Personalized Problems: How Powtoon swiped a hack from their sales rep to increase email opens – and webinar attendance 

0:00: There is promotional and transactional and promotional is very personalized.
0:04: Nice design wording and then we receive a transactional email that might be run even by different team and it’s not personalized even though they have all the data about user.
0:16: So just to support fellow email marketers, it’s, it’s not always our mistake.
0:24: It’s just the way how the companies build.
0:27: 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.
0:34: Every other week, we’ll talk to an email expert about an experiment they ran and in the following episode, we’ll dive into the strategies and methods used in the email so you can inform and it’s by your own email work.
0:44: I’m Mickey Elvas, the copywriter behind winning emails for eight and nine figure Sass and e commerce brands like Shopify for Stigmatic and Sprout Social.
0:51: 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.
0:59: Let’s go first.
1:01: Let’s read today’s email.
1:04: Hey, Anna, just a gentle nudge because we wouldn’t want you to miss out on the chance to add a splash of innovation to your L and D efforts.
1:11: Wednesday the 27th of March at three o’clock GMT 11 o’clock EDT join us and Charlie Moore from Nestle for a live webinar.
1:18: That’s brimming with insights on crafting, engaging learning experiences, brewing success.
1:23: Nestle’s recipe for impactful learning is your ticket to discovering how one of the world’s leading brands utilizes pow tune to create captivating training materials register now hosted by Charlie Moore of Nestle Max Edwards of Cartoon Perk Up.
1:37: Your led strategy insights directly from Nestle’s L and D journey success stories to inspire your own training, endeavors, interactive Q and A session with Charlie Register now preserve your spot now and let’s brew something great together.
1:50: Hope to see you there.
1:51: Max Edwards, head of demand generation, Anna.
1:55: Thank you so much for joining.
1:57: It’s a pleasure to have you on.
1:59: Thank you.
1:59: Thank you so much for inviting me.
2:01: So tell us who you are and what you do.
2:04: My name is Anna Anna Levitin and I lead email and marketing operations at a company called Paun.
2:11: Paun is a visual communication platform.
2:15: We have Power B two C and B B users to create engaging presentations and learning courses.
2:22: I started my career in marketing about 12 years ago and I haven’t started it from emails obviously and I don’t have a degree in emails.
2:35: Does anyone?
2:37: But we should open email university I think it’s a great, that’s a great idea.
2:43: I like it.
2:44: Let’s do it.
2:45: I started working with very classic media, like newspapers, radio TV, commercials.
2:52: So basically everything, what is barely measurable you have opportunity to see but there is less metrics and they are not reliable, being honest.
3:04: So when later on about six years ago I moved to email marketing.
3:10: It’s been such a pleasure that you have a dashboard for each campaign.
3:15: Everything is trackable conversion.
3:17: You know, we’re not going to speak here about attribution, but yet always a hot topic.
3:24: So this is my story and the way how I came initially to marketing is I have a degree in history.
3:33: My major is social anthropology and technology.
3:37: So I spent about seven years talking to people discover their behavior and a passionate about cultures, different religions.
3:45: It’s like always interested me and basically what I was doing with a pen and paper, you know, talking about behavior of different people.
3:55: Now I’m doing with numbers and reports.
3:59: Oh, that’s such a cool way of putting it.
4:01: I know a few people who were anthropologists or anthropologist majors and then moved into marketing and I really like the way of, you know, it’s the people but it’s now the number side of the people.
4:12: That’s very cool.
4:13: So, back to the more traditional media, how did you improve if you didn’t have the metrics to base on or did you just use your gut.
4:22: Did you use consumer feedback?
4:23: How did you work without data?
4:26: So definitely it’s a feedback and it reminds me actually another channel, not email but S MS where we also don’t have a lot of data on how user interacted with our message.
4:39: So when I measured the success of newspapers, I worked with a massive retail and there was a coupon code and user based on the usage of this coupon code, we measure the success of this campaign and of course, it’s a brand awareness if we are talking about like radio or TV, even with email, brand awareness is not something that you can measure.
4:59: So I guess we’re still working with stuff that we can’t measure.
5:03: OK.
5:04: So let’s talk about this email, which is webinar invite, which are always interesting because sometimes they do so well and you just get huge webinar sign ups and sometimes webinar invites don’t do well.
5:15: It also, it looks like this is a recurring webinar that you do every so often.
5:19: So tell me about how often you run webinars and how that fits into your content strategy.
5:23: Yes.
5:23: So webinar for us at pun is a massive channel of new lead.
5:30: We generate a lot of B two B leads on our webinars.
5:33: So our main audience, it’s L and D alone and development professionals, hr internal communications.
5:40: So these departments that need to run trainings for internal employees.
5:46: And we are talking about a targeted group of employees that work for enterprise companies.
5:50: So more than 1000 employees.
5:53: So these are co-hosted copartner webinars.
5:57: We always invite someone either from our customers or from the industry or someone as a L and D trainer, for example.
6:05: So it’s recurrent, they are not correct, but it’s with different personas, different people.
6:11: That’s so cool that you bring on your customers as co-host.
6:15: That’s such a great way of showcasing your customers and building that community.
6:19: That’s genius.
6:20: That’s great.
6:20: We are lucky to have these customers.
6:23: That’s really awesome.
6:24: So is your list typically for these invites?
6:27: Are they they typically cold audiences or this is like your people that signed up for some other reason.
6:32: So we have several types of list.
6:35: These are usually our current users and our leads.
6:40: So these users that were either interested in the product or in our previous events.
6:46: And also we target our self sort audience that use the same platform but with slightly different capabilities.
6:54: But based on their on boarding segmentation, we know that they also work in London Development Department or hr department.
7:02: So they might benefit from these webinars.
7:05: Well, because on these types of webinar, we not always present our tool, we’re not always only speaking about Pato, but we talk about the challenges.
7:16: And later on, I will share a trick how actually challenges help us to have a higher open rate for emails.
7:25: OK?
7:26: I can’t wait.
7:28: That’s such a great way of segmenting that you can include both plans and both types of customers where because it’s not just talking about the platform, it’s talking about their pain points.
7:37: That’s very cool.
7:38: Ok, so what’s your role in these emails?
7:40: Are you designing them?
7:41: Are you writing them?
7:42: Are you coming up with the content for them?
7:44: How do you and what’s your team like?
7:47: So this email are produced by marketing operations team.
7:51: So marketing operations team here at Pal Toon is not too big.
7:54: We have 2.5 people saying there is a, there is a shared source, everything is fine or worse of front end developer.
8:04: So idea comes from the partnership department or from the man department or sales or account managers.
8:12: whenever we have a person that we have a connection with and we would like to invite them to our webinar and then we have a brief from our content team, they brief creative team.
8:24: Creative team comes up with the design of the email of the banners lending page because usually there are several assets that we need for webinar.
8:36: So of course, there are several invite emails.
8:38: These are examples that I’m talking about.
8:41: There is also a replay email and then like S D R outreach and of course lending page and a replay page.
8:51: And once marketing operations, once we have it, we build all together like copy of email, images, connect to make sure that we have leads in our C R M in our E S P and we have all the data collected, all the pieces of the webinar and then you actually have to run the webinar too.
9:13: That’s great.
9:14: So this is followed up by individual S D R outreach to attendees.
9:18: Yes, correct.
9:19: So during the webinar, we like to run polls and this is I think could be done in any webinar tool you use.
9:27: So if it’s a co-hosted webinar, we might have two different solutions.
9:31: So we ask users which solution they are interested in to hear more.
9:35: And based on this data, we automatically have this data in one of the fields in ours.
9:41: So we can filter the list based on if they are interested in our solution or in another solution or they’re not interested at all.
9:49: And based on this, there is a different sequence.
9:52: That’s great.
9:53: I love when webinar flows are not just because they’re such amazing lead magnets because they’re so personal.
9:59: They really, it’s amazing content because it’s custom created for the audience.
10:03: It’s great guest speakers usually and really amazing experts that you can access.
10:08: And then it’s also just that really personal touch, you’re like watching the brand and you’re really interacting with the brand and building that connection.
10:14: So when brands take advantage of the flows and do the outreach and do the whole thing, it’s like, yes, it’s so beautiful and the webinars.
10:25: a great source of reusable content.
10:28: It can be blog post, it could be a short video for social media on demand pieces.
10:34: It could be included later on an inertia flow.
10:37: It’s also great for customer research because you’re hearing the questions that people are asking when they’re using your software or, you know, use cases that they’re thinking about.
10:46: And so it’s really, they’re just good stuff.
10:49: Exactly.
10:49: This actually brings me to the tip that I mentioned in the beginning, that sort of asking a simple questions, gives us a lot of information.
10:59: So what we started to do as an experiment and now it’s best practice for us.
11:04: So on the registration form, we have several fields.
11:08: And of course, we know that the more fields we add, the less the conversion, the lower the conversion registrants we have.
11:15: But yet we added a field about.
11:18: So we ask users, what is your biggest challenge and then the question about the topic.
11:23: So for example, what is your biggest challenge of creating engaging content for your learners or implementing A I technology in your learning development process?
11:34: And it’s not a mandatory field, but however, we receive a lot of responses.
11:40: So we send usually the first invite email two weeks prior the event and then we have some data.
11:47: So when we are sending the second invite email, it might be to the same audience or a different audience.
11:53: Depends on the whole email schedule.
11:56: So we use these phrases exactly how they are from the feedback we got from users.
12:02: So for example, users can say my team doesn’t have time or I don’t have budget for technology.
12:12: And then I twist it a little bit with the help of copywriting team.
12:16: And you say want to know how brand I have an approval for budget for learning technology or help your employees to find time to learn.
12:27: It’s such a great hack.
12:28: How did you land on this idea?
12:30: We have been brainstorming with our team and actually our marketing fleet.
12:34: He came up with this idea because we used to use these responses in an S D R L twit.
12:41: And then we thought, why not to use it prior to personal outreach?
12:45: Even in the second invite and reminder.
12:48: And what I noticed, first of all that, yes, we receive a lot of replies and more or less, there are like three main topics so I can choose subsequent header based on these three main challenges.
13:01: That’s so cool.
13:02: I would argue that, I mean, you tell me from the data that you see, but that it’s actually more effective pre webinar because people are in a very exploratory phase at that point, they’re like, should I check out this webinar?
13:14: Should I not?
13:15: Whereas when someone reaches out to you and says like, hey, you have this objection, obviously, it’s very powerful, but there is a little bit of that hesitation to engage and talk to that salesperson and see because it’s a bigger step.
13:26: Am I committing to this tool versus, am I just committing to this webinar?
13:30: So I love that you took that and moved it over to a place where it can be even more effective.
13:35: That’s very cool.
13:36: Yes.
13:37: And also regarding their like S D R outreach prior to the webinar.
13:41: Also, I’m not a great supporter of that.
13:43: I mean, there are different cases.
13:45: So whenever we have invite also on linkedin, so we create a linkedin event, but we don’t have a linkedin live.
13:54: We have it like the registration of the different landing page.
13:56: So we just remind users those who click that they would like to attend, remind them to actually register on the landing page and this is a great start of the conversation because they might answer.
14:09: Oh, like unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend.
14:12: And in this case, we’re saying, oh, you will receive a on demand anyway, so register.
14:18: So it’s a great starting the conversation.
14:20: Yeah, that’s cool.
14:21: Where it’s not just this annoying pitch, it’s value first.
14:25: I just want to say that it’s so fun.
14:26: All the little terminology throughout the email, the brewing and the other little food.
14:31: It’s great fun.
14:32: They’re just nice touches that get people like in the mood.
14:35: And also more than that I feel like as much as social proof and logos are people are magnetized to them, sometimes you miss them.
14:43: So when you put in these kinds of puns throughout the email, like it just, it makes it so much clear, it just, it’s repetition.
14:49: So you just pay more attention.
14:51: You’re like, oh, wait, where is it from?
14:52: Yeah, Nestle.
14:52: OK.
14:53: Got it.
14:53: OK.
14:54: This is Nestle.
14:55: So it’s a smart move on that end too.
14:57: So that’s your copywriting team doing that.
14:59: Yes.
14:59: Our cooperating team is coming up with a text and again, if it’s with a customer or if the webinar is with one of our customers, so we can actually use some numbers and we can link it to the case study that we had and very specific cases.
15:17: But even though if it’s with some other tool that beneficial that useful in this field, so we also can can show the main challenges and how different teams solving them through using our tools.
15:33: Yeah, because you can learn from all different platforms and technology and use cases and just apply it to yours.
15:40: So did you see a significant difference when you started using these data points from the webinar invites that you did beforehand to once you started using them?
15:51: Was there a significant difference in registration or show up rates or anything like that?
15:56: So first of all, we had an increase in open rate because I feel like the subject line really resonated with the users and of course in attendance rate.
16:07: So we normally have now about 40% attendance rate.
16:12: So 40% of users who register, they attend webinars.
16:15: Sometimes it’s higher, usually it’s higher.
16:18: While I know that for B two C field, it’s usually much lower.
16:23: Even B to B I mean, from what I remember, I don’t think 40% is anything to sneeze at.
16:28: I think that’s a great, especially if you’re getting a lot of people from the replace as well now.
16:33: Yes.
16:33: Yeah, we also track the number of views on the platform where we upload the video.
16:38: And we also out, we invite those users who haven’t attended, but we know that they were interacted with like replay email or they watched previous webinar.
16:48: We invite them for the upcoming events also.
16:52: And also another nice thing that we use, we try to design emails differently.
16:58: So we always have a banner where we more focus on the logo if it’s a big company like Nestle and on the title.
17:07: But there is a second design of email where we focus on speakers.
17:11: So we put images of speakers.
17:13: So you know, you can put face to the name and name to the face and you know that these are exactly people that you will see on a camera when the webinar is happening and these are real people and they will actually reply to your questions.
17:28: And it’s not just the sales team telling you about the platform, it’s experts that you’re bringing in that can really provide real value.
17:36: So you have two different templates for that first email and then that second email.
17:39: The first one is more focused on the brand and the second is more on the people who are presenting.
17:44: And I’m curious, do you see more sign ups for the customer emails, the customer, like when you bring a customer on or when you bring on an outside expert?
17:54: Or is there no difference?
17:56: Usually we see higher registration number when it’s either someone very well known in the industry like a leader or it’s just a big brand.
18:08: For example, we are going to have soon a webinar with Dell Technology also big brand resonates with a lot of other businesses.
18:16: So we expecting a big audience.
18:19: Cool.
18:19: OK.
18:20: If you were to go back in time and perfect this email or any of the emails in your typical strategy or I’m sure you are perfecting it as time goes along.
18:28: What kind of changes would you make?
18:30: That’s an interesting question of where we use same time optimization.
18:35: So we send to each and every user based on when they more likely to open emails.
18:42: But I would like to reach even more higher level of personalization.
18:47: Again, there should be a balance between being creepy, being personalized.
18:54: But yes, if I would be able to know each and every user challenges and implement that would be great.
19:01: Yeah, it’s interesting that you’re doing the feedback on the fly after like while they’re registering and then using it for the people who haven’t registered yet.
19:08: Do you also run surveys from time to time or when they sign up to become a lead or anything like that?
19:14: Are you also running that kind of feedback?
19:16: We run a lot of service for our customers that use already platform for webinars.
19:22: We sometimes for webinar attendees, we run like post webinar survey.
19:26: What was the most interesting moment and how they like the presentations or showcase the product.
19:33: So it’s all the kinds of surveys starting from N P S and just more feedback on the specific features.
19:40: For example, the speakers probably love that too.
19:42: Like getting that instant feedback of how is my presentation?
19:45: That’s great.
19:46: Of course.
19:47: Yes.
19:47: And it’s great for speakers, especially when it’s not only session that we conduct on the platform, but sometimes we have a linkedin live and I feel very engaging audience there and you can see exactly what is the profile of a person who attends this life?
20:05: I didn’t think about that.
20:06: That’s very cool.
20:07: There is another aspect of like different technical challenges.
20:12: I’m sure that you are on several platforms at the same time, but oh for sure, that sounds like a nightmare.
20:19: Wow, cool.
20:20: It’s interesting what you said about personalization, about wanting it to be more personal.
20:25: So I feel like a lot of times people think about personalization in the ways that are more creepy like their name or all the different merge tags that we can include in the emails.
20:36: And I love that you’re thinking about it more as a person facing a challenge and how you can make it more useful for them versus like how can I make it gimmicky so that they open?
20:47: Instead it’s like how can I find the value for them so that they open and get this great value that we have for that?
20:53: So that’s a good shift of how to think about personalization that it doesn’t just decrease the creep factor.
20:59: It also really creates the value for that.
21:01: I think we as a marketers generally have so much data and I know that you are focusing a lot on copy on content.
21:11: But the first step, you know, before handling these data, like this information to copy and and writers, it’s to make sure that we are collecting all data and not only collecting but actually using.
21:24: So for example, if I know that lead came from a specific case study or I know that this lead is coming from marketing department and not hr department.
21:35: So I will provide them with a specific information like on boarding employees probably won’t be that relevant for marketing department as it relevant for hr team.
21:47: Yes, 100%.
21:49: We often have so much data and we just don’t use it because it’s so many factors sometimes it’s just, it’s too overwhelming to go through and filter through and find that information.
21:58: Sometimes it’s too overwhelming to set up all the pieces to segment properly and give that right information.
22:04: And sometimes it’s just do we trust the data?
22:06: Is it coming from the right places?
22:07: But when we have it, we should be using it.
22:10: It’s so true.
22:11: Like it’s frustrating when you get an email about onboarding employees and you just start, you know, when it’s not real and you just start filtering out the messages and that 100% decreases relevancy.
22:20: So yeah, it’s great that you have that and you’re using it and you’re thinking about it so often times it’s also connected like in a bigger companies, for example, banks or airways companies like there is promotional and transactional and promotional is very personalized, nice design wording and then we receive a transactional email that might be run even by different team and it’s not personalized even though they have all the data about user.
22:49: So just to support fellow email marketers, it’s, it’s not always our mistake.
22:57: It’s just the way how the companies build.
23:00: But of course, I personally think that all email communication and not only email like push S MS whatever company is, should be under one team.
23:10: Yeah, that’s a very good point.
23:11: Sometimes you’ll even have different features where they like consider it different products.
23:16: But from the consumer point of view, it just kind of looks like this is my brand.
23:20: You know, I’m using this tool.
23:22: They’re not realizing that it’s different products and different teams running it and it’s confusing and it’s, you’re getting conflicting messages.
23:28: Like even when it’s not transactional in marketing, sometimes it’s marketing and a different marketing team or the product team will send something or the S T R team will send something and you’re just like, wait, you know, so yeah, it’s great when you can have everything under an umbrella and it’s all consistent and you know, flows together and gives that great customer experience 100%.
23:47: So we need to stop confusion and start conversion.
23:54: Yes, confusion is a blocker for conversion 100%.
23:58: That’s great.
24:00: OK, let’s see.
24:01: I think we’re up to the last question.
24:03: Yes.
24:03: All right.
24:04: What is your favorite brand to call?
24:06: Email?
24:06: Inspiration from?
24:07: There are a few brands from different fields.
24:10: I really like receiving emails by grammarly.
24:15: I use a tool that helps me with adjusting the text I write and they have very nice triggered emails with some like Gamification and stats telling me how many new words I use this week.
24:29: And if I’m in the top 10 users this week or if I need to hurry up to strike.
24:37: So it’s very nice and it’s educational also because they try to include some interesting articles in these mas.
24:45: Another brand I like is Casper.
24:48: Casper produces sleep products and main product is mattresses and I never thought that there is like interesting content about mattresses actually.
25:02: And two more brands, one is called is inspired by Iceland.
25:06: So this is the organization that promotes events in Iceland and about Iceland and products that were made in Iceland.
25:14: It’s just very funny brand.
25:16: I’m not sure if they have a big team, but if they hear massive kudos, it is very nice engaging emails and the last one is more like B two B related Slack.
25:29: We use Slack Toto and I think it’s a great product and what I like particular about Slack emails that even without opening email, I know, OK, this is email that promote the new webinar or product updates.
25:44: So they have very different designs and they consistent in these designs.
25:49: So it’s easier for consumers to understand if I receive this design with this emoji in the subject line.
25:55: I know there is an upcoming webinar.
25:58: That’s a great point.
25:58: I never paid attention to that.
25:59: Like I just open them all, but it’s really true that, you know, OK, this is like my billing statement, this is the content that they’re sending.
26:06: So that’s a really great point.
26:07: I’m curious where grammarly and Casper you mentioned that they lead to content.
26:11: Do they also like the grammarly triggered emails where they’re talking about your performance or things like that?
26:16: Do they lead like back to the dashboard?
26:18: Is it just content related and just trying to keep brand awareness or are they trying to push a conversion?
26:23: Same thing for Casper you mentioned, like they’re interesting, they’re engaging, they’re fun.
26:26: Is that leading to content or is that leading to like buy a matress?
26:31: So Caspers definitely they lead to their product page and it’s not necessarily mattresses, it’s Upsell or different other products like complementary to mattresses and in the grammarly case because usually like it’s grammarly business.
26:47: So it’s assigned to admin.
26:49: So if there is an admin email.
26:51: So yeah, there is information about how many seats you have and maybe that someone else requested a seat from your company.
26:58: But usually if it’s for the member, it just leads to content without the specific dashboard.
27:06: Cool.
27:06: Oh, that’s so interesting.
27:07: So it’s like under the team account, under a umbrella account.
27:11: Very cool.
27:11: I was thinking, I don’t know why but I thought that you would give like a bunch of different industries maybe because I feel like people in SAS are also getting emails from, you know, ecommerce companies and things like that.
27:22: So we see so many and so many different types and you get different kinds of inspiration from the different industries.
27:26: So thank you.
27:27: I love receiving e-commerce emails because they’re usually so personalized and the design is great because in our case, we use a lot of templates in our outreach in Ecom.
27:38: It’s not going to work.
27:39: You need always different images like to catch the attention.
27:42: Yeah, it’s a whole, whole different beast.
27:44: Absolutely.
27:45: Yes.
27:46: Ok.
27:46: Thank you so much for joining.
27:47: This was great.
27:48: Thank you.
27:49: Thank you Nikki.
27:49: It’s been a pleasure.
27:50: Thanks for joining me for email, story time.
27:53: If you enjoyed today’s story, give this podcast a review.
27:56: So email marketers like you can have more fun with email.
27:59: See you next week when we dig into this story’s takeaways.