Anaita Sarkar's Weekly Mid-Funnel Marketing Routine

Anaita0:00
Okay, thank you. Let me share my screen. We have a lot to go through today. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to move through things really quickly and these slides will be shared. And then also this will— is recorded. So you guys will be able to see this as well. So last week we spoke about website and we spoke about how to optimise it so you get the maximum number of conversions. In a very similar fashion, we're talking about the mid-funnel marketing strategy. So it's really people who do know about you but haven't actually made that purchase yet. And we're talking about how to keep your brand top of mind. And I think this is a really interesting topic because a lot of people focus so much on top of funnel, which is like getting new people, getting new people, getting new people. What we want to do is with the people who do know about you, how do we get them remembering you? Because we know that like the death of a brand is really about being forgotten. So what I've got today is something that I don't usually talk about, which is my weekly routine, my monthly routine, what I'm going to do in Q4. Of course, this is not set in stone, and so you don't necessarily need to follow this day by day. It's what I do, and I just hope it helps you guys as well figure out what you need to do. Um, okay, I— am I sharing this full screen? Can you guys see this just fine? Okay, great. All right, so let's get into why mid-funnel marketing matters. So just a few things here which I think you guys already know, but I'm gonna just reiterate them. One is that you need to always be in someone's consideration set, like always. And so if someone has a problem and they need to figure out a solution to that problem and your brand can do that or your products can do that, it's really nice to be in that top 3 consideration set. To be forgotten is actually quite easy nowadays because there's so many brands coming up in every single space. And so just staying in a consideration set can really help your business. Two is that the tiny reminders make sure that you're not forgotten. And then also tiny reminders always make sure that people have trust in your brand. It's a really interesting study that's been done, and it's been done over years and years and years, which is that the more that someone sees you, it's not about they go, "Oh, I'm gonna buy," but it's about, "I trust that brand." They see the brand name over and over again and they think, "They must be trustworthy." This whole topic, again, is on staying top of mind. I'm gonna talk you through my weekly marketing routine to do this. Now, obviously, in your day, what you would have is you would maybe, for example, pay you pack your orders, you answer emails, you do admin work, you might do some work in Xero. This is nothing to do with that. This is specifically what I do Monday to Friday to stay top of mind mid-funnel, but also to build community as well. Okay, so let's get into it. Let's start with Monday, and I want to start with something that most people don't do, and that is doing an interesting thing every week. And something that I have realised this year specifically is that doing an interesting thing creates interesting content. It's actually much harder every single day to think, "What interesting content can I create?" rather than just thinking, "What if I have an interesting thing that I'm trying to build out every week?" Then your content can be pulled from that really, really easily. What's an interesting thing? For example, are you going to redecorate your office? Or are you going to go stand at Bondi Beach and do some weird guerrilla marketing? Or am I going to surprise staff in a certain way? Or it's my birthday and I'm going to do something interesting. Interesting thing could be anything, but it's about creating something that you can stretch content out of, do storeys on, and then post about it later in the week. And people are following along. It's almost like a content series. And I just, I say all the time, it's like, if you do interesting shit, you'll have interesting things to talk about. And so that's what I always want you to think about every week. At the start of every week, think of an interesting thing that your brand can do this week. Second thing I want you to do which is what I do without fail, is map at least 7 content ideas. Obviously, that's— I'm talking about one platform, so that might be Instagram. If you're going to be posting across TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, any platform, I'm talking about 7 pieces each. So if you're going to repost, that's fine, stick to 7 content ideas. But if you're going to do specific pieces of content, what I ideally want is that you have 7 content ideas for each platform and you map that out on Monday. But it's not just having dot points of like, this is the trend I'm going to do, or this is the video I'm going to do. You're going to brainstorm the entire storyboard of that piece of content. If you're going to do green screens, you're going to have the screenshots ready to go, the images ready to go. You're going to bank it all up. And not only that, but on Monday, filming at least 2 pieces of content so you have banked up content to start the week is always a really good thing to do. A lot of people love to batch create, and if that's you, amazing. That's not me at all. I think it's because, one, I'm not organised enough to batch create, but also because there are so many new things happening in marketing, so many new things happening at Hero Packaging that I almost need to create content on the day itself based on what's happening. So I'll base it on inventory movements or I'll base it on the stock that's just arrived and what I can— like what content I can create on that. Okay. Number 3 is so important. Whether you do ads yourself or you use an agency, reviewing ad performance is going to help you understand your ads manager. There is nothing in this world that can help you understand it more than going into your Ads Manager. There is no report that an agency can provide to you that will make you understand what is happening rather than just going into your Ads Manager and having a look for yourself. So when I say review ad performance, the thing that I do— so remember, what are we talking about? We're talking about staying top of mind. So what do you do with your ad performance? You're going to go in there and you're going to have a look at the last 3 days, the last 7 days, last 14 days, last 30 days, and you're going to see what the numbers are trending like. So Is CPA, like your cost per acquisition, is that getting higher and higher for certain ad creatives? Is your ROAS getting lower or higher? Based on that, you're going to cut certain ad creatives and you're going to start to optimise campaigns. Maybe you want to turn back on some ad creatives as well. But essentially Monday is really reviewing ad performance and optimising to start the week right. And then number 4 that I'll do on a Monday, which I think most people don't do, um, but correct me if I'm wrong, but I optimise email flows specifically again, we're staying top of mind here. So this is not all email flows. This is specifically browse abandonment, cart abandonment, and checkout abandonment flows. And you're really trying to get to that mid-funnel, like the person who is about to buy and hasn't actually done so yet. So staying top of mind there, what can you do to optimize? So the first thing I would do is look at those flows and think, okay, what are the click or the open rates, the click-through rates, the conversion rates for those? And then I would see, okay, the last 7 days, these were my stats. The previous 7 days, those were my stats. What are they looking like? Are they trending upwards or downwards? And can I optimise that by just 1% for the next week? If I just test a new subject line, if I test new images, if I test the time delay between when they get one email to the next email, is that going to help me? And then you test that for 7 days, but optimising your email flows every week is actually going to help you get that incremental bit of revenue and it's going to be done for free. So that is really, really important. Then obviously at the end of the day, you're going to be posting to social media. If you're posting to LinkedIn, obviously you'll do that in the morning. Just remembering to post simply because you're staying top of mind. It's not about making the sale. It's also not about getting engagement. I feel like we are so following this dopamine hit constantly. We must have the most amount of likes. Let's delete posts if we don't get it. It's not about that. It's about you showing up as a brand and people are remembering that you are there. It doesn't matter. About the likes and it doesn't matter about anything. You're showing up in people's eyeballs and that's what matters. Alright, so I'm just gonna spend a bit of time on this slide which is Tuesday to Friday and this is just what I do. Again, pick the days that suit you but these are the things that you must do to stay top of mind and this is specifically e-com, right? So Tuesday, I always send an email on a Tuesday mostly, it depends if I'm organised enough, but Tuesday is when I will send an email to my database and that's usually to my engaged subscribers. Subscribers. So I— if we're going to stay top of mind, I've said here send an email about something that's going to build rapport. So like, it could be like a personal note from the founder, it could be a text-based email. I actually take that back. This is an email that you can say anything. You can sell a product, you can run a discount, you know, any email. But you have to send an email every single week. So I'll do that on a Tuesday, and that's one message, okay? But remember what that is because I'm going to come back to that later. So whatever that message is in that email Remember that you're going to post to your social channel. So okay, you've got— you've been in someone's inbox, now you're in their social inbox. Uh, the— yeah, social inbox. And another thing is, which I didn't say before, my whole concept of this, and you would have heard me say this on podcasts and on social media, is like we're trying to be everywhere all at once in the cheapest way possible. And so you're getting in people's inboxes, emails, socials, and you're continually documenting this interesting thing that you're doing. You're putting that on stories, you're getting people to back you to like do the finished product of this interesting thing. Whatever that interesting thing is for your brand, you're going to work on that, document it constantly, and it's going to give you that extra bit of content to share, and it's going to make people follow along to see if you finalise that interesting thing. Then on Wednesday, um, I want you guys to think about this. So that's the— that message that we spoke about with that email You're going to resend that email to non-openers the next day, just to stretch that piece of content through email a little bit more. Um, you're also going to send the same kind of messaging through SMS. So you're tapping into people's inboxes and then the next day you're tapping into their phones. Uh, and then you're also going to post to social media. So you're actually getting in front of them constantly, right? Um, and then you're going to continue documenting this interesting thing. Now, on Thursday, you're going to send a push notification with the same messaging. So this is what I do. I'll send an email on one day. The next day I'll send the same email to non-openers and I'll send a supporting SMS. And the next day I'll send a push notification, push notification through Push Owl for desktop notifications, same messaging. So it's, you don't have to really think about it too much. It's the same message getting pushed across multiple platforms. Another thing that I'll do on Thursday is I will have a look at any tags, any mentions, any hauls, unboxings of Hero Packaging, and I will take that content and see how I can leverage it. So if you have micro-influencers, if you have customers who are tagging you, that's the time to really take that in, organise all of that, and then start leveraging it, whether that means putting paid spend behind it, whether that means using it on your organic socials, maybe putting it as a Tolstoy video on your website, but really trying to leverage UGC content. I allocate a time block on one day simply to do that. And then on Thursday, I would post the outcome of your interesting thing that you've been working on from Monday to Wednesday or Thursday, right? Like, how did you achieve it? How did it go? Like, maybe you failed, maybe you succeeded. And obviously if you failed, that's even better because people love to see it, right? Like, people want to back you and be like, it's okay. So that interesting thing, you're going to post about that on Thursday. Friday is a super interesting day. I've got here some things that most brands don't do. For you guys, I just think it's so worthwhile. One is, of course, reviewing all the weekly marketing stuff that you just did. Did it work? Didn't it work? Of course, you need to see, did that email campaign really hit with my audience? Did it not get a very good open rate or click-through rate? You're going to review all the SMS stuff. You're going to have a look at that. I will stop here and say, if you guys are not documenting the messaging around your emails and putting it into some kind of spreadsheet or organisational tool to say, okay, this SMS with this messaging worked better than this email with this messaging, or I sent this email and then I sent it to non-openers, or I got a really high spam rate with this one. I just, I feel like if you're not documenting that, you won't know going forward what has worked and what hasn't worked because It's so easy to forget these things. So if you have a campaign running or if you've done something that week, put it in some kind of spreadsheet and have little metrics. And you don't have to share this with anyone, but it's just for you to know. These are the notes of that. And did it work? And I'm not going to do this again because it really didn't work. Even if a guru or a marketing person tells you, you must send this kind of email, but you know, you've tried it before and it hasn't worked. You don't need to do it, right? Because you've documented it. Okay. So that's Friday. Another thing that I would do on Friday, which is interesting, is looking at my top 1 to 2% of customers and seeing how I can surprise them in some way. Whether I send them a little gift or I tag them on social media, I do a case study on them, or I put a blog post on them. I think sending little gifts to people who— for absolutely no reason— is actually one of the best things that you could ever do. Even if it's a handwritten thank you note, to top customers, even if you just do a portion of them and then the next Friday you do another portion of them, the amount of love that you get for the brand— they already love you, and it's just that feeling of they're never going to go anywhere else simply because you're thanking them for just buying from you. Like, they haven't asked for anything, but you're just thanking them. So surprising your top 2% of customers is really nice. And obviously, the smaller you are, the bigger percentage of your top customers that you can target. Also, people who tag you. Not influencers and micro-influencers who you've asked to tag you, but customers who have gone out of their way to tag your product or your brand. Can you reward them in some way? What can you do? Of course, you can repost them on storeys and things like that, but what can you do to make them feel special? These are customers who don't really get that kind of— You know when influencers post, you give them so much stuff. You give them free product and you give them this and give them that. Customers don't get that, so what can you do with them? I try and do that on Fridays as well. We try and sit together as a team and brainstorm that. That's Tuesday to Friday. I'm just going to talk you through monthly now. Monthly, if this is not too deep. Start of the month is really looking at your campaigns. I think about a month as 4 weeks. What are the 4 campaigns or 4 interesting things that I'm going to do this month? Setting your goals at the start of the month. Quite obvious. And then also thinking about a content calendar, or at least a content list of things. So at the start of every week, you can build out those storyboards, but at the start of the month, it's really nice to build out a full list. So by the time you get to content creation, that's all you're doing. You're just implementing and you're not thinking at all. You don't need to use your brain, you just implement what's already there. Mid-month is just making sure that your goals are on track and then perhaps adjusting your strategy a little bit based on what's happening for sales. And then end of month is just assessing how everything everything went. Okay, I'm going to move on to this because this is a little bonus slide. This actually is not on topic, but I think it's very important for all of us to know for Q4 what I'm going to be doing for Q4 and what I think is really good for other brands to be doing for Q4. If you're advanced and you've gone through multiple Q4s, you'll know this like the back of your hand, but I think it's really important anyway to just remember this and have these little, um, notes and putting them into your calendar as well. August is really, I would say, pre-Q4, and that's where some of the work begins. But because we're nearly at the end of August, I'm going to start with September. The idea of Black Friday and Cyber Monday is to make as much money as possible. That's it. It's just to make as much money as possible. It's going to be the biggest quarter for most brands, not all brands, but for most brands. A lot of the time what brands try and do in this period is try and get people who have been sitting on the sidelines to go and purchase. That's when those people purchase Black Friday, Cyber Monday because they're waiting for that sale. Then they're also trying to get new people to come in and purchase. The problem is you try and get new people in November just before Black Friday and it's going to cost you like $80 to $100 per customer to acquire to make that sale. It's just way too expensive. What you're going to do is actually start in September to build up all of those new eyeballs so they move into your mid-funnel. So they're no longer these people over here who don't know about your brand. They know about your brand, but they don't necessarily need to have bought from you. They just need to be idle and know about you. You've moved them into that mid-funnel, and so that by Black Friday you're emailing them, you're SMSing them, you're push notificationing them, you know, you're sending social media content to them, uh, and like Google Ads are going to them. So September is building your lists. Now, um, list building strategy is really important. I was listening to a podcast with, uh, a girl. Do you guys know the brand Moody? M-O-O-D-I. It's so big, right? Like, I didn't realise how big she was, but she is in the top 1% of Meta ad spend in the world, which is insane. A New Zealand brand. I just think it's amazing. And she, what did she do? She emailed her customers and said, what is your favourite type of car? And they like unanimously were like a Range Rover. So she bought a Range Rover for $125,000 and she gave it away. Now she did this before a sales period and she did a full competition around it. But because the customers had already kind of voted on their favourite car, they're the, like, they also were like participating in this, right? But the key here is what she actually wanted to do is get new people viewing her brand. Do you know how many people signed up to that competition? In your head, just take a guess. I feel like competitions don't really work anymore, but she proved me wrong because that giveaway acquired her 8 million new email addresses. 8 million new email addresses because of this car. When you are doing something in September, to build an email list, what can you do to get new email subscribers, new SMS subscribers? I think giveaways are a great one, but they've got to be of high perceived value for the customers and it should be what the customers actually want. If you've got downloadables, they're okay. They work better with a service-based business, but one that works really, really well at all times is Jolie Skin. I showed you Jolie Skin last week as well, but they do this really well. And I've spoken about them for such a long time because this strategy has worked for ages for them. And they basically say, put in your postcode and your email address and we will send you a water toxicity report of your suburb. And of course you want to know what that is, right? Like, you want to know how pure your water is or how dirty your water is. And they've got these reports for every single suburb. And so not only are they getting your email address, but you're winning as well because you're getting this downloadable of your suburb to see what the toxicity is. And you go, oh Oh my God, it's so high. I must buy a Jolie shower filter. Downloadables work if it's really something that people want. Do you know what people want? Information about themselves, like a personality test, a horoscope thing, anything to explain more about people. If you sell skincare, for example, it's like, "What skincare would suit you based on your horoscope?" I know it sounds ridiculous, but people love that sort of stuff. Downloadables, giveaways, mystery gifting, anything you can do to build your list. Look at your current current email subscriber list, and let's say it's 5,000 people on there. Can you get it to 7,000 people by October and November? Can you add 2,000 people, and how will you do that? Um, okay, another thing that you can do, which is a really quick win, is, um, launch win-back campaigns. So win-back campaigns are people who have bought from you, say for example over 9 months ago, 12 months ago, and haven't returned. Those people have bought from you, and for some reason they haven't come back. They're either like, haven't thought about it, they've forgotten about you, they're just being lazy, maybe they didn't have a good experience, whatever it is, but they haven't come back. Because they already know about you, getting them back is actually much easier than acquiring a new customer. You can woo them, right? You can woo them through emails, you can woo them through direct mail, which is something that's really nice, but the more personalised the email or more personalised the communication with older customers, the better it will be for you. Launching win-back campaigns is actually a really cool thing to do, especially in September, getting those emails back into your system and those numbers as well. October is all about the prep, and the main thing here is what is my revenue and profit goal for Black Friday, Cyber Monday? Really setting that based on what you know about last year and then also based on the audience that you have and also current data for your revenue. And then one of the— actually, there's two things here. One is to create all of your Black Friday, Cyber Monday ads and have them uploaded in your ads managers ready to go. They're all uploaded, campaigns done. They have to be in new campaigns and not in your current campaigns. And if you have questions on that, of course, ask me later. And then the second thing I would say that's really important for October is preparing all the customer service macros for Q&A. So macros are essentially these canned responses ready to go for the most commonly asked questions for your products, for delivery time, for courier services, for tracking information, whatever it is, but prepare those in advance so you just copy and paste and they're ready to go because that time is going to be chaotic. And if it's just you doing it and you don't have any help, the more macros that you can have, the better it is going to be for you. And then November is of course actually launching it. Um, uh, you want to have like product bundles. Of course, when you are doing any kind of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, it's you discount a lot, right? It's going to be the maximum amount of discounting throughout the year. You would rather create the bundles and discount on those so you save on shipping and the margin isn't depleted too much. So really pushing bundles at that time. But creating bundles and having them ready to go and making sure inventory is working right, that all happens early November. Something that is really cool, and only if you're comfortable doing it, is sending direct direct mail, so like letters in the post, to top customers with early access details. There are some brands out there, and I don't encourage it, but this is what they do. They actually send calendar reminders to their top customers and it's like a pop-up in your calendar, a reminder that, "Hey, Hero Packaging sale has started." That can be quite intrusive, but it does work. Then of course you will launch your VIP early access sale and then of course you'll do the main Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale. How early do you go? That depends on you. Most brands are starting 2 weeks before Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and then they'll continue it to the Monday. Okay, now going back to the actual topic that I was supposed to be talking about today, I'm gonna talk about re-engaging past customers. Here are some things that you can do, which we've kind of touched on. So win-back email flows. So actually looking at people who haven't purchased from you in 60, 90, or 120 days. The smaller you are, the better this is because you can get way more personalised and more manual with this. Win-back email flows are automated, but that doesn't mean you can't send win-back email campaigns to certain people to say, I know you bought this. I would love to know if you would like this product or just launch this, and I think you would really like this. This is a personal note from me, Sarah. I run this company and I know you bought from us before. We just want to know if you want to come back. Second thing is direct mail that we just said. So sending letters to people if they're not opening emails from you, like getting into their actual mailbox to woo them. If you feel like comfortable doing that, go ahead and do that. Something that I think a lot of brands do, um, well, some brands do it well, some brands have not done it yet because they're too scared to do it, is to invite customers into exclusive groups. So like that could be close friends, it could be a WhatsApp group, a Facebook group, a broadcast whatever it is, but having that group of people there who love you, fantastic. The thing here is when you're re-engaging past customers, inviting old customers to come into this group just to see what the community is saying about you. And the best thing of all to re-engage is to set up feedback groups for old customers because they are the ones who are going to tell you the truth about why they didn't return. If they didn't have a good experience with you, you would rather know. So actually saying to them, I'm going to gift you this I know I haven't seen you in a while, but I would love your feedback on that. I know like you didn't come back. So if you didn't have a good experience, could you try this and let me know what you think? And I want the truth from you. So just re-engaging them by getting them into a feedback group and making them feel special again, but also your brand improves anyway because you're taking their feedback and they feel like they're included. You've got them back in the funnel, but also your brand is improving because you're listening to your customers. One of the things that I would love you guys to think about is whenever you are doing anything like this, to do it publicly. So if you are rewarding, you know how we spoke about rewarding people who've tagged you on social media, don't just reward them silently, but I would tell your audiences that you are sending gifts to people who've tagged you and show people that have tagged you and actually tell your audience and your email database about it. Because I think person see, person do, right? So like the more that people see, you're rewarding stuff, the more that they're going to do it. The more they see that people are tagging you and you're using it and leveraging it and being happy about it, they— the more that they're going to tag you. You want to encourage people to do that sort of stuff too. Okay, um, and this is really, I think, the last part of it, which is the tools and habits that I swear by. So I think this is probably everyone, but calendar everything. So every single item in my entire life is in my calendar. One thing that I will do is look at the things that are actually driving sales. I want to make sure everyone understands this really clearly, that if I was to say to you, would you rather create an amazing piece of content today or do procurement for your business? And you say, create an amazing piece of content, I will say stop, because I would rather you do procurement. And I'll tell you what that is. You know, when you look at a bunch of costs in your business, and you go, "You know what? I reckon I can cut that cost down," or, "You know what? I can talk to my manufacturer and negotiate my shipping rates down or the costs of this down." To me, that is more important than creating a really good piece of content. When I say calendar everything, I want you to think about the small amount of tasks that lead to the maximum amount of money in your bank account, and I want those things to be in your calendar. Even more than your content creation and the things that brings you that, like, dopamine hit every day. The second thing that I always think about is eating a discipline sandwich, which is basically starting the day with something that is good for you, whether that's like a walk or a gym workout or whatever, even a cup of coffee, whatever. If you— something that is good for you, and then making yourself so disciplined that you have time blocked, that you— nothing— there's no distractions whatsoever, and you get work done. And then at the end of the day, doing something that brings you joy, whether that's going to see your friends or just spending time with the kids or eating a meal that you absolutely love, getting takeaway, whatever it is. Discipline sandwich is like so, so important because it makes you feel motivated because you know there's something to look forward to. But that time blocking of serious work and deep work is something that you should really try and do. And of course, it's not always the case, but when you can, do that. Um, and then ruthless elimination is is with everything. It's with anything in your business that is not working. Cut it, cut it. If things are too expensive, cut it. You can always add things back again, but for me, it's like eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. Not just a lean team, but lean expenses, lean even people around you. Like, eliminate them if they're toxic. You know, that, that idea of creating a life for you that is just exactly what you want is actually more about eliminating than adding. And then the last thing I'll say is there is nothing better than exercise, good food, and taking your supplements. That is the truth of the matter. There is nothing that's going to make you feel better. And if you are not doing those things and you feel down, those are the things I would say to do first. And then with that, last thing is please give yourself the grace and the flexibility of every day. If you've got kids, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. When I say eat a disciplined sandwich, sometimes you just absolutely can't do that, right? Like, you give yourself grace for what is happening in your life. And that is something that I have to forgive myself almost on a daily level when I feel like I can't time block and I can't get something done. So what? I mean, it, I mean, it matters to me, but to other people, no one actually cares. So just please forgive yourself, um, and allow yourself to let go of things, especially when you've got so much going on as well. And, um, that's basically it. This is just kind of like a summary of it. So again, staying top of mind is being everywhere consistently Creating to-do lists for your to-do list, like planning. There's nothing better than planning. Always trying to think about how you can win back all of those old and re-engage those people and customers. And then discipline sandwich, doing something that is good for you, discipline and hard and deep work, and then also something that makes you feel happy and joyful at the end of every day. And that's it. So I think we made it on time, which is good, and I think we should just get to the questions. Awesome. Thank you so much, Anita. That was amazing. Now, guys, I'm going to move through the questions. So the first person we have is Deepa. Hi, Anita. Thank you so much for your insights. I've just got a couple of questions. I'll just quickly shoot them. I'm actually using the free EDM management tool, and I'm just trying to understand what is the best practise in terms of not overwhelming your customers and what is the percentage of focus on multiple pillars like sales or education or even sharing testimonials? And my second question is, also you did mention about maintaining a broadcast channel, so if you could share some tips of how do we, how do we be open about it? How vulnerable can we be in those channels to attract consumers? Thank you. Okay, so first question is about emails. How often do you send and what percentage of emails should be sales? And then and community building and so on and so forth. Over time, you'll learn what works for your audience and your database. For me, community building as a B2B company is really, really hard. I try and leave that alone. So what I try and do is build some kind of parasocial relationship rather than community building. So I will do a lot of personal emails from me as the founder and building almost what feels like a one-on-one relationship with people. And I try and do that that one week, and then the following week will be some kind of sales email. It depends on how many times you're sending it, but I always say one email a week is okay and is kind of expected. If you're a big brand, um, sending 2, 3 emails a week is actually quite normal. This is for like a $20 million plus brand, right? Like, I, I know that Proud Poppy, she sends a tonne of emails, but her audience loves it, um, and they— it makes her a lot of money. For us, we all can't really do that. It would just get annoying. So I would suggest one email a week. And then you would have— you need to sell your products, right? But can you do it in a way where it's not like a full campaign of like, buy this, um, this is my new product, buy it now, buy button, and the end, unsubscribe? Um, could you do it in a way where you write a note and then you say, these are my favourite products and I want you to try this because I think you'll really like it? That's also a sales email, but it's also coming from you. Um, so doing a mix of everything, but hopefully that answers your question. One a week and I do a personal note one week, and then I do like a sales or a discount or a new product launch the next week, and then a personal email, and then so on and so forth. For the second part of your question, which was broadcast channel or any kind of platform to bring your community to, how authentic can you be? Um, as authentic as you want. It's like your social media content, but I think what it's more about is allowing the customers to start speaking for your brand rather than a brand push for community. And I think we're over that whole brand-led community now. It just doesn't really— it shouldn't exist like it used to. If you have a look at the Mecca Facebook group, where it is, it was set up by Mecca for customers to talk, but now it's customer-run, right? Like, they're like, did you try the new Charlotte Tilbury XYZ? I didn't like it. Yes, I liked it. And then if there's a big conversation or when's this launching, when's it— a Mecca employee or someone from Mecca will go in and say, this is what's happening. But allowing customers to kind of run it, and the way to do that is posing questions, thoughtful questions for your community and letting them kind of guide the discussion is way more important than you saying, this is what's coming out, this is what— people will leave, especially a broadcast channel. They can get really, really annoying for people. You've got to really know your audience for that. So I would say do it more in like a community, like a Facebook group, group where it's a little bit more interactive rather than a brand push. Thanks so much. Awesome, thanks Deepa. Uh, Rachel. Hey, um, okay, I have lots of questions. Sorry, there was like— I'll just quickly smash it in, I think, there. Um, sorry, um, could you give a couple of quick examples of interesting things to focus on? Like, I'm struggling to think, and I could brainstorm, but just curious what your examples would be. Yeah, um, interesting things could be so small to really large. Like, um, if you took your dogs to, like, um, I don't know, like getting them dressed up or something, like going to, like, a dog fair. Um, sorry guys, like, this is really specific to Rachel, so like if people are wondering why I'm talking about her dogs. Um, but I think you could do anything about, like, guerrilla marketing, even if it's on a small level. Or in your warehouse space, like something that you could do, or something about surprising, um, one of your staff members, um, even organising a mini little event with other founders, or whatever it is. Like, it could be, um, the tiniest, tiniest thing where you're doing something for yourself but you're documenting it publicly, or it could be a big thing like you're going into a public setting and embarrassing yourself to get more products into the hands of other people. But it could be small to large, so interesting things could anything. Another really good thing you could do is have a look at brands that do interesting things and then get ideas from there. So obviously a really good one would be Girls Get Off. Um, she does such interesting stuff all the time, and just like looking at what she's doing and going, can I do something like that to stretch out my content? Yeah, okay, awesome. Thank you. Um, next one was just about Klaviyo's resend to unopened emails is like 48 hours later. Do you recommend doing that auto setup, or would you just create your own segment and do it like the next day? I like it 24 hours. Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, only because I'm, uh, really tracking— like, I'll do— I really do it every single week, is exactly the same for me. It is always the email, 24 hours later it's resend to non-openers and an SMS campaign, and then the next day is a push notification. It just— for me, I can track the data better that way. Um, but I mean, of course, if, if you want to do 48 hours and test that too, it's fine. I just like 24 hours. Yeah, okay, awesome. That— the next question was on SMSs. We don't do a lot of SMSs unless it is like Black Friday or it's a really special, um, occasion. Um, would you recommend trying to integrate that more regularly, like once a month, or as a test and learn? Why don't you use it now? I think because I'm still using Kudosity and when people unsubscribe from that, in my mind it's a really manual process to them. I don't like— I haven't really figured that out and how that ecosystem works, so I don't know whether I should just look at doing it through Klaviyo so there's less of a block for me sending them. Yeah, I would do it through Klaviyo and I would remove whatever you're using now. Um, Klaviyo SMS is actually really inexpensive compared to everything else. I believe it's, um, I believe it's like 5 to 7 cents, um, and other platforms I've seen are like 9 cents. So just, I'd be mindful of that. Um, but yes, I would say to you that with SMS, try and do it more often because like, for me, SMS doesn't really work for Hero Packaging. We, we don't make a lot of money through SMS, but I just tested one the other day. I had nothing to say. I was like, I'm just going to send an SMS because I just want to see how this works. Um, and I think we spent— I only said I segmented my audience, but basically spent like $150, like on a small segment of the SMS sends, um, and we made something like $2,400. So like, it's not like an email which makes us a lot of money, but it's still a great ROI on that investment, even though B2B customers, they don't buy through mobile, but we still saw a return. So I would say trying up your SMS just to see if it works better for your brand. And you are a D2C brand, so I do think that potentially you could reach people at the right time. Yeah. Okay, awesome. And then my last one was the Range Rover giveaway. Was there a purchase mechanic to enter that or was it just email signups? Interesting. No, I think it was email signups. Okay. Wow, that's amazing. And then the last one I had to add was, do you suggest for the public feedback or so the feedback group, do you think that's one you would keep private or still do publicly in some way? Oh, I would do that publicly, as in I would tell people that I'm setting up a feedback group, um, and I would say like, if you want in, let me know as well. But I, I love saying things publicly because people don't know the things you're doing, and like, to encourage behavior, people have to see other people's behavior. And we keep being so private. We're like, oh, we'd engage this person and like, I want to send them a surprise gift. Tell the entire world that you've done that also. Um, that's the point of your business, to tell others so that they also do the same thing. And then you have this loop of people doing things because they also want to feel like they're rewarded too, you know. Um, but feedback loops doesn't mean that if someone gives you feedback, you announce it publicly like, they hate my business and that's why they left. It's more about saying, I'm setting up a feedback group and I would love to know why people don't come back to my business. Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much, Nita, you're amazing. Of course. Steph? Hi. Thanks. I think she's frozen. Sorry, Steph, we might come back to you once you get— Do you want me to just cheque her question and then just answer it? Yeah, so if you can hear us, Steph, she's got, what email software do you like to use? Where should we learn how to do emails? Okay, email software to use, it depends on obviously how many people you have, but as you scale, things can get very, very expensive. I am right, I am in this whole process now of like trying to find the right email platform, but look, the main ones are Klaviyo, um, you know, there's ActiveCampaign, uh, you know, there's like Yopo, which is ending, so I shouldn't say Yopo, um, and Instant Audiences, uh, there's MailChimp, there's like a bunch of them, right? The— to be safe, I would stick with Klaviyo for now, um, and it is cheap. I think it's free for the first 500 email subscribers. As you grow, it does become more expensive. We can talk about that another time, but really start, Klaviyo is going to be the best one for you. It's like, it's a very, very good platform. Um, and, um, where should, where should we learn how to do emails? I, I don't know how to answer that question. I think you would need to— I don't know how to answer that question. Where do you learn how to do emails? Um, you would probably have to do like some kind of free resource on YouTube, like literally look up e-commerce business, um, you know, what are the main email flows. Klaviyo actually has templates for all the email flows you need to do, so I would follow that. In terms of campaigns, campaigns are really, um, drag and drop. So if you want to do— if you want to sell, for example, um, marches, you would have an image of it, like a buy button. Everything is there to drag and drop, and it's about testing it, making sure you're putting the right links in. Maybe have a look at YouTube and have a look at some free stuff that people do, but I think what's really good about platforms is they have all the templates ready to go, so I would just follow that. Um, and Amanda. Hi, how you going? Hi Anita, thank you. I'm sorry, I've just got my little one here as well, but, um, I'll give you a bit of context as well. So I've just launched an app called Home Hive. It's an all-in-one family app to share the mental load code associated with household responsibilities. Now I have like a free version, but is it best to try and promote the free features first or try and drive them onto a subscription? Is it— I'm all about community right now, so like I'm trying to build that platform up more and more. Yeah, um, but is it a freemium, um, platform? So they have features up until a certain point and then they have to pay? Yeah, pretty much. So the freemium is pretty much not allowing people to, or like not inviting other family members like your other half, but it's literally like shared calendar, shared notes, a vault to-do list and a cleaning schedule. That's, that's bloody awesome, by the way. Really cool idea. I would say push the free version. Okay. That's what I am building that community right now. Yeah. Yeah. Get people in, get people obsessed with it. Can't live without it. It, um, and then it's like, bam, here, you have to pay now. I would, I would actually push free version. That's what all app providers do. It's always free, free, free, free, free, and then when you really want that feature, you're like, oh yes, I want to see my results of XYZ, you got to pay for it. Um, but I end up paying because I'm like, I genuinely love this so much. So push free for sure. Okay, all right, thank you so much. Of course. Thanks, Amanda. Um, Olivia, Hi, I always get myself stuck on mute. Thank you so much, that's been amazing. I just wanted to ask, like, what do you do in terms of, you know, obviously you probably, I know you have a team behind you, but if we don't yet have a full-time marketing person, you know, what would you prioritise first, I guess, in terms of some of the suggestions you put forward? I want to do them all, but I just can't, I don't yet have the capacity to do them Uh, I don't have a team. I don't have a marketing team. I do every single thing I told you in this thing as something I do myself, and there's no one that helps me. So I have recently hired a social media girl who comes in on Wednesday. She's come in today to the warehouse, um, and she will help me to think of like content ideas. Every single— every other thing that you see, any email that gets sent out, any gift that gets sent to a customer because I think they're in the top 1% or whatever, That's all me doing it. So I will start by saying that, um, priority is to make as much money as possible. Like, I know community is so important and whatever, but we like making sure your ads are doing really well and optimised and are running in a cheap way to make the most amount of money is probably something that I would do. Seeing for me, it's like Google Ads brings brings in so much money for us. So optimising the shit out of our Google Ads every single day is really, really important. Um, understanding your email flows because it's a way to make money for free, and also thinking about fantastic email campaigns that can get the best click-throughs and revenue. Uh, probably those things are the most important. Content does not come into my top 5 at all. Okay, great. Yeah, really good. Thank you Awesome. Um, and Monica? Hi guys, hi Anita. I just had a quick question. I knew you were talking about different platforms, but, um, there's also Shopify email has all of the abilities now, and I was just wondering if you had an opinion on that. I do. I think Shopify email is actually getting pretty good, to be honest with you, and it's free. So something that some people do is use Shopify emails for campaigns campaigns and then use Instant for flows. And it's saving people so much money. So if you, I think shop, I think that's a really fair point actually. Shopify emails is doing really well and I think they're going to keep advancing that. I don't use it. I used to, oh, I use it for order confirmations and shipping notifications, but everything else goes through like other platforms. But yes, I think that's a great platform. Awesome. Thanks, Anita. I thought so too. Do you use it? I'm starting to set them up just to see if it's just as good as Klaviyo, and just, I'm getting impressed. So I just wanted to see if you had an alternative opinion, but I'm glad you agree. No, actually, that reminds me, I'm going to have a look at that today too. That's great. Cool. Thanks. Awesome. Does anyone else have any questions for Anita? Oh, sorry, Rachel. I'm still like not even off mute. I just wondered what you said, sorry, was the email provider as a backup for Shopify campaigns for flows? So no, I said Shopify you can do for campaigns. Yeah. And then Flows Instant for flows. Thank you. Yeah. I'm testing Instant at the moment. I'm seeing a much higher higher revenue per conversion, like when they convert one, but I'm not seeing as many as I did for other flows, but I've got to test it for a longer period of time. It's not even been a week yet. So I'll let you guys know how that's going. But Instant is good. I just don't have as much control over subject lines and stuff like that. It's all AI generated. So it's a bit hard. Oh, wow. Do they like literally, you can't can't like determine what it is. Okay, it just sends, um, basically they have information on so many people, and so they know that this person likes a bigger discount than 5% and a smaller discount than 11%, and it will optimise that discount code for that person and send it at the time that they know that they will purchase. So it's very, very AI-based on the data that they have on all of the people, and because they They have so many big brands, they've got data on all their customers, and then they pull that, and then that helps smaller brands to use email flows for that. Yeah, that's wild. Thank you, Rachel. And Shabnam. Hi. Uh, yes, so my question was, by the way, thank you for that. I'm feeling so inspired by the whole presentation. It was amazing. My question was for the monthly content calendar that you mentioned. Do you just use Excel or do you have like a specific tool that posts, uh, that schedules your posts and everything? I don't schedule, um, at all. I think a lot of people use, um, just Instagram scheduler, like the actual Instagram app, and they just schedule it all through there. I mean, that's pretty easy if you're talking about Instagram. I don't schedule, I just kind of create and post. But when I plan, I use Apple Reminders. Do you— I don't know if you guys use Apple Reminders, but it's the best thing that's ever happened to me, which is you have different categories. Like, you can have a reminder thing, it looks like a Trello board. You can make it look like have different categories, have all these different things underneath it, and then you can set times to post, and then it'll remind you like a calendar notification. Um, and it's like a to-do list, but it'll send you reminders as well. Um, and then you can categorise them into different weeks or different types of content. You can storyboard things, have notes within each point. Um, and it's on my phone as well as desktop, and it works seamlessly. So I do that. But again, Excel spreadsheet, anything where you're documenting it is absolutely fine. I just like things to remind me. So Apple Reminders is a really good one. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks, Shabnam. Guys, can we please give Anita a round of applause? I know we're at home, but awesome. So look, we just want to say a really big thank you. This is the first of our Mentorship at Scale series. I would love for you to put your cameras on again and get a photo with us all if you're comfortable. To do so. So, ready? 1, 2, 3. Thank you. And guys, if you love this, we'd love any feedback, ways that we can improve, things that you loved. And we will see you all soon. Thank you. Bye, guys. Thank you. Bye.