Episode 22
Why Email Blasting Is Costing Retail Businesses Sales
Most retailers don’t lose sales because email doesn’t work.
They lose sales because they send the same message to everyone.
Hi, I’m Clare Bailey, founder of Retail Champion.
In this episode of Retail Reckoning, I’m joined by email marketing, CRM, and paid ads specialist Sophie Walton to unpack why email blasting is quietly costing retail businesses sales.
Email isn’t dead.
But bad email habits are expensive.
We talk about why blanket emails damage engagement, how poor segmentation wastes time and ad spend, and why your email list is often more valuable than chasing new customers through paid ads.
This episode isn’t about complicated funnels or marketing jargon.
It’s about making your marketing calmer, more human, and far more effective.
This episode breaks down:
- Why emailing everyone backfires for retailers
- How simple segmentation improves sales and retention
- Where most retailers waste money with paid ads
- How email, CRM, and ads should actually work together
- What to focus on first when marketing feels overwhelming
If your marketing feels noisy, exhausting, or expensive, this episode will help you simplify what you’re doing and focus on what genuinely moves sales forward.
Less blasting.
More relevance.
Better results.
Let’s get your Retail Reckoning together.
Subscribe to the Retail Reckoning Newsletter
https://retailreckoningpodcast.co.uk/newsletter
Useful links:
Retail Champion: https://theretailchampion.co.uk
Sophie Walton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophie-walton-3877b221/
Mentioned in this episode:
Retail Reckoning Podcast Insights Newsletter
Get Retail Reckoning Podcast Insights and Goodies - https://retailreckoningpodcast.co.uk/newsletter
Retail Reckoning Podcast VIP newsletter
Transcript
Today's episode is all about marketing that works without wasting time or
Speaker:money. And I'm joined by a special guest today, Sophie
Speaker:Walton, who is our go to expert for the
Speaker:retail champion on email marketing, remarketing
Speaker:CRM, paid social, Google Ads and
Speaker:LinkedIn. That's a lot, isn't it? Sounds good, yes. Thank you for having me.
Speaker:Welcome back to Retail Reckoning. I'm Claire Bailey, the retail champion and today
Speaker:we're diving into something every retailer needs to know.
Speaker:How to make your marketing actually work without wasting time, money or
Speaker:brain power. A lot of people say to me, oh, email's
Speaker:old school, it's dead. It's all about social media now.
Speaker:But social media ads are a black hole and they're a money pit.
Speaker:But done right, email, CRM, paid social,
Speaker:Google Ads and even LinkedIn work together to grow
Speaker:your sales. Hopefully they will recover your lost
Speaker:customers and build loyal fans. So I'm joined today
Speaker:by my colleague Sophie go to expert on social media,
Speaker:email marketing, remarketing CRM and ad campaigns. Thank you, Sophie,
Speaker:very much for joining us today.
Speaker:Yeah, retail reckoning.
Speaker:Retail reckoning. No space for
Speaker:dusty shelves Cause retail
Speaker:reckoning owns the floor.
Speaker:Sophie is our guru in email marketing,
Speaker:CRM and paid ads. And everybody needs to listen to her
Speaker:advice because if she doesn't know it, nobody knows it.
Speaker:So let's start with the basics. Why is it that
Speaker:email does in fact, still outperform many other channels?
Speaker:Email is your own data, it's personal.
Speaker:You can very much tailor and personalize communications with email. It's
Speaker:fully owned by your business, so you're not relying on fighting on an
Speaker:algorithm or other people that are effectively in auction
Speaker:online to generate new leads, purchases, whatever else it
Speaker:might be, once it's yours, it's yours. When you get your email
Speaker:strategy and campaigns right, it's an incredibly
Speaker:efficient way to generate revenue for your business, increase customer
Speaker:lifetime value and very importantly, customer retention. But I
Speaker:think a lot of small retailers believe that email is just about
Speaker:shouting about offers or sharing deals. And I
Speaker:don't think they really understand about building the
Speaker:journey. And I know you talk a lot about building the
Speaker:journey. So could you share with us some of the biggest
Speaker:mistakes that you see retailers making with email marketing and how they could perhaps
Speaker:overcome that? Yeah, absolutely. I would say the biggest thing and one of
Speaker:the greatest things about email marketing is, as I just mentioned, you can be
Speaker:really personalized with it. So always, always think. As with any
Speaker:marketing campaign, any marketing tactic, who is it that you're
Speaker:talking to? What's going to resonate with them and how
Speaker:can you be really specific around that person and the messages that you're
Speaker:sending to them? So certainly in its basic form don't
Speaker:just like blanket your, you know, blanket message. Your email
Speaker:marketing database, there's so many
Speaker:tools within platforms that you can use now. You know,
Speaker:Klaviyo, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, whatever it is that you're using that will
Speaker:allow you to segment your customer data by their
Speaker:behaviors, by what it is that they're doing on your website,
Speaker:so on and so forth. So super important to be as segmented and
Speaker:as targeted as you can be. And I guess to answer your question, like, probably
Speaker:one of the biggest mistakes that I see retailers making when using email
Speaker:is they're just blasting everyone with emails. It's not
Speaker:one size fits all thing. Your engagement rates so you're
Speaker:opening click throughs in doing that are going to go wallop.
Speaker:Your unsubscribe rates are gonna go through the roof.
Speaker:You'll soon be able to see through the analytics
Speaker:in front of you and the content that you're sending out what's working and what
Speaker:isn't. So super important to look at your data and tailor your content
Speaker:strategy accordingly. So it's not always about selling, not always
Speaker:a one size fits all approach. Very much about education,
Speaker:inspiring people, helping customers. You're soft selling, aren't
Speaker:you? You're building a picture of your business and your brand without saying
Speaker:here. By this you're inciting trust and then layering
Speaker:that with occasional messages around. Direct selling
Speaker:is far more powerful and impactful than sending
Speaker:out three emails a week to everybody saying
Speaker:buy me now. It isn't going to work, as
Speaker:easy as that would be. No, it doesn't work.
Speaker:I mean, it sounds really intimidating, especially for someone like me. I'm a natural
Speaker:logistician. I like maths, not words. I mean, I do
Speaker:talk a lot, but I still like maths more than words. And I was only
Speaker:chatting to someone this morning that's like, if you get me a job as a
Speaker:fractional supply chain and logistics director, I'd be really happy. But marketing
Speaker:leaves me sitting there rocking back and forth going, oh yeah, I just don't
Speaker:understand. It's so intimidating. Have you got some sort of simple
Speaker:examples that list listeners could perhaps relate to
Speaker:in order to be able to feel a bit less overwhelmed?
Speaker:Because from my point of view, it's not natural to me and it
Speaker:is overwhelming. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Again,
Speaker:kind of as with anything, it's keeping it simple, isn't it? You know, the
Speaker:platforms, integrations, all of the different things that you can do with
Speaker:email. It is super overwhelming, isn't it? But as long as you
Speaker:have a good database, a database that you've generated yourself, you've
Speaker:not bought very, very important as well. You are paying attention
Speaker:to basic segmentation. You've got your master email
Speaker:list and you think yourself, right, okay, I'm gonna create a
Speaker:segment of engaged subscribers. So a portion of those people
Speaker:that have been on my website in the past 30 days and I'm
Speaker:going to send them a different message to my unengaged subscribers who
Speaker:haven't been on my website for the past 60 days. So you might try and
Speaker:pull back in your unengaged subscribers with some sort of a little offer,
Speaker:flash sale, whatever else it might be to try and bring them back into
Speaker:that fold of your engaged subscribers. And then your engaged subscribers,
Speaker:you might be treating them to some sort of VIP messaging
Speaker:or VIP product drops. They'll get to see stuff before
Speaker:anybody else because they're engaged, they're actively purchasing from you.
Speaker:That's probably just a basic example like from a segmentation
Speaker:point of view from actually generating email
Speaker:subscribers. Or one really, really simple thing to do is to add like
Speaker:a pop up on your website, which again can be easily done with mailchimp
Speaker:Klaviyo, another email service provider. So
Speaker:pop up appears when subscriber to be lands on your website.
Speaker:They fill in the pop up, you get their email, you send them
Speaker:a welcome email saying thank you, here's a bit more about our brand, so on
Speaker:and so forth and gradually again drip feed those soft
Speaker:selling communications with an eventual offer
Speaker:or something similar to help tip them to buy.
Speaker:I think it also ties in really well with some of the conversations we've had
Speaker:with Steph talking about Shopify and E commerce, with
Speaker:Fran about Pinterest. And it builds into something
Speaker:really, really powerful. But one of the things that again
Speaker:I hear a lot about this and I defer to you guys,
Speaker:it's this word, funnel. What on earth is a
Speaker:funnel? And how can we avoid scaring people by
Speaker:talking about funnel and this and that and the other and emails and
Speaker:automation without it sounding like we're just being
Speaker:robots. You think of your funnel,
Speaker:visualize one. So top of funnel, that's your cold
Speaker:traffic. People that have never heard of you, aren't familiar with your
Speaker:brand. Middle is general awareness of your brand,
Speaker:potentially have heard with you, have engaged with you in some way before and Then
Speaker:bottom of funnel is purchases, trigging people into
Speaker:purchasing. So that's our funnel flow of our funnel format. So
Speaker:if you think of the funnel as like a journey, your customer goes on with
Speaker:you, the introduction, start of the relationship. So in the early stages you
Speaker:want people to feel comfortable, you want to welcome people into your world,
Speaker:to your brand. You could do this using a welcome email automation,
Speaker:as I just mentioned, getting people to sign up, drip feeding, a first
Speaker:purchase discount, value driven content, perhaps a
Speaker:product showcase and then a reminder of their discount if they've not yet
Speaker:purchased. And you literally rinse and repeat that process for new
Speaker:subscribers that are coming to into your world. And the great thing
Speaker:about setting up email automations like that Claire, is
Speaker:you are selling in your sleep. Once you set up those automations,
Speaker:they're working as a salesperson in the background for you, which everyone
Speaker:wants, right? It's set up, it's done and, and that's part of the advertise
Speaker:selling and keeping leads warm, kind of taken off you. One
Speaker:sort of mistake I guess that I do see people making
Speaker:again as we've just mentioned, is sending inappropriate
Speaker:bad times emails. For example, sending like a last minute
Speaker:discount to people who have just purchased. That's going to annoy the hell out of
Speaker:you, right? Like you're going to be, well, I've just spent that money and I
Speaker:could have got a discount. And, and I have seen it as well where people
Speaker:do message and say, I've just bought this and you've just sent me a discount,
Speaker:can I have the discount now? So you gotta be really careful about,
Speaker:you know, who you send in these messages to. Obviously bad timing
Speaker:again, just gives bad feeling between your brand
Speaker:and your customer. It's so competitive online,
Speaker:you know, if your competitor's doing that right and really getting this
Speaker:process right, where do you think that customer's gonna go? That's actually quite
Speaker:interesting because I talked about this when we talked about the buyer's remorse
Speaker:at Boxing Day in an earlier podcast we did Y people
Speaker:would be disinclined to buy anything pre Christmas because they know
Speaker:it's going to be 50% off as soon as Boxing Day lands.
Speaker:And I think that it is important, isn't it, where if you're going
Speaker:to offer a discount that you have to then offer it back to people who
Speaker:might have purchased a full price otherwise it's just going to
Speaker:really disengage them. But I mean there's a lot of talk
Speaker:now about AI running all of this and I
Speaker:feel like, yes, okay, it can help, it can help you with some
Speaker:structure and so on. And again, a previous podcast we talked about
Speaker:AI as well and how it could be like your sort of secret
Speaker:admin assistant, but it's surely got to have
Speaker:that human touch. I mean, where does AI come into this?
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely. I think you're, you're completely right in what you just
Speaker:said. AI is God. It's a time saver. Right. You know, like,
Speaker:yes, you can help you like, map out automation sequences,
Speaker:ideas for, you know, funnel sequences, flows and so on and so forth.
Speaker:But I certainly wouldn't recommend using, you know, heavy
Speaker:AI like Driven Copy in your emails. Yes, perhaps use it for,
Speaker:you know, helping you to think about how is this process,
Speaker:this flow, this series of emails going to work and be presented to my prospect,
Speaker:my customer. But you tweak it and, you know, mold it so it still
Speaker:has that human touch accordingly. So without sounding
Speaker:robotic. So, yes, use it to inform what you're doing, allowing you
Speaker:to obviously hopefully scale what you're doing and increase
Speaker:customer retention. But the last thing you want to do, of course is sound robotic,
Speaker:you know, unlike your brand. So which unfortunately is probably the downside
Speaker:of using AI. Right. It can sound very, you know, blanket. You can,
Speaker:you can quite easily see sometimes online, can't you, where people have generated AI copy
Speaker:the long dashes. Yeah, long dashes and funny ones.
Speaker:That's right, yeah, yeah, you can kind of spot it a mile off. So for
Speaker:God's sake, no, you know, certainly put your own touch on it if you've been
Speaker:using it initially for sure. Well,
Speaker:that kind of leads me into the next point because I've worked in
Speaker:B2B for most of my life. I help
Speaker:retailers, but typically that's me being a service
Speaker:provider to them. So things like CRM,
Speaker:customer relationship management and data and
Speaker:so on is normal. But a lot of retailers don't
Speaker:understand how they can use CRM tools, particularly for
Speaker:loyalty. And for everything you've said about email and automation,
Speaker:how could an independent retailer or even a large
Speaker:retailer use a CRM tool in a way that
Speaker:works with a consumer rather than the known customer,
Speaker:which it's typically used for? Yeah, sure. So
Speaker:again, like, CRM is just so, so powerful. There's many out there
Speaker:on the market. I really like using ActiveCampaign for CRM based
Speaker:email marketing in particular. So not only can you segment
Speaker:by Claire, as you just mentioned, obviously existing customers, their purchase history,
Speaker:purchase preferences and so on, but you can also start to build out
Speaker:profiles within the platform of People that have been browsing certain pages on
Speaker:your website that have spent X amount of time on a page,
Speaker:that have abandoned cart, so on and so forth. So again, all these
Speaker:different sort of profiles that you're building that can then be used as criteria to
Speaker:inform and segment again your communications, to make them very
Speaker:tailored, very, very, very relevant to the person that
Speaker:you're sending the communication to. So super powerful. And again,
Speaker:you can be as basic or as like complex with it as you like.
Speaker:Recommendation would obviously always be to keep it simple, specifically when you're starting out.
Speaker:But certainly again those segments around like browsing history
Speaker:and timing a message to people that have spent a lot of time looking at
Speaker:a product, you know, the intents, there's, what do you need to do
Speaker:to educate, inform and tip them into a
Speaker:sale. And that's where you sort of, you know, your segmentation, your drip feeding emails
Speaker:comes in. This sounds really again for a small business
Speaker:it does sound quite overwhelming. How much time
Speaker:and effort would you suggest that they would need to
Speaker:spend? Or are we talking about them
Speaker:allocating a budget to actually getting somebody else in to do it for
Speaker:them? Because you know, from my experience, most of the independent retailers
Speaker:I've worked with, they love their product, they love their
Speaker:customers, they can dress the store and make the windows beautiful,
Speaker:but they're not necessarily that tech savvy and
Speaker:this scares people. So is it better to
Speaker:perhaps invest in outsourcing support or is it
Speaker:better to get somebody to teach you how to do it because then it takes
Speaker:away the fear. Again, a number of the clients that I've worked
Speaker:with through Retail Champion are those exact people. Claire, so
Speaker:busy store owners be that physical store, online
Speaker:store. I personally have worked with clients on a
Speaker:consultancy basis giving training on Klaviyo for example
Speaker:and client has often started to do it themselves and then gone.
Speaker:Do you know what, can you just do it? So it very much
Speaker:depends on, as you just mentioned, the time.
Speaker:Of course, you know, it takes like we all have our own
Speaker:proficiencies, don't we? I can do what you do, you probably couldn't do what
Speaker:I do. You got to be realistic, haven't you? And I think
Speaker:yes, ultimately, of course, if you have the budget
Speaker:to do it, I would always recommend using a professional and someone that knows
Speaker:what they're doing because God, you can't off waste your time, your
Speaker:resource and potentially your sanity by trying to
Speaker:learn something that is so overwhelming, you know, really
Speaker:or can be and ultimately frustrating if you're, you know, not getting the
Speaker:results that you want. And a lot of people talk to me about,
Speaker:you know, oh, I've had a go at Facebook ads or Google Ads and this
Speaker:and that and the other and I've spent a fortune and I've got nothing back
Speaker:because they don't actually understand how to do it properly
Speaker:and to get the segmentation and all that stuff that you do.
Speaker:I can run a £30 million a week, so supply chain, but I, I can't
Speaker:do this. That's why we work together, isn't it? This is it. Exactly. Yes.
Speaker:Yeah. But it's really hard for small businesses sometimes to be able to make that
Speaker:leap of faith and say, you know what, I'm going to have to spend some
Speaker:money on somebody else doing something for me and I'm going to
Speaker:have to spend some money on an ad campaign but I want
Speaker:to know that it's being done right and I'm not just burning
Speaker:through my. Whatever it is. Even if it's £50 a day, which,
Speaker:you know, could return £500 in sales if they get it right, couldn't it?
Speaker:But yeah, yeah. So what would you give as advice to
Speaker:people when it comes to the sort of the remarketing and
Speaker:the paid ads and all that good stuff, which is
Speaker:again another fear factor because it's spending money. Whenever
Speaker:someone comes to me with a request to talk about
Speaker:paid ads, that is the number one thing they'll say, I have
Speaker:spent X amount hundreds, thousands of pounds on
Speaker:Facebook ads and I've seen nothing. I'm not getting my return,
Speaker:I blow my budget, et cetera, et cetera. I literally hear
Speaker:that all the time. I would certainly recommend again, if you can talk to a
Speaker:professional, get someone to help you from the early stages do that. But at a
Speaker:very basic level, if you have some budget to spend on
Speaker:paid ads, the first thing I'd look at is probably retargeting people that have
Speaker:been on your website that have abandoned car again, people that are
Speaker:warm to your brand and are aware of you are far
Speaker:more likely to buy than someone that has never heard of you. So
Speaker:that's kind of where you start. That's like your low hanging fruit. I'd
Speaker:certainly also recommend from a paid ad perspective rather
Speaker:than going for getting people to purchase
Speaker:from you using your ad campaigns because you can set up things like,
Speaker:you know, purchase objective, lead objective. There's all sorts of different stuff you can do
Speaker:with Facebook ads. In particular, actually use Facebook ads to build your
Speaker:email database so you can get like email subscribers for a
Speaker:quid. There or thereabouts. Whereas you could pay
Speaker:10 times that, upwards of 10 times that, to try and get someone to purchase
Speaker:from you. So if you see like from a budget point of view, like how
Speaker:beneficial that's going to be, spending a few hundred pounds on generating
Speaker:a few hundred subscribers that you can then nurture on email,
Speaker:they're yours. Then you can do with them as you wish
Speaker:rather than pumping loads and loads of money into meta to try and get
Speaker:purchases. Got a small budget, that would be the best thing to do. That would
Speaker:be where I would start for sure. You're going to see a much better
Speaker:return on your investment, return on ad spend. You are on,
Speaker:on cold traffic and competing with bigger retailers online. When you're online
Speaker:and you're spending money online for ads, you're effectively in an auction.
Speaker:Those are spending more, are going to get seen via your smaller budget.
Speaker:So just really bear that in mind and think about what you're doing.
Speaker:Well, I'm going to throw a bit of a question out there which we'd not
Speaker:previously discussed, so I apologize in advance.
Speaker:Go for it. What would you tell me to do?
Speaker:Okay, so if you're generating leads for Retail Champion. Yeah.
Speaker:Because there must be people out there who have got service businesses as well.
Speaker:This is not my area of expertise whatsoever and it
Speaker:just be really interesting to have a few top tips that you might give to
Speaker:people like me. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a couple of scenarios that
Speaker:pop into my head instantly. One is the lead
Speaker:generation scenario that I've just mentioned. So perhaps on LinkedIn,
Speaker:obviously you're looking in a B2B space. You could provide some sort of
Speaker:lead magnet, a download to an exclusive podcast. 10 tips
Speaker:on selling in retail in 2026. Just pulling something out the air
Speaker:there, but something that's going to be super, super valuable to the people that you're
Speaker:trying to talk to. Get that email in for a few
Speaker:pounds and start to again, nurture them in the back end on email.
Speaker:So you've spent that little bit of budget getting that person into your world and
Speaker:then your email marketing is doing that for you on the back end.
Speaker:Conversely, you could get people to sign up for
Speaker:a podcast, like a live podcast or a live training session,
Speaker:which I personally have found really, really effective in the
Speaker:past few years in terms of lead generation and converting people
Speaker:into a client. Doing face to face. Yes. Seminars, again,
Speaker:very, very relevant to the people that I'm speaking to. Has generated clients
Speaker:for me previously in the B2. Yes, we use B2B space.
Speaker:The whole story comes together when
Speaker:leveraging the paid social, maybe Google Ads,
Speaker:LinkedIn, CRM. So as a bigger
Speaker:picture, if somebody was ready to go all
Speaker:in and make that leap of faith and say, you know what, 2026
Speaker:is my year and I am just gonna go for it, how would
Speaker:you put it all together? Yeah, absolutely. So it's, it's an
Speaker:ecosystem, isn't it, of touch points, as you said. So,
Speaker:yeah, like from a paid social perspective, if you're kind of using these tactics that
Speaker:we're speaking about today as part of that ecosystem, certainly think
Speaker:about putting ad spend behind like top performing content. That's a really great
Speaker:one. If you're scratching your head over like, oh, what do I write in my
Speaker:paid ad, what do I focus on? So on and so forth. Well, look at
Speaker:your analytics, look at your social analytics. Look at even emails that have performed well
Speaker:and put spend behind top performing content. Can I just interject there,
Speaker:There's a lot of people that won't even know how to do that. Yeah. So
Speaker:yeah, so yeah, they've probably got. All this information
Speaker:about how their business performs online, but they don't actually know how
Speaker:to tap into it. So that's probably, you know,
Speaker:not wanting to make a blatant sales pitch. That's probably working with
Speaker:experts like us. Well, you in particular and people like
Speaker:Steph and Fran really is important because you
Speaker:can't be an expert in everything. I mean, I pay an accountant because I can't
Speaker:do my own accounts and as a small business owner we
Speaker:have to tap into experts and sometimes we have to make that leap of
Speaker:faith. And everything you've just said, I'm already sitting here thinking I haven't
Speaker:got a clue. I wouldn't know how to do that.
Speaker:Yeah, that's, that's, that's it, isn't it? And I think it's all very well,
Speaker:like you said, sort of doing the delivery, the front end. I know perhaps you
Speaker:know how to put an email marketing piece together. Of course you know how to
Speaker:write a social post. But what happens
Speaker:when you share that content? Like it's the analytics behind it, isn't it? Looking
Speaker:at an email as your opens, you click through rates and subscribe rates.
Speaker:Looking at benchmarks, you can easily get benchmarks online again from
Speaker:like Klaviyo is a fantastic source of information when it comes
Speaker:to industry benchmarks for email, for E commerce, I think
Speaker:they release like a white paper every quarter.
Speaker:So whatever vertical you're working in, be it fashion and
Speaker:beauty, natural products and Whatever else it might be, they kind of have a
Speaker:list of all the sort of benchmark stats available on
Speaker:Klaviyo by industry that you can again, benchmark against. So you can see
Speaker:is what I'm doing working, is it? Right. So certainly look
Speaker:for those sorts of pieces of information and there's a lot of that online, so
Speaker:it doesn't take too much to try and find it.
Speaker:And I guess to wrap up so that we've got some key
Speaker:takeaways from this. There's some quick wins and there's
Speaker:some avoids and I think if you're a small retailer,
Speaker:you could feel overwhelmed by this stuff. I mean, I feel overwhelmed
Speaker:and I've been in business 23 years and I've managed to survive for 23 years.
Speaker:But a lot of this stuff and the pace of change
Speaker:is quite something. But I think if
Speaker:I'm right in distilling what you've said, it's about
Speaker:segmenting your audience and making sure you know who they
Speaker:are and not being a one size fits all kind of
Speaker:communication, using tools that help
Speaker:you automate whilst also remaining human.
Speaker:And if you're going to use ads and spend money
Speaker:on advertising, you need somebody to help you to understand
Speaker:how to spend that money smartly because otherwise you
Speaker:could be spending a fortune and getting absolutely nothing back. That's
Speaker:my summarization of what we said today. It's very
Speaker:good. Yeah, you've taught me something. I love it
Speaker:when I have these conversations because I learn so much, I. Still can't do it.
Speaker:At least I know that what you're doing for me. Yeah, what you're doing for
Speaker:me works. But what, what. Have you got any other,
Speaker:like, hot tip, like the. If. If it was the just
Speaker:one thing, what would you suggest?
Speaker:Yeah, I think I've. I've banged the drum about this over the
Speaker:past half an hour, but the big thing for me is
Speaker:overall, no matter whether you're doing paid email,
Speaker:social, whatever it might be, segmenting
Speaker:your audience and thinking about who it is that you're speaking to and
Speaker:creating those tailored communications around that person
Speaker:is the most powerful thing that you can do. When you're looking at
Speaker:segmenting on email, even two segments are better than one.
Speaker:Don't blanket market to people when you're targeting
Speaker:your paid ads, don't. I mean, broad audience targeting does
Speaker:sometimes work with smaller budgets, but again, think about your demographic.
Speaker:How old are they? What are their interests, what are they into? Where do they
Speaker:live? And build out your Personas online
Speaker:accordingly, getting smart about who
Speaker:Your customer is really understanding them and creating those tailored
Speaker:messages is worth its weight in
Speaker:gold. Rather than thinking, oh God, I need to send an email out, so I'm
Speaker:just going to quickly blast one out to everyone. You're just going to harm
Speaker:your deliverability rates, subscriber rates
Speaker:overall. So spend the time putting together a proper
Speaker:plan, thinking about who it is that you're talking to will pay
Speaker:dividends. So that would be my. My big sort of key takeaway.
Speaker:It's brilliant because the actually, you know, back in the day when I ran conferences
Speaker:and I just blanket emailed and I was like, oh, God, I've got to send
Speaker:a weekly email, I was like, panic, panic. What am I going to say? And
Speaker:actually, that is brilliant practical advice
Speaker:and I'm taking away another one. That email
Speaker:is gold dust. Email subscribers are
Speaker:your future customers and getting the messaging correct
Speaker:is. Is absolutely essential. So I'd
Speaker:really like to thank you for such practical advice and hopefully a lot of
Speaker:small retailers will benefit. Absolute pleasure. Yeah. And
Speaker:I hope everyone's learned a few things today. So, no. Thanks so much for having
Speaker:me on. Well, there was the magic marketing that works without the
Speaker:panic, the stress or the wasted budget. I'm Claire Bailey, the retail
Speaker:champion. I've been joined today by Sophie Walton and this is my been
Speaker:retail reckoning.
Speaker:Owns the floor.
Speaker:Sam.
