Let’s delve into the world of email marketing, a crucial tool for e-commerce businesses. Our return guest Priya Radia, from Flow Butler, shares her expertise and unravels the strategies that can help you master this powerful marketing tool. Whether you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur or an experienced marketer, Priya’s insights will provide you with actionable tips and a fresh perspective on optimising your email marketing efforts Tune in and learn how to enhance your email marketing game and take your e-commerce business to the next level!
In today’s episode you’ll learn:
- Conducting A/B testing to refine messaging and uncover customer preferences.
- Experimenting with different messaging and offers, particularly during non-peak seasons to get ready for a busy period.
- The importance of creating email flows to nurture and convert customers as an e-commerce business.
- Tailoring the quantity and content of emails based on the buyer’s journey and customer behaviour.
- Understanding personalised messaging to address various customers.
- Leveraging path length and time lag reports in Google Analytics to analyse the customer journey and optimise email flows.
- Seeking assistance to set up email marketing and evaluating your business’s stage and performance.
- Crafting compelling offers that incorporate mental triggers e.g scarcity and urgency to boost your average order value.
- Enhancing connections by using plain text emails.
Links from the show:
- Book Your Free Strategy Session!
- Bright Red Marketing Episode 50
- Flow Butler Website – Offer: Bright Red for 20% off your 1st month!
Transcript
[00:00:15] Dahna: Hi, and welcome to the bright minds of e-commerce podcast. I’m Dahna founder of Bright Red Marketing, and after helping so many businesses in the e-commerce space over the years, I wanted to bring you the best advice Australian experts in e-commerce and e-commerce store owners had to offer. If you want relatable stories and actionable advice and the latest Facebook advertising strategies, you’re in the right place. so let’s get into today’s episode.
[00:00:36] Today, we’re here with Priya from Flo Butler. Welcome Priya.
[00:00:39] Priya: Thanks, Dahna. So great to be here.
[00:00:41] Dahna: It’s so good to have you back on the show. I mean, you’ve had quite an adventure since the last time we spoke.
[00:00:45] Priya: We certainly have
[00:00:46] Dahna: let’s jump straight into the juicy stuff first.
[00:00:48] And then we’ll come back to that story at the end. Why is email marketing so important?
[00:00:53] Priya: Email marketing is one of those things that just gets overlooked. People think it’s just like sending emails, but there are two ways that I like to think about it. So one is if you were to picture your business as a bucket and you spend all of this money trying to fill that bucket with sales, using ads and influencers and all this kind of.
[00:01:10] Pay traffic and then your bucket is just leaking because there’s a giant hole in the bottom because you don’t have the email marketing to support that hole. And so you’re burning through a lot of your money and not supporting all of your paid efforts. That’s one of the biggest reasons that it is so important.
[00:01:24] It is revenue generating. It’s not just something where you send a few emails and. That’s it. That’s that it is meant to generate 30 percent of the revenue in your business. So many people don’t realize that. And so they just send a few emails and then they think it’s either not working or, you know, I already do email marketing and my business isn’t where I want it to be.
[00:01:41] And so if it’s not at 30%, it means that there’s something wrong. And the other way I like to think about it is it’s just so beneficial for e commerce stores. I think we’ve forgotten that e commerce is the sale of products. So we used to only have retail stores. So if someone walks into your store. And then they have a look around. They’re like, Oh, I’ll have a think about it. And they walk out again. That’s kind of it.
[00:02:02] You’ve lost that person. But with e comm and email marketing, it’s almost like having a little employee that follows them around in a non creepy way and taps on their shoulder and says, Hey, you saw this product what are you thinking about? Why aren’t you purchasing? And then you give them the answers to the questions in their brain.
[00:02:19] So you answer those objections and you say, well, here’s a bunch of other people that actually liked it and you give them social proof. And then they come back to your store and they purchase. And so it’s almost like having these employees that you don’t have to spend that much money on that do a ton of the work for you.
[00:02:32] Dahna: I love that. And I think having that benchmark too is really important. I think we were talking before we started recording about some people I’ve spoken to that are definitely not getting that 30 percent from email marketing. I think that’s a really nice benchmark for people to have and go, okay, do I need to be working on my email marketing?
[00:02:47] Yes or no? That’s a really nice clear benchmark. So I love that. Obviously having emails going out. Is really important. And we’ll talk about that a little bit in a moment. But I know something that people struggle with is getting more emails in the first place. So if people are really struggling to build that email list to be trying to get the 30 percent of sales, do you have any sort of top tips, recommendations on how to really start focusing on building that email list?
[00:03:12] Priya: Absolutely. So one of the things that we’ve done for At least a decade is the standard 10 percent off and that is getting a little bit boring for customers. I think people are like, unless they have a super high intent to purchase already, that can be helpful where, okay, I know I’m always going to get 10 percent off, but the fact that it’s always there means people are just like whatever, not really that fast. I’ll come back at any point.
[00:03:34] Dahna: It’ll still be there when I decide I want to buy later.
[00:03:36] Priya: Exactly. So playing around with some of these offers and they don’t always have to be discounted incentives. I know some brands either don’t want to discount it all because they feel like it devalues their brand or they find that it eats into their margins too much.
[00:03:52] So you can use different things. One thing we found really successful is free gifts. And you value the gift at significantly higher than what it would cost you. And the gift is not actually meant to be purchased, but it is available to be purchased on your site. So the gift might be, one of the jewelry brands that we own.
[00:04:08] We had like a 70 free gift. Now, very few people know that that gift cost us very, very small amount of money and we would give it away for free. And giving away that free gift cost us less than giving away 10%. And that’s how valuable it was for us. And then you put a time limit on it.
[00:04:23] So if you’re able to change your offers around and say limited time, even if you don’t say. You could do one each month, or you say it’s a limited time and you’re playing on the scarcity element. And so people then go, okay, I need to sign up now. Otherwise, I’m not going to get this gift because next month it will be different.
[00:04:39] So even if you’re running an offer every single month, as long as the offer is different, that’s okay. And that will get people in and brands that do this really well at brands like one day boost, they do lots of big discounts, but their business is incredibly successful because they don’t discount the same thing every single time.
[00:04:54] Dahna: Yeah. I think that’s a really good way of thinking about it too, because I think everyone really gets stuck in that. Oh, I’m going to give 10 percent off. 10 percent is not good enough. I’ll do 20%, but then you’re right. It does eat into people’s margins really quickly. And it’s just not.
[00:05:05] As effective, although I did have to give my email to someone because it was a free gift. And then I was really sad with the free gift, which didn’t do so good for them. Cause I was like, Oh, I don’t like my gift. I still buy from them, but I was just like, that was not the nice gift. I thought it was going to be, but anyway,
[00:05:18] Priya: and look, it really is about testing. So I think we get into this phase sometimes with small businesses and even medium businesses where they just, they have this one offer and it’s not working and that they don’t really know what to do. So you can split test a free gift with a percentage off with, you know, give away something. If there’s a competition, give away $ 200 worth of products to one person and encourage people to sign up to your list from socials, from ads from all the other methods that you have and say, well, this month we’re giving away this and all you need to do is sign up to our list and that’s sometimes quite encouraging. They don’t even need to purchase. So if, these are people that you’re just trying to nurture and build that relationship, giving away something can be really helpful.
[00:05:57] My only caveat with giving away things is you don’t want to be this brand that’s only attracting freebie hunters. And so you do want there to be a little bit of intent because the whole email list full of freebie hunters is not very fun for anybody.
[00:06:10] Dahna: no, I think there’s a difference between sign up and you get a free thing. If you buy something. And just getting free things.
[00:06:17] Priya: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:06:18] Dahna: I saw a company that’s doing their shipping is set price shipping, but if you sign up to their mailing list, which they’re calling their sort of loyalty program, they’re not calling it a mailing list, you got free shipping.
[00:06:27] I thought that was really clever as well.
[00:06:29] Priya: That’s brilliant.
[00:06:30] Dahna: I was like, that makes me want to sign up to your mailing list, although I’m already there, but now I get free shipping because I gave it to you again. So I’m very happy with this.
[00:06:37] Priya: Yeah, it’s thinking through all the little points that a possible friction or what is the reason someone would purchase from my brand over someone else’s brand? How can I get them to purchase now or in the next two weeks instead of in three months time? Unless you have a sofa, in which case you probably need to draw that out a little bit and you probably can’t give away a free sofa, but
[00:06:56] Dahna: No, but maybe you can give some cushions or sofa protection, or who knows what else you can do.
[00:07:02] Priya: absolutely.
[00:07:03] Dahna: Love that. So what makes a good email? Million dollar question.
[00:07:09] Priya: This is one of those things that is a million dollar question because it depends on the timing of the email and who you were sending it to. So no two emails will operate the same. So email marketing is really about sending the right email to the right person at exactly the right time. If someone, for example, is in an abandoned cart flow, the intent of that email is they were really close to purchasing.
[00:07:33] And there was something stopping them. So a good email in that sense is going to be short, probably include some elements of social proof, maybe include a discount. If someone has just joined your list, unless you have a product, which is an impulse buy product, a good email is going to look like again, short.
[00:07:49] One of the biggest mistakes people make is doing these really lengthy emails with 25 different elements. And yes, they look beautiful when you’re displaying them on a website, but The big brands, when you actually study their emails which, it’s just something I do a lot. Every email has one thing, one point that they want to get across one message, maybe a little bit of social proof in there as well.
[00:08:10] But each email really is designed to have one message to get them to take one action. That action might just be, here’s our brand story. Here’s why you can relate to us. And so keeping it simple, keeping it not too image heavy, a lot of the image heavy emails are ending up in spam. So it doesn’t matter how beautiful your email is.
[00:08:27] If nobody sees it, that is going to continuously end up in spam and it’s wasted effort.
[00:08:32] Dahna: Yeah. And a lot of effort at that because making those beautiful ones are not easy.
[00:08:36] Priya: No, that’s right. And if you’re, you know, paying an agency to do it, you’re paying design fees, you’re paying for all of that. That’s okay. Because some of the emails I find the welcome emails when they do have beautiful designs, it really brings that person into your brand. And some brands, they need to be incredibly aesthetically pleasing.
[00:08:53] If you’re doing nails, if you’re doing skincare, you do want a little bit of those aesthetics in there. But your entire email should not be designed and then just plunked in there. And it’s all images. It needs to have some real text in there. So it gets through to them.
[00:09:06] Dahna: Yeah. I love that. It’s so like, what is the goal of that email? What do you want them to do? What’s that one thing you want from that email? I’ve seen so many emails where it’s like, there are 17 different things you’re asking me to do from this one email. And that’s just too much.
[00:09:20] Priya: That’s right. And people don’t read the whole thing. People skim emails. When you think about how many emails we received in our inbox, There’s just so much information going in, and I think people sometimes feel like they need to cram a lot into the one email because they’re scared that they shouldn’t send too many emails, but it is much better to just send an email with a single message and then send a few more emails, spacing them out, reasonably than to just bombard everything in one email because the other thing is someone might just be having a busy day and delete that one email and then it’ll be here for you again. But they wanted to, and so it’s just about finessing those different points and just keeping it really simple.
[00:09:55] Dahna: Yeah. I love that. So we’ve sort of touched on it in terms of welcome series and abandoned carts and those sorts of things. But what are some of your favorite sequences to set up or at least like the most important. Curious to know your thoughts?
[00:10:06] Priya: Look, I think welcome flow very important and important to really touch on elements of your brand. Showcase your products. That’s when someone initially shows that interest in your product. That one you have to get right. Abandon cart flows. So many people just use the standard Shopify for using Shopify.
[00:10:23] Abandon cart flows. It’s not good enough. It’s not going to convert. It’s too generic. I think it’s really important to use a platform like Klaviyo and build out a very specific flow. If you can, and you have very different products, build it. That flow out to segment your products out, because if you have some people have lots of different skews, someone’s interested in mascara, they may not necessarily be interested in lipstick.
[00:10:45] So if you’re just doing these generic flows and throwing in random products, you’re not going to get the most out of it. So really solid abandoned cart sequence can help convert those people much more quickly and get them to spend a fair bit of money with you, which is what you want. Browse abandonment is another one.
[00:11:00] So that’s one that I often see missed people might do a welcome and an abandoned cart, and then not do the browse abandonment. And that one is really for your window shoppers. So people that are kind of looking around, they don’t have the intent yet to add something to their cart. So that’s actually a different flow.
[00:11:14] I really like to think about it as a shop front. So someone’s like staring in your window and they come in and they’re just like looking around, but they don’t pick anything up. What would you say to that person over someone who literally brought your product up to their, up to the counter and then just turn around and left?
[00:11:29] Like they’re two different messages.
[00:11:31] Dahna: I love how much you can bring the email marketing back to like a retail experience because it just makes it make so much more sense. Like, of course you would speak to someone who picked up a product and was asking you questions about it and then put it back. You would speak to that person differently to the person who just sort of walked around, did five laps and left.
[00:11:47] Like, of course you speak to them differently. Why do we not write our emails differently?
[00:11:52] Priya: Yeah, we just don’t think about it that way. And it’s just so powerful. Someone and it’s a lot easier for people to abandon part. I don’t think I could even go into a shop and put it on the counter and then leave. I’d feel so awkward.
[00:12:02] Dahna: But you pick some stuff up and you ask a question and then you put it back. I mean, that’s kind of the same.
[00:12:07] Priya: It is. And then the shop assistant would come and go, Hey, hang on, wait a second. Let’s talk this through. Let’s just bring you a bit closer again. So that’s how I think about those two ones. And then the post purchase flow is so important and people don’t realize how important it is. If you, if someone buys, yes, it’s great to let them know that they have bought from you and thank them.
[00:12:27] That’s awesome. But take those next steps because. It is so much easier to get someone who has already purchased from you to purchase again than it is to get a brand new customer.
[00:12:38] Dahna: Yes. I’ve seen clients have that set up and it is just phenomenally successful. We even have some clients set up post purchase ads and they are also successful, but I think you’re right. In that post purchase world, you have so much potential. It’s that bucket that you’re talking about at the start, like.
[00:12:55] They’re already in the bucket. You just need to keep them in the bucket.
[00:12:59] Priya: Yep. Don’t let them fall out. Remind them, get them even the small little things, get them excited to receive your product. If your product has a certain way it needs to be used. Bring them on that journey initially, there’s something that happens and some of the marketing. Psychology books talk about this, where people get buyers remorse.
[00:13:16] And they get it a lot. So as soon as they’ve purchased a product, They feel the sense of like, Oh, I just spent money. And what you want to do is go yet. You’ve made such a great decision to spend money with us. Really. Your product is on its way. Here’s how you’re going to use it when it arrives.
[00:13:30] Get them excited, bring them into your community. That will then when they receive your product, they unbox it. They’re excited about it. Maybe they’re excited to share about it, share your product. This then, gets them to leave a review. That’s another really important one. So as part of that post purchase journey, you need the reviews because this all feeds into your ecosystem that builds social proof and then get them to purchase.
[00:13:50] Again, now for some brands. If you have a lot of different products that people can purchase again, they might purchase immediately for some brands. It might take 30 to 60 or even 90 days, but you want them coming back. And that’s how you’re going to scale. If you spend 10 or 20 to acquire a customer, but you can then get that customer to continue to spend money with you over a 90 day period.
[00:14:11] That means your ads or whatever marketing you’re spending is going to have exponential results on the back end. And that’s what you want to be doing with your post purchase series.
[00:14:20] Dahna: I feel like Mr. Zimmy did that really well. I bought something from them not too long ago and like, I don’t remember how quickly after they sent the email, but it was just like, Oh, you’re going to look amazing in this. You’re going to take it on adventures and this is how you care for it.
[00:14:31] So it lasts a really long time. And I was like, I made a good purchase. They care about me. Like it’s an automated email. They don’t care about me. I’m in marketing. I know this, but I still felt cared for and I’m like, they care about this. So I think that’s a really good one to remind people of as well.
[00:14:46] So thank you. You sort of touched on it. In a previous question around testing, what is AB testing for those who don’t know? And what are your thoughts on the best practices and how to use that?
[00:14:56] Priya: So A B testing is basically testing often 50 percent of your audience with one thing and 50 percent of the other. So if you send an email out, you might A B test subject lines to see which one gets. A better response with the introduction of iOS 14 and 15. It made a little bit more tricky because open rates are a little bit less reliable.
[00:15:16] So then you might AB test your content for click rates. And what that means is you’re looking at what are the kinds of emails that are getting more people to click? Because interestingly, sometimes the things that get people to open and not the things that get people to click and purchase. And so it is really playing around with.
[00:15:33] Different forms of messaging. And I really like to encourage clients to do this when it’s not peak season. So right now we’re in between. Seasons where, we’ve got black Friday and Christmas and some clients, it’s father’s day coming up. But for everyone, mostly there’s black Friday and Christmas.
[00:15:48] You want to do your testing early so that when you hit black Friday and Christmas, what are the kinds of emails that our customers will respond to, and therefore what are the kinds of emails that we will send? And I’m actually doing this with a client right now on their signup forms and welcome flows, because we have a very short period of time because this business needs to go gangbusters towards Christmas.
[00:16:09] So we’ve got probably six weeks where we can do some testing, but split testing and offer. So free gift with a. 10 percent discount. You can’t go lower than that for margin reasons. So we’re going to put two sign up forms. One sign up form will be shown to 50 percent of the audience and another one will be shown to the other 50 percent of the audience.
[00:16:25] We’ll see which one gets the better sign up rates. And then the flow, the welcome series is being split tested based on those signup forms. And so we’re then going to be able to see which one gets the most purchases. So that welcome series has 34 emails in it. It’s extensive. We are further split testing that by audience.
[00:16:42] However, she has a very short period of time to get incredible results. And so that’s why we’re doing this because it helps inform the rest of her marketing. But what’s interesting is when you get those results. You can then say to your ads manager or ad agency, Hey, can we focus more on the free gift offer without ads?
[00:16:59] Because that is bringing in a lot of people. So it then further informs your marketing. Channels with your type of funnel, which I really like. So using all that split testing data to then inform the type of marketing, the type of audiences that you’ll be targeting.
[00:17:12] Dahna: Yeah. I love that. I think split testing is one of the things that people get really scared by and they’re like, Oh I’m not there yet. Like I don’t need to, but I think it can be really simple. It’s like, okay, well, I have these two thoughts. Let’s test both of them and see which one actually gets the better result.
[00:17:25] Which I feel like is almost easier than just. Coming up with one thought, sometimes it’s easier. I have these two ideas. Let’s actually just see which works rather than me guessing which one I think is going to perform the best.
[00:17:35] Priya: Absolutely. And it’s often the opposite of what we think.
[00:17:37] Dahna: It’s really frustrating.
[00:17:41] Priya: you think you’ve got this great subject line and then it’s the other one that’s like boring
[00:17:45] Dahna: and it’s always the worst one. It’s the boring image, the bad copy. And you’re just like why are you the one that’s winning? But it happens everywhere, which is why I feel like that gut feel is probably not advisable and you should split test.
[00:17:58] Priya: Yep. And if you’re starting out and it feels overwhelming, just split test the headlines, like, especially in your welcome series. These are the things that generate income over and over again. So it is so important to be testing because if 50%, if you’re getting, we’ve had open rates of like 50 to 75 percent on that first email versus 20 percent on another email.
[00:18:18] And it’s just, well, you want to be just split testing something as simple as a subject line to be able to see which one is getting more opens or which one is getting in an abandoned cart series, which one is getting more opens and sales because that one is hugely important as well.
[00:18:32] Dahna: Yeah. I mean, as you said, if your email marketing is supposed to be making you 30 percent of your sales and one email’s percent open rate and one’s got a 70%, you’d be wanting to do as much as you can to get that 20 percent as close to 70 as you could. That’s where your money’s coming from.
[00:18:46] You said that one of your clients has what, 30 something welcome emails in a split test? Yeah.
[00:18:53] Priya: so,
[00:18:54] Dahna: many emails is too many? How many emails is not enough? How long is a piece of string? But is there like a benchmark? Is there some sort of guidelines on how to know whether you’ve got too many? Not enough?
[00:19:06] Priya: so just to clarify, not a single customer is receiving 34 emails. The
[00:19:09] Dahna: No, of course not.
[00:19:10] Priya: customer receives 5 emails at max in that welcome series. So the reason we have done. In that way is just because she is so uncertain about which audience is going to be the one to purchase. Is it parents? Is it grandparents? Is it gifted by friends?
[00:19:25] We need to know this data because we need to be able to scale. And the way you speak to a grandparent and the way you speak to a parent, just in the copy, it’s a very emotional business. So if you’re bringing in this idea of, gifting a beautiful Christmas gift to your grandchildren, but you know, to your child, we’re looking at very different copy.
[00:19:41] In addition to that, the number of emails is something that we will tweak over time. And it depends on the buyer’s journey. And this is something that so few people do when they start, but it’s, who is your customer? And what is that purchasing behavior? So one of the, one of the ways we’re thinking about this and our hypothesis is that for this example, grandparents are likely to buy faster than parents because grandparents like to spoil their grandkids and we’ll be in that emotional, Oh, it’s fine.
[00:20:06] It’s Christmas. Whereas parents will be like, Oh, but we’ve got groceries and Christmas is expensive and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so they might take longer to purchase. That’s just a theory. We might be completely wrong, but we’re using that theory to then design those. Emails. And so when you’ve got a product where it’s more of an impulse buy product, you want to be more aggressive with your emails, use incentives in the first few days.
[00:20:27] We had a product that either people bought in the first three days, or they came back in two months. And so we had quite a few emails going in those three days, meaning, we had three emails in three days. Then we had a fourth and fifth day email just to capture any of those people that were laggers.
[00:20:40] And then we wouldn’t bother them too much until it was 30 to 60 days. With other products, you might do, five emails over a three week period. Because that customer needs more information about your product. They need to know how to use it. They might have objections on sizing and fit and you want to address all of these points in your emails.
[00:20:58] So it’s not so much about the number of emails. It’s. What are the different consideration points for that customer to purchase and how can we answer those questions in the customer’s mind? We like to use the path length report and time lag report in Google Analytics to get a bit of that data. So we think through if someone has seven touch points and their bulk of customers purchase within 14 days.
[00:21:20] How can we get those seven touch points without bombarding them? But how do we get all those little messages across? Over a period of 14 days, and that’s how we determine how many emails there are. I think three emails in a welcome series is probably your absolute minimum. And that’s sort of your baseline, anything less than that.
[00:21:36] I don’t think you’re nurturing enough. I start with five and then we go up and down just because it’s really hard. It really depends on the business.
[00:21:42] Dahna: What help with your facebook and instagram ads remember you can always book in a free strategy session at brightredmarketing.com.au forward slash free dash strategy dash session we’ll run through all of your ads see what’s working and what’s not and no sales pitch i promise, so let’s get back to today’s episode.
[00:22:00] Obviously, you’re talking about a lot of things that are fantastic and very helpful. If someone is listening to this and they’re just like, that is way more than I’m putting into my emails. I just send a broadcast, once or twice a week. I’m obviously missing a lot. When is a good time for people to get help? Like, is there a point where you’re like, Okay, you’re at this point of business. You probably should start to get help now or look, you’re probably not just yet. You probably need to just learn a few things and kind of. Get through on your own a little bit until you get to this point.
[00:22:29] Priya: I think there’s. Differences between you can get some one off help or you can get ongoing help. So I think it is, if you don’t have time and you are completely overwhelmed by the thought of email marketing, even setting up that first flow, you’re probably going to waste two months trying to work out what you’re going to put in.
[00:22:46] Cause you’re just too overwhelmed with it. So I think it can actually be a really good idea to just get someone. To set up those flows for you. Basic flows. We’ll put a few emails in each one. That way you at least have the basics going. You’ve got some beautiful emails. Then you can start to learn about split testing and that sort of thing.
[00:23:04] If you’re doing 10k a month and your emails are not bringing in 3k a month, then I think you’re leaving money on the table. And I think it is important to either invest in the knowledge yourself, which is time consuming, but can be worth it. Or you get someone to start helping you. And one of the good things about emails is once it’s set up, it will run for a while.
[00:23:23] So you can get some help, drop off the help, get some more help. And really just be flexible with how you think about it. Don’t think about it as in, I have to hire an agency now when I’m doing 10 K a month and I have to spend two and a half grand a month and pay that for the next 12 months. That’s not really the way to think about email marketing.
[00:23:40] I think you can be much more flexible with it. But you know, if you’ve got some sale periods coming up and you want to be hitting 20, 30, 40 K a month without emails, you’re just relying on paid traffic. You’re losing so much of that. So I think it is important to work out where you’re going and where do you want to be?
[00:23:57] And then just find someone who can just deliver what you need.
[00:24:01] Dahna: I love that on that note, can you tell everyone about your new business? Because I am obsessed with the service that you’re offering. I think it’s genius. I’ve been talking about this since you came up with the idea, but it’s just, it’s fantastic. And I think it’s really going to help so many people.
[00:24:15] Who are in that space where they’re like, I need help with this, but I don’t want to be spending an absolute fortune on an agency. And I just need a little bit more regular, consistent help. So can you tell us a little bit about flow Butler?
[00:24:26] Priya: Absolutely. I’m so excited that you’re so excited about it. So my co founder and I have both had multiple e commerce businesses. And I think I’ve spoken about this in the last episode that I was on with you. So I won’t go into all that detail, but they were successful. We exited those. And when we were running them, one of the things that we realized was when you start out.
[00:24:47] With email marketing, you’ve only really got two options. So one is that you do it all yourself and it is much harder than you think to actually understand what you’re doing and how to do it. And it’s also quite time consuming. And the other is to hire an agency. And for a long time, we were just not at the point where we could afford to hire an agency.
[00:25:04] And so the idea that we came up with was essentially an email marketing service where you could get. It’s basically expert email marketing at a crazy affordable price,
[00:25:13] Dahna: She’s not lying. It is crazy affordable. It’s fantastic.
[00:25:17] Priya: I’ve actually had a few, a couple of people go, I feel like it’s too good to be true. What’s the catch? And it’s just, we’ve just redesigned the model. So we just don’t do things in a way standard agency does them. It’s very flexible. And so going back to this idea where for e commerce. You will have peak periods with, black Friday or mother’s day or father’s day where you need to have your email set up.
[00:25:39] We do entirely separate flows for black Friday. So we would never run your standard flows for black Friday to it. Like you’re just missing out on so much money. So you can come in, you can get a bunch of things set up, and then you can either drop back to, we have a cheaper plan, which is just, we’ll just.
[00:25:54] Continuously do campaigns and things for you, and then you can ramp up again, you can even pause. So if you just need that basic setup done, we can do that for you. And then you can pause, go away, come back when you need, come back after a few months, get some insights. So we’re very flexible in that way.
[00:26:10] We don’t do fixed contracts either. So you sign up, you just sign up, get on boarded. If you sign up today, we start work tomorrow. So there’s no delay in those sort of two to three week delay in getting work done. So we’re very flexible in that sense. And we’re really here to support those businesses that are in between kind of being doing it themselves and then having a full service agency take on everything for them.
[00:26:30] Dahna: Yeah. I think it’s just, it’s such an incredible service because of the way that you’re doing it differently. It’s not just. Yeah, pay us huge amount of money every month and we’ll get this sorted for you. Like it’s super flexible and I just think it’s amazing for small businesses. And I believe you have a special little offer for our listeners.
[00:26:45] Priya: I do. So we’d love for you to give us a go. If you use the code ‘Bright Red’, you can get 20% off your first month with us. We are confident that you’ll love the way we work. We’ve clients who are just, really enjoying the way we work and how quick we are with our turnaround. We also offer some strategy so you know, if you are a little bit lost, we are here to help.
[00:27:04] Dahna: I definitely recommend everyone go check out Flo Butler. Priya has a huge amount of experience in e commerce, so she knows what she’s talking about. You’ve obviously got, as I said, a huge experience in e commerce. So do you have like your top three tips for e commerce businesses?
[00:27:17] Priya: I do. So I think we spoke about before how it all starts with the customer. Cannot stress that enough. There is no cookie cutter approach to anything you do. Just really understand your customer. Well, get into their shoes, understand their buying behavior. And if you’re really confused, the great thing with email marketing is that You can actually spy on other brands for free because you sign up to the emails and you analyze them.
[00:27:41] And so I always recommend, because we do this as well, we will literally just sign up to people’s emails, study their journey. When are they sending emails? What’s the, how long apart are the emails coming in? What do the emails say? What are they doing? And model it off that. Don’t copy, but you know, you can model it.
[00:27:58] The other point I would say for e commerce is to really know your margins. It’s not email marketing focused, but it’s just so important for everything that you do. Every strategic decision you make, whether it’s spending money on ads, whether it’s crafting an offer, whether it’s understanding, you know, if I break even on my ad spend, that might be okay because customers come back again and again.
[00:28:17] And so that makes this spend. Okay. How do we increase? The backend of that with email marketing and with other offers that are, you know, post purchase sequences. So really understanding your margins and your data will help inform how you grow and where you should be investing your money.
[00:28:33] Dahna: Yeah, I love that. I’m team margins too. You just, you got to know what they are.
[00:28:39] Priya: can’t believe how many people don’t and it’s fine.
[00:28:42] I think we don’t get taught this for some reason. It’s just something you have to know. And so a lot of businesses figure that out, several years down the track.
[00:28:49] Dahna: Yes. Yes. And you had your third point before I interrupted you. Cause I got excited about margins.
[00:28:54] Priya: That’s okay. This is actually a little bit of a sneaky email marketing tip that works incredibly well, which is to send plain text emails. That’s something that so few brands do, but we always include plain text emails in some of our flows. And the reason it works so well in e commerce is a, it helps with deliverability because plain text emails tend to land in inboxes.
[00:29:16] There’s no images. It doesn’t get flagged as spam, but it also humanizes the brand. And I think. Especially right now where consumer spending is a little bit down, it’s going to pick up again. That’s what so many people don’t realize. So what you want to do right now is start connecting with your customers.
[00:29:31] So these emails are designed to humanize your brand, put a real person behind your brand. Yes. People love the big brands, but you know, even Bondi boost, which is multi million dollar brand. Well, you’ll get an email from Alex and you’re like, Oh, Alex from Bondi Boots is emailing me. That’s nice. And it’s a plain text, like just a reminder, we’ve got this sale. That’s the one that actually got me to purchase
[00:29:50] Dahna: Yeah, it’s great stuff. I use it too.
[00:29:54] Priya: yeah it’s amazing. And it feels like it’s coming from a real person, which all emails are coming from real people. There are people running your business. So that’s just one of those tips where I think. Focusing on humanizing event brand and building that brand relationship.
[00:30:06] We’re about to go into black Friday sales, all that sort of thing. It’s the brands that people have a connection with that are going to get their money, because if people are looking at, where they’re going to spend their money, because funds are limited, they are going to spend, but they’re only going to spend on what they really love and want.
[00:30:21] Dahna: That’s it. That’s it. I think I got one of those from a beauty brand and it was from the founder and she’s just like, I’m so glad that you bought it. Like, if you have any questions, let us know. And I was like. I know that this is automatic, and I still am impressed. And it’s just because it came in plain text and you’re like, it feels so much more human.
[00:30:37] I love it. Is there anything that you think we’ve missed? I feel like we’ve covered a lot.
[00:30:41] Priya: We have covered so much, just having a quick think. I don’t feel like we’ve missed it. I don’t want to overwhelm the audience with too
[00:30:48] Dahna: Look, they can come back and listen again. That’s fine.
[00:30:51] Priya: That’s true. The only other thing I will say is around offers. So this is something that we realized quite late in our e commerce journey. And I think if we had realized it sooner, we would have scaled a lot faster.
[00:31:03] And that is around crafting irresistible offers. That people cannot say no to, and using what’s called, mental triggers. So things like scarcity, urgency, likeability, credibility, injecting those into your offers from start to finish. So if that’s, they start with a Facebook ad, they land on your website, they go to a product page, they then go end up in your email list, also using SMS, because that’s really important. And, highly successful when you use it, right? How can you create offers that from start to finish a consistent and irresistible? And if you can continue to do this on a monthly basis, using different offers, and they don’t have to be massive offers.
[00:31:45] You always want your Black Friday offer to be the best offer. Because that’s what people are expecting, but crafting offers that are irresistible to your customers, but also increase your average order value is this is the key to success. So if you’re doing bundling, you might get people to purchase three things and then they do get a discount.
[00:32:01] Being able to craft offers like that will help you scale your business beyond what you can probably imagine.
[00:32:07] Dahna: Yeah. I love that. And I think that’s a great note to finish those questions on. We’ll get into the last couple we ask everyone else. But thank you so much. You’ve shared absolutely so much information. It’s been great. Do you have any strategies or habits that you use every day to help you stay on track in business?
[00:32:22] Priya: I actually do. So I have kids. And so my mornings can be, I don’t have the luxury of like a one hour morning routine, but what I do is I try and wake up really early. I have my morning coffee. I cannot function without it. So if coffee’s not there, I’m not there. The morning coffee. And then I just try and get my mindset right.
[00:32:39] And there’s, various techniques to do that, whether it’s a workout, generally moving my body is really important. Sometimes I do a bit of a dance. Yeah. Not something that many people know about me, but I think pumping some great music and just getting your head into the right space. There are so many ups and downs of business and you just have to be in that right space because you just never know when there’s going to be a down or something’s going to go wrong.
[00:32:59] So I really like to just move. Coffee and moving are my two biggest things.
[00:33:03] Dahna: I love that. And I love that dancing was on your list because that’s my jam too. Do you have a favorite podcast?
[00:33:09] Priya: I’m really enjoying the smart marketer podcast, but that’s always a good one that I enjoy listening to. I’m very good with e commerce tips and very good with, just keeping you up to date with all the changes. We’re about to have iOS 17, so they’re always quite good at keeping on top of that.
[00:33:27] Dahna: Do you have a favorite business book?
[00:33:28] Priya: I do. ‘The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing’ by Al Ries and Jack Trout.
[00:33:33] Dahna: I have that one somewhere.
[00:33:34] Priya: It’s a good one to revisit.
[00:33:36] Dahna: And can you tell us about how people can find you if they want to know more?
[00:33:40] Priya: So we’re not being on socials. Find us at ‘ flowbutler.com’ and then sign up to our email list. That’s the best way to find us.
[00:33:47] Dahna: Wonderful. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. You’ve shared so much and I’m so grateful. So thank you for joining us.
[00:33:52] Priya: Thanks so much for having me. This is fun.
[00:33:54] Dahna: Thanks for listening to the bright minds of e-commerce podcast. As always you’ll find the show notes@brightredmarketing.com.edu forward slash Episode 50. thanks for listening.
