0:00: I was wondering who rates birthday email negatively. 

 0:03: You know, it’s so exciting. 

 0:04: You get a birthday email and a discount code. 

 0:06: So that’s so awesome that you had that ability to collect what’s negative about it and use that to improve it to such a degree. 

 0:15: 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. 

 0:21: Every other week, we’ll talk to an email expert about an experiment they ran. 

 0:25: 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. 

 0:32: I’m Nikki Elvas, the copywriter behind winning emails for 8 and 9 figure sassin e-commerce brands like Shopify, For Sigmatic, and Sprout Social. 

 0:39: 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. 

 0:46: Ready to make inspiration tactical? 

 0:48: Let’s go. 

 0:49: First, let’s read today’s email. 

 0:51: Just a quick note that if any of this copy seems a little rough, it is translated from Belgian, so it’s just a Google translate of the email that he sent over. 

 0:59: So, if some of it feels a little wonky, that’s why. 

 1:02: OK, onto the email. 

 1:05: Hip Pip, it’s almost here, especially for you. 

 1:08: €5 discount. 

 1:10: Yay, it’s almost your birthday, Asper. 

 1:13: So have you made plans to celebrate? 

 1:15: Whatever you do? 

 1:16: We have some fun suggestions to treat yourself to, especially for your birthday. 

 1:21: We would also like to give you a €5 discount on your next order when you spend €50 or more. 

 1:26: This unique promo code is valid for 14 days after receiving this email. 

 1:30: Happy birthday in advance, and of course, have fun shopping. 

 1:34: Host a dinner party at home. 

 1:35: Here you’ll find everything you need to impress your guests in style. 

 1:38: Yes, I do. 

 1:40: Have a good night’s sleep, relax and enjoy some me time under the sheets with this top selection. 

 1:45: OK, I’ll stay in bed. 

 1:47: Shop with promotions. 

 1:48: Here you’ll find all our current promotions and discounts. 

 1:51: OK, I’ll go for it. 

 1:53: How to redeem your discount? 

 1:54: After shopping, go to your shopping cart, Enter your promotional code and click add. 

 1:59: You will immediately see whether the discount has been deducted. 

 2:02: I am taking advantage of this deal. 

 2:05: What do you think of this email? 

 2:06: We’d love to hear your thoughts. 

 2:07: Good, can be better. 

 2:10: Jasper, thank you so much for joining. 

 2:12: Tell us who you are and what you do. 

 2:14: Thank you for having me. 

 2:14: So my name is Jasper von Laden. 

 2:16: I’m an email marketing and CRM strategist from Belgium. 

 2:21: I also do public speaking trainings and stuff like that, but I specialize in email and CRM for the last 12 years already, and I have worked at some big companies. 

 2:32: My main experience is with big companies in-house from Nestle, where I work for. 

 2:37: Brand Nescafe Dolce Gusto. 

 2:39: Oh yeah. 

 2:40: Also, for little, the retailers. 

 2:43: I don’t know if you know it. 

 2:44: It’s actually very well known in Europe and also in the US. 

 2:48: And then I transitioned to Cora Group, which is actually world famous in Belgium. 

 2:53: It’s a retail group, specialized also in food retail, but I worked in the internal agency for a company, so working for more than 27 different brands, helping them, all the marketeers. 

 3:05: And but also on a group level, setting things up in terms of email marketing, CRM. 

 3:10: But in the meantime, talking to marketers, managers and stuff like that. 

 3:15: Actually, we found some kind of a gap in the Belgian agency market. 

 3:20: There are actually no dedicated email marketing and CRM agencies in Belgium. 

 3:24: Wow. 

 3:25: Yeah, there were a few, but most of them got bought up by the bigger agencies, which are like full service agencies. 

 3:32: And also the few that were available were also all independent of tools. 

 3:38: So if you didn’t have, say for instance Clavio or Salesforce, you weren’t able to work with those companies. 

 3:44: And from our experience, my in-house experience is that when you work with those type of full service agencies, what they usually do is they do some kind of a bait and switch, where they come and do the sales talk with the most senior experts and then for the second you sign them on, they do like a bait and switch and they set you up with juniors or several account managers or project managers, and we Experienced that many times. 

 4:10: So actually, me and my ex-colleague from Lidl, we decided to set up our own shop, start our own agency, and it has been really great so far actually. 

 4:20: We’re now working with all freelancer and who’s working for us full time. 

 4:25: We’re looking for a fort right now, so pretty amazing. 

 4:28: That is amazing. 

 4:29: That is so cool that you really identify that gap because there are so many companies that just get lost with the agencies, the size of it and the The management levels, like you mentioned, it doesn’t serve businesses as well as dedicated agencies do, where you really get to work directly with the people that are doing the work. 

 4:47: I love this idea of digging into different cultures and email is email. 

 4:52: It’s the same across the board, but it’s different because you’re talking to different people and emails about building relationships with people. 

 4:57: So it’s very cool to hear the different what your marketplace is like and how it differs from the global marketplace, the US marketplace. 

 5:05: Yeah, well, the thing you mentioned like the difference in locations and cultures and stuff because when I want to go to a conference, I want to learn more about email marketing. 

 5:14: I always need to go to the Netherlands because Belgium, there’s nothing. 

 5:18: Email marketing CRM related. 

 5:21: Like I mentioned, there are almost no agencies which specialize in email, and there are tons in Holland in the Netherlands. 

 5:28: And that’s something we noticed as well. 

 5:30: If agencies are able to drive in the Netherlands, there should be a gap and possibility in Belgium as well. 

 5:37: And if you even look at the level of you, you see some business cases in the Netherlands, they’re from a very high level already, a lot of personalization, a lot of automation, CDPs, AI, the newest things, and in Belgium, it’s not on that level yet. 

 5:53: So you’re bringing that there. 

 5:55: Yeah, yeah, that’s we’re trying to do, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

 5:57: OK, so let’s dig into the email itself. 

 6:00: So you mentioned that it’s 56 years old, something like that, but that it still stuck with you. 

 6:05: So what do you love about it? 

 6:07: What sticks with you? 

 6:08: Tell us the story. 

 6:09: Well, it’s a very simple birthday flow, but the story behind it, it’s actually a company I used to work for at Core Group, one of the brands, and they didn’t have any automation because they had the idea, they, the tools they had didn’t allow any of it. 

 6:26: Oh. 

 6:26: They thought they didn’t have the proper data and stuff like that. 

 6:30: For some things, they were right actually, because when I started, I found a lot of disorganized data infrastructure that the company had a lot of large systems, legacy systems, which resulted in the data was scattered all around. 

 6:44: The quality wasn’t really good, and the tool itself was very difficult to navigate with. 

 6:51: And when they tried to set it up, this project with an external agency, they got a quote, an estimate to set this up, only the technical side of it for about €32,000 which was just crazy. 

 7:07: Yeah, just only the technical side, it was just crazy and a lot of organizational hurdles as well. 

 7:14: Because there was so much things which were scattered. 

 7:17: Nobody actually knew how it was set up, where the data was, so it was really intense just to find everything, to get everything connected and It took about 6 months just to know all the systems to know all the data connections, and by that time we already had a new email template, so we’re actually able to get it out very quickly and it was just a simple birthday campaign, very simple. 

 7:45: Just a week before your birthday, you want to send out an email with a discount code and just highlighting a few of your categories, and that’s it. 

 7:53: But the thing we also included, which is actually the most valuable thing and actually still remember it to this day, is that we incorporated customer feedback, email sentiments, possibility in the email. 

 8:05: You’ve probably seen it multiple times already with a thumbs up, thumbs down, those things, and we’ve been gathering data at that time for a few months already in the standard marketing mails, but we haven’t implemented it yet in the automated emails. 

 8:20: And then after a few months when the campaign was live, we looked at the data on all email marketing metrics. 

 8:28: Everything was really great and open rate was much, much higher. 

 8:32: The click through rate was much, much higher, and even it resulted in a lot of sessions. 

 8:37: The conversion rate was high and the revenue was amazing, but at that point we didn’t have a benchmark yet, so we didn’t really know. 

 8:45: We only had the marketing meals. 

 8:46: If it was good or not, our campaign. 

 8:49: And then when we dug a little bit deeper, we saw that our sentiment score, like the thumbs up, thumbs down, was at 5.7% when our normal sentiment score at the marketing meals was at least 7.2. 

 9:05: So we saw, yeah, that there’s something going on, something really wrong with the. 

 9:09: and then we dug into the qualitative data. 

 9:12: So that’s always the most valuable thing, right? 

 9:15: It’s not about the score, score can fluctuate. 

 9:18: It’s like an MPS score. 

 9:19: It doesn’t say anything, but it can indicate a trend, of course, but you always have to give the customer or the user an open question where they can answer what was wrong, what was good, and then the gold is actually in those answers. 

 9:33: And we found out that people who responded negatively on the email that they had a few difficulties with knowing on which category the discount was available, how long it was still available, all the other exclusion rules, and also how to use the promo codes. 

 9:50: Even though you’re an e-commerce website, you think people would be knowledgeable enough to know how to use a simple discount code, but This e-commerce company actually had target audience. 

 10:02: It was quite high at that time. 

 10:04: I think the average age was above 54 or something, which was actually quite high, and that actually explains why some people find it a bit more difficult. 

 10:15: Yeah. 

 10:15: So we went back to the drawing board and started. 

 10:18: Optimizing the email after 3 months. 

 10:21: And what we did was optimize the design because what we wanted to do, and that’s also something I tried to implement with my customers already, is try to go with some type of an MVE. 

 10:32: It’s like minimum viable product, but I call it minimal viable email. 

 10:36: That’s great. 

 10:37: Just try to make it as functional as possible, reliable, usable, but not the best of the best, but just get it out, learn from it and iterate. 

 10:48: That’s the thing I tried to implement. 

 10:50: And that’s what I did with this campaign for the first time, and it actually worked out. 

 10:55: So we optimize the design. 

 10:57: We made the copy much more clearer. 

 10:59: All the things, the information. 

 11:01: And they needed the insecurities they had, we addressed them in the copy and then we also included a step by step process. 

 11:09: It’s fairly simple if you think about it. 

 11:11: How do you use the online discount code to your shopping cart, add the promo code and just go for the payment. 

 11:17: It’s fairly easy, but it actually worked very good. 

 11:21: And after 3 months again, we did a reevaluation and we We saw that in terms of the email metrics, not much has changed, but the email sentiment went from 5.7 in the start to 8.7 in the second version. 

 11:36: Nice. 

 11:36: So a really good uplift in the sentiment, but the biggest win was, of course, the uplift in conversion rate. 

 11:44: The conversion rate had an uplift of 63.8%. Which is actually huge if you think about it. 

 11:52: That is so cool. 

 11:53: There’s so much here. 

 11:54: The first thing is, I was wondering who rates birthday email negatively, you know, it’s so exciting. 

 11:59: You get a birthday email and a discount code. 

 12:01: What would be the negative ratings? 

 12:02: So that’s so awesome that you had that ability to collect what’s negative about it and use that to improve it to such a degree. 

 12:11: I love the idea of the MVE. 

 12:13: It’s so great because it’s so true. 

 12:15: That you have a hypothesis, you want to test it and see, is it working? 

 12:19: Is it not? 

 12:20: And then in this case, it’s so clear that it was not working. 

 12:24: You needed some changes and you’ve got those changes and now it’s working great. 

 12:28: Yeah, and if you look at the feedback, it were actually all minor issues, minor points of friction with the customer, but when you add them all up, it’s actually a lot of friction you have introduced in something that should have been a fun experience, but you just Unintentionally add too much friction and that’s the power of customer feedback with the last podcast I listened to was with Rand Fishkin, and he mentioned the same thing, right? 

 12:51: He was talking about the power of customer feedback and just talking to your customer, your subscriber. 

 12:56: That’s so, so valuable. 

 12:58: And actually, I’ve given a talk about asking questions to your customer, but in terms of customer feedback, but also asking questions in terms of getting more data from your customer. 

 13:08: And people are actually willing to share their personal data and actually willing to give feedback if the value exchange is clear and if you’re just open about it, open on improving and why you’re asking all those questions, they’re very, very willing. 

 13:24: Yeah, it’s an amazing thing to see, you know, that there are so many companies who are scared to ask for feedback and the customers are just totally willing to give them this gold on a silver platter. 

 13:33: And so many times we get to see things that our customers give us that we would never come up with ourselves. 

 13:40: When you showed me the AB test, when I saw the thing at the bottom with the directions of how to use the coupon code, I was kind of, why doesn’t everybody know. 

 13:48: Know how to use a coupon code, but no, your audience did not know how to use a coupon code and that was very valuable to include in the email for them and you saw it in the conversion rate. 

 13:58: So it’s so important to talk to them and to understand because we’re not them. 

 14:02: They’re their own unique audience. 

 14:04: Yeah, totally true. 

 14:05: Like I mentioned, our target audience was a little older than 50 years old and I’ve read some feedback from a customer. 

 14:12: Who was actually 88 years old, an elderly woman, and she wrote like a whole letter in the feedback, and it was so heartwarming. 

 14:20: And then when I read it, I have to think about those customers as well. 

 14:25: At that time, I was 26, 27. 

 14:27: You’re not your target audience, and that’s a really good example, and it’s really good to keep you grounded when you read those things. 

 14:34: For sure. 

 14:35: It just reminds me because you You said you want to listen to more of the podcast, the Liquorice.com one. 

 14:39: I think it was like the 4th episode. 

 14:42: That one’s also great for customer feedback and just like, whoa, people giving tons of feedback. 

 14:46: That was a really, really fun episode. 

 14:48: The feedback they got was just astounding. 

 14:51: OK, going back to when you first started working with this client, you mentioned that the tool was very unwieldy. 

 14:56: Did you recommend migrating or did you just stay with it? 

 14:59: Well, it was working at Cora, so it was actually I never recommended it because I knew I had no chance of succeeding in the 1st 5 years. 

 15:10: So that’s also something I try to do as well when there’s not a lot of opportunity to change in a in a fast or it’s not. 

 15:19: 100% very, very necessary. 

 15:21: Just try to get by with what’s at hand. 

 15:24: And that’s what I hear quite a lot, even at that company as well, that managers have like a technology driven approach. 

 15:32: They’re focused too much on technology and the tool cannot do this and this tool cannot do that or that data is not integrated and they start off with doing or starting with a big migration and complex connection projects. 

 15:47: And by the time they get anything done, it’s 1 or 2 years later and they haven’t realized anything, and then the budget dries up and problems start evolving and we always try to focus on a more strategy marketing driven approach and just try to get as much done as possible with the things which are at hand and then just evolve from there. 

 16:11: I’m sure your clients really appreciate that, that they don’t have to adopt something new right off the bat and that it benefits you because you really can build that trust and show your expertise and the ROI even so that the budget is not drying up because you keep bringing more money in and then down the line saying, OK, you know what, actually, this would be very beneficial if we did migrate. 

 16:33: Yeah, that’s great. 

 16:34: Working with what you have because most things are workable. 

 16:38: It’s just it might be more headache. 

 16:40: Yeah, and then when you just focus on the strategy, what you can achieve, what needs to be done, and just prioritize really good set up those milestones, that’s also really important, set up milestones so people have the feeling of momentum when something is moving, that’s always the best feeling you have within a project because when you’re stuck in Technical difficulties with data connections or tool connections or whatever, something is out of your control, that’s when you kind of lose all hope and that’s the worst situation you can be in. 

 17:13: Especially as a new vendor, you know, you want to build that trust beforehand. 

 17:17: Oh yeah, yeah, of course. 

 17:18: Going back to the sentiment ratings, you mentioned that you put them in the newsletters. 

 17:21: So how did you use that information with the feedback that you got from the newsletters, the non-automated campaigns? 

 17:28: What did you take from them? 

 17:30: Was it also just taking the survey data that they responded with, or did the actual number give you information as well? 

 17:37: Well, the actual number, yeah, at those campaigns, the qualitative data which comes out of it is not really that useful because it’s mostly the same newsletters, same newsletters or marketing mails. 

 17:49: It’s not the most valuable, but it shows you a trend when you have different types of campaigns sometimes. 

 17:54: Have a more inspirational email, then you have a promotional email, then you have theme-based topical email, and then you can see different sentiments and how people respond upon them. 

 18:04: Another example is when the company wanted to focus a lot of sustainable or sustainable and durability products. 

 18:12: And that was the thing instead of before it was always all promotional, and we saw that those type of campaigns which focused on durability had the best sentiment score ever, like close to 9.5%, 9.6, it was amazing. 

 18:28: And imagine we had a lot of responses. 

 18:30: Everybody was so, so positive about them. 

 18:32: But the thing is, when we looked down, we looked at the conversion rate, it was the lowest of them all. 

 18:39: So that shows you that there’s a difference between what people say and what they do, right? 

 18:45: Everybody loves durability and sustainability, but most of the people didn’t seem to want to buy those products and they were more action discount driven. 

 18:55: That is so great to have because there’s so much to do with that because you can say, OK, so we should continue talking about the sustainability, but having it more as an ethos and the products, they can fit into. 

 19:09: To there, but we still have to be focusing on the discounts. 

 19:12: Or it could just be that it becomes a branding play where you talk about it as a branding aspect. 

 19:19: It’s so important to know that people care about that and like that, because if you didn’t have the sentiment, you would just see that people were not buying it and say, OK, forget it, we’re just going to pull these items. 

 19:30: Did you take that data and do something with it in terms of specifically with the sustainability? 

 19:34: Well, since then, yeah, we, we try to then do a mix like you mentioned, just keep the sustainability part as a communication in the communication, but more, we, yeah, we found out that the biggest conversion lever was the promotional side of things, but just make those things up and that’s what we try to do. 

 19:53: There’s so much to do with it. 

 19:54: It’s so, it’s so fascinating. 

 19:55: That’s really interesting. 

 19:57: Yeah, there’s so many valuable insights you can gather of customer data, customer feedback. 

 20:01: Yeah, it’s really amazing. 

 20:03: Not only in the short term and just optimizing your campaign, but also in the long term, like I just mentioned, those insights of durability, that’s something that just can, yeah, lead your brand for the next couple of years actually, the type of things. 

 20:15: Yeah, that’s great. 

 20:17: OK, so I’m always fascinated with button copy that is more fun and more emotional or action driven versus just click here or buy now or use your coupon code. 

 20:28: Obviously, there’s time and place for both, but it’s always really fun when you can. 

 20:32: Include button copy that is more interesting, like, for example, you have, yes, I do, and OK, I’ll stay in bed and OK, I’ll go for it, which is really fun. 

 20:40: Have you seen just either across the board with all your different branding or with this specific brands? 

 20:46: Have you seen different times where you like to use certain kinds where it doesn’t work as well? 

 20:52: How do you determine when you’re going to play with button copy? 

 20:56: Yeah, it’s a good question actually because I’ve tested this quite a lot of times because when you work with copywriters which aren’t really conversion copywriters, they tend to be very creative and the copy they do. 

 21:11: And I tested numerous times and actually what I found out is that the boring type of button CTA copy actually has the best results actually. 

 21:21: sometimes in the campaigns you see, it’s not the boring type of copy, it’s just, it’s a bit more creative and that’s What we try to do in more the automated type of flows that there you can get a little bit more creative, in my opinion, but instead of the weekly standard emails you have, in those cases, they need to be very scannable and very clear in my opinion. 

 21:41: And then we revert to the more standards type of copy. 

 21:46: Yeah, I’ve seen that too, and it’s so disappointing every time. 

 21:49: , but I like this balance of you have that button at the top that gives them the very clear option to go by. 

 21:58: And then the little categories, like that’s a good place to slip in the creativity where it’s additional options. 

 22:04: It’s driving to the same place, but it’s just an opportunity to have a little more fun with it and build that brand. 

 22:09: So it’s a nice balance. 

 22:11: I was hoping you would say, oh, you know, I can always be creative with this kind of brand. 

 22:15: It’s like, OK, those are my new clients. 

 22:20: No, I wish, no, the main button, which is actually a bit more standard and a little bit less creative, is it in a button, but the other ones, which are actually a second, the secondary buttons, which actually just our text links. 

 22:33: You’re not confined to the size of the button, otherwise you sometimes you can see a really huge button. 

 22:38: But when it’s a text. 

 22:41: then it’s also a bit more suited to be more creative, in my opinion. 

 22:45: Yeah, it’s following that copy that it’s just like continuing the narrative that you started, but that’s a great point that just visually, it just looks better. 

 22:54: You’re not confined to the button. 

 22:55: That’s great. 

 22:56: All right, so what is your favorite brand to call email inspiration from? 

 22:59: , there are a few brands, but actually I’m gonna pick a Belgian brand. 

 23:05: It’s not a customer, full disclosure. 

 23:08: so, so who are they if they’re not using you and there’s nobody else. 

 23:14: Maybe they’re working mostly with an in-house team, so yeah, they’re doing a really good job and as I’m from Belgium, obviously love chocolate. 

 23:21: Especially dark chocolate and it’s from a Belgian brand. 

 23:25: It’s called Neuhaus, and it’s just Belgian chocolate. 

 23:29: It’s more premium chocolate and what they do. 

 23:32: They obviously don’t market and promote too many or any discounts, not at all. 

 23:39: And what they do is, like I mentioned, a very more premium type of brand, and they are able to show that in a very elegant way in their design, in their copy, and most of those brands would just make it a very image-based email, only images, but they use it really well. 

 23:56: In their email design, it’s very accessible as well using best practices, and they are able to translate the brands really well to email. 

 24:06: You have a lot of brands which are not really capable of doing the transition to email. 

 24:10: Those emails tend to be boring or only promotional, but they are very capable of getting the emotions into the email, telling the story behind this type of chocolate, who made it. 

 24:21: And then the country of origin of this ingredient, it’s just wonderful, the storytelling behind it and the craftsmanship. 

 24:28: I really love it. 

 24:29: It’s always amazing. 

 24:31: Luxury brands really do struggle with email. 

 24:33: It’s such a good point that you’re making, that it’s rare to find a luxury brand that does it well across the board, being able to both tell their story and represent the brand well and also convert things because some of them will do the job well in terms of the story. 

 24:46: storytelling, but then they don’t actually make the conversions because all they’re doing is the storytelling. 

 24:51: And it’s always fascinating as well when there’s not that crutch of discounting and deadlines and all the things that make it so much easier for us to do our jobs, they have to do it without that. 

 25:03: How do they do it? 

 25:04: It’s OK. 

 25:04: I’m excited. 

 25:05: I don’t, I’m not going to be able to read them all because I don’t speak, but it’ll be fun. 

 25:09: Maybe Google Translate will help me. 

 25:11: Yeah, but it’s an international brand, so I think they have the option to do it if your French is good, but I think they have an English version as well, so. 

 25:20: You’ve heard the joke. 

 25:21: If you speak one language, you’re American. 

 25:23: , no, I actually haven’t. 

 25:25: No, OK, I killed the punchline. 

 25:27: It’s what do you call someone who speaks two languages, so they’re bilingual. 

 25:32: What about someone who speaks more than two languages? 

 25:34: They’re multilingual. 

 25:35: What about someone who speaks one language? 

 25:36: They’re American. 

 25:39: It hits hard. 

 25:39: It hits hard. 

 25:42: I killed the joke. 

 25:43: I should have like should have built it up. 

 25:49: All right, awesome. 

 25:49: This was amazing. 

 25:50: There were so many amazing insights and just really interesting perspectives. 

 25:55: So thank you very much for joining. 

 25:57: OK, great. 

 25:58: happy you liked it. 

 25:58: It was my pleasure. 

 25:59: Thanks for joining me for email story time. 

 26:02: If you enjoyed today’s story, give this podcast a review so email marketers like you can have more fun with email. 

 26:08: See you next week when we dig into this story’s takeaways.