When Does Email Marketing Make Sense?

Hey, Michael here.

We’re back with another edition of The DTC Letters.

In today's newsletter, we are going to cover:

• When to start using email marketing

• Where to start with email marketing

• What is important within your emails

When Does Email Marketing Make Sense?

The short answer…ideally from day one of getting site traffic.

Having proper flows is a HUGE part of a good customer experience and something that consumers in 2024 expect to be receiving.

This also ensures that you are maximizing the site traffic you do get.

As I’ve talked about before, about 98% of your site traffic hits your site and doesn’t convert right away.

This is wasted ad spend if we don’t market to them again.

That’s why you need to have a pop-up on your site converting 6-12% of your visitors into your email list.

This allows you to market to them still instead of hoping the see a retargeting ad or a social media post of yours, which are far less effective.

But let’s say you’ve already launched, then what?

Here are 3 things I look for when brands come to my agency wanting us to do their email marketing:

• Do they have product market fit?

  • Is their product good and do people want it?

• Are they spending money on paid ads?

  • Are they getting 10,000-30,000 site visitors a month (at least)

  • Although this traffic doesn’t need to come from paid ads, in my experience, 95 out of 100 brands struggle to achieve consistent traffic through other channels

• Do they understand the goal of email marketing and that it’s a long term play?

  • Yes our case studies show great results in as little as 26 days of implementing email marketing for some brands, but thats not always the case.

  • Every brand is different and email marketing is a matter of getting the basics set up and converting at a high level and then testing every week to improve those results.

  • With email marketing being able to bring in 40% of your brands monthly revenue, they need to understand that good things can take time

If the brand check all those boxes then they are primed to see huge success with email marketing and should strongly consider getting the ball rolling on this channel.

Where to start with email marketing?

The common misconception that brands have is that they need to set up everything and have it optimized from day 1. This causes brands to put out mediocre emails that have poorly targeted messages.

Remember this is a long term game…

At first all you need is:

• MVF (minimum viable flows) set up and sending

• A good base pop-up form that you can A/B test weekly

The pop-up will start growing your email list and allow you the opportunity to market to the people you’ve already paid to acquire and get to your site.

The flows will generate you more sales as well as create a more complete customer journey.

Start with these flows below:

• Welcome Flow for Non Buyers

  • To convert new subscribers into 1st time buyers and prime

• Abandoned Cart / Checkout Flow

  • To convert people who are close to buying in your funnel and just need a small push

• Post Purchase Flow

  • This is a vital part of the customer journey where you can reduce buyers remorse and create a relationship

And if you are feeling up for it, add these 2 flows to generate even more sales:

• Site Abandonment

• Browse Abandonment

Our agency deems all 6 of these flows as the CORE bare minimum flows but if I had to only do 4 I would implement the top 4 I listed above.

What is important within these new emails?

I’ll keep this section short because I don’t want to overcomplicate things for you.

You’ll get infinitely more sales from getting these basics live instead of worrying about copy and design for weeks before getting anything into your Klaviyo or Sendlane account.

Here are the 3 things to keep in mind within these emails:

• Design

  • Optimize your emails for mobile

  • Make them skimmable using subheadlines, diagrams, and visuals

  • Optimize the Above the fold section aka the top 600-800pxl you see without scrolling on the email

• Copywriting

  • (Keep it simple, copy is overrated unless you’re a health or supplement brand)

  • Follow the 4 P’s framework

    • Promise

      • Whats in it for them

    • Picture

      • Sell the identity change

    • Proof

      • Show social proof and reviews

    • Push

      • Have big buttons and clear CTA’s

• Personalized Experience

  • Handle the objections you KNOW your potential buyers have (based on what you know from your current customers)

  • Within your flows, speak to where they are at in the buying journey (someone who is in the welcome flow needs more content and info to convert then someone in the AB Cart flow)

Today’s Helpful Links

• 3 Strategies to Boost Campaign Revenue by Over 175% in 5 Weeks

• Are you measuring these metrics for your Ecom brand?

• Why you can’t ditch ads and only do email marketing for your Ecom brand

Reply to this email with any questions or content that you want covered in future newsletters.

Best,

Michael

PS - If you run an Ecom brand and want to have a 15 minute strategy session with me, book a call here »