Interview with Chase Dimond, Email Marketing Expert Extraordinaire!
Chase has driven over $50+ million in email revenue for clients and is a partner at a 7 figure Ecommerce Email Marketing Agency. He regularly tweets about everything email related to his 22k followers and has 12k marketers subscribed to his email secrets weekly email newsletter.
We caught up with Chase to learn about his journey and understand what it takes to successfully master the art of email.
Tell us a bit about yourself, your background and how you first got into email marketing?
Hey there, my name is Chase Dimond. I’m currently a Partner at Structured — a top ecommerce marketing agency, where I run the email team. Since June of 2018, we’ve helped our clients send over a billion emails resulting in over $50 million in email attributable revenue. A few of our previous and current clients include: Orgain, The Chive, Original Grain, and CrossNet.
I first got into email marketing through an internship I had in college where I was manually sending out emails one by one at the time. A few months into the internship, one of the software developers happened to walk by my desk and saw what I was doing and told me how inefficient this was. He then taught me how to pick and ultimately use email software that would take what I was doing manually, and automate a good portion of it.
I haven’t looked back ever since and the rest is history.
What are some of your favourite tools for email marketing/email newsletters and which is the most underrated in your opinion?
As an Ecommerce Email Marketer, my personal favourite ESP is Klaviyo. So much so that I even use it for my own personal newsletter. Although, I think there could be other solid ESP choices for personal newsletters as well. My biggest advice is play to your strengths. If there’s an ESP you’re most familiar with, I’d roll with that one.
Outside Klaviyo, I really like Privy on the email popup side. And I use a site called Emailable to clean my lists.
I think using an email verification / list cleaning tool is what I’d say is something that’s underrated.
What is the best way to monetize an email newsletter?
In my own experience, I’ve made way more money monetizing my list through my own courses and info products as opposed to newsletter advertising.
I think newsletter advertising can be lucrative, however, as a one man band, it’s been way easier for me to monetize my list through selling my own products.
I’ve also recently been testing monetizing my email newsletter via relevant affiliate offers. I don’t have as much data here yet, but the early results show that this could be a solid revenue driver.
You’ve helped to drive over $50+ million in email revenue for clients, what is the most successful campaign you’ve helped run to date and why did it perform so well?
My belief with email, as with life, is that there aren’t any silver bullets. Email in my opinion, is a channel that requires you doing a lot of things right, that incrementally add up to a significant amount of revenue over time.
However, if I were to focus on sharing a successful campaign, it’d have to be a new product pre-order campaign sequence we rolled out for a client who sells journals. We did a limited-time, buy one, gift one offer which went bananas.
We sent 4 emails out over the course of 3 days that did $196,984.20 in revenue. We sent out a first email (hype email) giving people a heads up about what we were going to send them the following day.
We then sent out an email letting people know they could participate in the pre-order. Later that evening we sent a reminder email. The following day we sent out a last chance email.
Do you think transactional emails can/should be monetized?
When done correctly (legally and tastefully), I think transactional emails should be monetized. These emails typically will have the highest open rates of any emails you’ll send, so you increase your chances of driving additional revenue when you implement cross-sells and upsells in transactional emails.
What benefits do you think advertisers could derive from email advertising?
I think email in general is an awesome channel for driving awareness, engagement, and ultimately conversion. When you harness the power of an engaged email audience, the upside potential is massive. The key is finding email advertisers with diehard audiences. When the advertiser has built trust with his/her audience, that trust is passed on to your brand as a result. And especially now with the top of the funnel landscape (namely iOS14), tapping into engaged audiences on social media is challenging. This makes email advertising that much more attractive and ultimately, effective. For context, I have a few brands I consult for that drive a massive amount of revenue (7+ figures) via email advertising.
If you had a choice between spending $1000 on Facebook ads or $1000 in email ads, which would you choose and why?
I personally don’t believe it’s a zero-sum game wherein you should have to pick one. If it were me, I’d split the middle. The name of the game is testing. Every company will have a different strategy that works, and the only way you can figure out what works for your particular brand, is to test a number of different strategies. I’d opt to spend $500 on Facebook ads and $500 on email ads. From there, I’d review the results and adjust the budget accordingly.
Chase Dimond has a wealth of experience in email marketing and is an invaluable source of knowledge for those wanting to learn more about the art of email. His strategies and advice, from tools and favorite campaigns to monetization and advertising, offers insight on how to drive success in the email marketing industry. With testing and dedication, anyone can tap into the power of email and achieve the results they desire.
