Why Everything You Know About Email Marketing Could Be Wrong

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular
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online well hello and welcome to the ecommerce
podcast with me your host matt edmondson a show all about how to grow your
own online business that's right welcome to the show and if you are tuning in to facebook or your youtube live uh it's
great to see you do say hi in the comments do post your questions that's the beautiful thing about watching this live
you get to ask your questions to amazing guests that i get to talk to every week and this week
is no exception oh yes we have got someone amazing for you from the world of e-commerce and we're going to get to ask her all
kinds of crazy questions let me tell you we have a new expert joining us this week all the way from very
very cold canada we've got gabriella rapone who lives and breathes email marketing and
specializes in email marketing for e-commerce businesses so she is definitely
in the right place for us today i am looking forward to this one let me tell you gabriella's expertise is in in
engagement and opening and clicking and delivering and getting basically
emails into the inbox she's sent in her lifetime check this out over million emails
uh that's a lot of emails even by my standards i'm not gonna lie that's a lot of emails
gabby has run and owned her own email service provider for over seven years and has consulted on brands
like as seen on tv united online and classmates she is also the author
because you know it sounds like she's got time to write a book in all of the stuff that she's doing but she has she has written a book uh called hit the
inbox which i have hey i've had the pleasure of reading let me tell you and i got some great pointers out of it
for my own business so i know today is gonna be fun now i think i've
picked up gabby enough now in case you don't know i do a pre-call with all of my guests i
get to meet them and chat with them before the show right and gabby's pre-call was very well let's
just call it memorable um it was great i loved it i loved every minute of it and so i've been looking forward to this one ever since that call
finished all of the notes from today's show will be available as a free download on our
website just head on over to ecommercepodcast.net forward slash because this is episode and you
can download those for free they will be on there when the podcast is released which is a week after we've recorded uh
so now without any further ado let's bring on today's guest we've got gabby now i'm gonna push this button here
gabby welcome to the show great to see you thanks for being with us hey mads i am super happy to be on the
show and as you mentioned our first call was the memorable call was a great call so i'm happy to be back
here yeah it was good it was great fun and i i i really appreciate you being with us uh it's but you're we were just talking
before we came live on air you're in canada montreal canada and did you say it was like
minus today that's right it's a nice minus but it feels like a
nice minus so you know you know all around it's it's a good day
it's a good day to be alive it is a good day to be alive uh and definitely make sure you've got some warm clothing
yes now are you talking in celsius or fahrenheit well we're in canada so yes we are
celsius good good i just i still can't get my head around fahrenheit so you know i
just wanted to i just wanted to clarify make sure i'm on the right scale yeah the the us always likes to you know
you know go to a drummer you know go go to their own beats you know yeah so uh yeah the us can do what they
like but yeah canada is like the rest of the world yeah yeah normal
exactly i'm gonna kickstart everything with our american viewers i don't mean that disrespectfully of
course i'm just being socially british making fun of everybody including ourselves um which is just
what we do isn't it so uh so have you been in canada your whole life are you
are you actually canadian have you always been in montreal that's right yes born and raised in montreal
i used to spend my winters in california for about years but i
stopped doing that about three years ago and um so that's what i used to do
that's the great thing about you know working online is you know you don't have to stay here and uh so i have family in
california which which was really amazing to be able to you know six months out of the years you know enjoy the sun and then come
back to montreal where you get to enjoy the best parts of the east coast which
is you know spring and summer and then escape from fall and winter
yeah it sounds it sounds almost like ideal dream you know scenario in some respects do
you i'm just trying to think do you have like the slopes and stuff
around you do you do the skin the whole skiing thing you know i have to say i've never been much of the outdoor
like i'm not much for skiing not much for snowboarding you know i mean it's cold you know who
wants to stay outside you know definitely not me but uh uh you know but but still you know
there's something i will say this you know i am years old but every time
it snows the first thing i will do is put on my my mother's
uh snow pants that i've kept since i was a child you know growing up the first thing i'll always do is just
go jump in the snow and make a snowman i'm like that's one of my favorite things to do i'm like i don't care i'm but it's the one thing i still love
to do is getting out there playing like a kid building snowmans building snow forts it's the most ridiculous thing but it
just feels so good you know what i'm slightly older than
you gabby i'm not gonna lie i would do exactly the same thing if we actually had snow i was saying at
the weekend we had about a millimeter of snow and we made the most of it maybe a few millimeters of snow we made the most of
it uh it lasted lasted for a day and that's it that's our snow gum for the year uh so i didn't does it shut down the
city when it snows that much and now we're all right at a millimeter it can it can you know once we hit two
or three that's that's real problems right there um but it always i mean to be fair we
didn't i didn't notice it this year because the whole country is in lockdown of course um but uh had had it not been in
lockdown that would have been like you know the trains would have stopped running you know there would have been a national crisis and all that sort of
stuff that england gets whenever it snows that's the way it works it always it
reminds me of california it's so funny when i used to spend my winters in california you know the minute it would hit like
you know whatever it is like degrees or whatever degrees right so it would be the equivalent of like
you know celsius the uggs and the parkas would come out
you know and i would look at these like women it's like you don't like you don't know cold yeah you don't
know cold if you think degrees celsius is cold you gotta you gotta feel minus
minus to really embrace those uggs in that part yeah i'm with you yeah i'm with you i'm
with you it's uh it's you know what we could trade stories all day long couldn't we uh so um so let me get this straight so
you have run right it said in the intro that you've run an email service provider of your own for seven years right
how in the world did you get into that did you just wake up one day and think i'm just gonna set up an email service
providers what i'm going to do well here's the thing first and foremost anyone
can set up an email service provider anyone you can set one up your grandmother can set one up anyone
can set up an email service provider but the way that actually came about was i got started in this industry
working at an email service provider back in okay right so that's how i got started
right that's how i basically understood you know the the mechanics of how everything works how the back end
works you know i mean i had you know text next to me for an entire year and uh it was right about my one year
anniversary was literally one week away from my one year anniversary of working at the esp and i got fired
right um i didn't yeah i didn't get fired for it had nothing to do with the job it had
nothing to do with my my work it had everything to do with you know a conflict with management uh like anything else right so i ended
up getting fired so and at that time i was like well you know why don't i just do what i'm
doing for my clients i can do it for myself right there's there's really no difference and here's the thing
with with an esp right an email service provider all it is is basically um you know someone's basically
providing a service of sending emails i basically just had five of my own servers that i basically ran and managed
and i kept those same five servers over and over again so uh and that's basically what i did i
was able to i was able to run my agency for over seven years even close to ten years because i took a
break in between after the seven years i took about a one year break after the seven um and that's it it allowed me to be
able to run my own servers right so you know i wasn't you know i wasn't at the um
you know i wasn't being overseen by people like mailchimp like i owned the space right so i wasn't you know i wasn't
being overseen by anything i controlled my own space i could send how much i want as much as i wanted and so on and so forth so that's
basically how i got into the game was start off as an esp i got fired right
decided to do it on my own why not and i did it because that's what i was because that's what i was really good at
i was really good at building brands with affiliates right because that's what people don't
realize is that you know email you know email marketing before it was adopted by you know e-commerce
and it was uh it was you know picked up on the mainstream you know it started probably picking up
probably around like where companies started to pick it up really more um but like anything else everything
always starts with affiliates affiliates are the ones who start everything right so that's how i
basically got started in this game where you know i basically took these affiliates started brand them the same
way you would in e-commerce right because that's what you do in e-commerce you brands right you brands you build you sell that's what you do
so that's basically what i did so i figured you know i might as well just do it for myself and that's what i did i just focused on
quality really building those relationships unlike you know the other affiliates and emailers that
were just basically burning and churning they were literally going through servers every couple of days where whereas i
would have the exact same servers for seven plus years okay you know they were white listed with everything and i
just managed it and that's basically it wow well it's it's fascinating how you just sort of
you you your journey starts with getting sacked right or fired uh mine started exactly
the same way got fired from my job just to be afraid i i wasn't i wasn't technically fired i
left before i was and i just left it just saved me the grief of going i got i got i was fired really
anyway yeah so we we share that in common and then you start out on your own and you sort of and here we are all these years later
still smiling about it right and yeah so you you sort of you get fired you set up this
uh email service provider company are you still doing that or have you have you moved on
from there so okay so here's the thing okay running your own servers is a lot of work
it's a lot of work and this is why again this is why email service providers and i say i ran an email service provider
right but i didn't really run an email service provider because i didn't i didn't sell the
service right you know what i'm saying so but the point is is that
an email service provider is still an mta right it's an mta which is a mail transfer agent right so here's the thing is that it's a
lot of work to manage your own server because you have a lot of things to consider you have to always
be looking at the back end technical because that's what people don't realize within esp is that they're managing the
back end okay they manage the connections they manage knocking on the door of gmail
they manage knocking on the door of aol people don't realize that that's a job right and that's a real job
right just looking at smtp responses that's the responses from you know once again you know knocking on
gmail's door seeing what they say are they letting you in are they saying no too many people move on like that's the true like
in in essence like when you're looking at what defines a really good esp is how good are their techs forget about
all the you know bells and whistles of what they have who cares okay
because at the end of the day the only thing that matters is again right are you able to reach
gmail right because again if you have gmail users is gmail gonna accept your email
because that's phase one right you gotta gmail's gotta accept your email and then gene then after that it's up to
your reputation to decide where that actually lands if it's an inbox or spam right so it's a
lot of work it's a lot of work so this is why you know when esp's came into play
it was it was easy enough for people like you you know your grandmother your mother
whatever it is right to just start emailing because you didn't have to you didn't have to go get it
you didn't have to go get a server you didn't have to bind the ips you didn't have to do the rdns you don't have to go through
all that technical stuff that you have to go through right so you know this is why it's like
no i don't do it anymore because it's too much work but there is a time and a place for everything right so with a lot of companies that
come to me that want to have their own space and their server you know
you have to wait until you reach a certain level of revenue right because it has to make sense right it has to make sense in order for you to
because again you have to hire a tech right you're going to have to hire someone to be able to manage that because again you can either be you know
doing the tech side or you could be actually working on your business um so this is why so
you know you have to look at the opportunity cost so i always encourage people listen unless you're doing a million dollars a month in revenue
there is no reason for you to have your own server okay no you would call that the cutoff point million bucks
yeah well well there's there's other factors too right but as a whole right as a whole if you're
just looking for something that's uh you know um just a basic rule of thumb it's yes if you're at a million dollars
then you have to should start considering because then you're gonna be spending a lot of money on esps for no reason
they're definitely not cheap esps no but the good thing is too is when you
get to a volume right is you have a lot more leverage with your esp people don't realize that
so that's the thing is that i came from the asp world i know that esps only make money when you send email
and they want to keep you if you're sending a lot of email and you and you're not damaging their space so this is why it's
like you have leverage whatever that pricing is on there just use it as a guideline because the minute you get
you know the minute you get to a point where you have good volume and you're and you're and you have good
engagements the ball is all in your courts in your courts yeah
that's one of the things i've noticed actually we um with our esp that drives some of our beauty businesses
uh we we in a we got half price we just basically called them up and said yeah we're not we're not paying
that um i mean we get on well with them don't get me wrong they're lovely people and and but we had a conversation
and yeah but a guideline i think is a good way to put it when your volume is high enough as a guideline just call
them up and have a conversation and see what they can do okay so um so here's your background right esp
and here i am a little ecommerce business i'm like i'm not doing a million bucks a year so i'm not gonna set up my own uh server if i'm doing over a million
i'm definitely calling you and going what am i doing right that's that's what i'm gonna do but until i get to that
stage um i am i am i am looking for an esp right an email service provider
uh not extra what is it extra sensory perception um no no we're talking about email today
um just in case you've just tuned in what is this channel uh so um so yeah so the email service
providers how do i find a good email service provider what am i looking for
as a business well that's a good question right um first and foremost one of the first
things you want to not do is ask people who they are using right so that's that's one of the things
that that um which is normal right it's normal you know you ask questions okay who are you
using but the one thing you want to understand first and foremost with um
with understanding an email service provider is the fact that first and foremost remember they provide a service right it's in their name right
they provide a service okay so it's um it's important to understand that
right it's important to understand that that is a relationship okay it's a relationship so it takes two
parties so it's really important to sort of understand that you know again this is this is a relationship so
when you're looking to find an email service provider right you're not just going to go by the one that again everyone's used thing right
or that looks good right you want because again if you pick the wrong service provider like a relationship
it's going to make your life miserable right so you know you pick the right one you're happy for life you pick the wrong
one you're going to be miserable so it's important to understand that when you are picking an email service provider
the most important critical thing you want to focus on is your features what features do you need and this is
something that a lot of people don't think about what features is it that you need in order to run your business
right and help you grow because the other thing you want to understand too is with an email service provider is
you know listen you're not going to be stuck with this email service provider for life so it's not like if you choose this one you're stuck
don't don't look at it that way right because like anything else you're going to grow the most important
thing when it comes to choosing an email service provider is again you know really looking at the features that you need
and also being an and also understanding the differences between email service providers afterwards
in terms of understanding that there's going to be your churn esps right like the mailchimps the clavios
the constant contacts like these are churn esps and the reason why i call them churn esps is because if you look at their
terms and conditions and if you look to look at their acceptable user policy
they do not have any clear guidelines in terms of when they can kick you off right and
this is major because i've had great clients be kicked off of clavio for the only reason that they
didn't like their content okay and that is major
again your business partners right yeah right when you enter into a business partnership right you want to make sure
that your guidelines are clear right you want to make sure that hey matt if you get out of line this is your guideline you can't have
something ambiguous right yeah and this is kind of what we're and this is what we're seeing i mean
you know just look at you know mailchimp mailchimp is like you know i call failchamp because they are you know they are exactly
that's right if you look at their you know they're they're a perfect example of
you know your typical esp that has again such a vague
right uh acceptable user policy basically saying well you know if we decide one day to get up and you know we
don't like you we're just gonna turn you off right and uh you know and you know it's
and they're very much against you know you know hate speech and all that sort of stuff but then you know long behold you know what's the
first email i get from mailchimp it's a you know it's a an email from black lives matters you know
it's like well you know again there's like the hypocrisy in terms of like well wait a minute you know
you don't you know you don't in you know you don't enforce this right you don't want this but then again
you're enabling certain companies you know what i'm saying so it's important to understand the differences
between esps right so you've got your turn esps and then you got your growth esps
and your growth esps are ones that are going to have clear guidelines based on all right matt you want to grow your
business this is the guidelines you have to stick to in terms of you must have engagement you must have um
you know uh you must have uh you must you know respect the threshold for unsubscribes feedback loops and all
those things right those because those are the metrics that matter right you know an esp caring about your
content is like you know the mailman refusing to you know i don't know i don't know like
deliver your you know deliver your guns magazine because he doesn't like guns you know it's like no it's not the way it works
right so to answer your question list your features your features are key what
features do you need to grow your business so you need easy integration you need -hour whatever it is support right you need
triggers you need split tests you need all these things right list them and then obviously list them priority
because i can tell you this i've been in the business for years and i still have yet to find an esp that has
everything right so you really do have to you know not say sacrifice not
say that sacrifices but you're gonna have to basically limit not limit but list your choices based on
what you have to make some priorities yeah exactly you got to make those priorities and then you know basically just start
because that's the most important thing is you know this is why i always tell people is listen don't get bogged down
with all of this stuff if mailchimp is the easiest one to start with start with mailchimp yeah i don't like them right
but if they're the easiest for you to start with and get used to it do it for a month and then get off we've
done that with a lot of clients where listen because again there's that apprehension oh i gotta it's gonna be so
hard to find just start start with the easiest one then in a month we will move you it's okay
you'll be all right i always i was always i always sort of have this saying in the back of my head
that i've always told my kids and it's this it's easier to turn a car when it's moving
uh in other words just stop to stop moving just start doing something and you can always turn right you can
always change direction but if you stood still yeah you're not going anywhere are you so i like that i
like that philosophy which is great so we're going to list our features and we're going to go uh shopping at
what you call the growth ones rather than the chew ones can you throw out some names so for listeners they're going to go well which
ones are the growth esps have you got any examples of ones that you would look at
uh that's a good question uh there's a couple of definitely some good growth esps and this is the thing too is even
when you're going through some of the churniest ps i'm not saying avoid churning esps by the way i'm not saying that it's just again it's important to understand
the devil that you're dealing with right that's the most important thing is understanding which there's nothing
wrong with these churn esps there's nothing wrong right but it's just important to understand so
um some good some good growth esps that i've used uh that i've used in the past uh e-mercury
is definitely a good one mercury is a great growth esp uh piers is another one that's actually very
very good uh cheetah mail we've used in the past like those ones are good uh some of those like tuna mails a
little bit more on the enterprise sides um i can actually share with you i actually have a list of uh esps i
can't guarantee that which ones are growth esp's because i haven't gone through all of them but what i always do tell people as well
is listen even with the journey speeds okay the most important thing is you have a conversation with these people
because at the end of the day you know you know again they have to put up a
long list of things in their terms and the conditions you know in order to sort of avoid attracting a certain type of
clientele you know so this is why trust me i've had i've had conversations with with esp's where i'm going through
their terms and conditions i'm like and listening they literally have like niches that are completely
that are that are not approved i'm like okay so tell me what can we mail you know maybe that's easier
so you know and you know they always clearly say listen you know at the end of the day as i mentioned
you're the customer the email service provider does not exist without
you so you have the control you have the power so once again it's just a matter of just
uh redlining and lev you know redlining the parts that you don't like so it's very clear okay this is what we do we want to make
sure that we're not going to be kicked off because you don't like our content so as long as you redline that part
you know then you should be good to go you're good to go okay so i am a young e-commerce business
i've done my research i've gone and chosen my uh email service provider but of course that's just the
first part of a very long journey and there are many things to think about one of the things that you said right at
the start which i wanted to sort of circle back on was this idea of gmail you kind of knock it on gmail's door
and gmail's deciding to whether or not to let you in um and i guess
my question is is gmail one of the ones that we should concentrate on and what do you mean when you say gmail's got to decide
whether or not to let you in well that's okay so so that's a loaded question okay so what was the first
sorry can you repeat the first half of your question so g you you focused in on gmail now i've read your book so i kind of know
the answer um but it's that kind of um this idea in if i was to ask most
e-commerce companies right the people that sign up to your email list what's the most common email
domain what's the most common email service and lo and behold it will be gmail everybody
says most of my customers are gmail right so the big holy grail it seems in email
marketing is can i can i win on gmail can i get my emails in their inbox
um and so that's is that is that a good perception to have
uh i guess would be my first question is is gmail at the top of the tree
okay so i hear a couple of things in that question so what i'm hearing what i'm hearing first is is
gmail more profitable than other domains is that correct oh okay
let's go there let's do that one yeah yeah i like that rephrase let's do that so um i can tell you
after eight years of following gmail gmail is not the most profitable okay
absolutely not and i've tested this trust me across thousands of different
clients in niches and the most the most
the most lucrative one in terms of domains is hotmail in terms of order so you got
hotmail you have aol which is the second and third right third kind of a little bit tied is
uh gmail and yahoo so while yes gmail might make
the greater landscape okay it might be you know obviously there's a lot of gmail users hopefully that's
going to change now hopefully in the next couple of years being the fact that people have woken up a little bit more to
you know the gmails of the world the fact that they're you know monitoring and cataloging all of your emails you know
thank you they just do it appreciate it yeah they just do it a little bit differently like facebook
is you know if facebook does it right in your face when you know you say something they'll deliver an ads
you know two seconds later gmail google is not stupid google stores google's like google's a woman
you know she stores all that information you know and then the day that she needs it you know well you know it's like you're
having an argument from like years ago she's like oh wait let me go through that i remember that from years ago
you know that's what gmail is gmail is cataloging not only they cataloging
they're building a profile and they're selling all of that information right they're selling it so
hopefully people are starting to you know kind of wake up a little bit more with gmail um but uh this is the thing is that so
yeah gmail does dominate the landscape but it's not the most profitable
it is it isn't at all okay but again it doesn't you know at the end of the day it's
important to understand that once again the devil that you're dealing with this doesn't mean okay just don't deal with gmail just go after aol
and and hotmail i mean that would be great you know unfortunately you know trust me i made you know i made the bulk of my success
with aol and gmail that's and yahoo at the beginning right so was yahoo aol
gmail um but again right you have to there's not you know no one's opening up
aol accounts anymore right because again that was one of the things that surprised me actually that aol was
still on the list i'm like oh yeah okay they're still around that's interesting
oh hell yeah you oh aol thank god for aol i'm telling you
aol has gotten me out of so many bad times like you know again it gets a bad rap but who
cares they buy they complain they they complain three times more
than any other domain so aol is the biggest complainers if you take like an aol uh list of aol compared to gmail yes
absolutely right and it's crazy like this is what i love about email what people don't understand is that
you know with email you know unlike you know uh display advertising with email you
actually get to see your people right i know that matt's engaging i know what matt buys
right i know where you spend your money right so again once i know where you spend your money i know you know your values and your
desires and all that sort of things right so that's why it's like people just ah you
know this is why i'm you know i i wrote the book why i created the course because you know just to sort of show people the
amazingness right that you can get through email just in terms of understanding your users
just by understanding your users and your you know your your different types of subscribers again opens up a whole window of
opportunity for you just in terms of just being able to easily manage things yeah a lot more
yeah i mean that's great that's that's really insightful though so you most of your customers may have a
gmail address but they're not necessarily the most profitable one look at your hotmail and aol customers
uh and i i like this i'm gonna go and check i mean we don't get in the uk we still don't get many aol uh
users um but i'm intrigued to find out which domain is the most complaining uh out of my customers that i i never
would have thought to check that out i am checking that out tomorrow uh so you know i think that's brilliant
absolutely brilliant so so okay so we're we're we're sort of getting our head
around uh the demanding and you took a touch on this in the book um and i i thought this was really
do you know when you have those moments where you're like that is so simple and so good
why have i not done this right i have never sat down and gone through my email list
and categorize people on the domain that i'm emailing so i mean i've not categorized them are they a gmail user
or hotmail user or anything like that and looked at the stats and one of the things that i got from
your book was actually you should you should absolutely do that especially when uh
deliverability and open and all the sort of stuff which we're gonna get into in the second half uh and monitoring those stats i i think
that's really why have i not done that before you know i you know i'm this is it you know one
of the first questions i always ask is you know uh and i can tell you nine out of ten people don't know so you are not you know
you're not the first um because i always ask what's your email list makeup right and people just be like what what what
are you talking about it's like well yeah what makes up your list right this is you know and once again like i'm curious
why and i think just this just comes down to just not knowing right what you don't know
is you know you don't know what you don't know right so and i think that's what it just comes down to right so again once again i came
from that world right i came from that world where again you know i i was lucky to
have started out in an esp and was lucky that i had all these texts around me to sort of explain and
you know navigate the crazy world but i'm curious why have you never thought
about looking at your list breaking down your list that way i i honestly uh gabby i was sat here
again that asking that exact same question i don't know answer you know i i i can't sit here and go well let me
i just i'm going surely matt somewhere in your brain you would have put two and
two together and gone you this makes an awful lot of sense right when you see it written out in your book
that's why i need to read your book gabby that's i'm not late so so did you actually look at your
email list makeup no not yet uh this is tomorrow's job yeah yeah we're getting the team's get
on a call tomorrow a.m yeah yeah we're having a conversation yeah well again it's you know this is why i
always try to explain to people listen if you don't know your email list makeup you're basically it's like you're driving blind
you're literally driving blind you don't know where you're going because yeah if your email list makeup is let's just say whatever right
gmail and you know yahoo again right if you if there's and remember they
don't you know the yahoos and the gmails don't speak to one another that's what people don't realize everyone think that oh in the online world everyone
everyone's happy and they all live in harmony it's like no man it's still war like everyone is
wants control power okay gmail does not talk to yahoo okay so obviously yahoo and aol now were
together because they were bought by verizon but so the three you know basically now the three majors right they don't speak to
one another they don't speak they don't collaborate so that's what people don't understand it's like they don't collaborate right so every
single one of them and this goes back actually to your other question when you were asking about you know uh you know gmail accepting the
the email right so and i'm not sure if you had gone through uh you know the book but in the book i
have you know this you know this great little sort of um where is it here it's great
little image where basically shows you like the reality versus
you know the expectation of email versus the reality of email which again you have those you have
those two filters that you basically have to go through which is number one right um you know the gmails of the
world making sure that number one you are the actual user right authenticating right so that's how they accept your
email so when you go to gmail and you knock on their door gmail is looking okay wait a minute do
they have their spf records dkm dmarc okay they're good right they can come in right so gmail lets you in right but gmail
only lets you in right right so gmail is gonna say okay you can comment but now
right who prioritizes you right in terms of inbox uh spam or black
holing isn't gmail gmail doesn't decide where you go right well it kind of decides but it
decides based on your reputation right so it's not based on again your email service provider
because that's one question that people always ask is well what what email service provider inbox is more right
and it's like well you know it's not you know there's it doesn't work
that way anymore right it doesn't you know you got billion emails that are sent a day
yeah you think that this is this is not based on which esp inbox is more it's just based on
your reputation which again gives you all the leverage which is great like people don't realize that
that's a great thing right so so the esp gets you to the door
and you get you thrown into the various different sections of gmail it's up to you it is up to you
afterwards to build your email rep right so that you are basically you know
you have a good reputation this way gmail is gonna you know they'll let you through that's that's what it is right it's like gmail
is like once again it's like you're knocking on gmail's door it's like listen if if you come in with dirty muddy shoes they're
not going to let you in right right but if you're clean you got everything good they'll let you in yeah that's brilliant now you've touched
on this email rep which we are going to get into in the second part of this podcast but before we do that
uh we're just gonna take a quick break to say uh give a big shout out to this week's show sponsor and
in just a few seconds gabby and i will be back don't go anywhere yeah let me give a big shout out to
one of our show sponsors curious digital you know what i love its flexibility it's such a great
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edmondson.com take advantage of the offers that they've got for you and let me know what you think
[Music]
well excuse me thank you curious issue and i don't quite understand what happened to my voice then uh
we were listening to that music i saw you swaying then gary uh there's something quite chilling about that music that they play on that advert
which is absolutely fantastic now um if you are watching this live if you're
joining us on the live stream uh whether that's on youtube or facebook or uh if you're watching the catchy videos you can ask questions in the comments do
say hi don't be shy uh be great to uh connect uh and if you've got any questions for gabby do
fire them off because we would love to hear them we're gonna do the q a session towards the end now before we got into
uh that smooth bit of jazz music there uh you started to use this phrase you
used it a couple of times email rep and this is something that came across time and time again in the book
like it was you know uh it was one of the big takeaways from your book is this whole idea of email
reputation uh you said in your book and i'm going to quote you now um the only thing stopping your emails
from being seen uh oh sorry the only thing stopping your emails from being seen by or
million subscribers is two words email reputation that's what that's what
you sort of put it down to and i thought you know what i want to get into this because i've heard a million people talk about subject lines
should you use emojis and all that sort of stuff you went straight in at this whole email reputation thing which no one i think
has ever talked about and i'm like this is going to be cool so what do you mean when you say
email reputation so that's a good question so you know
first let me just say this even though email has been around since what right over years um there is still
there's we're talking about decades of misconception right which is you know exactly the reason why i wrote
the book i was like i wrote the book because i was like there's too many misconceptions out there everyone right everyone
that has an email list who's thinking about an email it's like this is your foundation like this is like my years all into like one and i've
i've redone this book like literally like five times to make it like super simple so everyone could understand right like literally
you know i wanted to be so a ten-year-old could pick it up and be like oh okay i get it i get it right so getting back to your
question right so um so i'm curious okay how is it
okay so you've been doing ecom right and because i always like to sometimes get a little bit more kind of insights but
i'm curious you've never heard the term email reputation right oh i've heard it don't sorry let me just
clarify i've heard it i okay i've i would say i've it's like way down the list of things
that i've heard though it's not it's not where i think you think it should be if that makes sense in terms of
yeah yeah no it makes sense okay so you've heard of it okay so the the term is not for you you've heard of it so and and that's the thing right
so again it comes down to you know misconception because people don't understand how things work and again it's really really easy to you
know undervalue things or when you don't understand it so and like anything else right
reputation is key right because again you know you know back in the day when email first started you know filters
right again like there's billion emails that go out daily that's expensive to maintain yeah that's
expensive because again you're talking about you're talking about it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to to
maintain that infrastructure right so you know back in the day you know this is why you know when i when i got
started in this initial industry in you know that's where everything started to change where now it started
to become about reputation right or because again like the the gmails and the yahoos of the world
needed a way right to prioritize email rights or else again how are they going
to make sure that you are not getting uh you know malicious emails
that's how they avoid malicious emails is again one way through authentication
and then it's like well you know how else do we do it right how else do we prioritize emails right so hotmail back in the day right
hotmail was one of like the biggest gangster back in the day like they were the mob like you could pay them
you could pay them grand a year to inbox oh wow we paid them right but grant
but then things change right of course like everything else but you know at the beginning you know hotmail basically came up with
this concept and we all know who behind who's behind you know microsoft and hotmail and all that sort of stuff right
so they wanted to be paid right yeah they created the return path they wanted to be paid
right so if you paid them right it still didn't guarantee because again they make their own rules
right but everyone else needed a way to be able to filter emails so like anything else right like when
you run an ad right you know how how do they you know they base your ads based on you know maybe
not reputation but they still give you a score it's still based on a reputation you have are you positive or negative reputation
so everything is based always on reputation you know so email is no different it's just the fact that
people don't understand it right and i always break down email in three simple ways like i always say
three things every single day right say three things to my my students every day which is what's the number one
objective of email and i repeat this what's the number one objective for email okay
the number one objective for email is protect your rep how do you protect your rep you always
be engaging how do you engage you sell the click that is all you ever
even if you've never emailed if you've been emailing for years just knowing those three little simple
things that's it you will be ahead of everyone else so let's let's
say that again so you you're the most important thing is your email reputation no no no what is no what's your number
one object if i if i asked you math what's the number one objective for your emails what's the number of
what is it right now what's your objective uh now you've told me the answer i'm
going to say my reputation i'm just going to answer that to every question okay but what would you do beforehand i
would have said i would have looked at things like um things like open rates click through
rates and ultimately how much revenue did that email bring there you go so you're looking at sales right of course you think sales
you're like of course i want sales well yeah of course you want sales right but that's a byproduct right
it's a byproduct it is not your focus it's like anything else when you're when you're on a boat right when you're in
your boats right this is why you always have to have an objective right you have to have an objective if you're on a boat right and you're objecting and
what happens you know if your objective is to go whatever it is straight ahead but you start veering if you start looking towards the side
where's the boat gonna go the boat's gonna start going towards the side right yeah because if you've ever
canoed or sailed you know that you have to stay clear on your objective because if you don't and you start to
veer you're gonna veer off right so this is why very clear okay i don't
care yes sales will be there don't worry right again it's almost like you're trying to put the cart before the horse
listen don't worry okay because again you never and this is why i always tell
people is you never want to sacrifice your reputation right because if you're sacrificing your reputation for a quick sale
again it's not going to work right so this is why the number one objective is always
protect your rep protect your rep build your rep right that's what you want to do right so that's your objective that is
your objective so what's your objective for emails protect your rep how do you protect your
rep you always be engaging right
and how do you engage in an email you sell the click that's it
that is it it's a three-step process right there so when you say when you say sell the click what because
again this is a phrase that you you put in in the book quite a few times and i i have to be honest with you i quite like this
just explain to the listeners what do you mean when you say sell the click it may sound obvious but let's let's
deep dive into this a little second okay sure so very very simple right one of the
biggest um one of the biggest hurdles people have um especially in ecom world in the e-com world everyone's always
afraid of writing an email they're afraid right because they're like i don't know how to sell i have to sell products and it's like
once again right like just just think about it is it easier is
it easier to sell a product in an email or is it easier to sell a click in an email
which one is easier
which one is easy what are you going to say sell the click aren't you because it's a much smaller step well
there you go but that's again because why is it that you want to sell the click what's your number one objective
for email uh protects your rep exactly it's protect your rep right
because again when you protect your reputation right more people see your emails right so let's just say right now
you only have people that click on your emails well guess what if you protect your if you if you
protect your rep right if you make engagement your number one goal right if you make engagement number one
goal right and you always engage right you're not going to go from clicks right to let's just say
clicks what would an extra clicks do for your business right yes that's the point yeah that's the
point right it's you have to understand emails place in the online world
right email's place in the online world is just a display medium right it is
it is get a user from point e to point b right you don't have to reinvent the
wheel by saying oh you know i hear people all the time should i have a long copy should i have short copy should i do this
should i do it's like why are you assuming why do you assume do you assume that you're
that the brakes in your car work when you get into it you don't assume right you know if they
work right if you don't assume anything you that's the thing that sort of drives me it's kind of one of my
pet peeves whenever people assume things in email because it's like why are you assuming you literally have the ability to
literally test so many different variables at your fingertips whenever you want because you have an audience
ready to go wanting to hear from you yeah the only thing that is stopping you from sending
that email is you saying people and then they're going to get annoyed if i send
an email it's going to upset people who that who cares okay
i'm not saying who cares but i'm saying look at the stats right don't assume don't assume anything
right don't assume anything just you know you have the tools you have the knowledge to succeed right now it's just
a matter of you know again just looking at the stats maybe you don't have a good audience
right because we've noticed that a lot too with with especially in e-commerce stores right e-commerce stores
you know we started to notice a big problem with audiences when um people started jumping on the
wheelio bandwagon you know the spin to win type of ban uh that that pop-up not sure if you can you
still hear me matt did i go away
is everything okay i can't hear you
i can't hear you i'm trying to read your lips i'm trying to read your lips but i can't
hear you i lost you
i can't hear you
can't hear
i am just going to switch microphones can you hear me now yes so i think there's a problem with my
sound desk okay so let me just um figure out how to change the
sound output on here to that
okay i'm just going to hit the reset button on something uh don't go anywhere everybody sorry about this i'll be right
back we'll cut this out the final audio version this is the trouble of going
live
okay now we're back sorry gabby i don't know what happened there the sound desk
just went dead so uh yeah we're back let me just change no worries i'm not sure i'm not
not sure where i lost you so uh yeah so uh that's a very good
point where did you where did i let's take a talk um so we were talking about email
reputation uh we were talking about selling the click that's right and so it was a much easier
thing to do and then we got into the whole data thing like send out a test and let somebody uh let the data tell
you what it is that you're doing yeah sorry about that yeah
it's all good
so so let's let's crack on from there so um so we've got this we've got it in terms of i love this
idea of uh you know you're wondering whether to send long emails short emails and all this sort of stuff just do a test and
see what see what happens the main thing that you're looking for then is this idea this this engagement
this um selling the click this idea that actually getting someone to click
on the email is super important one of the things that you said in the book um about this whole thing
about engagement which again really struck me was i i can't remember exactly how you phrased it but something like even if
they've gone through the double opt-in you know and done everything to get on your email list
people don't actually want your emails you've got to give them a reason to want to read it to want to
is engage is that have i have i understood that right from your book yeah yeah so so that's it so a lot of
people right have this and you sort of hear this buzzword nowadays right when everyone's like give
value right and it's like so so that's the buzzword now is value
and don't get me wrong right absolutely right you want to give people value
right because again right like anything else why would people read again you have to give someone a reason to read your email
now going back to this whole value deal right what people aren't really understanding
with this because that's you know that so that's that's what kind of gurus kind of jump on that bad bandwagon and it's important to
understand that the word value here isn't about what you value as a company it's your
subscribers what they value and that is once again right and i've
seen this because this is this is where really really we we sort of like excel and where we focus right
is the fact that you know like everything else we focus on we focus on understanding your subscribers
right we show you how to understand your subscribers right because every single email list
because remember people sign up to your email list for a pain or desire right right so they have values right
they have values they have things that are important to them and the good thing is that every single email list right
every single email is typically you have between about three to five dominant uh you know avatars
you know so it's not like you have you know different values right you have typically the heart right
uh the heart of your uh of your of your list right because i always explain email marketing like a tree right it's you
have your you have your list which is like the the trunk and you have the roots which are your subscribers right and that's the heart
of your tree right like anything else they're coming they're signing up to your email list because they want to fulfill
they're trying to either believe a pain right or fulfill a desire right and it's up to you to understand
why they have that pain or desire it's not enough that you know that pain and desire right
you know why people come to you right you know why people sign up to your uh to your email list
right you're solving their e-commerce problems why is it right that they started their own e-commerce
right that's what people don't go into is well they signed up to learn e-commerce
what is it right what drove them what was the value that drove them to start their own e-commerce
store you know what i'm saying like yeah it doesn't you don't you don't have a hundred different reasons
usually you you know what i'm saying you have three to five even less than that right yeah you have core reasons and
that's the thing is to understand what is it that those right what do your subscribers value right are they
motivated by money are they motivated by service what motivates them right it's not just everyone thinks
we'll use money that motivates no money's not a motivator it's again money is a byproduct
right it's not a motivator if you try to motivate me like put million dollars in front of me
to run an agency now i'd be like who hell no you could offer me a trillion dollars i'd say no there's no amount of money in
this world you know what i'm saying so this is it money is not my motivator right it's a great byproduct whatever
you need it to survive live all that stuff right but it's not my motivator so that's the important thing is value right and i always say this right
when you understand what makes your users uh users tick you know it's easy to get
them to click because you know it makes them tick and that's all that it comes down to so it doesn't matter you know and this is the
same way too how you you know how you how you avoid writing salesy copy
or always depending on discounts because that's another big thing right that ecommerce stores have is
well how do we avoid giving discounts all the time because i hate that right it's like you're conditioning users to only
right you condition users to only buy when you give discounts and not to say
that there isn't a time and a place for that but again what you condition you enable so you really really want to be careful
that what you're actually conditioning users right to do because at the end of the day right your
email is your back end right yeah it's it is the unless you love paying for ads if you love paying for ads keep paying
for ads right but you know if you're anything like me where i don't like paying for
tonight then you want to build a strong back end okay you want to build
it and yes it takes a little bit more time i'm telling you the difference between the amount of
time that it just takes for people to take that extra week like when we when i
was running the agency uh when we were doing this for clients it would take us two weeks to like build
proper advertise avatars for clients right and some clients would be like why is it taking so long it's like listen it's two weeks
it's two weeks to do it but it's two weeks to set a foundation that you never have to worry about afterwards
yeah like you had all the keys to the kingdoms where you can literally write a copy in minutes
you have a promotion no problem copy minutes done you know what to do because you understand your people
right yeah no that sex and that's that's all it comes down to yeah very very good so i'm loving this
i'm loving this right make your emails engaging protect your right make your own engagement sell the click understand
your customers um know what their values are and write towards that one other thing i mean we've not gone
into any specific tactics but one of the things that one of the tactics that did come out from your book
that i quite liked was you mentioned about on the the buttons that you put in there that
you want people to click don't just put uh more info or find out more you you like let's use emotion let's convey emotion
uh in in that idea um and again this comes back to understanding the values of the customer
to know uh i guess what emotion to convey in that button
so yeah so so so that's good so it actually it's it's actually much simpler than that right
so once again so people for some reason treat email like it's a different entity
all together right which doesn't make any sense right like sometimes like i'll open up and trust me
i've got i've got friends that are great marketers fabulous marketers
but i look at some of their emails i'm like what are you doing i'm like you were literally i was like
what is it about email marketing that you think is so different people are still viewing it on right
they're still viewing it you know on mobile right in a browser like like it seems like for
some reason they forget all the rules it's like would you put a long url
right in an email you know sometimes you see like the instead of having a button they'll have like a full would you put a full url with xyz
dot whatever you know it's like a hundred different characters would you put a hundred different
characters as your call to action on a sales page yes or no no never so then why are you
doing it in an email you know what so you know it this is
what i'm saying is email is a display medium it's no different this is why it's like
when i see guys that are amazing you know amazing marketers amazing at doing and then you see them
on email sites like what are you doing did you just lose all like you know for some reason you know
they just lose all sense of you know the rules in terms of display it's like email is no different
okay it's still a display medium right the same rules apply meaning that you know again when
you're on desktop the same rules apply it you want everything above the fold right that's prime real estate right it doesn't
change right so and going back to the calls to action it's like anything else right like
same deal on a web page or in a sales page you know you want to put um an action verb in
there right because again the whole point of a call to action is to get people to act
right so obviously it's always best to have an emotion but at the end of the day what's most important is it's a verb
right it's an action verb right it's getting someone to the next one you're not just
gonna say click here okay well sometimes click here is applicable right sometimes in some cases
but you know what i'm saying there's there's a big difference between saying click here and okay uh yes to change your life
you know that's more powerful yes i want to change my life yes you know so i think the more
important thing is is not so much to really focus on the calls to action it's to more it's more about understanding that the
rules for these email is the same rules for display the same rules for display that you have
for whatever it is sales pages web pages the same rules apply for email there's
no difference that's really good well that's really good um i'm aware of time
uh and i'm aware that we have just literally scratched the surface of a whole bunch of this sort of stuff
um so gabby let's let's let me ask you maybe one final question here um what's one thing that you know we've
talked about a lot of stuff tonight what's one other thing maybe that you just want to throw into the mix here that we've not touched on that you maybe
want people to know uh that's a loaded question um yeah i thought i'd throw that on you
sorry um in all honesty my my biggest thing is is to really really reinforce the fact
that um it's just the email reputation i think we've covered a lot i think we've already
covered a lot and i can literally talk about email for for hours but uh the most important thing that i
always always try to reiterate with people is understand okay that it's all about your email
reputation okay it's all about you and that you control that you control the ability to
you know go from you know not hitting the inbox and not being prioritized and getting low clicks to
you know being prioritized and getting good clicks right just by understanding again those
three simple principles that literally anyone even if you haven't read the book okay even people that i haven't read the
book i'm like listen you don't even have to read the book just by knowing all you need to do is sell the click people are like ah yeah
you know wow that like you know you can you can even sense the weight being lifted off their shoulders when
you tell them listen sell the click i'll sell the product sell the click
and it just becomes much easier so those are the points that i just really really like to reiterate is just understand
that it's all about your email reputation okay i understand that it's all about engaging and
all you need to do is just sell that click that's it it's as simple as that yeah and there's
a lot of hard work that goes behind making it that simple but it i i like how you've boiled something which people just sweat at
right and just really struggle with into that straightforward concept and framework
and actually take care of that and all the other stuff starts to take care of itself listen gabby it has been absolutely
wonderful to talk to you about this you have bought such a fresh angle on email i've loved it i've loved love loved it how do
people who are watching the show or who are listening to the the audio version of this or maybe watching on catch up how
do people get a hold of you how do they connect with you what's the best way to do that very simple you just go to
emailmaverick.com right so you can go there you can visit the site you can pick up the book if you like
we also have an email masterclass that uh people can people kind of sign up to as
well that's which is pretty much gay we'll say it's pretty much geared towards e-commerce uh at the end of the day
pretty much all of email is really e-commerce regardless if you're an affiliate or influencer so uh so that's available too uh we are
getting off most of the big platforms now we are sort of just uh we're kind of getting off of facebook
and things like that so um i am looking because we did have a facebook group but i'm looking at kind
of getting getting rid of that so uh we're gonna be mostly on uh telegram and of course you can always
sign up to my email list because that is where people are gonna that's that is that is where i'm directing everyone to
go yeah that's the one thing i think everybody listening to the show should do because um i i'm always a fan of you know if you
have an email expert on go silence their email list because you're going to see actually this stuff in action right if you have a if you have a facebook expert
on go sign up to their facebook page because you're going to see this stuff in action and so i i would definitely encourage
you was it email maverick.com head there and sign up to gabby's email list that's what i'll be doing
yeah i would definitely say do not look at all of my emails for all of like i give you information in my emails but
i like to trick a lot of people when i actually create my emails so that's what that's one thing is
be very mindful about what you copy especially in my stuff because i know exactly that that's what people are
doing so i like to test people the same way that i test my clients and my students i'm like
if you're just following me it's like don't follow what i do all right don't follow what i be very mindful of
that that's just kind of a warning that's very good very good and the course is available at emailmaverick.com
as well i take it yes yes and the book is available the book is you can get the audio version
as well the auto version you can just sit back and relax listen to it for a couple for two hours it's not that long but yeah it's
it's packed with i mean you've read it so yeah it's a very very easy read very quick
very practical um and i didn't listen to the audio version but i did read the book uh but um no i can highly recommend it
do do check it out email maverick listen gabby thank you so much for being on the show as i said it has been an
absolute privilege and pleasure uh thanks for taking the time to speak to us and just adding so much value it's been
great i loved it thank you so much matt and hopefully yes uh be happy to be back whenever you like
talk more email i'm sure you will definitely be back there's a lot more conversation but thanks so much appreciate it thank you
thanks well wasn't gabby absolutely fantastic uh i hope you got a lot of value out of
that because i'm sure i'm sure you did i know i did right i love it when guests come on and just
just give us insane amounts of value and gabby was just no exception was she just insane amounts of value there
so as gabby said you can check out her website you can sign up to email we will
put links and show notes together for you uh so you can get a hold of those if you're driving or you can't take notes
just head on over to the website ecommercepodcast.net forward slash because this is episode
number and you'll get all that for you wow good thanks gabby that was a great show you
know it's always my aim whenever i speak to guests to find some real practical nuggets that i can use on my own e-commerce website
i got lots today i'm going to go and do that whole domain thing and figure all that out that's going to be good sell the clicks going to become
the new motto we're going to try a few different ideas in our email and see how we get on i hope you got some
great stuff out of it too if you did then i would certainly appreciate it if you could rate the show
on itunes and even share it out wherever you know wherever you wherever you do sharing facebook instagram you know
all that kind of stuff we just really appreciate it so we could connect with more folks around the world as i said uh just
a minute ago i'm just going to reiterate it now all of the notes links and transcript to today's show are online and you can get
them for free at ecommerce ecommercepodcast.net forward slash so all this left for me to say is
thanks for listening make sure you come back next week as we get to interview some more great guests
on how to grow our own online businesses my name is matt edmondson thanks so much
for watching we'll be back again very very soon
you've been listening to the e-commerce podcast with matt edmondson join us next time for more interviews
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