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Retail Growth Through Data: Email & SMS Marketing Secrets with Intuit Mailchimp · The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

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Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to let you know upfront that this
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episode has been made in partnership with mailchimp, which means it's a
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sponsored episode and I've been paid to produce this conversation. I want to be
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transparent about that because the whole point of this podcast is to give you genuinely
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useful information you can actually act on. I only partner with brands
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where I believe there's something really valuable for independent retailers and small
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businesses. And as you'll hear today, that's absolutely the case here.
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All of the views and reflections you hear from me are my own. Right, let's
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get into it. It's a really great in depth conversation.
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If you run a retail business or an e commerce brand, chances are you
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already have some form of email marketing set up. You're sending
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newsletters, maybe the old promotional email, and it's doing something,
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but probably not as much as it could be. Welcome
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to the Resilient Retail Game Plan. I'm Catherine Edley and in the next few
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minutes you're about to get powerful real world retail strategies
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from insights shared both from my guests and myself, backed up by
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my 25 years in the retail industry. Keep listening to learn how
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to grow a thriving, profitable product business. Let's jump in
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with this latest episode. Here's what I see again and
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again when I talk to independent retailers. They're sitting on a gold mine of
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customer data and not using it. They're sending the same message to everyone
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on their list, regardless of what those people have bought, when they last
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bought, or what they're actually interested in. And as a result, they're working
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harder than they need to, spending more than they should on customer acquisition and leaving
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a huge amount of repeat revenue on the table. Today I'm
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sitting down with Ali Wood from mailchimp to get practical about how small
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retail businesses can get more from their email and SMS marketing
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using the data that they already have. There are some genuinely eye
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opening numbers in this conversation and some really interesting ways of looking at things that
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you might not have thought of before. Thank you so much
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for joining me, Ali. I can't wait to jump in and I'd love
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to jump straight into the weeds. If you look at small business
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retailers or e commerce brands right now, what do you think some of
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the biggest challenges are that they're facing when it comes to marketing and actually
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driving profitable growth? Yeah, I think it's a great
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question to jump into. I think for a lot of the customers
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that we speak to and the brands that we see, it's about measuring and
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optimizing customer acquisition. I think there's so many different
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channels at the moment and different places that you can
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keep your data, track your data and if it's not, it's just
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fragmented. Right. So if you haven't got everything talking to each other,
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it's really difficult to then kind of figure out like
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where your ROI is and where you should be investing your money.
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Interestingly, one of the things that we've seen is that, you know,
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brands really want to invest in being able to grow their
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lists and they know that they need to now start capturing more
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information. So like phone numbers for example, for like messaging.
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But actually customers are getting a lot more protective over where they,
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you know, where they want to put their data and who they want to give
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it to. So it's kind of a bit like, you know, it's
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competing. Right. So how do you kind of like cut through the noise and get
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your message heard? I guess it's one of those things, isn't it, when cost
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of acquisition is low and it's easy to get
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customers and in a way, not that you can be more, you don't have
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to be as focused, but the more expensive it gets, the more you have to
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get it right, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So if you think about
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it, you're like, you're investing in channels, you've got channels to invest in, which is
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great, but then how do you know what channel is driving what? And I think
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if like really good example would be like, you know, if you're doing some sort
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of like targeting and you get someone that you have a niche product and you
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know they're really interested in that product, you send them some great email content,
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I don't know, say like skiwear and then they go to your website, they look
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at the ski wear, but then you get a pop up that says 10% off
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and then they click on that. Then how do you now know that they are
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interested in the skiwear but they've clicked on your 10%
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pop up? So you know, there's lots of kind of like conflicting
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ways in which the data, if you've not got it under some sort
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of like unified platform and if you're not tagging it correctly, you don't have
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the right understanding of the customer. What Ali's
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describing there is something I see constantly with retailers I work with.
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Data coming in from multiple places, none of it talking to each other. And
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founders making big decisions about their marketing spend almost completely
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blind. That fragmentation problem was exactly what drove
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mailchimp to rethink their platform and what they built in response is really
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interesting because it wasn't just about giving teams more data
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to look at. I think for us, a lot of it
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is around, you know, progressing from being a very sort of like basic email
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tool to something that is like much more automated
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and something that's going to give you the data insights that you need. Because what
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we kept hearing time and time again is, I'm really frustrated. I have a
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small team, I they're stretched thin. I
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don't really have necessarily the bandwidth to manage
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all of the processes that I need to manage. And
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then when you put data into that as well, there's a huge amount of data.
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So I'm collecting this data, but how do I put it together?
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And I need a tool that's going to be able to kind of give me
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some real, real insights, but then also make it really easy for me to
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use that with a very lean team. So one of the things
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as well was though, you've got your data coming in, you've
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got the actual process of email marketing and messaging that you need
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to do, but then you've also got the ROI piece hanging over the top of
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it. So, you know, if I've got a small team, am I making
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the right investments? How do I know that this investment has
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driven success for me? And I think one of the
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things that's really easy to get hung up on is what did this specific
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email drive for me or what did this specific
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social media campaign drive? Whereas it's kind of now,
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because you've got all of these different avenues, you need to look at it as
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a more like, kind of like holistic approach and say, what did that strategy
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do for me? How many new users did that strategy drive me? Or
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how much engagement did I get from existing customers through
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that strategy? Because everything's so kind of linked
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and it's really hard to build a picture of that if you haven't
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actually got a platform that's got all of that data linked to it.
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So we expanded our e commerce capabilities, so we've got
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about 26% more triggers. And so that basically
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that means then that what businesses can do is automate more
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intelligently using the data that they have. And one
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of the things that I like around that is kind of looking at two things.
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You're looking at customer lifetime value, which is hugely important,
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but then you're also looking at what's the propensity of this subset of
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customers that could be spending more with me are more likely
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to buy a specific time. And so
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the platform and the AI is giving you that data and then you're
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kind of, it's automating that process so you can kind of focus more on
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the creativity around it and message that you want to send to people.
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So, yeah, super exciting. But ultimately what we're trying to
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do is just get teams to run faster, get the AI to
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review the data that you've got and say, yes,
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no, this is where it could be tweaked, maybe do some A B testing
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as well. And I think when you're looking at things like, you know, driving in
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like loyalty examples into your email marketing strategy, they
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kind of go hand in hand really. You know, you've got your loyalty data, you've
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got your email data, you've got data coming from your E commerce
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platform as well. So ultimately what we want to do is
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increase the roi. This last point is
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really important and I want to make sure it sinks in. The goal of
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better data isn't more reports to read on a Friday afternoon. It's
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faster, smarter decisions with less manual effort.
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The businesses I see growing right now aren't the ones necessarily with the
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biggest teams. They're the ones who found ways to make every
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pound of marketing spend work harder. What Ali is describing,
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using AI to identify which customers are most likely to buy
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again and automating the right message to them at the right time
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is exactly how you do that without needing to hire a marketing department.
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I'm really surprised at how many customers
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still just send the same email to the same person,
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to a group of people, rather. Yeah, so, and I think that,
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you know, it's kind of really taking it back to what's the basics that I
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can do in order to understand my customer base and then
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what's the message that they need in the journey that they are in
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at the moment. If I'm a customer that bought from you last year and I've
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not bought anything in the last 12 months, then you need to win me back.
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Something's happened. You can send me a very different message to someone that
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bought from you last week. Right. So. So you know, the
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customers that bought last week, you want to really engage with them. You want to
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get positive sentiment coming from that purchase. So you might want to get
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them to make a review of the purchase that they've done, which is why you
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need the review data. LinkedIn, you know, if someone's done a review and maybe it's
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not as positive as you thought it was going to be, okay. I need that
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data and then I can use the tools to automate responses and get them
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into the right segments. You know, positive reviewers, negative
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reviewers, what's the story that I want to do? And like this is where like
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AI becomes really fascinating because you can just set up those kind
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of sequences but you can think about what do you need to do in
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order for you to engage all of the different types of customers that you've got
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in your database. One of the examples I've used a few times, but
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I'll say it to you, it's like, especially when you're looking at kind of like
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bringing in sms and I know we'll get onto that in a minute, but do
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you 100% know who your customer is shopping for? I had, my friend
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was shopping for her son for Christmas and then
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she gave her phone number. So she was involved into SMS. But
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the content of the SMS, the tone of it was geared
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towards a 14 year old boy.
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Yeah, you know, so it's like, yeah, you're trying to integrate it
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but she kind of got that message and it didn't land well, you
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know, the tone wasn't right. And so, you know, again that's
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like, it's a really interesting way that you can say, right, you know, use pop
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ups and things like that. So you know, who are you shopping for? Are you,
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is this a gift? Subtle things in order for you to be
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able to start building up better pictures of people like without making kind of
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assumptions, I think is really important. It's easier said than done,
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but with a lot of these tools now that have, you know, things
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integrated, you can then start making tags and putting those on them and then
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giving them the right story. The
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segmentation point that Ali just made is one of the most important
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shifts any retailer can make in how they think about email.
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Stop treating your list as one group. Start thinking about each
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person and where they actually are in their relationship with you.
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Someone who bought from you last week needs a completely different conversation
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to someone who hasn't opened an email in 6 months. Once you start
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designing for those different journeys, your email stops feeling like
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broadcasting and starts feeling like a relationship. And that changes
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everything about how it performs. And don't forget, even two or three years
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ago, this would have been incredibly difficult for you to do. But now
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with automation and AI built into email marketing platforms, there's
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a real opportunity for small businesses to do more.
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Imagine how more effective that message could have been
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if they'd have collected more data. You know, are you shopping for someone's birthday, you
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know, is it their birthday? Looking around, you know, oh, okay, I can
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start looking at the fact that they bought something in May. Maybe their birthday's in
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May. Oh, you know, if you've got any birthdays coming up, here's some
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offers. It's just being able to kind of think about that next level down in
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the data that you're trying to gather. And there's some really creative ways you can
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do it now through quizzes and pop ups and you know, and you can do
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that through the journey. You know, you've got email that's there
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to build your story and tell people about your
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brand and keep them connected. You know, longer messages and
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then you've got messaging cuts through the noise.
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You've got your transactional, you can link it in now to sort of, you know,
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like the operational side of things. So your
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orders on its way. Thanks for booking your transactional sort of stuff.
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But then also kind of cutting through the noise. We've got, you know, we've got
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a new drop coming, check your email in a week's time.
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There's different mediums kind of coming through. But I think it's
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ultimately like if you've spent the money trying to gain a customer and you've
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acquired a customer and they've bought from you and they, they like what they've
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bought and need to turn that data into sales. So this is really
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around where you do have to spend some time on looking at your data and
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the insights that you gather there and helping that to inform
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what you want to do in your email marketing strategy. In simple
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terms, it's kind of like having all of your data in one place, isn't it?
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So it's about say so not having to go to each of your like separate
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tools. So the more that you can kind of pull data from individual
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tools into one place so you can start to build up that picture of someone
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then you can start making better informed
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decisions and get yourself kind of better insights. I think for
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E commerce obviously you know, there's a lot of data in your E comm platform
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so how can you pull that into your email marketing
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tools and start to build up a picture of
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who you've got in your database and also like it's
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around how can you start to spot
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your, for example like your highest value customers really kind of like
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basic segmentation. So I've got all of these customers, okay, but what have
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they done? I've got high value buyers, I've got
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regular buyers that they buy lots of little things So I know
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I could increase their average order value. How do I do that?
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Then I've got customers that you know, haven't bought from me
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like we mentioned earlier. So then what's kind of like my re engagement
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strategy versus what's my engagement strategy? And
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then I think the unified piece kind of then also really
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brings in like email and SMS and messaging. And
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I think before they've been pretty siloed in the sense
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that maybe SMS is used to say thanks for your order, your order's on your
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way, like your transactional stuff. But now actually if you bring it
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into your strategy, like I mentioned earlier, like if you really want
14:30
a group of customers to read a specific email that you've created
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because it's really important and you really want to tell them something
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about your brand, they're going to get, I don't know,
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there's like quadruple the amount of emails that you get versus text
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messages. Right. So, right. If you can bring SMS
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into your strategy to let them know that that email's coming so that they look
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out for it. Because what we do know is that
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SMS is obviously going to get onto into someone's brain
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much quicker than an email in a list. But using the two together,
15:03
you can start building out that strategy,
15:11
Running an e commerce business, then you know the struggle. Not enough time, too
15:15
many tools and no clear picture of what's actually driving sales for
15:18
retailers today. Customer acquisition and growth are becoming harder to properly measure
15:22
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15:26
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15:29
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15:33
powerful automation across email and messaging. Now you can pull your
15:36
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15:40
Yotpo and judge me into one place so you can target high value
15:44
buyers, re engage at risk customers and automate smarter.
15:47
Want to connect the dots between campaigns and revenue? Expanded SMS across
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15:55
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Omnichannel dashboard shows what's working across email, SMS and
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Less guesswork, more growth. Visit
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www.resilientretailclub.com mailchimp to
16:23
learn more. Kind of going back to the idea of the unified
16:27
data. So one of the pain points that I see is, is you've touched
16:30
on it already. It's this idea of, right, I'm doing all of these things. I'm
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sending emails, I'm sending sms, I am also
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on socials, Maybe I'm doing organic social, maybe I'm doing ugc,
16:42
maybe I'm doing paid ads, Working with content
16:45
creators. Yeah, you know, maybe I've got bricks and mortar stores. So there's kind of
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like a huge number of different things that they're doing. So I
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guess it's then kind of working out. How do they actually work out which
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bits were working? Yeah,
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exactly. And also where it's not. So where are people dropping off?
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If you have separate providers for this stuff, then
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you're looking at separate reports, whereas if you bring it all into one
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provider, then you can start seeing what the actual plan was. So
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it's kind of going back to my original point, which was it's not
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necessarily like, how successful was that one SMS or that
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one email, but how did it work together as a
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strategy to drive views on pages,
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click throughs and ultimately purchases.
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So I think it is really about trying to have
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that overall vision of what you want the customer to go through
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and then being able to use the AI that you have within the tools to
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stop pulling out the insights so that you can see a
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spike when that sms, you know, or we planned that SMS
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and then actually we wanted an open rate of 40% on that email and we've
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got an open rate of 42 or AB testing where it's
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like, okay, well the next one, let's not send the SMS and just send the
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email and see what our open rate is. So starting to
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use the insights from the tools themselves to then make decisions
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on whether it's worked. You have to kind of like pinpoint, I think though,
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what does success look like? Because otherwise you're going to get into this, like too
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much data. I don't know where to start. You know,
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it's kind of very much sort of like take these things segment
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by segment and kind of like drive what you're looking for.
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What Ali's talking about here is a tactical shift
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that unlocks everything else. Pick one goal, build
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a strategy around it and measure the whole thing, not just the individual
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emails. But so that might look like my goal this month is to
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convert new subscribers into buyers within 30 days. I build
18:49
a welcome sequence, set my triggers, and then I measure whether that
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strategy achieved its goal, not whether any single email got a
18:56
decent open rate. That's a completely different way of thinking about email
19:00
marketing than what most small retailers are currently doing. And it's
19:04
the shift that makes all of the data actually useful.
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Also, you can look at things like some people prefer emails, some people prefer
19:12
messages, so which ones for which particular segment is working
19:15
for you? And last year we did some research which
19:19
was like a holiday guide and I thought that was super interesting
19:22
because one of the things you need to be thinking about now is everything that
19:26
you're doing now. And I hate to mention Christmas, but hey, hey, never
19:30
too early to talk about. It's never too early to talk about it.
19:34
If you're not engaging with your customers through your email marketing
19:37
strategy now, then what's to say that they're going to open your
19:41
email when you need them to, when you are really in the thick of it,
19:44
trying to drive that traffic that you need at Christmas, for
19:48
example. So there has to be some thought process around
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that. And then starting to see the engagement rates
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and then if you're starting to get engagement rates through certain types
19:59
of emails and then starting to test SMS within that
20:03
as well. So as you lead up, you know, I don't know, we've got a
20:06
bank holiday offer, there's Easter offers or, you know, whatever that
20:10
could be, then you can start logging in. I like, one of the things I
20:13
that we like is that, you know, people that like discounts are there.
20:17
People that only ever open up your emails if they're mentioned, if they're mentioning
20:21
discounts or your SMS, like, you know, oh, here's
20:24
5% off. Oh, I've clicked on that SMS. Okay, so you
20:28
know that they're driven by price. What have they then done on
20:32
your website that you can then pull that data from your Ecom platform
20:35
and then start putting that into your email marketing? Because it might be, oh,
20:40
I know that they're interested in, in a discount, but actually have not shown them
20:44
the right, the right product that they're interested in, for
20:47
example. So it's all these kind of like minutias. And
20:51
let's not forget that, you know, with the cost of
20:55
obtaining emails and the cost of
20:59
every other type of marketing to drive new
21:02
contacts into your base, once you've got them there, you can send as many
21:06
emails as you want. Like this is, you're free to rain.
21:10
So, you know, go through that data and test things
21:14
out and build out those relationships.
21:17
We've touched on SMS a few times, but I'D love to dig into it in
21:20
a little bit more detail because it has really evolved over the last few years.
21:24
Yeah. So how do you see it fitting alongside email?
21:28
Like what's the kind of best practice or what's working for e commerce brands right
21:32
now in terms of the combination? Yeah, I think it's, it's so it's definitely
21:35
around it not being just a standalone solution.
21:39
It's definitely something that needs to be worked into your overall marketing
21:43
strategy. And one of the things that we're seeing a lot of now is
21:46
around kind of like instant SMS opt ins.
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So, so I think what we've been seeing is people have been
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collecting emails and collecting phone numbers, but
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not necessarily collecting the same thing from one person. And so
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we've kind of now got email list and SMS lists. So we kind of need
22:05
to bring all of that together into unified data.
22:08
So being able to kind of like use pop ups to start getting phone
22:12
numbers and then linking that back to your, you know, your contacts.
22:16
One of the things I like is it's becoming a lot more
22:19
operationalized so you can link it through, through data, you can
22:23
link it to the customer journey. Thank you for your order.
22:27
Or we noticed I, I had a really great one recently where a brand
22:30
had said, I know you've looked at this product a lot
22:35
and sure you don't want to buy it, you know, sent me the link
22:39
and you know, picture of whatever I was looking at
22:43
at the time. Um, but what it means is that
22:46
now because before it was very sort of, you know, operational of the
22:50
transactional side of things, but now actually it's in the marketing team's hands and
22:54
they can get the right tone and keep the same tone as
22:57
the email marketing strategy. Because I don't think there's anything worse than
23:01
sort of like the text message just looking like it's from someone you've never
23:05
known, whereas the email's really curated. So that's really
23:09
nice that it can start to kind of become
23:12
one and feel like the same. If someone
23:16
gives a brand or a company their phone number,
23:19
they are that is there and explicitly saying to you I want to hear
23:23
from you. That's a concept that it's worth really
23:27
pausing and thinking about for a minute. When someone hands over their phone
23:31
number, they're extending a level of trust that is
23:34
qualitatively different from giving you their email address. The bar
23:38
for how you use it is higher and as you're about to hear, so are
23:42
the returns when you get it right. So I think Being sort
23:45
of like creative around what you, you know the topic that you can use to
23:49
do re engagement and like to put that into perspective. So like what does a
23:52
28% click through rate mean? Well for that particular business it was like
23:56
8,000 new MRR. So
24:00
a huge amount. And I think what we're seeing as well around sort of like
24:03
on the performance side with sms they're divi. It's kind of
24:07
delivering about sort of like 22 times ROI
24:11
when you're using SMS with mailchimp
24:15
and actually even then when you bring kind of like shopify into that we're seeing
24:19
sort of returns around 41 times the actual initial investment.
24:23
So huge, huge numbers. So I think if anyone is
24:26
thinking about it you should definitely give it a go and
24:30
use tools that have got a B testing to start like
24:34
plan and help you just you know, start small.
24:38
You'll see really good numbers and then you can kind of grow with,
24:41
grow with the tools as you get more comfortable using them and, and kind of
24:45
think about those use cases, right? Think about those segments who could start with who
24:49
are the low hanging fruit? Maybe like you say the people who were good customers
24:52
you haven't bought for a while or something like that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
24:56
You know who are your most loyal, your most engaged? Do you have their phone
25:00
numbers? If not, you know, use your email marketing strategy to
25:03
drive that engagement and get that data. Think about what you then want
25:07
to offer them through for giving you that data. It's kind of like, it's
25:11
always like a give to get, you know, you give me your phone number, what
25:14
am I going to give you? This is you know, and I always think as
25:17
well like even if you're taking it back to the bones of people sitting there
25:20
thinking oh I've got a massive database but I've got a really small
25:23
engagement rate. Okay, well maybe you need some new, a
25:27
new, new people. So what can you give that? So if
25:31
you, I think the wine guide's a really good example or you know, if
25:35
you are you know, booking hotel rooms, you know,
25:38
like explain what, you know, local area guides. I don't
25:42
know what think about the value exchange for
25:46
someone giving you the personal information and how then you can
25:50
make that email be seen within the inbox or the
25:54
sms. I mean the SMS is, is pretty much seeing the stats there prove
25:57
that. But I think with email, you know, again you can, this is where you
26:01
can use AI within email which is going to start doing you know,
26:04
helping you improve like a lot of the content
26:08
but then the marketing team can start adding on top of that around
26:11
tone imagery. I mean, and even like, sort
26:15
of like we integrate into Canva. So like all your imagery can just really be
26:18
sort of like edited over into emails as well. So
26:22
it's kind of a little bit too easy at the moment.
26:26
Well then it's gotta be about the quality of the message, right? Exactly, exactly.
26:30
What's coming next for small business marketing? Obviously so many
26:34
changes at the moment, but how do you think it will change over the next
26:36
few years? Where do you think it's going? I mean, you can't not
26:40
say AI, can you? In answer to this question. Really?
26:44
Yeah. You know, lean teams can use AI
26:48
to think about like the, the functional
26:51
side of things. But to your point that you just mentioned, it's like how do
26:55
you then use your, the human assistance to lay over
26:59
that to make sure that you've got the brand tone,
27:02
that your strategy that you're considering is, is
27:06
relevant and the journey that you want to take your customers on? I think for
27:10
me the journey, even as a consumer, if I think about
27:13
that, I think that's really valuable and really potent. So
27:17
if I engage with the brand and I'm not sure I've never shopped with them
27:21
before, but then they build my confidence, you know, this is how easy it is
27:24
to return. This is why we, you know, this is why our business is here.
27:28
This is, these are our values. And you start getting engaged with that.
27:32
You can automate those journeys that I'm going to go through and you can
27:35
concentrate, the humans can concentrate on the messaging so that the
27:39
messaging is really like interactive for me. So
27:43
I think it's a lot around that. And I think again, like we have to
27:46
kind of like circle back to how do you unify the data?
27:50
The data is only going to grow. So how do you make sure that you've
27:54
got right tools to be able to analyze
27:58
and also like to be able to, you know, we do say to quite a
28:02
few of our customers around cleansing data quite regularly. So I think
28:05
actually like, you know, we've gone through, we need to collect all the data,
28:09
but actually doing a nice cleanse and then seeing where
28:13
you're at and looking at some of the gaps that you want to
28:17
fill or potentially outline those ones that have, you know,
28:20
you think that you can re engage is much
28:24
more successful than just blasting everyone, looking at
28:28
who you've got on your lists and making sure that they, that they still exist.
28:31
Number one, because yes, a certain number of email addresses just become obsolete each
28:35
year because people change and then. And also that they're
28:39
still interested and that you're only sending to the people who have the
28:43
potential to be engaged. Really? Yeah, I think so, if you look at it. So
28:46
it's sort of like bringing your data together and making sure that it's clean
28:49
data, automating as much as you can through the
28:53
AI tools and then reviewing with your analytics
28:57
and, you know, keeping that circle going. And then you've got like your amazing
29:00
humans that work within your business to get your tone and
29:04
your brand. So here's what I'm taking away from this
29:08
conversation. The retailers who are going to win over the next few years aren't the
29:12
ones with the biggest budgets or the biggest teams. They're the ones who are the
29:15
smartest about the data that they already have. Clean your data,
29:19
connect it across your platforms, use it to understand what different
29:22
groups of customers need from you, and then automate the right message to the
29:26
right person at the right time. If you're not yet using
29:30
SMS alongside email, the numbers Ali shared today are worth
29:33
taking seriously. 22 times return on investment on
29:37
SMS alone and 41 times when you bring your Shopify data into
29:40
the mix. Those aren't vanity metrics. Those are the kind of numbers that can
29:44
fundamentally change the economics of a small retail business.
29:48
If this has got you thinking about your own strategy, come and find me over
29:51
on Instagram at Resilient Retail Club and drop me a message. I'd love to hear
29:54
what you're going to try first. And if you're feeling overwhelmed and now, like your
29:58
to do list is even bigger, don't forget you can start small. You can start
30:01
with one small step. You don't have to do everything all at once.
30:05
You can also head over to resilientretailclub.com
30:09
mailchimp to find out all about the Mailchimp platform. See
30:13
you next week.