Your list is “camp firstborns”

One of my absolute favorite ways to talk about the process of building relationships has to do with the purest form of humans: kids.

And today, I’ve got just the right story for you to demonstrate it.

Earlier this year, I was visiting my good friend, Dionne (hey, Dee!), and her family in Barcelona.

It wasn’t the first time I visited her, her partner, Thomas, and their two boys, Avery and Xavier. In fact, I stayed with them for a week in May 2024.

To me, Avery, her eldest, fits the Birth Order theory of firstborns to a T: Beautifully sensitive, responsible, highly intelligent, ambitious, and very well-behaved (can you tell that as the eldest myself, I’m slightly biased here?).

Xavier, on the other hand, is a total firecracker, endearingly cheeky, highly social, and walks into every room with the confidence of someone who knows everyone there will love them.

When I first met them 2 years ago, Xavi was a chatty baby, and Aves was early into primary school. Back then, Aves and I slowly built up our relationship throughout that week to the point where he trusted me enough to accept my offer: enjoying some ice cream at a nearby parlor and visiting the playground.

Only that when I came back to visit them, a year and a half later, he recognized me, but our relationship had to be rebuilt almost from ground zero. Even though he knew me and trusted me before. I wasn’t surprised by it, and in a sense, respected his reservedness.

By the time I left again, we had rebuilt some trust and had agreed to have ice cream together the next time I swung by.

Xavi, au contraire, now a chatty toddler, was quick to sit on my lap, demanded I read him books, and insisted I play him sounds of animals for him to identify - completely putting his trust in me in ways that made me envious of how people like him carry themselves in the world.

I'm telling you this story because every business has both types of subscribers: those like Avery, who need time and repeated touchpoints before they give you the signals of "I'm ready to trust you" - and those like Xavier, who are immediately open to you and what you have to offer.

And Q4 is when both of these subscriber types show up, big time.

If you're an eCommerce brand, you're likely to see more Xaviers in the last few months of the year. People are actively looking to spend, and a well-timed, relevant offer can convert them without a ton of relationship-building. 

But converting Xaviers once and never seeing them again is what most brands see. A smart Q4 email strategy has a specific plan for what happens after that first purchase.

If you're a B2B brand, you're not playing the same game at all. Many B2Bs don't have special end-of-year offers, and understandably so. So the deals that do close in November/December were earned through consistent presence and multiple touchpoints with stakeholders way before the quarter starts. In other words, if the trust hasn't been built, it’s very rare that a Q4 campaign will make it happen.

Either way, Q4 is too important for many businesses - and their email ecosystem needs to be ready for it.

We’re not just talking campaigns, but automations, segmentations, what happens as the relationships change or evolve - all the moving parts that either keep building trust with your Averys and Xaviers, or let it slip through the cracks.

On July 16th, we're getting together on the monthly Email Roundtable to talk about what that looks like in good-doing companies like yours: what your email ecosystem needs to support your Q4 goals, what's working, what could use some serious TLC, and what decisions you can make now so the last quarter of the year delivers the results you want to see.

(Btw, that’s the last roundtable for the summer, before I take my annual “email leave”. Even if talking about your Q4 plan is slightly too early for you, but you know that’s an important channel for your last quarter’s revenue, I highly recommend you join this conversation.)

Seats are limited to only 10, and the only way to grab one is to sign up for my newsletter. 

Join the list here.