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Success With Jewelry
129 - Laryssa and Liz on Why You Need to Clean Your Email List
00:29:01
Welcome to the Success With Jewelry podcast, hosted by Laryssa Wirstiuk and Liz Kantner, two experts passionate about helping independent jewelry artists thrive. Welcome to Success with Jewelry Episode #129! In this episode, we’re talking about why...
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the Success with Jewelry podcast where we invite you inside our conversations about business success and marketing for jewelry designers and entrepreneurs.
- [00:10]
B
We're Larissa and Liz, jewelry marketing experts with a combined 16 years of experience in jewelry marketing and proven track records and helping jewelry brands meet their goals. When you listen to this podcast, you get an intimate and exclusive peek behind the curtain of all the things you wish you could know about earning success in this industry.
- [00:27]
A
Welcome to episode 129. In this episode, we're talking about why cleaning your email list is essential for better deliverability, stronger open rates and a more engaged community. We'll cover how to know when it's time steps to re engage subscribers before removing them and why it's not about having the biggest list, but the right people on it. And for insiders, we're sharing about re engagement, email segmentation tips and a checklist to keep your list healthy all year. Hey, Larissa, let's get into it.
- [01:00]
B
Let's get into it. You know what I was just thinking as a side note, Liz.
- [01:05]
A
What?
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B
Isn't your business anniversary soon?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Or when is your business anniversary?
- [01:11]
A
Mine is in March. So it happened.
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B
Oh, it happened.
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A
It did happen. What year was it?
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B
Nine years.
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A
I think what yours is now.
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B
I'm also nine years. So we gotta change our intro. Oh, my gosh. We gotta change 16 years. Yeah, so it's 18 years. What's up? I know. And also, we can't.
- [01:34]
A
Did I change the thing when you.
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B
Listen to this podcast?
- [01:37]
A
Okay, so we've changed that.
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B
I just changed.
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A
Oh, amazing.
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B
We can't. We don't. I can't watch this podcast.
- [01:41]
A
You read it. You read it correctly.
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B
Okay, I read.
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A
Oh, good.
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B
So together, our combined experience. We're now legal, basically. We are. We are.
- [01:53]
A
That's very exciting. We have a lot of years. But that's just nine years for me is only my nine years working for myself. I've been in the jewelry industry for much longer. Not much longer.
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B
Same.
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A
So we could even up that number.
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B
That's true. I started my business nine years ago, but I was doing jewelry stuff for a couple years before that. I don't even know. I don't even remember what is time.
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A
Time. Who knows? I was thinking about while I was reading that intro, I was just thinking about cauliflower because that's what I had for lunch. But just before we hopped on.
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B
That sounds good.
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A
It was really yummy.
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B
It was like garlic and olive oil.
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A
And like, just, just, just cauliflower.
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B
Roasted cauliflower.
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A
That's the Word I was looking for roast it. Anyway, what's Liz eating for lunch?
- [02:49]
B
Yeah, I'm just. I just had breakfast.
- [02:51]
A
Yeah, you just woke up over there.
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B
That's the time zone difference here. We're living in different. Different dimensions, different worlds.
- [02:57]
A
And a dachshund just walked by my window. So things are. Things are pretty good over here. All right, so this is actually a very selfish episode for me because were talking about my open rates, and Larissa was like, you need to clean your list. And I was like, I don't know how to clean my list.
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B
So, yeah, we're. So I'll help you.
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A
Thank you. First off, why is cleaning your list so important?
- [03:24]
B
Yes, cleaning your list is so important because you don't want to be emailing people who don't want to be on your list. Or maybe they just aren't, like, their email addresses aren't valid, et cetera, et cetera. And it's not just that, but it actually can help you land in the inboxes of people who want to hear from you rather than end up in spam. And I think that, like, I'm just making up this number, but I feel like 90% of business owners don't realize, like, how big of an issue this can become, because once you do start ending up in spam, it's actually very hard to come back from that. That's why you have to be so proactive about cleaning your list.
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A
And I think it's a hard thing to wrap your head around, because my thought is, if somebody doesn't want to be on my list, they will unsubscribe.
- [04:14]
B
Yeah, that's not true. You would hope that they would and people do unsubscribe. But I think that, I mean, we can all think about our own email marketing behaviors. I know for my personal email inbox, I'm subscribed to, like, hundreds of promotional emails, and it's so much that I just let them pile up and then mass delete them because it would be too annoying to go through and, like, unsubscribe from all of them.
- [04:42]
A
I've been unsubscribing more recently just because it is just so much. And I've been unsubscribing also from sms, which we. Maybe our next episode will be about sms, but because it's just like on the weekend when I'm getting these, like, these marketing text messages, and I'm like, I want to be, like, on a weekend. Like, I want to, like, not think about these things, because when I See marketing, I think about marketing, I think about clients, I think about ideas and things like that. And I'm like, I don't want to see that anymore.
- [05:15]
B
Yeah, that's a good point. It's easier to unsubscribe from sms. I feel like so much easier directly, like in your face. But yeah, it's very important. I think it's also a hard thing to wrap your head around because there is a vanity element to it and it's hard to build up a list. Like you spend a lot of time and effort doing that. And so the idea that you're gonna suppress or delete potentially hundreds of people, that's like very painful. But you know what, after you do it once, you'll understand the difference it can make and it will be easier moving forward. That's my opinion about it.
- [05:58]
A
I think that the confusing thing for me is just the logistics of how this works. So the fact that you have. So for example, I'll give my example of my email list. I have about 1200 people on my list that I email regularly every other week. And I have been getting open rates of about like 20 to 30%, which is pretty low for me and what I've experienced in the past and a low click through rate to under 2% I'd say. But I don't understand how my emails going to spam or going unopened leads to more emails ending up in spam. Like I don't understand how the health of the list actually works.
- [06:48]
B
Yeah, so if you think about inbox providers, the most common ones being Gmail or I don't know what people use anymore, my dad uses aol, aol, you know those ones. But Gmail is probably the biggest provider. So in general there's a lot of actual email spam, like true email spam. And Gmail has to work very, very hard to protect your inbox because it's in their best interest to keep the spam out. Otherwise you'll be so frustrated you don't want to like log in and look at your email anymore. So they have all these like complex like filters and algorithms that determine if something is spam or not. And what happens with a legit emailer like you, Liz, if they start to notice that like, oh, 50% of the people getting emails from like Liz are not opening them or whatever in their Gmail inboxes. Gmail's going to start to think like this might not be like a legitimate sender or someone that is sending someone of value. So it's like this complex kind of system that's tied to your sender domain or email address. And so it starts to like guess or assume that you are spam.
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A
That's wild. I didn't know all that was happening.
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B
Yeah, yeah. And it might not be happening. You may not be at that point yet. But if you persist in that direction and it gets really bad, the chances of that happening increase. Got it.
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A
So how do you know? Obviously like a drop in open or click through rates. But what other signs are there that it's time to clean your list?
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B
Those are the main ones, especially the open rates. I'm going to try to talk about this without getting too in the weeds because it can be kind of complicated. So open rates are actually not super reliable. So I want to say that first because there are all these like privacy things in place with Apple that if someone has an Apple device and they receive your email, it's obscured whether or not the person is truly opening your email or not for privacy. So know that first that open rates are not 100 reliable. But what is reliable is seeing consistent trends. So if your open rate is consistently going down over a period of time, that is a pretty good indicator that your list is becoming more and more disengaged. So this is not looking from one email to the next on a micro level, but over a period of a month or two months. If you're sending regularly and you're seeing a trend of downward open rates, that is an indicator that your list needs to be cleaned.
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A
And that's why the Apple issue is the reason why I didn't notice my low open rates quickly. Because in mailchimp, which I use, they show when you look at the. Just like the big picture report, it doesn't. It shows it with those maybe not real opens and then you can toggle it so it shows it without them. And I didn't realize that it was doing that. And I just dug into my reporting and I was like, oh wow, this is not good.
- [10:23]
B
That's a very confusing thing for a lot of people. I'm like, I kind of hesitate to talk about it because it sounds really complicated. But I think the main idea or thought I want you to take away is if you see a trend of decline, pay attention to that.
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A
And that's why we should be reporting. Actually, I need to report on our Instagram. I need to. I'm a little behind on my reports this year, but reporting monthly is a really good idea because then you can start, start to see these trends and you can stay in your numbers and understand what's happening.
- [10:55]
B
Yeah, click through rates are also sort of reliable. But click. A low click through rate could be the result of other issues too, like with your email itself, like maybe it's just not super clickable or there's not a lot of buttons. So again, if you see a great trend of decline, that's a sign. But from email to email, I wouldn't like micro. Well, for the, the purposes of what we're talking about, I wouldn't like micro. Pay attention to that.
- [11:27]
A
Yeah, I think that in a lot of cases, like really like micro paying attention to things isn't helpful. It's like when you step back and look at the bigger picture is when you really notice what's happening.
- [11:39]
B
Yeah, especially if, let's say like three months ago, six months ago, you were pretty steadily having like 40 to 50% open rates. And now for the past two months it's more in the like 20 to 30s. I'd be like, okay, well that is a big indicator for me, which is exactly what's happening.
- [11:57]
A
And I'm like, what am I doing wrong?
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B
Yeah, and it's not that you're doing anything wrong, it's just that sometimes people, not only do they not unsubscribe, but maybe they just stop paying attention to their emails or maybe it was like a work email and they don't really look at that email anymore or whatever. They have a filter like where all their promotions emails are going and they kind of aren't, just aren't paying attention. Like there's so many reasons that have nothing to do with your emails or your business or you as a person, but you have to protect yourself as the sender.
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A
So what should you do before you remove anyone?
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B
Yeah, so this is the part, this is probably the hardest logist, logistically hardest part. So what you don't want to do is like cherry pick who you want to remove because that's not effective and it's actually very time consuming and just not effective. You want to create a segment or basically a group of people in your list that meet certain criteria. And that will be slightly different from like email provider to email provider, like how you set it up. But generally it's called the segment of a list. And the way that you set up that segment is going to depend a little bit on how often you are emailing and how quickly your list tends to like grow or get new people on it. But as a general rule, you want to make that segment be have the following, like subscribers that have been members before 90 days ago. So they've been on the list for like a decent amount of time. They're not newer people that you're so warming up. They've been on the list for at least 90 days, they haven't opened any of your emails for at least 90 days and they also have not clicked any emails for at least 90 days. And you can change that time frame depending again on like how long has it been since you've list cleaned, how often do you send and you can even experiment with like a few different conditions to see how many people get lumped into that group and kind of check. But the 90 days is like an average place to start and that will bring up people who have been on your list for a while and have not engaged. And like did I even explain that right? I don't even know if that makes sense. But basically they've been on your list and they haven't opened and haven't clicked. And it's not an or because you usually have an option to do open or click. You should do both because given that stuff I said about Apple, you cannot solely rely on open rate being the metric that you are using to see who's engaged or not.
- [15:02]
A
And then so what kind of email do you send these people to re engage them?
- [15:06]
B
Yeah, so sure. So it's called a RE engagement campaign and you only send it to this segment of people that you pull up and you. It's usually a plain text email, very short with an eye catching subject line because again these are people who have a history of not engaging with you. So this is kind of your last ditch effort to like get their attention. So something like hey it's been a while or like are you still interested? Or like you know, and depending on your brand voice you can get kind of like cheeky with it or not. It depends on how you usually approach your communications. But it basically says like it's been a while since you've engaged, do you still want to be on this list and like click this button to confirm and usually the button will go to like an update preferences forum where they can unsubscribe or they can change their email address but you're able to see based on who clicks on that email. Okay, those people who clicked, you can keep them, they still are interested. But anyone who doesn't click within usually seven days and it's going to be most of those people guaranteed because they are already not engaged, you're going to suppress or archive them. Got it. So. And they Always have a chance to res. They can resubscribe if they want, but they're not going to like weigh down your list. Got it.
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A
So you're kind of just putting these people aside, removing them from the list you're sending to, but you still kind of have them somewhere.
- [16:50]
B
Yeah, I would. So it really depends on your email platform provider. Also with Klaviyo, for example, they are very strict about charging per active profile, which means like a subscribed person. And so you definitely don't want those people subscribed anymore because you could be paying like a hundred extra dollars, whatever, depending how many people there are for people that are not interested, if it doesn't really matter so much with your payment, which I think less and less is true with email platforms these days because they pay per subscriber. Like, you don't want to keep people that you are going to have to pay for if they are not interested in being there. Got it.
- [17:40]
A
So I think that, I mean, there's definitely a mindset thing at play here. I would say maybe not for me. I'm not worried about removing people from my list or like my list of email subscribers, like having a big number. I just really want to engage the people who are interested because I think I'd mentioned this. I sent a pretty successful email a couple weeks ago in terms of replies, which I value, you know, because that's somebody taking the time to be like, I enjoyed this or, you know, and then they kind of become a lead. But the people who replied are already people I know, like what I do, you know, and that's great. I'm still glad to hear from them. But there's all these people on my list that are maybe opening or clicking or maybe just thinking they want to learn more from me or about me and what I do that I just, I can't identify them. But anyway, a lot of people might have this, this idea of like, oh well, more is better, like casting the wider net. So how do you kind of talk through someone who's like, oh well, I want to keep the 1200 people on my list.
- [18:47]
B
It's. I don't know, it's a mindset shift. I mean, I can share examples. I can actually have a very extreme example to share. We like started working with a client. We basically like inherited their whole email marketing program. They had like 20,000 subscribers. So probably more than most people listening. It was a big list, but when we kind of dug into it, it's like, why aren't these emails performing? Like this is A really big list. You would think at least some percentage of these people are engaged. Now I have no idea how that list was built or where those people came from, but when we started testing and even sending emails internally and looking into the data, this was already past the point of almost no return. Like every email was going to spam because they had spent so long just hammering this list and most of it not engaging, that now they were at the point where no one's getting their emails because they're all going to spam. So what the heck is the point of having 20,000 people? Like that is something I'm sure anyone would be thrilled to have that many people on their list. We had to do like several rounds of re engagement to figure out who is, who should be kept. We actually whittled it down to like 1500 people, if you can believe that, from 20,000 to 1500. And at that point you're basically starting from scratch. But we got to warm back up those 1500 people and the email started going in the inbox. People were engaging with them and actually having that small list, those emails were performing better, like revenue wise, all of that. And so what's the point of having that many people if literally you're just ending up in spam folders? And not only are people not seeing them, but if, excuse me, but if they do happen to see them in their spam folder. That looks so shady, you know, why are you ending up in spam? Nobody wants to buy jewelry from someone that's in a spam folder.
- [21:03]
A
That's so true. Can people. Because we should shout out our services more frequently. Can people come to you if they're feeling like they need help with their emails?
- [21:14]
B
Oh yeah. I mean, this is the main service that we provide for our clients. But they have to be open to like be open to giving up that stronghold they have on their list because it's just, it's just poor health to like hold on to people that don't want to be there. And in the long run it's going to be very, very detrimental to you. How did that client react? I mean, they definitely had a hard time letting go. It was kind of the thing like, can we try like one more re engagement campaign? Like, are you sure? Because that's a, that's a really extreme example. But when we showed like how poorly the emails were delivering is that's all you can do at that point. Like you kind of have to start from scratch in a way.
- [22:09]
A
Yeah, that's so true. It's Kind of like, I mean this we've kind of, I feel like people have kind of let go of because it's so time consuming to deal with. But like the, the followers on Instagram that are just like no longer on Instagram or not engaging anymore that you're still following and or like just the gem dealers or the, the, the bots that have followed you over the years. Especially if you start your Instagram when Instagram launched, you know, it doesn't necessarily serve you and I always struggle with that with my page because I have a lot of followers but I know for of them are no longer active. But it's like how do you get rid of them?
- [22:45]
B
It's kind of, it's similar to that. But the cool thing about email marketing that you can't do with Instagram, which is frustrating to me, Instagram, that would be a manual process you would have to go through and like manually check whatever the 20,000 people that you have who wants to do that. With email marketing you can build out segments that just dynamically group people in like a few seconds. And so that is really the benefit there. And not just identifying people who are disengaged, but also people who are engaged. Like who's clicking the most, like who is always there checking out your emails. You want to know that too on the other side of, of that coin and actually that just made me think of something. I'm going to go on a rant here. Let's hear it. So some email provide like platforms like Omnisend. I'm trying to think maybe mailchimp, they have like an auto resend to non openers thing. Don't do that. Don't resend to non openers. This is a very, very outdated practice from like five or six years ago that is actually reinforcing. When you do that, you are reinforcing all the things I talked about in this episode that is bad because you are only sending more emails to people that have already shown you they are not engaged and you're kind of asking to be in their spam in a way. So you want to focus instead turn your mindset to I want to engage the people who are engaging with me. And screw the people that are not engaging. I don't want them anyway. That's not only going to get you better results in the long term, but it's going to make sure the health of your like sender reputation stays really good.
- [24:45]
A
That's so interesting because I thought best practice was to update the subject line and resend within 24 hours.
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B
It used to be a best practice but the Apple stuff changed that. And also the stricter filters about like Gmail and like protecting against spam have, have changed that. So used to be a good practice, but not anymore.
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A
Wow. Wow. I had no idea. Thanks for sharing that.
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B
Yeah, because it's. And talk about reporting if you're, if you are doing that and it's, it's okay if you are, just don't do it anymore. But if you were to download a report of like six months of data where you are doing that and you look at the resends, you'll see, maybe you'll get like, I don't know, a couple extra clicks or something. But it's nothing crazy. Like those open rates and click rates are still going to be very low. And again you're reinforcing to like Gmail that like people don't want to hear from you. I know that sounds bad, but it's the truth of it and I have seen it, you know, in the numbers.
- [25:58]
A
Interesting. Well that's good to know. Before we wrap this up and talk to insiders, let's just go through the frequency of this and like how do you maintain your list and keeping it clean?
- [26:13]
B
It depends how often you're sending. If you don't send that often, like once a month. Well, okay, let me talk about this in a few different ways. This is also an argument for sending weekly because if you are sending weekly, you get better data about who is engaged and might sound like counterintuitive, but it helps you keep your list healthier. Even though a lot of people think like oh I'm bothering people, that's too much. It actually helps you keep a healthier list because you get, you're engaging people regularly, you're getting that feedback back from people to know who's engaged and who's not. If you email like once every three months, you're not going to get any good data because in three months half your list may have like forgotten who you even are like to, to be honest with you. So in terms of frequency, if you're a regular email sender like once a week, even once every other week, I would do list cleaning like every 90 days. And if you are a little bit more skilled with email marketing, you can even set up a automation that does this in the background so you don't have to manually do it. Basically when someone enters your disengaged segment of like 90 days not engaged or whatever, whatever it triggers this re engagement email that goes to them so that it's happening in the background all the time and then archiving them if they don't take action. So you can set this up to not be manual if. If you feel a little more comfortable with automations.
- [27:57]
A
Wow, this was super helpful. Thanks, Larissa.
- [28:01]
B
Yeah, I. I think it's a little bit of a complex topic, so I hope I explained it in a way that is accessible. And it's a shame that it's a complex topic because I think it's kind of an essential thing that anyone sending email campaigns should know and understand because I've seen damage just be done to lists without people even realizing what that they should have been doing this or that there were like, best practices around it. So, yeah, it's good to be aware. But also it is kind of like a harder. A harder part of email marketing. Yeah, definitely.
- [28:44]
A
Well, okay. I'm excited that you shared this with everyone. Does your email list need to be cleaned? Let us know. Visit successwithjori.com and if you love the podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Send us a message or leave us a review. Thanks for being a part of our community.