413 – Email Marketing Strategies to Increase Sales with Laura and Adam of Pink Leopard

Gift Biz Unwrapped guest,

episode number 413.

We don't advise.

It's always sell,

sell, sell.

And promotion.

Promotion, promotion like we see a lot of businesses do.

Attention gifters begs,

crafters and makers.

Pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one,

now you are in the right place.

This is Gift Biz Unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources and the support you need to grow your gift biz.

Here is your host Gift Biz gal Sue Moon Height.

Hi there,

it's Sue and I'm thrilled that you've joined me here today.

By now,

I'm sure you've noticed the uptick in people talking about the

importance of email marketing.

Dare I say,

even more important than social media.

Email is your key to predictable and growing monthly sales.

We'll dive into this further in a minute,

but first,

we've covered so many facets of a handmade product business over

the course of the years and today is no exception.

We've talked about how to start and grow your business stories

from many of you who have done just that.

How to choose and use social media sites,

build your website.

Oh my gosh,

there is just so much information here for you but not

necessarily at your fingertips.

So I've made a tool for you that categorizes by topic

the episodes of this podcast,

but only the ones that stay relevant over time because yes,

let's face it,

there are past shows that just don't work anymore for us

today. The world is changing so fast,

right? You can use this tool to zero in on whatever

topic you need at the moment.

Do you wanna hear from others in your specific industry?

How about details on Pinterest or setting up an email strategy?

You can now easily find the right episodes and create your

priority listening roster.

Consider this your Gift Biz resource center at a glance.

It's a Google Sheet best viewable on your computer versus your

phone. Make sure to look on the bottom where there are

five separate sections for easy topic reference,

kind of like chapters of a book.

It makes finding the shows to help you with what you're

working on right now.

So much easier to access this free resource,

go to gift biz unwrapped.com/topics.

Now, with regard to email,

it's one thing to understand its importance in theory and another

to know how to use it to your advantage in your

business. Today's guests are going to shed light on this with

concrete direction on the what and the how.

You'll hear how to grow your email list four communication flows

that you should have in place.

We are to find ideas for the content in your emails

and what to do after your email is sent.

I know most of us think that once we press that

send button,

our work is done.

Are you surprised to hear that?

There's more to it than this.

And finally,

my huge pet peeve,

Laura and Adam answer the question about whether you should sell

in each and every email you send.

I'm gonna tell you the answer right now.

It's no and yes.

Let's jump over to the conversation so you can hear more.

Today. We're gonna be talking with Laura Hanlin and Adam Smith.

Laura and Adam founded and have co-directed Pink Leopard and e-commerce

Growth Acceleration agency for the last eight years.

They're driven and passionate about getting under the skin of e-commerce

businesses, helping them grow to seven and eight figures.

Laura also has her own e-commerce store,

so she understands every aspect of running a successful online store.

Since she's been in the trenches with her clients,

Laura and Adam focus on sharing their knowledge with how to

grow via paid ads and email marketing.

As a thought leader in creating advertising strategies for e-commerce brands,

Adam takes time to understand the individual requirements and direction of

each business to be able to make custom recommendations for their

clients. Together they are passionate about building a people focused agency

that attracts retains and cultivates the best talent to ensure client

satisfaction. Laura and Adam,

welcome to the Gift Biz Unwrapped podcast.

Thank you.

I am so excited to dive in cuz I feel like

our conversation is gonna be a little twist on some of

the things we've talked about here already.

But before we do that,

I have some candle questions for you.

I told you this has become a tradition on the show.

We like to get to know you in a little bit

of a different way by having you describe what a motivational

candle would look like that resonates with you.

So Laura,

I'm gonna let you take it away first.

What would your motivational candle look like?

Okay, so it would have to be pink in color.

Obviously wearing pink now and with our business being called pink

leopard, it's just,

yeah, I feel like it's a great color and definitely reflects

myself and the business.

And as a quote,

it would be you are your greatest resource and that's really

a mentor said that to me years ago and I feel

like it's always stuck in my mind no matter what sort

of challenge I face in business or even life is just

that you will always find the answer to whatever problem you

have and there are so many resources out there to you.

I suppose chat G B T might have taken over that

now greatest resource.

Yeah, it's always stuck with me and I think it's a

really nice message to kind of have with you at all

times. I think so.

Because it also empowers you.

Yeah, so often we p think that things are being done

to us or we place limitations on ourself because of something

that's happened outside of ourselves.

But if we can circle back and remember that inside us

we can figure it out and we have the power to

make things happen,

I think that's really a good thing for us to continue

to remember all the time.

Yeah, yeah,

I like that a lot.

Okay Adam,

what are you gonna add with your candle?

Okay, so my candle color would be green to me green

is quite a positive color cuz it means go and that

you're on the right path to achieving your goals.

So little bit inspired by this book,

I'm actually reading at the moment by Matthew McConaughey called Green

Lights. I dunno whether you've heard of that book.

But what he says is with green lights is that throughout

life there's gonna be stressful times or as Matthew McConaughey puts

it, yellow and red lights.

So kind of stumbling blocks that you have to overcome and

challenges. But all of those challenges they provide you with a

lesson to learn from.

And so once you have that lesson,

it gives you a green light so that you can positively

move forward.

So it's about being,

having a positive and learning mindset and being able to improve

at all times and learn from the situation that you're in

Because as you grow and learn one thing,

you've may have gotten bigger or more knowledgeable and stretching yourself

so then you encounter something else you need to learn from

100%. Yeah.

So there's always gonna be a situation throughout business or personal

life and you've got to really understand the why behind it.

I think we all have these situations and reflect back and

say, I'm so glad that happened,

but at the time it feels like the worst thing in

the world.

So looking for that,

that opportunity and that positive kind of spin on things that

have happened that weren't so great at that time.

Yeah, it's a good learning and this is something I didn't

know when I first started my businesses,

is I thought,

you know,

they're gonna be so perfect,

I'm gonna put so much energy.

And I had a lot of experience already,

like I know what I'm doing,

everything is gonna run beautifully all the time.

And it took me a long time to realize once you

solve one problem,

something else will come up.

There's always like an open folder looking for your attention for

a solution and that's just the way business is.

And once I got used to it,

I'm like okay,

it's not me.

This is how it is,

this is how we roll 100%.

And we are very much in the game of problem solving,

you know,

constantly, you know,

from when we first started together to where we've come to

now, there's always gonna be a problem that we need to

solve. And I think if you can kind of enjoy that

and get into a mindset of there are gonna be challenges,

there are gonna be problems,

but we will overcome them,

it's about rather than having a negative spot on it.

Yeah and this is how it's supposed to be and this

is how you grow.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. So first Laura,

can we talk a little bit about your business?

I know listeners would be interested in what you've been into

that relates a lot with them.

So you mentioned that you've had an e-commerce business.

Share a little bit about that with us.

Yeah, so the business,

I kind of started the business after starting the agency and

it was really because of my love and passion for e-commerce

and I really wanted to have product business of my own

I suppose,

really to show what's possible and to show like how you

can grow it.

Well my goal was to grow it quite quickly,

but how you can grow it.

But also that I could also experience what our clients would

face because obviously it's all good talking about the marketing side,

but there are so many different elements aren't there?

So the e-commerce business,

product side,

customer service,

everything kind of goes hand in hand.

And so yeah,

and getting that experience was something that I really wanted to

focus on.

So started a business called Cameras Creatures,

which is a business where we would get,

customers would send in images of their pets,

their favorite pets and we would then turn it into a

customized piece of artwork that would then get printed on Canvas

or Muggs or T-shirts and get sent out to them in

the post.

And yeah,

it is a really cute business.

Love the e-commerce store and we started in Q4 and really

kind of excelled pretty quickly.

Cause obviously it's a gifting,

huge gifting period.

Oh I love that.

It's a pretty brave thing for you to do after you're

already helping other people grow their businesses to start one of

your own.

But it brings so much credibility also to what you're doing

and to your point,

being in the trenches and people really can know that you

understand what they're going through.

Plus I love the business.

You saw me light up when you said that cuz we

have a brand new puppy.

Oh Really?

He's nine months now.

He's not.

So he's in his adolescent stage.

Oh Cute.

Yeah, I think that business was just,

people do like when you talk about their pets or when

you show them the art,

the amount of customer kind of interactions that we'd have Who

doesn't smile with puppies.

Yeah, Oh exactly.

Or kittens,

any animals.

Let's go with that.

Well exactly.

And Facebook ads absolutely love pets as well because people click

on them,

engage with them Seriously.

So it was really,

it was a passion of mine but it was also knowing

what was quite a good product at the time,

work marketing wise.

So yeah,

Love it.

Yeah. And all e-commerce,

a hundred percent E-commerce.

Yeah, a hundred percent E-commerce.

Yeah. Got it.

Okay. So you did that after you guys had started Pink

Leopard. Let's talk about how this idea came about and how

you guys got together to form the agency.

I'll let you take that one Laura,

cuz you obviously started it and then I came in a

little bit later.

Yeah, sure.

So, well Pink Leopard started because we were hel I was

at the time living in Australia and I was helping out

businesses doing a bit of consultancy work at the time,

doing more when social media,

organic when,

or you could post something organically,

you'd go viral and you'd get loads of sales.

Obviously that's changed Back in the good old days.

Yeah. Of what,

10 years ago or something?

No, yeah,

such good days.

And then I,

I quickly kind of realized that speaking to businesses who wanted

to really grow and scale and wanted to take their business

from five 10 K in sales a month up to sort

of 50,

a hundred k or whatever it may be,

just those businesses really kind of needed paid advertising in a

sort of a serious marketing funnel really to help them grow

and scale.

And it kind of wasn't really about just posting here and

there now on social media,

although I'm not saying obviously organic still works,

but just spent a lot of money and a lot of

time learning from some of the best mentors in the world

to, because I really wanted to be one of the best

in the world at advertising for e-commerce businesses.

So yeah,

I got started off getting really great results,

got a lot of referrals from clients and then I kind

of came to a point where I was a warm man

band and it was just a lot trying to,

you know,

run every element of the business.

And luckily for me,

Adam and I have been friends for quite some time since

we were younger.

We've kind of grown up in a,

in the same area and Adam was a bit of a

crossroads in his kind of journey and looking for something that

he could do himself and be part of a business.

So our skillsets are really complimentary.

So I invited Adam to come on the journey with me.

So we became business partners around about four or five years

ago now.

So I'll let you take over from there Adam.

Yeah, so it came a great time and I'd followed Laura's

journey with pink leopard and Canvas creatures and was always really

intrigued by,

you know,

what she was doing and always knew that she was gonna

have successful business.

So when the time came when Laura gave me a shout

to see if,

you know,

I'd be interested on joining her,

I really did jump at that.

But I think Teco,

what Laura said about us having complimenting skillsets,

my background is in new business development.

So it's finding businesses that we can really support and help

and drive great results for.

We're not right for absolutely everybody and we wanna make sure

that we're honest in that approach from the get-go.

So doing a real kind of deep dive in understanding of

the opportunity and where we can help is really important and

part of our ethos at Pink Leopard.

But I think to add to that,

my background was also in employee engagement.

So big thing for Laura and I when starting this agency

was how do we create the best kind of agency for

people to work in?

So how do we attract that best talent?

How do we retain that best talent and make a really

lovely culture to work in,

which has that knock for our clients?

Because when you've got a great team that love what they

do, they produce really great work.

So that's kind of the how we started the business together

when I came on board and now we're at a point,

yeah we,

we offer a range of different services to e-commerce stores and

really helping them to grow and thrive.

Love it.

Absolutely love it.

And I really like the fact that you guys,

each of you brings an area of expertise together that naturally

merge together but also are important for business growth.

For sure.

So now I'm gonna ask you guys a really uncomfortable question.

Are you ready?

Yeah. Okay.

I want you to brag a little bit because when we

first started talking about doing the podcast together,

you know,

I wanna always make sure it's handmade product type based businesses

versus service businesses.

Cuz service can be a little bit different and that doesn't

really fulfill what our listeners are listening to.

So I asked about,

were you heavily involved in product based businesses and I heard

some of your great results.

So instead of me reading what they are,

can you share with me one or two success stories?

And you are allowed to boast,

I'm letting you boast.

That's why I told you it was gonna be uncomfortable.

I think Canvas creatures is a good place to start with

what Laura did there and how she,

you know,

really elevated it from nor to really,

I have to,

you'll have to remind me of the actual figures there,

Laura, but from where you took it zero to,

you know,

amazing results.

Yeah, so we started,

so we took it from spending nothing and obviously achieving no

sales cause we didn't have an audience or anything at the

time to over the first quarter achieving a hundred K in

sales and increased.

So we started off on Facebook ads solely in doing a

bit of email marketing,

but that really was,

yeah, our first quarter in sales and it continued to grow

in scale.

It's a very seasonal product.

So it was very much kind of around Q4 was obviously

a huge time for us.

And then around Mother's Day,

father's Day,

so we kind of scaled up and went with the flow

of the seasons.

But yeah,

with other clients,

we have taken a homeware company.

They are in the sell flowers from spending nothing on Facebook

to a hundred K a month over a year.

They were seeing about half a million in sales monthly.

So we built up their Facebook ads and also supported with

kind of all of the elements of their marketing really when

it came to creative and directing them on email marketing.

So yeah,

they're kind of two,

I suppose two of the proudest ones really that we've Achieved.

I saw the results in this results speak volumes,

right? So you guys definitely know what you're talking about.

I'm imagining that as you've said,

you wanna know what the needs of the customer are and

then you figure out what services are applicable.

Adam, you'd made a comment,

especially with new business development,

that there are some businesses that aren't right for the things

you do.

What do you mean by that?

Yeah, so it's having,

rather than being conceptual,

it's having a proven product that can actually sell online.

So having the concept is one thing,

but then proving it's actual viability is another.

So we tend to not work with businesses that have just

an idea.

They have to have some form of organic sales coming through

so that we can say,

okay, well it's already selling,

there's already results here,

let's elevate that and push it forward.

And then with e-commerce,

as we know,

there's a lot of moving parts to it.

So the website needs to be be good.

The marketing element is one major cog in the whole machine,

but it is still one cog.

So once we get the traffic to the site,

if the site isn't performing our work is it's,

it can be a very expensive way to get people on

your website that then don't convert.

So we need to be confident that the website is performing

well. Things like reviews and stock issues and the suppliers and

things like that we have to take into consideration because if

the client is always out of stock,

we are gonna have to stop,

start the ads and things like that.

So yeah,

lots and lots of moving parts that we need to consider

and almost have a criteria for them to tick the boxes

of. Otherwise we can't really support them.

We're very honest about that as well.

And we let them know,

you know,

maybe go away and consider doing X,

Y, and Z and then we'll talk after that.

But we wanna make sure that these businesses have a good

foundation that we can actually help grow rather than just trying

on their behalf.

Yeah, you answered my question.

If you suggest and advise people,

you know,

go fix up your website or whatever you need to do,

actually get your product from idea in your head to reality

and prove that it's saleable.

Right? I talk with people about this as validating your product

because there's no reason to start throwing a ton of money

if what you've made.

Nobody will open their wallet and pay for or press the

buy button,

you know,

whatever the situation is.

So yeah,

so getting a certain level of your business established and producing

beforehand Yeah.

Is where you start.

Okay. All right.

So I really,

really want to dive into email and Facebook ads and everyone

listening, don't click off right now because you're gonna hear good

things about both and they can go hand in hand.

They don't necessarily have to go hand in hand,

but I think that's really where I'd love to dive in

and I think where our conversation can serve the people who

are listening the most.

So let's start with like grounding email,

why you feel it's important,

and then we can go from there.

So I think email is found really,

really important foundational piece for any e-comm store because if you

have some automations and flows in place,

that will really help with customer retention and making sure that

sales are still happening as people go into different flows and

sequences. So the three main flows that we say are kind

of must-haves would be your welcome flow,

your abandoned cart flow,

and your abandoned browsing flow.

And these should be making a kind of 17 to 20%

of your total e-com store sales.

Now the reason why we say get those in place kind

of early on is it will really compliment the acquisition side

of things.

So if you are running some paid ads or people are

coming to your website,

whichever sort of means they're getting there,

once they actually give you their email address and their email

details, they'll fall into these sequences And it's almost,

you know,

it's a form of retargeting and giving people,

you know,

the information about the business that they need,

giving them an incentive to buy and they're,

they're really profitable as well because once your flows are set

up, designed well,

copywritten well and actually in place,

it takes very kind of little maintenance after that.

So a very,

very good first thing to do with your email is get

those flows right.

Yeah. And the automation is fabulous.

I think a lot of people are fearful of,

well how would I set that up?

Like how does it all work?

But there are so many services now,

I mean I'm a big proponent of Shopify,

but a lot of these types of programs have something already

partially set up that you just have to,

or partially installed with that are accessible to you that you

just have to set up properly and click the button so

that they'll start working,

right? Yeah,

absolutely. And also,

yeah, Shopify has all the apps in place and we're huge

kind of believers in Clavio that's also similar to,

well I suppose similar in the respect that you can just

set up the flows so it has it all for you

and it's pretty intuitive.

Yeah. And you don't have to,

you know,

straight out of the gate if you're just starting a building,

you don't,

and like with Canvas creatures,

we never went straight into getting designers and fancy copywriters.

You just wanna get the basics done well,

right to start there and then you can start building,

Right. Many people won't know what Clavio is,

so why don't you share that with everybody?

Yeah, so Clavio's an email software platform,

so it'd be akin to the likes of mail,

well just a different service provider to the likes of MailChimp,

AWeber. But we find that it's a really great system for

e-commerce because of the ability that it has to help you

segment your lists to set up these automated flows.

So you don't actually have to buy additional apps like you

do in Shopify.

Clavio can do absolutely everything for you.

So it is a very,

very intuitive tool and as we say,

set up for e-commerce businesses.

So yeah,

that's why we're,

Am I wrong or does Clavio also integrate with Shopify?

It does,

yeah. Yeah.

So someone buys on Shopify and you have Clavio and it's

connected, then all that email functionality happens in Clavio.

Yeah, exactly.

To a much higher degree.

MailChimp is great,

I know some people use Constant Contact,

but this is a higher level of sophistication and you can

automate more things.

You know,

apart from what we've just talked about here in terms of

the welcome and the recapturing of abandoned areas,

you can do even so much more in something like Clavio.

I think.

I not sure,

I haven't looked at MailChimp recently,

but I think they limit how many funnels you can have

or the sophistication of the funnels and the tagging and all

of that,

right? Yeah,

exactly, exactly that.

Yeah. So all Clavio integrates,

yeah, perfectly with Shopify.

So a lot of our clients are on Shopify and camera

screen is on Shopify linked to Clavio.

And also when you set up list building campaigns within,

say Facebook advertising for example,

that can also integrate into C,

it essentially becomes a big sort of CRM system for you.

Okay. So that's a good combination.

You would recommend that type of a combination.

Yeah. Okay.

All right.

Let's go back to theory a little bit because I'm afraid

some of the more tech things,

we're gonna lose people.

Okay, we all understand what a welcome message is.

Abandoned carts are capturing people who looked and maybe forgot like

their kids got in a fight and they had to leave

and they had something in their cart.

Like there's so much opportunity to recapture sales.

I don't know if you guys have a percentage,

but I know that it's huge of how much sales you

can recapture on average.

Yeah, from abandoned cart.

Yeah. It really varies from client to client.

Oh for sure.

I know that overall like it's huge how much you can

recapture all your efforts to having gotten someone over to your

website looking at your product,

just think about it like then they go into and purchase

something and it sits in the cart and for some reason

they get distracted or they think about coming back later,

but then they forget these are sales that you recapture with

no extra effort for yourself.

Such opportunity lost if you don't do this.

I talk about in the person-to-person space,

cuz a lot of our folks go to craft shows and

if you have someone come to a booth and don't capture

their email address and they just walk away,

you might have had a great conversation with them,

they're lost to you forever.

You know,

that's kind of like not doing anything with abandoned cart sales

because it's sitting there.

All they have to do is one final thing.

They thought of buying it at one point and poof gone.

Just gone.

Yeah, Absolutely.

I, I do it myself all the time and I'm actually

really grateful for those emails that pop up to remind me

cause I'm like,

yes, maybe I'm a that example of it,

but there You go.

Yeah. And it also gives you a chance if you know

they've come to your website from being a show or because

somebody's mentioned it and then they've come to your website and

not bought for whatever reason,

it also gives you that opportunity to give them another incentive.

So maybe they just wanna hear a little bit more about

the business or maybe it's a 10% sweetener that gets them

over the sort of purchasing finishing line.

So it's a really good opportunity to build a connection and

really encourage them to purchase.

So yeah,

huge opportunity.

Okay, I think we've got everyone understanding about all of this.

What other types of emails do you feel are important for

e-commerce and what purpose do they serve?

I wanted to pause this discussion for a second to let

you know that I recognize you may be feeling overwhelmed right

now. I mean I bring on great guests who are specialists

in their fields and we get into fabulous conversations that you

know can help grow your business.

So after the show you have the full intention of grabbing

a download,

making an adjustment on your website or any number of other

ideas that arise as a result of this podcast.

But what happens,

you get back to your other activities and the momentum you

once had gets lost.

What you've planned to do is forgotten,

then you feel bad because your business is going on as

usual without implementing anything that you know would help grow your

business. We're just too busy doing all the things like a

robot moving from one thing to another without thinking because we

have to.

I get it,

I've been there.

But guess what?

There is another way.

Since I recognized this exact behavior in my own business,

I set out to do something about it and now what

works for me,

I'm sharing with you.

I formalized the process and it's called the inspired daily planner

made specifically for gifters,

bakers, crafters and makers,

but it's not your ordinary planner.

First off it comes with a video explaining my productivity strategy.

Plus it's not dated.

So you can start using your planner the second it arrives

at your doorstep.

And that's not all included for each day is a motivational

message or business building tip and plenty of space to capture

and book in time for to-dos,

schedule appointments and all those other ideas that are now getting

lost. Think of it as a book and a planner all

in one yet compact enough to carry with you and resource

as necessary.

It's the perfect solution to truly act and move your business

forward. Go to gift biz unwrapped.com/inspired

to get your hard copy planner along with my power of

purpose video that will set you on the path for true

business growth.

This makes a great gift too.

So if you have a biz bestie,

pick up a planner for them too.

That link again is gift biz unwrapped.com/inspired.

Okay, let's get back to the show.

So you could bring in another flow,

which would be your customer winback.

So people who haven't purchased from you quite some time and

trying getting them to reengage and purchase from you.

Again, it's a good one to have because naturally they're already

familiar with your brand,

they've already bought your product so the likelihood of them buying

again could be higher than somebody who is cold.

We also recommend as well sending out regular email blast to

your database.

So yeah,

making sure that you are sending variety of different messages to

your subscribers.

It could be incentives again,

it could be a sale,

it could be a promotion,

it could be telling the brand story but really keeping those

hot customers and potential customers really engaged with the brand on

top of that.

Not to get too technical,

but you wanna make sure that the audiences are kind of

segmented as well.

So you can hit different groups of people with different types

of messages.

So it could be for example that you have a group

of people that have never bought from you before.

So you need to give them something a little bit different

to those groups of people who are regular customers.

So for a V I P list for example,

from somebody you know that has bought from you 1,

2, 3,

4 times,

you want to be thanking them and maybe incentivizing them in

a, in a different way with a different type of message.

Whereas people who haven't bought before,

you want to encourage them to buy for the first time.

So the incentive and the copy and the message behind that

would be a bit different.

And all of this,

once you've set it up can be done within Clavio.

I think this is where there might be a difference with

MailChimp and setting that up.

Is that part of what you help your customers do,

help them set up these funnels so that they will automatically

trigger? Yeah,

absolutely. And so the winback one you're able to set up,

if we haven't gotten an order from a customer within a

certain amount of time,

then trigger this email to go off something like that,

right, Exactly that.

Yeah. So you put in the different parameters and it could

be that you know this person you tell Clavio that you

want send a message out so a group of people that

haven't bought from you for 180 days or six months or

whatever it might be.

And then they will be triggered to send,

to receive an email from the business to try and reengage

them and to purchase again.

Perfect. And so question about the ongoing emails.

The emails that you normally send out and let's say this

is to a segmented list that you are just for whatever

reason you've decided you wanna communicate with regularly.

What frequency?

So you've got a really,

again dependent,

a really annoying win marketing,

everything's dependent on your product.

So annoying Laura,

so annoying.

I hate it when people say it to me.

So, But we would say a good rule of thumb is

once a week to start with and then you can learn

the behavior of how that list responds.

Certainly until you start building up a big list where you

can then segment and get a bit fancy with the targeting.

But to start with,

I'd say once a week and making sure that it's just

consistent and you're getting good sales and then if you're not

getting great sales you can potentially,

or you're not getting good click through rates,

you can then maybe drop it down slightly or if you

are, you can then push it and maybe do sort of

six emails or eight emails.

But really then just understanding how your audience is responding to

that. Okay.

And what do you put in these emails?

I mean is it always a product and like selling or

what is your suggestion there?

Yeah, so with e-commerce,

yes they're most often product focused but it's not necessarily always,

we don't advise.

It's always sell,

sell, sell.

And promotion,

promotion, promotion,

like we see a lot of businesses do,

again depends on the segment of your list.

You are sending different emails to different segments.

But if it's to the same segment that you were sending

one email a week,

it might be for canvas creatures for example,

you can send out things like this is our portrait of

the week,

but at the bottom you would still have them link through

to how they can purchase something similar or you may share

a testimonial that somebody has shared with you from the product.

Another one there might be,

because it's Valentine's Day,

we're doing 30% off for your,

you know,

the most important person in your life,

a gift for them.

So it's always,

it's really good to get your sort of 12 month calendar

or a six month calendar and looking at where those promotional

points are.

Things like Valentine's Day,

mother's Day,

father's Day,

they're really,

really good because they're kind of already events there that you

can utilize and make advantage of.

And then around that you can just build up other ideas,

you can look at seasons.

So if it's hot weather when you are an outdoor clothing

brand, it could be five ideas or five tips that you

can do in the outdoors but you always like link your

products in with that so that people are subliminally being marketed

to us Because you're an e-commerce business after all.

So you always wanna have that link where if someone's interested

in buying they can do so.

Yeah, you know I talk about this a lot that I

wanted to get your take on it.

The bigger brands,

because they do so many other things,

you know like TV,

I'm talking about the mega brands,

like they do TV or they do radio or they're on

Facebook all the time and they're running so many ads like

they're in your face all the time.

TikTok reels,

like all of it.

When the emails come they seem to be more individual product

based and go sell when we're smaller.

And you can contradict me after I say this cuz I

wanna know your opinion,

but I feel like always doing product price,

product price conditions,

customers, even if they love you not to open it because

they're like,

oh yes I have it but I'm fully stocked right now,

I don't need it.

And then they don't open the email.

And if you send weekly emails week after week after week,

then eventually you're not gonna be in the primary folder anymore

cuz they're not opening that you're gonna be in the promotions

folder. Right.

Versus what you are talking about like making it interesting to

open an email.

There's always gonna be a link to go and grab the

product, but five key points about why this product is healthy

for you looking at the pet of the week because they're

also cute and to your point,

like we all wanna see adorable little pet faces,

right? Like yeah so that you never know what's gonna be

behind that email,

but it always either makes you smile,

you learn something,

you get a discount,

but you don't know until you open.

Yeah, Am I on target here or what would you say?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think a good thing to do is to also look

and learn from your own behaviors.

Like what emails do you open,

what do you like to see from brands and start to

take note of that.

I mean we are on so many different email lists from

different brands so it's something that we are looking at all

the time and gaining ideas and we've got files where the

team can share if there's a great email or why they've

hooked you in.

So yeah.

And often it's the ones,

sometimes I love sale,

I like,

I love sale promotions for jewelry,

you know,

everybody does.

So Hint hit,

So I'll click on that and I'll often purchase on no

sales ones but not every single time.

And it would completely put me off if it was always

just, this is our product,

this is the price,

it's boring.

So you do have to get creative and find ways exactly

as we've just just discussed to entice people and put yourself

in your audience's shoes.

Like what do they want to know?

What do they like reading about?

And if you are sending emails and it's a,

they're a bit more like a how-to email or an instructional

and your audience responds to that and the click-through rate's high

and you're getting purchases then wow,

amazing. That's what they wanna see.

So do more of that.

And if you know,

or if it's they love reading reviews and testimonials then do

more of that.

So always be looking to see how they respond.

Really good point,

don't just,

once you have the email scheduled to send think,

okay, I'm done with that one.

Put it in your calendar to go back and look at

how the performance is of each one and figure out you

know, which ones your audience likes the best.

Yeah, really,

really good point.

The other thing that you said that I think is a

great idea too is if you're at a loss for what

to put in emails,

go into that promotion folder if you're on Gmail and see

which subject lines or when you actually click in what they're

showing is interesting to you.

It's not that you're gonna copy it but use it as

inspiration of something that you could do with your product.

So there's lots of ideas out there.

You don't have to be at a loss for things to

put in email for sure.

Yeah, Absolutely.

Marketing is all about borrowing ideas.

Yeah, borrowing.

But it's true,

it's true,

right? Like on this show,

and I mentioned this in a podcast a little while ago

and it relates but it doesn't,

I midweek do a podcast called Tips and talk.

It's just me talking,

how do I think of an idea every single week of

what I'm gonna talk about?

I go into the Facebook group and see what people are

talking about,

but I also,

do you know Seth the golden?

Yep. Okay.

So he does a daily email,

has nothing to do with product handmade based businesses.

They're usually pretty small and they will trigger an idea.

So I'm not even taking what he says,

but it triggers an idea for me that I know is

a pain point for my audience.

You know,

you say borrowing,

it's just like it inspires you or gives you other thoughts.

You don't have to sit in a blank corner,

solid room,

no one else there and come up with things all by

yourself I guess is the point.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I love that.

I definitely do that.

Yeah, boring ideas,

using ideas from other industries as well as so yeah,

it's so clever and it's just,

it's inspiring And I often find I get times where I

will have,

if I'm thinking of ideas for brands calendar or what to

put, I often find like sitting and having a bit of

a brainstorming session in one.

Cause I find if you're trying to do it weekly,

sometimes you sit down and it's really hard to get your

creative brain going.

As soon as I'm like dropping my kid off at nursery,

I've got all these ideas that I can't write it down.

So I,

I do think once you get into the flow,

you get into the flow.

So trying to do that sort of those ideas maybe for

the month or for six weeks in advance at one go

when you're feeling creative is also another hack I would definitely

advise. I think that's really good cuz you're not getting into

creative mode for five minutes and then out,

you know,

in and out.

I'll do that.

Like if I see one of the emails that I wanna

keep, I just print it and put it in a folder

so then when I,

it's time for me to get started,

I can go through and some of 'em are like,

what was I thinking?

Gone? You know,

but some of 'em spark an idea.

So the other thing,

like if you were doing what I was talking about going

into the your promotion folder,

have another folder of emails and things that you think are

interesting, just slide 'em into that folder so that when you

are at a point where you're writing emails,

you can just access that folder into your point Laura,

all of those ideas would be there then for you.

But I like the idea of grouping your tasks that way

when you're in that mindset.

That's really smart.

Yeah. Okay,

so all of this is great about email but we need

addresses to send to,

right? Yeah.

So, and we probably have a few in the beginning cuz

we have our friends and our family,

you know,

and we start acquiring.

But what is your best tip here on how we build

this email list?

So we have someone to talk to via email.

Yeah, so making sure,

so you've got to first of all have a,

a popup on your website.

So when you do have traffic landing on your site,

you've got a really clear,

easy way for them to put their details in.

And having some sort of office,

you'll often see it if you go on people's on different

websites and you'll see put 10% in for,

sorry, put your emails in to receive 10% off.

And then often I won't go into SMS marketing but sometimes

it's then and another 5% if you add your phone number

in there.

My mind was going there.

Exactly. I was thinking how many people do that second one?

Do you have any idea?

I think it's about,

again, massively,

massively dependent on each brand and what you,

what you incentivize them with.

But I think a good rule of phone could be 30%,

30%. Take that second one.

Yeah, Okay.

But hugely dependent on how good that offer is and how

good the incentive is.

Cuz a lot of people,

we always get asked as well like how,

what conversion rate the popup has.

But it would be so different from if you have no

offer to then if you obviously have 20% or if you

had a hundred percent off,

I imagine,

which you would never do,

but crazy conversion rate.

So having that on your website and popping up.

And again that's another part that Clavio does.

So that popup on your website,

you can build within Clavio,

which then people put their details in and that's how it

feeds directly into your Clavio account from your website.

But secondly,

once you have your popup,

you've obviously gotta have traffic hitting,

hitting your store to put their details into the popup.

And that's,

you know,

obviously in the form of paid advertising generally organically,

you can definitely do this as well and have a link

in your bio that says that they can get a discount

for heading to the website and entering their details to be

part of your newsletter.

But what we find is that Facebook ads works really,

really well and that's because A,

you can either send people to your website to the popup,

but B,

you can also use in Facebook ads what's called lead formats

and it's essentially a popup within Facebook.

So somebody doesn't have to leave Facebook,

they don't have to get onto your website to put their

details in.

You build the popup that pops up within Facebook,

they put their 10% in and that gets directly kind of

pinged over into Clavio.

So that's how we find works really well to grow our

client's email list.

Okay. So everyone stays on the same page with us.

We are not talking about Facebook ads that go to a

sale of your product.

We're talking about a Facebook popup or either ads that bring

you to the website to the popup or there's a popup

right in Facebook that are offering a 10% off where you

are in exchange for the address.

This is like the handshake when you first meet somebody not

asking for the date,

right? You're just getting to know somebody first.

Right. Okay,

so carry on with that.

Yeah. So that's one really good way and obviously that's a

way of paid advertising,

but there's also,

if you don't wanna necessarily spend money on paid advertising,

another really good way that we've found is by running competitions.

Yeah you can have a landing page set up on your

website that's a hitting landing page so it doesn't have to

link to any other part of your website.

And again,

you can use paid ads to send traffic there,

but what we find works better is if you work,

say collaborate maybe with four or five other brands and put

together like a really good prize and then you can each

share that competition with your social media organically with your list

so that you are actually utilizing other brands,

audiences who have a similar interest to your products as you

do. Because that's a way to get good quality people into

your list.

Sometimes if you run paid ad straight to a competition,

you kind of get every Tom,

Dick and Harry that just wants to try and win a

competition. So what's the competition like?

Gimme an example of what a competition would be.

So again,

just going back to camera's creatures,

we could do,

we obviously thinking of the person who's gonna win the prize.

So you could collaborate with a pet food brand,

they, so they could win a pet food brand,

they could win a portrait of their pet,

they could win a dog grooming kit,

you know,

and a couple of other prizes.

So in order to win this huge product,

they have to come to the landing page,

enter their email address and they're in the drawing.

It's a random,

you know like how they went Got it.

Kinda like a sweepstakes.

Yeah, yeah.

Or something like that.

So there's no,

which is the cutest pet,

there's none of that.

It's just the capturing of the email gives them entrance into

the drawing.

Yeah, Exactly.

Which is nice cuz it's super fast too.

Yeah like easy,

you enter your email and then everybody who's part of that

competition gets those emails,

right? You do as the coordinator.

But to your point,

so then the dog food company,

the we're into pet bandanas,

so the pet bandana company,

whatever. So each of those businesses would then have that email

list, right?

Yeah, exactly that And that's of course stated somewhere legally,

somehow. Yeah,

exactly. You'd have to have that written on the landing page

clear to w to enter the Ts and Cs.

But making it a big prize cuz we often see people

doing a lot of prizes.

It's like win one bandana for example,

which for some people they will enter,

but if you want to get people,

they still have to,

that's you see That's me.

But for people that you know,

they want to win a big prize,

like putting your email address is still like we are kind

of, people don't like giving their email addresses away that easily

now. So if you enter a competition on social media and

you just have to comment yes to be entered into the

prize, then that's a lot easier than giving your email address.

So you do want a good prize in order to get

people to part with their email address And a prize that

relates to your products,

not an iPad,

right? Yeah,

yeah, exactly.

Yeah, because you want people to give email addresses who are

interested in the product selections that are there not just to

win any kind of a prize either.

Yeah. Well and that's the whole reason of the collaboration is

because Right.

Mr. iPad man's audience may not be have any relevance to

yours, whereas the pet food person would.

Yeah, Exactly.

And so then everybody who's participating,

let's say there's three people,

they all share the cost of the ads too.

Yeah. If you're running paid ads that Way,

if you're running paid ads,

yeah, but like this,

I could see handmade creators who have been hesitant about ads

before say,

all right,

well if I did this with two or three other people

and ran an ad to a page that was collecting emails

to a contest,

I'm not doing this all by myself first off.

Like I could really see,

you guys will tell me in the comments of this podcast,

but I could really see that being really interesting for people

to do.

I totally see it.

The other thing that's so good about this idea,

and I've never thought of this before,

so it's amazing,

I love it so much,

is all of us have people who have followed us or

like us on our social media platforms but aren't on our

email list.

And we all know the drama when the platforms go dark

for sometimes it's just a minute or sometimes you get kicked

off of Instagram or whatever it is and you could potentially

lose all of those connections that you had if they're not

on your email list.

So this is a fun way of capturing another portion of

people who are following you on social but aren't on your

email list.

Cuz the lists aren't the same.

Who you have on your email list is not the same

as who you have on following you on Facebook obviously,

right? Yeah,

exactly. Yeah,

that's another great reason to do it.

So yeah,

especially if you've got,

like you said,

if you've got quite a big built up audience where you

wanna get them onto your email list,

definitely a good way Then once they do the email,

they're automatically on your list and then you can send them

through then these other types of things that we've talked about

before, like the weekly newsletters or winbacks if they've left you

for a while,

that type of thing.

So I think we've gone full circle now in terms of

how this can work together so nicely.

And the other thing,

I am not in any way shape or form a Facebook

ad specialist.

I have people who do my ads for me because I'm

not going there,

but ads in this manner are way less expensive than ads

going directly to a product also,

right? So that's another advantage.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because if we run like a full sort of paid strategy

for a brand where you are running ads to product pages

and you are wanting this traffic to convert into purchases,

you're obviously competing with every other e-commerce brand similar to yours

who wants to buy that traffic.

So in this way your cost per lead is cheaper.

So you can run this traffic ads topper funnel to cold

audience, the email flows,

do the retargeting for you so you don't have to spend

a lot of money in Facebook ads running a top of

funnel, a middle of funnel to a warm audience and then

retargeting them cuz that's what the abandoned cart and the welcome

flows do for you.

So it's,

it's by all accounts a cheaper way.

And it doesn't mean that because somebody's seen an ad that's

promoting you to join their list.

It doesn't mean that people aren't then gonna hit the product

page and purchase.

Like we often see really good returns on those apps,

which is,

it's a win-win really.

Right. Well and it's so much easier to put in an

email than to click by if it's the first time someone's

ever even seen you.

Right? Yeah.

And maybe they don't need your product right now,

but to your point earlier,

maybe it's a holiday thing so by the time the holidays

come they'll purchase.

But if they only see that buy add in the beginning

and don't respond to it,

once again,

you've lost them.

Yeah. The whole strategy makes so much sense to me.

I absolutely love it.

I do have one more question.

This is selfish because my assistant and I argue about this

all the time.

How often should you clean your list and get rid of

people who haven't opened for X amount of time?

Adam? Yeah,

I think you should always be looking at the health of

your list.

I think if you are gonna start any email marketing campaign,

obviously you wanna do that straightaway and then make sure on,

on a monthly basis that you are looking back on your

list and just doing a bit of a test to make

sure that it's nice and clean and healthy,

say on a monthly basis or bimonthly at most.

Okay. All right.

Perfect. We don't do it that often.

Well Yeah,

I think it depends on how much on the time that

you have.

Like for our clients,

obviously we're always in their email account,

so that's something that we will continue to do.

But If you,

I mean we clean out Undeliverables because what's the point,

right? Yeah,

yeah. So that we do on a more regular basis and

we'll also clean out,

unopened for a six month period.

Cuz you know how some people just have an email that

they never look at,

they only do it for promotions.

Mm. Yeah.

We feel like,

you know,

then we get rid of those.

The fact is people do it,

that's fine,

but then to clean it out and get those out of

your way because they're almost like undeliverables because they're not being

used. So we clean those out.

But I was really curious.

Now I'm gonna go back and tell Lori what you said.

We'll see where that goes.

So, alright,

wonderful. This has been so interesting and really I love the

idea of the competition or sweepstakes or whatever.

That is amazing.

And I really,

I think we're gonna trigger some thoughts for people about combining

together with a few other people and maybe trying these types

of ads for the very first time.

You know,

people who've never done it before,

it just feels much more palatable.

You know,

if you haven't dipped your toe into ads like this before,

so and definitely worth it.

A hundred percent worth it.

So share with us a little bit more about the business,

what you offer,

where people could go and learn more,

whatever, this is your promo spot.

What do you wanna tell people who are listening now that

they know all this goodness that you can provide cuz you

have had such great ideas and direction.

Yeah, sure.

So we're a growth acceleration digital marketing agency,

really helping businesses to grow and scale and thrive via paid

social, paid search and email.

They're our kind of three main channels that we work on,

but the goal for us is really to make sure that

our client's message is spotted.

Bit of a play on words there with leopards in the

right place at the right time and by the right audience.

So we mainly work with female founded businesses with products that

appeal to a female audience.

And we have a number of different products within Pink Leopard

to help people scale and grow.

If they've got,

you know,

a really established and and functioning business,

or if they're on the more startup end of the scale,

we can help help with things like the email list build

and getting those flows right.

That foundational stuff as well.

So there's a real kind of breadth of what we can

do across the agency to help people get started or to

accelerate their growth.

Google ads,

I have to ask.

Absolutely. Yeah.

So we do Facebook,

Instagram, TikTok,

and Pinterest.

Then we do Google ads for search and then email marketing

where we're a A Clavio official Clavio partner.

Wonderful. Perfect.

Well, thank you so much.

I am so glad that we had the chance to talk

today. I know we have gotten in the minds of some

people who are listening here,

and hopefully we'll prompt them to try something out here.

Yeah. So thank you.

Thank you so much for being on the show today.

Thank you so much for having us,

Sue. It was really great.

Speaking to you.

Can I just say I love the idea of challenges for

email list growth?

If you've been sitting on a stagnant list with no regular

increase in prospects,

this may be just the thing to kickstart activity there.

To learn more about Pink Leopard,

you can visit their website,

which is pink leopard.co

uk and on Instagram and Facebook,

pink Leopard uk.

I wanna make sure you're familiar with my free Facebook group

called Gift Miss Breeze.

It's a place where we all gather and are a community

to support each other.

I got a really fun post in there that's my favorite

of the week,

I have to say,

where I invite all of you to share what you're doing

to show pictures of your product,

to show what you're working on for the week,

to get reaction from other people.

And just for fun,

because we all get to see the wonderful products that everybody

in the community is making.

My favorite post every single week,

without doubt.

Wait, what?

Aren't you part of the group already?

If not,

make sure to jump over to Facebook and search for the

group Gift Biz breeze.

Don't delay.