JWORK LIMITED, A lifestyle clothing brand from Columbus, Ohio has honestly been doing an amazing job being open and connected to their fans and prospective customers. All their team members have their Myspace, Facebook and Twitter accounts linked on their site and most of them blog as well.

The site is well-designed and contains everything you’d expect from an awesome brand site and more. Let me break down some of the awesome things I see here.

Photos

These folks understand the value of photography. Photos are still the primary method by which shirts are sold online, and having great photos is key to selling shirts.

JWORK’s photos are not only magazine quality, but they show people wearing their shirts in various situations, not just standing and facing the camera. They use models of different cliques, races, ages and both sexes to show universal appeal and make everyone feel like they can be wearing those shirts.

Blog

Like many solid tee shop websites, JWORK has a blog. While they don’t seem to post much about their shirt development process (some behind the scenes stuff or photos of shirts being printed might be cool), they post videos, photos of shoes, cars and other things they’re interested in. This is a window to who they are and helps develop a voice to people visiting the site.

Lookbook

A lookbook is sort of a visual brochure for your t-shirt brand, but should never be as boring as a brochure. A lookbook can be anywhere from a couple pages of photos and brand info to dozens of pages featuring press articles and sizing information.

JWORK’s lookbook is more than 30 pages of magazine quality material, showcasing all their active and prospective designs, plenty of photos and sizing information, and even their wholesale pricing structure and details. The brand biography is detailed but does not bog down much, letting the shirts speak for themselves.

Events

Another interesting thing is the events section. JWORK gets out in the community and gets themselves some local exposure by doing things like a charity carwash. By telling people on the website and inviting them out in person, they marry the online and offline experience and allow you to see their brand in a no-sales-pressure kind of way.

Video

What really gets me though, is JWORK TV, their video arm. Through JWORK TV, they show all kinds of behind the scenes stuff related to their t-shirt company. There’s a clip showing highlights from their latest model shoot, and a few videos detailing their recent trip to the Magic tradeshow.

It’s not highly-processed and tightly-edited promotional material either. It’s raw, shaky, handheld footage of their team doing everything from eating pizza in the hotel room (skippable) to walking the tradeshow floor at Magic (good stuff).

The Big Takeaway

The biggest thing is that all this stuff makes them so real, so human. You feel more connected to the brand because you can see and get a feel for the people behind it. In the videos, you can tell how excited they are to finally be on the tradeshow floor and you can experience the overwhelming atmosphere right alongside them.

Their tee designs are diverse and while most aren’t really my style, I imagine they sell well because of what’s behind them: great marketing and promotion and genuine passion for the brand. The passion of the JWORK team bleeds through everything they do. They take pride in their backstory and bios without bogging down or putting themselves on a pedastal. They know the value of creative model photography and show their shirts worn by people from all walks of life.

They get out and try to meet people in person, and they show you consistently that they’re just a bunch of real people that are honestly passionate about their shirts, and that makes people looking at them want to care too. As a case study of a brand showing unbridled passion for what they do and how they do it, check out JWORK LIMITED and JWORK TV.

It might be the excitement of launching a new line or it might be your interest in trying exceedingly exotic print methods to set your shirts apart. In many cases the motivation could come from the need to pay the bills and keep the doors open and lights on.

Whatever your reasons are, sometimes there are days where you get up and you just don’t feel it. There will be days where you might have an apathetic attidude, where you’d rather not spend the day emailing with suppliers and packing orders.

Whenever these kinds of days happen to me, I take a few minutes to watch this video. This is Gary Vaynerchuk a few years ago at a Web 2.0 conference. For about 15 minutes, he talks about doing what you love and being passionate about what you’re doing.

I wrote previously about seeing if t-shirts are really your passion, so check that out if you haven’t already.

What gets me about this video isn’t necessarily it’s specific content, though the message is very powerful. What gets me is the unbridled enthusiasm. You can see and hear how strongly he feels about what he’s saying and how badly he wants to get his point across.

Every time I watch this, I feel such a jolt, such a kick in the ass to DO SOMETHING and to be as massively productive as I possibly can be. Every time I watch this I’m reminded that it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Just because you don’t see the fruits of your labor today, that doesn’t mean they’re not growing. Your day of harvest will come if you have the patience and perseverance to reach it.

The message encourages me to strive for excellence, so I thought I’d share it with all of you, hoping that it might have the same positive effect.

What motivates you to “kick ass” every day?

Finding a home for your list

First, understand that email marketing is not done through Outlook or Gmail or any other program or service you may use for regular email correspondence. Email marketing is done through a bulk email service provider. These are services that specialize in managing huge numbers of email addresses and in sending large volumes of messages to those addresses. This is NOT spam.

An email list is not a collection of names in Excel that you BCC messages to. That will get you flagged as a spammer quickly and will damage your ability to send messages from your domain name. You NEED to use a service provider to ensure your messages have a good reputation when your recipients email servers see them.

You see, your domain has no real reputation score with email servers or blacklist services. They don’t know who you are and are going to scrutinize messages you send to see if they should be allowed through. Email marketing service providers send such a massive volume of reliable, non-spam email that email servers know to let those messages through to the recipient.

You also need to think about the long-term security of your list. A list of email addresses is a valuable business asset. These are your qualified leads; these are past customers; these are people that like your brand enough to say “send me stuff; I like what you’re saying!”

This means you want to find a permanent home for your list right off the bat. Whenever you move a list from one email provider to another, you will see a significant drop off of subscribers because people will have to opt-in again in most cases. You don’t want qualified people falling off in the middle of your sales pipeline, so pick a service provider and stick to it once you’ve started building your list.

There are WordPress plugins that allow you to manage an email list, but these are not a viable solution. First, they don’t allow you to meet the reputation requirements of many email servers and second, they are not permanent solutions. You may not always be with WordPress. You’re in the t-shirt business, not the list management business. Let’s leave the list management to people who do nothing but that.

Picking a provider is a personal choice and a lot of your decision depends on the specific requirements of your business. Does the provider have autoresponders? How do they handle spam complaints? Do they have email templates you can use? Do they allow you to use affiliate links? How much can you customize the sign-up forms?

These are all questions that are important. I can’t speak for most service providers, but I can talk about the two that I’ve used, MailChimp and AWeber.

MailChimp

MailChimp’s big selling point is its price. It’s free for lists of 500 recipients or less. This makes the barrier to entry very low and allows you to dabble in email marketing if you’re just testing the waters. MailChimp also has a lot of email templates if you want to send graphical (HTML) emails to your subscribers. The help system is very thorough as well.

MailChimp does have some drawbacks though. Once you pass 500 subscribers (and that’s the goal) you are subject to their pricing plan, which may or may not be to your liking. 500 subscribers in is not the time to move a list, so if you go with MailChimp, make sure they’ll work for you when you’re huge, not just right now.

MailChimp also does not allow affiliate links in messages. This may not be a big deal for you if you’re only talking to past customers or you only plan on selling your own products to the list. It was a deal-breaker for me though, as I’m not affiliated with one specific t-shirt brand. I left MailChimp and went to AWeber.

AWeber

AWeber is one of the most reputable messaging services available, and includes a wealth of list segmentation and analysis tools. They also permit an unlimited number of lists and autoresponders. Some of the biggest email lists out there are managed on AWeber, and that’s for a reason. All of this does come at a cost though, $19 a month if you have less than 500 subscribers, and the price scales upward from there.

Your first month at AWeber is essentially free though, and it would behoove you to plan as much of your campaign in advance so you can use that first month’s low cost to your advantage. I currently maintain my email lists at AWeber and have no plans to move. I’m happy with the service, support and options.

The Math: Why email lists are profitable

While a lot of people balk at the idea of paying $19 a month for an email list, consider the investment you’re making. How many shirts do you have to sell (at your current profit margin) to come up with 20 bucks? Two? Three? I can come up with 20 bucks just in affiliate commissions on four shirts, so it’s not that far off. With a solid email list, how many shirts do you think you can sell per month? As many as you want.

If you have an email list of 500 opt-ins and you don’t sell 4 shirts (a conversion rate of 0.8%, which is paltry) it’s because you’re not sending any emails. With a solid list of people that opt-in and read well-composed messages, there’s no reason a list can’t generate a 3-5% conversion rate or higher. If you have people that are rabid fans of your brand, the percentage could be higher than that, perhaps over 10% for that subgroup.

At a list size of 500 interested subscribers, even a 2% conversion rate results in 10 sales. 10 sales for sending an email. That doesn’t consider the click through rate (the percentage of the list that click your links to go to your site) which is often considerably higher than the conversion rate. At the very least, it’s a traffic engine. In the best case scenario, it could be your most powerful sales tool.

Once you have a list that converts reliably, it’s a numbers game. How many people can you convince to sign up? At that point, more people = more sales. Almost any giveaway or “ethical bribe” (a gift, video, coupon code, or other valuable thing you give to people that have subscribed) you can come up with becomes worth the investment because you know you can pay it back.

John Reese, an internet marketing pioneer once said he could treat his email list like an ATM. He knew it converted at roughly a certain percentage, so all he had to do when he wanted to make some money at the end of the month was send a few emails. The sales were practically guaranteed to happen.

You can’t steer the ship if you don’t know the controls

Once you’ve chosen a provider, take some time to fumble through their system. Try out their services and test things by sending emails to addresses you control. Try using an autoresponder so you understand how it works. Try splitting a list or using a graphical template. Try setting up a stylized sign-up form and including it on a test page.

Learn the difference between broadcasts and scheduled messages, and learn how to check your open and click through rates. Knowing your way around the email system is important and allows you to effectively manage your campaign.

I hesitate to go over the specifics simply because every provider has a different interface. I really encourage you to explore for yourself, it’s really the best way to learn.

In the interest of full disclosure, the links to AWeber are affiliate links and I earn a commission if you buy from them. I really do use them, and I really do love their service.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seattle_library_framework.jpg_inside.jpg)

If you or anyone you know might be interested in guest posting here, either as a one-off or on a regular basis, get a hold of me at Brad AT CottonInMotion DOT com. I’d love to hear from anyone with unique insight or experience working with t-shirts online. Of course your articles would receive all normal attribution with your bio and links to your site. C’mon guys, let’s have some fun with this!

Tees in a Pod Episode 22 – http://edic.us/tiappodcast

If you’re not familiar with Tees in a Pod, it’s a terrific resource for t-shirt entrepreneurs. The bi-weekly podcast covers all aspects of marketing and maintaining a t-shirt brand and is hosted by Rob Ryan from Lady Umbrella, Tim Fox from Soge Shirts, Amanda Ryan from Creature Creations and Amanda Vare from GritFX T-Shirts.

This 45 minute episode includes tips on selling offline and submitting press releases in addition to the segment on email marketing. The entire podcast and the previous 21 episodes contain excellent information. However, if you’re just interested in the email marketing segment, I come in about 27 1/2 minutes after the start of the program.

Once again, I’d like to extend a huge thanks to the TIAP crew for having me on. Enjoy!

Tees in a Pod Episode 22 -  http://edic.us/tiappodcast

People that opt-in to your list or have bought from you in the past are so much more likely to buy from you in the future, it’s not even funny. If you spend as much of your time and efforts cultivating your list as you spend trying to acquire new eyeballs, I guarantee you will make money.

Capturing Eyeballs

It has been said over and over again that a potential customer needs several points of positive contact with your brand before buying in most cases. Some peg the number at 7 but hey, that doesn’t matter. The point is that the only people you sell to on their first visit to your site are impulsive buyers. While impulse is a strong reason to buy, it’s not the primary motivator for most people.

This means that a lot of people look at your brand and like what they see, but just aren’t prepared to buy shirts from you. Not today anyways. When those people go away, you’ve got to hope they come back again once they’ve warmed up to you. Hope isn’t a good business strategy. An email list ensures that you capture that visitor so that you can bring them back to your site again later.

Once you’ve got someone on your email list, you have to think long term. This is a marathon, this is not a sprint. The may not have bought from you today and may not next week. Some people may sit on your list for a year, but most will buy eventually. Here’s the basic formula to make that happen.

1. Get someone to voluntarily sign up for your list.
2. Give them lots of cool stuff without asking for anything in return. Build a relationship with your audience. They will learn to like you; then they will learn to love you.
3. Sell them on the idea of going back to your site and buying from you after you’ve built the relationship and earned their trust.

Getting What You Give

Notice I said EARN their trust, not GET their trust. You have to think about what you’d like to see in your inbox and give them that. They subscribed to your list because they see value in what you provide. They like your artwork, what your brand stands for or they like what they think you can provide in the future.

They’re signing up because they want VALUE. Give them that. Give them something awesome without asking for anything in return. It will come back to you, I promise. There is a time to ask them to buy, but that time isn’t now. Most people on your list will eventually buy from you (and are more likely to buy from you repeatedly) if you are honest and patient and give them useful things that don’t directly make you money.

Frank Kern, who is a master email marketer, once said “You should never underestimate the power of being totally cool to people and doing good things for others. I’m not talking about being manipulative and lame. I’m talking about just being a genuinely nice person who actually gives a damn.”

That’s what it’s all about, I’m sorry to say. You have to actually give a shit for email marketing to be effective. If it is done right, and you care about your audience, you will cultivate a following of people who are 10x more likely to buy your latest shirt than Joe Internet surfing around and finding your site.

This is where the RELIABLE money is, and reliable money is what builds strong businesses.

image credit: Napkyn (http://www.napkyn.com/blog/2010/07/26/email-marketing-web-analytics/)

While poking around Amazon for books, I came across a section of their book listings where they analyze the actual text of the book and compare it to the text of other books they have. In this section, they highlight statistically improbable phrases to help you identify the nature of the book’s content as it relates to other things you might have read.

A statistically improbable phrase (SIP) is a series of words that is highly unlikely to occur adjacent to each other when you consider all the writing available. Consider Seth Godin’s phrase “purple cow.” He uses this phrase to describe products that are so remarkable and noteworthy that people will stop and devote their attention. The basic idea is that if you saw a purple cow while driving, you would pull over and look at it instead of continuing on.

Before Godin began using the phrase, consider how often anyone ever said “purple cow.” Consider how often anyone ever searched for the phrase. Next to never I’m sure.

Choosing a purple cow name

When you name a t-shirt brand, think if you were to use the name “Purple Cow Tees.” Imagine a world where Godin wasn’t associated with the phrase. It’s unique, it’s statistically improbable that anyone will already have any thoughts or preconceived notions about the phrase. It’s statistically improbable that anyone is already using the phrase for anything else.

People would remember your name, people would know how to spell it if you said it verbally, and you would have no problem dominating search queries for your brand name.

Consider if you named your brand “Bob’s Funny T-Shirts” instead. How much does that stand out in your mind? You already have a mental image and ideas associated with the phrase “funny t-shirts” and it’s already a very popular search term online. You’ll have an uphill battle on your hands winning mindshare and search results pages with a name like that.

Too unique isn’t good either

One way to be unique is to change the spelling on a popular word and use that as a brand name. This satisfies the need to be statistically improbable, but it introduces a new problem, nobody knows how to spell your name now and will search for the wrong thing often.

Consider if you named your brand “Nyce Tees.” I’m aware a handful of people are using that name, but I’ll use it to illustrate a point here. It’s pretty unlikely that anyone’s using a creatively spelled name usually, and it’s pretty certain therefore that you’ll be able to dominate search results for that phrase. How often though, will someone type “nice tees” to try to find you? Pretty often. Not only will they not find you, but they’ll find a bunch of shirts tagged “nice” and will probably forget about you altogether.

Verbally, telling anyone about your website, you’ll have to say “Nyce Tees. That’s Nyce with a Y instead of an I.” Then you’ll have to hope they remember the alternate spelling. It’s a good idea to keep in mind that a good brand name has the following qualities:

• It’s statistically improbable that anyone has used that name before, to avoid preconceived notions about your brand
• Search results for your name don’t contain existing clothing companies or general phrases that make it hard for you to rank for your own name
• It’s easy to type and spell if you said the name to someone verbally
• It has purple cow qualities in that it is memorable and remarkable

There is a lot of latitude with this and there are a number of brands out there that have bucked the trend and found success with curiously spelled names or statistically popular names. While it’s possible to succeed that way, you’ll find it much easier to spread the word about your brand and dominate search results if you pick something just unique and memorable enough to stand out.

Do you think it’s possible to saturate your customer base with too many sales and if so, does this make visitors start to see your brand as cheaper?

If you’ve cultivated a BMW-class perception of your brand, do you risk portraying yourself as a little too Wal-Mart?

I’m not sure of the answer honestly, but I’m curious to see what you all think and what is working for you. Have you tried changing the number of sales you have on your t-shirts?

Bloggers are more likely to write about you

While most t-shirt bloggers will write about any t-shirt brand they like, it is no secret that the prospect of making some money in the process is a terrific incentive. Every sale they are able to generate for your brand is also a vote of confidence. If they realize your shirts sell every time they write about them, they will understand that your shirts are the kind of thing their readers want to hear about, and they will write about you more often.

You can drastically expand your online presence

Affiliate marketers will generate content related to your brand and your products. All of this content increases the likelihood of people discovering your brand. It’s sort of a real estate kind of game. The greater the amount of online ‘property’ you have, the more foot traffic you have going by. Experienced marketers can quickly create large amounts of index-able content promoting your shirts through search engines and social media sites.

You can benefit from the experience and strategies of experienced internet marketers

Talented affiliates know how to best recognize what approaches and methods will help to sell your shirts. Most full-time affiliates have experience promoting dozens of kinds of products through various mediums, including PPC (pay per click), Facebook, Twitter, email lists and niche websites. They understand which methods are worth trying and which ones will be a waste of time. This experience and knowledge could take you years to match.

You can free up time to focus on your core competency: t-shirts

Time spend promoting your brand online and trying different tactics is time spent away from what you’re truly good at and passionate about – designing and making t-shirts. By offloading a significant amount of the marketing and promotion workload to affiliates, you have considerably more resources to focus on being creative and steering your brand toward success.

You can learn which aspects of your brand sell and which don’t

By looking at where your affiliate sales are coming from, you will start to see patterns emerging in the strategies your affiliates use to promote your products. Maybe you’ll see that shirt reviews focusing on your shirt quality, the kind of cotton and ink you use tend to sell better than shirt reviews focusing on your shirts’ pop culture commentary. The strengths of your brand will begin to show themselves and you can focus on further promoting things about your shirts that people really connect with.

Most t-shirt brands go through Share A Sale, which is a reputable affiliate network, and most t-shirt affiliates are already Share a Sale members. Just a heads up, this is an affiliate link and I do get a commission if you decide to join SAS.

Occasionally, a brand will just sign me up without contacting me first. I honestly find that kind of spammy, but I understand where they’re coming from. It can be a pain to contact each t-shirt blog individually, so an easy way to cover all the bases is to harvest blogger email addresses and blast out a message.

It’s a pretty impersonal way to work when you get down to it. Email isn’t a broadcast tool like TV is, email is a communication tool. Talk to bloggers like they’re your friends and they’ll want to be your friend.

Give before you take

It sucks sending individual messages, but it boils down to a basic question: do you want to push your news to as many places as possible, or do you want to build relationships with people in our industry?

Here’s a better way to do this: Contact the blogger individually, like a person. Demonstrate you’ve read their site. If you can’t take the time to read their site, it makes little sense to ask them to commit the time to check out your brand.

Every relationship in life, be it business or personal, works best when you give before you take. So message the blogger like a human being first. Once they’ve written about your brand, ask them if it’s OK to put them on your list. They’ll usually be happy to agree, and now you’ve got their permission.

If you’re adding email addresses to your list without the recipient’s permission, it’s unsolicited commercial email, period. It’s spam, don’t do it.

A step too far

Like I said before though, while I find it pretty annoying, I’m willing to deal with it. It’s sort of a reality of the situation right now. One brand went a step beyond signing me up blindly though.

I started receiving their mailing list in French, a language I don’t understand. Not only did I have no idea who they were, but I couldn’t even make it through a sentence of their messages. This not only demonstrates that they didn’t read my site, but illustrated a total lack of respect. Their site did have an English option, so the least I’m thinking they could have done was sign me up in my native tongue.

It’s so much cooler to hear from a real person and get to know them as a human being and not just a brand. Spamming a blogger in a foreign language isn’t going to help your brand gain traction. Instead, approach them as a person, and ask later if you can put them on a list to make mailing easier. They’ll almost always agree, and its a huge cover-your-ass maneuver if your list is ever hit with a spam complaint.