Danielle – 00:00:03:
Welcome to Email After Hours by Sender Score, powered by Validity.
Guy – 00:00:09:
We’re your hosts. My name is Guy Hanson.
Danielle – 00:00:10:
And I’m Danielle Gallant. And this is Email After Hours. Hi everybody. First of all, welcome to our 10th episode of Email After Hours. We are officially in double digits Guy, so yay to us. And again, thank you everybody for listening. And let’s just dive right into our topic today. We’ve got another great one for you. Regular testing is the backbone of any strong email program. It can make the difference between a benchmark busting campaign or one that falls totally flat. But in the rush to get your next send out the door, marketers may not make the time to run and analyze tests that boost campaign performance. Some marketers frankly just don’t know where to start. So let’s dig into how Senders can make email testing their ultimate competitive advantage.
Guy – 00:01:06:
And to do that, it is such a pleasure to welcome Sarah Jones from AutoTrader to Email After Hours today. Now Sarah and I have known each other a long time and I’ve joked with Sarah before that she must be doing a great job with AutoTrader’s email program because I’ve bought three cars and one motorbike through AutoTrader over the past few years. So it clearly works. But Sarah, welcome. And just to lead into the conversation, just tell us a little bit about your day job, particularly from an email perspective and also perhaps what’s that one thing that’s keeping you awake at night at the moment.
Sarah – 00:01:48:
Thanks Danielle. Thanks Guy. So I look after our consumer CRM programs at AutoTrader, so that today mainly consists of email because email is a powerhouse, but we are obviously looking to expand that into other channels as well. But my day-to-day will kind of be looking at hubby, working with the product team, the tech team, the data team, to really kind of create our marketing programs, our transactional product programs, and also looking to really focus on consumer engagement and combining those two elements as well. So it really isn’t as black and white as sometimes it’s led to believe with kind of like transactional emails and marketing emails. It really is about the hybrid approach that you create for consumers and the experience that they get as well from your brand. So the thing that keeps me up at night, I generally sleep like a log and if I do wake up in the night, if normally remembering something that I have forgotten through the day. But I think just generally I think it’s not enough for us just to rest on some kind of good engagement and I think we want to continue adding value to consumers and staying relevant to them when they’re in and out of the market. And so it’s really our job to make the car buying and selling process as easy as possible for consumers because we acknowledge that there are kind of multiple pain points with that. If we can try and remove some of those barriers and innovate our products. I think that will make me sleep even easier at night.
Guy – 00:03:20:
Fantastic. And hopefully we can help you with that. But in your introduction, you made a small but crucial differentiation when you talked about programs, plural, not program. And that’s an important part of what you do because you’re servicing several different audiences, aren’t you? And the sort of value that they take from your emails is slightly different depending on which audience they sit in.
Sarah – 00:03:41:
Yes, absolutely. So we have multiple programs that we’ve catered for. So I think a large proportion of our audience consider petrolheads so they know exactly what they’re in-market for or not in-markets for and just constantly look at our app and website for cars that they kind of dream for in their garage. But we also have to kind of cater for an everyman brand for that the lifestyle kind of like users as well. So we’ve got, say, the majority of our audience are users that are researching an AutoTrader with no real make or model in mind in terms of what they want to buy. And so we really need to cater for all of those different types of audiences when we’re creating these programs and also adding value by identifying those types of audience as well. So for the petrolheads specifically, they might want to know about the latest sort of ice engines versus kind of like what’s actually practical, kind of like everyday car use. And I think we do a huge amount in terms of ensuring that our content cadence of both sets as well and then ultimately doing a lot of testing with those types of audiences as well.
Danielle – 00:04:48:
Can I just say first, I love the term petrolheads. Like, this is awesome to me. And actually on that note, you can tell we have two UK residents on the line today. And I, am a Commonwealth Citizen, am aware that AutoTrader is the UK’s largest digital automotive marketplace. But given the influx of competitors to this space over the last few years, what are some things AutoTrader is doing to stay ahead of the competition?
Sarah – 00:05:18:
Sure. So I think for us, we’re really focusing on digital retailing and COVID played a major role in the speed of how digital car buying and selling evolved. One of our main products being developed in the business right now is our new Deal Builder product. And so what that means is we’re effectively building this omnichannel experience that enables consumers to carry out jobs online and offline when buying a car. And so it’s about ensuring that they’ve got that flexibility to choose how they want to interact with the brand and kind of pick those jobs that some people might feel more comfortable kind of doing online versus kind of going into a retailer to have that conversation. And so alongside this product will be our most comprehensive CRM program to date, which I’m super excited about. So we’re really kind of pulling inspiration from my ecommerce giants. So whilst we’re not kind of an ecommerce platform in the traditional sense, that we’re not selling shoes and bags and that type of thing, I think taking inspiration from those kinds of key players is really important to us. And we’re really looking to then build alongside our digital retailing product, this, as I say, a very comprehensive CRM program that handholds users through that online offline omnichannel experience that we can then cater for as well. So it’ll be a big project, but it’s super exciting.
Guy – 00:06:36:
That’s awesome. And just to chime in, I’m a petrohead, so you’ve got your target audience right here. I’ve got a project right now to buy a new motorbike, and I’ll probably get that through AutoTrader too. But I digress. We brought you in today because we want to talk about Testing. It’s a really core part of everything that you do with your email programs, but do you have any particular go to tests, the sort of reliable ones that you know are always going to give you some great insights? And what are those insights?
Sarah – 00:07:09:
Sure. So we test almost like everything that we do. And it’s interesting because I think when you think of testing, you often think of traditional testing that you might do with subject lines or CTAs and creative and that type of thing, which we absolutely do, but we also kind of do lots of testing with our data and segmentation as well. So for new people coming in draw to trade, they’re like, oh, so what segment is that? I’m like, well, it’s this, but it could also be this, this, and this as well. And we really kind of like to responsibly adapt to that on a weekly basis, really kind of drilling into the engagement. So on the creative test element, we will kind of do your traditional elements by sort of like personalization of subject lines and long length versus short length and different kinds of images and what resonates into the content box with consumers. But I think the main thing for us is the data element and we really are kind of looking to develop and enhance that even further. So what we’ll typically do is we’ll look at our engagement on a weekly basis to understand kind of how that email has performed, kind of and benchmark that against other emails. And then it’s kind of like, right, well, how do we make this even more effective than what it’s already doing today? And how can we ensure that, okay, we’ve got this specific email that’s targeting this specific group. Are there any filters that we can build into that to see whether it adds any additional value as well? And I think that works really well for us, but there are so many more testing capabilities that we want to use as well. So we say recently, in the last year, kind of on boarded onto our platform braze. And they also offer kind of like lots of out of the box functionality that enables us to kind of do intelligent timing, intelligent channels. So we really kind of want to try and use as much of that as possible to steer us in that direction when it comes to those new learnings, I guess.
Guy – 00:09:03:
And it’s always exciting running tests. I mean, we do a load of testing with our email program here at Validity as well. And you probably shouldn’t have any preconceptions, but sometimes you set up the test and you think you know what the result is going to be, and then once in a while it’s completely counterintuitive and it is completely the opposite result that you’re expecting and you’re like you’re scratching your head thinking, wow, where did that come from? So is it like that for you, Sarah? Have you had like once or twice where you’ve got a really unexpected learning from a test and what was it?
Sarah – 00:09:35:
Yeah, definitely. I think actually a lot of our email programs have been born out of those tests we’ve got today. And one of our existing email programs that initially started as a test is our out of the week email program. So it does what it says in the tin. We send out a weekly email with an advert that we found on AutoTrader that is particularly interesting or quirky or garish. It’s kind of special that we think that would engage consumers. And during COVID we were just trying to experiment with our own channels in a bid to kind of keep consumers engaged when everything had shut down. And so I decided to run this test with having not initially a weekly email, but just an email that would go out with four different cars that met a specific theme because I’d found a Volkswagen Beetle on AutoTrader that had been redesigned as a Furby. So I don’t know if you remember Furby, I don’t want to say ugly. It was different, it was unique. And so I just thought, actually, there’s not really much we can do to kind of engage consumers and give them a bit of license, a bit of escapism. We’ll try this test of sending out this email to see what the engagement looks like for the consumers and they just loved it. So out of that was born this whole program that we’ve been running sort of over three years now on a weekly basis. And we adapt that program by including people that have recently looked at other kinds of other cars as well. So we’re continuing to refresh that segment on a weekly basis as well to keep it relevant and keep users engaged. There’s so many that have been born out of tests that have been completely unexpected in terms of engagement because equally, we’re increasing our frequency by doing that. And sometimes when you increase frequency like engagement drops. But actually we just saw the counter opposite. Increasing frequency absolutely improved our overall engagement.
Danielle – 00:11:29:
You already mentioned data, right? We’ve talked about data and a lot of these tests hinge on having trustworthy consumer data. Can you tell us a little bit about your approach to collecting and utilizing consumer data?
Sarah – 00:11:45:
Sure. So we rely heavily on our own platforms and that is really kind of like the key of how we collect all of our data. So we kind of look at registered users, opted in users and I am friends with as many people as possible, stakeholders run the business that have an influence on what goes into those pages. And so I think we really heavily rely on the kind of registered users but equally growing our marketable database as well. And so where there’s an opportunity to have someone opt into marketing, we want that capture there. And so as a result, because we kind of give a very good incentive and value proposition for consumers to opt in. So whether that is our monthly EV giveaway where we give away a brand new electric car every month, no strings attached, you don’t even have to opt in at that point. We’d love it if you did, but you have to kind of just register and then opt in. So we really try to pull different mechanisms that give that value to the consumer and then as a result, we get really good trustworthy data as well.
Guy – 00:12:49:
Yeah, I think we’re huge fans of the approach. I think we sometimes talk about almost that sort of virtuous circle that exists between great data and delivering great email messaging. But by creating that value and trust with your customers, they in turn give you great data about themselves back to you and then you sort of build from that. Now it’s all well and good, but much as you wish they might be, people aren’t in the market to buy new cars every day. So how do you use testing to keep them engaged even when they’re not in the market?
Sarah – 00:13:23:
Right, so I think that as you say, consumers are not in the market every day to buy a vehicle. Typically it’s kind of every three years. And so what we really kind of focus on, obviously if they are opted into marketing, our reach expands massively in terms of how we can communicate with them. So we’ll kind of focus on that element a bit. So when they’re opted into marketing, we do lots of testing around kind of like relevant content that might affect a car owner kind of within that lifecycle as well. So it’s not always about upselling them the latest product or upselling the next vehicle, especially if they have just bought a vehicle. It’s about adding value and getting them to enjoy that particular car as well. So we have seasonally relevant content that we work with within our own teams, with integrated campaigns and we’ll have lots of different focuses there. So it could be Winter Tires like do I need Winter Tires for my car? Or brand new laws that have been released for this year. Or consumers that are owning electric vehicles like anything from a government policy that may impact kind of like anything from an electric vehicle perspective. And then for users that are not opted into marketing we kind of look at competitions and that type of thing. So again I focus on the EV giveaway but there’s also kind of like partnerships as well that we are pulling into and we’re just continuously looking to test and learn with various methods really to try and engage users. But our main focus is the content piece so whatever we can do with adding value to consumers within their lifecycle journey beyond buying a car is good news for us because it keeps the front of mind for the brand and then they keep coming back as well, hopefully.
Danielle – 00:15:06:
That’s evident in your email program. We were just looking at some of your emails and of course we could see a lot of them are not focused on getting a conversion right? Like one that stood out was it had a subject line the best cars for your pet which immediately opened for me. What is your strategy with emails like this? Because I’m guessing that these value add campaigns have different KPIs from promotional sends. So what are you looking for when you test these types of emails?
Sarah – 00:15:36:
People come to AutoTrader to research their next car because we have a wealth of content to help them in their car buying decision and we’re a trusted source when it comes to working out what you’re looking for and so we’ve got a huge focus on relevant content as it’s such a massive decision with so many factors as well for different people. So it could be finding a vehicle that fits your lifestyle. So has it got a big enough boot for a Pram or a car that fits your pet or like am I going to be able to get my drum kit into the back of the car? All of those types of things are so personal to people and I think that’s what we’re really trying to draw on. It’s thinking about people as individuals and the fact that they all have different kinds of means. And so ultimately our email strategy isn’t always with the intention of kind of reaching a conversion, it is about providing that value, ensuring that we are like a trusted source for consumers so that they know that they can keep coming back to us as and when they’re ready to make that big purchase. We’re front of mind for them as well and it seems to be working for us as well.
Guy – 00:16:39:
So there’s already so many great things that you’ve covered with your testing strategy but we’re kind of keen to look forward as well and hear about any exciting future email projects that you have planned. And I know that Braze, you mentioned them a moment ago as your new sending platform and I believe that they’ve actually started integrating ChatGPT into their offering. So any plans to test that, Sarah? See if GPT can create a better petrolhead’s email than you can?
Sarah – 00:17:10:
It’s not written off, I think ChatGPT, it’s not in our immediate plans. But I am intrigued, I think, to see how it works. And obviously there’s so much information out there. Recently as well, I’ve been hearing about people that have been using it to complement like other email programs as well. So especially from a service perspective. So it could be that they’ve got these ChatGPT kind of comms set up just to drive that consistency approach for consumers to begin with and then at that point they get handed over to a real human to kind of like deal with the rest of it. And I think it is super interesting. It’s not something that we’ve kind of really looked into in a huge amount of detail from an email strategy perspective, but yeah, certainly intrigued to find out more and see and watch, I think closely how others are kind of maybe adopting it as well. But I think in terms of some other programs, I know, Guy, that your team has also spoken about, like BIMI, and I feel like I’m not saying that correctly. Is it BIMI?
Guy – 00:18:04:
BIMI is perfect.
Sarah – 00:18:05:
Yeah, BIMI is perfect.
Danielle – 00:18:06:
All of these acronyms are up for interpretation, I think.
Sarah – 00:18:11:
So I think that’s something that we’ve talked about for a while and it’s absolutely something that we want to implement and so hopefully that’s something that will be our focus certainly within the next financial year alongside then building out Omnichannel programs as well. So I’ve talked a little bit about our online-offline omnichannel approach, but I think the omnichannel program that looks at multiple different channels, like push notifications, web notifications, email into single journeys we really want to kind of validate testing some of those channels and building on consumer preferences. And hopefully that would then further improve engagement and add additional value to the consumer experience. So we’ve got some big plans, we just need more time to get it done.
Danielle – 00:18:55:
Always more time, right? This is the one thing every marketer wishes they had. Sarah this has been such a wonderful conversation, Guy and I love chatting with marketers who are so clearly committed to providing value as opposed to just sell, sell, sell. But before we finish our pod today, we have a couple of closing questions for you, and I’ll go first. From your point of view, which email program is kicking butt right now? Any programs that you think are just crushing it?
Sarah – 00:19:26:
There’s a fear, I think. So I think like any email marketer, you’re opted into absolutely everything, but I think there are three brands in particular that I am really kind of drawn to at the moment. So one is Calm. I really love Calm’s emails. So I’ve got the Calm app and feel like I’m promoting Calm, but they’re just great. I think just in terms of the email, you’ll have different things to listen to. They’ll have different suggestions, like different tips, and I think it’s just a really well curated kind of email in terms of content. And then secondly, John Lewis. I think that John Lewis is probably a lot of people’s answers, but I really love the integration between email and app activity. So I love their rewards program in the app and if I haven’t taken advantage of an app reward, they’ll be emailing me saying like, hey, Sarah, you haven’t taken advantage of this app reward, make sure you do. And I think that is really seamless, like pulling those kinds of integrations together. And then last but not least, RSPB, because they prioritize content and make it so meaningful and so action led without you realizing that it’s action led as well. They’re going to really hook you in from an engagement perspective. Danielle RSPB as well. Sorry there’s charity.
Danielle – 00:20:41:
We’ve had a couple of moments in this record so far where I’ve been thinking of the North American version of this. Like you said, put a pram in the boot and I put a scroller in the trunk. And also petrolheads over here would sound just horrifying. Like gas heads is not a thing, right?
Guy – 00:21:03:
But that’s just the fun of sort of sharing these sort of transcontinental insights. I have a question for you, Sarah. It’s a little bit cheekier than Danielle’s one, but have you ever been the owner of a really embarrassing email address and what was it?
Sarah – 00:21:19:
Yes, I have, Guy. I feel like I need to provide some context before I just throw it out there. So I grew up with a sea and every Sunday my dad and I would go surfing. It was like our thing. And so I was really into surfing and very beach life. And so my email address from the age of about 14, I think it was, was rip kill to debt. And I kept that for quite a long time. I went to the world of professional work and realized that that probably wouldn’t hold up.
Danielle – 00:21:52:
On the scale of how embarrassing that could have been. You’re good. An awesome, enviable hobby, that’s awesome.
Guy – 00:22:02:
Right? Sarah Jones, it’s been such a pleasure having you with us on Email After Hours today. Thank you so much. I think a wealth of great insights that our listeners can take back and apply to their testing programs. I think we’ve all learned something today. For me, man, I absolutely want to drive a Furby. Whether my wife’s going to be happy when I park it on the driveway, I don’t know. That’s going to be a story for another day
Danielle – 00:22:30:
Or once it starts speaking to you in the middle of the night, something used to do.
Guy – 00:22:36:
But thank you so much for joining us with our listeners. Join us again in two weeks. We’ve got another great episode lined up where we’re going to be reviewing one of my favorite pieces of research. The DMA has just released their consumer email tracker. It’s one of the very few pieces of research that looks at email effectiveness through probably the most important set of eyes, which is the people that actually receive them. We’ll have Ian Gibbs and Conor Hellier wearing their DMA hats to join us for that conversation. How should Senders be pivoting some of their tried and tested strategies and make sure that their customers are getting what they really want? See you then. Bye for now, but sure to tune in next time and hit subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes. And don’t forget to visit senderscore.com for loads more great resources to help you become a stronger sender to all you.
Danielle – 00:23:31:
To all you sleepless senders out there. Thank you for joining us after hours and see you next time.
