it means more emails. Yeah. Being sent to inboxes and every marketer knows that when you increase noise, it’s harder to stand out from the crowd. That’s actually why that people recommend that you increase marketing the recession because everyone else is decreasing budgets. So you’re more likely find out that that is just marketers perspective on that.
00:01:57:20 – 00:02:10:02
Sarah
But anyway, back to email marketing. So when I saw that, I was like, okay, that means more competition now. So it’s more important that you have a value driven email. Would you agree that or do you think it’s a good thing?
00:02:10:04 – 00:02:33:08
Morgan
I think it’s good and bad, and I can see both sides of it because to me I feel like email marketing is underutilized, which is so surprising because during the work day, think about how long you’re on your email because you’re constantly looking at stuff. But at the same time, I don’t like when I get a whole bunch of spam emails that I’m trying to do my job and I’m trying to figure out like what you sent me and I have to go through all this clutter.
00:02:33:10 – 00:02:38:05
Morgan
But I don’t know if you’re sending out good emails. I’m okay with it.
00:02:38:07 – 00:02:45:20
Sarah
I know. I mean, we’ll talk about what we like about emails, but I mean, I do rebrand and email some more.
00:02:45:21 – 00:02:51:20
Morgan
Yeah. I don’t know a single person that doesn’t read a branded email and just like, isn’t subscribe to something.
00:02:51:21 – 00:03:07:13
Sarah
Yeah. And I mean, I have joined subscription list actually. I join a lot of things for my job now, so maybe there is that now. Yeah, you know my own habits. But honestly it kind of also depends like what your industry is.
00:03:07:13 – 00:03:16:22
Morgan
Yeah, industry and your interest in general. Like if you’re just working your job to work your job and you really don’t care about the industry you’re in, then you’re not going to subscribe to as many.
00:03:17:03 – 00:03:20:22
Sarah
Yeah, that’s true. Okay. So that’s a that’s hot takes.
00:03:21:03 – 00:03:39:09
Morgan
Yeah. This got deep real quick. Oh, the next one comes from HubSpot as well. And that’s actually Statista. Yeah. Okay. HubSpot and Statista. I’m sorry. And it’s just that consumers spend on average 10 seconds reading brand of emails.
00:03:39:14 – 00:04:04:05
Sarah
Yeah, I like this one. It’s very similar to like just marketing in general. Like you only have seconds, maybe milliseconds, maybe just like a glance to really make an impact, which is why, oh my gosh, talk about hot takes. This is like it’s it’s a steamy one. So when you’re creating collateral for like a conference, first of all, lots of things are happening at conferences.
00:04:04:05 – 00:04:19:23
Sarah
Some people are usually like picking up business cards, you know, salespeople usually have it in their hands for when, like, someone starts firing back here, remember me? Take this thing so that if you see it later on, maybe you’ll call me. They’re going to do all those. Have a lot of words on them.
00:04:20:01 – 00:04:20:11
Morgan
Mm hmm.
00:04:20:16 – 00:04:37:09
Sarah
I as a marketer, we know that not everyone sits down and is like, Let me read my brochures now. Yeah. No one no one is going to spend that amount of time. And this goes back to like my favorite saying where consumers are lazy, selfish, and that’s the last one.
00:04:37:11 – 00:04:38:07
Morgan
Oh.
00:04:38:09 – 00:04:49:01
Sarah
Some of them are lazy and selfish. Well, that’s just important part. Yeah. They are not going to take the time to read it and they’re going to only look for things that pertain to them. Yeah. So I.
00:04:49:01 – 00:05:03:00
Morgan
Mean, when I get a newsletter, even if it’s company I love, I skim it. I don’t sit there, I don’t read all the blurbs, I skim it and I go and like, I’m like, What in this email do I need to know? Is an article, is it a discount?
00:05:03:02 – 00:05:20:06
Sarah
Yeah, but also you can’t just send an email with five bullet points. Yeah. Know, we’ll get into that. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could. If you really want to stand out, it’d be kind of the equivalent of like that one Super Bowl. I would just pick you our code. Yeah. You just sent five bullets here, you know?
00:05:20:08 – 00:05:22:12
Sarah
That’s it. Yeah, I was.
00:05:22:14 – 00:05:27:00
Morgan
Yeah. I don’t know. We should try it out.
00:05:27:01 – 00:05:29:14
Sarah
Me with that? Yeah.
00:05:29:16 – 00:05:43:04
Morgan
Okay, then. Our last stat is from constant contact, and I guess it kind of goes hand-in-hand with the increasingly email budget because email has a $36 ROIC for every dollar spent.
00:05:43:05 – 00:06:06:21
Sarah
Which is really high. If you’re thinking about like typical channels or typical industry benchmarks, I will say that is very likely to be stat which B2B is hard, it’s hard to measure. So usually we moving on B2C stats a little bit, but email by far definitely has a really impressive ROI when comparing to other channels. Yeah. So I mean is there.
00:06:06:21 – 00:06:30:14
Sarah
But okay, so we gave you all these stats and every like so most platforms talk about the value of email. Everyone has email, everyone checks their email about blah, blah, blah, ubiquitous, right? And that’s great for a channel. However, one of the biggest things that we hear from clients in the industries that we serve is that the number one thing they do not want to do is email.
00:06:30:20 – 00:06:45:23
Sarah
Like that is like point blank. We are just not a company that will email our customers things about us, which I get in many respects. But this episode is kind of like maybe there’s another option. Yeah. Like you don’t have to be annoying. Yeah.
00:06:46:01 – 00:06:56:05
Morgan
I feel like there’s a lot of the parts of marketing that get that kind of connotation with it. Like it’s too much, it’s annoying, but it’s all about leveraging it the right way.
00:06:56:06 – 00:07:00:06
Sarah
Yeah, In the right time. Yeah.
00:07:00:08 – 00:07:17:09
Morgan
Yeah. And so that kind of goes into our next segment and the fundamentals of email marketing and kind of building that out and what it should look like. Yeah. So subject line, I feel like that’s the first thing and that’s also the thing that a lot of people get stumped by is like, how do I summarize this and make it catchy, make it appealing and just drive clicks?
00:07:17:12 – 00:07:44:18
Sarah
Yes, I would say that there’s certain tricks you can do with subject lines that tend to be like, you’ll probably get higher open rates with if you do this. But I’m going to caveat that and say, like I have tested various techniques like this and it doesn’t always work. So you really have to know your audience and you have to know what they would want to see and what they would want to open.
00:07:44:20 – 00:08:06:19
Sarah
So an example is usually an industry best practice is to ask questions because punctuation, just as you can see, your behavior draws more attention, sort like there’s a punctuation mark that stands out from the ground. You’re going to get like walked in on that. However, when I have AB testing subject lines that were either questions or statements, the statements did better just for the client.
00:08:06:20 – 00:08:26:20
Sarah
Yeah, just for that one email. But like that’s what I saw and that’s how you optimize the email. And so I didn’t question that because if that’s what the data is, yeah, yeah. So it doesn’t always work out. But question marks when typically Bill recommends emojis lines, which we have thoughts on.
00:08:26:21 – 00:08:27:21
Morgan
Yeah.
00:08:27:23 – 00:08:29:23
Sarah
And then no capital capitalism.
00:08:30:02 – 00:08:30:17
Morgan
Really.
00:08:30:17 – 00:08:36:18
Sarah
Yeah. It’s very spammy. Yeah. You have to use your subject line in a way that proves that you are human and a spammer.
00:08:36:20 – 00:08:41:13
Morgan
Like, but like all caps. Yes. Okay. Because I use like title case title pieces.
00:08:41:15 – 00:08:46:21
Sarah
Okay. Is immediately spammy. Actually, you might not even make it into the inbox if you use all caps.
00:08:47:03 – 00:08:57:23
Morgan
Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah. Okay. So then you got your subject line. We’re going to kind of skip till you’ve already made the email, but what is your audience that you’re making this email for?
00:08:58:00 – 00:09:24:07
Sarah
Yes. Okay. So this one, this one’s big because when you do research on effective emails, one of the biggest recommendations that you’ll find is you have to segment based on your audience, which means that you’re tailoring each email to your audience. And it’s not necessarily about quantity of people receiving the emails, but more about the quality that you’re putting out and giving to them, making sure it’s right for them.
00:09:24:09 – 00:09:48:08
Sarah
So here’s here’s what I would say. If you have an audience of like 3000 people, it might sound great, like you have 3000 emails who get your email or 3000 addresses that will get your email that might feel like a baby metric can make you feel really good. But if you can send five really high value emails to 200 people each earning note that.
00:09:48:10 – 00:09:52:10
Morgan
No.
00:09:52:12 – 00:10:02:06
Sarah
If you send that out, that could give you way more return and you send it out to a smaller portion of people. Yeah, the right thing, if that makes sense.
00:10:02:08 – 00:10:13:18
Morgan
But so how do you combat it? Because we work with a lot of small businesses. They may not have thousands of contacts. They may only have 100. Do you still segment it then, or do you just send it to the 100 if you can?
00:10:13:18 – 00:10:33:00
Sarah
Yes, but also I wouldn’t necessarily view smaller email audiences as bad. Like honestly, even especially if you got them to sign up and it’s 100 people who signed up that is so much, so much worthwhile than 3000. Yeah. You got off of some conference list or something.
00:10:33:02 – 00:10:52:23
Morgan
Yeah. Or even like obviously if they’re in your contact list already, you do have a right to send them the email. But any of the email platforms like MailChimp Constant Contacts and in Blue, they’re going to favor sign ups more than you putting in your emails because once again, it seems spammy to just import 500 contacts or you’re going to email.
00:10:53:05 – 00:11:01:02
Morgan
So if you like also are posting like, Hey, sign up for our newsletter on LinkedIn, have a place on your website that’s going to help with your audience too.
00:11:01:08 – 00:11:37:09
Sarah
And you will get blacklisted if you do not adhere to the best practices of protecting people’s data. So if you just download 5000 email addresses, do not clean them at all and then send them an unwanted email, your domain will get flagged. And it is so difficult to get your domain online. Yes, just from the beginning. Make sure that you are sending emails to people who want the emails in that value them and then making sure you are not spammy, like you’re not do not have all the best practices in place to protect yourself.
00:11:37:13 – 00:11:49:11
Morgan
Yeah, and got with the segmenting thing. When you’re doing the sign ups and all that, you can have them check like I want to receive these kind of updates and that’s already segmenting it for you because you know what they’re interested in. Yes.
00:11:49:13 – 00:11:54:18
Sarah
That is a big plus of having like the right contact form and the right information.
00:11:54:20 – 00:11:58:18
Morgan
Yeah. So when should they sent these emails? Okay.
00:11:58:19 – 00:12:17:12
Sarah
So when’s a big question because it’s not just like when in the year or how often. Yeah. So like what time of day. What day What day of the week is this. And we’ll give you our recommendations in our best practices. But in terms of how often and when to send it in the year, there’s a lot of different methods.
00:12:17:13 – 00:12:19:21
Sarah
MORGAN When do you like to send them?
00:12:19:23 – 00:12:39:21
Morgan
I love a quarterly newsletter. I think it’s frequent enough that people it reminds them that you’re around. Obviously, you have time to get the content for the email, so you’re not constantly having to find something new every week and you can actually like use content. You’ve already posted a few months ago and like reuse it and get it re promoted.
00:12:39:21 – 00:12:50:05
Morgan
So that’s always a bonus. So I think it’s a good frequency. If I could do quarterly for whatever reason that I would say at least every two months would be my minimum.
00:12:50:09 – 00:13:09:23
Sarah
Yeah, I so I have done quarterly before. Sometimes I’ve done like bouts of monthly. Monthly seems like a lot. Yeah. You never want to annoy the people you’re marketing to. I feel like I always say that and like, that’s really important that you’re not people. Like we we become marketers too.
00:13:10:00 – 00:13:16:13
Morgan
Well, if you send like a weekly email and it gets really too much for that person, they’re just going to hit unsubscribe.
00:13:16:15 – 00:13:42:23
Sarah
Yes. Or like constantly delete. And if they constantly delete or even worse, marketing spam, then that’s definitely going to work. Like blacklist your domain and that’s very bad. So you do not want to annoy people. So keep that in mind. But I’ve done quarterly about two monthly. But recently my favorite is to actually coordinate around industry events because to me industry events are kind of like hotspots of conversation.
00:13:43:00 – 00:14:08:08
Sarah
If you’re looking like, like a calendar, like that’s when conversations are going on. And if it’s a big enough industry that it’s actually guiding the conversation in the industry as a whole. Mm hmm. So you can take advantage of that. So like, for example, if there’s like a hydrogen event in energy, then for a while a lot of LinkedIn is going to be about hydrogen and it’s going to be like out research papers and stuff like that because a lot of industry players are going to that event.
00:14:08:10 – 00:14:30:03
Sarah
If you have a well-timed email newsletter about a topic like that and then you have similar interest points that you can incorporate value any material about that topic, that’s the perfect time to send an email and you’re not necessarily arbitrarily assigning. I like quarterly emails for the reasons you already said, but I also like kind of going the industry event.
00:14:30:04 – 00:14:31:16
Sarah
Rounds Yeah, I’m.
00:14:31:18 – 00:14:38:18
Morgan
When you think about it, like even B to C they do it around events. Holidays is a big time to be sending emails. Yeah.
00:14:38:20 – 00:14:44:15
Sarah
That makes sense. Also, if you know, like when budgets are being planned or some, then you know, like it’d be a great time.
00:14:44:15 – 00:14:44:23
Morgan
Yeah.
00:14:45:01 – 00:14:51:13
Sarah
Like here’s how to budget for my product or service and things like that. And then that’s definitely high value out and at the right time.
00:14:51:13 – 00:15:04:12
Morgan
Yeah. Or obviously we’re oil and gas industry, We work with a lot of those clients. If there’s a new regulation that gets passed and you’re like, I can provide the services that’s needed for them to adhere those standards, send out an email.
00:15:04:14 – 00:15:22:00
Sarah
Remind them, and they’re going to be top of mind when they think about how am I going to solve that particular problem. Yeah, so that’s like when in the year to send it. But you also have to answer the question of like what day of the week? And then what time of day? So days of the week. Look, my only hard and fast rule with that is don’t send it on Fridays.
00:15:22:02 – 00:15:24:09
Morgan
No Fridays and I don’t think Mondays.
00:15:24:11 – 00:15:26:03
Sarah
Yeah. Because Mondays everyone’s going to.
00:15:26:04 – 00:15:27:01
Morgan
Yes.
00:15:27:03 – 00:15:32:12
Sarah
All at once and they’re like overwhelmed and just getting caught up like we’ll have 70 emails in.
00:15:32:13 – 00:15:33:02
Morgan
There and yeah.
00:15:33:08 – 00:15:46:00
Sarah
You’re like the last on their list that they’re trying with their way up. So yeah, Fridays and Mondays are no go, but Tuesdays and Thursdays are promising. I tend to sit on Thursdays just case but Tuesdays Thursdays a pretty good.
00:15:46:02 – 00:15:54:08
Morgan
I think the best starts on Tuesdays. Yeah, but it also really depends on your company and what you’re wanting to promote.
00:15:54:08 – 00:16:13:07
Sarah
So now time of day don’t in the afternoon because everyone’s trying to like wrap up where they got it in emails throughout the day. So it’s not so great. I tend to like sitting there kind of right before a day starts because yeah, kind of at the top and that links will see you. And so I do like 7 to 9.
00:16:13:09 – 00:16:26:06
Morgan
Yeah. You want to catch them before they go in for their meeting. And typically when you get to work you’re kind of chillin for a little bit, getting all your stuff pulled up. So so you can catch. Yeah, that’s a good time frame.
00:16:26:08 – 00:16:43:02
Sarah
Everyone will open your email in like the first two days. So don’t expect like if no one’s opening it the first few days, no one’s going to open. Like you’re not going to have this sort of resurgence. And yeah, like that, you know this didn’t hit no trade in optimize.
00:16:43:04 – 00:16:48:03
Morgan
Yeah definitely test it. Next thing content What should you include in your newsletter?
00:16:48:06 – 00:17:17:19
Sarah
Email it all you already talked about. It’s a great way to repurpose content that you post on other channels and maybe people aren’t on. So we do a lot of LinkedIn content management, but not everyone is on LinkedIn, so they can still see your materials, even if they’re not only doing email to your key client list. And then you can also promote like key called actions like value add things you want people to download or enter their information for.
00:17:17:19 – 00:17:21:21
Sarah
You put that at the top and kind of guide their media consumption that way.
00:17:21:23 – 00:17:41:02
Morgan
Yeah, and something about going back to LinkedIn content. So articles actually have like the lowest in case you’re paid on LinkedIn. Funny enough, even lower than like external links. So I like sharing Resharing articles on newsletters because I’m like not a lot of people probably viewed it on LinkedIn, so let’s get it back out there.
00:17:41:04 – 00:17:46:12
Sarah
So yeah, and then you spend less time writing the article, so why not use it? Yeah.
00:17:46:14 – 00:17:52:21
Morgan
Yeah. None of your content should just be like a one and done. I’m not going to touch again. Yeah. So use newsletters.
00:17:52:23 – 00:17:54:05
Sarah
Not the most efficient use.
00:17:54:05 – 00:18:03:12
Morgan
Of resources now. Okay. And then lastly, we’ll talk about optimization sports more so specifically the AB testing and the importance of that. Yes.
00:18:03:12 – 00:18:27:12
Sarah
So HIV testing for those who don’t know is literally comparing version 82, version B and C, which one does better so that you can optimize the final product. And email’s great for this obsession was basically like the need for email. And then it also used a little bit on websites. It’s really hard to do on social media, especially your gaining channels Page You can for sure you like paid ads, definitely, but you test those.
00:18:27:14 – 00:18:58:10
Sarah
But organics real hard because you like post one thing you can’t necessarily control organic, but emails are a great avenue to test it, optimize certain content, and when you want to email any testing, you can kind of incorporate into other channels too, because it can give you a sense of what your audience is looking for. So you can test subject lines times of day, how you put links in, how you format titles, whether or not you use images.
00:18:58:12 – 00:19:03:14
Sarah
And honestly, it takes the guesswork out of like what you might look like. You can try different things.
00:19:03:16 – 00:19:20:13
Morgan
Yeah, and I would say with that, really it’s going to take probably at least two or three emails to start establishing trends. So don’t just like so not wanting be like this worked perfectly. Let me do this all the time like a B test and send multiple emails and then draw conclusions.
00:19:20:14 – 00:19:44:07
Sarah
Yeah, it’s honestly all about iterating and perfecting with AB testing. You’re never going to just come up with the perfect email. The first draft easy testing is what allows you to make sure that what you’re putting out is the optimized version of what you want to send. So that is great to know and great to incorporate. It’s also very easy to do because all you have to do is randomly assign a little subset to either A or B.
00:19:44:12 – 00:19:52:12
Sarah
You don’t necessarily have to have a fancy program to do it. You can just literally manually send a in many ways and B to your minimum selected to folks and then compare the results.
00:19:52:12 – 00:20:03:05
Morgan
Yeah, it’s easy to do. And a lot of the mass email platforms like MailChimp send in blue, they have a B testing built into them too, if you pay for that plan. So it can even get simpler. Yeah.
00:20:03:07 – 00:20:05:07
Sarah
100%. Really? No reason not to.
00:20:05:09 – 00:20:36:07
Morgan
Yeah. Yeah. If you can. Abby does you need to be. Yes. Cool. Yeah. So next your move into how to avoid becoming what you hate when you think about email marketing. Right after the short little break.
00:20:36:09 – 00:20:59:09
Sarah
Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back from your break. I help you with enjoyable. I don’t even think it’s that long. You know maybe you paused it. Maybe we should go like drink water. Hydrate is so important. But anyway, welcome back. We’re glad you’re here. Ready to talk about how to avoid becoming the worst version of emails and why that’s so important.
00:20:59:11 – 00:21:08:01
Sarah
But first, we have to define what is good and bad is so. MORGAN What are what are your faves when it comes to emails?
00:21:08:03 – 00:21:24:08
Morgan
I love a good email that appeals to scarcity like if it saying like sale ends up midnight or this is going quick, especially when the email like has tracked what I’ve looked at on a website and they’re like only ten left in stock, I’m opening that and like looking at all that stuff.
00:21:24:10 – 00:21:26:04
Sarah
Yeah. So personalization.
00:21:26:06 – 00:21:38:20
Morgan
Yes. Oh yeah. I love when it says like my name and it’s just like, hello. It’s like, Hi, Morgan. It’s her first. Yeah, it makes me feel like I’m actually like getting an email from someone I know. Like.
00:21:38:22 – 00:21:44:12
Sarah
That is a good thing. And it actually is easy to do. On Spirit Mountain, you have that data.
00:21:44:17 – 00:21:45:16
Morgan
What about you? What do you.
00:21:45:16 – 00:22:14:21
Sarah
Like? What do I like? I like newsletters a lot. I do email though I email, I do read those emails. So I like those. I like ones that help me with my job because usually the emails for yeah, stay in the know like news updates are good. I can when they’re shorter I can when they give me like the information in the email and I know that’s not necessarily great for like tracking purposes of some things, but in terms of value add like I just want to know what I need to know.
00:22:15:01 – 00:22:23:08
Morgan
Yeah. And I feel like that goes back to this ability to like, you don’t have to search for all this stuff as it’s laid out right there for you. Yeah.
00:22:23:10 – 00:22:28:09
Sarah
I also like it when they’re like, Here’s a valuable little thing and they give me something.
00:22:28:09 – 00:22:33:04
Morgan
I like that. Yeah. That’s nice. Yeah.
00:22:33:06 – 00:22:38:20
Sarah
Mm. They think you feel like that. What about things we hate? Like what can you not stand?
00:22:38:20 – 00:22:58:11
Morgan
Reminds? Definitely a hot take because I just hate her teeth like. And I don’t. I know that there’s a place for them. Especially to see emails like emojis are fine. I don’t like when they’re in the subject line. Like that seems like super spammy to me. And like, how did you get an emoji in there? And then if I can see the preview, I don’t like that.
00:22:58:14 – 00:23:12:08
Morgan
Oh, another thing with the preview is I don’t like what it says. Like images cannot be loaded, like has errors with that because I’m like, I know it’s probably on my end because it’s not like optimized for those images, but I’m like, I don’t have to go in and then like, tell it to load all the images just to see it.
00:23:12:08 – 00:23:14:07
Morgan
I’m like, I’m not going to do it. Then it’s not that important.
00:23:14:10 – 00:23:53:22
Sarah
You know, images are complicated or work with emails. So here’s another important thing to know about this are new emails that I forgot I should have mentioned. This came to me now. So emails fun fact are notoriously anti weighted in terms of like how they are designed. So a little bit of web design to stick with me at the very beginning of websites in the Dark ages, websites were basically really big tables that were like published and that’s how things organized on a website is like they had like the header row and then they had like even if you know, each female a little bit like it says like header and yeah, H-1B issue, that
00:23:53:22 – 00:24:06:10
Sarah
means that like it’s very structured and it was all like a table format. So that all the way website design women’s emails when email started becoming a thing and then never improved.
00:24:06:12 – 00:24:07:12
Morgan
I did not know that.
00:24:07:12 – 00:24:26:14
Sarah
Yeah, that’s shocking. It is old all these email like you can’t even really apply a lot of if you know what this is like cascading style sheets that’s the thing that sells me email. You can’t even really apply that very well on emails. And then when you do, it’s like you always kind of mess up, face up the email.
00:24:26:14 – 00:24:51:08
Sarah
But from the reading it. So designing emails is not for the faint of heart. Usually simple is best and usually text is best. So if you don’t have enough text on an email and you have more pictures than text, you’re going to be able to stand because that those pictures have to be downloaded and things have to be downloaded on an email, then you’re at risk from viruses and it’s all about things.
00:24:51:10 – 00:25:17:06
Sarah
So don’t be don’t be mistaken for phishing email. That’s right. Yeah. But so text is good. Making sure your images are labeled your subject line makes sense. Your domain is verified. All the good things make sure. But emails are real hard to style, so don’t go to they’re real bad. And what might show up great on Gmail? It’s going to show terrible on Outlook.
00:25:17:06 – 00:25:20:01
Morgan
Yeah, they’re all different.
00:25:20:03 – 00:25:24:20
Sarah
And we got such a nice hand. Okay, now is the back. Is there anything you.
00:25:24:20 – 00:25:29:17
Morgan
Hate about emails besides that?
00:25:29:19 – 00:25:34:10
Sarah
I hate I hate getting multiple emails from the same company in the same day.
00:25:34:14 – 00:25:36:05
Morgan
Oh yeah. Or even the same week.
00:25:36:07 – 00:25:53:14
Sarah
Honestly, like, I don’t want to keep having to delete it off and I want to know when your sales are. That’s why I subscribe. Okay, obviously I’m talking about B2C here, but when I was going to like my fashion outlet, I want to know when the sales are and I want to know about your new line. Yeah, like, that’s not what I’m here for.
00:25:53:16 – 00:25:57:18
Sarah
Now, I definitely don’t know about, like the fourth, the new T-shirt you have.
00:25:57:20 – 00:26:08:18
Morgan
Yes. I think that’s like where I subscribe to a lot of B to C emails, too. It’s because it’s like, sign up for E now and get 10% off. And I’m like, I love a good deal incentive for you. Most ladies don’t subscribe, so.
00:26:08:18 – 00:26:16:22
Sarah
That’s also a good way to promote email subscriptions for me to be like, don’t take 10% off, don’t be like get a free download or freeway.
00:26:17:00 – 00:26:20:14
Morgan
Or a free audit or something like that.
00:26:20:16 – 00:26:36:17
Sarah
Something. Yeah, something that’s valuable to them. Yeah. Give them something change. Okay. So now that we’re talking about value and talking about how to integrate that for our B2B audiences, what do we typically do? We Are you talking about repurposing content from the beginning? Friend for value?
00:26:36:21 – 00:26:52:15
Morgan
Yeah. What else? You can find industry articles and put those in your emails. It’s kind of I think of it. So a big thing with sales is obviously also giving them get something like Hey, I saw this book or this article that I think you’d be interested in. And that’s to me what an email newsletter should be doing is like, Hey, I saw this.
00:26:52:15 – 00:26:58:17
Morgan
I think you’d have a lot of interest in it. It’s not necessarily my company, but I think it still has value. Yeah.
00:26:58:19 – 00:27:23:06
Sarah
Agree. Also, make sure that you’re writing to your audience, not to you. We all understand how great your brand is, but definitely does not care. Yeah. So make sure that you’re talking about how great they are, how to solve their issues. And like we already talked about testing and segmenting. Yes. Make sure they’re great and making sure that you’re sending things to people that really want them and that won’t just delete it.
00:27:23:08 – 00:27:23:17
Sarah
Yeah.
00:27:23:22 – 00:27:30:04
Morgan
And always have that unsubscribe option because if they can’t unsubscribe, you’re going to apply to spam.
00:27:30:05 – 00:27:35:11
Sarah
I actually think you like have to. Yeah. Required to have an unsubscribe. Yeah.
00:27:35:13 – 00:27:42:08
Morgan
But I feel like a lot of people hate it. Or like do the fake links like the spam ones they have fake little unsubscribe.
00:27:42:10 – 00:28:03:17
Sarah
You know what? Okay, so I am subscribed to this party. I didn’t even subscribe. It was like force. I signed up for one thing from this hotel team and then I was subscribe to their email list and I literally had to like, call someone to unsubscribe was so annoying. And I’m still subscribed. Oh, I’m like this as a marketer, I hate this.
00:28:03:19 – 00:28:05:05
Sarah
You give me an abandoned email.
00:28:05:05 – 00:28:06:06
Morgan
Yeah, useful.
00:28:06:07 – 00:28:30:10
Sarah
But you’re ruining it for everyone. I’m okay. Well, that was a hefty episode. I want good tips and advice for pretty quick, actionable advice actually on how to get started, making sure that you’re not becoming the spammy emailer that everyone hates. And then our clients, I mean, which we understand, we don’t want to be annoying either. No, that’s the worst.
00:28:30:12 – 00:28:36:02
Sarah
So in conclusion, be sure to subscribe to our podcast. We come out. No, no.
00:28:36:04 – 00:28:36:20
Morgan
Yeah.
00:28:36:22 – 00:28:38:12
Sarah
You can subscribe. Do we even have.
00:28:38:15 – 00:28:41:20
Morgan
We don’t have an email list, but we promise we won’t be spammy.
00:28:41:22 – 00:28:46:02
Sarah
Now, if you want an email, you would actually we would do pretty good. We would.
00:28:46:02 – 00:28:48:17
Morgan
Maybe we’ll have an email list coming.
00:28:48:19 – 00:28:58:19
Sarah
Stay tuned for that episode that started it all. Yeah, but in the meantime, subscribe to this podcast and we’ll see you again when we’ve lost our next episode. Yeah. Bye, guys. Bye.
Sarah
We’re excited to be bringing you this podcast produced by our company, ATV Marketing. ATV Marketing develops high quality and cost effective marketing materials for a wide range of businesses. Our relationship driven business model and customized marketing solutions makes us the perfect partner for small businesses looking to grow. I’m Sarah, creative director of Marketing. Join me here with the rest of my team on marketing matters every other Monday to discuss business to business marketing topics.
00:00:31:01 – 00:00:50:02
Sarah
Now let’s get into the episode. Hi everyone. Welcome back to Marketing Matters, a podcast where we discuss all things marketing related and how it applies to your business. So I am Sarah for newcomers. This is Morgan. We’re so excited to be. Here we go.
00:00:50:04 – 00:00:51:08
Morgan
Morgan Yes.
00:00:51:10 – 00:00:52:12
Sarah
What are we talking about today?
00:00:52:15 – 00:01:00:17
Morgan
Oh, my gosh, This is another thing that I have a lot of interest and experience in, and that’s email marketing and kind of just the overview of it.
00:01:00:18 – 00:01:02:16
Sarah
Yeah, let’s do it. We have some stats.
00:01:02:17 – 00:01:14:06
Morgan
MM hmm. Okay. So according to HubSpot, 37% of brands are actually increasing their email budget now. So is this a good or a bad thing, Sara?
00:01:14:08 – 00:01:22:04
Sarah
Okay, well, I’ll give my opinion and you can disagree with me, actually, maybe I don’t have the thoughts in general. Lots of.
00:01:22:05 – 00:01:22:20
Morgan
Opinion.
00:01:23:01 – 00:01:34:15
Sarah
I guess so. So first, when I saw that stat that we were going to talk about that, I thought of the fact that they’re increasing budgets, then that means there’s more emails.
00:01:34:16 – 00:01:35:11
Morgan
Mm hmm.
00:01:35:13 – 00:01:57:18
Sarah
I guess theoretically you could have just, like, better emails, but yeah, pretty sure it means more emails. Yeah. Being sent to inboxes and every marketer knows that when you increase noise, it’s harder to stand out from the crowd. That’s actually why that people recommend that you increase marketing the recession because everyone else is decreasing budgets. So you’re more likely find out that that is just marketers perspective on that.
00:01:57:20 – 00:02:10:02
Sarah
But anyway, back to email marketing. So when I saw that, I was like, okay, that means more competition now. So it’s more important that you have a value driven email. Would you agree that or do you think it’s a good thing?
00:02:10:04 – 00:02:33:08
Morgan
I think it’s good and bad, and I can see both sides of it because to me I feel like email marketing is underutilized, which is so surprising because during the work day, think about how long you’re on your email because you’re constantly looking at stuff. But at the same time, I don’t like when I get a whole bunch of spam emails that I’m trying to do my job and I’m trying to figure out like what you sent me and I have to go through all this clutter.
00:02:33:10 – 00:02:38:05
Morgan
But I don’t know if you’re sending out good emails. I’m okay with it.
00:02:38:07 – 00:02:45:20
Sarah
I know. I mean, we’ll talk about what we like about emails, but I mean, I do rebrand and email some more.
00:02:45:21 – 00:02:51:20
Morgan
Yeah. I don’t know a single person that doesn’t read a branded email and just like, isn’t subscribe to something.
00:02:51:21 – 00:03:07:13
Sarah
Yeah. And I mean, I have joined subscription list actually. I join a lot of things for my job now, so maybe there is that now. Yeah, you know my own habits. But honestly it kind of also depends like what your industry is.
00:03:07:13 – 00:03:16:22
Morgan
Yeah, industry and your interest in general. Like if you’re just working your job to work your job and you really don’t care about the industry you’re in, then you’re not going to subscribe to as many.
00:03:17:03 – 00:03:20:22
Sarah
Yeah, that’s true. Okay. So that’s a that’s hot takes.
00:03:21:03 – 00:03:39:09
Morgan
Yeah. This got deep real quick. Oh, the next one comes from HubSpot as well. And that’s actually Statista. Yeah. Okay. HubSpot and Statista. I’m sorry. And it’s just that consumers spend on average 10 seconds reading brand of emails.
00:03:39:14 – 00:04:04:05
Sarah
Yeah, I like this one. It’s very similar to like just marketing in general. Like you only have seconds, maybe milliseconds, maybe just like a glance to really make an impact, which is why, oh my gosh, talk about hot takes. This is like it’s it’s a steamy one. So when you’re creating collateral for like a conference, first of all, lots of things are happening at conferences.
00:04:04:05 – 00:04:19:23
Sarah
Some people are usually like picking up business cards, you know, salespeople usually have it in their hands for when, like, someone starts firing back here, remember me? Take this thing so that if you see it later on, maybe you’ll call me. They’re going to do all those. Have a lot of words on them.
00:04:20:01 – 00:04:20:11
Morgan
Mm hmm.
00:04:20:16 – 00:04:37:09
Sarah
I as a marketer, we know that not everyone sits down and is like, Let me read my brochures now. Yeah. No one no one is going to spend that amount of time. And this goes back to like my favorite saying where consumers are lazy, selfish, and that’s the last one.
00:04:37:11 – 00:04:38:07
Morgan
Oh.
00:04:38:09 – 00:04:49:01
Sarah
Some of them are lazy and selfish. Well, that’s just important part. Yeah. They are not going to take the time to read it and they’re going to only look for things that pertain to them. Yeah. So I.
00:04:49:01 – 00:05:03:00
Morgan
Mean, when I get a newsletter, even if it’s company I love, I skim it. I don’t sit there, I don’t read all the blurbs, I skim it and I go and like, I’m like, What in this email do I need to know? Is an article, is it a discount?
00:05:03:02 – 00:05:20:06
Sarah
Yeah, but also you can’t just send an email with five bullet points. Yeah. Know, we’ll get into that. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could. If you really want to stand out, it’d be kind of the equivalent of like that one Super Bowl. I would just pick you our code. Yeah. You just sent five bullets here, you know?
00:05:20:08 – 00:05:22:12
Sarah
That’s it. Yeah, I was.
00:05:22:14 – 00:05:27:00
Morgan
Yeah. I don’t know. We should try it out.
00:05:27:01 – 00:05:29:14
Sarah
Me with that? Yeah.
00:05:29:16 – 00:05:43:04
Morgan
Okay, then. Our last stat is from constant contact, and I guess it kind of goes hand-in-hand with the increasingly email budget because email has a $36 ROIC for every dollar spent.
00:05:43:05 – 00:06:06:21
Sarah
Which is really high. If you’re thinking about like typical channels or typical industry benchmarks, I will say that is very likely to be stat which B2B is hard, it’s hard to measure. So usually we moving on B2C stats a little bit, but email by far definitely has a really impressive ROI when comparing to other channels. Yeah. So I mean is there.
00:06:06:21 – 00:06:30:14
Sarah
But okay, so we gave you all these stats and every like so most platforms talk about the value of email. Everyone has email, everyone checks their email about blah, blah, blah, ubiquitous, right? And that’s great for a channel. However, one of the biggest things that we hear from clients in the industries that we serve is that the number one thing they do not want to do is email.
00:06:30:20 – 00:06:45:23
Sarah
Like that is like point blank. We are just not a company that will email our customers things about us, which I get in many respects. But this episode is kind of like maybe there’s another option. Yeah. Like you don’t have to be annoying. Yeah.
00:06:46:01 – 00:06:56:05
Morgan
I feel like there’s a lot of the parts of marketing that get that kind of connotation with it. Like it’s too much, it’s annoying, but it’s all about leveraging it the right way.
00:06:56:06 – 00:07:00:06
Sarah
Yeah, In the right time. Yeah.
00:07:00:08 – 00:07:17:09
Morgan
Yeah. And so that kind of goes into our next segment and the fundamentals of email marketing and kind of building that out and what it should look like. Yeah. So subject line, I feel like that’s the first thing and that’s also the thing that a lot of people get stumped by is like, how do I summarize this and make it catchy, make it appealing and just drive clicks?
00:07:17:12 – 00:07:44:18
Sarah
Yes, I would say that there’s certain tricks you can do with subject lines that tend to be like, you’ll probably get higher open rates with if you do this. But I’m going to caveat that and say, like I have tested various techniques like this and it doesn’t always work. So you really have to know your audience and you have to know what they would want to see and what they would want to open.
00:07:44:20 – 00:08:06:19
Sarah
So an example is usually an industry best practice is to ask questions because punctuation, just as you can see, your behavior draws more attention, sort like there’s a punctuation mark that stands out from the ground. You’re going to get like walked in on that. However, when I have AB testing subject lines that were either questions or statements, the statements did better just for the client.
00:08:06:20 – 00:08:26:20
Sarah
Yeah, just for that one email. But like that’s what I saw and that’s how you optimize the email. And so I didn’t question that because if that’s what the data is, yeah, yeah. So it doesn’t always work out. But question marks when typically Bill recommends emojis lines, which we have thoughts on.
00:08:26:21 – 00:08:27:21
Morgan
Yeah.
00:08:27:23 – 00:08:29:23
Sarah
And then no capital capitalism.
00:08:30:02 – 00:08:30:17
Morgan
Really.
00:08:30:17 – 00:08:36:18
Sarah
Yeah. It’s very spammy. Yeah. You have to use your subject line in a way that proves that you are human and a spammer.
00:08:36:20 – 00:08:41:13
Morgan
Like, but like all caps. Yes. Okay. Because I use like title case title pieces.
00:08:41:15 – 00:08:46:21
Sarah
Okay. Is immediately spammy. Actually, you might not even make it into the inbox if you use all caps.
00:08:47:03 – 00:08:57:23
Morgan
Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah. Okay. So then you got your subject line. We’re going to kind of skip till you’ve already made the email, but what is your audience that you’re making this email for?
00:08:58:00 – 00:09:24:07
Sarah
Yes. Okay. So this one, this one’s big because when you do research on effective emails, one of the biggest recommendations that you’ll find is you have to segment based on your audience, which means that you’re tailoring each email to your audience. And it’s not necessarily about quantity of people receiving the emails, but more about the quality that you’re putting out and giving to them, making sure it’s right for them.
00:09:24:09 – 00:09:48:08
Sarah
So here’s here’s what I would say. If you have an audience of like 3000 people, it might sound great, like you have 3000 emails who get your email or 3000 addresses that will get your email that might feel like a baby metric can make you feel really good. But if you can send five really high value emails to 200 people each earning note that.
00:09:48:10 – 00:09:52:10
Morgan
No.
00:09:52:12 – 00:10:02:06
Sarah
If you send that out, that could give you way more return and you send it out to a smaller portion of people. Yeah, the right thing, if that makes sense.
00:10:02:08 – 00:10:13:18
Morgan
But so how do you combat it? Because we work with a lot of small businesses. They may not have thousands of contacts. They may only have 100. Do you still segment it then, or do you just send it to the 100 if you can?
00:10:13:18 – 00:10:33:00
Sarah
Yes, but also I wouldn’t necessarily view smaller email audiences as bad. Like honestly, even especially if you got them to sign up and it’s 100 people who signed up that is so much, so much worthwhile than 3000. Yeah. You got off of some conference list or something.
00:10:33:02 – 00:10:52:23
Morgan
Yeah. Or even like obviously if they’re in your contact list already, you do have a right to send them the email. But any of the email platforms like MailChimp Constant Contacts and in Blue, they’re going to favor sign ups more than you putting in your emails because once again, it seems spammy to just import 500 contacts or you’re going to email.
00:10:53:05 – 00:11:01:02
Morgan
So if you like also are posting like, Hey, sign up for our newsletter on LinkedIn, have a place on your website that’s going to help with your audience too.
00:11:01:08 – 00:11:37:09
Sarah
And you will get blacklisted if you do not adhere to the best practices of protecting people’s data. So if you just download 5000 email addresses, do not clean them at all and then send them an unwanted email, your domain will get flagged. And it is so difficult to get your domain online. Yes, just from the beginning. Make sure that you are sending emails to people who want the emails in that value them and then making sure you are not spammy, like you’re not do not have all the best practices in place to protect yourself.
00:11:37:13 – 00:11:49:11
Morgan
Yeah, and got with the segmenting thing. When you’re doing the sign ups and all that, you can have them check like I want to receive these kind of updates and that’s already segmenting it for you because you know what they’re interested in. Yes.
00:11:49:13 – 00:11:54:18
Sarah
That is a big plus of having like the right contact form and the right information.
00:11:54:20 – 00:11:58:18
Morgan
Yeah. So when should they sent these emails? Okay.
00:11:58:19 – 00:12:17:12
Sarah
So when’s a big question because it’s not just like when in the year or how often. Yeah. So like what time of day. What day What day of the week is this. And we’ll give you our recommendations in our best practices. But in terms of how often and when to send it in the year, there’s a lot of different methods.
00:12:17:13 – 00:12:19:21
Sarah
MORGAN When do you like to send them?
00:12:19:23 – 00:12:39:21
Morgan
I love a quarterly newsletter. I think it’s frequent enough that people it reminds them that you’re around. Obviously, you have time to get the content for the email, so you’re not constantly having to find something new every week and you can actually like use content. You’ve already posted a few months ago and like reuse it and get it re promoted.
00:12:39:21 – 00:12:50:05
Morgan
So that’s always a bonus. So I think it’s a good frequency. If I could do quarterly for whatever reason that I would say at least every two months would be my minimum.
00:12:50:09 – 00:13:09:23
Sarah
Yeah, I so I have done quarterly before. Sometimes I’ve done like bouts of monthly. Monthly seems like a lot. Yeah. You never want to annoy the people you’re marketing to. I feel like I always say that and like, that’s really important that you’re not people. Like we we become marketers too.
00:13:10:00 – 00:13:16:13
Morgan
Well, if you send like a weekly email and it gets really too much for that person, they’re just going to hit unsubscribe.
00:13:16:15 – 00:13:42:23
Sarah
Yes. Or like constantly delete. And if they constantly delete or even worse, marketing spam, then that’s definitely going to work. Like blacklist your domain and that’s very bad. So you do not want to annoy people. So keep that in mind. But I’ve done quarterly about two monthly. But recently my favorite is to actually coordinate around industry events because to me industry events are kind of like hotspots of conversation.
00:13:43:00 – 00:14:08:08
Sarah
If you’re looking like, like a calendar, like that’s when conversations are going on. And if it’s a big enough industry that it’s actually guiding the conversation in the industry as a whole. Mm hmm. So you can take advantage of that. So like, for example, if there’s like a hydrogen event in energy, then for a while a lot of LinkedIn is going to be about hydrogen and it’s going to be like out research papers and stuff like that because a lot of industry players are going to that event.
00:14:08:10 – 00:14:30:03
Sarah
If you have a well-timed email newsletter about a topic like that and then you have similar interest points that you can incorporate value any material about that topic, that’s the perfect time to send an email and you’re not necessarily arbitrarily assigning. I like quarterly emails for the reasons you already said, but I also like kind of going the industry event.
00:14:30:04 – 00:14:31:16
Sarah
Rounds Yeah, I’m.
00:14:31:18 – 00:14:38:18
Morgan
When you think about it, like even B to C they do it around events. Holidays is a big time to be sending emails. Yeah.
00:14:38:20 – 00:14:44:15
Sarah
That makes sense. Also, if you know, like when budgets are being planned or some, then you know, like it’d be a great time.
00:14:44:15 – 00:14:44:23
Morgan
Yeah.
00:14:45:01 – 00:14:51:13
Sarah
Like here’s how to budget for my product or service and things like that. And then that’s definitely high value out and at the right time.
00:14:51:13 – 00:15:04:12
Morgan
Yeah. Or obviously we’re oil and gas industry, We work with a lot of those clients. If there’s a new regulation that gets passed and you’re like, I can provide the services that’s needed for them to adhere those standards, send out an email.
00:15:04:14 – 00:15:22:00
Sarah
Remind them, and they’re going to be top of mind when they think about how am I going to solve that particular problem. Yeah, so that’s like when in the year to send it. But you also have to answer the question of like what day of the week? And then what time of day? So days of the week. Look, my only hard and fast rule with that is don’t send it on Fridays.
00:15:22:02 – 00:15:24:09
Morgan
No Fridays and I don’t think Mondays.
00:15:24:11 – 00:15:26:03
Sarah
Yeah. Because Mondays everyone’s going to.
00:15:26:04 – 00:15:27:01
Morgan
Yes.
00:15:27:03 – 00:15:32:12
Sarah
All at once and they’re like overwhelmed and just getting caught up like we’ll have 70 emails in.
00:15:32:13 – 00:15:33:02
Morgan
There and yeah.
00:15:33:08 – 00:15:46:00
Sarah
You’re like the last on their list that they’re trying with their way up. So yeah, Fridays and Mondays are no go, but Tuesdays and Thursdays are promising. I tend to sit on Thursdays just case but Tuesdays Thursdays a pretty good.
00:15:46:02 – 00:15:54:08
Morgan
I think the best starts on Tuesdays. Yeah, but it also really depends on your company and what you’re wanting to promote.
00:15:54:08 – 00:16:13:07
Sarah
So now time of day don’t in the afternoon because everyone’s trying to like wrap up where they got it in emails throughout the day. So it’s not so great. I tend to like sitting there kind of right before a day starts because yeah, kind of at the top and that links will see you. And so I do like 7 to 9.
00:16:13:09 – 00:16:26:06
Morgan
Yeah. You want to catch them before they go in for their meeting. And typically when you get to work you’re kind of chillin for a little bit, getting all your stuff pulled up. So so you can catch. Yeah, that’s a good time frame.
00:16:26:08 – 00:16:43:02
Sarah
Everyone will open your email in like the first two days. So don’t expect like if no one’s opening it the first few days, no one’s going to open. Like you’re not going to have this sort of resurgence. And yeah, like that, you know this didn’t hit no trade in optimize.
00:16:43:04 – 00:16:48:03
Morgan
Yeah definitely test it. Next thing content What should you include in your newsletter?
00:16:48:06 – 00:17:17:19
Sarah
Email it all you already talked about. It’s a great way to repurpose content that you post on other channels and maybe people aren’t on. So we do a lot of LinkedIn content management, but not everyone is on LinkedIn, so they can still see your materials, even if they’re not only doing email to your key client list. And then you can also promote like key called actions like value add things you want people to download or enter their information for.
00:17:17:19 – 00:17:21:21
Sarah
You put that at the top and kind of guide their media consumption that way.
00:17:21:23 – 00:17:41:02
Morgan
Yeah, and something about going back to LinkedIn content. So articles actually have like the lowest in case you’re paid on LinkedIn. Funny enough, even lower than like external links. So I like sharing Resharing articles on newsletters because I’m like not a lot of people probably viewed it on LinkedIn, so let’s get it back out there.
00:17:41:04 – 00:17:46:12
Sarah
So yeah, and then you spend less time writing the article, so why not use it? Yeah.
00:17:46:14 – 00:17:52:21
Morgan
Yeah. None of your content should just be like a one and done. I’m not going to touch again. Yeah. So use newsletters.
00:17:52:23 – 00:17:54:05
Sarah
Not the most efficient use.
00:17:54:05 – 00:18:03:12
Morgan
Of resources now. Okay. And then lastly, we’ll talk about optimization sports more so specifically the AB testing and the importance of that. Yes.
00:18:03:12 – 00:18:27:12
Sarah
So HIV testing for those who don’t know is literally comparing version 82, version B and C, which one does better so that you can optimize the final product. And email’s great for this obsession was basically like the need for email. And then it also used a little bit on websites. It’s really hard to do on social media, especially your gaining channels Page You can for sure you like paid ads, definitely, but you test those.
00:18:27:14 – 00:18:58:10
Sarah
But organics real hard because you like post one thing you can’t necessarily control organic, but emails are a great avenue to test it, optimize certain content, and when you want to email any testing, you can kind of incorporate into other channels too, because it can give you a sense of what your audience is looking for. So you can test subject lines times of day, how you put links in, how you format titles, whether or not you use images.
00:18:58:12 – 00:19:03:14
Sarah
And honestly, it takes the guesswork out of like what you might look like. You can try different things.
00:19:03:16 – 00:19:20:13
Morgan
Yeah, and I would say with that, really it’s going to take probably at least two or three emails to start establishing trends. So don’t just like so not wanting be like this worked perfectly. Let me do this all the time like a B test and send multiple emails and then draw conclusions.
00:19:20:14 – 00:19:44:07
Sarah
Yeah, it’s honestly all about iterating and perfecting with AB testing. You’re never going to just come up with the perfect email. The first draft easy testing is what allows you to make sure that what you’re putting out is the optimized version of what you want to send. So that is great to know and great to incorporate. It’s also very easy to do because all you have to do is randomly assign a little subset to either A or B.
00:19:44:12 – 00:19:52:12
Sarah
You don’t necessarily have to have a fancy program to do it. You can just literally manually send a in many ways and B to your minimum selected to folks and then compare the results.
00:19:52:12 – 00:20:03:05
Morgan
Yeah, it’s easy to do. And a lot of the mass email platforms like MailChimp send in blue, they have a B testing built into them too, if you pay for that plan. So it can even get simpler. Yeah.
00:20:03:07 – 00:20:05:07
Sarah
100%. Really? No reason not to.
00:20:05:09 – 00:20:36:07
Morgan
Yeah. Yeah. If you can. Abby does you need to be. Yes. Cool. Yeah. So next your move into how to avoid becoming what you hate when you think about email marketing. Right after the short little break.
00:20:36:09 – 00:20:59:09
Sarah
Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back from your break. I help you with enjoyable. I don’t even think it’s that long. You know maybe you paused it. Maybe we should go like drink water. Hydrate is so important. But anyway, welcome back. We’re glad you’re here. Ready to talk about how to avoid becoming the worst version of emails and why that’s so important.
00:20:59:11 – 00:21:08:01
Sarah
But first, we have to define what is good and bad is so. MORGAN What are what are your faves when it comes to emails?
00:21:08:03 – 00:21:24:08
Morgan
I love a good email that appeals to scarcity like if it saying like sale ends up midnight or this is going quick, especially when the email like has tracked what I’ve looked at on a website and they’re like only ten left in stock, I’m opening that and like looking at all that stuff.
00:21:24:10 – 00:21:26:04
Sarah
Yeah. So personalization.
00:21:26:06 – 00:21:38:20
Morgan
Yes. Oh yeah. I love when it says like my name and it’s just like, hello. It’s like, Hi, Morgan. It’s her first. Yeah, it makes me feel like I’m actually like getting an email from someone I know. Like.
00:21:38:22 – 00:21:44:12
Sarah
That is a good thing. And it actually is easy to do. On Spirit Mountain, you have that data.
00:21:44:17 – 00:21:45:16
Morgan
What about you? What do you.
00:21:45:16 – 00:22:14:21
Sarah
Like? What do I like? I like newsletters a lot. I do email though I email, I do read those emails. So I like those. I like ones that help me with my job because usually the emails for yeah, stay in the know like news updates are good. I can when they’re shorter I can when they give me like the information in the email and I know that’s not necessarily great for like tracking purposes of some things, but in terms of value add like I just want to know what I need to know.
00:22:15:01 – 00:22:23:08
Morgan
Yeah. And I feel like that goes back to this ability to like, you don’t have to search for all this stuff as it’s laid out right there for you. Yeah.
00:22:23:10 – 00:22:28:09
Sarah
I also like it when they’re like, Here’s a valuable little thing and they give me something.
00:22:28:09 – 00:22:33:04
Morgan
I like that. Yeah. That’s nice. Yeah.
00:22:33:06 – 00:22:38:20
Sarah
Mm. They think you feel like that. What about things we hate? Like what can you not stand?
00:22:38:20 – 00:22:58:11
Morgan
Reminds? Definitely a hot take because I just hate her teeth like. And I don’t. I know that there’s a place for them. Especially to see emails like emojis are fine. I don’t like when they’re in the subject line. Like that seems like super spammy to me. And like, how did you get an emoji in there? And then if I can see the preview, I don’t like that.
00:22:58:14 – 00:23:12:08
Morgan
Oh, another thing with the preview is I don’t like what it says. Like images cannot be loaded, like has errors with that because I’m like, I know it’s probably on my end because it’s not like optimized for those images, but I’m like, I don’t have to go in and then like, tell it to load all the images just to see it.
00:23:12:08 – 00:23:14:07
Morgan
I’m like, I’m not going to do it. Then it’s not that important.
00:23:14:10 – 00:23:53:22
Sarah
You know, images are complicated or work with emails. So here’s another important thing to know about this are new emails that I forgot I should have mentioned. This came to me now. So emails fun fact are notoriously anti weighted in terms of like how they are designed. So a little bit of web design to stick with me at the very beginning of websites in the Dark ages, websites were basically really big tables that were like published and that’s how things organized on a website is like they had like the header row and then they had like even if you know, each female a little bit like it says like header and yeah, H-1B issue, that
00:23:53:22 – 00:24:06:10
Sarah
means that like it’s very structured and it was all like a table format. So that all the way website design women’s emails when email started becoming a thing and then never improved.
00:24:06:12 – 00:24:07:12
Morgan
I did not know that.
00:24:07:12 – 00:24:26:14
Sarah
Yeah, that’s shocking. It is old all these email like you can’t even really apply a lot of if you know what this is like cascading style sheets that’s the thing that sells me email. You can’t even really apply that very well on emails. And then when you do, it’s like you always kind of mess up, face up the email.
00:24:26:14 – 00:24:51:08
Sarah
But from the reading it. So designing emails is not for the faint of heart. Usually simple is best and usually text is best. So if you don’t have enough text on an email and you have more pictures than text, you’re going to be able to stand because that those pictures have to be downloaded and things have to be downloaded on an email, then you’re at risk from viruses and it’s all about things.
00:24:51:10 – 00:25:17:06
Sarah
So don’t be don’t be mistaken for phishing email. That’s right. Yeah. But so text is good. Making sure your images are labeled your subject line makes sense. Your domain is verified. All the good things make sure. But emails are real hard to style, so don’t go to they’re real bad. And what might show up great on Gmail? It’s going to show terrible on Outlook.
00:25:17:06 – 00:25:20:01
Morgan
Yeah, they’re all different.
00:25:20:03 – 00:25:24:20
Sarah
And we got such a nice hand. Okay, now is the back. Is there anything you.
00:25:24:20 – 00:25:29:17
Morgan
Hate about emails besides that?
00:25:29:19 – 00:25:34:10
Sarah
I hate I hate getting multiple emails from the same company in the same day.
00:25:34:14 – 00:25:36:05
Morgan
Oh yeah. Or even the same week.
00:25:36:07 – 00:25:53:14
Sarah
Honestly, like, I don’t want to keep having to delete it off and I want to know when your sales are. That’s why I subscribe. Okay, obviously I’m talking about B2C here, but when I was going to like my fashion outlet, I want to know when the sales are and I want to know about your new line. Yeah, like, that’s not what I’m here for.
00:25:53:16 – 00:25:57:18
Sarah
Now, I definitely don’t know about, like the fourth, the new T-shirt you have.
00:25:57:20 – 00:26:08:18
Morgan
Yes. I think that’s like where I subscribe to a lot of B to C emails, too. It’s because it’s like, sign up for E now and get 10% off. And I’m like, I love a good deal incentive for you. Most ladies don’t subscribe, so.
00:26:08:18 – 00:26:16:22
Sarah
That’s also a good way to promote email subscriptions for me to be like, don’t take 10% off, don’t be like get a free download or freeway.
00:26:17:00 – 00:26:20:14
Morgan
Or a free audit or something like that.
00:26:20:16 – 00:26:36:17
Sarah
Something. Yeah, something that’s valuable to them. Yeah. Give them something change. Okay. So now that we’re talking about value and talking about how to integrate that for our B2B audiences, what do we typically do? We Are you talking about repurposing content from the beginning? Friend for value?
00:26:36:21 – 00:26:52:15
Morgan
Yeah. What else? You can find industry articles and put those in your emails. It’s kind of I think of it. So a big thing with sales is obviously also giving them get something like Hey, I saw this book or this article that I think you’d be interested in. And that’s to me what an email newsletter should be doing is like, Hey, I saw this.
00:26:52:15 – 00:26:58:17
Morgan
I think you’d have a lot of interest in it. It’s not necessarily my company, but I think it still has value. Yeah.
00:26:58:19 – 00:27:23:06
Sarah
Agree. Also, make sure that you’re writing to your audience, not to you. We all understand how great your brand is, but definitely does not care. Yeah. So make sure that you’re talking about how great they are, how to solve their issues. And like we already talked about testing and segmenting. Yes. Make sure they’re great and making sure that you’re sending things to people that really want them and that won’t just delete it.
00:27:23:08 – 00:27:23:17
Sarah
Yeah.
00:27:23:22 – 00:27:30:04
Morgan
And always have that unsubscribe option because if they can’t unsubscribe, you’re going to apply to spam.
00:27:30:05 – 00:27:35:11
Sarah
I actually think you like have to. Yeah. Required to have an unsubscribe. Yeah.
00:27:35:13 – 00:27:42:08
Morgan
But I feel like a lot of people hate it. Or like do the fake links like the spam ones they have fake little unsubscribe.
00:27:42:10 – 00:28:03:17
Sarah
You know what? Okay, so I am subscribed to this party. I didn’t even subscribe. It was like force. I signed up for one thing from this hotel team and then I was subscribe to their email list and I literally had to like, call someone to unsubscribe was so annoying. And I’m still subscribed. Oh, I’m like this as a marketer, I hate this.
00:28:03:19 – 00:28:05:05
Sarah
You give me an abandoned email.
00:28:05:05 – 00:28:06:06
Morgan
Yeah, useful.
00:28:06:07 – 00:28:30:10
Sarah
But you’re ruining it for everyone. I’m okay. Well, that was a hefty episode. I want good tips and advice for pretty quick, actionable advice actually on how to get started, making sure that you’re not becoming the spammy emailer that everyone hates. And then our clients, I mean, which we understand, we don’t want to be annoying either. No, that’s the worst.
00:28:30:12 – 00:28:36:02
Sarah
So in conclusion, be sure to subscribe to our podcast. We come out. No, no.
00:28:36:04 – 00:28:36:20
Morgan
Yeah.
00:28:36:22 – 00:28:38:12
Sarah
You can subscribe. Do we even have.
00:28:38:15 – 00:28:41:20
Morgan
We don’t have an email list, but we promise we won’t be spammy.
00:28:41:22 – 00:28:46:02
Sarah
Now, if you want an email, you would actually we would do pretty good. We would.
00:28:46:02 – 00:28:48:17
Morgan
Maybe we’ll have an email list coming.
00:28:48:19 – 00:28:58:19
Sarah
Stay tuned for that episode that started it all. Yeah, but in the meantime, subscribe to this podcast and we’ll see you again when we’ve lost our next episode. Yeah. Bye, guys. Bye.
