Relationships at scale:

0:00: And I think this is a cool way of taking that new reality from ecom and applying it to SAS by adding their perspectives to their emails. 

 0:07: Not only is the team creating content that’s valuable and can influence the audience’s marketing or business decisions, but it also signals a commonality that they can get behind and feel connected to building long term loyalty. 

 0:19: Welcome to email swipes where we peek behind the scenes at the emails that catch your attention and earn their place in your swipe file. 

 0:26: Every other week, we’ll talk to an email expert about an experience they ran. 

 0:29: And in the following episode, we’ll dive into the strategies and methods used in the email so you can inform and inspire your own email work. 

 0:36: I’m Nicky Elvas, the copywriter behind winning emails for eight and nine figure Sass and e commerce brands like Shopify for Stigmatic and Sprout Social. 

 0:44: And I know that hearing the background stories to these emails will help you turn pie in the sky insights into plug and play actions, ready to make inspiration tactical. 

 0:52: Let’s go first, a quick recap of the email we discussed last week that we’ll be digging into today. 

 0:59: Howdy Nikki super quick questions and even a two word answer is appreciated. 

 1:04: Number one, how much value do you get from your free Spark Tour account? 

 1:08: And what are you using it for? 

 1:10: Number two? 

 1:10: What if anything holds you back from using Spark Tour? 

 1:13: More upgrading your account and, or trying more searches Casey and I read every word you send us and take that feedback to heart. 

 1:20: Oh, and if it’s been a while since you tried spark to good news, we’ve got a bunch of upgrades, more data coverage, a new press tab and enhanced text insights. 

 1:28: Perfect for optimizing your Facebook ad campaigns using in social posts or to inform content strategy. 

 1:33: Give it a spin. 

 1:34: You’ve got 10 free searches every month. 

 1:36: Thanks. 

 1:36: A bundle r Fishkin. 

 1:38: Yes, this is my actual email P S. 

 1:40: If you want any tips on queries to try applying results to your marketing tactics, favorite pasta recipes, et cetera, I’m always happy to help. 

 1:49: I find it so interesting that this episode is back to back with the last main episode where we heard from Alex from Pod Match because there are a couple of similarities and common themes between the two episodes. 

 2:03: The first similarity was when Rand said that in the early days of Maz, he was the voice of the company and that changed as it grew and how he didn’t like losing touch with the customers. 

 2:12: And so he brought that element back when he started Spa Toro. 

 2:15: It reminded me of what Alex said and how he worked really hard to streamline and systematize all the typical founder stuff so that he could stay focused on the stuff that normally doesn’t scale but makes such a difference to the customer experience and community A K A communication. 

 2:29: This in itself was similar to what Rand said about how he makes sure to keep Casey in the loop because one of his regrets for Maz was not keeping the devs in touch with customer feedback and experiences because essentially when growing all the teams begin to lose the connection to the customers and it takes a lot of effort to break down those walls and get things back to feeling super communicative supportive and continue to really listen to their needs. 

 2:52: And this is one reason that email is so powerful because it’s about building those relationships. 

 2:57: It’s about communication. 

 2:58: It’s at scale, but it can feel very personal if done right. 

 3:02: There are a lot of brands that scale email to the point that it does feel scaled. 

 3:06: The tone is very broad in third person. 

 3:08: It’s very designed, it’s very newsletter, it’s coming from the company name rightly. 

 3:12: So because it is essentially a company of communication, not a personal one, but that’s one of the awesome things about email and something that often filters into the flows that we create for clients. 

 3:22: There are so many types of emails to send. 

 3:24: You can really keep some of the communications personal. 

 3:27: You could have a person send, say the product updates even while the newsletter feels more corporate or vice versa. 

 3:34: A big company should have company communications. 

 3:37: But it can also and should also have personal ones to a similar end. 

 3:42: I love what Rand said about how he tag teams, the emails with Amanda. 

 3:45: He has backup when he can’t get to them. 

 3:47: And so does she, it’s not all on one person’s shoulders, but it still hits that personal sweet spot. 

 3:53: So take away number one. 

 3:54: If personal email doesn’t feel scalable, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. 

 3:57: Divide emails either by type or by frequency and have some of them come from a person both in sender name and tone person ability. 

 4:05: Brand says that he understands how brands struggle with customer feedback because they’re creating their vision and it’s hard to get up from your head down focus mode and listen to others. 

 4:14: I’ve always heard brands talk about how scary it is to talk to customers, how you have to have humility and vulnerability to solicit customer feedback. 

 4:21: And honestly, it’s the same thing ran just peeled off another layer of understanding for me. 

 4:26: Why is it scary? 

 4:27: Why do you need vulnerability? 

 4:28: It’s hard to hear what customers don’t like when you’ve worked so hard to build something. 

 4:32: It takes humility to listen to their version and say, yeah, my vision wasn’t actually the best version of what this could be. 

 4:38: Those things are what’s hard. 

 4:40: It’s not that the customers are scary. 

 4:41: It’s that what they say makes us face out. 

 4:44: You go and say, hey, we’re not the only right voices in the room. 

 4:48: So takeaway number two flex those humility muscles before talking to customers and maybe consider outsourcing customer interviews or feedback reviews. 

 4:56: Gosh, I am always so surprised at how many of our takeaways have like a mental shift component to them. 

 5:01: But that’s relationships, right? 

 5:02: And email done, right is nothing but building relationships and this is why it’s so refreshing that this bar to our team adds their perspectives to their emails. 

 5:11: Yes, they’re communicating something dry and periodic like product updates or whatnot, but they’re doing it as a conversation and that makes all the difference. 

 5:18: There’s a big movement within the ecommerce world that you’ll hear all the time, value driven brands, mission driven brands, ethical brands. 

 5:25: There’s a shift in consumer buying behavior. 

 5:27: Shoppers are no longer looking for just the best product for needs. 

 5:31: They’re also looking to give their dollars to brands that resonate with them value wise. 

 5:35: And I think this is a cool way of taking that new reality from Ecom and applying it to SAS by adding their perspectives to their emails. 

 5:42: Not only is the team creating content that’s valuable and can influence the audience’s marketing or business decisions, but it also signals a commonality that they can get behind and feel connected to building long term loyalty. 

 5:55: So takeaway number three customers are value driven. 

 5:58: This shows itself most obviously in practical things like a brand taking steps to reduce carbon emissions or donating to certain causes. 

 6:05: But email can be a great place to take common values a step further. 

 6:08: Again, email is about building relationships. 

 6:10: It’s a space to have the conversations around the values, to dive deeper into the w to create dialogue and community versus just doing the value. 

 6:20: I love, love, love, how focused the spark tour team is on the actual customer life cycle. 

 6:26: Understanding the customer life cycle is so critical for email, especially s a behavioral emails, but really all emails, I mean, just think about replenishment emails and ecom or even something as simple as asking for a customer review. 

 6:38: You have to understand when the customer is ready to give a review, to get that review. 

 6:43: And even beyond conversions, the team is focused much more on overall customer experience than on getting each conversion. 

 6:49: And that’s going to have a really positive long term effect. 

 6:52: There’s another sass that I use periodically. 

 6:55: There are many, many users who use it consistently, but I’m pretty sure there’s a large subset that uses it the way that I do. 

 7:01: They actually even have a really great downside. 

 7:03: They understand why people cancel temporarily and tap into that. 

 7:07: They know we pay for it when we need it. 

 7:09: We’re happy with it. 

 7:10: We come back to it when we need it. 

 7:12: So I have to say it is really frustrating that they never send any billing emails. 

 7:17: And I’m not talking billing reminders. 

 7:18: I’m talking billing invoices. 

 7:21: I have to go into my dashboard to get my invoices and receipts. 

 7:24: They don’t even tell me that I was billed. 

 7:26: So yeah, maybe they get a few extra bucks from people who don’t remember to cancel on time when they’re really not in a period of use. 

 7:32: But that just doesn’t create a great customer experience. 

 7:35: It would be so much more lucrative to tap into the actual needs either by creating features that retain customers around even in their gap months or by creating communication that reminds them to come back when they’re ready, which is why I found this email so smart and reached out to RAND in the first place. 

 7:50: It wasn’t just a feedback email, it was a win back email. 

 7:52: They were trying to understand how people use the product, what they need it for what they do or don’t like. 

 7:57: But also to let me know that I might want to try it again. 

 8:00: And that’s takeaway number four, learn your customer’s life cycle. 

 8:03: It is so so critical to understand, I can’t understate it. 

 8:07: It touches so many elements of human marketing. 

 8:09: It’s like flying blind without it, by the way, if you’re asking why this email doesn’t break the rule of one, each customer is only going to pick one choice. 

 8:17: They will filter out the irrelevant part of the email. 

 8:20: Would it be better to be able to send one choice to one subset and one to the other? 

 8:24: Sure. 

 8:24: But this is a great workaround. 

 8:26: If you don’t have that data, I am the biggest fan of customer research, but it will only show you broadly what your customers are experiencing. 

 8:33: It can’t give you that individual understanding. 

 8:36: In this case, if one specific account isn’t engaging with the software, we don’t know if it’s because they don’t like the U X or if they don’t need it at the moment or if they don’t even know about your new feature that would perfectly suit their needs. 

 8:47: So in this case, we need a workaround. 

 8:49: So take away number five, when we’re facing a personalization idea for an email that can’t be quantified unless we ask them. 

 8:55: This choice idea is a great workaround. 

 8:58: How cool is it that rand fed bias into his email so that he wouldn’t waste time on unhelpful responses. 

 9:04: This reminds me of that email. 

 9:05: I once had to write encouraging cancellations and why it’s important to be careful when swiping. 

 9:10: We can’t just take other people’s emails straight. 

 9:12: We have to make sure we understand them and their goals otherwise they could be doing the worst possible thing for our brand. 

 9:17: So take away number six, listen to email swipes you can’t know why Ran made a decision just by reading their communications and that’s why we have to get the back story here on this podcast. 

 9:27: Ok. 

 9:27: Also because it’s fun and so informative and inspiring. 

 9:31: Ok. 

 9:31: OK. 

 9:31: The real takeaway is to not follow your competition blindly, but to understand deeply why you’re doing what you’re doing. 

 9:38: You know, the whole long versus short debate, we all know that the right answer is to say exactly what you need to say and exactly the amount of words it takes to say it and not a word more or less. 

 9:47: But I am starting to see that non readers or writers have a mental block to seeing something long. 

 9:52: Even if it’s something that engages them, even if it’s content that they want and find interesting, there’s just a point of friction with long, so short might be winning in my book because of that. 

 10:02: Not always, there’s definitely a place for long emails, but take away number seven is that we do need to understand that, read a perspective of impatience and screen fatigue and be concise when it doesn’t detract. 

 10:13: Thanks for Eeking out with me about that email story. 

 10:15: If you enjoyed either of these episodes, you’ll probably enjoy getting my emails. 

 10:19: Plus you’ll never miss another episode, sign up at Nikki albu dot com slash subscribe. 

 10:24: And yes, that link is in the show notes.