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Foreign. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Kate Show. I'm Kate. It's episode 275 and today we are talking about the most effective email marketing topics and when to send them, as well as my somewhat traditional review of how is the email marketing industry faring? Is it still a good source of ROI for people in the home industry like yourself? Well, today we're going to find out. Now, the biggest question that I get asked by my new clients and my agency is which newsletter topics should I send first? And while there's no singular right answer, often a good place to start is with an official welcome email. But if you're new to email marketing, you might first be asking, why even bother with email?
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Isn't email archaic?
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I don't even read my own emails. That's a great question. So we're going to start the discussion by going over some stats so that you can make an informed decision for whether or not you should use email marketing in your business. And after that, we'll go over the best email marketing practices and I'll share some amazing stories from my clients who raked in six and seven figures just from sending email newsletters. And lastly, I'll share a newsletter topic breakdown for the types of newsletters you should be sending throughout the year as a home professional. All right, let's jump into it.
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This episode of the Kate show is brought to you by Honeybook. I love using Honeybook for my business because it helps create a streamlined workflow when people decide they want to work with me. Because, you know, there's one thing to do the right marketing to get the client, there's a. There's quite another to impress them all.
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The way through the end of the project.
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And with Honeybook, my clients are able to review and sign the proposal, make their payment, and then be told what to do next, all in one fell swoop. I've set up automations that remind them when they need to send me certain assets so that their website project can go off without a hitch. And if you've ever worked with us, you know that Honeybook kept you on track. It kept us on track and it was really easy to use. If you're interested in using Honeybook for your business, go to honeybook.com and use the code socialite at checkout for 50%.
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Off your first year.
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This episode of the Kate show is brought to you by the foundation website Guys. If you need a new website for your business, but you can't afford a fully custom site or you just don't have that much time to spare, you should check out the Semi Custom website design service from the Socialite agency for home pros who need more than just a DIY website template. How many times have you purchased a website template only to never use it or get stuck because you don't know how to complete it, you don't know how to connect all the things and well, doesn't that end up being a waste of money? It does. That's why the foundation website exists. If you want a professional to see, set up your website, handle your on site SEO, optimize your images and write your copy and you want to maintain full control over that website moving forward, this website is for you. You'll be able to see what's included and what's not included by heading over to kait socialite.com and under the services page click on Semi Custom website Design. Every great build begins with a solid foundation and we've made it easy. You'll be able to learn exactly how the process works, why we have a 10 business day turnaround, and why we can keep the fees so darn affordable with no ongoing fees to us whatsoever. The cool thing is, and the thing that a lot of our clients appreciate is that when you get our website, whether it's fully custom or semi custom like this one, we are available to help make updates to your site. We only charge you when you actually need an update made, which means that months, years might go by. You don't have to pay us a dime, but when you're ready for help.
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We'Re there to help you.
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Head over to katethesocialite.com and look under the services tab to get the website your business deserves.
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Email marketing stats for 2024 are going to be broken into a few categories. I'm going to first talk about usage and growth because there's no point in doing something if fewer and fewer people are using that media and then return on investment and then best practices. So for usage and growth in 2025. Yes, the year we are in right now, the number of email users is expected to reach 4.6 billion. Whoa. Email marketing revenue worldwide is expected to reach 17.9 billion by 2027. So there's a lot of growth happening. Also, four out of five marketers say they'd rather give up social media than email marketing. Millennials and Gen Xers, which constitute pretty much 100% of your client base, rely on their email more than any other generation has. With 98% of these millennials and Gen Xers using email heavily, 99% of email users check their inbox every single day. That's helpful for you. The average open rate for an email marketing campaign in the home industry has increased. It was around 20% for the longest time, but it is now 39%. It is growing. It is improving. More people actually want to get emails. Kind of bizarre, isn't it? With the way social media has just ravaged our lives, you would think that email would fall by the wayside, but it hasn't. Because as it turns out, a lot of people are sick of social media. Social media is being used by younger demographics. Social media is very divisive and brainwashing, to be quite honest. And email has just been this quiet player in the background that continuously gets stronger and more prolific and more impactful. So as a business owner in the home industry, this is what you should be paying attention to and directing your time toward. Now, the. The interesting thing is that 23% of emails are glanced at with an engagement time of 2 to 8 seconds. They open the email, they're like, is this worth reading?
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No.
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Okay, so if you're going to do email marketing, that stat proves that your emails had better be worth opening. Now it's a little more encouraging to see that 61% of emails are glanced at with an engagement time of over eight seconds. You can read a lot in eight seconds. I don't care who you are. I mean, I'm a fast reader because I practically do that for a living, reading and writing. But you can consume a lot in eight seconds. But that also means that your email newsletter should not be a mishmash or a smorgasbord or the charcuterie board of topics. It needs to have one topic, one call to action, a few solid photos, and that's it. It should not be. Check out our blog post. Click here to learn more. It should not be. Check out what we're loving right now. It should not be. Check out photos from our Instagram. Because all that does is water down the effectiveness of the newsletter. And when people come to me and they're like, I know you preach email marketing, I can see the reviews people write about your business that, like, email marketing, really does work. But why hasn't it worked for me? And I'll say, okay, well, why don't you show me the newsletters you've been sending out? And every single time, this is what the newsletters have going on. They are watered down. They have too many distracting calls to action, and none of them drive the potential client, the reader, toward what the business actually wants them to do next. So keep that in mind. But now let's talk about the return on investment email marketing. Email overall has a return of 4200%. Now a different way to look at that is for every dollar that you spend on email marketing, you can get a return of approximately $40. By the way, people are three times more likely to make purchases from email marketing than they are from social media. And that is especially true in the high end or luxury home industry because you're not necessarily selling retail products. I mean, you might be as part of your business, but what you're really selling are custom in person services that does constitute a luxury service. Whether you're a window treatment professional, an organizer, a designer, or a stager, what you do is considered fully custom, fully tailored to that particular client. And you can't sell that on social media. Now I'm not saying you can't as the, like you don't have the ability to. I'm saying it's not actually quite possible. Now every now and then I will hear from say, an interior designer who's like, I get amazing projects off Instagram and they're like kind of pissy, you know, because they've heard me talk about how this really doesn't work. So I'm like, okay, I'm, first of all, I'm happy for you. That's amazing. There's no telling how long that will last. So I hope that's not like the only marketing you're doing. But tell me, do you like the products that you get from Instagram? Oh, yeah, yeah, they're, they're pretty good. And I'm like, okay, are they, are they big projects? Oh, no, it's like, it's like, you know, one room or part of a room. And I was like, okay, is that what you want for your business? Because if it is, then that's fantastic. And they're like, well, I'd actually really love bigger projects. And I'm like, okay, so you're letting yourself be distracted by all these tiny projects and you're funneling yourself into this little corner where you can't do any other sort of marketing because you think social media marketing is helping you when it's just distracting you and it's, it's actually watering down the perceived value of your brand because now your portfolio is full of all of these one room projects, partial room projects. How are you ever going to reach for that bigger client who wants the whole home furnished, who, who wants a new home built, who wants the whole home organized. You've got to think big picture about this. And you might get a few leads from social media. They may not be good, though. And are they worth the distraction? Are they worth the damage to your portfolio? I don't know. Only you can answer that. All right, back on track here. 59% of people say that email marketing impacts their purchasing decisions. Yeah, absolutely it does. 50% of people say they buy from a marketing email at least once a month. And if you think about it, having messages tailored to you and delivered to your inbox versus you having to Google something or hunt something somewhere else. Yeah, it's convenient, it's easy, especially when you're used to hearing from that company or that brand on a regular basis. Now, let's hop over into best practices. And this stuff is super juicy, super fun for me because these are things that we are doing in my agency. And that's why email marketing works so well. And I'm excited to see these things reflected in the national international stats because it's like, okay, you know, I'm not the only one. Thank goodness. Because a lot of this is drastically different than what email marketing used to be and what the stats used to look like. So, first of all, if emails that include an image often get a 10% boost in open rates. So obviously people want to look at pretty images, but you can't include an image that's too big, otherwise it will make the email undeliverable. People's inboxes will block it, or they will show the email but not the image. They'll just show a little broken image icon. Not helpful. So keeping your images small is helpful for that. And then also, welcome emails have the highest open rate of 50%. Now, this is something that makes me laugh a little bit because when my clients send out emails, 50% is a normal average open rate for a regular newsletter. So their welcome emails will be closer to 80%. And I could go on a whole spiel about why our email marketing templates just score higher and get opened more. And it really comes down to the design. It comes down to the design and the content of it. It's something that we've been working on for a long time because basically since 2016 and continuously improving and it shows. Now here's another interesting thing. Companies that send two emails a month tend to see a higher open rate. Okay, so they're not saying one email every other month, one email every two months, or 12 emails a month? No, two emails a month, higher open rates. Okay, this is what we're talking about.
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Over in my agency all the time.
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One to two emails a month are. It's. That's where it's at. I personally send out like one email a month to my mailing list because I don't feel like bothering thousands of people for no reason. So when I send them an email, I make sure that it's useful and it's helpful and maybe it's even entertaining. And I don't send fluff, and I don't let my clients send fluff either. All right, so the next stat I want to share with you is that some of the best days to send emails are Tuesdays and Thursdays, which I would agree. Also, the worst days to send your emails out would be the weekends. People are checked out on the weekend, but on Tuesday, the rush of Monday has passed. They're fully in the zone. It's not Friday. They haven't started checking out yet. So Friday is, you know, it's kind of a risky day. But I would say Tuesdays and Thursdays and even Wednesdays are totally good days to send your newsletter. Also, 58 of email users will check their email first thing in the morning. This not something that I do. So you have to keep in mind that even though you might hear a stat and be like, well, I don't do that. I don't check my email every day. I don't check every email that's sent to me. Okay, but in the name of avoiding narcissism, let's remember that not everyone is like you and I. So I avoid email in the morning because otherwise it puts my brain in work mode right away. And then I'm distracted when I'm trying to get my kids out the door for school. And I check my email when I have mentally prepared myself and I'm sitting down on my desk usually and I'm like, all right, let it at me. What do we got today? What kind of flyers we got to put out today? Because they just never know. So just remember that these stats may not apply to you, but they will by and large apply to pretty much everyone else on average. Do you find yourself turning on the.
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News and feeling hopeless when you woke? Agendas, open borders, inflation due to out of control spending, and the list goes on. There is something you can do about it. Buy from companies that believe what you and I believe.
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We need to stick together now more than ever.
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All right, I want to share with you three different short little client stories that prove the power of email marketing. I love stories. I think they're honestly more interesting than a list of stats. Although we do have to pay attention to the stats, to the numbers as business owners. That's just part of it. But let me just dive into this. So one of my great, great clients, Adrienne Morgan, she's an interior designer. She wrote this awesome review on my Google page and she said this company helped me tremendously. After sending my first newsletter, I landed two large projects right away and that was pretty cool because sending out one newsletter, we don't necessarily anticipate new work to come in just like that, but it does happen. A similar story would be Natalie Rich. And she said, I've been working with Kate's group for just two months and have already secured two new six figure projects with clients I had worked with in the past. That confirms that yes, you do in fact need to continue marketing to people who already know about you. And I'm glad that she said that in that review because a lot of us are so focused on getting new clients that we really ignore the low hanging fruit we have in front of us in our mailing lists. So if you have a list of past clients, past leads that never converted to clients, you have gold right there, my friend. And if you are not using it, if you're not staying in touch with those people once or twice a month, you are losing out on six and seven figure projects. Speaking of seven figure projects, my client Diane wrote this amazing review. It's actually really long, so I condensed it for the sake of the podcast, but it's on my Google reviews. So if you Google Kate the socialite, you can go read all these reviews for yourself. But she said, I've been working with Kate and her team for about five or six years. We purchased her email newsletters and blog posts and we send the newsletters twice a month over the years. A client I did a small window treatment project for opened the newsletters every month, but that was it. Last summer she reached out and that phone call ended up turning into a seven figure renovation with completely new furnishings. She was very excited about that and I was too when she shared that on one of our monthly Mastermind calls. You should have seen the jaws drop. I mean, that is what we all want. Now. She did also point out on that call that it's not like she wasn't getting other projects as well from the newsletters. It's just this one really stood out because she wasn't expecting it. This client was seemed like, you know, a low engagement client. It was just a small window treatment project. And all of a sudden, because Diane stayed in touch with her, she was like, oh, I want you to renovate my home. Seven figures, all new furnishings. Dream. Right, Dream. And by the way, Diane, shout out to you, Dream Interiors New York. Go check her out, guys, because her site is awesome. She's been so consistent with blogging and I'm really, really impressed with what she has done and what she's built. All right, so let's now get into some ideal email marketing topics. Because you've seen in the stats, you've seen in the stories, this works. So the big question is, why aren't you doing it yet? And what should you say? So there are a lot of different email newsletter topics out there. I'm going to go over some of the basic, like foundation ones and then I'll also give you a sneak peek into what we have in the vault, which is always changing because we add different topics like every two Weeks. But you should have a welcome email. If you'd like to start out with a welcome email for your very first newsletter. And then the welcome email is really a shorter newsletter. It's not like a full length one. It just explains like, hey, I know we haven't stayed in touch, but that's about to change. And don't worry, I'm not going to spam you because, like, I don't have time for that. But here's what you can expect. We're going to show up in your inbox every few weeks with inspiring photos of our projects, stories behind them, and our insight into, you know, and then you kind of go into it. Depending on what your services are, the next email newsletter that you could send is How We Work. So you probably have a section on your website entitled How We Work or our Process. And it's helpful if you spell that out to people in a newsletter. Another topic would be a project reveal. Now you could reveal a project you completed a year or two ago. It doesn't matter. You can pull something out of the archives as long as you're still proud of it. And then of course, with your newest work, be revealing that as those photos become available. And then another topic would be to address the frequently asked questions. So an FAQ newsletter and also even an FAQ blog post are great ideas because they address the questions that people will likely have before they start working with you. And if you can answer those questions even before those people ask, it helps increase trust. All right, another topic, and I'm sorry this is a little bit vague, I will give more specific examples. At the end is to introduce one of your services in great detail. So how an organizer would tackle your kitchen or how to prep for a remodel or how a workroom operates or something like that. So that is helpful because people often do not understand what you do. So home stagers are often mistaken for decorators, right? Full service interior design. Nobody knows what that means. I mean, like, I know what that means, you know what that means. But the average homeowner does not know what the term full service interior design actually means. And it was interesting because when I onboarded a new team member and she's, she's well educated, well written, she's a published playwright. I mean, like, she's been around. She's traveled through Europe and everything. And I started training her and she was like, wait a minute, what exactly is full service interior design? And then it occurred to me, oh, my goodness, she's right. This is too vague. That is industry speak. We have to try to get away from that. Or if we are going to use that term, we need to be a lot more specific about how we define it. So that's something for you interior designers.
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To keep in mind.
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But also the home stagers and even the organizers, like a lot of organizers, have this misnomer about them that they're just going to come in and throw away all your stuff. But like, that's not the case. So make sure you take time to define exactly what it is that you do and how you do it. You can also highlight a misconception in your industry. Like some of the more controversial ones are why open concept spaces are not the best idea. Or if you have a different take on that, then write about it. Something that really gets people thinking. Like what? Wait a minute. You can also share your personal story in a newsletter. It depends on, like, what your story is and how comfortable you feel. But a lot of you have gone through cancer and come out the other side just so strong. A lot of you have gone through personal tragedies and you have recovered from them. And you know as much as one can. And your strength might be an inspiration to others and it might also just make you human, help you connect with other people who've also gone through some sort of challenge or loss or tragedy. Another thing you can do, especially around the holidays, is share your family Christmas card in a holiday themed newsletter. This is something I do every year. I have a digital version of my Christmas card. I always create my cards in Canva. I get it printed, I mail it out to all my personal contacts through the good old usps. But then I also use the digital version in my newsletter and it's just a nice way to get away from business. You know, I'm not telling anyone to book a call with me. I'm not telling anyone to go to this link or that link. I'm just saying, hey, Merry Christmas from my family to yours. And that gets a wonderful response and. And I would highly suggest that you do the same. Now I know that we're out of the holiday season now, but it's good to have that in your brain for the future because these years do speed by. All right, so the next thing is getting granular with specific topics and I'm going to go over some actual topics. So for those of you who are not watching right now, I'm actually going in the vault, which is place where my clients log in to get their email content. And I'm just going to give you Some examples of like actual granular topics. This is going to like in no particular order, span the gamut of interior design. Design build, organizing window treatments, staging. So if you don't hear your industry being called out, just be patient. I will. So first one would be carriage house design build tips. Like these are all written by the way and they have photos. But we do prefer that, you know, we swap out these photos for your photos if you have them. The drawbacks of semi custom window coverings Dress your windows before the holidays. So we have some holiday content in here at the time because I'm recording this before Thanksgiving 2024. Spoiler. High point market highlights. As we get closer to spring, you'll need that one. Color stories. So just explaining how color influences a space and how natural lighting and artificial lighting impact that Black Friday promos. So again, another holiday themed one. Renderings 101. Like how they work, how they benefit the client. Glamorous tiny spaces. How to stage a small house for Airbnb Ceiling treatment designs. So trade ceilings and so on. The philosophy and history of staging home staging. Full pause. Child safe window treatments. How to stage your Airbnb. What to know before you hire an interior designer. Custom slipcovers and throw pillows. Three creative workspaces for kids. Vertical organizing. Kid centric design. Contemporary window coverings. Luxury bath ideas. Organizing myths. I mean I could just keep going. We have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of of topics and they span things that are just focused on decor to the actual design build. Working with a contractor, working with an architect. Because I have quite a few clients who are also GCs. You know, they are not just decorating the space, but they, they include that, you know, it's kind of like the, as they say, soup to nuts. And the topics are ever changing because there's so much to say. So if you're ever at a loss of like, I don't know what to say in my email marketing. I know I need to be email marketing, but I don't even have time to write this, much less think of a topic like hello, that's why I exist. This is my, my life's mission, my life's work is to help make this easier for you guys. But I hope that this was helpful and that it was educational for you to know that email marketing is still not going anywhere but up. And you need to jump on that wagon if you are not already. All right guys, until next time, keep your marketing simple, your message clear and I will talk to you soon.