EP. 17- 2 Weeks Until They Are GONE 4EVER!!!! w/ Andrew Kordek from iPost l Expert Quick Tips

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Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday.

I'm Jay Schwedelson.

Let's do this, not that.

Right. We are here for a really exciting episode of do this, not that. And I'm going to tell you who Andrew Kordick is. But first, let me just say hi.

Andrew Cordick. Thank you for being here.

Thanks, Jay. It's great to be here.

All right, let me tell you, everybody who you're listening to, staring at, and I'm about to embarrass Andrew, and I'll tell you why. And I'm not. I'm not blowing smoke because he's here, but if I made a Mount Rushmore of email experts, Andrew would be on that Mount Rushmore.

He has been doing this for a billion years.

And put aside what he does today, if you ever wondered how did, like, Groupon, for example, become this crazy big thing that was all driven by email and we all were getting, like, trampoline park coupons? Who is the guy behind that entire massive email strategy? That's Andrew. And when Sears was Sears, he was running all the email.

He is.

And then he had an agency called Trendline Interactive, which I loved what they did because it was always against the grain about email. And today he's like the vice president of everything important at a platform called iPost for sending email and whatnot.

And it happens to be one of the platforms that my company uses, and I think it's fantastic. So I'm super excited for Andrew to be here. So there you go, Andrew. I told you I'd try to embarrass you a little bit.

Well, thanks, Jay. That's very humbling. I've always considered myself to be a student in email marketing, and I continue to learn about things every day.

And I've been doing this for a zillion years. And it's funny.

I do what I love, and I love what I do, and so it's really awesome to sort of even speak to you because you're sort of a legend in this. In this industry, too. So we're have some fun today.

Well, so there's one topic that I think. I think we agree on, but maybe not, and we'll see.

And that is, I think a lot of marketers out there they get nervous that they're sending too many emails, that maybe that's the cause of why things aren't performing, that they're sending too much. What camp do you live in? You should be sending more, sending less. What's your vibe?

So I have a saying and it's a little confusing, so I'll, I'll preface that. It's called send more emails, not email. And you know, there's this fine line.

We hear lots of arguments in the industry about what's the ideal frequency. And then you have people who talk about sending more, sending less, and there really is no ideal frequency or everybody would have figured it out.

What I mean by send more emails and not email is, is we're to the stage in the world today where people want more emails that are very targeted, personalized, whatever we want to call it to them.

So you have to figure out that fine balance of, instead of sending more email, like millions and millions or five times or ten times a week or whatever the case is, figure out an email or emails that are very much more targeted to get better engagement. So it's all about behavioral triggered, using transactional emails the right way. It's not about. And I'll say this from an ESP's perspective.

Yeah, sure, we want to have volume, but I think there's this fine line of understanding when enough is enough. So you really want to kind of put together a strategy, maybe one or two emails, nothing huge, don't feel like you got to blow it out of the water.

But send very focused emails rather than just a ton of email, if that makes any sense.

So you have two populations of people, though. You have your engaged population who really dig what you're sending and then you're not engaged.

And how do you look at frequency to the different populations of people?

Well, first of all, everyone starts out as being engaged and they get disengaged over a period of time for whatever reason. We can talk about that in a separate podcast. What marketers have to do is they have to understand the inflection point.

What point do people get to the point where they become unengaged? Is it offer after offer? Is it two weeks? Is it one week? We knew it. Groupon.

Just as an example, if they didn't buy a Groupon, like within the first two or three weeks, they're never gonna buy a Groupon. If we start to see engagement rates go down, then what we need to do is instill reengagement.

I call it intervention, early intervention, midterm intervention. So you have to focus, find that balance. You have to know what happens or when does it happen before they stay engaged or that they become unengaged.

But you can't layer what your email is telling you. Are they visiting your site?

Are you looking at data points outside of email to say, yeah, they may not be clicking through on an email but they're coming to your site and they're engaging with your brand. That's a hard thing to do, but try to take it in baby steps. So again, it boils down to how do you define unengagement versus engaged?

And that varies across all different industries.

So I know we're going a little deep on this, but I'm curious because you said something I think that most marketers don't think about, which is, I think a lot of marketers when they're talking about email, like, oh, let's grab everybody who hasn't opened or clicked in 6 months and 12 months, 18 months and they have these very kind of standard, far out there, you know, non engaged periods, whatever.

It sounds like what you were saying, that if you don't see engagement after a certain amount of weeks or first 30 days or whatever, it's a much shorter window that you have to start to react.

Is that accurate?

Yeah.

Everybody stop drawing a line in the sand and saying we're going to pull somebody's not engaged if they haven't opened or clicked or done anything in six months or three months or whatever. You can't just draw that line in the sand that everybody has drawn up and says that that means they're unengaged. You have to learn early and often.

And it also depends upon the industry that you're in. Like I use the example cruise lines. Cruise lines are awesome, but I'm not going to buy a cruise 14 times a year or even three times a year.

I might buy a cruise every other year. So you kind of have to look at the industry that you're in and determine what does that mean to fall off the engagement wagon.

Maybe you hold them out for a little while, maybe you engage them other ways.

Maybe you try to just send them feel good emails rather than offer or something over and over and over again until they become there's their atrophy that I was like, oh, another email from these guys. I don't want it. So it's hard and it's industry by industry.

So don't believe all the time what you read in books that it there's this line in the sand of X.

I think that's super. Super valuable for people to hear that. You have to.

And it's probably a much shorter window of when people fall off that cliff and you lose them from an engagement standpoint. And it's really probably within that first, potentially 30 days.

And that whole six month thing is like, that's a Hail Mary, that's not really an engagement program. So let's come into another area that I know that you talk about quite a bit.

And this is the idea of when people are actually filling out forms and you're capturing their information, their email address and all this. What should we be doing? What are we not doing? Right. What should we be thinking about?

Yep, I've used this analogy before.

And Jay, when you have a party at your house or when I have a party at my house and I want people to come in and have a great experience, what do we do? Well, hopefully we clean our house and we make sure that things are in order. Where are we going to put the coats when people come in the door?

Where's the food, where are the drinks? How are people going to flow through my house or the place that I'm having my party at?

In the same way kind of happens when, when it comes to companies and the way that they set up, how that experience comes across.

When someone comes in and signs up for their email program and I often look at it and say, yes, pop ups are great interstitials, whatever we want to call it.

But do we really believe or do we go through that promise of when we say, would you like 10% off or would you like to receive free stuff and then guilt them into giving an email address? Do we make them fill out a bunch of information? So do we actually go through the process ourselves?

Do the people who want that process at the organization actually go through that process? And so I think about the experience and what I'm going to get out of it.

And sometimes I go to large scale organizations and small organizations and sign up for their email and sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised and other times like, why do you need me to fill this out? All I want to do is this as opposed to that. So you have to sort of take a step back. And I'm one of those people that loves to learn.

So I would go and stand behind somebody's back and say, you know what, go sign up right here. This is my company. Go and sign up for email. I'm not going to prompt you and watch you do that and see how well you perform in signing up for email.

And then tell me what your first experience is and do you feel value? Do you feel loved? Do you feel like you know what you're going to be getting? That's where it starts.

Because you know the whole first impression thing, right? Do we follow through on the promise or do we as an organization just treat Andrew or Jay or anybody as a number signing up?

And, and I think that's so, so valuable to almost secret shopper yourself to go through the process and from a basic standpoint, I would also put in there, clear out your cache or open an incognito window, go through your forms on your desktop, on a mobile device, have your significant other do it and sadly you will see things don't go the way that you expect them to go. You don't get the auto, the trigger email or you get a wonky experience or something happens.

Don't rely on just all the automations that are set up and you think everything's cool because the odds are low that you get it.

All right, because we're marketers, we know how it should be, we know how to sign up, we know the flow, we know what should happen.

But when we have somebody that's literally a customer or a typical subscriber of us go and do it, It's a whole different experience and get some valuable insight when you have people do that.

I love what we just went through this last segment though. It's nothing to do with email, it has to do with nothing. It's called since you didn't ask. And we're going to talk about randomness.

So let me ask you a question. I'm looking at you here. I see a Notre Dame flag behind you. So that means you're probably a Notre Dame football guy.

Yeah.

So what is like the most embarrassing extreme version of fandom that you have done with your Notre Dame love that you have?

So first of all, people either love Notre Dame or they hate Notre Dame. There's no really in between. One of the most probably embarrassing things I probably ever did was I was at a game and I was really, really close.

I was actually the second row in and I was right next to the band and I wanted to grab a piece of grass from the turf. So I was with my dad and I kind of leaned over and kind of did that.

Like I was pretending to stretch or whatever and I just wanted to get a blade of grass. Dumb, I know. Probably would have put it in a baggie or what, but people were looking at me like I was some, some crazy guy.

Now I'm not That ridiculous of a fan. It was just, it was probably 15, 20 years ago. Right. But yeah, that was probably my most.

That's super embarrassing, and you should be embarrassed. But I'm proud of you. That's a wonderful thing. So when I was in college to motivate myself, I would watch the movie Rudy before every test.

Because instead of studying, I would watch the movie Rudy. If you haven't seen the movie Rudy, it's like the greatest movie of all time by this guy who made it through Notre Dame football and all this stuff.

I know nobody cares about me, but are you like pro Rudy the movie? Are you like, this was a garbage movie?

No, it's a great movie. And so I would say that if I'm the one that's. Let's say the TV's on, it's at night, I'm sleeping on the couch, and Rudy were to come on.

You just kind of wake up and start watching.

Absolutely.

Like, you can't just flip through it and say, I'll. I'll do it another time. Like it's like anything else. You just, you see it on, you got to start watching it. You know, it's like Shawshank Redemption.

You gotta watch. It's a. It's a great movie. I think it's a feel good movie. Right. For anybody, whether or not you're an ordained fan or. Or not.

But I think it's just one of those things about perseverance. But I have a client who you. Who tells me that and keeps reminding me every single time I'm gonna. I'm gonna call with them. He's like, he was offside.

He was a Georgia Tech.

So for those of you that have watched the movie, he rushes the pass or is like the last thing and he was the last guy to be carried off the field or whatever. But he keeps saying he was offside.

Well, we've learned a lot today. We've learned that Rudy Ruedeker was offsides, and we're going to hold that forever. And we learned about secret shoppering. Go to our own forms.

Try it out for yourself. Really think about if you're living up to the promise you're making to people and engagement, you could fall off that cliff fast.

Much faster than we thought before. Andrew, do you have any parting words for our do this, not that audience?

Yeah. So whether you're new or Whether you've got 10 years experience, email's hard. It's hard to do. It's easy on the surface. Don't sweat it.

There's a lot of stuff that you are in charge of. Try to battle through and figure out the ones that are going to provide you the biggest return.

Whether it's a welcome email, whether it's automation or AI or whatever, everybody's in the same boat. So don't freak out. Just take it easy. And if you need the help of experts, ask. This community is amazing and that's why I kind of stay in it.

So I've been there. I've been there folks. It's tough, but hang in there.

Yeah. And everyone follow Andrew kordick on on LinkedIn and on social.

He really shares a lot of valuable and up to the minute information about what's going on and pitfalls to avoid. So Andrew, thank you for being here and do this, not that. And I'll see you soon.

Thanks Jay for having me. Appreciate it.

You did it.

You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

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