Sarah Thomas: Turning Clicks into Customers Beyond the Inbox

Sarah Thomas  00:00

If you're on social media, that's great. Maybe lots of people are seeing you. Maybe they're engaging, maybe they're just scrolling past but at the point where they give you their email address to say, yes, I want to hear from you, that's a real honour for any business. If you're sending things that are irrelevant to them, then it might annoy them, and you don't want to just kind of batch and blast like we used to do. It isn't about our list size, it's about people actually engaging doing the things that we actually want them to do.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:33

So welcome to the show, Sarah, and thank you very much for joining us. I believe that you're over in Spain, we can be quite international with our podcast now. And what is it? What is it like in Spain at the moment?

Sarah Thomas  00:44

Tell me, it's great. Yeah, we're coming into autumn, so it's been really hot recently. Now it's cooling down and look this like more cosy weather.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:51

Yeah, it's great, beautiful. Now, as we can tell from your accent, you're not a natural Spanish kind of we're not born and bred in Spain. You're originally from the UK, is that right?

Sarah Thomas  01:01

Yeah, that's right, yeah, originally from the UK, just outside of London, and then moved to Spain about five years ago, after a small thing we had in the UK called Brexit, it kind of gave me, gave me a bit of a nudge to kind of make a, make a bit of a change and move overseas. So it's been, it's been a great experience the last few years, fantastic.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:22

And we were just chatting before we came up with the podcast, but I'd love you to share your story with the listeners, because you you know, you're now very much an expert in email marketing automation, but that's not where it started, was it? So tell us about how, how you started out.

Sarah Thomas  01:37

Yeah, the start of my career, big department store called Debenhams in the UK. I was working in their IT department, in their systems team, and we were building a single customer view database for them. So as you can imagine, that's huge. So many different shopping departments, people shopping multiple places and buying lots of things, different parts, different times in their in their life, like kids wear home, wear beauty, all of that. And they wanted to build a single customer view to understand all of those individual customers so that the marketing team could deliver the right message to them at the right time. And so I was on that team building that database, and at the end of it, when we had it, the marketing team kind of asked me to join them in their their email department, and yeah. So since then, I've been building lots of different like email automations for different businesses. Since then, it's been great, fantastic.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:33

So not from a marketing background originally, but that whole single source of data. So I've, I had a corporate career before I got involved in entrepreneurship, and I know that, you know, I used to work for an insurance company where we had massive amounts of data. We were trying to pull it all together. It's not as easy as it sounds. Is it because it sounds beautiful, lunar fun and let's have a single source of customer database, I'm assuming, yeah, it's a little bit more challenging than than that, isn't it?

Sarah Thomas  02:59

Yeah, exactly, especially where you have maybe an online store and then a bricks and mortar store, and then, like, what Debenhams had in their beauty department, actually, they had, like, you know, pieces of paper at the different counters, but like, their loyal customers and what they were coming back for So, and they had a loyalty scheme as well. So there was lots of different data touch points that we were gathering together to get that holistic view of customers. And it's, it can be very tricky, but, yeah, once you have it, that data, as you can imagine, is is priceless, and what exactly and and then what you can do then is with email journeys and automations, you can make sure that you're firstly, not like over communicating to any customers. You can segment them properly and then also reach them at the right time, as I say, so you know, kind of what their typical shopping habits are, when they might be lapsing, what they might be interested in hearing about, and that kind of things. There's so many places you can go, and a lot of people might feel overwhelmed by all of this data, but it is just kind of finding those nuggets of information and then putting in place kind of the biggest, I guess, what I would call, like relationship building, and kind of making sure that it's profitable at the same time. But yeah, it's kind of taking that whole holistic view.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:15

And I think that's one of the things that you just touched on there's really, really important is that, you know, we can actually over communicate to customers if we don't segment properly from marketing backgrounds. That was my, my original background was actually food science, but after food science was marketing, and, you know, it is very, very challenging to make sure that we don't over communicate, but also communicate things that are completely useless to the customers that we're actually dealing with.

Sarah Thomas  04:40

Yeah, yeah, 100% and also now people are much more savvy, so they know that you should know about them. You know they know if you're on their website and browsing, they are almost like expecting you to personalise the communications to them, not in a creepy way, but just if you're sending things that are irrelevant to them, then it. I Yeah, kind of annoy them. And you don't want to just kind of batch and blast like we used to do. You want to segment your audience, and so that firstly, you are building that relationship with them. They feel kind of like you know them, and that you're there for them, delivering them value, and not kind of sending them things that is going to switch them off and make them hit that unsubscribe button, and then you can't talk to them about anything. So it is a fine line, like, kind of having that data and using it for good.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:30

And so, I mean, Debenhams. I know Debenham has obviously been from the UK originally, but people might not know. But I mean, it is a large department store. I'm assuming it's got 10s of 1000s of customers across the different departments and things, which means it's probably listening to this kind of going here. But my business has only got, you know, 5000 customers or a couple of 100 customers, whatever it might be. What are the lessons that you kind of learned from that bigger store that you can now bring into the work that you do with more, smaller, entrepreneurial, privately owned businesses?

Sarah Thomas  06:00

Definitely something that I really love to do with the clients that I work with is, firstly, look at that customer life cycle. So new customers, new kind of people coming in who are just finding out about you, and then people who are shopping for the first time, and then at the other end of the funnel, maybe they're kind of looking like they might lapse. And looking at that whole customer life cycle, and making sure that there are different touch points that we are hitting along the way, so as people are coming in, educating them a bit more about your products or your services, and then getting them to be first time buyers. And then how do we talk to them after they're that first time buyer, and kind of helping them use the product or the service in the right way, cross sell or upselling to other things that might be helpful for them. And then once you understand what the buying life cycle is, then you might be able to see, okay, this customer is looking like they might lap. So let's put some things in in place then. And so what I really like to do with clients when I first come in to work with them on their email marketing and automations is, is kind of take the four foundational flows. Is what I like to see that people are having. And if you have these, then seeing how you can optimise them. But if you don't, then this is a really great place to start. And what those four foundational flows are, a welcome flow that's educational, telling them about the brand and your products and services, and then an abandoned browser, abandoned cart, if you are an E commerce business that always is like one of the top automations that that clients, that clients have, that I work with, a post purchase. So as I say, once they've made a purchase, helping them with with what they bought, or helping them, like, discover other things that you do, and then that kind of customer journey. So putting those in place, I think, is such a good foundation for any business. And if you and if you don't have those, then that, then any one of those is a great opportunity to kind of just put in, just put in place, kind of as a starting point. Perfect.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  07:59

It is interesting. Actually, we're paying a lot more attention to this now, because I this now, because I think that we are bombarded with, you know, AI generated very generic stuff at times, and it's really obvious that it's that. But I have had a great experience. I'm trying to remember the brand, but I just bought some bedding by my room over here in Melbourne, in my new home. And it is two lads that started this company. And they, first of all, the way that they actually kind of promoted their bedding really spoke to me. They had sort of certain features and things like, you know, when you're, I don't know about you, but I ate making the bed. It's one of my worst kind of nightmares. I really don't enjoy it. And they had things like making sure that you knew that the fitted sheet was the right way around, you know, trying to put a fitted sheet onto a king size bed when one side is short, one side is long. They've solved that. When it comes to the shot sheet on top, they put a logo on it, so you know exactly when it's in the middle. So you've actually got it evenly spread either side of it. And then once, I let you so I've got completely sold on the product. And we, yes, lots of those. But actually, when it arrived, it arrived with a beautiful card that kind of talked to, you know, this is how we came up with the bedding. This is our story. This is what you could expect from it. This is what this little logo is for. This what this does. And then I've noticed I've got the emails coming through as well. So you have to make sure the offline and the online environment work together as well, right?

Sarah Thomas  09:14

Yes, totally. And I think there's so many good things to take away from that experience that you had, which is, firstly, all of the product features, because maybe there were some of the things that you did know that attracted you to buy, that, that bedding, but there's all this other stuff that's obviously a lot of work and thought has gone into it that you might not have known. So it's like, did you know that it also, like, has these features and then carrying on that, that customer experience through with the nice packaging, the nice handwritten note, the follow up. Did you know we also have these products? If you are interested in these, it's kind of continuing that conversation, and as I say, building the relationships. And one thing that i i I make sure that I put in place with my clients is that it's not pushy. We're not doing any terrible sales tax. Architects. It's all, it's all adding value to the customer at every touch point.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  10:05

This is exactly this lad collective, because we have a shout out, because I was actually really super impressed with it as a marketer. But yes, so that the the original email was like, This is how you use the sheets. This is what they're made of. This is how you even just things down to, like, how you wash them, how you dry them, all of that stuff was kind of given to me in the mixture of the online and offline environment, and it's just made me kind of rave about the experience so far. Haven't actually slept on the sheets yet, so I'll let you know how that does

Sarah Thomas  10:33

But certainly from a You haven't even used it yet, and you're like, I'm already loving this experience and everything about it, yeah. And I think, I think, I think that's what's so good as well, is because sometimes, as business owners, we know all of these different things and the the thought that's gone into it, but and sometimes we just assume that our customer might know as well. That's why they've come to us, or that they've read all of the information that we've put on the website, on the product description, but maybe they haven't, so just making sure that we're like, reinforcing that message and how to use it, and everything like that is is really helpful and builds that that brand relationship, that's fantastic.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:09

So we're talking about the welcome email, the abandoned cart, post purchase, and then obviously lapsed customers as well. Okay, so it isn't just about emails, as it really is about the entire customer journey. And I guess that before you start to develop any of this stuff, you really need to understand that customer journey from the start, right? The way the whole life cycle. How does, how do people even start to think about that if they haven't thought about it?

Sarah Thomas  11:34

Yeah, I work with a lot of clients who struggle with, like, just not knowing where to start, right? It's like they know that they need this in place, or they've heard that, that this is something that's really needed to help scale the business, but But where to start? And really, it comes down to mapping out that customer journey. And so what I first when I first come into work with clients, is do an audit of what's in place currently. How does a customer find out about you. How do you bring them into your world? How do you welcome them? And then when they're making that purchase, what does that look like, and mapping out that customer journey? It's really fun, like, it's like a lot of clients don't even know, like, a lot of the stuff, right? That, like, a customer might hit a bit of a brick wall at some point. And so just bringing those out to, like, mapping that out and then layering on, what are the points where we could communicate to a customer to help them along that journey? Currently that aren't in place. So what are the gaps in the communication where we might be able to send them an email or a follow up, you know, to see if they need any help, just to kind of yeah, as I say, like smooth out that that customer journey a bit more to get them where, where, you know, where they need to be.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:46

One of the things that I keep hearing is, you know, with with AI, and everything else that's going on, is that, you know, email is dead. Nobody responds to emails anymore. What would you say to that?

Sarah Thomas  12:57

I really believe that email is the biggest channel for relationship building between a business and their customer, because if you're on social media, that's great. Maybe lots of people are seeing you, maybe they're engaging, maybe they're just scrolling past but at the point where they give you their email address to say, yes, I want to hear from you, that's a real honour for any business, and you want to make sure that you are kind of doing right by the customer. They've given you access to their inbox. And also, if you see like on social media now, kind of impression rates or view rates are super low, like 3% potentially, whereas email open rates are 40% and above often. So if you are sending emails to customers, they're more likely to open them and read them than if you're, you know, doing some other type of digital marketing. So and often, we see that conversion rates from emails are really high because we're building that relationship with them, and if we're segmenting properly, like we've discussed, and making sure we we're, you know, talking to the customer about things that they're interested in, then at the time that they're ready to buy or book, then you're there in their inbox. So definitely, email is is not dead. And in fact, it's getting, yeah, it's getting, it's getting even more fun with all of this data that we have and the segmentation that you can build and and definitely, like you mentioned before, some people can feel overwhelmed, because there is lots of options. There is lots of opportunity that you can see in the data. But just starting small, getting some basic things in place, maybe doing some AB testing of things can really help, but just getting those foundations in place and then developing from there, depending on the business need and the business strategy, like, if you are seeing that a lot of customers are lapsing, maybe that's where you want to focus. But yeah, as I say, just getting things in place simply at first is it will really drive the business forward, I believe.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:57

And I guess you know, one of the things about making sure. You've got clean data as well, isn't it? I mean, you would have noticed this, I assume with the Debra news project, is that having a single source of your data, customer information, it has to, you have to make sure that you have clean data, otherwise you could potentially be sending out the same email three, four times to the same person. What are the sort of what are the pitfalls? What are the mistakes you've seen people make almost like, the moments where it's like, oh my goodness. How did that happen?

Sarah Thomas  15:26

Yeah, definitely. I think there's, there's, there's a lot of things you can that can sometimes go wrong with data, I assume, but that's when it gets maybe into the wrong hands, if you have like, a junior member of staff who is like, segmenting and accidentally bringing in people that haven't shopped in three years, or whatever, into into, like the regular communications you might want to talk to them a bit differently. So, yeah, I think that some of the oops moments can be around, like recency and frequency, just being careful to to to not over communicate to people who look to be lapsing. So what, what we would typically do is, if customers are engaging, then they can get emails more frequently than someone who is is less engaged. And that's a good way to also kind of bring down your list volume, because sometimes, with some email platforms, you know, they charge by like, the number of emails that you've done? Yeah, exactly so. So just making sure that we're segmenting smartly for people who seem to be engaged, making sure that we are communicating to them, and if people are like, not as engaged, pulling back a bit, making sure that the message is right for them, to try and get them back into the engaged segments.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  16:41

And you talked about a b, a b testing, and I'm not sure this is done often enough in the environment that I work within, at least in terms of, you know, you have got the opportunity to test different things to see what has the best result. Talk me through that a little bit in terms of how you approach that.

Sarah Thomas  16:57

Yeah, there's lots of different types of A B testing you could do with subject lines, because obviously subject lines will drive the open rate. And so an increase in open rate is just on the whole, a lot better, because if you've crafted this great email, then not, not as many people are opening it, then it kind of falls flat. But subject line testing is great, and then within the email testing, copy, test and design things like that, and and sometimes I always love to do a B testing on automation journeys because people are with with journeys where people are kind of entering because they've, they've made a certain behaviour, or it's date based, or something like that. People are entering all the time. So you can leave that AB test running for, say, three months, come back to it see that like, oh, this email with this particular design had like, a higher conversion rate than b and testing things like that, actually, over time, can make such a big difference to the business. If something has a 5% conversion rate higher than something else, then imagine if that's running automatically, then that's kind of just increasing the the base revenue of your email channel. So AB testing is is key. It's quite simple to implement in a lot of platforms. It's something that comes like natively, so you can do it, and it's not such a big lift. So if you have a small team, it's not such a big lift for them to set something up and run and then come back to it in, you know, four weeks, three months, whatever it might be, okay?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  18:32

So that's, that's the kind of the benefits of testing. Can you give us some examples of maybe some campaigns that you've worked on that have just really changed a business in terms of, you know, uplifting sales, or, I don't know, tell me, give me a couple of case studies around where email automation has really changed the way business is done.

Sarah Thomas  18:53

Yeah, one of my favourite products I worked on was in the beauty department at debnum. So with beauty products, people do tend to have a kind of a frequency of when they buy, say, a mascara, like once every four months, or something like that. And what we found was it was, was looking at the data, kind of the top selling products that they had, how frequently people were buying them, and then they have so many options on the high street of where they're going to go to buy their product, but making sure that we triggered the email just before we knew that they needed to rebuy that product actually drove conversions so high it was, it was so good to see because that's that's data driven, and it's fairly simple to put in place once you know what the buying cycle of of your customers are, just making sure that you're there when they need when they need something to make it really easy for them to just kind of click and book or buy, yeah, can really make a big difference.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  19:55

So we've talked a lot about products, and I get from a product perspective, makes a lot of sense, but I'm guessing a lot of my clients. Clients and people potentially listening are more of a B to B kind of service provider. And sometimes the sales cycle is a long sales cycle. So I give my example. I've got clients that I've spoken to three years ago, given them a book, talked about what I do, never heard a Dicky bird from them. And then three years later they pick up the phone, they go, right, Debra, we're ready to start working with ready to start doing EOS. And you kind of go, wow, I haven't heard from you. Haven't seen anything blah, blah. And they go, you know, we've been, we've been following you. We've been, you know, getting your emails. I mean, the amount of time. So I send out an email newsletter to clients and potential clients, and sometimes I feel like it goes into this big black hole and nothing ever happens with it. And then when I talk to a potential client who maybe has been disappeared for two or three years, they'll go, you know, we've been reading your newsletter. Okay, so from a from a service point of view, you know, often there is this long sale cycle, we are wait. We have to be waiting until they're ready to actually come and use the service. So what's the role of email in that, and how do you know if your email is actually working?

Sarah Thomas  20:59

Yeah, I think that's, that's a really good question, because when people are quiet, you don't know if they're engaged, you don't know if they're thinking about it. You don't know if they're you know, people get busy and and get on to something else with other strategies, or they are just finding out, but in the education kind of phase of like figuring out exactly what they need. And with that, I think that's when those campaigns do come in and making sure that you are sending a newsletter weekly, or, depending on the size of your team, you know, once every two weeks, so that you are landing in the inbox people can see, you know, they'll see your business name in their inbox, or your name, and then they could be opening and reading, but not ready to buy. But then at the point when they are ready, you're there in their inbox, and then they can pick up the phone, they can hit that button, and then get ready to work with you then, because, yeah, with those with those longer life cycles, it is that relationship building that you're that you're working on you don't realise, because maybe it's, there's nothing happening yet, but black hole, yeah, but just checking in, and maybe it's, it's some like, customer service messaging on top of the broadcast sends that, that that you're doing, just seeing like, hey, you know, do you need? Do you have any questions about this or anything like that? You know, there's, there's lots of different ways to do it. And I think until anyone says I don't want to hear from you anymore, then they're still in that relationship with you, right? They're still kind of happy to hear from you. They still want to find out more. So yeah, you can definitely keep, keep speaking to them.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:35

And one of the sort of the metrics that we kind of talk about, I suppose, in email marketing and things like open rates and click through rates, what are vanity metrics? And what are actual metrics like, what do you think? What should we be measuring? And what are just the vanity metrics that make us feel good, but maybe don't have an impact? Yeah, I think, I think it depends on what your objectives are, but open rates and click rates do give you an idea of how engaged your audience is, but I would only typically look at that trended, not of like one specific email or one specific month, but it's just overall, how engaged is my audience the key

Sarah Thomas  23:11

The key metrics, probably for most businesses, are conversions. And so no matter how big your list is or how small your list is is how many people are kind of clicking and making a booking from those emails. Because you can have a list size of, you know, 200 people, but if they're engaged and they're they're and you get a good conversion rate from that, that's much better than having, you know, 1000s of people on your list, and the messages just aren't landing and people aren't converting. So I think sometimes list size can be a bit of a vanity metric, you know, like, my list sizes is this big, but really, how many people are doing what you want them to do, which is engaging and booking or buying with you? Those are the key, the key metrics.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  24:00

Yeah, I think it's interesting, because I remember, in doing the podcast, it's like, you know, people often launch a podcast. I think we've been going for almost four years now, people often launch a podcast, and they expect to get 10s of 1000s of people kind of listening in within the first few months, and then they worry that they haven't. And it's like, again, I think they are vanity metrics, because isn't it better to have potentially a couple of 100 people who are listening and listening every week. And yeah, imagine that's like being in front of an audience of 200 people in a doing a keynote speech that are actually genuinely interested in hearing what you have to say, as opposed to 10,000 people who potentially are paying zero attention to you and are off doing other things while they're while they're listening. So I think it's important to think about what is, what is the real measure of success look like? It's not about numbers, it's about what, as you said, what do they do? What? How do they engage?

Sarah Thomas  24:50

Yeah, and I love that analogy of Imagine your email audience as people in a room, like, if you've got 100 people on your email list, you would love to. Be able to be in a room with 100 people and just say, hey, here's what I do, here's here's how I serve, here's what you know, my business does. You would, you would love that. But sometimes people feel like that's not that big a list, but really like if you think of those people as individuals, and when you're crafting your email messages to them, actually thinking of of of them as individuals and people and someone that you're speaking to, one to one, I think that that is something that is, like, really invaluable to your to your marketing.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:28

Okay, there's probably huge amounts that we can talk about in terms of email marketing, but from a business owner's point of view, I think the key messages so far is email is definitely not dead. There is still plenty of opportunity. In fact, it is getting stronger and stronger in terms of medium. It isn't about our list size. It's about people actually engaging doing the things that we actually want them to do. It's really important to at least have those kind of four basics, the welcome email, the abandoned cart, the post purchase, the lapsed customer kind of emails, what's up? But more importantly, it really is about going kind of almost back to basics before you start building this pathway to think about that customer journey, segmenting them into the right sort of segments, so you're not just blasting stuff out, but you're speaking to them on a personal level, and then crafting the message too, to make sure that you are actually speaking to a human, not a generic one size fits all email.

Sarah Thomas  26:20

Yeah, that's a great summary. And actually, I have a free guide for your audience to help them implement some of these strategies, if you want. Maybe we can share in the show notes, yes, but yeah, this talk, it talks about segmentation, how to do it rather than the batch and blast like, how best to go about those first steps into segmenting, and then the journey emails, implementing those, and then what metrics should be measured, not those vanity metrics that that we talked about it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:46

And if we've got somebody listening at the moment who isn't sending out regular emails, and when I say regular, I mean, I heard you say weekly, maybe you can't do weekly, but even monthly, if you're not sending out regular emails, maybe you haven't even started doing it. What would you suggest? What you know? What's your advice to them?

Sarah Thomas  26:59

Yeah, I would say it depends if you even have, like, much of a list, if you do, if you have even started a list, then then just start sending messages out now, especially, you know, coming up to the end of this year and into into the new year, just start sending and depending on what, what, what you're selling like, you just want to make sure that you're giving value to your customers. So maybe, as you kind of are starting to put together a, you know, your messaging calendar, what do people what? What do you think people are wanting from you right now, and making sure that you're you're talking to that, and then, really, it's all just testing and learning. So putting together something to send out, seeing how it lands. You're not going to get things right every time. You're not going to get it right, definitely the first time. But starting to kind of send some some kind of messages to your audience, is definitely a good start. And depending on if you even have a team, because some people don't have maybe one person on like their marketing team doing all of the digital marketing, or whatever. So it also just depends on if you have somebody able to, you know, what are they capable of doing at the moment? And or do you need some help to for someone to come in and help put together a strategy and implementing that?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:15

And I'm guessing that's a lot of the work that you do is actually helping teams to get into that strategy so they can then execute that on an ongoing basis.

Sarah Thomas  28:22

Yeah, exactly. And as I say, if, if there's, if there is some kind of team, at the moment, there's someone in the business to do it, then what, what we can do is come in and help put a strategy, strategy together, and a plan together, and then, and then the team can, can implement, but if, actually, there's no bandwidth in the team, and that in, you know, people need help implementing like, what are those messages, building the email, sending them out, segmenting the audience, then that's something that we can help with as well.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:48

Hey, look, I always ask my guests to to ensure that we have a couple of, you know, top tips and tools. So when, when people are listening in, they're not only motivated and inspired to do something like send out their first emails or review their segmentation or review their database, but also they can walk away with, you know, real pragmatic things they can actually do. So what would be your three top tips, or tools for email automation, email marketing?

Sarah Thomas  29:13

The first thing I would recommend is taking a look at your website. And where are you capturing, you know, customer data and opt ins at the minute. And is there some improvements you can make there? Or if you you're actually not, then implementing something to capture those, those opt ins.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:28

I guess the B to B stuff is things like white papers or ebooks or whatever. But how else does one capture that data? Yeah,

Sarah Thomas  29:35

I think, yeah, giving away a freebie, like, like, like, you say that will kind of bring value to the audience is a great way always having something in the footer of your website if people want to hear more, if you have other forms, like contact forms, even like a simple checkbox, anywhere where you have a form, allowing people to kind of opt into those other email messages is is definitely a big win. So yeah and pop ups. And things like that. Perfect.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:02

Okay, so that is about making sure you've got that ability to have capture data and how people opt in to your emails.

Sarah Thomas  30:09

And then the second is, is having a look at what you have in place at the moment. So when people are coming in into your world, and they're, you know, getting that white paper or downloading whatever it is you have to offer them is then putting in that welcome journey in place, like, if they're interested in this thing, how, how can you help them implement it? What other information do you have? Maybe doing some, you know, even just two or three simple follow up emails after they've they've done that. I think that that will definitely help with building that relationship with the customers because they've shown an interest in in something. So let's make sure that we're kind of continuing that conversation perfect.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:49

And for my example, that's the sheets, and getting the information about how to use them when their features and things after I've actually bought them was fantastic. Yeah, yeah. And I think you made the point earlier, don't, don't underestimate or overestimate what clients actually have read or do read. We're overwhelmed with information these days, and so making sure that you know you can continue to feed some of that bite sized things that you that they may not have picked up on, even when they bought the product that can just help. I think I bought some Sony headphones the other day too. And similar thing, I've been getting these messages. Do you know this is how you can use them? Here's another example.

Sarah Thomas  31:21

Yeah, especially, like, like you said, with some of the with some of the free things that that people offer. You know, sometimes people download them they haven't had a chance to read them yet. So actually, one thing that I really would recommend people do is in the in, like, an email sequence that you might send after might be picking out one or two key things from that guide or list or whatever, and say, did, had you seen this? Had you spotted this? Here are like, three things in like this particular section that I think you might find really useful, so they might not have, like, actually opened that paper. So what might you be able to bring out and put into an email so they can see straight away, it's always useful, perfect.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:58

Okay? And tip number three,

Sarah Thomas  32:01

and I think the metrics, is measuring things that actually are going to drive your business forward. So what is the objective of the email campaigns or the email automations? And make sure that you're measuring against that is really key, and not some of those other metrics that people like to talk about. And people, yeah, like to like, like to see, but actually, what is driving your business forward at the end of the day?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:26

That fits in perfectly with that EOS philosophy, which is, you know, there's all very well having scorecards and data, but if you're not using that data to actually make decisions, then it's, it's not worthwhile even collecting it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, totally. Right. Okay, great. Well, I mean, I've certainly made a whole bunch of notes here about different things. I think the key thing for me is that, you know, email isn't dead. It's a great way to continue to build relationships, even from the even the beginning right the way through the end, and to re engage people. And I think my biggest, my biggest learning, personally, has been like I said. I think sometimes I put this email out, the newsletter out, or I put an email, I hear nothing back, but don't think that that means people aren't reading it. There are a lot of people out there who are what I would call silent, kind of almost like lurkers. They're not necessarily engaged and they're not necessarily responding, but they actually still are reading and still engaging without the actual physical engagement. So don't assume that they're not I think that's probably one of the things I've learned, Sarah, we're going to put that link in there for the guide that you talked about in terms of people getting hold of you as well. What is the best way to get hold of you if they want to talk a bit further about this?

Sarah Thomas  33:31

Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me. I'm Sarah Thomas Tierra Marketing CO, you can find me on there. That's the best way. And I have a website. Tierra Marketing co.com, fantastic.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:41

We'll make sure that we put that in the in the notes as well. Hey, look, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate thanks for sharing your knowledge and your wisdom. I think it's wonderful to see how you've gone from being essentially an IT kind of database developer into a marketing automation expert. So congratulations on that, and thank you for sharing.

Sarah Thomas  34:00

Great thanks so much, Debra, it's been great, wonderful.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  34:03

Thank you. Oh, thanks. Bye.