Jess Chan on Email Marketing for E-Commerce

How important is it for brands to have a good email marketing strategy? What are the best tactics when it comes to building brand communities and generating revenue via email? For Jess Chan, all marketing principles apply to email. The key is to adapt the strategy to each brand, innovate, and make your emails as personal as possible.  In this new episode of Social PR Secrets, host Lisa Buyer sits down with Jess Chan, CEO and founder of Longplay, an email marketing company. Jess and the rest of the Longplay team handle the email strategy of e-commerce brands. From operations to copywriting and design, they do it all! Jess says email is a great medium because it allows companies to speak to their consumers directly, without the restrictions of platforms such as Facebook and Google. Email marketing is effective in both generating direct revenue, and maintaining a customer community. When asked about the hotly debated topic of email frequency, Jess advises that brands start off with one or two emails a week and adapt as more analytics data come in. Ultimately, she says the ideal frequency is the one that generates the highest revenue with the lowest amount of work.  Lisa and Jess also discuss how PR can be integrated into emails. According to Jess, “authority” emails are some of the most effective because using press reviews lets customers know the brand is making a splash in the industry. But not everyone cares about what a brand is up to. That’s why Jess recommends that companies’ email lists should mostly consist of customers and people who are genuinely interested. To do that, she says that brands should avoid building their email lists from giveaways. An alternative and better strategy is to offer in-site discounts that require customers to enter their email.  When it comes to planning ahead, email marketing differs from PR. Jess says she plans out strategies three to six months ahead but always makes sure she can adapt to what’s happening in the world, in the industry, and with a specific client. One of the ways to do that is to prepare backup emails ahead of time, which is something you can do once you really know your clients.  Should your emails include graphics or be solely text? How do you prepare your email strategy to potential tragedies? What are the best platforms to use? Listen to this episode to understand why email marketing is so important and how your brand can take advantage of it! “Every strategy has a part of tactics in it but if you start with tactics then you end up with either no strategy or the wrong strategy. Set your strategy based on your brand, and then see what available tactics there are to use.” - Jess Chan Some topics discussed in this episode include: Email marketing Building email lists The best email platforms  New ways to generate revenue Contact Jess Chan: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-chan-258249ab/ More from Jess Chan:  Longplay: https://www.longplaybrands.com/