#235 How to Use Consent-Based Email Marketing To Sell More Toys
Is Your Email Marketing Consent-Compliant, or Are You Just Spamming? In digital marketing circles, consent in email marketing has never been a hotter topic. Before the toy industry gets left in the dust on what constitutes as "consent" in email marketing, you NEED this episode.
Today on Making It in the Toy Industry, The Toy Coach shares a conversation with email marketer Tarzan Kay to break down why getting clear, informed, and revocable consent is more important than ever. With the rise of regulations in email marketing it's essential to ensure that your email list is not only compliant, but engaged.
How many times have you come back from a toy show only to be bombarded by random newsletters you never signed up for? Not only is this an annoying reality, but it’s a surefire way to tank your reputation, deliverability, and those all-important open rates.
Tarzan joins the show to get real about to build a valid email list—whether it’s with lead magnets, trade show contacts, or discount codes. In this episode learn tips on how to keep your list engaged, rather than running for the unsubscribe button.
💡 Key Takeaways
Understanding Consent: It’s gotta be freely given, informed, and easily revocable.
Storytelling in Emails: Think your emails are boring? They probably are. Amp up engagement with storytelling—when you connect with your audience, magic (and higher open rates) happen.
Lead Magnets and Consent: Sure, lead magnets can reel in subscribers, but are they quality leads? Without solid consent, you might be attracting people who don’t actually want to hear from you.
Segmentation and Personalization: One-size-fits-all doesn’t cut it. Segment your audience and serve them relevant content.
Managing Frequency and Preferences: Let your subscribers decide how often they hear from you. Giving them control equals fewer unsubscribes and happier inboxes.
Episode Cliff Notes
Want to keep your subscribers happy? Find out how informed consent can transform your email game. [08:23].
Learn the secret to avoiding legal issues and ensuring high email deliverability by understanding the power of genuinely informed consent.
Ever thought a toy company email could be... fun? Tarzan rewrites one with a killer opening line using non-linear storytelling. [15:07].
Azhelle Wade and Tarzan Kay ideate email marketing strategies specific for the toy industry, such as humanized brand representation [18:00].
One simple trick to reduce your unsubscribe rates and improve the subscriber experience—don’t miss it. [23:45].
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This episode is brought to you by www.thetoycoach.com
Join Tarzan Kay's Email List: https://emailsbutbetter.com
Connect with Tarzan on LinkedIn -
Azhelle Wade [00:00:00]:
You are listening to making it in the toy industry. Episode number 225.
Jingle [00:00:11]:
Welcome to making it in the toy industry, a podcast for inventors, entrepreneurs and makers like you. And now your host, Ajel Wade.
Azhelle Wade [00:00:23]:
Hey there, toy people. Agelle Wade here. And welcome back to another episode of making it in the toy industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by the Toy Cook calm. My guest today is ex boss Babe Tarzan K. She's a writer of emails, but better, a much loved newsletter that is fun to read and more addictive than whatever you're watching on Netflix right now. Her programs teach business owners like me how to write highly readable, story driven emails that sell using consent based strategies to grow and sell with email. Tarzan has spent years wyattly dismantling her seven figure boss Babe empire and building a more inclusive online business that prioritizes people over profits.
Azhelle Wade [00:01:04]:
She lives in Ontario, Canada, with her two children and one canoe. I'm thrilled to welcome Tarzan on the show. So happy to have you here, Tarzan.
Tarzan Kay [00:01:14]:
Thanks for having me.
Azhelle Wade [00:01:15]:
I feel like you just saw a different side of me or something.
Tarzan Kay [00:01:18]:
I definitely did. I was like, oh, this is different from the person that I had brunch with last week.
Azhelle Wade [00:01:24]:
This is my radio voice. Sometimes my husband in conversations will be like, why are you using your toy coach voice on me right now? I'm so happy that you're joining us on the show today. And for those listening, I want to preface why I wanted to invite an email expert on this show where normally we just talk about how to make toys, how to sell toys. And that's because email is a huge part of my business and I've been getting a lot of emails from toy brands. I told Tarzan in one of our group coaching calls a program that she runs that I'm a part of. I said, there's a big misunderstanding about consent, and I'd love to talk more about this. And Tarzan said, maybe I can come on your podcast.
Tarzan Kay [00:02:03]:
A lot. A lot of people know, oh, yeah, email. I'm supposed to do email. Like, email is the way people sell things, but they just have a real lot of resistance around sending it because of the exact problem that you just alluded to. There's like, we all have so much in our inboxes that we're like, it's not just the toy industry. We all get this stuff every single day that we're like, did I sign up for this? Didn't I unsubscribe from this? Who is this person? And it means that a lot of people just don't send email because they don't want to be one of those annoying people in the inbox. And what I teach is how to do email marketing in a way that feels really good, like marketing that you feel good about. And the way that I teach people how to do that is by using consent.
Tarzan Kay [00:02:51]:
And at the most basic level, it's just only emailing people who actually said yes to getting emails from you. And a lot of people have even those emails and they still don't email them. But if you don't have those emails, that's step one is like finding, you know, building sort of a home base for people to say yes to your newsletter and all of the other places that you collect emails. Like maybe it's at trade shows, just a simple tick box. Yes, I would like to get emails from you.
Azhelle Wade [00:03:21]:
Before we get deeper, there is one question I ask people that join this podcast, and that question is normally the thing that surprised me most about the toy industry was, but for you, I would love to ask you to finish this sentence. The thing that surprised me most about the email marketing industry was, oh, interesting.
Tarzan Kay [00:03:39]:
I guess the thing that surprised me the most about email marketing is how intimate the connections with subscribers can be. Like, the whole purpose of email is that it's this huge platform and it's for reaching people at scale. However, especially for those of us who are very mission driven, the inbox is, it's actually not a one to many conversation like social media. It's actually one person reading your email in their inbox. Like, I always use you language. I'm talking to you rather than all you subscribers. There is a certain level of intimacy, and especially for me because I share a lot of stories. I'm a personal brand and I share a lot of the ups and downs of business.
Tarzan Kay [00:04:29]:
I teach through story. And stories are just a great way of connecting with people. And it's quite surprising how intimate those connections can be and feel.
Azhelle Wade [00:04:40]:
That's how we quote unquote met. I joined your program and that's when I first really got to meet you. From my perspective, meeting Tarzan was through emails, was through your emails and understanding your story and learning about you. So going back to the conversation of consent, ticking a box to say, yes, I'm interested in receiving your email. Why is that so important in email marketing?
Tarzan Kay [00:05:05]:
Okay, well, actually consent is much bigger than that, and I would call that permission. So permission based marketing has been around for a while. For about 20 years. Seth Godin wrote the book Permission Marketing and introduced us all to this new idea that marketing could be permission based and maybe we should only market to people who actually opted in. But consent is a little bit different in that consent has more parameters. So for one thing, in order for it to be consent, it has to be revocable. Let's say you take a box and you say, yes, you can email me. You have to at any time be able to untick that box, turn the emails off so that a lot of this is built into our email tools like unsubscribe button.
Tarzan Kay [00:05:51]:
But let's say you went to a trade show and you got like a list of all the other vendors that were there. We have two problems here. They never opted in. They did not consent, but also they can't revoke consent. There is no unsubscribe because you're not using. For one thing, like, if you're not emailing from a proper system, there's just not going to be an unsubscribe button. Whenever I talk about consent and consent based marketing with women, they're like, they get it. Like, women want more consent in their life and anything consent based they tend to lean into.
Tarzan Kay [00:06:25]:
But, you know, sometimes when I talk about this with other business owners, they don't totally understand it. And what is important to know is, like, when you operate from a place of consent, like, your relationships will be so much better. Like, your customer relationships. Those on the receiving end of your email are going to be so much more receptive. Think about how frustrating and annoying it is to have emails in your inbox that you didn't want, never signed up for and can't turn off versus the email where someone asked, like, you know, this, this even works outside of email marketing. Like, let's say, Azelle, I want to introduce you to someone reaching out and saying like, hey, Agelle, may I make this introduction? And getting consent first? And like, when you get that introduction, you're like, oh, yes, I was expecting this. Tarzan asked if she could do this. You're just like so much more receptive to what the other person has to offer.
Azhelle Wade [00:07:22]:
That is a really good point. So I actually hadn't heard the differentiation between permission versus consent. So thank you for clarifying that. Permission being a one time, yes, you can. Versus consent being a what?
Tarzan Kay [00:07:35]:
Like, at the most basic level. And this is more like the way it's practiced in marketing, permission is a one time ask. It's once you're on my email list, anything goes. Consent is a lot deeper and more broad. So even if you think about the context of consent around the body someone may say yes, but the difference between permission and consent is consent takes in the whole context. You can. Sometimes someone is saying yes, but when you take in the whole context, you realize that they're not actually saying yes. What are the circumstances around them saying yes? So consent is much broader and deeper and more meaningful.
Tarzan Kay [00:08:13]:
Consent has three qualities. It must be freely given, it must be informed, and it must be revocable. Just, let's just take ongoing and revocable. Like with email marketing, every email has an easy way to unsubscribe, and that way it can be revoked at any time. Therefore, the consent is ongoing. Informed is like when someone actually signs up, they know what they're consenting to. We've all been in like a sales funnel or an email marketing funnel where you gave your email, but then you got like a whole bunch of emails right away that you couldn't. You're like, hang on, I just wanted to hear from this person.
Tarzan Kay [00:08:53]:
I didn't want to sign up for this massive promotion. Even then, a lot of people use lead magnets to grow their email list. You can grow your email list with, like, discount code. All of those sorts of things work, and they also, they're also like, have a lower level of consent. Again, consent is. It's a lot of different things. It doesn't just mean, oh, since someone, like, didn't tick a box, that means they didn't consent to be emailed. There are many different factors here, and lots of people do use giveaways and discount codes for, for Ecom companies are like, really important ways of getting customers and making conversions.
Tarzan Kay [00:09:27]:
So I'm not saying that's not consent based. That's just like one part of the broader picture to think about when we're talking about consent.
Azhelle Wade [00:09:35]:
What I've learned from you is I love the way that when you have freebies and downloads that get people onto your email list, there is an option to get the download and to subscribe or get the download and to not subscribe. And that is also another layer of consent that toy companies could be integrating if they are using things like coupon codes and discounts to get people onto their list. Correct?
Tarzan Kay [00:09:57]:
Yeah. And so many, like, checkout, checkout page software. Like any email software, like, that's a very basic functionality, especially since there was this new rule introduced in 2018 that you may have heard of called GDPR. It applies to any subscribers you have from the UK. But it's just a little bit more. It's a little bit more strict. Like, you need explicit permission to email someone. So like a lead magnet was decided that's not good enough.
Tarzan Kay [00:10:27]:
So all of the email marketing tools, have you spent half an hour learning about it? You can set it up and it's just a tick box. You can just ask, here's my thing. Would you like to get my emails? Even on our checkout pages, 80% of people will say yes. That in the long term results in a much more high quality subscriber like versus someone who just got on the email list without opting in. Those people might mark your email as spam, very bad for deliverability, versus someone who actually opted in to be there and is reading the emails. They might hit reply and actually say something about your emails. All of those things like that they contribute to the health of your email list and whether or not your emails actually get delivered, whether or not they make it to like a primary inbox versus promotional inbox. It's really quite easy to build a huge email list of people that never really wanted the emails by bribing them.
Azhelle Wade [00:11:23]:
With a discount code in the toy industry, people listening, I get a lot of your emails and they tend to be very focused on, here's our product. We have this percent off, we'll be at this trade show shop here. But a lot of those emails that I get, they're just emails where I've been added to a list because I'm attending a toy trade show or because I attended a media event and sometimes have indicated I don't want to be added to the mass list. And still, still. Yet I'll get emails that I clearly know came from this event that I just registered for. So how could people properly obtain consent if they do go to a toy trade show? And part of going to that trade show is the organization says, here's a massive list of people who are attending the show. What is the right thing for them to do with those emails?
Tarzan Kay [00:12:12]:
Okay, so the first thing I would do is ask, because you've just indicated an industry problem, which is that the event may be actually asking people whether or not they want the emails and not passing on that information. So first of all, ask the trade show, do they have data about who said yes to emails and who said no? There, you can decide what to do. Let's say they come back and they say, we don't have that data. No problem. You still have the list. So I would recommend two or three emails. Send them from a proper email service provider. Agile uses active campaign.
Tarzan Kay [00:12:46]:
I use convertkit. You have to send it from a place where people can unsubscribe two to three emails. This is who I am. This is why you're getting this email. We met at the trade show. Now I'm following up. Would you like to continue getting these emails? Then you have something for them to click. I would ask for explicit consent to be added to an email list.
Tarzan Kay [00:13:10]:
You can do it the other way. There's explicit consent and there's implied consent. Implied consent is if you don't click this link, I'll assume you want to keep getting these emails. That can work. Like every provider, everybody's different. If it's a large list of, say, a few thousand people, I would go for explicit consent. If it's a small number of people, less than 100, implied consent might be fine. You probably have a closer relationship with those people.
Tarzan Kay [00:13:37]:
So that's what I would do. If you have no idea who wants to be, who said they want to be emailed or doesn't want to be emailed. So just as a reminder, tell them who you are, tell them where they met you, and then ask, do you want the emails, yes or no?
Azhelle Wade [00:13:52]:
But toy trade shows have 3000 manufacturer attendees. They might have a thousand to 2000 retail attendees. Likely you didn't meet everybody, but you still are getting.
Tarzan Kay [00:14:03]:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Azhelle Wade [00:14:04]:
How do you word that in a way that is not off putting to be like, hey, we didn't meet, but I know you went to the show. So that's how I have your information.
Tarzan Kay [00:14:13]:
Perfect. Okay, so great question. One thing that applies to all emails is like, talk like a human. People want to hear from humans. They don't want to read emails from companies. So. Hi, I'm Ajel Wade. I was a whatever you were at the whatever it's called trade show in Chicago this August.
Tarzan Kay [00:14:35]:
This is the thing that I do. Would you like to be added to my email list? Yes. It's not necessarily like we met. It's more like, where did you come from?
Azhelle Wade [00:14:43]:
Yes.
Tarzan Kay [00:14:43]:
So let's say if you join my, there's so many different ways to get on my email list. There's like many different doorways. But let's say you send an email to your list and you say, hey, you should all read Tarzan's emails. And then the confirmation email says, oh, cool, you came through a referral. We don't know each other. So let me introduce myself right now.
Azhelle Wade [00:15:08]:
The ramifications of not obtaining explicit consent or even implied consent from the toy industry's perspective can be a ruin to your network. If you start overflowing my inbox with your emails. I'm not going to want to hear from you anymore. I'm going to hit unsubscribe. I'm not going to want to review pitches you might send me because your email address, your domain and my mind will be associated with a spamming of my inbox. But I'm curious, do you know anything about the legal ramifications? Are there any? Have you ever heard of anyone falling into legal ramifications from not obtaining consent?
Tarzan Kay [00:15:45]:
Yeah, I actually haven't. Like, technically you can get fined. Like even someone in the US or me, I'm in Canada. Like, if you are violating GDPR regulations for your subscribers in the UK, like technically you can get fined. However, I've never heard of anyone getting fined. Certainly not people like me who have an email list of ten. I have 12,000 subscribers, but a lot of people and my colleagues have like 100,000, even a few hundred thousand. I've never heard of any of them getting fined, even though many of them are breaking rules.
Tarzan Kay [00:16:22]:
It doesn't look to me like regulators are going after small time operators like me. So I feel compelled to say this is a legal issue. In many cases, you must even what you're talking about, that would not be can spam or castle compliant, never mind GDPR, which is more strict, can spam and CASl. You need some sort of implied consent, so that is definitely not legal. However, the more compelling reason to operate with consent is that your deliverability is better. You're not going to trash your network. You're going to actually be building subscribers refers and customers.
Azhelle Wade [00:17:03]:
I'm sure people right now are like, I'm too busy to care about all that Tarzan and Nigell I just want to upload this list, send it to as many people as possible, and generate sales. So can we talk about open rates? Can we talk about email list size? Maybe you and I can share our numbers a little bit. So you have 12,000 subscribers, right? What is your open rate?
Tarzan Kay [00:17:24]:
My average open rate right now, I believe is 42%.
Azhelle Wade [00:17:28]:
And the click through rate?
Tarzan Kay [00:17:30]:
Oh, the click through rate varies a lot. So the thing about the click through rate is it takes in the data from every single email that's ever been sent, including sequences, including things that didn't have any link clicks. So I like to look at the click through rate on my individual emails, and even more specifically, the click to open rate, which is the number of people who opened the email, how many of them clicked, versus click through rate, which takes into account all of the subscribers. Yeah, so really good day, my click through rate on a newsletter would probably be like 3%.
Azhelle Wade [00:18:06]:
Yeah, I think you taught me that. Activecampaign doesn't have click to open rate, so I have to calculate it. So mine has been 2% for click to open, but my open rate was like 35 is the average. Okay, but here's the thing. So somebody listening that is just importing all the emails that they're getting likely is having an open rate. I would estimate 10%. And then the people that they're emailing me, I'm not a buyer. I'm not the person you want to be sending your wholesale prices to.
Azhelle Wade [00:18:37]:
You're paying to have me on your list and on your ESP, and I'm not even a potential customer. I want to frame it in people's minds of it's actually worth your time and effort to have the right subscribers on your list and to build a list of real potential customers who are engaged and want to hear from you and will open 35% to 40% of your emails and click to buy 3% of those rather than having a list of maybe you have a 50,000 person list, but if only five to 10% of that's getting opened and then even less is getting clicked through, is it really worth it?
Tarzan Kay [00:19:12]:
That's a great point. Another thing that's coming up as you're saying that is, it sounds like for type of people that you are working with, knowing certain information about the subscribers is really important, like those wholesale prices. And there's lots of tools that you can use to gather information about subscribers. And you could add this to your strategy after a trade show. Following up, ask people to opt in, but ask them some questions about themselves, like immediately after. So are they a wholesaler? Like, who are. I don't know what the categories are, but there's, you know, it's not that difficult to set that up so that every subscriber is tagged and you actually know who they are. So when it is time to send out wholesale prices, you're sending them to people who should get them and not people who shouldn't.
Azhelle Wade [00:20:01]:
So this opens up a whole other segment of conversation because the data that these shows share are already segmented. I am not listed as a retailer, but that is the level of laziness that companies are taking these lists, dumping them into their ESP, and just emailing everybody the same thing.
Tarzan Kay [00:20:21]:
Like what I could do if someone just gave me a list and said, like, these are the email addresses, here's their names, here's what type of business they have, like, oh, my God, you can just talk to people so much more specifically. Like, the retailers need their own messaging. Like, the retailers are on a calendar that's total from, like, the manufacturers. And the more you can personalize your marketing, the more effective it is.
Azhelle Wade [00:20:50]:
Okay, how can we prove that? Is it really worth my effort? And how do I prove that it is?
Tarzan Kay [00:20:55]:
So if we're talking about just writing, you know, an ongoing, a newsletter, like, what's the company up to? Like, you can speak more broadly about what the company is doing. That's interesting, what you're doing. You know, that that's like the newsletter stuff. And there might be moments where you can put in some specific, like, content that's just for wholesalers, but when you're actually trying to sell something, in that case, of course it's worth it. I can say, like, okay, I'm doing a promotion myself right now. I have my 12,000 email subscribers. Some of them get emails from me weekly, some of them get emails from me monthly. And I'm doing a promotion that is only to 400 people.
Tarzan Kay [00:21:41]:
And those are the people who have indicated that they are interested in the thing that I'm selling. So, you know, it's early to give you the numbers, and eventually I'll open that up into the bigger part of my list. But, like, I know from my history of being in business, it's more effective to just email the small segment of people who, you know, will be interested and talking to them directly rather than trying to talk to everyone, which is just like a common rule of marketing. Like, if you're trying to talk to everyone, you're not talking to anyone. Like, your sales strategy has to be just very watered down so that it applies to everyone. Whereas let's say you're talking to a wholesaler, you can get more specific about the seat they're currently buying for whatever it is.
Azhelle Wade [00:22:29]:
I have bought from brands, physical products that do the type of email marketing that you do. That is the storytelling format. And then when promotion season comes, there's a promotion side. All of the emails that I get from toy companies are all promotion. And these are all the brands that are just putting me on their email list without me having registered. I have not gotten one. That is, my name is. I started this company because our team is.
Azhelle Wade [00:22:56]:
I have not gotten one. They're literally all, see you at New York Toy fair. Have you registered time with us? Our next items are out. Check our wholesale guide. Like, every single one. I would love for you to talk about this email marketing conference that you just went to because you said that major brands are now realizing the importance of having a person behind them that is telling them about their story and their beliefs. Could you talk a little bit about that? We need to have a person behind the brand and we need to have a little bit more story in it.
Tarzan Kay [00:23:25]:
Yeah, well, I mean, let's just, the rise of influencer culture. Like, so many companies now are paying influencers to be the face of their brand because people don't want to buy from companies. They want to buy from people. And they definitely don't want to read emails from companies. They want to read emails from people. So, like, in the, I was just at a newsletter conference recently and there were a lot of operators like Bloomberg and like 1440 like news, newsy newsletters and those news publications. Like, they're actively, like, they want our journalists to have a public profile. You know, even corporations, like, they also will, they want their executives to have like a LinkedIn profile.
Tarzan Kay [00:24:17]:
Like, and if you want your marketing to be interesting and attention grabbing, like, there needs to be some story behind it. We're just not invested in the success of companies as we are invested in the success of people. And the other thing is we want to buy from people we like.
Azhelle Wade [00:24:36]:
Yeah.
Tarzan Kay [00:24:37]:
How do I know if. Obviously I don't like Mattel. Mattel made the Barbie movie to like humanize the company so that we could get behind like a person and a story.
Azhelle Wade [00:24:50]:
Uh huh, uh huh. That's a really good point. So, okay, I'm looking at this. I have this email from a brand called Kinderfeeds. And it looks like, I think this is the introduction email. It opens with the logo. Sustainably made, internationally designed collections that supports a physical and cognitive child development. And then it goes into born in the Netherlands, where love of biking is fostered at a young age.
Azhelle Wade [00:25:14]:
And it talks about the founder, Oscar v. Mulder, who was determined as a young parent to cultivate an appreciation for adventure in his son. What began as a one time project to build his child a balance by quickly developed into a thriving children's company.
Tarzan Kay [00:25:29]:
All emails should come from a human. It doesn't have to be the CEO of the company. It doesn't have to be you. I mean, I wonder, like, does it even need to be a real person? But it should come from a person because a person has a voice. I don't know who the person is. Like, companies don't write emails. People write emails. So who is the person writing this email? I don't know yet.
Tarzan Kay [00:25:54]:
This, like, I do like that this person is trying to bring us into the brand story. Though born in the nether, love of biking is fostered at a young age. The other thing, though, is, like, it sounds like a press release. And one thing when it comes to storytelling, something that I just do naturally, because I've told so many stories, is I don't tell stories in a linear way. I use non linear storytelling. So just, you know, we literally started at the beginning when Oscar v. Mulder was born. Like, I don't know who Oscar v.
Tarzan Kay [00:26:28]:
Mulder is. Like, I don't really care that much. However, the idea of, like, a five year old child, like, biking in the Netherlands is, like, kind of cute and interesting. So, you know, we could be like when five year old Oscar climbed onto his first bike in the city in the damp streets of Denmark in 1948. But with a few, any details can see, taste, feel, touch, damp, but the nostalgia of a five year old, his first bike. We want people to feel something. And I did put out a line that started at the beginning of the story, but you don't have to start at the beginning of the story. Usually the way we write stories is at the beginning and then to the end, which is fine.
Tarzan Kay [00:27:24]:
And that's a great way to draft an email. What you'll usually find is, like, the climax in the middle is a really good hook. So that could go at the top. Like, could be, like, before kinderfeets was a billion dollar company, it was just five year old Oscar on his bike. Like, you know, that's not a great example. I don't think kinderfeets is a billion dollar company. But you see what I'm saying, right? Drop the middle of the action rather than, like, telling them. Maybe the most important rule of email, nobody cares.
Azhelle Wade [00:27:57]:
Okay?
Tarzan Kay [00:27:57]:
Like, I'm in my inbox because I want to delete stuff. Like, I'm trying to get to inbox zero. If you can, like, give me a reason to delete something, I'm going to. So emails need hooks. Like they need. That they need. On the other hand, we also all want to be entertained. How many times a day do you open your email or you open instagram or whatever because you just want a hit of dopamine and you want to be distracted.
Tarzan Kay [00:28:22]:
Like, we can work with that, but we need to, like, pull people into something that's going to, like, stimulate my reward pathway.
Azhelle Wade [00:28:30]:
Your process of the hook at the beginning has worked so well for me. I did one email about how my now husband, then boyfriend and I had decided to go to Paris and Madrid for like a two week trip. And I wrote out the whole story and I moved to the very top was I moved to Paris for a week or something along those lines. And it worked so well because it was like, wait, Latoykovich moved to Paris? When did this happen? But it was part of a larger story. So brilliant because it just pulls people in to want to know more. It gives away a little fun nugget of the story and it makes it worth it to read the rest. Right. Cause you wanna figure out what happened that week in Paris or what happened to that five year old boy on his bike in the damp world of Denmark.
Azhelle Wade [00:29:17]:
So what if somebody doesn't want to be the face? Have you ever seen someone use a character, a Persona or maybe even a team member as the face of their emails?
Tarzan Kay [00:29:28]:
Team member for sure. I haven't actually seen a Persona. I'm sure that happens. And I just didn't know what was going on because if it is a Persona, really, the driver shouldn't know. But yeah, 100%, this could be a team member for sure. Lots. I mean, lots of people in my industry do do that. In fact, it's almost not believable when it's like CEO and founder Tarzan K is writing you an email every week.
Tarzan Kay [00:29:54]:
Like, no, you're not.
Azhelle Wade [00:29:55]:
Yes, you are.
Tarzan Kay [00:29:57]:
I am, right. But I don't have a, you know, I don't have. I'm not like at the helm of a big company fair.
Azhelle Wade [00:30:02]:
Okay. That's such great tips. One of the rules of social media is you don't sell. You give every once in a while you sell. And I feel like you teach a similar thing with email. Like, you share, you teach, you offer suggestions and guidance, but you can't constantly be trying to sell your product or people aren't going to want to open that email. Is that true?
Tarzan Kay [00:30:26]:
I mean, the larger my list grows, the less I have to sell, the more I can sell things a little bit more passively, but 95% nurture.
Azhelle Wade [00:30:36]:
Wow.
Tarzan Kay [00:30:36]:
Most of the emails, yeah, I mostly only do nurture and then I sell things. You know, the promotional sections in my email, at the top there might be like a little box or something that says, like here, this thing's on sale. If I'm doing a major promotion, then, yeah, I might send like ten emails specifically about one offer. But that's like a quarterly promotion. Most everything else is nurture. And, you know, I'm selling larger ticket offers. So that is important. If you're selling higher price items, or if you're selling in bulk.
Tarzan Kay [00:31:10]:
But, you know, if I'm like an ecomm company, I would be constantly nurturing. And my email list or my emails and newsletters would have, like, lots of offers throughout the email.
Azhelle Wade [00:31:20]:
Okay. Yeah. Cause some people listening to this podcast, some are e.com, where they're selling direct to consumers, but some are selling to retailers, but they are selling larger amounts seasonally. So it's just a good thought that not every email has to push something. If your plan is to get one larger order, you know, for Q four, one, for Q two, maybe you don't try to sell every single email. But as you said, if it is ecomm and you're selling direct to consumers, like, you would throw those offers throughout.
Tarzan Kay [00:31:47]:
The other thing nurturing is preparing people for the sale, too. So you are looking for that larger bulk order. The months preceding it are like, oh, we're, like, working on this. We're, like, developing this new toy. We're, like, so excited about it. Oh, my God, we got our first prototype. Oh, here's our first order. Like, oh, my gosh, the box arrived.
Tarzan Kay [00:32:06]:
Like, here's the new toy. Like, you know, you're like, people excited about the things that's coming so that when it's coming, it's not just like, oh, May 1 lands in my inbox because now it's sales season. It's like, no. Oh. This thing that we've been talking about for months is like, finally on sale, and it's the season that I'm going to buy it. So I'm going to buy it.
Azhelle Wade [00:32:25]:
That is such a good point. So in the toy industry, everyone is very secretive about what they're developing. And usually what happens is toy trade shows are times to do previews of items, but there are usually items that are super secretive, and then there's some items that they'll let a few people see. So you could definitely use your email to show, okay, here are some of our less secret items that were in development. And if you have an account with us, click here, log in, and we have a page to show you what's really coming down the pipe. What's in development. I think buyers would love that. I could see that being a valuable investment.
Tarzan Kay [00:32:59]:
Yeah. Another idea that I have.
Azhelle Wade [00:33:01]:
Yeah.
Tarzan Kay [00:33:01]:
Is like, okay, it's secretive. You let loose a few teasers, a few ideas of what's coming. And in order to, like, actually the big reveal of what's coming, you have to, like, give your name an email, or, like, explicitly ask for more information. And then, I mean, buyers who actually raise their hand who, you know, are interested and you can follow up with.
Azhelle Wade [00:33:25]:
Them or get them to reply to help your deliverability. Right? Because now getting them to reply is so important. Oh, those are great ideas. Okay. Yes. All right. Okay. Thanks, Tarzan.
Azhelle Wade [00:33:37]:
This was fantastic. We went from consent and then we got to dive in a little bit into the value of just email marketing in general. I know we have to close out, but before we do, I just want to hear what you think the future of email marketing will be. We have seen story based emails that are almost like a letter from a friend. I'm starting to see more newsletter focused emails. Where do you think that email marketing is going to be going? Is it going to be replaced by text marketing?
Tarzan Kay [00:34:05]:
I mean, people have been saying that for a long time. I mean, all things end, so surely it's coming to an end. However, you know, text message marketing works in some, for some companies and it doesn't. There's just nothing like email. It's like our digital address. But what's important coming down the pipeline is even more controls on the user end. So if you as an email marketer are not thinking about consent based marketing, Google's thinking about it, Yahoo's thinking about it. And they're putting rules in place for deliverability so that it's more difficult to reach inboxes if you're not operating from a place of consent.
Tarzan Kay [00:34:54]:
So Google and Yahoo recently rolled out a lot of new rules for deliverability. So the kind of stuff that you're talking about, Azhel, it will get harder. A lot of those inboxes won't reach a lot of the people on that list. And not only that, but you will tank your own server reputation and you won't be able to email people. You know, Google just introduced a feature that they're apparently gonna roll out where subscribers can change the frequency. Gmail will identify that someone's emailing you a lot and you get box that says, I only want to hear from this company once a month.
Azhelle Wade [00:35:29]:
Wow.
Tarzan Kay [00:35:29]:
So they're not preemptively like work from a place of consent. And it's better for me. Like, I have frequency control. So my subscribers can say they only want to hear from me once a month versus if they make that choice in Google, I have zero control over what Google is going to show them once a month, like, but now I write a special email for my monthly list and I say, like, hey, these are the things that I have for sale coming up next month. This is what you missed last month in case you still want to buy it. Like, these are the emails I sent. You can read any of them. That's just one example of why it's just, like, so much better to do this, to manage all that consent based stuff on your side rather than letting Google and Yahoo manage it for you, because they will.
Azhelle Wade [00:36:12]:
Oh, I did not know that.
Tarzan Kay [00:36:14]:
It's really great for you and me, Azhel, because we are already using these consent based strategies and building a list in a different, you know, you. I'm, maybe you have opt out boxes, maybe you don't. The list management strategies that you have learned from me have all of this covered.
Azhelle Wade [00:36:32]:
I'm thinking, ooh, I should have a monthly option. That's what I'm thinking. Because I'm sure I wouldn't. I'm sure there's somebody who would say, oh, I would love a monthly email from the toy coach instead. And then if Google gives them that option, they'll just take it because it's easy. So I'm thinking from a user perspective, if I want something and the toy coach isn't offering it, but then suddenly Google says, let me do it, I would be like, oh, okay, that must work. You know what I mean?
Tarzan Kay [00:36:58]:
I think what's more important for you and for people who may be thinking about this is to let people opt out of promotions. Because if you're just emailing once a week, like, your subscribers probably okay with that, right? But being a higher volume of emails, that's when people are more likely to be like, oh, my God, Azhelle. Again, like, okay, I'm turning her into monthly. But again, this is an argument for, like, working with consent all along. So that if I'm sending a promotion and you can just click a link and turn the promotion off, you're not gonna, like, roll because we already took care of that for you.
Azhelle Wade [00:37:36]:
That is true. Yeah. You're just bringing up one final point I have to point out to people. If somebody unsubscribes from your list, your email service provider will mark them as unsubscribed. But you could manually overwrite it. And don't do that because I get so many people doing that to me, this course creator who I've definitely unsubscribed from, and literally once a year they resubscribe me and send me emails. So what I see happening with people in the toy industry, I unsubscribe from toy list. But then I go to another show and I think they get my email again and re upload it and I don't know if they had deleted it before, so now it looks like a new email.
Azhelle Wade [00:38:16]:
You really have to be careful that if somebody unsubscribes from your list, you don't just go resubscribing them without consent. And shows need to be a lot more careful about giving out these emails, like because now I'm not trusting your show with my email. Actually, there are retail buyers who have told me they make new emails for shows and give the shows that email. So you don't even have their real email. Tarzan, this was a great conversation and I thank you so much for your insights. Where can people find out about you? Tarzan well, you can get on my.
Tarzan Kay [00:38:46]:
Newsletter at emails, but better.com emailsbutbetter.com sign up for my newsletter. That's the best place to hear from me. I'm on LinkedIn so if you want to like hang out with me on social media, that's the only channel that I hang out on and my website, if you want to see my offers and stuff is Tarzan K.com and she.
Azhelle Wade [00:39:04]:
Is just the best email storytelling teacher ever. Thank you so much Tarzan. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Well, there you have it toy people. I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I know your time is valuable and that there are a ton of podcasts out there, so it truly means the world to me that you tune into this one. Until next week.
Azhelle Wade [00:39:26]:
I'll see you later, toy people.
Jingle [00:39:28]:
Thanks for listening to the making it in the toy industry podcast with Azelle Wade. Head over to thetoycoach.com for more information, tips and advice.
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