In this episode, Evelina Kaganovitch explores why building trust is more important than increasing traffic for e-commerce fashion brands. She shares her journey from fashion school burnout to becoming a messaging strategist, emphasizing the need for authentic storytelling and meaningful communication. Discover what the key to a successful email marketing strategy is, why brand messaging is crucial to long-term success, and how to enhance engagement and drive conversions through content.
About Evelina Kaganovitch
Evelina Kaganovitch is a data-driven copywriter for fashion brands looking to connect with their customers and drive conversions through engaging content. After burning out in fashion school, Evelina turned to the startup world to combine her passion for writing, fashion, and entrepreneurship. Building off of her own experience in the fashion industry, Evelina connected with fashion entrepreneurs looking to improve their brand messaging to help them better communicate with their audience. Today, Evelina is a successful messaging strategist, using email marketing, ads, and sales pages to increase customer engagement and sales.
Contact info
Website: www.evelinakreative.com
LinkedIn: @evelinakreative
Instagram: @evelinakreative
Youtube: @evelinakreative
Free Resource: 35 SWIPE WORTHY SUBJECT LINES TO BOOST YOUR OPEN RATES
Takeaways
- Building trust is more important than just driving traffic.
- Genuine, quality connections with customers is what sells.
- Email marketing is a powerful tool for driving conversions.
- Speak like a human to your audience.
- Authentic storytelling resonates more than salesy messaging.
Interview Themes
What are the benefits of email marketing?
Build trust with your audience
Emails are not only a powerful marketing tool, but also a great way to build trust within your customers. They allow for personal, one-on-one communications, helping brands connect with their subscribers.
Higher conversion rates
Email marketing typically converts better compared to other channels like social media. They operate at around a 36:1 ROI, often outperforming SEO and paid ads.
Email marketing is measurable
Social media and other communication platforms only provide a small snippet of your marketing campaign’s statistics such as follower count and the number of shares and likes. Conversely, email marketing platforms provide a much more in-depth analysis of how your campaigns perform. You can see who has opened, clicked, and engaged with your emails, making it easy to refine your messaging based on real data.
Reliability and ownership of contacts
Email marketing uses reliable platforms that allow brands to have complete ownership of their contacts list. Unlike social media platforms where things can crash, accounts can be locked, and followers can be lost, companies will always have access and ownership of their email lists.
What is a common brand messaging mistake to avoid?
Brands can get caught up in creating elaborate, overly polished personas for themselves in an effort to sound cool and sell more. Unfortunately, this strategy often backfires. These personas make brands feel too distant and convoluted, resulting in a brand narrative that doesn’t resonate with the target audience. Evelina’s advice? Keep it simple and human. Avoid using technical jargon that can be challenging for your audience to understand. Instead, be straightforward and talk to your customers the way you would in real life. What do they need? What problem are they trying to solve? How can you appeal to that? Focus on clarity and genuine connection and your brand messaging will resonate.
Is nurturing your current audience better than acquiring more?
Yes! When it comes to growing a brand’s audience, always prioritize quality over quantity. It may be the case that your website has a lot of first-time visitors, but it’s unlikely that they are going to immediately buy after one interaction with your brand—it’s not always love at first sight. The people who are going to drive the long-term success of your brand and the ones who have fostered a trusted relationship with it. Loyal customers are the ones who will continue to support the brand through repeat purchases. By prioritizing meaningful relationships with them, brands will grow and ensure long-term success.
What are some actionable steps brands can take to improve their brand messaging and email marketing strategy?
Revisit your customer avatar
Even if you’ve already done customer research, it’s worth revisiting. As a business evolves, so do their customers, which is why it’s important to stay up-to-date with your customer persona. Redefine what your customers’ pain points are, what their preferences are, and what their needs are. Then, revise your brand messaging accordingly.
Map out your email marketing strategy
Setting up an email marketing plan can feel overwhelming. Start simple by mapping out your customer journey beginning from the discovery phase. Once you’ve mapped out the customer journey, identify any gaps in the flow and ideate how email marketing can fill those gaps.
Chapters
00:00 Building Trust Over Traffic
02:40 The Journey from Burnout to Brand Storytelling
05:34 Crafting Authentic Messaging
08:40 Understanding Customer Pain Points
11:41 The Importance of Clear Communication
14:29 Nurturing Customer Relationships
17:38 The Role of Email Marketing
20:51 Identifying Trust Gaps
23:36 Automated Email Sequences
26:28 Driving Revenue Beyond Sales Announcements
29:32 Balancing Email Frequency
32:28 Success Stories in Messaging
35:38 Keeping Copy Human in an AI World
38:31 Actionable Steps for Better Messaging
Transcript
Evelina Kaganovitch
The chances of somebody buying that first moment that they see your brand is very low. So you need to build that trust with somebody through different touch points on your socials. Then, if you get them on your email list and they're going to check your website there, if you've got customer reviews and testimonials. So then the chances of that one person looking at your brand and buying from you and then buying from you again and recommending you to their friend or their work colleague goes up and up.
I always say it's better to go for quality than quantity cause when you are acquiring a customer, it's good to think long-term, not just ‘I want this person to buy from me right now.’ It's like, ‘I would like this person to come into my brand and into my journey and have a really nice experience.’ So then that hundred dollar purchase of their first product turns into ongoing. So the lifetime value of that customer goes up.
Instead of chasing these vanity metrics and also being really disappointed and burnt out, because if you're seeing these large numbers of traffic to your website and they're not converting, it's just exhausting and it's already so much pressure building your own brand and being a business owner that if you see those conversions also higher, like less numbers, but higher conversions, just on a mental, like emotional level, you feel better and more secure and that confirms to you that I'm doing the right things.
Glynis Tao
Welcome to Chase Your Dreams, a podcast for fashion entrepreneurs who want to build a purposeful and profitable clothing business so they can make a living doing what they love. I'm your host, Glynis Tao, an apparel business consultant and SEO specialist with 20 years apparel industry experience. I'm also a mom to a wonderfully energetic little boy named Chase.
Glynis Tao
Today we're diving into a topic that every e-commerce founder has wrestled with at some point. Why is my website getting traffic, but no sales? My guest, Evelina Kaganovitch, believes the real problem isn't traffic, it's trust. Evelina is a messaging strategist and copywriter who helps creative founders turn their content, especially their email lists, into revenue engines. After burning out in fashion school and rebuilding her career in Berlin's startup scene, she discovered that most launches don't fail because of bad offers—they fail because of broken messaging.
Since then, Evelina's worked with over 50 brands and founders worldwide, from Amazon Web Services and the Australian Fashion Council to indie fashion labels and coaches, crafting copy that doesn't just sound good—it sells. Known for making complex marketing feel simple, human and wildly effective, Evelina now runs her business on her own terms while raising her 3-year-old daughter Her work has been featured on the Successful Fashion Freelancer, the Content Bite Copywriters podcast, and more.
Welcome Evelina. It's so nice to have you here today. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.
Evelina Kaganovitch
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I'm a listener of your podcast, so it's really nice to be here with you.
Glynis Tao
It's so nice to have a fan come on as a guest. And you're based in Melbourne, Australia, right?
Evelina Kaganovitch
That’s right, the other side of the world.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, that’s nice. I haven't had anyone from Australia come on as a guest yet, so you're the first.
Evelina Kaganovitch
That’s pretty special.
Glynis Tao
Evelina, your journey from fashion school burnout to becoming a sought-after messaging strategist is incredible. How did that experience shape the way you approach brand storytelling today?
Evelina Kaganovitch
Yeah, the experience of burning out in fashion school, I actually hear this narrative over and over again from my clients and community and it's very common because it's just such a highly stressful, highly competitive industry. A lot of the time, the business owners I work with, they've gone through something similar, whether it was like a physical burnout or a mental burnout. So we have that connection to start with and they've gone into business for themselves so then they can live their life on their terms and they don't build their business but still have a work life balance. And a lot of the time when they start their business, they actually create a new job for themselves and get stuck into this flywheel as well. And on top of that, have the pressure of making enough revenue to pay and cover their own bills.
So it's quite a layered approach. For me, I was always interested, always curious and very entrepreneurial. This kind of progression from going from fashion school to working in the startup world, abroad to then coming back, I mean like I want to do this for myself and work with business owners. It was very natural. Like it didn't feel forced at all and a big reason why I feel that I am in the right space. So it was like a very natural progression and around the time of COVID, as most of us had a lot more time, especially in Australia, when everything was in lockdown and there were very strict restrictions, I was able to commit that time to like really honing in my skills and asking myself like, what do you want to do? Like, what do you want your future to look like? And that's led me to where I am today.
Glynis Tao
And so many founders in fashion struggle to communicate their value without sounding salesy. How did your background in fashion shape your approach to writing copy that actually sells while staying authentic?
Evelina Kaganovitch
I think the great thing coming from a fashion background and working with similar business owners is that creativity is so strong and the stories are really strong and powerful. It's about blending those human stories, like where somebody's come from. A lot of the time, if the brand is a smaller business, the values of the brand are the reflection of the founder themselves because they started it based on something they wanted for themselves or where they were in their life a couple of years ago. And they help these brand owners pick out this story, like draw it out from them, and I've got like some tactics that I use to do that to really make sure that when we write the copy or when their marketing goes live, it genuinely sounds like them because that's what builds trust and what people connect with rather than the salesy like ‘buy now’ like ‘discount’ or really powerful, really strong messaging that's just feels a bit icky. That's not what I'm about and the clients I work with are also not interested in that.
I also think marketing, and I'm curious to hear your perspective too, tends to have a bad reputation. It's slimy and tacky and almost shameful if you're marketing your business or your product, but I try and reframe it in my client's head to say like, ‘if you've got like a wonderful product or service that you've been working on, it's almost like you're doing your audience a disservice by not sharing that message.’ If you've got this great line and they're actually looking for something like that and they buy from you and they're going to be so happy and keep coming back, then that's actually a really positive thing that your marketing did. So it's also getting over that mental state and those limiting beliefs. Then it actually comes quite naturally as well.
The founders I work with are always really impressed with how this sounds really like me. Like this is how I would talk, but it's framed in a way that really entices the audience to come into their world, to learn more about their products, to buy in as well at the end, but in a really genuine human way.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, I can relate to that as well as a former clothing brand owner. I would be hiding behind my clothing and be really afraid to tell my story, but I am a small business, you know? I produce a lot of this stuff myself, but I made this illusion that it looked like it was a big brand, I'm very corporate. I don't know why I did that, but I was kind of afraid to really tell my story. I guess I had this feeling that if people knew that these products were made by this girl on her kitchen table, that it wouldn't be good quality and it wouldn't have that credibility and they wouldn't trust it or something like that. It was just really hard for me to even put myself out there without feeling like I was sounding salesy just to ask people to take a look at the product.
So I really struggled with it. I really understand what you mean about getting over that block with sales.
Evelina Kaganovitch
And that's the magic, like where you do talk about your story and your audience buys from you because they're like, ‘I resonate with her’ or I know that you talk about your son and they'll resonate with you, maybe at that stage, not yet, but they'll resonate with parts of your life. That's what will make them buy in because realistically, especially in the fashion world, there are so many different brands, there are so many different products. Even if you, you know, you've got a unique way to design or do something, the chances are that there's nothing comparable to it at all is very low, realistically. So it's that story—opening up to your audience and just sharing like, ‘I've created this brand out of my love for this,’ or ‘it came out of this place and was going through this stage of my life.’ ‘This was my creative outlet.’ That's what makes people connect as well and talk about it more and say, ‘I want to be a part of this journey with you.’
Compared to going on Shein or on Temu and buying something fast fashion, like most of the time, that's not the audience. That's not the customer that a smaller business owner is going for, so don't compete with them. Do it in your way.
Glynis Tao
Yes, I've gotten better at it over the years, I would say—telling the story now. You often say most launches don't fail because of bad products, but because of broken messaging. What does that mean for fashion e-commerce founders?
Evelina Kaganovitch
So firstly, what comes to mind is that I see a lot of, just to understand where it comes from, a lot of fashion brand owners, especially smaller businesses, start their business because they have this great idea or they come from a fashion background and they want to share their ideas. Once they start their business, they start realizing that the actual designing creative part is like 5% of everything it takes cause then you've got production, you've got your sales, your marketing, your customer service, and the list goes on and on. Then you're trying to create all these things and scrambling.
Now a lot of brand owners are turning to AI as well. So one of the things that is making these launches, I don't want to say fail, but not be as successful as they could be is this like generic messaging because if you start seeing, as a customer, if you start seeing ads that just say like, ‘unleash your inner goddess’ or something along those lines and then you scroll and then you're getting similar ads for similar products and the next ad says the exact same thing, you're just turned off by it. Even if people on social media, if they're not working in this field and they can't straight up say, this is AI-generated, they'll feel like something is off and that initial like intuitive connection. And I also feel like women have that more too, naturally biologically, you just feel like something is off and like it didn't feel right. So that messaging also in communicating your story is one thing and making it sound authentic.
And the other layer is a lot of brand owners, I see them jumping straight to targeting people who are ready to buy, and when we look at like the levels of awareness in marketing, it's actually like a bit of a slope or it's linear in terms of somebody goes from they don't even know they have a problem to the extreme, the fifth stage of ‘I'm ready to buy in your product is the answer to my prayers.’ A lot of the time, what I see is brand owners targeting that like ‘I'm ready to buy’ stage rather than somebody who's never seen or knows anything about your brand, like showing them a little bit more, like educating them or pointing out like, if you're getting breakouts after you go to the gym on your legs and you can't work out, it could actually be that the leggings you're wearing are really high in plastic—made from synthetic materials—so when your skin clashes with the chemicals in it, it can create this rash. And then proposing if you swap to a more natural alternative, then this problem could be eliminated and then introducing your product. If you know, you're a more, natural sports brand in that sense. Just to paint a very literal example for your listeners.
So that's another disconnect that I see happening a lot of the time. Those would be the top two. A lot of the time, it actually stems from not having been super clear on who your audience is, and that comes down to the research. Really go deep—who is your audience or your customer? What are their pain points? What do they want? Really deep, not surface level. Also blending that and balancing it with who you are as a brand and how do you find that middle point between your values and what your customers want and then communicating effectively.
Glynis Tao
Because many fashion brand websites look and feel and sound beautiful, but they have problems with conversions. What are the common messaging mistakes that you see on products and sales pages?
Evelina Kaganovitch
So specifically in fashion, it's funny because it's such an elusive, glamorous industry. You see the couture shows and all this. It's like a different world. You're transported to somewhere else, which is really beautiful and very magical. But then when you filter it down to the average customer, they're not buying into that fantasy. They need something that solves a certain problem. They need a new workout outfit. They've just had a baby and their body's changed. They need something to suit their life now.
What I see with fashion specifically, and I think it comes down to this creativity that lives inside—like just creatives and fashion designers and people who have started their own brands—you want to overemphasize things. So I see the language is very over the top and confusing. It's very complex words, very complex language, which when you break it down and you read it, and especially to a consumer/a customer who's on your website, it's just confusing. It doesn't say anything. Talking about ‘this is a mystical so-and-so with like elaborate this type of sleeve.’ It's just confusing, and someone will click out compared to if we look more at say the information space or products, like food brands. It's just really straight to the point. It's really clear. A fifth grader would understand what it means. So I see a big part of that in the fashion space specifically. And a lot of the time, and I think it comes from this conditioning, maybe in some ways from fashion school, the more you over-complicate, the more glamorous and deconstructed you make it sound, but you have to remember that your customers don't come from that space, at least 99% of them. So speak to like that normal person that's just out in their day.
Glynis Tao
Don’t use the really technical or industry lingo.
Evelina Kaganovitch
Exactly. Yeah. It's like most people don't understand that. They like your product. They think visually it's beautiful. It suits whatever function they need it for. Say they're going on a holiday for the summer and they need a new bikini or bathers. Firstly, of course it's fashion—it’s a creative space. Visually it needs to stand out. Then they'll be like, does it tick my boxes? And the more clearly you can communicate that, then the more likely you are to get that sale.
Glynis Tao
When we first met, we chatted about the importance of building trust and credibility, not only with your customers, but with AI search. Studies show that it really matters what type of content you put out there. I've been having conversations with other retail e-commerce experts, and the consensus has been that it's important to emphasize building trust factor with your customers and AI search engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity because people are asking complex questions. So the better you're able to answer people's questions—answer their pain points and challenges—the better you're able to build that trust with them. And as a result, AI search is picking that up as well.
You had said that traffic isn't a real issue—trust is. Why do so many fashion founders focus on getting more visitors instead of nurturing the ones they already have?
Evelina Kaganovitch
I feel like it comes, it's also this conditioning that we have, the more, the better. The more people see it, the more chances that they'll buy instead of focusing on a smaller amount, but more quality because even if we're looking at it from the perspective of where does your customer find out about you first, a lot of the time it's going to come either from your organic social media content or from paid social media. There's so much scam online on the internet everywhere that the chances of somebody buying that first moment that they see your brand is very low. So you need to build that trust with somebody through different touch points on your socials. Then if you get them on your email list, they're to check your website there. If you've got customer reviews and testimonials. So then the chances of that one person looking at your brand and buying from you and then buying from you again and recommending you to their friend or their work colleague, goes up and up.
So I always say it's better to go for quality than quantity, cause also when you are acquiring a customer, it's good to think long-term, not just I want this person to buy from me right now. It's like, I would like this person to come into my brand and into my journey and have a really nice experience so then that hundred dollar purchase of their first product turns into ongoing. So the lifetime value of that customer goes up. So instead of chasing these vanity metrics and also being really disappointed and burnt out, because if you're seeing these large numbers of traffic to your website and they're not converting, it's just exhausting. It's already so much pressure building your own brand and being a business owner that if you see those conversions also higher, like less numbers, but higher conversions, just on a mental, like emotional level, you feel better and more secure. That confirms to you that I'm doing the right things. I'm showing my product to the right people and they like it. It's resonating with them and they're buying. So I'm going to do more of what's working rather than plastering everything everywhere and hoping it sticks. So rather than trying to be everywhere at once and posting here, there, and everywhere, just focus on what is working and do more of that content that resonates with your audience rather than posting everywhere and just exhausting yourself. It's so much work and not seeing those numbers convert as well.
Glynis Tao
What are some signs a fashion brand has a trust gap where customers are landing on their site but not buying?
Evelina Kaganovitch
You'll see that, as we were saying before, a lot of traffic coming in, but those actual conversions of people purchasing or at minimum signing up to your email list, being really, really low. What I see when a website gets a lot of traffic, but really low conversions, is that typically it just means people are turning. Something on the website's not sticking. It could be the messaging, it could be visual—the site, how it looks. It's also partly the text. If it doesn't make sense or if you've got large chunks of text everywhere, a lot of the time people get overwhelmed and turn—they go and leave.
If you're seeing these people leaving and exiting your site or not buying and not exploring the website and looking at it, you can check this data on the backend to see what is the average time that somebody spends on your site. Is it a first time visitor, second time visitor? I'm sure you are really knowledgeable and experienced in these elements yourself. And then you're also not seeing people signing up to your list. That's a sign that something, you know, is not resonating. It could be a mismatch between the ad that they're saying or your social content, and then they're going on your site and it's just not matching up. They don't feel like it's a smooth continuation of that user journey and it's worth looking at the numbers and looking at where that drop off is in your funnel and identifying those pain points and working on fixing it up. Even just improving those numbers by a couple of percent in each stage of that user journey. By the end of it, you'll see such a big difference in your actual conversions.
Glynis Tao
Why do you believe email marketing is a missing link between traffic and sales for e-commerce?
Evelina Kaganovitch
I think because email is a really powerful way to build brand trust and it's also a very measurable platform. Compared to social media where the data you get is ‘how many people saw your content or your reel’, on email, what it tells you is exactly who opened, exactly who checked, how many times and who clicked. It's also not rented land like social media. That means that anytime the social media platforms crash, you lose everything you've done. Email is such a powerful way to build trust and be with your audience one-on-one. Also if your email company crashes or goes out of business, you can just take your list somewhere else and sign up to a new platform compared to this social grind. And the data on email shows that it’s the highest conversion rate across like SEO and also ads. The statistics show the 36:1 conversion rate. Of course, take it with a grain of salt. Every business and every industry is a little bit different, but that just gives you a bit of an idea that email is very powerful and it's worth investing in.
And the other reason is because a lot of the time when somebody first finds out about your brand, they're not so likely to buy from you, but they are likely to sign up to your list if you offer like a small discount for the first purchase or you've got something special going on to entice them in. And then over time, you can nurture them and educate them through your emails. If you've got a launch coming up or a promotion, you can send that to your list and they can buy directly from there. So when we look at some of the biggest ecom brands in the world, they're very email heavy—very focused on that part of their marketing channel. It's like that middle funnel point.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, and it's true that you own your email list, you don't own your followers on social media.
Evelina Kaganovitch
Exactly.
Glynis Tao
And if it were to shut down, then you wouldn't be able to take your followers with you.
Evelina Kaganovitch
It's so heartbreaking. I've had it happen in my partner's business. It's a small business and you work for a long time building your community and then something happens and you can't get it back. I'm working with a client right now who has built a big Facebook community and then it just crashed. It's like years of work. It's just really disappointing. It's really like a stab in the heart a little bit.So on email, luckily, you don't have that problem.
Glynis Tao
Can you explain how automated email sequences like ‘welcome’ or ‘post-purchase’ flows can help create familiarity and credibility over time?
Evelina Kaganovitch
Automated sequences are so good because you create them once and then they get sent automatically to certain people on your list. You don't have to think about it. You do the work once you set it and you forget it. And there's some key flows that, especially for e-com brands, are really powerful and can really set a good tone. Say for the welcome sequence, when you are just building that relationship, when it's the first touch point with somebody.
And then if we're talking about abandoned cart emails, a lot of the time, people are so busy. You might have something in your cart and then like your kid needs you and they're hungry and you have to go make them a banana smoothie. So you forget! Abandoned cart email could be like, ‘Hey, we noticed this was still in your car and are you interested?’ Even maybe after some time you can give a little incentive, like an extra $5 off or something.
Those little, triggered emails really help either a) build trust and nurture your audience or b) get that sale over the line. I think it's also worth explaining that automated email sequences are the ones that you create once and they are sent to a list based on a certain trigger or behavior. So when somebody signs up to your list, they automatically get sent an email. So somebody could sign up on Monday and they get that email on Monday. And if somebody signs up on Friday, they get that exact same email when they sign up on Friday. Compared to broadcast, more evergreen emails, campaigns that you create and you send to your list weekly. If you send your campaigns on a Wednesday and somebody signed up to your list on Thursday, then they would miss out on that campaign on that week cause it's just triggered by the time you send it.
Glynis Tao
From your experience, what kinds of emails actually help fashion brands drive revenue beyond the typical sale announcement or product drop?
Evelina Kaganovitch
A lot of the time, the ‘welcome’ emails are really powerful because that's the first impression somebody has with your brand. I would really focus on that and make it quite personal, like sharing your story, sharing your journey, and then obviously sharing your products as well. A lot of the time, people buy from people—we buy from humans. If somebody's on your list, they're probably interested in a smaller, founder-led business that cares and shares the same values as them.
So showing that you're human, showing the person behind it, sharing your story, where you came from, sets a really good first impression. And then building on that with time cause I understand everyone has different levels of time to dedicate to their emails and different resources to invest in it. But if you start with one thing to get it right, set that tone nicely and then build on that.
Glynis Tao
Is there a number of how many emails you should be sending out weekly, monthly?
Evelina Kaganovitch
There's no one perfect answer. Every brand is different. If we're talking about the weekly emails or things that are ongoing, one thing to consider is—this is more on the backend of your systems—how you're tagging your audience and making sure people are not receiving like numerous emails a day because that just feels spammy. I'm sure you've seen that in your inbox—unsubscribing when somebody tries to email you like every single day. And that's a lot of work if you're running your business by yourself.
So I always say, get your sequences set up, the most important ones, and then when you go to do your normal like marketing emails, get into a routine and rhythm that works for you. Perhaps that could be starting with one email every two weeks. Once you're in a good flow, you've worked it out, you've gotten faster at it because you know what to do and how to do it, then you can go up to one email a week.
Typically for clients, I would do two emails a week, like on a normal week where there's nothing major happening. If it's more of an e-com or even service based business brand, there seems to be a nice middle point where you're checking in twice a week, like a friend, but you're not like love bombing them. And then when you do have a promotion or a sale coming up, I think it's fair to send a few more and people expect that, but not all the time. My mom told me the other day that she purchased this product and she was really excited and the product was really nice. And then she's like, I just got so turned off because they email me every day. How do I turn it off? I'm sick of it. So just thinking about the end user’s mind as well. People are busy. They don't need to hear from you every day. It's too much.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, well at least have some sort of option—I don't want to unsubscribe completely. I still want to receive them, but not as frequently. That would be nice.
Evelina Kaganovitch
Yeah, actually, I think a lot of the time, brands are not intending on sending so many emails, especially the more small to medium sized ones who now have somebody supporting them with their marketing. It just may even be that on the backend, it's not set up in the correct way and what I mean by that is it's not tagged. Like if this person receives this email, don't send them the next one. So they're actually getting a bunch of sequences at once, even though the general idea is well-wished and the idea is that they get like two a week, but it's just not configured correctly on the tech side. So they're getting everything.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, because there is a techie component to doing your email marketing—setting up all the automations and stuff like that. You’ve got to be considerate. I'm on both sides because as the sender of emails and as receiver as well, I'm on a lot of email lists and I sign up because I want to hear from them. I want to hear from them, but when the emails get to be a little too frequent, then it is a little bit of a turnoff. So I feel like there is this balance there.
Evelina Kaganovitch
100%. It's like dating. Like if you just met someone and they're texting you every day, like, ‘let's hang out.’ I don't know about you, but I'd be like, no, thank you.
Glynis Tao
Everything can relate back to dating.
Evelina Kaganovitch
Yeah, exactly. It's just annoying. It's like, no, let me be slow. Do it in a classy tasteful way. If you're not sure, less is more.
Glynis Tao
Could you share a success story example where great messaging turned an underperforming campaign into a win?
Evelina Kaganovitch
Yeah, so a few things come to mind. I've been working with a client for like two years now. What we saw at the start when I came in was that they had a really big list, but their engagement was very low. People weren't clicking. I think the clicks were like under 5% or something. And I was like, this is odd because we're hitting all the marks—we're talking to the pain points. What’s going on?
So we ran a re-engagement series of really value-driven emails that we knew the list would be interested in, like sending some free downloads, some really valuable advice. And what we did was we started with a smaller list segment, so the ones that were really engaged, to build up that trust factor and also for the email service provider to stop sending us to spam and basically for it to say, ‘yeah, this is a credible company.’ ‘It's not spam.’ ‘Send it to the inbox.’
We started seeing open rates up 70%. As those opens went up, we started increasing the list size. We started adding in less engaged subscribers, and by the end—it was like a four to six week process—we managed to revamp that list and bring it back to life. Now it's been such a powerful communication and sales mechanism for my client, which is really great. We also cut a lot of subscribers off the list. That's also nice to do to—clean them out. You don't need to hold onto people that don't want to be there.
And another win, which I was really excited about, cause this is like a very small business, was I was working with a woman who is an expert in the pattern-making stage with six plus decades of experience. And she's written a series of books. Her life mission is to get them out there and share her work, which she hasn't done up until this stage. So what I did was implement a basic funnel system to start getting her audience into her ecosystem. I call it a wardrobe—a content closet—to get them to learn more about what she does. In the first week or like the first 10 days from when we started posting, we're focusing on getting her audience from LinkedIn, which is about 300 people to her email list. And then slowly sharing about her and her story and then sharing her books and through a lead magnet. And she had 30 something people sign up in the first week, which I was like, wow, like this is great to go from absolutely zero to that is a really, really positive outcome. And she made a sale from that really tiny list. I don't remember if it was like 150 or 250, but she was stoked. It's not a huge amount, but it shows that it works and out of 30 people that received her email, at least one purchased. So that was a really nice win. made me really happy for her.
Glynis Tao
That's wonderful. You had said in the very beginning of this interview that one of the drawbacks of AI is that it sounds very AI and most of us can recognize it. Unleash your email marketing, something blah, blah, blah. It’s always those words that always come up. So with so many AI tools writing content today, how can fashion founders keep their copy sounding human and true to their brand?
Evelina Kaganovitch
So I actually have this one technique and I use it for myself and my clients. I really love it because it's like utilizing this power of AI, but also having you speaking it. What I do is I pull out notes, conversations, transcripts from meetings, from calls—whatever that may be where you're speaking— then asking the AI to analyze and say, ‘what are those common themes that I talk about?’ ‘What is relevant for me?’ And then turning voice notes—I ask for my clients to send me a story through a voice note—into an email because a lot of the time when we speak human to human, that's natural. You don't overthink it, but for somebody who's not a writer or a marketer, they sit down to write something and you get brain fog and you're stressed and you're overthinking it. A lot of the time how somebody would speak with their friend sounds so different compared to when they sit down and write an email or a social post. It feels stiff. It feels not right. It feels awkward or corporatey or they're using AI and it sounds really spammy or they're blending the two and it just doesn't match who they are. So I use voice notes and actual transcripts to turn that into content that sounds like the actual person.
Glynis Tao
That's a really great tip because I record all my meetings I have with people and I found that even just using the transcript or the meeting summary notes and feeding it through and asking it to pick out the important points and maybe taking that and turning it into a blog outline at least gives you a starting point to start to work on that content. At least you've got something to work with and AI will help you do that. And it’ll still keep the messaging and it's coming from you. It's not completely AI-generated.
Evelina Kaganovitch
Exactly, and it can be really hard to come up with this content, like ideas and constantly being like, what do I post? But you already have, as you said, that plugin to your meetings, those transcripts. Going through the content you already have and recycling it, just like recycling clothes or re-wearing things. Reuse what you already have because that just takes so much pressure off you. And then also it's relevant because you're having those conversations already. You know your customers, your audience is asking those questions or talking about it. So use that to your advantage. Like you said, if you are blending this human and AI element, run it into the AI.
And one tip is to upload—don't copy and paste the content. Download or upload a PDF or a text file for some reason, ChatGPT reads it better like that. And you can say, ‘pick out the exact words that I use, don't change anything’ and that's a really good starting point. That's already the 80% that people struggle with the most—getting the first draft ready and getting your ideas out on paper. Once you've got that there, then you start getting into the zone and it comes more naturally. It flows.
Glynis Tao
Yeah, that's great advice. What's one or two steps that our listeners can take this week to start improving their messaging or email marketing results?
Evelina Kaganovitch
I would say go back to basics and just have a look at your customer. Also, your customer may have evolved from where you started, so recheck that research. Check what are their pain points, create this avatar, give them a name and really build out this persona. So then the next time you are working on your marketing content, whether it’s emails or it's something else, you just have this one person and visualize them—we're creative people. Picture somebody and write and speak to them to make sure that your message connects and speaks to the right audience.
And the other thing is if we're talking about email specifically, it can be a bit overwhelming when someone's saying like, set up your email marketing, do this, this. It's easier said than done. What I encourage you to do is not to overwhelm yourself cause I don't like that idea. It has to feel natural and comfortable. Just write out. Whether you hand write it on your computer or create a table with two columns, identify what you already have. What flows are set up or working and what do you not have? And then make a little list. You'll see where those gaps are and you can even on a piece of paper, sketch out that journey. Where does someone come from? They find me on socials and then they come here and here. And then you'll see there's a gap in this spot, so I'm going to pop something in. I think being a visual community too, it helps to have it in front of you in a visual sense where you can see and start filling in those gaps.
Glynis Tao
Where can people find you if they want to get in touch with you?
Evelina Kaganovitch
So you can find me on LinkedIn at Evelina Kreative and I've recently started a YouTube channel, so you're welcome to have a look at some videos. There's some helpful advice and tips on copywriting, specifically email marketing as well, and that's @evelinakreative with a K. I'll leave the links with you as well. That's a good starting point. I also have a guide that might be really helpful for somebody who just wants a quick win on their emails and that's a guide of a subject line swipe file that you can use for subject lines I've used and tested. Ones that perform well and don't sound AI generated. You can kind of plug and play to get some quick wins—some higher clicks on your emails.
Glynis Tao
Great, we will have those links in the show notes. Thank you, Evelina, for sharing your journey and expertise with us today.
Evelina Kaganovitch
Thank you so much for having me.
Glynis Tao
Thank you so much for tuning in. You can find me on Instagram, @glynistao, and my website, glynistao.com. Please subscribe to Chase Your Dreams podcast if you haven't already. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with others who you think this may help. Lastly, it would be great if you left a rating and review for our podcast. See you next time!