Email Retention Strategies That Drive Ecommerce Lifetime Value | X Wang from Essence of Email

Kevin: Hey everybody. Welcome back to Pathmonk Presents. Pathmonk is the AI for website conversions. With increasing online competition, over 98% of website visitors don’t convert. The ability to successfully show your value proposition and support visitors in their buying journey separates you from the competition Online. Pathmonk qualifies and converts leads on your website by figuring out where they are in the buying journey and influencing them in key decision moments with relevant micro experiences like case studies. Intro videos and much more. Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50% by adding Pathmonk to your website in seconds. Letting the artificial intelligence do all the work and increase conversions while you keep doing marketing as usual. Check us out on Pathmonk.com. Hey everybody. Welcome back to Pathmonk Presents. We’re really excited for today’s episode because we’ve got X Wong, the owner of Essence of email joining us. X. How you doing today?

X Wang: I’m doing great. It is, pretty cold over here, but otherwise, try to stay nice and cozy. As you can see,

Kevin: hopefully this conversation will keep you nice and warm. So let’s get started. before we dive into anything a little bit too deeply, I was hoping you might be able to just give us a little bit of background information about essence of email. So maybe you could just tell us what are you guys all about and what are you up to nowadays?

X Wang: Yeah, absolutely. So essence of email is, the agency that I started, over 11 years ago at this point. And, we’ve always tried to stay in our lane, which is retention marketing for e-commerce brands, and by retention marketing primarily email and SMS marketing. Those are our primary channels. With some, a little bit of website stuff to obviously power the acquisition and the growth of the lists.

so yeah, so I’ve, I’ve pretty much been in the industry since as long as I’ve can, I can remember over 15 years, in total. And that’s our bread and butter, what we focus on.

And we actually have a sister agency that’s focused on just email design called the Better Creative as well. So we’re pretty much doing the core strategy and execution on the essence of email side. And then for some brands and we also white label with agencies that do just need email design. We have a separate brand to handle that as well.

Kevin: Awesome. Thanks for the background. So let’s dive into some of your clients. So maybe you can give our audience a little bit of an idea. Who are you guys serving the best? I know you mentioned e-commerce mostly. so what are the problems that you’re really solving for them and what types of services can they expect from you?

X Wang: A hundred percent. yeah, we’ve been tightly niched into e-commerce on the strategy side, although for design side, we actually cover pretty much every single industry there is.

but yeah, for our e-commerce clients, there are a couple potential pain points that we really try to address, which is number one. How do we, number one and foremost is how do we get the most revenue out of the channels that we’re responsible for? With, for, right? So email, SMS, how do we grow the list? How do we retain the audience and how do we get repeat revenue out of the list? That is the core umbrella objective. ’cause ultimately we fall under the umbrella of performance marketing. And if we’re successful in that, then our clients love us. If we’re not, then unfortunately, no.

Under that umbrella, there are many moving pieces, as you can imagine. So both looking at data, a lot of data, but also looking at the different creative options as well as a lot of testing, especially as the industry has been around for a while. The channel has been around for a while, but at the same time, things are changing all the time.

A lot of times it’s even just battling the different ISPs like Gmail and Yahoo and trying to get into the inbox and not into spam. That’s even a piece of the puzzle.

but on top of it, of course, the content. When do you send which piece of marketing content, who you’re sending to? the basics of marketing on the segmentation side. am I pushing the lever too hard at this time, which is yeah, you can see the short term revenue, but you’re crashing the list, which that, or shoot. we just came off of Black Friday, cyber Monday, right? So everybody’s been hidden bombarding the list, a lot. But now it’s okay, what’s that pullback and how do we optimize for both the short term and the long term and strike that correct balance. So

Kevin: yeah, I think any client would just say. strike the iron as many times as you can, right? I wanna make money. But it’s really important to make sure that for deliverability issues or for whatever it is, you wanna make sure that you maintain a long-term balance with your email list, right? and I think that’s something that a lot of clients usually have a hard time kind of understanding. Why aren’t we just sending this to as many people as we can right now?

X Wang: I would say it’s actually two categories of clients. One, which is what we just talked about, Hey, why don’t we just hit the list real hard? And then the other side is one that’s way too timid, which is oh, I don’t want to annoy my customers. I don’t wanna send the email other than like once every two months. And so the ideal is somewhere in between those two extremes where, you’re optimizing for a lifetime value.

Kevin: It would be nice if everyone could be within that middle area. But it’s not gonna happen. speaking of the audience, I want to talk about how you guys are marketing yourselves. So how are your audience members typically finding out about you? are there any sort of top acquisition channels that you guys have for your own business?

X Wang: Yeah, a hundred percent. So on the essence of email side, really it’s, fairly distributed actually. So there’s some organic and just, coming through a website, through, through some of a content marketing. obviously referrals is always, a big one for any agency that’s worth their salt. So both client referrals, partner referrals, software, and, potentially other, service agency partners as well. That’s always been a strong one for us.

And we don’t do a lot of paid advertising on the essence of email side, but for our the better creative service, the design service, we do push meta Facebook advertising as well as some other media buys. So that’s probably the majority of our acquisition channels as of recent.

In the past we did some events, which generates some leads, but it’s a bigger lift to be physically present and push the team across multiple events a year. So we’ve been scaling off of that.

Kevin: Awesome answer. Thanks for that. So I wanna move on to the next one and talk about your own website a little bit. and more specifically in terms of how it performs in terms of client acquisition, because everyone always needs to send people to their website, but once they reach on the website, we wanna make sure that we’re converting as many people as possible. So maybe you can tell us, what role does your website play in terms of not just educating potential clients, but also converting potential clients?

X Wang: Absolutely. So the way we see our website, because we’re an agency in a performance marketing space, it’s about a supportive role, right? So oftentimes when we’re getting the clients on, or the potential leads I guess, or potential clients on there, they would have already had some traction from our initial acquisition.

So what I mean by that is if they’re a referral from a partner, from a client, or they’ve been exposed to our content marketing in general, they’re not like completely bare. So when they’re coming to website, really our, the way we think about it is. We want to use it as proof points and to handle some like early objections so that they come into the initial conversation with us via booking a call, with a degree of trust and understanding.

so really that’s how we structure our website where we’re looking, pushing into case studies. We’re pushing into the, going deep on how we work, our strategic like pillars, our philosophies around how we approach the channel, and then having very. even if you look at the content side, really trying to dive deep into specific areas, even as granular as 10 things wrong with your DMARC records and here’s like example one, we fixed it, this is what the impact was, example two—so just to, to build that trust that we are industry experts.

And so it’s not so much like a direct, here’s 20, 20 bucks off if you call us, whatever those direct offers. But more—and those can work like by all means, but not necessarily for our clientele who we’re working with and how we’re positioned in the market.

Kevin: I think that makes sense. And I would also say building trust and making sure that they understand who you are is obviously something that we hear a lot with that question. But one of the things that you mentioned to answer objections as early as possible with the website is something really interesting, and I don’t think enough people talk about this. What are some of those early objections that you’re trying to answer on the website before they even schedule some sort of a call?

X Wang: Yeah, that’s a great question, Kevin. And basically, what most of the time when a legitimate lead looks at our website, they’re not just evaluating us, right? They always want to take a look at a couple options. Maybe they’re actively in RFP process, maybe, they even have someone who they think they’re gonna be working with already, but just want to have talk to us as well as a backup.

some of injections really come down to the risk level that a client has to undertake in order to initiate work. that’s one side. Of course, there, there are many others as well.

So things like, Hey, if I work with you guys, what’s the ramp up time? when can I expect the first emails to go out? are we going, does it take a month? Does it take three months? do I have to sign like an annual contract?

we pretty much say if you need a contract, sure. For a longer period of time. But otherwise, like we’re happy to do month to month with a 30 day out, which is significant value point because essentially it de-risk it for the client to get started and with you, and your services. And then it’s on us to prove out our value. And once that goes, then we’re smooth sailing,

Kevin: so, answering all those questions, and it sounds like setting some proper expectations right up front, right? So there’s no sort of unexpected turns, after they get started because, that’s one of the tough things, oh, we got started, we’ve been working together for 15 days, and all of a sudden I’m experiencing something that I wasn’t prepared for. That’s every agency’s worst nightmare, right?

X Wang: yeah.

Kevin: yeah, I think that’s a really, smart answer.

X Wang: just one more point on that. Sorry to cut you off there, Kevin.

Kevin: Sure.

X Wang: But also, for example, right now on that side of business, we’re very much boutique, right? So in fact we’re, I’m still involved in the strategic output for clients. we of course have a team for handling a lot of the execution. So that’s another point that could be a point of differentiation compared to, I know many agencies where, especially bigger ones where they have varying degrees of talent that potentially will be managing a particular account.

So that’s something that I hear a lot as well, which is hey, yeah, like the sales person I spoke to, or the owner I spoke to was fantastic, but then we got assigned someone with one year of experience out of school, which is typically not the best experience for

Kevin: Yeah, that’s a really good answer and I think a lot of people would appreciate knowing that. Even the owner has a direct input into some of the actual operations that are going on there and some of the actual client work that’s being done. that’s really important.

to move onto the next section of the conversation, we’re gonna focus a little bit more on you as an individual and a little bit less on essence of email. And I wanna start with a question that still remains a little bit on websites in general, but What do you think makes for a great converting website? I know you’re familiar with Pathmonk and you know what our tool does, but outside of that, are there any other types of tips or tricks or methods that you might recommend to anyone to have a great converting website?

X Wang: Yes, I would say three points. Clarity, relevance, and reminders. I think those are the three. I think above anything else, clarity is the most important thing, above design. Above, like in fact, in our design business, I always say clarity is most important above all the aesthetics and all the right.

and so if you think about some of the old school websites, perhaps, right? even Craigslist for example, right? it is not pretty, and there, there’s actually a lot going on, but at the same time, it’s like very clear, the objective of a website and what happens, right? you post an ad, basically, or a listing.

And, I think when a user lands on your site, the first thing you gotta do is you gotta make it very clear, like what you are, who you’re serving and what you’re providing. And if you miss that, then the rest don’t really fall into place. ’cause they’ll just bounce right.

secondly, I would say relevance. and this can be like sitewide relevance, but also landing page specific relevance and or the messaging, whether it’s with path monks, obviously there’s a good lead in there, or with your marketing messaging. Just like you, you have to be relevant to the specific target audience you’re going for. If you’re too generic, if you’re not speaking to their pain points, if you’re not addressing the what’s their mindset is then you’re gonna lose ’em. So just saying, just tossing a word salad out there, like that’s usually not preferable as well.

and thirdly, I would say reminders. So however you can get that going, right? if you capture the email address, if you cookie ’em and retarget ’em through ads, whatever it is, there’s so much noise out there these days that like a good prospect can easily just fall off from that first initial touch and you just gotta keep within reason, right? don’t piss people off too much, but like within reason you want to keep in front of your interested, but prospects that have not quite pulled the trigger to go further down the funnel.

So those are the three points I would say are important from a website.

Kevin: An excellent answer, really detailed. I think that’s really good. Yeah, I think, reminders, especially a great converting website doesn’t necessarily have to mean a conversion on the first attempt, right? It can definitely mean a return visitor. Sometimes it takes three or four. Like you had said in one of your earlier question, in one of the earlier questions, a lot of times people are making comparisons, checking out multiple websites, and that means they’re gonna be visiting at least once or twice or three times, right? So I think reminders is one that we don’t often hear on this podcast when I ask that same question. So really, good answer.

next to focus on you still, what does a typical day look like? what is your day to day work typically consist of?

X Wang: Yeah, I have my hands on a lot of pots and have always had my hands on a lot of pots. So it’s really, I would say a typical day can be quite variable, but there are a couple buckets, right? There’s always the client communication, client strategy that is that top bucket because ultimately we want to do the best by our clients.

then there’s always the internal coordination piece of getting all the moving parts, talking team member A and team member B, making sure everything’s cleared up.

then als always with the sales and marketing piece, that’s a core part of every single day because what you measure and what you tend to tends to grow. So, there’s always at least a little bit carved out. Some days there’s, maybe only 30 minutes, but other days it could be a bit bigger—talking to our internal teams, looking at data, looking at, if our funnel stage at this point improved by 5% that we’re aiming for.

and then, unfortunately there’s admin here and there as well.

Kevin: Oh yeah. Always the admin work,

X Wang: which is definitely not my favorite, but, talking to the accountant and getting all the paperwork done and contracts and all that. but necessary part of doing business,

Kevin: yeah. Especially when you’re the owner, you’ve gotta wear those hats. Yeah. but it’s, it’s really good to hear that you guys are obviously putting your clients first to know that’s bucket number one. I think anyone hearing this would say, it’s nice to hear that his clients first.

next question. I know that we’re all always trying to grow and stay up to date and become better marketers. Is there anywhere specific that you like to go in terms of the overwhelming amount of content that’s out there? is there any sort of specific podcast or LinkedIn personality that you like to follow or any sort of place online that you like to consume content.

X Wang: A hundred percent. I’m not a big social media person, but I’m a big YouTube user. and so YouTube for me is really the platform. And I have a million subscriptions to different channels on YouTube, so won’t go through every single one of those.

But, for me it’s it’s a great platform for longer form content interviews going deeper, whether it’s, like a entrepreneurial story or if it’s like someone who’s a deep expert in a particular field talking about some very specific, new, I don’t know, go Google release on SEO. So for me, YouTube is king and, I actually, depending on the type of work I’m doing, I do like to play some videos in their background. usually the more like administrative, the more lower cognitive load tasks, I run that.

And then, when it’s like deep thinking task, you just pop on some house music or something. Yeah. and go at it.

Kevin: And I understand. And I don’t think we get YouTube enough as an answer on this show. I think whether it is a quick, I need to learn something. Hopefully someone out there can show me how to do it, or whether it’s, I’m looking to learn more on a specific topic over a longer period of time and hear from multiple perspectives. I don’t think people underestimate how much helpful content there is on YouTube. It’s not just a place for entertainment and content creators. it really is a library of an endless amount of helpful content on every single category you can imagine. And I don’t think enough people leverage that information from like a helpful learning perspective. So I think that’s a really good answer.

X Wang: And just a side note there, sometimes it’s the channels with 25 views that have the golden, that have the golden nuggets, and maybe the production quality is not there because it’s like literally somebody who knows what they’re talking about but doesn’t have the editorial team or whatever to make it all nice and such, so, there are nuggets out there where you’re like. there are times where I’ve like literally learned more from like a 15 minute video that had 15 views than, the, some of the more popular ones out there.

Kevin: So I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more.

Okay. we’re moving into kind of like the last section of this call. we consider it like the rapid fire round, so we’re looking for like the first type of response that comes to your mind, not necessarily one word answers. But, relatively quick responses and I’ll get you started with a relatively easy one. what’s the last book that you read?

X Wang: I am currently reading Milton’s Paradise Loss, which is, I thought it was gonna be super boring, but I’m loving it.

Kevin: Okay. I haven’t heard of that one, so I’ll have to add it to the reading list.

X Wang: Yes.

Kevin: next one. If there were no boundaries in technology, and snap your fingers. Total magic. Anything is possible. What would be one thing that you would want to have fixed for your role as a marketer today?

X Wang: Yeah, definitely, data analytics that becomes prescriptive and not only that implemented, like the whole pipeline analysis. What to do and implementation, at least to a degree of that. because I think as much as we try to analyze and, extract and implement, the machines can do it a lot better if they can actually not hallucinate.

Kevin: Yeah, I would totally agree. And maybe not necessarily, operate it immediately or just say, okay, it’s been analyzed. We’ve put together the plan. Click one button to do this, or edit to make some small changes. And okay. Boom. That would be amazing. I think that’s a really good answer.

X Wang: Humans are still really good with context, but we can’t process like large strengths of data,

Kevin: of course not. No. And, especially as an owner of a business. You might not have time to be analyzing all of those strings of data. So I think that’s where it comes in the most important.

if there was one repetitive task, out of all the things that I’m sure you do on a regular basis that are so repetitive, what is the one thing that you would want to have automated?

X Wang: Probably on the admin side, to be honest, like anything that has to do with contracts, invoices, calculations of all that, it’s within the realm of possibilities. Just haven’t gotten fully around to all that

Kevin: there. There might already be a tool out there that’s doing something like that. I wouldn’t be surprised, but there is. To a degree, you have to be able to read these things yourself and make sure that nothing’s slipping by you. Because if something does slip by you, it’s totally on you. yeah. yeah. I wish, that was possible.

okay. And the last question, what is one piece of advice that you would give yourself if you were to restart your journey as a marketer today?

X Wang: Yeah, I would say, it would be more around talent and hiring and thinking deep on that from the very beginning. just, pay a lot more and get the hot and best talent you can within the parameters. because once you get the right team—I know this is probably harped on a lot, but like I’ve been on both sides of the equation and it’s just absolutely night and day difference. Like the wrong team is a net negative and a right team is like a force multiplier. So that, that’s what I would say is one of my biggest lessons from early days.

Kevin: Oh yeah. Yeah. Make sure to make those early investments on the right people. it’ll pay off much sooner than you might expect. a hundred percent. I think that’s a really good answer.

So X we really appreciate having you on the show today. Thank you so much for joining. Before we get going, why don’t you tell our audience one more time, who is essence of email and how can they find you?

X Wang: Absolutely. essence of email, we’re a strategic, retention marketing, so email and SMS agency for primarily e-commerce brands. you can just go to essence of email.com and look around. Easy to contact us there. And, real quick, we also have the better creative.com, which is focused on email design primarily, and that, is covering every industry pretty much.

Kevin: Awesome. Thanks for the time. X.

X Wang: Thank you, Kevin.