An email about emails
How we're thinking about emails, and staying #relevant
If we’re gonna be on the bleeding edge of commerce (like we tell you every week), then we probably need to think about more than just building a website. We need to think about an entire customer journey, right? A cute date for each of our darlings. From awareness all the way through to advocacy.
Emails are a great way to keep the flame alive. It’s something we’ve been learning a whole lot about.
Before we get into this week’s share though, we’ve got a declaration to make:
We need a Digital Producer.
To apply, send a resume to hello@loveandmoney.agency and tell us something interesting. Send us something ‘snazzy’. Need more details? Well, we know that’s probably the kind of person you are. Here you go.
Right, back to our cute date - the customer journey, emails.
To have a say across each stage of the journey, we can use emails - they’re quick, personal and direct. What’s not to love?
If we use emails well, we can get our brand in front of our customers, build lasting relationships and get them to the checkout more regularly. How and why?
An email can be a direct line into the world of your brand, can explain what makes it special and why you’re worth a customer’s time and money. If you’ve just met, you want to make a good first impression. This would typically happen in the awareness and consideration phases, the moments that you show your distinctiveness (them + you = better them).
Once they’re comfortable, you can start getting a bit more personal, use their name, show them another product that they might like. Reward their trust in you with something relevant. The more relevant the content, the higher the open rate, the closer the relationship. If you give them enough, you might even be able to persuade them to get buying. This is sweet, sweet, conversion. And we love it.
If you should be so lucky, you’ll win their loyalty. They’ll buy other things from you, they’ll want your exclusive content and even review your products. This is the end goal: customer advocacy.
There truly is an email for every occasion. Can anything else work this hard?
Just because we can do (and say) so much, it doesn’t mean that we always should. It didn’t work out too well for 39-email Donald on Election Day. If the strategy and flow isn’t managed thoughtfully, users won’t just unsubscribe (ouch, our feelings), we’ll have missed an opportunity.
So, emails can be a great way to shoot our shot, that’s why we’ve been experimenting with an email ‘stack’ of our own. Here are some hot takes:
Marketing service email builders (Klaviyo, Mailchimp etc.) are limited in customisation. What you lose in design, you gain in accessibility which can be great if you’re a client working on the fly. But what might you do if graphic design is your passion? You might want something a little more 🔥🔥🔥.
Enter Emailify. Shout out Adam Brock.
Emailify is a Figma plugin, and it’s the most precise way of we’ve found of getting the email designs of our dreams into codes. It may not be perfect, but it surely is the best solution we know that exists so far. Maybe not for devs like Dog, though.
Why? It’s a Figma plugin that literally converts designs to code. It’s magic – everything from design to final export is all in one place. Because you’re building things out in Figma, you can really push the boat out with more complex designs.
Plus, you can even make customisations from the code produced (if you know much about code). If you don’t know much about code like me, it can set off the ‘whelm, but maybe you do what I did and get in touch with Adam, he’s always had our back.
There are emails that you can’t really build in Emailify though. For example, Shopify integrated emails like transactions and review requests, they’re tricky. They are tricky because Liquid.
I won’t get into details, ffs, but long story short, they can only be built in Klaviyo or the email builder of the review service you might be using. Emailify can’t save the day here quite yet, so customisation can be very limited. And time consuming. If you’re getting into the weeds though, this page and this guide were pretty useful.
The future
Time keeps on going, emails will keep coming. Over the next few months we’ll be paying even closer attention to our email best practice. We’re curious though, what do you think the future of emails look like?
Get the comments, let’s talk it out.
We’ll be back in your inbox next week with another tl;dr, but if you find yourself pining, here are our latest articles:
tl;dr 003, w/c 20212604 →
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