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Email Marketing in 2017, What Works and What Doesn't - Inbound After Hours - Ep 12

21 mins read

This week we talk about Email Marketing in 2017. What works right now, what doesn't, our pet hates, tips, tricks and much more!

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In this episode we will discuss:

  • Does email still work?
  • What open and click rates should you aim for
  • Is email marketing growing or shrinking
  • Our email marketing pet hates
  • Plain text v templates
  • Emojis in subject lines?
  • Segmentation - how powerful it really is

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 Thanks so much for joining us this week.

Have some feedback you’d like to share, do it in the comments below!

 

Full transcript:

- Hi everyone. Welcome to Inbound After Hours. Today we'll be talking email marketing. We have Paul, Ricky, and Andrew. How are you doing?

- Awesome.

- Alright.

- And we are broadcasting from a 16th century castle, would you say?

- I'd go with that.

- Sounds about right.

- 15, 16. - 16th century castle ... We're actually doing this strategy day off site so we can get shit done today.

- Yep.

- Without being disturbed - so we thought we wouldn't miss a podcasting,

- Nope.

- we'd just set up here -- - Yes. ... near this really weird looking fireplace.

- Yeah we're not in Santa 's Grotto.

- No not Santa's Grotto, really. So we're talking email marketing guys. Let's kick off with with the first question. Does email still work?

- Yeah, I think so.

- Yeah.

- I hope so.

- I sent some out today.

- I'm out of a job if not.

- Yeah, I think you do hear... Well I think they're actually getting more popular.

- It's becoming retro.

- In the last few years. Yeah, yeah, it's cool to email.

- It's much like vinyl.

- I read, yeah, I did read something the other day, like especially for retail, the new, the weekly commerce thing. Because it's mobile. People, dropping the millennial bomb keyword but they're reading a lot more emails on mobile devices these days, so that the rates are actually going up rather than down.

- About three in the morning.

- Yeah, yeah

- Bizarre times.

- Yeah, as soon as I wake up, checking it. Or, so it's either people are being more personalised or more appropriate And not buying lists and people subscribing to stuff. I think as a delivery of offers and information on a mobile device, it's opened up again, that platform from like the 9 to 5 desk job off the screen. I think it's getting more popular. We use it for a lot of clients, it's key. A key part of our strategy really.

- They're easier to get on your phone as well, 'cause of that, aren't they? I suppose that'd explain that. You've got an app on your phone. It comes as standard, you've got hooked to your Google account to get your contacts, and then your Gmail, or your Hotmail or whatever, is on your phone. It's just another push notification.

- Yeah.

- Yeah. - Check your emails more than I used to, definitely now.

- What kind of stats are we looking at? Are you looking at our clients' HubSpots' ballpark?

- What, open rates?

- Open rates on mobile devices - I think you're talking 20%, or in the 20s.

- Yeah 20 is what I always set as the...

- The bar.

- The bar. Really anything above that is great.

- And I've read in general marketing blogs, they say, like 23, 24. Which I think 20 is more realistic.

- And if you're emailing every week, that's good in my eyes.

- Yeah.

- You'll have some, you know, your brand-new database, you send your first email, you've got a 90% open rate, it's amazing, and that slowly peters out. And I think 20 to 25 I'd be happy with.

- And also the context of what we do, we're obviously doing inbound, so people are opting in, they're expecting content, they've heard of the brand. So when we're talking email marketing, we're talking about the way we do it.

- And I'm talking here, as well, batch. Segmented book batch, like outbound, these sort of emails. Not talking about workflows or anything. 'Cause they're much higher, because people actually are waiting for those. But your standard week to week emails about launches and updates and things.

- Yeah, I'd say that's pretty fair.

- We've had to, on the client who's done the outbound emails cold?

- Yeah. - Has had a lead come out of that this week. I don't know how many they sent exactly, I think it was about 12.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And one of those, just from cold, off LinkedIn I think.

- Good work.

- I mean, you're playing the numbers, getting with cold aren't you? You're just hoping that someone's in the buying cycle at that exact stage at the moment you hit it. So you could send five and have one lead, you could send 50,000 and have no one.

- Yeah.

- There you go, yeah.

- You're playing a numbers game, really, and with outbound, it really is, like, well your open rates on pure cold outbound stuff's like single, lower single figures.

- If it gets through as well.

- If it actually even gets to them, yeah.

- I just think the risks far outweigh, in my eyes, in our market. Inbound, fully like all inbound. But if, you know clients ever wanna just chuck in thousands.

- You're showing everyone your "inbound" tattoo.

- It's just, I just think the risks of getting yourself blacklisted or your domain bound, it's just... I don't think people understand how quickly it will go very badly. Why, these days, you can't just, as long as someone doesn't report them, people don't have to open them, ever. Don't even have to see them, and the email provider will actually block you I think. Yeah, I wouldn't dare. Being on this side, it scares the life out of me.

- I always, because we're so engrossed in like the persona and persona marketing, I always think of, from their angle, "When do good things start with spam?" Like seriously, when did a good relationship ever start with spam? Well you think, "Wow, they spammed me 10 years ago, "and now I love that brand." Like that just doesn't happen, does it? And even if you spam someone, and you ignore it, if I'm actually in the market for summat two years later, if I remember, "Oh, they're bloody spammy guys, I'm not going to those." So, I think it sets off the wrong tone. If you sell them that sort of thing, I think it sets off the wrong tone, really.

- If it was my businesses, I just think it looks a bit crap. - Yeah, there's better ways to do it.

- Yeah, it's a bit embarrassing, like a big cringy nowadays, isn't it? Since you can, it's so easy to do it the right way.

- And I think even if you want in quick, which is normally people's answer to, like, buying lists and stuff. Playing that numbers game back, if you actually sat and wrote your funnel out with what you expected from outbound, then sat and wrote a funnel of maybe social ads on Facebook, actually getting people to download content and then opt in, I don't think your costs would be too far different. Your time wouldn't be any different. But you're getting people to opt in, and want the email rather than just smashing them outlists bound.

- People are scared of emailing 50 highly, like 50 of the right people versus 10,000 that possibly right, That 50 is the same in both, but you would just feel sort of more comfortable sending out 10,000, because you think, "I'll definitely get someone."

- Goes back to old-school marketing. Just impressions, isn't it? How many people saw what I've got?

- Reach and exposure.

- Yeah, and it's like, well,

- It's not the right people.

- Exactly, it comes back to that doesn't it?

- Yeah.

- I think, yeah I read some stats recently, like 90% of marketing goes out knowing that only 10% of the people who could see it are the right people. D'you like when you're looking at magazines, and stuff like that...

- You know full well.

- You know full well 90% of the people that read that aren't even relevant, and you still go at it.

- Just hoping. Yeah, it's crazy isn't it? -

It's bonkers.

- What's the saying we keep hearing lately, Ricky, from prospects, "Can you just blast my list?" That's the exact saying isn't it? "Can you just blast this list off?"

- It's such an awful phrase as well. It kind of sums it up, doesn't it? It normally comes from top down. It's like, without that knowledge we've got a client who has, I think like 1.2 million contacts, and their phrase is "blast the list." If we need to set sales I'll blast the list. And, fair enough, you're gonna get sales from 1.2 million emails, you'd have to do a bad job not to get any from that, even if you're playing a numbers game, you're gonna get something. So they've got that comfort blanket in, if you've had a bad week, blast the list, but...

- And if 50,000 people unsubscribe, it's not...

- Yeah.

- It's not a big deal.

- That's literally what happens, like, it's insane, really, yeah.

- Your quality score, yeah. Okay, what's damaged there? Let's talk Google then, what's damaged email marketing over the years?

- Well you just touched on it there, like Google adding the promotions tab.

- Yep, the promotions tab.

- And other mail providers getting similar features have kind of helped segment out. Personally, I mean, I don't think that does that great a job. I mean, how do you feel? I still get promotion stuff through my Gmail.

- I've unsubscribed from loads I don't really get to come back.

- I don't think that's done a particularly amazing job of it.

- I think people are fed up with them. People are aware of it as well. If you hand over your email address, you expect some sort of marketing email to come your way.

- Well marketers have -- - Some people might just give their email all the less or not open it more.

- I think when email was new, and when it, like, back in the day, people would do a lot of spam and stuff, 'cause you just had people's attention there no matter what you were sending. You'd hope most marketers in decent companies today aren't spamming. And that's kind of reduced the amount of spam people are getting. And that's had kind of a positive impact, that's why open rates have maintained rather than continually dropping, because I think marketers have got a bit savvy to it as well, and stopped doing it as much.

- You're right, if you look at your inbox, like your personal inbox, I look at my Hotmail one that I've had since I was 15, So it is just all subscriptions, and sometimes me grandma or something. But there's nothing spammy, I'm still subscribed to them all. And there's nothing offensive to make me unsubscribe. And there's nothing really, nine times out of ten, making me open them. But when something does come in from some brand I still want to hear from, it does make me open it, and it does have an effect. So they're all, they're inoffensive, or they catch your attention.

- Yeah.

- That, what you touched on there is like that approach of which actually affects deliverability for the sender. It's being addressed with graymail now. So going forward, you might stop. I do exactly what you do, I've got certain brands that I just read the headlines and if somethings... Actually, that's how I read their emails.

- Yeah, it's just subject line.

- One in every 10 I'll open. And I might buy something, genuinely. But truth be told, most people probably don't do that, a lot ignore it and I think that's why the idea of graymail is coming in to protect that.

- Go on and explain graymail.

- I was gonna say, do you wanna touch on graymail? We know what it is, but for the viewers, yeah.

- So graymail is something that HubSpot sort of introduced, last year was it?

- Year before.

- As a way to address this, what we're talking about, where you've got a database of vaguely engaged people, you've got people that open every email, you've got some people that just sit at the back, let your emails come, they're not fussed, they're not annoyed, but they don't open or read, or click, or engage, and they don't push your products in overtime. That probably grows as you send more emails and that impacts your send score and your open rates, so you're getting skewed data. And you're thinking that what you're doing is getting worse and worse when it isn't, well it is, but there is still people engaged, and you could send it to less people. Your open rates would go up. So what they've done is allowed a waive, you don't have to delete these people out your database, they can analyse the people in your database, see who is part of that group, exclude them, and you can still keep them there, and every now and again, you might include them if there's a big launch, or try and find a way of re-engaging them, which we do.

- Don't include them in a send, you mean.

- Yeah, so you untick them, you then put them into a separate sort of campaign to try and directly address what they aren't doing and sort of break the mould of your normal subject lines, and start saying like, "Hi, we know you're not opening them anymore, "we'll get rid of you if you want."

- Yeah, I think that frankness of the way we do it for ourselves and for our clients of saying "You haven't opened seven emails, "we respect your inbox, honestly, "if you want to come out of it, "that's absolutely fine with us, "we'd rather you do that than just sit in limbo, "so click here to go, or click here to re-engage." The good things are: Even if they don't click, we take them out, 'cause they're not engaged still, but if they do click, they normally re-engage and actually do read future emails. Maybe 'cause you know we're watching and I'm gonna email them again, saying "You haven't been reading our emails.

- It can just be like, note to tell them, there's a lot of times. I mean, I'm probably in the graymail list of everyone I'm subscribed to.

- Yeah, same.

- And I just think using brands in your email, I think, "Well I'm a bit skint this payday, "actually, I'll wait 'til the next one comes in, "I'll open that and have a look." It's not that I don't want to hear from them, but if they did send one, Swipeline sent an email that said, "We're gonna stop sending to you."

- A break-up.

- Did a break-up email. I'd click it and go, "No, keep sending them."

- Yeah, exactly.

- And I'm back in the pot, then.

- Yeah, I did a bit of analysis on a blog I wrote recently about this, and looked at our graymail stats. And I think the re-engagement, the open rate of that actual email was about 15%, so that's obviously not what we talked about with the benchmarks, but what I'm noting in the blog is that these are people that never open our blogs, to actually get between 10, 15% open rate out of people that don't open is actually a huge increase. And actually bringing those guys, I think the click-through rate of those that opened was about average from a normal email. Like 1%, 2%, whatever it was, and it was great, and those guys then go back into the normal database, so you've actually salvaged a bit of that. I think we've commented on, the way we've set it up is we send out these workflows and emails if they really don't, we'll get a notification from those no longer interested. I'm yet to get a notification of someone that's not interested that I'm bothered about. That I actually look and think "I wish they stayed in our database," or something. It's always a Gmail account, they've not given us the last name, we don't know who they are, they're from, we don't know, we don't know who they are.

- They've not clicked anything.

- Generic or spammy email, so someone who's just gone Just to get to a thank-you page. And that just proves that it works, all the other people are real, and just taking a back seat. Then actually jump in and start engaging again, so it's good.

- What subject line did you use for that, then?

- The first one of the two is "This is the end" dot, dot, dot.

- This is the end, OK.

- It opens up, there's like a downwards smiley face, big purple buttons. And the next one is it's something like, "We will unsubscribe you tomorrow." Something like that.

- So they'll notice it.

- The text is a plain text email and it's really non-marketingy, non-businessy, it's just "We respect your time, "we're gonna unsubscribe you tomorrow. "Click here if you don't want that to happen. "If you do, all the best." Sort of thing. And then that goes into a list, and then we look at those people, and we take them out. But we try to just do something a bit different.

- There's nothing lost there is there?

- Again, that frankness just works.

- Yeah, those people are technically gone, 'cause they're in graymail, we're not sending to them anyway.

- You could swear at them if you want to. And just be like, "Alright, you're sick to death of us, then, "clear off."

- Yeah, exactly.

- "You're about to be dumped."

- I think, to come back to answer one of the things that's damaging email. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine at the moment, is automation in marketing and email is awesome, but automation in spam is awful. Like one of the things you get now is if someone's spamming you, they'll have automated follow-ups. So, this isn't what this technology was created for, so a salesman's trying to get ahold of you and occasionally they'll try and be witty like, "I take it you fell down the toilet "and don't want to reply to my emails." But when that's 12 emails of spam, like no matter how witty you are with that, you're not getting a reply on me.

- Once you know it's spam, then it's gone. Stop trying to personalise it.

- Exactly.

- Yeah, it's pointless.

- It is. I think that awareness like we're in the position where we're aware that's what they're doing, they've plugged us in and hit go, and I think when you're very aware of it like most marketers, you get they're not using it when they're using it wrong.

- Consumers are aware, though, aren't they? Like I said about my mate earlier.

- You'd think so, yeah.

- Before we started recording, I was talking about my wedding, and guests staying at the hotel having to give their email address to reception so they can get their room confirmation. And I'm surprised how many people said "No, "You're just gonna send me a lot of marketing shit." "So I'll just put a fake one." So it is, when you said, "What's harming email?" I think that practise is having a negative effect. But then, the positive for us I guess, is if you give your email over, you're willing, you're listening. It's made somebody giving it up more valuable, I guess. So it's good for us.

- Why would I give it up now? Why...

- That's a new podcast series, "What Mark Hates."

- I've got probably five email addresses so when I go into my Gmail, it's all mail, so all five will go. When I unsubscribe to some people, you have to actually type your email in the unsubscribe page, and I think "Which one is it?" So I have to go back and find which one and type it in. That's annoying.

- Why do you have five email addresses? Are you a drug dealer on the side?

- Via email.

- That's a sure modern scene, isn't it? Yeah, well, we won't get into that. The worst one of those, though, what I really hate is when you click unsubscribe to go through, and you have to log in to unsubscribe. And I'm like, there's not a chance I remember my log-in for this site.

- That's straight to spam.

- You're not helping.

- I'm gonna hit you with spam, so they're doing themselves a disservice there, 'cause I'd have just unsubscribed quietly.

- That's my rule, if I can unsubscribe...

- I'm not raging with my unsubscribe.

- Your email client can give you unsubscribe for most of them, can't they? If you can't press that, they've marked it spam.

- I know, yeah, definitely.

- Your fault.

- That's the dark side of marketing.

- Yeah, right.

- Decathlon will talk about you.

- Let me unsubscribe!

- Let's talk about templates verse plain text. Which works better for us guys?

- Plain.

- Yeah, I think there's some context to it, but like nine times out of ten, it's plain.

- Depends what it is as well, I wouldn't send a blog update.

- No, plain, 'cause that'd look weird.

- 'Cause then, it would look weird, and then it makes your automated plain text little older. That was clearly automated and it looked like the same one that was supposed to be personal.

- And in e-commerce as well, you can't do e-commerce plain text, like deals. - Sorry Andrew.

- It's meant to be from someone.

- No, I just got to...

- Paul's out there.

- If it's off somebody in a workflow, definitely clicked it, that helps.

- And just that, what you're trying to get at, I've noticed, being on both sides of it, SaaS companies, and like, plugging people and like Silicon Valley, like cool, techy people started doing it, where they just email you like "It's Ben from CoSchedule." - With no capital letters and starting stuff like that?

- And he'll send this email and it's really nice, and I'm like "I'll read this." And like now I'm CoSchedule and that was really good that.

- I was really pissed off at myself when that worked on me. You know when they swapped a couple of months ago to not capitalising the subject line first letter, they kept doing it and doing it and doing it. And you could spot it.

- They'd done it, yeah.

- It took about two months, and I thought "I'm gonna see what they've done, "why they've done that." So I've opened it, so it's worked, then the content was in plain text and I read it, which I don't normally do, and then I clicked, and I don't like it. Bastards.

- We directly accessed it, I mean, it's quite -- it's not a new thing to send a plain text email, obviously, but for a marketing batch purpose, it is quite a jarring approach, because templates have been such a big thing for so long. We've shifted to doing this for our clients with launching sort of things, launching content, launching download, because it's so unoffensive, and non-invasive and people are so relaxed to read it. And we, I think we all agree that I know when I open the template that's got two grey bits and a white bit in the middle, a header and a footer, and some sort of formatted text, before I even know what it is, if it's not selling me like clothes or technology, I'm not interested, they already think you're in with those guys.

- You're trying to sell me, yeah.

- Rather than help me. Whereas an email, my brain still thinks it's from a colleague or someone I know. And even though I know it's not, it's slightly off, it's still, I'm in the right frame of mind. You read it, and it gets people's attention, and we've seen that firsthand.

- It works literally firsthand as well, when I get emails off you sometimes, still, 'cause it's a really long workflow, and it says "Typo, something, something," to do with the workflow, and I'm like, "What's Rikki sent? "Oh no, it's automatic." But I'll still look, just 'cause, you think, if you know what's going on, you think, "Well they've been clever about it, "you can have ten seconds of my time."

- I think from just the technology viewpoint as well, if you really don't need a template, go with plain, because it's getting harder and harder to support all of the devices, support all of the browser types.

- A/B test what's right for you.

- Yeah.

- Our development departments hate that, don't they? We've built so many templates, and we're just like...

- But then you'll get the old guy saying "I'm still on like IE3." It's like, "How are you even possibly still on that?"

- And they're the most angry ones. They do not like to stand on me.

- But with plain text, it's gonna go through to everyone, whether you're on a four, on a tablet, on a desktop, in any browser it's gonna look fine.

- And to just back up even more, HubSpot built that into their email templates as a set, it's a template, but it's a plain template, do you know what I mean? So you don't have to like think about how to do it.

- Yeah, 'cause plain text templates that don't look natural...

- Are worse.

- Are weird.

- Yeah, massive text for plain, yeah it's very bizarre. But again, definitely for workflows, on the automations or when someone downloads an ebook, keep it plain you're gonna get a much better engagement.

- The other thing about it, I don't know if you mentioned it or not, I was drinking my beer, sorry.

- You enjoy, mate.

- When we switched to plain text we found that people are reading the email longer, the message was getting across.

- Yeah, definitely.

- It's just all across the board, I won't go back to using templates as a first port of call.

- No.

- They have a time and a place, obviously.

- Something worth mentioning as well, when I first got into doing email marketing, it was plain text, it was just literally plain text. In case anyone's not used it, it is just plain text, hyperlinks are underlined, there's no fancy images. It's like you'd typed it.

- Yeah.

- I wanna talk emojis, but I know we've only got nine minutes of podcast left, but I can't skip that, can I? We've got a young workforce, and they love emojis. We use Slack and it's just nonstop.

- You have slack conversations, and it's emoji, reply, emoji, reply, emoji.

- It's just everything's emoji.

- It's like a story in emojis.

- Drag was all old guys, but let's talk emojis in subject lines. I mean, I know you guys have been testing that, has that worked for you?

- Yeah. It's a tricky one, I spotted, myself, before I started using them for clients, the YouTube emails. So you subscribe to a YouTube channel, it's the first time I ever spotted it was one if you subscribe to someone on youtube, when they upload a new video, you get an email, and they put this red circle, like a record button, which is pretty apt. And no one was doing it, this was probably like a year ago.

- Really stands out.

- I always look at that. And so then we, I mean HubSpot, again, implemented it in the system, so they're obviously on the same sort of -- Everyone's subscribed to people on YouTube. Yeah, we just started putting it on, e-commerce clients is a good one. Like regular emails. When you know that unavoidably you're part of some sort of noise for a client, you know, you're in the mix of lots of e-commerce people, and you're trying to stand out, it's really good. It's good for like seasonal emails, anything that lends itself well to something. Or like a launch or something that's quite exciting. And informal. It's not gonna work for every industry, but the ones that we've used it for, it's really helped keep, actually, just boost but then maintaining open rates way above the 20% mark. And it's just, I think it's just a good thing to do.

- What I'm surprised at is marketers haven't spoiled it yet.

- I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying my best.

- I don't get every other email with emojis.

- It can't be far off.

- No, it's not gonna be far off, I think that's the point where...

- I think people won't dare just yet to use it all the time.

- And I think that's a good tactic, like what you were saying. I think if you sent out an email a week as a client and every week you had an emoji on it. Not necessarily with something like YouTube, where it'd actually be pertinent to the email, when you're doing for like a recognition viewpoint.

- It's like one to one, isn't it?

- Yeah, so Sunderland Football Club, all theirs start with a football, again, it's just like subtle, like the red dot. I kinda get that, and I like it, but if you're not doing that, and you're sending out a different email every week and you're using a different emoji, I think that'd get tiresome quickly.

- Work your way through the different smileys.

- But I think using it on the one you really want someone to open or you wanna have a different impact or, like the break-up one's got a little sad crying face thing on that. There's probably a name for that.

- You view your inbox and it's just a list of emails but then you see the one with your little emoji on it, it does stand out.

- It still does, and I'm surprised at that, that that's not being completely wrecked.

- If it makes you look at it, that's job done, that's job well done, isn't it?

- Let's see, he looked at it, tick.

- The emoji's got you to look at it, so the subject line needs to back it up. I wonder how far off we are from that point of the inbox just being emoji, emoji, emoji.

- Couple weeks.

- I'm thinking end of the year, like it should do, that's what's coming isn't it?

- You know I'm involved.

- When this podcast releases.

- There'll be video on your subject line, will be the next.

- Yeah. Waving.

- That'd be pretty cool.

- Yeah.

- Although Wistia are bringing out, tangent alert! Wistia are bringing out a embedded video in email tool.

- OK.

- Well, they'll play in email.

- Yeah, it's not subject line, but actually in the email.

- Wow, that'll be cool. People've been promising that for like a very, very long time.

- Yeah they announced it the other day. I retweeted it, to be precise.

- That's another game-changer isn't it? If that actually happens.

- There we go, whatever that is, we need some sort of siren.

- The reason we're rushing tonight, we've gotta stay on time, Andy's getting his hair cut, he's got an appointment booked in, so.

- If you cannot stay, what're you gonna do? - If you can't tell, his hair's gotten really long and shaggy isn't it?

- Some things have gotta come first. I'll let you know how it goes. Next week, you'll hear me.

- Have a look next week, put in the comments if you think his haircut's better or not.

- How important is segmentation?

- Like, massively. Like if anyone still -- we touched on it before, the email blast days are pretty gone for me.

- I've got a stat to back that up.

- Good.

- First ever stat. Monthly blog round up, three other weekly emails with products and things. 11% open rate usually, can't get it above that no matter what we try, emojis out of context, emojis in context, shouting, capitals, "Fucking open it."

- That probably worked well. - Segmented, really, really fine segmentation just to teachers and dot a c addresses, and it shot up to like 30 odd. Nearly 40%. It was like 38% or something, proof in the pudding isn't it?

- Any good persona-based marketing, like inbound.

- Back to personas, we need a button for that. - Yeah, back to personas, but it's so true isn't it? If you're not segmenting your email, you're not doing your job properly aren't you?

- And to just mention before, is that even if the message, the thing you're saying, you've only got one thing to say to your whole database, still segment it, and just find some sort of angle for that subject line or the general message.

- You've lost nothing by not emailing the other people. Because they wouldn't have opened it.

- Just clone it, you've got a new feature on your software, or whatever it is, just say, "This is great for persona," and it's great for everyone, just say it's great for the persona. "It's great for teachers, it's great for them, "It's great for them, it's great for them."

- It's gonna resonate a little bit.

- And people go like, "Oh, great." It works, it's nice, it's not -- people don't switch off when you start talking about them, people wanna hear about themselves, don't they?

- If you know you're being marketed to, and you're going camping next week and somehow someone's found that out, and sent you something about camping stuff.

- "Remember to take a stove." That's my extent of camping knowledge by the way. That's gonna work.

- When's the best time to send them?

- When people have had enough time to do the very urgent stuff, and they've got a bit of time to look at their email for more than a second. Most, oh this is very niche to me, not to talk about my clients, but part of them are that sort of half three in an afternoon, or half eight in the morning. Where people typically are not up in their busiest period.

- In some of the research I've had some feedback that, like, four in the morning's a good time, 'cause someone either can't sleep.

- Who're your clients again?

- And then, top of the inbox when they check it on the phone in the morning.

- I was gonna say, first thing in the morning's underused for me. If you've got any sort of middle c or management c-suite business owner, they've checked their emails before they get to work.

- Before they've got up.

- I do it, pick my phone up while I'm in bed, my email's cleared before I get out of bed and have a shower, so.

- I turn my alarm off, check my emails.

- Emails are checked before it gets switched

- Half six to half seven, I think that's really underused if you're in B2B and you're targeting that. But B2C, it's anyone's game really, because if you're targeting factory shift workers or policemen or whatever, middle of the night could be fine for them. If that's what works for that persona.

- Back to personas.

- I don't like to say personas, but I mean we've got loads that are chefs, waiters, people in hospitality working late-night shifts. We purposefully don't send them at the eight, nine o'clock, 'cause we know they're kipping because they've been 'til three in the morning.

- Yeah, and everyone else is sending them at those times. Of course you've been online, read a blog, "When's the best send time," picked that time, it is in general, but for their persona it's not, so their inbox is full at the worst time. If you're just sending it midnight, when they've finished their shift or summat.

- It'd be a bit obvious to say, but maybe not to listeners, but don't send them on the hour or on the half hour.

- When they look like you've scheduled, yeah.

- Just go for a random time.

- Half-four, some and I've had to unsubscribe from them, it just got to a point where all the blogs were just going, I knew it were nearly home time because all the emails started going mad.

- Is that 'cause you're a teacher and that's when you used to clock off?

- Fuck off. Half four in the morning.

- That's it, isn't it? They've gone, like, "Oh half four, yeah last half hour, "everyone'll check their emails "and they're done doing work."

- They've all been unsubscribed.

- Six weeks holidays, don't send anything.

- We're far too clever for that. It goes at half three.

- How often then? So I know it's down to persona, but how often should we send them emails?

- On the balance, not too much.

- Yeah, I think, not less is more, but I think weekly's I don't wanna use... "nice."

- Nice.

- I think that's a comfortable level. I'm not gonna be offended at one a week, that's not gonna clog my inbox. But I'm actually getting through to you often enough to stay top of mind.

- And what're you offering?

- If it's "Buy my shit, buy my shit," you don't want it.

- What if like, you've just bought a house, and your estate agent, there's no point in them emailing you in the week after is there? Or in the year, or five years after.

- No.

- So use that analogy to whatever suits you.

- Yeah, definitely.

- Persona and context wins out, doesn't it, on all of these, sorry, sorry, that's a rubbish answer.

- We'll leave it there, then, we'll round it off on time.

- I've just got an appointment.

- I'm gonna enjoy this 16th century castle a little bit more.

- It's not a castle.

- Shhh.

- Santa's Grotto.

- From Lapland.

- From Lapland, see you later, thank you, take care.