Episode Summary
In this episode of the 7 Figures and Beyond E-commerce Marketing Podcast, host Greg Shuey speaks with email and SMS marketing expert Julia Amodt about key strategies for e-commerce brands heading into 2025. They discuss trends from 2024, such as increased scrutiny on email deliverability, compliance, and consumer privacy, alongside rising inbox fatigue. Julia emphasizes the importance of targeted segmentation, deeper personalization without crossing privacy boundaries, and leveraging tools like AI for data analysis and efficiency. She also highlights the growing role of mobile-friendly designs, accessibility, and innovative offers. Brands are encouraged to focus on calculated experimentation and adapting to rapidly evolving consumer expectations to stay competitive.
Key Takeaways
- Prioritize Deliverability and Compliance: Ensure email and SMS campaigns comply with authentication standards like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to maintain credibility and avoid spam filters. Regularly clean email lists and stay updated on global compliance rules.
- Embrace Segmentation and Personalization: Deeply analyze customer data to create highly targeted segments, reducing the frequency of mass emails while focusing on delivering relevant, personalized messages.
- Adopt Accessibility and Mobile-First Design: In 2025, accessibility will be critical, with requirements like high-contrast CTAs, dark mode compatibility, and mobile-optimized email designs becoming standard.
- Test and Innovate with Offers: Move beyond traditional discount models like “10% off” by experimenting with multi-order discounts, BOGOs, or creative engagement campaigns to retain customers and improve lifetime value.
- Leverage AI for Efficiency: Use AI for brainstorming, segmentation, and predictive analytics, but avoid over-reliance on AI-generated creative assets, as the human touch remains essential for authentic brand messaging.
Questions To Ask Yourself
- Is my email and SMS strategy optimized for deliverability and compliance?
- Do I have authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, DMARC & BIMI properly set up?
- How can I refine my segmentation strategy to create deeper, more meaningful personalization?
- Am I analyzing customer data effectively to tailor content to specific audience needs?
- Are my email designs accessible and mobile-friendly?
- Do my emails comply with accessibility standards, and are they optimized for mobile viewing?
- Am I relying too heavily on volume over quality in my email campaigns?
- How can I reduce email fatigue while improving engagement and click-through rates?
- What risks am I willing to take in 2025 to test and grow?
- What experiments can I run with offers, interactive content, or new formats to stand out from the competition?
Episode Links
Greg Shuey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-shuey/
Julia Amodt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-amodt/
Email Deliverability Tools: https://easydmarc.com/tools
Email Health: https://www.litmus.com/
BIMI Authentication: https://mxtoolbox.com/dmarc/bimi/how-to-create-bimi-record
Semantic HTML: https://www.semrush.com/blog/semantic-html5-guide/
European Accessibility Act (June 2025): https://www.levelaccess.com/compliance-overview/european-accessibility-act-eaa/
Email Design Inspiration
- https://reallygoodemails.com/
- https://mailboard.com/
- https://milled.com/
- https://www.mailmunch.com/
blog/gifs-in-email - Our fave email designs
- https://reallygoodemails.com/
emails/indulge-without- limitation - https://milled.com/Nordstrom/
wed-love-your-thoughts-on- holiday-shopping- RnpmZoBWZ5fvkMhq - https://reallygoodemails.com/
emails/find-your-spring-fling- with-50-off - https://milled.com/Apple/
introducing-the-all-new-apple- watch-series-10-and-a-new- finish-for-apple-watch- Bp7W2eQKuWC0WZvd - https://reallygoodemails.com/
emails/woohooo-2076-off - https://reallygoodemails.com/
emails/member-access-nike- react-infinity-run
- https://reallygoodemails.com/
- Our fave email designs
Episode Transcript
Greg Shuey (00:01.016)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Seven Figures and Beyond E-commerce Marketing Podcast. We are just a few days away from Christmas, so I assume that a lot of our listeners are probably going into hibernation mode for a week or so. We’ve had a very grueling couple of months prepping for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, seen some awesome successes, and now it’s time to rest for a little bit.
Regardless, we want to get a few more episodes out to help you with your 2025 planning. My guest today, her name is Julia Ahmet, one of our amazing email and SMS marketers here at Stride. And I’ll bet based on what she does, you can’t guess what we are gonna talk about today. We’re gonna dive into email and SMS marketing. So how about that, right?
So what we wanna do is just take about 20 to 30 minutes of your time today and really dive into the things that you need to be thinking about as you start to look at your email and SMS marketing strategy for 2025. You’re probably already planning. I mean, it’s the end of December. If you haven’t been planning, you’re probably a little bit behind, but hopefully some of these things will really help you figure out tweaks and updates and things that you need to do to help you get more out of your email and SMS efforts this year.
We’ve worked with a lot of brands this year that have seen really great success. We’ve also worked with some who’ve struggled a little bit. And I think that we have some really great insights and things that you might not be thinking of or even aware of. So I hope that you find this incredibly valuable. Julia, thank you so much for being with us today.
Julia Amodt (01:42.83)
Yeah, thank you, Greg.
Greg Shuey (01:44.556)
Awesome. just so everyone knows this is her first podcast ever. It’s going to be, it’s going to be a treat. since this is the first time on our podcast, hopefully not the last, would you just take a couple of minutes, introduce yourself to our listeners and share a little bit about your personal story and how you’ve gotten to where you are today.
Julia Amodt (01:49.409)
ever ever.
Julia Amodt (02:05.666)
Yeah, so I’m Julia. I focus on email marketing, but I have a pretty varied background. I have worked in hospitality as a marketing manager. I’ve worked at Microsoft. I’ve run a blog for six years and I’ve worked in, you know, the email marketing space for five years now in
you know, for startups, for big businesses and also agencies. So a little, varied. Definitely love the marketing sphere, the analytical side and the creative side. And here I am with Greg talking about email in 2025.
Greg Shuey (02:50.51)
There you go, awesome. Well, you ready to jump in? Cool, so I wanted to lead out with this first question to kind of give us a high level overview and starting point. So from what you’ve seen this year, what are some of the biggest shifts that you’ve seen in email SMS marketing that you’ve observed throughout 2024? And then how should brands be adapting to those shifts?
Julia Amodt (02:54.06)
Absolutely.
Greg Shuey (03:19.46)
to stay competitive as we work through 2025.
Julia Amodt (03:24.964)
was an interesting year as I’m sure you’re aware with election year definitely some shifts in terms of how consumers are spending. I’d say that across the board I saw a lot of clients have less revenue this year. Consumers were a little nervous about spending and I think wanted to wait to see how the election panned out. Surprisingly though
I saw that Black Friday, Cyber Monday had a record 10.8 billion in spending and that’s, I think it was like 10 % more than they did last year. It was according to NPR. So people are still spending, but definitely more cautious. And in terms of, you know, on the backend, this year was a lot about deliverability and email compliance.
Greg Shuey (04:03.332)
insane.
Greg Shuey (04:09.678)
Oof.
Julia Amodt (04:24.474)
So Google and Yahoo, make sure you have your SPF, your DKIM, DMARC authentication. I think all of that across the board, I’m seeing a lot of clients struggle with deliverability and making sure that we’re compliant. also a lot of, it’s very much like people are wary with.
you know, cyber attacks and spam emails and phishing and all of that. So there’s definitely a crackdown on make sure you have everything set up correctly and really focus on, you know, making sure one, you’re compliant to you’re constantly checking to make sure that everything looks good and you’re not hitting those spam inboxes. So going into 2025, I think the biggest thing to be is nimble.
because we really don’t know what’s going to happen in 25 in terms of what’s happening in the world. But one thing that’s constant is like inbox fatigue. So I think instead of sending so many emails, because you know, people are just inundated with emails, really crack down on deeper segmentation, analyze your data and how can we really get more personal?
Greg Shuey (05:32.036)
Hmm.
Greg Shuey (05:40.484)
Yeah.
Julia Amodt (05:50.254)
without getting creepy. I think that’s the key. Like get more personal without being creepy because there’s so much data to analyze and also SMS. SMS saw a huge increase, especially during Black Friday, Cyber Monday. How can we really focus on more SMS messaging? But yeah, I think segmentation, going deeper, analyzing your emails.
Don’t send so many, but really target, target your people.
Greg Shuey (06:22.51)
Yeah, I like that. So back to the tech side of things like setting up your authentication. You know, we were working on that in April, May, June, right? And there’s still brands out there who don’t have any setup. There’s some who are missing one. There’s some who are missing a couple. And it doesn’t take very long to set those things up. And it goes a long way. How do you recommend that you kind of track the health?
of your sending domain. Are there some tools out there that we should be aware of and using?
Julia Amodt (06:57.762)
Yeah, there are so many sites where you can check to make sure you’re compliant with your DMARC, SPF, all of that. And off the top of my head, Greg, I don’t have these listed out. So yeah, that sounds great. But honestly, there are so many great websites out there that basically just give you a check mark.
Greg Shuey (07:16.965)
We’ll grab some and put them in the show notes.
Julia Amodt (07:27.33)
know, Klaviyo is so good about, you know, checking these things for you and saying like, hey, giving you an alert, you’re not set up correctly. Yeah. But I think the biggest thing is you should be cleaning your email list regularly. I’d say quarterly, you know, make that a priority to make sure you’re compliant, especially with the changing rules, especially in EU with AI. Things are really cracking down. So…
Greg Shuey (07:35.524)
Hey, we’ve got a problem.
Greg Shuey (07:53.208)
Yeah.
Julia Amodt (07:56.6)
you know, instead of focusing so much on getting those emails sent, make sure your lists are clean, make sure you’re compliant, et cetera.
Greg Shuey (08:04.162)
Yeah, I like that. You also touched on segmentation, right? So the deeper that we can segment from an email and an SMS perspective, the better personalization that we can leverage. So as brands are thinking through how to balance personalization, how to balance automation, how to balance scale, number of emails and SMS messages that they’re sending, like how…
How do they effectively do that in 2025? What are some of the things that they should be thinking about?
Julia Amodt (08:38.35)
Is it terrible if I say slow down? Because I just think in, my years of email marketing, was so like figuring out how many emails you need to send. And you know, some clients they send one a week, some clients they send every single day. And it’s almost like they’re not taking enough time to look at the data. And like, you know, you get so in the weeds.
Greg Shuey (08:40.6)
Hahaha!
Greg Shuey (09:06.008)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Amodt (09:06.84)
There’s so much you can do even just with A-B testing. If you’re sending to just a couple segments and you go a little deeper, just A-B testing a few of those campaigns with deeper segments, I think it’s worth the risk when it comes to revenue and seeing how it performs. And there’s so much you can do with A-B testing for automations.
Greg Shuey (09:30.164)
Interesting. So, so more email does not equal more money.
Julia Amodt (09:37.028)
Correct. I mean, if you look at the data with click rates and your CVR, you’ll probably notice that a lot of your emails aren’t getting the revenue that you really want. So which ones are performing well? Because email marketing is so huge, I mean, I’m scared to look at how many unread messages I have on my, you don’t even want to know. It’s an insane amount because I’m signed up to so many.
Greg Shuey (09:49.304)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (10:05.912)
Yeah. You know, I was talking to a prospect the other day and they, they shared that they’re sending like 60 to 80, you know, cam they’re doing 60, 80 campaigns a month. like, are you going to be turned off if we come back and say, we need to cut that in half or even further than half? it’s just, you know, in some cases, I guess it makes sense. Like if you’re running a multi, multi, multi million dollar company with lots and lots of segments, but.
Julia Amodt (10:06.681)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (10:35.63)
For most brands these days that are hovering in the, you know, two to five, even up to $10 million mark, you’re just going to exhaust your customers. They’re going to stop opening. They’re going to stop clicking. They’re going to stop buying at the end of the day.
Julia Amodt (10:50.158)
Yeah, yeah, I, to be honest, I’ve seen more high unsubscribe rates than anything else. And it’s just because consumers are really, the inbox fatigue, there’s a lot of information coming to them. So, you know, what’s the most valuable information that you can give? Yeah.
Greg Shuey (11:09.548)
Yep. I was talking to another prospect the other day that we were talking about this very thing and we were talking about how we just have been going through our email accounts and unsubscribing just email after email after email after email. So they’re either ignoring it or they’re just unsubscribing altogether and you won’t be able to reach them anymore.
Julia Amodt (11:33.838)
I think one thing that I’ve noticed a lot more with brands is having
in this words. Preferences pages. Want less emails? You want them monthly? You want them weekly? I think that’s make sure your preference page is set up you know next to the unsubscribe link in the foot of the email. Having a preferences link that’s super helpful because there are some brands where I’m getting messages from them on the daily but maybe I do just want it monthly.
Greg Shuey (11:46.19)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (12:07.16)
Yeah, and that’s not a bad idea. You don’t see that very often. At least I don’t.
Julia Amodt (12:12.451)
Not enough. Not enough.
Greg Shuey (12:14.063)
Yeah, interesting. And I would assume Clavio probably has a way to embed that right in a page. Got it. Okay. I’ve never personally set that up before. That’s a great, that’s a great tip. So let’s talk a little bit about AI. mean, this has been the year of AI, right? You know, we we’ve got chat GPT, Claude, perplexity, just tons and tons of AI at our fingertips.
Julia Amodt (12:19.396)
Yes, yes, maybe I would have, yeah.
Julia Amodt (12:34.872)
Yes it has.
Greg Shuey (12:43.542)
As we think about next year, what role will AI and machine learning play in email and SMS marketing next year? And then how can brands leverage these technologies to, you know, do better data analysis, build efficiencies, and just build better marketing campaigns?
Julia Amodt (13:08.056)
Yeah, I think the key with AI is that it does help with efficiency. I’m not one, I’m a creative and so I don’t think that AI should ever take the entire role of a creative. I’m pretty against using AI for image creation and videos, but it is something that we are seeing more of.
Greg Shuey (13:14.244)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (13:36.697)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Amodt (13:37.242)
and if it works for your brand, absolutely. I think that’s going to be a big thing that continues. For me, I feel like efficiency, really helps with just brainstorming ideas, segmentation, because it can analyze so much data, I feel like it’s great for segmenting based on your
Behavior and interactions with the content that we have and the predictive analytics using that historical data Predicting future customer actions. I think that’s where we’ll see a huge increase But yeah, definitely Image creation and videos. I don’t love it. I will say I don’t love it. I don’t use it I don’t like it as my as As a creative not a huge fan, but it’s definitely helpful, you know
Greg Shuey (14:05.028)
Interesting.
Greg Shuey (14:14.175)
Mmm. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (14:21.06)
Thank
Greg Shuey (14:30.905)
Yeah.
Julia Amodt (14:31.684)
for brainstorming ideas, copywriting, subject lines, preview text, all of that. If you get into that writer’s block time and you’re like, I don’t know what to put here. AI is so helpful for that, but definitely realize that AI will never be able to capture the human element. It can’t do everything for you, but it’s definitely going to help with efficiency. And if you have a huge chunk of data,
I think using AI to your advantage is huge and that’s what we’ll see a lot more of in 2025.
Greg Shuey (15:03.726)
That’s awesome. Do you think we’ll get there in 2025 to where AI is good enough to do images and videos, or do you think we’re still a couple of years out?
Julia Amodt (15:11.61)
I don’t… man that’s so… because I really feel like that’s when we get into like the uncanny valley situation. I don’t think it’ll ever be able to completely… it can trick us definitely. But that’s so… I don’t know. I don’t think it ever will be. I don’t ever think it should be. But if it works for your brand that’s…
Greg Shuey (15:18.594)
I think we might.
Greg Shuey (15:22.446)
That is true. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (15:30.66)
Sure.
Greg Shuey (15:38.446)
Yeah.
Julia Amodt (15:41.592)
that’s for you, there’s just when you see the videos and images of people, I think there’s the human element that’s missing, it’s all in the eyes, but if you just need to pop out an AI video that’s not including the human element, maybe just showing off product, that might be great.
Greg Shuey (15:48.356)
thoughtful. Yeah. Yep.
Greg Shuey (15:58.478)
Yeah. Yep. I know that a lot of brands have concerns about putting data into chat GPT and other platforms. Like how, what are the best ways to approach that to keep things anonymous, but also be able to feed it the data so that it can do the analysis.
Julia Amodt (16:08.078)
Yes.
Julia Amodt (16:22.618)
Yeah, that’s so that’s a tricky one because there are a few there are a few ways you could do it. I see I see a lot of brands asking for quite a lot of information in that email sign up you know first name last name and email. I don’t tend to subscribe when it asks for that much. I’d like to stay more anonymous and you know using other
Greg Shuey (16:28.739)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Shuey (16:42.424)
No. Never.
Julia Amodt (16:51.092)
emails just for what I sign up for. However there are, like don’t ask for so much information or give give your emails a specific sender ID like assign an ID to that customer. I think that’s key but take out those those personal elements or if you are going to do that be transparent about it.
Greg Shuey (17:12.1)
Hmm.
Julia Amodt (17:20.346)
I think that’s another thing in terms of privacy and data security in general. Be transparent with your customer on what you’re doing.
Greg Shuey (17:29.548)
is that we use machine learning to better serve you. Yeah, that’s interesting. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anything like that come from a brand that I’ve purchased from, but that’s a great idea.
Julia Amodt (17:32.66)
Right. Yes. Yeah.
Julia Amodt (17:42.202)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (17:44.133)
Cool. So again, I mean, this next question touches on privacy and data security. What are some of the best practices for list management and segmentation for 2025? Because there is a lot of concern around how much do people know about me? Like, when do we go too far as a brand to be able to over personalize and maybe spook people?
Julia Amodt (18:03.214)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Amodt (18:11.692)
Yeah and I think that you know the be transparent thing comes back here and don’t be sneaky with what you’re doing. I don’t see any any reason to ask for specific information. I think first name only totally fine. I don’t think you need the last name. I but I think being transparent like we are providing emails that are specific to your location like that’s
Make it clear in when they sign up what they’re signing up for. Always stay on top of the changes with compliance rules, authentication, have that double opt-in, clear opt-in rules. Just yeah, make sure the person knows what they’re signing up for and you know, make it clear. If you use their location, if you use information about them, if you use AI, be transparent, but also
What do we, do we really need? How much information do we need to provide them location based things or personalized products? You don’t, you don’t need to know my last name. You don’t need to know.
Greg Shuey (19:27.092)
And we’ll get that later. You know, once you complete an order, we’ll get that later.
Julia Amodt (19:29.356)
Yes, yeah. Exactly. consumers know that you’re getting, it’s almost like on the consumer side, when you’re signing up for these things, you kind of need to know what it is you’re signing up for. Everyone has your data. It’s just the way of the internet. But yeah, there are ways you can protect yourself on the consumer side. Make another email, only use your first name, et cetera.
Greg Shuey (19:57.018)
Hotmail’s a great place to put spam email, you know?
Julia Amodt (19:59.52)
It is.
Greg Shuey (20:02.284)
I know a lot of brands are starting to lean into like these surveys after, after you opt in, you give an email address, a phone number, and then you ask two or three questions about who are they shopping for? What are their preferences? What are their clothing styles? Those types of things. Do you see that being more prominent going into 2025? Should more brands be thinking about collecting that data upfront?
Julia Amodt (20:15.002)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Amodt (20:29.22)
mean, it’s happening already. It’s so interesting when you do kind of like a deep dive into what have been the trends. it’s almost like there’s a battle. There’s a battle between privacy and data security and also personalization. And yeah, I think that information is useful. I really like getting, I mean, even just
Greg Shuey (20:48.644)
Yeah.
Julia Amodt (20:58.874)
Let’s just take Spotify for an example. my favorite thing is getting my wrapped playlist every year and I love how deeply personal it is to me. gosh, what was my top artist? Charlie XCX, it was Brat Summer. Absolutely. Blink 182. man, I saw them. I saw them this year.
Greg Shuey (21:09.764)
All right, who was your top artist?
Greg Shuey (21:17.764)
Really? right. Mine’s Blink 182. Yeah, I still live in the 90s. Yep.
That’s amazing, lucky.
Julia Amodt (21:28.886)
Yeah, I was really lucky to go see them. But yeah, it was a blast from the past. Yeah. I okay, so I was looking into the newest of DMARC SPF. It’s BeMe. BeMe is a text file record lives on your server for the inbox provider to verify. And it’s essentially like giving brands a blue checkmark in your email inbox.
Greg Shuey (21:33.452)
Awesome, okay, I cut you off. Continue your thought.
Greg Shuey (21:56.75)
Hmm. Interesting.
Julia Amodt (21:59.002)
That’s another thing that I think is going to be bigger moving into 2025 is getting this new authentication right within your inbox where people can be like, okay, I know that this is coming from X brand. I know this is coming from Nike or I’m sure they already have it.
Greg Shuey (22:18.784)
Is that a paid service? Well, we’ll make sure to include that in show notes as well.
Julia Amodt (22:21.058)
No, no.
yeah yeah that’s easy becoming more popular i don’t think hotmail has it yet you know gmail has it so yeah that’s another one
Greg Shuey (22:35.556)
Okay, cool. All right, so we talked a fair amount about fatigue, female fatigue. So as brands are thinking through like how their design and how their copywriting and how their headline writing needs to change in order to stand out in these overly crowded inboxes, where have you seen like really big wins or where are you seeing trends kind of in those areas?
Julia Amodt (22:42.233)
Yes.
Julia Amodt (22:53.743)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Shuey (23:06.594)
Ahem.
Julia Amodt (23:07.322)
Hmm. Mobile, mobile, mobile. Make sure your email designs are mobile friendly. I think that’s a big thing that’s becoming more like you need to make sure that you’re mobile friendly also. Okay. So in June of 2025, the European Accessibility Act is making sure that you have all of your digital products and services accessible.
everybody. So accessibility is a massive one. Make sure you have dark mode set up, high contrast emails, like that CTA button needs to be a high contrast color combo, and then semantic HTML.
Greg Shuey (23:45.39)
Hmm.
Julia Amodt (24:00.474)
That’s another one. can put another link for that one because, yes, so instead of your regular HTML, this one really helps with explaining the meaning of the content itself. Those are the three in terms of designed check marks you need to really have in the new year in terms of rules. But yeah, mobile friendly.
I’m all about make your emails succinct, especially if, especially with so many emails that people are getting, people aren’t really scrolling. Their attention span is very limited. So simple emails, great design, keep your CTAs above the fold. but also interactive content, GIFs, polls, gamification. It’s an interesting thing because it’s similar to what we were talking about earlier.
Greg Shuey (24:52.74)
Hmm.
Julia Amodt (25:00.546)
you have these rules that you need to be following, but then they bring in like gifts and polls and gamification. So make it very clear, but also how can you make it fun?
Greg Shuey (25:04.365)
Ahem.
Greg Shuey (25:08.216)
Yeah.
Greg Shuey (25:12.804)
got it. and, forgive me because I don’t even remember what these are called, but like these, these summaries, I’m looking at my phone right now. You know how Apple, the recent Apple update started to, you know, make, are they summaries? What do they call it? Do you even remember?
Julia Amodt (25:24.526)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Amodt (25:30.498)
I don’t, don’t. Summaries.
Greg Shuey (25:32.472)
But what about what about optimizing for that? Like, is there a good way to be able to do that?
Julia Amodt (25:41.858)
Hmm man that’s too early to tell yeah I’d say that that’s because I’m just looking I’m looking at my phone right now and I’m looking at emails from you
Greg Shuey (25:43.854)
Too early to tell.
Greg Shuey (25:55.278)
They’re weird. These summaries are weird. I hate them. And so like, I don’t know what that looks like next year for brands.
Julia Amodt (25:57.154)
It is weird. Yeah.
Julia Amodt (26:04.954)
Yeah, and I hate to say that I don’t have a great answer for you because it is so new, but yeah, maybe that’s…
Greg Shuey (26:10.242)
Yep. Well, that needs to go on the calendar for January to do some research. Yep.
Julia Amodt (26:14.912)
it does indeed it does indeed i’m looking at them now and it is it’s not from all of the brands i don’t think anybody’s necessarily doing it right because i’m still wondering like what is the point of this email
Greg Shuey (26:34.254)
Yep, I hear ya. It’s super strange to me.
Julia Amodt (26:37.786)
Yeah, so I’m sure that’s definitely something that will come up more in 2025 of like how you can implement your little summary. I mean, similar to SEO, Like filling out that little detail. That’ll be helpful. Yes, yes.
Greg Shuey (26:48.644)
Yeah. Yep.
title tags, meta descriptions. yeah. Cool. What about, you know, how should brands be thinking about how to reengage and retain customers? As we know, customer acquisition costs continue to rise. What we see with many brands is that
Julia Amodt (27:17.731)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Shuey (27:23.114)
weight of sales is down with email. So they’re not getting as many customers coming back and driving repeat revenue and growing lifetime value. So what are some key things there that they need to be thinking about in order to start to course correct that and generate more revenue through email and SMS next year?
Julia Amodt (27:45.698)
Yeah, one thing I see with welcome emails is that high unsubscribe rate after people get their discount and that’s, you know, I feel like that’s something that we’re always going to see. But for those who do stick around or haven’t clicked that unsubscribe button yet, making sure you have a really good welcome flow setup that’s, you know, split by who have used the discount and who hasn’t.
and how are we making sure that that series re-engages the user? Do you have also like your win back flow set up? A lot of brands because that’s a less popular flow they don’t have their win back set up, they don’t have the re-engagement with specific products that people have purchased. I mean the integrations with Klaviyo with you know your shopping feed even is
Greg Shuey (28:25.294)
Yeah.
Julia Amodt (28:44.204)
it’s so great that they have that data. So do you have your cross-sell upsell re-engagement flows after a product is purchased, set up to use the data that you have and re-engage those users? And like I said, I think part of that is because they’re focused on sending campaigns, which obviously you want to make sure that you’re sending a regular amount of campaigns, but also there are such key flows that can use
Greg Shuey (29:12.067)
Yeah.
Julia Amodt (29:14.35)
the customer’s engagement with your brand and bring them back.
Greg Shuey (29:19.662)
Got it. Okay, cool. So as we start to wrap up our conversation here, I like to leave our listeners kind of some tips and tricks for whatever’s next for them. as we think through everything that we’ve talked about today, would you be able to share maybe some innovative or unique
Email campaigns or trends or things that you’ve seen that listeners can really start to draw some inspiration from as they as they look at building out their roadmap.
Julia Amodt (30:00.312)
Yeah, so I feel like I’m gonna have to link some really great email designs in here. The ones that I’ve seen that I’ve really loved, like maybe I’m just a minimalist when it comes to email design, but I really love the emails that have one amazing header image that’s just honestly like make sure you have your graphic designers, like graphic, lean on your graphic designers.
find someone who’s super great at design but also understands like things that you need for email like making sure your CTA is above the fold but the emails that I’ve loved are just beautifully designed and get to the point right away. You don’t need an email that has a bunch of different things all in one email. You need the email with one header image that gets to the point and looks fantastic is aligned with the brand.
offers 20 % off like something grab my attention right away. visuals. I’m seeing so many more gifts and you know those interactive emails. So yeah, I’ll have to drop in some some visuals for people but I’m all about get my attention right away with that amazing image lean on your graphic designers. Yeah.
Greg Shuey (31:24.996)
Okay, that’s awesome. I’ve got one more for you. So I saw an interesting post on LinkedIn yesterday that said something along the lines of, nobody cares about your 10 % offer anymore. People are bored.
Julia Amodt (31:30.392)
Okay.
Greg Shuey (31:46.785)
What’s the sweet spot for next year? Or is there a different kind of offer that brands should be thinking about outside of your standard? Get 10 % off. Do you have any insights there?
Julia Amodt (31:55.642)
Mm.
Uh-huh.
man I feel like this is where you really need to be A-B testing what works and you know is it is it the 10 % off or is it the 15 % off what are your competitors doing I mean that’s that’s one thing that I come to a brand and even just discussing that welcome offer it’s like well what what are your competitors doing some competitors are offering up to 25 % off right on that first purchase
Greg Shuey (32:28.494)
Yeah.
Julia Amodt (32:31.512)
But you won’t really know until you test. So I say A-B testing and for some brands a dollar amount off works great. BOGOs work great. Free shipping works great. But you won’t really know until you test. I feel like the 10 % off is a great starting point but gather more data.
Greg Shuey (32:54.262)
Mm-hmm. I’ve seen a couple of brands, it isn’t a lot, probably less than five who have a multiple discount, meaning take 15 % off your first three orders.
Julia Amodt (33:09.786)
Hmm.
Greg Shuey (33:11.19)
I haven’t seen that before this year ever. And like I said, I’ve seen it maybe two or three times where they have a multiple offer, which I mean, if you’ve got the margin, that is pretty incredible in terms of being able to bring them back a second and a third time to grow your lifetime value.
Julia Amodt (33:26.266)
Yeah.
Julia Amodt (33:32.43)
What industry?
Greg Shuey (33:35.007)
clothing? Yeah.
Wild.
Julia Amodt (33:40.76)
Yeah, that is wild.
Greg Shuey (33:42.508)
I think we’re probably going to see some unique offers this year of people really starting to test.
Julia Amodt (33:48.376)
I think that people are definitely going to get more creative in general with things that they offer just because this isn’t the same rodeo as four years ago. Yeah, know, pre-COVID and after COVID, it’s all changing. And like I said, be nimble and test, use the data you have, get creative. I mean, if you can.
Greg Shuey (33:58.948)
Yeah.
at COVID years.
Julia Amodt (34:17.338)
If you can, definitely A-B test as much as you can to learn. If you want to do a multiple percent off, do it. Do it, try it. Yeah, definitely test. You won’t know unless you try. Let’s make 2025 the year of taking risks, you know, like safe risks. Yeah, exactly. Calculated risks. But let’s not stay in this safe.
Greg Shuey (34:41.54)
calculated risks.
Julia Amodt (34:47.864)
the safe area where we’re doing the same thing. Because I don’t, yeah, change. Change is the only constant. We don’t know what the world is gonna look like. So how can you really dive into testing and see what works for your brand?
Greg Shuey (34:56.557)
Okay.
Greg Shuey (35:04.996)
I love it. Awesome. Well, I think the two big things that I’ve heard is you need to be nimble and you need to be willing to test. And I think if you can take everything that we talked about here today and kind of chunk them out into those two buckets, I think that you’re going to be able to have a really good solid plan going into 2025. So Julia, thank you so much for being with us today. Was it as bad as you thought it was going to be?
Julia Amodt (35:34.389)
No, no.
Greg Shuey (35:37.38)
Did you shake off the nerves in the first few minutes?
Julia Amodt (35:40.426)
I did. I mean, I spent so much… this is where I live, right? Email marketing. So… Kind of… It’s more just diving into… diving into my brain and having a good conversation. Next time I’ll have… you’ll have to school me on SEO.
Greg Shuey (35:42.052)
There you go.
Greg Shuey (35:45.902)
Yep. Awesome.
Greg Shuey (35:55.982)
There you go. Love it. Well, thank you again. And thank you to all of our listeners. I hope that you’ve been able to pull out a couple of nuggets today that you can take and start executing against. Julia, thank you. And we wish everyone well. Thanks so much for joining. Bye-bye.
Julia Amodt (36:13.476)
Thanks Greg. Bye.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.
