Proven Strategies to Increase Revenue Using Email Marketing (E149)

• Adam Pearce
• Co-founder and CEO of Blend Commerce

Sponsors:

• Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!
• Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software

Notes:

• Ask how they want to engage.
• Benchmark – Open Rate 30-40%
• Shop Quiz

Links:

• https://blendcommerce.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/BlendCommerce
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/adampearceblendcommerce/

Transcript:

Charles (00:00):

In this episode of the Business of eCommerce I talked with Adam Pearce about proven strategies to increase revenue using email. This is a business e-commerce episode, 149. Welcome to the business. E-Commerce the show that helps e-commerce retailers start launch and grow their e-commerce business. I’m your host, Charles Palleschi and I’m here today with Adam Pearce. Adam is a co-founder and CEO of blend commerce, a Shopify agency, specializing in growth of six figure brands. Adam is a passionate advocate of email marketing and aims to make blend commerce. The world’s most supportive agency, and this interview had him give some very interesting strategies on what’s working with email marketing today. He helps talk about how to blend some of these strategies that, you know, it’s been around for a while with some new tactics and build something that’s kind of best of both worlds, right? Where you’re not just emailing the same old five five sequence emails until you get a response.

Charles (01:08):

He saw my blending SMS messenger, a lot of new, a lot of new technologies with email to get the best results. And I think that’s really powerful. One of the things that I haven’t gets into is quizzes, and how to use that, to get to know your customer, to collect more data and how to offer them products that really fit their needs. This is a great strategy that I see retailers using now. I think it’s super powerful. So let’s get on the show and let’s see what Adam has to say. So head on how are you doing today? Yeah, really good. Yeah. Awesome. To have you on the show, email marketing, just kind of grow through email. I think I’ve done SU I do similar episodes like this, like once a quarter and you keep seeing it come back up on like email’s dead and this isn’t working anymore. And then you do an episode and you dig into it and it’s, it’s almost like we’ve been talking about the same thing for years on like emails, definitely dead this, this quarter of this year. And it turns out it might not be happening. So is it dead this quarter?

Adam (02:09):

Good question. Well, look, the answer for me 100% is no, it’s not dead, nothing, you know, for me, if anything, it’s just evolving. And I think one, the important things that the email is that especially the past 12 months with obviously what’s been happening in the world the way the email’s been used with other channels as become a lot more important. So the likes of SMS, the likes of messenger using things like quizzes to pull any email addresses. So, you know, for me, and, and kind of looking around at the people that I work with, the clients I worked with, you know, clients are generating 30, 40, 50% of the revenue from email. So yeah, 100% email is not dead.

Charles (02:47):

Yeah. I think that’s how it’s changing as the interesting part. Right. Because we all still get email, it must be working. There’s something going on here. And I know from lists, we have like, that’s still one of our channels. And I’m curious though, so you say SMS messenger, like how are those things kind of plugging into it now? Yeah.

Adam (03:08):

So, I mean, with, with email, I think, you know, the great thing is that you’ve got, you know, you’ve got people like Play-Doh, for example, who now have email and SMS in one platform and equally you’ve got other people are SMS, but you can equally, you know, kind of use SMS and email very easily together. And I think what’s definitely changed with those is that rather than kind of looking at them as distinct different channels now people looking at, and we’ll actually look, we communicate with clients and we can communicate with the clients and customers using these different methods at different times. So for example, you know, if you’ve got a, let’s say for example, abandoned cart flow, which, you know, a lot of e-commerce store owners do, perhaps actually, if you’ve got SMS as well, get the, you’ve see that, that person, the first one I had the abandoned cart message. Didn’t open it, didn’t respond to that. If you have that cell phone and a mobile number as well, the next time, maybe send that semester out to them and see if that works. So, you know, if you have those opt-ins, which is very easy to do now, SMS messenger and email, you can choose the different levels of communication depending on what’s worked in the past or miles and without a particular person.

Charles (04:15):

Yeah, I think so it’s more the way I’m kind of hearing it, right. It’s a, tie-in of not just like, like this is an email address, it’s a tie-in of, this is actually a human and as human has maybe an email address, but they also have a cell phone. We can also retarget that same person now that we know their email address. We know which pages have been on. So it’s now linking that with, you know, here’s a human has the past purchases, his some other pages they looked at let’s retarget them and go again. So it’s in that whole, yeah. That like vision of who the buyer really is. And not just this, like as an email, let’s like just, let’s just keep beating them over, you know, over the head with offers.

Adam (04:55):

Think you’ve put it really well that Charles, you know, and I think that’s the thing is that we’ve, we’ve looked at email in the past that, okay, right. It’s, it’s kind of a one directional thing. And the, you know, we bring someone to me, my last, we pack them, pack them, pack them with an email. We keep on sending campaigns to them and hopefully eventually they might buy from us. And I think that that was kind of the mentality of it before it felt more of a, kind of a one way street. Whereas I think now what are a lot of the smarter bands are doing is making it into more of a communication channel in the sense that making sure that there is something actionable that people can do rather than say just, you know, buying a product. So whether it’s, you know, doing a feedback survey, whether assets assessing their email preferences, whether it’s signing up for SNS to get particular offers, if you can do that, you’re forming that relationship.

Adam (05:43):

That becomes two-way. And obviously, yeah, it might take a little bit more time, but you’ve certainly got more success doing that and having a conversation, getting to do different actions and just going, Hey, if I buy this thing, buy this thing by this. So I think, yeah, you’ve got it right there. It’s it’s, let’s not just keep going at them. Let’s go at them to have a conversation. And then based on what they come back with, let’s change that conversation because email tools are so advanced. Now there’s a lot you can do with that. And using segmentation, using different kind of communication to go back and forth with them.

Charles (06:18):

Today’s episode is sponsored by drip, drip it’s of world’s first e-commerce CRM and a tool that I personally use for email marketing and automation. Now, if you’re running an eCommerce store, you need to drip a try. And here’s why drip offers one-click integrations for both Shopify and Magento. There’s robust segmentation, personalization, and revenue dashboards. To give you an overview of how your automation emails are performing. One of my favorite features of drip is the visual workflow builder. It gives you a super easy way to build out your automation world visually and see the entire process. It lets you get started quickly, but also build very complex automation roles. It’s powerful, but also easy to learn. Unlike a lot of email tools that offer the same type of automation to get a demo of drip today, you can go head over to drip.com/boe that’s drip.com/b O E now onto the show. So how do you hook into when you say what they come back with, right? Is this, so you’re hitting someone with an email here’s an offer and they come back with, is it when you say they come back with like an actual response to that or are they clicking a page, you know, clicking and you’ve got a page view, like what does that next event that’s taking place at then you’re making a decision based on

Adam (07:29):

Yeah, sure. A good question. I mean, the thing is then obviously with, with some of the clients we working with now, we use tools at the start of the journey. It gets to where there’s a little bit later on where we get that data from the narrow then, but you know, a good example of thing is that, you know, if, for example, you’re a beauty brands and you’ve had, you know, someone sign up at their normal pockets, your store about point, obviously, you know, we don’t know what the age is, what their gender is, what their skin type is. All those factors are going to depend upon which product actually they’re most likely to buy. Now, what we’ve done in the past is that when we’ve got emails like that for a client, as that brand will go out and say, Hey, look, so that we can give you the best options available.

Adam (08:08):

Please tell us about your skin type. And it might just be three buttons in an email that says oily, dry. I serve her maximum, say for example, so all those things, you know, straight away, it’s a very easy action for the user. One click of a button of the back of that. Then we can segment them into a particular flow, which might be, you know, if they, for example, how dry skin it’s, you know, other customers that use this products yeah. Who had dry skin found that within 30 days that skin felt better, more relaxed. Here are the kind of products that maybe you might be interested in. So that then becomes one data point. If you then within the email, maybe have two or three different types of products, maybe different price points. You can then see on that click, which product they’re interested in if they buy or if they don’t buy it.

Adam (08:54):

And that’s another data point. So really, you know, from that one interaction that you’ve had with them, you’re putting in two extra data points against that person’s profile and you can then start to feed out more of that kind of back and forth conversation, which you know, is, is really, for me, the main thing that people should be doing now, rather than just saying, Hey, look, here’s a bunch of stuff that we sell. Maybe try and buy some of it. You know, it should be, Hey, we think this product is gonna be a good fit for you because of these reasons, because of what you’ve affected, we’d sold us. How do I check these out?

Charles (09:28):

Yeah, I like that because you could even do stuff. Do you see a few folks? Let’s say somebody was engaged. You’re awesome. It was oily skin. You kind of started learning about them and they got disengaged, right? You send through a sequence they don’t answer or whatever. So you go through the three to five emails, whatever it is, you get to the end. And you’re like, all right, let’s leave him alone for a little bit. And then through some sort of retargeting campaign, are you ever using that to kind of pull people back in and say, Hey, we have this new skincare product. And then, you know, Hey, you know, that was this person. They have oily skin, they clicked on that again, let’s get them into another work, another campaign. And we can basically just restart this, but with a whole different workflow. So we’ve done anything like that.

Adam (10:10):

I mean, w we did that for a brand. And so the, one of the things that we’re very conscious of is that we want to continue to be cleansing email less because obviously we don’t want to have people with thousands, the emails that are maybe costing them. I know, obviously not doing anything great for their deliverability. So that particular thing you mentioned there, where you have someone who was initially highly engaged, we’ve got data about them become very disengaged, is that we’ve done things in the past where for brands we’ve essentially said, look, here’s a new release of a product, get early access. We’d like you to be, you know, for a software product to beat tester. We’ve also had a kind of physical products where I’ve said that, you know we would like to give you a discount, try this out product, this product out first.

Adam (10:51):

And then what that does is that then like you say, it kind of starts that whole process. Again, they kind of become refreshed within that flow. And then obviously what you can do is sort of then reset that preferences off the back of that, but that’s kind of one way of doing it. And the other thing that’s been very interesting that we’ve done recently is that when we’ve had people who’ve seen it become disengaged, we actually send them an email about how they’d like to manage their email preferences. So it might be asking them like, do you just want to get news from us? Do you just want to get offers from us? Or do you just want to get everything from us? And even with that, what we’ve seen is that the engagement of those people who respond regardless of what they actually respond to the conversion rates on the next thing that goes out to them, regardless of whether it was just news or if it’s everything actually goes through the roof. Because I think the thing is then in that situation, that customer, that person on your list knows that actually, Hey, these guys have noticed that look not in their emails, they’ve noticed that I’m not buying something. So actually they’re trying to help find something that is more appropriate. So that’s been, been very interested in the past six months, three years, that tactic, because it’s worked very, very well to bring bringing those conversion rates.

Charles (12:03):

How do we actually do that? How do you implement that? Just from a real tactical point of view on you basically send them, here are my five types of subscriptions sort of thing. Like what sort of, you know, do you want to scribe to product alerts? Like, are they literally like checking check box?

Adam (12:18):

Yeah. So depending on which platform using, you know, it could be a radio button, it could be a button. And based on that radio button click or that button click, we would then segment them up, do a custom profile proxy against that person. So they clicked some particular button. They then fall into this particular segment. And then when we do, you know, news, for example, only people who have clicked on the news one and the all would then receive those particular campaigns that we get out. So, you know, they’re tactically, it it’s something that any e-commerce owner can do very simply. Yeah. And there’s, there’s lots of great guides out there from, you know, using sort of email surveys and radio buttons, depending on who you work with. But yeah, it can meal be done, be relatively straightforward.

Charles (13:02):

Well, it’s funny cause it’s, it’s built into every ESP, right? It’s like built in like you can unsubscribe, but you’re essentially using that like unsubscribed beat, unsubscribed process as a feature to get people to engage based off sending them an unsubscribe email, like a more formal like, Oh, it’s an address. I haven’t heard that one before. That’s a good I brought pipe boasts, open rates too. Cause then at that point you’re essentially getting, if they’re opting out of certain ones, they’re by default opting into other like, you know, if you do an inclusive or exclusive, right. You’re either opting out of some, but also opting into the ones you haven’t opted out of. So at that point, the ones that still in they’re going to get a way boost on that I’m guessing.

Adam (13:43):

No, absolutely. And I think the other thing, as well as the look ESPs are going to be looking at your open rates and your deliverability. So if you can do something with that, not only is that going to help you be overall a better deliverability and getting more of your message out, but like you say, you know, with those individual emails, getting more of the response that you’re actually looking for. And even if people don’t do just say, look, they want news. You know, look we can, if we, they say, look, we’ve got a new story that’s coming out about what’s happening within that link that they go to, of course, it’s going to be a call to action and that’s a byproduct or get involved more with the product. So it doesn’t mean, I think, you know, that people sometimes feel like, Oh, well geez, look, if someone already wants news from me, they’re never going to buy from me.

Adam (14:27):

Well, no, what they’re saying is that I don’t like it to be sold to in a more formal way. I like to get the information myself, consider it, and then I like to go on and purchase. So they’re not saying that they can’t think trauma that don’t don’t think that you’re kind of, you know sort of poking the hornet’s nest one day, Matt, you’re not your you’re merely kind of saying, look, this person’s telling me the way that they like to be communicated to. And I like being communicated to in that way that they’re more likely to buy. Then you just go in campaign, campaign, campaign, campaign.

Charles (14:58):

Yeah. I like that. When you’re talking about open rates I asked this and everyone kind of comes back with it depends, but I’ll still ask anyway, what kind of open we’re like, what are the benchmark like what is a good open rate? So if you’re in there seeing your 1% not good, 90%, like what do you kind of see as a range of something reasonable that you should be expecting for some of these? Yeah,

Adam (15:18):

Sure. I mean, I think know that when it comes to kind of benchmarks does actually we put a blog on our site on Blanc, commerce.com with some different Klayvio benchmarks that are out there in terms of apron rates. When it comes to campaigns, I think at the moment sort of apron rate wise, you’re looking at somewhere between 30 and 40% apron rate as a benchmark. But then what’s interesting is that you look at the different types of flows that are out there. And then sometimes then that the open rates them vary quite widely. I think the main thing is though that even if you’re not going to Actimize rates at the moment, the main thing is to keep looking at those rates and keep trying to improve them. Because you know, the thing is that ultimately, you know, when it comes to open rates, there’s only a few things already affects it.

Adam (16:05):

One is, you know, the day and time we send it to is, Hey, you’re actually sending say on three phases of JetLine. So yeah, from a marketer’s toolbox point of view, you haven’t got a great deal to play with. But what’s helpful is that ESPs have got lots of great tools to help you test those things. Like, for example, I don’t include Claudia. We’ve kind of got, you know, smarts and where it can send, you know, 20% of the campaign at different times throughout a day and then say, well actually, based on the results that we’ve had so far, it looks at sending this kind of campaign is best at 11:30 AM on a Saturday, and then you can then use that to then go forward. So, you know, use those tools that are within the platform you’re using to help you get better at those open rates. Well,

Charles (16:51):

Yeah, I think for had this one, a while back Roomba, where if you sent an email with a certain subject line and it wasn’t opened, you could just re send that same email, but with a different subject line, it’s just like, right. So, you know, if 25% of people opened it, you could just re-send it again to the 75% and they didn’t see us. And then all of a sudden the open rates, you would just double you’re double, if not more, because the second one, you could get a better open rate. Oddly, anytime you did this, you got better at writing subject lines and it just, you know, improve the whole process. So yeah, I like this little tools like that, that can help. And they’re part of these packages now. And like you said, and this is why everyone says it depends because, you know, let’s say you want to lose weight, you know, looking at like the benchmarks for at average ways.

Charles (17:34):

It, it’s not really that useful. It’s more like, where am I? Where am I today? And I want to get better than that. Right. So you’re always just trying to, you need yourself as the bench, you’re where you start. That’s really the most important thing. And you know, you’re just trying to head in the right direction. So yeah, you mentioned earlier, I want to come back to it, our quizzes, I feel like that’s something I’m hearing more about this now and it’s kind of getting to be the new hotness. But I think it works really well. Could you kind of go into how you’re using that?

Adam (18:03):

Yeah. So we we’ve actually used squeezes in two ways. The one way that we’d be doing a lot at the moment is there’s a toilet there by a company called octane AI and it’s actually called shoppable quiz. And what’s it called a shoppable quiz, shoppable quiz. Yeah. Shoppable quiz. And what this means is that you can actually have a dedicated page on your site, where there are a series of questions that you can ask to use. But at the same time also you can get that email. You can get their cell phone number and also messenger opt-in. So the important thing here is, you know, that you’re getting, you can get up to three pieces of key agents and communication, but there’s a lot of information that you can get about that particular person. So and then some people have some that we’ve just done recently is that we work kind of a personal care brand.

Adam (18:54):

And one of the things that we’ve done for them is that when you go onto that site it’s you know, would you like to get a free personal care profile? So what happens is that the person’s okay, what’s his personal care profile. So they click on the pop-up, what then happens is it takes them to actually a page on the site and it starts up by asking that age group. So that’s the first thing after that it’s asking about a skin type after that it’s asking about the activities they perform that they do at the weekend. It’s asking about that family, all of these questions that, you know, are an absolute joy to have as a marketer, because you know, so much about that person as a resort them, and at the end of that process, straight away, you’re able to give them, show them on the screen, the products that you think are the best fit for them.

Adam (19:42):

So not only does this kind of take out a lot of the kind of manual NUS of quizzes that used to be there, you know, we used to use type, form and look type form instead of great tool. But there was a lot of things that we’d have to do it like Zapier and web hooks and integrations. Whereas now it’s like, literally you can have one tool, have it, all that it integrates with your email provider integrates your SMS provider, and you’ve got that data there. And then I think the other thing is it’s that some people get a little bit freaked out when they hear the word quiz. Cause they kind of think, you know, look, those really kind of tacky Facebook quiz where, you know, which Disney character you

Charles (20:20):

Character. Exactly.

Adam (20:22):

And you kind of, you have these negative connotations, but when you look at it and, and you know, th the time of the quiz quizzes never actually used these things each, you know style advisor personal care advisor get our personalized guide on. So it just term personalizing and basically allowing that person to get to the price you want to get to, you know, in kind of three or four ago when this wasn’t really there, we would be relying solely on navigation called so actions copy. So essentially signposts the person through to those products he wants to get into. Whereas, Hey, what we’re saying is we don’t have to need to get him to go through that complete flow of the site to get them to that particular product we wanted to see, we can get him to do that literally by going to that information typing in.

Adam (21:10):

And because, you know, the way our, our minds work, we were inquisitive. We’re like, Oh, what are they going to recommend to us? You know, this sounds interesting. I wonder what they’re gonna recommend for me. And you’re, you’re skipping all of that flow out and getting straight to then them to that product. So they aren’t, and obviously if they don’t allow those products to then go to your B-cell products and email, so, you know, we give them maybe three different types are, let’s say aftershave or cologne and that are buying out them. So what do we do where we take their email? And we say, look, you know, have they haven’t bought there. So let’s try them with the next three bath products that we think is a good fit for them. And then, you know, the Maxine methadone by again, well, let’s not just do it as a campaigning now let’s do it as more of kind of a, an information piece, you know, three great colognes.

Adam (21:55):

That’s a great for this Christmas. So it kind of becomes more of a blog. You know, you’re still pitching products to a customer, but you’re pitching them in a different way each time. And eventually, are you going to get to a point where they do buy or if they don’t buy well, Hey, look, let’s get them out of the list. So, you know, you, you’ve just got to, I think kind of keep going with that funneling down of, you know, staff or would that kind of that straight direct look, these are products for you so that doesn’t work, go a bit soft, a bit soft, a bit softer. And if none of that works, then Hey, look, get them out of the funnel.

Charles (22:27):

Yeah. I think people really underestimate how effective this is just growing a list. Growing that profile, you get, find a five question funnel, quiz, quiz funnel, if you call it right, that’s five pieces of data that you wouldn’t have got for absolutely. You get a retargeting pixel. So now you can retarget them later on and they see your logo at the end and they see some products you could even offer. Hey, we’ll email you. You know, this report for the best skin care for your type of skin, whatever. So if you have oily skin, we’ll send you the oily skin report for 30 to 39 year old woman. So you can have these reports and it’s not even in a lot of these are similar-ish right? So you’re not, you’re not generating thousands of these. You could be down generating tens of them.

Charles (23:17):

You can email them a PDF. You can show them at the bottom of that email, here are some links to some products. So it’s, and it’s really, what is that offer? Like, I guess what are some compelling offers? Actually, probably a good question on that actually helped people out because you could do yeah. What star Wars character value. Right. But you’re not really like, you know, the offer there is. Okay, cool. Yoda, but like what do you actually offer it? Because you don’t just pay one off of you. Are you saying we’re going to offer you the best skincare product? Or is it a report to teach you more about skincare or is it a, a PDF, like what are you actually offering them at the very beginning?

Adam (23:55):

Yeah. So I think with, with kind of products that are, I think more lower priced, it’s more about just kind of giving them those products there and then so straightaway low. These are the recommended products for you. When you’ve got products that are maybe a little bit more expensive. And again, you know, I’m talking about beauty and skincare up, but it’s, it’s, it’s a great application for this is that if you have something slightly more expensive is if you created a core PDF, which was about health and lifestyle and skinned cat. So maybe talk about nutrition, you talk about diets or exercise, including some yoga exercise and that including, you know, different types of foods that are great for the skin. And then you just have one section in there maybe that is around st. Louis for your particular skin type and for your age group, these are the products that are going to work well for you.

Adam (24:43):

So you’re putting that sales message in there, but they’re getting a lot of value from you in terms of that PDF off the back of that. And that could be something that you could offer the other way we’ve seen this then as well, is that you can also, you know, w we looked sort of urgency, of course, and, and obviously, and scarcity and e-commerce. But I think, you know, one of the things here is that what we’ve seen done with it is that you can also offer a limited time free gift with those products. So one of the things that as you know, you might laugh and hear this, but it’s done very well, but three guesses, tote bags, those kinds of little sort of hacks in cotton bags. You know, we’re just seeing, giving those away as a free gift with a buy now service. It’s just crazy for conversion. Yeah. You talk in sense to add that. And it just goes through the roof

Charles (25:33):

That, or even you know, a bundle and you seen bundles work probably too, right on like a great example is like camera photography, that sort of thing. Everyone sells a cannon, an icon it’s map. Everyone sells it at map everyone, basically the same thing, but a lot of folks offer and they do have great margins, right? If you look at BNH any of those guys, great margins on that product. So they all offer a bundle of comes with an SD card case, and they kind of have this little thing, and it’s not, not super expensive for them to actually offer this dusty cards. Not, you know, it’s not the top end one, but they put together a bundle and that’s a way of differentiating, Hey, should I just buy it from Amazon? Or should I go to B and H because they offer this special bundle that I can’t get on Amazon, or can’t get directly from Canon. So I think people really underestimate just bundling, or like you said, just like, yeah, free gift where it’s just a little extra that differentiate you from everyone else. You don’t get that gift.

Adam (26:33):

[Inaudible] I realized that idea. And I think you make a very good point there in the, you know, particularly for those products, I, you know, photography equipment or, or anything where there are kind of multiple components to kind of delivering something where you go to Amazon, you’re like, Hey, well, you know, other customers bought these things together. I’m like, well, do I need this one? Do I need this one did this one? And it’s like, I think you made a good point in that. It’s like, in that situation that given that information, you are very clearly like, say with a bundle of saying, look, you need these things in this bundle and it’s going to cost you X amount of dollars. So, yeah, I think for me, that’s another great application of using it.

Charles (27:12):

Yeah. And I think people underestimate the free gift, the bundle that little, you buy and fitness, like protein powder. Right. And it comes with a free shaker. And like, you probably, if you’re buying protein powder, you probably already have that shaker, but just against the other one, that’s also, you know, 29 95, they’re like, well, I got a free shaker and, you know, to go next to the four other ones I have in the cabinet, but you still kind of, you’re like do perceived value of that is greater. And it really does give you something of saying like, well, you know, I could go with either one of these about 2095, but this one, I have this extra thing. And that extra thing just feels better.

Adam (27:47):

Definitely because I think, you know, it’s, it’s kind of, it adds a bit of trust to it. And it also, you know, it, it starts developing those, those feelings of kind of brand loyalty from the outset, especially when you could bet us on doing that. So, yeah. I couldn’t agree more

Charles (28:02):

When you were saying earlier, you mentioned SMS and messenger. Like how would, when are you Tyna layer in that, into this, right. So you get, someone’s email, you kind of know they’re interested in these three products. Are you hitting them first with an email or like, when do you know it’s the right time to actually go the SMS route? Cause I feel like that’s, that’s a lot more intimate right. On all of a sudden, like, you don’t want to just start, you don’t want to like, Hey, you know, you’re looking at some skincare products on Facebook and all of a sudden you got a tax and you’re like, you know, you both have mindset. So like how do you kind of come in at the right time with that?

Adam (28:37):

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think the other thing is, well, you know, depending on guys, you know, where you’re listening to this is that, you know, the reaction to SMS we send is very different in the UK to Europe, to North America. And I think, you know, in North America, the concept of getting attacks from a sales perspective is a lot more easily received than it is perhaps in the UK. The main way that I would say, regardless of where you are to staff though, is by using SMS more as a tool to notify. So things are, for example, you know, expected deliberate has the product being delivered. If you’ve got that opt-in for SMS, start with those, because what that does is that it’s, non-intrusive it’s information giving you’re not selling anything. And what that does is it programs in our mind actually look, this company will send SMS.

Adam (29:28):

It’s been helpful so far. And at that point, then once they’d gone through that journey with you of getting the SMS for those kinds of more notification type things, then start to feed in, for example, you know the campaign. So it might be for example, that you set up an SMS, the ASD, you know today’s special offer only, you know, X percent, half why products or it might be, you know here’s our black Friday offers, especially for you as your, you know, an accident and subscriber. So starting off kind of small,

Charles (30:00):

As you say that I just got a text and it pops up on my screen, my iPhone is actually getting delivered stuff for delivery. So there you go.

Adam (30:09):

Yeah.

Charles (30:09):

And that’s exactly, you’re saying you kind of get a little happy. I literally, that just happened, which is amazing as you’re explaining that. Yeah. So, sorry, go on. I just had to,

Adam (30:18):

I think they’ve got the points in it where we used to these bigger companies. We used to Alliance at ups or you know, the HR, wherever you are on the world, sending these kinds of text messages, that’s kind of expectation. You started that as a brand, then they would go, okay, great. The help for the useful. And they start there, nothing in their mind positioning you in the same level, even if you may be a small brands or one of these bigger brands are used to interacting with. So I think there that’s a good starting point, the other way of doing it, which you’ve also seen, has been a factor is if you are offering SMS signup, only benefits. So what do you know? Yeah. Look, sign up here to get our exclusive deal just for SMS customers. So at the back of that band, there is, you know, one of the good things that you can do there is actually create a product that, you know, a low value product that is only available via that URL that’s hidden would be hidden on your main site.

Adam (31:17):

So if you start getting chats on, you know, social media or look at your booklets products, well, Hey, how did you get that? Oh, well I subscribed to that email about S and XLS. That’s kind of a good way of doing it and then basically continuing to kind of drip that through. So I think that’s kind of another tactic. And the last one is, is when, you know, like I mentioned at the start, if you’ve got your email flows already, and you’re not getting a reaction there, then flip that over to SMS for the next time they’re battling cart, you know, flip that over next time to, you know, if let’s say for example, they become an engaged, just try the SMS just to see about that works. So there’s kind of, I think there’s three different ways that you can kind of start bringing that in. And I agree with Charles, like, you know, the last thing to do is, you know, Hey guys has an SMS, has an email, is a messenger message. Here is a web push notification because you know, how you just going to go look too much guys, unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe.

Charles (32:17):

Yeah. Yeah. Why don’t you go too far? I’ve got those. The what pusher ones, you know, when you’re like mistakenly, you know, a few years ago you signed, you, you’re like, Oh, what’s up. So you signed up and now all of a sudden, every time something was on sale, you’re like, all right, guys, let’s back off a little. Yeah. And I, I like the idea of offering like a coupon, right? That’s the easiest way you pop this coupon up and you’ve seen it put your email in, but also put your email and your, you know, SMS, your cell number or your cell number. You could just kind of play with that concept and try some different things there. And basically you give us something, we’ll give you something so coupon 20% off and everyone kind of has that email, but you could also, yeah, you could include SMS could include your you can get Facebook messenger access to it. Right. That’s another thing. Yes.

Adam (33:07):

So yeah, you can also get that to that. Opt-In to I mean, you just made me think of something out to you as well, that you mentioned kind of that back and forth between the brand and the customer. We did something with it, with a jewelry client, with S and S bump where they had a lot of guys who were looking to get engagement rings. And one of the ways that we use SMS for them is that basically there was, you’re able to essentially talk to an advisor, which was a real person by X and X. So it was great for engagement rings because it was kind of discreet. Obviously you’re not going to get, you know, your, your potential partner finding out you know, on your computer or wherever it might be. And obviously you’ve got that back and forth with the customer and you can easily actually automate that process too.

Adam (33:55):

So it might just be a, Hey look, what, what, what shape diamond are you looking for? You know, is it square? Is it round? Is it you know, tear drop. So you can either put through three images and an enter MMS and they can hit back and say, you know, square, okay, we’ll check out these ones. You know, what, what side carrot do you on? How much you want to spend all this stuff that can become automated, then you get your sales rack on it. Okay. Look, actually, I think you should go for this one. You know, and you can, if you discounts, look at your look as he bites day, I can give you, you know, a three-year warranty, you know, all this stuff. So if you’ve got some that’s more consultative in a more expensive purchase that again, SMS can, what one does in that respect too.

Charles (34:41):

That’s a good, that’s a good one for 2020. Cause I feel like that was a process where, you know, years ago I got engaged and go into the little jewelry store and he gives you the, the, the loop, they call it and you look and they go, yeah, you have this diamond and you look at the diamond and you pretend like you kind of know what you’re saying,

Adam (34:56):

Do this

Charles (34:57):

Whole, yeah, you do this whole process, but now in 2020, you’re probably not not doing that anymore. So you having that back and forth and all you want to do is you, they kind of, you want to give, my dare has kind of, you know, Hey, she told me this is kind of what she’s looking for. You basically wanna tell them what the person they come back with. And here’s about my price range. And they come back with three options, you know, like grace let’s do B sounds, sounds in the middle. Yeah. So, and that’s one of those things, like, you’re probably not going to the jewelry. So nowadays, and it’s also, like you said, you’re kind of doing it a little stealthy, right? So you don’t want to, Hey honey, I’m going off a Starbucks for two hours. I’ll be back.

Charles (35:37):

You have to kind of do it in the middle. So yeah, doing this, you could, you could see that consultative very very much working with us because it’s something that it’s very natural. Right? You want to just have this little side conversation? No one can see you kind of sneak it on the side. Great. Let’s go with that. You see recommendations, you negotiations. And you could see, yeah, like you said, using it for any expensive product though photography. Yeah. That’s a, you know, a classic example and new bed, things like that, where, you know, you’d have a lot of questions. What’s the warranty, like what happened? You know, how’s, how’s this work with this other product, how do they work together? And there’s just back, great. Let me check. And it’s basically, you’re asking for support for those sort of products before you actually purchase the product, which is kind of interesting. So it’s, you’re getting support up front. I think is perfect. Ash.

Adam (36:29):

I know the point you made there about coming to the eight go and asking those sort of support questions. Is that the nice thing with that is that as more as, as you get more and more people using that service, you can then bank those as kind of the typical questions. And then of course the automations, it becomes better and better and better and better. So your, your input as a, an individual in terms of jumping on that fight and responding back is going to become less and less as well at the same time, you know, bringing that out of the customer service up. So yeah.

Charles (37:00):

Yeah. If you use some tools like what does it drift chat bot, that sort of thing. And you know, you kinda, it asks a question that can be five responses or I didn’t see it. And then they type it on and depending, and you can do some super complex things with those now where, you know, you can answer 85% and the other few okay. And 85%, they go to an article or a page or whatever, prebuilt kind of workflow, but the ones that don’t, they go to, okay, now let’s get you on the phone with a human and each time you get to the human, that’s another kind of little point of, okay, we need to handle this path, right? Like this is the path that’s, maybe we need to add another two options on this question and that will get us to, again, automation. I like that a lot.

Adam (37:42):

Yeah. The beat is what you mentioned there as well as that, if you, if you’re using like a service that supports or like, say for example, gorgeous, you know, you would have all those interactions for your SMS is in gorgeous. So as soon as that person, you know, is, is talking to that live agent, they’ve got all that already in front of them. So they kind of, they know exactly where this kind of conversation’s going. So again, that’s just another great thing I’m asking us to

Charles (38:09):

Love it. Okay. This is super helpful. I’m gonna yeah, let me do a few things here. So people should definitely check that out. And if people kind of want to learn more about you kind of, so you mentioned blend commerce. What are you guys working on there? Is it exclusively email or is it kind of a, like, what do you guys do? Exactly.

Adam (38:26):

Yeah. So w we are first and foremost Shopify agency, and we predominantly kind of work with brands that are what we would say prepless so you have Shopify and Shopify plus, and majority of my clients. Yeah. So it’s kind of those people that just before that level of, you know, going to that plus level the majority of the work that we do at the moment is around growth partnerships. And what that really means is that as a client coming in, we help them grow their business with obviously conversion rate optimization, SEO, digital marketing, in terms of email, in terms of Facebook ads and any of the defendant requests they’ve got. So our team essentially becomes part of their business and we essentially help them grow whether that is increasing their revenue, their conversion rate, more subscribers, whichever it is we’re going to help them do that.

Adam (39:16):

But on the, on the, the marketing side, we are email and Facebook ads is, is definitely going to where we like and also do a lot of, a lot of SMS as well now. So yeah, if anyone’s going to check us out, it’s blind commerce.com. My name is Adam PSP arc. So you want to obviously connect with me on LinkedIn, too. Love to chat Shopify. And as you guys have probably seen today as well, email marketing is a big passion of mine. So yeah, if you ever want to get my 2 cents, let me know. Awesome. How can I show notes? Thanks a lot for coming on. No problem. Thanks Charles. Appreciate it.

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