Emily: 0:02 When people only use their first and last name as the sender name for their email campaigns, and it’s like “Oh, who is this person? Do I know them?” And open it up and you’re like, “This is a promotional email. This is upsetting.”
Welcome to inbox in the podcast about email marketing. Here’s your host. Hillel Berg.
Hillel: 0:37 Welcome to the very first episode of Inboxing. The podcast about email marketing. I’m your host Hillel Berg. Inboxing is a podcast that’s recorded as a Facebook Live on my Facebook page, which you can find that Hillel Berg Email Marketing Consultant on Facebook or at https://www.facebook.com/EmailMarketingConsultants/. Every week we’ll be releasing a new episode where we host a special guest from the email marketing world and we discuss all things related to email marketing. This podcast intended audience is digital marketers but it should be relevant to anyone looking to get more out of their business through email marketing.
Hillel: 1:16 For this first episode, we hosted the amazing Emily McGuire from Flourish & Grit – an email marketing agency based in the Greater Detroit area. I think you’ll hear that we had a great time recording this episode. And it should make for a really fun listen as well. Since this episode was recorded, I invested in proper equipment, but these first few episodes, you may hear a slight echo and I apologize for that. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and rate us on Apple podcasts or whatever your favorite podcast platform is. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to us at inboxing@hilberg.com. With all that I say welcome to Inboxing. I really hope you enjoy the show.
Hillel: 2:00 All right. Welcome to the unboxing
Emily: 2:02 Yay. So glad to be here.
Hillel: 2:05 First ever. All right. Well. Welcome. I hope you have a great time here. It’s definitely much more fun to having a guest.
Emily: 2:15 Just talking into.
Hillel: 2:19 Exactly. Yeah. For sure [Inaudible 02:22]. Hopefully you’ll be watching a little more. How are you doing? How are you handling Corona? And after Corona and have you get a vaccinated yet or not?
Emily: 2:32 No. I’m like, I looked up the New York Times has a thing. We can look up how far down you’re the list of getting the vaccine. And I think I’m on, my spot it’s 843 million or something.
Hillel: 2:47 Really?
Emily: 2:50 It’s gonna be [Inaudible 02:47]. Yeah, things are going. We’ve officially entered winter here in Northern US. We’ve got snow today.
Hillel: 3:02 You’re in Detroit.
Emily: 3:03 Yeah.
Hillel: 3:03 Yeah. You get snow all winter? Like I…
Emily: 3:07 Yeah, most of the winter, we get snow. But it’s not as bad. So we were, let’s say to Detroit and then like on the other side of the state, it’s closer or the west coast is closer to the Lake Michigan and I use to live on that side of the state and they get so much snow because of [Inaudible 03:27]
Hillel: 3:08 [Inaudible 03:27] right?
Emily: 3:28 Yep. So I’m glad not to have to deal with that. Things are going well, I could be in Corona land.
Hillel: 3:41 In terms of email marketing, you find people who are looking for more email marketing during Corona.
Emily: 3:46 Yes, a lot of people who hadn’t made the switch to the digital world are scrambling at the beginning and now are seeing the actual benefits of not relying on traditional forms of marketing that maybe aren’t as effective anymore. So people are really eager to invest in digital marketing in general and particularly email. So it’s been just a weird world.
Hillel: 4:20 Yes, it’s a weird world. I mean, you kind of nailed it. You said like companies that were never thinking of going digital within a very short time we’re itching to become digital.
Emily: 4:34 You know, proof of concept, right? Like they see you actually pay off. And they are like, “Oh, wait, why we did this before?”
Hillel: 4:44 It was like a backorder kind of thing. And then it was like, “Oh, gosh, it’s fun for her. Oh, wait.”
Emily: 4:52 Have you been seeing the same thing?
Hillel: 4:53 Yeah, definitely. There’s definitely been an uptick in business and people looking for help and everything, all digital avenues. I mean, Yeah, I think Facebook ads have become all time, more expensive and.
Emily: 5:06 I’m sure,
Hillel: 5:07 That’s what I was saying, actually opened the podcast. So I don’t know if you’re watching but I opened talking about that how email, once you have an audience, you’re not paying, percent like you have an audience by far the most revenue of any channel.
Emily: 5:20 Absolutely. Yeah, you own that audience and you’re not play the algorithm. And yeah, I’ve actually read an article, I think it’s from, anyway, I can’t remember who published, fuck magazine. So I tried to keep up with the tech and business News. And they were talking about, they see a looming bubble about to burst with digital advertising because the data isn’t on there. So the data isn’t super reliable to know 100% if you’re targeting is actually reaching the targets you wanted and in the US, our economy with the biggest tech companies in the US, Amazon and Facebook and Google, a lot of their revenue comes from advertising. And anyway, so it’s an interesting world, digital [Inaudible 06:21].
Hillel: 6:22 For sure. So, how did you get into email? Like, what’s your email story? How did you?
Emily: 6:27 It’s not very interesting. I’m just gonna warn you.
Hillel: 6:30 No, that’s alright.
Emily: 6:37 So I went to grad school. So I graduated college, at the height of the last big recession. And I was working at whatever jobs I could find. Because there were none. So my interest was in communication and digital communication. And it was very difficult to find a job. So I went back to grad school to sort of hit reset on that. And which led me to all kinds of opportunities doing digital marketing in general. So which led to social media, which I got my first job as doing social media and they were like, “Oh, you know, internet, you know the internet stuff. You can do the cool thing, too, right?” I did and they just [Inaudible 07:29] find that sort of where a lot of people enter the email world. Like you’re doing other digital work. And they’re like, “Oh, this is the same thing. You can do that too, right?”
Hillel: 7:43 That’s how I got in there also. I think it’s the same, a lot of our story.
Emily: 7:47 Exactly. And Google and I became best friends trying to figure all that out. Then I got another opportunity to only do email, there was a position that opened up at a large local E-commerce company that was only email marketing. And I had experience with email service provider, which was [Inaudible 08:09]. Yeah, it’s funny, because actually, where I was living at the time, that’s where Bronto is headquartered. I had no idea. They’re headquartered in and they’re owned by Oracle. So who knows? [Inaudible 08:25]. So I joined that team. And there were five of us working on email marketing. So then a very large program, so a lot of success from it. And that’s where I got to sort of hone my skills and learn from industry veterans who’ve been doing direct marketing for decades and which are fascinating to learn about, like most these people came from the direct mail world. And those tactics, they work in email to a certain extent, obviously needs to be tailored. But yeah, I learned there. And then my husband and I moved back to Michigan after I had my son. And I was looking for, “the right next job” not just adding job and I wasn’t finding it. So I decided to create my own. And here I am, doing my thing.
Hillel: 9:20 That’s so funny, because I sort of ended up there also, for similar reasons. Like, yeah, I worked at a big E-commerce company and that’s where I really learned email. And then when they finished, so I started looking around for jobs and a lot of stuff I didn’t want to do, gaming or no, no, no.
Emily: 9:42 Yeah, I saw a lot of roles out there that were looking for somebody who could do everything, which I could do, but I didn’t want to, like, I’ve done that game and I really enjoy digging deep into one area focused. Because I mean, especially in the digital marketing world, everything changes so fast. I don’t know how, like a generalist keeps up with everything, between Facebook and Google and all the big players out there. It’s just so difficult. So, I’d rather like no one area and really be able to dig into that. And
Hillel: 10:26 Own it.
Emily: 10:26 Yeah, I’m doing my thing.
Hillel: 10:29 Yeah. That’s amazing. All right. I also have more fun things like, what do you see in your inbox that really like the upsets you?
Emily: 10:39 Oh my God. I knew. Yeah, when you read my email [Inaudible 10:44] happened to your inbox in the morning. And you’re just like, “Why? Why are you doing this?” And I think that’s why people like, get really afraid of email or turned off, don’t want to explore it all because they’ve seen an email done orally, it’s like, it’s glaring and you don’t want to be that person. Whereas when something’s done really, really well, you don’t [Inaudible 11:07]. Because it’s seamless. And it’s useful and you don’t notice how you slowed it, anyway, things that bugged me, oh, how much time do we have? So two things. One is when I don’t know, who was teaching this or where this or the precedent has been set but when people only use their first and last name as the sender name for their email campaigns. And it’s like “Oh, who is this person? Do I know them?” And you open it up, and you’re like it is brand, this is a promotional email. This is upsetting.
Hillel: 11:48 Experience.
Emily: 11:49 Yeah. And it’s like, my time is precious. And I do not like, feeling like I’ve been tricked. And I know a lot of people don’t do that. So some people probably don’t do that intentionally. But there’s this very like, “Oh, it’s personal name, you’ll have better open rates,” well, better open rates don’t mean a better conversion [Inaudible 12:13] opened your email, right?
Hillel: 12:14 It’s just like an open rate.
Emily: 12:17 Exactly. So I don’t know the first and last name of yours, the CEO of your company, or your marketing director. It don’t mean anything to me, so please just tell me who it is, the brand. Otherwise, I just start ignoring any email from somebody I don’t know. So that’s number one. And number two is and I think this is just an experience thing in terms of messaging and copywriting. Our subject lines that are totally centered on the brand, and they have nothing to do with the subscriber. And that’s one of the first immediate things that I see that people can change is what’s in it for your subscriber to open this email, like, what we get out of it? Because, again, we’re busy people, people are busy, our inboxes are flooded. So you need to make that perfectly clear who the, it is from and what’s in it for me if I open it? And again, I think that’s an experience thing. And the more you level up and skill up in marketing in general, you’ll get there.
Hillel: 13:31 For sure, for sure. What’s the biggest mistake you ever made in your email?
Emily: 13:36 How much time for me to answer? So my very first email job, I don’t know, this is biggest but it was certainly one that made me want to crawl under my desk and never leave or just like, never return. So I worked at a company that they were a gourmet or like a specialty food retailer. And they also had a cooking school and a restaurant. And they had several locations. And their cooking school relied on email to launch their quarterly schedule of cooking classes. And I thought everything was set to go. Registration links are up, the [Inaudible 14:17] page was live, scheduled the email to go out, like first thing in the morning on a weekday and get into the office and the registration page was not live and the sent out this email in advance of maybe 30,000 people and there was nothing for them to actually register for. And it was just like, mortifying, like one of those things that you’re just like, “I hate this. I hate this so much.” I can’t believe I did that. You know, besides the usual, you accidently pick the wrong segment and send it I mean, I’ve done that too.
Hillel: 14:57 Yeah [Inaudible 14:57] you know, like with a button that didn’t have a link to it?
Emily: 15:03 Yeah.
Hillel: 15:04 Thankfully, it was like a micro list. Like it was like this weird project we were working on where like we have to something to do with like the FDA and we had to get people to buy certain products. It was all kind of fixed anyway.
Emily: 15:19 the thing I then learned is that people love oops email. People love them. As long as you’re transparent and can be a little human about it. People love knowing, I guess that’s kind of people love it when you make mistakes and you own up to it.
Hillel: 15:43 And I think it really ties into that people love when you show you’re a real person, you’re not just talking like a brand and being someone totally buttoned up. And here we are.
Emily: 15:59 Well, yeah, I think that, like people don’t realize because like really polished marketing campaigns in general, they look too good to be human, sometimes. And I think we forget that there are real human beings dealing with real limitation. And who can make mistakes? Who are doing this thing? So I know, people get really upset about bad emails. But sometimes they’re newbies who are trying to figure it out or they have leadership who’s really putting the hammer down on them to do it a certain way. And so.
Hillel: 16:43 All right. I’m sure. That’s I think, sometimes I think the biggest impediment to great email experiences sometimes is leadership.
Emily: 16:52 Yes and I find that to be the case with most like, practitioners, you’re the person with your boots on the ground, you’re doing the work, you know your audience, you know what tools you have, and the resources you can work with. And sometimes leadership doesn’t want to listen to that, they don’t understand it and they have their own, limitations and pressures put on them, too, that they’re trying to navigate. But yeah, I’ve definitely been in that position where people, they don’t understand what it is I do. And I think where really hurts is when they don’t want to understand what you’re capable of doing and what you can do so much better if you had the investment. And so personally, then your job that does count, you’re not only like trying to do your job and make the business more money but then you also have to build [Inaudible 17:46] for what you’re doing and they are trying not to [Inaudible 17:50] at the same time. So I think that every marketer, well, any profession really like you can’t expect people to read your mind and understand what you are doing day in and day out and what impact is making like you have to build that case for what you’re doing at all times? You have to double the work but you have to do it to navigate to people what’s going on and what you could accomplish.
Hillel: 18:21 Right. I saw the flip side of that. What do you consider like your biggest wins?
Emily: 18:26 Oh, biggest wins? It’s a great question. So one of my favorite things I like to like it’s a way to learn how to like toot your own horn. [Inaudible 18:139] yeah. It’s a hard one right? But so at this large E-commerce company I worked at, we had an abandoned cart campaign that they wanted, we just wanted to improve like it was already working, fairly well as bringing in good amount of money, but it’s always, because you could doing things differently. So over the course of, I would say six months, we tested and tested and tested and tested. We had three emails in the campaign, three abandoned cart emails, I tested the timing, subject lines, I tested design, graphics, copy, messaging, CTA buttons like the whole nine yards, and we tested everything. And after that there, over the course of that year, the campaign brought in million dollars and I can’t remember the exact number other than like a million dollars.
Hillel: 19:37 A million dollars, alright.
Emily: 19:40 But we saw last year over here, it was somewhere around 15%, the abandoned cart campaign. So those are like very direct numbers I can say are one of my better achievement. Bigger wins have been or other wins that don’t necessarily have the numbers tie to them about, I have a client who, they’re a local e commerce or they’re a local retail and e commerce. And when COVID hit, they’d been working on an e commerce. But like the process had, it’s just very difficult and they know [Inaudible 20:22] your inventory online. But when COVID happened, we had everything and ship in a week. And when our state shot [Inaudible 20:32] businesses down or close them to the public. So in that first month of their e commerce going live and email campaigns drove 20%, I want to say 25% of revenue that brought in. And that’s been pretty good percentages all year, like 25%. And that other e commerce revenue from launch, so that’s a good feeling to be able to support small business in that way and help expand their revenue reach, especially if you will rely on face to face.
Hillel: 21:09 For sure, you have a top five tips, you just throw out five things you live by?
Emily: 21:18 Okay, so, yes, again, how much time do you? Tell me when that joke insults. Okay.
Hillel: 21:24 Okay.
Emily: 21:25 My husband laugh at a joke that I’ve been saying the years yesterday. And the first time he actually laughed at it. And I was like, “Finally, five years of me saying the same joke over and over for you to finally laugh.” Anyway. So top tips. One is, thinking about the user experience with email, I see, like, a lot of people get really stuck on, what do I do? What do I put in an email? What do I test? How do I even want to do this whole email thing? Or what are areas to improve? And if you start thinking about the user experience, it becomes really clear on how and what to test and how and where to improve. So that might mean creating a dummy email address that you go in from start to finish, sign up for your email and see like, what that whole process looks like, from a fresh perspective to see, okay, where do we need to improve and nine times out of 10, that’s also the best way to advocate for the tactics you want to do to your ship. Because they might not be thinking about it from that perspective either. When you want to try something new or you want to invest in a certain area or they want you to do something that you don’t agree with, if you always add to the user experience and ask people how, that might be perceived to buy your ideal customer, people start to get it right and you start to grow too, so I would say that top tip to sort of think about mindset for email. And then from a really basic standpoint when you’re trying to come up with messaging and copy and offers think about what’s in it for me that old standbys and copywriting, your customers want to know what’s in it for me and it’s your job to make that connection for them. You can’t expect them to into it, what it is you want them to do or how your product or service will help them? You have to make that decision for them concisely. And that can be easier said than done. Yeah, it comes with experience and continuing to learn and up level your skills. So I would say those are the top few that people can really implement right away.
Hillel: 24:10 What are your top pitfalls that you see people screwing up all the time?
Emily: 24:15 Yeah, I think it’s really not understanding how, well, the first mistake I often see people make. And when I like start to talk to a new client or get on a discovery call somebody is I asked, “What are your goals for email for your business or for your business? And how does email fit into that?” And if you’re not clear on what your goals are for your business, I mean, that’s a whole other issue, [Inaudible 24:53] or marketing what are the action you want your audience to take? You have no focus, then you’re just like literally throwing stuff in the email and wondering why it’s not working. So you have to set goals for your email program and you have to set measurable for those goals. And if you [Inaudible 25:25] exactly. And you don’t have those yet, if you have no way of measuring those goals, then you need to get that foundation in place to be able to do that. Because again, like you’re just sort of stabbing in the dark wondering why things aren’t working. And when people tell me, “Oh, our email are not working,” I asked them, “What the goal is for the email are?” And they’re like, you know, like, well, then how do you know it’s not working? And I know these are super basic. But often, like we get stuck on the hamster wheel, just doing, doing, doing, doing, we don’t take a step back to wonder why we’re doing what we’re doing. And is there a way we can focus our efforts and focus our audience to achieving those goals? Like you have to help your audience achieve their goals? It’s not as let’s just throw out 10 [Inaudible 26:16] and hope that it does something, which is what I often see people do. But yeah, [do the] basics.
Hillel: 26:26 What’s that? It’s usually about the basics?
Emily: 26:28 Yeah, just going back to basics like what am I hoping to achieve and how?
Hillel: 26:34 Give the main thing the main thing?
Emily: 26:37 It’s hard. It’s hard to do.
Hillel: 26:38 For sure. What’s the last time you got an email that you like, really love, you know, you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, this is gold.”
Emily: 26:44 Let’s see. I keep thinking about I feel like there are some like b2c brands, who really get how to entertain people.
Hillel: 26:55 Like who are your top [Inaudible 26:58]?
Emily: 26:58 So somebody turned me on to this company called reformation they make dresses and during COVID, people are thinking about what dress you’re gonna wear in quarantine, right? Like, look here, your nicest. And so they were sending out emails that were like, “Hey, when you’re ready to start scrubbing the streets again, here are some options,” like they did it with [Inaudible 27:26] and acknowledge being the current environment the limitations of why somebody or the objections of why somebody wouldn’t be purchasing things right now. And it kept people warm, kept me interested. I wanted to read their emails. “Do I have a desire? Do I have a need to look my best on the street right now? No.” But if I’m ever in the market for dressing to the nines again, I’ll be looking at them.
Hillel: 27:57 Alright, cool. It’s really, I’m just taking a look at their website. Like I mean, it’s funny, I think the name of the brand is reformation. It’s just, you know, makes me think of 1500 [Inaudible 28:15] on thinking. Very cool. Yeah. What are your favorite tools? Like what do you like to use in your everyday?
Emily: 28:22 So lately, I have been into, if you were on my team, you would know that I have a real problem with talk tools. I love to play with them. And in fact, like, I don’t know if you know, app Sumo, do you know about app Sumo?
Hillel: 28:38 I’ve heard of app Sumo. And go tell us a little bit about app Sumo.
Emily: 28:41 So they are basically they launch startup type tools and offer you like deep discounts on lifetime access. So essentially, you’re like funding a tech startup, micro funding, but you get the tool. So I bought, lifetime access for like 50 bucks or 100 dollars. And their emails work really well because I had unsubscribed from them to buying stuff. Like this is gonna solve my problems. I’m gonna love this for $50 shirt. You got me. So I’ve actually found some really good tools for them. One of them is book like a boss.
Hillel: 29:28 That’s so funny.
Emily: 29:30 Yes.
Hillel: 29:31 I know them.
Emily: 29:31 Oh, really?
Hillel: 29:32 Yeah, he’s a coworker of mine. And [Inaudible 29:37] so I’m so happy to you know, I’ll send them the bucket.
Emily: 29:40 Yes, you should like I use that too. I got a lifetime access to and I think app Sumo still has like a yearly discount, an annual discounted price for them. They are one of my favorite appointment scheduling tools that I recommend to people.
Hillel: 29:57 Oh! Their template.
Emily: 30:00 Yeah, that’s so funny. That’s hilarious. I yeah, I mean for what you bet for that tool and the price you pay, it’s fantastic. They have landing pages, you can sell products, you can sell packages, if you’re selling services of some kind and then just your average, and you just schedule appointments. And what they do that doesn’t do that I’ve recently discovered is you can approve appointments. So if somebody requests an appointment, they won’t get added to your calendar until you approve them. What are your thoughts on pop ups for email signup?
Hillel: 30:42 If they’re not, if it doesn’t, like right, I think they’re fine. Like a, if they’re super spam. You know but like, if they realize they are a pop up but they’re self-aware.
Emily: 30:56 They’re self-aware.
Hillel: 30:59 We know, we’re being annoying but we think we’re offering you some good value here. And you might be interested.
Emily: 31:05 Exactly. Yeah, well, because one of the tools I was gonna recommend, again, it’s an app Sumo deal. They have like a special price on an annual membership or whatever. It’s called pop up smart. And you can basically manage all your pop ups from one dashboard and you can schedule them. It even has like AI where it will serve people the pop up based on their behavior on your site. But yeah, I think, I totally agree. It’s one of those things that people say they hate because they’ve seen it done poorly, so many times, but like, you can trigger a pop up. So it’s not annoying, right? So it’s a [Inaudible 31:46]. You can wait an extended period of time, you can trigger it on page squirrel. So wait time.
Hillel: 31:55 There’s ways to mitigate the annoying.
Emily: 31:57 Exactly. And it doesn’t have to be like the full screen pop up. You can have a bar at the bottom or a sticky bar or like a little side.
Hillel: 32:08 A low bar, that kind of thing.
Emily: 32:10 Exactly. It doesn’t have to be annoying. It doesn’t have to be intrusive, it can just be a friendly. “Hey, there’s this really cool thing you might like.” So anyway, so that’s a tool I’ve been using recently that has made managing pop ups very easy. And scheduling things like seasonal offers, one can swap out for the other, all that kind of fun stuff.
Hillel: 32:32 Okay, I have a thing. Let’s talk about CPAs.
Emily: 32:36 Let’s talk about them. What do you mean?
Hillel: 32:38 Fun, you know, fun CPAs? Like you’ve seen your best CPAs? Like, how do you like to use CPAs? It’s usually like a by now or you know?
Emily: 32:47 I mean, I have, I’ve tested CPAs and I mean, in all, like in marketing in general, being too creative can be sort of counterproductive. Yeah. And like, it has to be clear. So, I mean, it just depends on the brand. If you have like a really winky kind of brand, that likes to have fun, then yeah, it’s a fun, CPAs make sense. But most of the time, some very, very simple verb and make it really clear about what’s going to happen once they click, I think is always the best bet. So yeah, I’m all about creativity. And sometimes it can be really fun to play with a call to action, but especially, for the sake of clarity, I think it’s really important to be conscious of that with your CTA buttons.
Hillel: 33:46 Yeah, I definitely hear that, I remember seeing a content piece I was showing like up, like examples of CTAs. And there are usually like, the most expected CTA.
Emily: 33:58 Yep. And especially for people who are getting a little bored of the same shop now, buy on and I’m mainly about marketers, you can get kind of what they doing the same thing over and over again and you want to play with it, you know, for sure, play with it, but test it to make sure that you’re on the right track. But yeah and I hate saying like, keep it simple, especially for people who really want to play, they’re tired of doing stuff the same way. But like, it’s always fun to play, but always test it, for sure.
Hillel: 34:33 Where do you like to have your fun like more like in subject line pre headers or like in the contents of an email or?
Emily: 34:40 Yeah, I like to, so I feel like people put too much emphasis on subject lines as the end all be all. I get it because those open rates. Usually that’s the most visible metric you have, and the most easily accessible one, if you don’t have really robust [Inaudible 35:01] so I like I’ve tested so many subject lines and rarely have I seen them really make an impact on having multiple or testing one against the other. I haven’t seen the needle move a lot. There are exceptions, where I’ve seen an email with one subject line got a lower open rate but double the sales than that got a higher open rate. So I wouldn’t say that an open, anyway, sorry, I’m going into the weeds of subject lines.
Hillel: 35:33 No, you’re good, you’re good. Now, I think the point you’re making is really that you can like have the best subject line all the time. You’re not always offering the best value, it’s not even worth it to make the best, like, there’s a time and place for the best subject line. And then you make your efforts you make your and B tests, you work it out. Emily: 35:55 Absolutely. But yeah, the things I really like to play with an email are, well, automation. Like, what are the best triggers to grab people when they’re most interested? And then, what are those follow up actions? So the timing, how would you play with timing in an automation? How long do you wait between emails in an automation? So those kind of things I like to test. I also like, I’ve been playing with a video player and email again, another app Sumo deal where I take that three minute video and basically turn it into a GIF in an email.
Hillel: 36:40 How heavy is that? I always wonder about that. Like I’ve seen someone once sent me a video that was an email, and it was like a 20 megabyte GIF.
Emily: 36:49 I’ve been testing it. And it’s not really doing much. But I think you have to be really conscientious about what kind of video you’re putting in there, too. If it’s one that’s heavy on speech, people are then going to need the subtitles, it might not be super great. But yeah, I like to play with content. I like to play with layout, are there layouts that make the content much more digestible? So are you sectioning out each piece of your email so that it’s cleaner. It’s a different theme. Or it just breaks it up better? So those are the things that really like to play with. And of course, tech tools, how do you integrate things so that you have a better, seamless data transfer process and customer experience, those are the kinds of things I like to play with.
Hillel: 37:47 Yeah, I saw recently, I just, noticing more and more video tools for email, or like, I noticed one yesterday even called Banjaro. You’ve heard of them?
Emily: 37:58 I’ve been playing with that.
Hillel: 37:59 It makes so much sense. I mean, I feel like it’s such a fun way to engage, especially for businesses, like b2b and you want to and you can set up these automations of videos like I can be like, so cool.
Emily: 38:11 Yeah, well, it is really, well, it makes sense. Because like we are, I mean, especially in the pandemic world, the quarantine world, we rely on video so heavily. And it is like, going to be taking over more content in the digital marketing world And like every digital channel favors video.
Hillel: 38:33 Every platform.
Emily: 38:34 And so doing an email is tricky, because you can’t necessarily play a video in an email, except there are some tools that are coming out for that, that are very, very expensive, rightfully so. They’re innovative. But yeah, putting video in email is really important. It like you said it establishes personality, built relationship and makes it human makes it seem like it’s not just an automaton putting together a marketing campaign. But yeah, I’ve been playing with Banjaro. And that’s been really cool. Because it gives you a task. So you can set up a trigger. So like, let’s say, you sign up for your email list or they are looking at a particular product or service on your website, you can trigger a task in Banjaro to create that video. So then you can go and say, “Hey, person, first name, last name. Do you have any questions about blah, blah, blah,” whatever it is there that triggered it or like “Welcome to…,” you can do all those fun.
Hillel: 39:43 So do you set up the automations in Banjaro or like they integrate like an API call like you set up with an automation in like Mail Chimp or whatever you’re using?
Emily: 39:52 You can use like Zapier to connect to the Banjaro, those triggers but an Active Campaign, Active Campaign as a native integration.
Hillel: 40:03 Oh, nice.
Emily: 40:04 Yeah. So you can see automation. So if you add a step in, to create a task.
Hillel: 40:10 Alright, how about some unpaid endorsements, like who are your favorite service providers?
Emily: 40:18 Right. Yeah. I mean, I feel like just [promoting] all these businesses here today. So I too, for like professional services, Active Campaign, I always recommend the CRM component and it gives you the biggest bang for your buck. Like it can give HubSpot a run for its money at a fraction of the costs. And although HubSpot does really, really incredible, you really need a specialist to handle for you because otherwise you get 10% of what has available and it gets expensive, rightfully so, if you know how to use it. That’s worth the money. So Active Campaign, I always recommend they do have some really good E-commerce integrations with WooCommerce, Shopify as well.
Hillel: 41:13 In their CRM, what can we integrate? Like how much information can you pull in?
Emily: 41:17 So they’re really like over the last six months I work really hard with integrations [Inaudible 41:25]. So like they have it with Shopify and WooCommerce, where you can pull in the order, information, actual order and order information into your CRM.
Hillel: 41:33 Yeah, that’s so convenient. Like if you ever had to work with clients that don’t have either Shopify, WooCommerce or you know [overlapping 41:41].
Emily: 41:44 Exactly. So then you can like trigger automations based on what products, somebody’s purchase, category, like, those follow up sequences based on that. So that’s really.
Hillel: 41:56 All the recipes there.
Emily: 41:57 Yes. Also have a calendly native integration as well. So you can set that up and trigger goals. You can do custom conversions, you even do like assign a monetary value or like a custom monetary value for like a discovery call or some kind of other monetized call or things like that. So yeah, you’ve got a really good job with that. For E-commerce, like [Inaudible 42:30] was also a really good option. Yeah, their analytics are incredible. And they’re pretty.
Hillel: 42:36 And they’re also they’re pre, they’re called recipes or whatever they call them. You know, they’re really good content. Like they just, I don’t know how they write content that almost works for every brand. Like it just works.
Emily: 42:47 Yeah, they must have some good content marketers. So yeah, those are the two that I recommend, every business is different. Sometimes they need something very specific or specialized tools they’re using with loopholes.
Hillel: 43:03 Yeah, I think that’s always the, I was thinking about running your content piece in, actually, I think I might be sending something soon about this. And I am, someone who does my social for me, that’d be right with ESP. [Inaudible 43:17] ESP is that it really depends on what your business is about. You know what you’re up to be doing.
Emily: 43:22 Well, yeah, and what tools you rely on and what needs to be integrated with your ESP. Because I love that, that other thing people don’t think about is like, “What data do you need to go in and out of your ESP to segment and personalize and automating?” And they choose an email service provider because they’re like, “Oh, this is nice and flashy.” Then you’re like manual, uploading Excel files, CSV file, daily or weekly to put [Inaudible 43:53]. And it’s such a time taken, much better use then doing that.
Hillel: 44:02 Alright, well, thank you so much for being my first guest and being a great gift bag,
Emily: 44:13 I appreciate it.
Hillel: 44:14 This is actually our second run around. We did that Coronavirus in March, the panel discussion, that was a lot of fun.
Emily: 44:20 You know what’s hilarious? Let me tell you something. So I recently started, I hired an agency to hook me up podcasts. And I was on Monday evening with Jewels Dan.
Hillel: 44:35 Oh, that’s so funny.
Emily: 44:38 It didn’t occur to me until I get on the podcast with him. I’m like, “God, your name looks familiar. You look so familiar. Where do I know you?” And I was like, “We were on that.”
Hillel: 44:52 Yeah. It was like two in the morning. He’s like.
Emily: 44:58 So funny, but you Yeah, he is a typhoon of marketing world.
Hillel: 45:03 He really is. It really is. It’s so fun. It’s a great group of people. I think I’ll start the, find a co-host or you start the podcast with the guest or finding their way and then just keep it fun light, a lot of great content out of this and we’ll find micro content that often. And you can use it too, reshape. [Inaudible 45:27] whenever you are the top 30 internet marketers.
Emily: 45:08 Yeah, I think it was 20 or something like that.
Hillel: 45:41 Yeah, pretty good.
Emily: 45:43 Yeah.
Hillel: 45:45 I was so happy. I knew so many people in that list.
Emily: 45:52 You’re just so popular. You just.
Hillel: 45:55 Really honestly, that’s why I started this podcast because I know all these people, you know, I have a lot of great people. And everyone loves being on podcast. So Thanks again. We’re gonna wrap it up.
Emily: 46:11 Thanks for having me.
Hillel: 46:12 Yeah, thanks for coming. All right, that wraps up our show for today. Thank you, everyone who join and if you really enjoyed this content, please subscribe through Apple podcasts or Stitcher or wherever you’re listening to your podcast and tell your friends and this has been the Inboxing podcast episode one. Thank you for coming on.