E36: Emily McGuire

Richard Hill:
Hi, and welcome to another episode of eCom@One. And today's guest is Emily McGuire. Now Emily is the owner and chief email marketeer at Flourish & Grit, an email marketing and automation studio based out of Michigan. How are you doing, Emily?
Emily McGuire:
I'm doing as well as I could be in the weirdest year ever.
Richard Hill:
Tell me about it. Yeah, it certainly is. It certainly is. Doesn't get much crazier than these times, does it really?
Emily McGuire:
Yes. Exactly.
Richard Hill:
So today's episode is very much going to be focused on email marketing. So I know it's something that I am super passionate about and it's something that my agencies are super passionate about. So I'm looking forward to getting the low down and hopefully sharing some, or definitely sharing some amazing nuggets for our listeners. So how long have you been working in email marketing? So what made you get into it? Let's get straight into it.
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. So I've been doing only email marketing for... It's been about six or seven years now. Before that I was a digital marketing generalist. So I did all the things. And, like most people, I started in digital marketing with social media and they're like, "Oh, this is on computers. You can do email too. Right?" Exactly. So it just got thrown on my plate and then Google and I became best friends, frantically Googling all of the things. So most of that's been in the e-commerce retail space. So working brand side before I went out on my own.
Richard Hill:
So some brilliant insights on their way for our e-comm readers. So what would you say some of the things you're seeing that are coming through on the future of email marketing for e-commerce stores?
Emily McGuire:
For e-commerce? So people are talking a lot about predictive analytics. So being able to capitalize on all of the data out there to see when people are most likely to purchase again, and what campaigns are particularly working well. But that requires having the resources to be able to dig into the analytics and really strategize around that.
Richard Hill:
So somebody who's already bought from your store and then using the predictive technologies to predict when they're likely to, when's a good time to then obviously put another offer or another series of emails in front of them. Are there any specific, let's say, softwares or... Softwares really, that people can look at that can help them with that? Obviously I think a lot of our listeners will be Magento, Shopify, a lot of the usual culprits, WooCommerce, those types of platforms. Any specific tools that you'd recommend on that?
Emily McGuire:
So actually an email service provider called Klaviyo is... I'm sure people are already familiar with that if they're in the e-commerce space. They have really incredible predictive analytics around email. And for the price point, I can't believe they can offer that. So that's what I recommend.
Richard Hill:
Klaviyo. Yeah. I was actually on their site the other day. They're on our hit list of guests for our podcast. We'll be having a chat with them soon, I'm certain of it. So I think what surprises me still with e-commerce stores is probably the lack of use of email. I think that's one of the big things. They're very focused on new business, from the usual culprits which are SEO and PPC, which is great because I run two agencies that do that. But email, it astounds me when we see the amount of firms that aren't doing email. What would your advice be to e-commerce stores that are maybe just getting started with that early stage, trying to get things implemented with the email systems and email automations? What advice would you give to them?
Emily McGuire:
Yeah, so I mean, SEO and PPC is obviously amazing, right? It drives a ton of traffic to your store. But the average website has about a 50% bounce rate. So that means people, half that traffic is just leaving after one visit. And which means those are a ton of opportunities for sales that could be captured with an email address. So having that email address to then keep following up, that's the beauty, is the followup. That can be incredibly targeted based on how they signed up, how their traffic source. And then you can capitalize on what pages they were browsing and provide really personalized content. So I've seen the power of email, especially in e-commerce. Before I went out on my own, I was working in-house for a large e-commerce company. And I was on a team of, there were five of us only working on email and we were bringing in about $20 million a year just in email campaigns. So I have seen the power that it can provide.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. I have to say I've seen a similar thing. Yeah. I think it is night and day when people aren't using it and then they start to use it. I know, just when we use it in our business, some of the returns are just insane. They are ridiculous.
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. And it can make up 20 to 30% of your revenue easily.
Richard Hill:
So what will be a first thing they should set up? So you've got an e-comm store. You've got no email going out. Which is unlikely you've got no email, but it happens, doesn't it?
Emily McGuire:
Right.
Richard Hill:
What would be the first email, set of emails, first thing you would start to work on or you would recommend them to work on? They've got no emails going out. All they've got is maybe receipt emails or order process emails, but nothing else. What would be the first set of emails that you would work on?
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. So greatest hits in email marketing. The first one would be your welcome series. So really strategizing and working on getting that opt-in offer. So giving a juicy morsel to collect those email addresses, and then once they sign up, that's the most engaged they're going to be as a new subscriber. And so really capitalizing on that by serving up a welcome series. So that can be anywhere from one to five emails depending on your customers. And then the other one, which is the biggest ROI email automation campaign is an abandoned cart campaign. Yeah. At least having one email, but having more than one is absolutely powerful.
Richard Hill:
I think it's two things there that, if you listened to the podcast, there's two things there that, if you get those in place, I would vouch for that. Anybody that's been to the store, that's about to check out, that hasn't checked out or has got so far, depending on where they are in the process, but still have not checked out, an abandoned cart sequence or an email as a minimum. Just to remind you, I know just literally a couple of days ago I started to sign up for something. It was an information product, actually, not an e-comm product, but it was just a very similar process. And I went through the first step of the process, but I was like, "Oh, actually I'll buy this product with my other agency." Because I've got two agencies here. I thought I needed to have it.
Richard Hill:
So I've actually now got the email experience of an abandoned carter from one of my main emails and an actual purchaser. And it's sheer brilliance what they're doing in their followup. I've had about six abandoned cart emails now and I'm just thinking, "What more could he say to me to try and convince me to buy it?" Obviously I've already bought it over here, but he's just so good and I love being sort of sold to. I love that craft of it. Because it is a real craft, isn't it? So that abandoned cart. And then, as you said, that initial welcome sequence. Whether that's signing up for a voucher or a newsletter or whatever it may be. So what sort of things could go in that welcome sequence to make it a real wow experience in those first few emails?
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. Well certainly having an offer for sign up, delivering that offer, and then reminding people of that offer. So that means those first or anything after that first email, while you're delivering the offer, having your best sellers in an email, customer favorites, that kind of thing. Things you might like. But also telling your brand story as well, giving it some personality to make it likable. But also just include reiterating that offer in every single email, because you can't expect people to remember, "Oh yeah, I did sign up for a discount when I gave them my email."
Richard Hill:
It was reconfirming, going through it again. It might seem over the top, but people skim, they really skim. And what was the offer again? Oh, I can't find it. Well, it's there in black and white, but let's remind them again. Let's just confirm again and then look, it's showing them certain best sellers, products, discounts, reminding of the discount. Yeah. Great. So two very quick takeaways guys, listening in, straight out of the gate, which is great. So with a lot of email marketing and our marketeers, I see a lot of scarcity in emails saying an offer's going to run out at this point. It's a little bit borderline for me in terms of, well, it's not really going to run out, is it? It's not the word. So some of the language that's used in some of the trying to convince you that there's certain deadlines just seems a little bit too much sometimes. What are your thoughts on scarcity in emails and email sequences?
Emily McGuire:
I mean, it's powerful. It works because we do purchase based on feelings. And scarcity invokes fear and FOMO, fear of missing out. But if you overuse it, it loses its credibility and it's leverage.
Richard Hill:
That’s the key really, that credibility and your credibility as a seller. Yeah.
Emily McGuire:
Right. Exactly. And then also people don't understand that sometimes that when you issue an offer, or you put out an offer in an email or anywhere, that it does expire. We don't always realize that, "Oh yeah, there's a sale going on." And then you're expected to read the fine print where it says it expires in however many days. So even just having that reminder is not necessarily an overused tactic, but it is helpful to let people know this offer is ending. But yeah, don't overuse it because then-
Richard Hill:
Don't overuse it, but use it. You're saying use it, but obviously you've got to do it in the right way. Don't overuse it. And don't over push it, but you're reminding people that there is going to be a hard deadline, as long as there is a hard deadline or a hard discount, that it does finish at a certain point.
Emily McGuire:
Exactly.
Richard Hill:
Because I know in the UK we have... It's just slightly different, but we have there's different High Street stores and their TV adverts will come on and they're, "Right. Sale ending next week." And those adverts have been running for nine years.
Emily McGuire:
Exactly. Exactly.
Richard Hill:
It just loses that whole... It's like, "Oh whatever. I'm not even listening anymore."
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. Well, and it's trust too.
Richard Hill:
So straight away, it's just like, "Really?" The bank holiday sale. And then the Christmas sale and then the Easter sale and whatever it may be. I'm sure you're getting a lot of Thanksgiving sales coming up or whatever.
Emily McGuire:
No, in the US we've past Thanksgiving at this point. Everybody's onto Christmas.
Richard Hill:
Christmas already, yeah.
Emily McGuire:
Because it feels like we're not even having Thanksgiving this year. Thanksgiving, what? Yeah.
Richard Hill:
Okay. So we've now, as an e-comm store owner, you've got your welcome series set up for your juicy offer that you're giving them. You've got an abandoned cart set up. We've sent some emails around specific offers with that sort of time focused or discount focused at certain time. What would be some of the metrics we should be looking at to measure now, to see how well things are going, where we should dial things in or turn things down and measure how well things are going? What sort of things should we be looking at in terms of measuring success?
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. So I mean, most people hyper-focus on open rates, which can tell you... To me, they tell me the health of your list. So how engaged are people overall? And if you have people who are falling off and not being engaged anymore, then your open rates drop. And to me that tells you that you need to start cleaning out your list because it can affect your ability to end up in the inbox, as opposed to the spam folder.
Richard Hill:
What sort of things you do to clean the list? You literally just go in and remove people that haven't opened after so long or what...?
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. I mean, look at your average, well, it depends on how many emails you're sending out. But typically I start at three, between three and six months to see when people are opening and then consider unsubscribing them. Or at the very least just tagging them as unengaged. So you can look at them later and make that decision.
Richard Hill:
Deal with them differently sort of thing. Yeah.
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. And then the other thing is obviously revenue. So if you haven't yet already figured out how to tie revenue to specific email campaigns, I mean, that's crucial. To see individually which email campaigns are bringing in the money. But on top of that, what I typically recommend are also watching your unsubscribe rates, because churning through contacts, that creates more work for you eventually. Because the more people who unsubscribe, the more new subscribers you have to go collect. And it's more expensive to go acquire new subscribers and new customers than it is to keep your current ones. And that's going to happen. People are going to move on, they're going to unsubscribe, but watching for... It should be under 1% for email, but watching it to make sure that you have a baseline and if it spikes at any point, something's going on that needs to be looked at.
Richard Hill:
Okay. So quite a few things there to look at, but I think you touched on obviously the difference between we're trying to engage our existing list, but we're also trying to build a new list or get new subscribers. What are some of the strategies you'd recommend to our listeners to engage and get new subscribers to our lists?
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. I mean, definitely have a compelling offer that's not giving away the whole store. Something that's tantalizing. That's not going to set you up for failure in the future. So usually a discount or a freebie of some kind works and having two things around that. One is having a popup on your site. Popups can increase sign up by 30% and they don't have to be annoying. People get really icky about popups, but you can do that really strategically. So it isn't super intrusive to the user experience. And then also having a landing page dedicated to that signup offer and the signup form. So you can push that out in the world. So you can start driving traffic directly to that offer. That's something I don't see a lot of e-commerce companies doing. They just expect people to land on the homepage and then figure out that there's an offer to sign up.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. It's one of those, isn't it? I think, like you say, with a few of the things that we should have a minimum campaign set up and having something that you can consistently drive your other marketing efforts to, that isn't just a landing page, category, sub category, products. A very specific page that's been designed to get your email, rather than get a sale, which is most e-commerce pages. Is trying to get your email and then at some point you'll get the sale further down the line. So thinking about creating specific landing page, that's a great takeaway, I think, there. Yeah.
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. That you can promote on social media, that you can drive any of your Google ads or Facebook ads to. I think often we assume that there's a one-to-one correlation between an ad and a sale and that buying cycle can take a little longer for some subscribers, some customers.
Richard Hill:
So with e-commerce stores, you've got obviously all sorts of intent with people that have already bought, people that have gone through the checkout, people that have maybe filled in the different forms that you go on your website. Obviously all different types of customer or potential customer there. What would you say about creating different segments within your lists and within your database or your, if you're using Klaviyo or whatever it may be, what sort of segments should we have segmenting maybe that list? What sort of things would you say about that?
Emily McGuire:
So bare minimum. So this is something I don't see a lot of companies doing is minimum having a segment of your customers, people who have purchased, and having a segment of people who have never purchased. Those are two different audiences and they'll respond to different offers. Your customers, people who have bought from you before, don't need as much incentive as those who have never purchased. And so sending the same discount to all of those subscribers, you could have made more profit on one segment. So that's bare minimum. The other ones are your most engaged subscribers. People who are opening the most. Sending those people specific offers. Or maybe upping the ante a little bit to those folks, if they've never purchased before. And then your most valuable customers. The people who have bought the most or spent the most. So those are the minimum I would recommend. And then obviously category. If you have category purchasers or browsers.
Richard Hill:
Product categories.
Emily McGuire:
People who are browsing specific categories.
Richard Hill:
It really starts to make you think, doesn't it? I think. I don't have an e-commerce store now, but I'm thinking straight away of clients and what I used to have many, many years ago. But straight away, obviously customers, not customers, engaged with people that are opening the emails. Obviously are interested, but they're just not bought yet. Why haven't they bought? Oh, we got them over the... They bought this set in this category, obviously related associated products, cross sell products. It just opens a whole opportunity then to move them from one segment to another segment and then keep pushing that segment so you can keep them. And now they're over here because they bought this. Right. Let's show them the new version of X, Y, Z.
Emily McGuire:
Exactly.
Richard Hill:
So obviously we're sending a lot of emails there potentially, which is good. What would you say about trying to get improved? So we're sending those emails, those maybe half a dozen different segments or more. Obviously a lot more dependent on the size of the catalog. What would you say about some tricks and strategies to help get those emails opened? To improve the open rates on the emails that we're sending?
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. So first of all, the caveat to that is I have not seen a correlation between higher open rates and more revenue on an email campaign. So open rates are not the end all, be all of an email metric. So it's great if your goal is to keep your audience engaged so that when you do have a really time-sensitive offer or the holidays. If you really depend on the holidays to drive most of your revenue, keeping your list engaged is important. But open rates or open rates in general to get people to open, the first thing they look at is the sender name. It's an often overlooked part of the email strategy. But if you don't make it super clear who the email is from, if you have some random person's name from the company, they're not going to know.
Emily McGuire:
I mean, unless that person's a superstar and everybody knows that person, they're not going to know who it is. So making sure your sender name is crystal clear on who the brand is. And then the second part is in your subject lines, making them using the word "you" in a subject line has shown to increase open rates. And it really helps you, as a writer of subject lines, to reframe the way you're thinking about your email in terms of what's the benefit inside the email? What's the outcome? What's the aspiration that you're going to help people achieve by opening the email?
Richard Hill:
Yeah. I think the sender name's an interesting one, because I think I've seen where you'll sign up for something, you get that sender name, but then the sequence so far in, it'll change. It might say, "Hey, I'm Johnny from the marketing department." But obviously it's automated. So it's almost like a pattern interrupt or an interrupt to that. "Oh, who's this guy? Who's this lady?"
Emily McGuire:
Exactly. Exactly. And I've tested things like that. And I've seen higher open rates when you switch it to somebody's personal name, but at the same time, unsubscribes skyrocketed. So that can have a backlash effect where people feel like they've been tricked or duped into opening the email. And again, it ruins that trust with your brand.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. But like you say, open rates is more of a vanity metric. Obviously, that’s ultimately what you’re after, revenue as an e-comm store, as any business.
Emily McGuire:
Yes, exactly.
Richard Hill:
So someone's been on your list for a long, long time. They've not done anything. They've not opened anything. I think that's everybody listening that's got email lists, very much so. We've got a lot of people on our list potentially that just haven't done anything, bought anything, clicked on anything or very little. I guess two part question, really. So identifying those people that haven't, what are some ways to do that? Or who should we be looking for and who should we target? And how can we re-engage them?
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. So, when you really want to start looking at people or cleaning up all the people who have stopped opening, again, it depends on your email cadence in general. But start to look at people who haven't opened anything in six months.
Richard Hill:
Six months.
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. And just start there as the baseline. And you might find that you want to back that up a little bit more into five months or four months or three months. Then you can do one of two things. You can temporarily suppress those people from your list. Give them a pause from your email campaigns, give them a breather. And then, maybe after a couple months, start a reactivation campaign. And so the first emails they're getting from you again are, "Hey, where have you been?" That kind of stuff. Just talk to people like real people.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. I like that. I've not thought of that one. So give them an actual break. Stop. And then two months later, "What's happening?"
Emily McGuire:
Yeah, exactly. "Hey, it's been a minute. What's up?"
Richard Hill:
They might be like, "I thought you deleted me. Great."
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. Exactly. And then send a series of three to five emails over the course of a few weeks. And if they open one, great they're back on the list. And if they don't then maybe that's time to unsubscribe. And the other part of that too, is at six months you can just start sending that sequence. But I think after getting a pause from you, they're more likely to notice.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, I like that because I think most people suggest and teach to delete so many people after so long. And I have to admit I've done that a lot over the years and done similar thing. But to obviously just pause but actively pause. Not just pause because you're lazy and you forgot to send emails.
Emily McGuire:
Right, exactly.
Richard Hill:
You say, "Right. We'll take anybody, find me everybody that's not opened an email in six months, put them into this segment, which is basically leave alone for three months. And then reintroduce them with our reactivation campaign. That's, "Hey, what happened? Where have you been"
Emily McGuire:
Exactly. Yes. I missed you. That kind of stuff.
Richard Hill:
WE missed you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I know you've worked on a lot of different e-commerce stores, email marketing over the years, and I've been asked to ask you to tell us about a abandoned cart campaign that you worked on, that's generated over a million pounds annually.
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. Well a million US dollars. So not quite that much.
Richard Hill:
Oh, sorry, yes. Of course.
Emily McGuire:
I wish. That would make it more impressive.
Richard Hill:
Maybe it is now.
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. It could be. So like I said, abandoned cart is one of the greatest sets of email automations for e-commerce. And I was tasked with testing an abandoned cart campaign. We had three emails and we tested each one individually. Ran the gamut of subject lines, formatting, the sense of urgency kind of thing. And what we found, interestingly enough, was that the scarcity piece worked really well with abandoned cart. So saying that the items aren't going to last forever, but also having a discount, having an offer on those emails worked really well as well.
Richard Hill:
Did you give the offering straight away or do you use that comes after a little while?
Emily McGuire:
So I have done, with this particular campaign, we did the offer straight away. And so we had the same offer on the first two emails and then the third one, we upped the ante. But that can be a bit of a slippery slope because now consumers are used to that kind of thing. So they might hold out to check out until you send that email with the offer.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. They know then and they're expecting it. They're waiting. Where's the 5%, where's the 10%?
Emily McGuire:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
Richard Hill:
Or they're off to find a discount code. Googling discount code.
Emily McGuire:
Exactly. So many people have that kind of time and patience.
Richard Hill:
Okay. I mean, I think again, you guys that are listening to the episode, that abandoned cart, I think in every system that I'm aware of, it's very easy to set up nowadays, with the technology. Most platforms come with it or it's just a very simple plugin. Obviously a lot of options there. Different providers. But ultimately you're setting up, one, two, three, four emails maybe, and saying, there's an urgency discount. That simple. And when you think about buying anything online, unfortunately, or fortunately, people need a nudge. People need a push. People need to be... It's like when I think that as we do a lot of AdWords marketing and remarketing, but it's a bit like remarketing. We know if we don't have remarketing dialed in in our ad campaigns, it's going to be nowhere near as successful if it's not. If we're just relying on ads running and them buying straight away, people don't buy straight away. But a lot of people need that nudge, that nudge, that nudge, that nudge, that nudge. You know what? Bugger it, let's just buy the damn thing.
Emily McGuire:
Yeah, exactly. I mean, our attention spans are really short, especially in digital marketing.
Richard Hill:
There's so much noise out there, isn't it? It just happens just like you go to buy something and then it's like, "Do you know what? I'll do it later." And then you forget, you just forget. Oh yeah. Well, you're going to do it later. And then three days have gone by, you've had your two reminder emails, your abandoned cart, your remarketing AdWords, your abandoned email number three. Oh, I need to get that. If that's not in place, it's huge. It's tens of percent increase in sales for e-commerce stores. So if you're listening to this episode and you're at this point, I would pause right now on this podcast and go and set that damn thing up.
Emily McGuire:
Oh my God, yes. Like you said, it's so easy. The first time I set up an abandoned cart email was six or seven years ago. And I had to go in and hard code it into our website. And it was awful. And it's so easy now.
Richard Hill:
I'm going to ask you a bit more of a personal question now.
Emily McGuire:
Uh oh. I'm ready.
Richard Hill:
We've got a lot of Harry Potter fans. So Snape versus Sirius Black. Who do you prefer and why?
Emily McGuire:
Oh my God. I want to say Sirious. I do. My heart says Sirius, but Snape was the pragmatic one. He was the steady, dedicated one. Even though he was kind of a jerk. And Sirius is just stuck in the past. He just wants to have his fun with Harry. That... Was it the fifth book? When he went through whatever... Devastator...
Richard Hill:
I've got my youngest son. He's not too far away right now. He's upstairs. I'll give him a mention. I'll let him have a listen. One day he'll listen to one of my episodes. He's watched all the films 20 times, every single one.
Emily McGuire:
Oh my God.
Richard Hill:
Yes. There's eight of them, isn't there? So he's about 160 films he's watched. He's absolutely obsessed. A little bit less so now because he's a little bit older now. He's upstairs now.
Emily McGuire:
Yeah. Some day. Yeah. I've got a three-year-old and someday we'll get him in.
Richard Hill:
You'll be like, "Yay."
Emily McGuire:
Exactly.
Richard Hill:
Okay. So I like to finish every episode, Emily, with a book recommendation. If you were to recommend one book to our listeners, what would that be?
Emily McGuire:
Marketing specific?
Richard Hill:
No, it can be anything you like, anything you like. It can be Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, whatever it is. It could be anything you want. It could be marketing. If you want to do marketing. It can be mindset. It can be anything.
Emily McGuire:
Yeah, anything.
Richard Hill:
Anything.
Emily McGuire:
So I have discovered something about myself recently that I cannot read nonfiction. I'm a big reader. I love reading fiction, but right now I am listening to a book called Burnout. And it's about, just that, burnout and about, essentially, emotional intelligence and how you let go of emotions so that they're not eating at you all the time. And it's blowing my mind.
Richard Hill:
Oh, fantastic. I think that will resonate with a lot of people right now. Obviously we have lots of stressful stuff going on in everyone's minds at the moment. So obviously a lot of changes over these last few months that everyone's having to work through and that sounds great. So Burnout. Yeah. We'll get that. What we'll do, we'll make sure that's linked up on the show notes. So thank you so much for being a guest on eCom@One. For the guys that are listening in that would like to find out more about yourself and your business, what's the best place to reach out and find you on the web?
Emily McGuire:
Well, I do hang out on the internet. Thank you so much for asking. So I'm very active on LinkedIn. So come find me there. I'm posting all the time about email marketing and all those things. And then I do have a free action guide on my website about how to boost your email open rates. And there's a subject line formula in that and all that stuff. And it's at flourishgrit.com/open.
Richard Hill:
/Open. Yep. Well, we'll also make sure that's linked up on the show notes as well. Well, thank you so much for being a guest on eCom@One and I'll speak to you soon.
Emily McGuire:
Thank you.
Richard Hill:
Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye.