Chris Orzechowski is the author of Amazon Bestseller – Make it Rain: The Secret to Generating Massive Paydays from Your Email List. As well as writing a great book on email – he’s an eCommerce Email marketing Strategist with a big focus on copywriting.
Getting Started
Chris started his career as a school teacher and became peripherally interested in the success people were having making money on the internet.
He decided to give it a go and began doing freelance writing projects and quickly settled on email as a focus. He further narrowed down his focus on eCommerce because his success rate in that niche was really high and he loved it.
Types of Email for eCommerce
Email is essentially an ongoing “pay yourself first sequence.” Email marketing is the most important thing you can do and Chris says that engaging with your list is the most effective way to make money without running up the meter.
From anticipation to follow up, email is the best way to connect with your base. There are three main types of email that eCommerce brands need to focus on.
- Launch
- Automation
- Broadcast Campaign
Chris says that every email an eCommerce brand will ever write fits into one of these three buckets. No one category is more important and each of these sequences are crucial for building a comprehensive, successful brand.
Launch
The most underutilized of the categories, launch emails can be hugely successful in their own right. The amount of effort and energy put into creating a product is not accurately reflected in how companies share their work via email.
One of Chris’ favorite launch successes was a watch company he helped build a Kickstarter campaign that grossed over $5 Million dollars. The company partnered with Chris to build a robust launch experience, sending upwards of 50+ emails.
Automation
While automation is talked about a lot in eCommerce, it’s actually not used as often as it should be. There are countless automation sequences, but according to Chris, cart abandonment is the most important automation email sequence a company can have.
This sequence is easy, low hanging fruit that a lot of companies ignore, but Chris points out that the work has already been done to get these customers and not sending a follow up email is a huge loss for businesses. He points out that there are countless reasons people don’t finish purchases and not following up with them makes no sense..
Chris typically doesn’t start the sequence with an offer, but rather a simple reminder. Eventually he says, depending on margins and strategies, you can offer a discount or other offer to get more reluctant customers to budge.
Using Segmentation
A lot of focus tends to be on segmentation and while Chris admits that segmenting can be really useful, it doesn’t trump building valuable content that speaks to a brands entire list.
Even with the best AI, Chris prefers building really good, broad based content that connects with customers generally. Chris builds a base of flagship email using broadcast campaigns that focus on outcomes rather than products.
Ultimately, people are looking for outcomes and are buying products based on the outcome they perceive they will get from a product. These outcomes are the content that Chris builds his copy messaging on. Building this bond and relationship makes segmentation ultimately less important.
Broadcast
Telling compelling stories about your brand is an incredibly important aspect of building relationships with customers. The quote from adman Howard Luck Gossage underlines the essence of what makes good content in a broadcast email.
“People don’t read ads, they read things that interest them—sometimes that’s an ad.” If you can build emails that are compelling enough to get people to read them with pleasure you’ve cleared a huge hurdle. Sharing stories and providing a little bit of an escape for people essentially pays you twice.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- Higher barrier to entry make YouTube Ads really effective
Tool Top Tip
- ConvertKit email software
Growth Top Tip
- Build automations. That will support and increase your values across the board
Interview Links
Related episodes
- JJ Resnick explains how stories have been at the heart of his eCommerce success
- Kate Barrett author of “E-telligence: Email marketing isn’t dead, the way you’re using it is”
- Using Product Launches to create 200% annual growth with Chris Vallely of Dixxon Flannel Co
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