The Power of Personalized Email Marketing with Marc Newberry and Jasmin Bollman

Running a successful marketing campaign doesn't require a massive team or unlimited resources. Sometimes, it just takes a small, dedicated group that knows how to connect with people on a personal level.

That's exactly what Marc Newberry and Jasmin Bollman have accomplished at Genumark, Canada's leader in custom-branded merchandise and apparel. With a marketing team of just four people, they've mastered the art of personalized communication while expanding into the US market.

"Having those emails coming from the account managers rather than the info@Genumark email is definitely the best half an hour I spend in my marketing week or month," Marc explains, highlighting a simple yet effective strategy that dramatically improves their engagement rates. By personalizing each email to come from the client's specific account manager, they achieve better open rates and direct client-representative communication.

On this episode of Be a Marketer, Marc and Jasmin join host Dave Charest to reveal how their small marketing team achieves big results through authentic communication. They discuss their recent rebranding process, how they maintain a consistent brand voice, and why personalization is crucial for cutting through inbox clutter.

Tune in to discover their 30-minute email marketing hack, how they organize their marketing calendar around a monthly newsletter, and practical tips for humanizing your business communications to build stronger customer relationships.

Additional Resources:

• Create a New Email Contact
• Understanding Contact Segmentation
• Create a Sign-up Landing Page
• Create More Personalized Emails

Meet Today’s Guests: Marc Newberry and Jasmin Bollman of Genumark 

Marc Newberry

🎨 Who he is: Marc is the Creative Director at Genumark, Canada's leader in custom-branded merchandise and apparel. He's been with this family-owned business for 14 years, starting as an account manager before moving into creative roles. Marc helps lead their small four-person marketing team, creating content for their expansion into the US market and supporting their certified B Corporation status.

💡 Key quote: "It's definitely consistency in timing, content and visuals is definitely key to kind of making the email marketing work as well as it can. I think that's something that we've got better at recently and it's definitely the biggest piece of advice I would give to others."

👋 Where to find Marc: LinkedIn

Jasmin Bollman

🎨 Who she is: Jasmin is the Marketing Manager at Genumark. She joined the company as a freelancer after working in the tech industry and running her marketing consultancy. Attracted by Genumark's creative environment, she transitioned to a full-time role about a year ago. Jasmin handles all the written content for the company, from email campaigns to social media copy.

💡 Key quote: "I've always been a big proponent of — the way you talk online should be the way that you talk to somebody face to face, just like you're speaking with a friend. Because authenticity is what's going to make people connect with you."

👋 Where to find Jasmin: LinkedIn

👋 Where to find Genumark: Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook

If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/bam and follow the simple instructions.

What is Be a Marketer with Dave Charest?

As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the Be a Marketer podcast! New episodes every Thursday!

Dave Charest: 00:01

On today's episode, you'll hear from a small marketing team that knows how to get things done. This is the Be A Marketer podcast.

Dave Charest: 00:20

My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact, and I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business, even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer. And at Constant Contact, we're here to help.

Dave Charest: 00:52

Well, hello, friend. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast, and calm down. I know you're excited because, yes, Kelsey Carter's here. Hi, Kelsi Carter.

Kelsi Carter: 01:01

Hi, Dave Charest.

Kelsi Carter: 01:03

How are you?

Dave Charest: 01:03

I'm doing fantastic as always. Great to see you. I don't know if I have much to talk to you about today.

Kelsi Carter: 01:09

Yeah. It's just one of those weeks.

Dave Charest: 01:11

It's one of those days. You know, I'm excited about our conversation today because I think in many ways, the business that we're about to talk to, they're a business that's been around for a while. I'll tell you more about that in a little bit. But someone I think that creates an environment that reminds me a lot of just the environment that we have in Constant Contact as well. It's not as big as our our business, of course, but just in terms of how they look internal to grow talent and those types of things.

Dave Charest: 01:34

We're talking to a couple of people that are within the marketing field. So these are folks that have marketing caps on versus our typical business owner, but folks working for a small business. You wanna tell us a little bit about our guests today?

Kelsi Carter: 01:48

Of course. Yeah. Guests plural. So we have two. So today's guests are Marc Newberry and Jasmine Bollman.

Kelsi Carter: 01:54

Marc is the creative director, and Jasmine is the marketing manager for Genumark, which is Canada's leader in custom branded merch and apparel. They offer end to end solutions, including custom web stores, warehousing, and international fulfillment. And they even have a strong focus on sustainability and ethical sourcing and became a certified b corporation in 2023.

Dave Charest: 02:15

And as I mentioned, this is a family owned business that's been around since 1980. So kudos to them. Clearly, they've been doing something right. And the company is also now expanding into The US. In Chicago, New York, and Kansas City, they now have offices.

Dave Charest: 02:32

And as I mentioned, we were talking to some folks with those marketing hats on. Mark has been around the company for about over fourteen years. Jasmine, newer to the company about a year or so in. And what I love about this conversation is we really got to get a bit into the weeds of how a small marketing team, they've got a mar a team of four total, and how do they actually get things done using Constant Contact. And we talked about things that they've learned through the years just in terms of why you need to humanize your messages, the most impactful thirty minutes that they spend on email marketing, and how they get employees involved in the game of asking people to sign up for their list as well.

Dave Charest: 03:13

So back in January of twenty twenty four, both Mark and Jasmine worked on a rebrand of GenuMark. So let's go to Marc as he tells us more about that project.

Marc Newberry: 03:23

So we rebranded in January. Before that, it was a big long discussion of something that was gonna happen. We've kind of had the same brand for a number of years. We were overdue a refresh for sure. It's often a little bit more complicated when there's a few more cooks in the kitchen.

Marc Newberry: 03:40

Like, we have myself, Jasmine, Mitch, and Mark were the other Mark were involved, Mark Fried. And we just had to make sure everyone was kind of on board with the same idea, which is a little tricky sometimes when there's multiple generations, multiple different personal tastes, and all that kind of stuff. So it's something that we were excited about. It's something that our employees were excited about as well. It's definitely kind of given us a breath of fresh air, and that kind of coincided with us becoming a b corp as well and then expanding into The US.

Marc Newberry: 04:12

So it was kinda like this feeling of of like a a bit of a new age for Genymark, a new and not a new beginning, but a kind of evolution.

Dave Charest: 04:20

Yeah. Well, Jasmine, I'm curious from your side. I mean, was there a change in voice that happened with us as well, or was it just a visual type of feeling?

Jasmin Bollman: 04:28

The change in voice had been slowly happening since I had started as a freelancer. But with this, I was finally able to really put my vision into writing in our new sort of style guidebook and explain a bit more to the company as a whole, sort of, you know, what my reasoning was behind why I wanted us to talk a certain way. I've always been a big proponent of the way that you talk online should be the way that you talk to somebody face to face, you know, like just like you're speaking with a friend because authenticity is what's going to make people connect with you and really gravitate towards you when they're thinking of who they want to do business with. So that process of changing the voice had already sort of been in motion, but it just became more solidified, more real when we did the official rebrand. I was just yeah.

Jasmin Bollman: 05:17

It was great to finally have it down in writing because it was something we were it's funny because I do the writing for a living, but to actually sit down and explain why I'm writing things a certain way was just you know, it always kind of was it on my to do, but just Yeah.

Dave Charest: 05:31

It's one of those things. Right? Fall off.

Jasmine Bollman: 05:33

Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Charest: 05:34

What does the planning process look for you guys when it comes to marketing? Are you I mean, you walk me through it here, but but I gotta assume there's some type of, like, business goals that you're kinda trying to map to. Like, what does that look like for you two and your team?

Marc Newberry: 05:46

We have kind of like a work back schedule, I guess. I guess our month ends with our email blast that we send out, merch makers monthly, And that's kind of a collection of all the work that we've done during that month. So we would kind of do two, three blog posts a month. Usually that's interviewing someone within our industry or a case study of a client or it's some news that we have for the company. So it could be any number of those things.

Marc Newberry: 06:12

Then we have kind of loose rules that we set for up on a social media. So we would like feature stylized lifestyle shots of products that we love, often B Corp suppliers that we love or ones that definitely have a responsible eco story to them. And then we also do stuff like on LinkedIn, whether it's kind of cross posting with Mitch Fried or, like, stuff that he's sharing. And then that kind of all gets gathered up at the end of the month and gets put into our newsletter, which Jasmine said was, like, kind of magazine style, and it kind of outlines all the stuff we've done throughout that month. So the constant contact email that we send out at the end is a collection of of all the things that we've shared during that month, and it's a really nice kind of way to wrap everything up.

Marc Newberry: 07:00

And it kind of keeps it fresh. It keeps it engaging. The content on there is quite varied. So we have a really good interaction with it because there's such a cross section of things on there. So one person might not be interested in the case study that we did because it's not specific to their industry, but they might be interested in the cool new company that we've featured on our Instagram posts that they might not have seen because they're not following us on Instagram.

Marc Newberry: 07:25

So it's a really nice way to wrap everything up and tie everything together. And we kind of always work back from there and have a schedule of of what we're gonna accomplish for the month.

Dave Charest: 07:35

One of the interesting things that you're doing, I'd love you to talk through, like, your thinking and the strategy behind this, but I think what you're doing in terms of just sending that newsletter from a person at the company, I guess, like, I love that, and it it's a different way to kinda think about segmentation. Right? But talk me through that. Like, what was the strategy behind that, and how is that working for you?

Marc Newberry: 07:53

It's kind of what I've always done since I've been using email software to help send out emails. It's basically because we have such a load of account managers. We have, I think it's like 40 or 50 account managers nationwide, now in The States as well. And like Jasmine was saying, if you're just receiving kind of info at emails or just ones that aren't coming from the person you know at that company, then they get lost in the in the pile. No one opens them.

Marc Newberry: 08:22

No one really cares. I know that I get tons of emails every day that I don't even open just because they're they're generic. They're sent out to everybody. So I've always found that making sure that I send out emails that are coming from the specific account manager always gets a better interaction with the people that are opening them. Not only that, but then once they respond to that email, they can also reply to that person.

Marc Newberry: 08:47

And then that kind of takes us out of the equation, and then they're dealing directly with the account manager, which is who they need to get to at the end of the day anyway. Okay. That just saves everyone a bunch of time having to be like, oh, your client reached out to us. You should follow-up with them. Whereas now, they just do that directly with their contact.

Marc Newberry: 09:03

It just makes it more personal. And we're a company that likes to think that we're approachable. We're always available. We're kind of on name terms with our clients. They know us.

Marc Newberry: 09:13

So why wouldn't they get a get an email from James Wilson at Winnipeg when that's their account manager?

Dave Charest: 09:20

So what does the process to do this look like for you then? Like, who's actually sending the emails? Is it one of you two, or is it somebody else? Or

Marc Newberry: 09:27

Jasmine and I would work on it. Jasmine writes the copy. I would kinda set up the visual, and then I would kinda schedule them.

Dave Charest: 09:32

Gotcha. So from a scheduling perspective, walk me through how you're doing it to make sure that they're coming from right.

Marc Newberry: 09:38

Yeah. Right. Well, basically, we make sure we have all the account managers down as a verified email. The genymart.com domain's verified, so then we just have to make sure that they they make sure that they've verified the email from Constant Contact to give me the permission to send an email on their behalf. Then what happens is I have email contact lists set up for each account manager.

Marc Newberry: 09:58

On our website, we also have a directory where you have sign up to my email list, and that would sign that client up to their specific email list. So I have an email list set up for each account manager that enables them to have their clients on it only. So then once that's all set up in place, when I actually schedule an email, once I've set up the merch makers monthly, how it looks, feels, Jasmine's written the copy. The first one's always Aaron Greenberg because he's AA. Then in the from field, put Aaron Greenberg, JanuMark.

Marc Newberry: 10:33

I'd make sure the to and the from email addresses are Aaron. And then I would go through that process, select the list that is relevant to Aaron's clients. So I'd check that off, then I would schedule it. Once that's scheduled, I would just copy that email and just go down the list. It takes a bit of time.

Marc Newberry: 10:51

Usually, it's about half an hour, and I've done them all. But it's half an hour well spent because we're getting way better feedback, interaction, click through rates, open rates, and then also the client is also emailing them directly when they have any questions. So then the time saved from us having to

Jasmin Bollman: 11:11

Be the middleman.

Marc Newberry: 11:12

Yeah. Having to be the middleman with all those extra requests is I'm sure if you add it up, it's more than half an hour it takes me to send out those emails to begin with. Definitely.

Dave Charest: 11:21

Yeah. No. I I love that approach. I think that's really great. So are there any other things that you're doing just in terms of creating lists, or are you using tags within Constant Contact?

Dave Charest: 11:32

Like, what does that look like for you?

Marc Newberry: 11:34

We do tag sometimes. We do a bunch of events. We have one coming up in September. We have the PPPC National Convention, which is the biggest promotional products convention in Canada. So we invite a bunch of clients to that.

Marc Newberry: 11:49

We do that through Constant Contact. We create an event, and then we sign up people through that platform. So I would tag those people that sign up with NatCon24, just so I know that they were signed up via that specific avenue. So I do that periodically. At these events, we often do kind of like prize giveaways or we try and encourage people to sign up to our email that aren't already.

Marc Newberry: 12:16

So I set up forms where they can fill out forms, they can register themselves, they can select what account manager they have, so it auto signs them up to that email list. I forget the platform it is. It's like an app that's associated with Constant Contact where you could it all kind of links up. You don't have to be online, which is really handy. And then what you do is you take the app and you get online and it kinda syncs everything together.

Marc Newberry: 12:38

I forget what the app's called, though. But we use that, and that kind of tags things with these people signed up through this avenue. So it's kinda handy to know how people are people are getting onto our email newsletters. Other than that, I don't know if I use tags in in any other ways.

Dave Charest: 12:54

Got it. Got it. Jasmine, for you, what does your workflow look like in just in terms of, like, what you're creating? Like, are you writing someplace else? And then, I guess, who's moving that into Constant Contact?

Dave Charest: 13:05

Like, what does all that look like?

Jasmin Bollman: 13:06

Yeah. So the way that it usually works is that I'll I'll write something just in a a Microsoft Word document. It's just the easiest for my brain to process. And, thankfully, Marc understands what I mean when I highlight something and say image here. You know?

Jasmin Bollman: 13:22

So, generally, yeah, I'll just write something in in Word. I'll go through everything we did that month and pick out the things that I think would be the most interesting to the audience. And then I'll kinda write, like, the main draft. And then as Mark is inputting things into Constant Contact with the imagery and the design, we'll sort of discuss like, hey. Do we think that this part should be removed for our US audience because it's not very relevant?

Jasmin Bollman: 13:51

Or should we change, you know, this word to, you know, not having to use that kind of stuff? So it's there's like a main document that he works from, and then there's a collaborative process to sort of refine it as we're adding it into Constant Contact and make sure that everything is gonna be relevant to the people that are receiving it.

Dave Charest: 14:10

Well, I'm curious from from both of you, I guess, like, when you start thinking about the work that you have to do and in terms of what you're doing from the marketing activities and things like that, like, how are you getting that stuff done? Do you have different approaches? I mean, I'm sure you have different ways you do things, but, like, are you putting time in your calendar? Like, what does that look like to actually get those things that you need to get done done?

Jasmin Bollman: 14:30

We all work from home most of the time. And so a lot of it is just making sure we're being very open and honest with each other about, you know, what we have going on today and just trying to keep each other accountable. I feel like we're really good at that and about just checking in and saying, hey. Do you need help with something? But also we use the Basecamp software.

Jasmin Bollman: 14:53

We have our our list of our, you know, our weekly tasks that we need to get done, you know, post on Instagram, that kind of thing, and and we can check it off. I find that very satisfying when I can check off a task. But then we also have our bigger picture stuff in there too. So it'll be maybe in quarter three, we wanna make sure that we're launching a sustainability guide. And so what's all the stuff we need to do to be able to launch there?

Jasmin Bollman: 15:17

We'll break it down into different tasks and assign them to each other. And then just well, yeah, it's it's really about just communication, especially when you're not working in the same location. And I think we're really good at communicating, which is a part of the reason why even though we're a small team, we get so much done. And I'm sure that maybe to people on the outside, they think that our team is a lot bigger just because of the output that we do, but it's because we're so we are very organized, and we are very good at keeping each other on track.

Dave Charest: 15:47

Yeah. I'm curious. You know, Mark, you mentioned some of the the things that you're doing just in terms of, like, you have, like, the landing pages set up for people to join the list. Think I mean, it seems like you've done a a great job growing the list. I think you're upwards of, you know, 14,000 contacts or whatever.

Dave Charest: 16:02

Are there any particular strategies that you're implementing to get people on that list? Like, I guess, what are the ways people are getting in? Like, are account managers, like, saying, like, hey. Sign up for this list. Like, what does that look like?

Marc Newberry: 16:12

We encourage our account managers to ask their clients too. And then, obviously, due to the anti spamming laws, it's like the cooler than ever to get people to sign up because they have to, like, double opt in and all that kind of stuff. So it's tricky. In our email signatures, we have banners that advertise our our flipbooks. But then also we have periodically, have, like, kind of sign up to our newsletter links that are down there as well as we encourage people to sign up through those.

Marc Newberry: 16:40

There's the buttons on our on our website under everyone's profile that we have. And then the there's the kind of push for sign ups at events and things like that as well. So there's like a number of there's a number of different ways we can go about it. What we're going to start doing is we're going to try and like get more people to sign up just by getting them to opt in. We have, like, our software that we use for, like, kind of project management that not necessarily my team uses, but like everybody else.

Marc Newberry: 17:07

So we do have, like, tons of emails that are not on these lists. So I think we need to kind of ask those people to join up because we're not reaching our full our full audience. But with the kind of double opt in thing, it's it's difficult to make that happen. When those laws came into place, we basically asked everyone to opt in again, and our list shrank. Now we're kind of gradually growing it back up again, but it's a constant battle to do that.

Dave Charest: 17:32

I'm curious maybe from both of your point of views, but what would it be like trying to do what you do without Constant Contact? Jasmine, maybe I'll go to you first.

Jasmin Bollman: 17:41

I'm a big believer in in email. I think that people have been saying email marketing is dead for decades, but I I really don't think it's true. I think it's always gonna be the best way to reach people, but you have to make sure you're doing it smartly. Mark was saying, I mean, it's it's all about personalization. You want people to feel like this email is actually for them.

Jasmin Bollman: 18:04

It's not just some generic thing. But I really feel like email is something that people need to focus on more. Don't believe when people say that it's dying. It's really not. I mean, it's the best way to reach people.

Jasmin Bollman: 18:18

I find that more and more people are kind of opting out of social media. Or I mean, maybe not completely logging off, but they're not checking it as much. And the way that the algorithm works, I mean, you never know if your post is gonna get shown to someone. Maybe it will, but it might not be timely. I mean, you might see it seven days later and perhaps it was an event and people are like, oh, I would've went, but I didn't see it.

Jasmin Bollman: 18:39

But if you can send an email, I mean, that's gonna hit their inbox. They're gonna see that, and they're gonna engage with it if it's personalized to them. So I'd say constant contact is it's invaluable. It's gonna help us to reach people that, you know, aren't checking Instagram or LinkedIn or yeah.

Marc Newberry: 18:55

I think the fact that constant contact kind of encompasses events and it, like, does our email marketing and that's kind of like all in one place really helps me personally. It like saves time. I don't have to kind of like worry about having two programmes that I have to kind of coordinate things with. It's just all in one place.

Marc Newberry: 19:13

That really helps, like having all those things in one spot. Doing stuff without Constant Contact would be difficult. If we had no email software at all to do this with, it would be difficult to reach our clients. We know that the people that have signed up for those lists want to be on our lists. So even though our our numbers might not be as high as before the anti spamming law days, we know that every one of those people actually want to receive emails from us and not only want to receive emails from us, but want to receive emails from their specific rep.

Marc Newberry: 19:46

So it's priceless because our reps can focus on their jobs. They can focus on learning about new products, learning about kind of the new the latest decoration technique, and then we can focus on targeting their products with all the all the news and the info and the stuff that we've posted about throughout that month. So it's definitely a an amazing tool that that aids us in keeping constant contact with our

Dave Charest: 20:15

It's always a great moment when that comes up because it you're not the first person to do that. And it's like,

Jasmine Bollman: 20:20

oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. There it is. Yeah.

Marc Newberry: 20:23

It's a good name,

Dave Charest: 20:23

I guess. Yeah.

Jasmine Bollman: 20:24

Oh, yeah. It is. Oh, yeah. It is.

Dave Charest: 20:26

So I'm curious. What would be your just best piece of advice for, like, other marketing managers?

Jasmin Bollman: 20:31

So authenticity is the biggest thing. It's everything, really. I mean, because if I'm on Instagram and I see a brand jumping on a meme or using a sound that everyone else is using, but it doesn't really make sense with their brand, and then it just kind of loses all it loses the effect that they were intending, and they end up just kind of blending into the crowd. But what you wanna do is stand out, and the only way you can do that is by being authentic and by talking like yourselves. So I would say don't worry about necessarily what everyone else is doing.

Jasmin Bollman: 21:06

Don't worry about hopping on the latest trend if it doesn't make sense for your brand. The biggest thing you can do is be you, and people will connect with that, and they'll remember you because of it. So when they do like, maybe they don't need to buy your product right at that moment, but in a week, a month, a year, they'll be like, oh, I remember that brand. I really liked that post they did or and that's how you get people to connect with you is being you.

Dave Charest: 21:33

Mark, would you have a Constant Contact specific tip?

Marc Newberry: 21:36

I think what we've done in the past is we haven't been that consistent. We haven't really had a plan. And now that we've kind of got into this rhythm of consistently putting out content every month, We have like a specific theme. We have like sections that we hit. The clients are kind of expecting that content now.

Marc Newberry: 21:59

It's definitely consistency in timing, content and visuals is definitely key to kind of making the email marketing work as well as it can. I think that's something that we've got better at recently, and it's definitely the biggest piece of advice I would give to others is just doing those those three things, consistency and timing, content and visuals. And then once you've done that, if you've got that extra time to send out emails from those specific people that I was asking for, I think that's the most priceless thing that we do. Having those emails coming from the account managers rather than the info at GenuMark email is definitely the best half an hour I spend in my marketing week or month.

Dave Charest: 22:44

Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number one, humanize your communications. Both Jasmine and Mark emphasized that storytelling is central to their brand and their client marketing. They aim to use authentic language that mirrors how people talk in real life. They want the brand voice to feel approachable and friendly.

Dave Charest: 23:06

This authenticity in brand voice strengthens those customer relationships and makes their marketing efforts more relatable and engaging. Number two, calendar your work. Despite their small team, Mark and Jasmine produce a high volume of quality content by staying organized. Their marketing plan works backwards from their monthly newsletter, allowing them to get things done on time. They also ensure consistency with their social media posts, blog content, and other email campaigns.

Dave Charest: 23:40

The lesson here, even a small marketing team of one can achieve big impact by maintaining a structured marketing calendar. Number three, personalize your emails. Instead of sending emails from a generic info at email address, GenuMark personalizes each email to appear as if it's coming from the recipient's assigned account manager. This segmented, personalized approach increases open rates, click through rates, and direct client engagement. So look for ways to use email personalization so you can build trust and improve engagement, making recipients more likely to read and respond.

Dave Charest: 24:22

Here's your action item for today. Personalize your email marketing like GenuMark. If you're sending email campaigns, send your from email address from a generic company email to a real person's name. Then you can see what impact this has on your open rates and engagement. Just make sure it's a from name the recipient will recognize.

Dave Charest: 24:43

More details on adding account email addresses in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to ratethispodcast.com/bam. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show.

Dave Charest: 25:06

That's ratethispodcast.com/bam. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.