Josh Chin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Chronos Agency, an email marketing agency with a team of 100 strong. Josh has been a featured speaker at top industry events including Geek Out, Affiliate World, Ecommerce World, and others.
In this episode we discuss top email and SMS mistakes Ecommerce store owners make, what strategies are working now, and what the future holds for these channels.
Here’s a look at what we cover:
- The top 3 automations you need to build right now.
- How relying on templates could be dragging down performance.
- What to do now that open rate isn’t a thing anymore.
- Utilizing push notifications and tap cart - what you need to know.
- Top email strategies - what’s changing and what isn’t.
- Real World email examples.
- Plus more!
Mentioned in This Episode:
Josh Chin
Industry Report “Future-Proof Your eComm Business in 2022 Report"
Josh Chin’s Podcast with Brett
Transcript:
Brett:
Well, I am absolutely thrilled to welcome to the show, josh Chin. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Chronos Agency, and more about Josh in a minute. I'm excited about this topic because today we're going deep on email marketing, SMS, and a little known thing called TapCart. And we're going to be talking about what's working right now, what you're likely missing and how to really optimize these channels this year and beyond. And if we've learned anything in the last year or two, with iOS updates and attribution issues and rising CPAs on Facebook and Google and other places is that email, email is still a breadwinner for e-commerce. It's absolutely critical. It's not going anywhere, and so we're going to dive in.
Brett:
So let me tell you just a little bit about Josh. You're going to love hearing from him, learning from him. We actually both spoke at the same event, so we hung out in LA a few months ago. Our buddy Nick Shackelford, shout out to Shack, called Geek Out. Spoiler alert, that event is changing to Geek Up in the future, which is cool. But we were both speaking at this event. We get to hang out. We were like, wow, we're having a lot of fun chatting about... you know, we're geeking out about marketing stuff. I was on Josh's podcast. Now, Josh is coming on my podcast, but he runs a team of 100 and... almost 100. And they run email marketing, SMS campaigns, tap commerce, really doing some amazing things in the industry. He has a great reputation, so does the company. He's spoken at places like Geek Out, just talked about that, Affiliate World, Ecom World and others. With that, Josh, welcome to the show and thanks for coming on, man. How you doing?
Josh:
Brett, I'm super excited. Thank you so much for having me and I'm thrilled. You know what? eCommerce Evolution is one of the podcasts that I listen to and have been following from a long time back. I started the agency about four and a half years ago, and it's been a wild ride, incredible journey. And one of the things I love about the industry is that people are so open to sharing their so-called 'trade secrets' and insights that they've gathered. It's very unlike any other industries that I've come across. And that's one of the big reasons why I love talking about the stuff that we're doing, what's working, what doesn't work, and it ultimately benefits the community at large. And it puts me in a better position to succeed as well.
Brett:
Well, first of all, thank you for the shout out on the podcast. Glad you enjoy it. Glad you're a listener and glad you're here today. And I totally agree. One of the things I love about this industry is, in general, there's a lot of really cool people who are willing to share their secrets and ideas and tips and tricks. Whereas, I got my start in TV and radio way back in the day.
Josh:
Wow.
Brett:
And in traditional business, there's a lot of closed-lip, "Hey, this is my secret, my tricks, my tips, and no way I'm letting it out there, because then competitor will grab it or whatnot." And so I like going to things like Geek Out, or Ezra Firestone's events, or other events where people are just pretty open, people share ideas and it's super fun. So that's what we want to do on this podcast as well. So let's dive right in, Josh. Let's talk about email marketing and let's look at, what are some of the biggest mistake you see e-commerce companies making when it comes to email marketing?
Josh:
Ah, okay, I'm I'm going to answer this question in layers. The first-
Brett:
Layers. I like it.
Josh:
... mistake, layer one is not having the right foundations. And that often comes from a point of view of email is such a massive channel. There's so many things to do. I have absolutely no time to get things done. And that often happens when a business is approaching the one mill to crossing the one mill in revenue mark. And people often think about email as, "All right, I'll get to it when I have time." But the truth is you need email to get profitable and to scale successfully and profitably, especially at the beginning. When you think about channels that we traditionally rely on in the digital space with Facebook, Instagram, Google, it's getting increasingly expensive. So it's increasingly more important for us to build a strong relationship with customers that you're bringing through the door from day one. And the only way you can do that is to provide a coherent, consistent and good experience post opt-in and post purchase.
Josh:
So if you had to simplify email down to just its core essence, it's three automations that you need to build before anything else. And it really doesn't take that much time with the templates that are available and tools like Klayvio and the guides are available on our website, at Chronos. You really have no excuse to not do it. So it's a welcome series. That's what welcomes your new subscribers, along with a popup or an opt-in-
Brett:
So this is pre-purchase. So this is you sign up, you see a YouTube ad, Facebook ad, Instagram ad, Google ad, whatever, you land on the page, you don't buy.
Josh:
Exactly.
Brett:
But you opt in because of a popup or something that grabs you. Now, you get a welcome series.
Josh:
Correct.
Brett:
Okay. Got it.
Josh:
A welcome series. We call it a customer acquisition series, because that's the core focus of that flow. Then we have a cart recovery flow. Some people call it the cart abandonment flow. That's critical because that's often a key point in the customer's journey, where they're kind of indecisive or making a decision. They're distracted or they have some questions about your products that are unanswered. And that's why they're not making a decision, but it's critical because that's where interest and intent is at its peak.
Josh:
The last piece is in post-purchase. Post-purchase is incredibly important. It's one of the highest revenue generating activities and flows that you can have in your email system over the long run. Without your post-purchase flow and automation, you will not have a good experience for customers coming into your store. So if you have to break the two things up like between cart abandonment and post-purchase, a lot of people rely on just templates and prebuilt stuff. What I would strongly recommend everyone listening here to do is to customize your emails, to make it your own. Don't rely on templates that you can pull off the Internet. It's not you, it's not your brand. You got to make sure that it's on brand, it speaks to your audience, and only you know how that's done.
Josh:
The reason you want to have these two flows done up right from the get go, is that you're setting yourself up for success in your future campaigns and future communication. You're setting a good first impression for new customers that are just getting to know your brand, who you are, what you sell, what are the products you have. It's super important to have that foundation laid out.
Brett:
Yeah, so really, really good stuff here. So one of the issues is, especially as you're kind of smaller and you're growing, you're like, "Hey, I don't have time to email and fulfilling orders and doing all these things." So it's more of an afterthought. It's there, but it's not optimized. Then, let's kind of look at those layers. I definitely like the idea of don't just grab a template off the Internet and plug that in. You want your brand to shine. You want your personality to shine emails that are fun or emails funny, or emails that just have your personality shining through, are so much more effective than boilerplate templated emails. But let's maybe break that down just a little bit. So I love those three main automations: welcome series or customer acquisition series, cart recovery series, and then post-purchase. What are some of the mistakes at each step. What are some of the mistakes you see? Let's just start with that first one, the welcome series. Where do people get that series wrong? I'm guessing one of the ways they get it wrong is they don't do it at all, but-
Josh:
Yep. That's one way.
Brett:
... what are some of the mistakes they make there?
Josh:
Now, the most typical offer that people often have on their business is a discount code, a 10% discount code, or something that takes some amount off the price, which is fine. But what people often forget is two things. Number one, you don't just stop at one email. Stopping at just one email limits your ability to reach a wide enough audience. Now to give you a sense of the magnitude of the problem, we send approximately... as a globe, globally, about 26 trillion emails are being sent every single day.
Brett:
Wow.
Josh:
That's a lot of emails for very few people have access to the Internet. To stand out, it's incredibly important for you to have frequency of your messages, as well as the personality and personalization of your messages. These two things come hand in hand. So the easiest gap to fill here is the frequency of your messages. If done right, on average, each email is going to generate about a 30% open rate. Your welcome series are typically going to be higher at 60%, 70%, 80%, because they're expecting an offer. But what you often find is that even with 60%, 70%, 80% open rate, your click rates are going to be significantly lower at maybe 16% or 17% on average. You still have a huge chunk of your people who have seen your message, but hasn't converted yet. So have multiple followups.
Josh:
One of the easiest forms of a followup is a text-based email that links up with your customer support team. Because often you'll find that your biggest objections coming from your customers are things that are recurring, things that you can deal with, either through your customer support team, or through an FAQ of some sort. So if it's a common question that you're getting, you can have a simple FAQ type of... series of information in your emails, or you can redirect people into your custom support team, then they can handle that. We use a tool, an amazing tool called GORGIAS. We sync that up on the backend.
Brett:
GORGIAS is great.
Josh:
Amazing tool. They turn your customer support team, essentially to a profit center, which is amazing. And that process eliminates the likelihood of people seeing a message, but not converting as much as possible. So you're opening up the top end of your funnel significantly more.
Brett:
Yeah, I love it. And this is one of the reasons why I love email so much. Obviously it's a huge driver of revenue and when and you mentioned earlier, "Hey, email is driving 20% of my revenue," I know some businesses that email is like 40% of the store's revenue, or at least email is a part of 40% of revenue. It's super significant. That's huge. But also, I'm a huge YouTube fan. As an agency, we do a lot of top of funnel YouTube. And so that's often the first touch. But whether you're doing Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, if you can drive more signups and then you have a really polished, welcome flow, and then you have a great abandoned cart flow and you start to convert more, then guess what? You can spend more at the top of the funnel to really grow the business and accelerate that growth.
Brett:
So when it comes to the welcome series, how many touches are you typically looking for? Because you mentioned frequency being something to consider. How many emails are you looking for there? And any other tips. Is that going to be a combination of... Sounds like a combination of email and text. What does that look like from frequency standpoint?
Josh:
So when I talk about text, I'm looking at two forms of so-called text. You have text-based emails and SMSs, and we'll touch on SMS in a little bit, that's super exciting. But when we think about frequency, the number of emails that we have in a welcome series, it really depends on how long the conversion cycle looks like for a customer. For instance, if you're selling a mattress, an amazing mattress client that we worked with, they sell relatively inexpensive mattresses. But even then, the amount of time that people take to make a purchase from initial impression to conversion, is on average, a couple of weeks long. It's not immediate. It's not like a low ticket item, where people make an impulse purchase.
Josh:
For that reason, that's kind of an extreme. Or furniture, that's another really great example where people take a relatively longer time to consider. On the flip side, you have products that are really cheap, things that are a lot more impulsive by nature and your products are probably going to fall between that spectrum, somewhere in the middle. So understanding that cycle, how long when people take to consider a purchase is important for you to create emails that answer and address key problems and key issues that people have in making that purchase, whether that be comparing your product against someone else's products, your brand against your competitor's brand, the opening experience, the unboxing experience of your product, what that looks like, the post-sale support, if that applies, what does that look like?
Josh:
All these questions can be answered pre-purchase within that welcome series, and that's what you want to think about. So it can be as short as three emails to as long as 10, 30 emails, until someone converts. A good rule of thumb to kind of visualize this is as you add more emails, your engagement is going to fall significantly over time. Between open rates and click rates, it's going to fall over time. And once you see a steep decline in attention, that's when you know you've probably hit your... close to the maximum of number of emails that you should be having in your welcome series.
Brett:
Nice. Okay. And then, any tips on what you prioritize there? You talked about showing unboxing, or showing what the post purchase is like, or showing how you use it. Any tips or I ideas to kind of guide the building of that?
Josh:
That's a really good question, and it's a difficult one to answer because it comes from a lot of testing and a lot of data. That information can only be applied to your brand specifically. The starting point for that conversation, I would strongly recommend looking at reallygoodemails.com as a source of inspiration.
Brett:
Reallygoodemails.com?
Josh:
Reallygoodemails.com.
Brett:
Just a collection of great emails?
Josh:
Collection of amazing emails run by great buddy of mine, Matt. And they curate the best emails that they've seen in the marketplace based on categories, industries.
Brett:
Nice. I had no idea this existed. This is great.
Josh:
Exactly. Amazing, right? Amazing stuff. And you can look at what some of the biggest, most successful brands are doing. Because you have probably already invested quite a bit of time, resources, and data into split testing what works for your welcome email, and start from the categories that fit your industry the best and take inspiration from the structure of those emails, and create an email that fits your brand's personality. That's one way of looking at it. The framework and the structure, I would look at competing brands. The copy is where it's really unique to your brand, and you got to align that to what's happening on your website, your ad copy, and all that stuff. You don't want any dissonance between different channels and how you speak to consumers.
Josh:
The last piece of the graphics... Now, I would strongly recommend that if you're just starting out, just keep it simple, as simple as possible. Tools like Klayvio make it super easy for you to create an email with just drag and drop, no code, no HTML. So keep it simple. Make sure that you're keeping the structure easy to edit in the future, because you want to be creating multiple variations of that email, ultimately along the way. So that's... Yeah. What else? That's basically it.
Brett:
Yeah. No, it's super helpful. Let's go on to the cart recovery process. So for that cart recovery flow, what are some tips... what are some strategies to keep in mind there?
Josh:
All right, cart recovery, here's what people often get wrong. Cart recovery is, as most brands would understand, it's one of the highest revenue generating, highest ROI, email series that you can have in any email system. And that's true for most brands. So why aren't we optimizing this series even further? We end up seeing... when we do a lot of audits, we audit... I think hundreds of brands every single year, and one of the most common mistakes that we find is that the cart abandonment series has been in place since the beginning of the email program's inception. Nothing has been changed, no split tests, no optimization, which severely limits the growth potential of the brand, because that's where most of the conversions can potentially happen.
Josh:
Some of the benchmarks that you want to be looking at, cart recovery flow should be converting about 20% of all of your email subscribers coming through that flow. So if you're having 1000 cart abandonment emails sent out, you should be converting up to 200 of those people into customers. That's a lot. 20%. If you're using a typical plug-in cart recovery app plugin, you're probably going to be converting at maybe 7%, 8% to 10%. But if you customize your experience, make it unique to your brand and you can draw inspiration from other brands and what they're doing. You'll find that your conversion rate goes significantly higher up.
Josh:
A tactic that I can share here is to split test email number one with just a pure text email. We've been doing this for a long time. We have a really nicely designed HTML based email, versus a text-based, just pure text, no images, just one link back to the cart. And we kind of compare the results based on these very, very different looking emails with the same subject line, everything else remains same.
Josh:
We often find that the text-based email performs a little bit better, and this may change in the future. I attribute that success to the way that the algorithm is set up with Gmail specifically, where Gmail is by far the market leader in email. Gmail looks at text-based emails and they tend to categorize those as conversations, and conversations are not marketing emails. So because of that, it's typically prioritized in the key inboxes that matter the most, the primary tab, the updates, the things that people actually check out for. So you see your open rates go up, engagement go up and click rates go up significantly more. Obviously, this is not something I can do for every single email that you send. It's something to be used sparingly and in a way that makes sense for your customers.
Brett:
Yeah. Very cool. And then what about that final post-purchase flow? What are some tips or strategies you'd recommend there?
Josh:
All right, a couple of things. On a high level, post-purchase is where you're building the relationships that matter most to your brand. This is where your customers have... these are your customers, people who have converted, they have trusted you, they gave you their credit card information. They've made that leap. Now you got to ride that wave, continue on that excitement. Post-purchase is typically the moment where people have the highest sense of excitement, attention and anticipation. So think of different ways to build on that emotion, whether it be showing your personality a little bit more. A really good at example is CD Baby's post-purchase email. If you're not familiar with what that is, definitely go Google that.
Brett:
You said CD Baby?
Josh:
Yep. CD Baby, run by... started by this man called Derek Sivers, and he wrote a book about it and it's incredible. He turned a typical transactional post-purchase confirmation, order confirmation email, into something that's unique to their brand. Fascinating. It created a lot of loyal customers for them, and it's something that really changes the way that consumers relate to you as a brand of their choice. So personality, think about how you're building anticipation and excitement.
Josh:
On a tactical level, what you can test out is what I recently tweeted, actually, on my Twitter page. Include an upsell within your email. In fact, the first email that goes out, would you like to add A, B, C product? Something that makes sense to their order, into your cart at no shipping cost at all. We'll just tag it on to your existing order. What that does is this essentially creates a second purchase opportunity, where they have to confirm that purchase, click on your link, complete that auto form and all that stuff, which reduces the friction to a third purchase. A second purchase typically happens at maybe 20%, 30% of the time, if you're doing really well. But the third purchase happens at 60% to 70% of the time, so 60% to 70% of your people-
Brett:
Yeah, if someone makes that second purchase, once someone's bought twice, they're very likely to buy a third time.
Josh:
A lot more. Way more. So you're reducing the barrier to the third purchase, so that's what I would test. I would strongly recommend that. It's one of the tests that we're running right now. So, yeah.
Brett:
Very cool. Very cool. We'll talk about a couple of the things that I know are really, really important and pressing issues, given the current state of attribution and privacy and tracking and all that, but post iOS 15, what should we be measuring? Because now we can't see open rates on iOS devices, what should we be measuring? And what workarounds do you have so that you have enough data to optimize what you're doing with email marketing?
Josh:
Look, it's terrible. Brett, it's terrible. Open rates are not a thing anymore. We have to look at metrics that make sense in this current landscape. So that's click rates, that's other forms of engagement. We're using the UTM parameters a lot more. We're looking at how people are acting on the website and extracting that behavior and information onto email. So in a nutshell-
Brett:
Quick question, Josh. Why are you guys using UTM parameters more?
Josh:
That's just... It just comes down to click rates. We won't be able to measure the impact of opens anymore. So as a proxy, we got to look at the secondary metric that happens right after, which is the clicks. And we need to understand where the clicks are coming from, what campaigns are driving those clicks and all that stuff. And we wanted a unified place to visualize all that information and that's Google Analytics. We're still learning and growing in that aspect, but it's been wonderful. And it's so important to have... when we talk about attribution, one of the problems with attribution is that every channel has its own methodology and way of attributing success and conversions. So the only way we can agree and have agreement across all channels is to rely on the single source of truth, and in our case, the easiest, lowest hanging fruit is, well, UTM parameters and using Google.
Josh:
So with iOS 15, one of the biggest shifts that we have seen is that something we've been advocating for a long time. With Klayvio and SMS and all these fun tools, it's all about building a strong relationship with your customers, but what that kind of translates to is information. That's first party information and zero party information. So when we talk about zero party and first party data, zero party data, that's information that your customers are giving you through surveys, or inputting information manually to you and giving you information directly. First party data are things like site behavior, what they have clicked, what they have purchased, what they have seen, how long they've lingered on a certain page, and all that stuff paints a picture of who this consumer is, what they prefer, what they like, what they dislike and what they're going to do next. That gives you the information that you wouldn't otherwise have to create journeys and automations that are uniquely personalized to each consumer.
Josh:
That's where the power of email and SMS is shifting towards and where the most money's going to be made, versus just here's a template, here's the framework for email, slap it on, click send and the end. That's... biggest mistake number two that I see. So we talked a little bit about this before hitting record. We have seen a lot of brands, and I personally come across a lot of brands that have gone from like 30%, 40%, 20% of revenue generated with emails doing really well to 8%, 5% over the course of three months, and it's like a gradual decline. So it's not a sudden reduction in revenue, but a gradual one.
Josh:
So you'd be able to see the warning signs along the way, reduced click rates, reduced conversions, reduced click throughs, people not engaging with your emails anymore, the number of replies, if you're tracking that, that's all going to paint a picture of how well you're doing in your email program. And those are warning signs to keep a lookout for, as you continue monitoring and building your email program. People often set it up one time and forget about it and not optimize the system, and that's where it leads to its gradual decline.
Brett:
Yeah, it makes sense. And so, really now that open rates are kind of not a thing anymore, we're primarily then looking at click through rate, conversion rate, reply rate, those things. There's really no proxies or no workaround to tell what emails are getting open more than others. I guess we can still tell this subject line versus that subject line. If the click through rate is better, we can guess the open rate was probably better too. Any other tips there, or proxies, or workarounds?
Josh:
Start looking at alternative channels, I would say. I mean, even before I was 15, the average open rate that you're going to be seeing on any individual campaign on your email is going to be 20%, 30%, if you're doing really well, if you're segmenting your list really well. That still leaves 70%, 80% of your audience untapped. You got to be looking at alternative channels that can address that 70%, 80% of people that you're not touching with emails and that's SMS, that's mobile apps with TapCart, which we have been diving really deep into.
Josh:
TapCart's an amazing partner. They build mobile apps for Shopify stores that ultimately acts as a dedicated app, that is a standalone sales channel for the business, which is fascinating because then you live on your consumer's mobile phones, you get to send out push notifications for free any time of the day. Obviously, don't overdo it. With SMS, you have a really intimate channel. And we talked a little bit about this as well. With the level one of SMS being a communication channel, the second level being a marketing channel, that relies on the same pool of data and information that email has, and the final level tree evolution of SMS is a conversational tool.
Josh:
And it's moving into a much more intimate space of conversation and relationship building with a brand. It's something that we are really looking into and how that might pan out is going to be really interesting, because we'll be coming into two really key bottlenecks. Number one, to create authentic conversations one on one. It's really expensive because it takes a lot of people and it's really unscalable. Number two, the alternative to have a pure AI play is incredible inefficient and ineffective, because it doesn't understand context. At least-
Brett:
It doesn't lead to good outcomes. That's where the user becomes frustrated. They can tell they're communicating with a bot.
Josh:
Exactly.
Brett:
And they get frustrated. They leave. It leaves a bad taste in their mouth towards your brand.
Josh:
And it just takes one detractor to make the whole thing not worthwhile. And so the current solution and the current optimized solution sits between the two extremes of using AI enablement and support with a human support behind the scenes. So knowing where to include human interactions in that conversation is incredibly important. But having the FAQs, the frequently asked questions, the things that you know can be answered very quickly, like, where's my order? Can I get an update? Stuff like that can be answered by AI, but anything that's more complicated than the frequently asked questions, that's where you got to include a human in it. And ultimately, be authentic, be real. If you're using a bot, say that you're using a bot. People need to know that that's what they're dealing with. Often businesses-
Brett:
"Hi, I'm the CBD Baby bot."
Josh:
Exactly.
Brett:
"And I can help you with these things." And so you're like, all right, now I know I'm communicating with a bot. Now, my expectations are in the right place. And so then they go for it and yeah. Makes sense. Okay, so then how do you... let's just talk SMS and email first, the blending of those two, then we'll touch briefly on TapCart in a minute, and then close out here in a few. So how are you blending the email and SMS? I love the fact that you point out, even though we can lament, we don't have open rates. We knew even in the good old days when we did that, hey, it's only 30%. If you're doing really well with email marketing, only 30% are opening. So 70% of the people on that list, not even opening. So we can connect with them, ideally through SMS. How do those two, how do those blend? So you've got... maybe we go back to some of these flows. Where does SMS fit in alongside email?
Josh:
The number one thing, the number one opportunity here is to use SMS as a reminder tool to your email offers. With a tool at Klayvio, and Klayvio does email and SMS all in one platform, which makes it super were easy. We use Postscript as well, as well Klayvio. When you're thinking about using email SMS, they have to speak to one another. So if this, then that, kind of built out of automations, play a huge part in the success of email and SMS. So using Klayvio, as an example, if someone has clicked on your offer in your welcome email number one, what do you do next? Do you send a followup email, or do you send an SMS followup with that same offer? The easiest way to answer that question is through a split test. You can create two... basically two splits and two flows that happen as... basically, two scenarios. You can then compare the click rates between the two of them and conversion rates that occur based in those two scenarios and make the best decision they can.
Josh:
So that's one way of looking at SMS. Another way of building SMS as a channel that drives revenue is using SMS as an exclusive platform. So what I mean by that is using SMS for offers that are uniquely SMS. So things like pre-sale launch. You're dropping a new product, and it's only available on SMS. So people have to sign up to your SMS list to get notified ASAP. The reason for that is with SMS, you're seeing an open rate of what, 80%, 90% and more. It's really incredibly annoying to have that red little notification on your SMS app unopened.
Brett:
You got to get rid of it.
Josh:
You got to get rid of it. So people are going to look at your messages and super easy to read. It's much shorter. It's much more concise and you're delivering messages at a higher frequency. So for all those reasons, SMS is an incredibly powerful platform to use for launches, like sales launches, product launches. Using SMS as a lead in for that, and then email as a tag along for more information. For example, if I'm launching a new series of backpacks, I know that these segment of consumers are travelers. They're work travelers. They're digital nomads. I'm going to send them a text message that speaks to them, tell them about this new product that's designed specifically for them. And if they don't convert, send an email that outlines the features of the backpack, what to expect, photos, images, gifs, and all that fun stuff within that email, and then follow that up with another SMS with the offer. So building that out as an experience is way more powerful than just relying on email, email, email alone, where you're only tackling like 20%, 30% of people all the time.
Brett:
Got it. Yeah. Makes sense. So testing layering in SMS with email, love it. I know when I get a marketing text message, I read 100% of them. Doesn't mean I like them. Doesn't mean that I want to get them all the time. Doesn't mean that I don't opt out, because sometimes I do, but I open them for sure. So speak about that a little bit. How do we keep people engaged and enjoying our SMS messages, versus being annoyed and potentially opting out of SMS for us?
Josh:
I love that. That's such a good question. When we build SMS as a program, we often think about what is the identity and the brand's personality. We typically have a persona for the brand and we often give that persona a name. Say Kate, Kate from CD Baby. How does Kate from CD Baby text her friends? That's the question that we ask and we extrapolate that into our marketing messages, using the tone of voice. And one of the biggest things is that people often get caught up with grammar and punctuations and all that, all the minute details in text. But you realize that text, in text, when you're texting a friend that often goes out the window.
Brett:
Totally.
Josh:
You're trying to sound human, not like a textbook. That's the biggest thing that people often not realize with text, especially in the marketing space. You want to be able to relate to consumers, not bombard them with messages and information. So when you think about that from a conversational perspective, it becomes super easy, because we all text. We all text our friends and you know exactly what it feels like to receive a good text in a marketing message.
Brett:
Yeah. Yeah. Speak the way your customer wants to hear, speak like they're talking to a friend. And then I'm guessing there's also some frequency considerations there too, right? We're going to want to text less frequently than we email?
Josh:
Yes. 100%. It's a matter of testing, but in general, we look at maybe one to two texts, SMSs per week. In some cases we text a lot more, especially during product launches or sales launches, especially when the consumer has explicitly opted in for more messages. So that's how we think about it. But it really depends on how-
Brett:
So one to two texts per week? How many emails per week are you typically sending?
Josh:
We're looking at-
Brett:
And I'm sure it varies.
Josh:
Yeah. It really varies. And it really depends on how much content you have to offer. It's not about, hey, we got a discount on this product, 20% off, 10% off all the time. It's really boring and you'll see engagement go down really quickly. But we're looking at anywhere between two emails per week on a low end, sometimes one, if the list is really small, to as high as five emails a week, or even daily emails, if it really applies to the brand. It depends on what the context is. If you have just one product that you're selling, that's killing it, or two products. There's only so much content that you can send about the product, so you got to start looking at other forms of information and content. What problems are your consumers trying to solve and how can you provide value around that problem, is how we think about creating content.
Brett:
Yeah, totally makes sense. Super cool. Okay, so we just have a few minutes left, but I definitely want to hear about TapCart. So push notifications and mobile apps for Shopify stores. So explain to those that are not familiar with what TapCart is, what is it, and then why are you so stoked about it?
Josh:
Absolutely. TapCart.com is a site, it's currently for Shopify only. They've been talking about mobile e-commerce, mobile commerce for a long time now. And what exactly does that mean? When we think about an experience that's purely on mobile, we often think about the mobile version of a website, and that's often limiting because it's still a browser. It's not native to a mobile phone. It's not as fast. It still relies on the load speed of a website, the connectivity of the site and all that stuff. But when you have a mobile app that's built for your brand, you own the entire interaction and the experience that people have on your website. And that allows you to create opportunities of communication that you 100% own.
Josh:
Push notifications are channels that are 100% in your hands, that you own that is not relying upon Google, corporations or platforms. There are no platform risks except for maybe TapCart, but still you own the app. So that's what I'm interested in. One of the key problems that we are facing right now with TapCart is that downloading an application is a high commitment activity.
Brett:
It is.
Josh:
It's often really difficult to get people to download an app. So what they're building up next-
Brett:
Because I've heard we all use like seven or so apps on a very frequent basis.
Josh:
Exactly. '.
Brett:
And beyond that, it's hard to get any real frequent adoption of your app.
Josh:
So adoption and app downloads, app installs is incredibly difficult, especially if I was 14, app install, ads are going to be even more difficult now. So the shift that we're seeing right now is creating an experience first for a consumer through email, SMS, and then lead in with TapCart for an elevated experience for the next level of your top 10% of your customers. That's how I think about it right now, but what's coming up next with TapCart is app clips, which allows for the app experience to be delivered via a QR code and iMessage, a text, or anything, without having to download the application itself.
Josh:
So you get to go to the site, experience the app, go through the checkout process, even make a purchase without even downloading the app. And then if you choose to, you like what you have experienced, with a tap of a button, you get to download the app for free. So that's bridging the gap. Then you got to think about all right, now that we have a really good tactic tool to make that happen, what's the reason for people to come on to the app in the first place? I get to go on the site. I get to use my mobile phone. The mobile sites working. Takes little bit longer-
Brett:
Yeah, Shopify does fine on mobile. Check out on Shopify, it's fine on mobile. So why... yeah.
Josh:
Yeah, it's totally okay. Yeah, what's the point, right? Then you got to create opportunities through your brand to have people come to your app. Some of the really interesting ways and strategies that we've seen, private launches through your mobile app only. A lot of businesses are reliant on drops, especially in the fashion space. New drops, new releases. What if you released a collection of products that's only available on your app for the first 24 to 72 hours? And people-
Brett:
It's the true VIP experience.
Josh:
Exactly.
Brett:
That's where the most loyal customer hangs.
Josh:
Correct.
Brett:
Or may likely use your app.
Josh:
The top 10%, 20% of your customers. And you're then opening it up, that option up to everybody who's interested. And you're expanding that VIP segment a little bit further and creating an experience that's really, really mobile first and super intuitive to your consumers.
Brett:
Really cool. Well... So just really quickly, because we're about out of time here, but once you have TapCart, once you have that mobile app, now you can send messages to those app users whenever through push notifications. That opens up a whole new world of notifications. Any additional insights there?
Josh:
Exactly. And it's instant. It's instant delivery, even SMS gets throttled a little bit over... you go sending batches sometimes with email. It takes a bit of time. With push notifications, it's instant. It's super quick. It's multimedia as well. I got a ton of push notifications right now on my phone from Skype, Google and all that stuff. There is no way to miss it. One of the pitfalls that we've seen with push notifications is that it can get annoying very quickly if your messages are repetitive. So think about the experience from a consumer's point of view and whether that really adds value to their lives or not. Is it important that they know that there is a 10% discount off this specific product on your site right now? Probably not. But is it important that they know that the product that they've added to their wishlist has just come back to stock? That's important.
Brett:
They'd be eager to see that. They want that notice. They don't want you spamming them with coupons all the time.
Josh:
Exactly. So that's how we think about TapCart and push notifications.
Brett:
Cool. I love it. I love, it. Well, more we can unpack there I'm sure. Sadly, we're up against time. So Josh, what resources do you have and how can people get in touch with you if they think, "Man, I'd love to talk to Josh and his team about my email marketing and SMS marketing?" Or going with something like TapCart and a mobile app. How can they get in touch with you and what resources do you have?
Josh:
Absolutely. The best way to get in touch with my team is Chronos.agency. That's At C-H-R-O-N-O-S.agency. You can connect with me on social. I'm getting pretty active on Twitter as well. It's @JoshuaChronos.
Brett:
...
Josh:
That's right. It's @Joshua C-H-R-O-N-O-S. And resources, we have a ton of ebooks, case studies and guides available on our resources page. We recently put together an amazing massive industry report. We call it the Futureproof: Your E-Commerce Business in 2022 Report. We've gotten a bunch of partners that we work with very closely from Klayvio, Postscript, TapCart, and all these fun people with a lot of information in there. I will... I guess I'll send you the link to add in your show notes or something along those lines?
Brett:
Yeah. Yeah, send me the link. We'll drop in the show notes. We'll also link your Twitter account, but check out the site, get some free resources. Any final words, any final bits of advice, any final asks for the audience, Josh?
Josh:
Yeah. If you haven't set up email, SMS and TapCart yet, now is definitely a time. If you're hesitant and if you're confused, feel free to schedule time with my team. We'll be happy to run you through what your options are and all the best. Crush it out there in 2022 and beyond.
Brett:
Love it. Josh, thanks so much, man.
Josh:
Brett, thank you.
Brett:
You brought the fire and super, super good. Amazing. So thank you, Josh. And thank you for tuning in, as always couldn't do this without you. It would be pointless to do the show without you, our loyal and faithful listeners. And so we'd love to hear from you. If you have not done it yet, leave that review on iTunes. That helps other people discover the show, makes my day as well. And also, we'd love to hear what topics would you like us to cover this year? Any feedback on things you'd like to hear or things you're sick of hearing. And so with that until next time, thank you for listening.
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