Where do I start?

The beginner's guide to launching your Email + SMS marketing channels.

Welcome to the 28th issue of Always Be Learning. The newsletter that doesn’t charge you extra for guac.

If you were forwarded this email, you can subscribe by clicking below:

Friend of the program:

2.6 million people wake up to the Morning Brew newsletter each day as they deliver the latest news from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

Business news doesn't have to be dry and dense... make your mornings more enjoyable, for free. 👇

Today's Marketing Breakdown:

In this week's issue, I'm going to show you how to launch your Email + SMS marketing channels and get your CRM program hummmmming.

I'll cover:

  • Choosing your channel

  • Infrastructure needed

  • Must-have automations

Choosing Your Channel:

Email is a must-have.

SMS is a nice-to-have.

If you need to pick one, go with email. Customers expect a DTC brand to have some form of email comms. SMS is still growing.

That does NOT mean you should sleep on SMS. Using both is ideal.

Need more convincing? Here are 18 stats you should know on customer retention, email marketing, and SMS marketing 👇

Infrastructure Needed:

Let's assume you want to set up email and SMS.

This is the easiest plug-and-play tech stack most DTC brands should use:

This stack can power any sized business.

These are obviously not the only tools out there, though. Most will do just fine.

Just remember that your data infrastructure needs to be air-tight. Collecting accurate and real-time data will be critical to the success of your CRM program.

Must-Have Automations:

You should set up all of the automations below for Email & SMS (at minimum):

1. Welcome Series (Leads)

  • Goal: Get 1st purchase

  • At least 4 emails over 7 days

2. Onboarding Series (Customers)

  • Goal: Nurture new customers

  • At least 4 emails over 7 days (probably should go beyond 7 days but this is the bare minimum I'd set up)

3 & 4. Abandon Browse & Cart

  • Goal: Convert high-intent site visitors

  • 3-4 emails over 4-5 days for each flow

5. Winback

  • Goal: Reengage customers that have not purchased in the last x days

  • 4 emails over 2 weeks (bare minimum, could be much longer)

Set up these 5 automations and you're in business.

They will ensure strong open and click rates when you start out. Crucial for deliverability and sender reputation.

Bottom Line:

Those are the basics to get started. But there's so much more to it than that.

I've worked at companies where Email + SMS marketing drove over 50% of the total revenue for the business.

You can get there too. It all starts with the foundation discussed above.

There you have it! 1 marketing tip to help grow your DTC business.

Here’s what else I’m checking out in the DTC marketing world:

  1. 22 questions you should be asking your customers (click here)

  2. 10 dead-simple tips to become a better storyteller (click here)

  3. 7 FREE sites that will help you create stunning and unique images to use online (click here)

Hope this has been helpful!

If you enjoyed it, please forward it along to your marketing friends.

See ya next Thursday,

Joe

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here's 1 big way I can help you:

Cohort 2 of my Email Marketing 101 course is less than 2 weeks away.

I'll show you how to take the foundations discussed in this newsletter and turn email marketing into a powerhouse revenue driver for your business.

Cohort #1 had a perfect 10/10 Net Promoter Score, and that was just the warm-up...

You don't want to miss Cohort #2 👇