Building the Perfect Welcome Series With Jeff Luscynski

Speaker A: All right, it's that time. Episode 64 of the Needle Movement podcast is here. Our guest is Jeff Luzinski of Convert Factor and we're going to talk about email marketing. Often I talk about the importance of life cycle marketing. You know, it's just this idea that as a shopify store, you'll have thousands of email subscribers and buyers. And these people, they know your brand, so it's a lot easier to push them towards purchases than customers who don't know who you are. So email allows you to speak directly with email subscribers and buyers at a lower cost than any other channel. So today Jeff's going to give us some quick wins that will bring more email sales. Plus he'll do a detailed breakdown of the welcome series, perhaps the most important email automation. And this episode is going to get specific about the psychological tactics that you can use in copywriting and also what you can say in each email of the welcome series. I can't wait to share this. I'm your host, Stephen Carl, talking to you straight from Brooklyn, New York. Now let's get on with the show. Welcome to the Needle Movement podcast. Can't wait to introduce our next guest, Jeff Luzinski. And Jeff is an E commerce email marketer and copywriter and he's also one of the few copywriters out there who's also an E commerce brand owner. And two years ago he made the transition from corporate auditor to wi fi freelancer and has not looked back. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

Speaker B: Happy to be here, Steven. I appreciate it and happy to share some, uh, some thoughts with you.

Speaker A: Excellent. I'm psyched to bring you on because, um, the E commerce flows and automations, they don't get enough attention sometimes, don't you think?

Speaker B: Yeah, or it's general information that's maybe not specific to E comm so you have to weed through maybe and decipher it a little bit. So yeah, it can be tough to find that, ah, info.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Before we dive into email marketing and automation, that can really do wonders for a lot of brands. Tell us about yourself and how did you make the transition from corpor auditor to e commerce and email marketing?

Speaker B: It's a very unlikely transition and you don't see it too often. I always get asked this question, like, wait, wait, what? How does this work? So it really started with, aptly enough, I was listening to a podcast and it was the side Hustle podcast and a gentleman had a problem. So he was looking for a manual coffee grinder on Amazon and he couldn't find one. So what he did was instead of going to the store, he made his own, found a manufacturer, created the product, created a brand. And in the first year as a one man business, he sold $300,000 worth of these coffee, coffee grinders. So after hearing about that, I just opened up my eyes like man, if you like you can make money as one person and have this whole legit business. So you know, at the time I was content with my job doing the cubicle stuff, but it wasn't necessarily as much of a challenge anymore. And while it was safe and secure, I didn't really get to flex my creativity muscles as much as I liked. And you know, I'd always had dreams of starting my own business, being my own boss. So I decided to get up early and after about seven months learning about starting an Amazon business, had my first product and brand founded. And that was Primal Products. And it's a company that sells my brand sells like smoking accessories. So it was an uh, interesting niche to have landed on to start and it did really well on Amazon, um, still making sales to this day and did so well that I figured, you know, if I'm making this much part time, what would it be like if I take it full time? So I decided to bite the bullet. It was never a great time. It was during COVID I put in my two weeks notice and went full time. So that was just starting off with the E commerce. So then email. A month later or so, Amazon did a rug pull. My products ranking tanked. Instead of being on the middle shelf, it was like in a back room in a different state. So like my sales went down to nothing because it got banned from advertising. So this led me on the path of like how can I make sales outside of Amazon without relying upon them. So I looked into and then email marketing was a natural one where it's Facebook ads can't ban you from it. Google, you know, there's some spam filtering but largely you can say what you want and market how you want. So that was that natural progression. And lining up my skills of creative writing to make tangible results sales and then pairing that up with like the data analysis that goes with email marketing made sense from someone with an accounting background. So so far I've really enjoyed it and found it pretty rewarding. Way to earn that Wi Fi bread, right?

Speaker A: So you're like, you know email, you're a talented copywriter and you're also a crazy good analyst. That's a great combination for m for an email marketer. You know, I Think with email marketing the journey is kind of interesting because you know, it's always like labeled as this dinosaur. It's been around forever and then every year someone writes a clickbait article about how it's dying time and time again. Just an incredibly profitable channel.

Speaker B: It's something that it's even more important every day. Like as Facebook can ran like these random bigger companies can turn you off whether it's an error or not. Like it can have a big impact on your business and to have an independent channel is more important now than ever. And what uh, I found it's also like there's no, like you don't necessarily go to school for email marketing. You don't have like courses and books that are like the standard kind of have to learn on your own and find independent people. So that's an interesting part of it I found.

Speaker A: Um, yeah and the problem with email too is everyone's been doing it forever so they base it on what worked a really long time ago and not like it's really changed a lot over like the past, even like three years. So for email marketing let's get into that a little bit. Like there are email blasts, those are like Black Friday, you'll send a one time email blast to promote it. There are blasts and announcements like if you have a new product and then there are automations like abandoned cart and welcome series. So what's the difference between blasts, blasts and automation?

Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of confusion here, uh, talking with copywriters and usually brand owners if they're not 100% savvy on it. So the way I like to think about it is there's, there's two major ones are the campaigns and automations. So campaigns are also known as blasts. It's like examples of newsletters but the automations have different names which I think lends to the confusion. So automations are also known as flows, they're also known as a customer journey, it's also known as a sequence and there's probably other names depending on what brand and what you're talking about. The rest of this, we're going to use those synonymous. So an automation is a flow, a customer journey or a sequence or a series. So that's the definition of those. But really like an email campaign simply so it's sent once to an audience that you select when you schedule it. It's a one time email. You write, it goes out once. So examples are newsletters, as you said, new product launches, entertaining information, sales and offers kind of your Standard stuff that you get as a recipient of emails following any brands and it's manual so it requires ongoing investment. You write the email once, it goes out once. So you have to keep putting in some investment time to making more emails and then automations are essentially the flip side of all that. So it's actually not a one time thing, it's an automation. It's a logic in your email software that will automatically send out a pre written email based on an action that your subscriber or prospect took. So whether they're clicking on your website and entering the email the first time they abandon their cart that's triggering this automation but it's a one time investment so you spend the time once, put the logic in, if this happens, this email goes out, if the customer does this, the second email and so on and so forth. So examples are welcome, sequence, abandoned cart, upsell, cross sell, those types of things. So those are the key differences. It's ongoing investment versus the one time investment.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean that's what's nice about the automations that uh, you set it up I mean just for companies in terms of like, of spend companies have really been, we're kind of taught that habit of sending campaigns a lot. Like you know you see brands send campaigns like 15 times a month so all that creative gets used once and then like with automation you use that creative, you're good at least for a few months, you know for it. And the conversion rates are higher. So a lot of it I think is more of like they're gonna be both. You don't have to make the choice between like uh 100% campaigns or 100% automations. But for many brands I think we're seeing trying to strike more of a balance between like that abandoned cart that hasn't been updated in two years. These are things we like. I wanna like scratch my eyes at when I see this with clients where I'm like you haven't updated this in years. Like what's.

Speaker B: Yeah, so they work together. They work uh. Your campaigns support the automations.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So okay, so with automation what do you think are some quick wins? What you've seen?

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: You know from clients and yeah, especially

Speaker B: when talking with a new client or from my own brand it's like everyone's like it can give someone a list of 100 things, do an account on it for what they can do but like it boils down to like what's going to get me some immediate sales and results to justify the investment. So the first thing I like to look at is their pop up. So the pop up is as it sounds, it's a pop up and uh, it's a trade off. So the customer is going to give you their email. Someone from your web traffic gives their email in exchange for some type of reward. So 20% discount free PDF something that they want you're going to give them in exchange for an email. So the pop up is super important because it transfers and it uh, converts traffic into subscribers so it gets them into your ecosystem for email marketing. So if there is no pop up that's like a red alert like you got want to get one installed and set up. So I would set that up and the next step below that is is it maybe not performing as well as we'd like? Is it less than 5% conversions? Can we change the image, the behavior, how it pops up? Can we change the offer to get more people and convert more of your traffic into down the line of your sales funnel? The pop up is really the first thing I like to look at and then after that is really hey, is there any flows that are maybe missing? So like is there an upsell automation? Are you pushing your customers to make that repeat sale? Are you having automations to push customers into being like a subscribe and save? So any flows that don't exist that you put in place is all pickup. So it's any money attributed to those you can prove hey like we put this in place, it got you this money, this it's right there in plain black and white. So that's what I like as well is adding new flows and then adding more emails to existing flows. You can tweak and optimize but I find the most effective is let's just say your banning cart has one email, make it two, make it three emails, it's more emails is more, you know, within reason more opportunities to get that sale or push them into that next objective. And then the last one I like to look at is if there is low open rates can be a number of things but if they're sending a lot of image focused emails, changing those up to plain text will have more of a higher open rate automatically because less of them are going to get tripped up in spam filters. So those are really like the low hanging fruit that you can get quick wins on that don't necessarily require many months to prove out.

Speaker A: Awesome. Yeah, I love that upsell too because like for e commerce brands one time buyers is like the evilest of all evils. It is the thing that Holds back businesses. So they purchased like, you know, they've already taken the giant leap. How do you get them to do it again and find them stuff that is related to what they already purchased?

Speaker B: It's the easiest person to sell to someone who's already opened their wallet. So it's important to have that. Yeah, because I mean, yeah, like we talk about Facebook ads and things like it costs a lot of money to get that first customer. So if they buy once, maybe you don't break even but if they buy twice or more then you can justify it. So yeah, it's pretty crucial.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. Those are really good tips. So now let's dive in. We had talked before the show about what you wanted to dig into on email marketing and you know, you selected the wealth welcome series automations what you do right after you sign up for email. So why did you pick that?

Speaker B: Yeah, there's, there's several reasons and I'll just start off quick with a definition just so we'll be clear on the audience. The welcome series, you know, flow automation, whatever you want to call it, someone triggered based on someone coming to the website, entering their email and they're going to receive one email automatically for one a day for about a week and until they make a purchase. And the goal is to get that subscriber and move them down the customer life cycle to become a buyer. These emails would stop after a purchase is made. So that's specifically what the welcome Automation series is. And why did I pick it of all the other ones? Because it makes money. It is the lowest possible hanging fruit. I love to build these out for customers or clients because it's a one time investment and essentially prints money. It's an asset and it complements the pop up. So the pop up turns traffic into subscribers, feeds into your welcome series, increases the conversion so it increases the effectiveness of all of your ad spend that's driving traffic. And it's something where like you can get 50% plus open rates on, you can get 15% plus people making purchases from these flows like they are like the biggest moneymaker and greatest ROI that you can make. Like a digital marketer because again it's automated and it's an asset and it's something where you can really set it and forget it. You know, you can optimize but you get it set up right, set it, forget it. Like it's going to make you money and it's going to pay for itself multiple times over. Whether it's your investment of time or money. The last Reason I like it is they're fun to write. So like it's essentially your entire sales argument. It gives you the opportunity, over five or six emails you can tell the customer, the new subscriber, here's who we are, here's what sets us apart. It's creating like a bond with them to make them more likely to buy and be a repeat purchaser. It's really a unique flow and it's a unique set of emails for all brands because it sets that stage and it's really like if you're only going to spend money or work on one flow, like this is it. So that's why I like to put a lot of attention to these. And in addition, these are the most visible of any flow. You can spy a little bit, you can do some snooping, go to your competitor's website, sign up, what's their first email look like. You can get a sense of what they're doing. So it's very easy to see where brands stand on that and sometimes you don't get any email. So it's a way to show that you can improve what they have.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I, yeah. With like, with welcome, it's one of those golden moments because like they signed up, they put their email into the pop up so they're interested. So you are reaching a warm audience that wants to hear about why your brand is special. Okay, so how are brands like screwing up their welcome sequences? Like what are they doing wrong?

Speaker B: Yeah, there's, there's always room for improvement with some of these things and it's all about striking when the iron's hot. So like you said, the customer, customer or the prospect is interested. They want to hear m more, they're excited to learn more. Like you want that first email to be just as good as your website to continue that journey and what you'll see is like the biggest problems that I find is you don't sign up for the email list, don't get anything, that's the worst thing that can happen and it can happen for a lot of reasons. So if you have a brand, if you've got Shopify, you have different apps, you might have an email service provider app. All these things need to work together for that. Sign up to link to them, joining a list to them, getting the email from your automation. So that's the biggest thing I see as the problem is making sure that get fixed and a lot of brands won't. Even if you don't check it, you might not even know if they're not Looking at their data, they don't realize it hasn't been sent at all in the past 60 days. So it's something that can get overlooked. And another one is they do have it set up, but it's going to spam. So there's a lot of things that can trigger spam, whether using spammy words or you're using. You have a really big image that's maybe too large, or it has. There's something that can trip it up. So that's another one where, yes, it's set up, but no one's seeing it because it goes into the promotions purgatory. You're probably not checking your promotions tab on your Gmail too often.

Speaker A: How do you know that it goes into spam? Yeah, like, how do you address that?

Speaker B: So it's hard to tell. So if you're just looking from your email service provider, it will tell you if someone marked it as spam. Like someone got the email, received it, opened it, reported it as spam, they'll tell you that. But whether it hit the inbox or not, you can't tell directly. So you can only look for indicators. So you can say, all right, well, this open rate is really low. That's something. Okay, let's look into it. Let's go to, uh. There's websites that you can go to where you can send a mock email to them from your service provider. And it will say, all right, this is your spam rating. Like, these are the things taking away from your score, adding to your score. So it's kind of tough, but you can also just try it on yourself. Like try a Gmail account, create a dummy one, have it sign up, see where it goes. So different ways.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I think, like, people will rely on the discount for the welcome series. So they'll say, I have a great welcome series. And this is the example of money on the table, where it's like, I have a great welcome series. Okay, how many are you sending? 2. And it's just basically like, get your 20% discount. And there's just. People don't have any information about the brand and all your great selling points, you know, at that point. And like, what we're talking about, how you can expand your sequences. Because these people are interested, they've done something, they have signed up for the list. I mean, they want to hear something about your brand and what makes it different.

Speaker B: It's a perfect opportunity to explain, like, all the different, like why they should buy from you versus someone else. But like, uh, and it goes with the other thing is maybe they just focus on the discount, right? Which and a lot of customers are going to buy with just one email, one discount, that's fine. But there's some that need more. So like the other cardinal sin I would say would be if you're only sending one email on your welcome series, more should be added. And that's a red alert thing because if you just think about it, even if the customer is red hot sign up, they're excited, they actually want to buy. But uh, something happens in their life that their cat throws up across the room, they got to run over there, clean it up and all the commotion, they forget and they go to bed and then they never hear from your brand again. That's the one email you sent and then it gets buried in their inbox and they never bought. But if you include uh, more emails, you give multiple chances to make that first sale. Like if 20% is a good email open rate, it's going to take 5 for 1 open in some examples. So that repetition is impressions of your offer in front of your target audience. So it just can't be understated. And the last one is that like I'll see that there's clutter. So the first email has, it's trying to do everything. So it's like shop here, like look at our podcast, look at our articles, look at our blog, look at our social, check out our Twitter account that has five followers and seven tweets. Like, like just too much stuff. And the whole point of the first email and series is subscriber convert to first time buyer. That's it, that's the only objective that there should be. And by adding additional things it clutters things and you reduce your conversion rate. Cause they get, maybe they do go to your blog and they get distracted but they're not buying. So that's another thing that's quite common that you'll see.

Speaker A: Okay, let's go to copywriting. So you were talking before about how you like copy focused emails, sometimes over image focused, but just overall how does copywriting factor into building these email automations?

Speaker B: So I break it down to. You could take a step back email marketing. The whole goal is to get the right email in front of the right person at the right time. And not just that, but persuade them to take the next action to buy the product to recover their cart. So you have to do. Yeah, you gotta get all those three things right before you get to get some good outcomes. Automations are gonna cover the right person and the Right time copywriting is gonna get you to the right email, saying the right thing with the right words, the right amount of persuasion to get them to take that action. So that's where copywriting f and copywriting goes. It's all your emails has the same focus, the same goal of that one objective of one email, one objective. And in terms of image versus copy. So the main reason I like this is I'm a contrarian, so I like to do things other people don't do. So that brings me great joy. But uh, but also like every brand

Speaker A: is used, which is good in email because you're not, you know, like just looking at Black Friday in the inbox, I'm like, this shit's boring. Everyone's saying the same thing. So when you're the contrarian and you put a different message, it stands out.

Speaker B: But anyway, I mean, I'll say it contrarian, but also there's nothing more frustrating on this planet besides trying to operate Adobe Photoshop. And it's just, there's nothing, it's the worst. So, but other than that, like, so I like copy. So other reason is it converts better. So as you're saying, like if in your Inbox you have 10 brands and they all have pretty images, but this one brand is written from the CEO talking to you about a story that relates to the product that gets you to like, like which one is going to stand out? Like one that's all emojis and sale, or the one where it's like literally, uh, a letter from a friend. So that's really like where copy and well written copy can have advantages over images. You just can express different and more things with copy. So it converts better. But I mean there's been studies that go Back to the 50s, 60s, the Mad Men era that show like long copy outperforms short copy. So that's a known fact. And the reason is simple. Like some people that are going to your website, as we had talked about, they're going to buy the first time. They don't need more convincing. They like your product. They're not, don't have all these objections. They're going to buy. So that's where short copy would work. Or one email. But some will need more. They don't trust your brand, they don't know if your reviews are fake. Are you going to steal their credit card? Is your products really as good as they look? So they'll need more persuasion, more. They need a little more information before they make that purchase. And that's where long copy that's where the multiple, uh, emails and iterations, uh, come into play. And also it. You get more personal. So I like writing copy. It's more creative. You get to strike a different tone with your audience. As you're saying, you get all these sales, right? You get these image with a product buy. Now, people are used to seeing ads, and when you see an ad, everyone's mind, like, kind of some blinders come up and I go, right, this is. I know I'm being marketed to, so they get defensive. But if you have copy and it's a letter, you can diffuse that a little bit. Right? You know, not tricking them. But you're not like shouting from the rooftop, I'm selling you something. You're telling them a story. You're relating to them in some manner. Hey, there might be a product at the end of the email that would help you solve a problem, but it's just fundamentally different than the image focus type of strategy. I'm not going to say that you shouldn't ever use any image whatsoever, but I think they should be used with a specific purpose. Image should support the copy and should be needed. It should be necessary to support the email as opposed to in there, just because you want it there.

Speaker A: Yeah. And with copywriting, it's like, we've all read things from talented writers. What I notice is persuasion is very different than snark or wit. I mean, it can be there, but persuasion is like getting into people's heads in a way and giving them the reasons they need. Social proof is persuasion like, this celebrity bought this, so I'm going to do this. Or a hundred thousand people wrote five star reviews, like, oh, 100,000 people are buying this. Then I got to buy it. It's whittling away at some of those objections in that formula or giving them, like, not just the, it's our product. It's great. How's my life going to change as a of using this product?

Speaker B: And it's also getting some humor in there. Like you could write something and then you could say, like, you might be thinking to yourself, this sounds too good to be true. You kind of put like, hey, what are they probably thinking after I made this statement? And then just kind of diffuse the tension there and say, all right, well, if you thought we were being bombastic, well, we are. All right, I'll admit it. So, like, it's just that that's not what a lot of brands are doing. So that's like really where you can show, stand out from the crowd. Like Adidas and like, like Nike and these brands aren't doing it because no one's going to believe that they're a small company and like the CEO is actually writing to you. But for smaller brands that's an advantage. Like you want to play up that for a small, tight knit brand with real people.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely showing personality because yeah, it makes you relatable. Yeah. I think it just, it seems like as companies get larger, like it's just there's a desire to play things safe and not piss off the higher ups with like what if I write this subject line? Or these words that might, someone might not like so but yeah, like fun copy selling. Definitely.

Speaker B: Yeah. You don't want to at that point you just risk being boring. You don't get the conversions. Like people won't remember it, won't share it. So it's. Yeah, there's definitely is that risk aversion as companies grow and they get more employees and all that is definitely uh, a challenge. But I mean for companies that don't have, aren't quite massive, like it's an advantage to play it up.

Speaker A: And even on the other side, even for decision makers, it's good to not build that aversion where people have to be scared. If you're the president and you didn't like the copy, who cares? Like it's just one email, you know,

Speaker B: and that's like it's not.

Speaker A: You can use data and look at the conversions too.

Speaker B: Don't just look at and use data. Right. So you can a B test anything. All uh, right. We sent this email for a month and this email, we put them in a 5050 heat. This one converts better. So like whether they want the images or not, it's like, well you can, for lack of better words, like you can be wrong and make less money or right. You can be right and make less money or wrong and do the thing. It's. But using a B is to prove it out. Like this one converts better. So that's a way to get over the object of maybe the brand owner, maybe that doesn't want to do that different approach. So that, that's what I've used uh, in the past.

Speaker A: Yeah. Where you can be like, okay, we have two subject lines. One's fun, one sort of boring. Let's see what performs better and then, and you can just write it.

Speaker B: It's tough to argue with the data. If one works better then it's results versus the style. So.

Speaker A: Exactly. All right, so now we are at the fun part.

Speaker B: All Right.

Speaker A: For everyone where Jeff has kindly volunteered to run through a dream welcome sequence because we' trying to not just say do this, but really get into like get into the weeds a little bit on just what are the elements of that, of a really good welcome sequence. And this is something that any brand can do.

Speaker B: Sure, yeah. It's something that is again the most important automation you're going to set up. And I think that there's, there's different ways to do it. But the way that I like to set this up for clients is a six email drip. Another keyword flow drip automation.

Speaker A: Yep. So, right, a series of six emails sent a couple days out from each other.

Speaker B: Yeah. So one email per day and it's same automation. So customer subscribes, new customer or new subscriber, they get an email and then they get one email every day until they make a purchase for up to like six days. So the first email, this is the biggest one. This is the big enchilada, this is the big kahuna. This one is doing a lot of stuff, but at the same. Is doing a lot of stuff but we're all nudging towards the same outcome. The same outcome is make the first purchase. That's the desired outcome. Yeah.

Speaker A: And actually before we get further into this, I'll say just to the listeners, um, Jeff has a really great blog post about this and so we'll kind of walk through it, um, for the most part and then anyone can refer to it after the show in that, that goes. That really drills into much more detail on it. But go on.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. It's. Take a look. You can create your own. It's fairly good use of time. So the first one, as we're mentioning the first email is doing a lot. This is the one that's gonna have the most open rate. This is your chance to make that first impression. You want to have some humor, you want to be personable, use a uh, different subject line other than here's your discount code and have it come from a real person. You don't want your emails coming always coming from salesrand.com you want to have it coming from like the CEO or the founder or the whoever you design that's going to be that point of contact with the customer. Have it come from their personal email. You can change the reply address but you're not going to get a million people replying. People will reply 1 or 2% maybe if you ask them to. So it just makes it more authentic.

Speaker A: Right. Like jake@nike.com looks much better then nike.com and you're from in the first sales

Speaker B: at Nike, it's, it's better, it's better whether at that size company it's believable. It's another story, but that's the foundation of it. First thing you want to do is tell your brand's origin story. This is the number one opportunity. Like whether your brand is, this is a story from the founder, like why did you create the company? Why'd you create the brand? What was that aha, uh, moment that you decided, hey, this is what I want to do. And whether your brand is, has a certain motto or what you goals that you achieve, strive for, whether it's sustainability or helping people in need or something, know this is the time to explain that and to get that in front of your customer. So tell that origin story. The next in that same email is you want to make your unique selling proposition. What is different about your product and your brand that a customer should purchase from you instead of someone else? Put that out there front and center. This is in your first email. So this is the people that need a little more information. Maybe this is what they need. Oh, okay. Their products are a little more expensive because it's actually, the ingredients are actually sourced uh, correctly. So make that unique selling proposition and make a bold, confident claim. Our work gloves are the strongest work gloves in the planet. Something like that. You're going to back it up with some information. But if you're not confident about your product, what are they going to think? Like who else is going to be confident if not the founder? So having that bold and confident claim and then of course you want to deliver what you promised. If it's a discount code, if it's a PDF, include a link pretty close to the top for them to get that. And then set its expectations, tell them what they're going to be receiving. Over the next few days you're going to learn about our journey from starting the company to helping customers. Tell them what they're going to receive over the next few days and then give them permission to reply, whether it's in the PS or somewhere in the note. Uh, encourage them to reply to your email. And as we talked about spam, this is super important for two reasons. If someone replies to your mass marketing email or automation, it's going to make them more likely in the future to receive all of their emails, all of your emails in their inbox and not the promotion purgatory.

Speaker A: This is the reply thing is really interesting is that like how would you phrase a reply. So you were saying in like the psych.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Like you know, you could have like the letter from the founder, their signature and then PS but like what type of thing would you say to get them to reply to it?

Speaker B: Uh, I reply to all emails, hit reply and say hi or any question. Like I reply to all emails is not something you ever see. But I mean you have to do it. But like that's the key thing. So that'll get you people to reply if they have a question and even if it's just for that boost and spam reduction, they could have a good question or maybe there's some insight or like they're not buying for some reason that you didn't know about. So you're gonna learn a lot of good customer information from that. Well and uh, so that's giving that permission. So like this is again a lot of brands don't do this and like it's something that doesn't take a lot of effort to write that down. And you're only going to get so many replies. But it really does add up. Uh, pacing and leading is another one. You want to lead your prospects from the problem to solution. So if your product solves, if your product solves a problem, you want to identify that problem and demonstrate how it will solve that problem. You don't need to go into the full. This is a very short thing but you just want to have it stated there. Our product helps you get better sleep and then give some bullets. Like here are the benefits. Our product will help you sleep better. You'll save time and spend more time with your family. You'll have fewer headaches or you're just going to feel like a wonderful person. You're going to become a superhero. Whatever your benefits are, put those in a bullet and that's your first email. So the first one has a lot going on. One day later, this is assuming the person hasn't purchased yet, they get your second email. So this is the secret sauce, this is the full on sales argument. And again this is all like this is six emails. It's more information that's going to be on your website. So but it's really like you're putting your full sales argument to every subscriber on autopilot. So this is the benefit of this one. Introduce and frame the problem, part one of the second email. So what is the problem that your product solves? So this is where you can get into more detail of the problem and solution. Frame the problem, show a picture of your Product, this is where I'll allow you to have images. It's okay. Reiterate that unique selling point. What has your product stand apart from all the rest and then use some proof and statistics. So if you're going to make that unique selling point, we have the best gloves in the market. Say why? It's because made with this fiber material that's used by NASA, for example. Like you can use that to. Yeah. Support. Support those wild claims. If you make a wild claim without any support, people are going to just think it's sales talk. So that's the key, like the sandwiching that information and yeah. Social proof, of course in Eclund. So as Stephen, uh, you're mentioning like 10,000 other people, like 10,000 other customers gave this five stars. Or if you have numbers that are worth mentioning, put those in there. That's only going to help you or a famous person, as you mentioned, has uses your product. Product. Actually if you have a famous person using your product, that might be a whole separate email on its own. And then risk reversal. So money back or guarantee. This is the Internet, this is E commerce. People can't walk into the store and hold the product in their hands. So they're going to be wondering if you're going to run away with their credit card. So a way to alleviate that. That objection is 100% money back guarantee. Something like that. Now some brands will say, you know, I don't want to give 100%. No questions that ask money back guarantee. But what you can do is strike a middle ground. You can say, we're so confident that our products will solve this problem for you. You'll like them. That if they don't, we want to hear about it. So it leaves the door open for them to just reply and then you can have your marketing, your uh, customer service team because maybe they don't want the return, maybe they're not using the product right and they need information. So that's a key, key piece of it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I would say also with like guarantees, like it's a common strategy because rarely do people send the product back. Most cases a guarantee like very few people return with a money back guarantee, but they feel more confident because now they have assurances that you're not going to run away with their money.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a law of number of numbers. So it's. They feel good making the purchase knowing that they can fall back on it if they need it. But if you have a good product, it's going to be a small percentage of people and you can play with it. Whether you want to do 100%, no questions, or if you just want to have the reply, you can see what results you get. Maybe some people will take advantage of it, but it's a numbers game to see what works best for your brand. And then finally a call to action when I reiterate that discount. Code the deadline or just remind them, hey, we really want you to try our product. Product, your code expires in X number of days, but you'll hear from us tomorrow. So that's the second email sets the secret sauce. So we covered the first email, the big enchilada second email with your full sales argument framing the problem. The next one is the features and benefits. So this is the old canard is features tell, benefits sell. So no one's going to buy gloves because they are machined. Well, for example, they want to know why, like what's the benefit? Okay, it's machine. Well it's made of a stronger material so you will, uh, less likely to break your bones when using them. So like that's the benefit benefit and less likely to break your bones. Okay, so then you're going to be healthier, you're going to have more time to do everything else because you're not recovering from an injury. So it's really like telling them why the features matter. It's just that important part of the sales process too. And what I like to do is use storytelling in this one. Use a story of maybe a customer or uh, imaginary customer and just talk about the problems that they had and how your problem solved it and how those, the features and the benefits features led to the benefits that's led to the outcome. So that's what's going to help you move people along this sales pipeline in email number three. So email number four, day later is faq. This one sounds just like it is. But I would say like, don't just copy and paste your FAQ from your site because it's really boring and it's dry like, and not everything's relevant. But like what are really the big questions that your customers ask? And go to look at your two and three star reviews. That's a cornucopia of information from your customer. Like this is what they think. So if there's an objection, you definitely want to call that out. Like you could even put an FAQ like, hey, like your products are twice as expensive as the competitors. Like why you could even, you could be upfront and just say we're happy that our products are more expensive because we think they're more valuable. Like you pay twice as much, but it's four times as valuable based on this benefit.

Speaker A: Yeah. And one thing to interject is like I was actually writing one of these and like I think a good way to think about it is it's not like your FAQ section like you were saying, but it's like it's answering all the objections that customers have in their head on why they're not going to buy the product. Like I don't need it, it's too expensive, I don't know about this. So it's like it's called an faq. It's framed as an faq, but it's really many ways answering internal objections.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And just speak on the level, like be relatable. Just say like, are you going to run away with my credit card? Yes or no. Like that can be. And then you just answer like, oh well we 10,000 other customers haven't had this experience. This one. You really need to use some humor and creativity to answer these questions in an entertaining way. And uh, fifth email is a customer review. Customer win. So this is like taking that scour through your customer reviews. Find the best one that really shows customer has problem. Find product buy product experience, benefit, experience solution to problem. And then like laying that out in a storytelling manner using pacing, leading, so bringing the person receiving the email, bring them right from that problem to the solution and uh, just holding their hand a little bit and walking them through that process using your copy. And at the same time, any objections along the way, try to bring those to the front. Your reviewer didn't want to buy the product initially because it was too expensive. However, after using the product determine the product was actually four times as powerful, as potent as other brands that the person had used before. So it's really like flipping those objections on their head. And then also I think a good part of this is try to share personal experience. So if you're, this is coming from the founder, say, you know, like when I was also experiencing this problem, this product helped me. So just kind of relating yourself back to that key customer and then you can talk about how many people have purchased the product, like the quantity, the numbers and then just wrap up with this customer, customer in this review, they experience this benefit and you're confident that they can get it too. Reiterate that guarantee and have them a little button to buy. Now that's the customer review email number five. And the final email, but not last but not least is the Urgency email. So this is the. You want to induce the maximum amount of FOMO on this one, as in a legit manner. We want to get our product into your hands. It's. But your code is expiring in X number of hours or days. So restate that discount code, tell them that it's expiring soon. Restate all the great benefits of your product and give them again permission to reply. Say, hey, we know. Been talking to you for the past few days. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out or just reply and say hi. So that's really the dream sequence.

Speaker A: That is the dream. So before we. This is great. So codes, you know, so there's conversations now about static codes versus, like single use codes. And I'm kind of getting more and more in the camp of single use codes because I feel like people have figured it out. But what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker B: I would agree on the unique codes. And if your email service provider has the capacity to connect with your shop and do that, I don't see a reason why you would use the static one because people can. I mean, then it goes on to other web deal websites and people are using it and all that jazz. But it's. I think the unique code is more believable that it's expiring and you can actually code it to expire. And if I see a code that's a series of jumble of letters and numbers, I think that's actually unique. It is actually going to expire or at least the capacity exists for it to expire. The other one is like, there's no way it's going to expire because it's the same code that they use for years. So. But I'm interested to test it. It'd be interest to see one or the other with a big sample size.

Speaker A: And there we have it. So, yeah, so thanks so much for walking through that welcome sequence. And also in the show notes, we will have a, um, you know, Jeff's like, detailed rundown of all six of those emails that gets into more examples

Speaker B: in detail on it.

Speaker A: Awesome. All right, so wrapping things up. Thanks for nerding out on the welcome sequence, Jeff.

Speaker B: Oh, there's a lot more where that came from. It's. But when you get on the details and you do it and you write it out, it's like you get lost in the weeds. But it's cool to see the data. So like, all right, did this, tried this, got this result.

Speaker A: Yeah. And then you like, you set it up for A few months. And then after a few months, you're going to see the results of those. Like, all your theories in your head. Some are going to work, some are not going to work. And then you just do another version of that welcome sequence in a few months. All right, so. Okay, so wrapping up, we'll soften the content a little bit to a favorite question that we ask all our knowledgeable guests on the show, which is, what's one of your favorite songs? Your favorite song, Something good enough that you think it deserves at least one listen?

Speaker B: I think a lot of people have heard this one before, but Kenny Rogers, the Gambler. It's an oldie but goodie. I've just gravitated to this song over the years, and it's not about gambling. It's more about life. And it's also one of mine. And I think what could be one of yours, A, uh, great addition to any karaoke ensemble. So it's a pretty good song.

Speaker A: How is the Gambler in karaoke? That's interesting.

Speaker B: It just sounds like it. It's like singing, but you're not really. It's like, old. It's like 70s country. Right. So it's a little more donation. Just kind of go for it.

Speaker A: Yeah. And the nice thing is you don't have to, like. It's an easier song for many people to sing.

Speaker B: No high notes where there's no big.

Speaker A: Yeah, the performance can take over. All right. All right. Yeah. I love that song. And I'm glad, actually, you picked this song because I've noticed asking this question that, uh, like, we have a playlist on Spotify for these, and we'll add it to it. But we have a lot of bangers, so I think sometimes people will pick, like, you know, you have one song, five minutes, do it, and it becomes, you know, these awesome anthems. But I like your pick because it's like.

Speaker B: It's just a different pace. Yeah, it's slow. It's, um. You can sing it while having a beer in the karaoke stage. It's no problem.

Speaker A: Ah, excellent. All right, so people like what you're saying. How can they reach you?

Speaker B: Yeah, so my website is the best place. So if you want to hear about my three E's, so entrepreneurship, email, and E commerce, you can find me at, uh, my website, convertfactor.com. that's C-O-N V E R T the word factor dot com. And that's where you're going to find articles for this welcome series. You can see it in Grueling detail, detail all the different steps so you can make your own. And that's uh, going to be a good resource for this particular podcast. And if you're interested to see, take a look at my smoking accessories product line. It's Primal products dot com. It's spelled P R Y M M A L the word products with an s dot com. You can just kind of take a peek there and look at kind of how the things look and see a little bit of history of how I got started with E commerce.

Speaker A: Excellent. We'll put that all in the notes. This is great. Jeff, thank you for sharing all your knowledge on welcome series and email. Thanks so much for coming on.

Speaker B: Appreciate you having me on and it was a great pleasure talking with you.

Speaker A: This episode is sponsored by Needle Movement. This is Stephen again, the founder. My agency Needle Movement specializes in done for you email marketing and SMS services for Shopify stores. I've generated 20 million worth of E commerce sales through email campaigns and automations alone. A few growth stories I've been fortunate to play a part in are Lafayette 148, a women's apparel brand where we were able to grow the email revenue from $1.3 million annually to 12 million over a three year period. Bad, a Scandinavian retailer which just launched on Shopify Plus a few months ago and now is generating $110,000 a month on just one abandoned cart email series that Naval Movement created and Ecru, which grew 580% to become a multi million dollar Shopify brand for the first time. And they had welcome series and abandoned browse emails before working with Needle Movement. But there we learned the power of well crafted email automations. Want to be our next growth story? Go to needlemovement.com and sign up for a free strategy call today. Limited slots are available.