Memorial Day can be a big sale weekend for many companies with a little preparation. In this episode, the guys go over the best techniques to prepare your email list for holiday offers. Your outcome is only as good as the prep work, so it’s important that you approach your offers and your audience the right way! They dive into what goes into prepping your email list, the importance of consistent messaging and solid evergreen flows, and some of the things they are doing to prepare for the holiday weekend!

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This is a direct transcript. Please forgive any grammar or spelling errors.

Jason: The quicker, you can get new people to an offer, the better.

Kevin: There’s a good opportunity there that that’s a buyer’s mindset right there.

Jason: You know, email is one of those things that you can literally do for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and never run out of things to do

Jen: You’re listening to e-commerce uncensored with Kevin Manel and Jason Caruso.

Kevin: Hey everyone. And thank you for joining us on another episode of eCommerce Uncensored. My name is Kevin Monell and I’m here with.

Jason: Jason Caruso.

Kevin: So Jason, a couple of weeks ago, I actually got an email from Klaviyo and they gave us, it was a Memorial day success guide. And I I kept the email like unread. Cause I kept knowing that I wanted to kind of go back and review it and I kind of kept the tab open. I was like, I want to go back and review it. So considering the time and next week is Memorial day weekend, which is kind of one of those weekends. It’s a pretty big sale weekend, I think for most companies. So, so this morning when we’re talking about what we should talk about, I thought it would really be great to kind of like, just kind of, uh, go through this kind of checklist of what to prep, how to prep your email list, how to execute and things like that.

So you guys can all be ready for next weekend when you can get a boost in sales,

Jason: because before we get in. You want people to email us right now?

Kevin: I want people to text us, text us. Yeah, I’m going to talk, we’re going to be talking a lot about email stuff and email platform stuff. And you got, if you feel like you’re going cross-eyed and we’re talking about this and you guys need.

To, to, uh, you know, get these things accomplished. We have this done for you service that we’re offering now. And to learn more about that, you can text the word email to 8 4, 4 6 4 3 0 7 4 5, and we’ll get to know your company a little bit. We’ll respond back and we’ll see if there’s a fit there and see if we can work together.
Yeah. We’re already working with somebody. Yeah, it’s been great. And yeah, I’ve been texting back and forth with a few other people and so we’ll see what happens. All right. So anyway, so we’re just going to go, I’m just gonna go down the list, Jason of things, some of it’s like prep work that you can do to make sure that your, your platform email platform is ready to go. And then we’re gonna, we’ll go into like actually executing and then kind of a little bit of the post, uh, post Memorial day stuff you can do. Cool. Number one on the list is just like kind of giving your account a general kind of audit. And this is interesting because, and what I mean by that is kind of.
Making sure the platform is working properly, you know, making sure all your integrations are in place, uh, making sure, uh, all your flows are triggering properly. Your, you know, your evergreen flows. Cause I think we, we kind of let them go and we’re just like, assuming that they’re working properly, like. Uh, your welcome series, your abandoned carts, your browse abandonment.
And I just went through this yesterday. I went into a one on one company on partner of ours that we’re selling a course with. And I went into the, the post customer flow and I realized that people who bought from a webinar that we’re offering for an email signup, they were continuing to get. The webinar, email flow, trying to get them to buy the course.
And it was just because I had like a, the trigger or the, the filter on the flow is all messed up. So I just happened to catch that. So things like that go into your evergreen flows, make sure everything’s working properly. Yeah,

Jason: I actually, I don’t know if you picked up on this, but one of our clients yesterday emailed us or I’m emailed her and she emailed us back and she said, oh, I just extended.

The coupon code. So, you know, the brain trying to make is that like we’ve, we had some Facebook ads going, um, and we didn’t even know the code expire.

Kevin: I thought the same exact thing when she said that, I was like, oh my God, that ad’s been running for awhile now, and now she’s just extending it now. I can’t imagine, you know, I dunno.

I don’t even know when I didn’t even know what it did expire, so that’s a good point.

Jason: Very interesting platform. So they’re on NetSuite and NetSuite does these weird things, and that’s not something we were expecting, but the point is that, uh, to check your coupons as well, or, you know, if you’re using a new coupon for Memorial day, which I think you should, so that you can track it, make sure that’s triggering, make sure that’s working.

Do the, you know, uh, one thing that people, I think. Uh, don’t do enough of Kev and that is testing in incognito rather than testing while you’re logged in. Because when you’re logged in, if you’re using, uh, let’s say you’re using WooCommerce or you’re using Shopify or whatever, you know, sometimes those platforms will show you things that the PR people. That aren’t logged in. Like, in other words, like they’ll, they’ll, it’ll work for you when you’re logged in as an admin, but somebody who isn’t logged in and who is not an admin, sometimes those things stop working. So you should check those things in incognito.

Kevin: That’s a good point too. And like, uh, things that you may do on your website, like popups and things like that, where you’re excluding people who are already on your list.

So. If you’re on your browser that you’re using and that you’re already, you’re a person that’s already on the list, which you should be. If you’re running the running the store and you go check the website and you’re trying to test like a form or something and you see it’s not working, it may just because you know, that trigger on the pop-up is set up to not show to you. So I always open incognito windows to try to test that kind of stuff. So that’s a good point too, Jason. Yeah, absolutely. The next thing is like the, the, the calendar, and this is something back years ago. That we never really did. We always kind of like Wong it when it came long, it is long, it winged it, winged it when we used to come up to Memorial day and be like, okay, let’s just figure it out, uh, when the day comes.
But now it’s so important to come up with some kind of nice content calendar where, you know, You’re starting Memorial day, Monday before, and you’re running emails every single day, twice a day or whatever it may be. So you have, even though like along the way, you know, that you may adjust things depending on how things work, but to have that laid out in front of you, I think is so important.
Don’t you agree, Jason?

Jason: Um, I’m not really a calendar guys.

Kevin: So I saw that I saw that in your face. That’s why I didn’t say

Jason: anything, but the truth is, is like, it is important. It’s just not my thing.

Kevin: I personally just having it. It doesn’t have to be like set in stone. I know Trinity Trinity is going to be listening.

She’s like one that’s she’s like, if we don’t hit those dates, we’re going to have. Don’t send that. Well, we have one scheduled for tomorrow, like, okay, train. It’s going to be fine. Don’t worry just to change it.

Jason: Which is good though. We need that.

Kevin: Absolutely. I love that, uh, that she does that, but to have some kind of structure in place, I think is so important. So you know how the week or week and a half is gonna be. Right. Um, let’s see, uh, deliverability, you know, make sure, and I think this is the big part of this is like your clean list. Yeah. Clean. I was going to just say,

Jason: Clean your list word. We’re working with our client right now on that, like, she has a gigantic list of 140 something thousand or whatever it is.

And I would say 90% of that list is not engaged. They don’t buy, they don’t click, they don’t open. So we’re actually segmenting those people.

Kevin: Yeah. And some of the prep to that is like, okay, you notice that, you know, half your list is engaged. The other half is not. Maybe you start to lead up to these kind of offered times Memorial day and you try to try to get them reengaged.

Jason: Well, we’re doing that with our business, with the journal of wildlife photography, we’re, we’re creating, we, we we’re starting ads that is going to be, or the ads we’re using are bringing in new people for our Memorial day off.

Kevin: So it’s bringing new people in, but it’s also, we also have. Um, I’m sending our existing list, an email to sign up to another, you know, lead magnet that puts them through another flow to get them back engaged.

So I think that’s, that’s really important because what good is your list? If no, one’s opening your emails in there, they’re not really engaged, right. Um, I’m going to skip through some of these cause uh, some of them are more specific and I think we should stick with general stuff. So reviewing your other channels, you know, making sure that your messaging, your offers and things, and are all cleaned up your, you know, your Facebook ads and your, your Klayvio and your YouTube and your, all those kinds of things are in sync for Memorial day, that’s coming up.
Right. Um, onsite stuff. Uh, this kind of is like, what we just, we just talked about is kind of. Doing some lead up to build your list up. Right. So get people prepared, you know, run some, some opt-ins that on your site to just keep that list building and get those really engaged people in there. Ready to go when your offer comes.
Yeah.

Jason: You know, this was something that when our golf business, Kevin, that I’ve I’ve noticed is that, um, the quicker get. Um, the quicker you can get new people to an offer the better. Yeah. Right? Like the golf thing is like the faster I could put that offer in front of them without being intrusive, the better it is.

It’s like, as people start the excitement of what you gave them starts wearing off, they start forgetting about who you are. That’s when it starts getting a little bit more difficult. You know, if you bring in new people and you offering them something quickly, they, depending on how excited they are and how, how much your product solves their problem, they tend to be a little bit more engaged,

Kevin: Yeah. They’re fresh. I mean, they, they came on your list for a reason, right? Because they’re, they’re looking for something that you have, right. So they’re the perfect person to get that offer in front of the right away because they didn’t buy when they first met you for whatever reason, maybe it was the offer.

Maybe they didn’t have the time. So that’s a, that’s a good point. Um, so not actually like heading into Memorial. Oh, one more thing that I didn’t want to say. Prep wise, as far as Memorial day is kind of, and this is almost the audit kind of situation that I talked about first is looking back at previous Memorial day, say.
And seeing what offers worked really well, what segments you sent to that worked really well and just kind of reviewing those numbers and seeing, because most likely those same things are going to work for you again.

Jason: Yeah. I wouldn’t do that with the journal. Like instead of like reinventing the wheel, we just take the same offer that worked really well.

And sometimes we even use the same creative because. There’s new people on the list and they don’t remember what they did last year or what we did last year. So yeah, I mean, that’s

Kevin: a hundred percent. I think people get hung up with that too. A lot is like, oh my God, I just ran that same thing last year.

They’re not going to, you know, people are going to be think weird about the fact that I’m doing the same thing. Like they don’t care. They don’t think about you as much as you think they do. And they don’t remember no idea. I even like for our, one of our clients, we were reviewed some of the. Some of the old creative we use.
I was like, I don’t even remember using that. I was the one that freaking put it in there. Right, exactly. Um, so other things leading up, leading into and heading into Memorial day is updating your flows, updating your, your abandoned carts and your, your, uh, browse abandonment flows. You know, I’m not talking about like the setup, like we talked about for me.
You know, maybe freshing them up putting some Memorial day creatives in them or something like that, or incorporating your offer into abandoned carts. So it really, it really re iterates that offer that someone comes to your site and abandons their cart. And you say, Hey, don’t forget, we have this Memorial day sale going on right now.
And you can still save on that product, things like that. Um, Scheduling the emails ahead of time is kind of the similar to the, to the calendar stuff that we talked about. Jason, you’re looking all over the place. I’m looking at my other screen at this list. It’s like behind your microphone though.

Jason: You’re like weaving away because I was over here, but then I’m like, how can I talk if I’m

Kevin: Building those, uh, building those segments and getting those campaigns scheduled ahead of time is real important.

Um, because again, I mean, even, you know, They weekend is a time where you don’t work, right? So you’re not going to want to work that much. You’re going to want to take some time off. So be able to schedule those things ahead of time is real important.

Jason: And that even as like reminds me of something that makes it even a w or it’s really important is that people are doing the same thing on their end. They’re not working, they’re not looking at their email as much. So the importance of. Sending a lot of emails. Like the consistency of emails, the number of emails, because of the timing thing, right? Like everybody is doing their own thing and they’re not just sitting, waiting for your email to come in. So, you know, like we schedule like almost two a day, the morning, the afternoon, the evening, sometimes three a day, you know, it depends like you gotta, you gotta give people the chance.

To see your message.

Kevin: So to speak. Yeah. Think about yourself. Like, what are you doing Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday on Memorial day weekend, Sunday money, Sunday, money and money. Got money on my mind. Yeah.

Jason: Well, cause you’re looking at $150,000 pool going.

Kevin: I don’t want to talk about it. We don’t talk about pool.

We don’t talk about Bruno pool. No pool.

Jason: Actually you should be okay with the pool now. Everything, everything we’re good things.

Kevin: Awesome. Going a lot faster, which is causing a lot more stress matching. I was, I wanted it to be quick, but I didn’t want it to be this well, you don’t want them to be asking for money quick?

Yeah. Once a week asking for $25,000 checks.

Jason: Good thing.

Kevin: He borrowed it from me. Good. Uh, where was I? Uh, oh yeah. So think about where you are. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. In the middle of the day, you’re outside, you drink and you’re barbecuing, you know, so maybe it’s going to work better at, in the morning, early morning.

And later at night, you know, when people are sit in front of their TV or early morning when they’re first waking up looking at their phone, and this is like another thing. When you look back at previous years, she went, what times work better for your emails and get those scheduled ahead of time. Um, another thing is like the setup of some of these segments.
And I didn’t even think about this, like setting up a segment of. People who bought last Memorial day. You know, that there’s a good opportunity there. That that’s a buyer’s mindset right there. They bought during Memorial day. You say the same thing for black Friday or any other holiday find those buyers that bought at certain times, you know, they have these regular behaviors that they, that they usually follow.
Yeah.

Jason: Well, the only thing is you’ve got to just know your product because there, there are products where there. People grow out of your product. I mean, we have a client right now we’re working with is she only sells baby clothes up at two years old. So if someone is three years old, they’re not going to need it anymore.

But last year their kid was two years old. So just be mindful of that, like understand your customer. Um,

Kevin: yeah. Keep an eye on that same, that same client we’re working with to keep an eye on the, you know, your, your limits. You know, you’re making sure your platform is going to be able to handle this, the send that’s going to happen over the next week or so that sale weekend that’s going to happen.

Um, I w I had that same warning with this client. We just ran like a huge mother’s day campaign, and we sent more emails than she’s ever sent so that I was like, oh shit, we gotta make sure that we have enough from Memorial day. So keep an eye on that, to take a look at your limits and upgrade. If you have.
Make sure your coupons are all set up. I think that’s pretty much self-explanatory. You said that earlier. Uh, obviously don’t send out a coupon in your email. It’s not set up. Um, Yeah. I mean, that’s, most of the things I have on this list. I mean, some of the posts Memorial day stuff is, you know, keep an eye on the performance and keep an eye on the performance as you go through it.
You know, we said, keep a calendar, get a calendar set. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t adjust as you see the performance coming in, you know, change your schedules. And if you see one message work better than the other, send more of. So even though you have maybe something scheduled the next day or the next couple of days

Jason: yeah. You can always create, and you can create segments to exclude people so that you’re not overlapping them so much. So like, if you have different segments of people, you know, exclude some people like, okay, like, you know, just so. You’re not continually sending to the same people over and over. We like to do like people who haven’t opened, create a segment of those people, send them a different subject line.

Maybe the subject line you used before wasn’t catching their eye enough, try a different one. So, I mean, there’s a lot of things. You know, email is one of those things that you can literally do for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and never run out of things to do. I mean, this, this list talks a lot about, about, um, like you were talking about before, like segmentation and VIP’s and loyalty customers and high engaged segments.
I mean, you can give incentives just to these people. Maybe everybody else is getting a 20% off, but maybe you create a segment of people who have purchased multiple times and you say like, Hey look, you’re a part of our VIP. Everyone else is getting 20%. We’re going to give you 50%. Here’s a code.

Kevin: Oh yeah. That’s a good one too. Yeah. Early access, you know, give your list early access to the offer too. That’s another good one. Yeah. I mean,

Jason: and the thing is, is like the, the amount of money that you can make. I mean, look, think about it. And we talk about this a lot. It’s like we send an email to Kevin with the journal and it can make.

$5,000, $3,000, $2,000. Right? Think about how long it takes people to make $2,000. Right? Think about how long it takes someone, a man to make $5,000. So let’s say your, your emails are only making a thousand, sent five of them. There you go. You made five grand in a week, real simple, right. And finding different segments and trying to create emails that are specific to them will allow you to send out.
So there’s so much, you can do an email. It never really ends. Um, you know, it’s one of those things where like, if you need to make five brand, okay, you can do it. Right. Like send more emails,

Kevin: even as we’re talking, even as we’re talking, I’m like, oh, she could do that. Yeah. Like, as we’re going through this list, things are just popping up.

The more and more things we can do. You know, as the sales, even past the sales and after the sales and doing things like that. Yeah. I mean, there are, there

Jason: is, uh, definitely it’s endless, but, um, the things that we spoke about, I mean, this list is actually even, even more extensive, but we’ve. There’s some things in here that are like,

Kevin: eh, that’s why I kinda like tried to yeah.

You know, so

Jason: I mean, it’s, it’s definitely, and, and by the way, this is, this is for Memorial day, but this is really for, for any day. I mean, you can, you can do this for any holiday. You could do this for any event. You can really do this for anything that you’re trying to do. So,

Kevin: yeah. Yeah. Cool once again, guys, if you need help with your email to do things like this, that need to be done to grow your revenue from your email provider, text us the word email to 8 4 4 6 4 3 0 7 4 5.

And we’ll see if we’re a good fit to work together. Right? So as always, you can check us out at eat commerce, uncensored.com. And we’ll talk to you guys real soon

Jason: later.

 

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