Year-Round Retention: Off-Season Strategies to Keep Customers Engaged and Buying | EP 27

Consumers have needs outside Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Obviously the excitement's really high, but they wanna buy stuff year round, right? And obviously, you know, as consumers and the way the world is, we just love discounts. We love good deals. We love finding the most relevant, best products any time of the year. So off-season marketing also helps you maintain momentum, really brand loyalty, and avoid lulls in revenue. Because again, it's great that you drive all this money in November and December, but you need to have cash flow on hand and you need to be selling and pushing products year round. So that's super important. And often too, you know, we know this, a lot of listeners know it, it's way cheaper to run ads and push email promotions in a much quieter month.

People tend to highlight stories and reviews from peak season, and they don't really use that during the off season.

But reality is you're kind of priming the pump all year round and you kind of want to stay in front of them.

So I always tell people to build social proof all year round.

What's up, dude? You back from vacation?

I'm back, I'm— I'm back and at it. I've got a lot to catch up on. How are you doing?

You're—

you're tan, your hair is blown out. Where'd you go, to New Jersey?

Ah, I went to Cabo. Yeah, I went to Cabo.

Hair—

yeah, it looks like a Guido. I get it, I got the joke now.

I think that might be considered a racial slur, I'm not sure.

Hey, editor, maybe edit this out.

We'll beep it.

Beep! No, we don't have to beep it. I doubt anyone cares, but that's funny.

Anyways, dude, we got a good pod here today.

We're going to talk about year-round retention, offseason strategies, keeping your customers engaged and buying. So you ready to shoot this thing?

Yeah, let's run it.

All right. In three, two, one.

From the open to the click, they're the masters of the flow. Just watch your list grow and your leads turn to go. Did we retain you so far, or do we have to extend it? If you want results, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it.

What is up everyone? Welcome to Send It, where we discuss anything and everything retention marketing, specifically in email and SMS marketing and e-commerce. My name is Jimmy Kim and I'm here with my co-host Chase Diamond. All right Chase, today we're talking about an often overlooked topic.

We all like to talk about things like Black Friday and all the big sales, but Let's talk about how to stay relevant and profitable in your off-season, which can be for a brand all year round except for Black Friday.

And we're talking about crafting year-round marketing plans that keep customers engaged 365 days a year. But first, first, before we jump into that, I have something that's hot off the press. I haven't shared anything recently, but big, big thanks to Alexander Tran and our EAC retention community for sharing this. This happened on Friday.

You want to know about it?

Yeah, I wasn't around, so hit me. What happened?

Yeah, so Google just did a really interesting new release that I thought was really interesting. They want to know about your emails ultimately. So here's what it does, and I'll kind of shorten it because there's like a lot that they could talk about, but basically Google now wants to automatically capture details on your new arrivals, your promotions, your social media links from your marketing email. So they even give an email out It's like mail@googlemarketing or something like that at gmail.com. And they want to be a part of your emails. And this information they're going to take and they're going to take it and put it into your search, your shopping, and other Google platforms to increase visibility without any extra work on your part. You stay in control and you can opt out of this feature at any time too. All right. Pretty cool. Yeah.

So if I understood correctly, you basically, for the emails that you're sending, you basically send them off or you CC or you add them to your list. And they're essentially going to distribute that on other of their platforms organically?

Yeah, they're just basically keeping more up to date and relevant. I think this has to do a lot with their new AI and Gemini and everything they're working with. I think they're trying to stay more relevant and stay more up to date. And the way they think about it is, hey, what's the best way? Which is like email and knowing what's going on with the brand through email marketing ultimately.

Wow, that's interesting. I'm definitely gonna check that out and we'll have to drop that email that you're supposed to add to your list Yeah, we'll throw it in the show notes, the link to everything they have.

It has the link, it tells you what it is. It's Google's official announcement around it. And again, big shout out to our retention community for bringing this up. He was on top of it before even I got to it. But Alex, if you're listening to this, thank you for sharing that. That's exactly why people are part of our community so we can have the most cutting-edge conversations. But all right, let's get back to the pod here. And I want to talk about today's plan. So today's Today plan is to talk about how we're to get more leads. going to combine seasonal campaign tactics with off-season ideas so that we have some really cool ways to think about it. I've got some examples, we got tips. I'm thinking about talking about things like gift guides, flash sales, goal-oriented campaigns, loyalty, and much more. So if you think your sales have a slump once your peak season's over, which again, for most brands is like Black Friday and then nothing else. I mean, when I was running a brand, I think 50% of my sales happened in that 4 or 5 week period. But the reality is, Just because Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you know, is the big opportunity we have every year, it's no reason to go quiet. You know, why would we have a missed opportunity?

Yeah, dude, I'm 100% with you. And again, like, consumers have needs outside Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Obviously, the excitement's really high, but they want to buy stuff year round, right? And obviously, you know, as consumers and the way the world is, we just love discounts. We love good deals. We love finding the most relevant best products any time of the year. So off-season marketing also helps you maintain momentum, really build brand loyalty, and avoid lulls in revenue. Because again, if it's great that you drive all this money in November and December, but you need to have cash flow on hand and you need to be selling and pushing products, you know, year-round. So that's super important. And often too, you know, we know this, a lot of listeners know it, it's way cheaper to run ads and push email promotions in a much quieter month Because there's less competition. You know, Black Friday, Cyber Monday brings out the crazy, whereas now in a typical day, typical week, typical month, I'm not that there's no noise. Obviously there's a lot of noise, but the noise is a fraction of what it is. So since you're not competing with every other brand in a frenzy, just double down on today, on tomorrow, on next month.

Yeah, exactly. So step 1, I think about all of this, when you're getting into the mindset of thinking about it, you need to start by stopping thinking about the off-season as a dead time.

Instead, see it as your moment to almost reignite interest, to reignite your flows, and you reignite your funnels ultimately, and even as your revenue across the calendar year.

I think there's a lot of ways to do this, but I wanted to start off and we'll just kind of go and talk about some different ideas that we've had.

But one of the ones that I really like is gift guides.

I'm a big fan of gift guides.

I think people don't really— it's underrated ultimately.

People don't really focus on them too much.

And my take— It was really simple. I think gift guides shouldn't be limited to December.

So let's talk about that.

What do you think about gift guides?

Dude, I love gift guides. I am probably the worst shopper. I don't know what people want. I don't know what people like. Gift guides literally just curate suggestions for me and make it easy. It's like, as long as I know the brand or the brands that my wife, my brothers, my friends, my mom and dad, you know, whoever likes, if they have a gift guide, It makes it so easy. Just give me the best recommendations for a man, a woman, whatever, and let me go figure out and pick between 2 or 3 things, right? Whereas a lot of times, you know, if my wife wants like a t-shirt, I have to go on a company and look through hundreds of t-shirts. Dude, I am so overwhelmed. I have no clue. So with that, right, when people have birthdays, anniversaries, or kind of other random special occasions, throughout the year, leveraging something like a gift guide is fantastic. So, you know, I think the recommendation that we typically give to folks would be, say for example, you take your holiday gift guide, you know, repurpose that approach in a monthly or quarterly kind of top picks type email. I mean, even sending to like a landing page that has like a bunch of top picks depending on who you're shopping for. So for example, if you're, let's say, a home decor brand, maybe right now it would be really timely to do like a spring refresh Gift guide, right? In something like a March or April, or, you know, cozy up for fall, whether it's something like a September or October. That would be amazing.

You know, another, another idea is also to tie in life events. We all know all the life events that are happening, like graduations, for example, as we come into right now, actually, as you're listening to this pod, like graduations are starting to get prepared. So like graduation gifts or the spring and the summer is when people buy houses.

So it's like housewarming gifts. You know, I think that you can get really personalized and especially, Especially if you have different like loyalty programs or you're using the data and you can create personalized recommendations.

You can also, you really create gift guides that highlight based around what they've purchased, maybe categorical or, you know, some of your most popular products and calling them gift guides. I think those are also really cool ways to think about it.

Dude, 100% agree with you. So kind of quickly shifting gears over here. One thing that this kind of brings to mind for me Is like with Black Friday, right? Black Friday, Cyber Monday, all that type of thing. It's really known and it really works well because of the urgency and heavy discounts, right? However, urgency isn't limited to BFCM. Urgency can work at any time. You just have to know how to leverage it, right? So, you know, kind of one of my favorite ways to use that same strategy is to launch flash sales for slow-moving inventory, something like in March or even in April, like doing like a rainy day deal in type thing to spike engagement. So just get crafty, get clever, and find ways to tie in urgency. Obviously make sure that it's not manufactured. It has to be legitimate. And then additionally consider like small niche holidays. So if you're a coffee company, I know it's kind of cheesy, but like jump in on the bandwagon on National Coffee Day. There's no reason for you not to be. Other people are going to be promoting it. So it kind of creates this little buzz around it. Or like, for example, if you're a natural foods company or a gardening company, Something like an Earth Day flash sale. It's timely, it's relevant, it has, you know, a one-day window. So inherently there's that built-in urgency. So that's super important. And then on the, on the flip side though, you know, using kind of the wrong holidays can make you look bad. However, but if you use the right holidays and you kind of have fun and you don't take yourself too seriously, it will help you stay relevant, top of mind, keep you focused on the mission, and ultimately help you drive some, some revenue on some Hey, it's Jimmy.

Quick 15 seconds of your time because I have something fun to share. Did you know between the two of us, Chase and I, we have over 20 years of experience in email marketing? Recently, we put our minds together to create a certification program that takes all of our knowledge and share it to the world. It's called Ecom Email Certified. It's an end-to-end course certification program that's designed to take anyone, regardless if you're a newbie or an experienced marketer, founder, executive, agency marketer, or any marketing professional to teach them everything we know about email marketing, SMS, from deliverability to AI to copywriting to design to strategy. We cover it all. It's loaded with 175 modules and 25 hours of education combined with quizzes, community, all designed to educate, test, certify you to become a full-fledged email marketing and email marketer for e-commerce. And so since you're listening to this pod, we want to reward you with loyalty by giving you a coupon for $200 off this certification. Just jump over to ecomemailcertified.com, check the show notes. Now back to your pod.

Yeah, no, I definitely think that holiday strategy— the problem with holiday strategy is like people overuse it and overabuse it. They don't have any kind of thinking and connection to it, but I still think it does work when you're really focused on specific holidays that are really related to your product, right? Don't be a pants company talking about like, you know, something that's completely off relevant that has nothing to do with like a dog day or something like that. But when you can get really focused, it really does nail. And you know, one thing I always say, you know, and the biggest key to what you just shared, which I love, is that you want to make sure that you're using things like countdown timers in your email and/or SMS that are key here.

Sale ends tonight at midnight.

That sense of urgency is what moves the needle no matter what month it is. People like to have that. And You know what? Fear of missing out is definitely a big thing for most people. Okay. So, I got one. You know, one of the ones that I think about is how people set goals, right? In January, people are setting goals and sure, they, you know, go through and sometimes they miss them and all that good stuff. But the reality is, is that they aren't only having goals in January.

They're setting goals in May when they're prepping for the summer or September when they're going back to school or work routines.

That's a good one.

So let's break that one down. You got any thoughts around that?

Yeah, first off, absolutely agree. And then, yeah, so let's say, for example, a couple things to share. Um, so say you're a company that sells something like fitness gear, right? Um, maybe you can do something like a spring forward reset or a mid-year wellness check-in, right? So kind of piggybacking on what you mentioned, right, January being a time where that's kind of a goal. Obviously goals kind of fall off and people kind of go through the the ebb and the flow of wanting to get back in shape, right? In the spring, they wanted to get into good shape for the summer, going to the beach, going to the lake, going to the pool. Um, and then later, right, people are going back to school. I'm getting a, you know, focusing on school and work routines. That could be like a, you know, a really great time to do like an office supply type thing, right? Like back-to-school productivity boost in August. That's great. You know, people need things. I gotta imagine, like, you know, Target, for example, crushes it, right? Because they do tons of promos around that. There's no reason that other brands and your own brand can't piggyback and do that same type of thing. And with this, right, the idea really boils down to how do you tie your products, you know, potentially your services— obviously we're focused on e-com— but your products to any type of, you know, milestone or life improvement moment, not just New Year's, right? Reminding customers that they can commit decommit and recommit to goals at any point in time. Because I think a lot of people feel shame that like maybe they didn't move on with a New Year's goal, right? It's hard. So I think being really kind of upfront about that, it's like, hey, if you happen to fall off the wagon of the working out or you never got around to it, there's no time like the present, you know, shop X, Y, and Z, whatever that looks like.

No, that's spot on. And I guess my addition to that, as you kind of shared that, is like when you think about even monthly challenge emails or 30-day habit campaigns that you're talking about right now, it's— they say that it takes like 21 days to set a habit or something like that. So if you're thinking about goals, this is totally down to the line because people are trying to set goals all the time. I mean, I set goals for myself all the time for different things that are happening. So for instance, if you're like a meal kit brand, you might do like a 30-day of healthy eating in June or some kind of—

and, you know, you would focus on interactive and progress check-in emails.

These all work because people want to do things with other people and Sometimes even a brand can be that other person that's working with him because they feel like they're working through it together. Okay. So let's keep going into this off-season idea.

I have a few different topics. I would love to hear your thoughts.

So first and most important to me is, you know, not to disappear after your peak season, right?

You want to continue emailing your list. You want to stay top of mind. You want to remind them of new arrivals, share behind-the-scenes updates, or feature a customer spotlight. People don't buy if they forget all about you. And I think this is the problem that people have is like, people will be like, oh, I email super heavy during the holidays and I stop emailing or sending SMS afterwards because it's the off-season. But the reality is you've got to stay in front of them and there's a lot of opportunity in front of you.

Dude, 100%. Totally agree. And with that, like, I think one thing that people often neglect is keeping up with upsell and cross-sell emails, right? That's such low-hanging fruit that you should be leveraging regularly. So for example, if they bought winter gear in December, email them in February with the whole spring transition. You know, you can kind of get a lot of data to see if people buy on some of these types of things. It gives you an indication that they'll probably buy again when the season changes because people are going to need new clothing items. They're going to need new items for their house. They're going to need new items for kind of the outdoors or whatever that looks like. So with that, right, like just show them how to kind of adopt and kind of adapt their wardrobe based off the timeliness of kind of the seasons.

And that makes total sense. And that's a good use of time-based segmentation based around seasonal versus time and knowing that they should be ready for that next transition. And, you know, when you're doing that, for example, I, you know, make sure that you're offering these different things.

Like I think an off-season discount or preorder special for next season line, that's like a good way to kind of start prepping people up and warming them up. You know, It could be early booking, early bird sales. I mean, there's so many ways to kind of position and play with that.

Yeah, I totally agree and love that. And really with everything that we're talking about, the goal here is to basically guarantee revenue in your slow months. So it's kind of coming up with these creative, clever ways that are timely in nature and also personal, you know, to the people based off what they've looked at, what they've bought, what they haven't bought, what they should buy, you know, to make sure that you move inventory in the slow months and really You lock in your customer loyalty early. A lot of this, while it is focusing on capitalizing in the offseason, it really is building towards the on-season, right? It's really towards building that connection and that bond so that when something comes around in BFCM, people are primed and ready to buy. And kind of one other thing I wanted to quickly mention is, you know, I'd say another thing was like when the big holidays are over, launching some sort of like contest or a giveaway can help kind of create the excitement and the buzz. And also too, like Get people to start sharing your brand. You know, if you run a giveaway or contest where people have to refer or share something, that's a great way to get more engagement across the board. And people again might not be spending as much during these times, but they'll happily enter a contest and that's going to keep them kind of top of mind and hooked to your brand throughout the whole year.

Yeah, there's no doubt I've seen some great success with social media, email, brand-integrated giveaways, you know, Post a photo of you using your product in the offseason and you can win a prize, or opt in, or share to a friend, or some great viral. They, you know, making sure you follow up with the email also and SMS and keeping your audience and your, you know, kind of people in your community connected and also kind of sending them back to social media. That's another great way. All right, here's another good one.

Here's the facts: people trust recommendations from friends, right?

We all know that. We see it in like the Reddit world where Reddit People, I love Reddit because it's like the perfect place. People on Reddit be like, where should I buy this? And then like 3 people chime in and they're like, okay, I'll buy from there, right? It's like so funny how people do it. And these are like complete strangers. They'll listen to them, but they won't listen to different actual, you know, marketing and different things. So, you know, setting up a good referral season, referral scheme in your quiet months can be absolute gold. You know, the thing about your loyal customers is they usually love your brand, love your product, and they're happy. I know, like, for example, you talk about like your Built clothing, like you like a lot. Yeah. Regardless if it's season or not, you're always like, hey, I need a black shirt, go to Built. Hey, I need this, go to Built, right? The loyal customers are incentives and refer their friends to buy it regardless of the season.

Dude, 100%. And referral and loyalty programs, as you mentioned, are huge. Like, I think this is probably one of the more underrated, underutilized things. I think some people do it and they do it just to check the box because some agency or some guru told them that they need this and they don't really actually ever integrate and leverage it properly.

Yep.

Um, and I think one thing too that could be cool is like consider like doubling points in off-season months to encourage repeat purchases. So if you normally give X, um, traditionally, maybe in your slowest months you can consider doing 2X, right? An email is gonna be great and perfect for really highlighting these perks. There's no reason why you shouldn't have like a banner at the top or in the bottom or the middle, um, just kind of constantly reminding people about these types of things. They don't even need to necessarily be Dedicated emails, they definitely can be, but just integrating them kind of organically into your ongoing emails just to keep them top of mind is important.

Hey, it's Chase, and I hope you're enjoying the pod, but if I can just have a quick 60 seconds of your time, I really wanna share a quick story with you. So I've been using Klaviyo since 2017. My email course and social posts starting in 2020 drove hundreds and hundreds of brands and agencies to start using Klaviyo. At one point, I think I was their largest referrer of brands and agencies out of anyone in the world. And then those brands and agencies had referred hundreds and hundreds more to Klaviyo. At one point, again, I was their largest networker, largest referral through all of this. And according to the Klaviyo rep, my agency also was the top agency on their platform for managed book of business. So Really was a Klaviyo superstar, rock star. However, a couple years ago, unfortunately, I noticed a major shift at Klaviyo, and I really wasn't a fan of it. So I started looking for other platforms to work with. I needed a new home. Clients needed new homes. Friends and other folks needed a new home. So I started really diving in deep into it. And with that, right, I went searching for an alternative and I started finding platforms. I started connecting with the executives. Started talking to customers, and one that really caught me by surprise was Omnisend. I met the co-founder and CEO, Ritesh, back in 2021, and he was awesome. Really cool dude, really down to earth, really kind, and very, very helpful. Extremely helpful, actually. And because I was only kind of focused at Klaviyo at the time, I didn't end up kind of taking that relationship too much further. However, kind of more recently over the past year or two, it was obvious to me that Omnisend really was Klaviyo's biggest competition, the closest to them in every aspect possible. You know, you think about all the core features Omnisend really had that I was really impressed and really surprised. And frankly, I wish I started taking them a little bit more serious sooner. You know, I dig the team, I dig their platform, and their outlook for the coming months and years is incredible. And the success really speaks for itself. I know I'm vouching for it and speaking for it, but their success stands by itself. They have over 125,000 e-commerce brands using them, and they have a 4.5-star rating from over 6,000 companies on the Shopify store. They actually, at the last time I checked a couple days ago, they have 2x number of ratings and reviews as Klaviyo, all while having a better rating overall. You know, they're 4.8 out of 5 stars, right? It's incredible. And really with it, I use it for my own list. You know, a lot of my friends and clients are using it. They make it super easy to engage your list, drive repeat sales, and create that seamless personalized experience that we're all aiming for. This is why I'm really excited to be all in on Omnisend. I have joined them as a customer. I've joined them as an advocate, and I've joined them as an influencer. I switched my own newsletter over there. And my clients are starting to switch too, and you need to be switching there as well.

And I actually kind of have a good one and a fun one. So, so say for example, like your brand's off-season is a local or kind of weather-based thing, right? I think tying geography and kind of climate and weather all together is really fun. Kind of takes that one step further in terms of that personalization. Maybe you kind of partner with some complementary local business, right? Or multiple businesses. And for example, maybe a ski lodge might partner with a kind of a cabin rental or a local coffee roaster kind of cross-promote deals, right? Those— you guys kind of have similar audiences that aren't kind of conflicting, like they're complementary, they're not competitive. Um, so just finding ways to partner with other folks that have the audience that you want, especially if something is local, right? You know, the ski resort and the kind of cabin rental and the coffee roaster, whatever, those are all places that someone could go when they come visit. And if they have their trip booked, you know, it might help you get on their radar that Otherwise, you might not have been.

Yeah, no, that's good. I mean, you think about it in an interesting way. A skier or a winter sports person is probably going to have a high value of dollars and spender. And then you put a good coffee and local, you know, people remember that ski resort, for example. So that's a great way to create a partnership where people might find really good, excellent. I mean, imagine if you were a coffee roaster local to the ski resort that people went to and you're like, hey, come get some coffee, buy this much coffee or subscribe to this annual thing and get like a a free ski pass or something. There's a lot of ways to kind of tie that together.

And, you know, that reminds me, as you're kind of talking about seasons and bridging gaps with them, one of the things that I think people really do enjoy and a reason why you can create an event or a moment off-season is often to highlight some kind of like a charitable cause, a mission, right? Like donating a portion of the sales to a local nonprofit or your favorite nonprofit, whatever it might do. And it might just be a quick thank you or winter slumps over and your purchase will Help us donate to a great cause. You know, there's things that people want in goodwill.

People are generally a little bit more cautious with their dollar when it's outside of it. And you know, people like a good mission, and if they have goodwill and they feel like they're doing something, that's a great way to kind of build it. And not to mention, it's a good time to think about it some other ways. Here's another one I'm thinking about is like highlighting customer stories.

I mean, you know, this is a really generic and basic one, but I think that people. tend to highlight stories and reviews from peak season, and they don't really use that during the off-season. But reality is you're kind of priming the pump all year round and you kind of want to still stay in front of them. And so I always tell people to build social proof all year round and you should be continuing to do that.

Yeah. Sharing kind of UGC or kind of user-generated content or kind of how, you know, insert customer's name uses our product, even the off-season, is huge. There's no reason to let those kind of 5-star reviews collect dust. If you're collecting them, you might as well utilize them. And then one of my favorite and kind of last one to add to this specific list would be, you know, remembering to tease kind of new product lines or designs. That's a big one. Again, every time you drop something, you gotta hype it. So for example, say you're a swimwear brand, maybe you send an email something around like, you know, preview your new summer collection in early spring with some kind of, you know, VIP waitlist or some kind of Early access, like those types of things just get people excited about what's to come. And people just love in their mind just kind of like thinking about the next best thing. So if you're in spring, you know, everyone's already looking forward to the summer. They're looking forward to the vacations with their family, the beach trips, the lake trips, right? So while people are kind of at their desk bored in the spring waiting for summer, capitalize on it.

All right.

No, that's good. I like that. And, you know, always throw some kind of small discount at them to reserve these items for next season or whatever it might be, because That's going to really get them locked in, especially on your technical months or your technically slow months. You want to kind of like bring them forward to spend and get locked in with those things. Then not only is it good for like product forecasting, but it's also just great just because you have a better idea how it's hitting and if it's, you know, really working or not, right? All right.

Here's one more. And I know you said you got last one, but I have one more idea. You know, have you ever seen those like year-end type reviews, right? Like where it's like year-end review and type reviews. The fun thing that I've seen with some brands that I've seen this happen with is that they turn those into like monthly and quarterly highlight emails. Let me explain this. Instead of waiting until December for the thanks for an amazing year, you do a Q1 recap, a Q2 recap. You show a new product release, big wins, or upcoming launches, you know, or if you have like a subscription service, you, you know, you do monthly wrap-ups to share user stats. You know, you saved X hours and you read X, You know, articles this month. It keeps you invested in your brand story. I think people really want to have a connection and any reason to give 'em a connection absolutely works.

That's cool. I like that. I don't see many people utilizing that. So that's a great one for people to go start sending. I mean, and with that, like, I think the big thing that kind of that touches on is like the consistent ongoing check-ins and kind of heads ups and emails, just kind of connecting and reconnecting. That's what builds community and that's what keeps your brand top of mind. It's not just pushing sales down people's throats year round to try to drive a sale. It's sending things that people want to engage with, people want to share, people want to read, and they get really excited about. So even when you're not in your busy season, look to kind of diversify what you're sending. Again, everyone loves a discount if you're open to include those, but it's not solely about the discount. And with that, Jimmy, let's now talk about how do you actually implement these strategies on your email platform or kind of Yeah.

You know, let's talk about them. Let's start with the most important thing, obviously. It's starting with segmentation, right? Segment by your behavior or even seasonality. If someone opens mostly during the holidays, they're deal hunters, for example, and you wanna target them with flash sales during off-peak times. But if they're a product enthusiast and they're always engaged, hit them with ongoing gift guides or loyalty perks, you know? Using location. I think, you know, you brought this up before and I think this is an underrated thing, especially the larger brand in your email list is. But, you know, if you have a store, Dude, people don't use the locational-based segmentation enough where they should be segmenting the whole cold and warm stuff. Like right now is a perfect time. It's April. I know it's warm in California. It's pretty warm here in Texas, but I can tell you I was just in Utah and it was 30 degrees outside. It was freaking cold. So I would be getting maybe still warm stuff or winter stuff or maybe early spring stuff over in Utah while in California you should be sending full-blown beachwear at this point, you know what I mean?

Yeah, for sure. And to add to that, I think one thing that we should remember to do is like make sure you're also using purchase history kind of or browse behavior to suggest kind of complementary items. So for example, um, you know, based on your last snowboard purchase, you kind of mentioned Utah or maybe Colorado, people are snowboarding still, some snow still pouring down probably for the next little bit. Send them something like, we think you're gonna love these transition weather jackets, right? So as people are going from the last kind of bits of the snowy season to kind of nicer weather, you know, summer type stuff, send that and then incorporate dynamic elements too. So countdown timers in a flash sale email or real-time stock info, right? If something is potentially selling fast, if you can incorporate kind of the number of items or the number kind of quantity left, that does move the needle, right? If people can see that something has gone from X to Y and the number's kind of going down, or if something has just a, you know, a specific number of quantity left or limited quantity, people are going to want that because they know that it's just a matter of time before it sells out.

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Let them know that Chase and Jimmy sent you.

Now back to the pod. No, I love that one. That's definitely spot on. And that actually kind of brings me to what I would say my next point is, which is really copy or copywriting. You know what's interesting, Chase, is that I'm on Mentor Pass and I do like those mentor calls.

And—

Yeah.

You know, one of the things that I've noticed recently is that during the offseason, people struggle to talk about things and have an idea what to talk about. And I know you can use AI and all these different things, but people aren't investing enough in copywriting ultimately these days, especially during the offseason. Copy actually becomes way more relevant right now because you've gotta be more tactical and you've gotta be using words to sell.

You know, obviously you wanna be direct about their urgency, flash sales.

That's pretty obvious. You know, things like 24-hour blowout, don't miss these savings. Like, those are pretty obvious.

And then you've got things like gift guides that are like highlighting things like, you know, here's your 5 perfect gifts for spring and birthday.

But with the off-season, one of the things that I think people don't utilize enough is really storytelling through copy and being able to talk about different things. You know, you got to tease, you got to get people excited.

And it could be as simple as like, you're one of our VIPs, early access to our line.

But it could also be about like You know, one of my favorite copy lines are really talking about like time-based stories. Like, you know, 5 years ago we started this brand and then you could have an anniversary sale or whatever it might be.

You can really leverage it.

But the big message I would say in a tactical side is like, make sure you're investing in copywriting more than ever.

Dude, 100%, 100%. Don't just send beautifully designed images that just look nice. Like you actually have to make people feel Kind of a type of way, right? So, okay, that's, that's great. I love that. And I guess the question that people probably are asking is like, how do we know if these tactics are actually working, right? I think it's pretty obvious during BFCM, it's like you either made a lot of money or you didn't. How do you actually know if this is working year round or not?

Yeah, I mean, look, here's the basics. Obviously you still want to look at your open, your click, and your conversions for off-season campaigns, and you want to compare them to your peak season. But where you really want to pay attention is really tracking your unsubscribes and spam complaint rates.

Because if you're more equally—

if you're emailing more often and more frequently, you want them to stay low when you're adding value and not annoying people.

So you should be looking at that data again, not as a single point of data, but as a trend line. Are more people leaving? Are more people coming in? You know, you've got to be thinking about all of that.

Yeah, for sure.

And to kind of add to that, don't forget about the revenue lift, right? Obviously that's an Obvious one, but people sometimes, you know, forget about that. But also keep in mind things like AOV, LTV. You know, if your off-season deals keep your average monthly revenue up by 20%, I think that's a huge win. Like, could you imagine just adding 20% to the slow months? That's massive.

Yeah, it's, that's all you need. And that's really will shift the needles because, you know, slow months for most brands are, I don't know, like 9 months out of the 12 months per se, right? So if you could just add 20% a month over the first 9 months of the year, You'll come in so great because everything is incremental and you're going to see those things happen. All right, let's do a quick hypothetical, Chase. I'll kind of give you a brand and you kind of go after it and you give me some example.

But I'm a summer beachwear brand primarily thriving from June to August. I'm very seasonal.

How do you implement an off-season campaign? How would you think about this?

So, okay, a summer beachwear brand. So, got it. Basically, they need to sell going into basically this, the summer is what you're saying, because that's like, that's like their seasonality is June through August.

So how do they, how do they use these off-season things to create campaigns outside of that season?

Cool.

Okay.

I got it now. So I'd say a couple of things. Uh, number one, as I would put together something like a top picks for fall getaways, right? So how do you think about like extending the season, right? And I think it's basically one of two things. I think one is highlighting places in which, you know, September and October are still warm, right? So for most people, like the summer season is the June, July, and August that you mentioned. So how can you show people, hey, it's not too late to get away to warm weather, escape the cold in September, October, even November, right? I was just in Cabo. Dude, Cabo's pretty nice year round. Same thing with Hawaii. So I would do kind of top destinations and pairing that with the top picks. So then it's like, okay, these are the items in which I would wear in September, October, November, right? So I would do something like that. And then also too, and then pushing kind of transitional beach to fall clothing. So it's like try to extend the peak season if you can by focusing on items and destinations that you can still wear those. And then also from there, start trying to sell other items that aren't just related to swimwear, if you sell that, right? You know, maybe for example, like the beachwear company sells like long sleeve t-shirts on top of just short sleeve t-shirts, right? Now start thinking about pushing kind of long sleeve t-shirts.

Sure.

Or maybe, you know, they have, instead of just selling sandals, maybe they sell footwear as well. Maybe they also sell closed-toed shoes, right? Maybe start selling kind of some of the sneakers. So that's number one. Going on throughout the rest of the year, I'd say in the winter, start thinking about like beach body goals, right? Hooking those into New Year's resolution vibes. So again, in the winter, people normally kind of let themselves go, and then when January comes, they're like, all right, new year, new me. It's time for me to get back into shape. So play into that. What else can you do? So I'd say from there, I guess the next one would be probably something like a Valentine's Day or a Galentine's Day or like a single awareness type day. Start pushing kind of like sale on red swimwear or red clothing items, right? Just tie in kind of the, the time where it's kind of a big gift-giving thing either for yourself or for someone else and focus on kind of the trend. Maybe the red and the pink are kind of the trends of the season. So focusing on pushing that type of swimwear. And then I guess the last thing I'm trying to think of, one more would be probably like teasing something like summer 2025, summer 2026, 2027, whatever that might be, collection preview, right? So Then getting people really excited kind of in the winter, maybe kind of the spring about like the summer stuff that's coming with VIP signups, kind of first dibs, early access. So those are kind of the quick few I got.

Any thoughts?

No, that was perfect, man. I think you kind of nailed all the different things. So you were thinking like, try to figure out how to extend that summer into the fall a little bit by kind of diversifying your clothing. You mentioned kind of using goals, right? And the new body, new me, new year, whatever you want to do. But Basically saying, hey, I'm a swimwear company. I could still say, hey, for your New Year's resolution, why don't you buy that outfit to get yourself a goal to go forward? I mean, that's definitely things that people have done. You've got Valentine's Day. There's probably other holidays in between there that you can kind of play off that. St.

Patrick's Day, for example, you can do green swimwear, whatever it might be.

And then, you know, I think the big thing as a clothing company, and I've been in those shoes, is really teasing your next collection and getting people ready for next year too, and just getting them hooked up and ready and tuned up because everyone's kind of aiming for those goals too. So a brand could easily maintain like a steady flow of revenue using all these like little micro campaigns that we've heard ultimately. So, all right, Chase, I want, I want to wrap this thing up and I want to summarize what the listeners can do right now to boost their off-season campaign. So let's go back and forth, kind of, let's just recap some of the things that we talked about here. I'll let you kind of kick it off.

Yeah.

So the first one we kind of started with was year-round gift guides.

Leveraging them year-round, focusing on curating monthly or occasion-based or kind of quarterly product lists so that way people have things ready to go that they can buy for friends and family for things like birthdays, housewarmings, graduations, et cetera.

All right. The second thing we talked about was events ultimately, things like flash sales or weekend events or clearance sales. So you want to kind of adopt that idea that you have from Black Friday urgency at any time.

Anytime you need a sales bump, especially on slower months, plan out some type of an event that will create, uh, uh, some kind of spike in sales or some kind of frequency of, uh, urgency that would come out of that, out of it.

Love that. Number 3 would be, let's not forget about goal-focused and kind of family appreciation campaigns. So, um, tying products, services, what have you to self-improvement or kind of relationship celebration themes beyond just January or something like a Mother's Day or a Father's Day.

Yeah, I love that one. That's pretty— I mean, you really can tie in with a lot of things that are out there. In fact, one of the things that I really like are some off-season tactics like running contests and referrals and loyalty and highlight reviews, or partnering with local business. We talked about that. Those are all like cool ways to kind of come up with creative marketing ideas.

Yep.

And then the other good one kind of was the quarterly, monthly kind of wrap-up. So keeping your kind of subscribers and customers up to date on What's, what's new with your brand? What have you guys accomplished? What have been the best kind of sellers lately? Because obviously bestsellers are going to change by month, season, etc. And then what are kind of some upcoming events, either events specifically that your brand is participating in hosting and even just kind of cool events that your subscribers might be into? Maybe it's concerts, maybe it's different types of sporting events, just keeping people in the know of kind of what you guys are looking at doing. as a company and even as individuals on your team. Like, what are the people at your company, where are they attending? It'd be really cool to say, you know, hey, the people that work here, we're going to March Madness or we're going to the Olympics or we're going to the Taylor Swift concert or we're going to MLB Opening Day, like whatever it has. I think really peeling back the layer on humanizing your brand and just sharing like what's up with the team, it's kind of cool.

Yeah.

Especially if you're a seasonal brand, people still want to know.

I mean, if they like your product and service, they want to know you're existing and you're working.

And you're right, humanizing is really it. And really the biggest thing, I guess, talking about humanizing thing is just don't vanish.

I think the worst thing I see with brands is they're like, oh yeah, I don't really email during the rest of the year.

I just wait till the holidays. I think not staying in contact, not nurturing your leads and not really building some type of hype and building up and creating a funnel of people who are interested in your next peak season. I think that's a big mistake that I see often happen is people just don't think that they need to email just because they're not Relevant during that season. There's ways to stay relevant. It is marketing strategy to do that, and it's really just thinking about it in a creative way.

Absolutely, man. This was fun. Tons of strategies were going out that will hopefully help people really transform their business by leveraging these types of things and tactics to make off-season months not so slow. Let's basically use these to take kind of the dull dead time And let's make some revenue. So if this was helpful, let us know.

Yeah, no, that was good, man. I always— I think it's an interesting time because it's really just all about just trying to give people ideas on how to go after it. And, you know, unfortunately, we can't— we talk generically in that we can't— we don't know exactly what your problem is, but hopefully something that you've heard here will help and spark a strategy that you can apply. And that's why this is a wrap.

So wrap episode 27, year-round retention. Off-season strategies to keep the customers engaging. If you enjoyed this podcast today, please make sure you like, subscribe, follow, and leave us a rating on your favorite podcast listening platform.

You can follow the show on X, LinkedIn, YouTube, IG, and TikToks.

And there's a few ways to connect with us. So first and foremost, if you're not on our newsletter, you should be.

It's at ecomemailmarketer.com.

We drop a newsletter every single day about email, SMS, all the things that we talk about here.

Uh, we do cool breakdowns and all that fun stuff.

Secondly, if you're not a part of the community and certification program, I don't know what you're doing. You've got to connect with us. You heard the advertisement before. Come join our community. We've got 350, uh, plus thriving marketers. If you really are new to email and you stumbled across us and you really want to hear about how to really dive into it, we've got a 25-hour training, a certification program.

Both of those are found on ecomemailcertified.com. Check the show notes for more details.

And you can follow us on social media. Chase, where are you found?

Most every platform, Chase, no A in Diamond.

There you go. And I'm mostly found on LinkedIn and X today. So next week, Chase, we're back, episode 28.

We're going to jump into email lists. This has been a topic that people keep asking us in the community, and I keep explaining different versions of it.

And I think that it would be really good use just to throw a pod together.

So we're going to talk about email list reactivation, old lists, age lists, when to get rid of it, when to bring it in, what the strategy should be, what should be warmup.

We're going to get really tactical and it's probably going to be a little nerdy and probably half the room won't care, but there's a lot of people who ask these questions and I want to just have a pod so I can just reference them. So we're going to shoot a pod about it. So we're going to get chat all about that strategy.

With that, thanks Chase as always, and we'll see you next week.

Cheers.

From the open to the click, they're the masters of the flow. Just watch your list grow and your leads turn to go. Has this entertained you so far, or do we have to extend it? If you want results, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it.