STOP Sending Bad Emails! The $10K Segmentation Secret — Andriy Boychuk | How To Grow Your Email List Fast, The Four Key Segments To Target, What Segmentation Does For Revenue, Why Automations Drive Sales, How To Fix Deliverability Issues (#447)

In this archive episode, we dive into email marketing strategy and how e-commerce merchants can maximize its potential. 

Andriy Boychuk, founder at flowium.com, an email marketing agency for e-commerce, shares strategies for improving your setup, metrics, and overall performance. 

He explains how to effectively grow your email list before major sales seasons like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, the power of segmentation, and the critical importance of email deliverability

Topics discussed in this episode:  

• Why merchants feel they are not maximizing email marketing.
• Why planning ahead for Q4 sales is extremely important.
• The four key segments for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
• How to convert traffic into email subscribers before sales season.
• What early bird and giveaway strategies grow your list.
• How segmentation can multiply your campaign revenue.

Links & Resources 

Website: https://flowium.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andriyboychuk/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andriyboychuk/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aboychuk

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at https://tinyurl.com/2v2wkw4w

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Transcript

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:11:23
Andriy
Make it related to your brand. But also partner role was due to five brands who share your audience.

00:00:12:00 - 00:00:31:14
Claus
Hello and welcome to another episode of the E-commerce Coffee Break podcast. Do you, as a person have ever had the feeling that your online store is getting the most out of your email marketing? A lot of merchants have exactly that feeling. So today we'll dive a little bit deeper into email marketing strategy. Set up metrics and find places to tweak, improve email marketing.

00:00:31:16 - 00:00:50:07
Claus
What a reason that I have and report on the show is the founder of Low Volume, an email marketing agency for eCommerce at flow beyond Dot com. Andrew and his family moved to the U.S. in 2004 before launching launching blog, and he spent nine years working in corporate America, advancing from a junior position to senior project manager at the Clarins Group.

00:00:50:09 - 00:01:01:23
Claus
He focused on designing integrated smart building design solutions, and in 2017, he created Romeo to help business realize the full potential of email marketing. So let's dive right into it. Hi André, How are you today?

00:01:02:00 - 00:01:04:18
Andriy
Good. How are you? Thank you for having me on the call.

00:01:04:20 - 00:01:22:14
Claus
Yeah. Great to have you on the show today. Email marketing. I'm getting so many bad emails every day, so it seems. So it's a very difficult topic for a lot of merchants out there to get it right. How did you get into it and what's what do you see on a day to day basis? What are versions doing with email marketing?

00:01:22:16 - 00:01:51:09
Andriy
Yeah, so I started back in 2014. Was it my email marketing journey? But I did email marketing for myself, for my own company, for my own side hustle. As you said, I used to work in corporate America in technology company, where we were developing solutions for like smart building technologies, smart buildings, bot for commercial buildings like skyscrapers, not the residences.

00:01:51:11 - 00:02:18:11
Andriy
And a side hustle was my website, a portal for Ukrainian immigrants who came to America and helped them assimilate was this lifestyle was how like finance system work or bank system work. So we produce a lot of it's like consider like online magazine. So to personalize the journeys the path, somebody who just came to us versus somebody who live here or somebody who planning to come to us.

00:02:18:13 - 00:02:47:09
Andriy
We use email marketing to customize those journeys and to feed them different information. So back in 2000, 14, I started learning how to do it myself. I took a lot of courses, attended webinars and start to like doing this for myself. Fast forward to 2000 and late 2016. I quit my corporate job and start freelancing and so I started doing email marketing for other companies.

00:02:47:09 - 00:03:19:02
Andriy
But it was all over the spectrum. We are doing projects for dentists, for lawyers, and while I did my first e-commerce project, I realized like, whoa, it's so easy to show the value of my work because you send few emails. I mean, good crafted emails, targeted emails, and you see the immediate return of that email. So it's easier to show to my clients how much money are you generated to their brand.

00:03:19:02 - 00:03:54:21
Andriy
So like probably took me two years to realize that I need to finish this down. So then in 2019, we start focusing only on e-commerce and brands, and then we build company. Now more than 80 employees in the companies. We served a lot of clients. I don't have the exact numbers, but way over like two or 300 different brands, some projects just a few months of work sometimes some projects they was all over in the three years.

00:03:55:02 - 00:04:16:11
Claus
Okay, Now obviously you're seeing a lot of emails set up flows, automations, campaigns on a daily basis as we going into the Q4 season. So the strongest season of the year for e-commerce merchants was Black Friday, Cyber Monday whatsoever. What should they do to get everything right to make the most out of this sales season?

00:04:16:13 - 00:04:40:09
Andriy
I'll start from the basic answer is like they need to plan ahead. The busiest time for our sales department. I don't know why, but in November, Why? Because people like late to the game and they like, Oh, I need to set up email marketing. But this like already November and it's like really late and we have to turn them down or say like, we are not able to support you for that period of time.

00:04:40:11 - 00:05:08:21
Andriy
So the best advice I can give you, like right now we are recording in September this will be featured in October. This is a great time to prepare for November. Now out November and this two months, I would strongly recommend to put a focus on collecting those emails or emails or phone numbers for us. So put a heavy pressure on advertising social media to attract those clients.

00:05:08:21 - 00:05:28:12
Andriy
Maybe not conversion into sales, but conversion to email subscribers. Why? Because you will leverage those email subscribers. One that's the season with with sales, and it would be the best time to kind of to convert them to first time customers or multiple customers.

00:05:28:14 - 00:05:48:16
Claus
Growing your email list is obviously one of the most important parts because it's owned marketing. Once you have the email address and your list, it's much better than running Facebook ads and whatever. When it comes to growing your list, what kind of strategies do you recommend to merchants to do so without being completely sales focused?

00:05:48:18 - 00:06:14:16
Andriy
So one strategies that worked well for the past few years, many brands implemented, we are branding for some of the brands is like sign up for early bird discounts. So you are not giving them any discount today, but you letting them know if you sign up today, you will be the first one in the line to get our Black Friday, Cyber Monday discounts.

00:06:14:16 - 00:06:39:14
Andriy
So you are not revealing how much discount you will give them and to follow to add to the strategy when they sign up. You sending them confirmation message? Yes. We got your email. You are in our system and you will be the first one to get the email. But in that email I will strongly recommend to include some like gift card or some incentives for them to buy to date.

00:06:39:16 - 00:07:08:08
Andriy
Be something. While you're waiting until Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you're stand dollar gift card, $20 gift card. The password is your profit margin. I would not recommend to do percentage y because percentage just like doesn't have like such a big value versus like dollar amount. And some brands do have a limit. So maybe they will give you $20 off a voucher, but you have to spend like $30.

00:07:08:10 - 00:07:39:01
Andriy
Some brands do not. Depends on your strategy. Plus how how much like revenue you want to drive. Yeah. So this is one strategy, another great strategy that also I learned probably two years ago to run giveaway but not like generic giveaway like we there's iPhone giveaway make it related to your brand board. I also partner Rob was 2 to 5 brands who share your audience.

00:07:39:03 - 00:08:12:24
Andriy
So for example if you are like in while house and walls or a fitness industry how I want brands to sell maybe some sneakers, another brand sell like a protein protein powder, another brand sell maybe magazine subscription something in this industry and collectively run one giveaway, drive traffic to one giveaway and the share list. Share a list of those customers and let people know that you will announce the winner in your Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or in that week.

00:08:13:01 - 00:08:30:07
Andriy
But same strategy as was the early access. One day opt in, give them something, say Hey, why are you waiting to find out if you want or not? The first $20 coupon watchers that you can spend to date in our store.

00:08:30:09 - 00:08:50:10
Claus
Mm hmm. I like these ideas. Specifically, was was pre sign up for a discount. I've never that's that's absolute brilliant idea. Now, the power of email lies in segmentation and a lot of people just blasting. It adds to the whole list. Give me some ideas and strategies when it comes to a good segmentation idea or strategy.

00:08:50:12 - 00:09:18:13
Andriy
Sure. But before I would like to highlight what you just said about segmentation and give you an example that we ran for one of our clients. So we we did a split. This was so we were trying to prove to the client that blasting one email to the entire entire list is not a good strategy. Yes, maybe you will make more money, but long term you will hurt your deliverability, which will hurt your revenue in the future as well.

00:09:18:15 - 00:10:02:06
Andriy
So this is the task we did and we did it five times. So there's no doubt that it is successful. So we had one campaign, no sales, it was one campaign. It was a product release. One campaign was a product release. And we sent this company to generic list to everybody and the same campaign. Nothing changed except for we send it to we send it to people who express interest in this product category and verse all end segment was 100,000 subscribers and it generated around like that 1000.

00:10:02:11 - 00:10:43:24
Andriy
It's like, what's wrong with $10,000? And the second segment was 10,000 people, but it generated around more than 20, 20 or even $30,000. So basically this segment size was ten times smaller but generate three or four acts of the revenue. So it shows you the power of segmentation. Yeah. So for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, there's like a fourth segment that we like to focus on and also the ISP that we work with called Klaviyo, we are a Parker with them and they strongly recommend to focus on those or segment as well.

00:10:43:24 - 00:11:08:11
Andriy
So first of all, it's like the AP is somebody who spanned three acts of your average order value or was you or somebody who place three plus order who was. So it means like they are not one time buyer so they purchased three times or more was you So another like somebody who engaged with your emails in the last the past what is your engagement means?

00:11:08:11 - 00:11:34:20
Andriy
But let's say in the last 60 days, if you're selling mattresses, your engagement window might be like hundred 80 days or even like 365 days. If you're selling, for example, socks, it might be like much, much shorter engagement window. People who purchased with you in the past, let's say a one time buyer, but they did not buy again with you.

00:11:34:20 - 00:12:13:16
Andriy
So this is great season two when when dumbass and probably the last segment is people who purchased with you last year so they purchased last year during like November journal or during Black Friday Cyber Monday week and them again with maybe special offer incentives or maybe just a copy personalized for them to make another purchase. And by the way, so there are some brands who around zero discount during Black Friday Cyber Monday and it doesn't mean that you you have to discount your product heavily.

00:12:13:17 - 00:12:20:20
Andriy
You can do maybe zero discount but offer something that have a high perceived value.

00:12:20:22 - 00:12:41:05
Claus
MM That sounds absolutely great. You brought up one keyword and I want to dive a little bit into that. A lot of people don't know what it is. This is a word deliverability and it's I think that's something just explain what it is because I think a lot of people do not really know what it means to blast out to the whole list and to how it impacts actually your email marketing.

00:12:41:07 - 00:13:09:08
Andriy
So deliverability is the basic foundation of email marketing. So everybody starts from what is your open rate now? What is your click through rate? And those are important KPIs. But if you have a bad deliverability, meaning people is are getting into your emails, these are getting to your customer inbox or not. So if you if you say I'm not getting to their inboxes, you have bad deliverability.

00:13:09:08 - 00:13:30:22
Andriy
If they get it in, you have a good deal of ability. There's a lot of technical things you need to do to improve your deliverability, but rule of thumb, you need to send emails to people who engage with your email so you don't want to send it to somebody who stop opening your emails two years ago or even one year ago.

00:13:30:24 - 00:13:52:09
Andriy
You want to send it only to people who engage with your emails. And this is your job as a brand? Or is this is your job as a market marketeer to make sure people do engage with your emails, that they open? This is the bare minimum. And also this is like there was was a new apple privacy. You don't even know if they open or not.

00:13:52:11 - 00:14:33:04
Andriy
So it's more important for them to either click in your email or maybe engage in some other way, like respond to your email. If they're responding to email, this is their their good sign to inbox provider that like, hey, this person want to engage with this brand. So and any future email will get placed in the inbox so the I was on another podcast episode and we were this the person shared that I, I said want one strategy that you can use saying hey you can get the discount if you reply to this email.

00:14:33:09 - 00:15:00:13
Andriy
And that person said like, yes, I like it, but if I send it to 100,000 people, 100,000, even 50,000 people respond, It's like unbelievable. Hard to kind of to reply to each one with a discount. So one trick or tactic you can use, you will have specific mailbox and set it up out of office and say, Hey, we're running this promotion, but I'm out on vacation.

00:15:00:15 - 00:15:17:08
Andriy
But I don't want you to miss the discount. So make it as a out-of-office, a response saying, Hey, this is a discount. So this way it will kind of automate, but it will be personalized and it would be like a real human being kind of experience.

00:15:17:10 - 00:15:33:23
Claus
That's really golden nugget. I have never heard that before, but that's a really good idea. A really good trick to deal with that. Now you obviously you can have your partner and I think Klaviyo is the platform. If you're on Shopify, there is actually no other option to in my opinion, I'm using Klaviyo for years where we are happy with it.

00:15:34:03 - 00:15:42:15
Claus
How do you help your clients with moving over to Klaviyo or if they are already on Klaviyo, how do you help them to optimize their email marketing?

00:15:42:17 - 00:16:17:12
Andriy
I didn't say it publicly because we just have this kind of partnership with with Klaviyo, but we do free migration. So because we do not offer any services. So if there is somebody on the line because they don't have resources to move, we help them to migrate to for free. And there's no I mean, if they want to continue working with us there, of course there's a service fee, but if they just want to migrations that can leverage our service, our team, our expertise to do the migration and take it from there.

00:16:17:14 - 00:16:50:11
Andriy
So first we analyze, first analyze what they have, because some clients will have like zero automation, for example. And we do know that automations are crucial in email marketing. And some clients we go to, they are calling, they have hundreds of different automations. So we always start if they have no or what we evaluate what is their brand is, and show them the foundation and even even have hundreds, not hundreds, but a few thousands of automations.

00:16:50:13 - 00:17:40:12
Andriy
Sometimes we know that they are missing some fundamental automation, for example, like maybe two time buyers or when back or maybe sunset flows the sunset flow. This is common one who a lot of brands are missing. And I have a the full video where I describe what it is and how to sell rather but to shortly I'll explain that sunset flow is somebody who stop engaging with your email and this is the crucial automations to help with your deliverability because I said before it, let's say if if you know that after 120 days, if nobody opens your email, the good practice would be to clean to surprise those subscribers because they are damaging your deliverability.

00:17:40:14 - 00:18:04:06
Andriy
So we have automation which heads we have a segment which trigger the automation, which says if a person did not open an email in the last 120 days and never click on any of the emails, three stars, this automation and we start this automation and typically it's like three emails. And we our goal here is not to make a sale.

00:18:04:08 - 00:18:29:13
Andriy
The main goal here is for them to engage with your email. So we strongly recommend in this email to send a text based emails because they have a higher chance to get to the person inbox and one they open, or when they click in one of the emails, we will remove them from this sunset flow and they will go to the to the Engage segment.

00:18:29:15 - 00:18:57:06
Andriy
But the rest of people who did not engage with this automation, we need to surprise them or unsubscribe them from your platform. In this case, the client, like for example, for you it would be Klaviyo. Why? First of all, you're paying money for for for those subscribers that they are hurting your deliverability. So there's there's zero value and actually there's negative value in keeping those people in your account.

00:18:57:12 - 00:19:12:22
Andriy
And third, by unsubscribing, it doesn't mean that you're losing, losing them. They still in your system, but you will not be able to send them emails so they are able to resubscribe in the future.

00:19:12:24 - 00:19:29:20
Claus
Yeah, I think it's a crucial step to a reengage people to become more engaged on your list and also to clean your list. And I know a lot of marketers and urchins out there are too scared to clean their list because it might really in the first place a huge dip in numbers. They have. But you want a present, right?

00:19:29:20 - 00:19:33:12
Claus
It helps with the quality of your list. It saves a lot of money.

00:19:33:14 - 00:19:57:12
Andriy
So here's one more thing. For example, for you, since you use Klaviyo and it may be possible emails, you aspire to create this segment for people who stop engaging with your emails, but they are visiting your website. So you can, you can create that pop up specifically for them and not to opt in, but now it's like, listen, we send you females, you you're not opening, so check your spam folder or something.

00:19:57:12 - 00:20:16:04
Andriy
So this is like kind of you are able to show them personalized message only for those group of people. And this is how you can record some of people. They will probably check your spam folder and like, Oh, you're in spam and click unspent, which will also improve your deliverability.

00:20:16:06 - 00:20:24:22
Claus
You said before you were working with a lot of brands Are there or who's your perfect customer? Are you working with specific needs or verticals or industries more than others?

00:20:24:24 - 00:20:48:07
Andriy
So majority of our brands are in CPG space, consumer packaged goods, so like food, beverage, cosmetics and another majority of our brands are like fashion, fashion and apparel. So clothes and shoes, accessories. So those are two biggest group. But we don't shy away from any industry in e-commerce space.

00:20:48:09 - 00:20:50:24
Claus
How does the typical onboarding process look like?

00:20:51:01 - 00:21:28:09
Andriy
After we provide all the accessories that we need, we have a kick off call and after the kick during kick off call, we explain how we work. And before the kickoff call, we have a discovery questionnaire, extensive form where client provide us all of the information Branding guide, brand voice, their stats kickoff call and after kick off call, the first that we do overlay everything they have in their account and we come up with, we create a customized email marketing strategy for automations as well as a marketing calendar for campaigns.

00:21:28:11 - 00:22:01:01
Andriy
Then we presented to the client after the client approve it. Sometimes they don't do approval on the spot. Sometimes we need to make provisions. So after they approved, we start, we start working on what we presented. And during this this initial strategy, we also present them three, three emails, three email designs with a copy for different one for campaign, one for welcome flow and one for a random card, because those like different groups of emails so client can see and provide us feedback.

00:22:01:03 - 00:22:04:16
Claus
Okay, that sounds great. How does your pricing structure look like?

00:22:04:18 - 00:22:21:13
Andriy
So our emails email cost is like between $500 to $900 per email, but it depends. Depends how many emails you need per month. Either the volume of emails is the lower the cost per email.

00:22:21:15 - 00:22:32:21
Claus
Mm hmm. Okay. That makes absolutely sense. Now, before we come to the end of our coffee break today, are there any thoughts or ideas that you want to share with the listeners that we haven't talked about yet?

00:22:32:23 - 00:22:59:01
Andriy
I mean, we discussed already the deliverability brands needs to foreclose. A lot of brands disregard. This is very crucial in importance right now. It's getting harder and harder to get into people's inboxes and or another for other brands who are just starting out. Or maybe they'll have any email marketing in place here. Start at least a please with one email forum I mentioned.

00:22:59:01 - 00:23:19:13
Andriy
So maybe a welcome abandon cart and post-purchase when somebody purchased this automation have at least one email in E so we're talking about three emails. But if do you need more? But those are like the base, the fundamentals that will set you for success in the future.

00:23:19:15 - 00:23:27:16
Claus
Mm hmm. Okay. Now you have already given a ton of good tips and golden nuggets away. Where can people find more about you guys?

00:23:27:18 - 00:23:55:22
Andriy
Yeah, you can simply go to flow fl0wi um. Dot com we have a podcast, we have a blog, we have a YouTube, everything we post weekly. So we share a lot of free content that you can learn. You don't have to even hire us, but if you don't have been worse to do it like we are, I would like to talk to you and maybe there are some opportunity for us to partner at all.

00:23:55:24 - 00:24:13:05
Claus
Yeah, I've checked out your website. There's really a ton of good resources out there, so I would really recommend to our listeners to go there and have a look and thanks so much. Today I could talk for hours about e-commerce marketing, but I love it a lot. But e-commerce coffee break is coming to an end today. Thanks so much for your time and talk so thank you.