The EcoSend Podcast

S6E1
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the EcoSend podcast. Be inspired, educated and entertained by the world's most ambitious leaders putting climate at the top of their agenda. Welcome to another episode of the EcoSend podcast. I'm thrilled to be back with another wonderful show. I'm very excited today because we are chatting.

[00:00:25] Email, an ethical email, and I am joined today by Yuval who is Yuval? Yuval is an ethical email consultant. I've had the pleasure of getting to know Yuval quite a bit over the last few weeks and months. Yuval helps e commerce, e commerce businesses be courts and 1 percent for the planet.

[00:00:44] Brands turn their subscribers into their biggest inbox fans. And and Yuval does a bunch of other stuff. She's been named a top marketer to watch in 2024. She covers loads of best practices in the email space. She also knows a thing or two about pasta. And she's a songwriter. and a music producer.

[00:01:03] So I'm looking forward to unpacking a lot of this, Yuval. Welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I'm good. How are you? I'm doing all right. Thank you, Yuval. I'm doing all right. I'm, I'm all the better for seeing you. It's great to have you on the show. I I'm excited to chat. So tell us in your own words.

[00:01:22] Yeah. What, who's Yuval? What are you up to at the moment? Oh so I guess we need to begin from the fact that I started my career very early on at 17, fresh out of high school, a week after graduating, I enlisted the army in Israel. Cause that's where I was born and raised. And I was very fortunate to enter this really prestigious unit that That belongs to the IDF's national radio station.

[00:01:56] So has a reach of 50 percent of the population on an hourly basis. So that's a lot of different responsibilities for a 17 year old until 20 year old covering all kinds of ministries and policies. And it's. At some point, I was in charge of six different topics and subjects, which I don't think anyone in the history of the radio station was ever responsible for so many subject, subjects at the same time.

[00:02:23] Don't ask me how I managed to find some time to sleep in between those, because I literally did not sleep for maybe three years, but then, you know got into there as a storyteller who loves. Telling other people's stories and discovering what the truth is and left completely traumatized. Didn't want to do anything with storytelling, writing at all.

[00:02:46] Went into a seven year hiatus very biblical of me and just started doing all kinds of sales and hospitality gigs. Learned a whole bunch about people's psychology, sales psychology, customer psychology, and then decided that, yeah, that's not enough. I really want to help people beyond giving them food, which is don't get me wrong, amazing thing, an amazing thing to do.

[00:03:13] Especially if the food is good and decided to open my business and tell other people's stories and help other brands tell better stories in a way that is more ethical. To be honest and what is ethical? I'm sure we'll get into that in a few minutes, but yeah, it's been a journey of trial and error and Just trying to figure out what is it that I want to do to help brands that use business for good to create even more impact and generate more revenue with their storytelling and with their stories, with their impact as a whole email is honestly, and we're both biased about this year, the best.

[00:03:59] Means the best channel to do so, so I'm really, really happy to be helping brands do more good out there with my expertise and my knowledge. Absolutely. That's really interesting to hear. I hadn't heard your story before you about going back that far and yeah, I, I, I mean, it's fascinating to hear.

[00:04:22] Take where that started and now where you are because like today, you know, I, I think many people listening may have stumbled upon your, your feed and your work. you're very vocal about how to do email marketing better, you're a very enjoyable person to follow on various channels, including email, of course.

[00:04:46] And it's, it's fascinating, though, you've got this really focused kind of approach now, you're, you're you know, to go from, as you were saying, like trying to figure out where to, where to apply your skills and your time and your energy. And now like, you've got this very clear, you're helping really good brands and good companies, good organizations, not just to do email marketing, but to do email marketing in an ethical way to approach their communication to the right way.

[00:05:16] How, how did you end up focusing around that? And what was your journey into sort of the water? B Corps and good businesses. Sure. Funnily enough, I do have to share another story that wasn't Please do, that's what we're, we're here for. Yeah, unfortunately it wasn't a great story living through this story but I was a part of a fellowship.

[00:05:41] A year and a bit ago, that was very cult like or had distinctive elements of cult culture, I would say. And I didn't really enjoy my time there, even though it was just. A little shy of a month long experience, but throughout this experience, I was actually meeting with someone who told me about the B Corp movement.

[00:06:13] And especially throughout this experience, being completely sleep deprived yet again, you see a theme here I, I heard about the B Corp movement, what it stands for, what it's trying to do. And. Everything clicked for me in a way that many things didn't click like that before. So it felt like coming home.

[00:06:37] And for me, especially, you know, I've been to the time of us recording this, I've been a digital nomad full time for a little over a year and a half. So technically I am homeless. So to find a place that feels like home and talking with people People who create and run brands on the same kind of plane of shared values.

[00:07:05] That gives me pretty much the feeling of I am at home wherever I am, no matter where I literally am. And I can't really describe a better feeling than that. That's amazing. I love that. And yeah, the digital nomad lifestyle, I guess, is quite I guess a lot of people may be, may be envious of, of that and, and would love that lifestyle but you're actually, you're actually living, breathing it, you have the experience now and there are certainly, it certainly sounds like there's many, many plus sides but also nothing is perfect.

[00:07:47] Oh yeah. It's, it's interesting how, Yeah, a place you don't home is not necessarily a place, but it's, it's who you're surrounded by perhaps. And that's a really wonderful thought, actually. Yeah. Thank you. I I'm, I'm, I'm fascinated then as you've been spending more time with your extended family of good businesses and wonderful organizations, like you're helping, more and more people with their, with their marketing, their email marketing.

[00:08:20] It obviously at Ecosend this is a topic we care a lot about and I think it's why we hit it off. But there's this term, you know, we use quite a bit ethical marketing, ethical email marketing which is quite easy to say, but what does that mean to you? And, and what, yeah, what, what, how do you view Ethical email marketing.

[00:08:40] What is ethical email marketing to you Yuval? Really good question. What we need to talk about is not what I think is ethical email marketing, or what do you, James, think is ethical email marketing, but what does our audience think is ethical? And so I am no expert in ethics in terms of, you know, I don't have a degree in ethics.

[00:09:06] I do know what people like and how people behave and how people like to be treated. Keeping that in mind, every audience is different and every brand is different. And so my work, a lot of the times is understanding what the audience is, who the audience is, what do they want and how would they like to be treated?

[00:09:32] So ethical email marketing is not something that I can define in absolutes. I can say that. Ethical email marketing is marketing that is catering to an audience and respecting them, not fooling them into making ill informed decisions, using a lot of storytelling, using a lot of consent and a lot of transparency.

[00:10:01] Aside from that, we definitely need to dive into the audience. What do they need? The different segments of each audience and. What is the best way to cater to those segments, but again, in a way that is very specific to them and to the brand.

[00:10:23] Got it. I that's, that's a really wonderful answer to the question. I, I think it's it's a good point. Like everyone's sort of definition of ethical may be a little bit different. And I, I would also ditto what you said. I am not a, professor of ethics by any means, but I, I think, you know, what one person views as ethical can, can vary tremendously from another's.

[00:10:49] And I, I know from our experience, like leaning on, well, what do we think our audience cares about? What do we think our customers care about? Trying to do what's right by then is generally, it's, it's, I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it's a lot harder to go wrong when you think about their needs first.

[00:11:08] Of course, and I can also say that you're doing something that a lot of brands don't do at all, which is collecting customer feedback and networking with your clients. I've. One of the things that I'm teaching my clients is building systems around networking and collecting feedback and creating feedback loops with our audience.

[00:11:28] This is something that I know that you do in EcoSend. And in many ways, this, this is how you future proof your, your brands and your email marketing program. So you're doing Really, really great. So give yourself a pat on the back. Oh, I, I, you know, we've always got work to do about, always got work to do.

[00:11:46] But it's very kind of you, very kind of you. I, I, I mean, it's, it's such a, it's so fun to have a show where we're digging into email a bit more because on, on this, on this show, we, we, you know, we started this show to really learn more from people who care about building a good business who care about sustainability.

[00:12:07] And I've learned a hell of a lot from the conversations on this show, as I hope maybe one or two listeners have about building a more sustainable business. But I think this episode, I think there's some real opportunity to understand more from you about, about the email marketing world. And I guess there's a lot of brands who are listening who maybe follow along learning tips and tricks to get more sustainable, to reduce their carbon footprint, to be inspirational to other to their audience.

[00:12:37] But I guess the world of email marketing, there's a lot of information out there. There's a lot of conflicting information out there. There's a lot of people telling you how to do it one way or another. How, how, how are the What do you see as some of the biggest challenges for the brands you work with at the moment?

[00:12:57] What are you seeing as the challenges, the opportunities perhaps to really use email marketing in, as a force for good in the world? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can say that something that I'm hearing a lot this year is we don't know what we don't know. This is how brands usually start the conversation with me.

[00:13:18] When we just first meet one another and they say, we don't know what we don't know. We know that email marketing is incredibly important. We don't really know what we're doing, or we think we know what we're doing, but we don't know how we can improve this. So what can you do to help? To which I say.

[00:13:37] It's wonderful that we're meeting. I love the fact that you shared so openly, transparently what you think or what you experience at the moment. And, you know, now we can start working. A lot of brands don't know what they don't know. They don't necessarily have strategies in place. And so they usually just send out something when they have something to say slash sell.

[00:14:03] And a lot of companies forget that email is a two way conversation and not a blasting. Kind of a channel. Yeah. So in many, many ways, what I'm trying to do is to help brands understand, realize, and then understand that email is a conversation and it's a dialogue, not a monologue. It has been a monologue for a very long time, but we're actually going back with the technologies that we do have nowadays.

[00:14:31] So we're going backwards, but forwards. And we're trying to. Create deeper relationships with our audience because without our audience, do we really have a justification to send emails out? So do we have a justification to run a business? Maybe not, to be honest. So I help them understand what their goals are from email marketing, how to get there.

[00:14:54] And what do we learn in the process as well? Because I think this is the most important and underrated part of email marketing. It's such a beautiful way for us to learn more about our people and learn from them and improve our businesses through the conversations that we're nurturing. And yeah, we're using email for good and yeah, we're generating revenue, but it's a learning opportunity.

[00:15:19] So I teach my clients. how to do that, and then how to do that themselves as well. Such a, such a great point, because I think something we've seen is that when, with the world of, well, just in the world we operate in, email, email marketing tools, email marketing is considered like part of the marketing function of the business.

[00:15:44] And. And it is often by many companies considered like we use email marketing to tell people about our stuff. And replies are almost seen as a, an inconvenience like the no reply kind of email is is often a big deal and not, not uncommon to see. So what would you say to a brand that's sort of.

[00:16:08] Has that quite siloed approach or that departmental approach? Like, how do you deal with those replies? Like, how do you handle that? Is it the marketing team should field those or should the customer service team handle that? Like, what, what would you say is a good approach there? Or, or maybe it depends on the business.

[00:16:29] It always depends. It always depends. You knew it's coming. It really depends on the business, but a part of what I do with my clients is I help them understand which teams are related, connected to and from email marketing, because email doesn't live in a silo. And in fact, if you want your email marketing to be successful, everything needs to be, all of your ducks need to be in, in an order.

[00:16:55] More or less, I mean, nothing we're, none of us are perfect, no business is perfect. But how do we, again, create those feedback loops, both with our customers and audience and subscribers, but also internally within the teams. So you mentioned customer service. Extremely important to know what customer service agents are getting from clients and subscribers and customers, because they hold a lot of information that we in email marketing can use whether it's to generate more.

[00:17:29] Impact and revenue or reduce churn and give better customer service and then make more customers happier. So there are all kinds of ways to engage other teams within the marketing team and within the sales team and within other kinds of teams to help the email team and also for us to help them. So it's about building those feedback loops internally as well.

[00:17:59] And helping everyone realize this, this is a team effort and we can also make everything way easier for everyone down the road. So yeah, that's what we need to do. I love it. That makes a lot of sense. I, I know speaking firsthand how many of our emails EcoSend if you reply to them, they might go to our customer service of folks and especially Chris, they might go to me and I love it when we get a reply.

[00:18:30] When I get a reply from a customer asking about something, curious why we haven't done something, where's this, why haven't I got that, or I like this. It's such a brilliant leveler like that someone can could reply and I think Maybe as consumers, when we put out, take our marketer hat off and put our consumer hat on, we often, when we deal with a brand, like we don't expect there to be an actual human at the other end of that email being sent.

[00:18:59] It feels like the mothership beaming down information to me and I can't get back to it. But but yeah, for, for many organizations, it's always interesting. You know, if, if you have a particular. Affinity or connection with a brand. And you like, like what they're doing, maybe try replying to their, their email once in a while and see if you never know who might get back, huh?

[00:19:21] I will mention that replying to emails in terms of, I call it the hierarchy of mental effort. Replying to an email is A whole lot to ask for or to expect my clients and my subscribers are trained very early on that it's safe to reply. And there is a human being replying to them back as well.

[00:19:47] It is a priority. It needs to be a priority because it's not, you know, as you mentioned, the mothership, just blasting information into your inbox. This is not what we do this for. Not at all. And I will also mention there was something that you said, I'm trying to grasp this thought before it leaves my head.

[00:20:05] Yes, let's just not forget that most people, according to multiple studies, open emails based on the sender's name and their emotional connection to the sender rather than the name of the brand, rather than the name, the subject line, the preview line even. So it is about the emotional connection to the sender's name.

[00:20:27] Yeah. That's. There's already some top tips, Yuval. There's, I mean, there's a bunch of things to take away there. I was going to ask you what, what is your, what's your advice for encouraging people to reply. But I feel like you've already given a few, a few good suggestions there. I have more. Do you want me to share those?

[00:20:46] Hey, why the heck not? Yeah. Well, first of all, ask people to reply. It's really funny because we think and assume that it's such a no brainer. But we also know that unless people are told exactly what to do as in reply to this email and let me know, blah, blah, blah, they won't necessarily, it won't necessarily cross their minds.

[00:21:07] Asking for replies, training your subscribers early on. I cannot. You know, emphasis this enough, emphasize this enough. This is not something that a lot of brands out there do. They just kind of like send an email, send an email with a freebie, lead magnets, whatever and don't necessarily think about the longevity and the long term relationship from the get go.

[00:21:30] So this is something that I'm really big on with my clients. What else? How can we entice replies? Making it stupidly easy. It doesn't need to be a big ask because when people reply to you, they are also asking what's in it for me. So ask a simple question that is. really easy to answer. And for more tips and tricks and whatnot, then send me a DM somewhere and happy to explore this.

[00:21:58] Then subscribe to Umel's emails and reply to them. Please do. There we go. The one of the, I was going to ask a question, and you may have helped frame this, but I thought it was a great question anyway. So I'm going to ask you because I think it'll be helpful for many listeners. If you were the head of marketing for a brand today, with an established email list, lead generation engines, and a previous attempt at emailing, and you were to build an email strategy entirely from scratch, what would you do and where would you start?

[00:22:34] Okay. I always start with asking, what do we want to achieve and what are we trying to learn in the next three to six months? I usually don't plan ahead of, you know, more than that because marketing, the world is, is crazy right now and everything changes so fast. So what do we want to learn in the next three to six months?

[00:22:58] And what, what are we trying to achieve? So both outcomes and results, and also how can we then take and build upon those results for the next three to six months. So again, it depends what your sales goals are or what your growth goals are, but I would Look at the segmentation. I would look at automations.

[00:23:23] I would look at low hanging fruit and try to optimize that first and show the brand that I'm working with, how we can create success faster and at the same time, work on the back end of what are we sending, what On the regular basis, ongoing newsletters, what do we send there? What do we send to different segments?

[00:23:48] How do we improve the customer journey, the inbox journey as a whole? And this is a very general kind of an answer, but it's really hard to get into specifics with this one. Because again, it depends on the, on the client and the brand and their audience. I, I think that sounds great though, because The very fact that you started with asking what you want and what do you want to learn, I think it's just like, it's so easy to, you know, it's easy to say, and it's easy to say that's really obvious and simple.

[00:24:25] But when you look at like all of the things we do, like so many people don't start with that. They start with, let's start a newsletter, or let's, let's send an email about our new product. Yeah. Rarely do we actually go back to the very basics. And I think it's sometimes such a, an underrated thing to like, to actually start there.

[00:24:48] Like, what do we want to achieve? What are we trying to do here? It's so easy to end up doing a lot of work without really knowing why. Yeah, cause that, you know, as a result, Brands are kind of forcing their email marketing strategies on, on the brand itself, but also onto the audience, which then, you know those brands may say, Hey, email marketing is not really working for us.

[00:25:18] And then I'm asking, okay, what have you tried to do so far? What have you been trying to learn? What have you been trying to achieve? What's been happening, you know? And did you actually sit down to think about and being intentional about your email marketing, about the conversations that you have with your audience?

[00:25:36] And most times people are just like, no, we just, you know, we had something to say, we had something to sell. We had a goal to, to reach. So we just sent out an email and email marketing is not working for us. So my goal really is to show them how it's possible, how it's actually fun. And how we can make it a sustainable effort for the entire team.

[00:26:00] I love that. I love that. I feel like we're almost at half an hour, Yuval, and I haven't even talked to you about pasta at all. And I know you have some advice, so I, I'm wondering, yeah, have you got any advice beyond that, Yuval? I think you've got so much, so much advice. I always ask people. If they've got advice, but I feel like you've already been, like, this has already been, like, half an hour of advice, so I'm curious if you've got any more that might be bubbling away in your head, and also, I, I've got to ask about the pasta, how, how does it fit in with everything else you're doing?

[00:26:43] Everyone loves pasta. So yeah, let's hear, let's hear more about the pasta and any, any advice that might be pasta related. I don't know. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Let's do that. So the pasta, it's almost like a happy accident that I started associating my, my business and my brand with pasta because as you said, everyone loves pasta.

[00:27:05] I, unless, you know, you can't have pasta because of. Dietary health reasons, and even then there's gluten free, you know, gluten free substitutes, whatever. Everyone can have pasta and pasta is so damn versatile, just like email marketing. But unfortunately, not everyone likes email marketing. So. In a sense, it's all about balance, right?

[00:27:30] So in a sense for me, balancing something that everyone loves and with something that not everyone loves, but everyone kind of know it's important and know that they need to have it right in their business. That was. Again, not an intentional combination, but I'm very glad that I did this. As of the summer, I started doing a monthly masterclass called email in pasta, where I sit down with a dish that I just made.

[00:27:58] Unfortunately I'm not cooking on camera, maybe in the future. But I, I'm just making a dish and I'm sharing the recipe and then I'm connecting it somehow in some form. funky and obscure way to an email strategy that everyone needs to have in their business and how they can make it themselves. So, yeah, just connecting emails with pasta with strategy and, and having fun in the process.

[00:28:21] In terms of an advice regarding pasta always make sure that your sauce is ready before your pasta because soggy pasta is never fun. So sauce first, pasta second, and always toss them together. Top tips here, this is fantastic. You're making me hungry already. Same. You're making me think, yeah, I guess, I guess the more I think about it, I'm trying to make connections between email marketing and pasta.

[00:28:50] I guess. You know, many ways our email marketing is like a lasagna, you know, very layered, very, very full of different, yeah, I don't know, but we'll leave it there, Yuval, we can't go lower than that, can we? And it's my fault, sorry, yeah. No, that's fine. I'm just thinking how lasagna is one of my favorite sandwiches.

[00:29:09] If you want to hear more about the sandwich Theory. Go to the cube rule. I have no affiliation to it, but it's life changing. Go to what? Sorry. Cube rule. It's a whole, like, rabbit hole. If we get into this now, James, we will be recording for the next hour. That we can put a link in, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:29:30] Okay, okay. We'll put a link for anyone curious. Yuval, thank you. I, I am very keen to have some pasta for dinner now. And I, I hope everyone listening slash watching has, I'm sure everyone has taken away at least one tip from today, which has been a wonderful session. Bit different to our normal show because we're actually going deep on email, which is wonderful.

[00:29:55] So I'm sure many of our customers will really enjoy this. So thank you so much Yuval. For those who want more Yuval and maybe want some more pasta, Where can they find you? Well, I will say that the best thing you can do, if you're listening to us right now, and you're wondering, how do I make my emails better and use them for the greater good, there will be a link in the show notes that is inviting you to a free 30 minute consultation.

[00:30:24] Just come. Drop in, it's called the clinic, drop in with your most burning question about your email marketing. I'm happy to help free of charge, no sales pitch at the end. Book a call with me, honestly, I'm really keen to see what you're doing and how I can help. And there will be a bunch of other links in the show notes as well, where you can find me, newsletter, LinkedIn, threads, the whole shebang.

[00:30:52] I would have to say I. I had the privilege of basically doing a clinic with Yuval for EcoSend's own emails, because we do send our own emails. Even though we thought we would consider ourselves to know a bit about email, but Yuval taught us a ton, an absolute ton. You would just, it was just such a great masterclass.

[00:31:12] And I, for many listening, actually, it might sound a little bit too good to be true that someone's going to give you, an expert is going to give you half an hour of time. to go through your emails and figure out what you can be doing better and give you loads of tips. But Yuval really will do that because she did that for us.

[00:31:28] And it was absolutely brilliant and a game changer. So I highly encourage you if you're watching or listening, do take Yuval up on that offer because you're, why would you not do that? I mean, it's brilliant. So yeah, thank you Yuval. Really, really wonderful. And also if you do check out Yuval's website, ethicalemails.

[00:31:48] co. We'll put all of the links in the show notes. Yeah, Yuval, thank you so much for all of your wisdom and all of your pastor knowledge as well. We look forward to speaking again soon. I, I'm sure we'll be speaking lots and lots over the coming weeks and months. So thank you for joining me on the show today.

[00:32:05] It's been a pleasure. The pleasure is really all mine. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Yuval. And if you've enjoyed today's show you know what to do. If you're watching on YouTube please do like and subscribe because we want more people to hear about Yuval and her story. And if you're listening on your podcast player, please do subscribe.

[00:32:25] Follow along, share it with your friends, tell everyone about it, give it a like, give it a five stars. It really, really does make all the difference for us. So thank you for listening and watching and we'll catch you on the next one.