Email Marketing with Chris Barnett - Part One
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Martin Anders with Sally and Sam. And and today, we're we're privileged, excited, on this lovely summer's day to have, Chris Barnett from 19 73 Limited, email specialist. So I don't know if that necessarily, sums up sums you up, Chris. So I'll ask you to introduce yourself in a in a moment or two to our to our listeners.
Sam:But as we always do, if you could start off with telling us what your favorite dish is, that would be great. Then a quick spiel about yourself, and then we'll we'll get into the the meat of it.
Chris Barnett:Okay. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Chris Barnett:This is my first ever podcast. So, yeah, go easy on me. Yeah. Right. So my name is Chris Barnett.
Chris Barnett:I own and run a 1972 limited. My favorite dish. Well, wow. That's got me thinking. It would definitely involve cheese.
Chris Barnett:Choice. I want it. And not only and a very specific cheese, like a Cheshire or a Wednesydale mixed with with some milk and some butter under the grill and some bread. It sounds very basic, very disgusting, but it's very nice slop. My friends call it.
Sally:I've been out with Chris before, and I know that there might be a beer on the side.
Chris Barnett:Yeah. Yeah. That is probably one of my favorite choices. Yeah. I've just come back from Helsinki, and, they drink a lot of sour beers over there.
Chris Barnett:And they're absolutely delicious, and I don't think we really do them over here so much. So, yeah. I I don't put a sour beer chaser with my cheese.
Sam:Fantastic. No. I love it. Probably cheese cheese toasty, cheese cheese on toast. Yeah, I'm I'm with you there on the cheese.
Sam:I I I probably have far too much, actually. I bought a load at the weekend at this, festival. So not a cheese festival, I hasten to add. Just a a flower festival, which had cheese there. So I'm definitely with you there, Chris.
Sam:So so, yeah, 1973 limited. So tell us about that and your sort of background. Where how did everything start?
Chris Barnett:Yeah. So it's we're 20 years old. Actually, not long now. In about 2 weeks' time, we'll be 20. So we we started off.
Chris Barnett:I'm a web developer by trade. And me and my best mate, Dave Black, we were both born in 1973. And when we started out, we were doing a lot of, website work, Flash work, CD ROM work, and kind of some emailing work, and doing lots of things for lots of people. So we wanted a name that wasn't very tying us down to something very specific. So we we went with 73 because it was common between us.
Chris Barnett:It's quite handy for getting to the top of lists, obviously, as well, which we didn't realize at the time. Like, and things like that. Yeah. We were so we, it's just the sort of 2 of us really. We started off in a freelance basis.
Chris Barnett:We started working with some large agencies West of London, b to b marketing agencies, tech agencies. Eventually, we just got, well, we'll just build make our own agency and took the bits that we liked and bits that we didn't like, and got rid of those and built up to about 16 of us just before the pandemic. We kinda copied kind of, yeah, like I said, bits that we liked and didn't like and we left behind. But we were doing a lot of email work. We had a, well, a large client, and we knew the data very well.
Chris Barnett:And this client would insist that, when the RFP moved, for different agencies, that we were brought along because we knew how to work their data very well, and we could hit the ground running. And, eventually, that client asked us to, pitch for the work ourselves, which we won. We walked away with a half a $1,000,000 PO, and we built the agency off the back of that. So we started in email. Then we grew up open to a full service agency then.
Chris Barnett:We took on quite a few people, and we broadened out. Pandemic hits us a bit, so then we scaled back, and we scaled back a bit, but niched back on email. We've always been doing email for a long time. I'm part of the DMA's email council. Been a member for a few years now.
Chris Barnett:I also run part of the best practice hub and also the awards hub, the DMA's email awards. So, it's just a channel that I like. And there's one thing I'd really like to say about it is that I'm a big, proponent of real skilled work that gives people jobs for a long time. And building an email in excuse me if I'm teaching here. But to build a really good quality email is a very skilled job.
Chris Barnett:And it's not a job you just pick up a book and you read. If you wanna do a really, really good email, it's something that's a skill that you have to acquire over time because it's got yeah. It's it's it's a it's a tough life for an email out there. It has to respond on so many devices, and the the standards are very poor in terms of how an email is rendered. And so that that really resonated with me as to build a business off back of that And, you know, part of where we've got to.
Chris Barnett:I'm sure there's a lot more.
Sally:I mean, I think that's really, really interesting because I think you're right. People think that, oh, we'll just do an email campaign. That's why I think it's kind of, you know, it's not as exciting and sexy as doing, you know, exciting things on TikTok and all this kind of thing. They'll just do an email campaign, and you're absolutely right. You do see them getting people getting it very, very wrong.
Chris Barnett:Yeah. I mean yeah. And it's easy to do that. And it's a bit like print in many ways. You know, once it's gone, it's gone.
Chris Barnett:So you've gotta really plan it well. And, you can change things once something's gone out, obviously, links and things. But, yeah, you can get it wrong. And it one thing that really interests interests me about email is I feel I sort of see it, and maybe I'm getting a bit above myself here, perhaps. But an email I feel is like a little microcosm just in itself in how much you can learn from it, how much you can put into it, who you're gonna send it to, when you're gonna send it to them, how often have you sent previous emails, why are you sending it to them, and it's just and then then learning from the results of that email.
Chris Barnett:I just think it's just so much to learn. But then when you compound that then with doing a larger campaign and, you know, looking at how it lines with business objectives and how that can back up other channels and where how it fits into a mix. I think that, yeah, I find quite fascinating. And and I think if that's done really well, it's very powerful.
Sam:Yeah. I mean, I actually, I mean, we were sort of just beginning to talk a bit offline, weren't we, about the the mix and the emails place, I suppose, in in, campaigns, which I I should I should declare that Chris and I just started collaborating on a on a campaign actually on email. So Chris has done a fantastic job, for for me and for my client, which is is brilliant. We might come into a bit of that later on. But, I mean, I was just thinking about, I suppose to the I said the evolution of email.
Sam:I'm just thinking quite often I reference these conversations to, you know, my time in marketing, which, you know, and email was was was there when I and I started off even though there's still a lot of direct mail going on, etcetera. And, obviously, standards and, deliverability, you know, data protection, GDPRs all sort of come in over that period of time. But do you think email's place in this of marketers marketers toolkit? Do you think that's changed and evolved in the last sort of 10, 15 years? And do you, I mean, do you still think it's more potent, becoming more important, as a sort of general general rule?
Sam:And I suppose that's mass generalization because, of course, it depends on the market, the clients, all the rest of it. But just your sort of way you see it is in the toolkit.
Chris Barnett:Interesting. I I think it's if you go back maybe 15, 20 years ago, maybe even further, you know, people were just it's always had a perception of quite cheap channel and quite easy, you know, to get a lot of content out quite quickly. And I think it was slightly abused perhaps going back and still is to an extent. So we've got a bit of a bad rep in terms of spamming, you know, and just overuse. And, you know, if somebody you sees results, it just keeps sending more.
Chris Barnett:But I think and and as a channel, we we asked this in, one of our you know, what what did we see coming in email recently? I know what was the changes. And I think it is slightly hampered by and I'm not trying to be negative here, but by the technology that drive that renders an email is still back in the old days. When you're building websites, I don't know if you remember, but you'd have to build out 3 or 4 websites because it's just rendered so differently across all the browsers. And if you take that, that's been standardized now with HTML 5 and WebKit and things like that.
Chris Barnett:But the email hasn't had that, and so it's still very hacky and very kind of yeah. There is no consistent standard. So you can't if you can do one thing in one email client, you can't do it in the other. And so it's it's a it's and I think that would change. That would improve it perhaps if there was an email standards.
Chris Barnett:There is fine to push that way, but it's quite difficult and it's quite archaic. But I I just think it's so it's still relevant to this day. But and it it, yeah, it hasn't changed dramatically from a technological point of view. Well, it hasn't. It hasn't.
Chris Barnett:I just think there's so many brands now that still have it in their mix, and it's still here today. And a lot of people have always said, oh, it's going. It's going. It's going. I think Cernet markets, maybe in Asia, China, perhaps, it's not that relevant.
Chris Barnett:But in I think in the western market, I think it's still relevant, and the South America maybe market. I think it it's just it's it's just it it's just a bit of a steady Eddie. You know? And it's a good it's a good joiner of other channels, I think. So if you might be going out on TikTok and doing something like that, but then how do you then maintain that sort of attribution that you keep in a cons constant contact with that, you know, contact going forward rather you know, you can't always expect them to see your other social channels communications, but email is much more personal.
Chris Barnett:You know, you can still join all that data together, give a regular heartbeat out via email, I think. I just don't see it going away. It's not being replaced by anything. I think SMS might come along and be a bit but I think with SMS, it's a bit more. It's very personal.
Chris Barnett:You know, your mobile number, people, you know, don't wanna give out, I feel. I certainly don't wanna wanna give out my mobile number to marketeers. To us. But I think email is a little bit people are not as and especially people have more than one email address now. They often have a work address, and they have their personal email.
Chris Barnett:You know, they're easier it's easier to to be shared, I think. We don't see it as as a personal. Obviously, it is personal, but it's not as personal as as other, data.
Sam:Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, it's it's that thing.
Sam:I I I always find it that, I mean, I was gonna come on to, like, the power newsletters, shortly. I I know I was gonna pick it up now, but I suppose sort of to dive back into, as you say, that that perhaps the technology hasn't changed and evolved to a huge extent. But, I mean, if if you're thinking about, as you say, it's so hard to get it right, to to do good good email, good email campaigns. And do you think that the so I suppose for the listeners, I mean, as you say, a lot of people out there probably done a lot of this anyway. But if you were sort of talking to someone about sort of the core most important things to to consider if this before they're starting an email campaign, I'm guessing you're sort of creating things like, you know, data and deliverability, design, all the d's.
Sam:But, what what would you be your sort of top level step by step?
Chris Barnett:Yeah. I would say yeah. I I think if you if you step back slightly, if you think about, like, is it the guy who's, doing the Tour de France team team Sky, like, and lots and lots of small improvements all over the place had added to a large improvement overall. And I think that's very true with email. But I think it is yeah.
Chris Barnett:Data massively. And people I find still don't really enjoy data, don't like it, but scared of it, don't understand it, don't know, you know, what it is sometimes and what does it mean. You know, is information within data. I think it starts with that. I think if you get good data and so what does good data mean?
Chris Barnett:My interpretation of good data is well segmented. It's data that you've acquired that people have ideally given you. You know, you've a brand you've come to a brand and you've given because if you think of an email address as something that I've as a consumer, I've given to a brand, which is, you know, if this is something personal to me, you know, and I've given to you, so I'm trusting you that you're gonna look after it. I think you get that's a nice way of then building up a data list because, you know, you've given permission to talk. I mean, the other side, obviously, is is purchasing data, and I think I've seen really good results, from people buying good quality data, not expensive within reason, and having huge results.
Chris Barnett:So purchase data, if it's bought if it's good quality data, and it's obviously you know, it's it you can do that in certain countries and, you know, making sure that that's done to regulations can be effective in that respect. So you you know, you you've got your data there. And then it's putting it into pots that are relevant, so segmentation that is relevant to that audience. And I think that is a massive takeaway. If anyone who wants to listen to anything from this podcast today, I would say relevancy is so important.
Chris Barnett:As I've seen so many people just sending the same message to the same to everybody at any old time. There's no care put into it. And I think if you want people to care about what you are as a brand, you should put a lot of care into what you're talking about your brand. And I think that is something, yeah, I think if you're not looking after and this is something I will, this is something I try and talk to clients about is that it's not just what the email looks like when you get it in your inbox. It's what happen what is the what is the reaction that people have before it gets there?
Chris Barnett:So they'll look at the subject line, and then they'll look at who it's from, and I think that is key. So if I see an email come in from a brand I like, I first see the brand, then I see the subject line, then I see the content. Whereas, marketers often think the other way.
Sam:Yes. Completely. Completely. Do you know what? There's also there's a funny thing I have with my email, when I I sort of see it on my phone, you know, and it's it's an iPhone.
Sam:And then I I sort of immediately, there's some innate thing in my brain that just goes, right, that that's an email I'm gonna look at because that looks that's from well, obviously, someone I know, but it's almost just a format as well of of seeing it from a certain name. And there's just those things that you don't even notice perhaps you're picking out, immediately and going, that's something I'm even gonna spend a few split seconds looking at. But I still have loads of emails in my inbox, which I get from people. I've given my email address 2 years ago, and I've forgotten to unsubscribe. And then I'm sort of having to filter it naturally filter.
Sam:But I think we're almost all a bit like that these days and that, you know, as you say, I mean, I've loaded it from your inboxes, but I on my on my iPhone, it all goes into 1. And so, therefore, you know, you're just seeing, you're seeing everything as as this big long list of different emails, and then you're having to just do that that that filtering. But as you say, it's so crucial in terms of you know, because quite often I've done campaigns with people in the past, and they said, you know, oh, yeah. Yeah. So we just need to hit this x number of people, this campaign.
Sam:They think that's the most important thing. But actually getting it to someone's inbox, getting them to to realize who it's from, and then obviously open the thing and then interact with it. But having an objective and a purpose behind the email, or behind the whole campaign to begin with, so crucial. But but sometimes, you say people can, I say, I don't know how they can overlook that, but they can overlook that, can't they? They just they just sort of wanna press the button instead of thinking it through.
Chris Barnett:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I think if it it I think, you know, I think if you perhaps, you know, if you always put yourself in the shoes of how you wanna be spoken to as a person, I think that's always a good, like, yardstick then to see how how to market to people in that respect.
Chris Barnett:So if you find a brand that you really like you know, there's one on a Friday that a bike cycling brand that I really like, and they send out a regular email on a Friday. I almost look forward to it. And that's got that newsletter y sort of feel to it in that in that respect. It's got a bit of news, a bit of product promotion in there, and it's something that I'm engaged with. It's relevant to me.
Chris Barnett:You know? And I I I want and I'll find it in my inbox, and I will hunt, like you say, and find the ones. I I suppose that's where emails struggled with a bit is because it's just saturated sometimes. You know? And but yeah.
Chris Barnett:It is. And this is where I think another part of data comes in as deliverability is becoming more and more important, than evermore. And it is getting more and more difficult to be delivered well. So best practice around your emailing is more and more important that helps your deliverability. Obviously, email service providers, ESPs, do not share what makes something not be delivered.
Chris Barnett:Because then obviously, like SEO, you know, you try and get to the top of everybody will try to get on page 1 if Google told you how they're gonna put you on top of page 1. Yes. Very similar with deliverability. You know, you've got to you've just gotta be a good sender. Do
Sam:Yeah. No. I suppose I was I was interested in, as you say, if that was the thing about deliverability, as you said, Chris, the fact that, you know, it's it's that thing. I mean, quite often, we seem to come back to this across all sorts of disciplines and channels in marketing that, you know, you you need to stick to, you know, due diligence, I suppose, doing things in a in in a way where, you know, you can try and understand the mechanics, of course, of the channel that you're using, like like with SEO, like good web design, like like, good social media campaigns. You know, if you apply the right principles, then, you know, you're heading in the right direction.
Sam:You don't you don't have necessarily the sort of the the magic, recipe that's going to have an email that's going to have, you know, 100% deliverability to everyone everywhere, but it's more the sort of sticking to, as you say, well learnt and and principles you've picked up from from a lot of experience, I suppose, to to actually, obviously, create an email that's, you know, hopefully has, you know, the best of their ability, but also solid data and and then a good design as well. I mean, don't know if you had any thoughts about the well, of course, you would do on on design of of emails themselves, the templating.
Chris Barnett:No. I mean, that's what fascinates me about email in terms of yeah. There's so many facets to it, and design is obviously 1. I would say, like, to touch back on deliverability, it's having a consistent, approach to your email, not sudden spikes. I don't think ESPs really like that.
Chris Barnett:If you're suddenly sending a load of email, then you're not. You know, why are you doing that? That's that's gonna look unusual. So if you're consistent and when I say consistent, you're looking for an the ESPs will be tracking link clicks. And opens maybe not open be since Apple introduced and then this depends on your audience.
Chris Barnett:And the again, to go back to data, it's really important, I think, to analyze what your audience are typically opening on. So if they're an ecommerce brand, you know, they're likely to be opening on mobile. So you design, and then we'll touch on design, and then you design with a mobile first attitude, bit like the web would be, you know, so it's renders well on a mobile and then on a desktop, secondary. If it's a b to b kind of send where somebody's gonna be in the office, more likely to absorb that communication than you would design, obviously, with a desktop first approach, which then does secondary onto a mobile. You must do both without question.
Chris Barnett:And to go back to what I said earlier, it's got a tough you have to feel sorry for an email. It's got a tough life. You know, it's gotta it's gotta be quite when it goes into that wild world out there, it's got a lot have a lot of resources and a lot of resilience to render well. Because I see this a lot, and you probably maybe you see yourself. You know, you open up an email at nighttime now with a dark mode, and a lot of things disappear.
Chris Barnett:And you can't read it in it. You know? So it's it's catering for that as well, and that also comes into design as well. So, yeah, I would say so design, I mean, principles. If you think about what an email was traditionally there for, we're sending one message really to 1 person and 1 in one reaction, one click, hopefully.
Chris Barnett:And you can't always have a click. You know, if you're in a newsletter environment, you'll have several news stories that might get absorbed. And I would say all of this relates to lots of things, and it's all intertwined. And deliverability now is getting measured more and more on clicks and interactions. So if you send a load of email and the ESP sees that nobody inter interacted with it other than on subscribing, that's gonna mark you down.
Chris Barnett:And I I'm not saying this is how they all work, but, you know, it's just trying to do the best that you think is right to do and being consistent. But if they see lots of clicks and opens, and opens have been a bit skewed, like I said, with Apple, you know, because they hide the open. They they'll download your email. They'll open it for you, and they'll only send it to you when you look at it. So it sort of skews the open metrics a little bit.
Chris Barnett:So as an industry, we're sort of if your the if your audience is on a lot of Apple devices, then we would say, you know, looking at opens is not a really good metric now, but you want your content may not always be very clickable. You know? But one thing that is still sort of works in most ESPs or most, things that generate so Mailchimp, for example, or whatever it might be, Pardot, Eloqua, whatever. They will track, read stats, and you can you can still infer things. So they'll tell you how long somebody's opened an email for, how long they might have spent reading it, how long their dwell time was.
Chris Barnett:And, you know, sometimes the client might go, well, I've sent this newsletter. No. Just clicked it. But and then we go, well, look how many people have read it as well. And that is not an exact science.
Chris Barnett:There's still something you can show to a client. So that content went in front of that person at that time and was read for 20 seconds. And I'm not sure what other channels you could say that about or how many people have, know, read a tweet perhaps. I don't know if that's possible. I don't I'm not into I don't do that social media so much, but email still can provide that.
Chris Barnett:So it's a it's all intertwined, and I think it's looking at the the whole sort of picture. But to go to design so if you are if you think about how we all look at, content, you some some people know what they want straight away and wanna get straight to it. Like, they know this is an event. Where do I sign up? I'm already I already know what the event is.
Chris Barnett:I know when it is. It's really relevant to me. I just wanna sign up. So don't hide the the button right down the bottom of the email. Put it at the top, and people will will scan down an email.
Chris Barnett:So I think it's one good good bit of practice is if there is a call to action, which there normally will be and should be, because we want those clicks, if possible, to help our deliverability, Have it at the top and at the bottom, and just have it where it just again, this looks like you're putting care into your email. So if you've got a piece of copy that goes, you know, why don't you register for our event? Make the word register a link. You know? Because somebody might look at it.
Chris Barnett:Register. Oh, yeah. Click. You know? And it just instinctively.
Chris Barnett:So I think this design around like, typography is super important, I think, in emails. It's being clear. Like, this is one methodology, if you like. It's a rough methodology of a bit of a pyramid. So if you if you put, like, an image that's not too big as well, because you don't wanna remember, once you render it on a client, you can take up half the screen real estate.
Chris Barnett:I don't like using that word, but and it works off the top. And then you've lost it to this nice, lovely, attractive image, and then but where's the relevancy? What are you trying to tell me? So haven't yet. But you still wanna look like you know, you need to go and get your brand over and stuff, and it looks like a quality email, but then have a headline in a larger font that's slightly smaller than that image, and then have a paragraph in a or a smaller font.
Chris Barnett:Again again, kind of and then have a button at the middle of that with a bit of a triangle where you're almost reading down a headline. Okay. I've read the headline. I am interested. Now I'll read a bit more, so there's a bit more in the paragraph.
Chris Barnett:And then the button and another thing to do, it always springs off different things as I think here, but don't just have a generic button that just says click here. These days now, you can make HTML buttons quite easily where you can just change the call to action. So rather than saying click here, say register now or make the button text relevant to the content. I'm happy with the part design as well. And it's all about words.
Chris Barnett:One friend of mine said it's about empowering email. It's about empowering the written word. That's what he saw saw it as. I can understand a little bit with what he's saying.
Sam:Yeah. Oh, absolute well, do you know what? I mean, I think as as well as, you know, everything he's saying, it just really ties into all the lot of those other good practices we see in terms of, you know, I mean, you know, good copywriting and a way of actually, you know, bringing calls to action out, making them really clear. But as you said, sort of drawing the reader into right. This this is why I've sent this to you.
Sam:This is what I'd actually like you to do, if you want to. But I'm gonna explain to you why you should, perhaps briefly. But but it is that thing, isn't it? Because, I mean, it it's it's the power of an email. The fact that, you know, you could receive a a very, very short email that that packs a punch if you've if you've written it really well, and and you've got that clear sort of call to action with it.
Sam:But one thing I was I was also interested in. What you said, though, was about the the sort of what should we call it? The engaged email reader, stats effectively. And that sort of thing, that that echoes with with stuff I've done in the past with people on websites because you said, well, wanna wanna get a number of people onto this homepage or this page, which explains about this this program, this idea. And you go, oh, yeah.
Sam:But we we wanna get lots of clicks to you. Hold on a second. Well, what what do you want people to do on here? You know? Are you looking for an engaged user?
Sam:And then how do we define an engaged user? You know? Let's look at the stats. Let's look at the data and understand. Okay.
Sam:Well, is spending a minute or 2 minutes on this page to read, you know, 200 words or 300 words. Is that what you need, or are you looking to achieve something else? It's again, it's sort of making sure that you've got those clear objectives. You know, Keep going back to smart objectives. But, yeah, smart objectives in your head about what you're looking to achieve from whatever you're doing, I suppose, in marketing, but I suppose, yeah, particularly with email as well, isn't it?
Sam:It's like, you know, what do you what what do you actually need to get from this audience? And and and it's it's another part as well. You're saying about people giving you email address and newsletters and things. That's that's a relationship maintainer, isn't it? So it's that consistency in everything you're doing, but that consistency in building the relationship, I suppose, as well.
Chris Barnett:Like yeah. Totally agree, Sam. I think it's and I think, like, what you know, been around a while, and I think there's something that's still overlooked by a lot of marketeers is UX, is user experience. And producing journeys that are really consistent and that tick a lot of boxes that don't break halfway through. You know, you might have done a fantastic campaign over here, but when you come to click, the web page doesn't render or whatever.
Chris Barnett:Or it's just it it's in inconsistent and stuff like that. So that is soup something really, really important that you you have to put yourself in the shoes of who's consuming. And I think if you do that well and get it really good, you get brand empathy building up. And, like, you sort of like Apple have been very good at doing. Maybe they tailed off a little bit recently, but people understand that brand.
Chris Barnett:You only gotta say that word, and they understand they also get a lot of trust from them. And then I think that is really you know, it's not and that has to be built up over time by being consistent. And I think sometimes, you know, like, also, you know, people want just instant. I wanna know how much money this email is gonna make me. Okay.
Chris Barnett:From an ecommerce point of view, that's important. But maybe if you think about from a b to b and a brand awareness point of view, somebody might not buy directly off that email, but they might buy 3 months down the line because they remember your brand. They're not gonna remember your email. They're gonna remember your brand. And I think, again, that's really, really key to be part of it.
Chris Barnett:And email is a great way of being if you're relevant in your content of keeping people and I'm not saying email them every day. You know? Like, probably maybe once a week is getting a bit much, perhaps. But just being consistent with something that's useful to them that keeps you in mind. And, you know, nobody goes to web do they?
Chris Barnett:And go, oh, look what's changed on the website. Oh, that's different. You need to you need to tell people, don't you, that something's changed? And and if you're not and that's why I don't understand why businesses aren't emailing. There's I can't think of a real reason why you wouldn't email.
Chris Barnett:There's just you have something, a product, a message to tell an audience, and it's a great channel to do that, with with an engaged an engaged audience. Oh,
Sam:absolutely. No. I agree. I agree. Absolutely.
Sam:This is the thing. And, because there's another point. I I keep skirting around the whole thing of newsletters. I mean, actually, I I work with someone who who does quite a lot of work for b to b. Quite often, people, you know, financial services, people like personal finance, things like that, and and other, similar businesses.
Sam:And, and and one of the key, sort of, what would you say, columns, key key key supports, foundations, I suppose, of quite a lot of his strategies he works with on clients is around building a newsletter. Not not just building a newsletter, building a newsletter community, building a newsletter list, and, you know, so incorporating that into, where it's appropriate with, you know, the web the website and, you know, obviously scoping out the audience to begin with and then saying, right. So, what what's the relationship we wanna have? What's the customer journey we're looking to take these people on? And, you know, quite often, it seems like a newsletter is one of the key parts of the armory saying, well, look, you know, if you've got some interesting things to say, you've got updates to share, particularly say in personal finance, you've got updates to share on, well, you know, what what what could the general election mean for, you know, your finances when we get the new chancellor's exchequer in, all those kind of things, know, updates on your interest rates have gone down, what what could this mean.
Sam:So there's interesting useful expert advice there for for this these companies' clients effectively. And, obviously, if you built up that that newsletter list, you've got that community. As you say, you come out and you can start to talk about, you know, your your latest ideas, give them some value, but also, of course, you've got that that, I say, captive audience, that that warm audience, have you to start to for referrals and, advocacy and and all of that really important stuff that's the the the I'm I'm doing a thing, here cycling around. The cycling of the, you know, the reach, act, convert, engage model. You know?
Sam:It's that's that's next part of of of keeping these people going. But yeah. How do do you think, though, with newsletters that sometimes people are, I'm not seeing a lot of this in the past where they sort of, you know, just say, right. Oh, here's this is the newsletter. This is the template.
Sam:This is what we do. We just talk about these three things, and that's what happens. And and do you think they can become a bit dull if they're not thought out well? I mean, I suppose it links back into all of your stuff about thinking about the reader, of course, of of the email. But, any sort of I ideas on newsletters in general?
Chris Barnett:Yeah. I think well, we do a lot of emails. A lot of we do a a newsletter that goes out, monthly across 26 different languages for a client of ours. And it it is translated, by the way. That's another thing.
Chris Barnett:I think being if you can translate your content, so it's landing in the right language, again, it backs up that caringness about who once you've been given that email address and it's somebody in Italian, so you've given them Italian content again. So that's all I think. I think from a newsletter point of view, sometimes clients will cloud it with a lot of imagery. And I think in a in a newsletter point of view, you wanna be the point of that is to give them news, and so it should be easy to understand. If you opened up The Guardian and it was just massive images everywhere and you have to go looking for where the actual news was, you're not gonna sell many newspapers, are you?
Chris Barnett:So I think some clients still think, yeah, let's make it look really amazing. And I'm not saying it shouldn't look good. It should look good. But you gotta remember, these people have had this newsletter before, and that, you know, it's a it's a a regular kind of heartbeat. So think being consistent on how you structure that.
Chris Barnett:So if it's a mobile first, kind of you look need to look at the design a little bit differently if it's gonna be on mobile. So it's but just making it really obvious and sort of bite sized bits of content that people can sort of read and then digest quickly. Because they'll probably scan down it looking for something that's important, then go back up, then find something. But if they can't find it easily and it's not rendering at in at night, you know, dark mode, it's not working in or it's not rendering on a mobile, You know, like, it's it's just there's no mobile responsive coding in there. So the whole email, which might have been a desktop based design, is now rendering, and you go zoom in and out.
Chris Barnett:And that's not a great user experience as well. So presenting your content is really important, but I think making it quite within because you're not gonna if somebody's really, really interested about something, you just tell them the key pertinent points, qualify it with a little bit of a paragraph and then a button, and then drive them to your website or whatever it might be, then you've got them there. I know you've broken the journey from the email now. You've lost them on your email. You've gone to the website, but then have all that content.
Chris Barnett:We used to build our these, it became just an email, newsletter. But what we used to do and was successful and good content reuse because subscriber would spend, best part, quite a lot of money each month writing all of this. Send you out an email. It's gone. We said, well, let's put all that content on a website, a landing page for that month, with a menu, and then give them a snackable, newsletter, and then drive them if and they'll scan through that.
Chris Barnett:They'll drive click through, land on the landing page, all the content still there, but much bigger, much more embellished with video, more graphics perhaps because you've got more screen real estate. And then you've got that content forevermore that you can refer to in the future, or you can then start going, oh, look look at some other issues or put some segmentation within it or put it, you know, data drive it with data. Say, okay. Tell me more searchable, you know, what's so I can find. So it's reuse as well.
Chris Barnett:And I was trying to get, you know, trying to get a value for the client and their content as well. So I think that's another technique you can do. But it I think newsletters are great for just, like, sharing you that you care about your audience, and you've got something relevant to tell them. And it might not be you might not want a direct action off that. You know?
Chris Barnett:You might not need a click or a somebody to go and buy something. But you you've just built up that trust again in the brand.
Sam:Well, that's the end of part 1 of our exploration of email marketing with Chris Barnett from 1973 limited. I'm sure you can agree with me that that episode was packed full of useful insights. And you'll be happy to know that there's another episode coming your way. Part 2 will arrive in your podcast repository very shortly, and, we hope that you'll enjoy that and find it very useful. So in the meantime, if you have any questions for us, you can reach out to Sally or myself on LinkedIn, or you can email us at meanderspod@gmail dotcom.
Sam:Thanks very much, everyone. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye for now.
