82: Email Marketing for e-Commerce + Planning for Q4
Lauren Tilden
Welcome back to Making Good, podcast for small businesses who want to make a big impact. I'm your host, Lauren Tilden, and this is episode 82. In today's episode, I'm joined by my friend, email marketing strategist Kris Daria. This episode is an absolute goldmine of information and actionable takeaways when it comes to email marketing and planning for Q4. But a couple of quick things before we jump in. First, if you struggle with figuring out what to say in your marketing, I have an awesome free resource for you. This workbook will help you come up with a lot of content ideas, your audience will love to download it for free head to makinggoodpodcast.com/content. Second, I want to invite you to join other values driven small business owners for inspiration, accountability and lots of business and marketing strategy. Join the free Facebook community for this podcast the good business community. The link will be in the show notes or you can head to makinggoodpodcast.com/community to be redirected. Finally, if you enjoy this podcast, there are a few ways that you can help spread the love. First, I would be so honored if you would leave a review on Apple podcasts or Stitcher to help others find this podcast. And second, take a screenshot while you're listening and tag me on Instagram at @ LaurenTilden. I would so love to connect with you and cheer you on.
Okay, so let's talk about today's episode. My guest today is Kris Daria. An email marketing strategist who helps ecommerce beauty and wellness brands grow their online stores with automated email marketing. After spending over 10 years working with multimillion dollar ecommerce brands, Kris has become a pro at automating her clients email marketing in a day, so they can save time and bring in more sales on autopilot without lifting a finger. Her focus is on helping purpose driven entrepreneurs build impactful and automated email systems while giving them the tools to operate with more clarity, ease and flow. In this episode, which is amazing, we discussed why it's important not to depend on social media, where to start when it comes to email marketing.
The difference between scheduled and automated emails, the email automations every ecommerce brand should think about implementing, how to make an email marketing plan, how to plan for Q4, Apple's iOS 14 update and how that affects email marketing data, the importance of creating accessible content and much more. The timing of this episode is really interesting because this episode comes out on October 5, just one day after a massive Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp outage that left us unable to connect on Instagram or Facebook for much of the day, there couldn't be a more important reminder of the importance of building your email list and this episode will show you exactly how to make that happen. Okay, let's get into our conversation.
Kris, welcome to the podcast.
Kris Daria
Hey, Lauren, thank you. So happy to be here.
Lauren Tilden
I am so excited to have you on the show. Kris and I met on Clubhouse and we were just chatting like, kind of immediately connected over our love of marketing and email in specific and I just, the first time I heard Kris talk about email, I was so blown away by just like how actionable and valuable everything she had to share was, it's just like, everyone get your notes ready, get your pen and paper ready because she just is gonna I know this is just gonna be so full of things you can just take right now and go put into practice. So, Kris, now that I've hyped you up, I would love for you to introduce yourself and share a little bit of your story of how you got to run your own business focusing on email marketing.
Kris Daria
Yeah, sure. So I I've been working in like the digital marketing ecommerce space for almost 10 years now. And before working as a consultant, I had a position at a big corporate company, where a big part of my role was to kind of be more like the head of the brand and design the customer journey. So I was basically the ecommerce brand manager and I was overseeing the online operations and the offline marketing operations. So in that role I had, you know, I learned a lot about building a business online and offline. But really, one of the easiest and most profitable revenue channels for us was our email marketing. It was generating, you know, 25 to 30% of our sales were generated by email alone.
So we like for us, it was like, because we didn't have to pay Facebook or another media agency to reach our customers. And we're dealing with email internally, it wasn't, you know, outsourced to anyone, it was a really, really low cost way for us to reach our buyers. And you can see the performance, we can measure it, and it was one of our highest converting channels. So for us, email was a super key thing for us to have. And when I started taking on clients and working with smaller businesses, the one, one another thing that stood out to me was the fact that they were, there was a great need for more education and more help around email marketing. There was, most brands, you know, most small brands, when they start out the immediate, easiest thing is to start with social media because it's easily accessible. And the only thing I saw about that is that they were only focusing on social media to grow their audience, and they were not sending the clients I was working with, they were not dabbling in email at all. And for me, that was a bit problematic, because you know, with Instagram and Facebook, it's, you know, you're always at the, you're always depending on how the algorithm is going to show your content, you don't know, you don't know if one day and it happened before that, you know, Facebook and Instagram, like you know, disable your page, and then suddenly, you have no connection with your followers.
So like, that's why it's important for me to teach my clients how to build and monetize your email list. And so that's what I started doing, since I would say over a year and a half now. And what I focus mainly on with my clients is really email automation. So automated sequences or flows. Those are the many ways you can call email, automated email marketing, because most of my audience, they're, they're busy mom, entrepreneur, entrepreneurs. So they have to, they have balance it all, know all the things in their mom life and their business. And so for me, it's really important, I really believe in helping women just make more money, make more sales by working less and having less stress in their business. And if I can help with email automations to make their lives easier, so that they can make more money in sales while they sleep. I'm really all for it. So yeah, that's me in a nutshell on how I got started with email marketing.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah, I love that. And I love that you kind of make the connection between the results that email can generate and the kind of like lifestyle implications of that if you're not having to, you know, spend all your day on social media to make the same sale that are the same sales. Let's say that one email could send automated, you know, that frees up a lot of time. So is there anything else you want to say on the question of like, why is email an important part of any business owners Marketing Toolkit?
Kris Daria
Yeah, I mean, I think when you look at your website conversion rate, on a good day, and I always say this example, because on a good day, your website conversion rate is maybe what like 3% on a really good day, like maybe 5%. So but like when you look at that, conversely, means that 95, at least 95% of the people who come to your website are going to leave. And so if a person visits your website, they look at products, they don't add it to their cart, and they don't buy and they leave, what do you do next? Right. There's no way for you to communicate and get them back unless you know, you try to catch them on Instagram again, right. So it's important to capture the person's email address so that you could continue that conversation continue building that relationship after they leave your website.
And I feel like email to that point, email, I feel it's not just for selling. I know a lot of people they don't want to send email because they don't want to feel spammy. They don't want to bother people. But in reality, if you use email the right way, it's a really I see it as a really foundational tool to build that close bond with your customers and that and like sending out emails showing up consistently in the inbox is a really good way to build trust with your brand as a small business. And when I started working with small business clients, they would maybe just send like one email a month or they didn't have any automations in place they were really just like spending all their time on social media you know, you know how that can get overwhelming, right? also I see social media as like the big you know, party outside, and your email inbox is like this cozy living room where you can have a nice chat. So looking at your logs that way where you can have like that one on one conversation with your buyer with their customer. And I feel like when you treat the, like I had a client okay, let me give you a concrete example.
So I had a client who was, this was at the beginning of the pandemic, right. So I started working with her when things were, you know, going on lockdown and the whole world is getting crazy. And she was selling skincare products that were mainly sold offline. So they were sold in only retailers and only she had a physical location where she was giving skincare treatments. But only like 5% of their sales were done to her online store for her ecommerce storefront. And she had a large number of followers on Instagram, and she had a big social following for her brand. But it was taking a lot of her time now she just had like a six month old kid and she was like a little baby. And it wasn't, she wasn't seeing the effort to put that she was putting online on her social presence wasn't converting into sales for her online store. And when everything kind of, you know, went crazy, she had to learn to pivot online. And so now when I, when I started working with her, we implemented weekly email campaign, she had a really good follower base, and you just tried to get them on to join her email list and the implemented basic email automations. And now, now that she's 100% online, like all her sales come from her online store out of that. Now there's around 3% of her sales coming just from her emails alone. So it's not just for selling, it's also for email like for building that relationship with customers.
Lauren Tilden
I really liked that you said that you think of social media as the big party outside, and then your email inbox as like the cozy living room sort of intimate setting. I think so much of approaching email marketing has to do with kind of reframing what email is all about? And if you can really get yourself in this headspace of like, how can I give people an experience that is like, they're in this cozy living room party, instead of just being shouted out in this huge, I don't know, warehouse party outside with 1000s of people. It really is all about the mindset that you apply to it, right? If I am sitting down to write an email, and in my head, I'm imagining this being like a big email blast to 1000s of people, the kind of email I'm gonna put together is so different from them if I sat down and I imagined Kris sitting on my email list getting it, and I literally wrote it to Chris, because let's say she was my ideal customer. I know her I'm like, you know, want to write something that she's going to just be delighted to get in her inbox. So I just love that you made that point so strongly that so much of this is really the intention that you apply toward this platform. And it's not, I don't know, email just I think people they think of all the spam emails they get, and I think that's a not marketing. And it just isn't.
Kris Daria
Yeah, and that's the thing, what you said is so true in our, a lot of our perception around email marketing is what we see coming in our inbox from bigger brands, and a lot of ours, like a lot of items will your audience is hired to come like those bigger brands, right. But the reality is, as a small business, the way that you stand out from the competition from other people, other brands in your space is to really align with their customers values. And the best way to do that is to just speak to them from email marketing. I mean, there's other ways to do that, too. But I feel like email is a way for you to approach it in a different way, in a more one on one on one way, you can literally personalize your email, like, hi, Lauren, this is what happened with me and my family this weekend. You're like, you know, with your skincare brand, you can say we spent all day in the sun. And I just wanted to share five tips to protect yourself, protect your skin from the sun, hope this was helpful, have a great weekend, you know, like it can be as simple as that. And you know, link to a blog with your five tips.
Imagine having someone send that to you versus just like a Zara email you get with like, 10 pictures of the latest tops. And by now like that's not personal at all. I don't do email marketing, I don't see email marketing in that way. So that's how I teach my clients to approach their list when they send out emails is to write their email as if they're writing to their BFF, to their business, to their bestie. And one way that you can do this more easily, If you really hate writing or typing it out, you can use an app on your phone to dictate what you're like talk to your phone, write out your email as if you were talking to your friend like I mean, say your email is if you're talking to a friend and have your phone transcribe it and then just edit it and use that.
Lauren Tilden
Huh that's such a great tip for people who have that kind of like blank page feeling when they sit down to write an email and they just don't know, they can't figure out how to do it, dictate it to your phone as the way, the exact way that you speak and pretend that you're talking to a friend and that's going to generate something so much more personal and easy to connect with them, you know the sort of like blast email mentality that a lot must have.
Okay, so let's talk about, let's talk to the people who maybe are realizing that email marketing is something worth doing, but they really don't know where to start. So this is someone who let's just paint the picture for you so that we can talk directly to that person. Let's say I make greeting cards. And I have, you know, I have my handmade business, I'm pretty active on social media, or at least, kind of know how to approach social media when it comes to marketing my business. And I'm starting to realize that email is something that is worth my time. But I really don't know where to start, how would you guide someone to kind of get the basic setup?
Kris Daria
Yeah, I actually worked with a client like that. So she was an artist, and she was selling, you know, painted goods and like cards and stuff. So I have a good example for that. So what we did is we started, I would recommend you start capturing emails on your website. So you can do this through a landing page on your website with a signup form, you can do this to a pop up or a fly out in play, do you have pop ups that would just like you on your screen, and you had a fly out form that would just like slide into your screen. So you can test those out. There's different ways that you can set up forms on your website to capture your emails, but at least have a way for you to direct people to a page on your website. So you can sign up to your newsletter list.
A lot of the brands that I start working with didn't have that form on their website. So and I'm talking about more than just like the footer, at the bottom of your Shopify website, it's where to capture your emails, I'm talking about like your brand.com/newsletter sign up, you know, like a page dedicated for sending to newsletters. And that way you can and the way you need to do that is to start by offering what in the industry we call a lead magnet or a freebie for typical ecommerce brands, you can do an offer of like free shipping or 10% off, you can test that out if you want to whatever works for your brand.
But for this specific brand that I was working with, she was an artist and one thing she started doing was offering free virtual Zoom backgrounds as a lead magnet. And so people would opt in just to get the Zoom background and she would give to her and get people to download a version of her art in the form that you would put it on Zoom in your background. So that was pretty cool. And other ideas that you can have are outside percentage or discounts is if you're like, if you're a candle brand and you're all about you know cozy being like mindful, you can do like a seven day meditation challenge where every day you opt in and then everyday to deliver an affirmation or different meditations and practice for five minutes a day. If you sell, like health products or supplements, maybe you can do like a seven day video guide, or where you show them how to do healthy recipes every day or a healthy juice challenge every day, you know, you can also do like free trials like free trial kits or samples that could work to depending on what you have in stock. So there's different ways you can test out to start capturing emails on your website, that's basic, because if you don't have emails in a list, then you can't send out emails.
And then I would say you need to set up email automations to basically once that person signs up to your list, have a welcome sequence and welcome flow that sends a couple of emails welcoming the subscriber and nurturing them to me and introducing them to your brand. You know, send one email that talks about how you got started, what inspired you to start your business, you can send another email that talks about you know, talk questions that customer, top five products that customers have bought and they love all the time and you know feature customer reviews. And then another email could be a frequently asked questions or top customer objections that they have around using your product. So all of this is kind of like a customer journey, you're turning a stranger into a first time buyer, what do they need to know about your product before they buy.
And so having that wealth and flow that automated welcome sequences already enough for you to welcome a new subscriber and turn them into a first time buyer, I would say start there. And then once you have that automation has a like welcome flow setup. You can think about now sending a weekly email campaign to your list. So I suggest sending out one weekly email like minimum once a week I would say because if you wait too long between your emails, people tend to forget about you and then unsubscribe. So you don't want to lose out those harder, you know emails on your list so at least send it at a consistent rate like if once every two weeks, that's fine. Just be consistent about it as much as you can. You know, progress, not perfection is what I like. Yeah. So that way, it's not like overwhelmed one week is once a week is really overwhelming for you start once every two weeks. And that way you have like a regular cadence set up, you start to build a routine, you start to think about the content we want to share. And a lot of the times a lot of the brands that I work with, are you putting a lot of good content under social media or Instagram, you can totally repurpose some of that content into an email, you know, and so that way, you don't have to make multiple content pieces every week. So think about that, you're fine.
Lauren Tilden
That's such a great point. So many of us put so much effort into social media, and really not that much effort at all into email. But when we look at like, what actually drives sales, a lot of times it's the email. So you talked a little bit about, you know, one of the first steps in getting set up with email marketing being, you know, creating that first welcome automation. And I love that you sort of prioritize that first, I think that's having automations is something that can be easy to just put off, but it's so important. So that was one of the first steps that Kris suggested, and I just want to draw everyone's attention to that, that it was really worth putting some effort into your welcome sequence right off the bat. Could you talk a little bit more about the two different types of emails, so scheduled emails and automations. And maybe talk a little bit about other automations that you would recommend for product based businesses?
Kris Daria
Yeah, definitely. So scheduled versus automated sequences. So scheduled emails are email, they're, they can be known as email campaigns. I know in Klaviyo, the platform that I use with my clients, they call it, you know, the campaigns. So those are sent whenever you want to a list, right, or a segment of your list. So those are Manually Scheduled. So you could, you create a content plan, and you send them according to your plan. Whereas with automated emails, they're based on the actions that your subscribers have taken, whether they just joined your list, whether they visited your website, and they saw specific product, you can trigger an email to tell that person Hey, we saw where you were just looking at, you know, product A, maybe you'd like to add it to your cart. So that's called a browse abandonment email. If they added that product to their cart, but they didn't check out, maybe the next day, you can send a cart abandoned trigger email. So that's a an automated email flow that would get people who added things to their cart, but didn't complete their checkout.
So having those types of triggered emails along the customer journey is quite important, because you want to make sure that those triggered emails are present to really send the right message to the customer at the right time. So if they just place an order, you might want to send out a thank you email and then tell them then following that, you might send an email to ask them for a review. Following that, you might send out an email asking, you know, providing advice and tips on how to use the product that they just received, you know, that might be good for like a new first time buyer customer. But what I like to do with my clients is I like to segment it out. So for, if somebody just placed an order we look at whether it's their first time purchase, or if they're a repeat customer. And if they're a repeat customer, we treat them differently, we send out a separate set of email automations. So, when I look at scheduled and automated, definitely you should have automated because automated first because that way, whenever you invest in Facebook ads, you go on like media appearances or interviews or you promote your business on Instagram or whatever, you're driving people to your website, they sign up to your list and you have like a funnel to catch them and convert them into whatever the next step is. And you need to have consistent email campaigns weekly, I suggest to keep up to follow up with them and stay present with them on a consistent basis and to build that relationship. So that's having automated and scheduled both integrated in your plan is really important.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah, love that great explanation. In terms of automations, you talked a little bit about a welcome email about post purchase series. And you even said that that might be different for new customers and returning customers. Browse abandonment, or CART abandon email. Are there any other automated sequences that you feel like every product based business owner would benefit from?
Kris Daria
Yeah, so those are the I would say the three four emails trigger flows that you should start off with. And if you want to go further, another sequence you can set up is after, you know, after somebody places an order. And if you understand the average number of days between the first purchase and the second purchase, you can send out an email, maybe 180 days, six months after the last purchase of a buyer send out a win back email to try to reengage with them and get them to come back to your store, you know, hey, it's been a while since we saw you come back, you know, you can offer a discount you could offer a gift with purchase quarter, just even doesn't have to be an offer, just remind them Hey, like, we saw that you haven't been here in a while, here's some new things that we have in our store. And it could be an automated triggered flow that targets, you know, lapsing customers. So that's what I call a win back flow.
And another important flow to me to have setup for people, and not a lot of brands have this, it's called a sunset flow. Well, that's what they call it inside Klaviyo, a sunset flow. And it's basically a triggered automation that slowly breaks up with the people who stopped opening your emails. So it's a suit, let's say you you sent out an email to the customer, but it's been like six months that they haven't opened or clicked or visited your website at all, you need to have a sunset flow that tries to you know, it's a series of emails that get sent out to try to get them to come back and open and click or come back to your website. And if after, you know, through emails, they have not, you know, it's like they're not dead. But they're, there's no response at all. You can tag them as being an unengaged contact in your list.
And you would then segment them out of your weekly campaigns, so that you, you maintain a good open rate. And you would just, you can keep them subscribed to your list, but maybe just send, send out an email to them when you have a big product launch or a big sales event or something of that nature. And the reason why it's important to continuously keep a list that's healthy and engaged, is because when you send out an email to your list, the email platforms out there like Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, they look at the open rate, they look at the engagement that their users are having with your brand. And if your brand is sending out emails that nobody opens, then they're going to start putting your emails in the spam box and not in the inbox. And so that type of deliverability is something that a lot of brands ignore, they tend to think of I had a client who had 10,000 people on her list. But when we looked at there, there was only like 40 people 40% of the list that was opening and clicking on her emails. So she was paying Klaviyo, like, you know, the cost to send to 10,000 people, but only 40% of the people were opening. So you have to, it's going to be cost saving for you to maintain a healthy list. And it's going to be better for your deliverability your open rate, you know, so that's why it's good to have that sunset flow. So the win back flow and a sunset flow are an extra set of automations you can put in place when your store wants to have like the basic automation set up for you.
Lauren Tilden
So good. I'm so glad we talked a little bit about maintaining the health of your email list. So like Kris said, it's not just all about like having as many people on there as possible. What's way more important is having a good sense of who's actually engaged, like, we want as many engaged subscribers as possible, like having a subscriber for the sake of it doesn't do us any good. And in fact, if they're not opening, could actually kind of penalize you in some way. So I love that you made that point, Kris.
Let's talk about an email marketing plan. So we've sort of shared a little bit about how to get set up on what some of the most important components are, in terms of like having a marketing, like having email as part of your marketing plan, like how do you approach I guess, maybe with your clients or even your own business? How do you approach planning and having a plan over time with your email?
Kris Daria
Yeah, so this is something that I teach my clients and that I teach other, you know, students who sign up to my workshops is around how to plan for your email content. Because the way I teach it is not just like what stories to put in your email or what to say in your email. It's more about the process around what type of email content strategy is going to help you achieve your goals. So when it comes to planning your email content, the framework I like to teach covers a brand's story, their strategy and their systems. So when it comes to your story, you kind of want to the way I look at it is, you kind of want to start understanding what does your audience want to hear from you right now? So let's say you're trying to come up with a month of your email content for the month right. And you want to take under you want to look back at right now what period of the year Is it's maybe you know, back like right now we're recording this in the early end of summers with my view, like back to school. And a lot of Mama's there, you know, like looking at preparing their kids for school, maybe like I had a client who was a lunchbox brand. And she had like, she sells lunchbox on her websites. And so that would be a good time for her to think about what are the things that mamas are looking for when preparing their kids for school? So have that in mind, and then, then when it comes to your strategy, you know, look at what's happening around your business, what are your goals? What are your sales goals for the month,? and I teach my clients how to set those sales goals, because when I was managing a brand and ecommerce brand, it's not just enough to send out emails, if you're not, if you're not looking at your numbers, when you're running a business. For me, it's important to understand your data, your numbers, and that way at least be comfortable with managing money, basically.
So I'd like to say teach my clients how to set up a monthly sales goal and break down that sales goal per month, and come up with a content strategy every week to hit those sales goals. And then when it comes to systems, How are your operations organized? How are you automating or setting up a process that is repeatable, that will allow you to scale? Or how can you delegate this to a VA or a team member to kind of make this more easier for you, if you're a bigger brand with a team that might be interesting to set up. Because it's not, it's going to be complicated. If you just keep on, you know, figuring out last minute what type of content you want to send out to your list, it's not going to be scalable and repeatable. It's just gonna, you know, have a bottleneck in your content process.
So, let's say for example, because I see a lot of brands, so the thing I see is that they make the mistake of only sending one email, and for when they have a sale, and they think that's enough. So the way you can do this more strategically, to plan a launch, an email campaign for launch, for example, is to say, look, okay, if this is the month where you want to make, we have, we want to hit this number in sales, let's plan out our content. So we're launching our product, you know, on the on the at the end of the month, maybe one week before, we'll send out a teaser email that announces something big is coming very soon. Stay tuned, you know, you have to warm up your list, you have to tell them what's coming up. You know, I like to tell my clients, not every brand can be Beyonce, you can't just drop an album out of nowhere and expect people to buy from you. So you have to warm your list up, you know, maybe even a month in advance. So start sending out telling people behind the scenes, this is what our team is preparing for. And maybe one day or a couple of days before you launch your product or your new collection, allow your VIP customers to access early access to that launch and try to make these high value customers feel like they're special just or maybe maybe maybe try sending them an extra gift when they make that purchase, you know, like a small gift with purchase, or maybe just even complimentary shipping with their order.
So that way, giving them early access with you know, get them to come, make them feel special, and they'll maybe come back and make a purchase before everyone else. And then on the day of the launch, that's when you send your offer to the majority of your database. And you know, present a few days later, you can present the product in more detail, like targeting people who have opened the email, but haven't purchased yet, you know, tackle customer objections and talk about, you know, like top questions that you got from social media when you announced the launch of your product. So that's how you, I like to look at the content plan is to understand what's happening in your business, you know, understand the segments of the audience that you want to reach, and then customize the messaging around what you want to say to your audience in that segment. And that way, you can end by under doing that and parallel to managing your sales and your targets, you'll be more prepared and more set up for success for not just your content plan but for making and achieving your sales targets.
Lauren Tilden
So good. I love that three part strategy. So on this topic of planning, this episode is going to come out in October where in the product based business world, especially people are gearing up for the holidays, which for most of us is by far the biggest sales time of the year. What advice do you have understanding that this episode will come out in October? I think probably a lot of listeners don't necessarily have their plan all ironed out. So what advice do you have for people to get ready for this holiday rush and kind of set themselves up to have the most successful holiday season possible?
Kris Daria
Yeah. So if you're listening to this in October, I think one thing to keep in mind is that with Black Friday, it's been a trend over the past few years to start your sales earlier, if you decide to have a Black Friday sale, don't wait until Black Friday to launch your sale. A lot of the brands that I work with and that we've seen a lot of success during q4 is to start earlier, maybe don't even call it a Black Friday sale, maybe call it a lot of them, they call it like a VIP sale ahead of time. Because what happens is that when you're in the marketplace, on Black Friday weekend, everyone has like aggressive discounts and offers and that are super competitive, it's hard to stand out, right.
So one tip, if I can, if I can give you advice is to try consider starting your sales a few weeks earlier than Black Friday, like maybe beginning of November, and to get your audience engaged as much as possible before. Because like I said, you can't just you know, drop an email out on Black Friday or the stop of drop off at the start of your sale and expect people to buy you kind of want to warm them up. When it comes to q4.
Another thing you want to think about is revising the customer journey across your flows. So during q4, you may have some welcome flow in place, you might have a post purchase flow and pays a cap on an abandoned cart flow. So you want to think is there anything among these emails that would need to be updated for the q4 season, maybe there's some products that you put in there that are out of stock that you need to like, you know, refresh, replenish, maybe you want to change the offer in your welcome flow to reflect the discount that's shown on your website. Think about updating those temporarily so that you know you don't launch a sale that offers 25% off on your website. But then when they sign up to your email list, they get a 10% discount, you want to have that you want everything to be consistent with each other. And so that also applies to your pop up forms your newsletter signup forms, make sure they're reflecting the same offer that you have ongoing for your holiday campaigns, you might even want to update the look and feel for your flows to make them more festive for the holidays, that's your if that's something you really want to do.
Just keep it keep that in mind, because a lot of brands do forget, and then it gets all like distorted when people start getting random emails with different offers. So you want to keep that in mind. And think about segmenting. So like I said before, you're gonna have your VIP clients, you're gonna have people on your list who've never bought before from you. So now, as much as possible, you want to grow your list, but then you want to look at who are the people on your list at this time, and what type of messaging you want to send. So let's say for example, if you're speaking to a segment of your list who are non buyers, they haven't made their purchase, get on your run, think about answering their top questions, FAQ style, or send them user generated content images that they can see how other people interact with your products and how they like it, or send out more social proof more customer testimonials, you know, to try to get them more engaged to so that they can make their first purchase during this period. Because now's the time, right?.
And then you want to also think about obviously re engaging past customers. Look at what's one thing I can offer. One other tip I can offer for you is for your listeners is look at if you've been doing black Friday and holiday for a few years now look back at last year and see who are the people that bought last year? And how can I get them to come back again this year during this period. Right? So be mindful of understanding also your data, look at past historical years, what happened, what were the peak traffic periods so that you and your team can prepare for that. So I know that covers more than email, but it's important because it's as someone who used to really like be in this q4 was our biggest spike of the year was super, a lot of things were flying around and all that. So it's very important to have your team ready, you know, come up with a plan in advance, plan as early as you can. So that your team is ready to handle anything that happens. So when I know when certain times it's hard to plan in advance, but having that as a first step, I think would keeping all of this in mind would, I think put them in a better path to success during q4.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah, so good. So many great things there. I'm, I hadn't really thought about updating your welcome sequence, for example, during the holiday season. But that's such a great point that maybe something you're talking about won't be relevant or you know, when things go out of stock, you don't want to also be promoting them at the same time, like in an automated flow. So, great suggestions. I'm totally taking notes. We've talked a lot about, you know what to do with your email lists. And we've talked about how to maintain a healthy list in terms of kind of making sure that we're mostly emailing to people who are pretty engaged.
One thing that we haven't talked too much about yet is how to build this email list. So obviously, the more engaged people on the list, the better, the more sales we're likely to make. So how would you advise people to start thinking about, I guess incentivizing people to sign up for their list to begin with?.
Kris Daria
Yeah. So in terms of crafting a more like strategic often strategy or email capture strategy, there's different ways you can go about it. Like obviously, earlier, I mentioned having forms and pop ups to at least be able to catch you know, the people's emails when they're coming on your website. But if you want to go up, if you want to drive more people to your website, to capture their emails to have like an email acquisition campaign, you can definitely, you know, run one of the there's a few ways.
So one of the things I like to do is to have a giveaway. So when you run giveaways, you can be you know, $100 gift certificate, or like free products, you know, 10 winners are gonna win this product, and then highlight the product, and then have an automated flow, obviously, for people who sign up to that specific giveaway. But that's going to be something that's going to be good, because giveaways will attract maybe new people and also reengage past customers. So when it comes to giveaways, one thing that I suggest you do, though, is it's really it's a really popular method at capturing new emails. And like I said, set up a flow to send people to welcome people when they sign up to your list. And if you see that there's people who haven't opened any of those emails, a lot of brands do not think of cleaning them out, after so removing those who haven't opened your emails. So that's one caveat, I would say about the giveaways. It captures a lot of emails, but also it tends to capture a lot of freebie hunters, like contest hunters. So just that's just like, you know, disclaimer on that.
Lauren Tilden
Great tip.
Kris Daria
Yeah. And then one thing I want to also mention is Klaviyo, which is the email platform that I use with my clients who are on Shopify, Klaviyo they just announced, optimize multi step forms for you to make it easier to capture SMS. And so I don't dive a lot into SMS. But you could totally have a form that captures person's email and then ask them like, it's an easy way for you to ask them to opt into your SMS and then build out flows with SMS and email. That's a whole other topic. I know we might not have time to do that. But I think it's important to start also collecting SMS in your, in your marketing strategy, because right now SMS has like a ton of like it's a highly open channel to highly engaging channel. Don't go crazy about it. But it's good to at least start gathering your people's mobile opt ins, like SMS opt ins.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah, I've seen. So I also use Klaviyo, for Station Seven, the retail store. And I have seen them kind of pushing SMS as a functionality. I have not even dipped my toe in yet. So I'm glad you brought that up. That's definitely something that I want to explore. Because if you think about it, like, think about your text messages, and think of your email inbox, like where is something more likely to get opened? For me, it's definitely my text messages. And so not to say I mean, email is still a huge, obviously, this episode is about email. That's how powerful it is. But I think text, there is something there and you have to find a way to do it that's not like spammy and wise, where am I getting texts from this company? But yeah, I'm glad you brought that up as a as an opportunity.
Kris Daria
Yeah, start covering your email base first. Like I think if you want to, you need to, before you dive into SMS, like I suggest really just like nailing the basics of what I mentioned, we explained here and our conversation around email marketing, and then dive into SMS. But yeah.
Lauren Tilden
Okay, so those who kind of follow the marketing, and marketing technology knows, may know that Apple's new operating system has changed the kinds of analytics that are available to us. For anyone who will, actually for everyone, could you explain a little bit about what Apple has done and how that might influence the way that we think about the open rates that we get?
Kris Daria
Yeah, so what's happening with Apple iOS, which is supposed to roll out in September. They're giving the ability to users who use iPhones to who use Apple Mail to hide their mail activities. So that means that brands will no longer see whether or not their customers opened an email if they're using Apple Mail on their iPhone. So if you're using Gmail on your iPhone, you're not affected. But because Apple is very, you know, used by like a percent of the population or something like that, it's most likely that a lot of brands are going to be affected by this open rate not being reliable.
So what will happen is, Apple will maybe preemptively open the email, it clicked like Klaviyo would record, the email is being opened, even if the customer didn't really open the email. So that's one thing. Meaning that your open rate may not be on no longer be a reliable measure. And so this is why it's important to also look at other metrics, like clicks and conversions. Because in reality, your open rate is just a vanity metric. It doesn't indicate whether or not people are going to buy from you. So you want to optimize more for the click and the conversion rate than the open rate at this point. That with Apple coming up with stuff like this, I'm not, I wouldn't be surprised if down the line, Google Gmail come up with something like this, because privacy has been super on the minds of these big tech companies now. So it's good to have the practice of understanding Okay, outside of open rate, how can I measure my emails effectiveness, look at your Google Analytics, see how much traffic is coming from your emails, you can see the conversion rate and your Google Analytics from your email campaigns.
Look at the like I said, look at the click rate, look at the conversion rate. And try to during this period, it's good to kind of also look at the percentage of people in your list that use Apple Mail that open your emails using Apple Mail. And that would be a good way for you to gauge how impacted your open rate might be. Because if you see there's only you know, 5% of your list using Apple Mail, then maybe this might not affect you, but I think it would.
The other thing that would happen now with the new iOS updates, though, is the fact that if somebody comes to your website on their mobile phone, and you know when you come to your website, have a pop up asking people if they want to leave their email address to sign up to newsletter, when you know, when you enter your email sometimes it will auto populate your email address automatically. But right now Apple is going to have the ability for paid iCloud users to use a proxy email address.
So for example, if I come to your website, Lauren, instead of putting my personal email address like kris@gmail.com, Apple might say, Hey, do you want to use Kris@iCloud123.com or some other email address. So that way I the email, I would still be receiving your emails by through that proxy. But then when I come back to your website, you know later on and I want to make a purchase, most likely I will use my personal email address to make that order. Right. So what's going to happen is that a lot of I don't know to what extent this will be happening, but it's possible that there will be duplicate profiles of the same person in your email list. And right now there's no way to kind of reconcile who signed up with the proxy email and who made an order with your personal email. There's no way right now at this point in time to reconcile but I'm sure all the email platforms aware of this, it's a big game changer in the email industry, there's going to be something that's going to, I'm sure there's going to be a way to work around it. But nevertheless, it's still good practice to optimize for click, look at your conversion rate, and that's the way I think, like not having access to reliable open rate data shouldn't stop you from sending emails.
It's like back in the day when Instagram stopped showing the number of likes on their posts that didn't stop people from posting on Instagram, right? So it's the same thing. So I have a training, I did a full training on what to do exactly with like your segments and that on my website, if people want to watch the replay on that they can catch that training on my website.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah, will you share that link with them?
Kris Daria
Yeah, everything will be I have a free resource page for all the freebies that I mentioned here. So it'll be on makingkrisdarya.com/makinggood. Everything that I mentioned on this show will be on that page. All the resources, there a bunch of helpful email resources there for you guys.
Lauren Tilden
Awesome. I am going to be headed there myself. So recommend that everyone else does as well. Okay, so I just have I just want to pick your brain about email forever. I will have to have you back on the show to talk about things like segmentation, for example, and reading our email analytics. Those are both two topics that we just don't have enough time to dig into more but that would be a super fun follow up episode.
Kris Daria
I would love to tell more email marketing with you, Lauren.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah, okay. Okay, let's set a date. Before we sort of wrap up our chat about email. I have a few kind of last minute rapid fire email questions that I feel like come up a lot. So the first one that you have touched on a bit is how often to email your list?
Kris Daria
I would recommend at least once a week.
Lauren Tilden
Okay, text versus photos in your email content.
Kris Daria
So, I'm not a fan of sending emails and look like glossy magazine ads. I like to say to my clients pretty emails don't pay the bills, you know, because image heavy emails for people after a while, and it's like, as if you know, I don't know, how about you, but I kept keep on getting marketing promo files in my flyers in my mailbox, and I never opened them. So I like to have a nice eye catching photo or an animated GIF at the top headline of my email. And then just to grab their attention and make it more text based. And the way I see it is your images, your photos should support your copy and your text, not the other way around. So if you have like a promo code or the description of your sale offer, try not to put that in the image. Because what happens is some email inboxes don't render the image, so they won't see your promo code. So that's one mistake that I see some brands do. So I would, I'm more of a fan of a mix, I would say like more text and photos, but have a photo there.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah, that's a true great point. Because a lot of email inboxes, like, if you don't choose to display the images, you're not seeing anything that's only in the images. So make sure the text stands alone. Exactly. Any tips on good subject lines?
Kris Daria
So I recommend to have your subject lines look like they're coming from a friend. So, some subject lines that have worked really well with my clients, and you may have seen them around are like, I never thought this would happen dot, dot, dot, you know, when they kind of explained what inspired their business, you know, in when they put an email under welcome flow, that's a good subject line to put in. Or I have a confession dot dot, dot, you know, having like, you know, things like that, or like, first name, what would code Add to Cart give you, for example, that's one that really works really well. So yeah, make them look like they're coming from a friend. Like there's some from some from time to time, you know, you can put your sale offer there. But if you just keep on putting sales percentages and discounts in your subject lines, people will stop opening them. So yeah.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah, more personal. Love, love that. Finally, any specific tips you have for increasing conversion rates for your emails? maybe define what a conversion rate is just in case. That's helpful.
Kris Daria
Sure. So the conversion rate is looking at how many people made a purchase over the amount of people who came to visit your website. So that would calculate your conversion rate. So what you look when when you want to maximize the type of the number of people who come to your website to make a purchase, some of the tips I offer is, if you're on Shopify, you could use, you can, you can insert in your email a specific link that contains your coupon code. And when the person clicks on that link, that coupon code will be automatically added to their checkout. So it's easier for them to if they forget the code, it's automatically they're going to have to go and find that code after. So you can use like your brand.com/discount/coupon code, like coupon, replace coupon code with the with your coupon code in your link. And that will be that could be your text your, sorry, your link that you would put in your email.
Another tip that I suggest having is adding a product block in Klaviyo. They're called product blocks. But they're essentially like three to six, you know, images that direct people to the specific product page, put that at the bottom, put a product block at the bottom of your emails when you feel it's appropriate. So that way, it's easy for you to kind of get them to come to your website to shop related products to your email. So like if I like I said in the beginning of our conversation, if you're writing an email about five tips to care for your skin this winter, list the three products that they can check out at the bottom of that email with that product block there. And an easy thing that you could do is just when you have a sale, send out an email maybe like six to 12 hours before the deadline is over. And that really boosts conversions. Not to put so much pressure on it but you can instantly see the boost in sales. And I know they're like the most boring emails you'll read because it's basically just saying hey, like we have a RC list ending just a reminder, but you have to remember that a lot of people they get a lot of emails in their inbox and they're busy they don't have time to remember if your sale is when your sales ending when they're not, just just having that last minute email reminder like a couple of hours before it can help easily boost conversions. So those are my tips.
Lauren Tilden
So good, so good. Well, I just I was taking notes as we've been recording, I feel like listening back to edit is just gonna be such a goldmine. So I'm really excited to share this episode with everyone. Before we start to wrap up, I do want to talk about doing good through small business. And this is something that I know is deeply personal to you, we talked a little bit about your son. So I would love for you to share just where you stand on this topic of using business for good.
Kris Daria
Yeah, so what happened with my son, so my son currently he, he just had a cochlear implant operation, he's deaf, we found out when he was 18 months old. And so we've been going through this process. And as I've been going through it, and learning more about Deaf culture and the deaf community, it became more important for me to make my content accessible in terms of being able to add live captions, or providing transcriptions to my content, like my trainings, my workshops and stuff like that.
So for me, one way that I want to, that's what I do kind of to make my content and the knowledge and the expertise that I have more accessible to everyone in the community. So that if ever, you can't hear me properly, because I have like faulty air pods, or whatever, at least you have the transcription and you can read the captions while I'm delivering a training. And so, so I've been more mindful of that. As I've been navigating through this journey, because I'm learning American Sign Language, we're learning sign language with my son. So we're giving, I'm just, it's important for me to just give as much, you know, communication tools for him to thrive as much as possible. But that also made me more mindful about providing, like captions and, and transcriptions through my content. So, so yeah, I keep in mind.
Lauren Tilden
Yes, and I would love to just dig in here a little bit in terms of accessibility, this is a topic that I definitely want to talk about more on this podcast. What kinds of things when it comes to accessibility, particularly for the deaf community, what are the kinds of things that any business owner could be doing to kind of facilitate making their content more accessible?
Kris Daria
Yeah, so I'm still in the beginning of this journey, I'm still learning. But one of the things that I've, one helpful tool that I've been using is on an app called otter.ai. And it's been super helpful to have an app on my phone to dictate my stuff, but also to when I host zoom rooms, there, it can join my Zoom Room and automatically transcribe my meetings. And if I forget, I can even take the resume recording uploaded to otter.ai. And it has really accurate transcription on the on, on their app to give me the to be able to upload that on my, you know, learning platform. So otter.ai is, there's a free version, and there's a business version, so you can definitely start using that. I'm sure there's other tools out there, but that's the one that I use right now.
Lauren Tilden
Such a good recommendation. And I just also want to say even something as simple as like, your videos on social media, like caption them, there's, there are really easy tools to do that now. Some of them even built into Instagram. And if you can, so I'm so glad you mentioned that, Kris. And I know that you've also been doing some like monetary donations to this cause as well. Do you want to share anything about that?
Kris Daria
Yeah. So there's a local rehabilitation center that my son attends to do his therapies. So they have a foundation, it's called the math MCI Foundation. And so that's the magnet Chi Foundation is like the name of the center. So I applied Profit First to my business so I don't I know, I'm passing around that so I because I've been doing that this year, I'm able to donate, like 5% of my profits to this cause that I really, that I really care about. And I encourage a lot of other businesses to see if they can do something like that. And profit first. There's a book actually called Profit First for E commerce sellers by Cindy Thomason. It's a book that I give to all my all my VIP clients because I feel like after the work with me for automations, it's good to kind of look at the finances of your business. And it's a really great book. I recommend it to every ecom owner out there.
Lauren Tilden
Yeah, I don't know about that book. So that is a great recommendation.
Kris Daria
It's quick read. It's a quick read. Yeah.
Lauren Tilden
Okay. Music to my ears. Let's go into our wrap up questions. This has been probably a longer episode than usual, but so good. So I'm so glad we got to everything.
Kris Daria
I know. It's awesome. I'm sorry.
Lauren Tilden
No, no, it's like I just kept asking your question because you know everything about email. Um, one question I want to ask for you is one of my favorite questions to ask all of our guests and that is, what is one small business that you admire.
Kris Daria
So one business that I admire in terms of great emails, I love the way Truvani you how they use text and copy in their emails to sell their their health products. They don't shove promos or discounts all the time in my inbox, it has a very conversational personal tone. They talk a lot about company updates, behind the scenes of the making of their their product, but they also take the time to educate their customers on how to read labels for health products, and how they, and I feel like doing it in that way it makes like sending emails like that, you know, messages like that makes people feel more empowered when it comes to choosing their stuff on their website. So I've tried like their, their Tumeric powders and vitamins and stuff. So I'm into that type of thing. So I'm very into iron Veda and all that things. And they don't use, if you sign up to their list, they don't use any fancy graphics or design or coding. It's just some plain text emails. Sometimes there's an animated GIFs with some photos, and it's very simple. You don't need to hire an expensive graphic designer to do your emails. So in terms of email marketing, for just conversation, I'd like to just highlight Truvani, either whoever writes their copy is amazing.
Lauren Tilden
Amazing, I'm gonna go subscribe. What is a book recommendation? I know you just mentioned the Profit First for E commerce sellers. Is that the one you want to feature? Or do you have any other book recommendations?
Kris Daria
So that's a great book. But one thing that a book that recently changed the way, that deeply affected me I would say transformed my life. It's a book called Do less by Kate Northrup, I don't know if you've heard about it. So Kate, Kate's book came into my life, the book duelists on the cover, it says a revolutionary approach to time and energy management for ambitious woman. So her teachings came into my life at a time where I was breaking up with my corporate hustle mode working habits. So I would like, I was working in the corporate office environment for the longest time and you know, that tends to be very high pressure. And when I started my business as a solo consultant last year, after having a baby leaving my job, during the pandemic, it I had to really heal my relationship with my work and my productivity. And as women business owners who are running their business and balancing all the things, I think it's a great book to read, because it makes you realize, like reading this book and being her in her origin online membership, like I've really learned how to invest my energy and operate my business in a way that feels more aligned. And in a way that makes me feel good and happy.
Like, for example, one of the things that she teaches is how to try to manage your time and your projects around your cycle and the moon calendar, I'm really into that stuff. So being aware of that for cyclical people, like we don't operate in a linear way. And that's all her teachings are about, about how you can achieve more by doing less. And that's why email automations for me is like one of my, my key my core offerings is because it's a way to help women business owners to grow their business without lifting and make sales without lifting a finger. So it's really just book. It has so many. It's it's been life changing this book for me, I cannot recommend it enough. So definitely we do less. Yeah.
Lauren Tilden
Awesome. That has not been recommended before on the podcast. I'm excited to check it out. Kris, let everyone know, again, the website that they can gather all of your free resources, and just where else online, they can connect with you and learn more from you.
Kris Daria
Sure. So on my website, if you go to krisdaria.com/makinggood. You can download a bunch of free resources there. I have a guide that talks about nine email mistakes you can avoid too, you can avoid to sales on your website. I have like I said earlier replay of that iOS 15 training, and it's a page I'm just going to fill with a bunch of helpful resources over time. So I just launched my website recently. But if you go to Chrisdarya.com/makingGood, you'll find a lot of good stuff there for you guys, and I'm sure that will be helpful for you. And otherwise, if you listen to this podcast DM me on Instagram @KrisDaria, I'm always happy to chat in the DMS over there so so yeah.
Lauren Tilden
Yes, yes. If you listen to this episode, and loved it as much as I loved everything, Kris shared, tag, take a screenshot while you're listening and tag, both of us on Instagram and we would love to hear what you thought. So yes, Kris is @KrisDaria. And I am @LaurenTilden. And that will be linked in the show notes to. Kris, oh my gosh, what a goldmine this whole episode is I can't wait to share it. I don't know how I'm gonna wait another month and a half before I really get. So thank you so so so much for just, I mean, just being so generous with pulling back the curtains. I'm sharing so many, just awesome strategies and tips when it comes to email. I think this has been such a fantastic episode. So thank you so much.
Kris Daria
Thank you for having me. Lauren. I'm so excited. Thank you. I feel so honored for you to have me on your podcast. I was so I was so when I first met you on Clubhouse, I was like, it would be so awesome if her and I can just chat and geek out on email marketing on her podcast. And now it's happening and I'm so grateful for today and for you. Thank you.
Lauren Tilden
Kris, you're the best. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me.
I know Kris and I would both love to connect with you on Instagram. Take a screenshot of you listening to this episode and tag us both. Kris is @KrisDaria and I'm @LaurenTilden, everything mentioned in this podcast episode can be found at the show notes page at makinggoodpodcast.com/82 You can find Kris's resource page at krisdaria.com/makinggood. If you're interested in learning more about my small businesses Good Sheila and Station Seven the links are in the show notes. And again, I would so loved to have you in the Facebook community for this podcast had to makinggoodpodcast.com/community to join. Thank you for being here and for focusing on making a difference with your small business. Talk to you next time.