In episode 11 of the "Der Conversion-Hacker Podcast" Jörg Dennis Krüger explains why newsletters are so valuable and why e-mails are particularly important. 50,000 euros turnover with a newsletter are possible!
TRANSCRIPTION OF THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST
And today I'm going to cover one of my favorite conversion hacking topics, namely emails, newsletters and so on. There are always shop operators and it's the vast majority of shop operators I talk to, then I'll ask again, tell me, what are you currently doing with your e-mail addresses, what are you doing with e-mail marketing ? And then comes along: "Yes, not much, ah too little, ah yes, actually nothing at all". What the hack? What the fuck? How come? Especially in e-commerce but in general: newsletters are awesome! E-mail is one of the most important means of communication, e-mails are very important, it's more like a letter and not just a short text message and there are now hardly any other communication channels apart from e-mails to regularly communicate with my customers communicate. WhatsApp doesn't really exist anymore, maybe I can do Facebook Messenger, but e-mail is great and I have to do e-mail. And e-mail means sales, you can't even imagine that.
I had a customer who never really sent e-mails either, and when he did, he sent rather bad e-mail newsletters, and with him we worked out a concept for how to send proper e-mail newsletters. So we said, okay come on, what time do your people look at the whole thing, we agreed on Sunday morning with him, just private customers Sunday at the breakfast table, he said and yes, sounds logical, so we'll just send it out and then thought what can you do? Beautiful products, inspiring, from time to time a voucher, but very short, for a certain product category, to really get the customers to use their Sunday to take a closer look at the whole topic. It's about a hobby topic, free time, hobby, outdoor topic. And then we made the concept and yes, it's okay, I'll do the newsletter, we did two or three iterations until the newsletter was ready, he sent the newsletter and will call on Monday or on Sunday, directly Mail forwarded and says: "Woah, 50,000 euros in sales, can't be true!"
Yes, just add 50,000 euros in sales from a single newsletter! Of course, if I'm angry, I'd rather have agreed on some kind of profit deal, revenue-share deal and not a normal settlement. Fuck, well, never mind! I very rarely do revenue share, because it's very difficult to estimate, it's very difficult to measure, but well, never mind. If you have an idea, please let us know. But yes, that brings a lot and since then he has been doing it regularly and kills two birds with one stone. Suddenly he becomes a valuable supplier of information for his customers because he keeps giving them tips; with its products of course. Hey, it's autumn now, now you need these products to take care of your hobby things and so on. Hey, now it's spring, now you need this. Hey, it's summer now you need this. Hey, remember here, hey, remember.
Yes of course, by chance there are the products in the store and by chance there's of course also the products that you should buy right now maybe, then also with a small coupon. Best of all, of course, a bit upstream, so if I say: You need in the spring, then I make the voucher in February, of course, so that people realize in March that they really need it, then no longer get a discount, but those who have also ordered the newsletter and have received it, then also really have a real advantage of it and I make the sales just then so where I would not normally make it with these products. I can control that a bit via the newsletter. And I simply have an insane audience when I simply look at how big a newsletter grows, there are enough stores that have two, five, ten, 15,000 people on the newsletter and these are not just any people.
Ok, if you have generated the address via a competition, then you can of course leave it. If you have generated the addresses at least via a pop-up, where people could request a voucher, then you can probably already do quite a lot with them. If you can generally write to customers who have already bought something, that's great, depending on how many you have. But that's just a really interested target group, I can't buy them otherwise, I can maybe try to target them via Facebook, Instagram and so on, but actually I can't buy them and they're really interested and I can send them the info directly to their email inbox. Then I should do it accordingly! Because there's real revenue in it, let's consider so a newsletter has an opening rate, if I do it reasonably properly, times of at least 20 percent. So 20 percent open rate should actually get you there.
Yes, quite good, maybe sometimes 15, rather sometimes 30, 20 is a good average. So, you can write in the comments on jdk./Podcast. There's an area for each episode, where you can leave comments, you can write in the comments how right I am with it with you, whether now have 20 percent opening rate or more or less, maybe I'm wrong and now have the wrong numbers in my head or so. And then of these 20 percent, which open the newsletter, click stop so I do not know what, again 20 percent in the store, that is 5 percent of the people, which I write now are in my store and those I sell with a relatively high probability what, they do not come just like that, there I usually have my own very high conversion rate, probably also again of 20 percent. And then you see that one percent of the people I write to become customers. I don't think that's bad at all, and that's a worst-case scenario.
I can convert one percent of my reach into customers in a very targeted way with every newsletter, i.e. turn new customers into repeat customers. If I have a really good offer, then that quickly goes significantly higher. And then there is really, really money in it. But of course there are two questions that arise: How often can I send out a newsletter like this? And: What exactly do I write in it? And I put these questions together on purpose, because there is the same answer. The answer is relevance! If the newsletter is relevant, then I can send it as often as I want. Then I can blow out a newsletter twice a day if it's relevant.
So if I have sailors in the summer, or stand up paddlers or something like that, I can definitely send them a newsletter twice a day in the summer. If I add value with a weather report or something and say "Hey now you can" - "Hey now you can't" and then tell them "Man is colder, but you also need that and the neodymium and the neoprene suit" - not in winter so. I can't offer them any added value there, so I have to lower the frequency accordingly, so you have to look for something else that I can add value to. And that's just the trick: I have to add value to the newsletter. And if I can deliver added value, then I can send as many newsletters as I want, because then it's interesting for the user. Very easily. So if someone can tell me something important, they can call me every five minutes, if they call me again five minutes later and tell me the same thing, I naturally say "Hey dude, you just told me, I'm not interested.". according to relevance.
But – and here I am contradicting myself a little bit – telling the same thing can sometimes not be so bad, because many do not read the newsletters. A lot of people send fewer newsletters because they say “Ah, I have no idea right now.
I don't know what we should do now", or "Oh, that's so much effort to produce a new newsletter now". Well, I've had very good experiences with simply sending the same newsletter again with different subject lines. A week later, two weeks later, maybe a bit updated, but actually just a different subject in particular, one or the other will perhaps notice "Oops, I've seen that before", but after a week nobody remembers it . And quite a lot will open the newsletter and will not have seen it yet, because they didn't open it the first time. With an opening rate of 20 percent, we have 80 percent who haven't seen the newsletter and the 29 percent who will then read it again will open will only have a small overlap with the first 20 percent. In this respect, you can simply send again and then use the relevant topic again accordingly, because a relevant topic does not become irrelevant as a result - well, except for the weather report - that I once talked about it. But on the contrary!
I can talk about a relevant topic several times, precisely because it is relevant. Even those who have seen it before may be very grateful because they are reminded of the topic and then say, "Ah, that's right, there was something! I have to do that now!” I mean, the classic advertising effect research says yes, I need seven to ten advertising media contacts so that the addressee, the potential customer, perceives it and reacts to it. In this respect, we are of course very much like knights of fortune with a newsletter anyway and hope that it hits the spot at the moment and it hits incredibly often, because the newsletter is read really well if it's done well. But if I send it again and send it again and send it again, you can really do it more often, then I just remind you and make sure that the action is really triggered without making a lot of work for me. So and now I've actually defined a complete email marketing concept for every damn online shop out there in ten minutes. Is not so difficult.
And there is an insane amount of revenue in it, if you already have a few customers, is with such a small email marketing concept as I presented in ten minutes, there are easily 100,000 euros in revenue per year in it. And if the store is a bit bigger, there's also a lot more revenue in it. You just have to do it right and promote the right products, generate more addresses, whatever, there are many starting points. But you really have to do it, because leaving the e-mail addresses just like that naturally has the very big problem that the users simply don't receive the newsletter at all, i.e. are not set up at all, and are then perhaps rather a bit irritated when they then suddenly receive newsletters.
So just waiting and saying we'll do it at some point is really a problem because you minimize the value of the email addresses you have and of course that sucks. So you should start early enough, even if it's just a monthly newsletter. You keep reminding yourself. But actually you can address the customer at least once a week and say "Hey, here I am", but not just with a few products but always with a small added value. But as I said, it doesn't take that much effort to do it properly.
So let's go! Make newsletter! Good luck and lots of conversions!