E67: Jessica Coster

Richard Hill:
Hi there, I'm Richard Hill. Ecommerce nut and host of the eCom@One podcast. Welcome to our 67th episode.

Richard Hill:
In this episode I speak with Jessica Coster, CEO and founder of Ecommerce Badassery, eCommerce strategist and e-mail marketing pro.

Richard Hill:
Jessica works with entrepreneurs and eCommerce stores and owners, coaching and implementing all things e-mail and marketing. It's one of those episode where there are simply so many actionable take away and I highly recommend you take some good notes. But more importantly, you need to implement some of these key points that Jessica runs through.

Richard Hill:
We talk about all things, simple things, really simple things to look for in your existing strategy that can be tweaked to give a huge uplift to your sales, revenue from e-mail marketing, where to focus, what to do and how to improve those sales. How to re engage those old customers and subscribers. Segmentation, specifics on where to focus to drive even further sales from segments in your customer base. And of course we cover specifics on what's coming down the line with eCommerce and e-mail marketing tools and tech.

Richard Hill:
If you enjoy this episode, please make sure you subscribe so you're always the first to know when a new episode is release. Now, let's head over to this fantastic episode.

Richard Hill:
How you doing Jessica?

Jessica Coster:
I'm awesome Richard, how are you?

Richard Hill:
I am also extremely awesome. So it's a great start. So Jessica's coming all the way of Los Angeles today. We're just doing the weather check and it all seems to be good in Los Angeles as the moment.

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. Sure is.

Richard Hill:
So Ecommerce Badassery. What a name hey? Tell us all about it and also, I know there's quite a tie in there with the female entrepreneurs. You know why you're so passionate about supporting female entrepreneurs as well.

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. For sure. So I actually started Ecommerce Badassery a couple years ago by accident. It was right when MailChimp and Shopify broke up. And there were a lot of entrepreneurs that didn't know what to do and I just happened to be in a lot of eCommerce Facebook groups because I just loved being around that energy. I knew I wanted to something for myself, I just didn't know what that was.

Jessica Coster:
And I just started talking to them about Klaviyo because I had already been using it for about two years or so in my day job. And then all of a sudden I started getting these messages saying, "Hey, I'm on Klaviyo, I'm really struggling this, can you help me?" Or, "I just switched to Klaviyo and my e-mails are going in the junk box, can you help me?" and I was like, "Huh, okay. Sure." So I did.

Jessica Coster:
And I immediately fell in love with the process of working with that first handful of clients. And I remember I was sitting on the couch, talking to my husband telling him about it, and he was asking me, "Are you tired?" Because I was doing this on the side of my day job, and I was like, "No, I'm so energized when I get on a call with them or I come to do their work."

Jessica Coster:
And we really started talking about the lack of education in this space for that middle eCom entrepreneur, right? So you've got a lot for that super beginner person, right? Where you're kind of selling them the dream of having a business, and then you have a lot for the corporate space or the really big you know, if you have VC funding and all of that.

Jessica Coster:
But there wasn't a lot for the person in the middle. And he was just like, "Well, they need you. Are you going to start a business?" And I was like, "I think I am." So that's kind of how Ecommerce Badassery happened.

Jessica Coster:
I feel like a lot of people I talk to, kind of start their business by accident. And it's the best job I've ever had. Being in retail for 20 years, and working at a seven figure, eCommerce company, being the only employee for the first three years, I've a good amount of things I learned along the way that I can share. So it's been a joy and now I work one-on-one with clients, I also have a podcast. It's been the best job I've ever had.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I think I love stories like that where you sort of, you know you're learning something for yourself or for a company to start with and you just get so into it, you really enjoy it, you see a real need for it and a real passion for it. And then obviously then you sort of get asked, "Oh, can you help me with this?" And it's like, "Well, okay. It wasn't my plan, but ultimately, why not?"

Jessica Coster:
"Yeah, sure."

Richard Hill:
And that really resonates with myself yeah, that's sort of how I started doing this. Exactly the same story, just ... It was in SEO as opposed to e-mail marketing. It was like, "No, no, no, well go on then," sort of thing.

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:04:50] I loved what I did, and I didn't necessarily love who I did it for and I just didn't know where I was going to end up or what I was going to do, but it's just so funny how I didn't immediately see the connection of, this is what you do already, you can help other people do it too. And it took someone else on the outside to be like, "Hey, Jessica, like duh, why aren't you doing this?"

Richard Hill:
So you work primarily with female entrepreneurs then?

Jessica Coster:
I do. I think I just naturally attract them. There's not a lot of females in this space teaching this or doing what I do. And one of the biggest things I heard ... and I'm by no means a man hater or anything, but ...

Richard Hill:
I wasn't going there, I wasn't going there.

Jessica Coster:
... but there's a lot of bureaus in the eCommerce space and they're like, "Hey, run Facebook ads and tomorrow you're going to be a millionaire," and anyone's who's been in eCommerce knows that just not how it works. So I think the people I serve were just really excited to have someone who was going to like give it to them straight, really teach them like, "Hey, do these things." Teach them analytics, and there's not really a lot of other people doing that.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, no, that's great. So what would you say is one thing you see eCommerce businesses sort of one thing that's hindering eCommerce businesses on a regular basis? Obviously you work with a lot of businesses now over the years, do you see the sort of consistency in issues and errors and things and mistakes that they're making?

Jessica Coster:
For sure. And there's two, and it depends where you're at in your business, right? When you're just starting, if you're boot strapping and you're a solopreneur, generally they spend so much time tinkering with all the little things in the background. Oh, I got to adjust this on my website, and oh, I need to do this. And no, you need to show up, you need to get on social media, you need to partner with people, you need to get eyeballs on your business.

Jessica Coster:
It is a not a, if you build it, they will come situation. So I always see that. And then the other thing is those who have been in business for a while, and even if they're making a lot of revenue, they're not necessarily making a lot of profit and they don't understand their analytics. They're not using their analytics to make educated decisions about where they should focus their energy and what they should focus their time on. And they're just kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall, a lot of shiny objects, and oh, this guy's doing this, so I have to do it.

Jessica Coster:
And I just encourage everyone to be a bit more intentional. It depends where you're trying to go. Look, if you're VC funded and your goal is to create this huge business that you can exit later for a big lump sum, then that's what you do. Right? And you're not profitable those first three years, but if you are building a business because you want it to fund your life, take care of your family, give you freedom, then you need to be more intentional, build a brand and be profitable sooner basically.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, I think so many people lose sight of that. They see all the orders going out the door, they see the big 10, 20, 30,000 square foot warehouse, the employee count, this that and the other and all these big numbers, but hang on a minute, how much is left at the end of the month for you, as the business owner, your family, making sure that you are first as opposed to quite often last, which is quite normal, isn't it? So yeah.

Richard Hill:
So moving on a similar vein then, so obviously great couple of things there, but if we laser focus in on e-mail marketing which I know is your super power. What would be some of the things that you see there that eCom stores make mistakes with?

Jessica Coster:
The biggest mistake is they're not sending them, or they're not sending enough.

Richard Hill:
That's pretty bad.

Jessica Coster:
Yeah, it's crazy and it doesn't seem to matter where they're at in their business, how long they've been in business, e-mail is like this mystery that they just don't know how to handle. But in all seriousness, I think the mistake people make is that they treat e-mail like a sales channel instead of a communication and relationship channel. And we have to remember that there is a human on the other side of that e-mail address.

Jessica Coster:
Now, yes, you should expect ROI and honestly you'll get the highest ROI from e-mail than you do from anything else. But you can't just show up in people's in box and say, "Buy from me, buy from me," every day. If you had a brick and mortar, you wouldn't stand outside and say, "Buy my thing." That'd be super off putting. E-mail's the same way.

Jessica Coster:
So when you are approaching e-mail, I'd rather see you do it with your customer hat on instead of your CEO or your marketing hat. What does the customer need to hear from you, how can you add value to their life, how can you bring joy to their inbox? And it's funny because I think the bigger your business gets, the more you look to these large corporate companies like a Target or something like that of how they are doing e-mail. Don't do e-mail like them. Right? They have millions of subscribers. They can afford the churn that their crappy e-mail marketing is going to get them. But if you're a smaller business with a smaller list, you can't afford that.

Jessica Coster:
So that's kind of the biggest mistake I see.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, I love that sentence you said, bring joy to the inbox. I like that.

Jessica Coster:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Isn't that what it's all about? Just bringing joy in general maybe?

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. I mean [crosstalk 00:10:45]-

Richard Hill:
... buying from brands that entertain, that bring that something different rather than just a sell, sell, sell mentality. You're bringing that passion, purpose, the people behind the brand. I love it.

Jessica Coster:
I mean more and more we're learning that people buy from people. So just be human and be people and communicate with your customer that way. It's going to go a really long way. And I know a lot of smaller businesses they don't ... "I don't want to be the face of the brand," it doesn't have to be you, but you need some sort of personality that people can relate to and connect with.

Richard Hill:
So okay, so the guys that are listening to this episode, they're like, Okay fine, all sounds great, but the reality is I want to make money. That's the reality of it all, isn't it? It's like, Oh, this template and this sequence, and do this and say that. But what would you say are some very specific things that companies can look at, do, implement that will really turn a revenue dial?

Jessica Coster:
Yeah, for sure. So number one is, get more intentional and use the data to drive your decision making. When you are trying to decide when should I e-mail, who should I e-mail, what should I say? All of that stuff, remember that every action the customer does or does not take, is them talking to you, is them telling you something. And if they do or don't open the e-mail, did they click on it, did they not click on it? Did they buy what you were featuring, or did they buy something else?

Jessica Coster:
So we really need to tune in, pay attention and test a lot of things. Here's the secret. There is no secret. There's no hack. It's testing, it's learning, and figuring out what resonates with your customers, being of service and making it more about them than about you.

Jessica Coster:
So start looking at each ... just ... here's the thing, right? I see a lot of people will do this with their ads, but they won't do this with their email, but it's the same. So if you have an ad that isn't performing, right, you're going to look at each step individually. So are they stopping to scroll? Are they looking at the ad? If they are, then that means that your creative is probably good.

Jessica Coster:
Did they click it? If they didn't, your call to action probably sucks or something is off in your message. And then if they do click and don't buy, then there's probably a disconnect between what you were offering and what the customer saw when they got to your website, or your website sucks. Your email is the same way. Did they open it? If not, then it's probably a subject line, or the time of day or when you sent it, or when the audience you sent it to. And we can talk a little bit more about segmentation, same thing. Did they click it? If they didn't, well something was off in the email.

Jessica Coster:
So look at each of those steps separately and test them. Figure out what your customer likes. I'll give you an example. In my previous day job, I knew a regular just like fun, not a sale e-mail, just a promotional, hey, check these products out, something like that. If my subject line was more witty and suggestive, it got more opens. But when it was a sale, they wanted it straight. 20% off your purchase until x day, right? Clear over clever in that sense.

Jessica Coster:
So you have to figure out what works for your customer. But if you want two really quick wins that will just immediately generate you more money without having to test a bunch of stuff because I know we're all impatient, right? Is to one, resend your e-mail to the people who didn't open the first time. 99% of the time is going to generate you more opens and more revenue and it's like just something that we don't even think about?

Richard Hill:
How easy is that?

Jessica Coster:
It's so ... yeah, I mean it's like the easiest thing ever. Some platforms will do it automatically for you. So that's even better, otherwise just clone it, create a new subject line, resend it a day or two later depending upon what you're promoting. And then second, overcome common objections before your customer has a chance to have them. And this is especially powerful in your abandonment e-mail. So if you put product reviews in there, and you can get real fancy, make them dynamic if you want, based on what they were looking at, but you don't have to do that if you don't have time. Otherwise just generic e-mails about the ... reviews about the experience of shopping with you, right? It was really great, it was fast shipping. Pull those out and throw them in our e-mails. And if you don't believe me, you can set up an AB test, right? Where you test the content and it'll split it 50/50, one with reviews, one without, and then see which ones converts better.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, love it. I think it's so simple when you say it like that. You know the amount of people that are listening now, I think if you're not resending to your unopens, you can probably ... I don't know the number, but double your open rate, triple your open rate. I know that's possible. And you can set that up automatically in a lot of systems. So you're actually doing the same amount of work but again, doubling the [inaudible 00:16:14].

Jessica Coster:
Yeah, who doesn't want that?

Richard Hill:
It sounds good, doesn't it? That sounds good. Okay fantastic. So maybe talk about frequency for a minute. I know it's going to depend on a few variables, but what's your sort of go to equation if you like of how often, frequency that you should be sending e-mails to your lists?

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. At a minimum once a week is what I like to say. In general, the larger your product assortment, right? And the bigger your e-mail list, the more e-mails you can send. If you are a one-product store, you probably don't need to send more than one e-mail a week. Right? But if you sell men's, women's and children's clothing, right, those are probably different avatars, different customers that you can target and you can send more e-mails.

Jessica Coster:
So think about it like that, but also think about what you can realistically be consistent with. Don't send three e-mails a week for two months and then ghost your subscriber list. So do the [crosstalk 00:17:22]-

Richard Hill:
Yeah. You're going to listen to this episode, go and log in to your e-mail provider and do two e-mails this week and then forget about it next week.

Jessica Coster:
Exactly. [crosstalk 00:17:33]

Richard Hill:
... consistency.

Jessica Coster:
If you are not being consistent right now, start with once a week. Obviously if you have special promotions going on or if you have a new product launch or it's Black Friday sales, something like that, then obviously you're going to send more e-mails during that time. But generally start with at least one. Two to three is often a sweet spot for most brands that I see. But there's a lot of companies that send e-mails every single day.

Jessica Coster:
What really matters is what expectation have you set with them from the beginning and what can you be consistent with, and how engaged are they right? So I shop Steve Madden, it's a shoe brand, I get an e-mail from them every single day. It's annoying, but I don't unsubscribe because I have FOMO. What if the shoe that I want ...

Richard Hill:
How many pairs of their shoes do you have?

Jessica Coster:
A lot. I also just have a lot of [crosstalk 00:18:31] shoes.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, yeah.

Jessica Coster:
Yeah, I [crosstalk 00:18:36]-

Richard Hill:
You're on the VIP list aren't you?

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. I mean I used to sleep in my new shoes as a little girl, so shoes are kind of my thing. But I don't unsubscribe because what if the shoe I want is going to be on promo or there's something new that I really want. So it's really knowing what your customers can handle from you.

Richard Hill:
That's great. So another, on a similar vein is, and a lot of people that will be listening in are thinking, right, do you know what? We really need to up our game on the whole e-mail game, but the reality is they've probably got a lot of lists and a lot of people sat that are very disengaged, that maybe they've not sent an e-mail to for some time, it's not really been sorted out in terms of splits, the different lists, and the frequencies are different based on their intent. So what would you say about re engaging those disengaged people that are on lists? What sort of strategies can you recommend to them?

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. So it kind of depends where you're starting. So let's pretend you've already been sending e-mails and you've been consistent, but you have this group of people that are unengaged at this point. So for those, if you're in that situation, here's what I would do is one, sit down and write a fully texted based e-mail. You want it to look like the marketing manger, the CEO sat down at their desk to write this to the customer. And remember, it's a human on the other side of that e-mail.

Jessica Coster:
When it comes to your subject line for this, you can try something that's a little bit more cryptic like, Hey, quick question, first name, or my might want to say, Hey, last chance before we unsubscribe you. It kind of depends a little bit on your brand and what your voice is like. And when you sit down and write that e-mail, Hey, we haven't seen you in a while. If they're people who have purchased from you, maybe you're going to say, Hey, here's what's new. If they're a VIP, Hey, don't forget about these perks. You just want something to get them to open the e-mail and click to say, Hey, no I'm want to stay here.

Jessica Coster:
And what I would say with those people is, make one or two attempts to re engage with them and if it doesn't work, just move on. People are naturally going to churn, they don't need your product anymore. Often times you'll get more bang for your buck if you just focus on the people who are engaging.

Jessica Coster:
If on the other hand, you haven't e-mailed in a while, and you've just kind of ghosted your list, there's a couple ways you can approach this. One, is you can wait until you have something really powerful to say. So if you have a new product, dropping a new collection and you can kind of start break crumbing. Don't just start blasting them crazy with this stuff, but you can start bread crumbing, Hey, I know it's been a while, this is what we've been working on. So you can take that angle.

Jessica Coster:
If you ... maybe you're a smaller business, maybe you don't have new products, maybe you're a solopreneur, you have a really small team, just be straight up honest with them. Hey look, this is what's been going on, it was 2020, I'm home-schooling my kids, I'm trying to run this business. It's okay to just be real because they're all feeling it too.

Richard Hill:
I think that's fantastic. I think you should pause now, and rewind the last two minutes because so many ... depending on where you are with your eCommerce store, there's a lot of great take aways there. But I think bottom line is just be personable. Speak from the heart. It's speaking to a human being, share what's going on in the business, say, "Sorry, we've not reached out to you for a while, I can literally understand if you don't want to hear from and you never will if you click this button," or you know ... "But however, we've got some really cool stuff going on at the moment that I'm sorry to say we've not let you know about and we'd like to tell you now and we've got this coming up, that coming up." You know a bit of intrigue in there.

Richard Hill:
I think quite often a lot of people abandon the lists or just send them the same old ... whereas that's like with the pattern interrupted you go, "Oh actually, oh, this looks like they could be planning some real stuff because we've not heard from them for ..." Yeah, lots of great stuff in there.

Jessica Coster:
Yeah, and I think honestly, a lot of us just overthink this. We just overthink e-mail. We just think we have to have this big crazy strategy, and not to say there's no strategy behind it, but if we've learned anything, it's that people just want to see the real stuff. So it's okay, you don't have to be perfect. I am definitely not perfect, and it makes my clients feel better. Like, Oh okay, no one has it together. Sweet. I'm normal. Great, thank you.

Richard Hill:
And I guess on a similar vein, review e-mails. So sending out requests and those follow up e-mails after an order. What's your opinion on that, or any sort of strategies there on the review e-mails?

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you asked this because surprisingly, I see a lot of people don't ask for reviews, or they don't even have a way for the customer to leave a review. So very important if you're not already doing this, I prefer a platform like Yotpo or Stamped, where the review form is right in the body of the e-mail. Right? So the customer doesn't have to click through, find the review place. Make it super easy for them.

Jessica Coster:
The other most important thing is the timing of the e-mail. For those of you listening, Richard, have you ever gotten a review e-mail before you even have the product?

Richard Hill:
Yeah, that's happened a few times.

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. Okay. Not a great experience, right?

Richard Hill:
No.

Jessica Coster:
So please be very intentional. You want to make sure that they have the product in hand and have at least had time to use it, right? So think about your product and what is that normal lead time before they actually use it and have something to say. So if it's quick, maybe you do it 14 days after the sale. You have to think about your lead time to get it out of the warehouse, what is your shipping like, take all of that into account.

Jessica Coster:
And then in terms of rewarding people, so typically we would maybe give a small little discount on their next purchase if they left a review. I'm not 100% sure on this, I have this feeling, like I remember reading this or hearing this where reviews that Google will use on your ads, like that review extension that they decide whether or not they're going to put it there, I think if you incentivize them, like they're not ... they won't use them. I could totally be making that up, but maybe just go do a quick Google search on that.

Jessica Coster:
I think it's okay to incentivize in the beginning especially right? Because you just like need to get reviews, but if you have a rewards-

Richard Hill:
Yeah, it's hard.

Jessica Coster:
... yeah, if you have a rewards program, you might be better off awarding points for leaving the review versus a discount on their next purchase. So just something to kind of think about.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. That's great.

Jessica Coster:
And then aside from all that, just be simple, clear over clever. Just be really simple, straight forward, please tell us what you think about this product?

Richard Hill:
Yeah, I think, you said it, the review e-mail the next morning is definitely not [inaudible 00:26:15] when the courier's not even arrived and obviously you've not had a chance to sample the thing, try your thing. If it's a lawnmower, you've not cut the grass yet or whatever it may be. That timing, they're absolutely critical, isn't it? I've had it, it's bizarre. It begs belief. I have had e-mails the next morning, How did you get on? It hasn't even arrived yet.

Jessica Coster:
I know. Have you even shipped [crosstalk 00:26:37] it? I don't know how it is yet. Yeah.

Richard Hill:
[inaudible 00:26:41] used it. Yeah. So obviously worked on a lot of client campaigns, a lot of your own campaigns for when you were sort of client side. Maybe talk us through some of your favourite campaigns that you've worked on that have generated real results for your clients and for yourself?

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. So there's kind of two main ones that stand out to me. And it's really just like a system that I continually implement. And that is how I treat a new product launch and how I treat a large promotional series, like a Black Friday weekend or something like that.

Jessica Coster:
So let me talk about the holiday stuff first because it's almost upon us. I can't believe that it's almost here, is I want you to remember that if you are not showing up in people's inboxes, somebody else who sells a product similar to you, is. So if you're not already being consistent with e-mail, please do sit down and do that for these big holidays.

Jessica Coster:
And think about if you were the customer, how would you want to be treated during this time, right? I don't know how you guys shop for the holidays, but for me, I'm planning ahead, I'm thinking about you know I've got a budget for these people, my husband has a ginormous family so we're very intentional of how we have to buy for and all of that good stuff. I'm doing research ahead of time. And I'm trying to get a sense of where I'm going to go to get the items that I want for the people I need to buy for. And a lot of consumers are like this.

Jessica Coster:
So you want to start teasing them, and this is the same for a new product launch too, is you want to start teasing them a week out, a few days out, kind of depends, and a lot of people will say, "Well, I don't want to reveal what I'm going to do because people are going to wait to buy." They going to wait anyway. They're waiting anyway. Right? Even if you are not in the US, there's a lot of stores that Black Friday has kind of become a thing everywhere even though the US is the only one that celebrates Thanksgiving that weekend. So ... because the consumer has come to expect it.

Jessica Coster:
So don't be afraid to kind of tease it early on. And then I want you to think about ... I always lay it out in a calender. Okay, these are the dates of my promotion, I'm going to tease it a couple of days ahead, I'm going to launch to my VIPs a little bit early. Then I'm going to launch it to everyone. I'm going to have a couple of re sends in there, and we can talk about what that looks like, and then we're going to have our last chance. And then you might do the fake like extended, right? "Oh, the demand ..." or, "Oh, the discount [crosstalk 00:29:33]"- yeah, or, "The discount code was broken, sorry." Yeah, when people do that, that's all fake, but that's okay. So you can pull some of that in too.

Jessica Coster:
And when I do the re sends, like you're going to have the launch and the last chance, right? Those are pretty simple, basic messaging. Then I do the re sends is when I start to dive more into the psychology behind why they may or may not have purchased yet. Right? So in the case of holiday, maybe I'm going to focus on treating themselves, giving themselves a little bit of something. Maybe I'm going to overcome objections in there. Maybe I'm going to change the messaging based on what I know about them.

Jessica Coster:
So it depends a little bit. But that is essentially the framework that I use. And it's really similar for the new product launch too, right? So I'm definitely going to start teasing that. In a product launch specifically, and you can do this with a promo too is, even for the people who are already on your e-mail list, I will often ask them to qualify themselves as someone who wants to hear more about this thing that I have going on.

Jessica Coster:
And here's the great thing about that is, once you get them to say, "Yes, send me more about this new collection, or this new product, or this promo," you can talk about it more without annoying them because they've told you they want to hear about it. So I will get them to self segment and tell me they want more. And then the people on that list get early access. So this is great to grow your list from social or wherever else you're doing marketing. Tell them, "Hey, sign up for this, you'll be the first to know." And then the same thing for your existing people.

Jessica Coster:
And then I do the same thing, right? I'm going to have a lot of re sends, I'm going to hit on all the different reasons why someone might buy this particular collection. I'm going to hit on all the objections that they're having. Why wouldn't they buy from you? Overcome that right away. And same thing, breadcrumb, launch, re sends, last chance kind of deal.

Richard Hill:
So segmenting absolutely key then? Yeah.

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. For sure.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, I think that's where ... Just thinking of some of the things I've come across over the years, but yeah, I think ... yeah, brilliant. Just breaking it up, segmenting it, I think these things actually when you break it down like that, it sounds quite simple. And I think when you've done it once or twice as an eCommerce store owner, a marketer, a marketing manager, whatever, it's getting those first templates if you like down, and work ... it's not that ... Like everything we talk about, when you break it down of course, if you're in a position where you're not sending anything, or you're starting to segment and sending your first version of that, it's night and day the difference of returns. So I think that's brilliant.

Richard Hill:
So I think with your crystal ball in hand, what would you say is sort of the things coming down this next year or two that you would see as the future of e-mail marketing? What are the sort of things that maybe some of the platforms are going to be doing, or some of that ... you know we touched on segmenting, but really, okay, what's that next level of thing that's coming down the line with e-mail marketing would you say?

Jessica Coster:
Yeah, so there's a couple of things that I want to touch on here. And one, let's talk about a not so great thing. So if you haven't heard, iOS 15, right? So iOS 14 rocked the marketing world. iOS 15, making some changes. Starting to target e-mail. So the user will have the ability to opt out of e-mail tracking with IOS 15, which means, you won't see whether or not they open the e-mail and you won't have their IP address, which is how most people figure out where someone is. Right? So maybe you make location based segments, if you have brick and mortar also, or maybe you are targeting people based on different weather, where they live, whatever it is.

Jessica Coster:
So this is ... I can't remember if it's going to developers in September, or if it's going to users in September. But either way, it'll be here in time for Q4. Yay. Which means, for the next couple of months you want to start collecting as much first party data as you possibly can. So if location is important to you, start updating those customer profiles with where they're located. Create a, manage preferences form with the things that you want to know about them and let the customer tell you. Remember, if it's your first party data, no one can take that away from you.

Jessica Coster:
So you really need to build that up. And start really testing things like your subject lines, because hey, if you don't have access to open reads, how you going to know? Right? So start learning now what your customer likes. And the two, going forward, your click is going to be that lowest metric that you have to really determine if someone likes what you have to say.

Jessica Coster:
So start testing your content, figuring out what do people like. Do they like text-base e-mails? Or do they like really overly pretty designed ones? Do they like clever calls to action where you maybe talk to them about the outcome they're going to have when they buy your product? For instance a CBD brand that I worked with, right? It's like, Shop Calm or Calm Awaits, things like that. Like what is the result that they're going to get? Or do they just like buttons that say, shop now?

Jessica Coster:
Start testing that. You don't have a lot of time unfortunately.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, that's brilliant.

Jessica Coster:
And then also what I would love to see everyone start doing is segmenting more. But there's a particular way I want you to do this, and I don't want you to feel like you need to do this for every e-mail you send, right? If you are someone who hasn't been e-mailing regularly, but you're listening to this episode and you're like, "All right, sweet, I'm going to start sending an e-mail every week," I don't want you to feel like you have to create these segments every single week because it's going to be a waste of time.

Jessica Coster:
But about every quarter or so, I will sit down and I will create or ... I already have the segments set up, right, they're dynamic so they automatically get full, but when you sit down to create these, I want you to think about the group of people who engage with your e-mails but haven't bought from you yet. Then you have the group of political who maybe they have bought from you in the past, but it's kind of been a while. Where have they been, right? Typically they buy every three months, now you're on moth four, where are they at?

Jessica Coster:
Then you have those people who maybe shop with you a lot but they don't spend a ton of money. So how do you get them to spend more money. So you create those segments and then you sit down every quarter or so, and create an e-mail specifically for them based on the action you want them to take. And I usually make these text-based because I want them to think someone just sat down and wrote them a letter, and craft those specifically for them.

Jessica Coster:
So for the person who engages all the time but hasn't made a purchase yet, maybe I'm going to give them a limited time offer, right? 48 hours to make their first purchase. And I know ... I'm not saying that you need to discount all the time. We don't want to train our customers for that, but that first purchase is the hardest one to get. And once you get it, it becomes easier to get the next one. And that customer becomes more profitable over time.

Jessica Coster:
So it's okay to just do like a one time, first time purchase thing. Maybe you have, like I said the person who shops a lot but their AOV is way lower than your average order value. Maybe you can cross sell them something based on something they purchased in the past. And then for the person who hasn't shopped in a while, start talking to them about what's new. And that's how I like to approach segmentation.

Jessica Coster:
Obviously if you have a natural break in your product ... I'll use Old Navy as an example, they have men's, women's and children's clothing. I don't have nay kids, I don't have any nieces and nephews yet, so if they send me stuff about kids clothing, I'm not going to buy it. I'm just not. So if you have a natural break like that, you can segment that way, but don't get too bogged down with that in the beginning because you'll just spend a whole bunch of time tinkering, you'll get these tiny segments with no people in them. And it's just a waste.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, some brilliant segments there. I think that's real actionable take aways there for the guys that are listening. That you know, I think if you're listening, I've said this a couple of times on this episode, but I know from experience as well, those things are just so ... going to have a real benefit to the bottom line. Just some of those segments, tweaking them out. Well, having them in the first place, and making sure now you're focusing on creating them while you can because you might [inaudible 00:39:17] some of those segments. You know getting people's birthdays or whatever it may be.

Jessica Coster:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
Getting them now because iOS 14 has caused a real ripple in our industry, and 15 no doubt is not going to be any different. It's coming down the track. So plan for that now. I think that's [crosstalk 00:39:35]-

Jessica Coster:
But, please know, that that doesn't mean e-mail is dead. Right?

Richard Hill:
No.

Jessica Coster:
A lot of people are going to start to, "Oh well, I'm not going to bother with e-mail because ..." No, that's not the case. Just like ads, right? Ads still work, they're just really hard to track. [crosstalk 00:39:49] It's really hard to see the data.

Richard Hill:
I think when things change ... the way I look at it, and the way our listeners, I want them to think about it, when things chance, that's an opportunity because you can-

Jessica Coster:
Yeah.

Richard Hill:
... people will abandon it, and there's opportunities there and there's people give up, people fear that change so they do things the same way they did and they don't necessarily work, embrace the change, focus on figuring stuff out. That's where you're going to excel as an eCom brand. So I think it's getting in front of that now, knowing that it's happening, knowing that in six, eight, 12 months, yes, you're going to be hearing a lot of people moaning about it, whereas you could be like ... you know, that smug, [inaudible 00:40:26] little grin on your face yeah, yeah. Yeah, we saw that coming and we did this, this, this, this. Yeah, you might not have every answer to everything that's coming down the line, but you might be 80% in front of most people that have done nothing. Or they're doing [crosstalk 00:40:38]-

Jessica Coster:
Exactly. And I've seen it with ads. You know I have an ads person that I work really closely with. She works with a lot of my clients. And it was a little rough there in the beginning while she was kind of figuring it all out. But now, some of the ads are performing better because it's cheaper because people are dropping out and they're not doing it. So the competition is lower.

Richard Hill:
So last couple of questions. Tool. Now we always like to sort of squeeze a tool or two in that can help improve that, in this case, e-mail marketing. What tools, any specific tools you'll recommend that talks to that?

Jessica Coster:
Yeah. So in terms of e-mail marketing platforms, my number one, hands down favourite is Klaviyo. It has the most robust feature set for the price. Even more than some enterprise platforms that I have used in the past. And they are actively improving the platform, right? Because there's nothing worse than a stale piece of tech that has a bunch of feature requests that go unanswered. Hate that. If you're on a platform like that, it's time to go for sure.

Jessica Coster:
And another one is if you know, not everyone loves Klaviyo, Omnisend is a pretty close second. They are missing some specific features, but I've played around with them, I am technical a partner of them as well. And I would say, just pick a platform that is robust that you can grow into. Don't get hung up on the price because you're going to make your money back very quickly. And I would say use as many of their internal tools as you can at first. Right. Some people will use things like Privy for forms, for sign up forms and things like that, which is fine when you start getting in the swing of things because you have a little bit more flexibility there.

Jessica Coster:
And then I also love the website, reallygoodemails.com for design inspiration.

Richard Hill:
Oh okay. Yeah.

Jessica Coster:
But it's will say, don't get too stuck on that either. Focus on the content more than how you present it.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I hear you. Definitely. I think a shiny template is not the way forward, is it? [crosstalk 00:43:09] It's the words and the way that they are personalized and resonate rather than a very shiny, $97 template from a market [crosstalk 00:43:19]-

Jessica Coster:
Exactly. And it's the same thing with eCommerce websites, right? There are some ugly websites out there that convert really well.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Okay, well it has been an absolute pleasure speaking to you Jessica. I like to finish every episode on a book recommendation. Do you have a book that you would recommend to our listeners?

Jessica Coster:
So, I don't read a ton of books. I listen to more podcasts than I read book, but I did recently pick up the EOS system, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, so I have all of them in hand because I like real books that I can touch. I have them all, I just need to carve out some time to read them, but I've heard such amazing things and I have clients that use the system in their business and just some of the concepts and stuff. So I'm excited to dig into them.

Richard Hill:
I can give that a thumbs up. We use it in our business, yeah-

Jessica Coster:
Oh, do you?

Richard Hill:
Entrepreneurial Operating System. Yeah, it's an extremely good ... Yes, from what's known traction [inaudible 00:44:22], so I would give that a vote as well. So yeah, brilliant.

Richard Hill:
Well, thank you so much Jessica, for being on the eCom@One podcast. If the guys that are listening want to find out more about you, more about what you do, what's the best place to reach out to you at?

Jessica Coster:
Yeah, so you can find me in all the places as Ecommerce Badassery, that's they website, the name of the my podcast, and my handle on Instagram which is where I spend most of my time.

Richard Hill:
Fantastic. Well, it's been a pleasure. I look forward to speaking to you again.

Jessica Coster:
Yes, thank you so much Richard, this was awesome.

Richard Hill:
Thank you. Bye.

Richard Hill:
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Richard Hill:
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