How to Grow Your Natural Business With Email Marketing

Tina Smith: 0:00

These are the things that you should be talking about in email. You’re already doing it in your source. You don’t need to think about content and what should I create? I think that’s the biggest barrier that people have to putting out emails is they’re like what am I supposed to be talking about? The same thing that you talk about when your customers come in your store. Welcome to the Natural Products Marketer podcast. I’m Tina.

Amanda Ballard: 0:27

And I’m Amanda, and we’re here to make marketing easier for natural products businesses, so you can reach more people and change more lives.

Tina Smith: 0:35

Hi there and welcome back to another episode of the Natural Products Marketer podcast, and today we’re continuing our conversation about email marketing. So last time what we talked about was growing your email list, and we know that that’s also related to another podcast episode we did, amanda, about the seven steps that you can take to dominate your local marketing. So obviously we think email marketing is really important.

Amanda Ballard: 1:02

Yeah, absolutely. And one thing and we said this on the last episode about emails, but we really wanna just drive this home that there are statistics saying that only 64% of small businesses are utilizing email marketing in their businesses today and we wanna change that. It needs to be 100% because we believe that this is so important. It is the most effective way to reach your customers on a one-to-one basis and get the maximum ROI.

Tina Smith: 1:30

Yeah, just as a reminder of what that ROI looks like, the statistics also say for every $1 you spend as an e-commerce brand or a retail brand, you will receive $45 back in revenue. So that is a huge ROI. Everyone should be using this channel.

Amanda Ballard: 1:51

Yeah. So today we kinda just wanna spend a few minutes kind of focusing in on what types of emails that you could be sending that would be effective, and then just some practical tips of how to make them more effective. So we’ll kind of just do kind of like a popcorn style use this tip, use this tip, but let’s spend the bulk of our time just going through some of these effective emails that we think could be implemented in any business today.

Tina Smith: 2:20

Yeah, and to be clear, our last episode was on growing your email list, and everyone should continue to grow their email list. More eyeballs, more audience, the more chance you get of conversion. But we think most of you already have an email list. You have been selling products for a long time. If you are a retailer, you have been gathering that type of information, and so now we’re trying to give you some practical steps to be able to use the email addresses that you have to really start to grow your revenue and just create a great relationship with your customers, which is what you’re all about anyway.

Amanda Ballard: 2:57

So, before you even open your email provider of choice, we’ll just use MailChimp, for example. Before you even open MailChimp in your web browser, do you have a plan to communicate something of value to your customer? Because, at the end of the day, if this email that you’re about to send doesn’t provide value and you’re just talking about yourself and how great you are, no one cares. They wanna know what you are going to do to help them improve their life, right? So, whether it’s you know we’re introducing a new product or we’re telling you about an event, be very clear in your mind what you’re communicating and how it’s actually going to help the customer.

Tina Smith: 3:38

Yeah, one question I always ask is what’s in it for me? I put myself in the seat of the customer and I say what is in it for me? So you were talking about hey, you don’t just wanna be talking about yourself, you wanna have what’s in it for the customer. And there are ways to tell your story about you and how great you are that frame it up and what’s in it for the customer. Because sometimes when you’re talking about, hey, we just won this award, why is that important for the customer? Or hey, we have these credentials, why is that important for the customer? And sometimes it’s like we went after this award or we went after this education so that we could bring you or do the work for you or do the research for you, so that you don’t have to. So framing up the thing about you in a way that’s valuable for the customer, asking that one simple question what’s in it for me? And putting yourself in the shoes of the customer Every time you write an email, that makes your emails way more effective.

Amanda Ballard: 4:40

Yeah, absolutely. I love that, and I think it applies to every single type of email, right, Tina? So you could send out an email just with a list of events upcoming. But even if you just take a few minutes to write a short summary of why this speaker that’s coming in from out of town is just like the bee’s knees on Omega-3 education and she’s the best in the business Be able to hype up Like we really care about you and this is one of the most essential nutrients that you can take, and so we are doing our best to bring you the best, and so you can toot your own horn in a very subtle way, but also that gets the customer excited to be like oh, wow, they’re legit, like they really care to go out of their way to bring in these people.

Tina Smith: 5:39

Yeah, absolutely. And one thing about events, especially if you’re bringing in a special speaker, this is an amazing time to offer your customer the chance for face-to-face time that they wouldn’t get without you. So normally they would pay to see a practitioner like this and they’re getting that face-to-face time with you for free. And, number two, they can ask any question they want. So this is the moment that they have to come in and get their specific questions answered that might not be in materials on the internet, they might not be able to find a YouTube around it. They have a very special use case. Whether it has something to do with their family member, their own health, they can bring that to the specific expert and ask all the questions they want. So those are huge things for people when it comes to events, especially when it has specials, expert speakers.

Amanda Ballard: 6:33

Yeah, and definitely play to your strengths. You know I think there’s every, you know every natural products business should kind of have their, their things, that kind of define them, whether it’s you know education, or you know you have the best prices in town, or you know you have all of these extra modalities that you offer in your business. Whatever your you know special sauce is, lean into that in your email marketing. So like, let’s just give the example of you have a brand new product that’s come in. You wanna provide the opportunity to get the word out to the masses that you have this brand new product that could be revolutionary to their health. Well, whatever kind of your secret sauce is, so let’s just say it’s education, right up something that’s going to be like pretty meaty, and explain kind of how it works. And you could, you know, do a short little excerpt and link it to a blog that has a lot more detail. So that way you’re not like maybe overwhelming people and if they’re still interested in learning more, they can read more. But do do whatever it is that you do best in your emails and communicate that. That way you’re being true to yourself and you’re providing value in a way that just makes sense for you.

Tina Smith: 7:53

Yeah. So as an example, you use the example of education, which a lot of our natural products retailers automatically are aligned with because they are doing a lot of research for people. They’re in this because they have a lot of knowledge and expertise around different products. So education is key to the way that they market and interact with customers. Another thing that I do see a lot of retailers in the natural products industry aligning with this community, this sense of community. So if you’re thinking about if it’s an expert, if it’s an event at the store you can talk about, come be with other people who have the same issue, or come be with other people who think like you do. There are ways to continue to align with your culture and the way that people experience you. You can align with that online in your email marketing. So Amanda was giving the example of education. I’m giving an example of community. You might be something totally different, but what we’re saying is in your email communications, align with that so that you show up online the same way that you do in the store.

Amanda Ballard: 9:04

Yeah, absolutely. Another thing that you could do to that would be a very successful email campaign would just be to communicate any special offers that you might have. It doesn’t have to be anything, you know, crazy. But there are some, some businesses that we, we know and are, you know, work or work with that that really drive in the sales and they send out sales emails fairly regularly, and there’s a stat that we found that says that 50% of people buy from marketing emails at least once per month. So if you show up in a way that you know gives people the opportunity to make a purchase online or, you know, drive them into the store, if you don’t offer e-commerce, people are willing to make purchases online via email on a very regular basis.

Tina Smith: 9:58

Yeah, and I think too, Amanda, this is something that’s naturally happening in the store. You’re always having some kind of deal, a special, or you’re promoting a specific new product or product line. So naturally, when people come in, you’ve done things to set the store up that way or to remind people while they’re in there. Hey, did you know we have this deal? Did you know, did you see that we have this new product. So it seems exactly the same. Like you should follow the same pattern of the things that you do in the store in your email, and that should be the same thing. So when you’ve got a new product, that’s what you’re talking about. When you’ve got an offer to have a discount or buy to get one free, or you know, buy a bigger item and you get the same as the smaller item it’s the same price, right, as a smaller item. These are the things that you should be talking about in email. You’re already doing it in your stores. You don’t need to think about content and what should I create? I think that’s the biggest barrier that people have to putting out emails is they’re like what am I supposed to be talking about? The same thing that you talk about when your customer is coming your store, it should be a natural iteration of everything that’s happening in your store is also happening in that email, and these two things should come together and run in parallel. It’ll be that same experience. You don’t have to think too hard about it.

Amanda Ballard: 11:23

Yeah, I love that and I think it just puts this whole concept of marketing in general in perspective of you want it to match your in-store experience anyway. So, like why do we fret so much about what to say? It’s like you’re already saying it. Like heck, just record what you’re saying. Yes, you know, work the sales floor for a couple hours, record what you’re saying. And then it’s like I just got marketing material for a month 100%.

Tina Smith: 11:50

The same thing happens with questions. So customers are coming in and they’re automatically asking you questions. So here’s a great example. I was talking to a retailer the other day and they were like my customers are coming in with these TikTok videos and sometimes I’m like, oh, that’s really good information and I point them to the right product, but sometimes I’m thinking this is really bad information. So both of those are great for content. You can put those on your website. But also it’s great for email marketing where you can tell a story. Hey, a customer brought me this TikTok video the other day. You can link to it and then tell what you think about it. I think it’s great and we have this product. That is right in line with what this TikTok are saying. This is where they might have gone a little bit wrong in this TikTok. So here’s what I would advise and give that. So again, what we’re talking about is not working extra. It’s working the same and putting it in a different format, and we’re trying to make this super easy because it’s such an effective way of doing business and, at the same time, it’s the most effective way for you to do this and to add value is to do things that you’re already naturally doing.

Amanda Ballard: 13:10

Yeah, and we talk about testimonials all the time and how important they are to improving your presence online. And it’s one thing to have great Google reviews and people send in emails telling you their stories. But use that as collateral in your marketing and build a story around Susie’s issues with her digestive health. Susie’s willing to share all the details, which I’m always blown away by how many details people share. It’s hilarious to me. But if Susie’s willing to share her story, it’s like build a campaign around that. You know have you know her. You know five Sentence email that she wrote you. You know, get her permission, obviously, to share that with with the masses. But it’s like, okay, if Susie saying that you know, by following the diet recommendations that this store gave me, by adding these two Supplements to her daily routine, that she is, you know, feeling worlds better, add a little bit of information, maybe telling why those products work the way that they do or why we recommended this particular diet, you’ve provided more education and used her real life story. I don’t know what is more powerful than that.

Tina Smith: 14:27

Yeah, and you’ll be surprised at how many people are willing to take a selfie with you or just have them standing in your store. They’ll be willing for you to take a picture, or or hey, can I do you mind if I record this right now? This is such great information. I know it will be helpful for someone else that comes in the store here. Would you mind if we record that and send it out to the rest of the people that shop here? You would be so surprised by how many people will say yes. But if they say no, to be clear, you can still use the information. So they might say no, I don’t really want to be identified. I don’t really want my picture out there. I don’t really want my story out there. You can mask it to protect the innocent. You can mask the personal information and still share the content of the story. So I had a customer come in the other day and they were complaining about this type of issue. Here’s what we did I asked a few simple questions to really get down to the bottom of the Problem that they’re having, and we pointed them in this direction. This might be helpful for you as well, or if you know someone who’s having some similar issues, send them over to the store, will get down to the bottom of it too. It doesn’t even have to be specific to that problem you can talk about. This is our consultative approach, so there are a million ways that you can use this information. But maybe you laugh at me all the time when people ask me what’s the one thing that they can do to grow their marketing. I’m like stories, customer testimonials, taken all of the information and send it out to the world, and People are willing to share a lot of details and if they are willing to do that publicly, take them up on it. But if they’re not, you can still share the information While protecting their personal identification.

Amanda Ballard: 16:12

Yeah, and I love what you said about you know, just making it so personal, because it is, it is personal. You know you’re you might be sending an email out to five thousand people, but only one person’s reading it and you know they don’t know how big your email list is. And so I think, like I mean you’re just telling a story like you would tell to a friend, right, you know, I helped, I helped this person, you know, overcome this issue. This is kind of what that interaction looks like. You’re painting that picture of that in-store experience and it’s like, oh, that doesn’t sound, that doesn’t sound scary, you know, I, you know, I think sometimes people have this idea of you know, I go into this, you know business, and I’ve heard that they’re good people and they could help me, but it’s like, oh, do I really want to share, like, all these details about, like, my bodily functions? You know it seems, you know, daunting and you know, maybe overwhelming and anxiety. It doesn’t sound pleasant. But then, when you read emails like that or you may be a Friend forwarded you that email and you’re like, oh, like these people are, like they have a very gentle approach, like they’re not Going to, you know, yell at me, for you know, I eat McDonald’s a couple times a month. They’re not gonna yell at me for that, you know. Whatever it is, I think it paints this picture of you know, translating that in-store experience to online. But just there’s, there’s people behind the business, and I think that that’s, at the end of the day, what really is always going to set apart Independent retailers is the people.

Tina Smith: 17:43

Yeah, and you know that just reminds me of one extra step you can take with these stories. I mean, I know like you’re talking about is your own personal health journey. Sometimes it can feel a little Like you’re being a little too vulnerable when you start sharing your own personal health journey, and I know we’re supposed to be the bastions of health, so you know we’re supposed to be preempting all these things before they ever happen to our bodies. But I’ll tell you that someone that we work with that Started to have an Issue, a medical issue they were. They felt a little bit embarrassed before they put their story out into the world and then, when they did, when they did finally drop that guard and be a little bit vulnerable and talk about how they had to seek help From the medical community while using some of these natural products. It was the most read, most watch, most clicked through of anything, because it was like, oh wait, you’re human and so you start to see the beauty in that story. And you know I write blog articles for some of our clients and and for other people in the industry, and one of the best performing blog articles I ever wrote was I got pink eye from my niece and I used colloidal silver drops instead of using the antibiotic drops, actually couldn’t get the antibiotics, so I was like, what do I do? So I used colloidal silver drops and I took pictures of my gross eye and posted it in this article. And it is thousands and still growing, but thousands of website visits every month because I Told a story about using a product for a use case. So those three things made that article a little bit magic and you can do that too. So we’re out ranking Dr Axe and other people that really get a lot of clicks and have a lot of Traffic already. We’re out ranking them on this one topic because it was a story, it was a use case and it was vulnerable and there are pictures. So people are yeah just type in colloidal silver for pink eye, but seriously like getting a little bit vulnerable about your own personal health Journey or even these specific use cases. Like you, you’ve started to experience something. This helped you. Here’s how. Here’s what the outcome is. It’s not medical advice, it’s an experience and it’s a great way to bring people into your story. And you have it. You everyone has helped things that come up for them and so you have that content, so use it. I bet you’re telling the story in your store, so why not use it in your, on your website or in your email campaigns?

Amanda Ballard: 20:43

Yeah, so I think we’ve covered a lot of the the meat of what they can talk about in these emails and be super impactful with these. But let’s dive a little bit deeper into just some practical tips that can make these emails more effective, you know, in improve your open rate. You know, engagement rate, click-through rate, things of that nature.

Tina Smith: 21:08

So I want to be clear, amanda, before we get started, that, like you don’t have to put out that much content. All of the statistics are saying hearing for people, hearing from brands more than two to four times a month, it causes some fatigue. So, really, what we’re talking about in a 90-day period, what is that? 12 you get? You need 12 emails and what we’ve already talked about, we’ve given you ideas for promos, store your own personal story, customer stories, offers and events. That’s five things already. Repeat that two to three times and you’ve got content available. So it’s not, it’s it’s much easier than you think. Is what I’m trying to say, and if you want those to be more effective now, I mean just gonna walk us through ways to help make that happen.

Amanda Ballard: 21:56

I think we’ve said it again. It’s you have the content, just get the get. I think get out of your head and Stop making it so hard. All right, so the first thing that I want to touch on is segments, and we talked about this in our previous episode. We touched on it about creating these, these niche audiences, within your email list, and I Will hold to this forever, that this is Probably my favorite way to communicate via email, like I love having a large email list and, you know, communicating to all of my customers, but I found that the most successful campaigns have been through these segments. Tina, what was that stat that you were sharing with me earlier today about the success of segmentation?

Tina Smith: 22:46

Yeah, mailchimp always has these. Hey, here’s how you can make your, your email campaign better. And, by the way, we are not sponsored by MailChimp. Unless they want to sponsor us, reach out to us MailChimp if you’d like, but we’re not sponsored by MailChimp and actually I don’t use that with every client. It’s not the best email system for every client. So this is just an example. But they have a lot of aggregate data because they work with a lot of different Companies and they always advertise as soon as you log in. If you want a 33 percent higher click-through rate, use targeted segments. So it’s obvious to them, with all of their data, that using segments gets a higher open rate, it gets a higher click-through rate. So it’s a wonderful way to make your email marketing more effective.

Amanda Ballard: 23:34

Yeah. So with that in mind, I think there’s multiple ways that you can build these segments within your email list. It can be through a digital download we talked about that last time. It could be through looking at your point of sales data and who’s opted in for marketing, who’s purchased skincare in the last 90 days. Okay, well, I can build a segment based off of this. We had an event on prenatal health and we did an event with that. Okay, here’s an event, here’s all the people that registered for that event. We’re adding to that list. You could have countless segments. I think the beauty of that is whatever you’re most passionate about in that time or whatever’s timely. If there’s a TikTok that’s trending on blood sugar, it’s like, yeah, maybe that is something that you should probably blast out to the masses. But it’s like, if it’s something for prenatal vitamins that’s such a niche market that only impacts women in a certain part of their life, then you really probably don’t care beyond that, unless you just really really want to stay in the know about these things. I think it’s one of those really cool tools that you can use to reach an audience where it’s a white hot lead of hey, we got in this brand new prenatal multivitamin. It’s the best on the market. Okay, I have a list of all these young moms. Maybe they’re planning on expanding their family in the next couple of years. Send it to them. That can also be things that you are super passionate about as a business owner. If you are just right now, skincare is your thing. You can blast out skincare promotions or highlight a new brand or an event whatever it might be that you think would resonate with that audience. You’re going to know them better than anybody else, especially if that’s your favorite part of the story. You’re hanging out there. You’re going to know what they want to learn more about. You can provide that really targeted information to that group of people. I think that the results will speak for itself. I think it’s pretty undeniable how successful those campaigns can be because it’s so narrow. I think if you can get the messaging right, you’ll hit home runs every single day when you do that.

Tina Smith: 26:11

Yeah, again, we’re talking about segments. Two of things like hey, I want to know when you’ve got a new product. Hey, I want to know when you’re having an event. It doesn’t have to just be a subject matter, it can also be related to well, you’re naturally going to be talking about certain content anyway. Hey, let me know, because I want to come to the store. Whenever you guys are having a demo, a tasting, when you’re giving away free things, free products, or when you’ve got a special People tell you what they want. We talked about downloadables, which are great for categories like Amanda’s talking about prenatal vitamins, pets, those kinds of things. You can also just ask in your welcome email. We talked on our last episode about how eight out of 10 people will open a welcome email 80%, which is huge. In that email you can say hey, we want to get to know you better. What are the things you’re most interested in? Send them on a landing page where they can just checkmark those little click boxes. Then you’ll have automatic segments that you can start talking to about very specific product categories.

Amanda Ballard: 27:28

It makes email even more personal. I think when you use these segments because it’s like this is what I signed up for, I told them that I want to do this and, wow, they’re delivering I think it then just shows a level of intentionality with the business and making it feel like you’re the only customer. You’re getting that, exactly what you signed up for. I think that that will speak a lot to you as a business when you do that.

Tina Smith: 27:56

Also we’re talking about. You only need to email people two to four times a month before they start unsubscribing because they’re getting too much information from you. One thing that we found is, if you want to do more than that many times a month, some people do. Some people that are listening to this right now are thinking oh God, tina, please do not tell me to email people more than once a week. Some people are ready, they’ve got someone on their email team and they’re ready to just send out all of these emails all the time. What we would advise is once a week seems perfectly normal for most people. If you want to do more than once a week, it really should be to these segmented audiences. If it’s someone who’s interested in events and you want to announce an event, that’s okay to send more than once a week. Because they’ve said, this is a preference of mine. This is more personal, like Amanda’s talking about Subject matter too. So prenatal vitamins, pets, those kinds of things. If you have those categories ready and available, either you’ve segmented them through a download or through this welcome email and email preferences. Then they’ll welcome those. They want to hear those. Like we’ve said, our statistics are showing things that people are also interested in events and they’re willing to share them. 53% of people are willing to share that you’re having a local event. They also like things like birthday and anniversaries and other things that might be congratulating them for coming in the store the 100th time or whatever. Those are very personal emails. Those are segments of audiences. If you want to do more than once a week, we’re just saying do these very segmented and personalized emails versus these big email blasts that you’re doing two to three times a week.

Amanda Ballard: 29:48

The next thing to touch on and this will go rapid fire a little bit through this just some practical tips. One thing that I think is going to be really crucial with having more effective emails is being strategic with your subject line. Provide interesting things that also match the content. You know, don’t just do clickbait, annoying things, but just be authentic. And one thing that I really have found lately that I’ve been enjoying doing really just playing around with it and getting ideas is using chat GPT to help give me ideas for engaging subject lines for my emails. So you can, you know, just feed it some basic information. Hey, I am, you know, I’m working on an email for this event coming up or my series of events coming up for the month. I want to come up with something, you know, clever but also clear, and here’s a little bit about my business and you know some of the events we have coming up, and it’ll just within a few seconds, just there, and you can take it or leave it. But I think it just for me it’s more getting my wheels spinning, because then at the end of the day, like I know what language resonates best with my audience, but sometimes I just hit those you know, mental walls where I’m just like I don’t know Like I’ve written so many emails at this point where I’m just like, yeah, my brain’s not working or I need more coffee before I do this. So I think that’s a great way to do that and then kind of jumping ahead a little bit. We’ll talk about AV testing a little bit, but I think it’s really cool to try different things. You can do AV testing and see, like you know, maybe you’re stuck between these two subject lines that you really really like Run them through an AV test and see what one performs better. Does your audience like having, you know, emojis in the subject? Does that resonate well with them? Or they’re like like we don’t like that? We don’t. We don’t use emojis when we talk to each other. So you can do these different things and I think just it’s all. Again, you have to know what you’re looking for and care about the data, because I think you know it’s. It’s something I’m kind of a nerd about and want to know, like you know, what. What emails are performing better than others and what can I do differently to make them improve. I think maybe that’s just me being a nerd, but I’m okay with that.

Tina Smith: 32:20

Yeah, well, the same thing happens when you use someone’s name in the subject line, they’re more likely to open and click it using it every time. Probably not a great idea, but you can test it. It’s the difference between like hey, 30% off on X supplement versus Tina, I’ve got a 30% off this supplement and it is. It engages more when you see your name in a subject line. Now if you start using that all the time, it’s probably not going to be as effective. But the AB testing is so easy with most of these different email marketing tools. I’m pretty sure I’m trying to think of one that does not allow that, but what it does? You guys have thousands of people on your email list, so it’ll cycle through a few hundred and figure out which subject line gets the most opens and then it’ll send that out to everybody. So you can AB test a lot of things. But subject lines are really easy to AB test. And, on that note, the same thing like with all of these email marketing tools, most of them have an AI tool now for you to generate different subject lines. So if you’re stuck thinking, oh my gosh, now I have to put extra effort into thinking of more than one subject line. You really don’t have to think about it that much. You push a button, different subject lines come up and you can decide what goes where. Send out a test, it’ll pick the best performing. You’re off to the races, no problem.

Amanda Ballard: 33:52

So the next thing is just keeping it short and sweet. You don’t have to write a novel when you’re writing an email, and I think it’s just really important to kind of choose your language carefully in a way that speaks to their needs and wants, and we already talked about providing that value. But they’re not going to their email to spend a lot of time reading. It’s more skimming. What’s most important to me. They might be willing to spend a little bit more time on certain emails than others, but the average customer is spending nine seconds reading an email. So, but what’s the what’s the caveat to that stat, tina?

Tina Smith: 34:30

Yeah. So my rule here is if it’s a story, it’s going to engage from beginning to end. Feel free to be as long as you’d like. What I will say is that emails are similar to blog posts in that people scan them first to see if it has content that they want to read so using headlines in between paragraphs is very helpful and then, when they’re reading them, the most compelling text in an email format. I’m not asking you to write a novel this way. The grammar police are out to get me whenever I do this. But you want short paragraphs two to three sentences each. You want short sentences. So that means fragments are okay. You can start a sentence with Anne. There are. There are rules that we break all the time in emails and blogs, because it makes it more readable for the average user. Now look, if you’re a technical science company and you’re speaking to scientists, then yes, do your long winded version of things with very complicated language. But for the average retailer and even the average and we’re more science community, by the way the natural products industry, but even the retailers reading manufacturers emails it’s best if the sentences are short. They’re understandable, paragraphs are short, you have scannable headlines and if you want someone to click, make it obvious with a button that has a high contrast background. So all of these things make it easier for people to scan the nine seconds and figure out they want to read it. And then again, if it’s a story that’s compelling enough for someone to read from beginning to end, be as long winded as you like, use pictures they’re always helpful in there but you want it to be scannable for people so that they will continue to engage with the content.

Amanda Ballard: 36:26

Yeah, and I’m glad you brought up the you know being okay with breaking. You know all the grammar rule or I mean some of the grammar rule still. Still, you know Spell check and all of that. But one thing that I love about Whenever Tina sends me an email, I’m always excited to read it because she speaks my language and what. What I love about what Tina has done and there’s other people that do this really well too Is she knows who her audience is and she speaks a language that they, they can share. So I remember you put out this Survey to to a lot of your you know top clients of what TV shows do you like? And I remember seeing that I was like, oh, okay, I see where you’re going with this, I like it. I am curious to see how this is gonna get implemented. But I was like, okay, the office and parks and rack are my two favorite shows. Well, within a month or whatever, I get an email and it has Leslie note quotes and Just different memes and all of this stuff. And I’m like this is amazing, like it’s like I’m talking to my friend and we’re sharing all of our favorite quotes but she’s, you know, incorporating them into pain points that I’m feeling as a marketer and it was brilliant and I was like man, like I can’t wait to see what she does next, and so I think that that’s something, whether it’s for your segments, you know where you find out like, hey, these are my, my office lovers and I can do fun things like that with them. Or maybe it’s your, your whole audience, I don’t know, it depends on what your, your audience, looks like. But Knowing your audience, speaking their language, whatever they find funny, to keep things lighthearted Because I think that’s the funny thing too, like you know, we’re talking about health a lot. It’s funny sometimes, like what our bodies do, and it’s like we can laugh about that, and so I think incorporating different things, like shared sense of humor, I think is a really good idea.

Tina Smith: 38:27

Yeah, man Tushy is one of those brands that does this so well. I don’t know if you know them or not. They do toilet paper things to clean your toilet, and all of their Contents about butts, and they just talk about it all the time, and they’re really funny with it. So the one thing to remember about funny, though, is that it is for mass audiences. It compels mass audiences to be a part of your ecosystem. It’s not for luxury brands, so if you are a luxury brand, I would steer away from funny More often than not. I’m sure there are exceptions, but typically so there’s more elegant, elevated brands, humors, not your thing. But to Amanda’s point, what you do and you guys can easily implement this too, and this is part of content as well. You can send out a survey. That’s an easy piece of content that you can do to engage your email list, and that survey can be about something that has nothing to do with natural products, like hey, what’s your favorite TV show? I think the way I Reference that in my initial email was if you could only watch one show for the rest of your life, what would it be and what’s the follow-up? And I had a lot of office and parks and rec fans, parks and rec fans. So that made it super simple for me to be like oh, these people are my people. They understand my sense of humor. I think you’ll find the same things in your, in your retail stores, if you start asking Silly questions like that, especially on social media, because those are super engaging. But you can send that out as an email as well, and people are so much more willing to answer that kind of question than they are anything about their health.

Amanda Ballard: 40:13

Yeah, because it’s all them right. You know it’s. People love talking about themselves.

Tina Smith: 40:19

Yes, and it’s like one of those quizzes like hey, what color are you?

Amanda Ballard: 40:24

What Disney princess are you?

Tina Smith: 40:26

Right, anything like that. It’s very entertaining for people and they’re willing to give you information for it.

Amanda Ballard: 40:33

Yeah, it kind of takeaways. Choose your, you know, choose your moments of humor wisely, depending on what type of brand you are. But, you know, I think at the end of the day, the point is it goes back to understanding the language that your audience speaks and Whether it’s your whole you know how you communicate to your mass audience or how you communicate to these different segments. Just understanding what’s important to them and what what’s going to you know make them resonate with you more. Yes, so the next thing is Automation, and I cannot say how much I love automation. Um, one of my favorite ways to utilize automation is with these lead generators that you should have on your website, and so anytime you get that, that opt-in for you know, your digital download or your quiz or whatever it may be, that’s when you hit them with that welcome email. We’ve talked about that, um, how powerful that welcome email is. But beyond that welcome email, depending on what your, your lead generator was that got them into that, that sales funnel on on your email platform, that’s when you can hit them with these automated things that are triggered based off of you know what did they do, when was the last time you emailed them? And you can set up these different journeys, do different testing to see what works and what doesn’t. But you know we talked about this last time, this idea of this magnesium quiz and what’s the right magnesium for you, and you can. You know they download it. You send them an email Thanks for taking the quiz. Here’s your results next day. Here’s kind of the, the details that maybe we didn’t match you with. You know we recommended you take this type of magnesium for your needs. Based off of that, but here’s and you know, a deep dive into all the different types of magnesium To kind of show like we know our stuff. If your needs change, and you know, maybe we need to address more of Sleep, if that’s more of an issue, now you know this is the the best magnesium for sleep, um, or whatever it might be. Take a couple days off. Next time you hit them with another email and it’s like here’s a story about A customer that we had that had a similar situation that you did and you know, because we know your test results. You know you tested, you know you needed this type of magnesium for your use case. Here’s a testimonial from a customer that had a similar story. We’re telling her story. And then it’s like, wow, okay, this is great, and so you can send these automations, you don’t have to think about it. And again it’s. It’s that You’re, you’re hitting them on multiple different fronts. You’re, you know, getting that welcome email Providing them value, showing that you’re an expert in that area, showing them that they’re not alone. There’s other people like them, I think. And doing that with all, without pressing any buttons, it’s, it’s lovely.

Tina Smith: 43:28

Yeah, well, again back to these mail chimstats that we’ve seen on their home screen. It says get four times more customer orders by building a customer journey. So two things are happening here. First, you have to pay to use their customer journey software. So take it with a grain of salt, but truly they’re making their software more sticky for you. The more effective it is, the more likely you are to continue using them, and putting together a customer journey will convert into more sales, just like Amanda’s talking about. And it does not need to be sales emails, sales emails, sales email. It is the story that, hey, did you think about? These are some side effects you might experience. Here are the types that will be most effective for you. Here’s another story. And then a sales email. So you’re giving them a lot of that value add like we were talking about at the beginning. But then following up finally with that call to action like, hey, we have the products you need. Either come visit the store or you can buy it online right here.

Amanda Ballard: 44:33

Yeah, and just a few other side notes of other effective uses of automation. Tina mentioned them earlier. You know birthdays, anniversaries, abandoned carts are a great one if you do e-commerce, but those are just a few and it’s it’s great to have those in place because it’s just one less thing that you need to worry about Sending you not that you need to send a lot, but it’s one less thing that you need to worry about.

Tina Smith: 44:57

Yeah, and if I can say anything, as we’re closing this episode out About um, all the information that we’ve given you today, it’s the same thing that I say about everything else. Do it one at a time. Rome wasn’t built in a day and you don’t have to build your entire email marketing campaign in a day. Start with the four to five topics, repeating them over and over that we mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, which are related to events and promotions and offers. Do that first segment. Second, build customer journeys third, and do that based on your highest Revenue and profitability items and the things that people are most interested in, so that you can get the best ROI for the amount of time and money that you’re going to invest. So take it slow and build it right and Do what you can do. You don’t have to get overwhelmed by the amount of information that we’re offering today. Take it one step at a time and every little piece is going to contribute to more growth for you.

Amanda Ballard: 46:07

Thanks so much for listening to the natural products marketer podcast. We hope you found this episode to be super helpful. Make sure you check out the show notes for any of those valuable resources that we mentioned on today’s episode.

Tina Smith: 46:17

And, before you go, we would love for you to give us a review. Follow, like and subscribe on apple podcast, spotify, youtube or wherever you’re listening today, and make sure you join us for our next episode, where we give