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E149: Israa Alrawi

Compete and Win By Optimising Your Email Marketing Strategy

israa black and white portrait photo

eCom@One Listen on Spotify

Podcast Overview

You can write the catchiest, attention grabbing, value adding subject line in the world. But, if your emails end up in spam, you are in trouble. 

Email deliverability is absolutely critical for the success of your email strategy. So, don’t get it wrong. 

Steal your customers’ attention and boost your revenue with an email marketing strategy that would make your competitors shake. 

eCom@One Presents

Israa Alrawi

Israa Alrawi is an Ecom Lifecycle and Growth Marketing Manager at The Winbox. After scaling her eCommerce business, she found her passion in the world of email marketing. She has now driven £50+million in revenue and increased customer retention by 30% during her time at the agency! 

In this podcast, Israa chats about email deliverability and winning the inbox, her pivotable career moment, how she became profitable from day 1 with her eCommerce store and three best practices when it comes to email marketing. 

Find out where people are going wrong with their email strategy by listening to this episode. Don’t let your emails go to spam! 

Topics covered: 

00:43 – Why she jumped from her stable government job to eCommerce and email marketing

13:40 – Talking to customers, not big brands

14:00 – Email marketing mistakes

21:04 – Test and check your templates and competitors

24:23 – Tips for Email Marketing: Setup DNS, establish email cadence, prioritise list

29:23 – Use a matching domain name for email sender

32:32 – Deliverability critical, start Q4 preparation now

35:39 – Book recommendation

38:15 – Website offers consulting, audits & educational content

Richard Hill [00:00:05]:

Hi, and welcome to another episode of eCom@One. Today's guest Israa Alrawi. Ecom, lifecycle and growth marketing manager at the Wind Box. How you doing, isra I'm good.

Israa Alrawi [00:00:15]:

How are you, Richard?

Richard Hill [00:00:16]:

I am really well. I am really well. We're a fair, fair way from each other today. You're in Baltimore, I believe, or near Baltimore, and obviously I'm in the UK, so we've been trying to organize this one for a little while, haven't we? So thank you so much for coming on. I'm looking forward to this.

Israa Alrawi [00:00:32]:

Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Richard Hill [00:00:35]:

Great stuff. So I think before we get into some questions, it'd be good for you to introduce yourself and tell us how you got into the world of ecommerce.

Israa Alrawi [00:00:43]:

Yeah, so as you said, my name is Istra. I got into the world of ecommerce. Basically. I'm not going to go through my whole life story, but I had just left my actual government job that was quite a lot of traveling after having my kids, and I've always wanted to get into the marketing world. So in 2017, I kind of just took a leap of faith and a jump and took my L savings and put it into ecommerce and started my own store. And I learned a lot. I actually started it because I wanted to know where my talent or my skills would lie in the ecommerce world. And so I started my store, worked on it for six months, got it prepped up, was able to find my Win. I did the drop ship to private label. That was the big thing back then. That's what I found online. And I was able to find my winning products, and I was able to scale to a mid six figure quickly. And basically I relied heavily on just like everybody else on ads back then. They were easy. You could get anybody through a lot of new customers, but then the ads start breaking, and I turned into email marketing to help me basically offset the cost because I was bootstrapped with no, like, I didn't take on any debt at that point. I didn't understand the whole financial aspect of ecommerce just yet then. Yeah, so I got into email marketing, and it just clicked pun intended that that's what my skills lie. And I enjoyed it so much. I ended up handing over basically my store's assets to another bigger store and moving completely into email marketing in 2019, taking on clients, helping on, helping friends out, and that's my journey, basically. I've been in it since then, heavily focusing on strategy and deliverability and retaining customers for a lifetime.

Richard Hill [00:02:46]:

Yeah, I love these stories where agency owners start selling their own thing, selling things themselves, and then obviously they get asked or they start offering their services. That's exactly how my agency started a few years, many years ago now 14 in November. So about six months time, I'll be in for year 14 and exactly very similar, doing various things for myself, like you, and then moving full time into the agency world. So what would you say has been the most pivotal moment in your career to date then?

Israa Alrawi [00:03:23]:

I guess it's just knowing that I didn't realize that I would enjoy the lifecycle part so much. And it was a kind of I've had two AHA moments with this whole thing. So when I started with email marketing, when the ads weren't offset, were not working correctly, and I was using it to offset the cost, I just had this AHA moment of like, wow, why aren't ecommerce heavily relying on email marketing? Because email marketing is where your revenue, your profit is made. But everybody only talks about the front end. They talk about paid social media creatives. Go viral. The viral thing is a big thing. So I said, you know what, I'm going to start talking about it, even though I become annoying about it, because it was something that really helped me survive through three months of basically a dry spell in the store. So that was my first AHA moment, and then I had my second one. And I guess maybe I've hit that 10,000 hours of practice just a couple of months ago. It just clicked with me. Like, there's structure that needs to be taught for ecommerce. It was kind of like enough and enough of the things I saw on social media. And I really want to be out there teaching even people who are just starting and small business owners and people who are scaling the value of your email marketing platform, not just as an email marketing tool, but it's a whole CRM where your data lies. And that's kind of where I started. I'm building up my personal brand now because I'm basically, what do they call them? Not a perfectionist, but I believe in an ideal world where we can teach and really bring awareness about the issues that truly make a business successful outside of the shiny objects that you see online, outside of everybody talking about it. So that's really been my two big pivotal ones. Like, why am I doing this? And this really works if you truly put in the work for yeah, no, that's brilliant.

Richard Hill [00:05:40]:

So how did you manage to become profitable from day one with your store then? That's something I understand you did?

Israa Alrawi [00:05:46]:

Yeah, so I had a mentor. He was in ecommerce at the time, and they ran basically a mentorship at that time. And he had a course. So I took it. And it was actually a very beneficial course that taught me how to set up, how to source. But the big thing is it really focused on your numbers. So how do you profit? Basically it took into account your cost of goods, your overhead cost, all of that. Like things that aren't taught because people tell you, go put a product online and price it however you like. Instead of really understanding how should you price your product, what value to add to that product to keep it at that price, how do you not dilute? So I relied heavily on data and numbers to keep me profitable, and then I use email marketing, especially automations, to really upsell and bring that average order value up from day one. A lot of people say post purchase should be just for nurturing, and when you are strapped for money, you use that post purchase to not you can deliver value. I'm not saying you're diluting anything, but you can also give more value where people want to come back and buy faster than you expect. So I use my store basically as a guinea pig testing ground. I tested things that people said, no, that doesn't work, or no, you shouldn't do that. Everything that everybody went against the grain with, I went and I said, let's just test it and look at the numbers, and the numbers lie to me. So yeah, I really relied heavily on data and my numbers and understanding how much does it cost to acquire a customer and how much to keep them. So all of that is where I kept the profitability. We can talk about taxes, which really heavily influenced prices, but that's something also nobody talks about. But yeah, it was just the whole data driven.

Richard Hill [00:07:53]:

Obviously, pricing an item is one thing, and there's different schools of thought around that. Obviously, depending on what market you're in, how competitive it is, what availability is like but ultimately then it's about from what you're saying is then obviously nurturing those customers or those clicks from a customer to start with and then getting them to rebuy and getting them to rebuy and recommend and obviously you've got that lifetime value then. And then maybe depending on the numbers we're looking at but it could one order could be $50.50 pounds. Whereas three or four repeat orders. Three or four recommendations with three or four repeat orders could mean they've then got ten orders and you've now got 500 pounds or $500.

Israa Alrawi [00:08:39]:

But I was speaking on this the other day to someone else and I said, hi there.

Richard Hill [00:08:44]:

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Israa Alrawi [00:09:26]:

One thing that email does for you, it helps you offset your cost in ads by you can simply just send your best customers to your ads and have them comment on there and build that trust with your new customers are seeing the ads and that brings down your cost acquisition there. And it's a whole thing where there are tactics, there are strategies to really offset all your spending cost to stay profitable.

Richard Hill [00:09:57]:

I can't remember who said it, but there's something along the lines of the person or the company that can afford to spend the most on acquiring a customer. It's going to win the game and it's so true, isn't it? I believe that I know in my agencies that a customer is worth X and it's in tens of thousands of dollars or pounds a year. Typically our clients spend with us. So I can in my instance or to spend a lot more than a dollar or $10 or $50 or $100 or $500 $1,000 to acquire a customer is no problem for our business, whereas Ecom, obviously the numbers aren't quite as big as that. But naturally, if you know that a typical customer, that lifetime value is going to be $400 as opposed to that one order of $500. And if you can cash flow it in the early days, then ultimately you can afford, no doubt, to spend more than the companies that are just short term thinkers that are maybe tight on cash flow. I mean, a lot of it boils down to cash flow in the end.

Israa Alrawi [00:11:04]:

Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of people focus on impulse revenue. We talk about impulse buying, but we don't talk about owners who are so scared to build hype and sell like high. And I started actually doing this a lot with my clients to show them like, yes, you don't have to have ten K days every day. You can have a 300K day and then cruise the rest of the month, but you have to be patient enough to build that strategy to get people to buy at a certain set date instead of trying to hustle every single day. And it's just a whole stressful situation for everybody.

Richard Hill [00:11:46]:

Yeah, that's it. Some days it's like this different times of year, isn't it? I mean, I think trying to think it's different holidays and times of year, different types of product sets. You can have the ups and downs of ecom in terms of seasoning, whether you want to call that seasonality holidays. Obviously a lot of companies have that great run up to Christmas that six, seven weeks or two or three weeks in some instances. Now we're right in the middle of spring here, coming into the summer, so it's like longest. I think we've got the longest day coming up in the UK. I don't know if it's the same. I guess it is, yeah. In terms of the different things. I've spent the last two weeks looking at barbecues because it's that time of year. I threw mine away last year. It's like, right, I need to get a new barbecue. So I've been on probably, like, 25 websites to do a barbecue.

Israa Alrawi [00:12:47]:

I mean, it's crazy because quarter three is actually the lowest D to C ecommerce time frame. And a lot of businesses, this is when they're scrambling. How do we stay afloat till we get to quarter four? Unless you're like a summer, you sell some type of summer product, this is the time where it's like, let's double down on strategy. Let's stay afloat, and then also prep for quarter four, because you are prepping your customers. So, yeah, seasons matter. And being prepared ahead of time is good. Better than the week before.

Richard Hill [00:13:25]:

That's true, isn't it? So obviously, you've worked with quite a few clients now, and obviously your own store say some of the biggest mistakes that you've seen and you've maybe made through your ecommerce journey that our listeners need to avoid.

Israa Alrawi [00:13:40]:

Yeah. So the biggest mistake, and I will say this, I made it because I was ignorant and did not understand. And I think this is where I was like, this has to be taught. This has to be said a million times over online, was when I started emailing. I followed the big brands. What is these big stores doing? And then I forgot that they have a giant budget and they can do whatever they want, and they're probably working on an enterprise level ESP, which is a whole nother ballgame. And I realized when I first started sending emails, I was getting sales, and it was great. You drop an email and you get, like, $2,000 in sales, and that's great. But then it started dwindling the clicks start Dwindling, and then the opens were like, you're just sending us a bunch of products. So I was like, okay, how do I figure out how do I make this work for a small business? I don't have the budget to go and hire people to make this work for me. So that's when I kind of turned into basically talking. So when I started my store, the reason I actually was able to sell quickly is because I talked to my customers a lot. I got on the phone, I got feedback, and I just kind of applied that. I said, Why don't I just start asking them what they want through email? And that's exactly what I did. I engaged a lot more. I talked more about things that interest them. I use a lot of audience inside Google Analytics information to really bring that copywriting into the emails. And the engagement got better. The replies got better. I understood what my audience truly wanted. So by the time we actually found our second winner for the store, basically our top seller. It went viral with no ad spend behind it. We put it online, people just bought it in droves and they start sharing it. So that was a big thing for me is understanding that, you know, you're not a big brand, you don't have the budget, you need to talk to your customers. Email marketing, it's a communication channel first, and then it's a marketing channel. And people forget the communication part. They just want to look like a big brand. And I'm like, okay, great, you want to look like a big brand, but do you have the budget to be a big brand? So there's that struggle for small business owners. So that's the biggest mistake I made at first, but we pivoted quickly and we're able to bring that back. And another thing that I actually went into, I started understanding Deliverability. So deliverability is really big. Ecommerce, don't talk about it because ecommerce actually probably has the lowest spam complaint compared to other industries, like affiliate marketing and all that, because most people sign up to your stores because they want to hear from you. So a lot of the mistakes that people make that they end up in spam and DTC, ecommerce is basically engagement issues. So they don't clean their list or they want to say, I have 100,000 people on my list I want to send to everybody, and it does not work like that. So that's like one struggle I always have with clients is I have to fight them on. These are your buyers. They're only 30% of your entire list. That's a big one. Another one is a lot of customers. My clients, the design of the emails, they're either one image or the call to action is missing somewhere. So that's a big one. So they focus heavily on Opens. Like, oh, I got 70% open rate, but their click rate is like 0.2 and no sales. And I'm like, scratch that, that's not how it works. And then again, going back to Deliverability, understanding the can spam laws, understanding FTC laws and what you need in your email. So, like, a lot of people miss that. They need a physical address in there and you can get flagged for that or even SMS marketing. Now we go into and people are sending before 08:00 A.m. Or heavily sending SMS and they haven't read the terms of service with their providers. So it's a lot of just understanding how to use your actual platforms versus just like, let's just get these emails out and get money. Because over time, that's not going to work for you. It might work in the beginning. You'll get a couple of dollars, but if you truly want to cement and grow your audience, you have to understand the basics and the tech behind email to really drive that strategy and drive that revenue.

Richard Hill [00:18:24]:

Yeah, we see that. So many things there. That's great. Thank you. So obviously design, I think is something that maybe a lot of stores seem to struggle with and obviously it's your brand. At the end of the day, if you maybe spent time and resource or you should have spent time on resource developing that brand in terms of the website, the design, obviously that should then feather through to all your other social channels, et cetera. And obviously email, it shouldn't look disconnected, it should look the same as the store, et cetera. And quite often I think a lot of people just sort of maybe take a template from one of the providers, change colorway and then they send it. But hang on a minute, there's a few other things you can do there and then invest some time, whether that's with your agency or even with a freelancer to help yourself, et cetera, to help get a dedicated agency in to help you build out those initial templates. And then, like you say, if you've got that 100K list and you're just sending everything to that 100K list, you're not segmenting in any. That's just like a render strategy, isn't it?

Israa Alrawi [00:19:31]:

That's the fastest way to get into spam is that you are sending to a list that you have not cleaned, you have not segmented, you have not really understood what they really want. But just going back to the template issue, a lot of people look and want pretty. And pretty doesn't always sell. I'm not against imagery, I'm not against beautiful templates. But I have seen the issue of let's focus heavily on how beautiful we make it look that we forget we are talking to a person across that laptop or computer and they want connection and the copywriting gets missed heavily. They forget to talk to the customer. And yes, you can put a million testimonials and showcase how your product is superior, but at the end of the day, what are you offering them? Why are they opening your emails? Why should they click? I always say I finished my emails and I say, so what? So what? How are you going to get me to click that button to buy? And to be truthful, my most successful clients that I've had have the Ugliest email templates, but they have the loyaltest fans because their product good and they build that community. So community over just marketing is huge and I think it's heavily missed when we see all these freelancers and agencies putting up on social media beautiful templates and they're gorgeous. But I always say, give me what I want instead of just entertaining me.

Richard Hill [00:21:02]:

Right down to the picture, isn't it? You got to test these things. Exactly. I totally agree. A lot of the platforms will have these pre built templates and they look great and in many instances they can work well. But until you get that routine of basically you're looking at the data, seeing what's converting, where are the opens, the clicks and the purchases ultimately and then trying to beat depends how you're doing it and what scale, but ultimately you've got to be checking and testing what's working. Yeah, absolutely. I personally sign up to whatever industry we go into in terms of clients. Not so much now, but I have a habit of going and signing up to the half a dozen of the competitors or the key players in that industry just to get a feel for what people are doing. But obviously I don't know what's been successful for them and I think that goes back to your previous point a few moments ago. Quite often a lot of brands are just so eager to copy what is out there but you don't know what's working for them, you don't know what budget, you don't know what that piece might be a lost leader for them and they're making money elsewhere that you don't know about if it's a subscription. So you could be very careful, sort of I'm not suggesting you sign up to six competitors and copy what they're doing, but you can get a feel for ideas. Oh God, I didn't think about that. Yeah, we can implement loyalty into our email systems and I forgot about that. Let's look at implementing loyalty into a segment, into a series of flows that's encouraging people to obviously continue through the loyalty process to get into our Platinum Club or whatever it may be. You might not thought of that in that.

Israa Alrawi [00:22:51]:

Yeah, I don't disregard that and I do that myself. I'm an email marketer so I probably have a million emails that I don't even remember but I actually look for inspiration in my inbox. I go through every morning, I go through subject lines, I go through different types of industry. But the thing is, the idea is not to copy, but to be inspired to fit it into your actual business model because every business model operates differently. Your customers are coming to you. There could be one person that shops from me and you, but they shop for different reasons. So you have to understand why are they buying a Pan versus why are they buying an AirPod? Right? Having understanding totally.

Richard Hill [00:23:46]:

For the guys that are listening right now, I would say they're a savvy bunch and they are using email so we haven't got to sort of convince them on the intricacies or not the intricacies, but the benefits of email. We talk a lot about clavio and segmentation and flows, et cetera. What would you say that to our listeners? That there may be three best practices that our listeners can go and implement, can go away and think about implementing after this episode. What are sort of three core areas that you would get them to focus on?

Israa Alrawi [00:24:22]:

Three core so the first one, and I advise everybody to do this, especially if you've been emailing a while, is to actually set up your if you have not already set up your DNS, records your authentication for your domain, and start building your domain reputation instead of the ESP you're working on. The reason you want to do that is because you want to build a reputable domain with the ISPs like Gmail and Yahoo and AOL, because if you ever move, that domain follows you, that reputation follows you. You don't have to worry about rebuilding it every time versus if you stay on clavios, you're just building Clavios. So set up your SPF, your DKIM, set up a second layer of what do you call protection with DMark and that helps you inbox as well. It's kind of like almost a guarantee. Most people, once they set that up, their spam issues usually go away if they have best practices in place. So that's number one. Number two, I say is establish a cadence with your audience. People focus on subject lines a lot with what subject line. Most of the time people open your email because they recognize your name in their inbox versus the actual subject line you're using. So they're going to look at your name first and then second subject line is secondary. So establish a good cadence and stick to it. If you can only email once a week, do that first before adding more. And it also is important for your deliverability because you don't want to send seven emails during Black Friday and then ghost your list for three months and come back in March and send three more that could flag you as also a spammer. So that's something to look out for, consistency over, trying to get revenue when you want it. So stay consistent with your list. And my third one is send more emails if you can with of course, if you are trying to make more revenue, it is statistically proven that more emails make you more revenue without any other factors in place. That's just the case. Now I add a little bit of layer on that and I say send emails that your audience wants and it doesn't have to be a sell every day. You literally can send them articles, you can send them blog posts you write, you can engage them on your social media. If you're going live, let them know through email. So a lot of time these business owners focus heavily on social media. They forget that the same content on your social media can be sent to your email. And you should prioritize your email list because it's the only thing you own. If everything collapses today, that's all you have. And on that note, I tell you to download your email list often because you can lose that as well if the ESP kicks you off or something goes down. So keep a maintenance of your email list in a safe place on your actual desktop or computers or hard drives because that's the only data you truly own online.

Richard Hill [00:27:27]:

I think that's one that people just don't think about that because when you think about what you own, you own your domain name and the potential, the way that is ranking. But rankings can change. But usually if you're doing things genuinely and not doing anything too black hat, you should be safe in terms of your rankings. But then obviously, generally you've got your SEO rankings, but then you're reliant on paid ads quite often. Whereas with the email list, you own that list, you own that, that is your asset. So building that list, being able to market to that list forever more obviously within reason, it's literally a valuable asset. So when you're thinking also of selling your business and getting value in that back, if you've got a database that basically a new buyer or you who can basically get up on a Monday morning, send an email and get free money, which is basically what email marketing is, right?

Israa Alrawi [00:28:26]:

If your whole business collapses today, you can build another website and upload your contacts and go on your day because they will carry you through. And it's also, I mean you're not just downloading the email list, you are downloading all your data that comes with every single email that's attached with data, all their past history comes with that. So it is valuable, people get lazy about it, but I wouldn't because I've had a client that lost everything on MailChimp. So don't do that.

Richard Hill [00:29:01]:

And then when you said like the from email address, that's one I think is quite an interesting one because it's such a simple change or tweak obviously I think what you were saying was obviously that you need to get that right. So with a brand, would that be the brand name or would you suggest any of you got any other ideas like a department within the brand or sort of a persona within the company?

Israa Alrawi [00:29:23]:

Yeah, so your from email, the from, the one that you reply to should be always if you can@yourdomain.com use something that matches your domain. So like hello or support at your domain. What I'm talking about is the actual name that appears in your inbox. Yes, I just wanted to separate those in case anybody gets confused. But that name I always like to use the founder or like the customer success person, the lead name depending on who's reaching out basically. So if it's like letting them know about some type of update in orders or update in products or something like that, maybe we'll send it from like Pam, the customer success person or something like that. Or if it's like something major like wishing them a happy holiday or something, I send that from the founder so you can interchange but what I would do with that is make sure people get familiar. So put a face to the names so that people aren't confused that did I really sign up for this or is this like spam coming through? But. I always like to do like Pam and then maybe a dash and then put the actual business name there too just to indicate that this is coming from this business as well. It's not just some random name.

Richard Hill [00:30:40]:

Yeah, I think that's the first thing you see, isn't it? Obviously in your inbox come from obviously you see the snippet of the subject. It depends on where you're viewing it exactly. But you'll see that from and obviously if it says Pam the Barbecue Hut or whatever, if we're going back to barbecue purchase and then obviously if it's like Pam the Barbecue Hut. Pam the Barbecue Hut and then the 8th email might be something else, the Barbecue you can sort of intrigue it's quite intriguing. Then potentially oh, that's a different person. So you can set up flows potentially that you're training them, the customer that obviously you've had five, six, seven emails from Pam. But oh, we've had an individual email from the founder, what's? The founder? And then sort of introducing new people, people into the flows or new services into the flows with slightly different emails.

Israa Alrawi [00:31:39]:

But potentially you can even do the Barbecue Hut exclusive too, or like the Barbecue Black Friday if you want to attach a little bit more information to what the emails regarding. So we like to do exclusive for really big exclusive promotions that happen during the year because those are, people are looking for those most of the time. But yeah, we use a general name for most marketing and then we hit them with somebody's name once in a while to just make it pop in their email.

Richard Hill [00:32:16]:

Brilliant. So next twelve months, what should our listeners be looking out for? What do our listeners need to be focused on over the next twelve months to really get an advantage with our email marketing?

Israa Alrawi [00:32:32]:

As an email deliverability person, and because I love it so much and everybody rolls their eyes about it, it is really important to understand deliverability. Even if you pick up an article and read just a little bit, just to understand what to look for when things don't look right. Basically that's all I want really business owners to know. You don't have to become a deliverability expert, that's what we're here for, to reach out to us. But I would ideally like to see business owners and email marketers and agencies to know when they're in trouble and they need to come out of the spam folder quickly because the longer you're there, the longer it takes you to take you out. And I say that is because the privacy is getting stricter. You really need to understand your numbers, you really need to understand how to read your data to know that you are building a reputable domain and reputation online, to continue to be able to inbox and make that revenue and create the impact for your business. So that's a big one. The second one is if you have not started for quarter four. You need to start now. You really do need to start now. And your email provides you a wealth of knowledge there. You can send out emails and ask them what they're looking forward to or what they want to see in quarter four. And you can create all that information and start hyping stuff up once September or October rolls around. But you need the information now. Don't wait till the last minute. That's a lot of time. We've only planned for next week. But when it comes to these big quarters that make you some people make 50% to 70% of their revenue in these quarters. Don't sit on it, don't wait. You have the information in front of you. All you have to do is ask, so that's my two big ones. And going back to the deliverability, it's important because quarter four, there's a lot of the volume of email goes up exponentially. And it's not just about not going to the spam folder. It's about how do you surpass the volume and get to the inbox before everybody else does.

Richard Hill [00:34:48]:

That's a great point, isn't it? Because if everybody is ramping their email up, you're getting ten times the amount of email in your inbox. As a prospective customer, how are you ensuring deliverability? But also all the things we've talked about around standing out, around the naming, around the subject lines, around segmenting, et cetera. Yeah, deliverability is one that people sort of maybe take for granted, but if they were really looking at how well things are, your email lists are getting delivered. Like you say, there's certain things at domain level you talked about about ten minutes ago that people, I don't think generally do. A lot of the times they don't do it. So, yeah, some great tips there and I think a lot of actionable things for our listeners to be able to get stuck into now. I like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book to recommend to the listeners?

Israa Alrawi [00:35:39]:

I have two that I really enjoy, and I feel like these two really help basically increase your business or help it grow. The first one is launched by Jeff Walker. I don't know if you've heard of it. I love that book and I mean before I even read it. It's a strategy we've always used on how to use your email to truly drive that huge revenue impact. So if you are looking for a book that helps you, if you're doing a lot of product launches and it's just falling flat, that's a great book to go to understand how you really can harness the power of your email marketing and your networking to really drive high growth revenue periods. And my second one is What They Didn't Tell Me by Joad Asan. And it's actually right here. I'll put it up and I like this one because it talks about how to become a resilient leader and to build a team that really champions around your business. Because as in the online world and DTC world, a lot of times there's a high turnover of people you don't know how to get a good team together. So it was a really good read about how it's about his journey and how he really, truly treated his team well to solve a problem they have and stuff like that. So these are my two ecom big ones that I like to read about people's journeys. Those are really big and nice to understand how to grow your business. As far as email, it's really hard to pinpoint a book for email.

Richard Hill [00:37:21]:

Yeah, that's okay.

Israa Alrawi [00:37:23]:

Yeah, it's it's it's there really isn't an email book out there. It's really about testing and understanding your audience. So I really don't have like a set recommended book because I really never read about that. Sorry. I do always recommend cash advertising, and.

Richard Hill [00:37:40]:

It'S a book yeah, that's on my shelf behind me somewhere. I'm trying to find it now. Is there I know it's there thread.

Israa Alrawi [00:37:48]:

So it must be in one of those.

Richard Hill [00:37:50]:

I know who bought me that. Somebody called James bought me that about ten years ago. Yes, absolutely. Brilliant book.

Israa Alrawi [00:37:57]:

Brilliant short book that helps you really practice and hone your craft in copywriting and speaking to your audience, which email is about. So communication first.

Richard Hill [00:38:08]:

Well, thanks Israel, for coming on the show. For those that want to find out more about you, more about inbox, what's the best way to do that.

Israa Alrawi [00:38:15]:

So I do have a website. The Windbox is really a consulting educational platform right now, so you can go to thewinbox.com you'll find blogs if you need to reach out for deliverability problems or an audit. We do have those services set to help you figure out if something wrong with your email marketing platform. I do update blog wise because I do want to get that educational piece out there. But you can also follow me on Twitter isra the Wind Box or on LinkedIn, which is my name isra Arawi, and also I'm on Instagram as at the underscore Windbox too.

Richard Hill [00:38:56]:

Brilliant. We'll link that up in the show notes. But thank you for coming on the show.

Israa Alrawi [00:39:00]:

Thank you for having me.

Richard Hill [00:39:01]:

I look forward to catching up with you again. Thanks. Bye. Thank you for listening to the eCom@One eCommerce podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please hit subscribe. And don't forget to sign up to our Ecommerce newsletter and leave us a review on itunes. This podcast has been brought to you by our team here at eComOne, the ecommerce marketing agency.

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