Episode Transcript
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Every episode, we break down a new.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: And different tactic that can help you improve your ecommerce KPIs key performance indicators I'm your host, Andrew Figgins, and like most of you, I am an ecommerce professional. You may know me as the founder of AOV Lab, the former vp of product innovation at Scrubs and beyond, or as the former director of e commerce technology at Royal King, or just from LinkedIn today I'm excited to be talking to Jason Reese, an ecommerce colleague that has held a variety of interesting roles in e commerce, including directing global ecommerce for at cross company purveyors of cross pens. Jason, what did you come on the show to share today with your ecommerce colleagues?
[00:01:03] Speaker C: I'm Jason Reese, director of global ecommerce at Cross Company, a 175 year old luxury company brand. I also have a decade of experience in the field of web development and Internet marketing. I'm excited today to talk about automation of marketing and replacing or going beyond the spray and pray approach to email marketing.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Jason, it's a pleasure to have you on ten minute ecom today. After the ad, we'll get right into the chat.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Today's episode of ten minute ecom is brought to you by thrive ecommerce. If you are struggling to get your onsite promotions seen and engaged with, ecommerce is a goto tool that can help. I am actually a repeat customer of Thrive, most recently with Chefware.com, and I can't say enough about how impactful their tools are at driving increased conversion and revenue. If you'd like to set up a discovery call with thrive, head over to AoV lablab.com and tap on Vendor network to set up your 30 minutes discovery call and to see what all the fuss is about.
And now back to the show.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: Jason, we were chatting just before we started recording about that kind of spray and pray approach. I'm just always surprised it still is happening today where a lot of e commerce sprints are spraying and praying. Tell me a little bit about what that approach is and how you've seen the ability to do something different and better.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: Well, what I mean by the spray and pray approach is when a typical marketing company, Ecom marketing team will come up with 25% off promotion for their ecommerce brand as an example. And so they will create fancy email list, they might create a fancy landing page for it and they'll blast that email out to their email list. And then essentially they're praying that the product that's being featured in the hero image in the email will resonate with the customers that they're emailing. They'll pray that the 25% off is enticing enough to get the conversion, to get the click, and the subject line is enticing enough to even get the open. And that's the spray and pray approach to marketing.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: We both know that there's a better way to do things than just to. It's crazy because it does work and that's why a lot of people do it. It works in terms of getting those transactions. In many cases, you're not doing something that is unique to the customer. It's not a very personalized approach and it sounds through your work for the cross pen company you've had a chance to do something different.
[00:03:36] Speaker C: I just wanted to throw out some very brief statistics just because I'm all about numbers and analysis of what's going on in the world and marketing and HubSpot actually released a white paper back, it was past September 2023 that stated that personalized calls to action actually result in a 202% better conversion than an email that uses a standard or sort of an evergreen call to action, a non personalized call to action. There is also a really cool white paper done by campaign monitor and neither of these platforms do I use or I'm not necessarily advertising or they keep up their white papers that they produce. Actually produced a white paper stating that marketers are seeing a 760% increase in email and sms revenue when those methods are used utilizing a personalized strategy. And so what I mean by using a personalized approach really is going up and beyond just the spray and pray. So as an example, most people, when they set up their email platform, what they would do is they would set up a welcome series, essentially, and then they will set up usually a post purchase email that will usually be focused on just getting a review. So usually x number of days after a sale, you'll send out this cold email that says, hey, thank you again for your purchase. We would love to hear how your experience was rate us on a star scale of one to five or one to three or something along those lines. Not necessarily saying that those two email flows are bad, but there's so much more that you can do to increase your revenue and your sales.
Really, those things shouldn't become the main focus of your email program, of your automated email program. They should really just be one of the staples. Instead, what you should really be focusing on is the trigger campaign that are hyper personalized based on what a person's actions or lack of actions are. Doing on the website.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: That's interesting. So having some things that you're waiting to see happen or not happen, essentially. And I know for the reviews flow like you're saying, I think there's a standard. I think for me in the past, it's been either seven days or 14 days. That is wait. I think the assumption, of course, is that by that time the customer will have received their goods. They've had a chance to use them, so they have a shot at doing a review. But what you're saying, Jason, if I'm hearing it, is it's not good enough just to send that blanket email to every single customer that purchases. That's well and good, but we really need to be looking at other activity. What are some of those other activities that you look at in order to make hyper personalized campaigns come to life?
[00:06:32] Speaker C: So, for example, at it's across, one of the things that we do is we sell pens. So those pens obviously use ink. And depending upon how much you use those pens, at some point in time, it's inevitable you're going to need an ink resale for your pen. Again, usually it depends on how much you use the pen, but at some point you're going to need. For us, at the 90 day mark, 90 days after you place an order with us, we actually send you an email. However, it's not a generic email. We actually have a clone of three sort of duplicate flows. So that way we could be hyper personalized by that. What I mean is, for example, if you bought a rollable pen, if your order consists of a rollable pen in the order, at 90 days after, we'll send you an email that says, hey, John, thank you again for buying that rollable pen. We're hoping that you're enjoying it. We noticed that you might want to buy ink because based upon our research or based upon usage, people usually need ink around this time period and it will solicit them to purchase ink. And like I said, we have a clone of that across three different flows. So that way, based upon what they're ordering, they can receive either an email that has imagery and text that speaks about buying a fountain pen, buying a rollable pen, buying a ballpoint pen. That way, not only are we just using their name and saying, hey, we're personalizing email because, look, the word John, the guy's name is John, and we have John in there. No, we're actually using personalized imagery as well as personalized text because we know what they bought and we're seeing a tremendous open rate from that. And obviously, the click through rate is also awesome, because, again, they're seeing that they're getting really personalized information, not just some sort of cold wrote email that doesn't even pertain to them.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: That's great to hear. And it sounds like some of those stats that you read earlier are proving true for at cross, which is great, I'm guessing, with the approach that you've taken. I wanted to ask you, Jason, for a brand like at cross that I guess we can consider it a traditional brand that's been around for nearly 200 years. What are some ways that you're using? It sounds like you're using those emails and that campaign to stay relevant to your customers, but what are some things that you're doing as a brand just to reinforce that, hey, at cross is still around, still here, and that not only that, but it's a relevant brand still this day and age.
[00:09:15] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a great question. And so, for us, one of the things we lean on is that there's two things. One is that we've been around 176 plus years and our pennies are built to last. And we're very proud to be one of the only pen companies in the world that has a lifetime mechanical warranty on our pen. And the word mechanical there is really important to hear, is that if you have your pen, and for most of our pens, they become fairly family. Hence, so they become pens that are passed down.
If there's an issue with those pens, you can reach out to us, and those pens are covered under a warranty. And so that's one of those things that sort of separate us in the marketplace, is that we stand behind our pens regardless of what decade that pen was created or was built, and then also just continuing to tell the story of our pens being family heirlooms. And it's not just a pen that you're buying or inheriting, it's a storyline. You're going to come to us by pen ink for a pen that maybe your grandfather used, and you want to start using it again. And I'm always reminded of it. I plugged it for the show, but it's a story that always stands out in my mind of I spoke to an individual customer many months ago who inherited his grandfather's pen. And he was in college taking some architectural classes and wanted to use his grandfather's pen to do his drawings. And he wasn't sure even what the pen was called. He just knew it was a 14 carat gold pen, didn't know what ink to buy for it. So we were able to help him out and imagine sort of the pride that he's having, that college student in drawing whatever he's drawing using grandfather's precious pen. That's the story that we want to tell, and that's the experience we want our customers to know that they're getting when they purchase out there.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: I think it's amazing. And being a guy who recently was selling medical scrubs, those are not heirloom products. You just don't hear. There are some parents and relatives that go online and purchase those in the holiday season, a set of scrubs for their relative. But it's a very different product that at cross is selling. And I like it because we're talking about personalization here. What's more personalized than an heirloom in your family? I think that's really amazing. So, Jason, this is a show called ten minute ecom. Before we know it, the ten minutes is here and gone. But I wanted to again, thank you for coming on the show today and ask you, is there anything else that you'd like to share with your ecommerce colleagues today?
[00:12:02] Speaker C: The very last thing that I want to challenge my fellow colleagues to do, aside from going beyond the spray and pray email approach, is also to really dip your toe into email. Aside from email, SMS marketing. But for those who are getting into SMS marketing, try to really segregate what you're doing with those channels. What are you going to do that's different with SMS than email? Because you should not be doing the same sort of spray and pray approach that you would do on email. With SMS, you should really figure out for your brand. What's the purpose of getting into SMS?
Awesome.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Thanks so much, Jason. Thanks again for coming on the show today.
[00:12:45] Speaker C: I appreciate it.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: So that's a wrap for today's episode. I want to again thank our guest, Jason Reese. If you have a moment, be sure to subscribe or follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Google Podcasts, or wherever it is that you listen. If you're so inclined, there are a few ways you can help support the show. Number one, leave a written review of the show wherever it is that you listen to it that helps new people find the show.
Secondly, if you're an e commerce professional that would like to join for an upcoming episode, reach out to humans or find Andrew Figgins myself on LinkedIn and let me know.
I hope you're enjoying these first episodes of the show. I know I am. Until next time, this is Andrew Figgins signing off and saying, have a good one.
