Danielle Gallant – 00:00:03: Welcome to Email After Hours by Sender Score, powered by Validity. We’re your hosts.
Guy Hanson – 00:00:09: My name is Guy Hanson.
Danielle Gallant – 00:00:11: And I’m Danielle Gallant. And this is Email After Hours. Welcome everybody. Okay so listen moving, job changes, getting married. All of these things are ranked as some of the most stressful events in a person’s life. And if you were to ask email marketers specifically, I think they’d unanimously agree that ESP migrations are one of the most stressful events in a marketer’s work life. And that’s exactly what we’re here to talk about today with someone who really knows how to survive an ESP migration without risking email performance. Right, Guy?
Guy Hanson – 00:00:53: Oh, absolutely. And we got a very special guest today to talk about that and he loves migrations, but we’ll get to that in just a moment. Let’s start with a quick introduction. Michael Cabral, it’s a real pleasure to have you on Email After Hours with us today. So let’s start with just a minute or two about who you are and tell us about your experience in the world of email.
Michael Cabral – 00:01:15: Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. So, yeah, I’ve been an email for quite a bit, at least in my opinion. I started in 2008 and it was my second job out of college, and I got an internship at Disney Parks and Resorts in Orlando, Florida. I had no idea what CRM was at the time, where I had very limited idea of what CRM was. And I got right into direct mail and email and quickly learned the ins and outs of the industry, anything from engagement in the KPIs and obviously deliverability. And that was a huge part of the world of Disney. And I was there for about six and a half, seven years, learning the nuts and bolts all the way to the strategy, and then decided I needed a change of scenery, not just where I live, but just in my career. So I got a job up in Massachusetts. That’s where I currently am, at J. Jill. And actually with that J. Jill for a couple of years, I left for another company that was also in the travel and vacation industry. And then I came back and I’ve been back at J. Jill since 2018. And in that time since 2018, as you mentioned, Guy, I’ve gone through three ESP transitions.
Guy Hanson – 00:02:31: We’ll talk about that in a moment, but we know you’ve embraced life in Boston. Big fan of the fried clams.
Michael Cabral – 00:02:38: I recommended the fried clams to you. I actually don’t eat seafood. I just heard from my parents who love them, that those are the things to get when you’re in Boston or in the area, because lobster is more main everyone thinks about lobster, but it’s more of a main thing. That’s why the fried clams is what I recommended. But anyways, I just stick to Italian food and keep it basic.
Danielle Gallant – 00:02:58: First of all, strongly agree on the Italian food, and second, of all, I’m pretty sure it’s a crime if you live in Boston to not like seafood.
Michael Cabral – 00:03:08: I just don’t like it. I can’t handle the lobsters and crabs. They just look like giant insects to me. So I’m sorry.
Danielle Gallant – 00:03:14: Well, apart from fried clams and ESP migrations, from an email perspective, I guess we should say what’s the number one challenge you’re facing? Like, what’s keeping you up at night?
Michael Cabral – 00:03:26: I actually have two. I have a long term and short term, but I’ll keep them quick. Long term is keeping customers engaged with the email program over time and driving traffic. I mean, obviously you want to keep customers engaged. It’s a short term issue. But just long term, like, how do I continue to keep people opening and clicking on emails? Short term, and I think this pretty much goes for anyone who’s an email is what’s going to impact my deployment tomorrow morning, whether it’s a technical issue that’s hard to resolve or it’s a block or a blacklist or a deliverability issue. I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m up all night thinking about that, but definitely when I wake up in the morning and I look at my phone, it’s like, okay, the email is deployed. Okay, my inbox looks good. So maybe I’m a little more neurotic than the average person, but that’s the short term answer. That daily email, right.
Guy Hanson – 00:04:16: I think it’s good to be a little bit neurotic, but it pays off too, doesn’t it? I mean, J. Jill, super impressive brand. You’ve got an equally impressive email program. We really like it. So tell us a little bit about what makes your email so special.
Michael Cabral – 00:04:33: We have a very dedicated customer, and I’m sure a lot of brands will say that. But my example will, too, is I’ve worked in a few different companies. But the one thing I will say that’s unique about us is we’ll hear from our contact center when customers don’t receive emails almost the same amount, if not more than they say. Opt me out or you’re sending too many. And I would actually lean towards more. When I hear from our call center, it’s usually so and so says they’re not getting their emails, can we make sure they’re getting them? So that’s a unique and good problem to have. That really makes us a special brand.
Guy Hanson – 00:05:13: Of course, when you get deliverability like yours, those calls happen infrequently.
Michael Cabral – 00:05:18: And it’s not just promotions either. Obviously people want discounts, but we’ve been very much less promotional. It’s more about the styles, like, what’s the new stuff? And they want to make sure they get it for it sells out, too.
Danielle Gallant – 00:05:28: Be honest, which I completely understand. And let’s dive into today’s topic. We’re going to rip the bandaid off. We’re going to get into ESP migrations. So typical brands change their email service provider or ESP, another acronym for everybody who’s listening to the podcast about once every three years. But at J. Jill, you encountered challenges that necessitated three ESP migrations in three years. And I know in a case study that you did with Validity, you joked, what could I say? We love warming our IPs. But seriously, tell us a bit about what led to these migrations.
Michael Cabral – 00:06:05: So what happened was the first email migration that we did there was 19, 20 and 21 when they all occurred. There was 2023 now. So the first one we did was really just to change the relationship we were having with the current provider. I’m going to keep the names out of this, but we felt like a small fish in a big ocean. Our account team wasn’t strong at the ESP. We didn’t feel like we were getting the level of service we needed, and anytime we wanted something, that was extra dollars. So we did an RFP and met with five different providers. And the one we chose actually wasn’t the flashiest or the most expensive, obviously, but it was the one that had the best account team like glove service. We felt like we were a special partner of theirs. So we did that. We changed over to them and we went through the ESP process, which I know we’ll get into in a bit. Then the next move happened a year later. We stayed with the same company, but that company was actually sunsetting their tool and they were moving to a new platform. So we had a change to that platform, which was basically like an ESP chain, but just with the same account team. So in that regard it was slightly easier, but it was a full on change. We had to warm up our IP addresses and do a full change. Then the third one happened because when we were on that new tool, we discovered we were almost back in that same position where we weren’t getting that white glove service. And it wasn’t because the account team wasn’t caring, it just because they didn’t have the knowledge of the tool that they had before. So we weren’t getting what we exactly signed up for. So we made the move again to a new platform where we were trying to get back to where we were and also have a more advanced tool at the same time that was meeting our needs in the business.
Guy Hanson – 00:07:49: So you’ve explained the rationale, and I think our audience probably understands what you stood to lose by not doing the migrations. But Danielle was only half joking when she did the intro and compared an email migration to sort of most of those other key landmark events in our lives, especially if you’re an email marketer. And there’s a reason for that, because migration can pose a really big business risk if you get it wrong. You want to walk us through the sort of impact of some of those things that can go wrong?
Michael Cabral – 00:08:21: Yeah, I mean, obviously the biggest one is deliverability. If you don’t warm up your IPs correctly, and you’re doing it the wrong way. You’re going to have deliverability issues and you’re going to get blacklisted. And that is a huge loss of revenue and a huge impact on customer engagement. It’s hard to quantify a number dollar values, but the best way to do it is like, look how much your email drives in any given day, and then you extrapolate that to how long you’d walk for. You could be upwards of the millions, if significant, part of your business, like it is ours at J. Jill.
Guy Hanson – 00:08:55: So I know that Danielle is itching to go down into the weeds.
Danielle Gallant – 00:09:01: I’m rubbing my hands together. Let’s get technical. And just because I know working with lots of clients, it’s a regular thing, you’re going to change ESP. There’s a lot to get in order even before you start warming your IPs, right? So what are your top recommendations for a successful migration plan? I feel like you have earned the right to tell us what comes with a successful migration plan.
Michael Cabral – 00:09:28: So obviously the first thing is to start early. You want to start things very much ahead of time when you’re doing an ISP transition, when you’re picking out your vendor. Obviously that’s a very long involved process, at least for most people, because you’re doing an RFP, you’re looking at a lot of options. So by that time, you’re a little exhausted and you’re like, all right, we’re ready to get on and sending. But you really got to back it up a bit. And you have to what I say, leave no stone unturned. And the most important thing, and I mentioned this, is warming your IP, and you have to have a lot of patience. So what you’ll have to do is you’ll have to work on two platforms. You work on the platform you’re currently on, and you’re going to be working on the new platform that you’re going to be warming up and eventually transition over. And the best way to do that is start by sending small quantities to your most engaged customers. And by engage, I mean opens clicks. And I know Opens are a little trickier now with the Apple iOS issue, but I feel like a lot of these ESPs have figured a way to kind of isolate those out. But I’ll get to the clicks in a second. But that is a very important factor. So opens and clicks. Clicks mostly. And you want to separate also out Gmail from your other ISPs, because Gmail is a little trickier in their deliverability monitoring. So you treat them even more conservatively than you would your other email providers so they’ll get even smaller quantities and separate out Gmail, for example, just throwing out numbers. You may, on your first day on your new tool, send this to ten people on Gmail, but you’ll send to 200 on everyone else. And then you start ramping those up and ramping them up and ramping them up. Now what happened with us though, is we were solely looking at opens as a form of engagement. This last time around, it worked in the past, but this last time around, obviously it didn’t work because of the Apple iOS issue. So we ended up bringing in people that weren’t engaged and we were doing this that Apple iOS issue was fairly new. So what happened is we hit a block and we worked with Validity actually to identify that block and work with their account teams and determine what’s the best solution to get around this. And it was actually just approaching it through clicks, not from Opens because clicks are a true indication of your most engaged. So when we reset, and we did by clicks, we actually right at the ship pretty quickly and went from a low inbox one day to a very high inbox the next day and we never really looked back and had any issues from that. So it really takes a lot of patience. It’s about a six-week process working on two platforms and you start with your daily batch and blast email. So you may have your more complex emails, your trigger campaigns, ones that work off the API calls like your card abandons. Or if someone’s on your site and you trigger them an email, there’s a list of them. They also have more complex workflows. You save us to the very end because those are actually making a lot of money with little effort and they’re a lot more complex. So once you familiarize yourself with the tool, you’ve warmed your IPS up and you’re sending to everyone on your daily emails, then you can transition those more complex emails over and do so without worrying about them hitting any blocks or having any issues. And they’ll still have good deliverability on your old tool because those IPs will still be
Danielle Gallant – 00:12:42: It’s funny that you mentioned that because I have a client right now, they’re about to start an ESP migration and their question was, well, maybe it would be wise to start warming these with transactional messages. We know they get really great engagement and then of course the flip side doesn’t really occur to them, right? Yeah. But the risk is ten times what we’re dealing with. So totally love that answer. And then I guess in light of all that you’ve learned from going through these migrations, what is something you wish you knew before tackling these migrations? Was there a specific learning that you were just like, oh, and everything clicked into place?
Michael Cabral – 00:13:25: Well, outside of the thing I mentioned with the clicks, obviously, how do we not partner like Validity, but that is an important factor is having good vendors. And I knew that before getting into it, but it’s having the right vendors in place. And I’m not just talking about the new ESP you choose. And I know this sounds like a sales pitcher validity, and I’m not trying to make make it sound like so, but it really made me have less anxiety to be able to monitor and have another set of eyes and another person to come to bachelor us in case we have an issue. So that’s one thing for sure. The other element of it is just making sure you’re ready and knowing it’s a lot of work. And I know I talked about the ISP migration and it sounds in practice kind of easy. You’re working on two tools, you’re warming one up and you’re sunsetting the other. But the real thing is, and I haven’t getting into many details, is all the little things that happen on a daily basis, you kind of got to mentally prepare yourself for because it is a draining thing to do. Not just the RFP and picking that ESP, but also when you pick them and you’re warming up, you’re getting an account team that’s not familiar with your brand, not familiar with your lingo. So you have to kind of have a little patience in that regard too. You may have actual technical errors because you call something one thing and they call it another and that could lead to issues. So just making sure that you give yourself enough time even before you start warming up to kind of get on the same page as that account came at an ESP as well, and having a vendor that’s familiar with you like Validity. And we had another vendor that was helping us as well, that does our API calls, that knows our business inside and out. And those were key elements to a successful transition. And then finally I’ll just say, making sure your IT team or your IS team, whatever you call your help desk team, is very well aware and very up to date and they have the capacity to support you if needed. If they’re involved in your email program in any way.
Danielle Gallant – 00:15:21: Give your IT team a heads up everybody, to start an ESP migration.
Michael Cabral – 00:15:27: As soon as you start the RFP process.
Danielle Gallant – 00:15:30: Surprise. Happy Monday everybody.
Michael Cabral – 00:15:35: And if they’re separate from your database team, your CRM team and your team that’s working with the data and your audience file as well, because that’s a huge factor. And I say that as a cautionary tale because before I started at J. Jill, I heard that they were told moments before an ESP transition happened, this is way before my time, this is years and years ago.
Danielle Gallant – 00:15:58: You’re absolved of this particular instance.
Michael Cabral – 00:16:02: It’s just giving everyone very welfare warning and keeping them in the loop.
Guy Hanson – 00:16:07: While today’s conversation is all about email, I think the reality is that your marketing program is an omnichannel one. We regularly see you using email to recruit mobile subscribers to receive SMS messaging. And we really love the idea of how email supports SMS in your business. But does this work both ways? How do the two channels complement each other for maximum impact?
Michael Cabral – 00:16:34:
Like you said, we get a lot of our SMS subscribers via email. So we’ll send out an email to have people sign up for SMS. And that’s one of the few ways we acquire SMS. SMS is a fairly new program at J.Jill. We started actually right when COVID started in 2020, not because of COVID it happened to happen at that time and still the intent was also to drive retail, our brick and mortar traffic and do so in a very personalized, targeted manner, store events, specific stores, what have you. And obviously what happened was a lot of stores had to shut down and then now open again and so it was slow going. And the big thing now is obviously how it interplays with email. So a lot of our messaging to our SMS audience is also our email audience. So what we try to do is not overwhelm them, not over message them. SMS definitely more intrusive than email because it’s hitting your phone as a pop up message or your text message. And most text messages are from your family or friends and you’re going to want to see text from your family or friends. I don’t know how often you’re going to want to see text about a sale at J Jill. So we try to make sure when we do message them, it’s not as frequent as email, and it’s a message that we would expect our customers wanting to hear, whether it’s the start of a really good promotion or new styles arriving like that day, not just your run of the mill have you seen this latest dress? Or have you seen this latest shirt? Because I think that may be a little too much for SMS, at least at this point in time. And especially, I know not everyone has the same audience, but our audience is slightly older, so we’re not going to bother them with text that they may not want to receive. Now could that change? Of course, could be testing it? Of course, but we’re just kind of dipping our tone to that world right now and making sure that email is the channel that’s carrying the water and we can do a little more of that messaging, whereas SMS, we’re being a little more sensitive.
Guy Hanson – 00:18:35: It’s an amazing topic, isn’t it, that SMS has been around so long, but suddenly it’s so important. And I love the idea of how they can be used to complement each other. And I think sometimes marketers get quite behold into a single channel and sort of view all the other ones as competitive. But listening to sort of your explanation about how they work together is awesome.
Michael Cabral – 00:18:56: The challenge for us is an acquisition, especially in the retail realm, because we want to capture customers email and now we want to capture their phone, but we don’t want it to compete. So how do you accomplish that? Well, there’s ways we’ve done that. QR codes in the changing room or sign ups in the changing room. And then obviously the point of sale the associate would capture email as the primary. But if there’s time or working with conversation SMS, the one thing that every brand needs to work on is identifying if the customer has already signed up for email, then you could ask for SMS. But it’s also a more intrusive form of communication and I feel like it works well with certain elements of communication, like more transactional, your packages on its way or your appointments at next time, but the more marketing related ones, it’s obviously a little bit trickier. So you have to kind of toe the line a little bit and make sure you’re not over communicating or bothering your customer. But it is an easy channel in terms of getting that message out quick. You don’t have to design an email, you can just type something up, get it into it and send it out.
Danielle Gallant – 00:19:55: But I think you’re really smart to even recognize demographically what your subscribers might be willing to receive. Like, I had a conversation with one of our support team members who is much younger than I am and she was telling me I’ve had full WhatsApp chats with the support team for a company if an order is delayed or something. And I’m trying to imagine texting with a company about a delayed order, which just is crazy to me. I would never do it. But your point is well made, right? Like, being able to recognize the differences between what different audiences are willing to tolerate and how best to communicate with them is super important. Guy, should we take it to the Quick Fire hot take questions?
Guy Hanson – 00:20:39: I feel like we should. So, Michael, we always like to finish up with a sort of quirky question which has nothing to do with the day’s topic, and I know Danielle’s got one lined up for you.
Danielle Gallant – 00:20:49: I always love these and I always end up embarrassing myself somehow when asking these hot take questions. So for you, Michael, what is a popular email marketing practice that senders love or is really in the zeitgeist that you think is overrated?
Michael Cabral – 00:21:06: I may get in trouble for this and I’m going to try to answer this the best I can, but okay, so personalization. Everyone loves personalization. Any conversation I’ve had at a conference or interviews in the past, I’m not interviewing right now to anyone. J. Jill listening to this, they’re like, oh, we’re looking for personalization. They just throw that word out there. So it bothers me to a degree because I don’t think people really understand the best way to do it, they just want to do it. So what I mean by that is one of the biggest death nails in email, at least from what I’ve seen in my 13 years, is message fatigue, sending the same type of message over and over again. And any marketer likes to send emails daily, if not more than daily, multiple times a day. And when you use personalization, you definitely lose some of the ability to change up your messaging because you’re letting the logistics, the robots, do whatever you want to call it, determine. So you have to make sure to put up the right guardrails and have a very intelligent system to ensure that they’re not just seeing the same thing, whatever your product would be, but similar types of things. And a lot of people like to market and promote similar things like, oh, you like this, so you’ll like this. And you have to make sure you do it in a timely manner. You may have to do it weeks later, or you may have to make sure it’s not weeks later, months later, because when you’re messaging the same thing, they’re going to tune out one way or another. They’re going to, one, just not open your emails two opt out of your emails. And three, the worst, start hitting the spam button because you’re just bothering them. And some people just naturally do that and then you’re blacklisted. So that’s why I say make sure when you’re doing personalization to do it the right way. You do it in a way where you’re not repeating your message because it’s a very attractive thing to a lot of people and they think it’s the smart, fun thing to do. But don’t just do it to do it. Make sure you do it right.
Danielle Gallant – 00:22:55: Guys, if any brand that I’ve ever subscribed to, not that you would know, but if you’re listening, I don’t like the same thing I liked ten years ago. That’s awesome.
Michael Cabral – 00:23:07: Yeah. The other one I’ll say quickly if I have a chance, and this is more obvious, is just don’t send full file every day and send it to the same person multiple times a day. As tempting as it may be in the short term, it’s like eating a bunch of candy that feels really good and then later on you pay the price. You know you’re going to either get blacklisted, you’re going to again, like I said with the personalization comment, annoy your customers to where they tune out one of three ways. The best you could hope for, they just don’t open your email or opt out. The worst you could hope for is they hit the spam button.
Danielle Gallant – 00:23:38: Part of personalization is knowing how frequently somebody wants to hear from you. Right? So let’s promote our preference centers, people. Anyway, before I get on a soapbox.
Guy Hanson – 00:23:50: That will be an entire other topic.
Michael Cabral – 00:23:52: Some people in the industry people don’t know what they want. Yeah, they may say they want an email twice a week.
Guy Hanson – 00:23:59: Well, I feel you’ve given us a great quote that we’ll be using to promote today’s episode all about it’s like eating too much candy.
Michael Cabral – 00:24:07: Don’t say Michael’s Cabral hates personalization, because that’s not what I’m saying!
Danielle Gallant – 00:24:11: Hates personalization, loves candy.
Guy Hanson – 00:24:14: Yeah. Michael Cabral says personalization is overrated.
Michael Cabral – 00:24:18: I think it’s a great way to communicate if done the right way. The tactful, thoughtful right with guardrail.
Guy Hanson – 00:24:25: 100%. We will finish on that high note. Michael Cabral, so great having you here chatting to us today. It’s been such an awesome conversation with myself and Danielle. To our listeners, keep your ears open, should I say, for our next episode. In a couple of weeks time, we’ll be talking to the fabulous Kate Barrett and discussing why empathy is such a vital element of email marketing success. Till then, bye bye. Be sure to tune in next time and hit subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes.
Danielle Gallant – 00:24:57: To all you sleepless senders out there. Thank you for joining us after hours and see you next time.
