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Welcome to “It’s Marketing’s Fault”. If you are a marketer, this phrase is familiar to you. Sometimes deserved, often times not.
Don’t worry, you are among marketers and friends here. Let’s discuss how to do marketing the right way.
As a side note, in episodes 1 through 37, this was Build That Podcast. The goal of this podcast is to help you learn how to use a podcast to grow your business and expand your influence. If you go back and listen to earlier episode (those before November 2023) you will hear that name. Don't worry--it's good content too. :)
Josh Kropkof [0:00 - 0:55]: What else can we do to build a conversation and have a conversation and make it a two way conversation? Not just my brand is kind of just advertising at you all the time. And one of the best things you can do is just ask people to reply, because that's what makes it a two way conversation, is if I ask you to reply, and then we actually have a conversation about the thing, and then I can use that. Whatever you say, when you get replies, I can read them. And when I read a really good, good reply, I can use that as a springboard for more ideas and more content. Maybe I'll even mention in my next email that, hey, Eric from Nashville had a really good point the other day. I sent an email about this topic, and I asked this question, and here's what he said. And then you kind of have that rapport building with your audience that way, which is really cool.
Eric Rutherford [0:55 - 1:21]: Welcome to it's marketing's fall, the podcast where we discuss how to do marketing the right way. I'm your host, Eric Rutherford, and I'm excited today because I have with me Josh Kropkoff. He is co founder and CEO of email agency, who's focused on serving e commerce brands. And Josh is also the host of the email Revolution podcast. Josh, welcome to the show.
Josh Kropkof [1:21 - 1:25]: Thank you for having me, Eric. Excited to be here and great meme for the show, by the way.
Eric Rutherford [1:26 - 1:42]: Thank you. Yeah, it was one of those, I was trying to get an eye catching, very understandable name. And as somebody who has been in the marketing space for years, you, you get the fact that, man, whatever goes wrong, it's marketing's fault.
Josh Kropkof [1:42 - 1:56]: Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. I like to see it more as a solution, but I can definitely see it as, at least from our standpoint, as marketers. I think it's a little easier for us maybe to see it as a part of the problem, too.
Eric Rutherford [1:57 - 2:07]: I think so. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's not that, you know, we definitely have our fair share of responsibility in problems.
Josh Kropkof [2:09 - 2:10]: Yeah.
Eric Rutherford [2:10 - 2:22]: So let me, let me just ask, just kind of first talk about email marketing. What's one popular opinion about email marketing that you disagree with?
Josh Kropkof [2:24 - 3:24]: So that's a good question because maybe I've changed my answer to this over the years because I think that maybe it's a little bit more, things have shifted a little bit. But I think I used to say that the email is dead thing, but I feel like at least my sense of it is not as many people actually say that or believe that these days as much. I think that probably popular opinion that I would disagree with is kind of like the whole, we, you know, we get too many emails. You know, people kind of have this feeling of like, I need to be careful and not send so much email because, you know, people are just inundated with email and so, you know, let's kind of be careful how much email we send. I would say that's probably the one that right now is, I hear that a lot still and I see that a lot even from email marketers. And I think that I would definitely disagree with that.
Eric Rutherford [3:25 - 3:55]: So would you say that, and I love that take on it. Would you say then it's, it's okay to send more frequent emails? Like, is there a, you know, I'm gonna, I know the answer to this, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask it anyway, right. It's, so what's the, is there a magic number or does it just depend on the situation? How do you, cuz because I agree. I hear a lot of that and I wrestle with that. I'd love to hear how do you know what's the right amount?
Josh Kropkof [3:56 - 5:45]: Yeah, I think it comes down to how we think about the channel itself. I think that the problem with that mindset or that sort of idea, it kind of misses the point because, yes, it is a direct marketing channel and it's the most effective direct marketing channel we have. Know, what is it really like? What is it for? And I would, I guess I would, one way I would answer that question is to ask, like, if you were, if you had a YouTube channel, would you say how many videos is too many videos? Right. How, at what point should we be like, that's, I shouldn't put, I shouldn't post that many videos. That's too much. That's too many. Right. And so we don't, you know, we don't really think of it that way. And the other thing that I always compare email to is radio and a radio show. And we can get more into that because that's, people usually are curious about why I would say that. But if you have a radio show that's like, I'm talking like a talk show, like where there's somebody who actually comes in and they talk every day, you know, maybe for me, I listen to sports radio from Philadelphia because I'm originally from the Philly area and I'm a big sports fan and they're known for sort of their sports talk. But anyway, if I listen to that show, it's on five days a week or whatever, I know it's always going to be there. Right. So, you know, if it's, you know, a weekday at 02:00 p.m. i know the afternoon show is going to be there, so I'm going to tune in. We don't tend to think of email this way. Right. So I think it's a, the problem is, is more to do with how we're treating the channel, right? How we're showing up, what we're sending. But it just, like, if you had a YouTube channel and I don't. Do you follow youtubers, Eric? Do you have any, like, you know, channels that you're like a fan of?
Eric Rutherford [5:45 - 6:19]: You know, I primarily use it for, for research purposes. Although me and my son, he and I watch, there's a fun one, Kentucky ballistics, we watch. We always catch one when they come out. There's a couple other shows that on video games that I never can remember the names of. But like, whenever they drop one, he and I will sit down and watch, whether it's call of Duty or Minecraft or whatever it is. Like, we'll, yeah, it just becomes regular viewing and it's like, oh, they didn't drop one this week. What happened?
Josh Kropkof [6:19 - 10:24]: That's funny. That actually happened to me. There's a youtuber I follow that does like, cooking. It's like specifically grilling. And I was like, kind of bummed because he didn't release, he normally releases a video every weekend and didn't release one this past weekend. And I was kind of bummed. But anyway, yeah, my point is that, like, when it comes to email and just like any of these other things, like, the reality is people are busy, right? People don't have time to, they're not going to read every email you sent, and that's okay. But we don't expect that, right? So the point is, show up. And so there's a right way to do that, in a wrong way so we can talk about that. But I think that there's sort of this one dimensional mindset with email marketing that's a little dated, which is kind of like email is, you know, they thinking of it as sort of a very basic advertising channel and thinking of it as, you know, I don't want to send another ad today. I don't want to send another discount that I did yesterday or another two for one deal or something. And it's like, well, if that's all you're using the channel for, you're kind of messing it up anyway. So is it really about how much, how much, you know, how often you're sending? Or is it more the problem of like, how are you building the relationship with your audience? How are you providing value? So there are youtubers I follow who have new videos every single day and I will often not have time, but like, I know that when I go back I can rewatch some of that stuff. I can go back and watch those. And you might be thinking like, well, these are like, what's the difference then between those are content things? Whereas email is a marketing thing, but it really comes down to the sort of what email was intended for, which is a conversation. It's a conversational space. So it's definitely a more direct and more private space, but treating it as a place for conversation first and foremost, I think, is something that a lot of people miss the mark on. The most effective marketing you can do with email is to build a relationship by consistently being an authority in whatever your space is. And this can be, you know, whether you're selling coffee mugs or, you know, whether you are someone with a health business where you know that, but either way, you, you are solving a problem. The people who sign up to read your emails are doing it because they have a problem. They're looking to get it solved. And so they have signed up because they think you're an authority in that space. So now what does that mean? It's going to be different for everyone. To answer your question, you kind of said this earlier, like, is it dependent? It is. Because would it business that sells nothing but coffee mugs? Should they have a conversation about coffee mugs or coffee every single day? Maybe. I'm not saying you can't do that, but certainly like a health brand, for example, maybe there's going to be a lot more stuff that they can talk about. So some of that is, is really going to depend on your business and your audience and kind of what they expect. But to use the channel to its full advantage, you absolutely should figure out, you know, how can I create a conversation around my, you know, the problems that my, my audience is experiencing and about how my business is a solution and then how can I do that in a really tactful way where I hook people, I get them finding value from what I've sent and then, yeah, also send promotions and offers and show up with the right deal at the right time, too. But it's really a cohesive effort. So it's not just like, oh, I'm blasting my list with this offer all the time, but I'm figuring out how to show up in the way that's going to get the most people interested and get the most people ultimately to convert.
Eric Rutherford [10:25 - 11:00]: That makes sense, and that's a very different take. I think that a lot of people I talk to and how they perceive it, I like that idea of doing it right is really building the conversation. So it's not, it's. It's sharing information and knowledge, which could be in a variety of different ways. Right. It doesn't have to be like, same format every day. Or is that consistency better? I'd love to hear what your thoughts are.
Josh Kropkof [11:02 - 13:26]: That is a good question. I think that consistency is important. Like, in some respects. Like, I think that the most important thing with consistency is it comes back to frequency, because what you don't want is to kind of disappear for a long time and then, you know, show back up randomly and then, you know, kind of disappear again. And you don't want to have this, like, really infrequent, like, you'll find for companies that do it that way. And then it's like, oh, like, now that it's November, they're showing up again with sales and stuff. Like, they're the ones who have the biggest, you know, problems in terms of, you know, getting a lot of unsubscribes and spam complaints and sort of negative, what we call negative engagement. What you do want is to be consistent in that respect of, like, show up consistently. But variety is also really important. So, and I think that this is what you were referring to, like, it is something that we do with our clients and we always advise people to do is have a lot of variety in what you're sending. So sometimes, maybe your email is really heavily designed. There's a lot of cool imagery in there. You're kind of showing off products, and maybe there's very little text in the email, and then other times it's a plain text email that's just message directly from you. And then other times, maybe it's a blend of things, but it's focused around one specific offer that you have or one specific product. And then other times it's more of a sequence throughout the week that's based around a certain theme. And that could be a sale or it could be a product launch or something like that, but it should be, there should be a lot of variety because what you don't want is to become stale. And this is another thing that a lot of brands get wrong, is they kind of, you know, every email looks basically the same. It has the same look and feel. And the only difference is maybe the offer is different or maybe the product that you're talking about in the email is a little bit different. You will find that that is the quickest way for people to, you know, churn. They're going to lose interest and so your engagement is going to go down. Variety is the best tool that you have because if they don't quite know what to expect, they're going to be more likely to open and continue opening the emails.
Eric Rutherford [13:28 - 14:08]: I like that. I like that idea that the variety, if they don't know what to expect because usually, yeah, usually emails that I get from, you know, that I'm subscribed to, oftentimes I kind of know what I'm getting. And so sometimes it's like, you know, one of the, my favorite email, one of my favorite email companies is bath and body works because they're, they do frequent. They, they tell me what they're giving me. So I leave them in my inbox. Like, I don't unsubscribe because there's always, it depends on the sales and depends on the season. I don't always open them, but, but I'm always looking for them.
Josh Kropkof [14:08 - 14:09]: Yeah.
Eric Rutherford [14:09 - 14:44]: So I like them and I like that, that variety. So variety could even be, sounds like even not only your information, but it could be, it could be other articles, it could be other references. You could point people to other resources at times showing that you within your sphere of authority, you are also helping them with other, by pointing them in other directions. Is that a safe place or is that like, no, I don't want to do that because of fear of driving them away.
Josh Kropkof [14:45 - 15:10]: Yeah. I mean, you definitely, if you have the ability in your space to point to content that helps support, you know, your message and what your solution is, then, yeah, absolutely. You should do that. You know, do you, I think you're sort of asking like, about sending people to places other than your own sort of, you know.
Eric Rutherford [15:10 - 15:28]: Yeah. Like, is it, is it okay to send them to other websites outside my purview to, you know, like, hey, I was reading about this article. Here's what it said. Here's a link to it. Or is that confusing?
Josh Kropkof [15:28 - 17:45]: That really does depend kind of on your established cadence of things because I don't want to say not to do that because there are people who can do that. I would say it's probably a better bet to talk about those things without necessarily sending them elsewhere because, and I want to get to in the weeds, but there's, deliverability is a tricky matter these days. So there's, there's always, there's always things we need to consider about, you know, not hurting our deliverability. And so, like, one of the things that is more problematic lately and maybe hadn't been in the past is if you are sending people to domains that are not matching your domain that you just sent the email from, that's actually a red flag. So you gotta be careful with things like that. So that's the only reason I don't want to like, say, like, yeah, go for it with that kind of thing. I don't even at this point, we don't send people, we try to avoid having links in the email to social media channels of our clients because those actually trip spam filters now. Really? Yeah. So you really want to just be careful with stuff like that, but that doesn't mean that you can't talk about other things. I think, like, the larger point is that what else can we do to build a conversation, right. And have a conversation and make it, you know, a two way conversation, not just my brand is kind of just advertising at you all the time. Right? So. And one of the best things you can do is just ask people to reply, because that's what makes it a two way conversation, is if I ask you to reply and then we actually have a conversation about the thing, and then I can use that. Whatever you say, you know, when you get replies, I can read them. And when I read, like, a really good reply, I can use that as a springboard for more ideas and more content. Maybe I'll even mention in my next email that, hey, Eric from Nashville had a really good point. The other day. I sent an email about this topic and I asked this question, and here's what he said. And then you kind of have that rapport building with your audience that way, which is really cool.
Eric Rutherford [17:45 - 18:03]: I like that. Yeah, that definitely opens up the dialogue where I know if I get one of those, it's like, okay, I feel comfortable enough to reply if I want to, as opposed to just replying to sort of this nameless entity where they're just sending me stuff.
Josh Kropkof [18:03 - 20:23]: Yeah, yeah. I think that that's really important when it comes to variety is like, if you are a brand or a business or a professional organization, like, and one of the ones that comes to mind that is not in my space, but I see this all the time is. And not subscribing to a lot of, like, law firms email addresses, but our email lists. But there was something I was looking into, like, a year ago, and I did subscribe to a couple of, like, business law firms email lists. And I still get those emails once in a while, and it's like they're always just so, like, like, I don't even know how to describe it, like, because professional is a good thing, but, like, it's like, so formal, like the emails that they send. Right. I even did a podcast recently where one of the podcast hosts was a lawyer, and we were talking about this, too. And so I want to say that, to say that, like, it doesn't matter if we're talking about an e commerce brand or another type of business. There needs to be variety in how you, how you come across as the sender, too, because there's nothing wrong with having the brand send an email, and it's clearly the brand and it's talking about the products and it's talking about the brand. But then how about mix that in with some more personal stuff, right? Some more person to person communication? Again, we got to remember what the inbox is for. It is for conversation. It is a personal place. And so I don't think it should ever be all one way. I think personality, like, people say they want email marketing to be more personalized. Well, what does that mean? Right? Does that just mean you, you have my first name in the email or, you know, you somehow know where I live, you know, what part of the country I'm in or something? Like, sure. I mean, like, is that a great thing? I mean, we could argue about that. But, like, I think what's, what's more interesting when it comes to personalization is really, can, can there be a personality behind this? So I don't feel like, oh, this is another just AI thing happening, you know, or some reason not to trust another marketing email. Right. But the more that we make it about person to person conversation, I think the better response we see.
Eric Rutherford [20:24 - 21:14]: So I know you talk a lot about this, that person, excuse me, that personality driven content, personality driven copy. How do you go about creating that for a business? Because if you think of a business, it's one thing. If you are a solopreneur entrepreneur, you know, small business even. But as you begin to get bigger wherever, you know, there's many people involved, to hundreds, to even thousands of people as part of the company. How do you create that voice? I mean, do you, is it, is there a name on the email? Like it's from whomever? Like, what's that look like? Because I think that's a, in my mind, there's a bit of a conundrum on how to do that. So I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Josh Kropkof [21:15 - 21:40]: Yeah, it's a good question. I can give some, some cool examples I think would be the best way to answer this. Companies that we're working with right now is one that some people may have heard of actually called Giordano's. It's a company. Yeah. So they're, they're based in Chicago and they do deep dish pizza. And so they have an e commerce wing where they actually ship the frozen pizza. And so we're.
Eric Rutherford [21:40 - 21:46]: Oh, that's, that's dangerous because, like, that's, like, one of my favorite places to go in Chicago.
Josh Kropkof [21:46 - 21:47]: Really?
Eric Rutherford [21:47 - 21:51]: Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, keep going. I'm just taking notes.
Josh Kropkof [21:51 - 28:51]: Yeah, it's cool. So they, right now, they, they just released their barbecue bacon chicken pizza. Wow. Which, which is actually really good. Like, I am not someone who, like, on my own would, would order that, just being honest with you. But they actually brought us in to do this product launch with them. And, and so as part of the process, I went to a Giordano's, not the one in Chicago. We here in Florida. We have. They have a couple locations in Orlando. It's about a two hour drive for me. So went, went over there and, you know, ordered this pizza. And I was actually blown away by how good it was. I actually liked it better than the regular one, which, you know, I probably shouldn't say that, but I did it. Just something about the chicken and, like, the barbecue sauce just works so well together. But anyway, it. Different conversations. So back to. Back to what we're talking about. So the example is that, so a lot of the emails that we are, have created for this product launch are, you know, from the brand Giordano's. And this, granted, is a well recognized brand. And so you could argue that even the brand itself does have a little bit of a personality. However, putting that aside, we had a few emails that are actually written. We wrote them in the voice of the executive chef. His name's Jesse Harris. So we actually interviewed him as a part of this. Got everything in his words about this pizza. And then, so a few of the emails we created are coming from him. And it's in his words. Right. As much as we can recreate his words. And we actually did that really effectively for an early, basically, the earliest teaser email that we sent was just a written note from Jesse talking about how we are going to release this to the e commerce community soon. We're going to release our frozen, this new product. They actually emailed us that morning because they couldn't believe that in an hour after sending that email, they had something like a thousand people already replied to it, stuff that was pretty cool. But that's one good example. Okay. Another one is we worked with a company called Craftsportswear, and they are a, they're like an athletic apparel brand. They are. If you watch the Olympics, you'll see their name in there because they sponsor a lot of athletes, usually ones from different european countries, but there's american athletes as well that use them. And so we started working with them back in 2021. What I think is interesting about what you asked. So their marketing director or their e commerce marketing director was the one that brought us in. They're a big company, international brand, lots of levels, lots of corporate structure. So the guy that we were working with, he was several levels down from the top executives or whatever. You know, their brand emails were always, you know, just the brand and very sort of corporate. And so this was definitely something that they were, like, hesitant about when we suggested injecting some personal, you know, personality in this and using a person. But, you know, after some sort of coaxing, they allowed us to bring a little bit of this in. And the way that we were able to do it is, you know, it just so happened that there, the guy that we were working with, his name's John. He is a very, you know, a very avid, I guess, skiing and snowboarding guy and surfing and things. And so, like, he sort of embodied the brand in his own way just because of the fact that, like, he's not an athlete, but, you know, he is someone who, in his everyday life, he loves to do these kinds of sports. I don't know the right term for it because they're not, like, extreme sports, but they're, I don't know what you would call it, like, snowboarding and stuff. So those types of sports. Cycling was another big one. He, like, he'll go out to Kansas and participate in some, like, you know, one of those really long, like, bike races where they're going for, like, miles and miles and miles. So we were able to successfully use him in some of the emails and have him telling, you know, personal stories and kind of relating in a personal way with that audience. And it really worked. You know, it worked really well. And then the final one that I'll give as an example, like, one of the earliest times that we did this was with a client called Mix Tiles, and they're like a home decorating brand. And this was back in 2019, end of 2019, and they were, this was early on. So we didn't have a lot of, you know, we had like a year experience in email marketing professionally for other brands. So we didn't have a lot of, I guess, credibility or authority behind us yet. And this brand was kind of like, you know, very hesitant to try what we, we wanted to do. And so we actually persuaded them to let us do a test where we did a welcome sequence for them that was entirely written by a person and it was a person that we just made up. So, like, we came up with this, some person named Colleen and made her like, a super fan of the brand. And then what we did is we read through thousands of testimonials and reviews they had gotten and we used that to sort of create this iconic fan who then would tell her stories about how she used this product. And we created a sequence for them. They split, tested it against their ordinary, just typical brand marketing email sequence. And they ran this test for 90 days. And in 90 days, our side made, I think it was 82 or 83% higher sales and revenue. And so they had to admit after the end of it that, like, it won now. They still didn't want to use it. It's a different thing. We ended up. They did, they used it for a while. We actually persuaded them to work, work with us, and we worked with them for like a few months. And then ultimately they were actually in a, you know, they were growing and I'd like to think we were helping them grow, but they, they started bringing everything in house at that same time. But, and this was, like I said, this was early on and they were, you know, huge company. They were high eight figures and they became a nine figure company during that time we were working with them, so we didn't take it personally. No pun intended. But it was just funny because they, at the end, he admitted, like, this actually did work way better, but, like, we don't really want to have a person behind the brand. So whatever.
Eric Rutherford [28:51 - 29:31]: Wow, it's, and I get it. I have worked, I've worked for enterprise level companies and there is much, and much like you were talking about with the attorneys, like, there's, there is something that makes corporate executives, so to speak, or corporate decision makers really nervous about personality. And that's, sometimes you can work through it and sometimes you can't. That blows my mind, though, that you, like, you help increase sales by like 80% through the emails, you know, when you test it and it's like, no.
Josh Kropkof [29:31 - 31:31]: No, we're just, yeah, and the test we won on like, every metric open rates were way higher. Click rates were way higher, unsubscribes lower. Like, every single metric was like, it was just an obvious win. And it was just funny because they were, like, admitting it, like, in a meeting to us, they were like, yes, no, that's true. Yes, it did work, all this, but, you know, we have to be careful with our image. Basically, it was kind of how they. And, you know, I understand that. I think it was a good lesson kind of early on because I think as a company, we've evolved a lot since then. That was five years ago. I think nowadays a lot better at sort of meeting them where they're at and sort of gradually introducing ideas like this. If it's something that I feel like, you know, could benefit them and they're not doing, I already know what kind of resistance and pushback I'm going to get because change is scary. And I think people kind of have an idea in their head of how they want things to go or what they think. And so you just have to learn how to demonstrate to people when you are able to show them that there's a better way to do something. But certainly it's definitely a combination. Like I said, variety is key. So these days, I would never create an email welcome sequence where every single email is coming from a person and they're all that way. Unless, of course, that was the thing that this brand was already doing. That's working really well. Some cases it is. I just started working with a company that we just brought on last week, and it's an e commerce company, but the entire thing is centered around a person, and she is very much the face of the brand. So every email that we are doing for her will definitely be from her and featuring her. But you just have to. Every company is different. You kind of have to meet them where they're at.
Eric Rutherford [31:32 - 31:58]: I appreciate that. And somehow you combine this personality driven kind of idea, this content, this writing, but yet you also have a conversion focused design. So what's conversion focused design and how does that differ from, like, regular design? Like, what is that?
Josh Kropkof [32:00 - 37:51]: I think the simplest way to put it is are your emails actually intended to convert? Like, what's the goal of the email versus what I think the majority of companies still do, which is to make emails that they may say that they're focused on getting sales, but they're really focused on, like, a certain look. And so we see that a lot. Like, one example is you still have, and this is a little less common. But to make a bigger point, I'm going to start here. So, like, you'll still have emails. You'll get that are what they call newsletter style, where it's almost like you're looking at a blog. Like you'll open up the email and it'll be, usually they're kind of long and it'll be like one story or feature after another. And as you read down the email, it's like, you know, this happened in the company and like, click here to learn more about this. And then here's a product and click here for that. And then here's this other thing that we're doing. Look at this. And it's like, it goes on and on like this, right? I'm sure you, you can remember getting emails like this. So that is not designed to convert. Okay. Because right away it breaks a huge rule in marketing, which is called the rule of one, give me one thing to focus on. And that's especially true in email, like, people, just because I said that, like, it's not a good idea to be afraid of sending too many emails because people will open the emails. That is true. But that doesn't mean people are going to give them as much time as they could possibly give this email. You do have a few seconds to hook people in. That's absolutely true. If I open your email and already I'm like, there's so much here, I'm probably not going to engage with that. And so one of the big things is like, if you give me too many choices, I'm not going to choose. It's much easier to not choose. And that even goes to like website conversion, too. It's like if they call it like paradox of choice, if I'm on your web page and there's like just a ton of stuff everywhere for me to click on and I don't know, clearly what's the one thing you want me to do here? I'm not going to convert. More common than like a newsletter style, especially when it comes to e commerce, is very, just like, you know, emails that are definitely eye catching and they're kind of like, ooh, this is cool. But that I still don't really know what the point of the email is. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I saw an email recently from a brand. I'm trying to remember what was the product? It was like, I want to say it was a spray and I think it was a room spray, like something maybe like air freshener type thing, but it was probably more to it than that. And the email itself, first of all, it took multiple seconds to load because the whole thing is a coded image. And then probably the file wasn't compressed. Great. And that's another conversation. But, so I'm waiting. Finally the email loads and I'm like, oh, I noticed my eyes drawn to the image, but then the image wasn't clickable. And then I scrolled down the email. It had a cool slogan. I think it said fresher than your average. And then there was some interesting copy in there about some of the benefits. But what wasn't clear was the call to action. What do you want me to do here? Is it to, is there an offer you're giving me? Do you want me to learn more about the product? What do you want me to do? So I think when I, when I talk about design to convert, well, there's, there is a lot that goes into that because there's a science to it. And we work with designers who are, you know, they're trained very well in this and they're also artists and illustrators, so they know how to make something eye catching. But part of, part of the job that we have as email marketers is what do I want people to be? What are my eyes doing when they look down? When they scroll down, where are my eyes going to? There's a science in email marketing call. I forget what the proper name for it is, but basically when it's the thing above the fold, whatever the images that first loads, when I open the email, my eyes are going to follow sort of a v formation right down to the front, middle, kind of near the bottom of that email. That's where you want your call to action to be. That's where whatever the button is or whatever the big idea is, if you want me to click there and go through to that, you have to communicate to me very fast. Like what's the benefit of clicking here? What am I going to get? What's the offer? Right? And even if I don't take you up on that call to action and I keep scrolling, well, that's where the rest of the design comes in, right? That's where maybe it makes sense to have some product blocks or test testimonial like social proof blocks, or maybe it's benefit copy about the product itself, you know, and that's all going to depend on what is the point of the email. But that's the problem is for a lot of brands doing email marketing, I'll ask the person, like, if I'm, you know, talking to them about their email marketing for the first time. And I just have, you know, an email pulled up and I'll say, like, what's the purpose of this email? And half the time they don't even know. So, like, it's, I think it's just a mindset of, like, what are we sending this email for and how do we design it in a way that is going to get that action? I'd say the biggest thing is actually making that clear because so many people just have way too much going on there or not enough going on to even tell me, like, what do you want me to do here?
Eric Rutherford [37:54 - 38:14]: I appreciate that description and the way you're describing that. So it sounds like every email needs to have a why and it has to have a purpose for it to be really effective, essentially, and a call to action, but not multiple calls to action. Because that can get confusing.
Josh Kropkof [38:15 - 39:09]: Yeah, I mean, it depends because if, like, there's a style of email that we do intentionally called that, we call it a buyer's guide. And usually it comes at some place in a welcome series or it may be a part of a promotional campaign that we're doing, but that email is where we are now showing off various products. Right. And so they may each have different calls to action. Like, you know, you could have shop now or you could have learned more or whatever it is, and there may be several different kinds. Like, you know, maybe it's a product with some variation and it's like, you know, you're either gonna shop for the main product or you're gonna shop for this accessory. And that can all go in the same email, and that's fine. But the overall idea, though, of the email is the same, which is you've learned about us, you've taken the first step. So here are some cool opportunities, some things we want you to check out.
Eric Rutherford [39:09 - 39:40]: Okay, that makes sense. Where it's like, you know, our purpose is to show you. So ideally you buy and here are some things, or at least learn more. You're not just throwing things out there haphazard, whereas with another email you could, could narrow it down if you wanted to. So in some ways it sounds then like we just need to break up, like the big emails and just send smaller, narrow, more frequent emails.
Josh Kropkof [39:40 - 40:54]: That can work. Yeah, I mean, nothing is ever black and white. So, you know, I always tell people to really test everything. And that's really the thing that we use to learn the most about, you know, the audience that we're sending to is we run a b test to see what works best. And what works for one brand often doesn't work for another brand. You know, there are some things that we can replicate pretty consistently. You know, we know, for example, that it's really good to have urgency if we can create urgency around an offer and, you know, have it expire. And we know it's great to use exclusivity if there's something that, you know, they're going to get because they just joined the email list and they only have a few days to use it. We know certain things that work pretty well across the board, but, you know, at the same time, one brand may find that, you know, having shorter email. That's very simple. You know, one product, focus, you know, hero, image, call to action, very little copy that. That might work best, and then another brand might find that doesn't work very well for them at all. And then their audience actually does want a lot more information in the email before they'll click. So that that all comes down to testing and really knowing the audience as well and kind of, you know, being willing to do the research.
Eric Rutherford [40:55 - 41:19]: And that's a great point though, that it's not necessarily a cookie cutter process. It's trial and error. It's experiment. It's test and be willing to do it. Just be willing to do the testing and experiment. So just before we wrap up, any takeaways that you would like to leave the audience with?
Josh Kropkof [41:21 - 43:49]: Yeah, I mean, I think the big takeaway would be, you know, if you're not doing email for your business or if you, if you feel like it could be, you know, improved. I definitely think it is worth the squeeze. You know, the juice is worth the squeeze when it comes to email marketing because, you know, something we didn't get into a whole lot today is kind of like that perception that email marketing, like, isn't effective anymore or whatever. And it's, I laugh these days when I still hear people say that and it's like, there are, the number is some mind blowing. You can look it up. It's like, don't quote me because I haven't looked this up in a while, but it's something like 43 billion emails sent per day or something crazy like that. And it just, it dwarfs everything else by, it's like when you look at one of those like astrology or astronomy diagrams where it'll have like the stars and it's like the one star that's like gigantic and then the ones next to it are really, really tiny. That's what it's like. Email is like that giant star. And like, even sms is one of the tiny ones. And it's like just the number of people doing commerce through email is bigger and bigger all the time, and it's not going anywhere. It's the only marketing channel where it's direct and you own it and it's, it's not unregulated, but it is still the most free marketing channel that you have. The most unrestricted marketing channel that you have. That is one of those places where it is worth your time or your investment to put effort into that channel. You will get a return for that. I think that the takeaway is if you're not doing it right now, start building an email list, start sending to it, start doing it. And don't get discouraged if it's something that seems a little harder. It seems like it's not getting a return right away. It is a long term thing as well. It's not always an immediate return. If you're new at it or if you don't have a big email list, you might not get that return immediately. But it is worth your time and effort because the relationship you can build with that channel is far more beneficial than the relationship you're going to get from your instagram or your TikTok. So that would be, I think, my.
Eric Rutherford [43:49 - 44:14]: Advice for people, definitely, yeah, the email is key for everybody listening. Yeah, it's direct to the inbox, you get to the socials, and that's, you know, you're lucky if 1% ever see anything you, you post or share. So it's, it's. Yeah, that's stuff you own. So, Josh, this has been a blast. If listeners want to know more about you want to know more about the email agency, where do you want them to go?
Josh Kropkof [44:16 - 45:35]: So my number one thing would be to join our email list because I do send, you know, I try to send some, some really good, valuable stuff through there. And I kind of laughed earlier when we were talking because I realized, like, I might, I've just been in a hectic time period here the last couple weeks, and I haven't sent an email in, like, two weeks, but I have, like, a whole list of emails that I'm, like, ready to write and I just keep getting interrupted today, not today, but the last few days. So they will be resuming very, very shortly. We, our mission with the email list is to basically give you an edge in your marketplace by showing you how to use direct response email marketing. And so I try to send really actionable stuff that you can do or even just like kind of the thought provoking, like marketing stuff that you can use not just an email, but in your business. So I made it really easy to join that. It's at email 123 Club. That's email one, two, three club. And if you go there, you can sign up for the email list. And if you do want to learn more about us as a company, it's the emailagency.com. and that's where you can see, you know, our, our stuff, our case studies and testimonials and things like that.
Eric Rutherford [45:36 - 45:44]: Awesome. So email 123 club to get on the email list. The email agency.com for the website.
Josh Kropkof [45:44 - 45:45]: Yep.
Eric Rutherford [45:45 - 45:58]: Awesome. So we're going to drop those in the show notes. I know I'm going to email 123 club here later today and get some more information. Josh, this has been a blast. I've learned a ton. Thanks for joining me today.
Josh Kropkof [45:59 - 46:14]: For sure. Thank you so much for having me, Eric. It was a lot of fun too. And yeah, absolutely would be happy to continue the conversation sometime. It's a great show and a great conversation. All right. I.