Liz & Sandro discuss reasons you may want to send out more email, or less email to your base.
Liz mentions a past episode on how to improve your email open rates. You can find that episode here.
Episode 0276
Email Marketing: More or Less?
Sandro: [00:00:03] Welcome to Liz & Sandro’s Marketing Podcast! We’re the podcast that gives you pretty short episodes twice a week on All Things Digital Marketing from reputation management to SEO and one of the bigger things that I told Liz we should do an episode on this week and that is e-mail. I’ve been seeing a lot of tweets about email marketing and the power of it and how it just isn’t going away. And as we’ve mentioned in the past Liz. . .
Liz: [00:00:27] Yeah, we’ve talked about this that your subscriber list is is probably the most valuable marketing asset that you have. You have control over that. You don’t have control over Instagram, Facebook. I mean you know those channels are owned by other companies but the subscriber list is something that you control. You can control. You can put the message out that you want to you can be driving traffic back to your Web site very easily. So there’s a lot of power in that subscriber list.
Sandro: [00:00:54] That’s something you own your own Facebook or Google or Twitter. You own your e-mail address list and that’s very powerful. And still e-mail reaches more people than social media. So it’s still the most powerful way to get out. One of the most powerful ways to get out there. So today I was telling Liz that I use the Google Web page now more and more to check my e-mail. And I’ve noticed that I’m going into the promotions tab more and more and just highlighting them all and clicking delete without looking at them at all.
Liz: [00:01:20] OK see I got rid of my promotions tab, well over a year ago if not more because we had really important e-mails Adele e-mails were going to the promotions tab and I was like, “well I can’t I can’t miss my Adele updates!” So I got rid of the promotions tab. I have everything going into one main folder and I’ve done a lot of unsubscribing you know mass unsubscribes over time because it’s overwhelming. Retailers are sending e-mails every day. I don’t need an e-mail from Banana Republic. Every day I know you’re having a sale.
Sandro: [00:01:54] I’ll tell you one thing. Actually we didn’t talk about this before that. I love it. I have a Yahoo, two Yahoo email accounts and I go through there and I click through and delete a bunch of e-mails on the Web site the Yahoo Web site. And when I click delete for the past two months it says would you like to unsubscribe to these e-mails and you just click unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. It only works about half the time but it’s fantastic. So Yahoo knows when I’m deleting multiple times a week these e-mails It’ll say, “Hey do you want to unsubscribe? Here’s a one click unsubscribe option for you.” I know Google has something like that but they don’t ask you proactively do that. You have to open up the e-mail I believe at the top Google inserts an unsubscribe button. So e-mail is becoming more of a challenge is my point.
Liz: [00:02:38] It’s a great way to reach people but yeah there are there are challenges around it for sure. And you’ve got to make sure you’re sending good content
Sandro: [00:02:45] And having good subject lines. But I think personally one of the best ways to get people to open up your e-mail is to send less e-mails.
Liz: [00:02:56] OK.
Sandro: [00:02:57] Two of my favorite places to eat locally here in town they send out one e-mail a month and the first of the month one is called The Winking Lizard and they, I know all the beers are going to have special beers on tap throughout the month and I make sure to open that email every month. So less e-mails give me better open rates. I believe.
Liz: [00:03:17] See I disagree. I see so many people tip-toeing, “Oh I don’t want to send too many e-mails” and the result is that they’re not sending enough. I don’t think once a month is enough. Now obviously that’s going to depend so much on your industry your subscriber list and what you’ve you know set expectations as you know Winking Lizard has you know trained you. OK one e-mail a month with all of our beer specials.
Sandro: [00:03:44] Yes
Liz: [00:03:44] But you know a lot of the clients I work with is a lot of service based businesses. I’m like, “No you need to be emailing way more than once a month. You need to be getting in front of your subscriber list and demonstrating your expertise and your value.” I don’t think you can do that with one e-mail a month.
Sandro: [00:03:59] How many e-mails a month does Adele send out?
Liz: [00:04:02] Well none right now. She’s still recovering.
Sandro: [00:04:05] So Adele’s voice is gone but. . .
Liz: [00:04:07] So, she’s still recovering her voice her vocal cords are still recovering and I have hopes that I will get to see her live once again.
Sandro: [00:04:14] OK I’m still believing once a month is plenty but you’re telling me service based industries may want to send more than one e-mail a month. What would be reasons to do that?
Liz: [00:04:23] Yeah I think so. New blog article. New Video. An update in the industry. I think you could very easily find something to communicate once a week. And I think that’s a good amount for a service based business. Again it’s going to it’s going to vary on your specific industry and your subscriber list. But I think once a week is good when you start talking about an e-commerce website and you have a catalog of products I mean then then you really get into you know follow up email workflows you know. So if someone bought a product and you as the retailer wanted to share three complementary products you know thinking through all of those workflows you know that’s going to require a whole a whole other mindset of email marketing and how you can communicate with your customers. No I don’t think you need to be Banana Republic sending e-mails every day. But yeah I mean again even weekly I think I think that would be a good amount.
Sandro: [00:05:15] OK Liz Well I understand I’m not into the e-mail marketing you’re the e-mail marketing queen. I trust your judgment. But I as a consumer while still in the less is more camp I’m starting to come around to see why more than once a month may be OK. Thanks for sharing your point and pushing back in arguing your point. I appreciate that. And our listeners small businesses can make their own decisions. And if you feel like maybe you’re sending out too many e-mails maybe try lessening and if you think you’re not sending out enough. . .
Liz: [00:05:42] Try more.
Sandro: [00:05:43] Exactly. And we’ll have a future episode a 2018 version of how to improve your open rates.
Liz: [00:05:48] Yeah we’ve talked about that in the past but I think an updated episode would be beneficial to everyone. So we’ll get worked on that.
Sandro: [00:05:56] Correct because I feel like more & more people. Some people are actually using their voice assistants to read their email to them.
Liz: [00:06:02] Oh yeah that’s big.
Sandro: [00:06:03] Or even read their subject lines. That’s something we’ll talk about in the future. Thank you for joining us today. You can find us on Instagram Twitter and Facebook. We’ll have links in our show notes and if you have a question send us an email. We can read it on the air. Answer it and give you a link. We should have a new website by the time you hear this episode.
Liz: [00:06:21] I’m super excited.
Sandro: [00:06:23] Liz built it all by herself. She’s killing it the website building maybe we’ll have an episode on WordPress building websites.
Liz: [00:06:29] Absolutely. Yeah.
Sandro: [00:06:30] Thanks again for joining us. We’ll see you next time.