Cart Insiders Podcast

On the surface, the term “lapsed buyer” seems relatively straightforward.

But the concept turns a little murky when giving thought to what it really means.

First off, there are any number of reasons that someone has not purchased from your brand in a while. The customer might not be ready. They could have had a bad experience. Perhaps something changed in their life and your product has lost relevancy.

And defining the moment of transition to the “lapsed” side is debatable, too.

Despite all nuances, email marketers should not ignore these customers. Messages targeted at lapsed purchasers experienced a click-through rate of 13% last year, accompanied by a 21% conversion rate.

Naked & Famous Denim is one such company that employs lapsed-purchase email automation. The company’s chief denim otaku, Bahzad Trinos, shares the strategy behind these emails, which are sent to customers who often go a year before buying again. Denim enthusiasts are encouraged to wear the high-end jeans day after day, without washing in between, until the fabric molds to their liking.

Though Trinos doesn’t expect repeat purchases within a certain period of time, he sees value in engaging and maintaining an open line of communication. The three-part series produces a 16% conversion rate. The revenue-per-email (RPE) lift ranges from 580% to 793% over typical promotional emails.

He talks through his approach, which includes gathering customer feedback and utilizing Omnisend’s product recommender. Also joining the show are this season’s podcast co-pilot, Lucas Walker, and an Omnisend customer success manager who discusses her process for steering clients through creating the lapsed purchase series.

We dig into a number of questions about lapsed purchase email automations:

• How do you determine when a buyer becomes a lapsed purchaser?
• When is the right time to send a lapsed purchase message?
• What is the one element you should incorporate to prevent subscribers from tagging you as spam?
• How do you decide on the right content for a series, especially if you don’t know the reason for a customer’s inactivity?
• Why is it advantageous to ease in with a customer feedback slant?
• Is it better to create a multi-message series one email at a time, or all at once?

About the Guests

Bahzad Trinos, Chief Denim Otaku, Naked & Famous Denim

Trinos is obsessed with fabric, its history, how it’s made, and the way it ages. As the company’s first employee, he has been instrumental in its evolution every step of the way. Trinos serves as general manager, develops the product collection, and leads the company’s branding and marketing efforts.

Danielle Heck, Senior Customer Success Manager, Omnisend

With experience in digital and email marketing, Heck’s key focus is on providing excellent customer service and proactive communication to her clients. She loves analyzing her customers’ business strategies and progress to help them realize their marketing goals and gain the most out of Omnisend.

Lucas Walker, Founder, Rolled Up Podcast Network

Walker is a serial entrepreneur. He has started three successful businesses in the software, ecommerce and media spaces. Lucas’ experience also includes marketing for an internationally-recognized sales trainer, where he launched the Make It Happen Mondays podcast, oversaw partners around the world, and reviewed over 10,000 ecommerce websites.

The data all points in the same direction when it comes to SMS: it’s becoming a standard marketing channel. This time next year, marketers who don’t embrace it will find themselves well behind the game.

In 2020, ecommerce merchants sent 378% more texts to customers than they did the year prior, resulting in a 102% year-over-year increase in conversions. We’re confident numbers will only rise in 2021.

Regardless of the stats and indicators, many marketers remain hesitant to dabble in SMS. Asking for an email address? No problem. But a cell phone number—that’s getting a little too invasive.

Divatress, a wig shop, jumped into SMS in 2020. They’re now close to the 70,000 subscriber mark, which constitutes 40% of their email subscribers.

Owner and founder Rob Lin discusses why he felt it was time to make the move. He explains how the messaging channel was a natural evolution for his audience, the ways he is utilizing it to spread the word about the brand, and why it is exceeding his expectations.

Also joining the conversation are an Omnisend customer success manager and this season’s Cart Insiders Podcast co-pilot, Lucas Walker. They share their perspectives on ways SMS can be used to build relationships, and how merchants can move past the insecurities of getting started.

Tune in for these SMS considerations and more:

• What compels the marketing pros to sign up for a brand’s SMS alerts?
• What role can data play in determining a company’s strategy around using SMS?
• How can customer support through SMS help make a sale?
• How can SMS be used to establish a level of comfort for the customer?
• From a marketing standpoint, what is the most important thing to know about SMS?
• Is there an ideal time to send SMS messages?
• What are the SMS don’ts?

About the Guests:

Rob Lin, Owner & Founder, Divatress

Lin launched Divatress.com in 2009 with the goal of reaching more people after starting several retail stores. Over the last decade, he has grown the business while “navigating all the craziness of small business.” His goal is to grow large enough to open multiple warehouses around the country and also create as many jobs as possible. In his spare time, he loves spending time with his children, playing ping-pong, and grilling.

George Moser, Manager of Customer Success, Omnisend

Moser has over eight years of experience in the digital marketing space, primarily in ecommerce. He helps brands drive retention and revenue via omnichannel marketing automation.

Lucas Walker, CEO & Founder, Rolled Up

Walker is a serial entrepreneur. He has started three successful businesses in the software, ecommerce and media spaces. Lucas’ experience also includes marketing for an internationally-recognized sales trainer, where he launched the Make It Happen Mondays podcast, oversaw partners around the world, and reviewed over 10,000 ecommerce websites.

We hear from Chris Vallely, Senior Brand Manager of the clothing company Dixxon Flannel. He discusses the company’s rapid expansion from selling niche, biker-focused flannel shirts to an apparel brand with a broad appeal and range of products, built largely on the back of a successful social media marketing strategy. We learn how Dixxon creates hype around their products and how they use email marketing to add value to the brand’s story.

See how Dixxon Flannel outgrew Mailchimp

https://www.omnisend.com/resources/cu...

More About Dixxon Flannel:

https://www.dixxonquality.com

Social:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DixxonQuality/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dixxon_flan...

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rhone

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC__6...

Contact Greg:

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/whatsgregdoing

Contact Omnisend:

http://www.Omnisend.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/omnisend

Twitter: http://twitter.com/omnisend

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Apple has shaken the email marketing world with the announcement of its iOS 15 update, anticipated to roll out this fall.

The topic is taking over all marketing industry channels, with lots of discussion about the new privacy feature’s impact, including our new hub, www.OpensAreDead.com. It’s so important that it has interrupted our regularly scheduled podcast series on marketing automation.

The primary question up for debate: What are the repercussions when Apple Mail app users can block brands from seeing whether they opened their email?

The general consensus is that opens are dead. Even though not everyone uses iOS or their email app, it’s a large enough segment for which open rate data will disappear. Losing even partial data makes the rest unreliable for making informed marketing decisions.

Open rates have long stood as one barometer of an email marketing program’s success. While we don’t know all the implications of this change, we do know that marketers need to shift focus to what is most important in connecting with and engaging their customers.

Here are some questions we cover in this special podcast episode:

• What do we know about the iOS 15 changes?
• What is still uncertain?
• What should email marketers start doing today to prepare for this change?
• What are the must-have metrics for analyzing performance?
• How can you boost the likelihood that subscribers will open your email?
• What are the best means for ensuring marketing is relevant to the subscriber, and therefore turns a profit?

About The Guest:

Lucas Walker, Founder, Rolled Up Podcast Network

Walker is a serial entrepreneur. He has started three successful businesses in the software, ecommerce and media spaces. Walker’s experience also includes marketing for an internationally-recognized sales trainer, where he launched the Make It Happen Mondays podcast, oversaw partners around the world, and reviewed over 10,000 ecommerce websites.

It’s a common struggle for ecommerce merchants. Will I annoy subscribers with emails about their shopping cart abandonments?

Worse, will subscribers outright leave my brand if I remind them of the things they merely viewed?

Equestrian apparel company Kerrits has discovered the answer is “no” to both. They found the right balance, and it’s paying off. Cart and product abandonment messages account for 10% of the company’s email marketing revenue.

These automation types perform. Conversion rates for cart abandonment messages stack up to 34%, while the browse variety hits the 17% mark.

Senior Director of Branding and Marketing Sara Florin divulges how she implemented both kinds at Kerrits, taking us behind the scenes of the abandonment portion of the company’s “minimal but effective automated email strategy.” She explains the elements that go into Kerrits messages, how she inserts splashes of equine speak, and what triggers email deployment.

Also weighing in with insights are the Omnisend customer success manager who has guided Florin from the start, along with ecommerce veteran Lucas Walker.

We dig into the following questions around abandonment emails and more:

• How can cart abandonment emails be useful in revealing the reasons the checkout process stalls?
• Is success dependent on offering a discount?
• Which is best when designing browse abandonment emails: the intrusive approach of, “Hey, we noticed you checking this out,” or the covert, promotion-veiled route?
• If you implement an abandonment series, what should each message communicate? And what’s the ideal timing?
• How do you decide what products are worthy of a browse abandonment email?
• Why is it a good idea to split messaging based on different cart attributes?
• What are some resources for inspiration?
• Listen to the full story on the Cart Insiders podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

About the Guests

Sara Florin, Senior Director of Branding & Marketing, Kerrits

Florin, whose marketing career began in graphic design, flexes her creative muscles by overseeing projects spanning wholesale and direct-to-consumer touchpoints across all channels. She approaches every project with fresh eyes, focused on understanding its purpose, determining how to measure its success, and frequently asking, “What if?” Outside of work, Florin flexes her actual muscles in the gym, riding Fjord horses and walking her rescue pup.

Sadie Arnold, Customer Success Manager, Omnisend

Arnold helps Omnisend merchants elevate their email marketing strategies. With prior experience in customer behavior analytics at a grocery chain, she helps clients identify their customers’ unique journeys with Omnisend reporting tools and personalize automations for sending the right messages. Arnold loves seeing her clients become more successful email marketers.

Lucas Walker, Founder, Rolled Up

Walker is a serial entrepreneur. He has started three successful businesses in the software, ecommerce, and media spaces. Lucas’ experience also includes marketing for an internationally-recognized sales trainer, where he launched the Make It Happen Mondays podcast, oversaw partners around the world, and reviewed over 10,000 ecommerce websites.