Big Things Podcast
A weekly show where we talk about the big things we're watching in marketing, social media, pop culture and sports. We also talk through signals we’re seeing that could inform the future of digital marketing.
You can catch the podcast every Friday wherever you listen or watch it on YouTube. Be sure to follow us on Instagram or TikTok for updates on every episode.
Big Things Podcast
Mastering Email Marketing and SMS with Jimmy Kim, CEO at Sendlane
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Jimmy Kim, CEO and co-founder of Sendlane, is known for his expertise in email and SMS marketing. In this episode, he shares his incredible journey from working in the car industry to becoming a digital marketing powerhouse. He shares his top tips for mastering the art of email marketing, particularly for ecommerce brands. Jimmy explains how email is about more than campaigns and automations, diving into the importance of crafting personalized experiences for customers and evolving strategies based on new data. We discuss KPIs, understanding audience behavior and optimizing campaigns.
We continue the conversation by delving into the potent combination of copywriting and storytelling in email marketing. With Jimmy’s guidance, learn how to weave compelling narratives and create experiences that captivate customers. Then, we wrap things up with a discussion around SMS marketing for acquisition and retention. Join us, and learn from one of the best in the business!
Subscribe to Arcade’s Newsletter, SCAN 👀 CLUB: https://www.arcadearcade.ca/scan-club
Connect with Jimmy on LinkedIn
Or follow Jimmy on X: @yojimmykim
Show Notes:
- 01:30 - How Jimmy made moves from a career in vehicle sales to founding Sendlane.
- 09:30 - Building a business by accident.
- 11:00 - What it means to be the world’s best generalist.
- 15:00 - The types of emails Jimmy recommends ecommerce brands use.
- 17:40 - The longevity problem batch and blast emails create. Audience management dos and don’ts.
- 21:00 - Where does storytelling come in with email marketing?
- 28:40 - KPIs Jimmy closely watches for email marketing.
- 31:50 - Why it’s so crucial to watch your unsubscribes.
- 34:15 - How to build a solid acquisition strategy.
- 39:00 - How SMS complements email marketing.
- 42:50 - How to create an SMS message that works.
- 44:30 - Who is making waves and why?
- 46:45 - Where to connect with Jimmy.
- 46:45 - Where to connect with Jimmy.
Big Things with Mitzi (@mmmitzi) and Mike (@mmmiiike).
For more from Arcade, follow us on Instagram and TikTok @helloarcade. https://www.arcadearcade.ca/
Production by Morgan Berna, editing by Oliver Banyard.
The Evolution of Email Marketing
Speaker 1The way that I looked at email is very simple it's your customer communication channel , it's your livelihood , it's your retention channel , it's your sales channel . It can be a little bit of everything and it all depends on how you approach it ultimately . ["the Waves"] .
Speaker 2Welcome back to Waves powered by Arcade , a show for marketers , creators and entrepreneurs who wanna stop chasing the tide and start making waves online . We're your hosts , mike and Mitzi , and today we're joined with Jimmy Kim .
Speaker 3Jimmy is the CEO and co-founder of Sendlane , an email , sms and review marketing automation company that helps over 1,700 companies save time , generate more revenue and increase customer retention with email , sms and reviews . He leverages his expertise and market knowledge to build a product design for the data-driven digital retailer , enabling them to make better decisions in their marketing . Jimmy brings a unique voice as a former retailer , an email marketing lover and an email delivery expert . Welcome , jimmy . We're so excited to have you on the show .
Speaker 2Thank you guys for having me . Yeah , this is exciting , jimmy . I've been following you for a while on Twitter and just loving the content that you share . You're obviously an expert in a sea of people with opinions on email marketing , so we've been looking forward to this . I feel like there's gonna be a lot of gold that we can unpack for our listeners .
Speaker 1No , absolutely Very excited to be here and share and talk about whatever we wanna talk about and we can dive into all the fun things .
Speaker 2Sounds good . Well , why don't we just set the scene , lay a foundation here , Tell us a bit about yourself how you started Sendlane and where you're at right now .
Speaker 1Yeah , absolutely so . I started my life as a Washington DC native . Actually , my first career was in the car business actually . So I date myself now and I'm talking in the early 2000s . I was in car sales and one of my fun stories my first career was that I started in sales . I moved my way up really fast into a position where I was financing and by the age of 25 , I was actually running three Saturn stores and it was a really cool experience being the general manager , one of those being a top 10 . And we did a lot of cool things . I was working 80 hours a week but we were making a lot of money together and it was a fun ride .
Speaker 1And then , in 2008 , the recession happened and that's when the whole thing crumbled on us and I had to make a big pivotal moment and the decision came into . Very simple is that I couldn't see myself doing the same thing for the next decade or two and I wanted to make the big change . So that's what I did , and my first movement was to go partner with this guy that was running this company that was doing education . It was kind of doing affiliate marketing , content , internet marketing , education and I went into that company and what's that called . Again , he taught me about a lot of things , but the thing that I lashed onto really fast in 2008 was email marketing and the idea was very simple . It was like wait , people are on your list , right , and they opt in , they give you their email list and you send them something and they're gonna click on it and they're gonna make a purchase and I'm gonna get paid on it . And that whole movement opened up like the world to me and said wait , a minute , I don't have to go walk around the car lot and pitch people and talk to them . I can just direct people and make money . And that was my first experience into email and that's when the evolution started for me real fast .
Speaker 1As I started to get into it more and more , I got into copywriting , I got into media buying , I learned all the aspects of it and I was kind of like the first inkling of getting in there . I did that for several years while I really learned and the decision was upfront , just so you know . Like we talked about it . I said I'm coming here to learn . I'm gonna teach you a lot of stuff on operational , but on the other side , if you teach me what you're doing on the marketing side . I will help you stand up and then I'm gonna go off and move and do my own thing . And that's exactly what I did . So I jumped off from that . I started my first company .
Speaker 1My first company started as an affiliate marketing company because , well , I saw it , I wanted to do it . This was back in the day when Facebook ads were super cheap and I can go and build a huge list and I can go promote things . And you know , I learned how to make a lot of money From there . It kind of transitioned , right . I learned that and then I got bored of it just like , naturally , everybody does , and I wanted to go start teaching it . And that's kind of what I started doing . Next , right , I got into a content creator role and I said , well , I'm doing this , I'm making a lot of money , but why can't I teach this and not only make more money but empower the world to learn ? And that's exactly what I started doing .
Speaker 1And during that time , a friend of mine came up to me and he said hey , I've got a $50,000 order from Pacific Sunwear that I need to fill , but I don't have the money to do it , Can you help me ? And it was just a friend . So I was in a good position . I was young and I said you know what ? Here's the money . And I threw it to him and that's kind of how it all started for me and how I got into e-commerce .
Speaker 1So what really happened was I walked into the store a couple months later and I was like , man , I've actually never really been in this store before I didn't live in Vegas at the time so I walked in and I was learning and I was like this is cool , what are you guys doing online ? And he looked at me and he was like we don't do anything online . And I was like this is 2013 . And I was like , well , now we need to talk . So I said we negotiated a deal . I said , look , I don't care about your retail side . If we can do whatever you want on retail , I'm gonna go help you and build this online thing .
Speaker 1So we spun up a Shopify store . We started getting all the things put together . We got a store up and over the next three , four years , what was really cool was we took that company from a 1600 , 1500 square foot retail store front in Las Vegas and we moved it into this 10,000 square foot warehouse but it was eliminating the front end retail store because it wasn't generating that much more money . We were completely e-commerce focused of direct consumer . We did cut and sew , so we actually produced our own products . We no longer sold boutique items . It was a really cool transition and it was really fun and we grew really fast . So 100% plus year over year . We're growing it through bootstrapping and we did things like influencer marketing and different things before they were cool and before people knew what they were called and before we paid for it . This was when it was free and organic and we kind of grew really fast and it was a really fun story .
Speaker 1And during that time , this is where Sendlane , or the idea of Sendlane , started and our story was one of those unique ones where I didn't start Sendlane because we wanted to start a company . In fact , it wasn't even called Sendlane , it was just our email blasting tool . We had MailChimp and Bronto to purchase at that time . We couldn't afford Bronto , we could only afford MailChimp , but we hated it because it didn't do what we needed to do . So myself and other two other entrepreneurs of mine , friends of mine , co-founders of mine that were running their own businesses . We were like , let's put some money together and build our own tool , and that's kind of how it all started for us . So that happened for four years we're building this tool . We weren't really selling it , we weren't caring about it , we were just funding out our pocket . We were making so much we didn't care . It was the platform fee , essentially , that we were paying to ourselves to build this tool .
Speaker 12017 rolls around and that was kind of like my big pivotal year A , my e-commerce retail store . We were having creative differences . The thing I always tell people is I'm a capitalist , he was a creative and that created budding heads . He didn't like the fact that I was pumping Facebook ads and running email campaigns . He wanted to organically get people to find that our brand was cool and it would buy and it be exclusive . So we ran into a lot of problems and at that time I knew that it was probably my time to move on from there . So I exited that partnership , sold my partnership back to him and he went off to do some cool things and we always talk once in a while and he was always like I don't know why I stopped you back then and I was like , I don't know why either , but that's what happened .
Speaker 1And at the same time , I was bored of my other company . So that other company that I had was a affiliate company . It became a content company and they became a software company at the end . And why it became a software company was because , as I was teaching , I quickly learned all the problems that my students were having and the things that they were trying to solve , and there were such simple problems , but nobody could solve them at a simple end . Things like how do I make an e-book cover ? Well , I got to go on Upwork , go hire somebody , go get this done . I said why can't we have an easy to make e-book creator ? So I created that . Why can't we have great Doodle video animations ? I had a product called Doodly , which actually is still lives today . It was a Doodle whiteboard animation video creator . So we created all those , did a lot of cool things with him , filled it with lots of customers and then in 2017 , I sold all those products off into the world and some of those have gone and gotten reacquired recently . So it's been cool to watch them grow and evolve .
Speaker 1But that was my first really stint and I realized that at that time I wanted to go do something big and whatever reason I decided , I said I looked at Sendlane or whatever it was called at that time and we're like this is the company that I want to go build and I think that this has a lot of legs . So that was 2017 , into 2018 . Put my head down , sold a bunch , raised our series , seed in 2018 . And then I put my head back down and said now I need to truly build , because the old platform was for anyone . It was all about whoever the heck I could help , because I was just trying to get money into it . But now I'm going to go build a platform that it was built for myself as e-commerce merchants , to the focus of a unified future .
Speaker 1And so the idea was not that I wanted to build an email marketing platform . The idea was that I was sick and tired of the tech stack that I was dealing with as a merchant . This is going back to 2015 , 16 . We had so many things already back then the back and stop at 399 , this product , swatch at 499 , you know , like all these little things that we're adding up and I just couldn't understand why this was so difficult in market . So I went out to sort that and I knew that I had a path in which I had to go deliver this in order to make it right .
Speaker 1And , being the email marketer , I knew that email is the most important foundation of revenue for any business . So we hyper focused on that and made sure that we could deliver the best in class tool there . And then we started to expand over . So we launched that in 2021 , you know , raised some more money in our series A at that time and over the last about two years now we've released multiple products . We've released our what's that called an SMS tool , which is a competitor , something like a tentative or post script . And then we really start reviews product recently , which is very much a competitor , something like a YAPO or a reviewsio and so forth .
Speaker 1And you know we stout our styles because not only did we unify the tech , but what it really created for us was very simple . It allowed us to create more marketing tech for people , more things that you can do to really create the edge that you need to create in order to generate more revenue . So you know that's how we kind of developed the product . But yeah , that's the story there of how it started . It's an interesting story . That wasn't because I wanted to start a business , it was very much a accident almost . And I looked back and I was just talking to someone about this . I said , if I look back seven years and I knew what I knew now , I probably would have never started this , because it's been an incredibly hard journey but it's been very , you know , humbling here in the last year , but it's over the last six years . It's been a very tough journey at the same time .
Speaker 2Wow , yeah , one thing that really sticks out to me , as you like lay out the process over the last seven or 10 years or whatever it's been , is how much you've like adapted from the role you were in selling cars you know like , and I think especially it's interesting because a lot of people in my experience that would consider themselves a sales person or like biz dev , or even like accounts in the agency world , I'd say they kind of pigeonhole themselves into that . They're like I'm not a creative , I'm not a developer , I'm just a relationships person , or I can just like drive a sale , but and that's where you started but then you learn so many things along the way and you became so many different things . So have you always just been a great learner or was it just because you're a capitalist and you're like I'm the best guy to get the job done in any context , or what was it ?
Speaker 1I would say that I'm a problem solver . That's probably who I am foremost , and what I like is that I have a problem , I need to go solve it , whatever it may be . So like I'll give you a perfect example
The Potential of Email Marketing
Speaker 1. When I started this thing in 2017 into 2018 , the first thing I really quickly recognize is , to your point , I'm not a tech guy . I had not had the need to understand how to code or understand large infrastructures , and I didn't know what to do . So what did I do ? I went to Udemy . I took 400 hours of class online and just learned everything so that I can go intelligently , go speak to my engineers and to my product people and actually have real conversations that mean something to help deliver the things that I did .
Speaker 1So like to me , I would say that I'm always learning . That's number one . I think the biggest thing about being a great person is just If you're not learning , I don't see how you're progressing in life and how you're evolving . So , like to me , it's very important to learn and to do . Anyone can do anything . I mean , that was the thing that I've always learned as a child is like anyone can do anything . As a first generation immigrant , like when I came over , I watched my dad struggle , I watched my mom you know figure it out . And so I look at that and say you can do anything if you put your mind to it . So today I would say like I'm the world's best generalist I'm not an expert in anything but email . Like outside of that , I'm just a generalist . Like I will do anything , I will get my hands dirty and I will go try to figure it out , no matter what . And that's really the biggest thing . Like I'm going to go gamble , even have no idea what's happening .
Speaker 2Yeah , for sure .
Speaker 3Yeah , yeah , I have a lot of respect for that , because there's a scrappiness that you need to have , not just as an entrepreneur , but I think , even like our podcast , is largely for marketers and I think you know things evolve so quickly . We always need to have that mentality that , like one thing we say at arcade , our company , is that we're always in beta , like it's always , you know , something that we're going to change and the strategy that work today is going to be different than six months from now , and that's okay . So embracing that head on is really cool . And I want to talk about email .
Speaker 3I'm excited about it because we do email as an agency , but I think we've only just scratched the surface and I think you've kind of like spoken really at a high level like all the things that are possible and how valuable email marketing can be . So I want to maybe for those who might be listening who kind of maybe like me , feel like they've scratched the surface but really don't understand the depth of what's possible , especially for retailers . So I'm wondering if you could just kind of like speak really high level about , like automation . So we know that email marketing obviously is like the emails that people get from companies around their products . But what's what's beyond that ? You know , beyond the like weekly email , what else can you see in terms of potential with email marketing ?
Speaker 1Yeah , email is one of those interesting channels I zap back all the time and I talk about it quite often because , being in the space for so long and seeing the things that have evolved and changed the reality as email , because it's worked so well over the years , the dapps people aren't changing fast enough . Ultimately , you just nailed it right there . You were just saying , oh we , something that doesn't work six months ago doesn't work now and we've got to change and adapt . And email , it's actually been interesting . It's been one of those channels that continue to work , even if you're doing it the most rudimentary way . So , to your point , if I'm just literally sending out campaigns regardless that I'm just sending out campaigns , it's going to work at some level and it's going to drive some results Right . So what I've learned is very simple and the way that I looked at email is very simple . It's your customer communication channel , it's your livelihood , it's your retention channel , it's your sales channel . It can be a little bit of everything and it all depends on how you approach it ultimately . So , at the high level , I look at it very simple . There is email campaigns and there's automation . So there are the two things that really come into point right , an email campaign . We all know what that is . You've got a strategy behind it . You're sending emails , you're sending out a message to a targeted audience . On the flow side , it's very much this right .
Speaker 1So long time ago , we used to have something called a drip campaign , which is when someone did an action , we'd followed up . Well , we've evolved , we've gotten data more data than ever is available to us and those have allowed us to create triggers and different things in action . So when I add a product to a card or I leave out a band of cards or make a product purchase or opt into a newsletter , all those are different signals and it allows you to create those experiences right , those personalized marketing experiences where it could be just a welcome email with your 20% off coupon or it could be as death of you know , identifying who you are , what you've purchased , where you've been and giving you a really hyper personalized message behind that as well . So , at the end of the day , I always look at email . Is you know why ? It's always going to be in primary driver ? It's the thing that people end up knowing what to buy from , and I say that quite often . Like people buy from email , they browse on mobile , they shop on mobile , they look on their computers , but really they buy from email because , well , it's the trusted source it's our generations of what direct mail or physical mail is .
Speaker 1Email is that new move ? Right , we didn't have physical mail for hundreds of years because it didn't work . We had , we had physical mail for hundred , and it still exists today . Right , it's the same idea . Now we've evolved as humans and we now are in a place where we understand the digital mail comes in . Now it comes into still applying the same marketing principles that we've probably applied for years and really thinking about the journey and changing the way we think about it .
Speaker 1I always send people like we all think about in real life , like you walk into a store , you walk around , you go browse , you shop , you talk and ask questions .
Speaker 1The thing is , with online , you've got to adapt to the changes that are coming with what that really means to a consumer . Right , they don't do the same thing , they don't ask the same questions , but what you can do , instead of being like the creepy salesperson that pops up out of the closet rack , is like you could actually show up in their email inbox and be like hey , saw that you were looking at this . How can we help you ? Right , like , those are the behavior targets that you're really aiming to do with email , and that's what really drives and moves the needle . So , like when I think about it very simple , it's very simple . It's how you communicate to the customer and how you make sales , and it's the lifeblood of most companies , I mean anybody . If you strip email out , if they don't fail , that means that they probably didn't put enough energy into it , and there's a lot of opportunity there , right ? So there's a lot of ways you can think about it .
Speaker 2Yeah that's so helpful .
Speaker 3Hi everyone , just taking a quick pause to tell you about Scan Club . Have you ever felt surprised or unprepared when things change in the world of social media ? We felt the same way . We were tired of reacting to constant changes in marketing algorithms and consumer behavior . So we found a better way . Scan Club has been our secret weapon for over a year now and we're excited to finally be sharing it with you . This approach has helped us future proof our strategies and feel less reactive . It's not a crystal ball and it doesn't allow us to predict everything , but it's helped us level up our work and collaborate more than ever before . So how does it work ? Twice a month , you'll get a copy of Scan Club right to your inbox . It's our breakdown of the top signals for watching and why they matter . You'll learn to spot these signals , understand their impact and produce your content with confidence . Get the feature in your inbox . Click the link in our description to subscribe today .
Speaker 2You mentioned how people haven't evolved enough in email , and of course it works , even if you don't have a great strategy . But I'm curious what kind of emails are you tired of seeing or like what are some of the common mistakes that you see people making On the that channel these days ?
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean . Well , we can start with the simple right . The simplest problem that I see is very simple , and it goes into email or SMS , doesn't really matter , it's really just batch and blast , and what I mean by that ? What that terminology means , very simply , is that people are taking a large group of Audience , they're batching them together without any thought process around the data and they're sending an email out in the campaign and again , it works , because email just works in general , right , but the reality is is that you're really creating yourself a problem of longevity . The thing about what we do is email . It's not about the results today , it's about the longevity of the results keeping the customer from Basically churning and no longer being a part of your list , getting them involved , getting them to pull out their wallet again , or getting them to pull out their wallet again for the first time sometimes , right
Improving Audience Management and Email Marketing
Speaker 1. So the main rudimentary mistake that I see is audience management . That's the thing that most people fail at . We've all learned some level . Oh , we need to do the actives and bring in all your active engaged , but that's not enough anymore . Right , you should be talking to and I always talk about this a lot on Twitter , for example . But I talk about the fact that an audience manager is very simple . You've got your prospects . You've got your customers one , two right . Your prospects . You've got one goal get them to buy . I don't care how much you need a message in , I don't care how often you need a message in , you need to be to get it by or get out because it's costing you money until they make that purchase . Then you've got your customers . Your customers are a different person . They've pulled out their wallet , they've trust and believe in your brand . They've bought and purchase . You need to treat them with a different lens , a different effort , right ? So like taking those people and batching them together and sending them , that , ultimately , is a major problem . So , like , when I look at it , that's the basic problem .
Speaker 1Now , when I look at the bigger problem in the space and no thing that I talk about and beat the drum on a lot is the fact that we haven't evolved the space . If you look back again 15 years ago , I am not . I mean , people aren't doing that much different than we did 15 years ago . We didn't evolve . We're still doing campaigns Maybe they're a little bit more targeted and we're doing flows and , yeah , we've got a little bit more automation . But then I look around and say , okay , what's the yin and yang to retention ? Well , it's acquisition . And I look at acquisition and I say , well , how come an acquisition that we're evolving Every six months and an incredible rate . Things are changing , but we're not even applying some of the biggest learnings that we have with retention , with acquisition , into retention .
Speaker 1And the one I talk about the most is very simple what's an acquisition ? Marketers favorite thing they love . They love retargeting , right , because , well , let's , let's be honest , if I put an ad in front of people that visit my site and tell them to come back , they're gonna come back . But if you think about email , we don't do that . We send a campaign , they click and then we move on to the next campaign . And so I started talking about this a while ago because we've proven this out over and over .
Speaker 1But , like the marketing , angle has to continue to change and evolve in the side of how you're thinking about it . So , instead of thinking about a campaign is the end of the cycle you should be thinking about . Campaign is as kind of like your middle , the funnel . Ultimately , you're using it to throw your net out . You're getting the clicks , but what about all those people that don't click ? The example that I use often is like if I have a hundred thousand people and I've Get two percent of those people who click , and I get two thousand people right , and you get like a one to two percent conversion rate on your site let's just say two percent , right , you convert 360 people what about the 1640 people that clicked and showed intent ?
Speaker 1And the only thing you do as a marketer often is send the next campaign about something totally different and you're missing the boat . They've shown you the intent . The contextual data is right there in front of you . They're giving you the indication way better than first-party , way better than any other indication that they care about the thing that you just sent him and the click . They clicked on it and spent their time on your website , but they didn't purchase . Why , and you've got to empower that right .
Speaker 1So , like I talked about the evolving landscape of how you should be thinking about email and changing it , why does it have to be a campaign to be , and why can't the campaign be the prospecting to throw people into either a simple Retargeting campaign or even a very thoughtful ?
Speaker 1I mean , that's what I really like to work with my customers on is like creating a thoughtful journey .
Speaker 1Like , if I click on red shoes for the next week , I should be getting things about shoes red shoes , men shoes , coupons for shoes and nothing else from your brand , because that's what I want and the consumer behaviors already right there in front of you .
Speaker 1But again , as I go back to it , most marketers are sending their campaign emails and then they stop because they think that they need to send their next campaign and that , inherently , the biggest thing is You're really just leaving a lot of money on the table and putting a lot more extra work on your plate for no obvious reason . You can send less messages and make more money , and that's really the thought process . You have to think , because that's what you do in acquisition , isn't it ? It's the exact thought process you take when you hit retargeting . You eliminate them from all your campaigns . You hammer down a retargeting because you know that that's the hottest conversion that you can create , and so we aren't doing that . An email , so like that's the way I look at it , from beginner event audience , and then the bigger spectrum is like why aren't we using the data that we have available in front of us , and why aren't we evolving our playbook ?
Speaker 3Yeah , that's really interesting .
Speaker 3I feel like it's like kind of scratching it to my brain a little bit if you kind of see that campaign as like middle funnel and you , there's all this potential and possibility with that click that you can like Double down on . I'm curious , like you kind of mentioned storytelling , but like , what role does creative play in that ? Like you said , like , say , they click on an image with shoes , like the next thing that they should get is just a bunch of emails about shoes . But like , how in your experience have you seen like creative and storytelling make an impact in that like middle funnel , retargeting kind of like approach ? Because I think that even like , as we talk about like my , my mind goes to social too and algorithms and how sophisticated they are .
Speaker 3And if I , you know , watch a video on TikTok about red shoes out . The next 10 videos are about red shoes too . So like I think it's almost like we've kind of learned and been programmed to expect that really customized approach . But I think the way that we do that can be , you know , strategic to in the way that we Level into creative and things like that . So I'm just curious , like what's your perspective in terms of creative in the role there ?
Speaker 1You know I always laugh . You know some of the best apps in the world , like you know , tiktok or Netflix they have this entire thing called for you why ? Yeah , you've clicked and you've tagged and showed intent . That's why they show it . So when I talk about what you just asked about storytelling everything , look , there's something that I believe in wholeheartedly , more than even email . That's the most important driver to any business . It's actually copywriting , storytelling , being able to actually facilitate an experience . Look again , there's bad email marketing and there's good email marketing .
Speaker 1When I look at good email marketing , they tell a story , they tell you what's happening , and that doesn't mean that it has to be always words . It can be images , it can be branding , it could be different things . They're all part of important thing . Look , you're setting the stage . That first email or that email that gets out to the person , is not an email . That's just about the message . It's about the look , the feel , the energy that you're giving the person , the thought process , and then you're combining that with words that a person can read , to humanize that expect where a person connects , to expect who and what is , on the other end , right , and you get there and you got to get that message right , where you can tell the right story and get those people going .
Speaker 1And that's why I like for me , like when I work with any brand , often I tell them dude , let's create an event . And they know what do you mean by an event . I say , when we do a strategy , it's not about the one email campaign , it's about the next week , it's about your next seven days , it's not about your next nine days . Whatever that event is , let's create an event . Let's tell a story around that event . Let's curate an experience where you're introducing something or you're talking about something you're using UGC to talk about .
Speaker 1Whatever it might be , you need to be able to talk and relate to the audience , because it's still a human approach , just like this . I mean , if you think about it , if you're in retail , do you just pick up a ? Pick up a shirt and you slam it in front of their customer and look at it . That doesn't help them , does it ? But if you tell them , hey , I've got a shirt , it's red , it's worn by famous people , it's made out of the most softest Pima cotton in the world and it's not gonna leave you any sweating , it's gonna do this and that's what people want to hear right , it's what natural sales is .
Speaker 1You've got to translate that into your email marketing and be able to facilitate that in a very small little snippet and blurb . But you've got to be able to drive that and you combine that with the idea of events . Right , people love events . People like to know that there's a start and ending to anything and everything they're doing , which is why I think events are very much a very strong playbook .
Speaker 1Move in In in strategical side .
Speaker 1When you're thinking about an email right , if I start a sale , I talk about the sale and then I end the sale , well , you're gonna create a blurb in which people are gonna be really focused on making sure that , well , they want to know what's going on the sale and they had intent to buy . They're gonna push them to make that purchase at the end , right , so , like thinking about things like that , you tie all those pieces together and you put it with the right audience and suddenly I'm a magical sale , an event , and when you Do that to anybody , you literally two , three , four times their output with their revenue , because now you humanize that experience . So that's what I would say about branding , copy . You know , storytelling , all that stuff . I really look at it as probably one of the most pivotal stretch Psychological places when it comes to what email or SMS is . Without doing that , you're just sending pretty camp , pretty images out into the world and again it works . Nothing wrong with it , but it really is leaving a ton of money on the table .
Speaker 2Yeah , could be better . So when you talk about an event with a start and end date , I think that makes a lot of sense and obviously a sale or a promotion is the low hanging fruit . Are there other kinds of events , any other like creative angles that you've taken other than sales ?
Speaker 1Yeah , I mean you could take it . Events could be about instructional or why , right , like here . I'll give you an example of a brand I was working with . I was working with a really cool brand . It's called Braxley Band . I actually wear one . It's an Apple Watch Band . It's just a really comfortable , extremely comfortable watch band .
Speaker 1And I went into that company and they were just doing the pretty emails . They're sending out a bunch of stuff and I was looking at it and identified and looked at it . And then the first thing I did was said all right , we're going to go tag every one of your links because we need to know the contextual data of what people are clicking on on your emails to know what they're actually interested in . The first thing I came back I said dude , did you know ? The two things that people click on are one they want to know how to wear it , so they keep clicking on the UGC . They talk about the experience . And then , second thing people click on a lot is they want to know about your shipping . I said these should be your highlight . Nothing else should be the highlight , because this is what they care about . Stop talking about this and that and who's wearing it , or social media , no one cares , let's focus on what they are .
Speaker 1And so we reshifted their entire model , got really focused on the things that they're talking about and really focused on it . We saw a triple increase in revenue happening right away because , well , the reason why people weren't buying was not because they didn't believe that that was really comfortable . They just want to know how to wear it , they want to know how to use it , they want to know how other people are experiencing it Right . So to me , if I look at that , that's an event . Right , you're going to create an event around how to wear it . You just see around how to wear it , or a product release that you might have , or it might be around a summer sale . I mean , it couldn't be anything really . When I think about the event framework , it's very simple . It's a strategic playbook . It's a start and an end to anything you're doing and making sure that you have a clean cut on both sides so that you're maximizing every dollar and maximizing the intention and focus .
Speaker 3So you mentioned some data that you're looking at and I'm curious like what are other metrics that you're paying attention to when it comes to email marketing and if there's any like popular KPIs in the industry that you feel like don't really matter as much ?
Speaker 1Sure . So I'm going to , I'll touch on a couple of them real quick and then I'll dive into one of the ones that we look at extensively . But the first one , obviously , is the open rate . We all talk about the . There's a lot of problems and different things . Here's the thing about open rates they're trend lines and that's the thing I tell people right , just because there's something called Apple Mail Privacy , which opens the email and fires off data and all that stuff , the reality is , one , it's inboxing and two , it's showing up in their inbox , because if it was in spam or anywhere else , it wouldn't be firing it open . So A it's a real inbox and B , it's in their inbox . Now that just means C . I hope you had a good enough message to get them to open it and not swipe and delete it , right ? So that's the first one . An open metric to me is just very much a trend line . It's just you've got to know what's going on . It's giving you kind of a solid heartbeat in the in the business , but it's not where you should focus
Understanding Audience Engagement and Acquisition Strategies
Speaker 1, right .
Speaker 1The second thing is to click through right . We all know what the click through is . That's very important how many people are opening and how many people are clicking it . To me , that's always the number one , pivotal , because , well , if they don't click , they're not , they can't buy . You can't attribute that if they're not clicking and buying . So for me , that's something that I look at . Now , what I look at the most and what we look at really is , again , we drill down to the clicks and understand one of them .
Speaker 1The biggest metric we look at is , uh , my CTO and I . We always joke about it . It's called UTA , it's unsubscribe to action , and what that is is how well is your message resonating with your audience and is the action that they take on your email is to open it and unsubscribe or to manage your profile ? It means that you're not connecting with your audience and it means the message is not working to him and you're not understanding who that person is on the other end . And so what we call that is a UTA , which is unsubscribe to action and allows us to see a metric like hey , their UTA is high , they're clicking a lot , but most of those clicks are going to the unsubscribe page because they're getting out of here , they're not engaging with the email , which means that the message , the copy , the storytelling is not connecting with the audience .
Speaker 1So like there's all these other metrics we can look at of revenue , revenue per dollar , all that stuff and that's all arbitrary to understanding the best behavior of those people and why . Right , and so that's . That's really . The thing that I would really peg on is like look at why people are clicking . Don't just look at clicks , look at why and understand them at the deepest price , because a click is really the value . Everything else doesn't mean anything until you get a click .
Speaker 2Would you , would you say anything different when it comes to flows and automations , or is it the same focal focal point across campaigns and automations ?
Speaker 1Well , again , it all matters what the objective is right . Again , a prospect who comes into pop up for me that is opted into a 20% off pop up , for example , my goal is only one simple goal to get into , buy right . Anything else doesn't matter . So I'm going to be aggressive with those people and I'm going to try to get them to rebuy as fast as possible and make that first purchase as fast as possible . But then you take it to the customer level . That flow is different because maybe it's not about clicking there . Maybe your intention is to get them engulfed in your brand and your company . You want to tell them stories about your brand story mission . You want to tell them about happy customers . You want to tell them how to use the product . And when you have that , then your intention is maybe not to click on the same way , but it's still the same thing , right ? Like if they're leaving your instructional email , well , why they just paid money for you ? Why would they leave it ? It's not connecting , it's not working , or the emails wrong to the person .
Speaker 1When people are very reactive I mean unsuscribed to me are like an , an impulsive emotional decision that's happening on the other end , and often it's because they find no value . And so , like that's , your job is to create value for them , and that they want to have your email , they want to look at it , they want to save it , they want to forward it , they want to click on it . That means you're doing a good job . But if they're unsubscribing , that means that you're . You got their attention . You did a great job getting into the inbox and you did a great job getting the open , but they've now said to you I'm not interested because this isn't resonating . So when I look at the flows is the same thing . You've got to look at that data because you need to be always optimizing for what they want to learn about .
Speaker 1And it's really just again goes back to splitting your audiences and understanding what their intent is . Right , a customer eventually you need them to buy it again , because your number one job is to get them to buy again or else again and I take this in the right way , don't mean this in the wrong way but like people being on your list doesn't really equate to revenue . It just means that you're spending a lot of money until they're creating conversion . So you can have the biggest list in the world If you have no conversions because you can't connect . Well , you're probably not going to make any money from it , and we see this often , right , that is literally the biggest thing .
Speaker 1We see hundreds of thousands of prospects that opted into your 20% off coupon and never made a purchase . Been there for 300 days and , yeah , they're opening and clicking . They're still not purchasing . I know that you don't want to get rid of them , but the reality is that 300 days and they've still opened and click and they're probably never going to open and click on purchase . Right , get rid of them . The intent is not there . Right , and that's something that people don't think about quite often is a really latch on the fact that it's a high numbers game and it is a volume game , but the reality of things is you also have to be really good at the hygiene stuff and getting rid of him , and that all sends back to audience management .
Speaker 3There you go . I'm curious in terms of your audience management , like , let's talk about acquisition . Like I think there's a lot of ways that people can acquire email subscribers and there's some ways that people pay for email subscribers and I know , at least from what we've seen , that that can impact all these metrics that you're watching , like clicks and opens and things like that . So , like , in terms of strategy , is your approach with audience management different when it comes to like how they've been acquired ? Like I know that there's like the customers and people who haven't purchased yet , and that's like a really great , simpleized version of audience management . But like , how much deeper do you go when it comes to like taking into account acquisition strategies ? Or also , do you have any tips for like , what's an ideal like acquisition strategies ? That is , like paid , still something that contributes to a healthy list , or is it not ?
Speaker 1Yeah , that's a great question . I think there's a lot of ways to head in this direction with this thing . So let's talk about acquisition , because it's important
Optimizing Acquisition and Retention Strategies
Speaker 1. I think that any good retention strategy requires a good acquisition strategy . Well , first things first , we have the basics right . We've got pop-ups , you've got newsletters , we have those coupons . Those are very much standard ways of kind of approaching it and we should all be doing those .
Speaker 1Then you start getting into kind of what I call the places that are kind of gray and they're mythical in a way , because a lot of people don't know how to assume . Right , there's intent tools , right , and we all know about retentioncom and there's a ton of these companies that are out there . Those have to be treated very differently . These are people who are visiting your site and they haven't had the intent or they've seen your pop-up but they haven't actually opted in , so they're not really sold at that level , right . See , there's a different strategy and messaging that comes with that . And then there's buying lists , right , that's a whole different side of things . You know , buying lists is one of those things . It's a big no-no in the market because people don't understand it . You know , some of the largest companies in the world buy lists all the time .
Speaker 1Data is very much king when it comes down to it , but understanding those different data points is really where it comes into place . And a company and I can talk about big company stuff , because I know some of these companies that do this but when they buy data , they're scrubbing it off 150 to 250 points of data in order to engulf and figure out who this person is . Too often , when a marketer is buying data , they go off and say I want people who are interested in coffee and they download that , and that's just never going to work out . So to me , it goes like this Don't play where you don't know , and most people will never be able to figure this out . So I don't . I don't encourage that side of things . However , I've seen some tremendous businesses grown on cold data as well too .
Speaker 1Now where I like to look at is acquisition and say how do we get more emails into my system , how do I get more SMS into my system ? How do we get more people to opt in ? And the reality is very simple you just got to put a lot of ways to catch their email . It could be a flow , it can be a contest . It could be quizzes , it could be different inherent funnels , but knowing that each time you add a never layer to these things , your opt-in rate will decrease , but the only positive that happens with a lot of times is the intent increases at the same time . So , finding that balance , being able to sort them down to your source , right .
Speaker 1Not all pop-ups are equal , not all traffic sources are equal . So , like when I tell a customer it's not about your trap , it's not about your pop-up , often it's about your traffic source first , where is that traffic coming from ? How are those people behaving ? What's the long-term LTV of those customers and are they converting and how long is it taking right , being able to see it going up the chain ? So to me , when I think about it , is very simple . Each point of them has optimization top of the funnel .
Speaker 1It's about knowing where your targeting is . Is it working ? Is it paid advertising great . Is it paid average ? Paid Podcasts ? Is it paid newsletters ? You got to try them all because you got to find where your customer is , because , as you all know this market in this world right now it's you have to be wherever your customers are and your customers can be anywhere . They can be on discord , they can be on telegram who knows where they're at but you got to go find them right . And then the second thing is you've got to have a strong enough bait right . Look , everybody expects 10 20% off on your website . Everybody expects to be able to leave your abandoned car to get a 20% off coupon to come back . You've got to find a better bait and your optimization .
Speaker 1I think people missed this a lot , like you should be always optimizing your pop-up . You should always be looking for ways to increase that , because the more people you can get to opt in , the more people you have chances to go follow up on right . So there's that side of things and you think about , and then the data behind all that and Knowing that , how you can scrub that to Pete . Too often again , people put one pop-up up . They don't track sources , they don't track anything that's happening behind it . They just look at that and say , huh , I'm getting a 7% pop-up opt-in . That looks good enough , we'll just keep it that way . It's again not taking it that next step . We're all scratching the surface , but there's so many tools and data points available to do that .
Speaker 1So my , my , my thought process is very simple Use the things you have . A lot of times , most people just aren't even optimizing the things that they have today in the acquisition funnel , which is really where all your money is anyways . All these other ways there's a million other auxiliary ways that you can do different things . But the reality is is most brands 10 , 20 hundred , 50 million dollars Don't need more than one or two channels to make this scale , to get to that brand number . Until you really get like Facebook ads on or meta ads , I guess , or Instagram ads , whatever you want to call .
Speaker 1These days , you could drive a company to 50 to 100 million dollars . You're literally on that one single channel with a website , with a pop-up , and drive it . We see it over and over again . But where it fails all the time is execution . The product's not good , the messaging is not good , whatever it might be that it doesn't fail . But you hone in all those places and you optimize on them , it's gonna work . So that's probably what I would say . I mean , I don't encourage people to start dabbling into these third parties often because , well , you probably haven't even optimized the start yet at this point right .
Speaker 2That makes a lot of sense Somewhere in there and it would have been easy to miss . You mentioned SMS and I want to make sure , before we're done today , that we get to talk a little bit about SMS , because it seems to be a really Complementary channel to email , and especially because you've been talking so much about how we can make it personal based on people's behavior . So can you talk to us about , from your perspective , the importance of integrating SMS with email marketing and where you see it Fitting in in this whole process ?
Speaker 1Yeah , absolutely . So . I'm gonna say the thing that hit everyone hates but SMS was not a blast channel . It was never to be a blast channel . It's a 90s . It's an old 90s technology that was built for communication . That people have taken into a funny little way , and I think it's been a little bit of a software driven thing that has happened in this market , which is ultimately where the problems start with , and what I talked about is very simple . I talked about earlier today batch and blasts . We did that in 2010 , but somewhere along the line on SMS , we decided to do batch and blasts of the same way . It doesn't make any sense . And yeah , again , it works because you communicate to enough people . It's gonna create those actions .
The Importance of SMS in Marketing
Speaker 1Here's how I believe in SMS . Sms is a fast channel . It's an impulsive channel . It's one that works at an instant mark instant . So most conversions on an SMS happen within the first two hours . After that , the SMS is usually dead in the water . Why ? Because SMS is a now-in-the-moment channel .
Speaker 1So , with the way that I look at SMS is not to use it as a big net thrower , it's to use it as the closing tool , and so when I look at SMS , often it's like hey , people who clicked on my email , I'm gonna send him a SMS three hours later to remind him to not forget to close that deal right , or close the sale . That's the way that we look at it . It's a way to go and send him at . You know , 12 o'clock today that at midnight I've got a sale expiring in 12 hours . That's a that's a true use of SMS , right ? Secondly , it's also a Two-way cycle . I think a lot of people forget with email . People like responding to email . That's just not something that people do anymore , but for some reason , people love responding to SMS and you should be using that as a channel to get more feedback and information , and so I look at SMS is , secondly , a Communication channel to have those two-way communications . Often and a lot of times , it's just questions and things that people are concerned about . They just want to get the answers for . So SMS not here to go away . I think that people over index the value of SMS quite often .
Speaker 1However , I will take a simple caveat . It really depends on who your audience is at the same time . So if you're running a really young generation audience and you're running a Gen Z or even younger audience and your YouTube and influencer driven SMS might be actually a better communication channel for you than email , because they just don't check the email . But then you go to an older generation they don't give a crap about SMS , they want to focus on email . So , like , know your audience , communicate where they want to be , and I I horrible , like .
Speaker 1My biggest belief that I think about in the future is you have to be where your customers are living , and what I mean by that is they're everywhere , right . They're email , sms , telegram , ig , you know , snapchat threads , whatever the heck . You want to be on Twitter . You got to pick the channels that you want to focus on . Double down there and grow your audience and those channels , otherwise you'll never be able to go off , and I think that's a big mistake people try to take and they go I want to be on every channel .
Speaker 1Well , if you go on every channel , you're gonna create no positive effect because you're spending way too much time going through every channel , not being able to be concentrated in those places . So that's how I look at SMS . I think it's an important part . I don't think it's a main driver revenue , but it is a Complementary and we often see on the data side of things , where a good store is doing , you know , 20 to 30 percent on your email , that SMS is probably accumulating another 5 to 10 percent on top of that and that's a pretty healthy mix that you should be seeing . You shouldn't be seeing a dominant SMS . It just means they're leaving a ton of money on the table on email , essentially .
Speaker 2Yeah , okay , and with email , we talked a little bit about creative and copywriting and storytelling . Obviously , sms is a little bit different because it's shorter form and it's you mentioned , it's a closing tool . Do you have any other tips , though , in terms of including imagery or like how you should write the copy in an SMS ?
Speaker 1Yeah , I talk about this quite often because we've tested the living crap out of this for their customers . Right , doesn't matter if you send a hundred , sixty character , a 320 character or a entire MMS . The conversion rates they're about the same . The end revenue goals are about the same . And I tell my customers and again I'm the anti-guy here I tell my customers to send shorter SMS . Just get to the point .
Speaker 1They're browsing down the street , walking down the street , tell me that I have a sale , 50% . You don't need to tell me roses are red , violets are blue and sugar is lumpy , like . You don't have to give me a story , just tell me what the sale is , because that's all I want and , honestly , that's all it has . Yeah , you can add an MMS , you can add a fancy image , but the expense of triple the cost of paying for an MMS to the value of revenue almost never worth it . Again , specifically , I'll say with the asterisks right now , there was always some outlier brand , but I'm using the entire spectrum of a lot of data to tell you that information . But of course someone can argue with me oh , my brand does well , your brand does , but no one else's does . So like that's the way I think about it .
Speaker 1So my tip there is don't waste a lot of money on SMS . Be optimal on SMS . Focus on a short , sweet message and just get to the point , because that's all people really care . They didn't give you their SMS to hear stories . They didn't give you SMS to have a conversation . A lot of times they gave you their SMS number because they wanna know about your next sale or your next offer as soon as possible , when they wanna get directed to the point . So that is my biggest advice I can give to people is stop wasting money on SMS .
Speaker 2Love it .
Speaker 3So good . Well , there's so many rabbit trails we could have taken on this , but we're getting to the end of our time here and we'd like to ask everyone before they go who is making waves right now and why .
Speaker 1Woo , wow , that's a really expensive question . All right , let me think about this the right way . All right , so one of the things that I spend a lot of my time is on Twitter . Right , I spend a lot of time on Twitter . I see the people making community and I kinda see the leaders rising and I look at the people that are beating the drum and I look at the people that look below and places that I know that I was and I watched them as they're evolving . So some of the people that I love out there in the market right now are people like I love this guy , charlie , professor .
Speaker 1Charlie , I don't know if you've ever seen him . He tweets a lot about a lot of great things about Facebook advertising , but he's controversial because he talks about everything that people don't wanna hear . I appreciate that . I think he's making waves . He's gonna break through . He's creating this thing called a disruptor school , which teaches exactly that how to disrupt .
Speaker 1I look at people like Nick Shackleford , who's an advisor of ours , who I've been adoring forever and now is an advisor for us . You know , the thing about him is that he connects to the community in a different way . He's created trust and community of friendship , while he's still driving business for himself at the same time . So I see him making waves because he's showing that you can be a human in a brand and still drive revenue at the same time .
Speaker 1Right , there's people like that that are out there in market and I would say those are two very top examples of great people out there trying to find their community or have connected with their community , and they use that channel exclusively , use that channel most of the time to create that , and I think the biggest wave makers realize that focus is the biggest driver . Even myself , twitter is my focus . It's the only thing I really focus on . All the other channels are like we do it and we do the things we need to , but really the reality is that's my focus and that's where we spend energy . So the people we're making waves are focusing , and that's probably the thing that I tell everybody right now is like we all chase shiny objects . We gotta stop chasing shiny objects , because most shiny objects don't really accumulate to anything , but there's a one that does , and a lot of times you're ignoring it because it's already in front of your nose often .
Speaker 2So good , I'm a big fan of Nick and we'll look up . Was it , Professor Charlie ? You said , yeah , yeah , you'll see him .
Speaker 1Charlie T . Yeah , he goes by a couple things , but Professor Charlie is what you can look him up as .
Speaker 2Yeah , nice , we'll add those to the show notes for sure . Last thing , jimmy where can our listeners connect with you ?
Speaker 1Yeah , as I mentioned , twitter at Yo , jimmy Kim is my Twitter . I'm very responsive , I respond to DMs and the second place would be LinkedIn . Right , so I also am on LinkedIn . I'm at a little bit more of a professional level there , but I am there too . But really , twitter's where you'll find me the most and I'll talk about the stuff that I talked about here and a lot of the newest learnings and the things that I continue to learn . I tweet about them all the time and I try to provide as much value into the market and it's free , so come learn Awesome yeah , I can vouch Jimmy Kim's a good follow on Twitter for sure
Enlightening and Practical Insights
Speaker 1.
Speaker 2Well , thank you so much . This has been enlightening . I feel like we were able to get in the trenches a little bit , but still keep it really practical . So thanks , jimmy , we'll have you back again , for sure .
Speaker 1Awesome . Well , thank you guys for having me been a great hour .
Speaker 3Hey everyone , thanks for tuning in to Waves . If you enjoyed this episode , you can hit subscribe and leave us a five star review . And don't forget to follow along on social at hello arcade . We'll see you next time .