#145. 8 Simple Ways to Grow Your Email List | Podcast

Vira: 0:41

Hello. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Email Einstein the podcast by Flowium. I’m your host, Vira Sadlak, and today I’m joined by my colleague, coworker and fellow Canadian, Andrea. Say hi, Andrea.

Andrea: 0:54

Hey, how’s it going?

Vira: 0:56

We’re not going to do long intros because you guys know Andrea. She’s been on this podcast already. But the things you should probably know about her is that a. She’s also a Canadian. She’s from St. Catharines, Ontario. But also in her free time, she hosts Pop Trivia. We just like talked about it like literally five seconds ago. So Andrea, what’s the craziest fun fact that you recently learned that you will be using?

Andrea: 1:24

Ooh, craziest fun fact.

Vira: 1:25

Yeah.

Andrea: 1:25

So one of. So I recently did a Simpsons trivia. I’m obsessed with the Simpsons and I didn’t realize until very recently that the guy who plays Fat Tony like the mobster on the Simpsons is the same guy who plays David Rossi on Criminal Minds.

Vira: 1:44

What? Seriously.

Andrea: 1:44

I know, I like, like the idea of like he goes from filming an episode of Criminal Minds to going to film the Simpsons like in the same week. That to me is really funny.

Vira: 1:52

So that’s a good one. That’s a good one. Awesome. Cool. Well, I wish we could just like keep talking about like trivia stuff and like Simpson, but we do have some like juicy email marketing stuff to discuss today. So let’s do this, Andrea. Let’s do this. Cool. Yeah, guys, so today we will be talking about list. As the popular marketing quote says, the money is in the list. Your email marketing list. And we could not agree more. We might be biased though, but here’s the fun fact about email marketing lists and email marketing in general. For every $1 you spend on email marketing on average in the industry, you can expect an average return of 38 to $42. Isn’t it crazy? Obviously this number will be different for different for different industry, but the money is in the list essentially. And the fun fact number two, capturing a new lead is five times more expensive than nurturing one. So it’s yes, it is expensive to get a lead, but once you have it, you can capitalize on it times again. So today we will be talking about eight popular proven strategies to grow your email marketing list. Why eight? Well just like a random number of strategies that we have. We couldn’t come up with 10. I mean we can come up with 10 but we know a gazillion of them. But we’ll just decided to focus on like eight big ones for you to try, for you to try asap. Some of them you’re probably using, some of them you’re probably knowing, loving. But we’ll still like go over all of them just like to remind you why they are important important and how to do them right. So Andrea, let’s start with a, with a good old one.

Andrea: 3:31

Yeah. So I think like first and foremost you need a way to capture your customers information, right? So the, the thing we’re going to talk about first is the thing that everyone absolutely needs. Like the fundamental, which is a pop up something that I like to talk about when I talk about marketing is exchange relationships. So we are asking for something from your customers, we’re asking for access to their inbox, access to their sms, whatever it is. And so we have to picture that as a type of currency, right? And so in order to get that information from them, we have to offer something in exchange. And that’s what we’re trying to do in these pop ups, right? We want to make sure that we’re enticing them into giving us this valuable information of theirs in return for something. So whether that’s a discount, a credit to spend on products even just like our newsletter gives you help, some helpful tips and tricks or whatever it might be, offering something in exchange for that information is usually a really good tactic to be able to build your list. And it doesn’t need to be that complex. They don’t need to be flashy, they don’t need to be fancy to get the job done. Honestly, simple in a lot of cases is usually better. When you see like when you land on any e commerce website and you get like that big wheel that pops up and it’s like hey, get a discount for this.

Vira: 4:51

We do love it.

Andrea: 4:52

You know what I mean? That’s still kind of a form in the sense that we’re offering you a discount in exchange for that information, right? And that’s like one of the flashier versions of this. One of my clients has this like this big pop up that comes up and it looks like the cases from Deal or no Deal, right? And you use one of those cases and it gives you a discount. But I also have a client who uses Just like, hey, we’re going to give you 10% off if you give us your email address. And both of those forms work for different audiences and in different situations. I think as long as you’re setting one up that like, you know that the functionality of it works and that your audience is going to react well to the offer that you’re giving them. You know, stress that value and watch the conversions come in. That’s the main thing.

Vira: 5:36

Yeah, yeah, that’s a big one. And I love those gamified ones, those cases example. I loved it. And this wheelie, it gets me every time. You know, like when you like roll the wheel and get the discount code and I mean, yeah, it’s still, it’s, it’s very basic but it works. Like for me, it does it every time.

Andrea: 5:55

I don’t know about you, Vira. Like I will. I grew up on game shows like we used to watch. Like, I remember our school was on strike for like many months and my grandmother watched us every day and we would watch Price is Right every day.

Vira: 6:08

Price is Right. This is like, this is the show that we never had like back home growing up. And I was like obsessing over American version of it.

Andrea: 6:16

I would die to go on the prices. Right. But it’s this idea that like I, I grew like watching that wheel spin and being like, the money is coming. So I get on a website and it’s got that gamified like that wheel specifically. I’m like, let’s go. Like, I’m ready.

Vira: 6:32

Oh gosh. We should create some sort of like campaign surrounded, guess the price of the product or something. That’d be fun for a specific audience though. People like, who grew up in like 90s or like 80s. Is the show still around by the way?

Andrea: 6:47

It is. It’s hosted by.

Vira: 6:50

Wow, cool. I should rewatch it. That’s exciting. And this is like a very North American thing to do. Honestly, this is like the most North American TV show I’ve ever seen. But I loved it, yeah.

Andrea: 7:04

I love that.

Vira: 7:05

Cool. Okay guys. And for those of you who try to just like a additional like pro tip from Flowium Team, if you’re trying to grow your list quickly, maybe like stay away from Double Opt in. And for those of you who don’t know what double Opt in is, it’s basically when, when someone puts their email address into the pop up form and they are required to authorize that they’ve actually opted in into your list through a confirmation email. So basically they put their email address then they will receive an email from you or from Klaviyo asking hey, are you sure you want to be on this list? And honestly it’s a good practice. If you are on a hunt for a high, high quality leads, it will definitely help you with your deliverability, with the quality of your leads. But if you are at the stage of growing list, stay away from double opt in because I think that conversion is like 40% less on those lists that are double opt in list compared to the single opt in. So if you’re trying to build your email list at a rapid rate, double opt in is probably like not a good tool to use. But overall it’s a good practice.

Andrea: 8:09

Yeah, I’d also say like watch out if you don’t know what like if you don’t have healthy deliverability because that, that second opt in email when it gets sent sometimes gets lost in the junk mail or the promotions. And so not only are people like, you know, sketched out by getting like are you sure you want to join this list? But it’s also like what if you don’t receive it? You know?

Vira: 8:30

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point. That’s an excellent point. Cool. Okay, so the first one pop ups, the big one, obviously everyone uses them, everyone loves them. The second thing that believe it or not, a lot of brands neglect is using an email signup form in the website navigation or footer. It’s a very tried and true methods of like list building. And you know when you like go to those websites and when you scroll to the very bottom you have this little like a footer opt in form or something. You can consider this your almost like a passive list building method because you literally don’t need to do anything to make people sign up for your list. And besides in a way footer is like your filter for your most loyal fans because if person goes to your website and if they scroll to the very bottom of the website and if they put their email address it that they actually want to hear from you. So make sure to treat them well, make sure to deliver some high quality content into their inbox and if they are engaged you want to ask them for action right away. That’s why you want an email sign up in the footer. A lot of brands they neglect that footer and that’s a big issue I think because these are pretty much your most avid fans, right. And the footer is also the place where people can people kind of expect to have a footer at the bottom of the, of the website. It’s kind of like a, like a norm almost. So you should definitely include one as an addition to your other to your other opt ins at the website. So that’s a big one.

Andrea: 10:14

I feel like when I’m looking to sign up for one I’m like okay, gotta go to the footer, find the thing, you know.

Vira: 10:20

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I’ve seen some brands are even like collecting that like zero party data that is like invaluable right now. Right? They are collecting information about like custom preferences or like some quick question about like this or that kind of thing. So yeah, whenever you can always collect that zero party data because now it’s huge. Especially when we don’t use, we don’t rely on like third party cookies anymore. This is a big one. So yeah, definitely, definitely use an email signup form in your website navigation or footer.

Andrea: 10:54

Which brings us to kind of our next thing actually when we’re talking about that zero party data, something that we’re seeing a huge increase in is opt in quizzes or like product recommendation quizzes. So we talked kind of about interactive content a little bit like choosing the case or like spinning the wheel or whatever. But these like quizzes and calculators and widgets, those are going to be big ones for you that like give you not only the opt in but they also give you information about the person that you’re going to be reaching out to. So whether you’re looking to grow just your email, SMS or Facebook messenger opt in lists, there’s, there’s really no better tool in my opinion than a quiz. Because at the end of the quiz you prompt them to opt in to receive their quiz results. Right. And you know that they’re engaged and they have a high intent to purchase because they’ve gone all the way through that quiz. Right. Because I personally I’m not sitting doing a quiz and then like I’m not going to opt in.

Vira: 11:47

Yeah, you want, you want to get those results. That’s true. Yeah.

Andrea: 11:51

Yeah. I’m like I am doing the quiz for a reason. I want the answer. That’s like why I’m here. Right, right. So a great example of a quiz is Octane.Ia. they have this Octane.Ai. sorry.

Vira: 12:05

Yes. Yeah, they have like an e-commerce.

Andrea: 12:09

Like quiz that you can take that tells you like what you need to do next. And then they kind of go through and they show different clients of theirs that are using it. So one of those is Health Aid which does like a personality quiz that’s simple and quick and Then offers a custom mocktail based on the customer’s answer.

Vira: 12:26

I love it. I love it.

Andrea: 12:27

I love that too. This also works really well with skin care. One of my clients uses kind of like a quiz functionality to like recommend products that are like hey, like if this is your skin concern perhaps you might want to try this product. And that I think is like really helpful for their. Not only because skincare is hard. Right. I mean like I’m a skincare junkie and I own so many products because I’m like, oh this looks cool but it doesn’t actually do what I need it to do necessarily. And I think like having that quiz not only will increase your opt ins and probably honestly your conversions, but will also kind of give you that leg up in terms of customer satisfaction. Because if you’re recommending products that are actually just for what they want to use it for, then that product is going to work better for them overall.

Vira: 13:45

That’s true, that’s true. No, yeah, I’m a big fan of those quizzes especially on skincare websites just like you said and fashion websites, they are huge. And also just like they there for a good quiz like no matter what the quiz is, like what kind of chips you are, what kind of Disney princess you are, like buzzfeed quizzes, like bring them on. Honestly, I’m like that, I’m like that person. Yeah, definitely.

Andrea: 14:09

Not to like age myself here but like also similarly to like my talk about the price is right. It’s this idea that like I don’t know, I. We used to buy like teen magazines and the last page would have a quiz.

Vira: 14:21

Yeah, always, always.

Andrea: 14:22

My sister and I would fight over who got to do the quiz first because obviously then they’ve marked it up.

Vira: 14:27

Yeah, that’s true, that’s true. Maybe that’s why it works so well for like our generations. Those like quizzes and pop ups. There’s this like nostalgia in it. Definitely. And speaking of like skincare quizzes, there is this tool called Solawave. I’m not, I’m not sure if you’ve heard about it or not. It’s basically like a rat therapy, like a wrinkle tool almost like. And they have an excellent, excellent like a skin, skin test on their website. And this is like the $150 that I didn’t think will spend. I just like went on their website, you know to like look around and stuff but their marketing was on point. I really like how they have like different skin types and like maturing, like acne prone, like dry and puffy, like dull skin. And like you will basically they will help you to pick the tool, which is. I don’t think it’s like even necessary because they pretty much have like one tool on their website. But still it just helps you learn something about yourself. And that’s what we, what we as humans we always tend want to learn more about.

Andrea: 15:32

Cautionary tale about quizzes though. Like my cautionary tale about quizzes is if you don’t have enough products to make the recommendations based on the different things, like, don’t do it because like if I went through a quiz, like if I landed on a website and there was only one product and they made me do a quiz and I did the whole quiz and then they’re like, this is the product. I’m like, well, this is the only product you have though.

Vira: 15:52

Right. But they also like tell you the type of the skin and how use this product for this skin and like in combination with what, like serums or stuff. So it, it kind of makes sense. And I understand why they have it on their website because they want to collect data about you. Right? So it’s always that like exchange moment. Just like you mentioned this data. It’s almost like a currency in the email marketing world. So yeah, I mean I love them. I have this tool, I use it every night. I took the before and after picture or for now just before picture. I made my husband use it. So we’ll see how it goes. We are not sponsored by Solawave, but we can be Solawave. If you’re listening to us, let us know. Just like send us a bunch of those amazing red light therapy stuff. Yeah.

Andrea: 16:38

Always looking for a new skincare tool.

Vira: 16:41

Definitely. I spend way too much money on skincare and makeup. Like considering that I work from home and I barely use makeup like still, still. Okay, so you can also like a big, big thing in Klaviyo is also integrating Facebook with Klaviyo and creating lead ads to generate more leads that will go into your email marketing list. Although email marketing and social media, they always seem to be like competing almost for the title of a more effective channel for E commerce. I think in reality they actually work really well together and bring you better results when you marry the two together. Facebook, Instagram messengers, they are definitely powerful tools to promote your brand and gain new leads. So in 2023 you definitely can’t ignore combo of like social media and email marketing. You can actually use Klaviyo integration to set up Facebook leads ads that allow users to sign up for your email list directly within Facebook. So you don’t even need to create those like fancy landing pages. You don’t need to create like additional opt in forms. Basically your customers will be able to like see the ad on Facebook and then like be like added to your list directly from Facebook. As a bonus of this like Klaviyo Facebook integration, you can, you can then reach your existing Klaviyo subscribers and target them with like high quality ads on Internet. And you can also do this like by creating this like lookalike audiences. So basically you can take your list and create custom, custom audiences based on your list and based on like the characteristics of your buyer’s Persona and then like target similar people on Facebook that you have on your email marketing list. So your Facebook lead data will be then like sent automatically to Klaviyo. And this is basically like a big, almost like a circle that you can create. And this is an amazing way to generate more leads. Because what we’ve seen with some brands is that they actually like convert through Facebook but then they can’t talk to that person anymore. So they basically like don’t own that contact. Right. They converted the person. If they purchased, great. If they haven’t purchased, you don’t have the way to talk to them anymore. That’s why it’s super important to like connect the two so you can both collect the data and talk to your customers.

Andrea: 19:15

Yeah, I love that too. That’s one of the things that I love about marketing is integrated communication strategies. And this is like 100% that. This also helps you really control your customer’s journey a lot better. Right. Because if they opt into your list from Facebook ads, then you know that they not only want to hear from you, but also that that conversion is going to come through eventually, even if it hasn’t already.

Vira: 19:42

Yeah. And it does help with that. Like you mentioned that omnichannel experience, right. You want to be talking to your customer from different platforms, from different channels of marketing, but you also don’t want to be too repetitive or too aggressive. So if you know that you had the customer with this Facebook took say ad and they didn’t convert. You don’t want to hit them with the same identical ad, say like on Instagram or you don’t want to send the same email at the same time. You want to create this very flawless Omnichannel marketing experience. And integrating the apps really helps with that.

Andrea: 20:22

100%. It also keeps all your data in the same place, which is a huge Part of managing your list effectively.

Vira: 20:30

Yeah. And what people actually don’t realize about Klaviyo is that it’s pretty much like a customer, like a data platform of collecting customer data. This is like the most powerful thing about platforms like Klaviyo. Not the functionality of sending an email, which is obviously an important one, but the way you can collect the information about that customer through email is where the power of this platform is 100%.

Andrea: 20:56

Speaking of powerful platforms, another way to grow your list is partnerships. I think this is something that’s often overlooked because sometimes it’s like really hard to do. But being able to grow your email list by partnering with other brands that complement your own is such a good idea. You don’t want to partner with your competition necessarily. That’s obviously not the journey. But if you find someone who has something that complements your business, then you’re able to say like, oh, like I sell, I don’t know, candles and this, this company sells lighters. Like it makes sense for you to do cross promotion and to try and get into the other audience and get your audience to kind of buy into theirs. So when you’re doing some type of like competitive analysis, you’re looking at your marketplace, right? Think about what complementary brands that are maybe more well known than yours or have like a very engaged audience that you can form partnerships with. And it’s hard, it’s hard to give advice about partnerships like on a, on a macro level and say like, you should just have more partnerships. Like obviously that’s not a super helpful thing. But I think part of what people overlook in these partnerships, like if two people are doing say like an Instagram giveaway together, one of the things that they’re overlooking is how valuable it can be to create a joint list that you both have access to and that has consented to hear from both brands. So anytime you’re doing any sort of partnership with your company, I would say like, that the number one thing is to think about how can this partnership help build my email list? Because as you mentioned at the beginning, Vira, like it’s expensive to get initial leads. Right? Your cost per acquisition is probably high, especially right now. And so being able to say like, we’re using this partnership for general promotion, but then also we’re going to use it to build our list, is a really good way to like leverage a partnership in multiple different ways. You can even do like co branded experiences. This is something that like really big companies often do notorious for. This is Marvel or Disney, Disney in general but specifically Marvel. Right? So a great example to celebrate the Asian culture in film, Sanzo made an Asian flavored sparkling water and co branded it with Shang Chi and the legend of the ten rings, right? Which was like the first kind of foray into martial arts from a Marvel perspective. And that’s a very interesting thing is when you see these big co branded kind of products or experiences or whatever it is, what they’re trying to do is leverage the popularity of one brand to kind of bring the other one up. In a lot of cases this can be expensive, but it usually really helps. And in the case of Sanzo, they have been growing for a long time, but the month that that sparkling water launched, they six times the growth in their e commerce revenue. Like I can’t even imagine like you’re like chugging along doing your business and one month you just have six times the profit that you normally have.

Vira: 23:57

That’s insane, right?

Andrea: 23:58

It’s insane. Could you imagine? But they’re able to extend their reach because obviously everyone knows who Disney is. Like we live on the planet, right? So there’s like all of those ways of like using other brands and partnering with other brands or co branding things with other brands that, that allow you to kind of grow exponentially in ways that you might not have done before. And if you think about it, when you see that six times growth in their revenue, you also have to imagine that say six times the number of people made those purchases, if they also are being added to your list, not only are you getting that initial revenue because of the partnership that you did, but if they’re on your list now, we know that you’re going to probably hear from them again if you nurture them properly via email and SMS marketing.

Vira: 24:46

Yeah, no, I really love that like, aspect of like two different brands partnering, partnering together. And in fact we have this client called RSVLTS and we’ve recorded podcasts with them like way like back in the day. It was actually podcast number four and it was podcast about how to build a widely successful e commerce brand. And they actually tell their story of how the RSVLTS like went from not having a single license for that like partnership and almost getting sued by Fox. Yes, like that same like Fox company.

Andrea: 25:20

Owned by Disney now.

Vira: 25:22

Really? I didn’t realize that, but yeah, they pretty much. They created this like iconic shirt from the movie Sandlot. Have you, have you seen this movie, Andrea? I loved it. I loved it like I watched it for the first time, to be honest, after we recorded that podcast. Because I mean, apparently it’s very like iconic for this North American culture. It’s like, it’s like the movie to watch especially around like 4th of July and stuff. So they actually just like launched that sandlot shirt that went viral. It become like so, so popular. They made like a ton of money with it and then Fox reached out to them and like because they wanted to pretty much like sue them for not having the license. But on that meeting where they were like with lawyers and like talking all of the details of that like process results actually like convince them to partner with them and now they are getting things ready for like global distribution which is amazing. So they basically like turned that meeting into like a pitch and pretty much that’s how they became partners. And now they have like multiple, multiple licenses or like gazillion, gazillion of different licenses and they work with like this biggest brands and that’s amazing. That’s just like shows you how like you both can win right from that, from that cooperation. So guys, if you want to listen to the entire story, go to episode number four, how to build a widely successful e commerce brand. The episode with RSVLTS. So yeah.

Andrea: 26:54

They have a lot of cool shirts too if you’re looking for some cool shirts.

Vira: 26:57

Yes, yes. And I think they still have that like original sandlot, sandlot collection or the sandlot shirt. Although it’s like very hard to get because it’s almost always sold out. It’s so popular.

Andrea: 27:10

I love that.

Vira: 27:44

Okay, the next method that we are going to talk about is called email based retargeting and we were like literally talking about them today on our weekly EMS call. And for most people email based retargeting is still like a completely new concept. Right? And to be honest, I just like learned about it a few months ago when we were recording an episode with, with Adam Robinson from retention.com so definitely go and listen to this episode number 133 about like how to maximize your audience growth and reclaim revenue with the apps like retention.com but basically what email based retargeting is is that you can get customers information, you can get customer on the list without that customer’s, without that customer’s permission almost. So basically there is like a database of emails that companies like retention.com own and then they match that customer that goes onto your website with the email that they have in their database and add that person to your klaviyo list. Now very important thing, you can do it in Canada or Europe or UK or Australia. This is like an only US thing because in Canada it’s like prohibited. There is like some legal act aspects to take into the account. But initially this is almost like an email harvesting and I love this definition because it is basically an email harvesting thing. And actually one thing that you should know when you’re doing things like this is that can spam acts actually prohibits email harvesting when you don’t have the opportunity to opt out, when you don’t give them the opportunity to opt out. So it’s very important to first of all have unsubscribe links in your emails that you will be sending to those people. And ideally you want to have that unsubscribe link at the very top of the email so people can unsubscribe from your list instead of marking you as spam. You definitely don’t want this to happen. The second very important thing is that you need to have a physical address and you need to have it in the footer of your email. I think it’s actually the requirement for all of the emails anyways. But for this specific case it’s super, super important. And also so technology, basically it should not collect or provide email addresses to users. If those email addresses were acquired from websites that prohibits email address harvesting. So I know it’s like a lot of legal language, but basically the idea is that even if you do that, make sure that your customers can opt out, make sure that your customers are seeing what your physical address is and also be very careful with deliverability and stuff because if your deliverability is not very good, if you are in not that top tier of deliverability, don’t experiment with apps like this because naturally the unsubscribe rates will be much higher on say retention.com welcome flow compared to your regular welcome flow. So be very careful with it. And remember, it’s only the US thing, be very careful. So people from Canada or UK or Australia don’t go through that flow, maybe even add some filters because here in Canada it’s prohibited by law to reach out to customers if you don’t have, if they didn’t give you the permission to be on the list. In US it’s still kind of like a gray area. And this is a great way to grow your list especially considering that it’s not necessarily like a cold outreach because people, they actually went to your website, they express some interest towards your product or towards the service that you do. So they kind of know who you are but still be very cautious of like what you send, how many emails you send, and like what you are talking about in those emails.

Andrea: 31:50

Yeah, I would also say like in this case, in the case of retention.com or similar kind of like harvesting scenarios, make sure that you’re doing a different welcome flow than your regular welcome flow and that you’re giving them an offer of some kind. Because if you don’t give them an offer then you might lose them, right?

Vira: 32:11

Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much offer is definitely an important component of that thing. But also we try to make our welcome emails for retention.com people a bit more educational compared to say regular welcome flow. We try to give even more value to those customers because they might know less about your brand than people who opted in into your list. So we try to make this emails a bit more educational. For example, for this one brand that we are selling serums for, we try to give some very impressive before and after images. We try to explain how the serum works, what are the components of the serum, what’s the technology. We try to explain how our return policy works so they know that they can purchase this product and then return if they don’t see the results, which, spoiler alert, they will see the results because this brand is amazing. We talked about it a lot on our, on our podcast, but yeah, it’s, it’s a very interesting way of growing your list. Again, this is a good platform or a good tool to use for those like bigger brands with like bigger lists. Um, and also it’s quite pricey. So if you’re like starting your business, there are some like other ways that you can, that you can use to grow your email marketing list.

Andrea: 33:33

For sure. Another great way, if you are kind of just starting out or if you have like a really solid base of like customers is referrals. This is not specific to email. This is like, this is like in general referrals are great. I used to work in real estate and one of the things that we used to talk about all the time was that the best way to find a realtor is a recommendation from somebody else. Right. You have a good experience and so you, you go to the same person, you tell your friends like this person did such a great job, etcetera etc. And that can be applied to almost any industry. And a great way of doing it is if you have a loyal customer, give them an incentive to refer someone they like or care about to the products that they like and care about. So a great way to do this is through any sort of loyalty program. So whether you use a Yotpo or Smile.IO or Loyalty lion or whatever it is, all of these loyalty programs have some sort of referral functionality. And essentially what they do is they’ll give you a reward of discounts or early access to new products or exclusive access to something you can’t otherwise get. Or, you know, I don’t even know. A lot of times it’s just like an offer that people are like, oh, of course, that’s the thing I want, you know, and by doing that or giving them extra points, whatever it is, you’re attaching like their action to this benefit, right? And their action is like, sign up or ask a friend to sign up to our email list. Send them an email that tells them how much you love this product. And it’s such a great way to make it easy for people to. To share about the things they care about, essentially. Great example of this. One of the skincare brands that I’m working with right now, Versed Skin, they have a loyalty program and they have this viral headband that they like, went. Went crazy on TikTok. It’s this black headband you’ve definitely seen. It kind of looks like a crystal croissant. It’s like, I have one, it’s great. Of course I do. One of the things that they do is that they offer it as a reward for their loyalty members once in a while, Right. And because they have so many products that have gone viral and all of these different things, it’s this really great way of being like, oh, like if you share, like if you refer somebody, you get extra points and then you can redeem those points for these exclusive things that we don’t even sell. Sell, you can only get as a reward.

Vira: 36:00

Oh, I love it. I sucker for this kind of stuff. Yeah.

Andrea: 36:03

Me too. So good. And like, there’s. There’s a lot of different scenarios where you see this, right? It’s like, refer a friend and get 5% off. Or like, get, get $15, give 15% off and those types of things. And like, that is such a great way to let your loyal customers and people who love your products and your services get those loyal people to you essentially become ambassadors of your business, right?

Vira: 36:28

Yeah.

Andrea: 36:28

Because the reality is when we’re thinking about our decision making processes and when we’re making decisions about purchasing, I’m always more likely to buy something that a friend of mine really likes than something that I’ve just done research on. Right?

Vira: 36:43

That’s true. Yeah.

Andrea: 36:44

And this, this is a really good way of being like, hey, send them an email directly. And then in that email, that’s a referral email. There’s a way to sign, sign up. Right? That’s perfect because essentially, like, I think about the times that like my friends and I would be going out and I’ve got a new lipstick and I’m like living my best life. You know how much I love shopping and I roll up with like a new lipstick and I’m like, this lipstick lasts all night. It’s the best lipstick I’ve ever owned. I’ve just sold it to six people. Right. And so, and so not only am I now referring these people to this company and to this product, but they have like a really solid, like, yeah, we watched Andrea put it on. We watched Andrea wear it all night. Like it did what she said it was going to do. It lasted and it was great. And so kind of like letting your customers kind of show that proof and help grow your business for you is such a good way. And especially in terms of these lists, right, because this referral program lets you do like, oh, like we’re going to reward you for sharing and everyone wants a reward, right?

Vira: 37:44

Yeah, definitely. Because who needs like 5% off or 10% off when you can have that. How did you say it? Like black croissant shaped band or whatever.

Andrea: 37:52

Yeah, it’s a headband and it’s shaped like.

Vira: 37:54

Yeah, yeah, it’s the best. That’s the best. Of course. Yeah, you should start like a community or something like Andrea recommends like a Slack or Discord community or like signal or whatever. I would be there. I would totally be there. Honestly, I want to show you this thing I bought.

Andrea: 38:09

It’s like a balloon. Balloon. It’s a statue, but it’s shaped like a balloon animal dog. I’m obsessed.

Vira: 38:14

Oh, I know, I know, I know which one it is. Like, I totally saw them on TikTok. Honestly, are we hanging on the same channels or whatever algorithm? You know, probably that might be true. Yeah, that’s funny. And funny that you’ve mentioned about that real estate recommendation aspect because now when I think about it, I’ve never worked with any real estate professional who was not recommended to me. So now I work wonder why, why there are like so many like real estate benches around the city. You know, I’m not sure if you guys have them in, in Ontario, but this is like an advertisement where they put, where, where they put the face of like a real estate guide guy on the bench. Poor thing. Like, like why, why would you do that?

Andrea: 38:57

If the word of mouse is where it’s like the whole process.

Vira: 39:00

Right. And they so creepy. Yeah.

Andrea: 39:02

This is the funny thing, like when I was so I wasn’t a realtor myself, I was, I did marketing for a real estate group. Anytime we considered that I was like, but why would we do that? Like that those hundreds of dollars that you’re spending on that bench.

Vira: 39:15

I don’t think it’s hundreds, I think it’s like thousands. Yes.

Andrea: 39:18

It’s crazy. It’s so expensive. It’s like so like that money that you’re spending. What if you just reward your current clients for referring to referral program.

Vira: 39:28

Right.

Andrea: 39:28

And that’s again, that’s the same idea as this like the multi, like multi channel or omnichannel kind of approach is like.

Vira: 39:35

Right.

Andrea: 39:35

Really understanding which channels make the most sense for you. Because in an industry like that you’re not getting. No one’s calling the thing they saw on the bus. The bus.

Vira: 39:44

Right. And also you need to kind of understand where your customer hang out. So like in Vancouver, like the real estate, property, like properties are like insanely expensive. Like, and like people who are like driving, who are riding the buses or like people who are like looking at the buses. I don’t think it’s like the same people who would like spend money on purchasing the house. It’s just like very important to understand who your customer is and where they hang out basically. And like come to them, like bring the advertisement to them directly. And that’s. Yeah, but I love those like all old style marketing businesses, like it’s so cute. And those like planes with banners. I’ve only seen them in movies, I haven’t seen them in real life. But I still want to like, oh, I saw one. I really want here. Ontario. You guys are so cute. We don’t do things the same way here in bcm. You know what it is?

Andrea: 40:36

It’s because it’s specifically the difference between B.C. and Ontario. The product that was being advertised is something that, that is very limited in digital advertising. I’m not gonna say what it is, but it’s like the idea that like you can’t do certain ads because you are this type of business. Right. For legality reasons. And so I I’ve never seen one before. This was like, maybe, I want to say last year, last summer, I saw one for the first time and it was like advertising a store that sells this type of product. And it was, it was an interesting, interesting thing because I was, I. I think about it all the time, but I don’t remember what the store was.

Vira: 41:12

That’s an interesting approach because, like, it’s so rare and so cheesy that you like, that you actually notice it. It’s like with like this physical male, you know, and guys, the very last way to like build your. Build your list since we started talking about it and we didn’t have it on our. On our nose, by the way. So this is like totally just like an additional idea. Niche communities. Andrea, like briefly talked about it, but those, like, places where your customer hang out, if your brand can cater to like, the specific niche audience and convert those audiences and to bring them onto your list, this is very, very powerful. A lot of brands, they nowadays have this Facebook groups or Slack communities or Signal even, and especially smaller brands. So definitely make sure to tap into those communities because these are the people who are your core customers. This is your core audience. And you can basically give them some sort of a landing page, some sort of offer to bring them from those commun to your list. And this will be the top quality leads, believe me.

Andrea: 42:21

Yeah. In that same vein, if your company goes to a lot of, like, trade shows or events, having some easy way to get people onto your list in those scenarios and then actually having a plan with what to do with those emails, that is like, so great because you already have a personal touch point and then you actually use them. The number of email lists I’ve signed up for or at conferences and trade shows, but then they never do anything with your email. Right? Because they’re just like, oh, we’re just going to collect the information. Just make sure that you’re doing something with it once you get it.

Vira: 42:55

That’s true. That’s true. You can even like create a separate welcome series for those people just so they know that they are not forgotten, you know, that they know that you still want to talk to them. So now you have it, like eight strategies to grow your list in 2023. You guys, I hope you enjoyed listening to this podcast just as much as we enjoyed recording it and talking about all kinds of, like, weird stuff. So thank you so much for hanging out with us. And Andrea, thank you so much for coming to this podcast. We should do it more often. I love your examples.

Andrea: 43:24

Thanks for having me. I love coming.

Vira: 43:27

Totally, totally. And guys, if you like what we do, as always, please leave us a review and send us a screenshot and we will send you some really nice Flowium branded surprise. I didn’t plan to talk in like a poem form, but it’s just like I ended up. I ended up sounding like a poet.

Andrea: 43:43

You can’t help that you’re poetic, Vira.

Vira: 43:45

Yes, yes. It’s just, it’s just who I am, you guys. You didn’t know that this is who I am. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for coming, Andrea, and we hope to have you guys back here next Tuesday. Thank you. Take care. Bye.

Andrea: 43:59

Bye.