Once upon a time there was the owner of a small online store…
Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2024 3:13 am
Once upon a time, there was a small online store owner who worked more than 10 hours a day. His life was “pure stress”. Every day, he was divided between countless tasks, such as buying products, organizing inventory, updating products on the website, responding french polynesia business email list to customers, checking customer payments, preparing email marketing campaigns, billing employees and suppliers, among many other things.
He was increasingly concerned about the difficulty of getting visitors to his store. It was becoming too expensive to advertise on the Internet, and he no longer knew where to invest. But he also knew that if he didn't invest anything, he wouldn't get visitors and, consequently, wouldn't make any sales.
He knew that email marketing was cheaper than other media, so he tried to send campaigns whenever possible. But since he was doing so many things at the same time, he ended up managing to send only one or at most two campaigns per week. He charged the web designer to be quicker. He often complained that creating the campaigns took too long. With each campaign he sent, he monitored whether or not the store's sales increased. But he couldn't tell for sure which campaign was good or bad, after all, he didn't record anything anywhere. The following week, he couldn't even remember what type of campaign he had sent the week before!
He was always worried about the delivery of his emails. He thought that most of them were going to the “spam” folder, and that his client was not receiving them. But he didn’t know exactly why this was happening, or what he could do to improve this.
Another thing that bothered him was that some of his campaigns didn’t generate a single sale, even when the open rate was good. He didn’t know exactly why this was happening and was quite frustrated.
And deep down, he didn't even know if his numbers were good or bad. He didn't know if he was getting better or worse over time, because he didn't have time to analyze and learn about these numbers.
And so he continued every day, working harder and harder, without a positive outlook for the future.
==========
So, did you identify with any of this story? Maybe yes, maybe not. But this is a story that represents a good part of the day-to-day life of the owner of small Brazilian online stores, unfortunately.
As an entrepreneur myself, I understand exactly what these unpleasant feelings are like . I know how bad it is to not be sure about the future of your business. And how bad it is to not know where to start to attract more customers and more sales.
If you are going through a phase like this, my first piece of advice is: try to separate the strategy from the creation in the day-to-day running of email marketing. Let me explain further. The strategy is everything that involves the preparation and planning of campaigns, before sending them, that is: defining the monthly schedule, themes, products, promotions, subject line , segmentation , sending date , sending time , etc. The creation is the translation of the strategy into something visual. It is what materializes the objective of the communication, allowing people to understand and be attracted to what is being disseminated.
Separating these two tasks is essential, as the skills of the owner and the web designer are usually very different, with the owner having a much greater chance of implementing the strategy well than the web designer. And this is not a criticism of the web designer, quite the opposite. They need to value themselves and do what they do best: creation.
Therefore, this definition of roles is one of the most important steps in creating an efficient email marketing operation .
One of the biggest problems in small online stores is that they do not have a Sales Analyst, Marketing Analyst or even an E-Commerce Manager in their operations, so the owner ends up being the one with the most knowledge of the business to be able to define the entire strategic part of the communication. And the owner, because he does so many things at the same time, gets lost in the tasks and often claims “lack of time”. And precisely because of this “lack of time”, he delegates the strategic email marketing tasks to someone who normally does not have the conditions to carry them out.
In this case, the problem is prioritizing tasks. If the owner doesn't dedicate time to email marketing, it's because he believes there are other tasks that are more important. Maybe he's right, maybe he's not. Each case is different.
He was increasingly concerned about the difficulty of getting visitors to his store. It was becoming too expensive to advertise on the Internet, and he no longer knew where to invest. But he also knew that if he didn't invest anything, he wouldn't get visitors and, consequently, wouldn't make any sales.
He knew that email marketing was cheaper than other media, so he tried to send campaigns whenever possible. But since he was doing so many things at the same time, he ended up managing to send only one or at most two campaigns per week. He charged the web designer to be quicker. He often complained that creating the campaigns took too long. With each campaign he sent, he monitored whether or not the store's sales increased. But he couldn't tell for sure which campaign was good or bad, after all, he didn't record anything anywhere. The following week, he couldn't even remember what type of campaign he had sent the week before!
He was always worried about the delivery of his emails. He thought that most of them were going to the “spam” folder, and that his client was not receiving them. But he didn’t know exactly why this was happening, or what he could do to improve this.
Another thing that bothered him was that some of his campaigns didn’t generate a single sale, even when the open rate was good. He didn’t know exactly why this was happening and was quite frustrated.
And deep down, he didn't even know if his numbers were good or bad. He didn't know if he was getting better or worse over time, because he didn't have time to analyze and learn about these numbers.
And so he continued every day, working harder and harder, without a positive outlook for the future.
==========
So, did you identify with any of this story? Maybe yes, maybe not. But this is a story that represents a good part of the day-to-day life of the owner of small Brazilian online stores, unfortunately.
As an entrepreneur myself, I understand exactly what these unpleasant feelings are like . I know how bad it is to not be sure about the future of your business. And how bad it is to not know where to start to attract more customers and more sales.
If you are going through a phase like this, my first piece of advice is: try to separate the strategy from the creation in the day-to-day running of email marketing. Let me explain further. The strategy is everything that involves the preparation and planning of campaigns, before sending them, that is: defining the monthly schedule, themes, products, promotions, subject line , segmentation , sending date , sending time , etc. The creation is the translation of the strategy into something visual. It is what materializes the objective of the communication, allowing people to understand and be attracted to what is being disseminated.
Separating these two tasks is essential, as the skills of the owner and the web designer are usually very different, with the owner having a much greater chance of implementing the strategy well than the web designer. And this is not a criticism of the web designer, quite the opposite. They need to value themselves and do what they do best: creation.
Therefore, this definition of roles is one of the most important steps in creating an efficient email marketing operation .
One of the biggest problems in small online stores is that they do not have a Sales Analyst, Marketing Analyst or even an E-Commerce Manager in their operations, so the owner ends up being the one with the most knowledge of the business to be able to define the entire strategic part of the communication. And the owner, because he does so many things at the same time, gets lost in the tasks and often claims “lack of time”. And precisely because of this “lack of time”, he delegates the strategic email marketing tasks to someone who normally does not have the conditions to carry them out.
In this case, the problem is prioritizing tasks. If the owner doesn't dedicate time to email marketing, it's because he believes there are other tasks that are more important. Maybe he's right, maybe he's not. Each case is different.