Episode #169: The Art & Science of Successful Toy Biz Email Campaigns
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According to Demand Sage, there are 4.37 billion email users in the world as of 2023. That number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025. Email marketing has a return on investment (ROI) of $36 for every $1 spent. If you are struggling to sell your toy or game product and you haven’t considered email marketing as a way to make it happen, then you’re likely leaving sales on the table…or in the inbox.
During today’s podcast episode, you’ll learn about how you can use Connection Campaigns, Promotional Campaigns, Abandoned Cart Campaigns, and ReEngagement Campaigns to sell your toy or game product. The key to using email is great subject lines and even better storytelling. If you don’t enjoy writing emails to your customer list…your customer probably doesn’t enjoy reading them! Let’s fix that in 40 minutes with my latest audio masterclass, The Art & Science of Successful Toy Biz Email Campaigns.
This masterclass includes a free resource and book recommendation to further your learning on the topic. You can find both at thetoycoach.com/169
EPISODE CLIFF NOTES
This month has been extremely busy here at the Toy Coach headquarters…find out why. [0:32]
Find out why you shouldn’t rely on social media to generate sales. [11:58]
What is a CRM? [10:00]
The new most important thing you should be doing with your email list that your CRM can help you with. [14:08]
How to figure out the value that your email brings to your email list. [18:16]
The most important thing you should research when choosing a CRM [22:00]
Why promotional campaigns should be seasonal and how to make them the most effective. [26:34]
The POWER of POWER words in your toy marketing, plus examples of them in use. [31:25]
An example of one of my highest-performing emails with a great subject line and a well-told story connected to a call to action. [36:10]
Where to go to continue your learning on this topic! [38:32]
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This episode is brought to you by www.thetoycoach.com
Download my free guide, Before You Start Writing Your Next Email, Read This… -
[00:00:00] Azhelle Wade: You are listening to Making It in The Toy Industry, episode number 169.
[00:00:05] Hey there, toy people, Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of the Toy Coach Podcast, making it in the Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by the toy coach.com. I hope you've all been amazing toy people.
[00:00:32] This month has been extremely busy here at the Toy Coach headquarters, and I know I don't normally do this, but I do wanna give a little bit of an update as to what's going on with the Toy Coach HQ because we do have some people to welcome to the Toy Coach team, and they have been amazing. Earlier this year, we brought on Brittany Hardy. She's been our amazing general manager and she's giving me the freedom to come up with more amazing ideas for the toy Coach to build out more events. To book more shows, work with more people one-on-one because Brittany's been taking over some of the day-to-day activities that I would normally do myself. So I just wanna thank Brittany and welcome her to the team. I'm so happy to be working with you. Our next team member we brought on was Shera. And Shera is just your new customer success manager. She's the person handling our support inbox. She's the person you talk to if you don't know how you want to work with me or if you wanna work with me yet Sheara is there for you. So I'm just so excited to have Shiara as a part of the team. And Julia Christie. So Julia Christie's working with us a few hours a month as a community manager. So if you are a member of the Facebook group that we have for Toy Creators Academy students, Julia Christie is probably gonna become your new bestie in that Facebook group because her job is to stay up to date with all of you guys, find out what you're doing so that we can share your progress on this show, maybe on our blog.
[00:02:07] And talk more about what you've done after the program, because I wanna make sure. You guys are succeeding even after you've worked with me. We can use this platform in various ways to lift each other up, and I hope that we'll create a sense of community so you guys can also do that for each other.
[00:02:25] I want to welcome these new team members to the team. Lots of changes here at the Toy Coach hq. So if you've been trying to book a one-on-one call with me and you've noticed my schedule is booked out till. That's why we've been pretty busy. Not to mention we are gearing up for our Toy Creators Academy launch coming very soon.
[00:02:46] So if you don't know what Toy Creators Academy is, it is the most extensive online program for developing and launching your playful product ideas. This program is ever expanding, growing.
[00:02:58] We just made updates to the core program. Yesterday and all of my past TCA alumni have access to those updates. So if you want to become a TCA alumni, I wanna encourage you to head over to toy creators academy.com. Get on the wait list because there is a special invite to join the next round at a discount keeping last year's pricing, and that's going out in about 11 days. So get yourself signed up on the wait list so that you actually get that invite. And if you don't get on the wait list, don't worry if you're on my email list at all, you will be notified when the doors open for everyone to join the program, and we're gonna have even more one-on-one support in this next round, which I am really excited.
[00:03:41] Okay, let me not waste any more of your time. Let me dive into the topic for today's . Episode. For today's episode, I did a presentation recently for a company called DJECO, DEJCO is a French brand that has CR been creating fun, imaginative, and educational toy since 1954. Their goal is to contribute to children's development. Well, this amazing toy company also host events called Joy Fix for their retail partners and for their sales reps and people that they work with and friend of the show, Darby, reached out to me and invited me to join their joy fix as a speaker. I was super nervous to speak at this event. It was actually the first time I was teaching a topic that I use every day in my business, but I never teach to other people. And that is email marketing. So today I wanna share with you the presentation I gave. We are going to play the zoom recording of that call. Now during this presentation I mention a downloadable guide called Before You Start Writing Your Next Email, read this. This is literally the guide that I refer back to when I am writing my own emails. So I would highly recommend that you download this guide yourself. Head over to learn dot the toy coach.com/email to grab a copy of this guide, or you can head over to the toy coach.com/ 1 69, which is the page for this episode. And that link will also be waiting for you.
[00:05:27] Okay. Enough of an intro. Let's dive into the presentation that I gave for DJECO the Art and Science of Successful Email Campaigns.
[00:05:39] audio1572859171.m4a
[00:05:39] Megan Philpot: welcome to Joy Fix's 2023 season. This year, our focus is on providing you with industry tools and insights on how to increase your revenue in the toy business. And for those of you who don't already know, I am Megan Philpot, and I'm going to be your host.
[00:05:59] Today we are so excited to welcome the toy coach Azhelle Wade to Joy Fix. Woohoo. Let's give her a round of applause. The resident expert in all things toy. So you'll know it now, you'll be affirmed of it in the end, but if you need anything in the toy industry, Elle is your gal. So I just wanted to take a moment to spotlight that. But Elle, yeah, if you got that built into your presentation and conversation, let's go.
[00:06:30] I do. Thank you so much for embarrassing me. No . . Thank you so much. That was really nice.
[00:06:38] Azhelle Wade: Okay, everybody, thank you for being here today. I'm gonna do my best to keep us on time. We're gonna talk about the art and science of successful email campaigns. If you already know me, then you're probably on my email list and you may or may not love it.
[00:06:51] I don't know. We're gonna find out by the end of today. But if you love it, I'm gonna tell you how I do it, why I do it, and, and what it generates in my. . So to start off, I'd love to take attendance to help me frame this conversation correctly. So I'm guessing some of you here might either just be corporate professionals, creative entrepreneurs in your own right, retail store owners, or maybe just teachers or parents, or you're a couple of these things all in one.
[00:07:17] So if you wanna take a second in the chat and like, let me know who you are so I can better talk to you as we go through this presentation. Please let me know in the chat if you have a moment.
[00:07:31] Anyone chatting or people? Okay. We got a retailer and parent. Kim, we've got retailer, um, learning Express. I know you rep for Toy Service Inc. Great. Shemi says, sales rep for toy servicing. Julie, sales rep. Okay, fantastic. Thank you for sharing. Diverse rep Robin. Sales rep. Sandra says, hi, Elle. Okay, so I hope that you're interested in this chat today because you've been wondering something.
[00:07:57] You're wondering, am I doing enough with my email marketing? How do I grow my email list and what do I need to sell more products on your email list and of. Where do I even start? Where do I even begin? So that's what we're gonna talk about today. But before we dive in, I wanna introduce myself in case you don't know me.
[00:08:15] My name is Ael Wade. I'm known in the toy industry now as the toy coach. I'm one half of a toy couple. That's my husband, Christian Castro on the left side. He also works in the toy industry. Before being the toy coach, I worked in the corporate toy space. You can see me there with a blippy and one of my employees, Audrey, at the time.
[00:08:32] I work for a company called Creative Kids. That was my last big corporate Hurrah, before I broke out and did my own thing and I was a VP of Brandon product there. Since I started doing my own thing. I've ha amassed a number of students. This is one of my students, Keisha O'Connell. She, uh, won the License U competition last year for her.
[00:08:50] Uh, licensed brand KAMs that we worked on developing together through my program. So throughout my career, I started in 2010. I have seven toy awards, three toy patents. I developed over 500 toy and game products because I worked at a lot of toy companies that were big into mass retail. Um, so I would develop 50 products a season easily.
[00:09:11] Um, I'm also now a speaker and educator in the toy industry. I have had over 140 students take my program, toy Creators Academy. I've arranged hundreds of pitch meetings for them, from retailer pitch meetings to toy company pitch meetings for licensing, and I've helped new creators, uh, gain some retail PL placement.
[00:09:31] So, I want you to know something. Your email list is the most valuable part of your business, and if it isn't, you're not using it right and you're not using it effectively. My email list built my entire business and my business is successful and profitable.
[00:09:46] So here's what we're gonna talk about next. I got a little bit of a roadmap for us. First, we're gonna talk about the power of. Then we're gonna dive into the purpose of email. Why do you need an email, a list, and, and what should it be? Then we're gonna get into CRMs. I'm sure you guys know the term Custer relationship management tool, but we're gonna talk about CRMs that I'm used to using that are specific for digital marketing because some of those may be beneficial for you.
[00:10:12] Then we're gonna get into my favorite campaign strategies, and finally we'll talk about getting, uh, sales via email, and after all that's done, I'm gonna share with you a free guide of mine. I've sent it over to the team. They can share it with you directly or I'll point you to where you can get it on my website.
[00:10:28] Okay, so let's start with the power of email. Um, the power of email and why you should care. There was an article done by HubSpot November of 2022, not that long ago, but they cited many different sources like stasia, constant Contact Campaign Monitor, and these are stats you need to know.
[00:10:48] There's 4 billion daily users of email, and that number is. Still expected to climb. I know we think email's a little bit of an outdated marketing tool, but it's not, it's actually still one of the most direct ways you can reach your customer and get sales from them. Email marketing's return on investment is, um, $36 for every $1 spent.
[00:11:08] 64% of small businesses, uh, were pulled and they said that they will be using email marketing to reach their consumers. 33% of marketers spend weekly emails and 26% send emails multiple times a month. If you're not doing that, you are definitely leaving money on the table.
[00:11:25] Email marketing revenue is, has been growing almost a million dollars year over year. Um, it's expected to hit 11, uh, 11, I'm sorry, a billion dollars year over year. It's expected to hit 11 billion by the end of 2023, uh, from 9.62 in 2022, and it was up again from 8.4 in 2021. So even though we are all inundated with emails somehow, Still an effective tool for us to, um, earn revenue and grow our businesses.
[00:11:54] So now you might be thinking, but Can I just generate sales from social media? My TikTok videos get hundreds of thousands of views and only have like three p, 3000 people on my email list. So why wouldn't I just post on TikTok? Well, I wanna ask you something. Would you give the keys to your retail toy store, to a toy industry organization and let them tell you how many people deserve to get let into your store?
[00:12:19] No, you wouldn't do. That'd be crazy. Why would you get your, put the keys of your store, your livelihood in the hands of an organization in the toy industry? Well, that's exactly what you're doing with social media. With social media, you are giving somebody the keys to your kingdom, the keys to your revenue.
[00:12:35] If Mark Zuckerberg or the Chinese company that owns TikTok decides we're gonna change our algorithm, or we're gonna shut down, or they just go black, you're losing revenue and you shouldn't put that power in somebody else's. So what I think is really effective is when you have content marketing, you have your TikTok, your Instagram, you have all that, but you also have your email marketing strategy.
[00:12:58] You also have a plan for what you're gonna do with the people that are interacting with you on social media, cuz together you can get sustainable growth, you can get sustainable business growth, followers growth, and there's power in being able to own that list of customer. So now that you know why you need to, like what is so important, how it's so powerful email, I wanna talk about the purpose of email.
[00:13:24] So first you've gotta know exactly what email marketing is. Email marketing , is intended to just build relationships with potential customers, maintain relationships with past customers. You should use it to share new product releases discounts, even events that might be up and coming for your. Now it has to be consistent, but it doesn't have to be weekly.
[00:13:46] I have a student from my program, toy Creators Academy, and they send out monthly, , recap emails. Their product is called Bundle and their monthly recap emails are interesting, concise, have images, so I feel like I'm a part of their bundle journey, building their bundle game business. So you don't have to do weekly, but you do have to be consistent.
[00:14:05] Segmentation is a phrase that over this, past year 2022 and, it has really grown in importance in email marketing. I believe that's because as, , email marketing has been more widely known by people, heavily used by everyone. People are getting more particular about what lists they sign up for, and they want lists that are specific for them.
[00:14:25] So even if when you first start out sending emails, you know you're not gonna have the time or wherewithal to send a certain email to your toy, manufacturers, a certain email to your sales reps, a certain email to retailers. If you know you're not gonna have the wherewithal to do all. , you still want to segment the people that are coming into your list.
[00:14:45] Segment means just put them in different buckets and folders. There are different ways that we can do that, and we'll talk about that a little bit as we go forward, but I wanna get too deep. Email marketing should also feel personal. Segmenting your list, tagging people, putting them into folders so you know who they are and why they're on your list is gonna allow you to, when you're ready, get really personal with your.
[00:15:08] Last year, I remember, reading there was this, influencer I was following online and she posted on social media that she was going to be giving up on social media and she was gonna be focusing on her email list because for her ta taking the time to dedicate to post every day on social media wasn't giving the return.
[00:15:26] Her email gave. So she just completely dropped from social media and gave more focus to her email list. That's how powerful email is. So the first thing we gotta know before we're gonna do an effective email marking campaign is the purpose of your weekly emails. So there are two main purposes, there.
[00:15:45] I mean, you have one main purpose, but there are two things that are gonna help you figure out what that is. Your email has to have a clear value proposition for the person you're sending it to. So why is somebody gonna join this newsletter? What's in it for them? Is it deals? Is it education? Is it sales on new items?
[00:16:01] Is it back, , behind the scenes stories about your. For your business. And then what's the value proposition for you? You need a reason to wanna write these emails. Like what are you going to increase, your revenue that year? Do you need a better way to announce sales? Are you noticing or having a lot of, abandoned carts that you're not doing anything with?
[00:16:20] People are putting things in their cart online and just kind of leaving it there. You need to have that value prop for you, cuz it'll focus every email you send and it's a metric thing, you wanna be able to go back and check. Is this email thing really working? , which it will, but is it really working for me?
[00:16:35] And how can I track that? You have to first know the reason you're doing it.
[00:16:39] For me. What do I wanna do? Example . This is a product example from a client of mine. Um, er, Dr. Erica Gurley. She created the soothing snuggler.
[00:16:46] This is an s e l product that comforts kids, teaches them, social-emotional, calming mechanisms. So for, Erica, we're working on developing her email list, and we're like, okay, what are we gonna do? What, what's the vibe? What do we need to say? So for her list. She wants, that wants people on her list to get to know her brand soothing snuggler, right?
[00:17:06] She wants them to get to know the creator behind it, her, and how that brand can help their child. For her as my client, she wants to explain the reason why she created the product to share product, promos and new releases to generate more. So an example of an email that we just did, I told her, I was like, Erica, we need to get out an email to promote soothing snuggler, but I want it to be about your story and your life.
[00:17:30] So she started this email that was all about how whenever her kids go to the pediatrician, they get something. To calm their nerves. It might be a sticker, it might be a Popsicle, but there's one thing their pediatrician can't calm and that's when they gotta get shots. But eventually throughout the story you discover that , the soothing snuggler is actually the one thing that Erica knows will work to calm her kids down.
[00:17:55] The soothing snuggler will keep them calm, even if they're getting a shot because of the mechanisms that it teaches based on her experience as a clinical psych. Emily says, kid shots the worst. Okay, so now it's your turn. I want you to think about yourself.
[00:18:09] I'm sure you already have been hopefully inspired and been thinking about yourself. So first question for you is who is on your list? Do you have retailers on your list? You have manufacturers on your list. Do you, do you write to sales reps and check in on them? Who is on your list? Share it in the comments.
[00:18:26] Um, or write it down. whatever works best for your creativity. Darby says, everyone on the call is on my list.
[00:18:33] Reps, retailers, everyone. L e 45 says customers. Julie says, retailers. Okay, great. So now think, what is the value proposition for them to receive your emails? Julie, why would a retailer wanna sign up for your email list? What could they possibly have to. by being on your email list and then Darby, what could all, everyone in this chat gain from being on your email list, Darby, what could they gain
[00:18:56] Darby: you know, it's, it's really easy as you're going through these examples to think of how to apply that thought process to the way I think about, you know, what is the purpose of my email and what am I trying to achieve. And I think the answer is, it, it changes, it, it changes constantly based on our business needs. And I think most everybody on this call would agree that. You know, sometimes it's, it's about what we have to offer as a manufacturer. Sometimes it's about inviting them to, an event like this or to our launch party act last month.
[00:19:27] You know, just, we're always constantly thinking about what a new way to add value to our, our sales reps and our retailers. , might be.
[00:19:35] Azhelle Wade: That's it right there. I would say that your proposition for it, is to add value to your sales reps. to answer these questions, I would probably survey the people on your list and find out what has been most the most helpful two emails you got from us last year.
[00:19:54] And everyone will probably have a different, response. They might say, oh, I love that you invited me to that event. But then they also might say, oh, I love that you told me about that program where I could get free freight . You know, like they might all have different things, but you, like you said, it's all about the value you're providing them.
[00:20:10] I think you're just missing a couple of commas, like the value you're providing them so they can get what, or so they can have more of what those specific things are gonna guide. Whatever your consistent emails are.
[00:20:25] Next question is, what value do you want to get from sending these emails? You want people to show up. You guys must do good emails cause this is a great show up for a webinar, so well done. What is the value that you want other people to get from sending these emails? Write down your answers, put 'em in the chat. Think about them, but don't worry, this is actually an exercise in the free p d F that I'm gonna give you so you have some time to like mu this over. You'll see this, this slide again in p d f download form. So once you figure out those things, it's gonna be time. If you don't already have one to figure out your C R m , platform, you likely already have one and one that works really well for you.
[00:21:02] But if you can step away from Salesforce, or anything like that, I wanna give you my recommendations for digital marketing and explain why. So, one big one right now in my field is HubSpot. They've kind of taken over, probably perfect for you guys, but a little bit too sales heavy for the things that I do. So when I first started out, I was using things like MailChimp and mailer. So mailer light, and I think MailChimp both have free, uh, free versions where you can sign up, test things out, um, uh, send out some emails and see if it works for you.
[00:21:34] What's great for, with these tools is it's not too complex. They have like a ton of automation options. Um, the price points, low mailer light. I remember I was paying like maybe $25 a month and I had like 2000 contacts, which. If you know anything about c r M platforms, that is ridiculously cheap, but that cheapness came at a cost.
[00:21:57] So when you're choosing your C R M platform, one thing you need to search is something called, deliverability. Every c r M platform has, different deliverability rates that are actually affected by the people that use that platform. So the cheaper of a platform that you're going to use, the more likely your deliverability rate will be lower because you're having a lot of kind of inexperienced people using that platform as well. So it's like an affiliation thing. You want to, affiliate yourself with a high quality email platform. My favorite right now, and the one I use is active campaign. The, features that you get from Active Campaign and how specific and direct you can target people is, it's like almost scary.
[00:22:44] It's so specific. You can tag them based on what they do, where they come from, how they feel. If they click that in an email and then you can send them emails depending on what page they visit to your, on your site.
[00:22:56] So if somebody visits my contact page and doesn't even fill out the contact form, but they're already in my email list, I can send them a message and say, Hey. , did you have a toy day you wanted to talk about? Like that's the power of active campaign. Now, I believe Convert Kit's similar in that way, but when I got into Convert Kit, I just felt like it was a little too pretty and not technical enough.
[00:23:16] And I'm a very technical person, so I'm all about active campaign. My top two, I would say, if you're just starting out, you wanna experiment, I would go mailer light. It's clean, it's simple to use. It's really, really affordable. And then if you're ready to dive deeper, Active campaign. Active campaign has, um, deal slots just like some of the bigger, like Salesforce.
[00:23:36] There you can manage like corporate deals, but you can also talk to consumers as long as you segment and separate your list the right way. You can do that perfectly in ac active campaign and just need one platform, instead of two. Cause I know some people will use one platform for their corporate customers and then a separate one for, their consumers like business and consumer.
[00:23:55] But you can actually do both in active. All right, let's keep going. Let's talk about, um, my four favorite email campaign strategies. No matter what c r m you use, you can use, these email, strategies. So Strategy one, connection Campaign.
[00:24:10] So this is the main type of campaign you should be sending either. Weekly or monthly. This is like your check-in campaign. These share your story. These might share behind the scenes. If you don't wanna get personal in your emails, give your brand or your store its own personality and share emails from that perspective.
[00:24:30] What's going on in your store this week? What was the coolest thing that happened for your store? This. Share with that perspective. The way I'm planning on using this strategy with one of my new clients because this, uh, client of mine is really not traditional, what I wanna do with him is have. Tell the story of his characters through email. So it's almost like every email for him will be like somebody opening up another page in the book of this like character journey. And that's gonna be his connection campaigns to connect with the people that wanna know more about his product.
[00:25:01] And he doesn't have to talk about himself at all the way that I do . So. Let's move to, strategy number two, promotional campaigns. So, if you've been on my email list and you've gotten a promotional campaign from me, that's what this is. Promotional campaigns are different from those connection campaigns, because they should happen at most, four times a year.
[00:25:22] I think that the too many promotional campaigns will make people not want to even stay on your list to receive those connection campaigns. So I keep mine to twice a year. But four times a year would really be the, the true max promotional campaigns are much more back to back. So like when I do a promotional campaign, we're, we're sending out emails like every three days and the closer to the end of the sales date we're sending, we'll send out emails even faster.
[00:25:49] As we said, like there's, there's so many email users, but there's also so many emails going out, so your email is gonna stay at the top of the inbox for all but. 30 minutes and then it's gonna get pushed down if even that. So you do sometimes need to send several emails so that you can make sure that somebody, will see your email .
[00:26:08] And this actually reminds me of another great feature of Active Campaign you can actually send out emails. Go out at a time that they predict when your customer will open it. So it's called predictive sending. And based on that customer's location and the style of email, the email service provider will predict when they should send that email for you and send it for you.
[00:26:31] So promotional campaigns can be seasonal. One really important thing because we're sending so many emails in a promotional campaign. We actually add a header to the top of the email that says, Hey, we're sending promotional emails about whatever we're sending it about.
[00:26:47] If you want to get removed from this promotional email list about this product, click here and they will be removed from that list. But you'll still say, stay on my weekly email list. and then I'll have a section that says, if you wanna unsubscribe from the weekly email list, click here.
[00:27:02] You'll get off of everything. promotional campaign should definitely highlight testimonials, and always have one call to action. Do not try to promote an event and then in that email try to promote a product sale. Really keep it focused on one call to action.
[00:27:16] It's gonna be hard, but it'll get you a higher click through rate. Strategy three abandoned cart campaigns. So with abandoned cart campaigns, so say somebody visits the checkout page and they have this item in their cart, you wanna send them a quick cart reminder email within three to four hours of them leaving that cart.
[00:27:35] And that email might say, Hey, Looks like someone distracted you right before you were about to buy this toy. Did you wanna get it? Or it'll say something like your cart's about to expire. The, the second email that you wanna send in these abandoned cart campaigns is a testimonial or review email.
[00:27:52] So you might want to send something that says, Hey, did you see what Sheila said about this toy product? And you could have a screen. Of her review for this toy product, you wanna always show a screenshot of the actual review and not like, type out a. Then, a day later, if you wanna go this long with your abandoned cart campaign, you can do, a sale ending email.
[00:28:13] So for me, it's a day later, cuz the one I'm talking about in this example is a three day abandoned cart campaign for a three day sale. So for me, after day two, I'm sending one more. Email saying The sale is ending today, or sale is ending in today. So buy it now. And then if you wanna go real fancy and if you have active campaign and you have their phone number, you could send a final touch text message to them.
[00:28:39] So another thing that I love about Active Campaign is if you're in an abandoned cart, funnel with one client in an abandoned cart funnel? You might be saying, well, what if they buy after the quickcar reminder email? But they're already in that funnel. Active campaign specifically has something called goals, and when somebody meets a goal, like purchases a product, they can get automatically pulled out of. That funnel and put at the end of it, so that automation just kind of ends for them. So we don't want to keep reminding people to buy something they've already bought, obviously.
[00:29:12] The last one we have here is a re-engagement campaign, also known as a Winback campaign. Some people say it's not worth it.
[00:29:19] I feel like my emails are very expensive to get, so I think it's worth it. So essentially when somebody goes inactive in your email list and they don't respond or they don't open anything for, I say, 45 days. That's when they go into the re-engagement campaign funnel. And in this funnel, I like to offer a gift for one email.
[00:29:38] I like to ask for feedback, like, what are you not getting from these emails that you want to get? And then let them update their preferences. Like maybe they have a different email address that they've switched to using primarily. And they actually want your information there and it's not.
[00:29:53] So you want them to update that as well. So the question of if winback campaigns are worth it, I think they're worth it for two reasons. One, it. Gives you an opportunity to maintain a customer and maintain a touchpoint. Um, two, it gives you an opportunity to clean up your list. Um, cleaning up your list is really important.
[00:30:11] You don't wanna keep sending emails to people that are not opening because that actually will lower your own deliverability. So you do wanna keep cleaning up your email list so that you have higher open rates so that your domain maintains like a good deliverability rate. So now we're gonna talk about getting sales with email. So getting sales with email starts with. Having really great subject lines. Now this is my favorite lesson to teach.
[00:30:41] I learned this from a book, which I will share with you at the end and there are four yous. The four yous of great subject lines are urgent, useful, unique, and. Ultra-specific. We're gonna go into each in detail, but as a quick overview, urgent subject lines have power words, useful subject lines, call back to that value prop that you defined earlier.
[00:31:02] Unique ones are unexpected and ultra-specific ones use that data that you are collecting. The question we all ask is how to, how do we get people to open our emails? Well, let me see what I can tell you about that. So, The urgency. Urgency is really important in an email, especially if you have a sale ending or an event starting, right?
[00:31:21] So when you use power words, that's what helps an email feel urgent, right? Power words are words that evoke a strong feeling, a feeling like excitement, nostalgia, or even shock. So some examples are like secret jaw dropping, frenzy, dazzling, phenomen. Silly. Those words are almost like anima, right? They give you a visual in your mind and a feeling in your heart, right?
[00:31:46] So examples of titles that could shock and delight you into clicking into an email just to figure out what's going on, is something like, Beyonce just unveiled her twins to the world in the most breathtaking photo, right? Or seven life-changing toy care. , like, what do I need to know that is life changing about how to care for these toys?
[00:32:06] Or simple, dazzling, affordable, plush, like I need to see what is this simple, dazzling, affordable, plush, right? That's how you use power words to get people to listen into your emails. And the words underlined here are the power words. Adorable. Breathtaking, life-changing, dazzling. Those are the power words in these example.
[00:32:28] and in our free download, these examples are there as well. So you can get those to take home. So useful. I said a good subject line is also useful. So what is useful? So useful. Subject lines call back to customer needs.
[00:32:42] They share useful tips or ideas or resources that wait fulfills an urgent need immediately. Yeah, you. I literally try to use useful, urgent, all the four use in one subject line. Like that is my goal for every email , like I go in. so an example of this would be like, something that's urgent is like birthday gift, emails, fast shipping emails, free shipping emails, or educational event notifications, right?
[00:33:09] So examples of this would be. You say an email that says like, just Scheduled Marketing Automation Masterclass, right? Or Grab your birthday box today, right? Or free shipping on orders over whatever you're giving them. Specific information for me, and we'll see this email in a little bit. I had an email about, do you need to know about ski inflation?
[00:33:30] That's an useful and urgent feeling subject. . Okay. You also need those subject lines to be unique. Unique subject lines are unexpected. Okay? So if Beyonce's dog had a message to share with you, you would be like, what? What is it? Beyonce and her dog? That's unexpected. Okay, so things like adding question marks using emojis, juxtaposition, just going against the norm is how you go unexpected.
[00:33:59] It's a difference between having an email that says something. My toy wedding or my toy wedding, and literally that's an email I use and it had an amazing open rate and it was literally just me talking about my toy wedding. And then I said, listen to this podcast episode, so unexpected.
[00:34:16] You break up the monotony. People expect to see something certain in their emails, you can surprise them with so, New and unexpected. Then we get into ultra-specific subject lines. These subject lines use customer data and they call out to your customer with ultra-specific data that they gave you when they signed up, like maybe their name, their birthday, maybe their job.
[00:34:38] So when you combine the ultra-specific, the urgent, the useful, all of that in an unexpected way, my friend, you're gonna get really good subject lines. So something you can say is name, because it will fill in the name in your email service provider. Can I feature your product in or Happy birthday? I have a gift for you.
[00:34:55] Might be something you send because you know, based on your customer data. that it's their birthday. You also can use that question mark trick I said, so instead of saying my birthday gift, you could say my birthday gift. And it's just a more interesting email to open and look through. So now what do you do when you get them to open your email?
[00:35:15] Let's look at the format of a great email, cuz they're gonna open it. Once you use those tricks and tips, they're gonna just open all your emails. So you gotta make it good inside. Okay? So we're gonna have at the top of your email a hook. It's gonna be a line of text that. Is intriguing and unexpected, and I'm gonna show you an example, so don't worry.
[00:35:34] Then you're gonna get into the story. Then you're gonna get into the value. Sometimes I like to mix value in with the story, and then you're gonna get into the CTA or the call to action, and we're only gonna do one of those, and then you'll get into your sign off in your signature. Now your hook is actually normally in the middle of a story or the climax of a story.
[00:35:53] Your story definitely needs an image to support it and your value prop. I love bullet points for this because for people that like to skim emails, they can look for your value prop and know that it's gonna be there every week without fail. So let's look in an example. So this is one of my top emails, called Should You Be Aware of Skimp Inflation, right?
[00:36:14] That was the subject line and then the hook was in 2019. Christian and I booked a one way ticket to Paris, and you're like, what kind of is she in Paris right now? No. Like, you know, you're wondering what is going on. So then the story kind of clarifies that. So we've been tracking the price of the trip and with this app called Hopper, and one evening we got an alert.
[00:36:35] That a one way ticket to Paris was down to just $100. And you're like, oh, she came back. Okay, we get it now. So we were surprised. We booked it and we figured out the rest later. And after doing all the touristy things, and you can see me in, there's the photo built into the story of the touristy things.
[00:36:51] We're still in story. We hit up a bunch of toy stores across Europe. I was so surprised at how small the boxes were and how high the prices seemed having come from years in the mass market craft side of the toy biz. It was refreshing to see a box filled with more product than air, but it was confusing to see a box size that I would normally retail, for 9 99 being merchandise at 19 point 99 Euros.
[00:37:13] Okay, maybe I'm over exaggerating just a bit, however. I did expect an unexpected culture shock in the toy aisle. So this goes into story, and then eventually it says, I remember thinking how wonderful it would be to focus primarily on the actual content value of a toy and making the box small as possible.
[00:37:33] Well, careful what you wish for Azhelle. Skim simplification has entered the chat, and that's where we get into value. And that's also why I linked it. So now today's podcast episode was about two new terms, skim amplification and shrink ifl. While a joy to say they're not a joy to experience as a consumer or a manufacturer, with my podcast episode today and, and yada yada, we go into the cta.
[00:37:56] And then you see the sign off. So I love a sign off that's consistent because humans do like things that they know and it makes them feel comfortable and safe. But I do leave room for like an extra sign off where it says, thanks for reading and happy listening that I play with sometimes like sometimes I'm like, Like, have a good Monday, or I'm like, XO xl, like, you know what my vibe is about.
[00:38:16] So feel free to play with your C t a, your sign off a little bit. Now there are multiple links in this, email, but they all go to the same place. The c t A is the same. Even the image is linked. They're going to my podcast cuz that's the goal. So if you wanna dive deeper into these email marketing tips, I have got some recommendations for you.
[00:38:35] The Art of Click is an amazing book and I would love it if you would buy it off of my affiliate link. If you go to the toy coach.com/books, there's a link for the Art of Click. You can get it on Amazon. I got the audio version. and the like Kindle version. Cause I thought I was gonna read it, but I just listened to it.
[00:38:51] And I also did a full podcast episode about this, writing a clickworthy email subjects, lines for your pitch. So if you wanna listen to me teach it some more, you can go there as well. And then I wanna give you a free guide. So , Julie Wells said add to cart. So then I wanna give you a free guide. So before I write any email, Literally this guide I'm giving you is what I read.
[00:39:15] Basically, I filled out the blank P pieces that you'll see on your guide are filled out on my copy of this. And every time I go to write an email, I just read it. It's two pages and what it is is like, , what is my value prop? How often do I send my emails? What are good subject lines? What is the purpose of all this?
[00:39:34] And I read it to get myself in the right head space. And so I want you to give that a try, and I think you're gonna send better emails. And that.
[00:39:44] Megan Philpot: That was amazing. Everybody. Round of applause virtually in your space.
[00:39:49] That was incredible. Thank you so much.
[00:39:54] Azhelle Wade: Well there you have at Toy People. I hope you enjoyed that presentation about the art and science of successful email campaigns. Now there were some visuals with that presentation that you didn't get a chance to see, and I will be giving this presentation again live at a future date and time if you want to be notified of that, head over to the toy coach.com/ 1 69 where you are downloading the free email guide. You'll also be able to check off whether or not you wanna be notified when I have another live class teaching about email marketing, and you let me know if you're interested in that, and I will notify you as soon as those classes are available.
[00:40:38] Now My absolute favorite part of the lesson today was the teaching on how to create great subject lines. The four used, urgent, useful, unique, and ultra specific. If you want to dive deeper into that lesson, head over to the toy coach.com/ 97. I did a podcast episode a while back just about that topic, and if you love this episode, you're definitely gonna get a ton of value out of that past episode as well.
[00:41:10] Before I let you go, I've gotta give a shout out to Rick Derr of Learning Express Lake Zurich. So I think this is Rick cuz it's called Toy Rick. He left a great review about episode 1 64. Rick says this episode is one of my favorites because of the new learning and the future of how the toy industry can help kids in their challenges today. The mesh acronym hopefully will be more widely known in a year from now. And he says the guest, Rachel Harmuth, is very passionate about the skills kids and parents need to develop together. Thank you for that Great review, Rick. Thank you for the five star review. But also if you are a new listener to this podcast and you don't know, Rick was one of the sponsors for TCA last year. He made tCA possible for so many people. Thank you so much, Rick. And if you are a retailer or a manufacturer listening who's interested in sponsoring a student to go through Toy Creators Academy, tca, please reach out to me at info@thetoycoach.com. We could definitely use your support. People love the lessons and the community, but there is a cost to it. So if you can help at all offset that, please let us know and we will get you all the details of where to get set up.
[00:42:24] So if you, my friend, love this podcast, but you haven't already left a review. What are you waiting for? Your reviews? Put a huge smile on my face. Every time I see a new one come through, it pops up on my phone and I get all excited and it keeps me motivated to keep coming back week after week because podcasting isn't easy.
[00:42:43] But as always, whether you leave a review or whether you're too busy, you're working out, whatever you're doing. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I know your time is valuable, and I know there are a ton of podcasts out there, so it truly means the world to me that you tune into this one.
[00:42:58] Until next week, I'll see you later. Toy people.
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