Samar Owais on the Language of Email

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Patrick Campbell

Hello. Bonjour. Or hello? Obbligato Conejo. Okay, I'm going to stop before I embarrass myself even further, I should say. Also, I'm pretty sure one of those was not the word for hello. And that just shows just how great I am at different languages. So I'll try to stick to numbers. But that brings up an interesting point. Language is just beautiful.

00;00;24;24 - 00;00;56;04

Patrick Campbell

And I know that sounds just very trite, but it's also incredibly frustrating. It's beautiful because these systems of mouth noises somehow are understood by masses of people giving us the power to do everything from order a coffee, to write a speech that just sways those masses into action. It's frustrating because of the whole Tower of Babel situation where for some reason we all don't understand each other's languages, creating hijinx, confusion, frustration and ultimately creating dissonance.

00;00;56;21 - 00;01;15;24

Patrick Campbell

That power in frustration also applies to one of our favorite languages. Email. You've got mail. Yeah, it's. It's a language, and a lot of us don't know how to speak email. And that leads to the natural question of, well, how do you do that? Well, you can't go to email class or learn in a study abroad program, although maybe that's the actual dream.

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Patrick Campbell

Instead, you have to learn from folks like Samar oase an email strategist and copywriter in the world of SaaS and eCommerce. For the past decade plus, she has cultivated an understanding of what it takes to send and receive emails. With her help, you can skip the phonics and vocabulary of email and get right to the tactical tools that make emails.

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Patrick Campbell

Great. All that and more coming up next. For profit. Well recur. It's Protect the hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SaaS growth to make you an outstanding operator. On today's episode tomorrow, Waste dives deep into email marketing. We talk about the one rule that makes a good email mapping out an email journey, getting from value realized to value achieved moments with email How to deal with non-responsive readers, and keeping readers focused on your message.

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Patrick Campbell

So who are you and what do you do?

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Samar Owais

First of all, thank you for having me, Patrick. Total honored to be here. Oh, my name is Star Pronounced spelled differently. You pronounced like the season. Not sure what my parents were thinking, but here we are. I'm an email conversion strategist and copywriter for society from which brands I work. I specialize in onboarding at Attention Insight, and my equity knows it.

00;02;28;02 - 00;02;39;07

Samar Owais

And I've worked. I've been lucky enough to work with companies like HubSpot, Pinterest and numerous super rich marks over the course of my email career, and it's been an absolute commitment.

00;02;39;11 - 00;02;56;13

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, I love I love people who have email careers because those are those are the folks that are my people because I think email's one of those things where we all complain about it, but like really well-crafted emails are just kind of amazing, whether they're plain text or heavily, you know, heavily kind of designed in those types of things.

00;02;56;13 - 00;03;12;29

Patrick Campbell

And so it's kind of curious because I know you've written a lot of fun articles. You've obviously done a lot, you know, in the world of email. But what makes a good email like let's start super broad there because you're in this world and so I want to make sure I understand how you think about things.

00;03;13;00 - 00;03;34;06

Samar Owais

Yeah, absolute simplicity. Honestly, sending the right email at the right time to the right person and the message takes to be simple. And I will say if we're talking about what goes with an email, follow the rule of one message, one type of CTA, one reader. So your list could be like a hundred thousand people, but it'll be one person across the screen reading that email.

00;03;34;12 - 00;03;42;29

Samar Owais

And it doesn't matter whether that's B2B or B2C, it is one person meeting that. So for the rule of fun, make it conversational and keep it simple.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah, and I think you said what you just said is pretty simple, but it's actually a little complicated, I think, because it's not only the targeting, right? So you just you just brought up segmentation, which can get really intense right then like one message, it's also really hard to like boil everything down to one message and then there's obviously flourishes around that.

00;04;00;02 - 00;04;19;19

Patrick Campbell

I guess when you think about segmentation, because you've seen a lot of different types of, you know, you know, SaaS, e-commerce like that, they're a bit different and how they like, you know, go get folks and obviously there's many different types of emails, right? Onboarding off and conversion, these types of things like how do people segment, you know, and I know that's super broad so we could spend some time there, but like what's your view of segmentation?

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Samar Owais

Okay. So if you talk about SaaS, it's active users and active users. People signed up for your needs that are all of that. So it depends on what you're doing and what your goals are, right? So if you've got a request content marketing program for your company, then you're obviously building your email list, right? And so you have a separate list that is just signing up for your needs.

00;04;38;13 - 00;04;58;12

Samar Owais

Then you have a separate section for people signing up for the free trial. They have a separate second for people who are becoming paying customers. And then there is people who are starting to get inactive, starting to get told that they're about to churn out all of that. So it really depends on, if you like, the email journey is super important here and the users are important here.

00;04;58;19 - 00;05;09;04

Samar Owais

And so whenever I think about segmentation, I think of, for example, I think of users getting product.

00;05;09;04 - 00;05;27;01

Patrick Campbell

So it sounds like if I'm kind of extrapolating from there, it's like it's more about that journey or the actions that they're taking more than anything. Do you then especially for larger brands, do you then like segment down based on like size or something like that, or do you typically try to avoid like we call them AB Cross in terms of like the number of segments, I.

00;05;27;01 - 00;05;47;07

Samar Owais

Like to keep it as simple as possible, right? So and my products always start with mapping out the journey, even if all I'm doing is tapping the onboarding, I will ask them to sit down with me and walk me through their user journey. And let's map out the email, right? And so it usually turns into this a bird's eye view almost flowchart of that, what that looks like, right?

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Samar Owais

And it starts from the moment somebody lands on your website. And one of two things will happen, and I always use that as an example, but they're either going to sign up for our newsletter or they're going to sign up for a free trial, Right? And at that point, we need to sit down and think, okay, they've taken the action.

00;06;03;11 - 00;06;18;03

Samar Owais

We wanted them to take that What emails are we going to send up next and what is the purpose of those emails? So if somebody signed up for the newsletter, you ask yourself, what emails are they going to send them? And you feel welcome sequence or nurture sequence, right? But what is the purpose of that book of sequence?

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Samar Owais

And the purpose is to push people to the free trial. And if somebody signs up for the free trial, ask yourself, what is the purpose of sending them whatever I send them, right? And the purpose is to get them to sign up for the beta version. And so then that becomes the free form for each sequence, right? And so on.

00;06;36;05 - 00;06;59;03

Samar Owais

We keep building until we get to the end of whatever is their journey. That is right. And I always say this is a live document and it keeps getting updated as we work on different portions of the user journey and create email sequences for anything but more of them asking about what happens next. There's another critical question I feel that we need to ask, which is also where segmentation comes into play is, yes, we're planning.

00;06;59;03 - 00;07;23;19

Samar Owais

So I told you how to plan for like ask people can work, right? But there is a huge chunk majority, I would say, of users and subscribers who would not do what you want them to do. And so you need to create a plan for that. What emails are you going to send them if they don't work? So if somebody from gets the welcome emails and does not sign up for the free trial, you need to sit down and come up with a strategy of how we deal with that.

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Samar Owais

What are you going to do now? The usual answer is really different to you sending them our emails, all of that. But in there somewhere, we need to get strategic about pushing our free trial at again because yes, maybe they didn't sign up now because maybe it wasn't the right time, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be the right time.

00;07;39;25 - 00;07;56;20

Samar Owais

Always right at some point they might need it. If they're still on our list, they're still interested. Similarly, if somebody goes through the paid onboarding sequence and doesn't sign up for the paid working, then they need to sit down and ask themselves how we're going to have all the people that are not had that happen. Some terrible answer usually isn't.

00;07;56;20 - 00;08;19;06

Samar Owais

It's an excellent option is that we extend the feature, but I feel like that's pretty mature because we really don't know why that and we're not taking that step to find out why did it can work. Right? And so why did a date of becomes really important here because we it's so easy to send out a simple email saying hey, we noticed that you didn't sign up for the paid version.

00;08;19;08 - 00;08;39;08

Samar Owais

Will you please tell us what stopped you? Because we're always working to improve our customer experience, our software, all of that, right? Make it easy for them to just reply to that and get you that information back to me. And it's I call these proactive customer support emails. And what it does is that it gives you insight into problems before they become problems.

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Samar Owais

And so just keep a simple place where you keep putting in all of this insight and then every three months or so, go to there and see if any patterns. And so I kind of approach and I know it's not a clear cut answer to segmentation, right, but it does approach it.

00;08;55;12 - 00;09;11;09

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, there's some specifics there that I think are really good. I guess my question is around. So it's very action based. Right. And I like what you said about, well, someone doesn't take an action that you didn't say like this. And this is a little convoluted, but it's kind of an action in and of itself, therefore, that should trigger something as well, right.

00;09;11;09 - 00;09;29;09

Patrick Campbell

If they don't do it within X amount of time. I guess what I kind of struggle with, with what you said and I'm curious, your take is sometimes there's obvious actions like, oh, they started a trial, right? But before that there's a lot of like non-obvious things like how do I know that doing X is the right thing to send this type of sequence right?

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Patrick Campbell

Like, how do I determine some of those actions that aren't as obvious? Or maybe that's not low enough hanging fruit, So like, shouldn't even worry about it until you have everything else figured out. But that that's kind of sometimes what I struggle with because I think a lot of brands and companies, they don't necessarily know their buyers. They don't know who's a great buyer.

00;09;44;27 - 00;09;59;17

Patrick Campbell

They don't even know, like why their products are important to the buyer. These types of things. And so they end up inevitably kind of just guessing and checking. And I just worry that they're going to set out the right actions for the obvious ones, but the non obvious ones, which are really where you need to put the work in, they're just not going to do anything.

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Patrick Campbell

So what's your take on that?

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Samar Owais

I think you just answered your question.

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Patrick Campbell

You know, I do that often, but I want to use it.

00;10;04;26 - 00;10;39;26

Samar Owais

Yeah, Yeah. So my thing is I don't start a project without doing the voice of customer research, right? It isn't until I talk to their, their users non users, their target market, understand what their pain points are, what they like about the software, all of that. I'm just basically spending time with them to understand how what problem their solve it hiring our software to solve for that basic right so a little bit of a job to be done perspective that I don't go deep into that because I have I partner with this amazing consumer psychologist who does customer research for my business and she is the one who will like I am at a point

00;10;39;26 - 00;11;01;20

Samar Owais

where I tell companies I'm sorry, I and I are a package deal. And so if we are not doing voice of customer research, I cannot guarantee you conversions. And so it really, really just starts with talking to your users and your subscribers and also people what turned out to have yes, there will be fewer of these will respond to your requests to get on a call or take a survey.

00;11;01;20 - 00;11;08;27

Samar Owais

But even if two or three will do it, it'll be enough. And so just get to not take the time to talk to your customers, get to November.

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Patrick Campbell

Got it. And I think not. You know, we could probably spend an entire podcast talking about research. Right. But I'm kind of curious like one, why don't people do the research into what's kind of like if you're giving an overview of like the research that you should be doing, especially for email and copy and the triggers and things like that, like what does that look like?

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Samar Owais

I'm like, I want your first question or the first part of your question first, right? Why are people doing more research? And I believe the answer is that it takes time. It doesn't give results fast, right? So doing research for a project, at least any that takes anywhere between four and six weeks and people are like, no, that's the time limit we have for the whole thing.

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Samar Owais

Yeah, yeah. No, it does. It's a project. And so that time is a thing and they don't see the value because it's not something that will give them immediate returns. So I always have like a bit of an education element to this where I tell them like this is data that will inform beyond your emails and it would be good for 12 months.

00;12;05;09 - 00;12;13;17

Samar Owais

So that you can keep going back to it for insights any time you need to make a decision regarding your user tree. Okay, I tend to forget what was the other question.

00;12;13;28 - 00;12;26;12

Patrick Campbell

So like, great, I want to do research and I don't want to hire you, which I should hire you, but what do I do? Like, what does that research look like? Especially like the voice of the customer research when it comes to you, like setting yourself yourself up for, like email, stuff like that.

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Samar Owais

Yeah. So that looks like surveys and interviews mostly, but it also looks like taking a look at support tickets for common problems that are coming up and talking to the customer service representative, some of them and finding out what are some questions that you are getting that your software already does, but your users are realizing that they're doing it right?

00;12;47;01 - 00;13;16;13

Samar Owais

And so that's one of the questions we ask them when we interview them. So three main things, talking to people at the company, my personal favorite is always going to the customer service reps, interviewing customers and serving. So those are usually enough to give us anywhere between 400 to 600 data points and then hand out my research partner will analyze it, put together a report, and then I will study it, come up with strategic recommendations which people that visit to the site.

00;13;16;13 - 00;13;34;16

Samar Owais

And then there's kind of the tricky stuff goes here. And I feel like we're going beyond what you just asked me. So when I make strategic recommendations, I always have to give my clients that. You need to be realistic about which one of these you put it for, because I could create an ideal scenario email sequence for you, whether that's that sampling order section.

00;13;34;16 - 00;14;01;18

Samar Owais

But if you are unable to implement even one part of it, it will not work. So it doesn't matter if I our recommendations, I'm making you can only implement one, let me know. And it's my job as a conversion strategist to find a way to to those conversions for you based on the situation without that. So ever since I started seeing that, like a lot of my clients will come to me and say, okay, so this this is this is beyond the purview of our chain of command.

00;14;01;19 - 00;14;11;22

Samar Owais

We cannot make quick decisions on it. But this is what we can do. And then it's up to me to create an ongoing plan or retention plan, retention focus that will get them the results that they're after.

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Patrick Campbell

Yeah, a super interesting. Yeah, because we one of our products does a lot of market research and that's it is kind of fascinating how like everything you just describe like was not rocket science right? Like it wasn't like, oh my gosh, like, I think you're really smart, but it wasn't like, oh my gosh, you're like, Albert Einstein.

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Samar Owais

Yeah.

00;14;27;26 - 00;14;44;23

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, yeah. It's so same thing with pricing. People think I'm a genius with pricing, but it's like, no, it's just like thinking through the problem and like doing the right type of research and like putting in the effort. Right? And I really like what you said about and I think it's a good lesson for more than just email, which is like 4 to 6 weeks sometimes.

00;14;44;23 - 00;15;09;26

Patrick Campbell

That's the research phase, right? And that sucks, right? Like because you should have done that research for six weeks ago. Right? But we get so prone and biased towards action, which I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but we realize that sometimes the action is not necessarily going to have product results for a bit. Okay, we've done our triggers based on actions to figure out kind of the softer actions I call them.

00;15;09;26 - 00;15;28;26

Patrick Campbell

We did our research. Right now, we've got to get to the email. Right. What's your take on you know, you said one message, one one type of rule. I don't know what it's like officially called, but what does that look like Right. Like, what do you think about that one message? Where do people get this wrong? Is it if I have multiple messages, do I do it over multiple emails, like tell it, tell us a little bit about that structure.

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Samar Owais

All right. So you didn't start thinking about the hierarchy of events, the actions you want your user to take, right? Yes. You have amazing features, but which one of these will give you the aha moment, the value realized moment and the value achieved? Right. So the aha moment is usually that people sign up and they realize, okay, so this is potentially a solution to our problem.

00;15;49;16 - 00;16;11;03

Samar Owais

The value realized moment is when they first use your software and think, okay, my hunch was right, this actually has the capability to solving my problem. And then the value achieved moment is when it actually their problem is solved and that is when they become demonstrable users. And so what what actions do they need to take to go from AHA to value a change?

00;16;11;05 - 00;16;33;09

Samar Owais

And so from there we need to sit down and this is where I dive deep into the pain points of the ways in this research. And what I did was also therapeutic and how can we make it easier. And a lot of times I'm surprised. I was surprised when I first started to get that It is expectation setting in early stage because there are sort of things that the software can and cannot do.

00;16;33;19 - 00;16;57;29

Samar Owais

But there are other ways to solve that problem and you just need to phrase it in a way where the user realizes that, okay, here's another way to do this and it might be fine. And so you don't have to highlight every single bit. Pick 5 to 7 features or benefits that that will get them from one space, which is the our moment and the last one which is valuable to you and then take it from there.

00;16;57;29 - 00;17;23;25

Samar Owais

And so even if you're highlighting, let's say one feature, don't let that email be feature based, make that passive space. What is future piece of but what does that entail? What isn't likely to look like if they do this and then get to the other side? So it starts with a small action and then, you know, obviously every software takes time and effort to set it up properly and then you need to it's a little escalating, right?

00;17;23;28 - 00;17;40;07

Samar Owais

So you take a small step, which is usually set up your profile to activate your account, all of that, and then you move on to bigger versions. But my my big thing here is don't highlight every feature that you are super proud of, having the features that will make the biggest impact for your users.

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Patrick Campbell

It's got it. Interesting. Yeah, that's that's a big thing. That's why the research, like you said, is so important is because I think that we're all kind of biased towards, well, this is my favorite thing because it took so long to build and your customer might be like, I don't care about that at all, or they care about it, but not to the degree that you care about it, obviously.

00;17;59;00 - 00;18;13;20

Patrick Campbell

Okay. So I like what you said there. I guess you kind of alluded to this, but maybe to ask it directly, like what do most people get wrong, even if it's obvious, Like, what are the things that if if I'm listening to this, I should go, oh, I need to check my emails to make sure I don't have these four things or whatever it is.

00;18;13;22 - 00;18;39;21

Samar Owais

I'm going to say. Go check your emails for their simplicity. Right? If you are trying to achieve more than one thing in an email, you need to simplify and you need to figure out whether it's the other two things or two things that are in there or even necessary. Right? So if the whole thing is you want them to click to go to the app and do something, then just make the focus that don't put in your social media handles at the bottom or a piece about something else.

00;18;40;01 - 00;18;58;06

Samar Owais

Like, I remember this one email that I received from a company which was which was an onboarding email, but then at the bottom there was like this webinar and it's a I'm not interested in the webinar example there yet. And B, this was supposed to, you know, it's confusing, I got distracted and then I am somebody who evaluates these things for it.

00;18;58;07 - 00;19;15;11

Samar Owais

And so if I am probably harder than usual on, on these emails than the average person, but still the conversions drive. And so if you're unconvinced, I always say, let's run an expert and your email versus my similar emails and let's see what happens.

00;19;15;18 - 00;19;41;23

Patrick Campbell

Interesting question there. It's interesting comment that you just made because I'm totally, totally aligned and in agreement. Do you feel, though, that like any email that you send, it's going to be rare depending on what it is to get 100% open, 100% action? Right. Like it's just it's unrealistic and you can get really high actions. Right. And, you know, if you're sending a general marketing email like, you know, with a blog post or something like that, like, you know, 50% your God, right?

00;19;41;23 - 00;19;59;10

Patrick Campbell

Like assuming your list is pretty big, right? Yeah. How do you think about that? Like, I guess to ask a different way is like, how do you think about acceptable loss, right? Because if we have 30% of people open or we have 5% of people take an action, you have 95% of people who, you know, probably not all were were misaligned.

00;19;59;10 - 00;20;13;03

Patrick Campbell

But, you know, some of them, they're just like, oh, that's cool, but not for me right now, which is fine. But then there's there's probably a majority that are like, I don't want this or this is dumb or something like that. Like, how do you how do you think about that acceptable loss? I know the perfectionist probably in you is like, I want none of it.

00;20;13;03 - 00;20;14;09

Patrick Campbell

But you know, realistically.

00;20;14;12 - 00;20;33;15

Samar Owais

Just because it's it's a hard lesson that I've got. I like us and what you wouldn't expect any marketer, but I would accept the acceptable loss after I've created a plan for the people that don't do go. Yes. Right. So conversion, great. But I will. I'm also creating a plan for people who are not taking any action. We're not doing what we want them to do.

00;20;33;15 - 00;20;52;04

Samar Owais

And so if after that, nothing still happens, then that to me is acceptable loss. Because we did the research, we created a backup plan for people who will not take that action. And if that still isn't happening, then, you know, for now that is an acceptable loss. We can always circle back and think about ways in how we engage them.

00;20;52;07 - 00;21;13;15

Samar Owais

But because I work on my journeys with clients and staff companies, we're just focusing like you're focusing on the onboarding. Then after that, we have to move to other parts of the journey, right? So my focus is always to build it out and then ultimately got it.

00;21;13;15 - 00;21;22;10

Patrick Campbell

Do you find that? So maybe those go through like I sent a webinar email, I have good response rates, but not 100%. What's my plan for the people who didn't sign up for the webinar?

00;21;22;10 - 00;21;44;04

Samar Owais

Simple. You either. Then you have to sit down and decide how do you want to keep that, right? So even if they didn't sign up, how do you feel about something recording? How would you feel about sending a bunch of bass out? You could deal with it, right? It's not a recording than the highlights, right? This is what we talked about and this is a great storytelling is where I feel really comes into play to emails like this.

00;21;44;04 - 00;21;58;14

Samar Owais

When you're trapped where people didn't do what we wanted them to do. And so you can highlight one specific part of the webinar in your email and talk about it and tell me how interesting it was in all of that. And then at the bottom, say if you missed it, you can still sign up to watch their report.

00;21;58;14 - 00;22;10;12

Patrick Campbell

It got it. Okay. So that's yeah, it's less complicated, I thought. I think it was kind of like I was looking for a super secret thing that you were like, Oh my gosh. You know, it's like it's a no. It doesn't. And that's a good sign. Like, it does have to be complicated.

00;22;10;13 - 00;22;20;01

Samar Owais

I believe in simplicity. I believe that email is a communications tool more than it is a marketing tool. And so there is a way to market while still having a conversation.

00;22;20;01 - 00;22;44;11

Patrick Campbell

That makes sense. The conversation piece that's going to have me thinking a little bit, especially around some of these pieces, because I think that, like I do think there's so much low hanging fruit that there's so much low hanging fruit when it comes to this, this whole concept of like people who did not take the action you want and I have not thought about this way so now this is like my gear is turning and I'm going to have a great question like 6 hours from now that I'm not going be able to ask right now because I wasn't thinking about it.

00;22;44;11 - 00;22;59;21

Patrick Campbell

But okay, so we got this and then then maybe a final question on this whole topic. What are some areas are some actions that you typically see people not taking advantage of that are like, I don't want to say easy quick wins, but are like places that people should should be thinking about.

00;22;59;22 - 00;23;20;21

Samar Owais

I'm going to say retention, okay? People are not focusing enough on the retention aspect of it. Right. And so when we're thinking about onboarding, Bridge is thinking about ongoing. What I always think about onboarding with retention in mind. So if you've done your research, you'll know what it was like to pay it forward, right? And think about how you can remove that obstacle within your onboarding.

00;23;20;21 - 00;23;43;07

Samar Owais

And so it doesn't get to that point. And after the ongoing, a lot of people will just leave it at that. Why then you need to keep building out that journey, right? And one of the lowest hanging fruit for increasing retention is moving people to the and make them an offer that will be irresistible enough for them. Or they can see the value in upgrading to new plan.

00;23;43;08 - 00;24;03;16

Samar Owais

And that's instant increase of attention. Right. And so the other thing and it sounds counterintuitive, but before our renewals, especially for our clients and email, letting them know that a renewal is coming up and you will be turning their cards on so-and-so to give them options, right? So if you know, if you want to change your details, here it is.

00;24;03;16 - 00;24;23;13

Samar Owais

If you want to cancel or move to a lower tier account or whatever, here's what to do or reach out to us. And it's very simple but instills trust in your users. And so you it's just one of those things that I always recommend SaaS companies do, which is something like we charge.

00;24;23;27 - 00;24;43;22

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, that's interesting. I think so. Term optimization or plan optimization, as you kind of talked about, we built an entire product around this. So definitely on board with, with that, I think especially for like subscription commerce folks, I just think it's such a easy low hanging piece of fruit. The discounts don't necessarily have to be that high, as you kind of are alluding to as well.

00;24;43;22 - 00;24;54;17

Patrick Campbell

And in the world of SaaS, it's like really, really obvious. I think the sending for the card about to be charged, I think legally you have to do that with subscription commerce in the States. And I think it's it's a good idea.

00;24;54;22 - 00;24;56;05

Samar Owais

But they're not doing it then I.

00;24;56;05 - 00;25;16;19

Patrick Campbell

Don't know why they're I the enforcement is always interesting with a lot of this stuff. I think I just think and you were kind of alluding to this so one, I legally get to do it and you should be doing it. I just think people suck it. It's so much like they just it's like so transactional and so like, this is such good real estate that you have to use and you're not doing anything about it.

00;25;16;19 - 00;25;31;06

Patrick Campbell

I don't know. I would actually opt, especially in the world of SaaS and this is more of an opinion than anything is I don't think you should send it. I think you should just have a generous refund policy and also generous like that. Yeah, I just think a generous refund and a generous like you should send a receipt like that.

00;25;31;06 - 00;25;57;13

Patrick Campbell

You charge someone. I just think it's there's always this weird balance and this might be an interesting philosophical discussion for you and me, but there's always this weird balance where it's like, idealistically, you should be able to email people as much as you want and everything should be fine. But I think what ends up happening is people don't put enough time into all the emails because there's a lot of emails that you should be really thoughtful about and they end up having like really bad emails and then all of a sudden it encourages more churn.

00;25;57;13 - 00;26;14;00

Patrick Campbell

And it's again, it's one of those things where it's a healthy balance, like no emails should cause churn, but they do right. And so I think what we typically find also is and I don't know if you've enabled a lot of data on this, but so it's one of those things that might be helpful for you, but like expiration emails, like so hey, your card is about to expire, you just shouldn't send them.

00;26;14;00 - 00;26;31;01

Patrick Campbell

You shouldn't send them before the point is. Yeah, well, and here's the thing, and I always say this and people are like, Oh my God, emails, you know, we should send them. And I was like, There are no like if you're a SaaS product, even if you're not, you should do in-app notifications and maybe one SMS message because the open rates on those are obviously so high.

00;26;31;04 - 00;26;52;22

Patrick Campbell

But the problem is, is that there's a lot of people who like send a7a7 email trip before the cards expired. This is bad at writing the emails. And then what ends up happening is, is that a lot of those a lot of those expirations will be updated either automatically in some particular fashion. And we've seen that it actually increases active cancellations by about 10 to 20%.

00;26;52;22 - 00;27;09;26

Patrick Campbell

And when you send those emails, because again, you're reminding someone that they're purchasing, which should not be a problem. But we that's why you send a receipt and have a very generous refund policy. And then legally, with subscription commerce, I think obviously you do it, but it also helps you too, because you're shipping something and so you want to make sure everything's good, I guess.

00;27;09;26 - 00;27;19;19

Patrick Campbell

But yeah, it's interesting. It's very, very interesting. But speaking of retention or any comments on that, I just went off on an aside there for like 3 minutes. I just want to make sure that I did know.

00;27;19;19 - 00;27;38;24

Samar Owais

But I do that because you made some really interesting points and I see the wisdom of that. Right. But when I said that, you need to let them know that a target is coming up, I did. I meant one email because that's literally all that's required. So you don't you really don't need to turn it in for secret.

00;27;38;25 - 00;27;58;20

Samar Owais

So this is why I like keeping it simple, comes into play. I don't know. You're complicated. And again, for cancel cards and all of that, you have a range like let's wait until it fails. They always send them a reminder weight. But then again, it's one of those things where you need to sit down, look at the data, look at your research.

00;27;58;20 - 00;28;06;16

Samar Owais

And that well, is it to somebody like Patrick who has that data. Yeah, those decisions. And so, you know, I really like the perspective. Yeah.

00;28;06;16 - 00;28;21;10

Patrick Campbell

Well I also think that so even in subscription commerce, it sets up a really weird let's say the cards are about to expire right. And we know the cards about like because you can see that in the billing system, right? Well if you send me an email that's like your order is about to ship. Awesome, right? Because that's what ends up.

00;28;21;10 - 00;28;37;10

Patrick Campbell

People end up doing like that email should be, Hey, we have this awesome order. Like, here's what's in it. I'm so excited to send it to you, but the card's about to expire, so we're not really sure if it's going to work. Like, can you update your card? Like, I think that's fine, especially in subscription commerce. I think it better be like a conversation.

00;28;37;19 - 00;28;39;20

Samar Owais

Right? So it's a conversation. Exactly.

00;28;39;20 - 00;28;55;15

Patrick Campbell

Totally. I don't think I don't know if you've seen any of our emails, but that's that's the type of emails we like. Really try to send you this thing that we've kind of found now that you got me going, here is plain text works so much better, these types of emails than marketing emails like do you ever struggle with talking to people?

00;28;55;15 - 00;29;03;10

Patrick Campbell

And they're like, Yeah, but our design department really wants like this, this a mess. And you're like, Yes, but I actually want to send this very basic email. Like, what do you typically see with that?

00;29;03;11 - 00;29;26;27

Samar Owais

Yeah. So first off, companies, they're very on board with sending text emails if there's a need right? And even if when they're designing emails, I tend to keep the design element to a minimum because conversational emails need to sound like personalized personal e-mails and there's no need for them to be extremely designed. So we're looking at a design, sort of looking at a little bit of a header and that's it.

00;29;27;01 - 00;29;46;01

Samar Owais

I'm a huge proponent of space and so my emails need good emails. And so but in the e-commerce world, especially in the evening, whether it's subscription or anything else, yes, I do run into that because they have set templates, they have a design team that is set in doing certain things. So it's whatever, I need to send something out.

00;29;46;01 - 00;30;03;19

Samar Owais

It's a conversation that I need to start having before I even get to write them down because I want the things I don't want to put in the effort that emails are going to be sent out. The way I envision to be said, I like that. And so yeah, it's it's just, you know, it's one of those things that a brand will need to experiment with.

00;30;03;27 - 00;30;25;05

Samar Owais

And whenever I hit something against a roadblock or a process like this, I'm like, Let's try it. That's right. Yeah. Sending a text based email doesn't do much. And if it doesn't work out that well, we have that data. I feel like saying that just helps everybody. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. But you're certainly not challenging anybody's hard work or perception or experience.

00;30;25;05 - 00;30;30;23

Samar Owais

You're saying, let's run it fast.

00;30;30;23 - 00;30;44;21

Patrick Campbell

Yeah, I like that. Interesting. When do you think marketing heavily designed emails work? I would say better, but maybe it's like when should you use those versus something that's a little more plain text in B2B SaaS or in subscription commerce or commerce in general.

00;30;45;04 - 00;30;47;10

Samar Owais

To say never.

00;30;47;10 - 00;30;52;17

Patrick Campbell

Oh, never. Interesting. Even for like a product announcement or like a feature.

00;30;52;17 - 00;31;13;01

Samar Owais

So e e-commerce is a different thing, right? But because you mentioned SaaS, I would say no, because there are so many, but you're announcing a feature, there's a lot your users are going to be a lot of anxiety about using that feature. So instead of turning it into a design element where that email is going to look nice, think about elevating their anxiety.

00;31;13;08 - 00;31;35;21

Samar Owais

So Link Tree does this really brilliantly. We're trying to release a new feature they will include and instruct instructional gifs inside it that shows you where to go to access that feature, what options you need to select to turn it on all of that so that by the time you click through, you kind of have a vision of what it's going to look like within the software, right?

00;31;35;21 - 00;31;52;15

Samar Owais

And so I am always on for like think about your user and not about how many people look at an email. It's just a medium that's helping you communicate with your user. And so you need to think about how people feel when you're announcing something. And if it's a feature, there's something.

00;31;52;15 - 00;31;58;05

Patrick Campbell

Very interesting. I'm literally scrolling your Twitter feed right now looking for this. It's if you.

00;31;58;05 - 00;32;07;19

Samar Owais

Have it and you see that I was that because I did not hear about offline emails bookmarked on this time last year. Yeah it was one of the emails that I had and.

00;32;07;22 - 00;32;17;01

Patrick Campbell

That's really cool. That's really cool. Why this over all the things you could be doing, like why email, why retention it like why, why this? Like how did we get here?

00;32;17;20 - 00;32;22;23

Samar Owais

Okay. Are you asking from the perspective of how I got started or just General.

00;32;22;23 - 00;32;25;20

Patrick Campbell

No, for for you like personally, like, oh.

00;32;25;29 - 00;32;45;12

Samar Owais

Yeah, my guys are okay to me. She's the emails, right? And so when I'm a little back story here historically in 2008 I was I had just graduated, got married and moved to a country and this all of these things happened within ten days of each other. And so I started looking for jobs to find any because I had moved to the buy.

00;32;45;15 - 00;33;03;25

Samar Owais

Right. And so 28 the recession hadn't made yet. And every employer I was interviewing with was asking me about my driver's license, and they were like, Let's talk. When you have that. So I felt very strange, right? And so when I asked my husband, he's like, Yeah, community, a problem. Your public transport is nonexistent at this point. Do you need a driver's license?

00;33;03;25 - 00;33;16;25

Samar Owais

Right. And so we went to get my driver's license and it would be in taxes. And because the recession had ended, everybody is at its peak, just the waiting time period to start. My lessons is six months. I'm sitting at home.

00;33;17;02 - 00;33;17;19

Patrick Campbell

Interesting.

00;33;17;26 - 00;33;36;00

Samar Owais

In boring, and I don't have any family in the country. You I don't have friends. And so I and I used to write on a on a citywide lottery when I was in Boston before my marriage. Right. And that was like, it's a place like my son has logging and you being paid for and things that are articles then the why would do.

00;33;36;00 - 00;33;51;08

Samar Owais

And that's why I go online and I search for writing jobs online and I come across a content mail that I didn't realize was a content for a lot of time. Right? But basically I spent ten years as a content writer, and in 2017, I was burned out to the point where I didn't want to get out in there.

00;33;51;19 - 00;34;18;17

Samar Owais

Like just the idea of go right in a blog post would give me so much anxiety. And so I joined Joanna Reid's freelancing course at that time, and I figured if there's anybody who can get me on my phone, it's Joe. And so I joined, started doing the work that she was telling us to do and quickly realized that the problem was that I was done with writing content and I always say that content writers have a shelf life minus ten years, and it's not like I was working with big brands.

00;34;18;17 - 00;34;36;00

Samar Owais

I was writing for Marriott Intercontinental. I've not met like and, you know, Internet famous companies like Copyblogger and stuff. Paul Jarvis was a client of mine. That's still a feather in my cap. That's cool. And so even though I was seeing all of that success as a content writer was burned out that I joined Joe's course, I met guys there in there.

00;34;36;11 - 00;34;56;03

Samar Owais

And when I realized that I was done with writing content, Writing is the only thing I've ever been good at, right? I was never a good student. I was my classes. And so I knew that whatever I was going to do next had to do with writing content, then copy. And so I started experimenting with landing pages that I copy sales pages and pretty much cried my way to at all.

00;34;56;24 - 00;35;18;07

Samar Owais

And thankfully, luckily, around that time, Bob was like under contractors for My Business and I reached out and I said, As an ambassador, I don't make the same mistake twice, so you please take a chance on me. And she did and gave me a re-engagement email sequence to give me two weeks to do it. And I was the happiest I've been in a long time.

00;35;18;07 - 00;35;37;24

Samar Owais

By the time I turned in my first sequence to work out, I knew that I had the passion and kudos to now for being an amazing mentor and teacher. She would always answer my questions. She would always explain her reasoning with me, and then when she felt like I was ready, she pushed me to do this, come up with a strategy, stop myself in school just for review it.

00;35;38;00 - 00;35;49;25

Samar Owais

And then she would ask me, why did I make this decision? And so I, with I learned to defend my decisions as well and explain them in a way that now I can speak to. My thought was a small subset of how I landed in it.

00;35;49;28 - 00;36;02;05

Patrick Campbell

That's so cool. I love how that was great. And I just it's one of those things where it's like it's what I like about her as well as like other members of I don't know how to define this community exactly. It's kind of like the email community, I guess.

00;36;02;15 - 00;36;03;23

Samar Owais

Herself email geeks anymore, I.

00;36;03;23 - 00;36;05;28

Patrick Campbell

Think. Is that offensive now or just.

00;36;06;17 - 00;36;06;28

Samar Owais

Somebody.

00;36;06;28 - 00;36;07;03

Patrick Campbell

Just.

00;36;07;09 - 00;36;10;02

Samar Owais

Trademarked that phrase, apparently.

00;36;10;02 - 00;36;29;06

Patrick Campbell

And so that's so antithetical to that community. I feel that maybe they didn't know. What I love about this community is it's super helpful, like just in not just to the extent that bounded, which is like a lot like you just describe, but just in terms of like, hey, I actually don't think that that's a great email because of X, Y or Z or Hey, did you ever think about like looking at this email or something like that?

00;36;29;06 - 00;36;48;19

Patrick Campbell

And it kind of like helps helps each other out like other communities can get very I don't know, confrontation is not the right word because confrontation is help too. But like can get very high on issues like jerk ish, you know, basically something along those those lines, like even if they're all a part of the community. So that's really cool.

00;36;48;21 - 00;36;54;29

Patrick Campbell

Okay. Couple of questions that I ask everybody. What was your first job ever and what did you learn from it?

00;36;55;00 - 00;37;17;05

Samar Owais

I tutored a sixth grade kid in that and I hated it later because that kid was brilliant. But I wanted to do was look at the world like meet him. His parents had taken away his phone and everything at that point because was something that Nina's a brilliant kid. And so my job literally was to make him concentrate because he knew what he needed to do.

00;37;17;05 - 00;37;37;18

Samar Owais

And I didn't have to teach him that. I had to get him to concentrate. And I hated that job. But yeah, it taught me to see things through because I needed the money as a student starting student. So I was like, okay, I need to do this. I need to get to this. And, you know, and I kept telling myself, it is only until he passes exams that.

00;37;37;18 - 00;37;54;14

Samar Owais

I don't have to see that speech. I mean, I know no offense to that kid. He was extremely well-behaved. Right. And it's not like he's giving you a hard time. He just wasn't concentrating. And so. But yeah, so as long as for me, the lesson I learned there was that as long as there's an edit, I can pretty much put up with anything.

00;37;54;18 - 00;38;09;25

Patrick Campbell

Now that's because you're saying it also probably helped you not to talk about customers sometimes, but customers can be children sometimes and as a result, you know, sometimes hard to deal with that even if there is an end date. What did your parents do and what did you learn from them?

00;38;10;03 - 00;38;28;15

Samar Owais

So my mom was is a housewife, always has been. And my dad was in the merchant navy. So we were very lucky that he was allowed to because he was at that time there were things called baby officers, which now make that job obsolete. But his job was to communicate with the other ships in, the area, with the port, when they were docking.

00;38;28;15 - 00;38;52;20

Samar Owais

All of that happened. So he was allowed to take the family with him. And so I traveled. That's cool. That's the world before I even turned six. Right. And when we turned six, my parents opted to make that decision of not traveling any more because we were starting grade school. And when you go on a merchant navy ship, you go when it leaves, you come back when it comes back, and that would be 6 to 8 months or, you know, you pay out of your pocket to find something out.

00;38;52;20 - 00;39;13;00

Samar Owais

And my dad obviously didn't have that much to it, but from them, I have learned the value of education, right. So my book, my parents were high school graduates, nothing more than that. But they have four daughters in a patriarchal society like Pakistan. That's something to be proud about. So I remember the picking things up looks that he would get because he didn't have a son.

00;39;13;16 - 00;39;39;13

Samar Owais

But my parents never let it bother and they're from there. The whole thing was where you need to educate our daughters. And so importance of education. It's another thing that resilience is something that I thought that and somehow my mother managed to raise three core feminist daughters who are involved with the guide. So my sister went on to do her PhD in public health, is now in Canada working full time.

00;39;39;22 - 00;40;02;23

Samar Owais

I was the first person in my family to start a business and bring it to the level of success that I've been able to do. My younger sisters are equally brilliant of doing other stuff and so it's we've all gone off the beaten path and it's only because my parents were able to give us the education. And I mean, my dad is amazing, but, but he's a part of the future.

00;40;03;10 - 00;40;20;04

Samar Owais

I whole thinking was that I need to get my daughters married off and that I'm only educating them because, God forbid, if I die earlier, the husbands die or, you know, something happens to them where they need to look out for themselves and education will help them do that. But we did get married and we did start our own businesses and we are flourishing.

00;40;20;16 - 00;40;28;10

Samar Owais

That's awesome. So yeah, so you know there is that he managed to he was doing it from his perspective B decided to take his vision and just run with it.

00;40;28;10 - 00;40;37;27

Patrick Campbell

That's cool. That's really cool. Yeah. I mean it's, it's always fun to see where where people come from and what they learn and things like that so awesome. Where, where can people find you and anything you want to plug?

00;40;37;28 - 00;40;57;11

Samar Owais

Yeah, absolutely. So if you are curious about the work that I do, that is start with Starcom. Let's put that in because my spelling is here. But if you want to talk about emails with me, I pick an email every day at emails, dot writes dot com is that as my names and it started out as like your average email marketing newsletter.

00;40;57;11 - 00;41;04;18

Samar Owais

Right? But I have strong opinions and it really feels like I'm picking a fight every Wednesday. So that's the unofficial like that.

00;41;04;18 - 00;41;05;28

Patrick Campbell

I like that. That's awesome.

00;41;06;03 - 00;41;26;20

Samar Owais

And since this is Wednesday, today I am doing a link between talking about how companies can do Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and they're in such a unique position to do. Amazing. Yeah, because they're not shipping anything and so they don't have to deal with those supply chain issues or how hard e-commerce makes the post-purchase sequence building within the space.

00;41;26;22 - 00;41;30;22

Samar Owais

Right? So two things that I'm thinking about and let's see which ones make stuff up now.

00;41;30;22 - 00;41;42;16

Patrick Campbell

That's awesome. Awesome. Well, appreciate the time and yeah, your Twitter feed is also really good. So thank you. Oh, you're there and all that kind of fun stuff. So appreciate it. Cool.

00;41;42;16 - 00;42;10;18

Patrick Campbell

A huge shout out to Seema for doing the podcast. Now you have what it takes to speak email today. We talked about the one rule that makes a good email mapping out an email journey, getting four value replies to value achieved moments in email, how to deal with non-responsive readers and keeping readers focused on your message. And if you want to support profit, well on the show, we would greatly appreciate it if you leave a five star review of this podcast or the equivalent rating wherever you listen or watch the podcast, gods like that type of thing.

00;42;10;18 - 00;42;24;22

Patrick Campbell

And we like to appease the podcast gods. Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle. A podcast from Prophet will Recur. The largest, fastest growing media network dedicated to the world of subscriptions.