Latest / eCommerce Podcast / She Deleted 19,000 Email Subscribers And Turned Deliverability Around

Transcript

She Deleted 19,000 Email Subscribers And Turned Deliverability Around · eCommerce Podcast

0:05
So hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson and it
0:09
is great to be with you today. Hopefully wherever you are in the world, you are
0:13
enjoying yourself today. I know I am. We're recording this whilst the World Cup
0:17
is going on and I, if you're watching the video, you'll see I'm wearing my
0:21
England shirt because at this stage we're still in it. Uh, it might date this
0:25
podcast a little bit if we get knocked out on Saturday, but who knows? Anyway,
0:29
welcome to the show. Uh, it's great to be with you. Hopefully you're having a
0:33
bit of World Cup fun. Uh, now if you're new to the show, let me just give you a
0:37
heads up on a few things. We talk about ecommerce. That's what we do. Everything
0:41
you want to know about the show is on the website ecommercepodcast.net. All our
0:46
past episodes are there. Um, you can find out information about the cohort
0:50
groups if you want to join one of those. Which is basically where we get
0:54
together with other ecommerce entrepreneurs from around the globe and chat about
0:58
ecommerce. They're great Zoom calls. Love them. Absolutely love those. We do
1:02
those every month. We have the AI stuff, which is on there. Yeah, there's a
1:06
whole bunch of stuff on there. Just go check it out, ecommercepodcast.net. And
1:10
the other thing you'll find on there, of course, are today's show notes, the
1:14
blog posts we do, the video links, everything will be on there as well. So
1:18
that's ecommercepodcast.net. And of course, if you're returning to the show, you
1:22
are a returning listener, You, my friend, are a legend. Great to have you back.
1:27
Great that you're here. Thanks for keeping on listening. It means that we get to
1:31
do what we do. And I genuinely, my favourite part of the week is doing the
1:35
podcast recordings. And because like you guys, I run my own ecommerce businesses
1:39
and I love to have people on the show like today's guest, Laryssa, where I can
1:43
just grill them about ecom topics and see how I can figure out stuff that's
1:47
going to help make my business better. So Laryssa, welcome to the show. How are
1:51
we doing?
1:56
Thanks, Matt. I'm doing great. I love the energy. I'm excited to be here.
2:00
Yeah, yeah, that's it now. I'm done.
2:03
It's over to you. Well, it's really good to be on the show. I'm Laryssa. Yeah.
2:09
Now I gotta bring that energy. Oh man, that's a lot of pressure.
2:16
Yeah, it's just how we rock and roll here. Laryssa, if for those that might not
2:19
know you, just give us the brief sort of elevator pitch into all things in
2:23
Laryssa's world and what you do and what you get up to.
2:27
Sure, happy to do that. So hello everyone, I'm Laryssa Wirstiuk. I'm a Klaviyo
2:32
expert. I have an email and SMS marketing agency called Joy Joya. I also have my
2:37
own podcast called Marketing with Laryssa where we talk about all things email
2:41
and SMS marketing. Um, yeah, and I'm just excited to be here to talk about email
2:46
marketing, what's new, what's working, what is trending in Klaviyo right now,
2:50
and share all that with the audience.
2:56
Fantastic. Have you— how long have you been podcasting?
2:58
About 8 years now.
3:01
8 years? Wow. That's, uh, when did I start podcasting? Uh, I want to say 2012,
3:07
so 14 years ago, I think.
3:12
Oh, you got me beat then.
3:14
Yeah, it wasn't in this podcast. We didn't start this one until 2019. So if I
3:17
look at this podcast, you, you've You've definitely been doing, uh, your podcast
3:20
longer than me.
3:24
Sure. It's hard to keep things fresh. There's a lot of evolutions. Podcasting
3:27
has changed a lot. It's been a journey.
3:30
It has. It's been, it's, it's been a fascinating journey. Someone asked me, you
3:34
know, once, like, why do I do the pod? Because I don't, we don't, I don't know
3:37
how you do it, uh, Laryssa, but we're just talking shop a little bit, guys.
3:40
Sorry, we'll get back to ecommerce in a few minutes.
3:44
Sure, sure.
3:45
Um, but the We don't have show sponsors. Um, like, you know, and I appreciate
3:50
some people do. I don't know if you do, but, uh, we don't do the show sponsors.
3:55
So there's no direct income from the podcast for what we do. And we do it week
4:00
in, week out. There's obviously a lot of, as you know, a lot of work in putting
4:05
a podcast together and getting it out there. And so why do we do it? Um, because
4:10
we're crazy. Because we're absolutely bonkers. I would venture to say I was
4:15
talking to someone about this the other day. If I was to try and put a monetary
4:19
value on what I've got out of podcasts, bearing in mind there's no direct
4:24
sponsorship of the show, so it's all a bit anecdotal. How do you measure it? But
4:29
I would say it's millions, right? It's absolutely had a multi-million pound
4:34
impact on our business without any shadow of any doubt. And so this is why I'm a
4:39
big fan of it. This is why we've started now doing podcasting for all our e-com
4:44
brands. As well. And we started to see the impact actually for— and we should
4:49
maybe— maybe I'll do something on this in the foreseeable future on why every
4:54
e-com brand should have its own podcast. But yeah, have you found it?
4:59
Well, you know, I've never actually thought about putting a dollar amount to it.
5:04
It kind of is just part of the marketing mix for my agency and part of thought
5:09
leadership. And like you, I don't have sponsors, so there's not that. Measurable
5:13
ROI. But yeah, that would be a good exercise for me to do for sure.
5:18
Yeah, just try and figure it out. Like the doors that it's opened, the people
5:21
that I've met, the work that it's led to, even things like the changes that have
5:25
happened on my website because of people like yourself who come on the show and
5:28
say, well, if you try this, or this is what's going on at the moment, I go, oh,
5:32
that's a good idea. You go back to the team and go, let's try this. And you can
5:35
see the measurable impact. So Yeah, that's why we do it. Anyway, let's talk
5:39
about email marketing.
5:42
Yeah, let's talk about it.
5:44
Everyone's like, I don't care about the podcast stuff. Let's get to email
5:48
marketing, Matt. Tell me about Klaviyo. So I love to ask this question, right,
5:52
of every guest that comes on the show. You obviously have been around email
5:56
marketing for a while. You're a Klaviyo expert. You've got the agency, you've
6:01
got the t-shirt, you got the badge. What is the biggest mistake we're all making
6:05
when it comes to email marketing and maybe specifically when it comes to email
6:09
marketing on the Klaviyo Sure. What are we doing wrong?
6:13
I think the biggest mistake that brands are making with email marketing is
6:18
they're not valuing it enough. I mean, that's at least that's what I see. We
6:22
work with brands, they already come in, they have a need, they know the value of
6:27
their Klaviyo platform, they want to take it to the next level. But then there's
6:32
this whole percentage of ecommerce business owners that are kind of like, half
6:36
in, half out on email marketing. And I do hear this all the time, even at like,
6:41
let's say a dinner party or I'm out, people ask me what I do. I do email
6:45
marketing. Oh, really? People look at emails like that still works? I'm like,
6:50
yeah, it does.
6:55
That's still a thing?
6:56
It does. Yeah. In 2026, people look at emails. So for someone that doesn't, for
7:00
an ecommerce brand that doesn't already have the belief in it, It's kind of a
7:04
hard sell.
7:08
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I, and it always amazes me actually when you meet
7:13
people that don't have necessarily the same perceived value that I do, right? In
7:17
the sense that, like you say, people might think it was like, so 10 years ago,
7:22
right? You know, surely everyone's doing something else right now. And I think
7:27
there are other things obviously like SMS, there's WhatsApp, there's voice
7:32
marketing, there's all these kind of things which we, you know, you can sort of
7:37
throw into the mix. But foundation to all of this has always been email. And I
7:42
don't see that changing anytime soon.
7:47
Yeah, I think the word email is the thing that makes it so unsexy. But behind it
7:52
all, it's just the owned list, the CRM, the lifecycle of it that I don't think
7:57
is ever going to go away. And I, as someone with the agency, it's kind of a
8:02
shame that I have to call it email because that's, that's the most recognizable
8:07
term for it. But it's also somehow the least sexy term for what I do, you know?
8:12
Yeah.
8:17
What would you change it to if you could?
8:19
Oh gosh. I mean, there are already like marketing jargony terms for it, like the
8:25
lifecycle, the CRM, the retention. But those don't mean anything to people who
8:31
are outside of ecommerce or marketing. So it's a bit of a tough position I'm in,
8:37
in trying to be the champion of email marketing.
8:43
I'd love to do a survey actually amongst our audience, if I could just sort of
8:48
do these magic surveys. How many of them actually do do email marketing? And so
8:53
let's, for those maybe who are new to ecommerce, who are thinking of entering
8:58
ecommerce, um, how would you define email marketing? What is it? What, what are
9:02
you talking about when you're talking about that phrase?
9:07
Sure. Yeah. And we can lump SMS or text, whatever, all those text message
9:13
platforms into this, but basically it's different from any other form of digital
9:18
marketing in that you are the true owner of the list and kind of the steward of
9:23
the customer behaviour that comes along with that. So these are people who have
9:28
opted in to receive messages from you. They have expressed interest. And in that
9:34
way, it's different from social ads, SEO, like AI marketing. Those people are
9:39
basically being shouted at to some extent.
9:44
Yeah.
9:45
With email and SMS, these are people that have expressed interest in hearing
9:50
from you. So you're building a relationship. with them. And I consider myself
9:55
lucky in being able to handle that part of the customer journey because in some
10:00
ways it's, it's easier because they already want you. You just have to figure
10:04
out how to like keep that relationship going, which is the hard part.
10:09
Yeah, always the hard part, right? Always the hard part. So if the biggest
10:14
mistake that we're doing is not valuing the email list, what's the biggest
10:18
mistake we're making if we do see the importance of email marketing?
10:24
Yes, I also hear so often in discovery calls, I understand the importance of
10:29
this, but at the same time, I don't want to bother people. Like, I, they say, I
10:34
hate receiving marketing text messages. I can't stand receiving emails. So is
10:39
there a way we can do this without annoying people? And that's already a barrier
10:45
that they're coming into it with that is—
10:50
Yeah.
10:51
It really limits us. And we can talk more about what quote unquote annoying your
10:56
customers means, but that's also a mindset barrier that I hear a lot.
11:01
Yeah. And again, I can empathize with it, but I think when it comes to
11:06
ecommerce, because we're so close to our own businesses, right? It's a really
11:11
important thing to us, really close to our hearts. Or at least it should be. We
11:16
start to judge our own customers by our own personal behaviour and preferences,
11:22
right? So—
11:27
Yes.
11:27
Now that said, I'm one of these crazy guys who signs up for every email
11:32
possible, right? If there's a marketing email, I'm signed up to that. And in
11:37
fact, now we've got our team, they're developing Well, they're upgrading the
11:42
system that analyses those emails because I just think it's, it's just, it's
11:47
just, maybe it's just me, Laura. So I just, maybe you do the same thing. I, it's
11:52
just like free training, right?
11:56
100%.
11:57
And you can see the emails, you can see what happens over time. You can see your
12:01
competitors, what offers they're doing, what the designs are like, what the
12:05
frequency is like and all that sort of stuff. And it's such a treasure trove of
12:09
information. That said, going back to my original point, if I didn't have that
12:13
hat on, I'd probably unsubscribe from a lot of emails. And so you do think, you
12:16
do think there's that behaviour, isn't there, that your customers are going to
12:20
respond the same way?
12:24
It's so true. People are kind of afraid of the unsubscribe though. And I think
12:29
maybe it's easier for me to feel confident about this because I'm looking at the
12:34
numbers, I'm monitoring the performance, I'm seeing the actual unsubscribes. And
12:38
whatever the founder or the e-com marketing team has thought in their head about
12:43
what people are going to do, it's, it's not the reality in the numbers. Like the
12:48
unsubscribe rates are never as high as someone would imagine they would be. Most
12:52
of the people on that list, they want to be there. And you know what, if they
12:57
don't want to be, that's a good thing because they're just holding you down.
13:02
They're potentially harming your deliverability. They're not for you. You know,
13:07
so let them, let them go, let them unsubscribe.
13:11
Yeah, and wish them well on their way.
13:14
Yes.
13:16
Goodbye, God bless. Yeah, let's dig into this. Your phrase, they're afraid of
13:21
the unsubscribe. And again, it's something that's an obvious statement. And I
13:25
get it that people are going, we've worked hard to build the email list. We
13:29
don't want to hack people off so that they unsubscribe. Because we want to keep
13:34
them on the list as long as possible. Explain to us why maybe that's perhaps not
13:38
the best mindset and how we can— well, how do you lead clients to get over that
13:42
fear?
13:46
Yeah, well, it starts a lot with the content strategy. I mean, if you are
13:52
offering value and those people want to be there, you're doing— you're providing
13:57
a service. It's like sales as a service, but through your Email messages.
14:02
Yeah.
14:04
If you're literally spamming people, well, yeah, then you are being a bother,
14:09
and yes, people should unsubscribe. But I think it comes with the confidence of
14:14
knowing your voice, knowing your content strategy, knowing that you're providing
14:19
value even beyond the email piece, and then communicating that through email.
14:24
And the customers who love you are gonna just. appreciate that so much.
14:30
Yeah. And you raise an important distinction there with spam. So how do I— and I
14:35
suppose this is maybe what people are fearing, is if I start sending more
14:40
emails, people feel that they're spamming people, which is a very grey,
14:45
undefined, murky area. What's the difference between spam and genuine email
14:50
marketing? How would you separate those 2 in people's minds?
14:55
Yes. Well, you know, there are those Nigerian prince I've still not had my
14:59
money, Laryssa.
15:04
I'm waiting. I should be getting about $5 trillion soon, I think. Yeah.
15:09
Those are true spam. Um, I mean, I really think spam is a concerted effort.
15:15
Like, you have to be trying to exploit someone or harassing them for it to be
15:21
spam. But if you're a brand that's showing up with like I mean, obviously
15:27
depending on what you sell, but styling tips, gift ideas, new arrivals,
15:34
promotions, education about how to use this product, like really painting a full
15:40
360-degree picture of what you offer. I mean, that's just value at the end of
15:46
the day. You could argue that maybe frequency is spam, but that's what
15:52
segmentation can help with once your list grows and grows, because then you can
15:58
decide how frequently to send certain emails to certain people on the list, and
16:04
there's a whole strategy around that. So yeah, there's many levels of kind of
16:11
providing value to the right people at the right time.
16:17
Yeah, yeah, I'd agree. And it all comes down to providing value, doesn't it?
16:21
Like, is this genuinely providing value for the people that I'm sending it to?
16:25
Yeah.
16:25
One of the most interesting things we've discovered recently, which I didn't
16:30
predict, but I'm fascinated by, going back to the podcast, one of our e-com
16:34
brands, we've launched a podcast. We're on like episode, I don't even know, 30,
16:39
40, something like that. It's doing well. The podcast has got great download
16:44
numbers, et cetera, et cetera. So one of the ways that we promote that podcast
16:48
is we send an email whenever a new episode comes out to our Email list. We don't
16:53
talk about offers. We don't talk about products. It's just literally here's the
16:58
product podcast. Here's what we talked about. Here's where you're going to find
17:02
it interesting, right? Those podcast episode emails are our highest grossing
17:07
revenue emails. So they outperform our sales emails, our offer emails. Well,
17:12
most of the offer emails. You know when you send out an email about a podcast
17:16
episode. You're going to sell considerably more than if I sent an offer email
17:21
out to the same audience.
17:26
That's very interesting. And on the flip side of that, though, if that was the
17:30
only type of email you ever sent, I'm sure it probably wouldn't perform as well.
17:34
So it has to be part of this whole system too.
17:38
Exactly. Yeah.
17:39
Yeah.
17:39
You're exactly right. And it's not like we stopped sending the other emails.
17:43
Yes.
17:43
They're still being sent.
17:44
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
17:45
Yeah.
17:46
Because there are also brands that ones that are kind of afraid of being spammy,
17:50
afraid of selling, where they're almost like trying to disguise the fact that
17:55
they sell something. You know, they go so, they go so far in the opposite
17:59
direction that it's like, we're just gonna educate or entertain all the time and
18:03
pretend we don't actually sell anything. You know?
18:08
That's really funny. That's really funny. I, yeah, that's true. I've seen those
18:13
emails. To be fair, Actually, I've probably been tempted to write those kind of
18:18
emails myself because I just assumed it was a British thing. Maybe it isn't.
18:23
It's just like, we don't want to come across as pushy. No, no, no, we don't want
18:28
to do that. We like to be polite, you know, but there's an invitation if you'd
18:33
like to find out more about something, then there's a link somewhere buried. But
18:38
no, you're right. It is funny, isn't it? That whole disguising the sales thing.
18:43
You mentioned segmentation as a way to not be spammy, perhaps as your list
18:48
grows. How do I, how do I do segmentation well? Do I need like a minimum list
18:53
size? Do I need to think about different customer types? How do I do
18:58
segmentation well?
19:03
Yeah, I would say, well, anyone can do segmentation theoretically. But what we
19:09
have seen, it works best In 2 scenarios. One, it depends how often you're
19:14
sending. So I would say if they're sending 2 to 3 times a week, that's when
19:19
segmentation starts to be important. Plus having a list size probably over like
19:25
10 or 15,000. Under than that, under that number, you could probably just send
19:30
once a week and for the most part send to your whole list. Obviously paying
19:35
attention to people who may have disengaged, but I think you could be okay under
19:41
that number. Over that segmentation becomes important because there are going to
19:46
be people in that list size who are only occasional engagers and you don't want
19:51
to keep like blasting those people 3, 4 times a week, but maybe they want that
19:57
like one most important email that you send. That week. So that's when that
20:02
starts coming into play.
20:07
So how would I segment? Would I segment on the basis of frequency of purchase,
20:14
like an occasional buyer, a regular buyer, like your red-hot VIP kind of buyers?
20:20
Sure. We typically recommend like a combination of things by frequency. So let's
20:26
pretend we're saying 90-day engaged is your most engaged segment. It's kind of a
20:32
mix of email engagement, site activity, purchase activity, newness to the list.
20:38
It's a combination of different engagement factors. And then you can do 90-day,
20:44
like 180-day, 365-day. These day numbers that I'm saying kind of depend again
20:50
how young your list is, how big your list is, there's some variation there, but
20:56
those are kind of standard, like, engagement timeline checks, I guess you could
21:02
call them.
21:07
So these are people that have purchased in the last 90 days, people that have
21:11
purchased in the last 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months, right?
21:15
Yeah, or they have engaged with your email. So like open, clicked, browsed site,
21:19
added to cart, started checkout, placed order, exhibited some sort of meaningful
21:23
activity.
21:27
Okay. Can we deal with the other elephant in the room while we're talking about
21:32
this? Because, um, email list cleanup, right? The dreaded word cleanup where
21:37
people go, you want me to delete emails from my email? I'm sorry. Excuse me. Um,
21:43
should we do email list cleanup? If we should, when should we think about it?
21:48
What are the rules of engagement there?
21:54
Oh yes, email list cleanup is so important. And it is one of these other like
22:00
scary mindset things that people have about email marketing, just exactly like
22:05
you said. I worked so hard to build this list and now you want me to delete
22:11
hundreds, thousands of people? But it's so, so, so important because there is
22:16
kind of a natural lifespan of an email list. People Email addresses change.
22:22
People stop looking at their inboxes. People don't care about you anymore, but
22:27
they're too lazy to unsubscribe. That's just what happens, and you need to have
22:33
a system in place to figure out who those people are. And usually you send them
22:38
a sunset flow, which is kind of this like last chance effort to keep them, and
22:44
then suppress. Or archive them. You do not want those people in your active file
22:49
of who you're sending to. And there's, there's a number of reasons for that.
22:55
Which are?
22:56
The most important one being, if you are sending to people who just don't ever
23:02
open, don't ever click, you're sending signals to inbox providers like Gmail
23:08
being the most prominent one that Oh, this email must not have value. This email
23:14
must be spam. Look at all these people not opening or clicking it. And that's
23:20
when your emails slowly start ending up in spam folders because Gmail has
23:25
decided you are not a valuable or legitimate sender.
23:32
Yeah.
23:33
And it's really hard to come back from that.
23:35
Yeah. I mean, it takes a while. It's an important point, isn't it? Because It's
23:39
better to send an email to 100 people who are highly motivated about your brand
23:44
than to send an email to 100,000 people where the same 100 still open it and you
23:48
might pick up 1 or 2 from the other 100,000. It's the 987,000 that aren't
23:53
opening that are gonna cause some real damage where Gmail and Outlook and people
23:57
are concerned, right?
24:01
100%. In one of the most extreme examples of this with a client that we took
24:07
over their email program. Let's say, I think they had 20,000 people they were
24:13
sending to. We don't really know the full history of like how this list was
24:19
grown, but we took it over. They were certainly ending up in spam. It was some
24:24
of the worst open rates I had ever seen in my career, like 5% or something.
24:30
Oh wow.
24:30
It was horrible. It was horrible. We did like multiple rounds of trying to
24:35
figure out who were the true engaged people. We cut it down, I want to say, to
24:41
like 1,500 from 20,000. And I'm very grateful for this business owner to like
24:46
trust me on this because could you imagine someone telling you, um, we have to
24:51
get rid of like 19,000 people on your list? Um, we basically started over and
24:57
turned it around, got it out of spam, started getting revenue conversion rates
25:02
back up, but it was a very extreme.
25:07
Yeah.
25:09
case. And that's really hard for people to hear. But like you're saying, it's
25:14
better to speak to the people that want to hear from you rather than trying to
25:19
somehow like win back or convince people that just don't care.
25:24
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I'm intrigued then, um, what are some of the best
25:28
practices, some of the things that we should be thinking about? We're halfway
25:32
through 2026.
25:37
Mhm.
25:37
Um, what is working now? What are some of the, the things maybe we've not
25:40
thought about that are working now? Um, some of the things that we should still
25:44
keep doing?
25:47
I—
25:47
what, what are your thoughts?
25:48
Sure. I always like going back to the basics. So I recently did this kind of
25:52
unhinged study. It was like, it was similar to what you were saying where you
25:56
like—
26:00
I'm really curious what I What a Hinge study would look like.
26:05
Well, maybe you wouldn't find this unhinged because you said you subscribe to
26:10
like every ecommerce email under the sun, but I was really curious to know. I
26:16
was monitoring and following, it was like 360 ecommerce brands in different
26:21
verticals. I signed up for each one of their welcome offers through a popup or
26:27
whatever it may be. And that was through Email and SMS, and I took notes about
26:33
everything that happened. Whether I got the welcome email, whether the offer
26:38
matched or not, whether it ended up in spam, all of this kind of stuff. And 44%
26:44
of this random sample did not send anything, even though it was promised to me.
26:50
And the reason I mention this to your question. Is I think we just need to go
26:55
back to the basics. Like it's, it's always shocking to me when I audit, when I
27:01
meet new brands, how they think they need to go to some fancy new level, like in
27:06
their email program. But when we pick apart the system or the foundation that's
27:12
already there, there are things that have never been checked or looked at, just
27:18
very basic. Things that have a huge impact on the customer experience. You know,
27:23
for someone new to come to your website and not receive what you've promised
27:29
them, goodbye. Like, you've, you've lost them, you know? And it surprises me
27:35
that there are so many brands out there that are not checking this. It's as
27:40
simple as signing up for your own email or having a friend do it just to make
27:46
sure.
27:51
Mm-hmm.
27:53
It works. Yeah.
27:56
Yeah. No, absolutely. We have a little Claude script actually that now tests all
28:00
the email forms on a regular basis and knows how to do multiple test emails.
28:05
Yes.
28:06
Um, because you just, you never know if they've broken. It's just, no one tells
28:10
you. It's 44% is a lot, man.
28:14
I mean, I was pretty shocked by it. Yeah.
28:19
Okay, that's unhinged. Yeah, I'll give you that.
28:21
And there, there was more stuff like, I can't remember, like 12% just went right
28:26
to my spam folder, which who even knows what's happening there? You know, there
28:31
was a lot of different things that I found. So it's just that first touchpoint.
28:36
Like if you can nail that, that is truly the most important email or text
28:41
message you're ever gonna send in your whole email program because that's the
28:46
only time someone is gonna be Waiting. No other time is someone waiting for your
28:50
email, you know?
28:55
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's true. I, I suppose the— well, the, the only one I
29:00
maybe would add to that, the email that we found works really well is the order
29:06
confirmation and the shipping notification, right? So everybody reads the order
29:11
confirmation. Um, it's a bit Which always fascinates me. I do it and I'm kind of
29:16
going, why am I reading this? Because I've just seen it on the website, but I
29:21
just want to make sure for some reason, you know, that it's connected.
29:26
Yes.
29:27
It's a bit like I still read the instructions on the back of a shampoo bottle if
29:32
it's a shampoo I've not used before. It's like, it doesn't make sense, right?
29:37
Why am I reading this? I have no idea why I'm reading this. I know how to use
29:41
shampoo. I've done it a lot anyway. Um, so I, I, I think the order confirmation,
29:46
but also the shipping notification email. Are two of the most read emails that
29:50
we send out, right? And so the default is, if you use Shopify, I'm just going to
29:55
literally send you that template. Here's your name, here's your address, like I
29:59
don't know it. Here's you know what you've ordered, and that's it. And then the
30:04
shipping notification is usually these days because we're all lazy, we leave to
30:08
the courier to send that notification going. oh yeah, your parcel's on its way.
30:13
And you kind of think— I, my experience is there's a lot of possibility just in
30:17
those 2 emails. I don't know if you found that.
30:22
Yes, I'm so glad you brought this up because those transactional emails are very
30:27
overlooked. Marketing emails are the things everyone's focused on, but you're
30:32
very right. I think a lot of people who just set up a Shopify store, it's not
30:36
intuitive to go in there and like update all your Notification emails or what to
30:41
do with them. But if you take the step to enhance them, like you're saying, it's
30:46
a more branded, a more personal experience enhances the customer journey. So
30:51
yes, I that's a really good point.
30:58
What do you see then in terms of emails, marketing emails, transactional emails,
31:02
whichever ones? What's working well in terms of There's 2 questions people
31:06
always ask, isn't there? What should I put in the emails and what should they
31:10
look like, right? What are you seeing working well in, in the content channel?
31:15
And then we'll come to the design channel later.
31:19
Sure. I think simple is best. I know we're not talking about design yet, but
31:24
both for content and design, some brands, they're trying to reinvent the wheel.
31:29
How can we make this like the most interesting thing anyone has ever Consumed
31:35
all the topics, but like one idea, one desired action. Keep it simple. You don't
31:40
want people to be sitting there like reading your email as if it's some epic
31:46
novel. It's, it's, I mean, it's a means to an end. You want them to do something
31:51
else and the faster you can get them to do that, the better.
31:56
Yeah, we found, um, Going back to conversion, we found on one particular
32:02
website, we cut every single paragraph down on all the main pages, like the
32:08
homepage, the category pages. You had to drill down to the product page. On all
32:13
the other pages, we had a rule that no paragraph could be more than 3 lines,
32:19
right? Or no block of text could be more than 3 lines. And so you had a heading,
32:25
you had 3 lines, And it really forced us to create the instant sort of elevator
32:30
kind of statement for each thing. By doing that, by reducing massively the
32:36
amount of text, our conversion rate went up quite a lot. Because to your point,
32:41
simple wins. And I'm— it works on the website. And my experience is also, like
32:47
you say, it works in email as well. Right.
32:53
It's, I work with a lot of like creative entrepreneurs with more creative
32:58
ecommerce businesses. It's always so hard to convince them that the simple
33:03
version is better because they want everything to be so branded, so creative, so
33:08
story-driven. But yes, it works. If we A/B test it, I guarantee that it will
33:12
outperform something more elaborate.
33:17
Yeah. Yeah, it's true. It's a fascinating one, isn't it? You can do storytelling
33:21
just within 3 or 4 lines, right?
33:24
Yes, exactly. And that's hard.
33:28
It's hard. Yeah, it always is. And the shorter it is, the harder it is to write.
33:31
That's the problem. And I think sometimes we like longer emails because they're
33:34
easier to write. You can be a little bit lazy, right? That's true. I don't know
33:37
if you ever do public speaking, but public speaking, if someone asks me to speak
33:41
for an hour, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. I understand them talk
33:44
for an hour. It's not a problem. You asked me to talk 15 minutes. I'm in a cold
33:47
sweat, right? Because that's a much harder thing to prep for. Do you know what I
33:50
mean?
33:53
Very true.
33:54
Because you've got to cut out a whole bunch of stuff. I suppose the only, to be
33:59
slightly contrarian, the only emails I've seen work well where there's longer
34:03
form content, certainly in our business, is when I've done like a founder's
34:08
update, like an annual sort of state of the nation to all our customers from the
34:12
founder. And I do this in our brand, so I'll write an email To our customers,
34:16
and it's usually—it's not an insignificant email, but it's the only time we do
34:21
it, and people do read that because it's a one-off. It's just like a state of a
34:25
nation type thing. People who are really interested in the brand want to know
34:29
what's going on. They would not want to do that week in, week out.
34:35
No, no, no, no. But there is there is sort of an art to that type of email too.
34:39
Like if you just went blah blah blah me me me I I I like. Not so interesting.
34:43
Like, you still have to make it customer-focused while sharing the information
34:48
that you want to share about your brand.
34:52
Yeah, you do. Yeah, you have to put in a way where they're going to care, right?
34:57
It's, um, it's such an important point. So simple works. What else should we be
35:03
thinking about with content? Um, again, I still see a variety of different
35:08
emails from plain text to full-on HTML, beautifully designed emails with
35:13
animations to emails with now embedded videos and all kinds of stuff. So in
35:19
terms of the actual content, keep it simple, but how, what else should we be
35:24
thinking about with the content of the email?
35:30
Yeah, I think if you're gonna try, I guess, more fancy formats like what you're
35:35
talking about, I would always A/B test against a format or a layout that is more
35:41
simple and straightforward, because while it might look cooler and more branded,
35:46
you have no idea how that's going to perform with your audience. The more that
35:52
you add to it, the higher risk also that it's not going to render correctly. So
35:57
it's definitely not for the, the, the beginner email person. I would say there's
36:02
more that could potentially break, you know, to optimise for dark mode, to
36:08
optimise for mobile, to different devices. So if you're DIYing this or you have
36:13
a smaller team, keep it simple. You'll do great with that. If you're working
36:19
with an expert, maybe you can try other formats, but even then I would say A/B
36:24
testing them against like a simpler, more straightforward layout.
36:30
Yeah, I love that. Always A/B test. What do you mean when you say, for those
36:33
that might not know, optimise for dark mode?
36:40
Yes. So dark mode is a thing on smartphones where you can flip it to have the
36:45
background white or black. And what that happens is it inverts colours in email
36:50
marketing. And it can look really horrible if you, if you are not, if in the
36:54
testing phase of the email, you are not also previewing it in dark mode to see
36:59
what it looks like.
37:04
Yeah.
37:05
Sometimes, I mean, actually the majority of times, it's hard to design an email
37:10
that will look 100% perfect in light mode, in dark mode, on this phone, on that
37:15
phone, on desktop. There's always some kind of compromise you have to make. And
37:20
that's why it's, it's better to keep it simple.
37:25
Mm-hmm.
37:26
But it is important to test it on multiple devices because Sometimes images
37:31
don't load correctly or they get broken or for accessibility reasons, the way
37:37
colours get inverted, someone can't even like read what's in your email. So it's
37:43
important to be aware of that. I think that's a big hurdle I do get from clients
37:49
is people think an email design is like a flyer or something like it looks the
37:54
same everywhere you see the design, it's going to look.
38:00
Yeah.
38:02
Perfect. And people don't realise there are often compromises that need to
38:07
happen. It's hard. That can be a hard pill to swallow for people. They're like,
38:12
what do you mean it's gonna change colours on dark mode? We don't like that.
38:16
Well, I can't change dark mode, you know what I mean?
38:21
Yeah, we definitely need to play to it. Because like you say, I mean, I am
38:24
actually a fan of dark mode. Everything I have is in dark mode.
38:28
Yeah.
38:28
Including my sense of humor, probably. But it's, um, but the amount of times
38:32
I've got emails and got, I just can't read it because it's in some weird dark
38:36
blue font and you kind of like, dude, delete, right? Because I just— or the
38:40
other thing that a real pet peeve, I'm just gonna get on my soapbox now. A real
38:44
pet peeve is when someone puts a signature on an email as a PNG with a white
38:49
background. So they've, you know, they've got their handwritten signature, but
38:53
the PNG graphic has got the white background and you're like, oh, that's just
38:57
lazy.
39:01
Exactly. Exactly. Well, they didn't test it on dark mode, that's for sure.
39:04
Because they would have seen that. Yes.
39:07
I don't think dark mode was done when maybe when they put their signatures
39:11
together. I suppose that's something else that I've found, just even on your own
39:14
emails, your email signature. The amount of people that send me emails You know,
39:18
with a signature that's 10 years old. It's like technology's moved on, guys. I
39:22
just, I just want to point that out, right? Maybe have a think about that.
39:26
That's, that's a good exercise for everyone. Go send yourself an email on dark
39:31
mode and see what it looks like. And it's okay. Just fix it with no judgment.
39:35
Yeah. No, there is judgment. Fix it. Come on. Um, so in terms of design, if we
39:41
can switch slightly. Again, we're keeping it simple. I get the point that it's
39:47
going to render differently in dark mode, light mode. It's going to render
39:53
differently, say, on an Android to an iPhone, um, to an iPad, to a desktop. Um,
39:59
so what are some of the other things that we should think about? Should we—
40:05
well, let's go and start with the basics. Should we still be using HTML, CSS,
40:11
and images in emails, or should we be Well, I think, yes, all of the above.
40:17
I think what is popular and emerging as a best practice right now is kind of a
40:23
hybrid approach where text elements of the email are rendered more plain text,
40:29
and then you have some HTML elements. So, oops, sorry, my phone was ringing. So
40:35
that In case something doesn't load, you know, still some elements of the email
40:40
will render and be delivered to the subscriber.
40:46
Okay. And is that something you can do easily in Klaviyo?
40:50
Oh, definitely. Yeah. Klaviyo, pretty much any email platform, whether it be
40:55
Klaviyo or whatever else, they, they have similar builders. So there's the
41:00
option to do HTML. There's the option to do a drag and drop. There's option to
41:05
just do plain text. So that would be true across any email marketing platform
41:10
that you use. I would just say, well, image-based for someone that's maybe
41:15
DIYing their emails or has a small team, that's kind of how you can ensure the
41:20
most stability. I don't know if that's the right word, but the most ensure that
41:24
it looks like the design you intend because it's going to match exactly. Whereas
41:29
HTML or plain text has more chances to kind of be responsive or invert in dark
41:34
mode, et cetera, et cetera. So if you are really stuck on having a certain look,
41:39
really making sure your brand is communicated, those image-based emails are
41:44
going to be for you. But the trick with that is making sure that the image files
41:49
are sized appropriately, that they are compressed appropriately, because
41:54
otherwise, you know, your email is going to take forever to load in an inbox,
41:59
especially if you're sending a lot of them.
42:04
Mm-hmm.
42:04
Especially if someone's on a slow internet connection.
42:06
Yeah, which still happens, obviously, because a lot of people are seeing emails
42:10
on mobile. They're doing that on their data plan on their mobile phone. And if
42:13
they're out of signal somewhere, that email is going to be a nightmare. And so,
42:17
and I, I'm convinced, I don't know if I have any direct evidence of this or
42:21
whether I've even cared to look, but I think the slower the email takes to load,
42:24
the more likely Google is just to put it in the bottom of somewhere that it
42:28
doesn't need to be, right?
42:32
Yeah, definitely. Oh, and one thing we didn't even touch upon now, because I
42:37
just thought of this because you're talking about Google and the decision it's
42:42
making, is now in the Gmail inbox, Google has its own AI that is summarizing
42:46
emails. Um, and the benefit of doing HTML, plain text, or even an image-based
42:51
email that has really good alt text is like AI doesn't have anything to read
42:56
unless there's text there that it can.
43:01
Yeah.
43:02
access. So now you have to think about optimising for AI as well.
43:05
Yeah, that's interesting. It's— AI is everywhere, isn't it? Because even now, I,
43:11
you know, we've been playing around with it a little bit. Claude Code has an MCP
43:16
with Klaviyo. So you can now get this sort of direct interaction in terms of
43:21
metrics. So we've talked a bit about design, which has been great. But in terms
43:26
of metrics, what should I be tracking where my email is concerned? How do I know
43:31
my email Sure.
43:37
Basics would be open and click rate. So open rate with a caveat. So I can't even
43:43
remember now what year, maybe 3 years ago now, iPhone released this version that
43:48
has mail privacy protection. So what happens is if someone uses Apple Mail on an
43:54
iPhone and they receive your branded email, It automatically marks it as opened,
44:00
whether or not that person actually opened your email or not. So there is now
44:05
this bit of like a veil of not knowing for sure about opens. There are some
44:11
tools like within Klaviyo and other platforms that can help you identify who is
44:17
using Apple Mail Privacy Protection. So it's, I'm just saying that to take open
44:22
rate with a grain of salt. Yeah.
44:29
Yeah.
44:29
However, it is reliable in the sense you can monitor big patterns up and down.
44:34
Click rate is still reliable. And it's the most, I guess, it's the best way to
44:40
tell that someone is truly engaged with your email because they took the time to
44:45
actually click something and go to your website or to wherever you're sending
44:51
them. And I would say 2 to 3% is a great, healthy click rate. More than that,
44:56
great, amazing. If you're under 2%, it's time to kind of start to look at ways
45:01
to try to maybe manipulate your CTAs, move them higher up in the email, look at
45:07
like colour contrast, look at your layouts. What can inspire people to click,
45:12
basically?
45:18
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, what about, what do they call it now? Revenue per
45:24
recipient is one of the new metrics I'm hearing a lot about.
45:30
Yeah, definitely. So that is a measure. I mean, it is exactly what it says. So
45:36
based on how many people received it, how much revenue, like per each person. I
45:42
mean, that would obviously vary depending on like what you sell, what your price
45:48
point is. So you would have to figure out what that average That healthy average
45:54
would be for you. But yeah, that's a great metric. Generally conversion rate,
46:01
unsubscribe rate is a good thing to monitor also, but open and click is kind of
46:07
like the standard basic email metric health. Yeah, KPIs.
46:13
Keep looking at them. And what's subscribe rate? What does that need to be under
46:16
these days?
46:22
Unsubscribe rate would be under 1%. I mean, 1% would be very high if that's
46:26
where you were. That's a danger zone, but that's kind of like, oh, okay, we need
46:31
to really pay attention to what we're doing and who we're sending to.
46:36
Yeah, no, fair enough. Fair enough. Listen, Laryssa, I'm looking at the clock
46:41
going, oh my Lord, time has just gone by at 1,000 miles an hour. If people want
46:47
to connect with you, if they want to find out more about what you guys do at Joy
46:52
Joya, if they— which is a great name, but where did that name come from?
46:57
Thank you. So we used to be a marketing agency that specialized in the jewelry
47:03
industry before I niched into email marketing, and Joy Joya is kind of a play on
47:08
that because joya or joya means jewel in Spanish, and then just I liked I liked
47:13
the joy connection there, and we just kept the name. We no longer just
47:18
specialize in jewelry, but the name the name stuck around.
47:24
Joy Joya. I just love the name. Anything with joy in is just a great name. Thank
47:28
you. It's just let's be joyful people. If people want to find out more about
47:33
you, connect with you, what's where do we go?
47:39
Yeah, go to joyjoya.com. J O Y J O Y A dot com. And actually that unhinged thing
47:44
I talked about earlier is a report that your listeners or viewers can download.
47:49
They can go to joyjoya.com/frontdoor, all one word, frontdoor. And they could
47:55
read about all the unhinged things I found. And I also have a podcast called
48:00
Marketing with Laryssa that's on Audio everywhere you listen to podcasts and on
48:06
YouTube if you want to hear more about me nerding out on email and SMS
48:11
marketing.
48:16
Fantastic. We'll of course link to those in the show notes. So if you're
48:20
listening on the podcast, just scroll down, they'll be in the show description
48:24
there. Or of course, if you're on YouTube, just look at the description, the
48:28
links will all be in there as well. So you can click through to those. If you're
48:32
subscribed to the newsletter, they'll be in your inbox. If you are a Slingshot
48:36
AI user, just ask Sam to put you in touch with Laryssa and he will Gladly help
48:40
you. And of course, they'll all be on the website as well. Listen, I always love
48:44
talking about email marketing. I don't think we talk about it enough, if I'm
48:47
honest with you. But it's great to have you on the show. It's got to that stage
48:51
of the show though, where I need to ask you 2 more questions for those who are
48:55
listening. Question number 1, what's your question for me? As odd as that
48:59
sounds, this is where you give me a question. I take that question, and I will
49:03
go and answer it on social media. So, Laryssa, what's your question for me?
49:07
Okay, hopefully this isn't too tough, but if you were to start an ecommerce
49:11
brand today, this, on this day, what would you personally do to try to grow an
49:16
email list from scratch? I'm really curious to know what your, what your effort
49:21
would look like.
49:25
Okay, that's a great question, and I'll tell you why that's a great question.
49:29
I'll happily answer that. If you want to know how I'm going to answer that, come
49:33
follow me on social media @MattEdmundson. Now, the reason why I I think this is
49:37
a great question because my second question, saving the best till last, this is
49:41
where, for those that have stuck around, I just want you to deliver your high
49:45
value. My genuine question for you is going to be, how do I build my email list?
49:49
Okay.
49:51
So you get to go first, and if it's good, I'll steal your answer.
49:58
Okay. That's a great question. Well, I want to say there's no one blanket
50:03
answer. It's really going to depend on the brand. I think the main, most
50:08
efficient way right now, you have to be in paid ads because to grow the email
50:13
list, you need to get traffic to the site for any sort of opt-in to convert. So
50:18
you need some kind of system lever to be driving traffic. The other thing I
50:23
really have liked lately, and I've been experimenting with my clients,
50:29
especially on Klaviyo, They have a new Klaviyo social integration, which to me
50:34
is amazing because prior to this, the 2 channels, organic social and email, you
50:39
had to kind of like work around it to try to convert email subscribers from say
50:44
Instagram. But now with this new integration, there's like a Klaviyo native
50:49
opt-in that happens in the DMs. So you can tell people like, oh, comment. Yeah.
50:54
Whatever, uh, promo and you'll get this special Instagram follower only discount
51:00
and they have to like opt in through the DM. And then, um, so that's a really
51:05
great way to leverage an organic social following if you have that. Before it
51:10
was more difficult to do that. And then just making sure you have an offer that
51:15
like is truly going to resonate with your customers. Obviously, if you go around
51:20
the internet and look at ecommerce brands, most people are doing whatever 20%
51:25
off your first purchase, blah, blah, blah. Sure. That's a great place to start,
51:31
but you have to know for your customers what's going to be enticing for them.
51:36
And if you don't have the margin to offer a welcome discount, can you get
51:41
creative with offering something that people are actually going to want once you
51:46
get them in front of that form or whatever that opt-in might be?
51:51
Yeah. Brilliant. Great advice. There you go. Can I improve on that? Come find
51:55
out on social media. I doubt it. But Laryssa, thank you so much for coming on
51:59
the show. Genuinely loved it. I've not talked about the colour of the walls
52:03
behind you, but whatever colour that is, I'm a big fan. That's a lush colour on
52:07
those walls.
52:11
Thank you.
52:11
But thank you so much. A bizarre way to end the show. I'm really sorry. But
52:15
thank you for coming on. It's been great to chat with you.
52:19
It's been so fun. Thanks for having me, Matt. I loved it. Great.
52:23
Well, there you go. Fantastic. Another amazing conversation all wrapped up here
52:27
on the eCommerce Podcast. Make sure you subscribe and like and follow and all
52:31
that good stuff because we've got more great conversations coming up. And of
52:34
course, I don't want you to miss any of them. And like I said at the start of
52:38
the show, anything you need to know, anything you want to find out about the
52:42
show, go to ecommercepodcast.net. On there will be the blog post from today's
52:46
show with Laryssa. All of the stuff, all the notes will be there if you want to
52:50
download that. And of course, if you're subscribed to Sam, the Slingshot AI
52:54
system we've got, just ask Sam, how's, how's what Laryssa said today going to
52:58
help my business? And it will get to work helping you out. So all of that said,
53:02
that's it from me. That's it from Laryssa. Thank you so much for joining us this
53:06
week. Have a phenomenal week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next
53:09
time. Bye for now. Bye.