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Chase Dimond, Founder, Boundless Labs
Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools that brands can leverage during the pandemic. With face-to-face interactions still being limited and people spending most of their time at home, there has never been a better time to hit ‘send’ on those email campaigns and flows.
To help guide you in the right direction, we sat down with Chase Dimond to get his best recommendations on how to crisis-proof your email marketing strategy. Why Dimond? Not only is he the co-founder of Boundless Labs, an email marketing agency that was recently acquired by Structured Social, but he has also helped his clients make over $40 million in email attributable revenue during his career.
In our conversation, Dimond shares specific examples of the most successful email messaging, campaigns, and flows that his clients have used during COVID-19. He also reveals fascinating data on the email marketing trends he’s noticed since the start of the pandemic. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just getting started on your email marketing journey, you’re sure to learn something valuable in this interview.
Also be sure to check out our previous interview with him earlier this year.
If there’s any other type of content you’d like to see that would be valuable to you during this time, please don’t hesitate to reach out at support@foundr.com.
Key Takeaways
- Dimond’s agency merge with Structured Social
- How Dimond is thinking about Covid-19 from a business perspective
- Examples of email messaging to use during the pandemic
- Why Dimond is staying away from fear mongering and focusing on adding value
- The difference between email campaigns and email flows
- Which categories of email campaigns are working well for Dimond’s clients
- The importance of creating an email marketing calendar
- Why Dimond recommends splitting your time between campaigns and flows
- Examples of successful email campaigns Dimond’s clients have run in the past
- Dimond’s thoughts on giveaways
- What Structured Social’s data is showing when it comes to open rates, mobile traffic, and the impact of stimulus checks on email marketing
- Dimond’s recommendations on getting emails prepared for the summer
Full Transcript of Podcast with Chase Dimond
Chase: Yeah, let’s talk through it. So, real quickly about myself. I ran an email marketing agency for e-commerce brands called Boundless Labs. We’re a team of about 10 people. And we’ve done just shy of about $40 million in email revenue in the past two years. Nick Shackelford, who’s a buddy of mine and Nathan, and also has been on some other podcasts and some other things with Foundr. He and I actually merged our agencies over the past, I’d say, a month or two. So, it’s been a really cool process of integrating and working with him and his team.
Nathan: Crazy. So both of you guys, you and Nick are instructors have an incredible course that we created called Ecommerce Masters. I’ve learned a lot from you throughout this journey of getting to know each other, and you really are the master of email marketing, especially when it comes to e-comm.
Nathan: The reason that we want you to come on and come back on is really to share, really break down and go deep on email marketing and the things that people can be doing, especially during this time period, where the world has seen a bit of a shake-up. Businesses are seeing a serious shake-up. And email’s just incredible profit centre, and there’s so much you can do there. I know you have so much to share. Chase, thanks so much for taking the time, man, where do you want to start?
Chase: Yeah, pumped to be here. I actually wanted to share some of the emails that we’ve been sending over the past couple of weeks for clients that have been really working through this tough time, as well as some emails coming up that people listening can take advantage of to implement over the coming weeks and the months. Do you want me to talk about how we’re thinking about COVID and some of the things that we’re seeing and then we’ll dive into some of the emails people should be building?
Chase: I also have to say I feel very fortunate and lucky that being in the e-commerce space, I feel insulated from all the crazy and the chaos that’s happening now today. I think a couple weeks or a couple months ago, that wasn’t the case, I was very uncertain, and not sure where things were going. I can’t say now I have all that much more clarity. But having been a few months since we talked last, I would say a lot of our brands are doing just as well, if not better. So, I do feel very fortunate, and I’m hoping to share some things right now about that.
Chase: In terms of COVID and addressing that with clients and their audience, for the most part, we just have on a couple brands in the header or the footer of the emails. A message or two just talking about, “Hey, we’ve been working hard to help support COVID-19. Here you can learn about the initiatives that we’re doing, or with other brands.” We might just say something as simple as, “We just want to let you know we’re taking precautions to keep our warehouse team safe. There might be some shipping delays, however, for that, here’s free shipping, and thank you so much for your understanding.”
Chase: I’d say on a couple of our brands, we have those call-outs. And with a lot of our other brands, we’re actually not even pushing too much COVID talk or conversation at this point. I think a lot of people have reintegrated to this new normal. So, I think we’re just rolling with the punches and just putting out content that feels more normal. But also being aware and mindful of the fact that COVID’s still very much is a real thing, and people are having a hard time as well. So, I’d love to share a little bit more about what that messaging looks like if that’s okay.
Nathan: Yeah, let’s definitely do that. So, this is just the context though. This is every time you guys send a promotional blast or a campaign like a launch, in what context?
Chase: Yes. So those call-outs and those emails happen for every email in some brands, happen on some emails for other brands, and zero times for some brand. So depending on the brand and depending on how they want to address and how they typically talk to their consumer, we have that call out. And then more generally, to answer that question, these are emails that are working over the past few months, past few weeks and emails that we’re going to be working on that are all going to be through this COVID time coming up that are related to these topics.
Nathan: Why do you guys choose to do that?
Chase: So, it’s two things. One is us being proactive about this, and two, clients and customers referring to things and wondering, having these questions. So with specific brands, they’re still overloaded with support questions and tickets about how long is my item going to take to ship or how are things being handled in the backend? I want to make sure that the people on your team are being safe, right?
Chase: So for certain clients that are facing a lot of inbound client customer support tickets, we’re just getting ahead of it with these call-outs. And then for other brands, where that’s not really been an issue, we addressed COVID a few weeks or a few months ago. We’re just rolling on business as normal, just that way, not every email has to be this down in the sad thing. We’re really more focused on providing humour and education and support with other brands.
Nathan: I see. Please, let’s go on. Sorry. I just had to make sure we get as much context as possible.
Chase: Absolutely. Again, when it comes to COVID messaging unless there’s a negative impact on fulfilment, we are trying to stay away from any explicit messaging. And we really haven’t done a lot of fear-mongering campaigns. We’re really trying to leverage its pull sales. We’ve definitely been staying away from that. I was talking to my team earlier this week about how they feel and what they think about the approach that we’re taking. And the consensus is that they really like that our company has this vibe of empowerment and positivity in a really non-aggressive way.
Chase: That being said, we did have a funny situation this past week, where we had a client that wanted to run a super aggressive impending doom type campaign. And we fought them on it just because we didn’t want to take that angle. But it ended up being that for their specific product line, doing that campaign made sense. But that was very much an outlier.
Chase: And to keep going on this topic, we’re really more focused at this point unlike a COVID lifestyle, right? So people are working from home, they’re having to work out indoors. So things of that nature is what the content’s focused on. And then in terms of what clients are seeing success, we’re seeing a spike in customers buying things across like electronics, garden-related products, any kitchen related products, health, wellness, fitness and sports, home and decor, arts and crafts. So, those are some of the categories that are really seeing a lot of success. Do you have any questions on any of those categories?
Nathan: No. I don’t want to go too micro. If we can around industry-specific, keep it top level.
Chase: Awesome. For those industries as well as our clients as a whole, some of the campaigns that we’re sending over the past few weeks and the past couple months is again, education and content emails are still super relevant and super important. How can you add value to the people on the receiving end? What can you teach them? How can you get them excited about you as a business? Is it the fact that your business is being sustainable? And what does that actually mean, right?
Chase: So, with so many things going wrong in the world, if you have a business that’s focused on sustainability or giving back or anything that’s really cool or innovative, definitely creating emails and content around that is a really great bucket. So, that’s something that we’ve done forever, something that’s come increasingly important during these times.
Chase: This is one depending on when someone listens to it that’s going to be a little bit timely and relevant for the next probably few weeks, a few months. We’re recording this towards the end of May, but graduation is a really important time right now, kids are graduating high school, college, and they’re really missing out on that traditional graduation that a lot of people had. So parents, grandparents, family, and friends are really taking upon graduation as time to do something special, and probably something larger than they normally would do anyways.
Chase: So, we’re seeing a lot of our clients that we’re sending graduation gifts for really converting well, and making purchases. This is another category that we’ve had that’s been tried and trued for a long time that’s also working now, but basically problem and solution campaigns. What I mean by that is everyone or not everyone, but most companies end up building their company because they have some problem to solve. So you need to express those problems and provide a solution in an email.
Chase: For example, we work with a couple skincare brands, and we’ll send out an email that says, hey, based off your routine, if your goal is A, B, or C, then our products will all fit those things. So for example, if one of your goal is to reduce breakouts, then you might want to buy our face mask. If your goal is to have an even skin tone, then you might want this moisturiser or this glow drops.
Chase: So, we’re working with the brands that we have to try to identify what are the things that people want from your brand, why did you start this? And we’re pairing content and reviews and testimonials with it to help sell specific categories or collections or more so specific products.
Nathan: I see. How often do you do these?
Chase: For us, when we look at a campaign calendar, we typically plan at the minimum two weeks out, but most of the time we’re trying to plan about a month out. So we’ll go through six or eight or 10 different buckets and really make sure that we touch upon different categories, that way there’s a mixture of content. We don’t want to always just be selling. We don’t want to just always be educating. We really want to have a healthy balance.
Chase: So, for each of these emails, we try to sprinkle one of these in every month or at minimum every quarter depending on how often you’re sending. Most of our brands send between two to three campaigns per week. We were able to rotate between categories pretty quickly, where this week we might hit a graduation email, we might do a giveaway email, and then we might end the week with a problem and a solution type campaign. And then the following week, we might hit three new categories. So, we’re always looking at calendars and trying to recycle these same types of buckets because they do work.
Nathan: That’s crazy. One of the biggest things I’ve learned from you is when it comes to email, if there’s one thing you take away from Chase and this whole interview that we’re doing with him, is if you just look at your promotional calendar, and plan it out when is graduation, when is Mother’s Day, when is Christmas, when it’s New Years, when is Black Friday? And all these different dates, that alone will add heaps of revenue to your business and heaps of profit to your business from doing promotions. That alone I think it’s a game-changer.
Chase: Yeah, it’s crazy how many clients never realise the different types of buckets and things that they should be sending or the frequency of how they should be sending. I think most people are tired of receiving emails themselves that they fear about sending too many emails. And again, you shouldn’t probably be sending an email every single day with all these things, just because.
Chase: But getting in the right cadence, and for every brand is different. For some brands, maybe it’s once a week and for other brands, maybe it’s four times a week. And really the way that you’ve figured that out. I might have mentioned this to you before Nathan is you send one campaign, you look at the open rates, you look at the click through, you look at the support tickets, you look at the unsubscribed, look at the market spam.
Chase: If all those indicators lead you to bully that you could send another email, then you send a second email. So as you figure out how many emails per week, how many emails per month you’re going to be sending, then you have to reverse into it. Coming up is Memorial Day, so we’re doing a tonne of campaigns for Memorial Day, it’s a big thing here in the US. That’s this coming Monday, which I believe is the 25th. That was really a big thing on our roadmap for May.
Chase: And then from there, we have Mother’s Day a couple weeks ago. We’re then trying to fill in the gaps in the holes of, okay, between the two big holidays, there’s two weeks. Well, we can’t go two weeks without sending emails, what other types of things can we start sprinkling and layering in? And again, the content emails, the graduation emails, this problem solution campaigns. These are great filler campaigns because they’re always going to be relevant to some degree, and they don’t really go out of style.
Chase: So giving you as more buckets to think about, product launches or product-focused emails are also at great thing to hit. I do realise that you’re not always going to be launching a new product every week or every month or even every quarter. So doing product spotlights, so products that you’ve launched in the past. Call out new elements about it that you didn’t realise people cared about.
Chase: I don’t know, maybe if you had haircare or something, and you’ve noticed that people were using it for x, y, and z, and you found some crazy thing that people were doing with it or trying with it. I don’t know what that would be. But you could call those things out in an additional email. So find different ways to give a spotlight on it.
Chase: In a similar vein on some of the things I mentioned, social proof and customer testimonial emails are huge. People always want to buy things that others are buying and others can attest for. We actually tried a really cool email where in the email, it was a gift where basically showed this guy starting to talk about a product. And then if people click on that, they would actually take them to a video reviews of the person talking about the product.
Chase: I think when people can speak on camera about why they like something and when they’re wearing it, when they’re modelling it, it feels a lot more tangible. That’s what we’re doing, is we’re trying to relate people’s comments and reviews not just statically like we had been, which do work. But we’re trying to incorporate a video aspect and element. Does that make sense, Nathan?
Nathan: Yeah, 100%. We talked about I guess event-based specific campaigns. You talked about graduation, we’ve got Memorial Day coming, and you talked about problem solution. And you mentioned sometimes for clients you’re doing two to three campaigns a week. What does a campaign mean or equal just for context for people?
Chase: It’s a great question. So within email, there’s two core primary types of emails that you send. The first is a campaign. A campaign is like a manual broadcast to our audience. It’s basically us telling their audience that they should care about Memorial Day because we care about Memorial Day, right? Or they should care about a new product launch because it’s relevant to us, so we think it’s going to be relevant to them. Where on the other end an email flow or an email automation, that’s all based off an action or a trigger that a user takes.
Chase: If someone visits your website, and there’s a pop up that says, enter your email for 10% off. When someone enters their email, that will then trigger an automated email for a welcome series. If someone is on your list and they add something to their cart, and they don’t start checkout or they don’t purchase, that will then trigger an automated abandoned cart type email.
Chase: So everything that we’ve been talking about right now is these manual push and broadcasts that are ongoing and require a lot of work. Where on the flow side, the automation side, not that those emails are set it and forget it entirely. But those emails work for you while you’re doing other things, those will automatically send based off again behaviour that people take. So it’s a really nice balance to have the two in tandem.
Nathan: I see. If you’re for a client or brand, you’re doing two to three campaigns per week. That’s basically two to three broadcast emails, or it’s a couple or how many per campaign?
Chase: Typically, we’re sending two to three broadcast emails. And then a customer could potentially receive a fourth or a fifth email depending on how engaged they are. So some customers, if we send two campaigns per week might only get to two emails per week because they didn’t look at any products on your website, they didn’t add anything to their cart, they weren’t that engaged.
Chase: However, if we send those two emails, and then someone goes to your website, and they view a product, they add something to their cart, that could trigger a third email, which is the first automation email. So depending on how engaged people are or aren’t, they could be receiving maybe one or two additional emails on top of the broadcast each week.
Nathan: Wow, I see. If people just wanted to just get started, where would be the first place people should start? Should it be the campaigns during this time period? Because we know emails are super powerful tool. We know it’s probably most people listening to this, it’s underleveraged. It’s not been correctly leveraged, and we know that it’s a great profit centre for you. Where is the first place people should start? Is it campaigns or is it flows?
Chase: That’s a fair question. This isn’t the answer to what you asked. But I would try to split whatever time you have. So maybe you have one hour a week, or maybe you have five hours a week. Instead of going all in on one bucket, I would really try to split your time because they both are necessary, and they both work.
Chase: The benefit of working on flows first is again the fact that they’re going to work on your behalf for you while you’re doing other things. If that minimum, you could start one welcome email, one abandoned checkout email and one customer thank you email. Those are the emails at the bare minimum that people expect.
Chase: If someone enters their email into a pop-up or a fly out, they really do expect a follow up because so many other brands are doing that. So if you don’t do that, your customer might be confused. That’s a missed revenue opportunity. That’s for sure at the bare minimum, the one welcome email that you need to have. Typically, we build out four, but again, just focusing on the bare minimum, one abandoned checkout email.
Chase: Again, these are people that are furthest in your funnel, and are that close to buying. But for whatever reason they didn’t buy. Maybe you didn’t have free shipping, maybe they’re waiting to see if you’re going to send them a discount. Or maybe they just got distracted. That’s a really great email that you have to have.
Chase: And then a customer thank you email. Again, you have to just say thank you. It can be super simple. That email can be plain text from a community manager, from a co-founder, whoever it might be. And at minimum, if you could do one campaign per week, that should get you by right.
Chase: Hopefully, after you do those two things and split some of your attention and time on email, you’ll really be able to see the power of it, and hopefully, over time, you’ll be able to build out a more well-rounded email programme. For our clients, we’re building 10, 12, 14 flows. And in each of these flows have anywhere from two to four emails. So, there’s a lot that you’re going to be leaving on the table by just doing this. But that’s better than not doing anything at all.
Nathan: I agree. So bare minimum, welcome, abandoned cart, and customer thank you. Talk to me around what else you’d like to go through. Do you want to go through more campaign ideas or what else?
Chase: I’ve got a couple cool other campaign ideas and concepts and things coming up that I think people may know of, others they won’t know of. But the last thing I want to talk about is what we also are sending sales and promotion based emails. So for some of our clients in these sales and promotion emails, we will include a note as to why we’re offering a discount. And for others, we’ll just include notes on how they’re giving their customers a way to make a purchase that could be tied towards helping health care workers and other frontline workers. Again, that doesn’t apply to everyone.
Chase: But in sales and promotions emails, we are still sending those. Those are still working. Mother’s Day was a big one that just passed. That was a huge buying time for a lot of consumers. And then Father’s Day is going to be the same thing. Father’s Day is coming up, at least here in the States on June 21st. So that’s a month out from today. That’s something that I think almost all brands should be taking advantage of.
Chase: The way that we approach things like Father’s Day and Memorial Day and holidays is we use the holiday as an anchor. And what I mean by that is for example for Mother’s Day, we sent three to four campaigns prior to Mother’s Day and on Mother’s Day. So the first campaign that we sent was actually about a month in advance, launching the sale early. Mother’s Day sale starts early, shop our site for 10% off, don’t miss out.
Chase: And then the next email that we send, and again, the same strategy. The reason I’m telling you about this, this can be applied to Memorial Day, it can be applied to Father’s Day, Fourth of July, this is going to work for any holiday. The next email that we sent, came about a week later, and we basically gave people a heads up saying, “Hey, you’ve got 48 hours to order this product for guaranteed delivery for Mother’s Day.”
Chase: So we launched these emails a little bit sooner than we would otherwise just because supply chains and shippings and things like that are a little bit thrown off because of COVID. So, it’s better to give people more time to make a purchase. It’s better to err on being more cautious than less cautious.
Chase: And then the last two emails that we sent related to that holiday, for some customers they had gift cards. We sent them out 24 to 48 hours before Mother’s Day basically saying, “Hey, if you’re like us and you leave things the last minute, it’s going to be too late to get things. Malls and stores are closed for the most part. Get your mom the gift of this gift card. So that way you have something for her.”
Chase: And then lastly, we set a campaign on Mother’s Day, wishing your mom a Happy Mother’s Day and wishing all the moms in our community a Happy Mother’s Day. Nathan, does that make sense? Do you have any question on how we use a holiday as an anchor?
Nathan: No, that’s I was just thinking to myself, “Well, you guys are good.” How do you come up with all these ideas?
Chase: Dude, honestly, I think most of our best ideas come from missed opportunities from months and years prior. When we first started offering email, we only would send out a Mother’s Day email, and it did well. And we always were like, “Huh, I wonder what happened if we launched this early.” So for Black Friday last year, Cyber Monday, all of that, we launched all the sales early. We made almost as much if not more revenue from the early sales than we did on the actual sales just because it’s a lot less crowded.
Chase: Typically, most people are only sending an email on Memorial Day or Father’s Day. So by getting ahead of it, you get the opportunity to have to share of people’s wallets before they’re even planning and thinking about it. So if something comes in your inbox for Father’s Day and it’s around June 21st, you’re probably not thinking about Father’s Day right now. But if something’s compelling and enticing enough, you might get ahead of it. And then all the brands are going to wait till it’s too late, will miss out on the wallet share.
Chase: So really, for us just banging our heads against the wall about like, “Oh, man, what if we did this,” or “I wish we had done that better.” This year has just been about making sure we execute everything ahead of time. And the fact that time over time this is working for us, it’s just allowing us to get more creative and more aggressive.
Nathan: Because I think people listening right now, it’s so impressive all these crazy campaign ideas and things they got to do. It’s you guys come up with these incredible ideas. I want to always bring it back to what’s the mental model, you know?
Chase: Absolutely. And then a couple other campaign ideas, and I had some other random stats and notes based off of conversation I’ve been having with industry experts and based off data that I’m seeing. So we talked about Memorial Day, again, that’s on May 25. Father’s Day’s on June 21st. Here in the US, Fourth of July is going to be a massive one. I’m imagining a lot of people this year, depending on where they live are going to want to be out and about.
Chase: So I got to imagine Fourth of July is going to be a big-spending opportunity, get ahead of Fourth of July. These are things that people need and want for the actual day. So allow yourself to have enough shipping. You should start promoting Fourth of July in the beginning or middle of June. So that’s a great one.
Chase: One random and cool gifting opportunity campaign that we’re going to do for some clients is called Best Friend’s day. Again, it’s just a silly day that someone somewhere made up, but it makes money. So Best Friend’s day is on June 7th. That’s a massive gifting opportunity. Again, if you think about who’s on your list, either A, they’re buying for themselves or B, they’re buying for someone else.
Chase: So just because someone bought from you recently, doesn’t mean they won’t buy from you again. I think that’s a really big missed opportunity. So typically people that have maybe one or two products in a store, that’s all they sell. They’re afraid and wary of sending to people that bought in the past because they don’t think someone’s going to buy it again. So I want to just call out again that people don’t just buy for themselves, they often buy for others. Does that make sense, Nathan?
Nathan: Yeah, 100%.
Chase: Awesome. And then three last campaigns, I promise, I don’t want to bore you guys with campaigns. But I do hope that this is helpful for some of you guys. International Yoga Day, again, this isn’t going to be for everyone. But for people that have women-centric businesses, this is a great one. Not that it’s not for males, but I know women love yoga. Note it is on the same day as Father’s Day. So for us, we’re obviously we’re going to focus more on Father’s Day.
Chase: But this could be just a little call-out at the bottom of an email for Father’s Day, just talking about, hey, we’re going live on our Instagram, or we’re going to do a Zoom in the morning before all the positive festivities happen for Father’s Day. Moms, ladies, families get yourself started the right way with celebrating yoga. Here’s our water bottle for national Yoga Day that you could have to look cool and stay hydrated during your workout. Here’s this great new mat. Here’s this great new athletic product.
Chase: I think find ways to be creative. Yoga Day doesn’t again need its own campaign. It could be tied in with other things. And then the last two, International Children’s Day again, people that have kids. Now, being a dad, I want to buy my daughter everything. Any email I get about something for her, I got to imagine I’m going to buy something. So that’s on June 1st, International Children’s Day. And then National Flag Day is on June 14th. So those were the main campaigns that I wanted to talk through today, Nathan.
Nathan: Wow, it’s crazy. Look, the big takeaway for people is one, set up the flows and two, just go to public holidays. You just go online and what do you search for really to find out all these different ideas for campaigns?
Chase: We were looking obviously all the really large popular holidays and celebrations, the ones that we mentioned. And then there’s all these random today is or these national today is type holiday calendars and campaigns and things. Dude, every single day, there’s five to six random things like National Donut Day, National Pizza Day, National Stay at Home. There’s all of these random things. So, it’s fun and cool to pick random ones throughout a quarter or every six months to just tie in and teach people on your list. Because it gives people a laugh at the very least, and to provide comedy, especially in a time like now is very appreciated by the subscribers.
Nathan: I love it. What about giveaways, how often do you run giveaway campaigns?
Chase: Giveaway campaigns, I have actually an interesting spin on a giveaway that I’d love to share with you guys. But on a giveaway basis, I would say, for some brands we do them as often as every quarter. And other brands we’ll do them anywhere from semi-annually to annually. For some brands, giveaways are a really great acquisition channel that leads to a return. For other brands just because their products are so expensive, giveaways are great in theory. But in terms of practise, actually getting someone to convert on a $300 watch is difficult, especially when you’re partnering with other brands.
Chase: What we’ve noticed is think about all the purchases that you make on Amazon. It’s like the $20 here, the $50 there, the really impulse purchases that you make on Amazon, where you might want to consult a review or two. But you don’t need to consult all of these reviews and all this research. Those are the products that we’ve seen really around giveaways.
Chase: So products that have an average order value of $50 or lower that people could see and then just buy. Those are the things that we found worked really well. But when some of our clients are selling a $300 watch, or they’re selling really high-end things, giveaways are harder, especially when you partner with other people. Because you’re not too sure the buying potential and the buying power of these folks. So, if you’re selling, I don’t know, a washing machine for lack of a better word, or a barbecue or grill, for some clients like that, it’s a little bit harder to get a conversion through.
Nathan: I see. So anything else that we missed?
Chase: I just got a couple random notes of things that I found interesting. So we’ve been monitoring the engagement over the past few weeks, and the past few months. And one thing for sure that we can say, across all of our clients, open rates have been up throughout COVID. I think people are at home, they’re bored, they have more time, right? Maybe they’re not working as hard or working as long.
Chase: So, we’ve seen an intake in open rates. On some clients, it’s minimal, it’s like a couple points and other client clients the open rates could be as big as 5% or 10% higher. So that’s one really interesting thing that we’ve seen. One other interesting thing that we’ve seen is mobile traffic and purchases on mobile have increased across a number of our clients we’ve noticed, which has been interesting. I know mobile’s obviously been a trend for a while, but we’ve noticed more so over the past few weeks than ever that people have been on their phones, and they’ve actually been making more purchases from their phones.
Nathan: That’s very interesting. It is quite often that people optimise for desktop still, but they don’t realise that majority have been on mobile.
Chase: And then the last thing I wanted to share that I found really interesting, which I think makes sense is across almost every single one of our clients, we noticed a boost around the same day that the first stimulus checks arrived. So here in the States, for anyone that’s not familiar, people that are making a certain income get $1,200. It depends on how much they get. If they’ve got kids, they get more. If they make a little bit more money, they get a little less. But we noticed that when the first round of stimulus checks arrived, whether people were feeling blue and needed to pick me up I know retail therapy is a real thing. That the conversion rate and the revenue on that period of time was through the roof.
Nathan: Wow. That’s interesting. What do you think is going to happen when all the government funding stuff stops in many countries?
Chase: Yeah, that’s a good question. So I’m thinking about that. I’m also thinking about the fact that people definitely been spending less money on eating and drinking out and about. When you go out to eat and drink, at least here in the States, it’s very common to tip 15%, 20%. So the food prices are jacked up. You’re paying all this extra money for the service.
Chase: I obviously think people are still eating and drinking just as much, maybe if not more, but they’re doing it at home. So, they’re saving some of that money. And I think some of that money currently is being rerouted towards online gifts and this and that, and definitely away from in-person to online.
Chase: I’m truthfully not entirely sure what’s going to happen because I think we’re seeing some really weird variables that I don’t know how long they’re going to stay around for. But it’s been a great time for e-commerce. Some of the numbers we’re seeing across our clients are comparable to Black Friday, Cyber Monday time. So, I’m optimistic and hopeful that it’s going to stay, but I can’t say for certain.
Nathan: I’m with you there. But I think what’s important is just I think using email as one of your big channels and not forgetting about it, and speaking to your customers and your community through email. You don’t have to be selling as well. You talked about these education type campaigns. Can we go a little bit deeper on that? Because I know, it can be intimidating for people sometimes to think, well, I’m going to send this one, I’m going to send this one. I’m going to send this one, you know what I mean? So, you can mix it up.
Chase: Absolutely. Nathan, I have a bunch of cool examples on these topics that we discuss. I’ll provide them to you and your team, so that way you guys can make these available. I know sometimes it’s hard when I’m talking about these things. And we’re discussing them on voice to really understand what this actually looks like. It’s not that tangible. So I promise you guys, I’ll give you guys a bunch of resources and things for you guys to share to everyone listening. So that way people can see.
Chase: But on that topic, so I have pulled up on my screen earlier like the CBD type campaign that we sent for a client, and it was all about feeling refreshed and getting sleep right. So again, we can’t make any claims or promises that CBD leads to increased or better sleep. But we talked about how sleep is physiologically, and how to get more of it and different practises to take and reviews that people are saying. Again, it’s all anecdotal. It’s all qualitative feedback from our audience on how they’ve slept better without making claims that it improves it.
Chase: And we’ll just publish and post studies that researchers have done related to it to back it up in a blog-style type post. So a lot of our clients we’ve been having them be very active on their blog, just posting interesting or relevant content that people would get a kick from.
Chase: Another example is we work with a wallet company and they always used to make fun of me because my wallet was so thick not because I had a lot of cash and I wish that was the reason but because I had so many cards in it. I just accumulated cards and photos and all these things. And that actually because they’re making fun of me so much spawn them to create a blog post about how wallets have changed over the ages. Where back in the day, these bulky wallets were in style and cool. And now everything is about minimalism.
Chase: So their whole design, their whole thesis is about taking these things that have always been bulky and big, and really making them thin and efficient. They shouldn’t be this massive purse that thing people carry around. It should be just enough, but not too much. And they create a really cool blog post that we link people too that have photos and text and funny comments from the community.
Chase: I’m not sure if that helps, but just feel free to have fun with this content. If you’re going to say something, that’s hey, this helps you get sleep. You have to have research and study and you can’t say there’s a cure. So just be careful also too when you’re making claims, when you’re making certain education things that you’ve done your research and you can credit authoritative figures.
Nathan: For sure. But when it comes to education, you would put the content in the email or the content on the blog post?
Chase: It depends on how long the content is. Typically, with some clients, they have pretty long-form blog posts. So what we’ll do is we’ll include maybe the first or second paragraph that’s really information about what’s to come and has a headline or something that catches someone’s attention that makes them want to read more. And we’ll typically have like a call to action button that says like, “Learn more, read more,” something like that, that will then take people to your website.
Chase: We do, if possible, want to get people to your website, that way they have more chances to buy. Again, the goal of these emails isn’t to sell. But if you can get someone to your website, maybe they’ll go from that content to a different content, and then they’ll land on a product page. But then coming back onto your site, you give your marketing team, your paid acquisition team, a chance to retarget them right. So there’s a lot of great things that can happen just by bringing people to your website.
Chase: We typically will give enough content within the email that someone is intrigued, and then we’ll send them to the blog post. I mentioned before, we’re trying to send people to video reviews so that video might be hosted on YouTube, it might be hosted on one of our landing pages. So yeah, we’re using email to funnel people to other platforms.
Nathan: And then let’s just say that that was a really great story about the minimalist wallet, and all that stuff. So let’s just say it is a long-form blog posts. A paragraph or two is in the email, then a CTA is to click to go to the blog, and then that just hosted on the site. And then from there, hopefully, or maybe people want to engage and perhaps look at purchasing the product, if not, that’s all good also. You’re just providing goodwill and facilitating that goodwill.
Chase: Exactly. And then in blog posts, we typically have what’s called an embedded subscription form. So, if you’re on a blog post, and you’re reading part of it, or some of it or all of it, there could be something in there it says like, “Hey, for more content and cool things like this, enter your email.” Again, obviously, the people that are receiving this email will already be on your list. But if the blog post is really good and compelling, people do share it on social media. They will text it or forward it to a friend.
Chase: So the point that you have, that email capture isn’t for the people that’s receiving the email, it’s for the people that might end up getting the blog post through some sharing. It could be a really great way to also acquire users. And then at the bottom of the blog post, maybe you have products that are popular or related. Throughout the article, some of our clients will hyperlink some of their product pages to it.
Chase: So, it’s just a really great way to get traffic, eyeballs, sharing, sales, where it’s all a byproduct, right? It has to come across genuine and authentic or else people aren’t going to buy it, but that’s really how we approach it.
Nathan: Man, that’s awesome. And so dude, you’ve been so giving and you’ve shared so much gold. Was there anything else you would like to share with everyone that came help them using email? Now, I know you specialise in e-comm, but the same rules apply, right? Doesn’t matter what industry. There’s some different tactics and strategies. But there is a premise around the idea of using flows, if somebody is about to purchase online, or it’s a welcome series or whether it’s a cart abandonment series.
Nathan: There’s the same premise for campaigns around getting people to sign up for your product or your service during a certain time period and celebrating a particular time period. I know in for example, B2B SaaS, I don’t know how much you could do over Mother’s Day. However, you could have your own fifth birthday special or fifth birthday for your company. You could definitely do a Black Friday campaign. You could definitely do a Memorial Day campaign. So it just depends, right? But yeah, is there anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on?
Chase: No, I think we covered all of it. I just I’m going to challenge everyone that’s listening to start preparing for summer. For us on our end, we’re going to start doing some summer preparation for summer-related products and activities and things here over the next few weeks. So if you’re listening to this, I’m going to challenge you to start creating some content relevant to summer.
Chase: Because this summer, I think, more so than ever as people are excited and energised to get back into the world, and hopefully, all of that goes smoothly. People are going to want to start spending money on experiences and products and things that they could do with their family and friends. So now’s a really great time to start preparing and take advantage of this period.
Nathan: Amazing. Thank you so much, brother. Well, look, thank you so much for your time, man. Last question is where’s the best place people can find out about yourself and your work? And also, the merger of your agency, now both you and Nick.
Chase: I’m a few years late to the game, but both myself and Nick have been posting a lot on Twitter. Without going too much into it, I think it’s a platform that has a lot of reach. And it’s a lot of people in the online, direct consumer e-commerce space are sharing some really great tips. So my handle on Twitter is ecom, E-C-O-M, and then Chase Dimond, no A in Dimond. So ecomchasediamond on Twitter. I’m sharing daily screenshots of emails from my team and daily screenshots of emails from the community and calling out subject lines they’re using and things that they like. So that would be a great place. Thank you, Nathan.
Nathan: You’re welcome. Awesome. Well, look, thanks so much for sharing so much, Chase. This was amazing. Thanks so much, brother.
Chase: Awesome. Have a great day, Nathan. Thank you.
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The post 319: Chase Dimond Teaches You How To Crisis-Proof Your Email Marketing Strategy appeared first on Foundr.
Link : https://foundr.com/319-chase-dimond
Author :- Nathan Chan
August 13, 2020 at 10:30AM
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