E-telligence: Recent Episodes

efocusmarketing/Kate Barrett

Kate Barrett is the founder of eFocus Marketing (https://www.e-focusmarketing.com) – a specialist email marketing agency based in London providing consultancy, management and training services to companies around the world. Welcome to my brand-new podcast ‘E-telligence’!

It’s our pleasure to be joined by Gyula Németh co-founder at Chamaileon and EDMdesigner, for this week’s episode.

Today’s topic is one for all the diehard email geeks out there! We’re going into the coding of your emails today and some of the issues you may encounter when creating your campaigns and ensuring they render correctly in all email clients.

It’s absolutely critical you make sure that your emails are built correctly so that they are able to do their job and engage your audience. This covers everything from making sure that they display on mobile devices in a different way from your desktop or webmail version so that they are easy to interact with in all instances, for example, through to ensuring that the code you use is read and followed by the different mailbox providers you’re sending to.

Join Gyula & Kate as they talk all things email code and rendering:

The differences between email clients and rendering engines
Your code and what different providers support
Considerations for Outlook (desktop) – the bain of an email marketers life!
What you need to be aware of when importing that code into your ESP

Hi and welcome to another episode of E-telligence.

Today my fabulous guest, Chloë Thomas from eCommerce MasterPlan, and I are talking about how to make the move from batch and blast to automation heaven specifically for retailers (although of course, its always great to learn from other industry’s so if you’re listening in, stay tuned and there’ll be lots of tips and tricks you can pick up too!)

The days of batch and blast, sending the same thing to everyone are dwindling, and if you want to stay ahead of your competitors and stand out in the inbox, you have to use that knowledge to deliver messaging that’s relevant to them in that moment.

Right message, sent to the right person, at the right time.

Automated campaigns will be some of the highest performing campaigns in your strategy and by meeting the needs of your customers and prospects in the RIGHT way, you’ll reap the rewards.

Join Chloe and I in this episode and discover…

Why it is so important, for retailers in particular, to consider their automated campaign strategy alongside their regular manual campaigns
Examples of automated campaigns you need to implement for your ecommerce business initially
Time saving tips to help you create automated campaigns faster
How to find the right platform(s) to support your needs

Welcome to another episode of E-telligence.

Today we’re bringing you a really interesting episode all about AMP and creating interactive email.

It’s my pleasure to be joined by April Mullen to talk about the practical application of AMP into our strategies and how it can help transform the interactions we have with subscribers.

In episode 10 of this podcast, we spoke to Jay Oram from Action Rocket about Interactive email design and he gave some fantastic tips and code to start really digging in to that for your business in our show notes (you can find that at https://e-focusmarketing.com/podcast/episode10/) and we mentioned AMP briefly, but In today’s episode we talk more about the promise of AMP (and interactive email) and what this means for marketers.

AMP is the acronym for Accelerated Mobile Pages, a mobile-friendly framework for website developing. The AMP project is pretty new; announced by Google in 2015 the first AMP pages appeared in February 2016. And now it’s available in email! Having started as a Google project, its now opensource and we’re seeing other mailbox providers picking it up – including Microsoft and Yahoo!

The whole point of AMP is to change the static to the dynamic – to provide a mini website experience right there within your inbox; in theory making it easier, faster, more intuitive for subscribers to take an action and engage with your messaging.

For example, instead of receiving email notifications when someone is mentioned in a Google Docs comment, they can just see an up-to-date comment thread right within Gmail. They can then simply reply or resolve a comment without ever leaving Gmail or the email itself. Many companies like Booking.com, Despegar, Doodle, Ecwid, Freshworks, Nexxt, OYO Rooms, Pinterest and redBus, have already started to use dynamic email “to make their emails more actionable and relevant.”

And that’s ultimately what we are aiming for. Ease of action and specific to that 1 person. Sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time (through the right channel of course).

Join April and I to discover…

The possibilities and opportunities using AMP brings
How AMP for email will change the role of email marketer
The challenges we foresee for AMP
Potential use cases for AMP and a real life example
How you can get started

For this episode of the E-telligence Masterclass, we’re going to talk about the growing role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and it’s place in our marketing and email marketing strategies. And it’s my absolute pleasure to welcome Victoria Peppiat – Co-founder and COO of Phrasee, which empowers brands with the most advanced AI-Powered Copywriting technology. to join me in this discussion today!

AI is the buzzword of the moment!

But how many of us actually know what it is and how we can use it in our marketing to improve our results and make better connections with our audience?

A study by Vitreous World based on a survey among global marketers confirmed that many don’t! 

67% don’t fully understand how to make the most of AI to deliver results.
68% think AI has become a buzzword that marketers don’t really understand.
70% say they don’t use it, and a further 8% don’t know if they do or not.
67% don’t know how to evaluate the different AI technologies available to their businesses.

I’m always talking about being customer centric and using the right tone, wording, phrasing, content, product recommendations, content recommendations and generally meeting the needs of your customers, surprising and delighting them and actually going above and beyond to start to anticipate their needs before they even know they have them! But many people haven’t yet fully started to explore how technology and machines can better help us to do that – and you are certainly an expert when it comes to that.

According to Microsoft research (‘Maximising the AI opportunity’), organizstions already on the AI journey are outperforming other organisations by 5% on factors like productivity, performance, and business outcomes.

Join Victoria and I for a riveting conversation about..

What AI is (hint: it’s not robots taking over the world) and the difference between general and narrow AI
How to define the use case and determine exactly how we want to use AI for in our strategy
How we define how and where AI might enhance marketing performance
The importance of people in AI
How can we get it right and, importantly, at scale using AI without compromising on the quality of the content or your brand voice?
Ethical marketing using AI and why its so important
5 steps to get started with AI and gain a competitive edge

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or whichever podcast provider you’re listening through, follow us on Youtube for more video-based content and find eFocus Marketing on all the socials.

Changing the email marketing status quo – how to win friends and influence people with your email marketing.

Today we’re going to talk about changing the status-quo around email marketing and it’s my absolute pleasure to welcome Mark Ash – CEO of Pure360 to join me in this discussion today!

Pure360 are the sponsors of the DMA’s most recent reports: the Marketer Tracker (released in March) and the Consumer Tracker (released in January) so we will be referring to some of the stats from those in this episode – if you don’t already have a copy, head over to the Pure360 website and download them – we’ll add the links into the full show notes for you which can be found at https://e-focusmarketing.com/podcast/episode20/

These reports both highlight some of the key challenges and trends marketers experience when it comes to creating good email marketing campaigns.

And the world is changing. We have to make sure that our strategies and how we implement these into our daily campaigns is adapting and changing too – otherwise, email as whole wont die, but your results are going to see a steady decline. And we don’t want that!

Having a customer centric approach to your email marketing is absolutely vital. And this means understanding what your customers want as well as how and when you can deliver this to them in a way that’s going to truly connect. Especially when we have times like we’ve seen this year with the global Covid-19 pandemic, but just in day to day life as well. Being human, is key to good email marketing.

Join Mark and I for this episode and discover:

Why there is still a difference between what marketers think vs. what consumers want
How to communicate with senior leadership better in order to get buy in for your email marketing in the future (resources, support and learning opportunities)
Some of the key considerations we need to have when it comes to the new way of interacting with subscribers
Why data is at the heart of everything that you want to do and how you can use it to better understand your subscribers at a human level
Why we need to move from a product-led approach to a customer-led approach and how you can do that in your business
How you can overcome the challenge of technology when it comes to the successful execution of your email marketing campaigns
The need to change the way we view metrics to evaluate ongoing success

Today on the E-telligence podcast I wanted to talk about your known data and how you go about collecting and updating it in your business so that you can better get to know your subscribers.

In episode 16 we looked at your data pyramid and conducting a data audit (check it out here: e-focusmarketing.com/etelligence/episode16) and at the base of the pyramid and the foundation to your email marketing data is ‘Known Data’.

Listen in to this episode with Kate Barrett and you’ll learn about…

A quick recap of the five main types of data in your data pyramid,
2 main options for collecting known data from your subscribers
Tips to make the most of each collection opportunity

Thanks for listening!

For this E-telligence Masterclass all about CRO, it’s my pleasure to welcome Tom Jepson from Footprint Digital as my guest!

CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimisation it can make a massive difference to not only your email sign up rate but also the overall success of your campaigns and revenue.

Conversion Rate Optimisation is the process of finding out what works and what doesn’t in a specific area – for example on your PPC ads, landing pages, and for our purposes in email marketing, your sign-up forms. And of course, you can use the exact same principles within your email marketing campaigns too – everything is a test and learn opportunity to improve.

It’s about learning why visitors to your website aren’t doing the things you want them to do and then improving elements to maximise the number of people who take your desired action.

But don’t forget, Conversion rate optimisation is a process – there’s no quick fix. You need to methodically and strategically work through a series of well thought out options in order to find the best combination of elements for your business and situation.

So, for the purposes of this episode, we’re going to focus on your website and more specifically, your forms and email sign up forms and what we can do to optimise your opt in conversions.

We’ll be discussing

Why CRO is so important
Why you need to fight assumptions
The 5 key phases of a successful CRO strategy
What tools can be used to help you with your research, implementation and analysis
Examples of elements on your sign-up form you can test

For all the links mentioned in this episode, visit our website for the full show notes and your FREE CRO CHEATSHEET DOWNLOAD > www.e-focusmarketing.com/podcast/episode18

Hi and welcome to another episode of E-telligence.

Today I’m talking about sending the right message to the right person at the right time, through the right channel, by understanding your customer lifecycle.

Listen in with Kate Barrett and discover…

The 5 stages of the customer lifecycle
How to treat your customers and prospects differently based on their current needs. (your aims, their key behaviours and examples for each stage)
Conducting customer journey mapping for personas

Thanks for listening!

Hi and welcome to another episode of E-telligence.

Today I wanted to talk about your data!

Having an in depth understanding of what data you have in your business, where it is, how it is used and why it’s collected is imperative to creating a solid email marketing strategy that WORKS!

YOU need to take the power in your business and understand your data in order to drive your strategy forward and increase your results.

In this episode, I’ll explore

The five main types of data in your data pyramid

(there’s a picture on the full show notes online – head to e-focusmarketing.com/etelligence/episode16 )

Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make it easier to spot trends, understand correlations and help you serve content which meets a need the subscriber didn’t even know they had yet
How to conduct a data audit to map your data dictionary

Thanks for listening!

For this episode of our E-telligence Masterclass,

It’s my pleasure to welcome Guy Hanson from Validity (Retunr Path) as my guest!

In this episode we’re talking all about uncovering what our subscribers actually want from brands and the email marketing we’re sending – not just what we THINK they want!

This conversation has come about not only because Guy was involved in the DMA’s 2020 Consumer Email Tracker Report sponsored by Pure360 (https://www.pure360.com/white-papers/dma-consumer-email-tracker-2020/), but also because this is a topic area that is often overlooked.

Many of us focus on creating our strategies around the messaging and offers that our companies want to put out there to our audiences but we often forget, or are forced to forget through lack of time, data and strategic insight, that each number in our audience is a real person, with real needs and real emotions.

In this episode Guy and I discuss the results of the latest DMA Marketer Tracker report:

The impact of GDPR on the consumer and how they feel about marketing
What consumers want from brands as that push to sign up
At the opposite end of the scale, what’s driving unsubscribes and what do people expect from the process?
How consumers are using email nowadays; and particularly the younger generations coming in – are we right that they’re still using email?!
The kinds of content consumers want to receive via email
The alternate interactions receiving an email likely to cause

And much more!

For all the links mentioned in this episode, visit our website for the full show notes > www.e-focusmarketing.com/podcast/episode15

Today’s it’s my pleasure to welcome John Thies as my guest on the show!

Today John and I are talking all about the pre-send process and making sure you have a solid QA process in place.

QA stands for Quality Assurance and is essentially making sure that everything is right and as it should be before you hit the send button – something that for many marketers is still a source of great stress and worry each and every time! But a great QA process will help to alleviate some of that and give you the confidence in your campaigns.

Now of course, that doesn’t mean that mistakes are never going to happen, we’re all human! But it will help to reduce the likelihood of them occurring.

But, when they do, don’t panic! Just make sure you have a solid plan in place to deal with those mistakes.

All emails should go through a Quality Assurance (QA) process before being broadcast; This process not only needs to test and produce error-free emails but do it as quickly as possible.

In this episode John and I discuss…

What to do if you do make a mistake
Why its so important to have a solid QA process and what makes a good one?
Some of the important elements in a good QA process? You can also download our checklist here > https://e-focusmarketing.com/free-guides/pre-send-checklist/
How do you manage the process on your own and when there’s multiple people involved?
Why you need to check every email nowadays and not just your main template
Is spam testing still a thing we need to worry about?!

Find more show notes and resources here:

https://e-focusmarketing.com/podcast/episode14/

This month it’s my pleasure to welcome Gavin Laugenie as my guest on the show!

Today we’re talking all about omnichannel marketing – what is it, do we need to be thinking about it and how does email marketing fit in!

So let’s break it down and clarify what we mean by omnichannel to begin with.

Multichannel is where we are using lots of different marketing channels (SMS, social media, PPC, email, print etc.) at the same time, but independently of each other. Whereas omni channel is where we are using lots of different channels, but together, in conjunction with each other. With information feeding back and forth between each and informing the decisions of the other. So, your communication with a prospect or customer is inclusive of all activities.

But being able to do this rests of having the right data, in the right place to be able to join your messaging together. Which can be a challenge, that’s for sure, but if you get it right, omni channel marketing means the experience your customers and prospects have with your business is much better.

In this episode Gavin and I discuss…

Why having an omni channel strategy is important and how email marketing fits in to it in 2020?
If everyone be working towards an Omnichannel approach
Do companies risk the losing relevance if they don’t adopt an omnichannel strategy?
Examples of how omni channel marketing strategies work in practice
Some of the key considerations of implementing this into your business

Find more show notes and resources here:

https://e-focusmarketing.com/podcast/episode13/

Today we’re talking all about attribution modelling. It’s such an important topic and something that so many businesses struggle with, and of course lots of different ways to approach it.

So, for anyone who’s not sure, attribution modelling is the way in which you calculate which marketing touchpoint and channel has contributed to a sale and to what extent that contribution played a part.

It’s absolutely vital to allow you to accurately decide which channels are worth you spending more budget on to acquire new customers and which are helping you retain repeat customers. But also, to let you know which channels aren’t working hard for your business.

During this episode, Skip and I explore:

Why attribution modelling is so important to understand and have a model that works for you
What’s ‘wrong’ with our current approach to attribution modelling
Some of the most common attribution models currently used
A better way to approach attribution modelling to allow you to understand which channel you should actually spend your marketing budget on

Read skips blog here:

https://www.skipfidura.live/blog

Get your Attribution Modelling quick reference guide here:

https://e-focusmarketing.com/podcast/episode12

I’ve got a load more fantastic content planned for you in 2020 so watch this space! And if there is a specific subject you’d like me to explore on the podcast or you simply want to reach out and say hi, or discuss how we can work together to sky rocket your email marketing email me at kate@e-focusmarketing.com

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or whichever podcast provider you’re listening through, follow us on Youtube for more video-based content and find eFocus Marketing on all the socials.

Thanks for listening.

“To find that psychological magic trick, you must embrace the idea that anything -- from consumer behavior to people’s perception of a product -- can be transformed, so long as you’re willing to think like an alchemist.”

We have a slightly longer E-telligence Masterclass episode for you today as we delve into the world of behavioural science and speak to the force that is Rory Sutherland from Ogilvy.

Rory is the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, and co-founder of a behavioural science practice within the agency.

Rory was previously a copywriter and creative director at Ogilvy for over 20 years, having joined as a graduate trainee in 1988. He has been President of the IPA, Chair of the Judges for the Direct Jury at Cannes, and has spoken at TED Global. He writes regular columns for the Spectator, Market Leader and Impact, and also occasional pieces for Wired. He is the author of two books: 'The Wiki Man' and his most recent title: 'Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense'.

In this episode, Rory and Kate chat about the power of truly understanding your customers and how this can impact your marketing (and email marketing).

Some of the key takeaways from this episode include:

In order for marketing to work its full magic you have to have great creative, media and behavioural science in equal measure – get everything in alignment for marketing to work its magic to the full.

"40% of the success [of a direct campaign] will be attributable to the targeting. Maybe 20% to the creative. (These are merely averages - a really clever creative insight can have a huge effect.) And there was always 30% which was 'something else', it wasn't the targeting and it wasn't the creative."

How Uber uses behavioural science to its advantage
Reducing the friction of completing an action, making it as easy as possible to do, is a key part of behavioural science… but sometimes you want to add friction to make an action seem worthwhile (counteract something being too good to be true)
One of the reasons behavioural science is frustrating is that the opposite of a good idea can be a good idea – there are no completely hard and fast rules.
As marketers always question what you’re doing – particularly the ‘obvious’ things as the opposite may actually be a better option! Be unafraid of questioning conventional logic to improve your results.
Start at the end – if your Customer Experience is no good, there’s no point in doing great conversion work as people will only buy from you once. Get your experience right and then work on your conversions and THEN your advertising. Optimise the bottom of the funnel first otherwise you create desire without action.
Figure out what your customers REAL problem is that they’re trying to solve and how is it impacting on their live – solve that.
Pay attention to your copy and individual words (how you frame things and the way in which they’re put) – for example, there is a huge difference between saying we want your opinion and we want your advice; in terms of the engagement that will generate

Accompanying links:

The 300 million dollar button blog post: https://medium.com/uie-brain-sparks/the-300-million-button-76b566ae5f73
Rory’s books: 'The Wiki Man' (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rory-Sutherland-Wiki-Man-SUTHERLAND/dp/0956437338/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+wiki+man&qid=1578328612&sr=8-2) and 'Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense' (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alchemy-Surprising-Power-Ideas-Sense/dp/0753556502/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+wiki+man&qid=1578328612&sr=8-1)

Alchemy

Rory Sutherland: The Wiki Man

Episode 10: Expert Masterclass - Let's Get Interactive!

Today it is my pleasure to welcome Jay Oram from Action Rocket to join me on our monthly E-telligence Masterclass session.

The amount that we are able to do in the inbox is growing. And if we want to keep getting the best results from our email marketing we need to understand how our audiences want to interact with email going forward and how we can make their journeys faster, easier and more enjoyable. There is a wealth of emerging technical capabilities for email marketing that many companies are just scraping the surface off.

In today’s episode, Jay and I talk about interactive email and how you can use it to surprise, delight and engage your audiences with your design and of course, make it even easier for them to convert.

Jay is part of the design and code solutions team at the ActionRocket. In his role at ActionRocket, Jay is usually experimenting with new code for emails or finding that elusive rendering fix.

Find more show notes and resources here:

https://e-focusmarketing.com/podcast/episode10/

Episode 9: Expert Masterclass - Making Your Emails Accessible

This month it’s my pleasure to welcome Elliot Ross from Taxi for Email to discuss making your emails accessible.

Getting the design of your email right is such an important part of the email marketing mix. If you don’t make your content easy to read and interact with, you’ll diminish the impact of your message.

And one of the most frequently overlooked areas, and yet a vitally important part of the design process, is to ensure that your emails are accessible – making sure that you create and send emails that every subscriber can read and understand, regardless of whether they have a visual impairment or disability.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.3 billion people worldwide live with some form of visual impairment, with 217 million living with moderate to severe vision impairment. Approximately 36 million people worldwide are blind and 246 million have low vision.

To put that into context, the UK population in 2019 is about 67.6 million

WHO also estimates that more than 1 billion people worldwide – or 15% of the global population – live with some form of disability. And we also can’t forget colour blindness at varying degrees and other temporary ailments that might be an issue when interacting online.

Join Elliot and I as we discuss how you can make your emails accessible across 4 key areas; Hearing, Visual, Dexterity and Cognitive requirements.

Find more show notes and resources here:

https://e-focusmarketing.com/podcast/episode9/

Episode 8: Brand Spotlight - RentPath

Find more show notes and resources here:

https://e-focusmarketing.com/podcast/episode8/

Episode 7: Expert Masterclass – Interactive Opt Ins & Loyalty Drivers

Today it’s my pleasure to welcome Jacques Prothon from Odicci.

I wanted to invite Jacque on the show today to discuss a really important subject: list growth! And more specifically, growing your email list in fun, intuitive and interactive ways beyond just our standard sign up forms.

Growing your email list is such an important topic - especially post GDPR where many companies removed large chunks of their list and saw their revenues drop because of it. But not only that, just generally we have to be aware of the rate at which our list is churning (called your attrition rate or churn rate) – attrition eats up about 25-30% of the average email list every year. And that’s just those who actually unsubscribe or bounce from your lists. There’s also those who emotionally unsubscribe (but don’t actually hit that button) and go inactive, and those who don’t see your emails anymore – perhaps due to deliverability problems or because you’re sending to an email account, they don’t use any more. This could account for another 10-25% of your list.

So not only do you need to work on list cleansing and reactivation, your list growth efforts have to outpace your list’s attrition rate. If they don’t, no matter how much list building you do, your email list will stay the same size. It might even get a bit smaller.

In this episode Jacque and I discuss:

• How you grow your email list and do it in a way that really engages subscribers

• What an interactive email sign is and how it differs from a standard opt in process

• Who can benefit from interactive marketing

• How interactive sign ups work in the offline world and help to connect offline and online

• Some of the biggest mistakes we see companies making when it comes to email sign ups

• How interactive experiences helping companies re-engage and re-activate lapsed audiences

• The psychological effect of interactivity

Find more show notes and resources here:

https://e-focusmarketing.com/podcast/episode8/

Today it is my pleasure to welcome Najmah Salam from Help for Heroes to our monthly E-telligence Brand Spotlight session.

Najmah is the Digital Marketing Executive at Help for Heroes (taking care of the email marketing and PPC campaigns) and brings a wealth of knowledge to the charity from her previous travel and retail experience.

During the interview, Najmah was kind enough to share some fantastic insights into the importance of email marketing for them and how it sits within the Help for Heroes marketing mix (with PPC, paid social, offline marketing etc.).

We also discussed:

How Najmah’s career journey that led her to Help for Heroes and how her previous retail experience is helping her move their strategy forward
Why you need to listen to what subscribers are telling you – directly and through their behaviour with your campaigns
How Not-for-Profit organisations can benefit from looking at other sectors for inspiration with their email marketing campaigns
Why marketers need to expand their life experience to become better at their jobs
The importance of data: Using email to understand your audience – what they’re saying and their behaviour is telling you
How Help for Heroes are developing their email marketing strategy and tailoring their strategy and content for different segments within their audience

Listen to the full interview to find out more!

Want to find out more?

Emotional Intelligence – E-telligence Episode 4: Listen now >

Tools Help for Heroes use:

DotDigital

If you want help to create a customer-centric, personalised, intelligent email marketing programme, get in touch with eFocus Marketing and discover how we can assist you.

Get in Touch >

Today it is my pleasure to welcome Kait Creamer from Scaled Agile to join me on our monthly E-telligence Masterclass session.

Kait is the Email Marketing Manager at Scaled Agile and a passionate advocate of empathetic "surprise and delight" email marketing.

Prior to joining the Scaled Agile team, Kait managed the digital marketing and automation strategy at Boulder SaaS innovator, MakeMusic. 2019 Stefan Pollard Email Marketer of the Year award winner, featured on Phrasee's "Who to Follow" series, and vice chair of the EEC's Events and Education committee, she's an expert and enthusiast in email, customer data, and marketing automation, always pushing for next best customer-centric campaign. Just like us, she believes in beautiful design, protecting the subscriber, clean copy, and relentless innovation in email.

During the interview, Kait and I discussed truly understanding who your customers and prospects are, when you should be talking to them and why, as well as linking that together to come up with a comms strategy that works for the individual subscribers. We also talked about…

What does emotional intelligence actually mean? (be a good friend!)
How brands are starting to address the human side of their communications
How you can walk the helpful / creepy line with your content
Using MVP to move your strategy forward
Looking at your data and see what works for your successful customers and what is not working
Applying emotional intelligence to your internal teams to get buy in for your email marketing strategy (convince your CMO with intelligent context – lead with why!)
How Kait finally convinced her CMO to switch ESPs (after 2 years of trying!) – what changed in her approach to make that happen

Listen to the full interview to find out more!

Want to find out more?

Taxi for Email
Scaled Agile

If you want help to create a customer-centric, personalised, intelligent email marketing programme, get in touch with eFocus Marketing and discover how we can assist you.

Get in Touch >

Today it is my pleasure to welcome Catherine Loftus from TrustedHouseSitters to our monthly E-telligence Brand Spotlight session.

Catherine is the head of marketing at TrustedHouseSitters, based in Brighton and has worked for them for over 3 years. TrustedHouseSitters Connects pet owners with people who want to go pet sitting – in over 130 countries around the world!

During the interview, Catherine was kind enough to share some amazing insights into how they keep their subscribers so engaged and generate 30-40% of their acquisition revenue through email marketing.

We also discussed:

What a day in the life of the head of marketing at TrustedHouseSitters and how email sits within the TrustedHouseSitters marketing strategy and marketing team
How the marketing acquisition strategy is structured around email marketing and why – nurture and educating.
How TrustedHouseSitters use their email marketing strategically to communicate with both sides of the network tailored to each segment specifically and their needs (automation, manual emails, segmentation and content)
Why you need to thinking about your audience as PEOPLE! Bringing your message into real life, adjusting your content and knowing when to increase and decrease your frequency
How TrustedHouseSitters use their data to personalise campaigns and create a connection with their subscribers – including using Liveclicker to delight and surprise them with real time dynamic content.
The top performing triggered emails that TrustedHouseSitters send and why they’re so successful
Their exciting personalisation & automation plans for the future to increase results and cut down manual build times for the team to free up resources
TrustedHouseSitters biggest challenge when it comes to email marketing and how they overcome this within the business
Why working with an email marketing consultant was so valuable to TrustedHouseSitters

Listen to the full interview to find out more!

Want to find out more?

3 types of automated emails every business should be sending: https://e-focusmarketing.com/inactive-subscribers/3-types-of-automated-emails-every-business-should-be-sending/
Automated campaigns Checklist: https://e-focusmarketing.com/free-guides/automated-campaigns-checklist/
Creating a high converting welcome email series: https://e-focusmarketing.com/free-guides/creating-a-high-converting-welcome-email-series/

Tools TrustedHouseSitters use:

Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Return Path Certification
Liveclicker
Reallygoodemails

If you want help to create a customer-centric, personalised, intelligent email marketing programme, get in touch with eFocus Marketing and discover how we can assist you.

Get in Touch >

For our very first E-telligence Masterclass it is my absolute pleasure to be joined by Matthew Vernhout from 250OK (https://250ok.com/).

250OK are an email intelligence platform providing additional services and analytics on top of those in your Email Service Provider (ESP) including Inbox Placement Rate monitoring, analytics, DMARC services, a signal network monitoring spam traps and a number of consulting services to help you understand potential pitfalls in your program or solve domain specific deliverability issues.

Matt’s email experience spans more than 17 years, during which he has faithfully advocated for the channel through refining email marketing and privacy best practices, influencing anti-spam legislation and compliance, and managing ISP expectations.

During the interview, Matt was kind enough to share some fantastic insights with us around one of my favourite subjects - deliverability!

Matt and I discuss:

The distinction you ned to make between delivery rate and delivered rate (Inbox Placement Rate - IPR)
How 250OK helps you to monitor your delivered rate
The biggest changes seen in filtering over the last 18-24 months; IP vs. domain-based reputation
Legal regulations from around the world
The main elements of email authentication you need to implement to create a solid email sending infrastructure
What to do when you see deliverability warning signs occurring and fix issues

Listen to the full interview to find out more!

Want to find out more?

Deliverability decision tree:

https://e-focusmarketing.com/deliverability/deliverability-troubleshooting-decision-tree/

9 top tips to reduce your email marketing complaint rate:

https://e-focusmarketing.com/free-guides/9-top-tips-to-reduce-your-email-marketing-complaint-rate/

Useful Links

250OK: https://250ok.com/
DMARC: https://dmarc.org/
Is BIMI the new frontier for email marketers?

https://250ok.com/email-deliverability/is-bimi-the-new-frontier-for-email-marketers/

If you want help to create a customer-centric, personalised, intelligent email marketing programme, get in touch with eFocus Marketing and discover how we can assist you.

Get in Touch >

Hi everyone, I’m Kate Barrett, the founder of eFocus Marketing (https://www.e-focusmarketing.com) – a specialist email marketing agency based in London providing consultancy, management and training services to companies around the world.

It is my absolute pleasure to welcome you to my brand-new podcast

‘E-telligence’!

Every 2 weeks I’m going to be bringing you brand new content, digging into a specific area of email marketing, to help you energise your campaigns and use email more intelligently, to increase your results.

And, over on YouTube on the last Friday of every month, you’ll get an extra special episode where I’ll be joined by Elliot Ross from Taxi for Email (https://www.taxiforemail.com/) and we’ll be reviewing an email creative that we’ve received, talking about how it’s constructed, what we love about it and the elements that we would love to see tested and tweaked.

Here's the link for you to join me over there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZiZ-YPtR3XyCDT5Sc7XPmQ

I may also throw in some bonus recordings every now and then so keep an eye out!

And if you haven’t already got a copy of my new book ‘E-telligence: Email marketing isn’t dead, the way you’re using it is’ head over to Amazon now! It’s a great breakdown of the 5 key areas of a successful email marketing strategy.

Buy it on Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/telligence-Email-marketing-youre-using/dp/1916489400/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1547200355&sr=8-1
Buy it on Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Telligence-Email-Marketing-Youre-Using/dp/1916489400/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1547200360&sr=8-1

So, know you know what I’m going to be doing, make sure you never miss an episode!

Visit https://www.e-focusmarketing.com/spotlight to sign up to receive our regular email marketing spotlight packed full of email marketing tips, tricks and of course, notifications about new podcasts and videos!

You’ll also find all the show notes for each episode at https://www.e-focusmarketing.com/etelligence

You can let me know your feedback, suggest questions for the brands I interview and topic ideas by emailing kate@e-focusmarketing.com - I’d love to hear from you! And if you’d like to put yourself and your brand forward as a guest, let me know that too!

E-telligence: Email marketing isn't dead, the way you're using it is

Today it is my pleasure to welcome Emma Haskell from Vision Direct to our monthly E-telligence Brand Spotlight session.

Emma has worked for Vision Direct for 7 years and is the head of customer retention for the brand.

Vision Direct are primarily an online contact lens store operating across 7 markets around the world.

During the interview, Emma was kind enough to share some fantastic insight with us including:

Vision direct send weekly marketing campaigns across 3 core segments (active customers, lapsed customers and registered not bought customers).
Personalisation of email content is key to drive re-orders: they saw a 557% increase in clicks from using hyper personalised content recommendations (using Fresh Relevance)
Personalised welcome email based on specific customer type (from specialised landing page with incentive to opt in) in their French market achieves a 70% open rate and 31% click through rate.
Vision Direct are using SMS to back up the reminder to re-order messaging they send via email, providing a cohesive message across channels

Listen to the full interview to find out more!

Want to find out more?

Customer Personas - you can find a great free guide on the Hubspot blog here > https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/buyer-persona-research
eFocus Marketing Split Testing Kit – Download your free kit here > https://e-focusmarketing.com/free-guides/split-test-kit/
Deliverability Q&A episode with 250OK: LINK TBC

Tools Vision Direct use:

Dotdigital Engagement Cloud
Fresh Relevance
Return Path Certification
Google Postmaster Tools (Gmail)
Google Analytics

If you want help to create a customer-centric, personalised, intelligent email marketing programme, get in touch with eFocus Marketing and discover how we can assist you.

Get in Touch >

About Vision Direct

Vision Direct is the fastest and easiest way to buy contact lenses online. Ordering lenses with us is a hassle-free process and takes just 2 minutes. Repeat ordering is even quicker with speedy 3-click reorders. With Vision Direct you'll save money without compromising on quality, as we stock the same contacts as high street opticians, without lengthy queues. Plus, we're always open, with a dedicated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week customer service helpline.