5 Email Hacks To Boost Shopify Sales Forever — Sergey Sapelnyk | What DTC Email Mistakes To Avoid, Why Mobile Emails Need Clear Designs, How Visual Emails

5 Email Hacks To Boost Shopify Sales Forever — Sergey Sapelnyk | What DTC Email Mistakes To Avoid, Why Mobile Emails Need Clear Designs, How Visual Emails Increase Engagement, What Makes Pop-ups Boost Lists, Why Email Frequency Speaker 1: I send some, call it 80 million plus emails a year and I still see so much opportunity. I mean email's been around for decades now and there's still a long way to go I think and there's a lot of money being left on the table. I'm going to go through a list in no particular order of where I would focus on if I was a DTC brand. So first and foremost, I would say... Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Ecommerce Coffee Break podcast. Today we want to talk about email marketing strategies and simple strategies to help you boost your revenue. Joining me on the show today is Sergey Sapelnyk. He is the current co-owner of BedForkedMarketing.co and he also founded two successful ecommerce brands – Society Socks and Pearly Drinks. Sergey specializes in helping brands boost growth through email marketing, especially in today's challenging landscape with platforms like Meta Ads and TikTok Shops. He's here today to share actionable tips that you can use right away to improve your email marketing and grow your business. So let's dive in and welcome him to the show. Hi. How are you today? Speaker 1: Great, great. The loud of applause is crazy. It's really loud. Hopefully, people in the car listening to this podcast are clapping along as well. Speaker 2: I hope so, too. So, let's dive right into email marketing. I'm a big fan of email marketing for 20-plus years and specifically with DTC brands. It's a big opportunity there, but it's not always easy. What's your take on what are the biggest challenges and the biggest mistakes that you see when it comes to email marketing for DTC brands? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So, for some context, dual, easy to read, and so on just goes such a long way. Just thinking about the basics, you know, as they say, KISS, keep it simple, stupid, frankly, is something that a lot of brands, you know, should be following. Now, in terms of tactical changes in that area that I would focus on. First and foremost, mobile responsiveness. I mean, most people, just like you and I, Claus, open their emails on phones, as high as 70-80% of emails that I send, depending on the brand, are opened on phones. So just make sure that you're building emails for that. I mean, a lot of brands send an email, you can't really read what's going on. On the phone, and the person just closes the email. So just being very clear from that standpoint. And beyond that, just making sure that the hierarchy that you're following in your email is, you know, basically following basic UI UX principles. You're going from a headline, transitioning to a sub headline, having clear call to actions, and so on and so forth, so that the eye follows, you know, what story you're trying to tell me. And then finally, I would say avoiding extremely long paragraphs because if you're a DTC brand, no one really cares about the massive paragraph you're going to send me. Unknown Speaker: People are visual creatures. Speaker 1: They just want the pants, the underwear, the makeup that you're selling. And typically, unless you have something amazing to say, I would stay away from longer paragraphs. So that's the first bucket is being more visual, simpler, and just easier to read. Speaker 2: Let me just stop you there. I just want to dive a little bit deeper into the email, the mobile view of an email. I think that's particularly important. You said that 70-80% are opening on mobile devices and you said there are sometimes problems that people just cannot read it. It's either too long or they put text and graphic or whatever. What would be a structure from your side for mobile-first to get it right from scratch? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, certainly. So to get it right from scratch, I guess two directions you could take it. First, I see a lot of DTC brands, the way they send emails is they just insert like JPEGs or PNGs into an email. And a lot of the more sophisticated email clients or email softwares like Klaviyo, for example, allow you to upload mobile and desktop-specific images. So if you're the brand that sends blocks like that, I would just make sure you have mobile images with bigger text. Now, if you're a brand that sends actual almost like plain text or HTML emails, I would just bump up the size and don't worry about fonts looking too big on desktop. A lot of these builders also are dynamic when it comes to desktop versus mobile. So just make sure that you're bumping up that size. And ultimately, what I suggest everyone always does is send yourself a preview. You will instantly be able to see is this too small or too big or not, and you'll be able to suss that out. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a great tip. I know you should never send anything out before you haven't tested it, and maybe also give it to your colleagues to proofread for typos and different devices, not only your phone, other devices as well, and then only then hit the send button. I have probably made every mistake that's in the book over the years, and I have been very, very particular on testing before I hit the send button. Cool. Dive into the structure and let me know a little bit more about it. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Beyond that, what I typically like to focus on and fix with a lot of brands that I start working with is just having cleaner and clearer call to actions. So first and foremost, making your CTAs look like actual buttons goes a long way. Consumers are such quick, distracted animals at this point. We have messages firing at us from all angles. Just having a button that looks like a button goes a long way, making sure it's big and easy to find in the email. Now, beyond that, kind of a pro-level tip that I would give is making sure that the story that you're telling in your email leads into the button. So, the example that I always love to share is just naturally guide the person. So, if you're selling, let's say, a hair loss product and you're talking about the problem, oh, you're losing hair, we know you want your hair to grow back, I would make a call to action, test something like, grow back your hair now, here's how to grow back your hair, whatever, tie it to the story and I can guarantee your click-through rate is going to go through the roof. Speaker 2: Great tip there. So you said sending emails and people get far too many emails and as a brand, obviously, you want to communicate as much as possible with your client. What's the frequency of emails that you're sending out? Is there any kind of guideline there or what's your experience? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So, Claus, you probably have a variety of business builders from different run rates listening to the podcast, so I'll talk about the different tiers and how I think about it. So, if your business is doing, let's say, under $100,000 a month in run rate, I would say, at minimum, aim to have at least one email every single week. So, you know, even if your business is doing $5,000, $10,000 a month and you're just starting out, make sure you're nurturing that list because the last thing that you want to do is for people to forget about you and for you to come back in a year when you're doing $200,000 a month and for your email list to just not care. And I see that happen very, very often. Don't take the list for granted, but also make sure you're nurturing these people right away. And it doesn't have to be complicated. I said previously, don't send massive paragraphs in an email. It's okay to send a simple email with a couple of sentences and just a simple image that you designed in Canva. That's totally fine. Just follow the basic principles and tell a nice story. Now, if you're, let's say, above $100,000 in run rate, up to maybe $200,000, $400,000 a month, I would say, at minimum, you should be sending two emails a week. And if you're not sending that many emails, you are probably leaving a lot of run rate on the table. And then if you're above the threshold of, let's say, roughly $500,000 a month in revenue, I would say send at least five emails a week, if not more. Because when your business is that big already, when you're getting into the $5-10 million a year revenue scale, Your list is probably super big. You could start segmenting and getting more complex and figuring out where the opportunity lies that way. So that's kind of the sliding scale for me. At minimum, try to send one email every week or every two weeks up to five to seven emails a week. Speaker 2: I want to dive a little bit into how to collect email addresses. Obviously, email address is the best database you can have. It's owned marketing. It's not based on someone else. Obviously, you have to get an order in, and then you have an email to fulfill the order, and then you start your marketing. What are other ways to build your email list? Speaker 1: Yeah. Massive, massive opportunity. You're spot on. Honestly, in the email world, this is the most valuable asset that we have. And honestly, as meta and Google and all these paid advertising platforms get harder and harder and harder every single year, your own email list, your own media becomes increasingly important. So it's such a valuable asset that you got to plant that seed now and you'll start seeing results years down the line. Pop-ups are the biggest way for you to leverage getting new opt-ins and new emails into your ecommerce brand. A massive stat that I love to share is just an example of Let's say you have 100,000 monthly visitors to your website. And the difference between a 1% opt-in rate and a 10% opt-in rate on your pop-up is the equivalent of half a million dollars in a year. Half a million dollars and call it 120,000 people on your email list. So huge, huge, huge difference. And you can see how that compounds over time. Now, the beautiful part about collecting emails and opt-ins is it's really, really easy to test. Frankly, the pop-up, typically, you get so much data and so quickly, especially if you're getting a lot of traffic, that you can test things very, very fast. Now, what I would suggest brands do is they follow a really simple hierarchy of what they're testing in their pop-ups. Typically, I like to test first and foremost what the offer and messaging is. So no percent off, 10% off, 20% off, a gift, whatever. I would test that. Then I would test the copy and then finally the creative and how you're communicating your brand in the pop-up. And frankly, I would just start running these tests right away because if you're not running tests right now, you're leaving money on the table. Now, one quick tip here for brands is unlike meta ads where a lot of the time you see brands that you think perform, but you don't really know what performs. With pop-ups, you know what performs because you can look at the best-in-class brands, True Classics, Ridge Wallet, Somersault and you could see what pop-ups they're running on the website and more likely than not that's a great starting point for you especially if you're a smaller brand. Speaker 2: Good point there. Just looking at what others do doesn't give you any kind of insight because they're trying to figure it out as well. So it's not that they have all the wisdom out there. Now, when it comes to pop-ups, one thing that comes to mind is how can I avoid that I annoy my customers with too many pop-ups? So how often do I show pop-ups and where in the customer journey do I show them? Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. So it really depends on the brand and the audience. But a couple of rules of thumb that I would say. First, make sure that if you have random upsell apps that you're leveraging on your website, that those upsell apps are not layering on random pop-ups throughout the consumer journey that you're not accounting for. Because what I see with a lot of brands is they have the initial pop-up when you get to the website, then there's a pop-up when you get to the product page with some sort of offer, then there's a pop-up at the car, and then when you click checkout, there's another pop-up. So just don't overload them. You can audit that very quickly yourself. Beyond that, what I would say is typically I avoid showing a pop-up right away to the consumer with no delay. It's just too annoying. You're spot on, Claus. No one likes that. No one wants to give you their information. You have to show me why I should give you my email address. But a sweet spot I would say is between a 10 and 40 second delay is fine. 40 seconds is probably the upper end of where you want to be. But I would play around and test what works best. And then the final tip that I would share is depending on the types of paid media funnels that you're running, sometimes I play around with actually not showing pop-ups on the landing page when someone clicks from meta because sometimes it's just a little bit too intrusive. You can get a little more like complicated and test revenue per user with and without a pop-up, but that's probably like expert level. So, you know, probably as a starting point, you could just exclude people that go to a landing page because ultimately we are optimizing for revenue right away. And then the email, you know, maybe that person doesn't convert, but we have an opportunity to sell them in the future. But that's a second order, I would say, benefit. Speaker 2: Hey, Claus here. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the Ecommerce Coffee Break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show. It will make it also easier for others to discover the podcast. Simply like, comment, and subscribe in the app you're using to listen to the podcast and even better if you could leave a rating. And finally, sign up for our free newsletter and become a smarter Shopify merchant in just 7 minutes per week. We create content from more than 50 sources, saving you hours of research and helping you stay on top of your ecommerce game with the latest news, insights and trends. Every Thursday in your inbox, 100% free. Join now at newsletter.ecommercecoffeebreak.com. That is newsletter.ecommercecoffeebreak.com. Thanks again and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one. And I'm Claus Lauter. Speaker 1: Two tiers. I think about it in two different ways. If you're not running a promo on your pop-up so you don't have 10, 20, 30% off and it's just, you know, join our email list type of messaging, obviously, you need to get crafty and creative there and communicate why there's value in joining your email list. But holding that aside, I would say a healthy opt-in rate is between 3% and almost 10%. It really depends on the brand. You know, sometimes online you see 10%, that's best in class and that's where you need to be. And a lot of the time, that's just not the reality. If you're in the range of 3 to 10%, that's probably a great place to be. You could probably push it up a little bit more with testing. Now, if you do have a promotional offer, 10% is very healthy on the email pop-up. I have a brand that's as high as 15%, although that's really an exception, not the rule. But I would aim to be in those ranges and Beyond that, also, just don't listen to me at all and just keep testing until you keep improving. And when you don't see any more improvement, pause on testing for a few months and come back to it in the future because marketing constantly changes. Speaker 2: That's true. Now, obviously, you're working with a lot of DTC brands at Bedford Marketing. And can you give me an example what kind of results – you don't need to name a brand – but what kind of results your clients saw after implementing the right structure? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Honestly, it varies. And it really varies on the brand that I work with. But I have this one example of a brand that I took over sending emails for, call it just half a year ago now. And really, the big difference maker for them was just sending more consistent emails. To my previous point of what the biggest opportunities are, this was a brand doing $200,000 a month in revenue. And Just by increasing their frequency of emails and SMS by the way to 2 to 3 and sometimes 4 a week versus 1 to 2, we took them from call it $200,000 a month to $300,000 a month. There was additional opportunity also for them to start scaling their paid media because we were activating the retention side. More effectively, there was more profit to be had and more profit to be sent to the meta side. But that's a massive result, I would say. And it really just came from, again, the basics. Keep it simple, stupid. Send a few emails every single week. Make sure your messaging is clear, concise, to the point, and that the consumer actually has a reason to open and read your email. Speaker 2: No, absolutely right. Now, you're one of the agency owners, one of the very few who actually built DTC brands by yourself. So, you have built two successful DTC brands, and now you're focused on email marketing, helping others in the market. Who's your perfect customer? Speaker 1: Yeah, my perfect customer, do you mean just generally, like who do I love selling things to on the Internet? What I've learned is... You mentioned, Claus, I was running a sock business. It was called Society Socks. Still running it. But I would say learning number one for me was generally it is so much harder to sell things to men on the intranet than women. I also have past experience in the CPG, Consumer Packaged Goods space, working at Procter & Gamble, a best-in-class brand. The mantra there would always be, we're selling to mom. She is the lead consumer of the household. And really, that's true for the majority of categories on the internet, not on the internet. That is just the simple truth. So I would say the sweet spot for me has been working with brands that are selling products to probably women that are in the age range of like 30 to 60. It's hard to narrow it down specifically, but Selling to consumers where they have a little bit more disposable income, they have wants and needs that they want to fulfill is just so much easier. Sometimes it is a little bit trickier selling to younger audiences, the Gen Zs of the world, especially given they're on such new and trendy platforms like TikTok and so on and so forth. I mean, to them, you've got to market completely differently. So I would say that's a bit of a different animal. No, no kind of like specific consumer. I, you know, sell to people across the board. Speaker 2: Okay. No, absolutely perfect. So, for our listeners who run a DTC brand and that want to work with you and optimize the email marketing, what are the typical onboarding process steps to get them up and running? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, I mean, first and foremost, I would just message me at BedfordMarketing.co and typically what we do is, you know, get on a call and just try to audit your account. Completely for free. I can't tell you what medicine you need before I review your brand and figure out what's going on. So I love to dig into the brand, see your sending schedule, see what kind of results you've driven in the past, and then go from there. I really custom tailor every single partnership and every single plan. I don't believe in one-size-fits-all because that's frankly not the world we live in in DTC. Speaker 2: Okay. Tell me a little bit about the pricing structure, if you can. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, definitely. We just price our partnerships based on a monthly retainer. It honestly ranges depending on how many emails you need every month, how many flows and automations we're working on, how many pop-ups we're doing, and whether we're also helping in other capacities. So honestly, it really depends. I can't give you a range because I'll audit an account two days in a row and it'll be two completely different kind of ballparks. And it really just depends on the size of the business and how much help you need. Speaker 2: Okay. Before we come to the end of our coffee break today, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet? Speaker 1: Send better emails. That's my only call to action is just spend more time and a lot of the time we're in our worlds and you know very quantitative and looking at numbers and that's really important but also we're selling qualitative things. We're appealing to people's feelings and I would make sure that everything that you put out into the world from a marketing standpoint you also activate that part of the brain. You think of How the consumer will feel, you think of, you know, what the strategy is and, you know, what you want to communicate to them and not just be, you know, numbers-based. Think of the qualitative and the emotional side as well and I promise you, you'll go a long way. Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. If you have a solid structure and qualitative good marketing strategy with email, you're a long way ahead because all the other platforms, as you mentioned before, are changing all the time. So you're basically always chasing what's happening and trying to adjust. Email marketing is around for a long time, and I don't think it will go away anytime soon. And I think it's one of the fundamental things that you need to get right as a DTC brand. Thanks so much for your time today. Where can people find out more about you guys? Speaker 1: I would just go to www.bedfordmarketing.co and message me on there and I'll be happy to chat and take a look at your email account. Speaker 2: Perfect. I will put a link in the show notes and you just one click away. Thanks so much for your time today and I hope to talk to you soon. Thanks so much. Speaker 1: Amazing. Thanks, Claus. Speaker 2: Hey, Claus here. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the Ecommerce Coffee Break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show. It will also make it easier for others to discover the podcast. Simply like, comment, and subscribe. Subscribe in the app you're using to listen to the podcast and even better if you could leave a rating. And finally, sign up for our free newsletter and become a smarter online seller in just 5 minutes. We create content from more than 50 sources, saving you hours of research and helping you to stay on top of your ecommerce game with the latest news, insights, and trends twice a week in your inbox, 100% free. Join now at newsletter.ecommercecoffeebreak.com. That's newsletter.ecommercecoffeebreak.com. Thanks again and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one.