Are you geared up for the holiday sales season yet?
If not, worry not. We've got you covered! In our latest conversation, we invited Adriana, the brainchild behind Flowmingo, an email and SMS marketing agency.
Her invaluable insights on crafting engaging subject lines, pre-planning campaigns, setting up automation flows, and the power of audience segmentation will ensure your readiness to smash the upcoming holiday sales season.
Looking to optimize your forms for maximum email engagement?
Adriana strongly suggests a minimalistic approach to form fields.
Think first name, email address, and mobile number - that's it. She also highlights the importance of collecting more data points through progressive profiling.
Plus, she sheds light on how to create effective email flows for those all-important dates - Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas.
And we're not stopping there. We get Adriana to spill her secrets on standing out in email marketing and making the most of SMS strategies.
She shares her wisdom on creating compelling offers and subject lines, utilising SMS for marketing campaigns, and maximising open rates and engagement.
Add to that, get handy tips on tailoring offers and campaigns to different audience groups and the power of AB testing.
Whether you’re a rookie or a seasoned pro, this episode is a goldmine of information to boost your email and SMS marketing strategies in the run-up to the holiday season.
Tune in and prepare to be enlightened!
Join 'A Remarkable Newsletter' for weekly high performance marketing and content actionable tips.
Are you geared up for the holiday sales season yet?
If not, worry not. We've got you covered! In our latest conversation, we invited Adriana, the brainchild behind Flowmingo, an email and SMS marketing agency.
Her invaluable insights on crafting engaging subject lines, pre-planning campaigns, setting up automation flows, and the power of audience segmentation will ensure your readiness to smash the upcoming holiday sales season.
Looking to optimize your forms for maximum email engagement?
Adriana strongly suggests a minimalistic approach to form fields.
Think first name, email address, and mobile number - that's it. She also highlights the importance of collecting more data points through progressive profiling.
Plus, she sheds light on how to create effective email flows for those all-important dates - Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas.
And we're not stopping there. We get Adriana to spill her secrets on standing out in email marketing and making the most of SMS strategies.
She shares her wisdom on creating compelling offers and subject lines, utilising SMS for marketing campaigns, and maximising open rates and engagement.
Add to that, get handy tips on tailoring offers and campaigns to different audience groups and the power of AB testing.
Whether you’re a rookie or a seasoned pro, this episode is a goldmine of information to boost your email and SMS marketing strategies in the run-up to the holiday season.
Tune in and prepare to be enlightened!
Join 'A Remarkable Newsletter' for weekly high performance marketing and content actionable tips.
Welcome to the Ecommerce Australia Podcast. Welcome to Ecommerce Australia. I'm your host, ryan Martin, founder of Remarkable Digital. This podcast is aimed at those who have their own online business, e-commerce professionals looking to keep current on the trends, and for anyone interested in learning more about the world of Ecom. For those of you seeking direct assistance, remarkable Digital is just a call away. Our mission is to be remarkable, doing great things for great people and great businesses. I understand how much choice you have and how many podcasts are out there, so I'm truly grateful you've tuned in. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments or topics you'd like covered. Let's get started. So this week we say a big, warm welcome to our very first guest on the podcast back in August of 2021, so happy two year anniversary, almost.
Speaker 2:I know it feels like not that long ago. I can't believe it was two years ago.
Speaker 1:Crazy. It was also our second highest streamed or downloaded episode, so we thought we should catch up again and get the latest on what has changed in those two years. And particularly coming into the sales season with Black Friday, cyber Monday, singles Day, click Frenzy, christmas and Boxing Day Sale there's a lot going on. So a quick introduction Adriana is the co-founder and general manager of Flomingo, an email SMS marketing agency built for e-commerce businesses. They work with all different sizes of businesses in all different categories in the world of e-commerce absolute elite specialists in email and SMS. So welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thanks for having me, Ryan.
Speaker 1:That's a pleasure. Yeah, we got a lot of great comments two years ago or even ever since too, like people are listening to the episode. So great to have you back. Obviously a key time for e-commerce businesses to start to get their heads around what they need to do for this upcoming kind of last quarter of the year. Yeah, but let's maybe start, if people didn't listen to that first episode, a little bit of a background to yourself and when Flomingo started and your background more generally in email and SMS.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no worries. So I've been. I've been an automation specialist for probably about six years now. I've been in the marketing industry for nine years I think almost 10 years so, yeah, I've had quite a lot of experience in the automation space, both with e-commerce brands and also I started with my career doing more CRM and sales automation originally, and I still do a little bit of that sort of stuff, but definitely more focused on e-commerce now. So, yeah, as you mentioned, ryan, I run Flomingo, so we specialize in exactly that email and SMS for e-commerce. We've been around now for three years. We actually just had our three year birthday last week, which was exciting.
Speaker 1:Happy birthday.
Speaker 2:Kind of a mild snow. Thank you, which is very exciting. So we originally our brand was originally called Humble Agency and we rebranded about a year ago and launched Flomingo. A little bit more of a fun brand sort of stands out a little bit of a play on words there with the brand name and everything like that. And yeah, it's been a wild journey really.
Speaker 2:It's been really fun, though, and, yeah, we've been able to work with so many different brands and get to help so many different businesses every day, which is why I'm in this at the end of the day, so, yeah, Fantastic.
Speaker 1:Well, looking forward to it, that's well. Congrats first on three years, that's. I think it's always the hardest, isn't it, the first few years?
Speaker 2:I hope so.
Speaker 1:That's right. And so let's get into how clients can set themselves up from. You know, coming into this last quarter, how are your clients currently kind of going? Where are they up to in their you know? Have they got all their flows set up and their automations complete, or are they still in the process of doing that? How are they sort of setting themselves up for that last quarter?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, it's obviously arguably the most important time of the year, as you were reeling off those different sort of event days before. It's, yeah, undeniable that there's a lot of opportunity to do list building, to be getting new people into your store, getting a brand out there in front of people. So it's such an important time of year and, yeah, brand exposure is up there with you know it's awesome at this time of year, so it's really important to get your name out there and to leverage every opportunity that you possibly can.
Speaker 2:In terms of my clients, who I'm working with, one of the things I think that's probably the most important thing is being really timely and planning in advance. So I mean even the facts that we're recording this podcast today. It's August and you know we're talking about potentially, campaigns in a Christmas time and in the new year and everything like that, and it's not too early to be planning this stuff. That now, if you haven't started, now is definitely the time you don't want to be rushing at the last minute trying to pull together assets and ideas and, you know, setting up your offers and everything like that and rushing it all because it is such an important time and being prepared is a key to success really, and that applies to your holistic marketing strategy, not just email and SMS marketing. So I think, with that like it's in terms of your like your email planning, it's a good idea to get your subject lines in order, get the content that you want to be sending out, in order, even pre-planning all of the copy for your emails and the designs and everything like that before you even actually build anything. That helps so much. Just with approvals internally with key stakeholders. You can present documents instead of having to go in and update emails and everything like that, which can be really time consuming and often a lot of room for error can happen if you do it that way. Another really good thing to do is, as you mentioned before, having your automations and everything set up is key. So if you haven't got any automated flow set up, it's probably a good time to start doing that now, especially high value flow. So even if you're just setting up a welcome flow for new opt-ins and an abandoned cart flow, for example, those two workflows have really high open rates, really high click-through rates and really high conversion rates, which is what we want to be seeing in the lead-up to all these seasonal promotions.
Speaker 2:So one of the biggest things you can do right now is start getting your audience engaged.
Speaker 2:If you've got an email list and you haven't been sending campaigns to them, or you've only been sending them sporadically throughout the year, now's the time to get consistent and to ensure you've got your workflows set up and in order to make sure that your engagement rates are starting to build, because that's going to help with your deliverability when it comes to those really important dates, so there's a higher chance you're going to reach people's inboxes instead of potentially junk mail or going to the promotions folder.
Speaker 2:People's inboxes get busy at this time of year, so it's really important to focus on your deliverability and setting up high value flows and being consistent with your email campaigns in the lead-up is two of the best ways that you can do that. So yeah, and I mean in terms of your overall marketing strategy, I think a lot of people generally put a lot more of their marketing budget towards campaigns and their top of funnel marketing. So having email and SMS in place is really good, because even if you're spending more, for example, on generating leads via meta ads, for example, you can do retargeting via email and SMS marketing, either through your automated flows or through your campaigns, which is going to lower your retargeting costs on your ads. So that's always a nice thing, you know funny ways to save money as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 100%. I've just got a question with the welcome flow and we could probably get into more specifics a little bit later. But with the welcome flow, just for the audience out there listening, we've actually got, we've got quite a few people on the live, which is great through LinkedIn, so a couple of familiar faces there Craig and Andrew and and stasa. With the welcome flow itself, how much information should we be asking for? Obviously, if we're gonna try and segment our list as much as possible, do we ask for, you know, first name, last name, email address, phone number Area, or do you just start with something really basic in terms of email address and then, through later sort of Segmentation, we can ask for more of those details? What's your thoughts on on how much to ask for, straight up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, everyone does Something different depending on their brand and what they're trying to achieve. It's important to understand what Type of segments you're wanting to create and that then informs the type of data that you want to collect. In my Experience, having as your initial opt-in form whether that's through a leadout or whether that's a pop-up form on your website I think it's best to keep the form fields to minimum. There is a lot of research out there also to sort of indicate that that is the better way to go. So I would definitely have first name. You don't really need last name.
Speaker 2:First name is important for Personalization in the email, so you can say hi, first name. That really helps with engagement. Email address obviously is a is a non-negotiable, and then, if you like, you can collect something. Some brands like to do birthday, if they want to do a birthday offer. So then you know there's room to add one more perhaps there, but I wouldn't probably go much further than that. I also like to add a two-step form. So once they submit that email information, you could then collect their mobile number as an optional field.
Speaker 2:Not everybody wants to be sent an SMS, which is completely fine, so that way they can subscribe by email. They don't have to subscribe by SMS, but they do have the option to do that as well. So then you've got that key information and that gives you. Even if you've just got that information, you're able to then start segmenting by behavior and by engagement.
Speaker 2:So People who've opened emails, people who've clicked emails, people who visited your website or certain product pages, people who place orders, abandon their carts, all of those sorts of things, you can really get quite a lot of behavioral segmentation Just by collecting those two really data points. Then there's the option to do progressive profiling as you go along, so you can ask, start asking people questions, as they, you know, go throughout the customer journey. Obviously, when they're placing an order, you get to collect quite a lot of information in the checkout phase. But, yeah, you can start doing things like Triggering pop-up forms of people in certain lists who may have been browsing the website for the last 90 days and still haven't purchased, to collect some additional information from them, and you might even Want to send one of the emails as your, as a nurture email, to ask them to update the information. Then you create, create a little preference center or something like that.
Speaker 2:So there's a few different options and it really just depends on your brand and what you're trying to achieve.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, nice, we've got it. Some the dogs making a bit of an introduction. There's Perfect love, a good live stream, we're running into all, which is great, so we probably have like, since I spoke to you two years ago, I would say that the majority of econ businesses are now quite proficient in in terms of at least having some Basic email automation set up. Yeah, and you obviously are seeing a lot of econ businesses on a weekly basis. Is there some common areas that you see that you know people actually need to improve on, or or what's the next level of Kind of segmentation now that you're doing that, you know from a. We've got things set up, we've got our welcome flows, we've got our abandoned cart, abandoned browser, that sort of thing. What's sort of the next level of performance that business owners can look to implement to help them get their most out of their email and SMS campaigns?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean with segmentation. I think the most important thing is how it ties into your email campaigns. So we want to be sending email campaigns to people who are engaged in with your email. So it's basically a big giant no-no to just send a blast email to your entire database, even though, like so many people, do it, it's very, very common. But that's actually something that will drastically hurt your deliverability rates, especially over time. You could risk getting your email domain blacklisted and then, or you could risk just basically ending up always in junk mail or in promotions and never actually getting in front of people, which just ends up being a waste of time and energy for you and your email marketing strategy.
Speaker 2:So one of the most important things about the email workflows, the automated emails, is that they are strategically placed at different parts of the customer journey, that they're very, very targeted and they're very, very timely. So, for example, when somebody initially opts in, they're getting nurture series. It's very relevant information. They've just shared their email address with you so they know that they're receiving this information. They'll be opening and clicking those emails. Those emails generally have much, much higher opening click rates compared to campaigns. And the same goes with banning carts and browser banning flows, for example. It's very targeted, relevant information. So those flows in itself helps build up your engaged audience.
Speaker 2:When it comes to sending email campaigns, that's when it becomes important to use those segments that you're creating. So if you want to send a campaign out to people who've opened and clicked an email in the last 180 days, that's a really warm audience that you could, then highly, highly likely they'll open the email and then engage with the email, potentially make a purchase. Email systems such as Gmail and Yahoo notice when you've got higher open rates. It tells them that your email marketing is relevant and it's highly unlikely that it's spam mail and therefore they give you more preference in the inbox to be sent to the inbox as opposed to into other folders or to be drowned out by everything else. So, yeah, that's probably what I would say is the most important thing about segmentation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, perfect, and then all right. So I probably just got you off track there a little bit. So we're wanting to build our email flows for Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas. What are some of the next level flows that we're looking for for these specific objectives? What are you seeing out there in the moment? Are people just trying to build their lists and warm their lists up as much as they can so then that those campaigns have the most amount of effectiveness, or is there any kind of little tips and tricks that you're seeing the brands are going to be doing this year, which is different from previous years?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I think warming up the list is, as we've spoken about, probably the most important thing right now and obviously, pre-planning everything in advance In terms of your specific flows have turned on. It doesn't matter too much. I mean, you might want to have a seasonal workflow set up if you wanted to do it as an automation. I typically like to do any seasonal stuff through campaign sends as opposed to automated flows. It's just a little bit easier to schedule everything and then adjust campaigns as you go, so you can notice things and then start making changes throughout the campaign. If you're looking at open rates and they're not high enough, you might want to go through and adjust some stuff, and it's just a little bit. You have a lot more control if it's through a campaign send.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I think, generally speaking, setting yourself up right now is more to do with planning, more to do with warming your lists up. It's obviously hard to stand out in the inbox. So if you are sending campaigns a little bit earlier so, for example, on Black Friday, if you're sending campaigns out a few weeks earlier, maybe you have got like an early bird special or you've got a specific campaign exclusive to your email subscribers, for example. That can be really good because there's a higher chance that you will get good engagement on that. If you're sending out campaigns, you'll notice if you're sending campaigns in a few days, in the lead up to Black Friday, for example, you will have lower open rates. That's just normal during this time because it is seriously there's people are getting so many emails.
Speaker 1:You'll look at your inbox and it's just emoji, emoji, capital letters.
Speaker 2:It's actually really hard to stand out during that time. So one of the best things that you can do is have really compelling offers. So if you've got, let's say, you're a brand that has an AOB between $50 and $100 and you're only offering 5% to 10% off your products, it's going to be quite hard to stand out because people are doing big things during this time. So you want to be discounting, obviously within your margins, and everything, but providing really compelling discounts that grab people's attention. Along with that is your, your subject lines. So the way I like to think about it, especially during these seasonal periods, is like imagine when you're traditionally walking through a brick and mortar shopping center and you're shopping at brick and mortar stores and every single store has big banners up in the windows and they have giant discounts, you know listed on their windows and everything like that, and you know they're enticing you to walk into their store based on the banners that they've got up in their windows. Your subject line is kind of similar to that. So it needs to be really short, really sharp, succinct, it needs to be to the point and it needs to grab attention so that people open your email and then you know either click through to your website and or do whatever the call to action is that you're asking. So, yeah, having your subject lines really planned out is obviously quite important.
Speaker 2:Going back to the having offers, I think some people you know there's definitely brands out there who don't typically discount and I know that they struggle a little bit during this time because it might not be, with, you know, within their brand strategy to provide discounts. So in that case, I would recommend to do something that adds value instead of discounting your products. So, whether you offer a free product with purchase, bundles are really good and they are quite compelling as well, and there's little like. Let's say, you're on Shopify. There's bundle apps that you can set up to help you actually implement that.
Speaker 2:You might want to do a giveaway. So, for example, christmas, you might want to do 12 days of giveaways or something like that and do a bit of a countdown style campaign. That could be really cool. You might want to donate a product to charity or money to charity or something like that. So there's lots of different things that you can do instead of just providing a percentage or a dollar amount discount, and I think that's where you have to really get creative. You have to think about okay, what's my objective here, what am I trying to do? And you've got to set yourself some little. You know seasonal goals, I guess as well. Yeah, perfect.
Speaker 1:And I think Shopify just released a feature not long ago which helps with bundles and upsells and cross-sells. So you know, obviously we're talking predominantly here Klaviyo and Shopify, but anyway you can kind of get those upsells or cross-sells or you know, adding some value there to that. But just to recap that, it sounds like that the subject line is the kind of most important thing to potentially test and get right. Would that be correct?
Speaker 2:Definitely yeah, 100%, and that's what's good about. If you're doing campaigns in the lead-up as well, I ab test your subject line and see what works with your audience. Like does the use of emojis increase your open rates? Does the use of personalization tokens in the subject line increase open rates? Open rates are obviously the key to getting all your other metrics in good shape. So the more people open your email, the more are going to click, the more are going to go to your website and potentially convert. So, yeah, obviously having a good website experience definitely comes into the picture as well. But yeah, in terms of just email itself, open rates is definitely something to focus on. Yeah, perfect.
Speaker 1:And then, before we go to the next question, let's just touch on SMS a little bit. I still feel like it's quite underutilized, undervalued, maybe misunderstood, Maybe there's a little bit of fear around, and SMS send you know going wrong in terms of not the right call to action, not aggressive enough or you know not the right time. What's your experience with SMS this year? Have you seen more brands starting to take up this strategy or this tactic, and what's your kind of best practice for using SMS? What sort of cases are there to win the best time to execute an SMS strategy?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean what we were talking about before getting like pre-planning everything. Now is a good time. If you haven't got an SMS list, add that to your strategy. So, for example, as I was saying earlier, with the multi-step form, pop in a little optional section for people to put their mobile number in there so you can start collecting that information.
Speaker 2:One thing that I will say about SMS is it's quite an invasive channel. It's not really a channel that should be utilized as a siloed channel. It really needs to be paired with a proper email strategy, and that's when it really is the best. So the way that I like to think of SMS is that it enhances the email strategy, enhances the email campaign in general. It's not really something that just works on its own. So, for example, if you've got a specific email campaign that you're sending out to your email subscribers, then you could also replicate that into a really short, sharp version as an SMS as well to your SMS subscribers. Clavio limits your SMS characters to 160 just for one SMS. You can obviously go over that, but it's going to double or triple how much you pay in terms of each SMS send. So I like to stick to the 160 character limit, because in my opinion, that's what an SMS should be. It should be right to the point. This is the discount. Here's the link Shop now so simple. It shouldn't even take you that much time to do, really, and if you're pairing it, as with your email campaigns or even with your automated flows, it should really just be a shortened, summarized version of what that campaign or flow actually is.
Speaker 2:The second thing I will say about SMS as well is collect consent. Make sure people have explicitly opted in. It's really, really strict rules in Australia. You can't just send to people who you've got their mobile number and you don't know how you got it, or something like that. You really need to have them tick a box. You need to have those terms and conditions on your website. You need to have all your privacy information in there as well and just making sure that you've actually got them. It's specifically subscribed to SMS because, as I said before, it is quite an invasive thing.
Speaker 2:Not everybody wants to receive a text message from a brand, but a lot of people do, and when they do, it has amazing, amazing results. I think it's a 95% read rate in the first three minutes. Compare that to an email campaign, which may be over a five day period. It has a 40 or 50 or 60% open rate, so it's got incredible read rates, which is really really good for getting important brand messages out there. I like to use it very sparingly, so it's only when really important things are coming up that you want to communicate to your audience. That's the best time that you can use SMS, not just hey, here's an update, kind of thing. It's when you've got really good sales on and different promotions like that. That's when you should send SMSs.
Speaker 2:The final thing that I'll say about SMS is the time that you send it. So definitely so. Clavio, have like a sending window that you can set for SMS. So just make sure that you've set that up properly. You don't want to be just think of yourself as the person receiving the SMS. You don't want to wake up at 6am and the first thing you've got is an SMS from a brand, especially if it's over Black Friday and all that sort of stuff. It's just, it's too much. It's just it will have the opposite effect. So you know, maybe between 9am and 5pm or something, 6pm, maybe it would be your SMS send window.
Speaker 2:Don't send SMSs outside of that window and yeah, because it's just will have the opposite effect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 100%. I always for SMS. I've mentioned them a few times on the podcast, but Drummond Golf do exceptionally well with their SMS strategy. So if anyone's listening out there, maybe subscribe to Drummond Golf, maybe. Yeah, probably helps if you like golf, I guess. But just in terms of a marketing point of view they do really well. I think they've sent me three or four SMSs over the past six months and I've clicked on them every time.
Speaker 1:It's been super relevant to what I'm interested in. It's usually a really aggressive discount end of season, 50% off so you'd kind of go okay, that's awesome. Thank you for telling me that you've got 50% off. I'm going to go and have a look. If it was 10% off, new range or something, it'd be like yeah, not really sure if it's worth an SMS. So I guess it's just having a little bit of social EQ just to kind of understand. You know, is this really an offer worth sending an SMS to? Yeah, exactly Two more questions for you. What's your favorite strategy that you're using in 2023 for some of your clients to get the most amount of revenue or sales?
Speaker 2:So one strategy that I really really like is to plan strategic offers and email campaigns to target various audience segments based on where they are in the decision making process. So crafting offers and campaigns specifically for these different segments. That could be tailoring an offer in a campaign to new email subscribers in the last 90 days. It could be targeting campaigns to window shoppers, so people who have typically been browsing on your website and looking at products but are still yet to actually convert into a paying customer. You could tailor a different offering campaign towards that segment People who have expressed interest.
Speaker 2:So if they've added something to their cart or something, then you could send them specific offers, and then previous customers as well. So the goal with previous customers is to help increase your returning customer rates in that section. So I think it's a really cool way to do it, because it means that you're being really strategic about who you're sending your campaigns to and when, and I just find it has a lot higher engagement rates if you do it that way, because it's a much more personalized approach. You won't have giant giant send volumes at one time. It will be, you know. It does need to be meticulously planned, especially with your segmentation, to ensure that you're not sending to double ups to people and everything like that. So you really need to have exclusion lists and all that sort of stuff. So it does get a little bit more complicated but it's definitely worthwhile because it does have. It does produce really good results.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect. And is there? Can you like walk us through perhaps an example of that, just so the audience can kind of understand what you mean. So let's just take one of those you know times in. Let's just say what was the first one you rolled with.
Speaker 2:New email subscribers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so new email subscribers. Let's say, how do we use that in an actual case scenario? So we've got new email subscribers that haven't purchased yet. Would you have to first put together a bit of an offer or some sort of lever to get them to then purchase?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that would probably be the best way to do it have a compelling offer In the campaigns you could push products that are best sellers because you obviously know they're the most popular products, so they're more likely to purchase one of those products. Important to include things like customer reviews in those types of campaigns as well, because that really helps to build brand credibility and establish trust for the audience as well. So, yeah, that could kind of be your approach with that, so it doesn't just have to be about the offer, but also tailoring the actual campaign content towards that audience as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. So including so just because they're a new email subscriber, you still need to build more trust. That's a really great point. I think it's just to use testimonials or use case studies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do speak to a lot of e-commerce businesses and, especially if they're just starting up and they're fairly new, they don't have a lot of social proof. So if someone's given you their email address, then, yeah, that's probably a really great strategy to ensure that you have some testimonials or some case studies or some social proof to go along to build trust, because that may be one of the reasons why they haven't purchased yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's quite an important part of it, and also just communicating your brand value at that point as well and really helping that new subscriber understand why you're different to the competitors, to the other options out there in the market.
Speaker 2:You know they're still in the decision making phase of they're weighing up all their different options out there that they have. So it's your job to really convince them that you're the right brand to go with. You've got the best products to suit their needs, and you can do that through educating them through your unique selling points and about your brand in general as well. So, yeah, that's kind of how you would address that audience segment. And then for people who are window shoppers, for example, people who are browsing your website and they haven't converted whatever timeframe, you know that is, I think, something really cool that you can do with. That is, display dynamic content to them. So, for example, in Clavio, you can set up different feeds, different product feeds, so you could actually personalize a product feed towards that that recipient based on their browsing behavior. So it's going to recommend products that they're most likely to then purchase. So that's sort of how you would then approach that audience segment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fantastic. And then generally, like this might be a too much of a broad question, but I'll ask it because I'm thinking of it at the time how many of those from sign up to then conversion in your experience? Like, I guess it depends on a lot of factors, but how many emails would you have to send to get them to convert? You know, generally speaking, what would be your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:It's such a hard thing to ask.
Speaker 1:I'm asking the hard-hitting questions here. Yeah, it's honestly.
Speaker 2:I could never give you like a specific number for that, because there are people who like, let's say you know you've got a welcome series like I don't know.
Speaker 2:You've got people who are coming from different four different places and they are at different stages of the decision-making process.
Speaker 2:You might have some people who've been evaluating all of their options for quite a while. They've been, you know, they've had a lot of touch points with your brand and they're sort of ready to go when they opt in and subscribe, so they might convert as soon as you send the first welcome email. You've got other people who perhaps have seen an ad that you have that has been shown to them and it's on Facebook. They haven't really expressed intent that they're looking for this product, but you've grabbed their attention in some way and they come into your website. They're looking at your brand and they're like oh, who's this? What do they sell, kind of thing. It might take them weeks, it might take them 90 days to convert, it might take them a year to convert. It really is hard to tell, but it might take that type of person longer than somebody who's already established a need and they know what they want and they're coming to your website intentionally to purchase that product.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, brilliant. I'm always interested in, like who's doing things the best and who's doing things well. Is there some common themes that you've seen across all of your experience in terms of brands that are doing well or brands that you work with? What's some common themes of best practice in terms of 2023?
Speaker 2:So consistency is key. We've talked about that quite a lot. So if you're not sending email campaigns, I would recommend sending them one or two a month. Don't spam people. You don't need to be doing crazy amounts of email campaigns. Remember that less is more and it's all about segmentation. So no blasts or anything like that. No, just sending 12 emails within the space of 12 days, kind of thing. Be consistent, but also use emails sparingly as well, because it will have a better effect.
Speaker 2:Another thing that is really important is using data to inform your decisions and to find new opportunities. So, for example, if you have low returning customer rates, thinking about different ways that you could be using email and SMS marketing to increase those returning customer rates. So, as I mentioned earlier, you can create an audience segment for people who purchased from your brand in the last 60 days, 90 days, 365 days, whatever time period it is. You can create and tailor different campaigns for those different segments as well to help increase your returning customer rates. You can also do things like connect, integrate Facebook and Google with Clavio and then use that list that people who have purchased lists and send that back to those platforms. So then you can create retargeting ads to bring them back again to your website. So you can sort of do it the opposite way around as well, which works quite well.
Speaker 2:Something else to remember, just from emails into more in terms of a, I guess, aesthetic and design standpoint in, is to have your primary call to action above the fold. So we were talking about before subject lines being really to the point, being really relevant about what your call to action is in your offer. Ensuring that that offer matches the content above the fold of your email is extremely important, but people sometimes won't even scroll, so you want to grab their attention straight away. You could use GIFs as well. Obviously, you're not going too crazy with GIFs and graphics, because it does slow the emails down, it doesn't look great and it actually is a bit of a spam trigger too. So be careful of how much you use.
Speaker 2:But you could use perhaps you might have an announcement bar at the top of the email which is scrolling with your offer and maybe the discount code at the top, and then you could use like a really cool image that grabs people's attention and a button right there to click through to the website. They might not even scroll, they might just go straight through to your website, so it's important to have that content, the compelling content, above the fold. And then, in terms of graphics, it's good to have really high quality, good looking graphics. I like to recommend to people to use graphics or to use an email design that matches your website, so it's basically like a little mini version of your website, so it provides a really consistent brand experience. I can't even tell you how many times I've worked with new clients who've been doing email marketing with someone else or doing it themselves, and I've opened the emails and they look completely different to their website and it's like is this even the same brand?
Speaker 2:It's really important to make sure it matches up, just for that really nice, consistent brand experience. And then the final thing is AB Test. I think people who do well always AB Test. So obviously we're only AB Testing one thing at a time. So if it's you're wanting to increase your open rates, ab Test your subject lines. If you're wanting to increase your click through rates, ab Test your email structure, your design, call to action, placement, colors, fonts, whatever it might be. Play with different things, but just test one thing at a time so you know what you're actually working with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great, great point, and Clavio makes it quite easy. He does know to create some AB Test, but I think it's really relevant that you say just test one thing at a time. If you test two different variables, you're just not going to understand what actually worked and what didn't.
Speaker 2:Exactly 100% right.
Speaker 1:And I think too, you know that's another great point you raised around making sure that it looks similar to your website, like congruency in everything is really important. Even notice that with like Google Ads and things like that. If you have a message or you know a description with your Google Ads, then you want that landing page to talk exactly about what they've clicked. The same could be said for emails. If you're talking about one thing and then you know don't send them to a completely different email which is, you know, a little bit clickbaity by the sounds of it, and then it doesn't also match the experience on the website. So a couple of really good points there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:I think we're just about done. I've got one question to ask you from a I've actually got a text for this question who's listening to the live. But I guess the last question I have for you on an agenda point of view is what sort of brands does Flowmingo work with and what would be a trigger for a brand to understand that they need some help with their emails?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I think. So one of the important things to think about is, I think, is your media. So how much you're actually spending on your marketing in general as a brand. If you're struggling with your conversion rates through your ads and you've got really high retargeting spend or anything like that, that might be an indicator that email marketing is something that you need to look into. So what email marketing is really good at is saving you money, because it is actually. It's so much cheaper than running ads on Facebook or on Google. It's just ridiculously cheaper. Even including if you're paying an agency fees, even if including, you know, your subscription to Clavio itself, it's still going to be so much cheaper than actually running ads and everything like that.
Speaker 2:Obviously, you need to be doing something in the lead generation space to be bringing traffic to your website. But yeah, I mean it's just, it's really. It has a three times higher conversion rate email than social media, so it really is quite good at conversions and at keeping your audience engaged and in the loop as well. So, definitely, like, if you're struggling with I know there's so many different changes in the privacy space and you know, with cookies and everything like that, especially lately, it is becoming increasingly harder and more competitive to actually get good results on those platforms Definitely harder than it was, you know, early 2020 or around when you know the when COVID was first happening, it was quite easy for brands to sort of get really good results really quickly through those platforms, and then that drastically changed as soon as all the competition just came out of the woodworks.
Speaker 2:And so email marketing is an awesome way. So if you're spending a certain amount on your lead gen, you're sending traffic to your website, we're capturing that through a form what we were talking about earlier and then we're nurturing them instantly through a welcome flow and then, when they're browsing the website, or if they're bounding their cart, and then sending them email campaigns to keep them in the loop. I think one of the most important things to be aware of is, like you know, email marketing doesn't have to be annoying for people, and so many people would think, oh, I don't want another email in my inbox and blah, blah, blah. But if you're strategic about it and you're really planned about it, it can work really really well and you're not going to annoy people. They will actually want to hear from you and they'll want to open your emails and engage with your content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect. It comes back to, you know, even that drum and golf example. Like I'm happy to hear from them because every time I do hear from them it builds rapport and it builds, you know, it's something that I actually want to hear from. And and again to your point earlier around, you know the double opt in. If they haven't double opted in then you know they're not probably interested and they're not worth sending an email to. So you don't want those type of customers. You still want those customers but you don't want those type on your email flow because they're not going to open it anyway. So yeah, I guess having a database of a thousand that are double opted in as opposed to having a database of 2000 who are from everywhere and not quite engaged, you'd prefer the, you know the former 100%.
Speaker 2:it's quality over quantity, for sure, and it would just get you so much better results if you're sending to people who are wanting to actually hear from you at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also when you're looking to I know it's something that you probably don't think about when you're first start off, but when you're wanting to sell a business or exit the business, if you can show a highly segmented, highly targeted, highly engaged database, that's going to help you all in the sale of your business in a massive way 100%.
Speaker 2:It's adds to your brand IP massively. It's such a big selling point if that's your goal, if you want to sell your business at the end of the day, and yeah, it really just adds to that. And I mean it's the same thing with the automated flows and everything that is set up. That's infrastructure for your business. You own that. It's like owning a website Once it's set up, it's just running in the background. Obviously, you know we can optimize it, we can adjust things over time, but that's something that actually adds value to your brand as well and could be something that's really appealing to any person you know looking to buy a business as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and, as we say, that's sort of that's your own database and IP. So you know, if LinkedIn were to shut you down, or Facebook were to shut you down, or Google with the rise of AI, and you know they're shutting down accounts, they're frightened center through, you know no real reason other than just the AI has flagged it. That's always a scary proposition. So at least you've owned your own that database and you can take that wherever you want to go.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:And also I think too, when you're looking at you know, just purely conversion, it's a lot easier to get an email address than it is to get someone's you know, someone to check out with their actual, with their money. So you know, to do e-commerce businesses, we're always thinking about conversion. But actually if you think about lead gen as well, getting those leads in through your email and then get them into your flows and get and build up that trust that way, then the conversion is going to be a lot more cost efficient than trying to get that conversion every time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:All right. One last question I have. So someone's texted through. They want to know about pop up forms versus exit forms. When should you ask for the details? Is it you know? Do you have a pop up that appears straight away? Do you wait five seconds? Do you let them browse first and then, as they're exiting, do you have a pop up form then? Do you have any ideas or kind of best case scenarios in terms of when they should be deploying that pop up form?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So in my experience, having one displayed right away doesn't work as well as having one for some reason. Four seconds is like it works amazing Four seconds after someone's on a site. Then you could display a pop up form. Then that's a good way to do it In terms of exit intent. I would test that, just a test split test your pop up form for a month or something and then just see which one resonates best with your audience. It's always going to change the different brands of different industries, different audiences, you know. So it's important to test that for sure. Or you can even test how you know the delay time for when the pop up comes up to. You could also, in addition to that or as an alternative, have different forms for different audiences as well in Clavio. So if you wanted, you could, you know, have a pop up for people who are brand new visitors and then maybe an exit intent for people who are revisiting your website but still haven't placed in order. But again, test, see what works for you and then just run with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, perfect, awesome. Hopefully that answers your question. But yeah, look, that's all from us today. Thank you for your time. Really appreciate you jumping on the first live for eCommerce Australia.
Speaker 2:It's exciting.
Speaker 1:How do people get in touch with you? What's the best way for them to work with you? Is it just send an email? Jump on the website.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can jump on to the website, which is wwwflowmingocomau, or you can just head to my LinkedIn and send me a DM by that.
Speaker 1:How did Flow Mingo? How did the name come about?
Speaker 2:My business partner thought of it. It actually took me a while to come around to it, to be honest, but it was his idea to play on the words of flows, like email flows, and I don't know where it came from, honestly, but it works.
Speaker 1:Exactly. It's easy to remember and it cuts through the noise, so I guess that's all it needs to do. Exactly Also, Mulya. Thank you very much for your time and your insights. I really appreciate it and hopefully the build up from now to Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas is a great one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me Cheers, thanks, bye.