Lou Mintzer shares five email strategies for boutique owners. Build your list to 1,000 or more with pop-ups, send at least one campaign email weekly, and set up triggered flows for cart abandonment and post-purchase. Automate everything to let email work around the clock.
Questions this episode answers
December 27, 2024.
1,000; 2,000; 5,000; 10,000 (grow steadily over time).
Under 3% requires changes; over 5% is best-in-class.
Three or more emails.
At least one campaign email per week.
Foreign.
Business can be a lonely game. But it doesn't have to be. Welcome to Boutique Chat where we explore community over competition and how to scale your company with the balance and the happiness that we all seek. We'll hear from product based businesses of all types, retailers, e commerce and wholesale brands, along with industry experts shaping the future of our industry. I'm your host Ashley Alderson from the boutique Hub and I can't wait to chat.
Hey Hub, I'm Lou Mintzer, CEO of Grid and Pixel and I'm really pumped to be on 5 Minute Friday with you today because let's be real. Great email marketing is like having a cash register that runs 24, 7, but only if you know how to set it up right. And so today if you're using Shopify email or Shopify and Klaviyo or Omnisend, you, you're in the right place because I'm gonna share five really powerful strategies to turn your emails into a sales engine that can just work around the clock for you and your boutique. Because really what you want to get to is an email marketing program that will boost sales without you constantly having to be in front of your screen. That's what great looks like. And so it all starts at number one with building a really strong and good and large email list. Your email list is the key. It's your lifeline to reliable sales over time. And so you want to get to 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 10,000 emails over time. You have to constantly be collecting them. One of the most successful ways to collect them is through a purchase. Next best is through a pop up form on your website. So if you don't have one, you really need to set up a pop up form. You can use Shopify forms for free. Klaviyo also has a great forms product. You need to put in a reciprocal offer, right? Something that will convince people to give you their email address so that you have more than one bite at the apple to try to make the sale. And so great offers include things like giveaways, 15, 20% off, a free gift, a special note, VIP access, 10% off, 5% off, free shipping, et cetera. You know, you know the world is your oyster, it's your store, it's your brand. So come up with a compelling offer and when you put it out there, measure it. And here's the yardstick. If you're converting under 3% of your site visitors into email addresses, then you need to shake things up. You have to go experiment with offers. You need to be over 3%. Getting over 5% is best in class. And you'll be able to do that. Try a contest. Okay, moving on to number two. You've got to set up behaviorally triggered email flows. These are your silent and reliable team members that can engage with customers around the clock. I mean, think about it like it's a whole other sales associate working in your boutique that is connecting with customers and knows when to jump in and reach out at the perfect time. And so the core lineup includes your welcome series, which is a series of three or more emails that welcome people when you get their email address and encourage them to make the first purchase with a discount if they haven't already made one. Next up, we've got all the browse abandonment automations. Those include browse abandonment when someone looks at a product, site abandonment search abandonment when they do a search on your site, Collection abandonment when they look at a collection page or a category of your products. And it continues on to cart abandonment, right to checkout abandonment, where oftentimes you will want to consider more of a discount in the last chance offer. Email. Moving right along, we've got the post purchase, follow up emails. Those include thank yous, upsells and cross sells which lead right into win back emails. And you can think about those as like a post purchase email with a really long timer. So they might go out three, six, nine months, even a year after the initial purchase was made. You know, it's a really great way to make a connection with people that can sustain over time. Because really, email marketing is the world's best retention marketing tool. And so this is all about turning first time customers into repeat customers. Which leads me to number three, which is that you should be sending at least one campaign email per week, every week. You have to think of them kind of like a regular check in. You need to keep your boutique in your customer's mind. And one of the ways I've seen people do this successfully is by taking all that social media content that they're posting throughout the week on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and turning their weekly email campaign kind of into a summary of those. And they'll merchandise it with a great offer. Get everything above the fold, the product, the offer, the discount, the personalization elements, and then below that, great photos, great connections, stories, that kind of thing. That's what people really, really like. And that leaves me to number four, which is in the emails, the actual emails that you send, you have to have a really good balance, about a 50, 50 balance of images and text. Now, you wouldn't want your marketing emails to be all images and at the same time, you also wouldn't want all of your emails to be all text. So you've got to find that nice balance that starts with great image or animation above the fold, that leads into some storytelling below. Because when people read, that's how they form an emotional connection that, that can really bond them to your brand and your products. And you want that to be a story that is told over the series of multiple emails and touch points over time. And that's what will really get people to know you and to understand your store. And that's what can lead to more sales. And so finally, number five, you've got to automate, automate, automate everything. Because I know that, you know, you're running a boutique and time is everything. And with the right automation, you can create a system that's really, really focused on around the clock sales, even when you're focused elsewhere. In fact, it's one of the best ways to unlock multitasking because you can effectively delegate a big portion of your email and email marketing to a professional so that you can really focus on the other aspects of your business where you're able to bring a lot of unique value. So there you have it. That's my rundown of the top five things you should definitely be incorporating into your email marketing program. And if you don't know exactly where to start, well, Gridded Pixel has you covered. So if you want to go a little bit deeper on this stuff, I'm happy to set up a call with you and go through how you're handling your email marketing today. And I suspect there's probably a way that my product, which is a Shopify app and it's also a Klaviyo app, can plug into your existing website marketing flow to enhance some of the results that you're seeing. Because I really want to help you get the most out of every email send and every customer so that you'll be top of mind to drive more revenue without doing a lot more work. Thank you so much for joining me on this five minute Friday. And let's go out there and make those emails count.
Thanks for listening, guys. I hope you took away all kinds of nuggets and new ideas from this week's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a rating and review. We love to hear your feedback and give you a chance to be featured on the show each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and to access guest downloads and bonuses and all the resources we talked about on the show. Head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.
