#266 The “No-Discount’ Abandoned Cart Email Sequence with Chris Orzechowski

“I like to have at least a little little bit of a line in there and to say, Hey, you know if you had any questions or if you had any problems checking out because that's something you know, sometimes too, depending on, you might look at your checkout be like, this makes total sense. And other people might be going through it. And they're not used to because we're using the platform. Normally just buying an issue with a credit card or PayPal or whatever you're using. You never know.”

Welcome to Thrive by Design, the podcast for ambitious independent jewelry brands, looking to profit from their products, get ready to make more and sell more doing what you love, without spending every single waking minute doing it. Hey, and if you're a creative fashion or product-based business, I want to welcome you to the show. I'll be dropping big tips on launching, growing, and scaling your business. Spend more of your precious time using your creativity to make you ready. All right, let's do this.

Tracy: Welcome to the Thrive by Design podcast episode 266. Oh my gosh, you are going to love today's episode but before I dive into that, let me introduce myself. Hey there, I'm Tracy Matthews. I'm the Chief Visionary Officer of Flourish and Thrive Academy and the host of the Thrive by Design podcast. And I'm excited to be here to be chatting with all your jewelry and creative product business owners about email marketing. In fact, today's episode is going to be super fun because I interviewed Chris Orzechowski about a killer of no discount abandoned cart sequence and you are going to love his strategy. Chris is awesome. I met him a couple years ago at a copy writing event.

And I got a reintroduction more recently from one of our students, Mary Geraldine, which was super fun. She has an amazing brand called Gardens of the sun. Go check her out. She's awesome. And email marketing has been a hot topic all year because it is actually working so well. It's working so well that we ended up releasing a bunch of business bundles and the first one that we released is called the Emails That Sell done for you bundle. So if you're interested in learning more about our business bundles, you can head on over to the show notes, which is https://flourishthriveacademy.com/266 And check out all the amazing business bundles that we have over there. But this has come up because we've been working really hard with the members in our community to keep their businesses afloat and pivot because of a lot of their traditional sources and in particular, doing art shows and events, and wholesale, a lot of that was canceled for a majority of the year.

And I know some of you in the summer months, have been doing your art shows and all those things. And you've been able to recoup some income in a very interesting way. And I just want to remind you that right around the corner is the holiday season and we want to get our email marketing game on point, develop a strategy where we're emailing people on a regular basis and getting our automated sequences set up. And that is what Chris is going to be talking about today. In fact, we work in depth with the students in our programs on how to set up automations in their business. Particular marketing automations amongst many other things, to help them drive more sales and traffic to their website, because we know, any time when you have direct access to your customers, you can grow a really successful business in any economy that does not rely on a lot of the things that we've been counting on, like in person shows and all those things.

And so I really want to empower you that if you've been stuck working really hard in your business, and it doesn't seem to matter, like how hard you're working, you're not getting the result that you want. Maybe you feel like you're spinning your wheels, maybe you're a little bit overwhelmed, because there's a lot of stuff to do. And you're starting to realize that all the things that you did to grow your business to get it to where it is right now is no longer working anymore, and you're frustrated because you can't see a clear path out of it and drive the ship on your own. And so I've been talking to a lot of people lately, and I know that for the majority of business owners, they will often hit these sort of business plateaus at a certain period of time because they are working in their, you know, with their own frame of reference, they have their own version of confirmation bias and how they're seeing things and they can't see their blind spots or the things that they can't see in business. 

So unless they have, get some help from outside eyes, it's really hard to overcome some of these things that happen as you're a growing business. So if you're feeling like you would like to move a little bit faster this holiday season, you're ready to get some outside eyes on your business and you'd like constructive feedback on what's happening. And also maybe someone to kind of take a look at inside your business and point out some of the blind spots and gaps you have. Because trust me, you can't see them yourself. You don't even realize that you have them. But we all have them. In fact, let me tell you a little story. My blind spots were the thing that actually led to the demise of my first company in 2008, because I was ignoring crucial signs of things that were happening and I did not pivot fast enough. And so my goal is to help as many of you come out of this a weird a half year possible on top or doing the best that you possibly can. 

So if you're interested in hearing more about that, I'd love to invite you to apply for a FREE Business Accelerator Audit. On those audits, we're going to do just what I said, we're going to take a look at your business, take a look at where you want to go, your big picture vision, we're going to take a look at some of the things that might be holding you back from reaching your goals as quickly as you like. And we're going to lay out a clear path forward, so you know exactly what you need to do using our Desire Brand Effect methodology. And if it makes sense, we're going to share with you how we can help you implement that in your business quickly. So head on over to https://www.flourishthriveacademy.com/strategy/ 

And see if you qualify for a FREE Business Accelerator Audit right there. You start to fill out a quick application and you'll know in just a few minutes, and it's easy peasy simple. Alright, so let's dive into today's episode. Chris is awesome. I was super pumped to talk to him and I'm very excited for him to share this Amazing information about the no discount, abandoned cart sequence, pretty cool stuff. And let me just do a quick introduction of him. Chris Orzechowski is the founder of Orzy Media, a boutique email marketing agency that helps ecommerce brands grow fast. He's also the author of the book, Make it Rain: The Secret of Generating Massive Paydays For Your Email List. So you're gonna love it. Let's dive into this episode with Chris.

Tracy: I am super excited to have Chris Orzechowski. on the show today. Thanks so much for being here, Chris.

Chris: Thank you for having me, Tracy.

Tracy: Well, we just found out in the pre interview because when I was introduced to you by one of our students, Mary Geraldine of garden of the sun, she introduced you to talk about this abandoned cart sequence and then I was like, I was looking at your website. Like I think I know that guy. And it turns out that we met at Kevin Rogers Copy Chief Live because I went to go check it out. My friend Laura Belgrade was singing. She was singing. No, she was dancing.

Chris: She might have been singing.

Tracy: So I was like, I know I'm so it's so fun that we've actually met in person before a couple years ago.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, that was a good event. It was fun.

Tracy: Yeah, super good. Well, thanks for being here. So you're an email copywriter and you specifically write for e-commerce brands in a lot of ways. So I want to hear a little bit more about your background and your journey into copywriting and kind of what you do and what your agency does.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, you know what, most people kind of found this after college and after working a different job, I used to be a school teacher. I taught special education, middle school before that was elementary school and it wasn't a bad gig, but it just wasn't really for me. And, you know, I always saw I saw these people using the internet to make money and I was like, how does that work? I gotta, I gotta like, learn that I got to figure that out. So they sent me down the rabbit hole. I discovered copywriting. I started doing that on the side next weekend and eventually built up enough clients before I could leave the teaching job and I worked with all kinds of clients. 

You know, the last seven years and in the beginning, it was usually a mix of like, you know, some ecommerce brands, some, even some brick and mortar, a lot of digital publishers, people sell courses and masterminds and things like that. And I just remember, like, looking back at all the projects that I did after like, halfway through my career, and I look back and I said, Man, every time I work with one of these e-commerce companies, everything just seems to work. It just works really, really well. You know, like, I would do these, you know, I've done a number of multimillion dollar course launches with different people, Jeff Walker, John Assaraf, a lot of different, you know, bigger name, dudes, people in the industry, you know, and we always been on pins and needles, or at least I would be, you know, you'd write 300 pages worth of copy. And then for three weeks here, like blood pressures through the roof.

Yeah, like, are we gonna hit our numbers? Or is this thing gonna flop and it's like, you know, it was just a very, after a while, just became a very stressful way to live month after month. And then I do these ecom projects and be like, wow, we did that email sequence we made 100k like that was easy, like, So eventually, I got to that point, I was like, why don't I just hyper focus on these people, the ecom people and then when I started looking around the industry, I just started noticing, like, there were, there was a lot of room for improvement. 

You know, there's obviously some brands to do it very well, but I just kept seeing with, I just kept seeing, like, every email like a big flashing picture discount, and then there were some brands and they were just doing the same sale every week. I'm like, it's been the eighth week in a row and 40% off sale, it's like your products just cost that much. It's not even a you know, like higher. So yeah, so I was like, there's got to be a better way to kind of do the calm email thing and a lot, a lot of my clients we can find a lot of successful me just writing a really great copy. And I was like maybe this will work for a lot different brands. And the more and more I tested out the more and more I just started work.

Tracy: So what are the range of types of companies that you've worked for before worked with in the e commerce space.

Chris: So I work with a lot of different brands. So a few meal, meal prep, meal delivery companies. Chef was one of my bigger clients. They're no longer in business, but they were a big startup and competing like Blue Apron and Hellofresh. I worked with Factor75  which is another meal delivery company, Filippo Loreti.

Tracy: The watch company.

Chris: Yeah. And I did there must have been back in 2016 I think it was we did a Kickstarter and did 5.2 million in 30 days. And so that was like, awesome. Yeah. You know, that was one of those I was like, holy crap, this is so cool.

Tracy: Can you repeat that? How much did you do in a few days?

Chris: It was like $5,170,000 depending on currency conversions at the time, you know, around give or take, you know, a couple hundred thousand or 100,000 or so. But you know, it was it was a decent sized Kick starter things are the 18th biggest of all time at that time, I think a few of you know, bumped us down the list but and then we did another one the year before where we, you know, kind of recycled the campaign updated, refreshed it and did like another 4.4. So, those are fun gigs. But you know, it was a great great company, great products and a hungry audience and it was just kind of like a perfect storm kind of thing but trying to think what other brand right now I have a supplement client we have a client that smells – spells sells. Whoa, hello,

Tracy: Smells, Spells and sells

Chris: I promise it's all it's all it all comes together. They sell a spray for if you you know smoke marijuana or cigarettes, whatever, you don't want it to smell like it they smell a spray that gets rid of it like that and lasts and then we have another client who sells called carnivore snacks and they're like dehydrated not dehydrated, but kind of like dehydrated and baked like rib eyes. So it's like imagine you took like, you know, a one pound rib eye and you put it into a little bag you fit in your pocket and you take it anywhere needed. So it's pretty cool. So pretty wide variety

Tracy: Not just for those that's not for the vegans but..

Chris: It's definitely not Yeah, definitely not not for them.

Tracy: So you've done you've written email copy for like a range of products from like high end jewelry, and watches to like meat in a bag? So, in your opinion, I mean, I know we talked a little bit about how you got into copywriting for e-commerce, but like, Is there really like a big difference between writing for the different types of products? And like, what are those differences?

Chris: Good question. Um, you know, the biggest differences that I find like, I think from a strategy perspective, there's not a ton of differences. I mean, maybe here and there maybe for selling like a mattress versus supplement you know, mattress where you purchase once a decade versus supplement which you got to purchase every 30 days, like there's going to be some nuance in strategy there. But the one like the frame, and the lens that I like to look through with all this is that all of your emails really shouldn't necessarily be about your products. It should be about outcomes, right? Because what I've seen with the brands that I've worked with and tell me if you've seen this as well.

Products change over time, right products evolve products, get discontinued products, get put on the shelf, you introduce new products you come up with an upgraded version, right? So if all of our emails are just about products, like, that's not really why people are buying things, right? Like, why are people buying jewelry, like they're buying jewelry, to optimize the way they look to improve their self confidence and all of those, you know, there's a number of factors.

Tracy: One of the things that we talked about is like jewelry is a desired purchase. It's not something that's needed. And a lot of people buy jewelry, because of the way it makes it feel. You mentioned confidence, but like people feel beautiful sometimes when they wear jewelry, or, you know, it reminds them of special moments in time or whatever. So it's pretty sentimental in general.

Chris: Exactly. So if your emails are about that, rather than the product, because people say, Oh, this is a 24 karat gold and yada yada yada and that's cool. Like, I mean, you need to know that stuff, obviously. Right? But really, that's not why people are buying it. That's not the emotional reason why people are buying it. So I think with all the brands that I've worked with, the one thing that we always try to do is sell an outcome that people want and then use the product as a vehicle To help them get to that outcome.

Tracy: So what were the outcomes you were selling with Natasha's watch brand?

Chris: So there were a few. So I guess I could demonstrate with an example, if you don't mind. So one of the emails we wrote for them was can your appearance affect your salary? 

It was this email. And actually, we referenced a study from Neil Patel. And we kind of broke one of those sacred rules of email, like don't link to anything other than the main call to action. But we did, you said, Hey, check out this article written by Neil Patel. He spent, I think it's got like $100,000 in the style, and helped him make like an extra 600 k that year from I mean, you know, he had all the data points. It was a very well done article, but he said, Take a look at this article. And you know, ask yourself this, like, do you think if you worked on your parents, would it help you get a promotion? Would it help you feel better about yourself? Would it help you hold your chin up higher when he walked into the office every day? Right? And you know, there's a lot of ways to do that. One of those ways you could do it is by getting a nice watch. That you love that expresses who you are right and broadcasts the message you want to be sending to the world. So we could have said, Hey, here's a watch that isn't cool, buy it here's a discount, right? And that's what most people do. Yeah, but he took it one level deeper.

Tracy: Yeah, I love that. So that is that's such a great, you know, first of all, that's a brilliant subject line like, what was it again?

Chris: Can  your appearance affect your salary,

Tracy: Brilliant, I think everyone here who's listening to this podcast should use that in one way, shape, or form if you're selling a luxury or jewelry or even create a product because I feel like it's something that they're using for themselves. That's massive. But I love that it's all focused on outcomes, and you can even tie data into it, which is super amazing. Well, you know, we've been measuring all that stuff as well. So one of the things about emails for e-commerce, in particular in the jewelry space, it's like a lot of times the emails are image heavy, I guess is the best way to put it? How do you kind of incorporate that balance of products and copy in order to make it work?

Chris: So, you know, I go back and forth on this a little bit, because images, obviously, like they're appealing to people, right? And, you know, depending on tests you run and data that you see from certain, you know, I'm not in the very, I'm in the camp of like, just text or just images, right. Like, I think there's kind of a middle ground here. But what I think is that people, the images support the copy, right, so like, the copy is really why people are going to open up the email. And if you're writing your emails in a dynamic way, and you're telling stories, that really becomes the prize, right? Like, if I just sent you an email, and there was just an image with no words in it, you'd be confused, right? So we obviously don't want to take that approach where it's just like, image flashing button buy now. 

Like I've seen clients and I've been into people's Klaviyo accounts where that's what they're doing. They're just sending an image in a shop now button and there's no context. There's no story. It's like, why am I getting this and then the sales report Like that, you know, 34,000 person list or making 150 bucks when they send an email like that. So and that shouldn't happen, that should be thousand $2000, $5,000. And then email goes out, right? But I think what you do is you take people on a journey, right? Like there's so many things you can do with the text and with the copy, you can tell people the stories, but what you're working on in your company, new products, you're developing things that happened on the factory floor, right? things that are happening in your own life, like basically, you know, if you watch what Laura Belgrade does, like those kinds of stories, those work three come to I mean, that's, that's what I have clients right now.

And that's what we're doing. We're telling stories, we're focusing on the outcomes and the transformation, all those things like I think the pictures help, definitely. But I think, you know, it goes back to this one of the one of my favorites admin, from like the 1950s-1960s era, who's not as well known as like the David Ogilvy is and those kind of guys but his name is Howard Gossage, and he was out in San Fran and this little firehouse and had this little tiny agency and his quote that like just is like the pillar of my one of the big pillars of my belief. He said that people don't read ads, they read what interests them, sometimes it's an ad. So I believe that if your emails just look like ads all the time, and they're just the pictures and they're just discounts and they're just screaming you buy, buy, buy, buy. 

People are gonna tune that out because it's not interesting. There's no reason and it's almost like what I'm like in my inbox like, God forbid I buy something from Brooks Brothers I get spammed seven times a day for the next like 10 weeks and it just does things on sale for 20% off this thing's on sale for 30% off this thing's like I don't need to open those emails anymore because I know what's in there there's nothing dynamic isn't exciting in there waiting for me I know it's an ad and if I'm not ready to buy I'm just not gonna open it so I think you just focus on making your ads not look like sorry your emails not look like ads you'll you know you really see some great results.

Tracy: That's awesome. Okay, yeah, cause we always talk about this balance and storytelling is huge for my industry. And in fact, we call it story selling sometimes because I feel like there's so many different ways that you can weave in stories. Have your customers of your brand have like your even your dream clients or whatever it is into something that's compelling that people want to read. And you could do that video and all the aspects of the content that you create can be reflected back into your emails, which I think is really powerful. 

So what kind of like email sequences because we're super big on, I know that a lot of people listening to this podcast, probably don't have these in place. But we're really big on setting up automated sequences on the back end of a business, including like, I call it an opt in or a nurture sequence where they opt in to your list for some reason, post purchase sequence or win back campaign and then also abandoned cart sequences. So do you wanna talk a little bit about those and like, how you structure them?

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. cart abandonment. What I like to do with these is I like to have a little bit of storytelling within those because I've seen some from bigger brands, I think one was Bonobos, I saw recently and there was just it was just like a picture of the product and like forgetting this picture of the product button and like that was it like I guess The works are big enough brands have good products, right? But like, what we do with ours is we kind of tell a little story. So the one we did for one of my clients was like, you know, this is the client that sells the spray for if you smoke marijuana, and you don't want it to smell like you do, we kind of took the whole voice, we injected some brand voice in there. And we kind of took this whole thing like, you know, we're smoking weed all day, we're making cool products. And like, it's just got this kind of like funny, stoner vibe to it. 

So we basically just said, like, Hey, we're just getting ready to run out and grab pizza and have, you know, have a little one session. But before we did that, I just noticed you left something in your cart. Did you pump too many times before passing? Like, you know, and we kind of like inject some jokes and some humor. We don't do that with every brand. And that's like, I work for every brand, obviously. But like we try to find what's unique about the brand's voice and inject a little bit of humor and fun into those emails because it makes people stop and makes people think and they say, wait a minute.

That's funny, or that's cool, or, oh my gosh, this brand is so different than anyone else and it's almost like they kind of want to stick around to see what else you're going to say. So in terms of things like nuts and bolts for cart abandonment, three emails, I like to not go with discounts, especially not for people who are already customers, you know, maybe, maybe maybe test out where you do a conditional split if it's someone you know.

Tracy: A lot of the people listening probably don't understand what that means. 

Chris: Okay, yeah, I'll unpack that. So a conditional split is basically like you can choose criteria. So in this case, conditional split, you know, in your email software, you could say, hey, if someone is a customer already, send them down this path, they get this set of emails. And then if someone's not a customer, and they're just a prospect, or just a regular subscriber, no purchase records in your system, and they can get this other sequence and then the sequences can do different things. So there's a lot of different ways you could set it up. But you know, you could do something like if they didn't take their welcome discount, you could offer it in the cart abandonment sequence, right, because you've already committed to giving up that margin there. 

But I think I always err more for all these sequences. I always say err more on the side of let's try to put off giving them a discount. And I think the reason why is like, you know, if you went into buy like a Louis Vuitton bag, or like a or a scarf or something, right, like and they're like, and by the way, if you order now, in the next five minutes where you give you 20% off, you're like, Oh, I kind of don't want that anymore, right? Like it takes away. It makes the brand feel cheap almost a little bit. You know, I think in the right circumstances, yeah. But like, for instance, Lulu lemon, like, I love their joggers. I'm a big fan of that brand. And like, they never put those things on sale. And I like to cherish them. Like every time I get a gift. I'm like, Oh, I'm buying something, you know, I don't need the discount because I like the product. It's a good product. It's a good brand. They're not, you know, roped me in with a discount. I don't need that. So I think too many people rush to discount, I think test that without the discount first. See what happens.

Tracy: Yeah, I love that. You know, one of the things I can't stand discounting, I made that mistake in my first business when I had a jewelry company. And I used to have these massive sample sales because I built a huge direct to consumer audience. Because most of my business was wholesale back then this is back in the 90s and early 2000s. And, and the thing that was interesting is that the direct to consumer is like when I finally got a website up, like most of them would never buy regular price because I train them to buy it from my sample sales. But if I did put some things on sale on the website, then they would buy it then. And so when you offer discounts, you train people to only buy from you on discount, and you want to be the like, haggling brand that people are buying from so train them to buy from your regular price, and then give them a reward if you happen to have a sale or an event, like once a year or something like that, but don't discount too often. So what do you include in those in that abandoned cart sequence?

Chris: So basically, the general structure is kind of like, you know, I like to set the context with all these behaviorally triggered automations because I don't think people are dumb like, I think they're smart. And I think they know that you probably got some crazy software that can track what they do. You know, and I think people can't like, you know, if you send them an email an hour after they put something in their cart if they know you're kind of like track a little bit better. So I always say like, hey, just checked in and got this notification. So you're leaving. So you left this in your cart? Or if it's browse abandoned. Hey, so are you checking this out, just want to check and see if you had any questions about it. Hope this is what you're looking for. If it is cool, might as well grab it right, we only have a limited amount of these in stock, or we make these by hand and they take a long time. So grab it now if there could always be a reason to act now.

Tracy: So you're creating urgency by saying that there's limited quantities, or we make them by hand or they take time, or we only have a few left or something like that. So that's the urgency not to discount.

Chris: Yeah, I throw that all under the umbrella of like the reason to act now. And there's a lot of creative ways. Beyond even what we just mentioned here really depends on your brand and the way you know, you make your products and market them but that's definitely an important part of it. I sometimes like to pull them the dynamic product image like hey, here's the items in your cart, obviously test it out, right? It kind of depends too on like your overall templates that you're using. Like if everything is super visual, we probably want that if everything's more text based. 

You might not needed as much as something to test out I think, like with, you know, with with most things and marketing, it's testing will, will give you the answer but and then I always encourage people to reach out and ask questions and say “Hey, you know, especially like a jeweler or something like that, like, you know, anything you're buying that you're going to wear on your body. What I found even myself as a consumer, I always noticed, like, I wonder if this is going to fit or I hope this fits or hopes this looks the way I think it does, right? So you might want to talk to someone, and maybe there's a different product if you're trying to decide between the two and someone from their team from support could help you make that decision. So you can get the thing that you want.

Tracy: So would that be the second email to say like, Hey, I noticed that you haven't completed this yet. Do you have any questions about it or something like that?

Chris: I like to invite them to respond back in each email.

The reason why is because I just you know, I don't know like, I just don't think you can guarantee that people are going to read every single email. Right? There might be someone who they only get they get all three emails but maybe they only had time or only they only opened up email number two or So I like to have at least a little little bit of a line in there and just say, Hey, you know, if you had any questions, or if you had any problems checking out, because that's some, you know, sometimes too, depending on, you might look at your check out. I mean, this makes total sense. 

I mean, this makes total sense. And other people might be going through it. And they're not used to because you're using a different platform that we're normally used to buying, or they had an issue with a credit card or PayPal or whatever you're using. You never know there's like a million different reasons why, and half of you never even guess like, they'll give you a real quick example. Not that it was a payment issue, but just in terms of a cart abandonment story. We were getting our bathroom upstairs redone in our house here and they were like jackhammering tiles one day and I was sitting at the dining room table, and we have this floating shelf back there and there were these wine glasses. 

And you know, I'm just checking out buying something for my wife and all of a sudden, the jackhammer was shaking the walls. I didn't realize one of the glasses fell off the shelf shattered into a bazillion pieces as I was like mid checkout in my cart, and then I had to spend 25 minutes cleaning up all the glass I had to get the vacuum out. It was like this whole big process. I'd wash all the glasses by the bar over there. And meanwhile, like I was literally like entering my credit card number. So without a cart abandonment, like, like the person who wrote the cart abandonment sequence could have never imagined that sequence of events playing out. So that's why you gotta follow up. That's why you gotta reach out and see if they have questions. That's why you got to, you know, have these things in place because you never know what's going on in your customer's life.

Tracy: That is so true. There's been so many times when I've like been shopping Instagram or something like an ad pops up and like, I'm in the thing, and then my, on my phone, and I'm typing, I'm trying to type in my details, but I'm realizing that the autofill is not working. And I'm like, I got to go get my credit card. And it's like, late at night, and I'm like, forget it. I'll just open it up in the morning and then something glitches and the whole thing closes and you just never know why. Like usually it's because someone is busy and they've walked away or like they're late to pick their kids up from school or something like that. So, yeah, it's interesting.

Chris: A lot of people think, I don't know, like, I've talked to a lot of business owners and they're like, well, if they didn't buy it, I just didn't want it. I'm like, No, no, no They added to the cart like they definitely are at least a little bit interested, like, let's see, you know, sometimes even like adding a risk reversal, right? Like, hey, and by the way, you know, maybe email two or three in that sequence say hey, by the way, just in case you weren't sure about this, we have a 60 day money back discount where you could exchange it, or get a complete refund. Try it out, you know, we've got to get

Tracy: Money back guarantee

Chris: Yeah, sorry. Sorry. Yeah, that's um, it's a guarantee right? So like, you add that in and that will ratchet up response as well because it's kind of that risk reversal. So there's a lot of these like little copy leavers, some little like pieces, almost like lines of code, essentially, right? That's the way I view copy. It's like code that's going to go into your reader or your customers brains gonna change the way they think about interacting with your brand, right? So you can write these little lines of copy and just add one or two that align a little bit of risk reversal a little bit of a reason to act now. People are going to jump at those.

Tracy: Well the coolest thing too is I heard I was just doing some research. Some I just, well, this will air after the masterclass is over, but I was researching metrics like automated sequences and how much more effective they are. They're just regular email broadcasts and abandoned carts like they sometimes get like 30 to 40%. open rates as opposed to like a regular email broadcast. And your ability to actually recapture that sale, like sometimes will recover up to 30%, or even more of abandoned carts by just sending out a sequence. And so I think anyone who's not doing it is actually just leaving money on the table.

Chris: Try it out, you know, we've got to get It's free money. And you don't get it, you set it up one time, like, you know, some of these sequences we've written for clients, we wrote them three years ago, and they're still profiting off that, like if you know how long you plan on running your business for if it's 510 years, like you could write a sequence today, that's going to be paying you a decade from now. Like there's not many more forms of leverage like that in your life that you're going to find it's crazy.

Tracy: So we talked about kind of the checking in kind of like, Hey, I am not sure if you realize you left this. Then we talked about risk reversal. What's another idea for like the third Email now, abandoned cart

Chris: In the third email that's going to ratchet up the urgency, right? That's when I really focus on that reason to act now. And like, if you're not gonna use a discount, if you don't have low stock, or, you know, you could just use the old Hey, listener carts about to expire. And I think, you know, here's the thing, like, it's n

ot like, you're going to write that one or two sentences, and 100% of people are going to jump, right, but like, maybe you get 10% or 20% more people who are going to buy now that wouldn't have before, if you didn't include a lot of copyright. And what that does, so I think we have this like fear of loss, you know, FOMO, right. It's like, Oh, well, I kind of wanted that stuff. 

And I took the time to shop. So it's a little bit of a zeigarnik effect, they want to finish what they started, right. It's a little bit of like, I almost have those things in my possession, right? And now I'm going to lose them even though they don't have them. They see them on the screen, like I don't want to lose all that stuff. Right. So I think I'm really just focusing on that. And one of the things we tried with one of my clients was we said listen Here's the thing like your carts about to expire. And what that means is that someone else is going to get your stuff like Brian from Tampa, and Brian's a huge fan of our brand. And he's gonna buy like all the stuff in your cart. And I know you don't want Brian from Tampa to get your stuff.

So like, we went, and it was kind of, yeah, it was kind of funny, you know, and like, not you. Like I said, not every brand has to be funny like that. But there's always a creative way that you can inject your voice into it, that we're working with a nonprofit right now they sell coffee, and they donate a large part of the proceeds to the nonprofit arm. But what we're doing is basically saying like, hey, not only are you about to get some awesome coffee, as soon as you complete your order, you're also going to be helping kids orphans in Honduras who really need the help, right? So like, that's not, you know, that's not a funny thing, right? That's not a funny piece of copy. But it's something that kind of tugs at your heartstrings and it gives you another reason to act now and another reason to buy instead of just not buying.

Tracy: So this is perfect for anyone who has a philanthropy aspect to their business. Like if you're donating a portion of proceeds to something or you're doing some sort of Have you regularly do some sort of incentive for charity? This is a great way to kind of weave that in. I love it.

Chris: I was gonna say it's always how you can kind of I call it demonstration and dimensionalization, right like you want to demonstrate how the products if you can future pace a little bit to like you're so close to getting this supplement like you're about to be so jacked as soon as you get this, like that's what you could do for like, you know, if you were a supplement brand, and the dimensionalization, is what we talked about with the nonprofit stuff, right? Like, here's how this purchase, here's how you take this action is going to affect your life and the life of other people like they're super powerful little, little copy nuggets that you could drop right in there.

Tracy: I love that. So let's talk a little bit about list segmentation. You briefly mentioned it earlier where you could test like different sub categories of buyers versus non buyers. So like, what's your philosophy around that and how would you write like for someone who's just getting started with this because I know a lot of people, they don't understand how powerful list segmentation can be and it can get complicated. If you like. So what's your philosophy around that?

Chris: Yeah, you're right. It definitely can if some people get super deep into the weeds, I think for most people, like there's a few key segments you want to look at, I think the most important segment you want to look at is your buyer segments. So the way I have my list and a lot of my clients list set up is we set up a few whenever we start working with them, and we say, Okay, here's the unconverted people are just the prospects or subscribers, we'll call them, non buyers or non buyers yet, and then we have the customers. And I heard this great line. It's I wish I was I wish I came up with it, but it's from Paul Moore. I don't know if you know, Paul, but he's a genius. He's a smart dude.

He's a smart dude. And he said, I'm not trying to run. Okay. Yeah. He said, I'm not trying to build an email list. I'm trying to build a buyer's list. And as soon as I heard that, I was like, Oh, my god that is like that. That's what we're trying to do. Right? We're, you know, yes, we're trying to grow a list. Absolutely. But we're trying to grow the list so we can grow a buyer's list because we can't help people with our products until they cross the chasm. You can't learn karate, if you're standing outside and looking into the glass on the sidewalk. Right, so we look at the buyers. And some of these things are for tracking more so than mailing, right, like we want to see the buyers number going up every week, obviously, we want to see the customers list, sorry, the subscribers list going up as well, because that means our organic list is growing.

I also like to look at what segment of them are engaged versus not engaged, right. So you have, you know, super active versus inactive, those are two easy ones. And the way you do this criteria is basically each list is going to be different. But you could say people who've opened or clicked an email in the last 30 days, those could be like your active prospects, and then that will give you some clues into your overall list health. You know, if you have 10% of your list, suddenly, only 10% of your list is you know, opening or clicking in the last 30 days. Like you might have some list hygiene issues, right? Like you really need to fix that. I like to look at VIPs. That's one segment because those are like your whales and we like to do those. It's going to differ client to client but I usually pick a spending threshold that they have to cross or a number of purchases specials. 

So if someone's bought from you four times or they've spent $600. And they meet either of those criteria, they go into that VIP category not to get around 10% 9% 11% of the list to play with a criteria until I get to about that 10% number. Because those are the people where if you only have maybe you have a limited edition, you know, we only have 75 of these items in stock. Those are the people you want to go to you don't want to open up everyone. I'd like to open up to them first, because they're the people who are my biggest fans, who were the loyalists, were telling the friends about us, we're posting on social and tagging us, we're doing all of those things like those are the people you want to reward with those super special offers.

Tracy: I love that that's so good. So and then from a list building perspective, like what are your strategies for helping like advising your clients on building their list like from? I mean, we have, we have our strategies, like there's a bunch of different ways that you can get them on but the one thing that people always lean in is like some free shipping or discount option. And I like it. I'm like, so what are some of the other ideas besides that?

Chris: Yeah, I mean, so yeah, those are those are the obvious ones and like, I could see There's there's definitely pros and cons to that, like the pros are like, Oh, you're gonna get people who obviously want to buy if they're looking for a coupon but on the other hand, you're training people to buy with a discount. One of my clients and this was his idea, not mine, so all the credit goes to him. He sells leather bags, like they're really really nice leather bags. They're meant for men's leather bags, like backpacks and luggage and stuff. And what he does is he does a raffle he raffles off a gift card. So he's not giving a discount everyone, he's basically giving credit to one person.

I think it's every month or every two weeks, and his list is growing like a weed. I mean, every time we talk, it's another, you know, three, four or 5000 people bigger and it just works great. You know, obviously, like most things you got to test I'm not huge on offering a digital lead magnet like seven ways to think that works better if you're selling information. I mean, I guess it could work. You know, again, it depends on the product, but um, I've tend to find you know, something that's a little bit more tangible, that's a bit more geared towards people buying it. It's not discount or free shipping, a gift card, something like that. Maybe a free product it depends but again those are usually the things we look at these are the first few moves that we make.

Tracy: Yeah most of the people that I know who are building our list by building a VIP like they call their VIP insiders not in the way that you're talking about us with their top top people. That's mostly what people advise but like the draw is that they get exclusive access to like insider sales or like special events etc. We've had people test the lead magnet thing but it's usually more like a guide on things like how to clean jewelry or how to care for a product and how to style it. And that sometimes works but like you said, it really depends on the brands in your experience like with this guy who's doing the raffle is are people just signing up for that list for free stuff or do this people actually convert to buyers

Chris: They convert to buyers, you're gonna get some freebie seekers but I think the thing is gonna get freebie seekers no matter what you do, you know, like so We haven't really seen an issue so much with the raffle. And that's kind of what's been working best. And he's had that running for a few years now. He used to do the discount, and he opted for the raffle instead of that because it was working a lot better. So obviously, because that's another list of growth strategies people do, too. They'll do the big giveaways. And they'll do you know, get everyone to cross promote. And I'll do one of those big events where you know, when products from these four or five brands get a lot of freebie seekers through those things, but about the exclusive access and those kinds of things. I think if you have the right kind of brand, like are you familiar with the house?

Tracy: HAUS?

Chris: The upper teeth, upper teeth? So we just bought them for the first time and Wow, what a cool brand. I mean, I could talk about them all day. They're awesome. But one thing that I saw wasn't necessarily a lead magnet. But one thing that was cool about their membership that's like making me kind of want to test it out is they have they offer those, you know, pop up events and cool insider stuff. So that's one of those things. If you have a A brand that's like that, that's a, I don't know if I'd call it a lifestyle brand, but kind of right. Like, it's kind of more in that realm where it's not just about the beverage, it's about the lifestyle and like, I don't know, it's just it's just cool. I'm having a tough time putting into words but you know, if you have something that goes beyond the products into that spills into people's lives, if you're a cooking you know, if you sell cooking stuff, and you have classes or you have other pieces of content that will help people use the products like there's a lot of different ways where you could kind of use some of those tests some of those things out as lead magnets, like you're saying with the insider's club. I don't know if it's gonna work for every brand, but I think with certain brands. Absolutely.

Tracy: Yeah, I think for people with cult followings, or they really like the product, but they're not ready to buy. Now it works really well. But the best way to build an email list is actually from buyers. So it's about getting the right traffic and making sure that your website's converting getting those people on your list understanding how to segment those people are figuring out another way. I mean, I love the raffle idea, as long as you're Getting the right kinds of people on the list. I think it can do, too. Yeah. Chris, this was awesome. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, this, this is a good one. Tell us a little bit about what you do like on the side, like where can people find you? I know you have some courses for email copy and stuff like that and an agency. So let's talk about that.

Chris: Yeah, so my main site right now is the https://theemailcopywriter.com/ I was very fortunate to grab that domain many many years ago. found that today. But, I published a lot of content there. I have a weekly series called email the week and basically I just take emails from really cool ecommerce brands. And I break them down and I show you like, Hey, here's all the things that are going on in this email to kind of break it down so that you can use it for your own business and it's a lot of work each week, but people really like it. And I have profiled a lot of big brands and just kind of showed you all the secret sauce that goes on, at least from what I can tell behind the rebound marketing strategy in the copy strategy and those kinds of things. And then I have to give away my book too.

If you want to try my list, make them coming out another book soon, but probably about three weeks away. And that one's about e commerce, email automation. But I also have an agency called Orzy Media. And basically, we just work with e commerce businesses and help them, you know, blow up their revenue with email. And you know, we do that a few different ways. We can build automation. Sometimes if people want full management, we can just manage their accounts, and they just kind of sit back and sip on some house and we just run all their email and enjoy ourselves. And then we also do you know, coaching can some people want to, you know, done with you or they want, they want to learn how to do it themselves, so they don't have to have an agency the rest of their lives, which I totally understand. So we do some of those training situations as well.

Tracy: That's amazing, Chris, thanks so much for being here. And we'll have links to everything in the show notes. And this has been awesome. I appreciate you.

Chris: Thank you, Tracy. Appreciate you, too.

Tracy: All right. Thank you so much for listening to the show today. As always, we're going to have all the links and everything that Chris spoke about so that you can find him over on the show. notes you can head on over to http://flourishthriveacademy.com/266 . To check out all that goodness, you can also check out our business bundles over there, and so much more if you're interested in seeing if you qualify for a Free Business Accelerator Audit. We'll also have that link right over there on the show notes as well. Thanks so much for listening to the show. This is Tracy Matthews, signing off.