#18. How To Create Engaging Email Content And Stay Consistently Creative | Podcast

Vira: 0:16

Erich is actually one of the masterminds behind Chubbies iconic emails. And in this podcast he will hopefully share some juicy email marketing details with us.

Alissa: 0:50

Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Email Einstein. Vira and Alissa here today with a very special guest. But before we get into that, we are two email marketers at an email marketing agency called Flowium. We are super passionate about email marketing and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium, full service, e commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients. And our service is tailored specifically for your business and is designed to help increase your online retail revenue by 20 to 50. That’s 5,0%. We deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment and that’s what we’re all about. And without further ado, Vira, please introduce us to our very special guest today.

Vira: 1:38

I’m so excited about today’s episode, you guys. So welcome to another episode of World of Flowium podcast. Thank you for hanging out with us today. Today on the show we’ll be talking to Erich Hellstrom from Chubbies Shorts. And for unfamiliar, Chubbies is the apparel brand with a cult following. And as you will learn in this podcast, killer email. And if you are not on the email list, go sign up now because it’s hilarious. Even though it’s October in Canada and I’m certainly not in need of shirts, for sure, I’m somehow always find myself opening all of Chubbies emails because they are that good. Anyways, so we have Erich with us on the show today and Erich is actually one of the masterminds behind Chubbies iconic emails. And in this podcast he will hopefully share some juicy email marketing details with us. So say hi Erich.

Erich: 2:34

Hey, how’s it going? Thank you for that introduction. Officially the first time I’ve been called a mastermind.

Vira: 2:40

I love calling people that. For some reason it was so hard for me not to call you Erich because of that video you guys posted a few months ago.

Erich: 2:53

Yeah, there’s a funny story behind that too. Erich. Is a nickname that I had around the time I was in college. And the reason that I got the job or one of the, like, my foot in the door at Chubbies was one of my co workers from back then. And he always knew me by Erich. But my name is Erich. But everybody at Chubbies has always called me Erich.

Alissa: 3:14

Interesting. Okay.

Vira: 3:16

I’m trying so hard not to tell. Not to call you that. Like, I was like, his name is Erich. Erich. Erich. I was like, he’s Erich. Like, like Prince from. From Ariel, From. From, like Little Mermaid. You know, Prince Erich. Prince Erich. Yeah. That’s a good promising start, right?

Alissa: 3:36

That is hilarious. Little Mermaid. Oh, my gosh. Well, before we get started on, like, the really good, juicy details of email marketing, Erich or Erich, we have some blitz Q and A’s for you. Short and sweet, whatever comes to your mind first, are you ready?

Erich: 3:52

I’m ready. Can I ask follow up questions?

Alissa: 3:54

Possibly. Yes, you can. You can ask follow up questions. Okay, so question number one. Amazon or Shopify?

Erich: 4:03

Shopify.

Alissa: 4:04

Okay. Baby panda or baby penguin?

Erich: 4:08

As a pet or just to look at?

Vira: 4:11

Ooh, it’s a good one. Oh, as a pet.

Alissa: 4:14

Yeah, as a pet.

Erich: 4:16

Baby penguin.

Alissa: 4:17

Okay, there we go. Who would play you in a movie? What actor would play you in a movie?

Erich: 4:25

I’m a pretty humble guy, so I’m gonna go Brad Pitt.

Vira: 4:29

You’re giving me some serious Kristen Bell vibes for some reason.

Erich: 4:34

Kristen Bell would be great.

Alissa: 4:39

Favorite milkshake flavor?

Erich: 4:42

Chocolate.

Alissa: 4:43

Okay, nice. Tacos or wings?

Erich: 4:47

Dinner or lunch?

Alissa: 4:48

Oh, lunch.

Erich: 4:51

Tacos.

Alissa: 4:52

Nice. And it say. Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Erich: 4:56

No, that was a hard one for me.

Alissa: 4:57

I know. It’s hard. For me, it always depends on the flavor of the wings. That’s my thing is like, what flavor wings? Do you believe in ghosts?

Erich: 5:10

Kind of. I grew up in a 100-year-old farmhouse, so there was some spooky stuff that happened.

Alissa: 5:17

Oh, my gosh.

Erich: 5:18

Halloween’s like a week away, so I’m gonna go. Yes.

Alissa: 5:21

Okay, good. Nice answer. Okay, awesome. He made it. He made it through the blitz Q and A round. Okay, so let’s get started. So, Erich, this question is primarily for people who aren’t necessarily familiar with Chubbies, but how would you describe the brand and what is Chubbies, essentially?

Erich: 6:03

Yeah. Well, at Chubbies we make clothes that feel like the weekend in general. Just as a brand. We don’t take ourselves too seriously and we encourage people to do the same. If you ask somebody else, they probably say we make really short shorts and swim trunks, which is pretty accurate. We do other stuff as well. Like now we have like a fall line of jackets and lounge shorts and we’re releasing on Sunday something called the Chubzy, which is like a onesie made of lounge material. It almost looks like a one piece pajama, but it’s a pair of shorts.

Alissa: 6:38

Nice.

Erich: 6:39

Which is cool.

Alissa: 6:40

That sounds awesome.

Erich: 6:41

But yeah. So we were. The company was started by four guys in the early 20s who just on the weekends after, they didn’t really enjoy their jobs that much. So on the weekends they would put on like 1970s, 1980s shorts that were really short and have a good time. And then eventually they realized they couldn’t buy them anywhere and so they started making them. And then fast forward 10 years and we’ve been. We’re cruising now.

Alissa: 7:07

That’s awesome. When did you guys. When was like the conception of the business?

Erich: 7:12

2011. So we went live November 2011.

Vira: 7:16

Were you working with them from the beginning? What’s your background?

Erich: 7:20

Yeah, so in 2011 I was a junior in college. So working with them, I kind of. My background professionally was, you know, I studied political science in college. And then I kind of bounced around jobs, either seasonal work or nonprofit work for a few years and had done some retail work as well and some managing of people in retail stores. And then in 2016, at the end of it, Chubbies opened up like their. They had a flagship store in San Francisco and then they opened up a pop up shop in Atlanta, Georgia. And it happened to be in the building where I was working at the time. And so I went in and I knew the guy who was running the store and I offered to help out and only picked up three retail shifts with them. And the store was only supposed to be there for about two months. And then the ball kind of started rolling and I started working there more. And they signed a lease that was supposed to go for six months and I left my other job to go be the store manager there. Wow. Yeah. And then the rest is kind of history. I started helping out with the marketing team while I was on the retail team. And we grew from, you know, one and a half stores to 14 stores pretty fast.

Alissa: 8:26

Oh my gosh.

Erich: 8:28

Yeah. And Then I moved out to San Francisco in 2018 to be like half the time I was like a retail training manager and the other half of the time I was on the marketing team. And then that kind of switched over in 2019 and I went full time on the marketing team.

Alissa: 8:43

Nice. So are you able to work remote now or do you still work in some of the stores or is there like an hq? You work at hq?

Erich: 8:51

Yeah, I work at HQ now. So we do. We’ve shrunk our store presence even before kind of 2020 happened.

Alissa: 8:58

Yeah.

Erich: 8:58

But since then it’s been a lot easier because we didn’t have very long term leases down now to about five stores.

Alissa: 9:04

Cool. Okay.

Erich: 9:05

I’ve been out of the. I help them out every once in a while. Like people still reach out to me for help with kind of marketing ideas on the retail side. But like 100% of my time is mostly spent on e commerce marketing.

Alissa: 9:17

Cool. Okay.

Vira: 9:18

Well, political science and short shorts, they go hand in hand together. Right. So how did you end up like in that email or in that marketing department? Did you have some like copywriting background before that or that’s just something that you like doing?

Erich: 9:36

I’ve always been kind of a goofball. Specifically, I started doing improv comedy in 2015. I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time, so I had a background in comedy and I was doing some comedy writing, like short form Joe writing, but also some sketch writing. And so coming in, they kind of knew that, or at least the people in retail knew it. And I started writing for free for Chubbies. Just subject lines. We still have a Slack channel that is like, we call it email subject senders. Really, it’s just a brainstorm that we post in a few times a week to ask for ideas for subject lines. And when I figured out about it, I just got in there and started going to town. So I probably had contributed, you know, close to a thousand subject lines even on the marketing team.

Alissa: 10:22

Oh my gosh.

Vira: 10:22

So you were senior subject subject liner, or how even to call your position?

Erich: 10:29

Yeah, well, now I’m technically the manager of retention marketing, but.

Vira: 10:34

Sounds cool.

Erich: 10:35

I’m the mastermind of subject centers.

Alissa: 10:38

Mastermind. Back at it. That’s so cool.

Erich: 10:40

Yeah, it’s been great. And since then too, I’ve just gotten. I didn’t even have that much marketing experience coming in. I mean, I’d done some stuff, but more in the realm of like, you know, event marketing and things like that.

Alissa: 10:52

Right.

Erich: 10:53

But it was a pretty steep learning curve. And our director left In April of 2019, our E Commerce marketing director. Instead of replacing him, they kind of, we kind of just took on more stuff. And so I kind of started learning more about leaps and bounds in the last year and a half.

Alissa: 11:40

Nice. So obviously because you guys kind of started to lessen the amount of brick and mortar stores you guys had. So you guys are obviously focusing a little more on like the digital side of marketing. So with email, social media and your website, where does email fit specifically in kind of like your overall strategy?

Erich: 11:58

Yeah, I mean it’s a really huge part. Everything in one way or another kind of feeds into itself. And the way that, you know, social media can push people to the website where they find a pop up and they sign up for the email list, they get a discount, click back through to the website and become a customer and then are on our weekly scheduled emails. But in a way like from a strategic standpoint, a lot of times we look at when new products are coming in or we’re doing new sales, we look at how we’re going to message it from an email perspective first.

Alissa: 12:31

Right.

Erich: 12:32

And then from that kind of follows how we’re going to organically post on social media. Granted, our social media posts a lot of stuff that’s not product and sales focused, but that is product and sales focus kind of trickles down from email. Same with ads. We use a lot of copy for ads and stuff that like homepage stuff we put on our website based out of what comes out of email and tests well in email.

Alissa: 12:57

Cool.

Vira: 12:57

So going back to that time when you first started working with Chubbies, let’s talk a bit about the brand voice. How did you pinpoint the brand voice? It’s pretty unique. It’s very friendly, playful and honestly it’s quite genuine. So how has it evolved over time and how did you come up with that brand voice? I said the first on the first place.

Erich: 13:19

Yeah, well, thank you for saying that. We really do put a lot of thought into being genuine in the way that we talk with our customers and just everybody in general. A lot of it was set in stone before I got there. I mean the brand when they had like our co founder who’s the head of marketing now, when he was doing the first emails for the company, his main goal was to make his friends laugh. He was like, I would just things that would make my friends laugh. And we’ve kind of kept that as like an undercurrent of what we do going into any email for the most part. Or any like anytime we’re writing or talking in brand voice, the idea is to be light hearted and funny and to make, to say and put things out that we would want to, you know, read or look at. It was pretty easy for me because I really enjoyed the brand voice coming in. And then I spent, you know, a year and a half in a store where I honed it every day with customers in person.

Alissa: 14:16

Right.

Erich: 14:17

It was good for me. It was a really awesome role for me because I did have people who knew our brand would come in and expect kind of that brand voice and we would give it to them in person. I had a really awesome team that was with me there. But also people who didn’t know the brand before coming in. We still kind of gave them that same experience and they really loved it because it’s especially for like a physical retail space. You don’t expect to come in and have, you know, I know it’s not a video podcast, but I have like really long hair and a mustache. I’d be wearing like short shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.

Alissa: 14:48

Yeah.

Erich: 14:48

And like not breathing down people’s neck. But being super helpful and also super funny.

Alissa: 14:53

Right.

Erich: 14:53

Somebody tried on something and they came out of the fitting room, I would normally tell them I’d never seen them look better. Go to Jean.

Vira: 15:01

That’s a good one. I’m taking notes, taking notes here.

Alissa: 15:07

I’m still, I’m still harping on the. We make clothes that feel like the weekend. I’m like, that’s like, that’s such a good line to me. So.

Erich: 15:15

Yeah.

Alissa: 15:16

It’s cool. No, that’s really cool. So you’d probably say that the fact that you got like that in person experience with not only like working in the store and being in the environment of chubbies essentially, but then also getting an opportunity to talk to clients and like, or customers and just live it out, I guess. Probably has helped quite a bit when it comes to write. Just getting down and writing the copy for. For Chubbies.

Erich: 15:37

Yeah, definitely. I mean you can’t pay to get that type of experience.

Alissa: 15:41

Yes.

Erich: 15:42

Which has been good and served me pretty well, I think.

Vira: 15:45

Has your brand voice like changed or evolved over time? Would you say that or is it the same as started?

Erich: 15:53

Yeah, I mean as a company too, for sure. Kind of the way, you know, the way we made people laugh when the co founder was writing emails and he was like 25 is a lot different. Now that all the co founders are in their early 30s, our brand voice has stayed silly and lighthearted. But also kind of grown with into the early 30s age range, which has been good like specifically for me. I remember writing the things that I would write when I first started on the email team. I would go for almost too goofy sometimes. And we’ve now done a really good job of harping in where we write funny stuff, but it always serves the product for the most part. Like we don’t want to get too far away from that.

Vira: 16:37

Right. And you mentioned that you have the comedy background too. And I think a few other guys in your team has some comedy background. Right?

Erich: 16:47

Yeah. We got a pretty funny name. Joe Avery, who’s. Who’s more on social and influencer now, but still helps a lot on copy, is a pretty accomplished stand up comedian in San Francisco, which is great. And then, you know, a few of the other guys have like done video stuff and sketch stuff, which is good to have because there’s a general vibe of like when you’re writing for comedy, it’s a little different than writing for, you know, some sort of serious business like selling tires to the military or something.

Vira: 17:18

Tires to the military, wow, that’s a serious one. Would you say you have to have the comedy background to be working at your team or that’s.

Erich: 17:30

I would say now no, but maybe like when I started, probably because it was a very small team, I came on. There’s four people writing and four people between, you know, email, social and video in ads. So now we’ve grown a little bit more. I hired an intern this year who’s now with us part time who didn’t have a comedy background at all, which is great. And they’ve contributed some really awesome copy throughout the year. And I think part of it is like teaching people the parameters through which we write, being lighthearted, but also sticking to the fact that it is kind of product marketing at its essence.

Vira: 18:09

Right.

Alissa: 18:09

Cool. So Erich, can you talk a little bit about the cadence of the Chubbies emails that go out and like how often you guys send campaigns and what type of content is going out and just speak a little into that.

Erich: 18:23

Yeah, for sure. So most people we have like, you know, flow campaigns set up that are always triggered by, you know, shopping behaviors or certain things like that. A campaign perspective. The bulk of what we send are to an act as list that generally are either newly acquired customers or people. Customers or subscribers who have opened or clicked within 90 days. So we send to them generally four times a week, sometimes five, depending on how many messages we have, which is a lot. But we come out With a lot of new products, which is kind of what drives that. We also do some targeted sends. We do a non opener send generally on Thursday, which is highly engaged people from that list who haven’t opened in the past week. So we will repurpose our best messages. We’ll take the best sections from the best performing messages, put them in one email and then we’ll call it non openers. So specifically we try to go for subject lines that aren’t product focused, they’re more pop culture references, general funny things. One went out today and I think the subject line was pineapple on pizza question mark.

Alissa: 19:32

That’s like the never ending question.

Erich: 19:35

Yeah, it started many debates in the office back when it was and then the preview tech said now that we’ve got your attention, open this email please. So we do that for non openers. And we also have a frequency, a set list which are people who on our unsubscribe page you can request to just get one email a week rather than unsubscribe. So we send them our best performing email sections with our best subject line every week as well.

Vira: 20:01

So again, how do you define this non openers? These are your engaged customers who haven’t opened anything from you within the week, right?

Erich: 20:09

Yeah, within five days. So we send, generally we send Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, so we’ll send it on Thursday and that’ll get everybody who hasn’t opened kind of Sunday through Thursday.

Vira: 20:20

Have you noticed that those campaigns that you’re sending to non openers have like worse open rates or like?

Erich: 20:27

Yeah, they’ve pretty. They have less than half of what you’d expect from another. But the good thing is of those people are opening, you’re getting conversions and if you look at that, you know, if it’s four campaigns a month over the course of a year, incremental revenue, it really starts to add up.

Vira: 20:44

Right.

Erich: 20:44

Which has helped us. I mean it’s cherries on top for the most part. So as long as we’re not affecting our deliverability and our unsub rates aren’t skyrocketing, we kind of keep doing it. Unless we feel like we don’t have any messages that are like, if there’s no messages that are really performing well that week because of seasonality, generally will hold back.

Vira: 21:04

But, but how do you guys consistently come up with great ideas for like subject lines for campaigns? What’s your creative process? Do you guys like get together and create them or is it like a one person show sort of thing?

Erich: 21:18

Yeah, it’s. You Know, consistent creativity is really tough, especially I mean this year we’ve all gone remote. But even before last year I moved to San Francisco or to Austin from San Francisco and I was one of the first person people from the marketing team to come out here. So we went from having in person meetings every week to being split up and doing zoom calls, which makes it tough because there isn’t. There’s a funny part of creativity, especially when you’re trying to write funny stuff where you’re just in a room kind of pitching ideas sometimes. And then zoom, as most people probably figured out this year, can be a little bit harder to goof around on. Yeah, a little. I have a few hacks for that. My favorite one is pinned the CEO’s video during an all hands call. And I did a screen record of it for about five seconds and then I make it my zoom background sometimes before I come into a call. And so I’ll come into a call and people will think it’s the CEO and I’ll change my name to his name and I’ll just watch them like start to turn. They’ll be like, Kyle, I didn’t know you’re coming to this meeting. And he’s getting anything because it’s just a video. Nervous for a minute and then I’ll pop up, which is awesome.

Alissa: 22:35

Oh my gosh, you’re just so great.

Vira: 22:37

And you mentioned that you also have like a slack channel for subject lines and stuff, right?

Erich: 22:41

Yeah, yeah, so we do that as well. Which anybody in the entire company from people who are just, we call them weekenders, but like hourly workers in our retail stores to the co founders are in there as well. It kind of ebbs and flows with how willing people are to brainstorm in there. But we generally have around six to 10 people who are pitching subject lines every week, which is awesome and fits from all sides of the business.

Vira: 23:09

Do you A/B test this subject lines at all?

Erich: 23:12

Yeah, we do. We for every campaign we generally test for different subject lines, which is. And the reason for that is, I mean I’ve been doing this for a while and it’s still hard for me to know exactly which one’s going to win.

Vira: 23:24

Do you have like some kind of formula of a successful subject line?

Erich: 23:28

Yeah, for me, the subject part of it generally one to three words and I like the whole thing to read kind of vertically. Well, a lot of our users are on smartphones. Reading on a smartphone and you’re scrolling through your inbox, you’re reading vertically already. So the less you can say, at least in that subject line and lead into the preview line is kind of my formula for success. It’s kind of like a setup joke in that subject line, and the preview text kind of brings it home. We also changed the FROM field a good amount, whether we haven’t done as much as of late because our open rates have been really good and we haven’t felt like we’ve needed it. But we’ll change the FROM line to be something like YourWalletubbies.com email address. And then the subject line will say, thank you for shopping that sweet sale or whatever.

Vira: 24:20

I like the one where you change the from to sender’s name. Oh, subject line snap. This was like, oh, snap. That was a good one. So back in the day, you did it a lot. Like, you were always changing these things. Now it can be a bit tricky with, like, deliverability and stuff, right?

Erich: 24:41

Yeah. If you do it a lot, it’ll mess up your deliverability a bit. And we’ve had very rarely. Earlier this year, we had a weird thing with Gmail where deliverability went down twice and we had to work it back up.

Vira: 24:52

So, like, specifically with Gmail?

Erich: 24:54

Yeah, specifically with Gmail, which was weird. And we had heard through because we talked to Klaviyo a good bit. We’d heard that a few people had had the same issue. So it’s kind of like Gmail is cracking down on larger senders for some reason. But we kind of have a formula now for getting back from that, which is like taking our most active Gmail users and then sending to them and then expanding that by a little bit. Sending to them, expanding that and sending it to them. So we have workarounds for it, and we still change the for line a lot. But I’ll change it now to say something like early release batch of these. So it kind of reads like the first line you see would you see would be early release by Chubbies. The middle line would be like the world’s softest. And then the preview text would finish it off with like, imagine.

Alissa: 25:39

Got it, got it, got it. That’s really handy.

Erich: 25:42

Yeah. You’re saying it’s actually like two sentences worth of stuff. But people don’t read that much in the way that they’re scanning kind of feeds into it.

Vira: 25:51

I’ve actually never utilized that from.

Alissa: 25:53

Yeah, me neither.

Vira: 25:54

That from think. But it’s so smart, you guys. Wow.

Erich: 25:58

You should try it out.

Vira: 26:00

I should. That’s for sure.

Alissa: 26:02

So you. I mean, you guys obviously do a lot of Testing. And that’s in part why now you know that like doing that too much messes up your deliverability and that kind of thing. But do you have kind of like any unexpected surprises that you’ve experienced along the way? Or like things that you thought would work but didn’t, or kind of the other way around, like things that you did accidentally and then you were like, oh my gosh, this works really well kind of thing.

Erich: 26:25

Yeah, I mean, one of the interesting things is like looking back at last year, at one point I was looking at like our best message, like our highest convert, converting most sessions driven. And there was one about blazers that we wrote and like the subject line was really good and it had high opens and it was like, we’re back. And it was like the Blazer Chubbies were back. But then you opened it up and it was very simple. Short email and everything kind of served it well. There wasn’t a lot of bells and whistles. It was like close in shot of a blazer and it said the blazers are back. And it was like two sentences of copy. And then our links kind of also served as copy so that we write links in an interesting way sometimes that feeds into the narrative of the body copy saying. And it was just, you know, it was like a headline, an asset, two sentences, a link and then like a two grid of the two other blazers and then another link. And that was pretty much it. We also had a sign off and it really did well, which was surprising. And it was something that we’ve, we’ve recreated a lot where it’s a short email where we take like the funny parts of it that are really light hearted, but they’re short and they’re in sentences that like hit multiple points.

Alissa: 27:37

Got it.

Erich: 27:37

And so it’s not. Yeah, it’s like sometimes you can get like too deep in the weeds writing stuff. Oh, yes. Needs to be. We need to point out every single feature right here or like it’s important for everything to fit in this graphic or for us to say as much. And like saying if you can really nail it and say a lot with a little. It performs really well and people respond really well. Another interesting thing for me is I’ve never. I would have expected GIFs to really outperform static images in email, but I have never seen. I’ve tested a lot of GIFs and I’ve never seen overwhelming evidence that they perform, you know, better than static images. Which is crazy.

Alissa: 28:17

Yeah. Which we’ve seen a little bit on our end too, where like you put in a gif and you’re like oh, people are gonna love this, it’s gonna smash it. And then you’re like oh, people hate it.

Erich: 28:27

So it’s like some people kind of that people appreciate emails that look like emails. Sometimes if you get too graphicy, like a full graphic email that looks like a beautiful page in a magazine, like people enjoy looking at it but it doesn’t really serve the purpose of for us which is clicking people through to the website normally to go and shop on our website.

Alissa: 28:49

Right, right, right.

Erich: 28:52

Short and sweet and looks like an email for the most part.

Alissa: 28:54

Right. Well and it makes you think like maybe going, I mean not fully going back, you know, because it gets kind of boring because. But maybe going back to primarily text based emails is kind of something that’s worthwhile. Like if you get a little too heavy on the graphics and the over designed emails and then you send out a random text based email, people are like wow, a human’s talking to me nice.

Erich: 29:19

It does have human touch. We’ve done some of those too and we’ve tested them in product emails and less product focused emails and you get really great click rates because on an all text email you generally are only going to hyperlink one or two spots and it’s usually on top of text and so it kind of forces users to click a lot.

Vira: 29:36

Right. In one of my emails for my clients I’ve done this thing like post scriptum. P.S. i’m real, you can respond to me. That was basically like a tags based email and it converted so well. I was actually surprised. What would you say was your biggest email marketing fail or like something like that or something that you expected that it would perform super well, but it didn’t. Except for the gifts because you’ve covered them already. So what other things? Maybe some flows that you thought would perform good but they didn’t perform as well for you?

Erich: 30:16

Yeah, I mean there’s been some flows where you know, you wanted to retarget specific buyers who bought products in general. What I’ve learned from like flows is you’re not going to get a whole lot of return unless there’s a lot of people in them.

Vira: 30:29

That’s true.

Erich: 30:30

Yeah. So that was. And there’s been a lot of trial and error on that front. I’m trying to think of a good error. I mean I’ve made some mistakes where I accidentally sent an email to a bunch of people I shouldn’t have, which was a big fail, pretty big list. And I’ve accidentally Sent, you know, six figures, amount of users, the same email two days in a row.

Alissa: 30:54

Oh, my gosh.

Erich: 30:54

Which is making me nervous just talking about it again.

Alissa: 31:00

It happens, though. Even to the best of us, it happens. And all you gotta say is, sorry, there’s not much else you can do.

Erich: 31:06

Yeah, and I got no feedback either. Like, nobody. Nobody really. It’s surprising. You can mess up pretty big. And like, people who receive emails don’t even think twice.

Vira: 31:14

Your audience is super loyal. I guess that must be.

Erich: 31:20

Like, oh, Erich messed up again.

Vira: 31:23

Again. What’s your sort of like a favorite flow? I don’t even know if you can pick favorites. It’s like kids, you know, you can’t pick one and send them to college. But still, like, which. Which one is your favorite?

Erich: 31:38

I have one. A specific favorite flow in a specific version of it. Because when I was still working in retail, I had a request from the person in charge of email at the time to write browse, abandoned flow. And pretty much they were like, yeah, it’s for people who are cruising the site. We’re not going to show them what the product is, so just try and get them back to the site. And I kind of took it upon myself, built three different graphs in Canva and then I started the browse abandon as like. It’s like I called myself Duncan Smothers for some reason. Duncan Smothers from the Chubbies data team. They had been on the site and I had some important stats that I needed them to look at. And then the first one was like a Venn diagram of like people without chubbies and people with chubbies in the middle was work. Really weird.

Vira: 32:30

And then another that was very scientific, right?

Erich: 32:32

Yeah, it was super scientific. But they were all three really goofy, like bar charts and pie charts about, like, why you’d be better off buying a pair of Chubbies. And then at the end was like, well, I’m glad I got the information to do with it what you will. Here’s a link back to the site which stayed live for like two years.

Alissa: 32:50

Wow.

Erich: 32:50

Yeah, I really like that. It’s just a good memory for me too. Like my first real email that I wrote.

Vira: 32:55

It’s your baby.

Alissa: 32:57

That’s awesome. Did it do really well?

Erich: 32:59

Yeah, it did really well. Browser band in generally does well for us too.

Alissa: 33:02

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Erich: 33:03

Right now we’ve gone with kind of a more simple approach that shows like, the product. If they’re viewing a product page and got off of it and like, there’s an interesting asset at the top. And it says something along the lines of like, you look like you got really great style but we noticed that you, you left the site before you picked these up. Short and sweet like that.

Alissa: 33:23

Nice. Yeah. And sometimes those kinds of short and sweet automations do a little bit better because they don’t feel as automated. I guess for people.

Erich: 33:32

You just want to put like a tiny bit of personality in there. But really like a lot of times they’re going to perform best when you put the most important thing really close to the top, which is you left this in your cart. Here’s a picture of it and a link back to buy it.

Alissa: 33:46

Right, right, right.

Vira: 33:47

Yeah. I have like a love hate relationship with the browser management. I mean personally I love them but sometimes they feel a bit like creepy, oh, someone is watching me. You know, I haven’t even placed it into the cart and I already got this thing. So you’ve got to be really careful with them and don’t go like too, too aggressive with browse abandonment. That’s for sure.

Erich: 34:07

Yeah, yeah, It’s a good call. You don’t want to come up as like really breathing down people’s necks and twist their arm to buy a pair of shorts stocking. Yeah. Send them a flow campaign with touch points every 10 minutes. Like we saw you didn’t buy it. We saw you didn’t buy it.

Alissa: 34:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Vira: 34:27

What’s your Strategy for Holidays 2020? I know it’s a bit, it’s a big topic but this season will be different for sure. So what will you be doing different this year and have you started preparing for 2020 holiday season already?

Erich: 34:44

Yeah, we have, we have a weekly meeting now talking about some things. Probably the most, the biggest sticking point that I think a lot of people relate to and maybe it’s the big secret of the year, but it’s been happening every year is that holiday messaging starts earlier and earlier.

Vira: 34:59

Oh yeah.

Erich: 35:00

We technically messaged some holiday prints last weekend and they’re kind of moving. So earlier is kind of better. Especially with kind of uncertainty with how everything’s going right now. It’s good just to be in front of it. But outside of that, we do kind of like a week of sales leading into Black Friday Cyber Monday. It’s kind of a way, it’s another part of taking it or going earlier, but also taking a lot of pressure off Black Friday and Cyber Monday because a lot of times, and I’m sure a lot of companies can relate, there’s a lot of pressure on those two Days and the more we can take off of it by like doing cool promotions leading into it. It helps us out a lot. And we don’t have to like financially rely on two days for an entire month.

Vira: 35:45

That’s smart.

Erich: 35:45

We do some specialty sales that we would have probably done on Black Friday or Cyber Monday anyway, but we do them the week leading in. Then we do a pretty big Black Friday sale, which technically starts on Thursday on Thanksgiving because you can kind of email. You can email people on Thanksgiving now with Black Friday deals and still do pretty well.

Alissa: 36:05

Right. Right.

Erich: 36:06

Yeah. And then we do. We call it Cyber Monday. We’ve done it for years now, but it’s a lot of free gifts and like exclusive products and like really awesome sales that we do for about 12 hours. So we go really in on that day and probably send to our actives list and people who haven’t purchased in the past few days. We generally send a couple emails to with awesome deals. And then outside of that, it’s kind of just creatively messaging what we have left as far as inventory because we’re mostly like a spring summer brand. So the stuff that we do have for the holidays and the winter, we try to move through pretty fast. Kind of just flexing into creative sales, creative messaging. We do really well through week two of December and then it really drops up off for us for about two months.

Vira: 36:54

Yeah, I think it’s. It’s typical for the industry. And you’re doing something like this for July as well. Right. In July you had like a July bird. Is that?

Erich: 37:03

Yeah. Cyber Monday. Yeah. In years past it’s been like just a random Monday. It was supposed to be a take on Cyber Monday, but July and to get help, you get stuff before the fourth of July.

Vira: 37:17

Right.

Erich: 37:17

What happened in late June? And we would do about 12 hours of sales with like really awesome free gifts with purchase and like exclusive products and deals as well, which we’ve done every year. We moved it to the end of July this year, which was interesting.

Vira: 37:31

That’s. That’s different.

Erich: 37:34

Yeah, a little different. This year’s been kind of crazy.

Alissa: 37:36

It’s kind of like Christmas in July though, isn’t it?

Erich: 37:39

Yeah, it’s kind of like a half Christmas celebration.

Alissa: 37:42

Yeah, that’s cool. July or Monday. That’s hilarious. That’s really funny. And Cyber Monday, you guys.

Vira: 37:50

Erich, what would be your best advice for e commerce brands? Preparing for 2020 holiday season. So I guess starting earlier and what else could you recommend from your past experience?

Erich: 38:01

Early this year is such an interesting one. Granted we Won’t know what happens between then and now, but definitely references to acknowledging the times in positive ways, not negative ways. So not being like, screw 2020, but being like, you know, it’s the perfect time to get a gift for that friend that you’ve been zoomed hanging out with every week for the past eight months.

Vira: 38:26

Aww, that’s cute.

Erich: 38:27

Yeah. Creative ways to take in and to like, spur that feeling of like, it has been a wild year and hard for almost everybody and that leaning into it, like it is capping off the year. People do get really nostalgic about the year generally at the end. So there’s a lot of opportunities too, to tap into that and like spread a little bit of positivity and like, it is kind of nice. I’m not a huge holiday person, but, you know, giving gifts and appreciating people this year, like, there’s. There’s so many angles you can take that’s like, it’s important to appreciate the people that you have gotten us through this year, you know, So I like that. And especially with like being inclusive too, I think as time has gone on, people doing Christmas sales over holiday sales and like not acknowledging other holidays besides, like Christian holidays, it’s a great time to go kind of more away from Christmas and into holiday.

Alissa: 39:21

Right.

Erich: 39:22

Yeah. Which is something I’m a fan of.

Alissa: 39:24

Yeah, that’s cool. And being a little more all inclusive, which I. I’m. I dig that. That’s cool. That’s really cool. So we have one last question for you, Erich, before we wrap up. What advice would you give your younger about starting in email marketing?

Erich: 39:41

Yeah, the best advice I’d give them is. Or a young me would probably be to get better at organizing your time. Constant struggle for me. But I think honestly, like understanding the market more and constantly doing market research is something that I do, but I don’t constantly do. And like making sure to write down what you’ve learned. I would love, if I had over the past two years, like a Google Drive of just lists of things that I’ve learned. I would love to look back at that. Yeah, so that’s always good. Kind of take notes of the progress you’re making and things that you find are important because it starts to move pretty fast. And then a lot of this stuff just kind of lives in your brain and becomes like second nature.

Alissa: 40:29

Probably. Do you have like a little journal or like something on Google Drive of all the subject lines you’ve ever written?

Vira: 40:35

Dear Diary.

Alissa: 40:37

Yeah, right.

Erich: 40:37

Yeah, my subject line diary.

Vira: 40:41

How cool that would be. Wow. I want that one.

Erich: 40:45

A little ebook that’s just my best subject line.

Vira: 40:49

What would be in that ebook? What were your best subject lines over the years? Do you have your favorites?

Erich: 40:55

Such a good question. And I wish I remember them because I probably written just week like 100 subject lines as far as brainstorming and stuff. So they start to go out the window really quick. And it’s hard to remember the one I presented at Klaviyo’s conference last year. And I talked about one that does stick out. I changed the from line to the abominable snowman at chubbies.com just said, I’m real and I’m on a pair of shorts because we were selling shorts with the abominable.

Vira: 41:33

I was waiting for you to mention that one. I was last year on that conference and I was like laughing so hard.

Erich: 41:40

Oh, yeah, yeah, that was a good. That one does stick out.

Vira: 41:43

That was a good conference. I wonder if there is a video of that conference recorded somewhere. There should be.

Erich: 41:49

Yeah, there’s one on Klaviyo’s website.

Vira: 41:51

It was a good speech. Wow. I would rewatch it for sure.

Erich: 41:55

Thank you. Yeah. I also wrote one that said this email contains zero snakes, which is sticks. It was true. And it opened really well, which made me happy.

Alissa: 42:09

That’s really funny.

Vira: 42:10

I love how random your subject lines are. It just makes me so happy. It makes my inbox so happy.

Alissa: 42:20

I love the pineapple on pizza, question mark one. That’s really good.

Erich: 42:24

Yeah, that’s a good one.

Vira: 42:25

What is your take on that? Pineapple and pizza. Yay or nay?

Alissa: 42:28

No, I don’t do pineapple on pizza. That’s not for me. Yeah, no, no, not for me. I’m a mushroom pizza girl. And everyone’s like, oh, that’s disgusting. I love mushrooms. Like, it’s a weird obsession. And mushroom pizza is for me, like the end all, be all. I love it so much.

Vira: 42:46

Oh, in Canada we have this thing. I don’t know if you guys have it. In the States it’s pierogi pizza. It’s basically pizza with pierogis on it.

Alissa: 42:54

Oh, my gosh. That sounds amazing.

Vira: 42:57

I don’t know. It’s like Ukrainian in me celebrating, but it’s honestly disgusting.

Alissa: 43:03

So that’s really funny.

Vira: 43:05

Well, thank you so much, Erich. A lot of inspiration. I have my little notebook here. I’m taking notes.

Erich: 43:13

Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.

Alissa: 43:17

What’s your take, Erich? Pineapple on pizza?

Erich: 43:19

Oh, yeah, 100%. It’s juicy and delicious.

Alissa: 43:22

Wow. I I honestly haven’t even tried it, so maybe I need to try it. We’ll see. Maybe one day. Maybe one day. So guys, thank you so much for joining us today. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. Make sure that you check in with them and see if they’re having pineapple on their pieces pizza too. If you do have any questions at all that you’d like us to feature on one of our future podcast episodes, feel free to send them in at flowium.com/ask we are more than happy to answer as many questions as needed by all of you who listen to our lovely voices every week.

Vira: 44:00

And if you guys want to join our amazing community of email marketers and e commerce interactions entrepreneurs, join us at flowium.com/community and if you are interested in getting some more advice on how to establish a solid email marketing strategy for your store, visit flowium.com/contact and sign up for a free consultation. So we do have a lot of good links here, good resources. We mentioned them again in our description box down below. So scroll down and check out all of the links.

Alissa: 44:32

And make sure that you listen in for our next episode. We’ve had like a whole host of guests lately and I’m so excited. We’ve had really good people on, but our next episode is called why Aren’t My Emails Working? And we’ll actually be having an interview with Francis Baker directly from Klaviyo, specifically talking about deliverability, which is like huge, huge topic across the board. It’s something that we all kind of want, want to know more about and make sure that we have healthy Klaviyo accounts that are delivering all our emails. So Francis will be on with us next week so that we can share some details about how to do that. So make sure that you stay tuned for next week’s episode.

Vira: 45:12

Well, Erich, thanks again for coming.

Alissa: 45:14

Yeah, thank you, Erich.

Vira: 45:16

We are email marketing nerds and you made us very happy today.

Erich: 45:21

It made me happy too. It flew by.

Vira: 45:25

Thank you so much for coming.

Erich: 45:27

This is awesome.

Alissa: 45:29

Thank thanks for coming. Thanks for hopping on.

Vira: 45:32

Guys, thanks for listening and we hope to see you all next week. Bye.