Nikki Elbaz: 0:03 Marketer just see when people do things that are ineffective like when it's like sale, sale, sale and all it is just like a flyer style, email it like 70% off and today, and then like it's 50% off the next week, and then it's 70% off. Like why? Why would people actually trust you or open or anything like that?
Hillel Berg: 0:25 Welcome to Inboxing - the podcast about all things Email Marketing. Today on Inboxing Nikki Elbaz from nikkielbaz.com. Hi, welcome back to the Inboxing podcast. Inboxing podcast is a podcast about Email Marketing. I'm Hillel Berg, your host. Tonight we're going to be hosting a very special guest. And that is Nikki Elbaz. She'll be joining us in a few minutes. Let me introduce myself. So Inboxing is a brand new podcast where we talk about Email Marketing every single week. We're recording the episodes live on Facebook and on Instagram and hopefully coming soon to live to LinkedIn, and maybe some other platforms.
Hillel Berg: 1:05 And we're the whole point is really to... Our guests are going to be from the Email Marketing community. And we're going to be talking about Email Marketing, about best practices, about really just for any marketer coming to listen, like there's really tons and tons of value about how to do Email Marketing well, what are the tricks, or at least, what works and what things they should focus on in order to get the most out of their Email Marketing. And just a little bit more about Nikki. Every week, we're gonna be having different guests. Last week, we had Emily McGuire from Flourish and Grit. She was fantastic. She was our first guest. Tonight, this is our second episode. And we're gonna be having Nikki Elbaz again. And every guest will bring their own perspective, their own story, [and] things they like to use. I'm really curious to hear from Nikki, what kind of things you'd like to hear? I'm happy to help all the people that are joining from my Facebook page, I just was on an episode of Make Your Mark. We covered a lot of great content, take a look at that. It was really productive; a lot of great things came out of that.
Hillel Berg: 2:08 But in this podcast, I think we're gonna be diving a lot deeper into email about different questions people might have, different techniques in terms of automations, in terms of segmentation, in terms of personalization, great things that we're seeing in the email world, changes that we're seeing in the email world, new trends, and their things are always changing. So it's really important to stay ahead of things and know about the new trends and know what's going on. And what you can use in your business to really leverage email in a really effective way. Really, the podcast is all about, it's really, what Hillel Berg marketing is all about. It's really about helping businesses leverage email, in the best way possible, and getting the most out of their email. Something that came out of the latest podcast was, we touched on video marketing via video Email Marketing, which is just enough like a brand new thing. There a lot of new things coming out. And video is one of them, because it really offers you that one-to-one personal touch. When you send email, so it really could have been written by anyone. But when somebody... You're emailing to Hillel Berg. [And] when Hillel Berg send you an email, video back, you see me, you hear me. I'm talking to you. It's a super personal as you can get. So it's really tremendously powerful.
Hillel Berg: 3:24 And there's a bunch of different platforms that are doing it. One that we mentioned in the last one is called Bonjoro. That's something I encourage you to look out and explore the different ways that you can automate. You can automate videos into automations. That just sounds like the coolest thing I can imagine. And as one might imagine, it looks like someone sent you a personal video, then it definitely increases your chances of opening and watching. So it's really just a great opportunity. Nikki should be here, like any minute. So I just want to give her a really warm welcome by saying... Nikki is a powerhouse copywriter. I know no other way to say it, but she's written an email for some top brands, including Shopify Plus, including Doodle, among others, and she teaches Email Marketing. She's got her own platform - nikkielbaz.com - where she sells all kinds of playbooks and tools to help email marketers do their job better. So, without any further ado, Inboxing is proud to present our special guest of the evening, Nikki Elbaz.
Nikki Elbaz: 4:36 Yeah, good to be here. Finally, I’m here.
Hillel Berg: 4:41 Yeah, we've been talking on LinkedIn. I think just mostly on LinkedIn. But it's finally sort of enough flash. [Inaudible 04:55] Zooming and virtual conferencing has become... Like you got to remember it like a face to face.
Nikki Elbaz: 5:03 Life these days.
Hillel Berg: 5:04 Well, people are getting vaccinated. So now hopefully we're turning a corner and we might have real... I feel we're ready for a real conference. I think a lot of industries are ready to have a real conference, maybe by the summer.
Nikki Elbaz: 5:19 Cool. Nice!
Hillel Berg: 5:21 Yeah, now I hope so. We can only hope. Anyway, let's jump right into it. Shall we?
Nikki Elbaz: 5:27 Yeah
Hillel Berg: 5:28 So let's start with the bad stuff. What do you find most upsetting in your inbox? What do you see in your inbox that really just makes you cringe?
Nikki Elbaz: 5:37 The bad stuff; I love it.
Hillel Berg: It's like everything. Like the news: man bites dog, [Inaudible 05:46].
Nikki Elbaz: 5:47 Much more exciting. Yes. So there's two kinds of bad stuff that I see in my inbox. There's the stuff that makes me upset as a marketer, like you're doing things wrong. So I get very, like up in arms, holier than thou kind of thing, which is obviously very mature of me. And then there's the actual upset, like, the stuff where people are just like, "Don't do that". That's just wrong on a non-marketing perspective. Just like as humans, we should know better. So that's like things like, I don't know, when people will call email you with [Inaudible 06:19] response to something. You're not responding to me, you're not actually replying anything that I said. Just don't do that. It's just sleazy. Just don't! Like that, oops, broken links, and apologies, [and] anything fake, that's not real. That you're just trying to get people's attention. Things just like... Just don't do that. So that's the actual setup. And then as a marketer, just seeing when people do things that are ineffective, like, when it's like sale, sale, sale and all it is like a flyer style email. That's like 70% off ends today. And then like, it's 50% off the next week. And then it's 70% off. Like why would people actually trust you or open or anything like that. That's obviously super annoying.
Nikki Elbaz: 7:06 Another huge one is like when people are scared to tell you what they want. Like, buy my course, check out the sales page, even something like download my e-book, just like being very weak around your call to action, and just kind of expecting people to know what you want from them. Now, that's obviously a big mistake that happens often, because we're very close to the product. We think that if we talk about it, then people will automatically want it. We know that people need prompts and pushes to go do the thing that you want them to do. So that's something that happens often, because people don't realize it's a problem. And it really, like you'll be so much more effective if you just give some guidance and some direction and some clarity that can be super helpful.
Hillel Berg: 7:54 Yeah. Sometimes that calls to action are really just like "Buy now".
Nikki Elbaz: 8:01 It can be like... You get a lot of like new copywriters giving that a lot of flak, like, "Buy now". There's no benefit there. There's no emotional outcome, which is true. You definitely need to be selling out the benefits in your email. And there are cases, [and] often cases where you want them to be more about like, change your life, or something like that. And most products don't change your life. But there's definitely something to be said. I'm just like... The clarity, especially at the end of the sequence, at the end of the sale, there's "Buy now". It gives no question of what you want them to do. So [Inaudible 08:37].
Hillel Berg: 8:39 Yeah. For sure. Like I saw... Actually, there was an article I don't remember who put it out, but it was like a top 20 examples of good CTAs. And it was really all like... There was nothing super fancy. It was no deep dive into the emotion. It was all just what you'd expect the follow up to be, the headline, the sub pretext, and then, yeah, "Buy now" or "Order now".
Nikki Elbaz: 9:01 I think [Inaudible 09:04] between nurturing emails and sales emails and where in the funnel, the sales email happens and all these different things. And also there's a difference between "a call to value" and "a call to action", which is, like in the beginning, using the more emotional "call to values" can be super effective and does give that emotional outcome [and] feel good kind of stuff. But at the end, when the sales ending in an hour, you don't have time for that. You just need to get the people that are on the fence like just go go buy right now.
Nikki Elbaz: 9:36 Everything
Hillel Berg: 9:38 Yeah, there really is. What’s your biggest mistake in Email Marketing?
Nikki Elbaz: 9:45 This is like really embarrassing. I did an affiliate launch once and I got the end date wrong. Like I thought it was ending on Sunday. And it was really ending on Tuesday. So like all the emails were like it's ending on Sunday and I sent out like two [inaudible 10:02] emails on Sunday. And people responded to them like me. But I thought the sales pitch says ends on Tuesday. So it actually ended up being super fascinating for two reasons. Number one, it gave me more time to like, send another email, which was totally not planned and absolutely was not supposed to happen. But basically what I did was I apologized and said, like, I'm really sorry, if I freaked you all out, or you thought you hadn't worked hard to make the decision, which apology emails get better open rates, kind of what we were talking about before sleazy tactics, this was not sleazy, not on purpose, although a lot of people thought it was sleazy, and maybe sleazy, but it was not. But um, basically what I said was, “I didn't plan these emails out”. So basically, if you have questions, email me, and I'll tell you what I know about the course and if you're a good fit, and that kind of thing. And it was really powerful, because it really helps people get over their objections and see if it was a good fit. Like, it really was a smart email to do and like it was totally not planned. So it ended up being really interesting. And also just, in terms of me launching my stuff, seeing, like real life objections as they happen, versus just like the ones that come in from the people that already are really interested. When you prompt people by asking, it gives them like really interesting responses and interesting things to think about. When I watch my own products, I actually was thinking of sharing them with the person that it was being an affiliate for, you should know, these are all the questions that people are asking about your course. But I never could do that but probably should. So it was a total mistake, really embarrassing. But it ended up being really a very interesting test was like, the thing that I love about email. And what I find so cool about email is that it's something that is so easy to test things until they communicate with your audiences to talk through things and like, it ended up being a positive experience, even though I made this mistake, because of the nature of the relationship of email and the testability of email and all that kind of thing. So it was cool.
Hillel Berg: 12:08 I feel like most like “oops emails”, they really do. People love seeing that ‘Oops’. So usually ends up being really positive for companies always sent up a kitten by accident.
Nikki Elbaz: 12:20 Yeah, it's definitely super interesting. Very grateful that our mistakes can be like, it's better engagement.
Hillel Berg: 12:33 Oh! what happened? I screwed up. But look, we made a million dollars.
Nikki Elbaz: 12:40 What is interesting, I feel like a different mistake that I made was, I took testing a little too far, where I was mentoring a short cast founder; he created this “short cast app”. And he was talking about all the different used cases, and he was trying to do cold outreach. And so one of the used cases that he was saying he wanted to do outreach for was newsletter creators, and just giving them this like other opportunity. Like, instead of just sending an email, you send a short cast of the email, read the email, that's your short cast. And just like you can track better engagement that way in terms of like, how many people actually listen versus when you just see an open, you don't know who actually reads it. So he was talking about how people that like testing things or want to, like really track their engagement really well, and those kinds of things. It's like a great fit for that. So I was like, “Hey, I want to try this. I want to test it”. So I tested it a few times. And I feel like I was too pushy about the testing. “Hey guys, “I'm testing this new thing”. And everyone kind of felt like the new pics. So I feel like that hurt my brand and my engagement. And it was a little like, “hey, we're not your test specimens”. That was like taking testing a little too far.
Hillel Berg: 13:55 Far for you. You got to be careful. So what are your biggest win?
Nikki Elbaz: 14:15 I feel like the biggest wins are always unexpected. When it's just like, wait, what that happened. That's super cool. So my favorite is Doodle. I got a 64% increase in paid conversions from their onboarding campaign, which is like humongous like 64% increase impede conversions. That's just amazing. I don't even know how that happened. It's super cool. So I was totally not expecting it because we hadn't really gotten the results yet or whatever, we weren't communicating them. And I basically read about it on a blog post and I was just like, why? That's awesome.
Nikki Elbaz: 14:54 So that was really unexpected and really super fun. But another cool one was again, getting this feedback randomly when I wasn't expecting it. Usually I'll be like, let's go through the results. Let's do post mortem. And both of these times were just like random pieces of feedback where I was totally not expecting it. So this guy who ran marketing at Sephora responded to a welcome email that I wrote thinking it was the founder. And he's like, this is like, the most awesome welcome email I've ever read. I feel like your brand is the coolest ever. And I was just like, that's awesome.
Hillel Berg: 15:32 That's from your personal welcome series?
Nikki Elbaz: 15:37 No, first I [inaudible 15:38]
Nikki Elbaz: 15:41 So the [inaudible 15:42], took a screenshot and shared it in slack. And I was like, “That's so cool”. But it was like unexpected timing in terms of just like, getting this feedback randomly. So that was really fun.
Hillel Berg: 15:53 That's awesome. So what are your top five tips for audience out there?
Nikki Elbaz: 15:59 top five tips. Okay, my number one tip that I always tell everybody who's like, Okay, how do I write emails? How do we learn about emails, all that kind of stuff? Nobody likes it. Everybody hates this tip. But do it anyway. Subscribe to a million emails and just read them, study them, like it's your job, because it is your job. Just like in a budget. I mean, if you're in a certain industry, subscribe to emails in your industry, not just your competitors. But if you're an ecommerce, read ecommerce emails, if you're a copywriter, then you need to subscribe to all the different kinds of or an email marketer, all the different kinds of emails that your clients will be sending. And then two bonus points, subscribe to emails in different industries, just kind of see what they're doing and see if you can adapt them for your industry. It's just immersive. It's really the only way to really get what's happening on the ground. And what are some cool new things you can test and the different ways to play around with different things, it's just like the easiest, most immersive way. So that's tip number one. But everyone's like, “It’s too overwhelming”. It's pretty overwhelming. But like set up your promotions tab, so they don't come into your inbox and get mixed up. If you have a VA, you can help like that can help deal with all the inbox overload and all that kind of thing. There's definitely ways of dealing with the overwhelm, where you can still be learning.
Nikki Elbaz: 17:24 How many emails Do you subscribe to YouTube?
Hillel Berg: 17:26 How many?
Nikki Elbaz: 17:30 That's awesome. That's how you get inspiration, you get inspiration from everything from nature, from the world from billboards, blah, blah, blah. But you also really get it from subscribing to emails and seeing what other marketers are doing. Tip number two is research. Like, don't just go on gut and write emails, like you have to know your audience, you have to know what they want, you have to know why they care about you why they care about your product, you can't deliver value if you don't know how they define value. And what you find valuable. And this is kind of like, in terms of I guess this is another mistake is when people are, like scared to sell, because they feel like they're not giving value like what do you mean, I can't sell right away, I have to the three to one nurturing rule, like I need to nurture, I need to send three nurturing emails. And then for a lot of people value is your product they signed up, especially sign up with a coupon, they want to buy your product, they don't care about your content, they want your product. So that that could be value for them and give it to them, why not? It's good for you. It's good for that. So the only way to really know like, who they are, what they care about, is to do research. So customer interviews, customer surveys, data mining like forums, just kind of like spying on them, kind of just seeing what they care about.
Hillel Berg: 18:52 Like seeing what other people that are interacting with the Facebook page of your brand. These are your people.
Nikki Elbaz: 19:01 Like reading support tickets is hugely informative. What are their objections? It’s super awesome. Good. What else? When you're actually writing, write 25 subject lines, at least. So I resisted this for a really long time. I did not want to; I don't want to.
Hillel Berg: 19:27 How long that takes you?
Nikki Elbaz: 19:30 That's the thing is, it doesn't take long. If you use formulas, if you just kind of like, if you use curiosity, you’ll end up just kind of like skimming your email that you basically you always write your subject lines last. So once you read your email, you just kind of like pull pieces of it and that gives you like a good 10, 15 so then you kind of have to do like another 10 which is what pushes you to be more creative and to use the formulas and, and to play around with that.
Hillel Berg: 19:58 That's awesome.
Nikki Elbaz: 20:00 I really resisted it for a really long time. I guess because it always felt like the first one I came up with was good enough, no, that's a good one. And then after writing a bunch, I was like, “I actually do come up with a better one. Right?
Hillel Berg: 20:14 What do you have? 25? How do you then pick two or pick one?
Nikki Elbaz: 20:17 That's really hard. It's like, okay, let's A B test this for no good reason. We don't need the data on it. I just don't want to lose one.
Hillel Berg: 20:30 Crazy, you know Frazy. No. Oh, so phrasing. They had some kind of platform, and you have to have a big enough list to make this worthwhile. Basically, they would like use artificial intelligence to make like 25 subject lines out of your subject lines, like, wow, the keywords and I'll put it together. And then they'll find the winning subject line, no one will see everything they're trying.
Nikki Elbaz: 20:53 That's super cool.
Hillel Berg: 20:55 Yeah, they're fun company. You can follow them. You'll enjoy their emails.
Nikki Elbaz: 20:59 Crazy. Yeah, [I] will do it their email, subscribe.
Hillel Berg: 21:05 What do you find the tough pitfalls, things you have to watch out for in your emails, and other emails, what should you be careful about?
Nikki Elbaz: 21:18 So typically, a lot of companies look at their vanity metrics, like their open rates. That's like a huge one, how open is doing where, obviously, that's important. Nobody's opening your emails, and they're not reading your email. But it's not the most important KPI, I guess, what is the goal of your sequence? Why are you sending this? And are people doing that thing that you want them to do? I actually just read a stat today that your most important metrics should be your list growth, which has nothing to do with anything.
Nikki Elbaz: 21:53 So there's just things that actually matter versus, that kind of more surface level engagement, which does matter. But it's not your end all be all. Clicks can be deceiving, because you're like, “everyone's clicking, but aren’t people buying”. So that might not be an email problem, that might be an offer problem, it might be a landing page problem, it might be a product market fit problem, it could be another problem. But you know, just because people are clicking in your emails doesn't mean that you're going to see success. So you have to pay attention to the whole funnel. So that's, [inaudible 22:30] going wrong.
Hillel Berg: 22:32 And I think we've all like clicked in, a link and then whether for a school thing, or for something, you have to get a link to do something. And then the landing page is like, not responsive. And it's like impossible to navigate.
Nikki Elbaz: 22:45 Quickly nowadays, everybody like trying to, like zoom links, and everything is just like…
Hillel Berg: 22:54 Now my daughter's school is using some kind of thing for parents, teacher’s conferences, and my, my wife called me at a panic, we didn't get the email, I didn't get the email, and it just went into the [inaudible 22:05], and it's must be going into spam. Even she was in the platform, and she's trying to get her email, and she's not getting anything. And then I look and all those emails are in spam, she was reset three times. So it's important. That they know that these, I wonder how many other parents never copy and visited see mine open, in booking your time. [Inaudible 23:37]
Nikki Elbaz: 23:40 one parent, parent teacher conference.
Hillel Berg: 23:44 That's fun. Anything else to be worried about?
Nikki Elbaz: 23:48 So I mentioned this, like a million times being scared to sell. So I'm not going to belabor that point.
Hillel Berg: 23:53 But what I know, you're saying, “When people are just not like beating around just saying, buy now or buy? Like, here's a product, go for it?
Nikki Elbaz: 24:02 No, I don't think you have to do that every email. And I don't think you should, it kind of depends on your audience and your product, and all that kind of thing. It's more than just kind of only sending nurturing emails and being scared to send sales emails. And I'm not immune to this, especially when you do see that people do unsubscribe after you do a sales sequence. But you kind of just have to keep, focus on why am I building an email list? Like Yes, it is to engage with people and have really cool conversations and learn from people. And it is awesome to have an email list. But at the end of the day, its part of your job and it needs to make money. And if the people that can't handle you selling to them are unsubscribing that's fine. There needs to be that trade off, why are you giving all this free content because you have stuff to sell? Yeah, it is on an email level, but it's also in like a bigger picture kind of level. Especially if you're not talking to marketers. People kind of get very wary of like, what is this or they don't even understand or gets interesting when its different industries and people aren't used to being sold to or selling or any of that stuff. You see the mommy bloggers, they're selling their e-books, and they’re selling their memberships. Like, there's just there is, it works.
25:21 There's a reason people, if they're signing up for your content, then they're interested in your product too. Again it's keeping that top of mind that what you have to offer as a paid product is also valuable for people just because people have to exchange money for what you're giving them doesn't mean you're not getting value. It could be value too, if they have to pay for still valuable.
Hillel Berg: 25:50 What are your favorite emails? You saw that really like knock your socks off.
Nikki Elbaz: 25:54 Favorite email, so these change all the time, I've always [inaudible 25:58]. But I've gotten into ecommerce emails lately, just because I feel like the DVC community is really interesting. And they are kind of testing new things and are just very passionate and that shows up in their emails. So it's been fun to be following a few new brands. So Drizzly has fun emails, a little cheesy, but they're still fun. Dope, which is they're all food. Like they actually just they're not all food.
Hillel Berg: 26:26 I don't really know these. So Drizzly is really awesome.
Nikki Elbaz: 26:28 Drizzly is an awesome service. Like if you need to send a gift or anything, it's like drinks and beverages and stuff that you it..., I think they link up with like a local supplier. But it's just basically sending gifts or for yourself, if you have a party. It's like, one-day shipping or seems same day or whatever, anyway, so they're just fun, they are more of a celebratory kind of brand. So they have a lot of fun with their emails. And they just… So some of them are your typical ecommerce emails that are pretty boring. But a lot of them are just interesting and fun. And they test cool things. Dope is a cookie dough brand. And they don't test tons. But there are a few things that are interesting. Like their flavor releases are cool. They will send from the founder occasionally and also from Dope. So it's just like interesting to see the differences of what they send when and why and plain text versus design. It's just interesting stuff to like, study and see. [Inaudible 27:51]
Hillel Berg: 27:37 like, are you on [inaudible 27:35] like this?
Nikki Elbaz: 27:41 So [inaudible 27:40] really tricky. And I signed up the email lists with a bunch of different email. Email all the time. So that's always fun to like, see, like, okay, which…
Hillel Berg: 27:54 I got two subject lines, [inaudible 27:55]
Nikki Elbaz: 27:58 That one because that's a much more subject line. I would never open it. But I will click like, [inaudible28:03] accurate.
Nikki Elbaz: 28:10 Baboon to the moon is craziness. I don't even know like, who's writing it? Are you a marketing for a millionaire? But maybe too much fun. Like, they're nuts. They just, I don't know. They do like,
Hillel Berg: 28:22 I followed them, because I saw you posted about them. And I think I saw someone else posted about them. It was like, alright, what the hell's this baboon to the moon? And I like signed up, and it's like, bears on the moon and or baboons on the moon. They are selling bags for life money.
Nikki Elbaz: 28:40 It's really fascinating to just see what they're doing. Some of them are super cool. Like this end of the world sale. They just like took a turn. About this Meteor smashing into earth that has absolutely no effect. But there's a small subset of people that thought it would be the world. Oh, hey, it's an end of the worlds have a life and no return because the world is over. Which I thought was hysterical. But then randomly, they'll just be like, they just do the craziest stuff. So it's just interesting to see. They're crazy. Thankfully, they remind me of Starface surface is one that I just very recently signed up. So I've only been on their list for like a week or two. So I haven't seen like so much from them in terms of like interesting tests, things like that. But they sure they sound really weird. They sell these acne patches that you like, it's like in the shape of a star and you stick it on your pimple and it sucks out the pus. I know it sounds really cool. But what's fascinating to me is that I've seen this product before it's like a very generic product that's sold in target or whatever. And what they've done is made it into like cool shapes. You could buy stars you can help kiddies, it makes like teenagers want to wear them and feels like a badge of honor and like I'm so cool. It’s really interesting. So that's been interesting. Number one, and just like seeing more like most of my work does not target teenagers, it's more adults. So it's just interesting seeing differences between, like adult marketing and teenage marketing. So that's been interesting. And then just like, I don't know, the design is really nice. So that's always cool to see.
Hillel Berg: 30:23 Cool. When was the last time you got an email that just made you take an action?
Nikki Elbaz: 30:28 So what's really interesting is that I usually don't take action at all…
Hillel Berg: 30:32 I'm studying them.
Nikki Elbaz: 30:36 Maybe it really couldn’t be that. But it also could be just the fact that I like terrible making decisions. And I always take 20 days to take decision. So I almost get sold. I'll be like, reading the sales page, and I'll be like, and “This is so good. I should really buy this”. Let me think about it. And then I don't take action, even in terms of like, self-segmenting. If they're saying like, “What kind of emails do you want to get? Like, are you a marketer? Are you a founder?” It's like, no, like I can't, myself because I want to get all the emails. No, no, I don't want to send the only time that I've seen emails like that, where it's like, I almost did it, or I actually did do it is this copywriter Her name is Bree Weber. And she's, I don't know, she just tests really cool things and just really interesting stuff. And she always gets me, so fresh to me. But like, so built up this whole email. So the one that I just responded to, I think it was like last week, Wednesday, let's say, she's running this, like a kind of mastermind group type thing called the “Cold pitch catalysts”. So her whole story is that she lost all her clients during the pandemic. And the beginning of the pandemic. She just started like, cold pitching client, like cold pitching companies, and seeing like, amazing success and testing different things coaching, like testing different cold pitches. And she then turned it into a class. And she had like a whole group and she talked them all and they're seeing great success, and now she's running a second one in January or something like that. She sent an email saying, “I just got cold pitched, like it was bound to happen. Of course, someone's gonna cold pitch me I keep talking about cold pitching. Do you want to see it? Hit reply. And I'm like,
Nikki Elbaz: 32:25 I have to see it.
Nikki Elbaz: 32:29 Part of me was just curious, just because like, it was really interesting to see like, how do you cold pitch someone who's talking about cold pitching, how careful and conscientious are you? And also because I had a sneaking suspicion that this person also cold pitch me which they had. So I kind of wanted to see so there was a little personal like interest there. But also just like the way that she built up the email in terms of like, the curiosity was totally there like you needed…
Hillel Berg: 32:58 You walked into it.
Nikki Elbaz: 33:00 Yes. I was like, wait, a link, I have to hit reply. How can you do this to me? So she totally got me I was like, “I have to reply”. So she also does a really good thing at the end of her launch, where like her first launch for the course, where you hear this all the time in terms of telling people to either be in or be out, are you joining and you're thinking about it in normal emails or like you're not interested opt out, don't get overwhelmed with all the launch emails and just choose, make a decision because decision indifference and not like indecision is your biggest conversion loss. That's where you will lose your people. It's not the people that they know, it's the people that just don't respond. So I've seen this as like a template A lot of times, but the way she structures hers, was like, “I should really hit one of these, I really should didn't, but really close to.
Hillel Berg: 34:01 So just shows what great copywriting can do, how it could set it up and makes such a difference. I mean, you said, “your big win 64% conversions by paid conversions”? It's unbelievable. What tools do you use in your email building or testing, or even…?
Nikki Elbaz: 34:27 I don't know, I'm very low key with email when a client already has their email set up, I don't get involved. It's like whatever works for you. I obviously have my preferences of like, [do] you have Intercom? Yes. Okay, awesome.
Hillel Berg: 34:41 But what does Intercom like that's [inaudible34:43]
Nikki Elbaz: 34:45 One is Intercom I love I don't know, the, the recording capabilities and Intercom are just like so the UX is like so friendly. And just like it's so easy to get your results and the supports really awesome. And I mean, it's really expensive for small companies. So it's hard on that end. But I get excited when my clients have Intercom.
Hillel Berg: 35:07 … email, is an Email Marketing platform?
Nikki Elbaz: 35:11 So it's a combination of a couple different things. It's everything basically, it's like your support desk, and your Email Marketing and your in-app prompts. So it's just so seamless. It's like, everything happens in Intercom. So you can kind of like really track your engagement and what people are up to, and you get so much data and so much of the customer journey.
Hillel Berg: 35:35 So it's really powerful in that platform!
Nikki Elbaz: 35:37 Exactly. So there's more like that there's HubSpot. There's like a million, I just happen to really like Intercom.
Hillel Berg: 35:43 Do you have any favorite VSPs?
Nikki Elbaz: 35:49 So it depends on what your industry is. Like, if you're an ecommerce then Klaviyo is your default go to kind of thing. Although Drip is kind of getting into ecommerce, supposedly, they've been positioning themselves as getting into ecommerce or so I haven't actually tried so much ecom. for Drip, but supposedly they do for service providers ConvertKit works really nicely Active Campaign works really nicely. I personally use Active Campaign, I find that it's nice and robust, it has more like testing capabilities than ConvertKit does. So that's why I chose Active Campaign. But really, honestly, like, a lot of them are fine. And it's really just a matter of making sure that you're fitting into what you need. So like, MailChimp can be totally okay for someone who is not doing a lot of segmentation and tagging. And testing, if they're just sending out a weekly campaign every week to one audience like, [inaudible 36:43] So it's very much about matching your needs.
Hillel Berg: 36:50 So your SP for sure, anything goes I mentioned 25 subject lines, but anything specific about subject lines besides writing 25 of them?
Nikki Elbaz: 37:02 Anytime you want to test them, you want to be testing, like, instead of my way of like, “I like both of them”. You want to make sure you're testing different types of subject lines. So you like why are you testing? You want to answer a certain question? So it's basically usually your overall question is, what does my audience respond to you? Do they respond to curiosity to they respond to questions? Do they respond to just knowing what the offer is, right up there in the headline, the subject line? So just kind of like, making sure you're testing things that that answer a question versus just testing two different kinds of subject lines, because they both sound good. So you want to be able to have a hypothesis before you do it and come to a conclusion after you do it. So that's anything else, use formulas, they're not cheating? They're awesome.
Hillel Berg: 37:54 [inaudible] find that out.
Nikki Elbaz: 37:55 Yeah, Google subject line formulas. And you'll see a bunch of different blog posts with subject line formulas. And there'll be like a quote, that's wrong. Here's why. Or the number one reason that outcome equals whatever, just like, they're literally like, plug and play kind of things. And they're proven to incite curiosity, and to just like, play on people like, psychological behavioral triggers, and all that kind of stuff. And they do really well.
Hillel Berg: 38:25 Any questions that are you want to go to wrap up with?
Nikki Elbaz: 38:29 I'm curious about what your favorite is?
Hillel Berg: 38:34 I really am loving Klaviyo right now. I've experienced also an Active Campaign. Getting along with Patrick, shout out to Patrick. I campaign. But there's the platform itself, it can do everything that I grew up in the email industry doing responses, which is very technical, but you can do anything. So I'm actually an Omnisend. Partner, and I love them. But they're still in diapers a little bit a lot. They still don't yet have all the functionality that it needs, like comparing them to Klaviyo. Klaviyo has grown up and they're not there yet. They're trying to do the same kind of thing. Like they're gonna even have a little extra functionality that Klaviyo doesn't have, it’s going to catch up on that, like basic level.
Nikki Elbaz: 39:14 It's great that every single one has like a pro that the other one doesn't. Why don't they all have the good stuff? When I was testing ConvertKit versus Active Campaign for my list. ConvertKit is so much more user friendly, in terms of writing the subject line and the pre-header at the same time as you're writing your email, whereas an Active Campaign, you have to raise the design beforehand, or after a whole different screen and it's so annoying. Why would you do that? So, every single one has like something that's just right.
Hillel Berg: 39:44 Yeah, that's so true. Is there everything if you're coming from I think Active Campaign apps are not [inaudible 39:52], but Convertkits is made for non techie, like bloggers, so it's super user friendly. It's the way you think, the more technical it is, the more it'll be like Active Campaign you're describing like a separate screen for the fine air, just everything is very segmented your audience, your subject line, your full name, all that stuff's like on different pages, you get the point of it all, you have to find it all. Even in doubt, you've got to find it all. I always say, Nochips, a great place to start 15 bucks a month and grow your list there. But sometimes it gets very expensive as you grow it, and then you want to do more, and you are kind of limited. I'd say look at [inaudible 42:32], depending on your business. Like Elbaz was saying, “It really depends on what you need your Email Marketing to do”.
Nikki Elbaz: 40:37 And also knowing how like what kind of growth you're expecting, because it is a huge pain to migrate your list. So if you know that down the line, you're going, if your goal is to keep increasing your subscribers and 10 times again every month, which is probably not likely. And you know [that] you're going to want to set up automations down the line and segments and all that kind of thing that like it doesn't make sense to start in MailChimp. But often it does. So kind of just knowing what your goals are and what your plans are. Yeah, definitely. But you reminded me with the diapers, there was one company called Sen Fox that sounded really interesting. They sounded like they took all the pros of everything. And their roadmap was like, amazing. Like, it sounded incredible. And it was $50 one time and you're done. I was so tempted. But I’m like they don't have what I need now. And I don't want to wait, and I don't want to do half-half.
Hillel Berg: 41:37 The truth is there are so many, and so many starting all the time, and I've checked out a bunch of them and everyone has their own, like nuanced and niche and pain in the butt. And you know, like…
Nikki Elbaz: 41:51 [inaudible41:51] many
Hillel Berg: 41:52 Yes, nothing is nothing is perfect, but I find from all of them. I find Klaviyo to be like most, especially for ecommerce stuff.
Nikki Elbaz: 42:00 But then I was just in a Slack group and someone was complaining about Klaviyo. And she's like, “Is this really like the end all be all for e commerce emails, like I need something else because I don't like X, I don't like Y, I don't like Z”. So it's just like interesting to see that like, even that didn't work for her.
Hillel Berg: 42:17 And support for all of them. Actually I have among all I find MailChimp is actually one of the best in terms of support. When you need to talk to somebody, like I find with not sure but usually can talk to someone within a few minutes. I was [inaudible 42:32], when I needed to speak to somebody, I had to wait like 45 minutes till I got through somebody. And just live chat. We have family send, that there's always people to talk to, but the answer is often, “The functionality is not available yet. But you're really part of the development process, because everything is part of the product team.
Nikki Elbaz: 42:58 Make you feel good about it. Right.
Hillel Berg: 43:02 really doing you guys owe me a cheque. Anyway, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I think the audience really appreciate it and the best to you and happy holidays.
Nikki Elbaz: 43:19 Thank you for having me.
Hillel Berg: 43:22 We'll just see each other on LinkedIn and maybe the person in the summer there is amazing. Yeah, if there isn't, I'll make one. Have an Email Marketing event out of our little niche. I feel like there's not enough knowledge. I know like five people then like our whole email marketers in Israel. They're more I know there are.
Nikki Elbaz: 43:50 Sure they're.
Hillel Berg: 43:52 Out of the woodwork and we'll talk about email. Have lots of fun. Thanks so much. And that finishes our live stream for tonight. Thank you for listening, all the people that were here tonight and have a great week.