More 2 Marketing

More to marketing. Welcome to modern marketing. The podcaster explores marketing, product and all things business. I’m your host today, Susan, and we’re. Gonna be learning. All about the importance of really having those integrated marketing emails and then how this actually unfolds for Omni channel strategy as well. I am very, very fortunate today to have a special guest. It is Brandy. Mr Brandy is a true modern marketing man. Even she believes marketing magic happens at the intersection of strategy, creativity, and technology. As chief marketing officer at Tech writer, a marketing consultancy specialising in marketing automation and strategy for the modern marketer, Brandy helps companies of various sizes to attract, convert clothes and also retain. Customers using technology. Voted one of the top 50 women, you need to know in Martek in 2018 and also having over 20 years career experience spanning a variety of different industries and marketing principles and disciplines, Brandy really does bring a huge amount of wealth forward for just today, but also for her client, she works. With. And I’m also loving the fact that Brenna is also a Co author. She’s a Co author of CMO to CRO. The revenue overtake by the next generation executive. So that’s a must read for anyone that needs to know how you can actually make money when you’re in marketing and do it right. So you make things happen the right way. But. I’m going to. Welcome you. But I’m. I’m also going to let everyone know there is a podcast that Brandy does too. We’ll talk about that at the very. End so you. Don’t forget it because we want you to also listen to. Her podcast too, but welcome brand.
Brandi
Me. Thank you for having me. I am excited to be here.
Susan
I’m so excited to have you here. You’ve done so. Much in your. Career it’s absolutely magical, and I also love talking before that. We have very similar thoughts. About the process. Of sharing knowledge and helping others on their journey.
Brandi
Yeah, it is something that, you know, I’m super passionate about. I love learning and I love. Sharing as well.
Susan
Tell me more. About your business and how it came about.
Brandi
Yeah. So I started at Tegra 9 years ago and the company is 10 years old. So pretty much been here, you know, almost the entire time. And I had always worked on the client side and I found that I had so many ideas and things that I wanted to try that weren’t necessarily right. For my particular organisation and so I decided to jump the fence from the client side to the consulting side and I joined the Tegrity team and we have since grown. On the business drastically, it has evolved so much, but most important, I have the opportunity to work with a lot of different organisations and it really has helped me see like what truly works and what doesn’t. When you can see kind of the same things in play across multiple organisations.
Susan
Definitely, and I suppose that a lot of those also covered in the book as well. Could you tell me a bit more about the book you helped Co author?
Brandi
Yes. So we, it’s funny. The book started as a joke the you know our it’s written by myself, the owner of our company who is our CTO and our CRO. And we were sitting around Airbnb and we were talking about the challenges that we all have seen. Consistently throughout our careers and we’ve had very different careers, different aspects of business. But we’ve seen the same. Challenges we all had ideas of how to solve those challenges and recognise that we had seen components of it in play but had never really seen anyone, you know, crack that nut and do all of it. And so we were like, you know, we should totally write a book and give our advice on how you do this, right. And it was like haha. When would we ever have time to write a book? And well, we did. And it’s funny that when we started writing the book, the topic seemed very. Untouched, and by the time we finished writing it and it launched the topic of, you know, who leads revenue, what’s the right role to lead revenue? What that really looks like had become a hot topic. So the book, like, dropped right on time because people started talking about. What we had been thinking about a year before.
Susan
Absolutely perfect. And it’s such a helpful, helpful resource as well. So I’ll make sure that I put the link. To that in the show notes too. But before we move on to our topic for today, I’d just love to know more about your your accompanying podcast that you do revenue rehab. Tell me more.
Brandi
Yes, so revenue rehab, it’s like therapy, but for marketers, that’s our tagline and you know leading any component of revenue. It is a hard gig, and especially those that lead marketing. You can often feel alone like you don’t have the right network, the right resources. You know there’s so much information it it’s figuring out where to pay attention. And on top of it being a hard gig, it is also like we’re all human and there are leadership challenges. You know, I always say, like, the managing people is way harder. Then you know managing. The work you know, most executives are over 40, some headed towards retirements. There’s challenges that come along with that. And so, you know, I’m a big advocate of therapy, you know, for everyone all of the time. But in thinking about it, it’s like these are conversations that we should have. And I didn’t want to just talk about the marketing practise or the revenue, you know the the revenue, the practise of doing these things. I really wanted to tackle the whole human and so that’s what we do. We talk primarily about challenges faced by revenue. But then we cover some personal stuff. We’ve covered executive burnout, we’ve covered caring for ageing parents. Some of the challenges of, you know, when you inherit A-Team, that’s not that great. When you take a new role. And so really thinking about all of the challenges and bringing people, you know, to the virtual couch to really. Work through those things and offer advice for people who may be struggling with that.
Susan
I think that’s such a a strong message as well to share with everyone cause. My in my career, I don’t think many people have actually spoken about what’s happened. How could we do better? Has anyone been through this? Can anyone give me advice? So it’s a fantastic way that you can listen in and not feel like you’re potentially being judged as well if it’s actually happening to you, you can hear other people’s journeys and and learn from them and process from it as well. So I love. I love that thought and I’d love to see even more of your podcast coming out and how they touch other regions as well. Well, because there’s just so much there that people can talk to, particularly with the the changing in marketing itself and how that then impacts revenue to impact the team to impact, et cetera, et cetera.
Brandi
Yes, and that is exactly the mission.
Susan
Wonderful. Well, today we’re actually gonna be talking about Brandy’s fabulous passion. So Brandy does have a passion. We have a a chat offline, and it’s all about the email marketing and how you actually bring that together as part. Of a a. True Omni channel strategy, which many businesses still struggle to do even though we’ve been digital for quite a while now. So I’m going to go straight into basics, OK, why are emails important? What role does email marketing currently play in an overall marketing strategy and how does it contribute to that Omni channel approach?
Brandi
I am a strong believer that email sits at the centre of all of the marketing that we do and our strategy needs to be built around. Email and I know that in some circles can be a controversial opinion, but when you think about it, like so, thinking about those top of funnel things that people do, we’ve got organic and paid search, organic and paid social programmatic ads, content syndication, all these different things that we do to attract people to us to get people paying attention to what our message is. Once we’ve accomplished that, there’s a factor of and then what? And so it’s not like someone downloads a white paper and magically wants to buy something from you like that just is not the way that it works. And so it is about how do we create the right communications to send. To those people that are going to move them through whatever journey they need to go through and that’s not always a buyer’s journey. Like not everyone is in market like there’s a lot of statistics. Say only 5% of your addressable audience is in market at any one time, and so some cases the journey is an education journey. And so you know. And then as they progress through the process of being ready to potentially engage with sales, there is a component of email there as well. Whether it’s marketing, email or even you think about what the sales people are sending, if it’s tech, they do a demo, what’s being sent after that. And so you know and then even through to you have a new customer they’ve said yes, signed on the dotted line. How are we communicating with them so that they continue to feel like that purchase was a good one. And then how do we keep them engaged and using our product and service? And if there’s a renewal component renewing or cross sell upsell like email is one of the few channels. And honestly I’d say other than your website, it’s really the only channel that is used at every single stage. Of the journey, so prospect customer etcetera.
Susan
Very true. And I think a lot of the time. Companies don’t. Actually address that. They are different segment and time periods as well. They treat them all the same. They treat everyone identical. They don’t actually look at what some of the data is saying to them along the journey, such as their research phase or their a gifter, or it’s for themselves and. For me, a lot of the the. Miles and making it more strategic. It’s about using data the right way to do the right message to help them 100% on that journey of Discovery and when they’re ready. But I do love how you talk through about the after after the purchase because there’s many products. And services out there that you’re right. You have to have follow ups. You have to have check-ins, there might. Be a regular service. Every year that has to happen with. It too or. Just to make sure it’s functioning correctly or hey so I may have bought something very expensive. Say I don’t know a KitchenAid. It would be very handy to be able to continually just send out recipes or the latest function. So that they’re continually engaged along the way. OK.
Brandi
Yeah. And, you know, I think like the examples that you used are more B2C and that’s where I see more companies getting it right because you think about there is a direct tie to the revenue in business to consumer brands because the email goes out, someone clicks it, there’s some revenue that happens directly tied to that. We work a lot in the B2B space and that’s where it gets a bit more muddy because there isn’t always that direct correlation of we sent these emails out and they bought something. If I’m, you know, an organisation and I’m spending $50,000, I’m not doing that in like, oh, let me click this button. And put in my credit card for 50 grand. Like, that’s not how business works. And so I think getting email right is much harder. For B2B organisations, but it’s so much more important because you know, let’s say you miss out on the KitchenAid sale, but that’s not as huge and missing one person. You know buying a KitchenAid that’s you know, 5-6 seven, $100 versus missing out on a 50,000 or $100,000 opportunity. For B2B organisations.
Susan
100% and I I keep thinking to myself, because currently I work with a lot of multi platforms and marketing and CRM plate. So I I can see how they they come to me, they do a demo. What’s their next strategy after that? For when I can put them in front of potentially a client to be part of the tender for example. I feel that that’s 100%, I agree. With you that there’s. Probably a lot of opportunity there. That’s not being looked into about how do I keep in touch with these key people that could help me land a sale? In the future, that is. Like you said. $50,000 a quarter of a million, half $1,000,000 to be able to get that in a tech platform.
Brandi
Well, yeah. And I do think that, I mean, you hit on a use case that is so often overlooked and that is the partner community because in many cases that it is a partner or a consultant or an agency that is the main influencer, and they’re an influencer for multiple customers. But so many brands aren’t thinking about that and you know, email is the perfect channel to leverage to stay in front of those people.
Susan
I also love email in the sense that I love to archive things and go back to it so that I’ve always got a source. So instead of having to try and remember that conversation or that demo. Afterwards, I’m hoping that they send me through either the recording of the demo or the deck, so then I can file that as well so that I can refer to it whenever I need to as well, and that that’s another thing that I love and the B2B. Space is having that ability with the emails as well, because conversations can get forgotten, muddied up in your head. All of those things. But when you’ve actually got it there, it’s almost like it’s tangible that you can just go back to it and actually feel and and remember that presentation again.
Brandi
Yeah. And it’s one of those things that a lot of times people think about. The email impacting the brand only when they click, but that’s not the case, to your point. Quite often people will read an email and archive it and you know, intend to come back to it later. It’s not something they need to address, and in some cases just seeing the brand’s name pop up. And their inbox can also be a trigger of like ohh yeah, I need to go back and so some people won’t even open the email. They’ll just then go open your website and it’ll show up more as those direct visits. Others that came direct to your site because that email was just a trigger of a memory of something that they needed to look into.
Susan
Definitely. I think I I’d love to get on to our, our our next question here because I think it’s a really interesting. 1. What are some of those key benefits for those for all those emails, the marketing emails and everything, really, really integrating them in into Omni channel strategies both for customer engagement? Perspectives and also for I suppose in the terms of driving sales. What are some of those key? Benefits.
Brandi
There’s two key benefits. So #1 is going to be that email is going to make every other channel better and I’ll give you an example in just a second. Number two is that email will help to inform. Your strategy, and so it kind of is, you know, back and forth. So email helps make every other channel better because again, you know you think about how much and I’ll just use programmatic. So many companies spend, you know tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of money on programmatic every year. Like I know small companies even spend 10 grand a month on programmatic. And so there’s a lot of spend there and a lot of times the effectiveness of that spend is measured on. How many people did we get to take the call to action and that call to action is great, but unless that call to action is revenue? Do then you still like. There’s still a gap. And so this is where when we then can follow that up with email and stay engaged and nurture those people to get them to the point where they’re ready to do something because on the net new side, it is ready to make a purchase. But even on the customer side, it could be just staying engaged with them so that they do. Renew later or that you know, they take some other action and so every other channel whether it’s. Events, programmatic social search. You know, all the different channels are all made more effective when email is connected to them. And then the other piece is by tapping into email data and you know and relating it to those other channels, you can start to see what’s really working. And so the best example I have of that is I had a client that works with multiple content syndication vendors and they were planning to, you know, reduce the number and just keep two of them. And they believed that, you know, this particular vendor was like their number one top choice. They were getting tonnes of leads from this vendor, their cost per lead was low. And so they were like, this is one we’re definitely keeping. They asked for some input to help pick a second. Well, what I ended up finding. When I started looking at how contact. Connect and you know how they were engaging after they came in from the content syndication vendors. One of the vendors that they were for sure planning to cut because they produced the fewest number of contacts and they also were the highest cost per lead. They were the ones that actually sent over contacts that stayed engaged. So although it cost more per contact and they got fewer. Those people continue to engage long after they came into their system, and so they were able to see that email engagement, whereas the one that was generating tonnes of leads at a lower cost, those people did almost nothing. And so that basically was wasted money in buying names. That we’re never going to buy from you. And so, you know, the analysis of looking at the email data completely informed their strategy on how they tackled content syndication, which was their number one channel for driving net new contacts.
Susan
I think there is. There’s also so much. Let’s just put on. Also on last click, that last click is King. We’re really attributing. Models are so much more powerful, like in your example, if I if I even delve in and change it a little bit. It could also have been the example of if they used last click, this one is giving us all the click throughs they’re giving us all the leads, but if. You do the attributing. Model you actually find out the other company they’re about to cut off. Off was the. One people were. Researching first but happened to land on the. Other company last. So the the power of data and be able to actually mine it and bring it back to what does engagement look like? What does sales actually look like? What does your life long customer value look like as well? Adding those into can be very powerful.
Brandi
Yeah. I agree completely.
Susan
What other measures have you found really effective when you’ve been doing all these different types of campaigns with different clients? What what metrics do you think people should prioritise? So you given a great example there, but I’m sure there’s many other ones that people should consider too that you have seen. Work really well.
Brandi
Yeah. For me it is really looking at things in aggregate. So engagement where you are able to measure you know and sort of break down audiences and look at the data by in batches. So for some companies, industry is really big and so we’ll take campaign. Data you know from email campaigns or other tactics, and look at it isolated by industry, because what we’ve seen. Thing is, for some audiences and it doesn’t have to be industry. In some cases it’s by persona. In some cases it’s Geo, especially for global companies. But for whatever The thing is, we will look at it that way because in some cases we’ve seen initiatives be really effective in a particular industry or particular Geo. Or for a particular persona where it is completely flopping for another, and so in some cases it’s we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing related to this group. But we’re going to come up with a new plan or a modified plan when it comes to this other group. And so, you know, I have people all the time asked, like, you know, if I’ve got any special metrics that I’m using and for different clients, there are some unique metrics that we’ve come up with, but they are always more specific to what they do. But universally, the big thing is really segmentation and not just looking at how things are performing across the board, but looking at those sub segments to understand you know is this working? Is this moving the need? And also looking at what the impact is, because I’m just thinking about it from a sales perspective in some cases, you know the marketing tactics are helping to generate revenue. In some cases it’s velocity. So you know the revenue is there, you’re not getting any new revenue. From your efforts, but you help that revenue, you know come in faster or on the other side retention like the marketing efforts or so that you don’t have churn and you aren’t, you know losing those. People. And so it it’s less about, you know, finding the unique metrics and more about like how do we get more insight from the basics first and then once you’ve really mastered that, that’s where there’s some other opportunity to then look at are there other metrics that we want.
Susan
I think that’s so important because a lot of a lot of the companies I’ve seen. Mean. Or you read. About or even you may have heard from friends. They try and get a bit too fancy and creative with some of their reporting and it it’s almost like they’re trying to make the story fit what they want and not actually show what it truly is. And 100% you need to get back to basics. Put it against also your KPIs to ensure and then explore to see what insights you can get out of it and that’s actually what I do with my team. I’m always straight away going OK what is this telling me? That’s great. You can tell me there’s 4000 transactions, but that’s meaningless without. Has it gone up? Has it gone down? What? What’s made this move? We need those insights to go with it so. That it’s actually going to be able to help. So I make a decision if there needs to be 1.
Brandi
Yes, and and that’s exactly it is really start with the basics. Put some context around it. Let the data tell whatever story the data tell because you know sometimes people do try to make the data tell a good story, but there’s lessons in something sucking, you know. We just had an email programme. That I thought was amazing and the assets like I had some of our target audience. So CMO’s that I knew test out the asset to get some feedback and they were like oh, this is amazing. It’s extremely helpful. I’m going to send it to my team. And so I knew that that was good. But when I looked at the performance of the campaign. I mean, it kind of flopped and that happens like it doesn’t mean the campaign was bad. It doesn’t mean, you know, we were bad marketers or we failed just means it didn’t work in that context. And so we took looked at what was working, where people were dropping off, and we made a change and we had. Couple iterations of making a change and then we found where we started to see traction. And so you know, that is important especially with email or any of your channels. Don’t try to make up a story just. Let the data tell what story you know is what’s actually happening. Let it tell the truth, and you pivot from there because there’s lots that can be learned. And this is where I say email helps to inform the rest of your strategy is we take away from those lessons and we can say, OK, how do we do? Better in this. In our case, the situation was our targeting on our programmatic ads was a bit. And once we figured out how to better target, people responded to the email campaign and the asset. And so it’s like I could have thought like, ohh, our email programme is bad. When that wasn’t the case, you gotta look at everything in context.
Susan
Exactly. And I think so many people also can sometimes jump at shadows. And not even think that, OK, we’ve just got to make a pivot here or a small. Increase in budget or decrease in budget, whatever it could be, or maybe change the Coms a little bit. Here they just start jumping and going ohh we’ve got it and some examples I’ve seen increase the discount or give away more. They don’t actually give it a chance to pivot and try in those different industries areas. All those different avenues that you could test before you actually go, you know what this does suck. We need to move on.
Brandi
Yeah, I agree completely.
Susan
Do you have any other examples of campaigns that you’re able to share, either unsuccessful or successful?
Brandi
Yes, of course. There’s always lots of them. I’ll start with unsuccessful and honestly most unsuccessful campaigns I see have one consistent thing in common, and that is generic targeting.
Susan
Like was sung before.
Brandi
Yes. And I mean, I could probably rattle off 10 different examples. Of client campaigns that have not gone well. That were related to targeting and so you know, that’s kind of the bottom line, but I’ll give you another example of a really good campaign and one that pulls in the multiple channels together. And so how do? And where they had developed this big white paper, it was like, very meaty, very thought leadership focus like it was a big deal they, you know, anchored a lot of things on this. And so they ran multiple top of funnel channels. So they did some programmatic, some organic social. They had, which I guess now would be called an influencer. Wasn’t then. But you know, they had a third party that was helping to promote it. So multiple things running to get people to download this white paper. So single call to. And then once they downloaded the White Paper, there was a nurture campaign. So email, nurture that was not focused on driving a sale because someone who you know, someone who downloads a white paper is not raising their hand to say I want to buy something. But what it did was really pick apart. This White Paper, and I mean I think this White Paper was probably 1215 pages like this was like a meaty, meaty thing.
Susan
Nice. Lots of content in it.
Brandi
Yeah. Yes. And so the nurture really broke down. Down into small pieces, some of the key points from the White Paper and the key considerations. So like here’s a point. Here’s what you need to be thinking about related to that point. And if you want to dig into this, go to page 8 or you know whatever. So it referred back to. If this is a thing for you, go back to the White Paper that you already got and they put a link in there just in case you know someone couldn’t find it, so you could always get back to it again. In that time it was ungated and it was one of those things that. The repeat visits to the White Paper. You could tell people were engaged and it was because they very much focused on not what are we selling. And then at the bottom of every email there was some other content that tied to their product. So if someone was interested. You know, they’re putting it in front of them, but the focus of the email, so probably 70% of the email was, you know, the content was in the email. So there wasn’t a real CTA, it was just, this is what the point is. Here’s what you need to think about. Ohh and. If you need the White Paper again, click it or here’s this other stuff if you want some help with you know this sort of thing and the engagement on that email was so high or on all the emails on the campaign was so high because it kept giving people something to think about and they kept going back to that white paper. And so the goal of it really was to drive that engagement and to, you know, position the business as a trusted source. You know, a thought leader, et cetera. And then a certain level of engagement fed them into another campaign that was more nurturing around what they offer. So it’s like if you keep. Engaging with these emails, chances are you do really have this problem. And so now we’re going to start to talk to you a little bit different. And so that is one example of something that works really, really well because it was a very specific audience. Only the people who had downloaded the White Paper, it didn’t focus on the sales. It focused on what that person needed. After taking that action. Gave them enough that they could engage. That could be an indicator that they’d be interested. And so by the time, you know, a sales Rep because they did have BDR’s that those people that went into that second nurturer also went to a BDR. And so at least by that point, they know who the company is. They know they’ve been engaging with these. Emails. It’s not so off. Putting that someone’s reaching out to you trying to get a meeting as opposed to what happens in most places. You download a white paper in 30 seconds later, a sales Rep is calling me how much you want to schedule a demo, and it’s like I didn’t even open the white paper yet. But you know, that’s my rent. It’s so true. Or they.
Susan
Start stalking you on LinkedIn.
Brandi
Yes, that too.
Susan
No, I I think that’s that’s an Absolutely Fabulous example, particularly of moving them into a different funnel stream where it’s now turned into a warm lead from being the cold one over time. It’s built up and become warm. So that even if they’re not interested yet or it’s not the right time, they now can build a relationship with that salesperson. Yes, and they’re not going to be so off.
Brandi
Putting and that’s the goal.
Susan
I love this. Are there any other insights or lessons from your past campaigns that you bring about and actually utilise quite a? Bit in your toolkit.
Brandi
Yes, the one thing is actually not a part of the campaigns, but it is what I call a campaign map. And I do this work with client. It’s it’s always fun coming up with it. You know, we’ve got one internally for for Tegra. I work with clients on it and it is really creating this grid that identifies what are all the email programmes that should exist and what purpose do they serve? When should people go into them? And like mapping out the full thing of in an ideal state. What would this look like? And then from there that is where we put a plan in place of like, where do we start? So based on what’s currently running, you know what the business objectives are, where they may be struggling, you know it may make sense to start in different places for different companies. But then, over time it’s just like, OK, we’re going to knock these two out at the same time when we get those done, we go back and identify what’s the next thing on the campaign map. And what we end up doing with that is building out an infrastructure on the back end that controls who goes into which campaign. So instead of just here’s this audience, we’re going to push them into this thing. We’re doing it really smart and really programmatic in like, you know what this based on what you’ve done. Based on who you are based on what we have to say, this is the next right set of communications for you and going through that process of thinking about what are the different types of communications that should? Exist. What does that map look like? How is it different for prospects versus customers or in some cases, you know personas or industries or geos and like actually fleshing out a real plan that is my secret sauce to how do we get effective with email because then we start thinking about it differently because. For most people, email is an. They’re running something, you know, they do this white paper. They start generating all this and then. And I literally had this happen about a month ago, a client goes, hey, we’ve got this industry report out there. We’ve got about 5000 people that have downloaded it. We just thought about it. We should probably say something else to them. And I’m like. But they downloaded it a month ago. Like even if I created something for you today. Me. Do they even remember that they downloaded it a month ago? It just, you know, it can’t be an afterthought. It has to be like at the time that you’re planning the White Paper, there should be a conversation of. OK, here’s how we’re promoting the white paper. And then here’s the. And then what exactly?
Susan
And like we’re talking about before, it shouldn’t always be the same generic comms as well. You need to think about that segmentation and do they have to be slightly different or do they have to have some more dynamic content from the White Paper within there to make it more interesting as well? So that it is the right content at the right time. Otherwise you’re going to lose them as well.
Brandi
Yeah.
Susan
And that’s probably one of the scariest things I find talking to many businesses. They don’t want to change or do things differently in case of the Unsubs. Have you? Yeah. You’ve come across this as well?
Brandi
Yes, the audible sigh. Unsubscribes are good, and if people don’t want to hear from. You they don’t wanna hear from you like someone who would unsubscribe is someone that’s not gonna buy from you anyway. Yes, you think about it, the average person other than the occasional, I’m so sick of my inbox being full. I’m unsubscribing from everything like I think we do have some rage unsubscribes that happen. But beyond that, most people don’t unsubscribe because FOMO fear of missing out is very real and a lot of times people don’t want to unsubscribe because it’s like, well, what if they send that thing, I might actually want. So I’m just going to stay on the list. So if someone gets to the point where they are like. I don’t want to be on this list. They have already decided that they have 0 interest in what you sell and it’s OK, like everybody you know, says that that movie, he’s just that, not that into you. And like everybody isn’t meant to buy from you. Get those people off your list and focus on talking to the people who care.
Susan
And I think the other liar to that is sometimes they may have redone the purchase and they never ever need to engage again because of whatever the product or service is that. Do sometimes that is actually a natural part of some different kind of company structures with their product that they don’t have repeat purchases. They don’t have the opportunity for upsell or resell or anything like that. It literally is this is it, goodbye. So that that needs to be recognised as well of what type of business you are and what your nurture. Campaigns are to be able to go. Does it make sense?
Brandi
Yeah. And a great B to C example. I had a friend. We were laughing because she doesn’t drink alcohol. However, she bought something for Father’s Day or for her husband or her dad last year. That was like this custom like whiskey making thing. That you can, you know, make your own whiskey. And of course, now she’s on their list and she’s like, this is not like this isn’t my jam. And so she unsubscribed. And it’s like there’s nothing wrong with that. If she ever was in a scenario again, that she needed that kind of thing, she’d probably come back and buy from you. But she doesn’t want your emails day in and day out on, you know, the best whiskies or how to make craft cocktails. Whiskey or whatever. Like she doesn’t drink. And so like, that’s a really simple example of why the unsubscribes are OK, you know, there’s different reasons.
Accurate.
Brandi
And it’s fine.
Susan
And I actually have an example very recently, so I was just helping out this other company. Just give me some advice because of part of my background and I said to them your your company is very one particular type of sex skewed. So it was men skewed, but naturally on your database you’re going to have a lot of females. Maybe you actually need to look at how you segment your database for the communication you do, because I’m sure that woman isn’t going to want to see beard oil every week in the emails. She she’s she’s the gifter. So therefore you need to treat her as the gifter or the main purchaser. Whatever she identifies herself with. I think you need to put on identification. Strategy in when you’re capturing these emails so you know what type of comms because again. I I I don’t know how often men need to buy beard oil. I don’t. Know how long those those tubes? The tubs last for but I’m. I’m sure she’s only buying it once a year for like Father’s Day or a birthday or something as well, so she doesn’t need that weekly reminder.
Brandi
Yeah, it is, you know, and that goes back to like, how do you want to communicate to your? Audience, you have to capture that information because it may be, you know, like capturing gender sometimes can be sensitive, but you could always just ask are you buying for yourself or someone.
Susan
Else exactly and then that.
Brandi
Like doesn’t matter the gender, I mean, cause you think about even a man buying beard oil. If I’m a man, I’m buying beard oil for my father. But I have a clean shaven face. Yes, I am a man. But your beard oil can’t help me.
Susan
Except.
Brandi
And so that is where, you know, sometimes it is about asking the right questions or gathering the right information because you want to get what matters for you to segment. And so some people would default to, oh, I need to capture gender. And it’s like, no, you don’t. Actually need to capture gender. Especially you know we are in like people identify differently and being you know sensitive to these things it’s like it’s not necessary to ask for gender exactly.
Brandi
What ask are you going to use this like if it’s for beard oil, do you have a beard or are you buying for someone with a beard? Doesn’t matter your gender. I could be a woman with a beard, doesn’t matter if is it for me or somebody else. And so yeah, it is gathering the right information so that you can talk to people in a meaningful way.
Susan
Exactly.
Brandi
Is a key part of all types of marketing, but especially Emma.
Susan
Well, and again come down to that unsub. It will help reduce that as well. If you have that strategy in place because you shouldn’t have the fear to ask the right questions up front because it will have a great impact further along where in this case, when they do put through those questions, they’ll have less people dropping off because of the relevant. Email content and hopefully they will see as part of the metrics as you said. Sometimes the emails just are triggered to automatically just type in the email address. They should then see a pickup there as a correlation.
Brandi
Yes, that is my sentiment exactly.
Susan
Wonderful. I know you love this space, but what excites you the most about marketing emails?
Brandi
The possibilities it is so because email is a low cost channel because you know you have the technology and you know it doesn’t have the same doesn’t carry the same price tag like many of the other channels. The possibilities are endless, and so there’s lots of opportunity to experiment. There’s lots of opportunity to test, you know, to try new things, especially with like audiences that are engaged, like that’s the place to, like, try something different. And so. Like you don’t have that with other channels like you know we do do testing on. You know we recommend testing for everything, but you think about even when you’re testing ads, there’s a cost to that. So you kind of got to figure it out quickly. With email you could be testing all year long. You know every email could be a test of some sort. I mean that would be overwhelming, but it could be. And so that’s what gets me really excited is the influence that I know that email has and the possibilities and it it it’s like there’s so many things you could do. To make everything in the business better.
Susan
There, when starting with email and so that’s why I get jazzed about it. Now I feel it and I can. I can see it as well. And your big smile that you’ve got on it because I completely agree with you that email is so important and sometimes is so underutilised, particularly even basic data. You can do magic with it. So I I I love your enthusiasm on emails and I we’re kindred spirit here. I’m loving it.
Brandi
I love it. I love it.
Susan
Well, I have a final question for you. I asked all of my guests. What brand? Any brand in the world best represents you and why?
Brandi
This is a tough one because there are so many brands that I align to, but thinking about what speaks to me most, it is a small company called Passion Footwear and what passion footwear is for those that are not familiar. It is high heels where the soul. And be swapped out so you can have the shoe and it can be a three inch. Heel and then your feet start hurting and you pop that sucker off and it can be a flat or it could be a wedge. And the reason that I really identify with that brand is First off, they’re a fun company. Just if you, you know, they were started by a 23 year old college student. They’re fun. They’re innovative. They solve a problem. You know, I’m very much a problem solver. There and the two other things that I really love about that brand that I identify with is in their mission. They talk about how women always have to choose, like you have to like you think about with shoes. It’s like, am I going to be cute or am I going to be comfortable? Do I want, you know, career or family? Like, there is always this choice. And they have the belief that, you know, women can do it all. And I am kind of that person, like, you know, people are always asking me, like, how do you do it all? Like, you know, how do you do so much? And and then I you know, they are also a high end, but practical brands. So they’re expensive, I mean not like designer expensive, but they’re you know they’re not cheap, but they’re also practical because it’s like one pair of shoes. Yeah, you got you buy 3-4 different heels and you got all these different shoes. In one and so that really I’m fun, I’m upbeat. I try to be innovative. I I’m a problem solver. I do a lot, you know. I believe I can do all the things and I am both high and and practical, so passion for. I.
Susan
Absolutely love it and I I haven’t heard of the name. I’ve heard of. The shoe, so I didn’t know that was the brand with the shoe, but I actually have have seen, I think like YouTube videos and other videos over the years of it. So I know exactly what you’re talking about and they.
Brandi
Yes.
Susan
Are so cute.
Brandi
Yeah, check them out. Like, I mean, I have no affiliation to them, but. I definitely believe in the brand.
Susan
I love it and I love how you’ve connected it to yourself as well. I think that’s absolutely spot on. And I just can’t wait to see pictures. Of you with these different shoes. I’m just going to do a quick round up for everyone as well, which I love to do so this particular podcast is all about the power of email and how you can bring it into your business and actually make magic happen with it. So email should really be treated as central to what you’re doing with all your communication strategies, because it really can glue it all together and continue that. Journey and nurture that journey beyond just the first touch point. It has so much power. If you actually bring in the data and marry that with everything else, it really is that central glue. Now there’s no right or wrong way to do emails test and learn. Learn along the way. Do do different integrations at work and make sure you’re actually looking at your data and segmenting so that could be on personas, geos industry. But it also could be on other metrics that make more sense for your company. Make sure you’re thinking about it more from what your company does when they’re talking. What happens in that journey that should continue past just the first email? What does the salesperson do when they do a demo? Do they actually send out all the details from that demo? And then what can you nurture be on that that you have naturally? That will help nurture a continuing conversation that’s engaging. Think about what marketing is doing as well. How can it be supported and in what ways can you build out your campaign map to make it make more? Sense. B2BB2C they are a bit different, but you can also look at other means of people that are coming through talking to you via email and connecting with you like. Partners. There’s a partner community out there and they’ve got high influence value, so make sure you’re capturing those as well and treating them with the respect that they should get, but also the engagement they need to be able to help with decision making and hopefully bring you up to the forefront and top of mind. Follow up and engagement is huge, particularly if you’ve got a product or service that has renewals, upsell or cross sell because you don’t want to miss out on those opportunities. And email is one of the cheaper channels. So not only is it that glue, it can also help you in the long run as well with the costs that you may have for your marketing budgets too. The key benefits, as Brandy has shared with us. So number one is email makes every other channel better because as I’m calling it, the glue, it just connects it all together. It it’s an area where you can just funnel all the different content you’re getting and nurture and make those campaigns out of there for the future with relevant info at the right time. And two. Email helps to inform your strategy. It helps you with what’s working, what the data is, and data is ultimately key for any type of campaign and strategy, even for businesses. Now, metrics don’t get too fancy with them. Keep it simple. Do if you need unique ones, bring unique ones in, but make sure you get the basics right, particularly about your segmentation and understanding how your subsections work, how they work, and what the impact is. And if there’s any other opportunities that come. Out of it. From the insights that you build from there, then you can get a bit more fancy, but always remember context because you don’t want to go a bit too. I want to fill in the story I want it to make it. Use the data with integrity because that’s how you make sensible business decisions. When it comes to getting that data, sometimes it. Might not look too. Good, but guess what? You can do this magical thing called pivots, and that’s where test and loads come in. This is where you may go to a different industry, maybe change your comms a bit, but look at it as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for the business to improve and you’re learning from it as well. And that’s how you can look for. Your traction and. And bring it about to be something more magical. Unsuccessful campaigns generally come about because you haven’t listened to the data, and you also haven’t looked into how you could make it more dynamic for those users. So try and steer away from a generic as much as possible where it makes sense, because that’s where you bore people and you get those unsubscribes. But. We do not fear unsubscribes because, as we were talking about before, if someone unsubscribes from your newsletter, it’s for a reason. Reason. It’s usually a very good valid reason they don’t need the pro open service. They actually are not interested. They are not engaged. You want an engaged base, so by having those people leave, it’s actually more positive for who you have on your base because that means they are actually wanting to hear what you’re saying and most people. Will stay on because of the fear of missing out. FOMO is real, so make sure you have if you’re going to do a nurture campaign, you continue giving those excellent little golden Nuggets along the way so they do have that fear of missing out, particularly if it’s more of a nurture camp. And I do love the example that Brandy gave of that where you might use a white paper, for example, and then you do a nurture campaign out of that where every follow up email is more about 70% on the learning, hey, this is something you might want to consider. Here’s the White Paper to read it on this page and then a little bit at the bottom about, hey, these are our services if you need help, we’re here. But using the data from people clicking through to then create another email funnel of warm leads, that’s how you can get better engagement and that’s how you’ll be able to be more successful with your email campaigns and bring it together. As the glue. I really love the idea of the campaign map where you grid out the purposes of all your emails when people should be moving into different email streams and the ideal state you want to do. Start off with where do you start? What’s the basic and then build from there and look at what your objectives are and also where you’re struggling because their areas you probably should start ticking off first. Use the whole prior Rule 8020 and then start working through there, but behaviour will tell you a lot of that and that’s why game data is key. Lastly, I just want to end on nurture. Emails are a form of nurture. They are the glue. They how everything comes together and brand has done a great job in doing that and sharing that with us today about how you can do it in your business and how you can continue it so that you’ve got those ongoing conversations in such a positive way with your base. How did I go Brandy.
Brandi
Great. I am impressed that you were able to recap that much so quickly.
Susan
I do love all my guests and I love to learn. As we’ve talked about before. So I think there was, there’s just so many insights about emails that you’ve uncovered here for us all. So we’ll be able to have a lot of takeaways here to be able to bring into our own businesses and make them flourish even better.
Brandi
Well, I have enjoyed.
Susan
Thank you so much, Brandy and everyone. Don’t forget to check out her podcast. Revenue rehab is on all good platforms, so make sure you look up that it’s perfect for chief marketing officers. Chief revenue officers, it is transparent. She is entertaining as hell. There are hundreds of conversations there to develop a collective. Solution but also heaps of takeaways for those bigger challenges faced by your revenue team. Not just work, but also the personal ones that creep in too. I will add that link to the show notes. Don’t forget the book as well. I already mentioned that will be in the. Show. Notes to anything else to.
Brandi
Add Brandy. No. Again. Thank you so much for having me. I have truly enjoyed this discussion.
Susan
Thank you so much all. Bye. Thanks for everyone tuning in to more to marketing. Don’t forget to subscribe for more insights. Fabulous guests at any comments you’d like along the way and I’ll talk to you next time. More to marketing.