286: How To Turn Your Email List into Engaged Customers

Danielle:

Let me introduce to you Lauren Luedecke. She is the go to expert for small to medium ecommerce businesses looking to scale through powerful email marketing. She specializes in email consulting, guiding clients on deliverability, campaign strategy, and converting subscribers into loyal customers.

Lauren:

Okay. My name is Lauren. I'm the owner of By Lauren Jean, a digital marketing agency, and I am about to reach my 10 year anniversary of starting my business. So my email marketing approach is building strong customer foundations through honest and transparent email marketing, which is exactly what we're gonna talk about today. To give you a brief background about me, I started my career in ecommerce with a company that sold personal safety equipment. So, like, I'm talking safety glasses, high vis apparel, hard hats, talk about a sexy product. Right? Although the product line was not glamorous, it was a small business, and I was involved in every aspect. I was 23 years old managing a p and l, customer service, web development, marketing, and everything else that you do in a small business.

Lauren:

That's where I really fell in love with email marketing. And you can read more about how I got started in my chapter of the all out impact book if you wanna learn more. Here is how I define an actionable community when talking about email itself. An actionable community is one where the subscribers are just past recipient. So where subscribers aren't just passive recipients of your emails, but they're inspired to engage with your brand. So some of those examples would be, like, they're reading your emails because you actually find value in them. They're more likely to respond to your calls to action. Building an actual community actually relies on consistent, relevant, and value driven communications.

Lauren:

Right? When a company understands there's an actual human behind an email address. Now what I'm gonna discuss here is not earth shattering brand new concepts, but instead, it's designed to make you think differently about building your email strategy and communicating in your digital channels. Meet my client. They are the leader and the best selling sewing furniture in the United States. They're known for their sewing cabinets, their sewing chairs, storage furniture. And when it comes to building an email strategy, there's a lot of things that are considered to set the stage. So let me highlight a few things about their products. Aero cabinets range from 900 to $4,000.

Lauren:

And if you build a modular system, it can require an even more investment. The cabinets must fit in the user's craft room. So, overall, Arrow's customers make very thoughtful decisions. They're not spontaneous purchases whatsoever. Knowing that high level of information, how do you think emails like this did? Every single email that they sent were like this. Too salesy, blah, looks like a flyer. I would also note that they're really sporadic. It was like whenever they could get to them.

Lauren:

really mad at me if I spent $: 25100

Lauren:

They actually had decent results considering, they had a 32% open rate, an average click rate of 1.6, and a click through rate of 5.2. So actually not too bad. I'm not sure if you guys know what click through rate is, but it's the number of people who opened and clicked. So forget about the subject line. Once people open it, what results are you getting from there? So I think this is the most valuable KPI that you can focus on, and I don't think people focus on it enough. But this is definitely where my eyes go whenever I'm evaluating an email program. Let's pretend you were a crafter, sewer, quilter, any of those. Other than a discount, what would you want to see from Arrow's emails? I'd like to see case studies, how to fit back in my crafting closet and corner, how it benefits you, user videos, layouts, tips for not breaking the needle.

Lauren:

Awesome. So when we look at an overall email program, right, there's a lot of challenges. So here's the challenges that we had. We had a rapid takeover in the middle of 2,023. There was no budget to create loyalty programs, engaging videos, like, we had to work with whatever they had at our fingertips. And then also, we had to move to a brand new platform right before crazy holiday season in October. So it's not ideal. We had pretty much no information on customers.

Lauren:

So what was the strategy that we did? One of the first things that we did, which I pretty much do this with most of my clients, is an email list cleanse. So before you move from a one email service provider to the next, I always recommend an email list lens. And there are tons of benefits, and there's a strategy to it. Another one is we built SOPs right away since the email program was always second thought, and the emails, as you saw, were nothing other than promotional. So we wanted to start with a welcome series. They didn't even have a welcome series, and they wanted to be a 15% off-site wide. So this is the list cleanse. They get 2 calls to actions.

Lauren:

d any emails prior to holiday: 2022

Lauren:

This is always about quality over quantity, and this would also help me do a small domain warm up to focus on deliverability. Just know that when you're switching ESPs, you should only send the engaged people first on your brand new email service provider. Alright. So this was the welcome series. The first email is a quick 15% off coupon. But what we did here is we wanted people to craft their own experience and tell us a little bit more about them. What we do is we say, tell us what crafts you're interested in. So we can have sewing, quilting, paper crafting, garment sewing, all those.

Lauren:

ing in the email. We finished: 2023

Lauren:

t a well thought strategy for: 2024

Lauren:

We're passionate about creating the best sewing furniture and fostering a vibrant creative community. So right away, we want people to respond to us, understanding that we're here to build a community for you. And one of their big messages is it's not about having the perfect craft, it's about exploring and having the joy of sewing and quilting. So this had an 88.1% open rate, 54.8% click rate, and 62% click through rates. So this was the 3rd email in the series. What I didn't show you the second because it was very similar to show us your craft and tell us what you do with your craft. So I was just showing something new here. This one, we actually set a live poll in an email.

Lauren:

Now this does not have to just be ecommerce. This can be anybody. Pull your audience in some way to make it engaging to see what other people responding with. Right? So I asked them a live poll of tell us what you thought about the pattern. Did you already start working on it? Are you looking forward to adding it to your queue? And then it's not my style, but it was a good inspiration. And you can see down here, every time someone opens the email, it's a live update of who clicked on what. So I can see not only engagement, but I'm gathering customer information. So now when I go through and segment my list, if everybody who pushed c said, hey, it's not my style, I know not to send them information about that type of pattern.

Lauren:

And this one particular was EPP. It's English paper piecing. It's a very niche type of thing that you do with sewing and quilting. So now I know don't send them things a lot along that lines of EPP. They're not quite interested. And now I'm gonna send more things and start tweaking what they are telling me that they want. Open rate of 69.8%, click rate of 25.6, and a click through rate of 36.7. So this can be easily done about service.

Lauren:

So if you're not an e commerce, that's totally fine. So what would you pull your audience on? And make sure it's something that you would actually use information on. Another thing that we did for a client was we did a diamond pull, a diamond ring pull. We said, are you a round shape, a pear shape? We created an entire program out of it. So now I have information on all the users if they like round cut diamonds, haircut diamonds. So you better believe that I'm taking that information, and then when I'm sending them an email with jewelry, I'm giving them images of just round cut diamonds. My sister is an oncology dietitian and so she understands who's in treatment, who's not in treatment, who's in survivorship, and she segments her lists very specifically. Just remember to use the information that they give you.

Lauren:

Just don't let it sit there. So here is the 4th in the welcome series. Alright? So we're building the community from the start. And the 4th was, hey, let's just show them inspirations. It's not images of the product in a white background. It's people actually say, hey. This is what my studio looks like. Isn't it inspiring? And then we're even leveraging the creators at the bottom, and we know that those creators that are in our program, they love it and they're gonna speak to it.

Lauren:

So we're gonna give them love too and get people to their accounts. Even a click through rate of 20%, I love that. See, this is the 4th email, and people are still involved. We also do a monthly series, meet the creator. So now instead of just promotional emails, this is another monthly thing where we're actually creating the actual emails and showing, like, there's another space. Here's a really good way for you to go use some patterns and shapes, and you're seeing some great open rates, 45%, click rate of 3.9, click through rate of 8.6%. Here's another one. We give an inspiration series.

Lauren:

So a lot of you guys in the beginning were seeing, like, how does it fit my space? What are other people doing? Give me some inspiration. That's exactly what we're doing here. 48.8 percent open rate, a 3.6% click rate, and so forth. I mean, this one is this very first one, I love Sharon Holland. I'm not even a sewer, but she gave you an idea of how to give a hostess gift. And then now this is what their monthly promotions look like. Still a little crowded in my opinion, but we're working with what we have. But instead of saying, here's a sale, here's a sale, here's the sale, we're also giving them, like, is it this one or that one that you want? Again, engagement.

Lauren:

We're also doing a giveaway. So we're still having to qualify what the client wants. Right? The client wants the bold colors, and this is their brand, so we're sticking with it. But now we're getting better open rates and click through rates and conversions specifically. So when we look at 2,024 so far, these are the results that we're seeing. Remember, this is something I didn't mention. I send a re mail to every single time. So if somebody did not open the first email, I'm changing the subject line and sending it to them again.

Lauren:

So these results actually include their email, so they left a little lower than what they would have been based off what I was showing you. You do not need new content or a large budget. Just think differently, and then consistently provide value, not just discounts. And gather information for your responses, then use it to personalize your emails.