#130. Get a FREE Email Marketing Audit From Flowium | Podcast

Vira: 0:41

Hey everyone, and welcome back to Flowium Podcast. I’m your host, Vira Sadlak, and I’m a marketeer at an agency called Flowium. And here at Flowium, we are very, very passionate about email marketing. And because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Delivering the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s what we are here about. And today I will be joined by my colleague, Jeff Conway. He’s my email marketing fellow. He’s my fellow Canadian. Jeff Conway is our sales expert here at Flowium. And today we will be talking all things e-commerce email marketing audit. with Jeff. So, Jeff, say hi.

Jeff: 1:22

Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

Vira: 1:24

So excited to have you here. But before we go to all of the serious, juicy audit questions, let’s play a little Q&A game, like this or that Q&A, just like to get to know you better. Okay?

Jeff: 1:37

Sure.

Vira: 1:38

Cool. Let’s do this. Texting or calling?

Jeff: 1:40

Texting. Don’t call me.

Vira: 1:44

Yay. Black coffee or cream and sugar?

Jeff: 1:46

Black coffee.

Vira: 1:47

Shopping online or shopping offline?

Jeff: 1:50

Like a mix of both. Online.

Vira: 1:52

Yeah, I mean, I’m the same, obviously.

Jeff: 1:55

I was going to say, given what we do for a living.

Vira: 1:56

Given what we do, we’d better be shopping online. Yeah, for sure. Netflix or cinema?

Jeff: 2:02

Netflix.

Vira: 2:03

If there was a song playing every time you would enter the room, what would it be?

Jeff: 2:07

That’s a hard one. I know you ask that question a lot. I really like this band called Wallows. And they have a song called Remember When, and it makes you feel like kind of like the main character of a movie. And I’m always chasing that main character moment. So I’m going to go with Remember When by Wallows.

Vira: 2:22

You definitely have a main character vibe, you know? Yeah, like, for sure, Jeffrey.

Jeff: 2:26

For sure. When you said— when you asked me to come on the podcast, I was like, great, a main character moment.

Vira: 2:31

Let’s do it. Totally. Totally. Okay, cool. So today you will be a main character in this podcast for sure. So I do have all of the email marketing audit questions to you. And I mean, audit, it sounds boring, but the email marketing landscape is so like, it’s always changing, it’s always evolving. And while staying on top of like the latest tools and tips and trends is very important to stay competitive, but it’s just like as important to probably sometimes like pause, take a step back and like make sure that your efforts are working and that your efforts are as strong as they can be. So that’s like a quick intro to what we will be talking about. today. So let’s go back to the basics, Geoffrey. What is like email marketing audit, like in general? What, what these terms mean and like, and why should we care?

Jeff: 3:22

Yeah, I mean, I think you explained it pretty well. It’s just about, you got to slow down and make sure that everything is working because if it’s not working, you’re kind of wasting everybody’s time, right? You’re wasting your subscribers’ time, you’re wasting your time trying it. So what you want to do is you want to go into your ESP and you want to use the data that’s right in front of you and make sure that things are working. And if they’re not working, you have to kind of pivot your strategy And use the data that you have to inform how you’re going to make things better. So it’s always really nice to just kind of hop in there every now and again, make sure things are working. And if they’re not, make them work.

Vira: 3:56

Right, right. And I mean, as with any processes, but with audit specifically, the big thing is to probably like make it systematic, to have some sort of like order in place to ensure that your audit doesn’t have any like gaps, you know? So this is like, that’s why like I love the process that you guys have like internally that our team has. And I mean, another big thing is probably like that it has to be like comprehensive and it should cover like all areas of sort of like email marketing, not just areas where you think the problems might be, but also the problem, but also like just like to have that comprehensive approach because sometimes the problems you might not even like realize you have them.

Jeff: 4:40

You don’t know if something’s like hiding in the shadows, right? If you’re just kind of looking at it face on and you’re not peeking behind the curtains, sometimes the main problem is It’s deep, deep within your ESP. You got to click a couple buttons.

Vira: 4:52

Right, right, exactly. So at what point usually businesses need to start conducting marketing audit? Is it like for everyone or is it for new businesses, for established businesses? What do you think?

Jeff: 5:05

I don’t think there’s really a right answer to this question. You should be doing it, like if you ask me, you should do it quarterly. Right now is the best time as you head into the new year and you can take your findings in the audit and kind of stretch them out across the entire year. Right. And, um, once you hit like the really high revenue quarters, like quarter 4, obviously it’s a little far away, but if you have the information from the audit and you can use that to your advantage throughout the year. So I would say quarterly, but I would also say at the beginning of this year is probably the best time to get one of these done.

Vira: 5:37

That’s, that’s true. Yeah. A lot of businesses will be revising their like systems that they have in place, their like finances and everything. And that’s a perfect time. But like, if you’ve done a lot of those, You’ve done like a lot of audits with like a bunch of our clients. What would you say are the biggest benefits for the businesses of that like audit process?

Jeff: 5:59

Our audits are really, really based on data. And what’s important when you’re talking about something like Klaviyo is the benchmark data. So the outcome is special in a sense that you can have a better understanding of how your competitors have that advantage over you. So when you use the benchmarks, to inform your strategy that helps you just kind of continue to dominate your industry and kind of rise above what’s going on with other people.

Vira: 6:25

Right. And for those of you guys who haven’t used the benchmark tool yet, first of all, it’s awesome. You should be definitely, definitely using that tool internally for all of your accounts. But it’s basically like the tool that can, just like Jeffrey said, it compares you to the other people or like other brands from your industry. It doesn’t tell you like the names of the brands, obviously, but it just like shows you where you are compared to the other brands. Because maybe sometimes you’re just looking at your numbers and your numbers look good to you, but for the similar brands in the industry, say the click rate or open rate are much, much higher because the nature of the industry often dictates those metrics. And believe me, they can be very, very different. For example, the fashion industry probably has the lowest click-through rates because those emails are often very visual and you have everything you need in the email. And unless someone wants to go through the link and purchase from that link, they won’t click on the link. But when you’re selling something a bit more expensive and it takes you longer time to convince someone to buy, and maybe you want to send your traffic to some FAQ pages or pages that explain the product details or something, that numbers will be completely different. So what I’m trying to say is that even though your numbers seem okay, make sure to see where you are compared to the peers, to your peers in your peer group. So that’s super, super important. So thank you for bringing that up, Jeffrey. That’s huge. Yeah. Yeah. So Flowium audit, obviously today we will focus specifically on what Flowium does and our process. And if you guys want to implement similar processes in your businesses, feel free. And I’m sure Geoffrey will talk about it later, but we do that audit for free for all of our clients and potential clients. So maybe you would be interested in getting one of those yourselves. So Jeffrey, what’s included in Flowium email marketing audit? Like, what areas do you guys look at usually?

Jeff: 8:26

Like you said, so we’re, we’re offering this to anyone who wants it. So what we’ll do is we will take access to your, your service provider, and we will take a look at a very detailed look at what’s going on in your account. So this is going to look something like we’ll do a business review for you. So we will calculate all of your revenue over a certain period of time. And we will take that to the benchmarks tab on your your service provider and compare that and see what the money would look like if you were to make it up to where the benchmarks are supposed to be.

Vira: 8:56

Mm-hmm.

Jeff: 8:57

We will audit your strategy. We’ll make sure that your flows, your automations are working properly, that there’s enough time delays and the triggers make sense and that the customers are going on a proper journey.

Vira: 9:08

Mm-hmm.

Jeff: 9:08

We will audit your opt-in performance. We’ll make sure that your opt-ins are doing well, whether it be your footer or your popup or any sort of opt-in. We’ll make sure that those are going right. And if they’re not, we’ll make sure, we’ll make recommendations based off of that as well. We’ll audit campaigns, totally audit campaigns. So we’ll audit not only the metrics, but we’ll do the design audit as well. So we know, like, as an agency at this point, we’ve got our design pretty down and we want— we design and copy our emails to make sure they convert. So I’ll go in there and I’ll make sure that your emails are designed properly to convert as well. And if they’re not, I can make recommendations based off of that. We’ll do your analytics. So this is where it comes really data heavy. We will make sure that we’re looking at every single one of your benchmarks. Your click-through rate, your open rate, your bounce rate, the whole nine, and make sure that they are up to standard within your industry.

Vira: 10:00

That’s a big one. That’s a big one. No, I, I totally love how like systematic your approach is.

Jeff: 10:06

Yeah, we have a, we have like a game plan. Like when we first started doing it, we were trying to fig— make sure it was a process, right? So when we go in there, I have like a perfect plan of attack. As soon as I get in, I know what I’m doing and I’m ready to rock and roll.

Vira: 10:19

Yeah, no, and I do believe that this like holistic audit approach is probably like the best way to like uncover those, not just like issues, but also the opportunities.

Jeff: 10:28

Yeah.

Vira: 10:29

Just like you mentioned.

Jeff: 10:31

There’s, even if you’re performing perfectly, you still have room for growth.

Vira: 10:35

Yeah, totally. And that’s why we like with our accounts, we’re like constantly A/B testing, even like the smallest details. You wouldn’t believe like how those like little small actually details can like affect your conversion, even like the color of the CTA button or like the.

Jeff: 10:50

Yeah, that was, That’s one of my favorite things to hear about is how the color blue works better than the color red. You would think like, oh, that’s like nothing. And then it turns out it’s something massive.

Vira: 11:01

Actually, now when I think about it, and that’s something that I just like learned recently, a lot of brands are trying to stay away from like green and red colors, not because they don’t like Christmas or anything, but because a lot of people are actually colorblind people. They wouldn’t be able to like recognize those colors. So when you’re like want to visually make something like a focus of the email, you probably like better stay away from that specific colors because it will just like not be very readable. And especially if like, don’t use ever like text, like red and green text, bad, bad idea.

Jeff: 11:35

Yeah. And now you just gave me an idea to, for something to look out when I do the design audit portion now.

Vira: 11:40

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally. No, I do love that you guys have this like complex approach and you like evaluate not just like design, but also the opt-in performance and like you’re auditing campaigns and like flows. and all that, like analytics and benchmarks. I think that’s, that’s huge. What are like the big, like the biggest issues you’re seeing like across, say, all of the accounts? What is like most overlooked?

Jeff: 12:04

I’ve done a bunch of them now. I think I’ve done about 30 or 40 of them now. And when you go in, 9 times out of 10, they’re missing certain foundational flows. And when you go in, that’s a big one. You got to get that like the exit intent. Like so many people are missing the exit intent. It’s such a high revenue builder. And when you go in, you just want to like shake the screen and do it, do it.

Vira: 12:23

Yeah.

Jeff: 12:24

They’re usually missing that. And then a lot of the times, like you said earlier, they think they’re doing great and they are doing great, but then you go in and you see like, oh, well, your competitors are doing better. So when you go in and you’re like, you made this much, but your competitors are going to make this much. And it really is eye-opening for them.

Vira: 12:44

Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s huge. How do you guys, like, what’s the process if someone wants to do the audit? Like, where should they go? What’s the process? Do they need to give you access to their Klaviyo, like how do you handle privacy and security, all that like household items?

Jeff: 13:02

If you go to our website, flowium.com, on the top right, there’s a button that says schedule a call and it’s the first option for a call. It’s a quick 15-minute call with me or one of my sales colleagues and you get to talk to me and you get to have your main character moment. And we just, we run through it really quick. I run through what it looks like, what we’re going to do. And then in terms of privacy and security, when we start working at Flowium, we sign like an overarching NDA to make sure that every single one of our clients are protected. But I will also send over a secondary NDA that would go directly to the brand. And that way there’s, there’s protections in place because I totally get not wanting to give a complete stranger access to all this powerful information about your brand.

Vira: 13:46

Totally.

Jeff: 13:46

So we will send, we’ll send over the NDA, we’ll make sure it’s signed. And then after the 15-minute call, we schedule a secondary call call to review our findings.

Vira: 13:56

So basically, like, how is the audit delivered? Do you guys just like do the call and then you go over all of those stats? Do they get something like at the end, like an email with all of the stats or something?

Jeff: 14:07

So, um, once I get access, I can turn them around pretty quick. I usually need about a business day to pull them out. And what they’ll get is I create a giant board on Miro and it goes over the ins and outs. So everything that we take care of goes onto a Miro About a business day later, me and the potential client or the brand that just wants it will hop on a call and I will review the Miro board with them and make sure that everything is understood and that if they have any questions that are kind of laying around, that we can answer those as well. Once we’re done with that 30-minute call, I will go ahead and send a follow-up email with a bit of a document with my findings, our recommendations, and everything like that.

Vira: 14:48

That’s cool. That’s cool. And then like, if they want to pretty much like implement all of the changes themselves, they have like a game plan ready almost for them, like, or at least their recommendations, right? Or we can implement all of the changes for the brand.

Jeff: 15:03

Yeah. And then sometimes, sometimes when I present it, it’s just like so daunting to them that they end up just coming to work with us and they want to kind of hear more about our services because then we’ll just take care of it, right? Because we’re so dedicated to just email marketing. And we’re really in the business of taking time off of people’s hands, right? So if you’re talking to a one-man show and you’re giving them a list of like 50 different things to take care of, that’s, uh, we’ll help you out.

Vira: 15:29

It can be overwhelming. Yeah. Especially considering that this, um, thing, it covers pretty much your like organization goals, objectives, strategies, like different technical details and everything. If you can do it internally, you can totally do that and we’ll have the game plan ready for you. But we also do all these things internally as well. So, Jeff, thank you so much. Like, I mean, it was short and sweet, and that’s exactly what we wanted to do. Um, and especially at the beginning of the year, just like you said, it’s such a great time to, to like go back to the basics and like review those like areas of improvement. Yeah. And yeah, that’s, that’s a perfect time, especially considering that it’s like a slower season too for like a lot of you guys in.

Jeff: 16:15

Yeah. And you’ll have the time to kind of really, um, fledge out what you want to do, when you want to do it, and how you’re going to— that plan of attack, right? And making sure that you have the proper amount of time to take care of it. And then when you hit the busier seasons and everything is in place, you’re really going to notice a difference.

Vira: 16:31

Totally, totally. Yeah. I mean, if you’re in the supplement business, probably it’s not going to be your slow, slow months. January or February, they’re huge, Jeffrey. This is like— surprises me every freaking year. And I’ve been doing this for like many years, but like every freaking year, January, February is huge for like supplements. I guess it’s like the whole new year, new you.

Jeff: 16:49

Yeah, I was going to say everyone’s making their New Year’s resolutions. They’re like, I’m getting back on track. I’m buying the supplements and everything. I would like to see the benchmarks for a supplement business. If you own a supplement business and you’re listening, please schedule a call with me.

Vira: 17:04

Totally. Totally. Yeah, I know the numbers in January, February are crazy, especially January for some reason. It’s probably by February people are done with their New Year resolutions. They’re forgetting them or whatever. But yeah, Well, I’m totally going to make fine New Year resolutions this year. And New Year is like when? Like next Saturday, I think. No?

Jeff: 17:22

Yeah.

Vira: 17:22

Can it be? No.

Jeff: 17:23

Yeah. Next Saturday.

Vira: 17:24

Crazy. Crazy. Yeah, guys, we are recording this podcast like 2 weeks before you will hear it. So we still have Christmas time around. We still have like New Year’s in a week and a half.

Jeff: 17:36

Yeah. I’m not making any resolutions yet.

Vira: 17:38

Not? You’re not?

Jeff: 17:40

No, not yet. I need some time to marinate with Yeah, you’ll do that after Christmas. You’ll have to. Exactly.

Vira: 17:46

Yeah.

Jeff: 17:46

I just want to eat for Christmas.

Vira: 17:47

Yes, please. Yes, please. So I’ll have a lot of food for myself this year because I was supposed to have this big family friends gathering tomorrow, but we got snowed in and people in Vancouver don’t know how to drive in snow. It’s not even that bad. I mean, for Ontario people, it’s like, whatever, I’m still going to go on picnic or whatever.

Jeff: 18:06

We have a giant snowstorm heading in tomorrow and everyone’s sounding the alarms as if we’re not going to plow our They just think it’s just going to be all snow. I’m like, it’s going to be fine. Everyone’s going to be fine.

Vira: 18:19

Yeah, no, not in Vancouver though. We can see our grass through the snow, so that’s concerning. That’s concerning. Yeah. Well, anyways, thank you so much for coming to this podcast. You guys, we’ll link everything that Jeffrey mentioned in this podcast. We’ll link it down below. Definitely do that free audit thing. It’s a super, super cool offer that we’re doing for all of our clients, potential clients. It’s free as well, and you’ll have your game plan. And maybe you’ll decide to join our awesome Flowium team after that. If not, that’s cool too.

Jeff: 18:51

And I do enjoy doing them. They’re a lot of fun.

Vira: 18:53

And I mean, yeah, and he’s a rock star too. So definitely schedule a call with Jeffrey. And that’s a great thing to do at the beginning of the year. And I hope you guys will have an amazing kickstart of your year and that this year will be even more successful than the last one. Jeffrey, thank you again for coming.

Jeff: 19:11

Yeah, not a problem at all.

Vira: 19:13

Thank you. Take care, guys. We’ll talk to you next week. Bye.

Jeff: 19:16

Bye.