Aaron Conant  0:18

Happy Wednesday, everybody, my name is Aaron, I'm the co-founder and managing director here at BWG Connect, we're a giant networking and knowledge sharing group with 1000s of brands just crossed the five year mark now and we network and knowledge share together to stay on top of the newest trends, strategies, pain points, whatever it might be, I spend a lot of my time talking to brands on a weekly basis. And it's from those conversations that we get to pay the topics that everybody wants to cover, whether those are pain points, or newest things that are popping up. But it's also where we get kind of connected over to the best in class service providers, the highest recommended people out there from the network as a whole. When those things line up, we host an event like this, you can check out our website, we're also gonna do close to 100 in person small format dinners this year, probably six or seven large format events, just let us know if you'd like kind of a an updated sheet of everything we're doing. And every place we're going to be. We launched a podcast. So a lot of these topics as well you can consume on your own time in small chunks is just called The Digital Deep Dive. And so go ahead and look that up if you want to, you know, kind of eat some of these in smaller chunks or on your own time. This topic has been coming up over and over again, you want me to kind of recap, what I'm hearing from brands is, as we got towards the end of May, a lot of direct consumer website traffic dropped off conversions where the same traffic is dropped off. And so there's been a lot of questions around lifetime value of the customer talking with customer relate, you know, relationship building. And so a big part of that has been around email campaigns as a whole. And what does that what does that strategy look like in the reality is a lot of times now has to be automated. Just if you have a sizable business, and you're looking to take it to the next level or just stay where you're at. You just need automation, no matter what you're trying to do. And so we've got some great friends, partners, supporters of the network for a long time now over Cohley they've got great friends over at Floium who's going to jump on today with Amara as well. But Brian, I'm gonna kick it over to you. If you want to, you know, brief intro on yourself, Cohley. That'd be awesome. You can kick it over to Amara and she can jump in and then we can kick off the conversation sound good?

Brian Petracca  2:30

Yeah, absolutely. So excited to be joining today. A little bit on last notice. It was supposed to be our founder and CEO Tom Logan joining the call today but congratulations to him. He had a baby girl come a little early. And so I'm stepping into fill his shoes. But yeah, a little bit about me I was one of our early employees at Cohley have really done it all for the last few years, from marketing to sales to operations and everything under the sun. Here at Cohley, we're a content creation SAS software platform that helps our customers generate content from user generated assets. Anyone with a smartphone in their pocket can can be a creator all the way through professional photography, product reviews, short form, text, whatever you might need, helping create those assets, and also helping test those assets through email marketing channels, social channels paid or organic. Definitely a big one that we'll be focusing on today, obviously, is that email side, how we might be able to give some insight and education on that with some assistance from Flowium.

Amara Ricord  3:46

I guess I'll just really quickly introduce myself as well. So my name is Amara and I actually have the really fun job of running operations here at Flowium. And so we are a full service email marketing agency who we personally specialize in our niche of just email marketing and SMS, along with using Klaviyo as our platform. So everything that we will share with you today is information that you can generalize and use and any different type of platform you might be using. It just might be referencing to some specific verbiage that is a little different, like automations in clay vo are called flows or broadcasts are called campaigns. So you'll kind of see some of that difference as well, though, I I'm excited because email marketing is one of our passions here. We kind of live it breathe it and I absolutely love the channel. So I'm excited to share.

Aaron Conant  4:43

Awesome so as we kick it off here and I dropped it in the chat as well. If you have any questions along the way, drop into the chat or dropping into q&a and we'll get them answered real time. So I want to kick off the the conversation with just like high level stuff. So brands you're working with You know, what, what are? What are they doing? Right? Like the leaders in the space, the most successful brands out there? What are they doing to set themselves apart? How should? How should people be thinking about email marketing.

Amara Ricord  5:14

So I sincerely mean this not as a pitch, but what they do is they have a dedicated team for the email marketing channel. And that's one of the biggest differences that you guys can do for your brand. It doesn't matter if it's an in house specific email marketing space, or if you hire a team that is dedicated towards that industry, but it takes in such a massive amount of your revenue, that there's just no affordability to just have it be a side channel, it's not something that you can do that way if you want to do it, right. So the most successful brands do have a dedicated team specifically for email marketing. And why is because a successful strategized email marketing channel for you is going to drive 30 to 50% of your overall revenue. That is such a huge drastic number, that there's just no way to just put 50% or 30%, even of your revenue and a side pocket along with all of your other marketing channels. That's like the number one thing that we see

Aaron Conant  6:22

is so quick question comes in around is that the same team that handles SMS?

Amara Ricord  6:27

So here's kind of a fun fact, though. Yes, and no. For us, specifically, we do email and SMS as a partner team. And in Klaviyo, it's actually in the same platform. So therefore, it's only one profile, we see all of the segmentation that comes through. And we can really strategize those two things together. If you use two different channels, I would tell you to, like combine those teams, if you would, simply because they really should go hand in hand in your communication. SMS shouldn't be doing something where email is doing another, they really should kind of collaborate together and your strategy. Yeah.

Aaron Conant  7:07

Awesome. Brian, I kind of kick it over to you as well, like, what do you see in this space? If it is we kick off the conversation? And yeah, everybody feel free to keep dropping questions in the chat or the q&a? And we'll get them.

Brian Petracca  7:17

Yeah, excuse me. I mean, I think the biggest aspects, especially from our side, on the content pieces, is really using the full funnel of email marketing as an opportunity to understand performance, different channels, you're going to be looking for different aspects of click rates, conversion rates, where are you actually trying to drive people so similar to a lot of other digital marketing channels? It's not just all the same. So I think when it comes to the content piece is really being able to identify alright, what what is getting clicks? Where are we actually getting performance? Maybe it's outside of of the email itself? And just the subject line? Where are we getting opens? Really using the data that performance to identify recognize? Where are we actually winning? And how can we actually incorporate that into the rest of our marketing channels as we move through the mark, email marketing funnel? Okay, great. We're seeing a lot of opens here. Let's actually maybe try that at a lower stage. Maybe it's not just a brand awareness, but actually something we're trying to get more of a conversion or instead of just like a browse abandonment, a cart abandonment, we're seeing success there. That's what's actually driving to the revenue versus just the maybe eyeballs or visits, really being strategic about how you're measuring the performance there.

Aaron Conant  8:37

Where does the content come from? Then? We're going to be because we're thinking about setting up these. So we think, okay, I still have email campaigns up and going today, they want to completely reconstruct it, right? Because it's just been kicking out automated emails, but now, like, I think we're at this digital 3.0 point, right, which is I have to be, I have to constantly learning and revising, and improving everything I'm doing because everybody else is now in the game as well. So when you think about setting up email campaigns, we can kick it over to Amara as well. Like, what what is that initial campaign? And then how am I breaking it apart? Is it you know, segment by segment? Is there are there two Are there five? And then how do I get content for each of those? Or do I use the same content for all of them?

Brian Petracca  9:25

Amara let you take a lead on that.

Amara Ricord  9:28

Okay, so actually, I think I think I'm gonna go ahead and just share my screen over here for you guys, because ultimately, and we'll make sure that you guys can see this Okay, you guys are viewing this right here right now. Yep. Perfect. Okay. All right. So this is just a little bit about Flowium as a whole. We really do put a lot of focus into our email revenue. This is just from one month. And we kind of specialize in of course, increasing revenue for all of our clients, including that SMS attributed revenue and about 20% of Her clientele uses SMS right now. And to kind of go into like the setup, I think that there are a few things that I am going to kind of show you. This is a program called Miro for anybody who does not have it. It's amazing for Team collaborative and just really showing. But I think the very first thing that you need to do is that, and you'll kind of see this and I think this is a good kind of starting point as to like, where do we start? What do we do, but there are some top mistakes and shortfalls that we find with brands that come in to us. And just to name some of those. And you can see all of them here kind of listed. But the very first one is not having your email marketing in place, because it really does bring in that 30 to 50% of your revenue, you really want a good strategy stay in the lack of segmentation, which means that you're going to have load Deville deliverability, and reputation with providers. And so what happens is you have your platform, and your platform can send out 500,000 emails, but that doesn't mean that 500,000 emails are going into inboxes. That means the platform did its job by sending it your deliverability. And reputation is what allows you to actually get into the inbox, not the spam folder and not blocked. And so if you don't segment and you are just blasting, that's one of the number one mistakes that you can do. So as far as how you kind of handle this, it kind of goes into the two sides. So you have on one hand, you have automations or flows. And those are set up by customers behaviors on your site. They're automated based off of what happens and what they decide to do, for example, an exit intent on a very basic level here. But on an exit intent, if you're on a desktop and your mouse goes to the top corner, as soon as it does that, it triggers a pop up, which is usually your exit intent or an opt in. And that allows them to enter into an automated series of emails that will be that through with time delays, first one is immediate second one is a day later. Third one comes two days later. And therefore you're already kind of building on this automated side. At the same time, there's campaigns or broadcasts, which you should be sending out consistently to your audience. And what this tells those providers is that that you are a consistent center, who's speaking to your engage segment, and this is a good brand. And so if you are only doing one side or the other, your deliverability is not going to be high, and your IP pool is going to be low. The both of those work hand in hand when it comes to providers and your deliverability. And a few other things, lack of technology stack, huge missed opportunities and revenue, think referral, loyalty, subscription, all of those kinds of tech stacks that just really build on to your strategy. And then little or no optimizations and testing. So your audience is just ever evolving, which Brian, I think this is what you were kind of touching base on to is you really should be testing to understand your audience. And so you need to I know Kohli is amazing with their design elements. And really on that influencer round where you can really see what your audience responds to. And you can get that information and input. So there's so many big high mistakes that brands make. And the first one that I'm really going to kind of just talk about here that leads into it is your lack of strategy. So when brands just like winging it, or just set up like high priority flows, I know these are important, there really is missing a full approach to the whole entire customer journey. And that kind of leads directly into creating your strategy.

Aaron Conant  13:42

I mean, it also seems just surely it also seems though, with a lack of strategy behind it, it's not just that people aren't going to get your emails, it's not just the fact that they're not going to open them, you're not going to get the inbox you're actually hurting your reputation, which means on other ones that you sell, you're less likely to actually get through to the inbox. This is like this compounding thing that, yeah, you're concerned about open rates, but you're also concerned about how the platform's view you and are you a meaningful communication tool? Or are you just spamming and therefore you need to be filtered out?

Amara Ricord  14:14

Right, right. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. No, go Brian.

Brian Petracca  14:20

I was gonna ask you a question. I'm on that topic. And on that same sentiment of a question that we get asked pretty often, especially when we're having email conversations and setting up in a automation partner. While we're scared. We don't want to overwhelm our customers with so many different emails every day. Do you have a general old rule of thumb of how many broadcasts should a customer be falling in? How many should you have set up as a brand that you feel like you're going to be successful in actually getting the job done and not just bombarding people with unnecessary emails?

Amara Ricord  14:58

So this is where you need to remember That's right. So you have these flows and automations that are sending emails, and there are great tools that you can use. So you really have to consider your customer journey. I don't like getting bombarded with three emails, or perhaps I joined an exit intent, where offers me 10% off. And then I immediately get a broadcast that's like 20% off. And I'm like, What are you guys doing? There's like so many mixed messages. And the rule of thumb is, is your automations your flows. So I want you to think of what starts the flow, right, there's an action, and then there's a flow filter, so you're gonna pull out certain people. And then there's also the trigger filters as well. And so if all of that sounds like foreign language, this is where you need an email marketing team, I'm going to tell you right now, and But setting that up, so say in the welcome flooded, we want to make sure that the welcome flow is not receiving necessary broadcasts until they finish that nurturing welcome flow with you. So you want to make sure that you create that filter. Another thing that you can do is you can turn on smart sending, most apps have or most G's, most platforms have something about smart sending. So for Klaviyo, for example, there's just a little checkbox, and it says don't send to anybody who received an email in the last 16 hours, so that we can really kind of segment that out. Same thing, when you are sending those broadcasts. If you're sending a sale campaign, for example, a promotional campaign, and you really have to consider, maybe we should take out a segment and exclude people who purchased in the last 14 days. On top of that, we probably should exclude people who are in this specific automation or this specific flow. And those are all things that you can do with a very well set up strategy as far as the number paid. So for deliverability, you want to send a minimum of one a week, that's like a baseline for you. Now when you get into the so when we call it four to five a month, but when you get into double that the 10 campaigns, this is where segmentation is always important. But it becomes so vital, because maybe once a week, you're talking to your engaged group. But the next campaign is going to go to your VIP segment with different offers. The next one is going to be an educational content that's going to really build your knowledge and nurture. And then you're also going to segment to people of specific products who purchase during a certain timeframe. You want to bring in people who can do early signups for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and you want to make sure you're speaking to those right people. So as a baseline one a week. But if you go up to 1012, even more than that, I would tell you anything more than that, really, really segment that you're speaking to the right people, segmentation, just the right segmentation will increase your revenue by 30%, more than just blast sending.

Aaron Conant  17:54

So quick question that comes in here. And others if you have questions drop in the chat or the q&a, is there a platform you use the integrates social ad tracking, web visits, activity and email marketing.

Amara Ricord  18:06

So this is one of those. I mean, like, seriously, it's like the chicken in the egg. So Google Analytics is gonna pull from all of these different platforms, you're gonna have social media, you're gonna have your SEO, you're gonna have your, your Google ads that are all kind of driving this traffic to your site. And there are some great partners that you can use, who will even pull up and kind of watch these reports in different ways and metrics. But what you have to remember is that no matter what you do, it's probably not going to line up 100%. Because every platform has different attribution. And every platform wants a touch of that attribution, and that revenue that's coming in. So if you were to advertise on Facebook about a specific item, it drives to your site, and they sign up for email, and then they come back tomorrow, and they Google search your name, you're gonna have Facebook, marketing, and Google all compete for those numbers. So I think it's important to understand that as a business perspective, but there are some technology programs that will kind of pull in all of the different channels for reporting. I believe one of them is called tech savvy, I would have to just kind of double check that went on here. But they will kind of it's called techie scouts, techie scouts, T E, C, H, Y, but there's just multiple options like that to what you can do.

Aaron Conant  19:29

Cool. I'd set a note from Lauren, that, you know, the chat layer was disabled, but I have it turned on now. So if you're trying to drop a question in the chat, I think you can do it now. The next one says, Amara Do you have a handout for this strategy you mentioned on the amount of emails to send based on segmentation and broadcasts

Amara Ricord  19:46

So there is I mean, like I can absolutely kind of share some of this information with you. I'm going to I think it will help if I kind of fan out on my screen so you can see like an overall view of this world You might be like, Oh my gosh, you might have an overwhelming, like, what am I doing.

Aaron Conant  20:04

But I'm more than happy to connect anybody with Amara and Brian after the call as well as to kind of do a deep dive, I'm sure, either of them would be more than happy to jump on the phone and share. If we don't get everything covered today.

Amara Ricord  20:18

Yeah, and I'll I'll actually share the one of the things that Flowium. And one of the things I love is we are here to help ecommerce brands. I mean, that really is our mission is results driven email marketing. But we are always happy to do inbox audits for you, which means we'll actually sign up for your emails, and we'll be like, Hey, guys, there's a few things missing. And we are also happy to always just do a consultation with you see what you have in place what we would recommend to move forward. So yeah, I absolutely welcome that. So let me let me kind of show you this. This is where I was like, if you're looking at this, and you're like, What is this? Don't, don't worry. But I think sometimes what's important to when you think about your automations, where you want to go next is your basic automations, I think that we can kind of talk about is their steps. So what I'm going to show you here, you're gonna see, use the nine different flows, or automations, right here. And this is actually called foundational strategy. And what I mean by this is, every brand that comes in, we make sure that this is in place for every single one, it's kind of like taking a boat and putting it in the water. And we have to build a boat first. And then that's the very, very foundation, then we add on the sales, and then we add on all the driving posts, and we add up everything else that's in regards to something that I don't know about which is building. But when you kind of launch it into your water, you want to make sure that this is your foundation, right. So in short, you're going to see all of the different ways that they're coming in, right, you drive the conversion, you get the traffic to the site, we drive the conversion into the right messaging. And it goes into these nine foundational flows. So if you are missing one of these, get these in ASAP, because it's the basic customer journey. And when I say basic, I mean bare minimum strategy here. And that includes a welcome low, which I depending on your platform, make sure that it's either pre purchase welcome named that because it's actually measured by your help and deliverability to is making sure you are welcoming and nurturing your subscribers. And I'll kind of give just an example, because I'm happy to share this board with anybody who just wants to see some basics too. But just as an example, here with pre purchase, sometimes what we see is like, Hey, welcome, here's 10% off. But there's nothing about your brand, there's no nurture, there's no talking about your mission, your statement, your purpose, what your products do for others, sharing user generated content, talking about your social media. And so a lot of brands are missing that you only focus on the sale part, which is great for an initial sell. But then there's no two time buyer, there's no loyalty, right. And that's I think everybody's goal. So this one kind of just includes like, it's usually an opt in for the welcome. And you can share your story, your mission. And then a day later you're set. You're you're sharing your social engagement, your you're sharing your Instagram channels and talking about the influencers, right. So this is also a coli expertise that can kind of come in and really share about the products because user generated content is one of the number one conversion channels that you can do is just user generated content, people like real people. And it doesn't even have to be a model. And just be a person, a regular everyday person using those products.

Aaron Conant  23:47

If you have different content you're popping in to each of these.

Amara Ricord  23:52

Yes, yes. And so this is why, you know, it's so important that once you build this initial, this is just one flow. I mean here for this one, you would have 12345678. So this would be if you were using a strategy, this is eight different emails that are going through to anyone who just joined your homepage, opt in. And once you turn that live, it might be through a 15 day period that they're getting all of these email. But in that timeframe, you turn it live 30 days later, you're going to have metrics, you're going to have KPIs, you're going to have open rates, conversion rates, revenue, placed order, click throughs. And that's where optimizations are so important. Because anything that's low anything under the benchmark you want to test.

Aaron Conant  24:43

So Brian, when you see this and the amount of content what pops into your mind?

Brian Petracca  24:47

Yeah, I mean, it's it's a matter of kind of what Amara was just getting to is that performance and that measuring kind of the success rates, but you had asked a little earlier about kind of like, where does all this content come from? And I mean, And obviously, I think that's where Cody would love to, I'd love to put my sales hat on there. But the truth is, it's from everywhere. It depends on the channel depends what you're trying to accomplish. But most importantly, it's about implementing different varieties Amara, I'd love for you to kind of circle in in a bit about kind of the ABX testing opportunities you can do through these flows and through these broadcasts, but what's most important is we don't know what the answer is until after we test it. So making the assumption of Ri Well, this article or this case study, or this photo, this video is going to be better because it's prettier, or it's higher quality, or it comes from someone who has a celebrity background versus more of a maybe a relatable stranger, where you don't know what people are going to want to see in these channels until you actually test it. And that's really where the emphasis comes from in really the content piece. You can never make the assumption until you actually kind of have some of the measurements and the performance behind it. So some of the things we would say, really focusing on using that UGC, using videos that are performed in other channels. I know, as you get lower into the funnel, maybe cart abandonment, browse abandonment, you run into some hurdles of being able to implement video versus maybe just static imagery. Great, then let's focus on photos, let's test product shots versus lifestyle versus bright versus dark colors, whatever it might be, to really get an idea of where the performance is coming from. Further to that is the type of assets are we only using photo? Or are we actually implementing video? are we including product reviews? If we have really great ratings on these products and on our brand? Why are we not emphasizing that when it's coming from a consumer really use what you can gather, whether it's in partnership with a a coli, like content creation platform, or if it's just more organic to the website, to your retail channels, through events and through emails you receive? emphasize those consumers who are celebrating your brand. So definitely in UGC, we're going to be able to align more with the consumer because it's coming from the consumer. So yeah, I guess Amara, taking that. I'm just gonna set you up here, but into the AV testing, and especially in maybe some of the partner software's you use, or where you might have to be more manual about doing it. What's the process that you see for maybe different sized brands who have so yeah, sources, others might not.

Amara Ricord  28:07

So here's the first thing that I would tell you is I would do steps, okay, so we can talk about the creating your strategy. That's step one. The second part is setting up your foundational flows. Hands down, really important here. And just to kind of recap, I mean, I kind of give you an example on this one. But if ever, you only have one or two emails and a flow, you're not reaching out, you're not sharing your user generated content, you're not reaching people to your channel. So the very first thing is setting up your foundational flows that includes a welcome an exit intent of an abandoned cart, those ones right there, your high priority, meaning most revenue building and the foundational aspect, you have your browse abandonment, which is different than abandoned cart, you also have a lot of platforms. So like clay vo has a different one, that's called added to cart that's very different than abandoned cart and browse abandonment. And that one is also a huge high revenue building flow. But we'll get into that. So you have post purchase, you have two time buyer, you have a bounce back offer, which is a huge percentage of people who will purchase right after their first purchase. Really kind of funny in the market, but I do it all the time. And then you have a wind back to kind of reach out to lapsed customers, as well as everyone should have some type of Sunset flow. In other words, this keeps your list clean, it goes through these people haven't interacted they haven't opened they haven't clicked and so long, remove them from your list if you want to help the account if you want a high deliverability you want to make sure you have cleaned lists. So once you have all of these turned live now I want to be kind of specific as I'm gonna get into the AV here but once you have your foundation turned live this is called like your platform like your your foundation that you're going to build on just from the very beginning. In the course of say A year, you should have double the amount of these flows. So it's constantly building towards different behaviors. And just to kind of give you an example of what I mean here, I mean, loyalty flows referral back in stock SMS, which we're going to get into engagement survey apps, countdown, CRM platforms, when you guys are reaching out that way subscription. I mean, there's so many just in that regard. And then you also have additional, so so many that you can reach out to birthday anniversary VIP replenishment, predictive blows, you know, you have price drops, and then Black Friday, Cyber Monday specific or holiday flows, brand specific flows, somebody who purchased the shampoo is going to love this conditioner later, there's so many different ones that you can do here. But in short, having a foundation set up should be your number one priority, as well as your campaigns and broadcasts that you're sending out weekly. Now, I mentioned this, because 30 days from that timeframe, you're going to have data, you're going to have your metrics, you're going to have your KPIs, and all of those A B tests. So I kind of talked about this one over here as well, little bit, but the lack of no optimizations. So when you when you don't optimize, when you're not a be testing, when you are not split testing, you're missing out on huge opportunities, because you might be sending the wrong message to the wrong people, you're gonna miss on that revenue, you're not going to understand your target market. So AB testing, split testing, campaigns and flows. There's some similarities here. So if you have a low open rate, you can absolutely test subject line. Sure. But you need to take in mind, Apple iOS inflation. And so there's ways if you have a great platform, like Klaviyo, for example, but where you can pull out iOS, and view the rest of your spending for the most accurate information there for your KPIs for open. But you can test emojis versus no emojis, just in a subject line, there's so many things you can do. You can do a discount versus no discount and a subject line, you can do more funny versus more serious. I mean, there's lots of split testing just on opening. And the one thing I would tell you is test your segments. So we just sent out an email to facial, it's the facial cream for men. And we had a quiz prior to this where we were able to answer and send to different segments based off of their age group. And then once we actually sent the campaign and we already knew the age groups we were sending to after the attribution time, we went back in and we saw that their demographic is 40 to 65 year old men. And we were able to segment that through email automation. Now we know who we're talking to we can kind of adjust that voice in that messaging. So when a call comes through, yeah, yeah, it

Aaron Conant  33:05

just in regards to the mural board is that something you're comfortable sharing with the people on the call? Did you want that just do you want us to connect you afterwards and you can send them that way or you can drop it in the chat and whatever is easiest

Amara Ricord  33:20

for you. Yeah, let me let me put this into the chat so you can kind of see I'm happy to share it everybody should be able to click the link if you can't please let me know but you should be able to see it. So everybody, just let me know if you can open it.

Aaron Conant  33:35

Now I don't think it went to everybody but I'll do everyone right now.

Amara Ricord  33:38

Perfect. Okay. So in regards to like say testing, click through. There are numerous numerous testing here, you have for click through rate which leads directly to placed order, you can test using product blocks versus not using product box with pricing versus not. You can test color of CTA Burbidge of your CTA, your call to action that leads to the website, you can test the TAs and header imagery versus CTA is down beneath. You can test educational content versus only promotional content. You can test imagery, kind of like Brian just said, believe it or not. Lifestyle imagery is beautiful, but it's not always the number one conversion. Sometimes it really is just the guy who's holding a dog that looks like he submitted the photo through Facebook. And that works. You can do testimonials versus promotional reviews. You can do so many different I mean like the there's just so many that's in there and what I would tell any brand, whether you're working on your own team, whether you are working with a different team, be open to testing and be patient because when we turn on a test they for campaigns and broadcasts Depending on the on how many people we're sending to write, we want to always test it for a minimum of three broadcasts to up to five or seven or lower traffic, we want enough numbers to feel totally competent, that the red CTA performs better than the blue, we want enough information to know. So testing should be completely, um, be patient. But even in like in a full year, you could run 12 successful tests. And within a year, you're going to really know how to speak to your audience better, what kind of images to use. And I would also tell you to add to send like test. Sometimes, though, hopefully, your platform that you're using has, like thin time tests, do it for five campaigns do it, because you will find out for an example, that your traffic that your audience opens up your emails at 2am of all times more than anything else. And it could be location base, it could be a product base. But without testing, you're just guessing you really are. And you could be missing out on so many opportunities there.

Aaron Conant  36:10

So another question that comes in is just the balance of SMS versus email. Yeah. I mean, that's huge, right? I mean,

Amara Ricord  36:20

that leads us right over here. So I can

Aaron Conant  36:24

work together. So you're not, you know, their levels where you're hitting people too much.

Amara Ricord  36:29

Yeah. So the very first thing is, so I'm going to speak in the two languages, right. So I'm gonna speak in the Klaviyo, the language of flows and campaigns, meaning automations and broadcasts. So in regards to flows and campaigns, you want to make sure that your SMS messages are extremely thought out. So if you've been kind of tips that I always love, kind of sharing here with SMS, but it is an additional, it's an amazing additional avenue of reaching out. And 85% of customers prefer to communicate via text, which is fantastic 80% use their phones to make purchases I do. Number one, hands down, I want to Amazon way too often, just on the app. And the click rate is what you want to pay attention to let me tell you guys something, open rates, we don't even measure, we don't even look at why. Because you're gonna look at a text message you receive everyone does. Everyone does. You look at it, it means nothing. And so what you have to remember as well, open rates are at 98%. It's because people have their phone and they're always going to look at a message within breastfeeding. Do not base any success on open rates for SMS, you want to measure click through, you want to measure placed orders, you want to measure the revenue. They are your most loyal customers, they've agreed to give you their email address, they've agreed to give you their SMS for like texting. And so really, the two work together. And they should work together. If you are using two different teams to take care of SMS and email, combine them they need to speak together, if I receive an email, that gives me a 20% off while I receive a text that gives me 10. There's no way I'm going to trust this brand, let alone click on the 10% I'm totally gonna go for the other way. And at the same time, when it comes time to combining, there's also that smart sending feature, that's great. If they've received an SMS message in the last five hours don't sent right let's not bombard their phones. But also in emails, you really need to think about the way you strategize. So I'll kind of show you a little bit here. And if you have not considered SMS as a channel, so first, you will improve your your revenue. And this is exactly what we what our team, this is from our team training and flowing them. And why we think it's so important for SMS as a channel is because it really does improve our clients revenue. It increases flow revenue, because we can create conditional splits with customized messaging. And what I mean by that is, if this person did not open email number one within one day, send them an SMS with the same offer. Or if somebody opened this email, but they did not purchase Let's send them an SMS reminder about their discount. So it doesn't need to be that I receive both at the same time, especially at the same time. I'm going to feel a little overburdened by this brand transactional SMS options like order shipping billing confirmations, and those are fantastic as well. So SMS can really be I know I have a coffee subscription brand is called bottomless, absolutely love it. In short, it's just a skill that measures my coffee and when my coffee gets low my coffee beans, they automatically send a new box And my favorite thing is when I received their SMS, which is actually an MMS. You guys all know it's a little girl in pigtails. And she's all, like really excited. They'll send MMS messages or gifts like that just saying coffees on the way. And I love it. It's a great connection to that brand. And I'm totally happy to stay on board with them.

Aaron Conant  40:21

Jim and, Brian, I want to get over Brian, just get his thoughts a little bit here to, like you see this going on. I know you guys have a lot of overlapping brands that you work with, like, I'm overwhelmed by this. I understand now. It's almost like Amara, you should have saved it to the end, like, hey, you need, you'd have a dedicated team or agency. But you know, Brian, would love to hear your thoughts on this as well.

Brian Petracca  40:45

Yeah, I know. And I mean, first of all, Amara, I'm sitting here taking as many notes as I'm sure every other person watching. But thank you for absolutely crushing it right now. But no, I mean, I think it's just an emphasis on the scalability. How are you able to keep up with all of the content needs for every single one of these emails, all of these segments, all of these, all of these channels, SMS versus email, and still trying to really identify what's working and what's not, and being able to keep up with all of it. And I think two things just immediately come to mind that really emphasizing one, what Amanda was saying is, you need someone who's an expert in this, whether it's internal managing a team working with a partner, agency, or software that can help simplify a lot of these things. This isn't something that should be on the backburner, and okay, we'll get to it. And we'll, we'll have it in the background. And we'll just let our flows go. Because you're gonna run into a lot more problems and a lot more annoyances, then you are going to drive revenue. And that's really the goal of email marketing. Depending on where you are in the funnel, you want to drive someone from that top of brand awareness to actually a conversion. So I think looping it back around is how are we also then going to be able to have enough content for all these channels. And I said it earlier, but it's really important that you're bringing them from all different aspects and not just relying on single methods of content creation. So being able to use the UGC that you're partnering with, whether influencers, content creators, software channels, go ahead. But really being able to use things and reuse things. I think one aspect right now is going into holiday season. D Are you prepared? Do you have the content you need, you're going to start sending a very different stream of emails and digital ads right now that are not going to be the same as what you were trying to kind of support in the middle of the summer, you're you're going to want to kind of pick out what is most suitable for the right time of year. But that doesn't mean that you can't continue testing it. So you have assets from last year, double down and generate more coming into the new year, generate more that is maybe going to be with new products, especially for clients who have we work with brands who have 510 products, we work with brands that have 1000s, how are you going to actually make sure that you're emphasizing the ones that are important, using Klaviyo for example, that with some integrations from Kobe that we've recently released, being able to actually identify on a more product level? What's being abandoned? Why? How can we actually now pick up on that and say, product A is kind of going pretty smoothly through a sales process, but product B keeps getting hung up on the checkout? What's different? Is it a pricing issue? Is it a checkout issue? Is it a content issue? Are there not enough reviews on that channel, being able to actually tap in and kind of just generate the assets that you need to support every aspect of visual? I believe right now, it's the number is pretty ridiculous, where almost 90% of consumers will not make a purchase online without minimum of like five to 10 product reviews on that page. Same is gonna go for your emails, if you're not kind of supporting the mission of what you're trying to send with the content that supports it. You're not going to have the results that you're looking for.

Aaron Conant  44:54

And we probably have about, I don't know, four or five minutes left here as we kind of get to like key takeaways. score last minute questions that people have you want to drop into the chat or the q&a. But, you know, Amara get over you like, number one is, the key takeaway for me is you have to have a team on this, like you said it could be internal could be external. But that begs the question, like how much? I think he might have said this in the game, how much of a company's revenue is coming in, you know, via email, or is directly related to email marketing? And then, you know, what are some key takeaways that that people should have from the call today.

Amara Ricord  45:33

So what I would tell you is use that board to your your benefit, use it as just a reference, the strategies that I kind of put in even in the Lowe's itself, those are very basic, every single branch should have a customized strategy in place, you should speak differently, nothing should be a template. But even for SMS, the one thing that is on the board, so please reference it, but there's SMS compliance laws that you need to be aware of same thing with email marketing, no rented lists, no bot lists, that's a great way to get blacklisted. Same thing with SMS, you have TCPA guidelines, you have the T, I have a guidelines, so and regulations. And the one thing is that if all of this sounds like a lot it is, that's, it's truly why you need a team. And I'm a huge believer in niche teams. Reason being, like for email marketing, if that's 30 to 50% of your revenue, I think you want a team dedicated to that much, right? Same thing. We're huge even at Flowium. We don't have different we don't have like an all in one ad agency, we trust our SEO agencies, we trust our content, we trust our content team. So I think really understanding that specialties are important. Same thing, like in the influencer realm, right content, that's its own channel. Personally, if I was an eCommerce, business owner, and I heard all this information, I would just probably go to sleep and take a long nap and drink wine because I don't know even where to start. And so that's where I think this connection with BWG, having some really great partners to talk to building those relationships, I think is really beneficial as a whole. Yeah, I'm happy to answer any questions, anything else that can pops up too

Aaron Conant  47:29

awesome. And more than happy to connect anybody with Amara after the call as well. Copy will ask about a recording, it usually takes us a week or two to get you know, it edited on the front end and back end and then pushed out to the site where you can just request a copy of it. Brian key takeaways from the Cohley. Here as we kind of get to the end, I also put in a link to the our podcast where we we capture this exact conversation, but just in a podcast format, and then tons of other topics as well. But so check that out. But Brian, key takeaways.

Brian Petracca  48:03

Yeah, I think I think for me, it's I've probably emphasized enough, but performance and testing is is always going to lead to the best results and to a winning kind of campaign flow. Just a quick story that comes to mind that I think really emphasizes that we got off a meeting a few weeks ago with a creative director, who was redoing their website was looking to redo a lot of their flow. Formatting. They're like, we can't wait to improve the visuals. And we're just waiting because the performance is so good right now. And our first reaction was, well, why are you trying to change the visuals if something's performing so well. But the real learning we took from that was performance is more important than the visual when it's actually being presented. It's not about we want our page to look prettier. Your job as a marketer is to drive revenue for the company and help grow your company. And so sometimes it's surprising what performs best and what is going to be the most successful. That's not to say that, hey, our website's been the same for 30 years and we don't need to update it or our email flows have been the same for years. tested, try it a be tested and you can always go back. But your reasoning should not be Hey, I think this is ugly, but it's working. So we don't want to use it. No, it's ugly, it's working keep using it and test it against something else until you find what's working better. So So I think that's something that a key takeaway here for me and I'm things go better. You have a lot of opportunities. If you have this many broadcasts broadcast was going on that you're going to need to use a lot of content when you see things that are working try them and other channels also when you see them some thing that's getting a lot of clicks and a digital ad on Facebook or Instagram, use it in your next email flow, try something new. Usually with content with photos, if you're sending to a single segment of age range males, something that works in one channel, find something similar will probably perform similarly in another channel if it's getting that same segment. So take those learnings tried to really double down on on what worked. And I think the most important thing I can say is, the sooner you find things that don't work, the sooner you can eliminate them. And that's just going to help you continuing to find more and more success.

Aaron Conant  50:41

Awesome. Well, Amara, Brian, thanks so much for your time today. Thanks for everybody for sending in the questions. Look for a follow up email from us. I'd love to have a conversation with you around your biggest pain points. More than happy to share any kind of context I have across the digital landscape. And if you're ever looking for any kind of service providers, don't hesitate to reach out. We've got a short list on everything from Amazon to drop shipping to direct to consumer to content and email marketing. A couple of those experts here today will also be more than happy to connect you with Ryder there after the call. With that we're going to wrap up hope everybody has a fantastic Wednesday. Have a great rest of the week. Everybody take care, stay safe and look forward to having you at a future event. Alrighty,

Brian Petracca  51:21

Thanks