Here’s what I learned this week

I was talking to an email agency head this week, he’s been in business for nearly 20 years in the space, we were discussing what email is becoming and how effective it really is.

(they are moving out of ecommerce as growth is slow)

Now I get it, it’s how the guy makes his living so of course it’s super important.

(I know that some of you reading this do the same, that’s not lost on me, so if you get your feelings hurt, feel free to stop reading here.)

Data wise for ecommerce though, eh, there’s not a whole lot you can really impact. Before some of you get all up and arms with me, I’ve had access to a lot of accounts over the years and it’s pretty much all the same.

90% of email subscribers convert in 14 days from signing up if they are going to convert and of the email campaigns sent out 90% of the revenue comes from people that have purchased before.

Now he got defensive when I called out some of what we’re seeing in the data around this and I get it.

In truth, I’m a shit starter, I like to take something that everyone believes is gospel and challenge it just to learn something I like the debate.

But there’s something you should know about me, if I say something, it’s usually because my crazy ass has likely already tested it.

I run a lot of tests usually over longer portions of time.

I tend to walk into these friendly jousts with a bazooka of data to pull from.

Before we get to the rest of this conversation I want to interrupt this email to share this popup design I created using ChatGPT + Dalle-3.

I think it’s cool, just wanted to share.

The two email tests I’ve been running

Test 1: My Golf Blog List

Test Length: 6 months

In the background I’ve been treating an email list I have like it’s my bastard child, neglecting it, putting in no effort, mixing up formats, changing narratives, I’ve changed lengths, send times, even days of the week and gapping.

I mean if I could treat it any worse I’d be arrested.

The thing is…

The Open rate, the same, the click through rate, also the same.

Turns out there’s not much difference and it’s likely that the same people open it when I send something out because they like the topic being talked about.

(Side note on this one, while drinking wine last night I saw a post from a founder that is looking to increase the use of his golf app, turns out my skills might be a good fit for this one, neglected asset might turn into something useful, more on this at a later time.)

Test 2: Our Krakatoa Weekly Newsletter

Test Length: 2 weeks

So this was built off the results of the first test. (All of my tests inform learning somewhere else.)

I own a lot of properties, with audiences so I get to test across all of them in different ways, no need to ask permission that way, just launch and measure.

So here’s how it started…

I’ve had the conversation a bit over the last few weeks where instead of trying to sell products to people, we just treated them like they already knew what we sold, they were going to buy eventually, and we viewed it as a channel to just provide some levity in the world.

I also needed to pick a structured format, same subject line every week, same format and content that was easily sourced in bulk in less than 48 hours.

The email is comprised of one amazing video sourced from YouTube, one random funny shirt from Tee Public, and a recipe that someone could make over the weekend.

(I have enough content for the next year done already)

The only CTA is a small button at the bottom that has a split offer to those that have never purchased and those that have in case they are in need of refreshing their underwear drawer.

Over the last two weeks, this non-salesy email has made more than $20k in revenue or about 10% of our monthly total revenue average. It has out performed our new product launch emails.

I can’t make this stuff up.

So armed with this data I dug in asking some questions with agency head:

Me: “So how do you handle just having content that doesn’t sell or talk about your products?”

Agency Owner: “We do content on the first Monday of the month, it’s always the lowest performing email.”

Me: “Is the content about the brand and products?”

Agency Owner: “Yes, it just doesn’t perform.”

Me: “I bet it’s not about the normal lifestyle related to fun activities they do daily.”

Agency Owner: “Well, no, it has to be about the brand.”

Me: “Why?”

Agency Owner: (getting flustered) “Because that’s just the way it’s done.”

Me: “Says who? You see you have a mental construct that there’s one way to do things, I don’t prescribe to those.”

(I shared the example of the weekly newsletter above no sales involved)

Agency Owner: “Well that’s brand dependent, it wouldn’t work for…”

Me: “Are you so sure? You’ve been doing the same thing forever, don’t you think that other brands are doing the exact same thing and that in a sea of sameness, this might just be working because it’s different?”

We ended our call there.

The Takeaway

Break the rules.

Marketing is pretty sterile these days and nothing really stands out.

Learn to zig when others zag, change what people expect from you, you might just be shocked and surprised.

My point is that too many people in the ecommerce industry rest on their laurels of some best practice that was likely created during the days before social media, limited attention spans, and access to endless content.

In a world where the average person spends hours a day glued to screens and is bombarded with offer after offer from brands that they don’t remember signing up for just be different.

Brand it under the brand’s name, but throw a curveball with the content you share.

Have a great week!

-Jon