The McMethod Email Marketing Podcast

By John McIntyre, The Autoresponder Guy

Episodes

Mentioned books

Feb 3, 2015 • 34min

Episode #95 – Jakub Linowski On How To Transform Your Business Into A Sales Machine Through The Power Of Conversions (start testing.. or test BETTER)

Jan 27, 2015 • 38min

Episode #94 – Drew Sanocki on Skyrocketing Your Ecommerce Sales With Savvy Email Marketing Techniques (bust out your notebook for this one.. GREAT content)

Drew Sanocki, to put it VERY lightly, Is an advanced email marketer. And it’s been a LONG time since we’ve been in contact, Talking about getting him on the show, And finally, With so much life and business going on since then, …we got Sanocki on the show. Drew ran a madly successful online retail eCommerce business before selling it. Now he consults (mostly private equity and venture firms) how to do this stuff… So if you’re into eCommerce, don’t miss out on this episode. Why not? Because Sanocki is an eCommerce email marketing legend.. ..and he gets into things like segmentation, targeting, marketing automation, RFM analysis (hundred bucks if you know what that means…jk). It breaks down your customer database to make sure you’re mailing the right people, the right stuff. What’s this all equal? Well if you’re in ecommerce, Or if you use email marketing AT ALL, It means MORE MONEY. Just ask his consulting clients. Sanocki’s email track record is phenomenal. See what I mean inside, And how you can make your email marketing that much more phenomenally profitable too ; ) Because we all know how email’s ROI is outrageous compared to say, SEO… So be a pro, and polish or build a bulletproof email gameplan for your eCommerce retail company. Do not delay any longer. In this episode, you’ll discover: why and how repetition is the mother of skill how marketing.. online, email, whatever kind, transcends all marketplaces (learn it well and you can use it in any business you create no matter what kind) how email marketing separated Drew from his marketplace pack (competitors could copy him all they want without him caring now… because his list is now his true income generator) the number one benefit Drew ended up with after creating an email list (hint… it’s mind boggling) the absolute best way to grow your company into an asset (build yourself a profitable investment like Andrew did, unknowingly too) the principle and tech stuff with email marketing can be laid out on paper (in other words, all ESP’s are the same. Just use any of them) the golden rule with ecommerce email marketing is… relevance (learn how to nail it and crank out sales because of it) why everybody needs an engagement campaign (figure out how to turn visitors into customers) the three part breakdown of a successful eCommerce email campaign (don’t miss this one) Drew’s successful three part advanced eCommerce email marketing campaign formula… and all the goodies and examples in between how to turn complete strangers into freinds… and then long time customers the definition of an entrepreneur: building something with limited time and resources (just go out there and do it.. courses upon courses not needed) that endless blog tips and articles won’t help in the long run (absorb the principles and then execute!) how to read feedback to optimize whatever you’re working on to make it better that retention is the most advanced email marketing facet you will face (find out how Sanocki makes retention his b****) how the catalog industry, yes that same old school lumpy mail sector can teach email marketers a trick or two how recency, frequency, and monetary value are 3 metrics that allow you to create fantastic triggered email programs (retain more and more and more customers) how you MUST learn how to retain and extend your customer’s lifetime values why CLV should be greater than CAC (find out more in the episode about this epic formula for business) the snapshot to motion video technique to killer custom email campaigns (and this one’s gold for any type of online business owner with a list of buyers, readers, clients, whatever). why active list members are so much more important… than the total number in your list the best time to set up a trip wire marketing campaign (win back the waning customers with this trick) what a look-alike audience is (you’ll think this is pretty damn cool, and useful) Mentioned: Drew Sanocki’s Blog (eCommerce and online marketing related) @DrewSanocki – Twitter Powerhouse Campaigns (Drew’s 5 week course for EVERYTHING email marketing… for retailers) Mailchimp Aweber Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing Rob Walling Mineral.io (ad agency that focuses on paid acquisition marketing) Jim Novo (for some RFM education) Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre: Hello, it’s John McIntyre here the Auto responder again. It’s time for episode 94 of the McMethod email marketing podcast. We’re getting close to it… episode 100. Next, you’ve got a special surprise coming for you at episode 100 so stay tune for that. Now, this is the podcast where you discover… I used to be saying a one simple thing how to make money every time you send them email. But, I think the new tune I’m going with is that, this is really just about marketing. Yes, it’s focused on email and yes it’s called email-marketing podcast but, this is all just marketing fundamentals. A lot of guys out there… a lot of famous, successful coach that are famous are saying is, “Reparation is the mother of skill on earth.” Few people will say that and, that’s why it’s good when you listen a podcast like this to do it over and over again. Because you’ve really ground in, you grind in those fundamentals about marketing and sales, and how to get more customers. So, it might be like, “I’ve herd this before.” You know, “I already know how to write copyright emails or send emails to my list.” But, sometimes this kind of things and this is how I look at out with conferences, and conversations and things like that. So, you can get just one idea… one simple idea which might be 10 seconds worth of material in a podcast, or conference, or whatever it is. One single thing, that could make a huge difference in your business and in your life. One single thing that you implement, Okay, and that’s why learning is such amazing thing. So, you’ve had that empty, begins is mine… I think this among school anyway. And not philosophizing falsifying, today we’re talking to Drew Sanocki about some advanced email-marketing strategies for ecommerce retail. So, Drew…. it must been like a year ago… a year and half ago and I want to do a podcast because it built say taking a ecommerce retailer and done some pretty dam advanced email marketing stuff with them in blink. Sort of automating emails, segmenting list for… just automating the whole thing. So, it happened automatically [laughter] and dramatically increased the lifetime value of the customs that came through that store. So, I brought him on to the [inaudible 0:01:52.9] caught up some mother stuff, and I go caught up with stuff. But, now he come back and he is ready to share what he did to grow that store? And that’s what we’re goanna talk about today. So, you have any ecommerce store, this one is for you. To get the [inaudible 0:02:03.5]…for this episode of the email marketing podcast, go to themcmethod.com /94. Now, this week’s McMaster’s inside of the week is really, really simple. But, a lot of you, even me… forget about this… someone is high. This is a fundamental idea that… here it is. Always giveaway value in your emails, now this supplies in your marketing as well. But, the thing is you want to leave them some better than you’ve found them. When some reads your email, when someone reads your sales page, when someone listens to your radio ad, when someone gets on a sales call with you, even reads a blog post. Before you start to teach them, before you start to teach them, before you start to say, “Hey, look here are this great product I think you should buy.” You want them to subconsciously feel like they got some value from that email, okay. Here’s an example, one of those emails I send that is called the seven-letter-words underlies all effective marketing. Okay, I open… you know like other’s is a one-word that’s underlies everything in marketing. If you can mail this one single thing to seven-letter-word, everything goanna be easier. You know that word is? Empathy. Now, what’s empathy? Empathy means you want to understand them, you’ve really got to dive deep into your prospects hopes, dreams, fears, problems, desires and when you know that you can translate that into an amazing copy which is really goanna inspire and drive the marketing that you do. But, without that, its all goanna be fail. Okay. Now, if you want to learn how to use empathy properly you need to get you know… “I’ve got a couple different surveys you could use including 10 specific question that you need to ask every prospect before you start trying to sell to them. And, that those questions and that those surveys that they are available inside my product right here. Click here to sign up.” Okay, so that’s an example of an email… I just made that up then so it’s not [laughter] on exactly what it says but the idea is to first to give them a value, which is that you need to have empathy. Next, I’ll explain what empathy is, some sort of just flashing in and out of it you know, just making sure that value is this. So, even if someone reads the email and doesn’t buy a single thin, well even unsubscribe some of that email at the very at least they know… you said you start to believe. But, they know that the empathy is important. They’ve got that piece of value in it they don’t need to pay me, they don’t need to do anything, they don’t need to click anything to get the value and then there’s a pitch. So, you want to do this in your sales letters as well or any sort of marking that you put out there. Offer some value before you pitch; give away a tip, give away some advice and then pitch, use that transgression into the pitch. Give them the what? The emp… What you need to do? You need to have empathy. How do you do it? Buy this product. Okay. So, always, always give people better than you’ve found them in everything you do. This applies to your sales; get on your sales call if you do sale call. And, just blow your perspective away with all the value, with all the advice you’ve given in that what they can do in this specific situation. And, then obviously if there are good prospective, you’ve qualified them, they cannot hide you anyway. This is not way thing you know you want to do this hard worth of themselves, okay? So, that’s it for now. The last thing is the reviews… so I keep going on it; I think there’s a little bit lately. But, like I said last week I love reviews and I really eat them for breakfast. They just make me so happy, put a massive smile on my face. So, what you know, when I wake up in the morning, and there’s a new podcast of you know, I jump off up and down on my bed like it’s trampling into a few back flips, I cannot think. Seriously, anyway that’s enough for that fun. Let’s get into this Mr. Drew Sanocki, it’s John McIntyre here, the Auto responder guy, I am here with Drew Sanocki. Now, Drew came to me by email. I think it must have been two years ago. He has been listening to the podcast and turns out that he is an email guy himself. He actually built a big ecommerce retailer online and they happen to use a ton of email marketing in then in really advanced way with they did a lot of segmentation and targeting and some RFM analysis. So, embrace a way of breaking down the database to figure out whom to mail, what to mail and more that sort of stuffs. We chatted way back two years ago, I’m doing a pod cast together on this and we went back and fort and I think I followed up a few times, said I would keep following and then eventually I stopped following up and nothing really happened. Then, emailed me out of the blue a couple of weeks ago. May be a week or two ago and said, “Hey, I’m back. Got this new website, and I’m doing this e commerce stuff. You want to get on the phone and have a chat?” So, here we are doing a podcast on some of the advanced email marketing strategies used with that easy commerce retailer and then the consulting client he is working with today. So, today that’s what we’re talking about. Drew, how you’re going man? Drew Sanocki: Doing well, I think when I reached at to you I said that I got this new kid, now I got this new course because the kid is the reason why I kind of fell of the map for two years. There’s anybody who’s had a kid would know. John McIntyre: [laughter] Drew Sanocki: Brings you to your two nieces for like two years but now I’m back in the world again. John McIntyre: But it feels good right? Drew Sanocki: Yeah, It feels great. You mean having the kid or being back in the world again? Drew Sanocki: Both, both of things feel good. John McIntyre: Both of things feel good. Yeah, [laughter] All right, we’ll talk about some about needy, greedy in a minute. Before we do that can you give the listener a bit of a quick background on who is Drew, and what has he done and what does he do? Drew Sanocki: Sure, thanks. My name is Drew Sanocki, and I live in New York City. About… in 2003 I started a online retailer called designpublic.com. I grew that for about 10 years, I sold it in 2012. And, after that I started consulting to mostly private equity and venture firms on e commerce and online marketing. That’s where I am today. I blog at drewsanocki.com, mostly talk about marketing and ecommerce. John McIntyre: Okay, very quick and then you’ve just said you’ve got cost in doing it well, right? Drew Sanocki: I do, I found that… well, John as you and I know we talked about this just a little bit before we got on the air. But, email marketing drove my online retailer, and I found that I was using that the same techniques that implemented at my retailer at every consulting and coaching client I worked with. So, in an effort to kind of opened the doors and release those techniques to a more people I started an online coarse called Power House Campaign and it’s a five workshop that will bring you through everything you need to know about email marketing. Four retailers should add that it is targeted a little bit for retailers but I guess it applies that to anybody. John McIntyre: Right. Yeah, it sort of like it’s I mean email, even marketing when you get sort of the fundamental understanding you can apply it when you get it, you can really apply it anywhere to any type of business online. Drew Sanocki: Yeah, it’s like the power of having a big list and then saying, “You know, I need more revenue, or I want to drill down and, what I like the most about email is that when we started our retailer?” We wore drop ship retailer, we sold pretty much the same thing that two or three retailers sold. And, you know you’d add something to your home page and your competitors would copy it or you’d find a new product to carry and like within months your competitors had it. And, it was killing me like… that was killing me because you’d go to bed you’d just like this pitting your stomach like, “ Are the competitors on sale today? Like, how do I need to react to that and, that kind of liberated me from that cycle of that… that competitive cycle was email marketing because you could look at your… you can built that permission asset really like you built that asset of email addresses. And then you can segment and target it in different ways and it’s sort of one to one relationship between you and that customer, you and that subscriber that is really hard for any competitor to duplicate. And, for us it really led to growth. I know for other retailers their main frustration was something like Google SCL like relying entirely on one marketing channel. John McIntyre: Yeah. Drew Sanocki: And, an email is again like another solution there where it just really can diversify your accusation and in conversion channels. John McIntyre: Right. Well, I’d like to know before we get into the some of the needy, greedy is… and I’m sort of least as curious too where… when I found this [inaudible 0:09:41.7] I did a podcast this morning actually with a guy, it was very tactical – really great information but, I was thinking there as you know imagine there someone’s brought might be listing in this, may be there are eyes are glazing over it just because it’s a lot of info and it’s a bit like why does it matter? So, before you get into the needy, greedy why did like… I mean how… like let’s bring it down to what clearly benefits did it have to your business, to your lifestyle, to weather you fall asleep at night. If you can share… I don’t know if you’d share like how much money that it’s you know, what sort of numbers it did for you? What’s… why should someone be excited about this? Drew Sanocki: Sure, the biggest benefit which I did not expect when you go to sell your retailer they want to know that how many names were there on your list? And like, how many are active? John McIntyre: Yeah. Drew Sanocki: I didn’t meant to… I didn’t build it with that intent. But, now that I’m working more with private equity and venture firms like that’s how retailers get bought. You know, they get bought for the list and I’m sure the same thing is true for any content marketers, or for information marketers. It’s all about the list size you know that’s… if you want to sell your company; you got to grow that asset. So, I think that’s probably the biggest benefit but, year to year, or month to month, week to week email was driving probably 15% of our new customers sales. The conversion rates from our email list wore three times higher than conversion rates from paid, actuation, or SCL, or from social. So, totally converted I think we wore averaging about a dolor per subscriber per email sent, which were really high. John McIntyre: Yeah. Drew Sanocki: And, for certain emails… not for every campaign, but certain campaigns would often bring us up to like 9$ per emails sent, which is just incredible. So, it’s like it’s cash money and the nice thing about email is you can automate all this stuff like, you know you are not a hold in to goggle, you’re not obligated to cope with crazy new blog posts that go viral or like some of the viral news sites to now like email marketing just works with a free email service provider like MailChimp or, one like Awebber you can automate 80-90% of your email program and just it runs day and night. And, that’s what I’ve loved about the most. John McIntyre: Yeah. And, what about the tech side of it… I mean, it sounds like you might be a bit of a techy guy, what if someone’s not a techy pearl like a technical person? Is this something we’re goanna be able to either sales or arrange with that teams to do? Drew Sanocki: Absolutely not, I’m joking. John McIntyre: [laughter] Drew Sanocki: Of course,yeah. [laughter] absolutely not which is why you need take my class powerhousecampaings.com. John McIntyre: [laughter] Drew Sanocki: No, it’s… I teach it in the class but it’s something you could do it yourself with the spreadsheet, that’s the most common question I get is like, “Okay, what technology do I need here, what’s [inaudible 0:12:38.5] do I need to help me out?” And yeah, those things could make it easier but I think principles behind it are sort of universal and easily understood and easily implement with MailChimp and AWeber they are probably the two biggest stuff people use but both those feature automation and I think they’re pretty easy to setup. John McIntyre: Yeah, let’s talk about that the you just mentioned about the principles that you can get… the principle I mean, like how big on this two, people say, “What’s the best email auto responder provider?” If they can just find the right software where everything would just be fine. Drew Sanocki: Yeah everything works. John McIntyre: But it’s just not how it works, right? I mean it’s not… it’s about… I think we all do it right? We are all like nervous, we’re all afraid of failure, we’re all insecure about you know… it to some extent in some way, we would fear pleasure part and all about lives. And, so we create this, “I’ll find, I’ll do it.” This feels like one of those things. It’s like, “Focus on the software.” When it’s not the issue. Software doesn’t really matters, there’s plenty of great software solution out there. What you really need to understand is I guess the marketing in this case marketing fundamentals; the principles underlying it and then you can use what ever tool you like. Drew Sanocki: Right. I think the biggest and the best principle is relevance you know just sending the right message to the right person through right time. John McIntyre: Okay. I mean that’s pretty simple, are we just end the podcast right here. There we go bro. Drew Sanocki: [laughter] So, to expand on that I think there is probably… you know, people hear segmentation and targeting which really is what relevance is right? Their eyes either glaze over they think and that means… you know I got at least in retail, that means I got a send, each customer in the exact product that they want on the day they wanted, that’s related to their previous purchase and that probably requires big data to figure out what those things are and… you know I think that the big companies like Amazon there like they do that but… like you don’t really need to start there, like you get 70 to 80 % of probably the predictive power that the Amazon has, just by some basic level of increased relevance. John McIntyre: Right. Drew Sanocki: For you know… and I can give you some examples. I think everybody needs an engagement campaign. This is the campaign the goal of which is to turn your new site visitors into customers, right? So, in e commerce 98% of people who go to your site on any one-day bounce so average e commerce conversion rate is 2%, like what if you could get that 2% to 4%? And, the way you do it is by collecting someone’s email address and then selling to them over time. You know like building up trust, introducing some of your products and ultimately having your called action. So, they buy something that’s an engagement campaign and I think it’s just what we’ve done is taken all the possible customer segments out there and we’ve focused in on one, and it’s the new site visitors and then developed an email campaign just for them. John McIntyre: Why didn’t you tell me about that? Like let’s say like I’m on the site you mentioned earlier and there is a pop up for I get the news let us save 5%. How do you suggest some of these goanna have a store, what sort of campaign are you goanna say… how many like, how are they goanna… you know what’s the pop-up of a goanna be some honor to listen the first place, and how many emails, what are the emails goanna be about to engage the people on that list? Drew Sanocki: Yeah, I like to break in ecommerce engagement campaign down into three parts. It’s the lead magnet, which you’ve mentioned there’s a little bit of value that you give up in exchange for the email address. Then there is the welcome sequence, which is anywhere from two to five days worth of emails that go out over time to sort of educate and inform, built up trust. And then, there’s a called the action at the end. And, as far as what I see working for lead magnets… the quickest and easiest in the e commerce is a discount so, 10% off your first purchase, or free shipping on your first purchase. But, you don’t have to start there; other things work really well too. I think things like a free guide – downloadable guide or, a look per curriculum where you can see the products and action, or even some increased service offerings like, “Call and get free consultation.” These are all things that I see ecommerce retailers that don’t want to go straight to discounting, using really well. John McIntyre: Yeah. I mean here’s an element where like you know, I’ve been [inaudible 0:16:50.4] If I’m not ready to purchase, I’m not even sorry for if I want to buy from that site. I’m not goanna be interested in 5% off, I’m not in… like this discount not goanna matter to me until like, “I’m goanna buy something.” But until that point happens, I’m goanna be more interested in some sort of [inaudible 0:17:04.5] or a report, some sort of cool information… that kind of like a hook, something catchy, it’s goanna make you think, “Wow, wow we’re goanna know what that is.” Drew Sanocki: Yeah, you know I think most retailers underestimate subsidy cost and, subsidy cost is a cost that the money you’re giving away to create incentive where the customer didn’t need that incentive. A certain percentage of that customer would buy anyway and yet you’re sending them a 10% off coupon, you’re loosing 10% margin there. So, what can you do on the creative side to get away from that 10% discount? How do you get that person excited to buy? What kind of information or content do you give that person or increase service [0:17:43.6] End The post Episode #94 – Drew Sanocki on Skyrocketing Your Ecommerce Sales With Savvy Email Marketing Techniques (bust out your notebook for this one.. GREAT content) appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Jan 20, 2015 • 32min

Episode #93 – Matt Paulson on The Most Undervalued, Unknown, Profit-Piling Email Marketing Insights You’ll Ever Hear

Matthew Paulson. Name sound familiar? If you’ve been following the show at all it will. Matt laid down the rules of entrepreneurship for you back in episode 69. The fact that back then he had 120k email subscribers, Sending out 4 million emails per month…. …I think it’s fair to say we took what Matt had to say seriously. Well Matt’s back, His business has grown, He’s still sending out millions of emails per month, Every month. And along the way he’s picked up quite a few best practices… …mainly from going through the fire. Trial by error, And then coming out on top. So Matt is here today to talk about how to make your email more profitable for you. And not just with general email marketing tips. He’s here to talk email deliverability. And the best part? It’s not rocket science. It’s easy. Anyone and their momma can do it, So I would highly recommend checking out what this email deliverability stuff is all about. Matt also reveals bulletproof email marketing staples and tools that all online businesses must have (one that I implemented the second I got off our Skype call). So learn how to set yourself up properly, AND… …how to ensure you’re getting into inboxes, in today’s episode. Because it’s like, once you’re inside their inbox, Game over. Once you go inbox, you never go back (unless you eff it up). So get in that inbox. Get your emails opened. Get your ads clicked on, Get people engaging in your content, And get more customers, faster. This is what email deliverability does. Bookmark this episode. Here, I’ll post the link for you again: https://www.dropdeadcopy.com/93 You’ll def. want to come back ready and logged into your ESP, And with a notepad out to tack off one by one all the awesome insights Matt shares with you today. In this episode, you’ll discover: the six best practices to email marketing brilliance (learn what Matt swears by) why sending mail from a regular SMTP or from your WordPress site through a plugin is a really bad idea. the benefits of having a solid ESP to watch your back (it’s nice to have best-practice reminders and constant IP reputation checks done for you to keep you performing tip top and your deliveries at their proper destinations) at the end of the day… you get what you pay for (take this into consideration even more so the bigger your list) how best practices; doing all the right things, even the simplest things, leads to big upticks in revenue when you have a large list (a percentage increase in conversions can be quite an income spike when you got a huge list) the best ways to get people to open your emails, interact with your emails, and just take that action you want them to inside of your email the importance of knowing what your ESP will and will not do for you and how to find this out (Aweber won’t set up your SPF (standard policy framework) records, so should you do this yourself then?) the reasoning behind having a second ESP as a backup to your first (it’s all in the term: deliverability… 100% of the time. You can never be too sure) that if you’re not going the ESP route, having a dedicated server and your own private setup can get you that 100% deliverability (just recognize that all the problems land on your shoulders, and if you say, get blacklisted, you can’t go running to customer support for a quick resolution) the vitalness behind engaging with your list and the deliverability drawbacks from not engaging enough (the main ISP’s know if people engage with your emails; read-through rates, clicks, number of opens, etc) the fact that ESP’s know when you’re sending out duds & why you need to be actively be removing bad email addresses from your list (it’s ok to wait 2 or 3 bounces before you remove them) Matt’s 3 email warning sequence and a post de-activation email that works on getting some of his stale emails back to life the importance to setting up your DNS verification records (something that most ESPs don’t do if you’re sending out from your own domain name) why you should know about things like DMARC, reverse DNS and domain keys (you’re running a business, learn these bells and whistles that are what really get your biz cranking for you) the explanation behind the rise of your Domain Reputation importance the threshold number that Matt recommends when you reach it… to switch to a dedicated IP address (don’t let other list owner’s bad habits hurt your deliverability when you’re dealing with big numbers and still on a shared hosting ESP) Mentioned: SendGrid (what Matt uses) Matt’s previous McMethod interview SenderScore.org (check deliverability) MultiRBL (check to see if your IP address is on any blacklists. Check both domain and IP address. Blacklisting is more common that you think… easy to get off them though) Aweber Infusionsoft Mailchimp Drip (what I use for most my email marketing) Mail Monitor App (what I use to check for deliverability) Return Path (high-end deliverability and more service) SendGrid Deliverability Guide (great guide for you to download right now if you want it) Matt’s blog Contact him on Twitter too :@MatthewDP Matt@mattpaulson.com: or feel free to email him with any questions you want to ask him Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre: Hey it’s John McIntyre here, the auto responder guy and it’s time for episode 93 of the McMethod email marketing podcast where as I said last week you’ll gonna discover just how to get more sales how to get more customers you know. This is an email marketing podcast but at the end of the day this is just marketing. It’s just getting sales. What you learn here, you can apply to anything. You can apply to email marketing, you can apply to your sales page, you can apply to your Webinar on and on and on and on, right. And as you spend more time with this stuff, as you go through this podcast you’ll discover that a lot of this stuff is carry over, okay so you can learn about email, it’s gonna make you a better sales page writer for example. And that’s what I love about it, okay. So today, I’ll be talking to again Matt Paulson, and Matt came on the show awhile back to talk about some rules of entrepreneurship, and today he’s back. He’s email me a little while back saying that he’s gotta one hundred and twenty thousand email subscribers, he’s sending four million emails a month, and during the time you know he’s been growing his business, he has discovered a few things about email deliverability because when you’re sending four million emails a month to one hundred twenty thousand different people, you’ll gonna run into some issues in terms of how to get your email into the inbox past the promotions tab, how do you gonna avoid there’s bounces, how do you avoid bad reputation with Google and Yahoo and those kind of things, If you got too many spam complaints. So all these different things add up and I said when you sending that many emails to that many subscribers, just a few small percentage of point bumps and your say open rates, or your deliverability rates can mean tens of thousands of dollars or if not more to the business so it’s an amazing, what a really valuable topic to learn about so he’s on the show today to talk about that. Together show notes for this episode of the email marketing podcast go to the mcmethod.com/93. Now I got a quick McMasters inside of the week this week it is what software should you use for your auto responder. I may have mentioned this before but I feel it’s worth repeating because I get ask this a lot, by clients, by people emailing me. Everyone worries, or wonders, or both about what software they need. Should they use Aweber, Drip or infusionsoft or you know something like salesforce or exacttiger like a what level what software should you use. And the answer is gonna there based on the size of the business and the complexity of the operation. However, generally speaking, just pick one. They all do pretty much the same thing. If you wanna fully fake the rm, go get something like exacttiger or salesforce. If you just want like a basic auto responder aweber will do fine, drip will do fine. If you want some you know marketing automation stuff go with something like drip. You’ve also got active campaign, but don’t stress over this. Don’t think that software is the most important decision here. The main thing if you wanna get email marketing set up on your business is just to start sending the damn emails. It’s not to get the perfect software. They all do very much the same thing in slightly different ways. But at the end of the day, it’s really is the same thing. Just pick one, go with it, get it running, that’s it, okay. Now the other thing is reviews, I love reviews. I eat them for breakfast when I can. Seriously though, when I wake up and I check my computer I look at the podcast and just it really does make my day. It does make this worthwhile. You can really tell that I do enjoy this, I do have fun recording this podcast. Chasing out to guess on how do I get to have fun on myself like this, but I also love to get the feedback and the reviews. Some of it emails from people sending mail. I love this bit. And those are great, I love those emails bit a bit, but when it comes to the podcast the best thing that you can do if you wanna say thank you, show your support, jump over into itunes, or switch to Android, if you have an android phone. Jump over to itunes, search for the McMethod email marketing podcast and leave me a review. Make it four or five stars if you can, or not, whatever floats your boat and tell me what you think about the show and I’ll wake up and I’ll eat for breakfast. I’ll just smile feel happy and joyful about the day, okay. So yeah that’s it for now. Now, let’s get in on this interview with Mr. Matt Paulson on how to increase your email deliverability It’s John McIntyre here, the auto responder guy. I’m here with Matt Paulson. Now Matt was on the podcast awhile back episode 69 and we talked about the seven deadly sins of first time entrepreneurship about a book that he was publishing which went out a little while ago but Matt actually hit me up recently to say that he is learned all these stuff about deliverability how to get you know emails into the inbox not because he is working non-stop or anything like that but because he’s just a guy who’s sending a huge amount of emails. So he hit me up, hey I got all these notes how about we get on them we talk about it. We talk about deliverability and how to really overcome some of the common I guess limitations when you try to send email and try to get email into someone’s inbox. So, that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. How to get up I guess more open rates right. At the end of the day it means more sales. So, that’s a simple, simple side of it. So Matt, how are you doing today? Matt Paulson: I’m doing well. So I publish daily investment newsletter and we have I think about a hundred seventeen thousand people and I get that daily email. So it ends up being between three or four million emails a month we send out to our subscribers. To we have sent out a lot of email. We’ve been to a couple of different email service providers. It’s kind of a long way in the last three years I’ve been sending out this newsletter. I’ve learned just a lot of different things and kind of the best practices mostly by making a lot of mistakes and having ESPs all at me but I think I started to get it figure it out and I thought it might be a good idea for us to talk about some of those things because there are a lot of people who send a lot of email. You know they listen to the podcast and hopefully they can benefit on some of this stuff as well. John McIntyre: One thing, I’m curios about is probably you know for the biggest objection that we gonna you know we gonna fully find here with someone listening is that you know I’m not technical enough, you know, that’s you know, I’m not saying that for me but I mean like someone’s gonna listen to dmm, this is all great and everything but I’m not a techy guy. So is this stuff you’ll gonna share today, is that something that anyone can implement or do you need to be like a tech wizard to kind of set this up. Matt Paulson: For the most part, you don’t need to be a tech wizard. You just need to be able to log with your web host account. You know make changes to your dns record which is just quirking around. There are a lot of guides to do it, and step by step online to do these things. A lot of it is not rocket science some of it you might need to develop or you need to change your software but for the most of it you can do eighty percent of yourself without much help from anybody. John McIntyre: Cool! Okay. So let’s get into it man. Where’s ah, I mean you’ve brought up these amazing notes. Where would you like to start? You’ve got the? Matt Paulson: So it’s broken down into I think six different things I guess. They kind of best practices, you know, what you should be doing. The first thing is that you should really use an email service provider. So this is something like Syngrade, aweber, mailchimp, drip, manger. You know, some of them will just send your email on your behalf. Some of them will kind of manage your mail this to, like mailchimp and aweber do. So there’s different levels to kind of depending on what you need obviously. And I’m guessing most people that subscriber of this podcast already have one of those. But, I think its, if you’re sending mail from your own server like your using sendee, your smtp, or you’re using some wordpress plugin that sends email from your server that’s just really a bad idea. So basically when you pay somebody to send your email on your behalf or to manage your studio or bought a nice things for you, I actually send grade. I pay thirteen heavy box a month to send that much three or four million emails. And it’s really a situation of where you get what you pay for. Send good words a lot. Words would have a lot of different stuff for me which is really nice. They monitor blacklist daily, blacklist on a daily basis. They monitor my IP reputation, they just make sure I’m following all the best practices. They make sure I’m on the whitelist. These are all things that we’ll talk about but when you’re paying kind of high end ESP they kind of worry about the best practices for you. They’ll gonna make your life a little bit easier. Once you have a big email list, if you can you know follow best practices and you know improve your open rates five or ten percent just by doing all the right things that atleast you didn’t throw your money so it’s, in my opinion, it’s definitely worth the investment to pay for your good servers. John McIntyre: Right. One thing, I just want to touch a couple of things here but the first thing is what’s really the benefit here in the long run. We’ve talked about more sales but can you just give a bit more, like what’s it done for you by focusing more of this stuff, how is your business changed thanks to all these stuff? Matt Paulson: It certainly has. I think by trying to do all the right things, certainly my daily newsletter never short on the things you can for, so you open a few box, they see it, they open it, they engage with the content, they click on ads, they signup for premium subscriptions, and instead of the higher rates, it’s kind of a morse plane factor, you just get more, people tend to do more you want them to do. More people that see your messages is obviously the better, and lead to more sales, more customers, and more things you are looking for. John McIntyre: If you think about it, if you think about the list is like a tree or a plant in a garden, focusing on the stuff that we are talking about today, it’s a bit like putting fertilizer in the garden. You gonna get more from your crop, more from that plant that you’re growing which is your email list. Right? Matt Paulson: Yup. There’s a couple other things that ESPs, you should truly have a good idea on what they’re doing for you and what they are not doing for you. Like aweber, they’re not gonna setup your spf records or anything like that for you. You should kinda know what their best practices are and kinda know what they are doing for you and not what they are not doing for you. So if there’s something they’re not doing then you know you should do it yourself. You just basically have to ask them, and say do you do this, do you do this, do you do this? Or show them the website, or if they don’t, then you know that there’s some that you need to worry about. Then the other kind of related tip is, if you’re sending a lot of email and specially if you’re not like doing a dub walk in newsletter that’s really boring, if you’re doing anything that’s aggressive, I suggest having a backup email service provider. So we have seven grade set up as primary, but you know I have Syngrade set up, with a dedicated IP address there, just in case anything ever happen to my account. I used to send email through amazon. There was an issue where they thought my newsletter was kind of penny stock scam which obviously this isn’t, but, when you have maybe a Pakistani customer service person that does not understand the financial markets, trying to decide whether or not you are violating their policy or not, they’re not always going to get, always all that’s consistent with what your term actually say. So, in order to just make sure I’ve got that one hundred percent uptime and deliverability, I have it set up so I could switch over to Manger any second if I need to. John McIntyre: One thing here, is that there’s a guy that I talked quite a bit via email, Atien. I spoke to raise a podcast here, he goes to by Carl, anyway, I just mentioned his name coz I know he’s probably gonna listen to this at some point, and I know that he sends mail, via his own, he is very big on his own, having his own server. We’ve kinda gone back and forth, and he saying “man, you’re giving up all this extra sales or extra open rates on whatever by just sending from an email server instead of setting it up on your, I mean he is setup as far as one has a private server, so he is in with his own server with his own software and everything like that, and apparently you know gets a hundred percent deliverability and he is really really big on that. So what would you say to someone like him in that position? Matt Paulson: You know, you can do that if you’re going to be worried about all of the different things we have talked about in this podcast. If you want to do that, that’s fine, but then you have to recognize that hey, I need to become the expert in deliverability. If there is the problem, it’s my fault and there’s nobody I can ask. So if you know, for me it’s a Matter of focus. I’d rather be the guy focused on your writing the emails and getting them sent out, versus being the guy that’s making sure that it actually get there. I’d say if I’m in a blocklist, like I got a rise on my blocklist last weekend, It was just sent to me by my dedicated provider, hey take care of this. An hour later he said, don’t worry about it. You’re off the list. It’s nice not to worry about those kind of stuff, just much pure headaches, in my opinion. You can certainly do it the other way, but that’s not what I have chosen to do and I think that’s made my life easier as a result. John McIntyre: Okay. Okay. So it’s a case of, I mean, you can do it, but you are really splitting your energy a lot more. So if you know, If you got plenty of time, do it. But, in most cases, your time is better invested, better spent on the emails and growing the business itself and not just the email list. Matt Paulson: Absolutely. Let’s move on to, I guess to list number two, and that is list engagement really Matters. So the big four ISPs that’s Google, Yahoo, AOL and Hotmail or Outlet.com. They’re paying a lot more attention to whether or not users are engaging their emails. They only have a limited amount of data available. So they know if people open your emails, and click a link to your emails, and maybe replied your emails. Those are the only ways that people, or the email service providers can tell you know whether or not that was a message you actually wanted. So if they see that people are opening your emails, clicking through your emails, they’re replying to your emails, then they know that messages from John’s email list are people that actually want because they’re highly engaged with them. Just sending how much emails, and nobody is opening them, clicking to them, replying to them, then they’ll know that these are emails that people probably don’t read a lot of and that means that your messages are less likely to get into the box, and more likely get stuck in the spam folder. Go ahead . John McIntyre: This is a lot of huge stuff. The stuff that I do, we did a podcast with entrepoor, the postmaster there, so the deliverability over there. And he mentioned a few things. Now what I have done is I was asked to reply to the first email. And then the second email is just the same thing. The first email is like reply and answer this questions. Email number two, did you get my email? And by the way, can you just answer now the question for me. So I replied to the first. It’s amazing that I actually replied to those emails. And then these emails throughout the rest of the sequence that do get replies maybe every few weeks , and there’s always a link going somewhere. It’s not always to a sales page, it could be to a blog post. That are some of the ways that I’m doing it. Matt Paulson: Absolutely. So the other kind of good engagement tip is to actively remove bad email addresses from your list. So if somebody clicks his spam complaint button and then you get that spam report through your ESP or if they have a hard bounce and the email service provider says the adds is a bad address, you should take them off your list right away. Soft bounce means that their inbox is full or something stupid like that, you can use your wait, your two or three bounces before you remove them. I’ve seen people that have thirty percent of their emails are bad, they keep mailing to them even though that like they’re never going to get through. The spam list in the ESPs, they look for this kind of thing. They’re actually like old email addresses that become what we call honey teapots. And they know that people are mailing to these old addresses that nobody has checked in years. That means you’re probably not doing your job cleaning up your list, and that’s another sign to them that you’re not following best practices, and maybe people don’t want your email. And another thing, if somebody doesn’t open an email from you for like twelve months, you should probably just take them off your list. If people aren’t engaged for that long, and they don’t open a single email or they don’t click a single link, your emails are probably in the dead inbox or probably they are in a folder that nobody ever looks at. I mean it costs you money to have people in your list so if they’re not engaged at all, it’s okay to just take them off the list at that point. John McIntyre: Would you send them an email saying unsubscribe them and then send them an email and saying hey look, you haven’t opened an email from us in twelve months, we just unsubscribed you, If you want to re-subscribe, click it. Matt Paulson: Yup. So what I do is actually I do six months just because based on the amount of emails we sent. So, at the sixth month point, they get like three emails saying hey, if you don’t tell us that you keep wanting this emails by this date, we are gonna take you off the list. So they got three emails and the last one says hey, you are off the list. If you want to reactivate your subscription just click this link. Some people do and a lot of people don’t. John McIntyre: How many do you get to keep? I’m curios. Matt Paulson: What do you mean? John McIntyre: I mean how do you track the success of that? Matt Paulson: I guess I don’t. I guess I couldn’t see what’s the open rate for that email, but I know it does get some people. I think sometimes people like they aren’t just as open because they might only have text email and thay they don’t ever click the images button. So that’s kind of a good way to catch those people that might be active even if the software says that they aren’t. John McIntyre: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Matt Paulson: Let’s move on to thing number three. That’s setting up your DNS pre application records. So there’s different technologies. Systems that people set up over the years. Just simply to say that hey, this email is from this IP address and this domain name. The first one was called SPF, and that stands for Sender Policy Framework, and that basically says does this domain name have permission, or does this IP address have permission to send from this domain name. So it’s basically signs your email saying, yup, this is from this IP address from Mattpaulson.com, and Mattpaulson.com says this IP address can send on their behalf. So this is something that, like I don’t think Aweber or a lot of those services don’t do by default if you’re sending by your own domain name. I definitely recommend making sure you have this done regardless who send your emails, whether or not it’s you or somebody else. John McIntyre: So you really need to sign up, so I’m sending through, I’m using drip right now, I’m not sure if they do it, but I have to go into my hosting account and setup SPF records for my domain, right? Matt Paulson: Yup. Obviously they don’t have access to your DNS records so they can’t do it for you. John McIntyre: Ahh.. Matt Paulson: Make sure that you had it done. The second technology there is called DKIM, basically short for DomainKeys, and that will do kind of a public/private key encryption that basically proves that every individual message will be signed by your server to their file and it’s from your domain name and it’s not forged. John McIntyre: How do you set that up? Matt Paulson: It’s basically the same process so like Aweber or whoever, they’ll provide you this like the records to put in. And you just have to do it. And make it your file and make sure your text is working. John McIntyre: And that what D-K-I-M. Matt Paulson: Yup. John McIntyre: Okay. Matt Paulson: And the newest one is called DMARC. And that basically specifies a kind of built upon SPF and DKIM. It just says, what should we do with the emails that kind of fail this test. So you can say if it doesn’t match my SPF records just go ahead and delete the email. Or you can say if it doesn’t match my SPF records, treat it as gray mail, maybe it’s okay, maybe it’s spam or you just say let it all through, which obviously nobody will recommend. DMARC is probably least necessary than the other two. John McIntyre: Do you use DMARC? Matt Paulson: I don’t. I think if you do it wrong it can always screw things up. John McIntyre: That’s what I was thinking. Yeah, If you forget one of the domains you used to send emails, it’s in an email account somewhere. All of a sudden your emails might go missing. Matt Paulson: Yeah. So I haven’t set that up yet. I might at some point in the future but SPF and DKIM are kind of ninety percent of the way there. John McIntyre: And does this make like you know, when you set this up, is this gonna generally make a boost or an increase in deliverability rates? Matt Paulson: I think it does because our source provider check for that. They look for signs that your domain name, your IP address is valid. They might look for SSL certificate. They might check to make sure there is actually a mail server there. Or they might check your DNS verification records. All the things like that just basically are the signs that this is a real website and a real domain that the people are actually using and those are definitely at the top list. John McIntyre: Okay. Matt Paulson: So there’s kind of secondary to that. This really Matters if you are running your own mail server. It’s called reverse DNS. With DNS records or points, your domain name to this IP address, and the reverse DNS basically says that this IP address belong to this domain name. A lot of mail servers will reject email that’s not set up properly. I’ve seen that in my own bonds records. When I was sending mail on my behalf, I’d see that three or four percent of messages just get rejected because that wasn’t set up. If for whatever reason you’re sending out mail on your behalf and you have a dedicated IP address, your web host can set it up for you. I don’t think you can do it yourself. But just ask them and they’ll do it for you. So, in the even that you are doing that, that’s definitely something to get done. John McIntyre: Okay. We’re up to tip number four. Matt Paulson: Yup. And that is to manage your IP reputation, your domain reputation and keep an eye on block bust. So the reputation of your IP address, that used to be the main focus, but now the trend is kind of moving towards the domain reputation because, if you are a spammer, you have a domain name, you can always switch to a different IP address if you get blocklisted. So now, it’s really more under the domain name. It’s kind of where the focus is. If you are on a poor shared IP addresses like if you’re with Amazon SES, MailChimp or any of those, if you don’t have a dedicated IP address, they actually take care of it for you. You are sharing the IP address with five or six other different people. It could be that they worry about it for you but it could be bad that somebody else’s scam will have a negative effect on the IP address which will be a bad news. I think If you have any decent amount of mail, one hundred thousand emails a month or any close to that, at that point, I think you should have a dedicated IP address. That way, your authority and reputation is based solely on what you sent and it won’t be affected by anybody else. There are a couple of tools that can really help you monitor these things. One is a server called senderscore.org and that is put on by ReturnPath which basically gives your IP address kind of a score to say this is how legit we think your IP address is, senderscore.org. And there’s a really cool to check blocklist, it’s called MultiRBL. It basically check over a hundred different blocklist to see if your domain name or your IP address is on blocklist. Basically what happens for a couple of minutes is hey, these are the issues we found, go take care of them. You are to search for both your domain name and your IP address. And if you find yourself in a blocklist, it happened once, I get blocklisted maybe once a week by some little known name blocklist that nobody uses but I took care of it anyway. So I just have my assistant, on a weekly basis, check my IP addresses and my domains against that list and if there’s an issue, she tells me and then I just go ahead and fill out the form. It usually takes about two minutes for each one, but it’s really easy to get off them. They are like more for people who, oh I don’t bother to take the time to maintain their reputation, so if you are not a spammer, then basically you’ll take out the list. John McIntyre: That’s interesting. I just looked up the senderscore for the mcmethod.com and it’s telling me it’s missing the SPF record. I got everything else, looks like, but SPF record’s missing. Matt Paulson: So, you should sign yourself. John McIntyre: We’ll get that sorted. Matt Paulson: So, I guess we’re gonna call the tip number five. It’s called follow best practices. I guess that’s a generic term for everything else that kind of didn’t fit in the everything. One, just be spam compliant, and that it’s really simple to being compliant with that. Basically it’s for your mailing address, if your email have an unsubscribe link, usually we don’t name, don’t fake stuff. Don’t say it’s from Matt Paulson when it is really from John McIntyre. John McIntyre: Bad. Matt Paulson: You can google all the requirements but it’s really simple. It’ll need your name, your address, and then the unsubscribe link basically in. I think you have to identify that, as to commercial emails you can just say this is an advertising email somewhere in the further and you’re fine. John McIntyre: You mentioned unsubscribe links. Do you put them at the top and the bottom or just the bottom? Matt Paulson: I actually do both. John McIntyre: Why is that? Matt Paulson: If I have it on the top, people are going to make this decision whether or not they’re going to click the spam button or the unsubscribe button. So I’d rather have them click the unsubscribe button. It will be easy to get to. In that way they know they’re getting off the list and they’re not just like complaining about me. If they’re clicking the spam button they don’t like my emails. So I’d rather have them click my button and not have a spam report against me. John McIntyre: Right. Right. Okay. Matt Paulson: The other thing with unsubscribes is, Gmail, now at the top, sometimes with a mailing list has a set of unsubscribe link as a header, next to your name, so there’s this new unsubscribe header that’s been out for a while, and that gives you a little kind of deliverability bump. For having that there, it’s like hey, do you want to report spam or you just want to unsubscribe. It’s kind of a nice way to turn what would be a spam report in an unsubscribe switch. John McIntyre: Okay. Matt Paulson: One of the other things to follow best practices is to just format your email properly. So you should have an html version of your email, plain text version of your email. If you’re gonna do an html email, you should have their opening/closing html tag. They look for properly forMatted email. So if you are using ESP, you don’t have to worry about this so much. But If you are sending your own email, you do have to worry about that. So that’s basically that. John McIntyre: Okay. Pretty simple. Matt Paulson: Last and final thing, thing six. Review your deliverability on a weekly basis. If you’re with SynGrade or Manjro or whoever, you should just login to your account on a weekly basis. You know, every Monday and just see how is my deliverability rate the last week. I usually stick around 99.5%, so I know if I drop below that, there might be an issue. So I just go back and look at the previous week. If the rates are good, then I don’t do anything. If the number went down, then I go and check if there is an issue. John McIntyre: One thing I’ve had, because I’m using, I mean a lot of these, you know whether it’s Aweber or other providers, they don’t seem to provide like a deliverability score, it’s probably intense for people working at that. But I’ve been using a site called MailMonitorApp.com, that I’m looking right now. I got good deliverability, at a hundred percent most of the times. Sometimes it’s 96, 98. The Hotmail is terrible. I got one email here right now that is zero percent at Hotmail, sometimes it’s a hundred, but the average must be like 50 or 60 percent. Matt Paulson: Hotmail, they give you like a green/yellow/red score, and I’m not quite sure how that works exactly. I think there’s a guide about email deliverability about what stuff happen in there, that’s worth checking out. John McIntyre: Hotmail looks like the stricter or the revaluating, a little bit different than the others. Matt Paulson: Yeah. I mean they’re a little bit different. You worry about the blocklist, the little lines, you worry about it so much. But yo do, but you don’t. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah, Okay. Matt Paulson: And the other thing is just check what your open rates are. If you see a big drop in your opens, that may mean the mails got delivered but they all show up in the spam folder and then people aren’t actually click ing through the emails. I like to work back and see like what emails did I send that had that really recuperates and what did I do them for people to take that action. It’s good to look at trends. John McIntyre: Absolutely. I think that’s really a good piece of advice. People should really look at what’s really working for them in the past and then try and replicate that. Because some emails, I mean this looks like a general business sale, I’ve notice for me that people respond really well to templates and checklists and then this is done for you sort of thing. Survive an email about lists and templates, click it, download the templates, say, that gets really high open rate. If the template is in the subject line, and it really high click through rate. If I mention like download an e-book or something, it’s not gonna get the same amount of response. So this is kind of like just a long term. You don’t know just what people will notice what people respond to. Matt Paulson: So, that’s basically it for thing six. So the quick review of the six things is number 1 is use in ESP, number 2 is that list engagement Matters, 3 is setting up your DNS for your verification records, 4 is manage your reputation and keep an eye on blocklist, 5 is to follow your best practices and 6 is to review your email deliverability on a weekly basis. John McIntyre: How do you, coz I use MailMonitorApp.com, do you know of any or do you recommend any service you can recommend for checking the deliverability? Matt Paulson: They check it out for me, so I don’t have to look into that. Very high end one is go to ReturnPath. People there are way greater than me, but they charge like ten thousand dollars a year so I haven’t paid for that yet. They basically make you on the whitelist, so that ISPs will look upon you more favorably. I think if my list were twice as high as it is now, I probably will think about that, but I think it’s not worth me paying ten grand a year yet to do that. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah. Okay, that’s fair. You also mentioned that Syngrade has a nice deliverability guide. Matt Paulson: Yes, they do. Just go to their website or just google syngrade deliverability guide. It’s like a thirty or forty page document. It kind of goes over a lot of what we’ve talked about in this podcast, and then just a lot of best practices that you should follow as well. John McIntyre: Okay. I’ll gonna have a link to that in the shownotes in the mcmethod.com. If you’ll just go to google as well like he said. You can look up syngrade deliverability guide, that’s the first, that’s the pdf there, there are two versions there as well. Matt this has been epic. I think this has been the most like, as far as detail, info-packed podcast, this is probably be right near the top, if not at the very top. You know I’ve got this in front of me. So it would mean writing it down. But If I have a notepad, I would have a lot of pages of notes right now. Matt Paulson: There’s a lot of action stuff. I think if you wanna do one of these things and just start moving in that direction and make sure you have your SPF and DKIM records set up. That’s basic attack ring of email deliverability, so if you don’t have those set up, that would be my first step. John McIntyre: That’s on the list the man. I probably gonna do that. I’ll do that later today. Matt Paulson: Alright. John McIntyre: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing this stuff. If someone wants to learn more about you, maybe they want to contact and ask you a question, you know, if that’s okay with you, where’s the best place for them to go into that? Matt Paulson: There’s a lot of action stuff. I think if you wanna do one of these things and just start I’m on twitter. My user id is Matthewdpdsndiepsnpony. My personal blog, I talk about entrepreneurship, business and technology and stuff like that, it’s Mattpaulson.com. My email address is just Matt@Mattpaulson.com. Feel free to email me. I usually get back to people pretty quickly. John McIntyre: Cool. Cool. Alright I’ll have links. I can set it up in the shownotes at mcmethod.com. Matt, thanks for coming on. Matt Paulson: Absolutely. The post Episode #93 – Matt Paulson on The Most Undervalued, Unknown, Profit-Piling Email Marketing Insights You’ll Ever Hear appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Jan 13, 2015 • 0sec

Episode #92 – Carl Juneau On What It Takes John McIntyre To Grow A Popular Podcast (& Turn It Into A Money Maker)

Get ready for your world to be flipped upside down. Or better yet, I should get ready to have my podcast world turned upside down, Because we got Carl Juneau doing the interview today, …on ME. Yup. It’s episode 92, And after 92 episodes, I think it’s a great idea (Carl’s by the way), To have a long time listener, And fellow online business owner.. ..interview me and ask me questions specifically centered around my podcast production. So instead of Carl asking me these questions for himself, We decided to hop on Skype and bust out a podcast for all the other listeners that would like to learn more about podcasting, ..what I feel about it as a business model, ..as a traffic generating tool, ..how I get it done, And everything else in between. So enjoy this well-played role reversal podcast me and Carl have for you today. He does a great job and even throws a few signature McMethod Podcast lines in there… In this episode, you’ll discover: the discovery that blew me away the most when gathering successful names for interviews (& how to attain names that I thought were unreachable) how I got John Carlton onto my podcast down to the exact intro email conversations (if you’re a copywriter, you know how cool this is) the non-secret to getting anyone onto your podcast (no special quality needed unless you consider being annoying one) that following up is an art form that sometimes just needs to be taken to the next level in order to be effective how podcast fares as a business model if you’re building one right now (you might be surprised of my opinion on this one) the number one strategy I use to get people to listen to my podcast a special, unique and powerful networking trick I have yet to try out at a conference (but I guarantee you it will work for you to grow your power network) the exact gear I use and the gear you’ll need to get a podcast up and running today (and how non expensive you can make it) how to outsource your podcast production to make it both affordable and effective. Mentioned: John Carlton Bob Bly Perry Marshall Terry Dean Me Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre Hey, it’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy, and it’s time for episode 92 of the McMethod email marketing podcast. And the whole point of this podcast is really to talk about email marketing. But it’s been developing and there’s something a little bit different. Oh, it’s just marketing. This is all the same thing, right? Marketing fundamentals. I’m applying it to email marketing, but at the end of the day, what you’re learning here is stuff that you can apply anywhere in marketing, ok? Whether it’s on your sales page, or it could even be in a radio ad, right? It doesn’t have to be with email. This is fundamental marketing principles, ok? Now, today, today’s a bit different. Today, I’ll be talking to Carl Juneau about…well, like I said, it’s a bit different. So, it’s not…I’m not interviewing him, he’s actually interviewing me. He emailed me, we’ve been chatting awhile back, you’ll hear the story in a second. We’ve been chatting for awhile though, and he said, “Hey, John. You’ve done almost 90 podcast now”- this is episode 92. And I’m sure some people out there are wondering, how do you do a good podcast? I mean, how do you get the guests? How do you record it? What sort of microphone do you use? All these different things, and he said, “Why don’t I interview you so people can hear from you about, sort of, your take on podcasts?” And I was like, “Hell yeah, man. Sounds cool, sounds like a cool idea.” So, here we are. You’ll hear him in a minute. We’re going to get on, I’ll give him a sort of a quick little intro, but then we’re going to flip the tables and he’s going to interview me. So today you’re going to discover, not so much just the email stuff, but this is a bit on how I get the guests that I do, how I structure the podcast, how I record it, the exact microphone that I use, some of this stuff. So that if you, too, want to grow your business with podcasting, you can do it with exactly what you’re going to learn here. So, that’s it. To get the show notes for this episode of the McMethod Email Marketing Podcast, go to themcmethod.com/92. Now, I’ve got this week’s McMaster’s insight of the week right here. Now, Julian has been in McMasters since the beginning. He’s one of the members, inside McMasters. Like I said, he’s been there since the beginning, and he has been smashing it. When he first came to me, he was a struggling student trying to put some stuff together, trying to make a little bit of money online so he could fund his studies. And after he went through McIntyre Method email program, and he went through some of the other courses inside McMaster’s, now as of, I think a month or two ago, he’s up to five or six thousand dollars per month with his business. So this has gone from being just a, sort of a side hobby, just paying, you know, helping him pay for his studies, to now, it’s a serious business. It’s still small, but it’s, I mean, it’s taking him along. This is more than just paying for his studies, this is, this is becoming, like, you know, one of those lifestyle businesses. So he can spend more time with his wife and his kids, and do all the things that he wants to do in his life. And I think the insight there is really that, when you take someone like Julian, when you come into a program, whether it’s mine and my training, or anyone else’s, and you sit down and you apply, you execute on it, you’re going to get results. It is that simple. And any successful person is going to tell you something to the same effect, ok? It doesn’t matter whether it’s mine or any of the other email guys out there, or launch guys, or online guys, or whoever. Just make sure that when you pick something, that you execute on it, and you do, and you’re going to get the results sooner or later. There’s going to be bumps, there’s going to be challenges, but you’re going to get there, because that’s what Julian really excels at, is taking action. He’s been absolutely amazing in terms of, you know, he comes to me and says, “John, what do you think I should do with this?” I go, “Uh, try this one.” He goes and does it. A lot of people aren’t like that, a lot of people don’t take that kind of action, they’re not that committed. But Julian is, and that’s why he’s gotten that result. So, if you want some of these, if you want access to the resources that Julian’s used to build his business, you will have to join McMasters. McMasters is, it’s basically a private membership community. There’s access to all the training products I’ve created, including the McIntyre Method, and several other products. Plus, there’s a private forum where you can ask questions from the other members, and myself, I’m in there a lot. And yeah, it’s just a great way to learn. But that’s that. That’s it, themcmethod.com, and in the top menu there’s a link to, I think members. It should be pretty simple to find. I look forward to seeing you in there. Now last thing, and then we’ll get into this interview, is reviews. If you want to help me get the word out about the show, if you really want to make my day, because when I read reviews, it really puts a smile on my face and it makes all this worthwhile, or you can just send me an email and just say thanks. But ideally, please, jump over to, you know, run on over to iTunes and search for the McMethod email marketing podcast, leave me a review, tell me what you think about the show, and you will seriously make my day. Anyway, that’s it for now. Let’s get into this interview with John McIntyre on radio podcast. It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy. I’m here with Carl Juneau, a podcast listener who’s actually been on the list, on the email list, for…I can’t remember, even, maybe since the beginning. Carl showed up, and he just started replying to my emails. I think he came through Ben Settle. And since then, we’ve kind of had this back-and-forth banter about marketing and, especially raw eggs. He doesn’t like the fact that I eat raw eggs. We’ve had a lot of conversations about that, maybe he’ll bring that up today. Anyway, we’re doing a bit of a different podcast today. Carl wanted to flip the tables a bit; instead of me interviewing someone else, he wanted to interview me about podcasting, because he figured, and I think he’s right, that you as the listener might be wondering why podcasting is so cool, why I do it, all that kind of stuff. So, he’s going to be interviewing me in this one, and we’ll see what happens. I’ve never done this before on my own podcast, so I’m not even…I don’t know how this is going to go. We’re going to cross our fingers and hope it rocks. So, that’s that. I’m going to give it over to Carl, because he’s got an intro, since he’s manning the podcast. Carl, how you doing, man? Carl Juneau I’m good, I’m good. What about yourself, John? John McIntyre Fantastic, man. Fantastic. Carl Juneau Yeah, that’s great. John McIntyre It’s good to have you on here. It’s good to, good to…I don’t know. I’m a bit nervous, man. I don’t know what to expect here, but let’s…let’s do it. Carl Juneau Right. It’ll be ok, don’t worry. Raw eggs, though…raw eggs are bad for you, by the way. But let’s do this for another time. So, yeah, my name’s Carl. I’ve been listening to your podcast since day one, and I consider myself, perhaps, one of your greatest fans. I’m a business online2 owner, and, you know, listening to your podcast all this time, I’ve been starting to think maybe I should start my own podcast, and I’ve been wanting to ask you these questions about podcasting. And I thought, well maybe other listeners might benefit from this, and maybe they wonder if they should start a podcast, too. So this is what we’re going to be talking about today. And for the people who don’t know you, I’ve…I wrote a little intro. So here we go. John’s a copywriter from Australia. He started out copying sales letters by hand when he was in the Philippines doing marketing for a hotel in exchange for staying there for free. He then moved to Thailand, branded himself as the Autoresponder Guy, and started his email marketing podcast. His podcast first aired on May 17, 2013, and he’s since published 81 episodes at the time of this recording. He’s had top copywriter guests, including John Carlton, Bob Bly, Michael Thornton, and David Garfinkel. He’s also had top online business owners, like Vishen Lakhiani, James Schramko, and Russell Brunson. And today you’re in for a real treat, because John’s going to reveal his best kept secrets for building a successful podcast, growing your email list with your podcast, and adding money to your bottom line. So, John, please start by telling us a little bit about yourself. Who are you? How did you get started? And what do you do now? John McIntyre I mean, you… Carl Juneau How’s that? John McIntyre I’m impressed, man. I mean, you did your research right there. It’s just strange to be intro-ed on my podcast, but anyway, let’s roll with it. My name is John McIntyre, like you said, who am I? I got started in, like you said, in the Philippines, I mean, it’s a great intro, you know, doing the marketing for the resort. But to bring it to the podcast, I started handwriting sales letters, taught myself to write copy while in the Philippines. That led into a sort of a freelance copywriting business, and around, I think it was, what was it, like, March…April…May…no, that’s right. So what happened, March last year, I’m thinking, I want a product. I’m kind of bored with this client work stuff, I want to have some product and some passive income. So, I go create a product, and because it was the first time I had created a marketing product, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to go, I wanted to hedge my bets. So I was like, well, I’m going to go record a whole bunch of interviews with Andre Chaperon, and Jay White, and these famous copywriters and email marketers, because I thought, even if the product’s not that great, people will at least get the interviews, and they can’t be angry at me. So, I did that. Carl Juneau And, you know, I saw your product, man, and was like, oh, I want these interviews. You were right about that. John McIntyre There you go. And I did the product, did a JV with, you know, Andre promoted it to his list, which I was pretty, I was surprised by it at the time, but that worked out pretty good. But the thing that blew me away the most was how easy it was to get 12 guys to do an interview with me. I mean, it was Ben Settle, Jay White, a whole bunch of, you know, James Schramko, guys that I thought, you know, at that time in my life, unreachable, were just an email away. And just saying, “Hey, do you want to do an interview? I’ve got this product that’s going out, and you’ll get a bit of publicity.” And they’re like, “Yeah, that sounds great.” Then I get them on the podcast, and I get to, basically, it’s like free consulting. You don’t phrase it that way, but I’m like, let’s talk about this, about what I want to talk about, and we get to mention your business at the end of the podcast, and it will go out to, you know, at the end of the interview, and it will go out to a few people who buy the product. And they’re like, “Yeah, sure, that sounds like a great idea!” And then we get on, we hit record, and I just quiz them about my business problems. So, it’s…that’s…so what happened, how that led to a podcast is, pretty much a month or two later I was like, how easy was that? That was just, that was really easy. Maybe I should start a podcast and go after these guys and do interviews with them. How hard can it be? So, yeah, that’s sort of the story of where the podcast started. Does that answer the question? Carl Juneau It does, absolutely, and it answers some of the questions I have later for you. Maybe we could jump right into it. I was wondering, how do you get such high profile guests? I mean, you’ve had John Carlton, who’s one of my personal heroes, Perry Marshall. You had James Schramko twice. As we said, you had Vishen Lakhiani, Bob Bly, Michael Thornton, you had Brian Kurtz, Daniel Levis…I mean, how do you get these guys? John McIntyre Its…this is one of, like, probably the most common questions I get about podcasting from, like when I meet people at conferences, or people email me, and they say, “I’m really impressed with these guests.” And I wish there was some magic secret to it. I wish I could say I was, you know, really cool, or did something special, or had some special, I don’t know, ability. But…I’m just annoying. I email the crap out of these people until they either say, “No, I’m not doing it,” or they say yes. It’s like, well, here’s the exact process I follow, alright? I can get most people via email. If I can’t, I can usually get them on Facebook. So, if I get them on email, I send Carl Juneau Let’s talk about John Carlton, how does that one… John McIntyre How did that one…ok. So I Facebooked him, because I couldn’t find his email address, didn’t know how to do that, so…you know, he’s impossible to contact via email. And I still don’t have his email address, and you’ll find out why in a second. Anyhow, I message him on Facebook, and he says, well…I don’t think he replied at first, but Facebook has that little feature where it tells you if they read your message. So, I think he was reading the message, and- a lot of these guys do read these messages and they don’t always reply. There are some other guys I’ve contacted who I’m still hassling. But anyway, he eventually, so you know, I’d follow up a week later and be like, “Hey man, what about this podcast?” And another week later, “Hey man, what about this podcast?” And a couple weeks later he eventually responded and said, “Talk to my assistant, here’s the email address.” So I email the assistant, and now it’s on email, and I think at first she didn’t really reply. I could probably bring up the email and tell you exactly what I said, and then how emails I actually sent them. Carl Juneau So how many times did you write you John on Facebook? Four, five, six, the way I’m getting this? John McIntyre I don’t know, man. It could have been, I vaguely remember it was, like, 20 or 30 times, with the email… Carl Juneau Oh my God. Ok. John McIntyre Yeah, yeah. Carl Juneau So that’s really the trick, is you just, you never let go. John McIntyre I mean, pretty much, man. You just, like, yeah. Like I said, there’s no secret to it, you just email, and email, and don’t, I mean, I don’t do it every day. I mean, you could do that. But I do it every, you know, there’s a thing in my to-do list every Friday, or every, I think it’s Mondays right now, it’s “go through the podcast label in gmail”. So what happens is, say, I email John Carlton’s assistant and maybe she doesn’t reply. But I’ve, before I send it, or after I’ve sent it, I label that email as podcast, and then a week later I come back and I go through my podcast tab, and anyone that hasn’t replied to me, I send them another email and just say, “Hey, did you get my email?” Carl Juneau Ok, so you follow up once a week. John McIntyre Yeah. Sooner or later they…here we go. Diane, John Carlton’s assistant. Looks like I sent her three emails at first, and then she replied, and then I replied with her with the details and then she forgot about me again. So I went and emailed her again, and I was like, “Hey Diane, we spoke on Facebook, here’s the details…” And then another email: “Diane, any update on this?” And then a week later: “Diane, can you get back to me on this? I’d love to know if John’s interested.” And then a week later: “Hey, Diane, any update on this?” A couple weeks later: “Diane? (question mark)” And then another week later: “Diane, any update? I’ll keep following up.” And then another week later: “Diane, any update on this?” I just kept saying, you know, more or less the same thing. And then, I think it was after, I think it says here, something like 10 emails, 13 emails or something, she’s like, “Hi John, thanks for getting back to me. Thanks for writing in, let’s see if we can get this interview scheduled.” So then we finally scheduled it. So that’s…I mean, he was a tough nut to crack, right? That’s not typical, but that’s how you get some of these guys. Like, John Benson’s coming up. Well, actually, by the time this episode goes live, John Benson would have been live, maybe a month or two ago, or something? And, I mean, he was, I think he was a bit tricky to get in touch with. So, some of them are hard, some of them aren’t. Carl Juneau Wow, well I’m kind of surprised. You know, I said four or five times because that would have been the, probably, the number of times that I would have followed up with John, or anyone. But you’re saying you followed up, like, 30 times before you got anywhere. John McIntyre You just keep going. Carl Juneau And that’s probably the secret, then. John McIntyre I reckon that’s the total secret, man. You just keep following up and never stop. Carl Juneau Right, and it doesn’t, like, you don’t have to write three-page letters. Just “Diane? (question mark)”, you know? It seems… John McIntyre Exactly, exactly. Like, if you keep, I figure that, you know, you treat them like people. So if you reply and you give them this long-winded sales pitch about why they should get on the podcast, you sound like a freaking needy, you know, 16-year-old dude who’s trying to persuade some girl to sleep with him. You really just need to be like, “Hey, look. I sent you an email, did you get it?” So, I’ve still been going on Harlan Kilstein. I think we’ve had, you know, 40 or 50 emails, and, you know, he won’t reply for 20 emails, and then we’ll have a bit of banter for a few, how he’s telling me he’s not going to do it, he’s never going to do it, or whatever. And then we go back, you know, and then he disappears for awhile, and he eventually gets back to me. I’m working on him, so. Carl Juneau Good, ok. That answers it. Ok, let’s zoom out a little bit, because the first set of questions I wanted to ask you was about podcasting in general as a strategy to build your business. You know, I’m a business owner. Will starting a podcast make me money? Or should I be doing something else? What’s the most effective thing, you know? Because everybody wants to do the 40 hour work week, so what should I be spending my time on? Do you think podcasting is one of the top strategies for growing a business? John McIntyre No, not at all. Carl Juneau Are you serious? John McIntyre I’m serious, man. If you want to be at a link, if you want to make, like sales today, or make money today, podcasting is a terrible idea. But…and I found, in my case, I found it really hard to connect the podcast to ROI, in terms of, like, I can’t really track how many people are coming to my site, and signing up to my list, and buying my products via the podcast. You know, because people just go and type in, you know, the mail URL. And I could have a coupon code, and there’s some tricky things I could do, but, for the most part, it’s quite difficult to track the ROI. With that said, however, you know, a year and a half into it, we’re coming up to episode 81, or 82, whatever just went live, and from, like, a long-term business point of view, it’s absolutely incredible. It’s opened doors for me in ways that I had no idea. It’s getting me access to guys, and networks, and groups of people that I would never have thought I’d be able to get into, you know, unless, you know, for like, five, ten years, something like that. Because people see me as this, you know, people listening to this, this is kind of like the magic source of podcasting, is, if I can get on the phone with John Carlton and talk about marketing with him, or Perry Marshall and Bob Bly, and hold my own, and you know, have a bit of banter back and forth, and build rapport with them, that’s me showing the listener that I know my shit. And it’s not me persuading someone, it’s not me using sales copy, it’s not me, you know, using tricks to make them think that. I’m literally demonstrating the fact that I know what I’m talking about, and that’s what makes podcasting so powerful. It’s not, you know, that, the catch is that it’s not an instant thing. If you want money today, or this month, go and do, you know, take some money and go and do paid traffic, and build a sales forum and test it. That’s probably the fastest, if you’re willing to risk the money, that’s probably the fastest way, I’d say, to get money online. But from a long-term perspective, podcasting is freaking awesome. Carl Juneau Ok, interesting. Alright. Let’s get back to podcasting itself, and the interviews you do. How do you decide which questions you ask you guests? John McIntyre I, I mean, I told you before this, I actually, when I first got started podcasting, I used to plan things out. You know, I used to, I’d do a, like, a 15 minute, half an hour, you know, research on the guest. These days, I don’t do any of that. I don’t prepare, I don’t do research. And this applies to everyone. I think what I’ve realized for myself, what works for me, and this is not going to work, this is not necessarily going to work for everyone else, but what my groove is, what works for me, is I get on the phone and I have, like, a five minute chat with the guest about something. I usually have an idea of what they’re about, or what their thing is. Like yesterday I spoke to one of the guys from Kajabi. And I knew it was a membership platform, but I’ve never used it, and I don’t really know much about it. So I just sort of got a bit of handle on what to talk about first, got a couple ideas. And I don’t even make questions, I just write a couple bullet points. And then we do a, you know, it’s just like, alright, let’s hit record and let’s have a conversation and see where it goes. And that, to me, has led to more interesting podcasts than planning it out. You know, an interesting one was Bond Halbert. We did, a couple weeks back, you know, a month or two ago, something like that. That was a very casual podcast, I didn’t plan that out at all, but I had a number of people come back to me after that and say that that was one of the best podcast episodes they’d heard. So, it’s, and..you know, I’ve had other times where I’ve, you know, put all this effort into it, and really planned it out, thinking about the questions, and it doesn’t really resonate at all. So I’ve found that what really works is being really honest, being vulnerable, getting onto topics, like, getting deep into stuff, like, getting really, like, authentic. Talking about, like, dreams, and goals, and feelings, and emotions, and all that, instead of just talking about here’s how to optimize a landing page. Carl Juneau Good tip. Awesome. Next question: what’s your strategy, what has been your number one strategy to get more people to listen to your podcast? How do you draw your audience? John McIntyre Hmmm, I mean… Carl Juneau I mean, you ask people for reviews on iTunes. Is that the best strategy? John McIntyre I honestly don’t know. I haven’t put that much– I don’t put that much effort into promoting the podcast, and I know I should. What I do do is, from the start I released three episodes at once. That gets you into, that usually gets you into new and noteworthy, because someone listens to one, if they like it they’re going to download the other two, so you get a bump in downloads. But other than that, all I’ve really done for the podcast is publish it each week, made it really easy to find on the website, and every week I email the list about it. That’s, yeah, that’s pretty much all I…I know what I want to do moving forward, is set up a Facebook campaign and just rotate a different podcast every three days to them. I just haven’t, and spend, you know, I don’t know, 10, 20, 50 bucks a day. Maybe track the email conversions on it. It’s going, like I said, it’s going to be quite hard to track. I mean, you can sort of correlate that to ROI, but it’s a little bit tricky because it’s, you know, it’s like a front end thing. Carl Juneau I’ve seen Ben Settle set up a different website. You know, he’s got bensettle.com, and he’s got bensettlepodcast.com, I think. So now, on his podcast, he tells people to go to bensettlepodcast.com, so I’m guessing that any signups that he gets on the lists over there, you know, he attributes to his podcast. That would be an easier way to track ROI. John McIntyre Yeah, there’s ways to do it. Like, if I did a Facebook campaign, I could use, you know, tracking links, UTM codes, in the links, and I could find out how many opt-ins the Facebook campaigns are getting. But it’s not, it hasn’t really been a priority right now. Like, right now, what I’m doing day-to-day when we’re recording this is sort of setting up some technical stuff, like moving a separate payment processor, the sales funnel, some affiliate tracking for the community, McMasters, the community that I have. So once that’s all done, then I want to…that’s when I want to go back. Right now, all the Facebook stuff’s paused, I haven’t been focusing on it, but I’m getting all the backend stuff. So once that’s don’t, I’m going to go back to Facebook and fire up the campaigns for the sales forum, for the podcast. That’s another cool idea. This is not podcast related, though. Here’s what you do. Let’s say you get into, like, trafficking conversions, or any of these, like, I went to a conference recently in Bangkok, and one thing I didn’t do this time that I think would be great for a conference is, let’s say you go, and maybe you’re a speaker, maybe you’re not. But you want to find a way to get yourself known among the guests. You find a way to scrape a list, or maybe just go through the guest list and find everyone on Facebook, get a VA to do it, create a custom audience on Facebook, and then create five, you know, really strategic pieces of content that make you look like a freaking bad ass, and then rotate five, you know, these five pieces of content to them every three, four, five days, or whatever to this audience one or two months out from the conference. And then when you get to the conference and you introduce yourself, they’re like, “Oh, yeah. I saw you on that podcast. You’re that guy that did X Y Z.” Something like that, I’ll try it. Carl Juneau Good one, good one. I think you can do all sorts of crazy stuff with Facebook, but, maybe we should start another podcast about this. We’re, I think we only have a couple minutes left, so I’d like to ask you a few technical questions. My first one was: what microphone do you use to record your podcast, and where did you buy it? John McIntyre I use a, oh, we’re not doing video, I was going to show the video thing, but I use a Logitech, it’s like a, it’s literally a $20 Logitech headset that, like, a USB headset. And I’ve done podcasts in, on the side of, like, busy city streets. I’ve don’t podcasts with motorbikes going past, and you can hear the motorbike in the background. The first time I did one with Ben Settle, you could hear chickens in the background, and he’s like, “What the hell is that? Is that a rooster?” And I’m like, “Yep, welcome to Thailand.” So, yeah. I mean, the reason I mention it, and the reason I sort of emphasize it is people think you need this, like, big microphone or, like a boom stand and all that crap, and like, I’m using a $20 mic. I’ve done this for every single episode I’ve recorded, and it, you know, you whack some compression on there, and some, a bass booster. You can do this in Audacity, or any sort of radio editing. Audacity’s a free one, so, like, free software, you can make yourself sound like a radio voice in a $20 headset. It’s pretty easy. Carl Juneau Excellent. That was my next question. So which program do you use to record your podcast, and you seem to be doing some editing with them afterwards? John McIntyre Right, so what happens is I do, the recording happens with something called Scribe Recorder. It’s made by a company called eCamm- E-C-A-double M. So if you go, like, eCamm call recorder, I think it’s eCamm.com, you can download, like, it’s like a little plug-in or an add-on for Skype. It’s, like, $20 from memory. And that will allow you to record Skype calls. One quick tip, though. If you do download that, one of the crazy things is that it records in, like, .mov format, which is, like, a single track or something. So when you first listen to it you can only hear the other person’s voice, and it’s like, man, I think I messed up the whole podcast and only recorded one side. But if you convert it to mp3, it actually works ok. Carl Juneau Oh. So you’re manually converting every podcast into mp3? John McIntyre Well, yeah, so what happens is, the software that you get, the Skype call recorder, you have to, it spits out an mov file. It must be a mono or something, I’m not a tech guy when it comes to audio stuff. It’s some sort of file where you can’t hear both tracks at the same time. But if you convert it to mp3, it makes it all into one track and you can hear both voices. So that’s just typical. If you go do it, don’t freak out when you can only hear one voice. And then, as for editing it, you know, I’m on Mac. I use Audacity, which is a free software. You can use, I mean, Audacity does the thing, I used to use– So what I used to do, the work flow, is you get the mp3 out from the call, jump into Audacity, and add, you know, you edit out the umms and uhhs if you’re a bit neurotic like that, and you want to get rid of the uhhs and the umms and make it sound real professional. And then also add, I add EQ, so you get the bass boost, turn the bass up, and then put some compression on there. It really makes you sound real professional. Like, that’s where, that’s you get the radio effect coming in. And then I’d go into Garage Band and just sort of align all the different components, like, here’s the intro, and here’s the sound transition here, and here’s the actual interview, and here’s the outro. So you know, you can use this, there’s paid software as well. I think one’s called, my friend runs a podcast editing agency, and I think they use an Adobe software. I can’t remember what it’s called. But, yeah. It’s paid or free. It’s really easy. And podcasting, you really don’t need much at all. And, what’s great is, I don’t even edit the podcast now. John Manning actually, he’s here in Thailand, Chiang Mai, Thailand with me, he actually edits it. So he’ll be editing, he’ll be listening to this at some point, and he’s going to be editing out the umms and uhhs, and putting the base and the compression in there, too. So what’s great about podcasting is that you can, you now, write up a pretty, just, an SOP, a process document, and then you don’t even have to do it. So, basically, outsourcing is pretty easy, too. Carl Juneau And then last question. How do you post your podcasts on iTunes? Is it any complicated? John McIntyre What you have to do, you get an RSS feed, and…so what you do, so you set up, because you have to set up your podcast on your site with, like, a podcast, like a podcasting WordPress plug-in. And what happens with that, that creates an RSS feed for the podcast. You create a category, like a WordPress category, called podcast. That creates an RSS feed for that category. Then you submit your RSS feed to iTunes. And then what happens, you go back to your, you know, blog, and every time you post a new post in the podcast category, there’ll be a section to add the mp3 in WordPress. And then when you, you know, publish that post, the RSS will update and then that will ping iTunes, that will ping iTunes and iTunes will just update the feed. So iTunes doesn’t, they don’t host any of this stuff. They just index, they’re really just indexing RSS feeds of podcasts. Carl Juneau Great, so that sounds pretty easy. John McIntyre Yeah, super easy. Carl Juneau John, we’re right on time. Thanks. Yeah, I know you say this to your guests all the time. Seriously, thanks a lot for answering these questions. I had a few surprises on the, you know, finding high profile guests, where just persistence is the key, and not, you know some easy-peasy persistence, there’s some hardcore persistence for that. I’ll apply this, and then how podcasting is not a short-term strategy, but like, you found it doesn’t really make you money on the short term, but really opens your doors for the long run. So, I guess that kind of puts it another way in my mind. Thank you. I really see you becoming one of the top email marketing experts in the world. I think you’re doing a great job with this podcast, so keep it up. And I hope other business owners like me listening to this interview were able to make up their minds, or at least help them think about starting their own podcast. So thank you, thank you very much, John. John McIntyre Thanks, Carl. Man, it’s been good to be on the show. Thanks for having me. The post Episode #92 – Carl Juneau On What It Takes John McIntyre To Grow A Popular Podcast (& Turn It Into A Money Maker) appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Jan 6, 2015 • 44min

Episode #91 – Kevin Halbert on Boosting Email Response Dramatically By Simply Using… Moving Images

Before it was Bond. And today we have Kevin on the show. The great and late Gary Halbert’s son, ..is as you might have guessed, Also a marketing genius. When most kids came home from school to watch Ninja Turtles or play Zelda, And others went outside to play, Kevin and Bond studied endless hours of direct marketing instead. (just kidding.. it wasn’t that intense) But Gary did start teaching them at a young age. And even if he didn’t, THE Gary Halbert being your father automatically makes you a marketing guru one way or another. And that goes for Kevin just as much as Bond. Today on the show Kevin gets into how he uses video in email to generate fantastic results. And how he first started giving advice to others seeking marketing help. Kevin’s one of the first to use video the way he does, And his results are practically mind blowing. Not only that, Kevin shares tons of resources, ..both free and paid (& he’s tested them all), To get these moving images working for you on your campaigns ASAP. He also reveals a few click converting tricks that many would not even think to try out in email before… Along with a mindset that especially you, As an email marketer or person who writes any form of copy.. ..must have in order to live a successful legacy In this episode, you’ll discover: the transformative power behind masterminds that will squeeze all that potential out of you (learn exactly how masterminds helps unleash the Gary Greatness in Kevin) that anything and everything in online marketing you are doing right now can be either confirmed or corrected with Gary’s teachings (the late Gary’s teachings all translate to current online direct response marketing) how copywriting’s been such a prized skill ever since the days of ruthless and relentless email spamming (and how the teachings of Gary, Claude and the rest of the direct response greats saved email marketers) why moving images are so vital to have and include in multiple areas of your marketing (emails are a great place) Kevin’s research discovery about HTML5 and how to play video within the email message window on any ESP except Gmail (bonus inside on a fun thing you can do with Gmail instead…) the astonishing 500% open rate Kevin got when using video and animated GIFs for the first time on his whole list multiple ways that you too can learn how to create GIF’s and videos within your email marketing to leverage their converting power a must-know fact about video in emails that you need to know (if you make this simple mistake, your videos won’t work and people will unsubscribe in masses) a special trick Kevin used (and that Bond loved) that got people to click, click, click away inside the email how VSL’s are awesome (they suck you in like Closed Captions in movies… but they’re front and center) why Kevin is not a fan of article generation in emails how storytelling is not only engaging but even more importantly… memorable (and how to utilize similes and metaphors within them) Mentioned: The Gary Halbert All-Star Audio Series The Gary Halbert Letter halbertising.com Dan Kennedy Gary Bencivenga John Carlton iTunes TuneCore Email On Acid Free Video To GIF Converter Amazon S3 (for hosting your videos and GIFs) Alchemy Mindworks GIF Construction Set The Boron Letters Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre: Hey it’s John McIntyre here, the autoresponder guy and it’s time for episode 91 of the McMethod marketing podcast where you’ll discover basically a whole bunch of tips, tricks and strategies to grow your business, get more customers with less time, effort, hassle, anything really that’s just kind of annoying. How to automate that entire sales and marketing process so you get a steady stream of customers 24/7 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Now, episode 91, you know what this is at 91 and in 9 episodes, it’s gonna be episode 100 and I’m gonna do something special. For you to figure it out so you got to stay tuned, it’s gonna be a bit of fun, it’s not gonna be the standard guest thing, I’m gonna do some a little bit different and you’re gonna have some fun with it so stick around for that. Now today, I’ll be talking to Kevin Halbert. Kevin is the son of you see the late Gary Halbert. I have did a podcast with his brother Bond a couple of I think a couple of months back and you know I thought I’d get him on the show, he was also at tons and all his guesting list I met at the time of directors for seminar. He was there and we chatted and talked to him on podcast be a great idea. So today, give it to this cool way of doing video inside an email. So let’s say you’ve popped up in an email in outlook and you can play a video from inside the actual email, you know doesn’t, you don’t have to go to youtube you don’t have to go to another site, you don’t have to click a link, you can just watch the video on the email. That’s a really cool stuff that you can do, so it’s like how to do that and why it’s really you know why it really works. How to get the show notes of this episode of the mcmethod marketing podcast, go to the mcmethod.com/91. Now, one more thing the McMaster’s insight of the week. This one’s a really simple one. I’d have a one time offer on the page of the some of the stanza anyway I’d a one time offer on the thank you page when someone joins your list. So what do I mean by that, well someone goes to your website, they visit your landing page that come from page traffic google whatever and they signup and on the next page you just say hey! thanks for signing up, great to have you on here. We’re gonna send you a, we’re gonna send you you know this and this, we’re gonna send you you know these 3 tips on this, there’s an amazing ebook here, it’s gonna show you how to do this but you know what’s really you know, you know what you really need so the problem is with the you know with x ys and is that in the problem of email marketing is that you really need a map, you really need to a you know, know how to do it so today I wanna give you 3 special tips on how to do you know, I really wanna give you a map right now right here coz I say hey, if you really wanna learn how, you’re gonna fill in the details and you know you’re gonna have to implement this map on your business and you wanna check out this product that we’re selling, McMaster’s or you know whatever product you know insert you r product here and then you’ll get that map, you’ll get that blue print and it’ll show you how to implement it in your business. Have you idea, it doesn’t really matter what you say, it’s that someone’s already taken an action to join your list, there’s a great time for you to capitalize on a burning heat right there, they’re ready to take another action if you give them the opportunity to do so make that offer to them, give them the video he can’t, you can do audio, you could use to copy. Do something, yeah, there’s making off and you’ll be surprised on how many people take you up on it like. You’re good at some substantial revenues in bottom line and it’s such an easy tweak coz before you get that product, before you get the email list. Happy days, okay. That’s this week’s McMaster’s insight of the week. We’ve got to get more insights like this which more more you know sometimes are about marketing or emails, sometimes it’s just about business and life. It’s something like we’re talking about. You’re gonna get more like this, you should join McMasters. Alright, McMasters is a private training community that I’ve got, it plays like a mastermind, it’s like being mentored by me or coached by me and leads them regards to marketing and email stuff. It’s a private form, you get coaching with me, there’s other people in there that can respond to you and help you out and give you advice on some of the marketing stuff you’re doing in the business. There’s also a bunch of training products that will teach you yeah how to setup a sales, how to run an autoresponder, how to do a speedtest and there’s amazing webinars I’ve done which are with great page traffic you know panels running on facebook really this year. All the details are in there, I just share everything in some of those webinars so that’s McMasters for you, that’s why you should join. Okay. If you wanna learn more about McMasters, go to the mcmethod.com/mcmasters and I’ll see you inside. Well, that’s it for now, let’s get into this interview on video inside the email with Mr. Kevin Halbert. It’s John McIntyre here, the autoresponder guy and I’m here with Kevin Halbert, the son of the late Gary Halbert, he’s the brother of Bond Halbert who did an interview with a couple of months back on some of the emailing stuff and what Bond was doing with email and wow I was chatting with Bond and he’s saying worked really good to my brother Kevin, it’s Kevin who’s doing this amazing stuff you know it’s a little bit technical but he’s also doing some something incredible stuff online and even with email and we’re just chatting about some of that so I send him an email and here we are doing a podcast on a on we’re at Kevin’s office. Today we’re gonna talk about, it’s very relaxed conversation today about that video inside the email, what’s coming up, what’s next for email marketing because I think Kevin’s one of the guys, he’s on the front of this stuff, he’s really on the edge and he’s gonna have a lot of stuff to share about a what’s changing and what’s you know really what’s coming up, so we’ll get into that in a minute. Kevin, how are you doing man. Kevin Halbert: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on. John McIntyre: Good to have you on man. So, before we get into I guess the content or dive into some of the topics we’ll talk about, can you give a list or a bit of a background on you know who you are and what you’re up to. Kevin Halbert: Ahm, people really know my last name and that’s the real, this is really about some importance is who my father was Gary Halbert, for many it’s clearly that he was the greatest copywriter who ever lived but whatever it is, atleast we know these are people who think someone else is you know his his ability to write, outstanding copywriter, copywriting in so many markets is that’s probably what me and Bond understand is that when it came to him, he was great in so many different(diverse) niches. I mean, you name it he went into it, he sold it and having never even touched that you know marketing category before you knew how to you know I remember talking with Gary Benz being on the phone and he was like, you know Kevin your dad really swap up for defenses and he would go out of leam you know back in the day 1 it cost you $20,000 to run a newspaper or ad. He would go with that untested thing and just you know we’re talking with forty-nine stuff and that’s father stuff he did, you know he always able to knock it out apart and yeah and then you know obviously he became you know this guru got this really bad name this days but you know when he went 1986 and started teaching people you know he was the guy that has plenty of people that appointed who he was you know, Kenedy you know he talks about how he gave him his first job and how you know Ben swores he got on his feet and you know there’s plenty of people I mean theres a parade of people that talk about how his teachings on marketing got everyone started and so. John McIntyre: Ok and then how did that end up or I mean what have you done to screw that what is that lead to for you? Kevin Halbert: That lead to us first thought we have I you know very shy and very you know what I should say I was Bond was not really shy we we’re you know not ready to take over the mantle so to speak so quickly so I was very trepidations and nor cautious and I and then later on I just started coming out of my shell little bit much I said the biggest time that I isolate with the stuff we do is going to master minds that’s the thing that’s I used to be really shy and then one day I just said screw it I’m gonna go for it and you know was one of this people that barely speak to them and then I just started speaking out and then I just notice when I walk out of the room people will come out to me and surround me and asked a bunch of question you know what I actually this are not all crazy suggestions you know asking for help asking asking higher as consultants we have a bunch of clients we could consult for and that’s kind of my favorite thing cause I but its nice when you walked in and you have the big idea for people and then you don’t have to do all the work and you can you know do that for twenty people and I hope that answers your question. John McIntyre: Yeah now absolutely man it’s just always interesting to hear sort of you know where you know I always asked people this question just because it’s fun finding out where they at or what there are sort of just a journey and sometimes it’s the stuff we expect and then sometimes you come out and you hear about stuff you never heard of so when. Kevin Halbert: I like to say about our Dad’s legacy alive and keep it moving forward and let them know that this stuff all translated exactly and the new age but ok sorry to interrupt. John McIntyre: Your good your good I definitely empathize with you and the whole like being on the shy thing and a lot of people think I’m this you know this crazy extraverted guy who talks and talks and talks and I got on good at it I think maybe in doing the pod cast and doing some sales job but I’m in a sense some little bit similar like that like when I’m in a big group of people and everyone talks like I don’t really wanna talk I wanna sit back and watch so it’s hard. Kevin Halbert: Yeah it was for the longest time and yeah I mean you literally when I have an idea for somebody I could go find them and have a whole meeting and give them all my ideas instead of presenting it to the entire room and know it’s like you know me and my brother spend our time like how much time we can give in to each person when I’m out. John Mclntyre: Yeah yeah yeah cool man lets dive in to some of this stuff that we’re chatting about and send of the video stuff for yeah let’s start to what coming up and what’s next and how do you think that you know marketing in a sense that doesn’t really never changes like the principles of psychology on how to persuade and how to motivate people that never changes but on the same time technology is moving so rapidly that what’s change at the same time so how do you think about how do you deal and how do you understand all this change going on. Kevin Halbert: Um I bet your right none of the psychology what happens is different ways that we can take advantage of it that we just didn’t have before and so we have this you know this same old things you heard you can test quickly you can move quickly you can roll out quickly all that stuff is moving forward and I don’t know how to explain the taking advantage of I just try see if we can like what I was saying we can get closer to the person sooner and get them from the second of engagement to the whatever we’re trying to do and take out the as many clicks and stuff like that I mean we’re talking about how we’re taking and if we’re talking about the video and emails and stuff like that is that stuff you are referring to. John Mclntyre: We can go in whole a bunch of different directions one thing I think some what your pointing at there is that you know like 20 years ago when the internet wasn’t really around you know you really needed a top copywriter to be at make a direct response worked like you said you gonna to spend $20,000 on a news paper ad where is now you know anyone you don’t even need I you know I think you need to be opposite decent copies gonna help you but because tech you can buy traffic on facebook and ad words pretty cheap you can split test seven and the software for testing cost you know 50 bucks a month and so can test your way to having a real high converter anything for very little money so its completely change the ball game. Kevin Halbert: A little bit a little bit, it’s a couple things you’ve got a good point and that triggers something in my mind, ok. Back in the day when the internet come out, I remember talking to my Dad and there were two thing going on: 1 is this was back when AOL was about as big as the internet and there was a time when AOL is contemplating a charge call of penny to get an email delivered, for promotion email and everybody was open arms, they were freaking out because internet was free and how dare you do all the discoveries like bring it on. He wanted it more than anybody wanted it and the reason was is because everybody in their cousin was you know spamming everybody and there were spamming most of the time and they were just putting everybody in a bad mood and turning a month and he had a client that was making a fortunal, a .00001% response because he had 25 million email list name and you know, he could, with that many leads you could get for free to sell a refined or mortgages and stuff. He could still make a fortune and you know that, the thing was there was this whole free for all. The thing was when those anti-spam last came in, part of you saying came into a fact and what happened was, is a lot of people got washed out with the new policies that came in. And what happened was, is that the people that had to be better at the copywriting to make it work and you know with fewer names you know coz a hundred thousand names marketers some you know, you had to do with a ton less and you start to get better and what happened was it was kind of this, Darwinian thing, the people that would survive how to get it right and now the only way people were gonna get it right were using basic principles, basic direct response copywriting marketing principles and when those guys survive, they’d come back and say how are you doing and these basic principles and they’d go back to Halbert, go back to Claude coz you know go back to all these other great guys and so it was the, it was you know Gary Halbert had like all the other marketers, had to be rediscovered because anyone else who didn’t was just not gonna be in the race. So, that was kind of an interesting you know moment we went from, really had have really great copy, having a terrible copy and then having to bring that great copywriting back. And now we have to be better in some sense because the attention has been, has just plummeted and I mean, you know this is the thing is that I talk a little bit and you could cut me off coz I can go down a long road. But the thing is that when we released Gary Halbert all star audio series, we had a very strategic plan and paid off in some senses that we’ll gonna release it on itunes and the reason we’re gonna release it on itunes was a couple of things is everybody in our cousin will download or buy these products with these copywrite recordings and sell or these other stuff and they get just dumped in their folder and save for viewing later you know. You know, it’s, they got it, you know they can get to whenever they want and stuff like that. It’s piled in, with all their emails, all the skype calls you know everything else and what we wanted was we wanted people’s drive time, we wanted to be alone with them in their car and we wanted to be with them on their flight, we wanted to be in it when they’re exercised off and that was the very strategic plan to get our way from all these noise and you know, and to get these stuff we are not the type of people that wanted to make a sale, we want the people you know which calls and talks about how he send out you know, their client sent out blank DVDs, thousands and thousands of them, they didn’t know they send out blanks coz nobody was consuming them. You know, they got their sale, you know what I’m saying? But it didn’t you know, so we wanted to you know getting those, getting people’s attention somewhere else or direct mail where you know that fliers sent on their desk and you know doesn’t need batteries. John McIntyre: That’s a really good point. Kevin Halter: Yeah, it’s really is. It’s getting alone with the girl you know, the guy’s are all hittin on her and pissin her off. John McIntyre: But this is one thing, I guess that was mentioned you know describing, you know 12 minutes ago was this idea that, yeah you’re absolutely right, you do need to have this, you do need to get someone’s attention but provided you get their attention though it’s kind of like look I will design your technology where you can in Perry Martials you don’t listen like you know like 20 sales of marketing book which I handed out at tons and just, yeah it was just all testing I do which is nothing new at all but when you can take something that’s kind of you know it’s working days at least you test something and you know bump the response by 10 or 20% and then next month you bump it again by 10 or 20%, you keep tweaking those different steps and it’s so cheap and so easily you know, so easy to do these tests. Kevin Halbert: Yeah, absolutely you know. You’ve proven every step for sure, I agree. You know, I don’t know how to say it any differently but yeah, you just, one thing improves the other one, more people and they get into the final the more people then converted that step. Yeah, it makes a good point, it’s just a multiplication or a orders that matter. John McIntyre: Tell me about this video you know you’re talking about before you’ve record. Tell me more about this video inside the email, so that what’s working with it and if it’s worth you know checkin out. Kevin Halbert: The video, we’ve started out is we talked before we’re gonna repeat it. What we were talking about was that it started out when I want a video on email, I was told I couldn’t have it basically by the Gods of browsers design and email embraces and stuff and I finally saw some dancing preconos like why is this moving? I see a moving object, I want video in my emails, what’s going on and I didn’t want that picture that has the play button that just link it and takes you to external page and then starts playing the video and I realized, it just took me a second and it was obvious to me that was an animated gif, which is basically a flip book, just series of images showing on top of each other in a time sequence whatever it’s time sequence is. And that was the big price list because things that people don’t know or they don’t think about is even you know, videos got us attention getting but moving stuff you know that’s why the banner ads are always got stuff and that’s you know motion is a very important element I mean, you have, if you got all these stuff and you can see something moving, that makes a huge as end you know when you set halves you get a certain open writer could be rate and you send a picture you can send open click through it and when you send an animated gif you definitely get a better click to rate and the thing is you have a chance right there, a special chance right there. You grabbed their attention and really drive their curiosity. You know, people are spending their time on facebook trying you know, seems like you know you’re selling car insurance using you know a sexy girl in a ppc and you know the first thing I saw was I’m gonna get on a ppc ad, I’m sure they don’t allow it but gmail does and the thing is here whatever you have, whatever thing you have going in with facebook where you’re going to have a still image, you had so much text in all other stuff, you have incredible chance to drive curiosity to click if you’ve got moving images and then obviously I wanted to move to the next step which was to actual sound in a that would actually play and so I did a bunch of research and it turns out that html5, because of new security and everything else will play video right inside your email. Now, won’t do it for gmail users whether or not you know just about anything else, it will play and that’s a big deal and so, so the gmail but the nice thing was is that you have alternative email, just like you have an alternative text and if it doesn’t, if the, so in that case gmail loves animated gif and so if you can get the video play, you still have a shot of getting the thing and if people would go ahh, I don’t want to play it and you know the video would play on some things and it’s like you do your best shot for this and you do your best shot for that kind of like response of web design you know, you do whatever it is and so you know for me the idea that this video would play and then one thing was we were doing a webinar and we’re promoting an email, when the email you know that cleans services and stuff and I was doing a test and I send it out to send up just a little test, we have a small amount of people on the thing, we had a great response to it and when we send an email we were talking about how we were starting to use video and started to use animated gifs and we’re gonna teach people how to do this stuff but when we sent the email out, we decided just to show them by sending them an email announcing the webinar by using the video in the animated gifs and we have a 500% open rate coz everybody’s I think going son of a bitch, it’s working! You know and they’ll send it over to other device to see if it works over there and stuff like that. John McIntyre: Wow, how did your response change? You get the 500% open rate, what was the response to the email like in terms of clicks, on sales of getting for with the webinar? Kevin Halbert: Well, we got. I don’t, you know that’s a good question because we have a certain amount expanded done it where he’d, he was giving the you know, the curiosity, the sub decline and you know that stuff so by the time they got to me, they’re on webinar number 5. That’s a good question, I’m about half, they don’t know the numbers to your answer, I do know that we had signed and we had a you know affiliate deal with, with we were working with getting response and we were, we had an affiliate deal with them and we signed up a ton of people and for small amount of attendees, I got to say that. So, I can say it was very successful, it was very very successful. What we also used that to launch, I don’t know if you saw there are VSLs for the audio series but you know, we also use that to send out to get everybody over to and that was a terrible for that, talk about driving you nuts, we had a learning experience, we screwed up left and right and one of the things, well one of the things we did was we accidentally send out this bonus confirmation email with the use this password being blank because they haven’t signed up, we’ve accidentally send out this one and they was like I can’t get in, I can’t get in I was like and we’ve spent our time telling them ignore that email, ignore that. You know but that was, that was just like you know after 2 weeks and I was safe, I was losing my pride but one of the things that we didn’t well we, we had to figure out how to work with itunes and we’re trying to figure out who we could stream it with coz some of the people would stream it and stop but when we went with itunes and we used tune cart which you know I liked now to fill it, I recommend you guys use it. And that was another thing, we are uncrowded space with itunes including the set up in there but the thing was they don’t give you any stats for a month. To there was like the meet direct response marketer and you’re into go buy something and you’ve got a set for four weeks just to figure out what’s going on and then then we, then the huge mistake we also made was that we didn’t know even though I have exams on galaxy note 3, I didn’t know that it would gonna be available on android and it was you know, no one’s allowed to have itunes on their android phone and so we had this grant for a week, putting it so everyone could download it over and ah on our own site with the direct download. Yeah, that was the.. John McIntyre: Interesting. So the basic idea was the video in email can dramatically boost the response and so if someone want to get started with that, they’re really just gonna look at html5 and video in email, right? Kevin Halbert: Well, there are a couple of things. I don’t know, I don’t wanna, we have a thing where you sign up for autoresponder, we have a thing that will send you a bunch of stuff on how to do it. It’s kind of a thank you and a link to go in there and get stuff but if you wanna skip that there’s a couple key points you wanna know. The guys that helped us do it was a company called, I kind of like say another company. John McIntyre: Careful, yeah. Kevin Halbert: It’s another company called email and asset, and they have a template. I did modified the template, I wanted something more so I, that’s what you get if you sign up for the Gary Halbert letter, you can, our responder will send you a thing showing you where it came, go get this template and stuff and those guys crack the code on how to get it to show you know a still image when worse comes to worse shawn up or something to get an animated gif to be the next best thing and to get video playing, ok. And so those guys did a great job on doing that, I did a couple things different, I’ll tell you guys some things you wanna know, when we send out the email, one of the things I was losing my mind coz I just released an audio series telling people how to do this stuff and I thought that you know, I was, that the people started abusing and there’s something on the background and they stopped working on my ipad, I was freaking out coz I’m like, what’s going on? this was working, I tested everything, we’re sending out this big thing and I’m you know giving this tutorial are my thing and it turns out that if that little indication switch is switched off, even though you can play your dance moves and everything else, it will not play the html5 sound so one of the things I did was I photographed an iphone and ipad and I put a little instruction on the video showing them to turn that off or on, you know turn that on if they don’t hear any sound so they’re gonna miss the message. All the things that’s very important to know is that you should never set this thing to autoplay, if you set this to autoplay, you’re gonna sky racket, you are unsubscribed. So if you set it to autoplay, the thing is like it will keep playing if you didn’t change which email you’re looking at and stuff and specially you got to set it on, on a loop then you got a person that is trying their best to find this thing and get to it and turn it off but if you set it to autoplay with mute then you won’t have a problem then you can do, you can just have it set not to autoplay and just play with the regular sound and that will, that’s fine, that would be great, ok. John McIntyre: Was this sound, you know I’m just looking for a if you got a google access on video inside email or just video email, that’s where you can find that there’s a template from email on assets those guys you mentioned so this is exactly what you did then they got a whole list of you know which clans play the video which don’t so let’s check that out. Kevin Halbert: Yeah, and so you got what a 60% like success when it’s being played and then you have a like a 30 or something % success that the gif, the animated gif will do it instead. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna pitch a lot of things, I’m gonna try to look in my software here so you guys can go get this some of the pieces of the software for free. There’s some great pieces of software that after we do a lot of testing figured out which one, which ones do this cool stuff and they’re free. There’s one called free video to gif converter. John McIntyre: Ahh, okay. It’s like converting video. Kevin Halbert: And it did something weird to my computer. So it kind of irritated me so I just, I reset something and it didn’t came back so I think it was a virus or anything, I think it was some kind of weird thing but one of the nice thing about this software is what happens is when you take a clip of video and you put it in, you just you know go browse for it and you select it and it pulls it up and then, then you can come in and it will splice it out to all the frames and you get to choose the frame rate, you get to choose the image size and stuff like that and another important part about that is do not have it in a host this images, you know have something like amazon s3 with something like that, yeah something fast. You can pull it off if you put it in a wordpress thing and serve it out but yeah so this stuff will go in, now if you really wanna go crazy, there’s another piece of software that really crunches it down and makes it efficient but you have to buy it, let me see if I can find it real quick over here. Alcomy mind works, gif construction professional 4 and that’s another piece of software that will get you up to speed on doing it, if you want it, if you really wanna make go crazy and make the pallets really efficient and make the colors worthy, you can really dial it in like you know, kind of like dial it in your jpeg files to the right compression, you know right middle pan stuff like that. John McIntyre: I was just thinking you know one thing you could do is like you know when you do people’s at the youtube videos you know with some could use it like the video with like a play button on it and that’s sort of what they’re doing right now, just an image and you click the image and that goes to the page where you watch the video. Alright, can you let me know ah you know in the middle would be like if you have a video or gif which is like, it could be like 3 seconds so with a small gif but the gif is moving, that’s gonna get their attention then you have that play button on top so they’ll know that if I click that button, the if they click the moving image, they’re gonna be out to watch the video and images about, you’d probably be that’s like they’re having a medium in between. Kevin Halbert: Absolutely and what Bond loves is that the one stunt I pulled with it which was you know click here and it will turn on the sound you know. Yeah, and what they’re really doing is getting take them somewhere else when you know like active gif going. John McIntyre: We’ve seen this on, I mean facebook has been doing this like when you scroll down through the news feed, sometimes there’s videos that are already playing like there’s no sound but they just you know, and only know when you click on them, it’s a really like every time I see them, I have to watch the video because it’s already moving, I wanna see what the hell is going on. Kevin Halbert: And so what you’re able to do is a clever trick, if you really want them to get crazy with which kind of pull this thing. It’s not a crime but you could put in those levels, I don’t know if you’re using the dancing level meters but when you scroll up, when you scroll through, you’re on your smart phone and you scroll through and you see videos on your wall or someone else’s wall or feed or whatever. The videos starts playing but there’s a little dancing like you know, sound levels like you know 3 level bars will go up and down indicating that there’s sound to be heard. You know what I’m talking about? John McIntyre: Yeah, you could do the same thing. Kevin Halbert: And so, you could do the exact same thing on your emails and people would already have that habbit of hey I can turn this sound on, you know I recognize as familiar and so yeah definitely see but there’s no doubt that with the thing, you know, ok this is one of the things that you know has taken a while if you think about how long it’s been, It’s taking a while to catch on considering how long we were capable of doing it so far back you know when the band was up that stuff. People get that mind set of you know back in the day it was, no one did video commercials because it cost you fortune to make a commercial and everyone handed just left themselves stuck in text and you know a phrase frame image and stuff and you can do all of that you know now and the thing is there’s a reason that they use that and it cost more is because videos are more powerful so the idea that if you have something interesting to say and you’re not seducing people into paying more attention or you know take it’s just a mediocre idea, I think could be you know, I just say it will be crazy so you know we send, you know when you wanna get something that fast and in email that something it’s fine but if you got something important you know, I don’t see how, you know I think moving images can only move you in one direction not to mention if you include images in emails, your spam grading goes down, do you know that? Coz the spammers don’t tend to put images on emails John McIntyre: Why is that? Kevin Halbert: I don’t know, probably coz the hosting will get messed up. John McIntyre: Well then you know they’ve been emailing like a hundred million people or something and you get a hundred million people even if you know a 1% open rate. You can never pick hosting hunting a one million people download an image all in the same day, I mean that’s a peak, that’s big into the hosting bill. Kevin Halbert: Exactly, exactly and then you know where it’s coming from. John McIntyre: Yup. Kevin Halbert: So yeah, so putting images lowers your spam grading, it’s gonna, you’re gonna sell the click a whole lot better and you can get a whole, and you can communicate a message, I wish it’s sending to your list or something, our VSL coz it was perfect, the VSLs run in perfect quick test because the thing is, is that the text on screen is what we’re doing anyways when you’re seducing these people. I’m telling you, I’ve tried to tell everybody this, some that have powerpoint with a next button with a paragraph on the screen is just awful, this puts me to sleep. It’s a, but have 5 words on the screen the second you see them like it’s just like close captioning but instead of it being like low, it’s a front and center right on the screen, you know it’s not the lower third, that stuff you know sucks you in and so the thing is we’re gonna do that new VSL anyways, that’s the nice part. You created a VSL, you’ve got one of these words on screen you know or use many words as you can say in one paragraph, nice thing is sound is or it’s ready to go in your email you just you know re-run it and down to a small size and you know that’s start your selling for you just the way it is. I don’t know how to explain how, how seductive those words on the screen are, I don’t know if that it, can it proven that more attractive, these are rumors, I’m not confirming but they’re more seductive than even doodle videos and I think it also depends on what you’re illustrating, it depends on what you’re illustrating but they haven’t proven that in general, they are more seductive than the doodles. John McIntyre: Interesting, well just just the five words on the screen and then you’ll on next button. Kevin Halbert: Yeah, like if you had it, if you’re reading one sentence and it had 10 words in it, the second your mouth opened, can I just tell people where they can watch? John McIntyre: Sure, sure. I mean we’re running out of time. Kevin Halbert: Look okay, thegaryhalbertletter.com with the word the t-h-e-g-a-r-y-h-a-l-b-e-r-t-letter.com, they go there, they’ll gonna end up in simple single page and at the bottom they’ll gonna see view newsletter list and when you go to that newsletter list, it’s gonna take you to all those Gary Halbert letters and that’s one thing I’d like to talk about real quick if you wanted to talk about thing some out but the thing is when you get there, there’s gonna be a video there and we’re cleaning up that page by the way, we’re doing or doing a whole or rebump everything but you’ll see a video there, selling the Gary Halbert letter with an all star audios, it has Gary Bencivenga, Michael Gerber, Dan Kennedy, and Paris on parplis and Clatemakepiece on that he’s coming up but 14 of the biggest copywriters in the world, and you’ll see how it, you can tell the thing is when everyone’s going there checkin out I want you to imagine that your sound is coz you’ll find out that the VSL’s still works and you’ll see how it build bullets on the screen and they stuck up and those times unpacking maybe have it, maybe you’re watching it now but the way that works is it’s, it’s you’ll see how seductive it is. I have a better one. John McIntyre: I could see, there’s a video on that page. It’s got a moving gif then you’ve got to click it to watch this video with sound. Kevin Halbert: Now that’s a different one but that’s, that is just something I put on the page that we’re going to use in the promotion for selling you know, one of my dad’s expenses seminars. That was, we’re like sending out email and that what you’re saying there was what we sent in the email and what the, but later on I was like alright, we’re don with that promotion, let’s throw it up, let’s throw it up on the page and it says there and you could see you know depending, it all depends on what if you put something curiosity laid there but images are you know very powerful way to seduce people obviously, they spoke using left and right with no sound to begin with. So, we can go and check that out, now other thing you’re talking about autoresponders and engagement stuff like that, right? I mean that’s your audience, right? This is the one thing I find crazy is that people talk about these article generation, I don’t know if you like that stuff but I’m not a fan of it. All this stuff that create these articles pointing to all the stuff to get SEO and all and you know and people want a site, they want to get traffic in all these stuff but they don’t wanna do any of the work. Okay, and the thing is that there’s couple of things Gary Halbert, a lot of the stuff he taught wasn’t always new, it wasn’t always first coming from him. They came from my master, of someone else, they came first before him but the difference is is that one of the things that Gary Halbert did that was very very different is when people write to us. This is like a broken record, people write to us and they go I didn’t have a chance to meet your father before he died but from reading his news letter I felt like I knew him, okay, this is a very common thing that people would say, people are avid fan, I just went to a master mind, these guys are like big marketers and they’re talking about how they’ll sleep with my dad’s the born leaders book next to their night stand and they just eat it up and reading it every night. And what you’ll gonna notice about this stuff is, is that his stuff is popular for 2 things; that he drives home a message that is unforgettable, if you’ll look at it like one of the ones like the one advantage, people will get that and they’ll go okay, this is awesome and I get this lesson and the point is he drives it home, he did it once in a famous exercise he does all the time, there we have, it’s called a dear mom letter but no one should go and read that to your mom letter, she’ll watch it in a video presentation and it’ll screw up but this is my point, story telling is everything, they’re moving it, there are brain studies that everything that story telling is engaging and story telling is also what triggers things being memorable and there’s other thing of engaging with semiles and metaphors that helps people understand more deeply and so there’s a lot of people that can teach copy writing, they got courses out, they got all these other stuff but none of them is really talking with the person, not in the room with the reader and you will find that he often writes, more like my dad but a lot of these people don’t and the thing is it bonds you with the reader and so have you known John Carlton were at the, at an event together and he was talking about hey, you need to let your freak fall that right and that was you know, the whole thing was is that you have to be out there, you have to be somebody, you can’t be a robot you know, you know who is this guy, what’s its you know cockiness I mean you know, people would rather see a train rack than just a boring thing so content, storytelling, be in engaging, all that stuff and the thing is if one of the things I could say about it is, is that when you do it right, I mean when Gary Halbert passed away and I was 7 some of these stuff you know dates back the mid 1980s and the thing is he write one great article, it’s there to impress people for the rest of your life and if you’re right to just doubled it, having that relevance and that’s just important, it’s really important and it’s it’ll get you a whole lot more out of your relationship with the customers. John McIntyre: Absolutely, absolutely. Well, cool man. We’re right on time but things are. Before we go I mean you mention thegaryhalbertletter.com which that was actually that was how, that was how I get started you know to, two years and a half, I was in the Philippines at that time, I live in Thailand now but you know I was trying to sell an ebook and I heard that you get to learn how to writecopy but writing your stuff down in the writing old school sales that is down by hand and someone shared me the newsletter, Gary’s newsletter hands on experience and so I read that and he’s like we write down the sales and read this book so I went into that, it’s a and that was I mean I’ve been going through all of the newsletters but I’ve been through a lot of them so I highly recommend it if you wanna get better at marketing. Is there anything else I mean, where is someone’s you know after this if they wanna learn more about you and more about the video stuff, where is the best you know, where do you recommend them to go? Kevin Halbert: The videos, to learn more about us, if you want to just start reading the Gary Halbert letter, it’s the best thing, it’s free, you’re right. And you are one of those few people that actually does the exercise, everyone is successful. My dad’s teaching actually doesn’t take the shortcut, they do what you did and they’d go and rewrite the letters out by hand and I’ll tell you when we came out with the audio series, I had to write out the script for the that VSL that we were talking about and I was having to write in the little entrust for every copywriters that they started to say it at the beginning and I started to write out Gary Bencivenga’s and it was son of a bitch, this shit is genius. Sorry! sorry Gary! But his stuff was brilliant but the thing was is it some of it washed over me when I just you know been listening and working with all its content for days and days but when I started writing it out, there’s something about having to go that slow that makes it stay with you, stays with you long and you just think about where, what sense are you writing before and what sense are you going to next? Don’t do this where you just you know, you know you how can write something out and you’re not even thinking about what you’re copying you know but you have to make sure in the copy. But yeah, so so yeah, the gary, go to thegaryhalbertletter.com, I mean sorry for saying that too much but ahm, that’s a great way to go and we really you know, people complained, they were like, I don’t know if you heard the audio series but everyone has been saying no one has given us even a mediocre some are good some are bad some of the tracks, it’s 14 tracks, like songs on itunes and we’ve had people saying nothing but like not a model, amazing and the only thing we’ve ever heard the people would say is why did you sell it so cheap and so you’re paying basically $2 a track to listen to the best marketers on the planet, give you their advice and so it’s a fantastic place to go if you wanna get it by gary halbert products or kevin and bond halbert products and stuff like that, you can go to halbertising.com spelled with an s and you can pick up stuff there but when you start reading the gary halbert letters you’ll go ah! I’m in the right place and you know you won’t worry about you know what I’m saying, you did it right? John McIntyre: Yup, yup. Cool! Well, I’ll have links to what all that stuff you know, all the links you’ve mentioned as well in the show notes at the mcmethod.com. Kevin, thanks for coming on the show man. Kevin Halbert: Thanks for having me. The post Episode #91 – Kevin Halbert on Boosting Email Response Dramatically By Simply Using… Moving Images appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Dec 30, 2014 • 32min

Episode #90 – Travis Rosser on The Secret To Building Long-Lasting, Profitable Membership Sites (and how you can start one sooner than you think)

Dec 23, 2014 • 35min

Episode #89 – AJ Mihrzad on The Selling Machine-Like Power Behind A Good Ole Story

If there’s someone out there that can prove to you that you can do anything, That you can overcome your current obstacles, ..be who you want to be, Do what you want to do, Then let AJ be that person. Former chubby guy.. ..to being featured on Men’s Fitness and BodyBuilder.com, AJ Mihrzad is a textbook example of how you can break boundaries, And strive for more. Today he gets into how direct response marketing and understanding the power of stories, Have propelled him to grow his health business into several different successful areas. From online education programs, To a successful supplement line, And much more, AJ’s take-charge attitude over business and his learned story telling chops, Have made his copy bulletproof, As well as his abs. Let him show you how he learned to wield stories like a sword, And how he now controls his business’ success (thanks to stories). In this episode, you’ll discover: how investing into your education helps you become a success starting with a change in mindset (overcome perceived mental barriers simply by attending seminars) how revealing your backstory to prospects automatically makes them connect to you on a deeper level (and grows your sales massively) the powerful tool that all good speakers use to engage the audience into what they say (stories) the human ingrained power behind stories that puts people in a trance when you tell them (stories automatically make people put themselves in your story’s main character’s point of view) how stories make people want to read more of what you write (all copy or posts you write will be read through to the end much more often) not a story teller? No worries… learn a powerful framework to telling engaging stories no matter what your subject or business is the c.a.r.e.s. story-telling framework that’ll automatically make you a genius, entertaining story-teller the showing not telling technique that turns a basic description into a lively visualization that great marketer’s are all masters of triggering a prospect’s pain (develop this skill… and be successful no matter what you do) how to use powerful stories in your email marketing, optin pages, website copy, and inside off all other aspects of your business to empathize with and sell how stories are the ultimate limiting belief killers (use stories to erase all those doubts your prospects have… and seal the deal$$) Mentioned: Life Fuel Fitness The Mind Body Solution (AJ’s book will show you some great story examples) Joe Polish Immediate Fiction by Gerry Clever The Emotion Thesaurus Joseph Campbell‘s Heroes Journey Kurt Vonnegut facebook.com/ajfit (he said to go ahead and add him if you wanna get in contact) Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre: Its John McIntyre here, the autoresponder guy and it’s time for episode eighty nine of the mcmethod marketing podcast, where you’ll discover how to get more customers in less time, with less fuss and less hassle, so you can have the business that you want and do all things you wanna do. Today, i’ll be talking to Aj Mihrzad. Now Aj is a great guy, I met Aj in New York when I was there, couple months back. He’s a fitness guy, he’s absolutely ripped. I mean you should check out this guy’s facebook photos. And he mentions his facebook in this interview, so you’ll get to hear about that. Really cool guy, we had dinner together, its bunch of us guys it’s all about business, life, and philisophy.. I really get well with Aj cause we both have this you know, I guess affinity, or lacking or getting philisophical about life about purpose and you know about what we should be doing with ourselves. All that sort of stuff; introvert ions, extraversions. So I really love talking to him. In this episode makes you talk about storytelling process and how it affects the buying process. Now Aj’s got some really, let’s say new ideas about storytelling and how to use it and couple different book recommendations that I never heard of so I learn a lot from talking to Aj about the stories and I think you gonna learn out of this. So this is all about writing stories, using stories to persuade into the facts and benefits. And its great formula that he shares about half way through, about how to really craft those stories that connect with your readers. To get the show notes for this episode of the McMethod marketing podcast go to themcmethod.com/89. Now this weeks’s McMasters insight of the week its another good one. Its similar as last week about opportunistic folk, you know as opportunistic folks is being focused and this one is, you got to take a hollistic view of business instead of just tactical. Now what does that mean. Well some people you know come to me, they join say Mcmasters buy a product of mine or hire *** autoresponder for them and one thing ive noticed with some people I’ve come to work with is that they’ve heard about autoresponder and how amazing I think this wizbank? technique for magically converting leads into customers. You know in some way autoresponders can be very powerful. I’m not denying that but there’s a mindset that some people have with this where they think they’re looking for that latest and greatest tip, latest and greatest tactic that’s gonna explode their business. And its just not, I mean its not how it works you really have to have that hollistic view of business I means that’s a bit of funky word out there but just, like business is business you know, you spend a certain amount to acquire a customer, and then you sell them certain amount of stuff with certain value and hopefully make a profit. So that’s I mean that’s how I breakdown business. Like you spend a hundred dollars to buy, to acquire a customer with advertising or ***. And you spend hundred dollars worth for human resource to acquire a customer and then you sell two hundred dollars worth of products to them, might be one product might be several over the time you and that customer had interaction. Therefore you have average profit per customer of one hundered dollars. That’s business in a nutshell. That is you buy customers and you sell them stuff and you optimize the whole thing so you make a profit and then you make the whole thing repeatable. So that you can you know,buy the customer for a hundred and make two hundred from them and do it over and over and over and over again infinitely. Okay, that’s business in a nutshell. But that means that you can’t just plug in an autoresponder, right? You have to have, you gonna have something, first you’re gonna have people that can buy something that actually have a problem that’s solvable. Then you havr to have stuff to sell them if you don’t have that yet, there’s no point dropping in an autoresponder that runs the business and you haven’t got paid traffic dial, your traffic *** in order for autoresponders I mean its great to get set up first, but its not this magic thing. Like its not just set up an autoresponder then, “bang!” you’re making money. Its not that I mean, I some ways its not that simple but its even simpler. So that’s the McMasters insight of the week today, you really got to take the big picture of your business, that forty thousand worth view where maybe you need an autoresponder maybe you do, right? Or maybe you need to focus more on pay traffic or maybe you need a good you know, good sales phone, sales chart, sales flow. So that’s it for today’s McMasters insight of the week. If you wanna know more about McMasters, you wanna get more insight, business growing insights like this, you should join McMasters a private community, private forum, bunch of products in there and I’m in there everyday posting as well. You get advice from me, from other people in there its a great place to grow your business and get more customers so go know little more about that. That’s in theMcMethod.com/mcmasters. Now, that’s it for now. I want to get with this interview with Mr. Aj Mihrzad. John McIntyre: Hey it’s John McIntyre here the Autoresponder guy, I’m here with Aj Mihrzad. Now Aj is the owner of Life Fuel Fitness which is based in Great Neck, New York. He’s the founder of Life Fuel supplements along with the fitness software called the Lean body. He’s also the author of best-selling book The Mind Body Solution train your brain for permanent weight loss which proves that the key for better body that’s in shape, energizing, youthful is a healthy brain. Which I hundred percent agree. Aj is a fitness professional, he’s got a Masters in Psychology and he’s also been featured in men’s fitness and bodybuilding.com. That’s awesome and he’s also key note speaker at various event. I met Aj about a month ago. Its a month ago I think we’re recording in the set or not at the Titans of Direct Response seminar but we actually went to New York one night, had dinner with few guys. Aj is one of the guys that came along. We had a chat and then we had a chat actually a couple weeks back to talk about copywriting and marketing and everything. That was all this guy sounds like he’d be worth to get on the podcast and that part part there about men’s fitness and bodybuilding.com is a hundred percent true cause I’ve seen Aj’s photos on facebook and this dude is ripped. So Aj how you going man? Aj Mihrzad: Im doing good John, how you feeling? John McIntyre: Pretty pretty good man. Good to have you on. Now before we get into, we’re gonna talk about storytelling today and how to you know use story time with copywriting and how to use it in writing a book. But before we get into that stuff, can you give the listeners a bit more of a background who you know, who is Aj and what does he do. Aj Mihrzad: Yeah. Absolutely John you know I’m former a chubby kid turned fitness professional and I really overcame my weight loss you know with the world of fitness empowered me to want to create a business out of it and been in fitness industry for about twelve years now and it really developed different businesses out of that where its a line of supplements and after that I created along with online coaching program and you know its really awesome. I think one thing that helped me to grow my business is understanding how to write copy and understanding Direct Response Marketing at the core of it. John McIntyre: Right. Right. And I know you’re a member of at least, a think you and Joe Polish are 25k mastermind man. You’re like members of high level stuff and you know some of this guys personally. Aj Mihrzad: Yeah yeah absolutely I mean I do process with 25k group and you know I really am a big believer in investing your education and you know you definitely get a different perspective when you go into this high level masterminds, when you’re around this people that you know had this amazing businesses and lives and it just changes like your mindset to what’s possible so its been really amazing experience being with this group. John McIntyre: Yeah. I hundred percent agree man like, part of the value for me when I go to conferences, at seminars its not so much the talks or even just the networking, in a networking sense. But its very much when you have a conversation with someone who’s playing at you know few levels above you, just by hearing nothing specific but like, not the actual words they say but just turn your general mindset for getting the fuel for how they think that changes you know how I think and it creates this incredible shifts that almost like an emotional shift where you see that the barrier that you’ve set up with yourself doesn’t actually exist. And all of a sudden you go from one level, you just start stepping it up without even trying to. You can’t even help it. Aj Mihrzad: Yeah that’s right John. You just completely take away a lot of perceived limitations you know when you hear stories of some of the people, like at the seminars and what they’re accomplishing; all of a sudden it puts your wall in a perspective. Also certain things that you tend to I guess really get down upon are little issues and problems you have in life and business. When you hear about some of the crazy things that this people have to deal with you know it kinda brings down to size. John McIntyre: One thing I think is funny which I found when you know being in Asia for three years now and met a whole bunch of different people, different business owners, and the interesting thing is that before I came out here I used to think that this business owners would be so serious, so profesional, they must be you know extremely productive and just perfect with everything they do with business and then I met them and was like “oh they’re just like me”. Some of them like to party and you know they have problems with productivity some days. They’re just normal men and women and when you see that you’re like “hang on, if they could do that this normal guy well I can do that”. Aj Mihrzad: You’re so right about that John. I think you know when I first went to my first seminar many years ago, a lot of the gurus and experts there, I thought they have like superhuman powers you know, cause I study their products I read their books and when I met them I was like “wow! this people are all just like me”. And it made me realize “they really no different”. You know they just have better strategy than I do. If I get better strategy I could be where they are. John McIntyre: Cool man. Alright cool. Well lets get into the story telling process. So tell me about that. You’ve been using stories to grow your business. So lets kinda get a bigger picture, overview of what do you mean by using story telling in marketing? Aj Mihrzad: Well you know I really first start it off you know with my own fitness business being overweight and struggling. With fitness being big part of my life, I realized that I have a story to tell you know, and I can get more people if I tell that I used to be overweight and chipmunk chicks and man boobs and I was really insecure with my body and it lead to lot of issues both physically and emotionally and by telling people my backstory I realized that I was having a deeper connection with them even you know my clients we’re abiding more to my program cause like this guys experienced what I experienced every single day and he was worse off than I was. So there is deeper connection and then I just kinda kept that Heroes Journey story throughout my business and I realize that I connected more with people telling them stories as it goes to giving them facts you know, there’s so much like fitness information, nutrition and exercises and it is flooded all across the Internet however when I was really inspiring people to take action it was by telling them stories of issues that I overcame. And then something just dawned on me and I realize that I wanted to use more stories in my copy, in my email marketing, on my websites and that was like a major game changer. John McIntyre: Did you? So it sounds like you sort just stumbled upon it you didn’t read it somewhere like stories were a good way to sell, you just happen to realize that by telling these stories you’re really connecting with people and that’s what was building your business. Aj Mihrzad: Exactly John, it was kinda like it stumbled you know, in front of me like when I was telling stories is like a shift in emotions and you know my sales increase. When I was always telling people about my struggles in my past and then it dawned on me like “wow!” You know I’m just telling them stories based ony experiences however I really wanna get deeper into storytelling and the art of storytelling and just finding out more about the history of it, the psychology behind it and that’s what I just really dealt deeper into it. John McIntyre: One thing I found cause I’ve done some reading about this, I use to hear a lot of stories in the emails, that I write and I send and one thing that I sort of notice, when I get, I mean in seminars are a great example when you go any sort of, when you say any good speaker, he really knows what he’s doing. They don’t sit up there you know and they don’t get their slides up in screen with bullet points and just text and text and facts and all that crap. They have one big story its not always about the Heroes Journey when you know then, you know I used to be overweight now I’m ripped. It can be usually just the story called, story ***. But any sort of leader, anyone who has a message to share and actually good at sharing and you know share with other people sort of has a viral effect uses stories and I think its a funny when you look at religious teachers you go into the bible and you look at Jesus and the parables he told or you look at Buddha or any famous spiritual leader and they all use stories to illustrate you know you might say moral principles, spiritual principles and I think that’s an incredible reason for all of us to start using stories for all of our businesses. Aj Mihrzad: Yeah John that’s a really good point you know like back when they have text in written word you know they would tell stories and pass it along generations and the reason why they tell stories we’re because it’s so memorable. You know, the stories really stick into a person’s mind. John McIntyre: So what did you learn then? You say you had written books and whole bunch of stuff to find out what was going on with stories and how to use them. So tell me about some of the stuff that you’ve learned. Aj Mihrzad: Well a lot of fascinating stuff you know first and foremost when you’re telling a story to someone, all of a sudden part of their conscious minds shuts off and their subconscious minds becomes so much more receptive because they put themselves in the point of view of your story. So lets say you’re telling a story about yourself, their more engaged cause they imagine what they would do in that situation or if you talk about your mom they think about their mother or their father. So it’s a fascinating shift of that person’s attention. Also let’s say when writing a story you know someone is reading it whether its a copy or your website, a person gets a lot more engaged cause they want to know how that story ends. So typically by telling a story you’re gonna get the person to a lot more engaged into reading you know a bigger block of text. And what was really fascinating was this study that I came across. It was about this ceramic horse that this scientist got for like ninety nine cents and they put her on Ebay and basically they split tested two different types of copy. So they had this one description of the horse and it was just basically ninety nine cent horse you know, buy it over here so on so forth. And then the second one was an engaging story about the horse. It was about this girl who said you know that “my father he had the ceramic horse” and you know “he was a drunk” and he was like, he was this, he was that. Its really deep emotional story and the Ebay ad that had the story, the horse sold for sixty three dollars. John McIntyre: Wow. Aj Mihrzad: So that was like six thousand dollars increase and they split tested it across many numerous different types of the stories that always destroyed the logical regular ad. John McIntyre: Wow. Well I think right now that some of listening to this they’re thinking “that’s great”. I understand cause I was talking about this before on this podcast with storytelling is great . But one of big challenges you know of life is that, they’re thinking “I’m not a storyteller”, I don’t know how to write stories”. What’s your advice to someone like that? Aj Mihrzad: Well that’s great you know because I started with it initially myself and I just read a lot of books on storytelling and a lot about how to even like write a screenplay you know cause it tons of story visuals. And I came across this great book and its called Immediate Fiction by Jerry Clever. And here is a great framework of telling a powerful engaging story. John McIntyre: Okay, so what’s the… can you give me like summary. What’s the framework? Aj Mihrzad: Sure absolutely. So he discusses this framework and its called “CARES”. C-A-R-E-S, so prior to writing a story or coming up with an outline you put a part of story each with this words lets say C is for conflict, A is for action, R is for resolution, E is for emotion, S is for showing. Okay so lets say for example you want to tell a story. I give one that I did to my clients about a time where I almost got smothered by a pair of breast implants and you know I always start stories off to be very engaging that’s why C is the most important one like its conflict so it has to be something where you know it just stops the reader and creates an emotional connection. So conflict, “I almost got smothered by a pair of breast implants”. Okay, action “I hired a trainer from a local gym to train me”. So basically Im building up some type of action and then I go into the R, the resolution. So basically I discuss a story about me going to a gym hiring a trainer with big breast implants that almost smothered me and then from that point on I wondered about how visuals are very appealing but you know, she wasn’t the best trainer. So discussing how that its better to hire an expert compared to an amateur in a sense that I was telling a story about this experience that I had and that’s conflict, action, resolution and next one is emotion. Okay, so basically whenever you’re telling a story you want to elicit emotion from your reader and instead of using the actual word, you wanna show emotion. That’s the last one S. Okay, so showing not telling and a great example is that is let’s say for example if you want to express in a story that the person is angry, instead of saying he was angry you could say his face was red and his nostrils we’re flaring. Okay, so this creates a powerful visual in your readers mind and it connects a lot more into them and gets them more engaged. And there’s this phenomenal book that I highly recommend its called the Emotion Thesaurus. It is written by a group of psychologists, it discusses every single emotion in human realm and it gives the actual visual interpretation of it. Okay, so lets say anger it will show how anger is expressed externally internally. So its like this amazing resource if you’re writing fiction, if you’re telling stories to really captivate the readers. John McIntyre: I love that. I love that. We talked about this a few weeks ago with this idea of.. You got something that I’ve never heard before, this idea instead saying someone’s angry or someone’s mad or someone’s happy or whatever it is you talk about their body language. For example, the behavior and I think that’s such a small thing but also such a huge thing that I think if someone’s talking or they’re already telling stories let’s say sales copy or something like that, if they start using those ways of describing and I think it would connect so much more. Aj Mihrzad: Yes. Exactly John. You know for example if you’re trying to tell a story about confident. You know, you could say when I was insecure or you could say he was looking down, his shoulders we’re slumped and he was just walking very slowly you know, and this basically you’re saying the same thing but you’re creating this powerful visual that the reader keeps inside their mind. John McIntyre: Right. What’s fascinating about that actually, you learn some of this stuff with Tony Robbins actually they conciously think about what that means my shoulders are down and keep their heads down but its funny that you don’t have to know that, people don’t have to know those things to know what that feeling would be if you described someone with shoulders slumped and the head down and the walking slow, what do you think this guy is feeling? He’s probably sad, probably depressed. Everyones gonna say that. Its crazy how universal this stuff is. Aj Mihrzad: Yeah. You know that’s a great point. Im a huge fan of Tony Robbins and his take on human physiology is exactly true and its fascinating to present his book when he goes into confidence and happiness when you actually start to read the descriptions, you start acting them out you notice your state and mood change very quickly. John McIntyre: So tell me about, how do you take a story once you’ve got this framework you get a story about, it could be like story like yours where its going from overweight to being ripped or getting smothered by big breasts, big fake breasts implants or any story. How do you take a story like that and use in your marketing? Cause some stories are gonna be better than others. Aj Mihrzad: Absolutely you know like I always say start with conflict and the key thing is, you always want the conflict to be your prospect’s pain you know, their biggest struggling point. So when you’re telling a story about that you’re really digging deep into their own personal pain. You’re bringing that out and slowly very implicitly you’re discussing how your product of service is gonna be the solution to their pain. You know its gonna get them out of that hell *** their in. But you know, a great marketer, a great salesman is really a master of trigerring pain cause when you guys trigger your prospect’s pain and then offer solution to resolve that, you could do that very powerfully with a story. John McIntyre: I like that. I never heard anyone framing it up quite that way with the idea obviously with the headline is to enter that conversation that’s going on someone’s head. But to think about, what emotion are they feeling? You know, when they wake up what are they pissed off about? What are they upset about? What do they think when they look at a mirror in the morning? And then find the headline or find a hook that kicks off this story. That’s your conflict and thats opening for the story. Here’s what the story is about as I look in the mirror I and I felt like a loser or something like that. Aj Mihrzad: This is true. I guess its like sales in the simplest way is, you know you’re triggering someone’s pain and from that point on youR offering some of resolution like you’re trying to get someone so thirsty so parched so dehydrated and then your product of service is gonna be that glass of water that they need, you know. John McIntyre: Exactly, exactly. I thought it was funny a minute ago actually when you said that a great marketer is a master of trigering pain and I think that’s so true and actually a couple of weeks ago I did a presentation and one of the parts of the presentation was talking about how really with a story in any sort of marketing. Number one you’ve got to get someone’s attention and number two you just got to agitate them make them. You got to get them feel the pain so much that they take action on whatever you’re offering. Aj Mihrzad: Yeah John that’s a great point nobody takes action unless they hit rock bottom you know they had to be in that place where you’re triggering their pain and they realize “wow!” you know “If I don’t make any changes right now my life is gonna be a living hell, its gonna be worst off”. So you’re inspiring them to take action by triggering their pain. John McIntyre: And the thing is with this story is its much better way like I mean you could talk about, you can say you’re angry that you’re overweight but if you tell a story about a guy whose body language says that he’s angry because he’s overweight it gets the person, it triggers that pain in someone in much more powerful than if you just talk about you know what sucked about being overweight. Aj Mihrzad: Yeah. Exactly John you know, like you give this expressive facts of person, you know the conscious mind will shut it off “I don’t wanna be taught I want the advice”. However if you tell a person a story about yourself or someone else you know the prospect all of a sudden puts themselves in the point of view of the character in the story and all the pain and all the struggle and even the triumph that they go through the prospect experiences that. John McIntyre: Right and where I mean what are some ways to use these stories obviously you do it in emails but this is something you can do in sales and any kind of marketing right? Aj Mihrzad: Yeah absolutely, in every aspect you know on *** pages, your websites, your email marketing, direct mail you know they go on and on and on but a great story is just perfect way to captivate you know the reader and inspire them to take some action. John McIntyre: What like mediums have you used stories with to get really good results, you know obviously you probably I guess done emails restores and you get sales. I mean what works for you? Aj Mihrzad: Of course you know sales letters you know, websites, I do a lot of emails marketing with storytelling. The thing that worked really good for me is writing a book actually, you know I wrote a book called The Mind Body Solution and initially when I was writing the book its was based on facts and there was like neuroscience and psychology it was just really you know area to be scientific. I decided to rewrite the book and you know it just became a set of stories, like story after story after story and you know the book really caught on and really engaged the reader. You know, the book became a best seller, I was really happy and blessed about that and I guess the only reason it did so well was because I embeded it with stories stacked back to back to back. John McIntyre: Okay, what are some of the mistakes that you think people make or mistakes that you made while trying to do one of your stories or with your business with the book, with the emails. What are some of the challenges that you faced? Aj Mihrzad: Of course you know story not being too engaging, not having enough emotional triggers in there, being a bit too bland. You know like I said I find this framework works really well for me from the book Immediate Fiction and so when I kinda stir off away from the framework when I don’t have conflict, action, resolution, when I’m not trigering emotions those are a lot of mistakes that I made in the past and by not really having a lot of emotions in the story, a person’s really gonna turn them off in a sense. John McIntyre: I think its one of the cool things in marketing is where its not really about you know your headline, or you know the structure of the sales page, its very much about understanding emotion and how to use emotion to motivate people to do something which is why you know I mention that you’re gonna get someone’s attention that’s step one and step two, to me its only those two steps. Step one get someone’s attention, step two agitate them, cause if you agitate them enough out of their own initiative they will click the link, go and buy something or download, or whatever it is. And its, I think its incredible market the goal is not to become some magician; the goal is really to understand how emotions drive behavior and how to trigger this. And its not about manipulating people in a bad way I think its about understanding that if someone is overweight and they wanna lose weight, they’ve got a whole bunch of limiting beliefs inside their head about why they cant lose weight even though they can. And so the marketers job I mean is to be sort of like an amazing salesman the savings of the world are written I think in email lines which is where nothings gonna happen without a good sales person or good marketer because someone has to help the prospect overcome those limiting beliefs and get to the point like “screw it. I’m gonna make this work I’m gonna do whatever I can to lose weight or to make some money in order to help my family” whatever the case is. Aj Mihrzad: That is very very well said John, I told you really. Now that’s so eloquent just putting all that together. I was taking notes when you said that actually. John McIntyre: I mean that’s cool its one thing that I talk about in the community, inside like empathy. Where I love bringing things back to marketing fundamentals where instead of looking at you wanna be like a big book or all big cause and things like that and what I found the more experienced I get, you know the guys I meet who are very successful it often comes back to you know just empathy which is you know I always needed with emotion. If you go back to even into further back for the fundamental, its understanding what someone’s going through cause if you have that, then it sort of follow, if you have that you know what to say to get their attention, you know how to agitate them. Aj Mihrzad: No John you’re so right. *** to be able to enter the conversations to prospects mind is the ability to understand them better than themselves and connect with them on a very deep emotional level. John McIntyre: Have you ever had a bad result from a story? Have you ever had like someone come in, you’ve told a story and been pissed off for some reason? Aj Mihrzad: Oh absolutely. You know I guess when you get into story telling a lot of times you could really offend people and yes a lot of women delete you in emails. But the main thing is you know, story is so powerful and so emotionally driven that you could really really piss someone off. *** offend them, you get kinda across the line in a sense because it engages a different part of the brain you know where as I find stories in a sense, its a sense like a person really getting into it. Just like watching a good movie, a person can get really into it they can be emotionally disturbed by the whole experience. John McIntyre: Its, I think its like an aspect some people look at marketers are so bad, they’re evil, they’re manipulating people and you know in some cases that does happen because I think part of the problem is the language that you know, we use like get inside someone’s head and really understand what they want and play with their emotion but like this is what guys like Tony Robbins do. When they’re trying to help someone get through their limiting beliefs, its very much about you know understanding behavior and figuring out what motivates them so you can help them get what they want. Aj Mihrzad: Yeah. Exactly. John McIntyre: And I actually have this theory with like cigarettes for example, so people say you know some people would be like sure I know how to sell cigarettes cause they’re bad and you know I think that cigarettes they’re unhealthy but stopping people from selling them or from selling anything that isn’t actually good for someone isn’t gonna stop people from buying it **** stop desiring so what that means though is that marketers you can’t make someone want something they don’t actually want . You’ve got to find what they already want which, if its weight loss then they probably gonna want more energy, want more time for their family, they want more you know respect from people of the opposite sex or something like that but if they don’t want things you can’t sell them anything. So its interesting about email marketing even with the best story if they don’t want what you’re offering them, no amount of persuasion is ever gonna get them there which is an interesting thing cause you can’t have them do what they don’t want to do. So I think with marketing it really just channeling desire not creating it. Aj Mihrzad: That’s a really good point John I just thought about like you know the whole aspect like people moves towards pleasure and away from pain and a great marketer is able to you know push the person so close to that pain that they’ll do anything to get away from it. So they’ll actually go towards something they’ve never done before. And yeah that’s really interesting concept. John McIntyre: And what do you think about like this tons of different story formats. Its Kurt? Kurt? What’s his name Kurt Vonnegut. I never know how to say it. He’s got, this info graphic of like eight different story telling format you can look at this online they’re all free I think. Just look at different story telling format. Do you ever use those kind of things? Aj Mihrzad: Yeah I mean I’m a huge fan of Joseph Campbell and his Heroes Journey. I think that’s like the best framework for any type of story just because any expert was an amateur. Always going back to how you acquired your super power. You know people tend to really, they’re really close with that heroes journey specially with all these superhero movies. And you know this ability of this like geek to acquire a super power and became this hero and save the world and will always go back to your back story. Whatever expertise you have showing people how much you fail and how much pain you had all of a sudden you overcame to become the person you are today. John McIntyre: One thing I just thought of which is interesting when it comes to information products which you might say transformation products, you buy the products, you use it transform yourself. It might be a little more difficult for someone who understands how to use a story to sell say kitchen knives or you know porcelain horses or something like that. So because you don’t have the heroes journey I’m not gonna buy a porcelain horse because its gonna make me a better person. I’m just gonna buy it cause, maybe you can sell this stuff with stories maybe you see the difference with the transformation you can tell a transformation story or a heroes journey story but it doesn’t work the same way if you’re selling a commodity item. So what are your thoughts, how would you sell, you told the porcelain story how would you sell like kitchen knives with a story? Aj Mihrzad: That’s a really good question John you know. But really is you know what is the end user’s end benefit you know lets say you’re selling to a housewife and her benefit is to you know, cook a great meal for her family so you could create a backstory now, you know her using the kitchen knives and bringing the family together and some loving environment and you know everyone eats the food have a great time you know like this isn’t have to be the exact knife but its kinda like what that knife could bring, the benefits and just, you know what emotions you could stir up in that type of environment. John McIntyre: What you need to talk about when everyone’s smiling, some nice good dinner music in background, everyone’s laughing and telling jokes. You don’t wanna say family’s’ happy right? You just want to make them sound happy. Aj Mihrzad: There you go. You created this amazing masterpiece for the readers, yes. John McIntyre: I like that I like that. Its pretty much like when your selling commodity items, sometimes it would be about the commodity but its very much about, it’s not really about the products. You know, they want kitchen knives but really they want that feeling of like a great family or a delicious juicy steak that they’ve cook in their brand new barbeque or whatever. It happens like that. Aj Mihrzad: My mouth was watering when you said that. John McIntyre: Cool man! We’re right on time here but before we go, if the listeners wants to learn more about you about the fitness stuff or I don’t know, if you anything about the story stuff where is the best place for them to go? Aj Mihrzad: Sure I’m really active on my facebook you can just add me on there its facebook.com/ajfit. A-J-F-I-T and if you wanna get an example of like storytelling and embedding different facts with it check out my book its like thirty bucks on Amazon The Mind Body Solution by Aj Mihrzad. Yeah, you know anything I could help with in terms of storytelling process or even with just some great research that I’ve used over the years by all means just hit me up. John McIntyre: Cool. I’ll just link that up in the show notes at themcmethod.com. Aj thanks for coming at the show man. Aj Mihrzad: Hey John thanks for having me buddy. The post Episode #89 – AJ Mihrzad on The Selling Machine-Like Power Behind A Good Ole Story appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Dec 16, 2014 • 43min

Episode #88 – Roy Furr on The Fundamentals Of Writing Copy That Converts (because it’s NOT hard to make way more)

Fundamentals people. What makes money? Like every time? Getting down to the basics. ..barebones money making copywriting. Sales… and fundamentals. Today Roy Furr is on the show to talk about this. He’s quite the copywriter and hangs out with the best of the best. Usually that means someones one of the best too. So learn from what he’s got to say. He shares how to find what to write about when busting out sales copy. ..how to get into the mind of your readers, How to shock them at their core with your copy. And make BIG money. It’s what sells. It’s what makes great copy. In this episode, you’ll discover: the reason why you want equity stakes in business as a copywriter (freelance work is solid, but equity is where it’s at) the single best way to make load of money for the rest of your life off copywriting and marketing (and we’re not talking JV opportunities with other IMer’s here) the simple yet vital mindset tweak you need to move up from a millionaire… to a multi-billionaire how drilling down and learning the ins and outs to one niche can be very beneficial for freelance copywriters why you need to think big as a copywriter if you plan on running your own business and making real big profits. how reading about litigation can help you move your mindset into think big territory why staying on course is a smart way to become great… to become a titan (learn how to stay on your “gps” entrepreneurial course) how tactics and templates can steer you away from what is really the most important thing… empathy the six points that you need to know in order to be a profitable copywriter how a simple chain letter made 1oo’s of thousands of dollars (when the copy is right, even a chain letter can make you rich) how building value fast, allows you to raise your prices and gain stronger relationships with your list (and earn far more from your customers, long term) Mentioned: Titans of Direct Response Gary Bencivenga Breakthrough Copywriting Secrets Dan Kennedy The Well Fed Writer AWAI Bootcamp Everbank Ready. Fire. Aim. Agora Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder guy it’s time for episode eighty eight of the McMethod Email Marketing Podcast where you’ll discover one simple thing: How to grow your business within our Market? How to grow your business with marketing you know. How to get more customers? How to crank up the value of those customers? And automate things as much as possible, so you can run around at the park with the kids and do all like crazy cool stuff. Today all we’re talking to Mr. Roy Furr. Now Roy, I met him at Titans of Direct Response copywriting conference so it’s a while back and he was actually the copywriter for the sales for that conference, so he’s a you know, he knows probably some, a lot of the biggest copywriters in the world right now, and so I thought I’d grab him and put him on the podium, you know, get him to do a podcast with me on what he’s up to and some of the copywriting strategies he uses to really get great results with his own list of *** clients. So today we’re gonna talk about the value, I mean he has crazy value per email. You know that sort of value dollar per lead which we’ll hear about in the episode. We’re gonna also talk about some core Direct Response concepts cause I believe and he believes as well. Now a lot of this stuff it comes back to fundamentals. I mentioned last week about the opportunistic stuff that you, you really can’t be opportunistic about business ideas or projects within the business or even tactics, that you can’t think, “oh im just looking for the next latest and greatest tactic to run for my business”. It really does come back to fundamentals so we gonna talk about some of that fundamentals today. to get this show notes of this episode of the McMethod Marketing Podcast, go to www.themcmethod.com/88. Now this week’s McMasters Insight of the week is, to know your values. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, we all make decisions based on whether we wanna go to the gym, or not go to the gym or go out to party on a weekend, or spend time with the family or all the different things, all the decisions we have, we have a filter that we run our decisions through and that’s what made them, and sometimes we feel like we made the right decision. We fill our lives with that decisions and that feels good, and other times we don’t feel good about it. We question ourselves, we doubt ourselves. So the advantage of knowing what your values are and taking the time to understand them, your core values, what drives your decisions, is that you know, you have a conscious way of knowing when you made the right decision and when you didn’t. Okay, so I did an exercise recently and this is what I do. I got a list of four hundred different values. I actually did this exercise with a podcast guest who was on a probably a couple months back. His name is John Logar and you can find the podcast in the archives if you like and he helped me with the exercise. So basically we got four hundred different values, four hundred different things and different ideas like health and nutrition or family or love, all this different things and the idea was, out of those four hundred, you choose all the ones that resonate with you, and I ended up think I listed like seventy five and you do it again. Out of those seventy five I had thirty, and out of thirty I had twenty, and eventually we riddled it down all the way to five and then I ranked the five in you know highest to lowest and there you go. I had a set of values and it not so much about the deciding what the values are and the exercise, its more about eliciting them. Okay, you know diving under the hood of your brain I’m thinking what really drives you already. Okay, and what’s gonna happen is those shift, but the advantage of knowing this stuff is it really helps you to make decisions, to be clear on what you ‘re doing, why it’s important to you, what really matters. So you can wake up each morning, you can look in the mirror, and you know what you’re doing today is really moving your life forward in the way that you want to move forward. I mean, I think this is the key I have in that really satisfying and fulfilling life is that knowing what your values are and then crafting like creating a life that allows you to live out those values. I know I talked about a couple of weeks back about this idea of passion versus getting good at something. I think that’s the wrong questions to be asking. The better question is probably gonna be something along lines of, what are your values? And are you living a life aligned with those values? Because if you are its gonna feel freaking awesome. But if you’re not then it’s gonna feel pretty empty. Okay, so that’s the exercise. You could do it yourself, you go talk to John Logar. He’s a really cool guy, really friendly. You can reach him out via email. I think he has a Website might be Call John Logar and you can jump on phone call with him. Calljohnlogar.com I think that it is, I might be wrong. But something like that, anyway, that’s that, in this weeks’ McMasters insight of the week. You probably know McMasters by now, if you’d been listening to this podcast, but just in case you don’t, it’s a private community. VIP community you might say. With people who you know pay monthly fee for access to forum and training products and I get in these forum. I reply to their threads. All the members in there replying to their threads, and the whole goal here, of this sort of networking, it’s a bit of mastermind, you might think, is to really help people grow their business. Get more customers, with less time, with less effort, with less fuss. Because that’s what we all want, right? That’s why you’re listening to this. You do want more customers, you want them with less effort, you wanna, so you can do all that you know, so you can really live your life and with accordance to your values okay. So that’s what McMasters is all about, if you wanna know more about it and even sign up go to themcmethod.com/mcmasters you gonna get all the information there and I would love to see you inside the forum. That’s it for now, let’s get in to this interview with Mr. Roy Furr. John McIntyre : It’s John McIntyre here the Autoresponder guy, I’m here with Roy Furr. Now Roy is a copywriter, I met at the Titans of Direct Response conference a couple months back for the time he’s supposed to go live, a couple months ago in a Stamford Connecticut, which was a.. So Titans of Direct Response is an incredible marketing summit, marketing conference with all the big guys, Gary Bencivenga, and all those guys and then Roy turns out, he’s a copywriter who was at the conference but he actually wrote, from my memory he wrote a sales letter for Brian Kurtz from Boardroom who actually put the events on. So Roy has worked with some of the biggest guys in this industry and direct response game. So I’ thought I’d get him on the show to talk about sort of the lessons he’s learned and sort bit about what we both go at our times, what was the core , some of the core concepts that we talked about there. So get into that in just a minute, Roy how are you doing today man? Roy Furr: I’m doing very well. I’m doing very well and its, I feel honored actually to be in the podcast. I know what a huge effort these can be to put on and to connect with all the great people that you’ve had in your podcast so far and I feel honored to be a guest featured alongside with them, here so. John McIntyre: You’re one of them now man, Roy Furr: I guess. Yeah. John McIntryre: Okay, but before we get into some of the contents, we just, I mean we just discussed this a minute ago. Can you give a list now, just a background on who is Roy Furr and what are you up to? Roy Furr: Yeah. So in 2004 I got a degree in psychology and it was an undergraduate degree and I promptly got just about the best job to be qualified for with undergraduate degree in psychology which is a customer service job at a local gas company and it was an absolutely miserable job. So for people who didn’t pay their heating bill all winter and then the first warm day of spring came and we went out to shut off their service, I was the guy that picked up the phone, when that person called in, you know if you didn’t pay the bill and you started yelling at me because I shut off your service apparently. It was a horrible job, it was my first full time job out of college and it was really miserable existence but I worked from like noon to nine pm and most of the people don’t want to call the gas company after about six pm so I had bunch of time in the evenings to read and I’ve been you know a casual writer. My biggest commercial success as a writer was when my grandma bought ten copies of my self-published poetry book for all my aunts and uncles. But I found a book called The Well Fed Writer and I thought “Oh that’s an interesting title” and I started reading it and discovered this whole copywriting thing and that book in particular was in direct response copywriter so I quickly went down my own rabbit hole. But that was back in 2005, discovered direct response copywriting. By fall 2005 I had a full time job, basically running a marketing department for a small business at Oregon. We more than double that business over the next four years. Put it in the e-magazines list. The fastest growing small businesses in the country and had a ton of success there and then in 2010 I broke off on my own. I became a fulltime freelance copywriter. I wrote a lot of business opportunities stuff in that first year and then transitioned by late 2010 to almost exclusively working with the big financial publishers and doing direct response then. In late 2010 I got a lot of folks who copy know AWAI. Every year they have their boot camp, as we’re talking it just ended. Unfortunately I missed it this year but in 2010 I was the guy that got the big ten thousand dollars check up on stage. I loved using that picture for being like the hottest up and coming copywriter. John McIntyre: How did you get that? I’m curious, what was the challenge of the…? Roy Furr: Yeah. So the, it’s kind of a multi layered process for choosing it but largely you get under their radar by working with AWAI. I mean obviously they’re kinda aware of all their students. But their most aware of the students who shop at boot camp and spend a lot of money with them and their even more aware of the people who work for them. And that year I wrote, what was their largest ever opportunity product promotion. It was a promotion that did so well that they had to actually shut down selling the product. Now normally what they do, and what they still do, is they launch a product. They don’t do like product launch formula model. They launch a product and they just sell it from that point forward. Well it did so well that a day or two Katy called me up and said, “I’m a little nervous cause too many people want this”, and I said, “well you should shut it down”. Then they said, “no we can’t do that. We’ve never done that, never done that”. And then about 3 or 4 days later they say, “Roy we’re gonna go with your idea. We’re gonna have to shut this down”, and so within two weeks they shut it down because it was just selling too well and then launched it again, as a, with even more content a few months later. But it was largely that promotion that like cemented the ten thousand dollar award that they offer. John McIntyre: Wow! That’s a cool story. Roy Furr: Yeah. Yeah. John McIntyre: So what happened? You’re at this thing; you got this ten thousand dollar thing then what happened? Roy Furr: Yeah, well at the time I had been just starting to do work with the big financial publishers and I got a bunch of gigs with various financial publishers at the time and one of them actually locked me up for the next eighteen months as an exclusive for them where I did a bunch of copywriting. I wrote my first million dollar promotion there. Had a lot of success with them and even had the opportunity to kinda do some copy chiefing like helping to run the copy in writing department in kinda in own position and then I went back out into the freelance world after eighteen months and I’ve continued to work with a bunch of other folks, and build my network work and just go for a ride I guess. It’s a wild world, even you know, even this big financial publishers it’s kinda a wild world to be freelancing and bouncing between them. John McIntyre: Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, okay. Well lets, I’m curious just before going to cool direct response stuff, I’m wandering you know, after telling that story, where you trying to get to in five years’ time. Do you wanna still be a copywriter or do you want to have your own company? Roy Furr: Well one of the things that I’ve dealt in speaking with the best copywriters in the world, because I’m on a first name basis with most of the best copywriters in the world and so I get to have conversations with them that a lot of people don’t and there’s one guy who spoke he’s name is David Galland through he’s currently with Casey research. He was a partner in Everbank which is a huge online banking success story in the U.S. over the last couple decades. He hosted the New Orleans investment conference for I think eight years. He helped launch the Blanchard Group of mutual funds and he has billions of dollars of sales to his name even though you don’t know who he is. Well one the things he told me when I was working with him in the Casey research was like find a way to get equity stakes in business. I mean the freelance game is nice for a while earning fees and royalties, even some really substantial royalties. But if you can a find a way to become a partner in a business and use your marketing skills as your capital that your bringing to the table. That is the single best way to make bunch of money off marketing and off copywriting. And that’s far more better than being a freelance copywriter. And that’s, there’s a lot of time you’re thinking about building a copywriting team and developing marketing strategies online, offline. Understanding you know if it’s appropriate, is there a direct mail *** you can go into. Yeah that’s shrunk in last few years but you know the folks that I worked with that are using the mail are still getting incredible response rates so there’s less competition in that mailbox now. You know it may be cheaper to provide online but you know getting new customers through the mail is, its great way to go right now. Yeah. John McIntyre: That’s a cool idea. I think as a copywriter listening to this, this gonna be some of that. Cause I know I’ve been in that position before, right? Well I don’t do much copywriting these days but I’ve been in the position before and sort of want to keep going with the copywriting. I don’t want to become, you know very successful with it and that is interesting, I haven’t heard of that approach. Instead of just doing, I mean you can do small partnerships. Partnering with say a traffic guy and doing like an internet marketing product but I guess the idea of partnering with big big big company and taking an equity position in that company cause that has much much much bigger potential than just your old deal. Roy Furr: Well I don’t. David’s example was an interesting one. There were less than ten founding partners and I don’t know how big Everbank is today. And I don’t think he has a stake in it anymore. I think he might have sold the stake. But when you just think about that, he is one of you know less than 10 founding partners in like the largest online banking success story in a last decade or two. There’s got to be something to that. John McIntyre: 2.2 billion dollar market cap right now. Roy Furr: Okay, I’m sure he cashed out before that but still you know. And he’s done this over and over and over and over again. And it’s something like, I don’t know the exact details but I know *** has a partnership agreement with *** I don’t think he’s a shareholder because of something that I listen to a presentation that he gave. Where he just said he didn’t want to deal with being a shareholder. Dan Kennedy he is a shareholder in multiple direct response businesses that the Kennedy’s hair, barber club being one that I know has some sort of stake in. You know these great copywriters are doing these you know over and over again. Gary Bencivenga, he actually said at one point that one of his biggest regrets of his career as a copywriter was not going off and forming his own business. So what did he do when he retired, he formed fresh pressed olive oil which is an olive oil of the month business that he has a stake in. John McIntyre: It’s very interesting. Like it’s an interesting thing, I think that sometimes it’s easy I mean, when I was learning how to write copy, and really like ****, like writing down things in my hand and reading books all the time, is it was easy to think while, you know, this really is the point here you know. Let’s just make some money, some sales, let’s just write some emails, you know, do that kind of stuff. But the end game is really to, I mean, it’s not really the end game. It’s basically, if you want to be wealthy, like if you want to end up with that F in your money, you need to get into a position where in you’re a business earner. Whether in its 100% of the business or you’re a partner in it, you split it so you write a copy and now the people build the business however the deal is you have got to get that point where you’ve got equity, where you own some sort of a business, some part of it, if you wanna become really, really, really wealthy. Roy Furr: An ideal business where you may work hard upfront but then you’re be able to set up processes and systems and stuff where you’re able to step away and still continue collecting those tracks without having to be writing copy every day for the business. You know that’s a great long term. When you think about something, I keep on going back to it, just because it’s an example that we’ve brought up, it’s an interesting concept with Everbank. You know it’s a bank, they don’t need a new sales letter every, every week or month or something. You know it’s… John McIntyre: It’s another thing too. Like i noticed with, in new *** marketing field, I find even with the Direct Response game is, not everyone of course, there is a lot of small thinking like this thinking let’s say like ten, twenty million dollars is a nice business to have. Yes its nice, but if you have like a hundred million dollars or five hundred million dollars or say like Everbank has 2.2 billion as far as Google is telling me right now. So like if you’re gonna play at those kind of levels, it takes much much much bigger idea and I think it’s quite difficult to build. Say a 2 billion dollar business on top of a few books. And you could probably say I like that. But its… Roy Furr: Yeah, yeah. Well Mark Ford and Bill Banner who are partners in Agora, and Mark has written about this under Michael Masterson. His book Ready, Fire, Aim, is like must read for everybody in the Direct Response business. They eagerly perfected the model of… They build a small business and then they’ll get to pass a million just by figuring out how to sell one thing. They’ll get to pass ten million by selling a lot of things that those same customers want and then after ten million, they start to spin off divisions and you see this with Agora all the time. Money Map Press used to be a division of Oxford club. Stansberry has divisions and separate companies. *** sweater actually kind of underneath Stansberry .So they have this kind of you know family tree that early owned by Agora proper but it’s all this independently operating business units and we’re talking a very solid nine figure business with divisions of it that is still growing very fast. And that’s run by two copywriters. I mean if. Actually there was a sales letter that came out recently that said, basically if Bill Banner, because he was the founder and is the majority owner, I’m pretty sure. If he wanted to be a billionaire today, he could be, he would just have to package up Agora and sell it. But he doesn’t want to be a billionaire. He wants to like ride about the economy and own this business and he’s happy with where he’s at. He’s not just trying to cash out. But yeah, it’s. And they thought about building a publishing empire they figured out this model that’s outlined of Ready, Fire, Aim of you know essentially supporting the entrepreneurship of you know you got really good copywriter. Porter Stansberry was a really good copywriter for one of their divisions I don’t remember. And he said, “I want to write my newsletter”, and so he wrote his newsletter and launched the newsletter, you know now he has Stansberry. It’s you know this is the deep dark secret for a customers of this industry is that a lot of newsletter, you know copywriters have to be really sharp about whatever topic they write about. You know and that’s one of the benefits of finding an edge and sticking with it. John McIntyre: Right. Roy Furr: And you get really really sharp about a topic and so a lot of newsletters you know are written or compiled by at the front side of a copywriter. John McIntyre: The interesting thing that like, the interesting that you know that like Bill Banner and Michael Masterson they are copywriters. But there’s an interesting thing like where it’s not the copywriting part of their brain that built the company, it’s the entrepreneurial part of the brain. Roy Furr: No. John McIntyre: So you know let’s say the list out here, they might be a copywriter or consultant of some sort, but if you want to have a company, if you just don’t want like writing sales letters or maybe passing a few things onto copywriters you have something small like that, and you have a company that requires you know, you gonna have to put your copywriter hat on to write your sales letter. But when it comes to building companies, setting up process and hiring staff and all that sort of stuff, you’re gonna be an entrepreneur. So it’s an interesting reminder, a very important reminder that, I guess to think big, and that, like, you don’t have to be just a copywriter. Roy Furr: Yeah, I think a lot of times its kinda like the entrepreneur that started the business and got it off the ground and going. It’s not the entrepreneur that can take it to a hundred million dollar company and to some degree you can do that like in your head you can make that switch if you are like self- aware enough to do that. And so you know copywriting alone may help you build a one million dollar business or five million dollar business just by going out and writing a bunch of sales letters. But when you want to take that next leap, that’s when you should hire MBA’s because they tend to as a whole have kind of negative impression that they are built for middle management in large companies. But you have to have that kind of systems MBA mindsets that’s taught and figure out how you can transition I guess or put on different hats in different times, and say, “okay, we just need to sell products, I need to put my copywriter and marketing strategist hat”, but when I need to build this big business I need to put on my system builder hat and fill in the copywriting roles you know ideally so. John McIntyre: Okay, okay so I’m curious, just to change the topic a little bit, we mentioned Titans before, you we’re at Titans, I was there. What was your, we talked at some core concepts, or what was the gist of Titans? What you get out of it? Roy Furr: Yeah, I should actually bring out, I’m gonna use this as just a momentary excuse to talk about my blog breakthrough marketing secrets cause I’ve written about takeaways a couple of times and I just on Monday, well Monday as I speak, I wrote like the top takeaways for beginning copywriters. The funny thing was, to me the thing that jumped out so much was that there was like very little talk of tactics at Titans and so much about like mindset and not getting caught in kinda this little mind of the copywriting world, like going out to the big mind of like the whole world and thinking about your market and all of that. Like you know one of the things that was recommended a couple of times was reading about *** and how the best lawyers build their cases and that was completely fascinating to me like, we’re thinking about the different types of persuasion out there. And that, I mean that’s still fairly connected. There were a lot of talks there and to think about topics that might be thought of as kinda “woo woo” on like you know putting yourself on. I compared it to having a GPS and a lot of them talked about kind of variation on this like you have to enter, let’s say you want to drive from Los Angeles to New York City well you know you enter the address in New York City in your GPS and then you have to like stay on course for that entire trip and it’s a long trip. But if you stay on course you know like where you’re going, if you get off route, you have to get back on route. And to become really great, to become a titan at Direct Response or anything else like that’s one of big things that I took away is that you have to be kind of constantly aware of that GPS. I definitely did the same thing as a copy writer very early on. I wrote this in 2009, this letter for ***services that said something along lines of, imagine hiring the next Clayton Makepeace, Michael Masterson, you know when they’re basically fresh and whatever. Now the letter itself *** but the thinking behind that was sound. I mean that particular letter I don’t think generated me any business but it was actually like very similar to some of the stuff I heard from the Titans on stage. John McIntyre: It’s an interesting thing, I mean here’s a concept from I think Psycho-cybernetics is the book where you know getting towards a goal, getting towards anywhere in life its very pretty much like sailing a boat or you know riding a boat across the ocean the reason being is that you never get on a straight line from point A to B specially when your sailing because your wind blows and you have to sort of zigzag your way there. So wind blows and you get blown of course. Roy Furr: Yeah specially up wind. John McIntyre: Yes exactly and you zigzag back in, zigzag back and eventually you get to the destination. But I mean so often you lie, if it’s easy going, “Oh I’m getting so distracted and I’m getting carried away with this thing over here”. Those sort of problems and it’s tough to remember but it’s really important to remember that really the process of getting to that goal I mean whether you’re a copywriter right now or you already have a business doesn’t really matter. Getting to anywhere, you zigzag your way there. You can’t go on a straight line and even if you try. And it’s an interesting analogy, and sort of what you’re saying there, is that it doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be that straight line. Roy Furr: No it absolutely doesn’t. And I think the ceiling is another great analogy. Actually my grandparents retire onto a sailboat and sailed from Indianapolis, Indiana which you know, you have to ride a lot of rivers for a while. But they sailed from Indianapolis, Indiana down to the Caribbean and all the way across over to South Africa and back. Like in their 60’s, I think they were in their 60’s when they went to South Africa. There was like 26 days, there was not a sign of human life, like not even a jet smoke trail across the sky. The whole world could have imploded, you know as long as the ocean is still there, and they wouldn’t have known it, for 26 days. And so well I grew up visiting them on their sail boat quite often and that really resonates with me. I enjoyed the idea. John McIntyre: I’m curious about what we talked the core direct response concept. So aside from, I’ve talked a lot about this in my, in training community which is that a lot of people get hyped up, they get excited about tactics, like headline template or a good sales letter template. When a lot of, I mean the core fundamental to me is empathy, getting inside someone’s head so much that you understand him or her better than they understand themselves. That to me is one of the fundamental concepts. Roy Furr: Yeah. There were six words that really like locked into my brain and I don’t remember where I heard them but it locked into my brain when I was fairly early on my copywriting career and its understanding your prospect’s fears, frustrations and failures as well as their dreams, their desires and what they see as their destiny. And like if you understand that, like what fears are blocking them from having a life they want, what are they frustrated with today in their life right now, what failures just keep bugging them , like things they should have succeeded at but they didn’t and what dreams do they have for their future, and for what that can be. What immediate desires they want fulfilled right now. John McIntyre: How do you find some of this stuff out? Roy Furr: A lot of it for me, I mean, about the time that this podcast is published and I have a very small group of copywriters coming to join me for three days in Lincoln, Nebraska to chat about this stuff and you know it’s a very big topic. But for me, part of it is actually just going and like…Well it’s a psycho-cybernetics technique of *** of your mind of just trying to put yourself in the mind of the prospect. In 2010, I got an interview with Bill Banner at AWAI and we talked for a while about his process for copywriting and this is largely what I try and do, is he just kind of imagines the prospect and it’s not like a real, defined process. But he thinks about you know for investors its somebody who’s maybe right on the cost of retirement and they’re realizing they haven’t saved enough money and they you know their just looking at their finances and they’re thinking, “oh jeez I can you know retire now and probably do okay for a few years”. But you know, am I gonna be greeting people at Walmart? Or am I gonna be you know checking groceries at the grocery store that I’ve shopped at for the last 20 years? You know,what’s my life gonna look like in 10 years if I don’t figure this financial thing out and get a bit more money there to back me up. So like really try and put yourself at the mind of this person at this point of their life and with all the past and all the future kind of crashing on them and then like, just you know this is in terms of finding what to write about. Just to look through all your research, and the topics, you know the news around and whatever topic you’re writing about and like really look for what jumps out of you and I think while your inside that person in the field of their mind and just write about that in the best way possible and test it. And what starts to happen if you like stay in the market for a while, is your imagination about who that prospect is what gets them excited, does start to become more accurate. You know and that’s why somebody has been in the business for twenty years is usually getting better than somebody who’s been in business for two years. There are great examples Denny Hatch had a book called Method Marketing where he had couple examples of people who wrote their first ever sales letter. And the book I think is out of print. But a few sales letters from super star pro copywriters and a few sales letters from you know people who weren’t even copywriters, who just sat down and wrote a letter and both because they did such a good job of kind of capturing the gestalt, which is a term in psychology, the big picture of who the prospect was, what they cared about, how the business or organization met in there. They did incredibly incredibly well. And there was one like a fund raising chain letter, basically for like a children’s medical research place and they ended up like shutting it down even though it was making a ton of money, like this woman wrote this on her own, I think she was a nurse and she’s like “this is important and I just want you to send ten dollars, ten of your own dollars and on your letter head retype this letter and send it to like five or ten of your friends and ask them to send ten of their own dollars”. A lot of who they are, “it’s just ten bucks”, and they made like hundreds of thousands of dollars and the hospital or medical research facility like shut it down because they didn’t want to be associated with this chain letter. But you know I’m like slapping my forehead about that. But and that was just somebody who really like understood, you know. It wasn’t a super star copywriter, so like, so understanding your market, that’s a great like fundamental in Direct Response getting back to your question but also just the customer process of like you know in order for me to buy from you, I have to know who you are first and so like as a marketer I have to introduce myself, like provide some sort value or unique perspective for something to like connect with this person first and then like once I’ve connected with them then I can ask them to join in my list and be part of my list and then when like stat step has been achieved I can start trying to make a first sale but you know it has to be a gentle sale not an expensive sale. Like the term trip wire is used for those seven dollar offers or whatever which is you know it’s fair enough term whatever and then like a bigger sale from there and then you know maybe a big big sale or like a continuity sale after that . In the newsletter business there’s a bunch of front in newsletter s that are less than a hundred bucks a year and then you know you can step up from there. There’s like thousand dollar newsletters that focus on smaller stocks with higher volatility and higher potential upsight. And then there’s like daily trading services where they’re providing you updates, and those are much more expensive. John McIntyre: Right, right. Roy Furr: And so it’s all about building that relationship and as you build the relationship and you deliver more value, faster value, more immediate value, that sort of thing. That allows you to raise the price. So they get more value, you get more value but it’s this like growing relationship. John McIntyre: Right, okay. It’s sort of ongoing thing that you know, I call a dynamic thing when people talk about how many emails should an Autoresponder view for example or when should you be contacting customers for leads, I say, “never”. It’s a relationship. And you can let them end the relationship by unsubscribing or cancelling or something like that. Otherwise if they don’t unsubscribe, like they don’t decide they don’t want to hear from you, then you keep on sending them stuff. Roy Furr: A great story. When I was working for that company out in Oregon they published ***and for little while, because I couldn’t earn a royalty in the marketing department I switched into sales where I could get paid of sales commission but I was still doing direct response marketing I was just getting a sales commission. John McIntyre: Right. Roy Furr: And driving leads to myself and the rest of sales team. I very quickly became one of the top sales people because I found a way to filter out the people that wanted to buy the our really expensive solution like thirty thousand dollars. And what I did was, I started off with usually with really good conversation with them like maybe your ***. I got them to raise their hand and say you know, “I want a consultation about how your training my network to your organization” and then we would have that consultation. And then what I would do, I would just put it in our *** system, which basically I set up a reminder that I would contact them back. And if I didn’t just made good conversations with them, I might contact them back before the end of another week or early next week. And then as it went on and as their purchasing process cause a lot of it is B to B sale, purchasing process would drag out. I just kept contacting them until I got a yes or a no and you know I told them, I don’t like maybes, I like yes or no but if it’s not yet, I’m going to keep you know touching base and seeing how can I help, is there’s anything I can do today to move it along and you know it would start out with very frequent contacts, and then you know months later I might be sending somebody a note every two or three weeks and just say, “hey how are things going is there I can do for you today”. And it’s a little bit different when you’re doing like Autoresponders, you know not in a one on one sales process but the principles the same. Like when the relationship is hot, you contact them often but until they say no, like specifically “I don’t want to do business with you”. You should have a some sort of ongoing contact with them and just keep doing it until they say yes or no and I would have things go on for six months or more where other sales people would have completely dropped that lead and just you know not done anything with it after two or three times. I would get, I would have a thirty thousand dollar purchase order show up and everybody be looking at me like, “how the heck are you doing this?” you know cause I talked a couple of those month which worked out very really well for me and a bunch of other stuff too. So that’s really the attitude, I mean like I write my stuff daily. I write articles daily and it’s a different thing because that’s what I promised but that’s certainly how you should think about Autoresponders. John McIntyre: Okay. Well cool man. We’re actually right on time here. So before we go though, let’s talk more about, you know what’s going on with this breakthrough marketing secrets you know and where should the listeners go to when they wanna little know more about what you’re up to. Roy Furr: Yeah so five days a week, you know daily, essentially I write an article on something from the direct response marketing world or my experience. And you know generally, Mondays I answer reader questions. Tuesdays I talk about copy. Wednesdays I talk about web marketing stuff. Thursdays I talk about business strategy marketing strategy and Fridays I talk about whatever I want. And I don’t have a ton of readers but I have very excited and loyal readers. I try and deliver a ton of value. You know contrite to the teaching of some other people who do daily emails and that’s fair, what works for them works for them. What works for me, works for me. You know but I write a ton of content for that. It is how I announced my copywriting event. Registrations are now closed and certainly by the time this is published registrations are closed. But I will have a crew coming in to record that. But its, if you’re into direct marketing, if you’re into copy writing then there’s gonna be a lot of stuff for you in there so that’s it breakthroughmarketingsecrets.com. If you go there, the first thing that’s gonna happen is the video gonna start playing where you are going to learn the most valuable secret that I learned from Gary Bercivenga, who’s considered the world’s best copy writer. Years ago, this probably has contributed more to my success than anything else. It’s a secret that’s not just for copywriters, it for life in general and for business. In whatever goals you have. You’re gonna learn that right away and you’re gonna have opportunity to sign up and get few really valuable reports. There’s some for business owners, some for copywriters and some just good stuff. And it will give you a chance to also try my daily stuff and I am happy to have you on subscribe if you ever feel like you know I sucked and you hate my articles or its just too much. I’d rather have you unsubscribe than complain in spam but I have ton of loyal subscriber who open up religiously within the first hour they receive it every day and my stats say that. John McIntyre: Okay. Roy Furr: Yeah so it’s a lot of fun. And gives me an opportunity to talk about marketing. John McIntyre: Cool man. Now I’ve got a link to that breakthroughmarketingsecrets.com and the show notes at themcmethod.com. Roy thanks for coming on the show man. Roy Furr: Hey awesome. Thank you for having me and invitation and opportunity to speak along sides of some amazing guys that you’ve had so far. I can’t wait to dig even deeper into the archives and listen to every episode. John McIntyre: Cool man. The post Episode #88 – Roy Furr on The Fundamentals Of Writing Copy That Converts (because it’s NOT hard to make way more) appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Dec 9, 2014 • 34min

Episode #87 – Danny Iny On Tuning Into Feedback & Being An Audience Master To Grow A Successful Business

Danny Iny, The Freddy Kreuger of blogging, The online business creator tycoon. Is taking time out of his day, ..even though he’s in full-on launch mode, To talk business. How to grow it properly. And how YOU can get started today. How to really profit off your biz ideas, past, present, or future… In this episode of the McMethod Podcast, Danny reveals the strategy, philosophy and tactics to grow an audience at the perfect time to really explode your business, And your profits. He’s a learner, And each success and failure Danny’s been through, ..he’s pretty much utilized it to either better himself or most importantly, Many, many, MANY others. He’s on his third big launch at the moment, Listen in to what Danny’s got to provide you today. It’s really good stuff. You’ll get pumped up, guaranteed. In this episode, you’ll discover: how listening to feedback is the North Star to your building and planning your business the guest blogging power that flipped the switch early in Danny’s online entrepreneur career (and how he leveraged that power by writing over 80 guest blog posts in 2011) how success is not always premeditated and is often stumbled upon when you’re bulldozing forward productively the no bullshit fact that everything starts with your audience’s actual, documented, personally-taken-in problems and questions (not just what you think they are) Danny’s insider secrets to building a relationship with your prospects to receive their personal feedback that whether you’re already full-on in your business, or just starting out… Danny’s strategies are equally promising the root-cause search that truly solves your students’ problems as a consultant, trainer, or product developer (don’t just look at the symptoms to problems) why you should never rush to create a product (why are you rushing? Is it because you don’t have an audience yet?) that solid, consistent effort towards a set goal can take a year to begin to fruition (but guaranteed if you work hard and smart) how you shouldn’t rush for cash… and how you need to give yourself a runway and seek real insights for true success the internet marketing world is still in its infancy, don’t go for fools gold when jumping on the gold rush train that Danny is very approachable… shoot him a message if you have any questions about the material in this interview at danny@firepolemarketing.com Mentioned: Dane Maxwell & The Foundation Write Like Freddy Audience Business Masterclass Firepole Marketing Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. Hey, it’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy. It’s time for episode 87 of the McMethod Marketing Podcast where you’ll discover how to get more customers, in less time, with less effort, with less money and plus you want to have make more money with them all, with those cool tactics and strategies. Now, today I’ll be talking to Danny Iny. Danny Iny is from Fire Pole Marketing. He is the audience guy. He teaches, you know what we will teach is to build a products I think your final audience to sell it to. Danny does the other way around. He teaches you to go and get, go and get the audience and then get a product. Ok. I think that’s really, that is really a great way to do it. Because look, you know a great product, but there is no one to sell it to, no one is going to buy it, okay. Unless you have an audience first you have the list is a whole bunch ways to get that audience. Sneak and find out what they need, what problems they have and product they want to buy, which is a much easy strategy to perform. But it is a little bit of kind a intuitive, okay. So we are going to talk it to today about the short term versus long term thinking, that drives that thinking, that drives that strategy. To get the sure notes of this episode of the McMethod Marketing Podcast, go to www.themcmethod.com/87. Okay, one more thing we got the McMasters inside of the week. This week is really cool, I love this one. Opportunistic, or the question is really do you want to be opportunistic or you want to focus down? Okay. Now one year ago I, you know- been in Bangkok for a conference, just come back to Thailand- so just, just back to Chiang Mai. I realized that I was focusing on like 4 or 5 different projects; 4 or 5 different you know separate businesses on Australia, trying to do this trying to do that. I heard about supplements and I heard that eCommerce and drop shipping and I want to do this email marketing thing. And I realized that I was just chasing the part of going at the end of the rainbow. I was, every time I heard a good idea, every time I heard a story from someone who is making money, I’d like ‘Oh that sounds great! I think I want to do that.’ But I won’t make any proper progress on any of them or maybe I make some small progress but you know- I go and say ‘I’ll do some Amazon stuff a little bit.’ Make some head way make some gains but then, I do like then the excitement would wear off and then I hear a better idea, a more exciting idea and then I jumped off into the next thing. And one thing that really changes my business and specially improved it was that realizing that some sort of opportunistic thinking is cancer to success, okay. Let me say that again. Opportunistic thinking like jumping from opportunity to opportunity is cancer to a business, ok. In other words, if you are trying to get somewhere with business, and this could be you know- this applies if you are a freelancer and you are just getting started. This applies then maybe you are getting a lot of money. Because you can be opportunistic in terms of multiple businesses or you could just be opportunistic and multiple projects within the business. Maybe you try to focus on 5 or 10 different areas when you should really focus on 1 or 2. And one thing that changed me in, and really change the way I do businesses and improved things is just focusing down. I mean this is part of like the Auto-responder kind of guy thing. This is you know combining all the products that I have into a community called McMasters this is just simplifying things. So I can focus and deliver a huge amount of impact into 1 or 2 key areas. And it makes it much easier to make an impact, okay. So the suggestion today if you are listening to this is if you are stopping opportunistic whether you are at the beginning of the journey, whether you are in the business, stop focusing on 5 things, 10 things. Figure out a couple of things that are extremely high impact, extremely high leverage and go explore like a freaking bomb in those areas. Okay, that is what you wanted to. If you want more insights like this, you need to join McMasters. McMasters, it is a private meeting community which is rare, really about how to build your business how to grow it. It started being about email marketing so how to write and auto responder all that’s in there. But, what I have realized is that, the easy to people who join is- I mean like Danny Iny, it’s about the audience. It is not just about the auto responder, it’s really you know–if you join you don’t want just and auto responder. You want a sales founder you want an automated marketing system that runs 24/7 to convert your prospects and leads into paying customers and that also cranks the value of those customers up. So that McMaster is all about there’s forum, webinars, there’s training part a bunch of stuffs in there. If you want to learn more about it go to www.themcmethod.com/mcmasters. Cool! Let us get into it that’s a finale, let’s get to the interview with Mr. Danny Iny. It’s John McIntyre the Autoresponder guy I’m here with Danny Iny from www.firepolemarketing.com. Now Danny is known as the Freddy Krueger of blogging. He is the founder of Fire Pole Marketing. He’s got a couple of bestselling books, engagement from scratch in credit of the audience Business Master Class Training Program. So, today I thought they get him on. Someone mentioned recently and emailed it to me and after a lot of getting in the show and talked about what he is known for, which is really how to build an audience first. So, you might have a product, so you might want to create a product but instead of going down that road, you know what Danny suggest what he teaches is to go down the road of booting an audience first. But, to go into it beyond just booting a twitter, you know a Twitter falling or Facebook page it is much more-deeper than that. That’s what we are going to talk about today. So, we are getting into Danny in just a minute. Danny how are you doing today? Danny Iny: I am great! I’m really excited to be on the phone to you! John McIntyre: Good to have you here man. And you’re in the middle of a launch we are just chatting. You are like a neck tape in the middle of-whole bunch of webinars and emails going out and it seems like busy over there. Danny Iny: Yeah we- we usually in the middle of one launch or another. We keep things pretty busy around here, but yeah it has been a hectic and exciting last five weeks or so for us. John McIntyre: Nice. Nice. Ok. Before you get into some of the audience booting stuff, the strategy and the philosophy and the tactics can you give- I have been given of a list in a sort of a very quick background of you. Can you give the list in a bit more of an overview of who you are and what you do? Danny Iny: Sure! So, I run a company called Fire Pole Marketing. And we teach-you know we started out very much like a lot of online marketing, blog sites you know organizations and etcetera. It’s teaching marketing through blog, through online contacts. How to general kinda training course? And like most online entrepreneurs we weren’t merely smart as we thought we were. So, we got into this like I really knew exactly what I thought what people needed. So I created the course like how am I going to get the word out, how make it a sound. And in the process of looking for, you know all the different ways to get the word out of what I’m doing. I stumbled on to guest posting and I got a post published on Copy Blogger, I got another one published on Pro Blogger. I thought I was getting some good exposure a good traction, so I totally threw myself into it. The first year this was 2011, I wrote over 80 guest posts from major blogs. People starts noticing me on all this different major blogs and start leaving comments saying: “Wow Danny wherever I turned you’re there it’s like you’re Freddy Krueger.” And that’s how I became the Freddy Krueger on blogging. The name stuck. Very, very ironically I’ve never in my life seen a Freddy Krueger movie but the name stuck. In doing this a lot of people kinda discover my work and then audience started to form. And because of my notch like, this didn’t start out as a strategy- you know success is always in high it seems premeditated. (Laughs) But, just a personal like personality cork of mine is, I’m kind a very mildly obsessive of compulsive. I don’t have to be diagnosed but enough that my desk is usually clean and organized papers are always right angles like that kind of stuff. So when someone emails me, I respond quickly because it’s a ‘to do’ I want to get it done I want to get it out of my inbox. And I kinda developed a reputation for being very responsive by email. Like anyone of my audience would email me, I respond always within 24 hours. And this big relationship started to develop between me and the audience. And through all this conversation I started to learn a lot about, what people wanted, what questions they were asking, what their real needs were. And I found first of all that, you know the big training product I built once upon a time. This massive overview course about how to do marketing, which is a great course for what it is, never sold well because it was not people were asking for. But through all these conversations, through all this interactions I learned what people actually did want. I kinda stumbled on to and paid attention and learned along the way as I went. I stumbled on to this audience first philosophy and strategy and approach, that we have applied now with personal growth of our business. We went from starting at zero on January of 2011, now we are doing about a million and half dollars a year and growing pretty faster, 15 people on my team. So, I was grown pretty quickly and we applied this to the development and launch of what will soon be three (3) blockbuster training program. So the first was Write Like Freddy, a program about blog writing, that was very much created in response to tons of people emailing me asking “how do you write so much?’ How do you get on all-these major blogs?” and these people were asking me for it. Clearly there is a demand and so I created it. Then the Audience Business Master Class, very much of how to do, of what we have done in building this business driven by an audience. People ask the questions that indicated there was demand then I actually created it. This new product that we are going to be launching in January the question build there is the builder is really how really to build a training program that people will love and appreciate and get value from and want to buy and consume, based on indicated demand on the market. So basically, taking what we have done successfully and teaching other people how to do the same will done this in a lot of different niches market industries etc. All about connecting with an audience, engaging an audience, listening to what they tell you and letting that be your North Star in building and planning a business. John McIntyre: Right. Right, Ok. I love that this is popping up a lot. Like I’ve seen with a- like Dane Maxwell the Foundation and you’ve got some of the start up community like the lean start up where this is big focus like right now entrepreneurship especially online but I think just in general, is that everyone is catching on to this idea that there’s really never been a better time to start a business. What that means is that a lot of people get on the game thinking ‘well I’ll just get the product first and go find some people to sell it to.’ And what that’s leading to is obviously that’s, those people got the picture the wrong way around, the strategy the wrong way around. So then out of that needs out of the people created that don’t really know the process has come to this market for stuff like what you’re teaching, where it’s not about the product. It’s not about really whether to PDF an eBook or videos or anything like that. Everything starts with understanding who the prospect is, who the audience is what problem they have and then creating something that fits them, like a glove. Because like you said you got a program that is a great cause it’s fully very helpful but because that’s not what people are looking for it doesn’t sell off. Danny Iny: Uh-hmm. That’s absolutely right. Underlying all of that because you got to actually gather from the audience from the market what is it that they want, because I see only what they want and what you think they need are often very different thing. But underlying that is you need to have a strong relationship with the audience because otherwise they are not going to tell you. John McIntyre: Right. So is this something you, is this something you do from like you teach through it like to start, before they even starting business to go to the audience and say start blogging, guest posting or podcasting like this and then to start serving the audience and finding out what products they need or what products you can create? Or is this something as a strategy, is this something you teach who already in business or is both? Danny Iny: It is both. So we work from people where they are. So there is the kind of best case scenario and then there is how you usually play that. The best case scenario is that someone comes to us right at the beginning. They are like “I think I want to start on my business, but I’m not sure how and I want to learn how to do it.” And probably about half of the student’s that we are or at least quite close to half of the students we’re working found that category. And we were acquainted from day one from ground zero and build something amazing and successful together, which is just great. But a lot of people went off the very first thing that they’ve ever seen in the world of online marketing. They’ve had their idea, they’re natural process of entrepreneurship, you do have an idea and you go out and you do it then you start learning more. Entrepreneurs tend to learn as you go kind of people. So often we meet and connect with entrepreneurs who are further along, they’ve built a website or blog or business. And its kind a stalled it’s not getting the results they want, I’m not sure why. Then we teach them how to work through our process to fix things from the ground up and go from there. So, I’d really want to start out and get everything the first time but, you know you work from where you are. We got to play the cards that we’re dealt. John McIntyre: Right. Ok. So, what’s I’m curious like what because I made this mistake before in the past just kind a going getting product and trying to sell it. And what I’ve noticed, actually I’ve been doing some advertising campaigns on Facebook for this thing, one thing that surprised me and it make so much sense to me now but during the testing and –you know basic teachings on different parts, different office it’s interesting to see that you can change the headline, change the video, and change the price and the delivery of the part and all the different things like that but, the problem is if you are not selling something that people want to buy it’s not going to sell. I mean it’s not going to sell that well. You could have great copy, you know a great copyrighter a fantastic video sales letter and the whole thing, the whole ‘she bang’, but if you are not selling thing that people want they just not going to buy. And how that played out for me was I noticed that, I’ve got a how to information training program that teach how to write emails and how to email the list and how to write a auto response and how to make sales and all of that and that’s great some people do wanted to do that, but then a larger part of the audience just wants a template. They can fill in the blanks and templates are not as good as email is written by then, but it requires your method. Go in fill the blanks upload the thing. So now I noticed by selling templates, and I’ve seen this recently with the launch of Ryan Diaz has been doing with the machine they were really stressing this angle of templates. And to me that was a classic example of seeing, you know you’ve got, in the grand scheme of things these people would be better off if they’ve learn how to write their own emails but the facts of the matter is they’ll rather just fill out a templates. So that’s what they are going to buy more of. So it’s interesting. You start to kind a think more like a, this is a difference in thinking like an entrepreneur and thinking like I guess a product creator. Because an entrepreneur says what do people want to buy and it goes and creates stuff. Danny Iny: And honestly it’s very difficult like it requires a lot of humility, which is something that, you know I don’t always excel at (Laughs) to really kind of shut up and put aside your preconceptions and listen without kind of applying that extra layer of your knowledge and expertise to filter through what people are saying to. You know ‘Oh this means they really need this.’ I know they are struggling with A and B and C even if they knew how to write emails properly and that wouldn’t be an issue. So that’s what they need for it. It’s very, very hard for us to step away from that. John McIntyre: What sort of mistakes you see people making when they’re getting started? What I see the big grand mistake is thinking about the product before they go and talk to the audience. What, you know when you’re training, when you’re working with someone or when you look at someone that people using your products what are some of the mistakes that people make with the strategy? Danny Iny: Well, what you going to think about not just what mistakes they make but why do they make mistakes. A great example, a great way to illustrate this is, I attended to that behavioural design class about 6 months ago or something, it’s basically how you create the behaviours you want in your life. So they gave the example of let say you want to get up early, you wanted to start your days earlier. And what a lot of people say, ‘Well I get up too late I need to find different ways of waking myself up in the morning so maybe I need a better alarm clock and better system for how to get myself out of bed etc.’ But really if you want to get up early in the morning you got to go to bed early at night. And to go to bed earlier at night you got to start your evening routine earlier so probably got to have dinner earlier. So to have dinner earlier you got to kind of clock out of work a little bit earlier to head home. (Laughs) And that’s really where that it actually starts. So, if you look at what kind is problem like the symptom then it’s very hard to solve. You got to look at the root cause. John McIntyre: Okay, I like that. Danny Iny: So in the case of kind of people a trying to get their online businesses going, the mistake people make is that they rush to clear the product. They rush to clear the product, they just want to put it out there trying to sell it but if you look back to why do people make those mistake it usually comes down to the fact that they don’t have and audience. They don’t have that group of people who can give them input into what they want or need and the reason for that is the people don’t plan a proper runway in terms of building and launching their business. And the classic example of this is it is in the restaurant in industry all the time, not that I work for all the restaurants, I just, you know you see them out there. A lot of restaurants start up and then they go out of business within 3-6 months. The reasons for that, is that they did their planning, they created their business plan they figured out what it’s going to cost to operate their business, how much money are they going to make with the certain number of customers in the door and etc., so they raise all their money to buy the franchise license and do the renovations and buy their equipment all that stuff, but they don’t account for the fact that they are not going be working at full time capacity from day 1. It’s probably going to take 6-12 months. So you don’t have the financial runway to build up to the results they want. A lot of people start on online business at a point where they kind a thinking, ‘okay you know I am desperate I quit my job I don’t have any savings from the bank. I’ve got to make rent next month. What can I do online that’s going to make money today?’ And the reality is that, there are exemptions there are way that you can get lucky and certainly you know if you are very experienced on other space there are things you can do, but they are in their heart the reality is that when building something successful does take time. We tell our students in our Master Class, ‘look in a building a business is generating a comfortable revenue, a comfortable income your looking probably a year, and we guarantee to students in our Audience Master Class, that if they put in a time which is ten to twenty hours a week, they do the work they recharge to us when they need help, we guarantee they will be earning at least $3,000 to $6,000 per month, consistently, sustainably and growing by the end of the first year. And if not we will be giving their money back, we even give them an extra thousand dollars out of my pocket. That’s how much, how confident I am that they can get their results. But it could or may take most of the year to get there. So, if you are in kind of a point where you are thinking, ‘How am I going to pay next month’s rent?’ We tell them explicitly this is not it. And in the time frame of building and launching a business that is not such a long time but if you go into it saying; ‘what can I do, that will make me money tomorrow?’ You’re kind of saying to yourself up to fail cause you don’t have time to connect with an audience and engage with them and learn what they want to build relationships. You can’t gather that real insight into what it is that the people want and need on how you can help them. And so you can’t do any of that. That’s why you jump straight to, you know ‘I’ve got to launch a product.’ So the mistake of people who jump straight to you know ‘I want to launch a product’ instead of want to build an audience and learn what they need. But the reason for that is that people kind a make their plans at a point where they’re like ‘okay I’m done I can’t take another minute in this day job, I’m not going to save any money. I’m just going to make money tomorrow, going to make money yesterday.’ And you can build huge success and great sustainable freedom online. I don’t know if that’s necessarily the best but the easiest place to make money really, really fast. John McIntyre: This is one of those things that for me it’s taking a while to get drilled in to me. I supposed this it’s really this year when I started to think more lonesome. But at least initially that’s where, that’s a lot of time where the hype comes right from me. You got the books like the four work week and see if this is some sort of spamy internet marketing stuff you see out there that promises to make like $3,000 a day or the next few weeks or something. And so it got to gets people you know their eyes glowing. Thinking that they going to be rich in a very, very short period of time. But the problem is I mean it’s not the, like once you get going once you have a good business and you can scale you can you know you can make money very quickly but if you’re starting, you’ve got no experience in business you don’t have any capital at all you don’t have any, I mean that’s my name no capital and no experience it’s going to take time. And especially like that first $100 online and then that first $1,000 online that’s going to be the hottest money you’ve ever you know worked on. Once you get to that it get a bit easier and thinking you know the first hundred thousand dollars you’re earning is probably, you know it’s easy and the first million dollars and so on and so forth. Danny Iny: Uh-hmm. Absolutely and if you think about it if you look at the history of kind of the “online marketing” quote and quote industry it’s really more of a cottage industry but you know our industry as we call it’s a very young industry, right where you’re getting 10 or 15 years old not much more than that. And because whenever you have a new industry right, you’re going to get a gold rush. With actually the gold rush you know back in the states however long ago like lots of people just going to rushed in cuz ‘Oh my God big opportunity.’ We fight with the online world we fight with the AppStore, we fight with Kindle. Whenever you got space you’re gonna have a gold rush because it’s new and the first people in are like it very well because they have enormous share of voice because there’s hardly anyone else’s there. It’s very unregulated relatively speaking it’s the wild west, you know you can there are times of loop holes on Google that you can exploit and so forth. And so that kind of environment will usually attract first it will attract smarts opportunistic entrepreneurs. Which also going to attract a lot of people who happen to be in the right place in the right time and it catches their eye and you know they make quick dollar and they’re like ‘Hey I can do all this why not sell it to other people too.’ You know it’s always easier to sell shovels than to dig for gold. (Laughs) and that’s what a lot of people do. And they sell this to dream of you know ‘Yay! You can make money in your sleep in your pyjamas from, you know your tropical island (laughs) and there’s much, which by the way which is total baloney cuz those places never had good Wi-Fi (laughs). John McIntyre: I lived in Thailand there’s Wi-Fi in some of the islands there. Danny Iny: (Laughs) so it’s just a set of unrealistic expectations and most of those things you can make money that way but that is not a business. Like taking advantage on some loop hole on Google to do arbitrage to, you know run traffic to this thing and then get, you know revenue from adds until the loop hole closes? That’s not a business it’s a scheme and it may make money for a little while until the loophole closes. But there’s nothing sustainable there and there’s a real, you see a lot of people who kind to rise to stardom they launch their like product. Teaching their instant magic formula for getting rich then the loophole closes then they disappear and they’re gone. And it’s not a real business as oppose to people who are working at for a long time so on the same stuff, for year after year because it’s good and it’s solid and it works. And building out a real business they do, you know it’s not one guy with 2 virtual assistants you gonna be doing high 6 figure it is kind a holding the business together with duct tape. It’s a real business with real people real system etc. It’s kind a young industry like give it another 5-10 years the industry got to grow up. John McIntyre: Well, you know business got to see if that happens and I think there will always be this people. Just get online like you go and register to main for 10 bucks and you’re in business in the sense. But this is partly like, you know me initially, when I was back in Sydney I’m from Sydney Australia so I’m there I’ve got a job working in s call center, I’m sitting there thinking ‘well you know.. you’ll be great’ I can just make say 400 bucks a month or maybe a 1000 bucks I could quit my job and I just do nothing or then I could just work. But at least initially often unless you know I find for me like, unless you it’s who you meet successful people who are making a lot of money you see how normal they are. They are not crazy. They are not as you know specially gifted or anything just normal people and often I find some of them not even that smart. It’s a lot of intelligent people don’t make much money and vice versa. But for me I found until I started to meet people who were far more successful than I was, it’s very hard to imagine myself in that position. So making a thousand dollars a month online with some, you know loophole on Google add worlds, that sound like a great you know a great opportunity because you know this is sort of limiting belief that I know I can really be it. This is kind a conscious thing but there is this limiting thing where like ‘ah I’m not really a business guy, I can’t have a big business’ but I find what’s happening with me and I’m seeing this happening with friends who, you know watching their businesses grow as well as you hit these goals and you knocked them down and you start making more money you gradually start thinking bigger and bigger especially when you start spending time with people who are far more successful than you are. So, I find this topic fascinating thing cuz this is like if you could unlock this barrier like the tactics as far as how to achieve and build the audience, when and how to build a product and how to actually make a money in it, that comes relatively easy once you get rid of that mental baggage that stops you from really thinking big and thinking long time. Danny Iny: Uh-hmm. And that kind of relative thing of reference it really, it does a number on your two levels, right? The first is that when you’re just getting started we all do a kind of mental discounting. You know you see the big expert of your looking up to and he’s making I don’t know $50,000 a month in revenue, let’s say. And we all do a mental discounting where we look at the leader in our industry and say,’ wow I mean you know they are amazing, they’re so smart. You know I don’t think I’m like that but if I can do just 10% of that then I’m still doing well’, right? So we take that and we kind a look at just 10%. The problem is that business model is totally working on a different scale. You can’t take what they’re doing and reduce it to 10% and expect it to be necessarily still be the same of all, like that is an always work. The other challenge is that we also look at kind of the leaders in our industry and you have to set our expectation we that same kind of mental discounting in terms of what is possible in general. So look at the internet marketing “space” there are a handful of players like literally count them of on your fingers. A handful of players who are doing, you know between probably 10 or 20 million a year. They’re the biggest players in the industry. And it’s even border line whether you can save that they’re really doing that because they’re really running like 18 different businesses and 18 different niches. So it’s not really that they’ve got a business doing, you know 15-20 million a year. But let’s stay there, biggest players in our industry 15-20 million a year. And so we all do that mental discounting we’re like, well when I get from 1 or 2 million I’m doing amazing, right? But then step outside to our little cottage industry, you know if you go to a venture capitalist, you tell you them the biggest in this industry I want to go into is 20 million a year. They’ll laugh at you saying ‘What are you talking about?’ You know if the biggest player in an industry isn’t doing at least a billion dollars I’m not interested. Alright there is no opportunity there. And so it’s really important to kind a pull your mind out of being so entrench in this little cottage industry. This little bubble they cut off your sense of what is really possible. And I’m not saying that everyone has to aspire to run a billion dollar company, right? Someone told me once it was very, very wise that success looks different to different people. For some people, it’s a laptop on the beach. For other people it’s a glass castle. And both are difficult to build and the real tragedy is if you build the one that you don’t even want, that would just really suck. So I’m fine with someone that says ‘You know what I want to be making 6-figures working 10 hours a week enjoying my freedom.’ I have friends who do that and I think that’s great. What I do have a big problem with is people setting an artificially low ceiling on what is possible for them to conceive of. Just because of the frame of reference they have chosen for themselves. John McIntyre: Yeah. It’s funny that you mentioned the billionaire thing. Because in the last few months I’ve spoken on few different people and one of them we’re talking one of the top click bank product, and some of these guys are often are very affiliate driven. Some of them say ‘yeah you’re doing twenty million dollar in sales, 50% of that would go to the affiliates may have another 20% goes to JV manager and then you’ve got a little bit left over to pay the people on the team’, often it is a small team. So they might be bringing in there from 20 to 50 thousand dollars a month each if it’s a couple of founders to something like that. But you know I’m on the days when, you know I may look at one of those guys and get ‘wow 10 million dollars a year that’s like hot! That’s like a million dollars a month, that’s insane. Imagine what you can do with a million dollars a month.’ (uh-hmm) But you know I was reasoning it was a few months ago I may be hearing those like ‘men that’s not, you know you could do a 20 million dollar business and you might be bringing in as far as income goes 20-50 thousand on those month. That’s a lot of money but it’s not a try-try for what it seems like you’re doing a 10 or a 20 million dollar a year. So I’m reading a book now called All The Money In The World it’s by, I think it’s by, it’s by the Forbes 400 an author who’s affiliate with him somehow and it’s about the 400 Riches Guy in the World and Women guys and girl. And what’s fascinating is just the scale that this guys plan and think out that makes at, it’s exactly like you’re saying, makes you, you know when I go back and look and read that book and then go look at internet marketing industry you see this is so, so, so, so, so small. And if you want to actually play big like proper big do you know that marketing industries not the industry to be in. It’s a great industry to get in; you know if you live in the beach and you can build a decent, you know a decent size of business. But if you want to stop playing out like a hundred million dollar level and up, you gonna need to be in a bigger market. Danny Iny: Absolutely! And it’s not the marketing space the-the online business, first of all its gonna grow, I mean it’s gonna grow still very early days but it’s a great sand box. It’s a great place to learn how to do things and how business works. It does make you really sharp but at some point, you know if you’re really looking to build something big yeah you got to grow up and get out of the sand box. John McIntyre: I like the way of looking at it. It’s a, it’s a part of yeah I just came back from the states and see marketing conference there. And coming back I am everything you said where I wanted to be, you know 6 months, for a year or 2 years, 5 years that sort of thing, and the sort of the summary- or the vision that I sort of figure that so far is that do what it to come business in to it, it’s a pretty decent size business, and then use that stick big as wings. Instead of going and building like a nice-a nice internet marketing businesses like a membership site for example and then saying ‘Oh this business works let’s go just make another one of these. Let’s copy this business’, which I’ve seen a lot of people do, it’s not going ‘well no let’s use this as a platform’. So then go how could you stop playing in a business which is in a like hundred million dollar potential. And maybe you take a few swings. Maybe the first one you never make any money the second one maybe you’ll only hit 10. You’ll like ‘that was a hundred million’ but just the mere fact that you’re playing in a different ball game playing in a bigger field which it’s-it’s probably not gonna be the internet marketing. You push your skills day, you got that platform that the cash flow that the cash in the bank all that sort of stuff and then you take this biggest swings in bigger markets. To me that’s what, that’s what getting me fired up right now thinking about that. Danny Iny: Yeah I’m looking forward to continuing this conversation because I’m very much on the same- kinda the same space. And the really cool thing is that you know its kind a circling back to where we started this conversation, right? I mean this audience first methodology that we teach, that we’ve used to launch multiple you know blockbuster super successful products in the online marketing space. We’re actually using the same process the same methodology right now to develop and launch a software product that is intended-like it’s useful and relevant to people in our space in our industry – you know which is you just look as we can reach a lot of them. They have a much-much broader appeal. Let’s just break way beyond the barriers of this little bublle of the market that we are in. And I don’t know if that’s gonna be a huge block buster success. I mean whenever you take on a big projects in business, if there is a risk involve you know -I’m not taking onto that big enough project so it may not work out. But the cool thing is if this methodology that you learn to apply at the scale they usually do scale they do work on different scale and that’s where it gets really exciting. John McIntyre: One thing is really dawned to me reason is talking to- we’ll wrap up in a second a bit- I was chatting to a friend here in a Chang Mai Thailand and he’s-you know he’s a very successful guy and one thing what we’ve been chatting about is- neither in marketing world it’s like if you want to make more money get better split-split testing. You know, buy more traffic get your conversions high, hire a better copyright and get better video cells that roll that stuff. But the- you know if you look the thing running like 18-20 perspective look it like one of the one of two things neither one thing that makes the biggest difference in everything you do and in business it’s gonna be the market that you’re in. It’s not the split-testing in the headline or the copyright you hire or any of that stuff or event the offer. It’s the audience that go and trying to help. Danny Iny: Yeah if you want to make more money make something that more people want. John McIntyre: Cool man. Well I think we need to wrap it up here but before we go if-if the listeners want to learn more about you this has been a little loopy sort or wan that way through a whole bunch of topics in, but if they want to learn about you or what we talked about here especially audience building stuff where is the best place for them to go? Danny Iny: Sure, sometimes a loopy conversation is the most interesting way so (laughs). If anyone listening to this and wants to learn more about me and my work Fire Pole Marketing and the stuff that we do around audience building an engagements, if you go to www.firepolemarketing.com— that’s ‘fire f-i-r-e, pole is p-o-l-e so like you’re sliding down a pole in a fire station not you’re standing at the street corner asking questions, marketing.com– we have a tone like a huge metric ton of free amazing content on the site. There’s like 700 articles which are rich in depths and super valuable. We’ve got my book engagements from scratch from Amazon. It’s was a bestseller on Amazon for 2 years straight. So it’s not like one of those PR stands, where shouts at the top of the charts and drop back down. It was up there for 2 years straight it’s got over 200 very-very positive reviews so we give it away for free on the website. You can just go there up and then get it. There is a ton of great stuff there so go check it out. And if anyone listening to this has any questions, I still am a little bit obsessive compulsive about answering my email. So anyone who emails me my personal email is danny@firepolemarketing.com. If you have a question of anything we talked about if there is anything I can help you with I will either respond to you in 24-hours or it is someone on my team who is just better equip to help you I will send you to them and they will get back to you in 24 hour but either way you’ll hear back and you’ll be hear back quickly. So if I can help anyone I’m happy to. Thanks for having me on the show this is a lot of fun. John McIntyre: This is good man I’ll have links to your sign of the show now it’s the www.themcmethod.com The post Episode #87 – Danny Iny On Tuning Into Feedback & Being An Audience Master To Grow A Successful Business appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Dec 2, 2014 • 33min

Episode #86 – Matt Trainer on How To Make BIG-TIME Money If You Have Email Copywriting Chops

Matt Trainer. SEO extraordinaire before SEO even had a definition. Matt Trainer. A red carpet force in Hollywood, Doing online work for Paris Hilton, Dr. Phil, among many other well-knowns. Matt Trainer is a beast. After gaining Hollywood street cred, Matt randomly met Frank Kern at a conference and they became friends, ..then neighbors. Then Frank took Matt’s story telling skills.. ..molding him into an expert email copywriter. From running a PPC and a media buying biz, To a huge SEO company, And now being introduced to the internet marketing world by Frank, Matt has literally done it all. But he’ll be the first to tell you that most of it’s been boring. Dealing with clients sucks, So that’s why Matt gravitates towards email copy as his fun in business. He doesn’t like crappy emails, And he’ll unsubscribe from your list faster than you can say sorry for writing it. Let Matt tell you on the show today how he handles email in multiple businesses, How he handles corporate consulting as an email copywriter… ..to MAKE EASY BIG DOLLAR PAYDAYS, And how you too should be writing email copy THAT DOESN’T SUCK. In this episode, you’ll discover: how to get your list to email you when they haven’t heard from you in a while (a surefire sign that you’re writing good emails) the one gritty fact that makes Matt’s email come out as must-reads… every time the autoresponder-avoidance strategy Matt uses to communicate with his list (if you’re a timely storyteller… this will work for you too) how Matt treats writing broadcast emails to his list like an art form rather than a profit-pulling message to keep it fun and interesting why you should never treat your email list like an infomercial (the whole hype this, buy that thing is not a good strategy for success) where Matt prides himself in his emails and how he makes his list open, whether they like what’s inside or not how often times even the industry pros have shoddy email copy (but don’t think you can get away with this on a launch without good JV’s) how even big corporations with big budgets and fancy websites still suck on email marketing and direct response learn a genius yet easy way to get high-paying consulting clients how corporate consulting gigs are where the money is at if you are good at email copy something each email you write must have in it (Andre Chaperon’s course won’t teach you this one) Mentioned: Frank Kern The Marketing Moron Dan Meredith Ben Settle Ryan Deiss Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy. And it’s time for episode 86 of the McMethod Email Marketing Podcast where you’ll discover how to make money every time you send your list of – really what this is about is – I mean it’s not just email, okay? What I’ve realized is when anyone is doing email marketing, he’s really just doing marketing. And they’re in the business of getting more customers. Well that’s why they’re here. So, that’s why your here. It’s not just about email, it’s about getting more customers with less time, with less energy spent, with less money spent, so you could make more money, make more profit. And do whatever you wish to do. Now today, we’re talking to Matt Trainer. Now Matt’s a very interesting character. He was recommended to me by one other guy, Dan Meredith actually, which you might have seen me do the videos with him on the Titan’s conference. And Dan knew – Matt came. That was a recommendation from Dan and I wasn’t really aware of who Matt was or what he did. It turns this guy has just done a whole bunch of interesting stuff including – he wrote copy for Frank Kern’s first launch. OK, so he’s where I’m in. He started – I dunnow if that was his first job, but he did some, he’s done some crazy stuff like that. He’s written copy for some of the biggest guys in the industry, he’s got a bunch of his own stuff going on, including an SEO, huge SEO company. And as we jumped on the [01:07] and talked about email copywriting, which turns out, email copywriting is his passion. And so what I got him to talk about em – to divulge – was some of the mistakes that people make when they’re doing their emails and some of the opportunities that are available, especially in the corporate world, to do better email marketing. So this is a great episode for any consultants, anyone who’s sort of working with clients as a freelancer and wants to step up their game and work with bigger clients. But it’s also a great episode for anyone who wants to just get more from their email list. So, yeah, to get the [sound notes – 01:36] for this episode of the Email Marketing Podcast, go to themcmethod.com/86 Now this week’s McMaster’s Insight Of The Week is a very interesting – I like this one, this is a great topic. Here’s the thing. Passion versus get really good at something. Reason I mention this is couple of days ago, I had lunch with a friend here in Thailand, and he’s in this sort of tricky situation where he loves surfing. Really, really love surfing, OK? But he also wants to do business. So he’s in this sort of Catch-22 and he’s like “Well, do I go on and just focus a hundred percent on business, or do I surf? And I can’t do both -” cause he was recently living down by the beach and he said he didn’t get any work, you know? He got a little bit of work done, but it was a bit hard, a bit difficult to focus on getting better at surfing and getting better at business. And I tried to explain to him over lunch was that you kinda gotta get to a point where – [wait, wait, sorry – 02:21] – just to step back. He went on about a lot how he wanted to do something that you love. He couldn’t do something that he wasn’t passionate about. And that’s a challenge. I felt like that. I think anyone who’s gotten into business, got into the online game, feels a bit like, yeah, they want to do something that they’re passionate about. And that’s great, it’s a very – definitely something to keep in mind, but there’s an interesting – I guess a philosophical question here, or an issue that you might want to think about if this sounds a bit like you. And this is thinking about, like, passion – like what if you gave up the idea of needing to do something you were passionate about, and decided you would just gonna become really, really good at something, and then the passion was gonna come along after the [02:57]. Because there’s – something interesting happens. When you go and get really good at something, you start to enjoy it. And I think that, I’ve found for myself that the more I was trying to seek out that “Oh, I just wanna do what I’m passionate about and I’m gonna refuse to do what I’m not passionate about.” that doesn’t actually help me move towards the life where I’m doing something that I’m passionate about, OK? It’s sorta like, when you focus on trying to live a happy life, life’s really not that happy. It’s kinda like life’s easy – like life’s hard when you try to live it the easy way, life’s easy when you live it the hard way. It’s very much like that. If you wanna find the passion when you enjoy what you do, I think you have to really get good at something. And the passion will come. [03:33] my friend [03:34] I was trying to explain that “surfing, I mean, are you really gonna care that much about that in five years, ten years time?” I’m not saying stop surfing. I’m saying, put it to the side for a bit. And instead of trying to become an elite level surfer, which isn’t easy – I think he was sorta wants to get to that level. Business is gonna be a much longer term. And you really gotta figure out – in five years time, ten years time, twenty years time, what’s two thousand – 2040 you, what’s you in 2040 gonna think about what you’re doing today? Is he or she gonna be thinking “Man, you should’ve worked harder.” or is he gonna think “Well you should’ve gone surfing.” That’s a question you have to answer for yourself. So anyway, the reason I bring this up is because we’ve been talking about this with a few people and it’s a big issue. It’s a big issue. And really something you gotta resolve for yourself and I feel like I’m starting to resolve that with me. What I realized for me, just to be a bit honest here, is that, sometimes I do find it hard to go to work. I’m thinking “Man here I am in Thailand, and I wanna go and – I’m working in a coffee shop” for example. I’m like “I don’t really wanna be here. I wanna be riding a motorcycle.” or “I wanna be traveling.” I read that four-hour work week book and I’m “What am I doing here in this coffee shop?” And the more I thought like that, I was even more depressed. I wasn’t happy. I was always in conflict. And something I’ve realized for myself recently – and this is just through a lot of thinking, and a lot of talking time to figure this out for myself – was that I’d just love to get in a ring and take some swings. I love to work, and it’s not so much about getting to a specific destination. Though, that’s part of it. It’s very much about – not just getting up and doing something everyday, you know? My passion I think in many ways, is to be growing. And to be going somewhere, and to be just doing stuff that’s exciting. Obviously it’s great to get somewhere, but it’s this classic cliche’ of “It’s about the journey, not the destination.” So anyway, that’s today’s McMaster’s Insight Of The Week. I hope this wasn’t too much rambling. This is a topic I’m very passionate about. Anyway, if you have questions about this – I love to talk about this, so shoot me an email if you want. john@themcmethod.com. Anyway, if you wanna hear more about McMasters, Marc McMasters is a private training community I’ve got. There is a forum where you can talk to me, talk to the other members, get advice. It’s really about getting more customers, making more money from them. All that stuff. There’s training stuff in there. More details at the mcmethod.com/mcmasters. Now, that’s a finale. Let’s get into this interview with Mr. Matt Trainer. It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder guy. I’m here with Matt Trainer. Now Matt Trainer is the Marketing Moron. Well that’s his website: themarketingmoron.com. Now I was introduced to Matt, well we actually met a while back, [he signed out – 05:53] to the list, and we chatted a bit, and then we recently got introduced by a friend of mine, Dan Meredith, whom you might have seen in the latest [06:00] videos, and Dan was saying “Man you gotta get this guy on the podcast.” He is a boss, so I sent him an email and talked to him to get on the podcast and here we are. So we’re gonna talk about some of what he’s up to, which is a lot of stuff which is [06:12]. So, Matt, how you doing man? Matt Trainer: I’m awesome man, how you doing? John McIntyre: Pretty fantastic. Pretty good. So, before we talk about some of the content – we’re gonna talk about email copywriting – you said it was your passion, it’s how you make the most money – and that’s really what’s working for you the best. But before we get in and talk about how you do that, what’s working, all that stuff. But before we do that, can you give the listener sort of a bit of a background on who you are, what you do. Matt Trainer: Yeah. John McIntyre: Sell yourself, man. This is the time to do – Matt Trainer: (laughs) John McIntyre: – now they said it’s not really your thing to [06:41], but this is the time to do it. Matt Trainer: Yeah, I’m not good at it. I’ve done a lot of stuff. I started at marketing – [even knew – 06:50] that’s what I was doing back in ’98, ’99 and back then I was just trying to get people’s eyeballs and stuff and started doing something that later became search engine optimization, SEO. I didn’t, I wasn’t aiming for it then. It’s just, you know, hacking stuff, basically. And through the years got pretty good reputation for building really high quality websites. And then ended up being sort of a go-to person in Polywood for television, and – all the television shows and celebrity websites. So I built Paris Hilton’s first website. I built drphil.com. I built [07:28].com back in 2004. Did World Poker Tour’s websites. A lot of big-name people. You know, back in the day, website development was a really big, expensive thing, you know. I could charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for a website. And then as that business became commoditized and dried up the really big money, I had met Frank Kern down in Orlando at an event – at the bar, of all places. And I really had no idea who he was, but we got to talk about stuff and he heard about all the celebrity websites done and liked my work, and he really dragged me into the Internet marketing world. And I just happen to live not too far down the road from him and he convinced me to move to La Jolla, California and I lived there as his next-door neighbor for about six years, I guess. And so through that I – John McIntyre: Ah, what’s it like having Frank Kern as your neighbor? (both laugh) This is crazy. Matt Trainer: He’s an interesting dude man. I mean, I owe a lot to him cause he really put me into the whole Internet marketing world in a big way. Yeah, it was quite interesting seeing all the people that come and go, you know, and then I helped him with all of his, you know, back in the with Mass Control launch, Mass Control 1, Mass Control 2, and then List Control, and and all that stuff, you know. I was the one that did a lot of the website management, and all that kind of stuff. Helped him with the back-end systems, and that sort of put me on the map and from there, I mean, shoot, I’ve done it all. I have a very large PPC management company for a while, had a media-buying company for a while. Just got sick of the client business. Grew my SEO company up to a very large company that does very, very big numbers for Fortune 100 companies, doing lead gen for them. That’s a cool business and everything, but it’s boring as shit, (John chuckles) so I really enjoy email. And through the years, I’ve watched Frank while he wrote email copy and – Frank got a hold of a book that I wrote {a while} back and he said “Man you should write email copy” cause he said I was a good story teller. So, he taught me a little bit about how to shorten up my copy and over the years I just got really good at it. It made sense to me. So, I enjoy email writing more than anything even though I have several successful businesses. I just like it. It’s my creative outlet, basically. So – John McIntyre: Nice man. Matt Trainer: Yeah. Got a lot of stuff going on here and then, you know, kind of – I hate to be like the jack-of-all trades but that’s me. So – John McIntyre: Well what they say, I mean, you wanna be like a successful guy in business, you really gotta be the generalist – Matt Trainer: Yeah. John McIntyre: – not the technician, you know. Hire all those people who are good at one thing, but then be the jack-of-all- trades, you can tell them what to do. Matt Trainer: Yeah, so I can tell them how much they all suck and how much they gotta fix it. (both laugh) John McIntyre: Exactly man, exactly. So let’s talk about email. You mentioned that email is making you the most money. That’s what’s really working for you. So tell me about that. What’s the – how are you using email to make money to and why is it working so well? Matt Trainer: It works well for me just because I’m really, really, raw. I tell some really gut-wrenching stories that are a hundred percent true, you know? And I mostly dive in to my failures, more than anything and people just love it. And I just have a knack for telling stories. And I just like being able to be open and honest and, you know, very, very raw (laughs). Sometimes I piss a lot of people off. Sometimes, you know, people love it. But, you know, no matter what, people read my emails. And I get very, very high open rates compared to most in the industry. And I’ll write emails, and then not write any to my list for a while, and I’ll get, you know, several people emailing me saying “Hey when are you gonna email your list again. I haven’t heard anything for a while.” And to me, that just tells me I’m doing it the right way because I don’t know if anybody else gets that, but I think it’s a pretty rare thing that you actually get emails from people requesting more email from you. John McIntyre: (laughs) And they know you’re just emailing the list. That’s the funny part. Matt Trainer: Yeah. You’re the Autoresponder Guy, and I’ve not been, I’ve not been very good with Autoresponders. It just doesn’t suit my styles, so pretty much every email I do – well every email I do is a broadcast now. Just a one-of broadcast. And just because my stuff is – I see something on the news, or something on TV, or something current. Or something in my own life that I just screwed up on really badly. And so I try to make a lesson out of it, you know, and it’s all very current, so. I’ve not found a solid way to do that with Autoresponders yet. I’m sure it’s possible, but I just haven’t done it, so. John McIntyre: One challenge that I’ve had with is cause I go – the whole reason I didn’t do the broadcast thing that you’re doing – a lot of people are doing – is that I just want to be a able to like take-off for two months and have emails keep going out. And I thought, why would I, why write emails and just send them once, when I can just keep sending them over again. But then the downside of that is now, if I have a broadcast – cause I have like a – I’ll have a cool idea or something that I want to email everyone about – and I don’t just want to email the people who finished the autoresponder because then I’d miss all bunch of people who are in the middle of it. So then, what ends up happening is I end up emailing – some people get two emails in a day, sometimes three if I go a little bit crazy. So they’ll get the broadcast, which is, you know, some timely that’s just happening, you know, with the Autoresponder email. And I’ve never had anyone really complain about it so much as just say “Does this actually work for you?” (both laugh) Because are surprised. They don’t – like, they used the daily emails, so then they assume “Oh John sends a lot of emails.” and when I sent two, instead of complaining. they’re just a bit like “Well if you’re doing daily and it works, maybe I should send two emails a day” so – (both laugh) I think it just pissed some people of. Matt Trainer: Yeah, I get it. It’s just, I dunnow. For some reason, I just, I’d rather be little bit more mysterious for some reason. Maybe it’s an ego thing, something. I’ve been trying to put together at Autoresponders. John McIntyre: Yeah. Is this just for you main sites or someone goes to marketingmoron.com, reads your blog, or the different content you’ve got on there and signs up to that list, or you using this in different sales files that you’ve built? Matt Trainer: Yeah I’m referring just to my main marketing list from the marketing [line – 13:21]. On my other businesses, you know I have a health supplement company too that we do really well, and we do have autoresponders in that. It’s just there. You know they’re way less personal and way less story than what I’m talking about. So, it’s funny cause in my regular, “regular businesses”, I do use autoresponders because I don’t really like those businesses. I don’t wanna babysit that, so. But for marketing, I’m really passionate about it and for some reason, just autoresponders in that just doesn’t feel passionate to me, you know. I treat it as an art form more than anything which might sound weird, but – John McIntyre: [13:57] and there are times – and I go through stages, personally. Like, I’ll have a day when, you know a couple days when – well it’s really like maybe a stage [14:03] a few weeks or a month where I just love writing emails and I’m, you know. Like, I look forward – it’s one of the highlights of the day. Waking up in the morning and having like a – I guess a creative think about what crazy thing could I write about today and make it into an email. But then other times it’s just going through the motions. And it’s not a passion, it’s not that exciting, but it’s just like, “Well I know this is good for the business and I know this is part of [14:23] the list so I’ll do it” but – Matt Trainer: Yeah. John McIntyre: So do you find you use a different strategy if you’re, like it sounds what you do. With the supplement company, you’re gonna use autoresponders but with your personal brands, you’re just using you. That’s where the artform comes in. Matt Trainer: Yeah exactly. Yup. John McIntyre: So what would you suggest? I mean, I have the emails out that you’ve said you’ve seen – you follow people who are good at email, but you said there’s a lot of people who aren’t. Like, there’s a lot of basically shitty emails [14:26]. You know, bad email marketers out there. So what do you think that they’re doing wrong what someone listening to this could sort of learn from and use to improve their own emails? Matt Trainer: Well the best explanation I’ve ever heard of that is by Ben Settle. He said, people treat their – was it him that said it? Maybe it was me that said it. (both laugh) John McIntyre: [Quoting/Courting – 15:09] yourself. Matt Trainer: Maybe it was. I can’t remember. I don’t want it to come off as my original idea if I heard it somewhere. So just in case it was somebody’s idea, I think I might have heard if from Ben Settle, but now I think about it, it might have been my idea. But I’ve been teaching for a while that in general, Internet marketers treat their email list like an infomercial. And it’s just hype, hype, hype, buy, buy, buy ,buy, buy, you know, and I don’t recall anybody wanting to stay up at night to catch the next infomercial, you know. So there’s no engagement there. And it obviously works, but man, there is a much deeper way to do it. So, that model of just hype, hype, hype, you know, here’s the next video check out this new video. If I ever see another email – that’s when I get off somebody’s list. If I see a subject line that says “Check out this video” I immediately unsubscribe because that’s just lame. So for me, it’s all about, really more about engagement and be an interesting – I pride myself having very, very interesting subject lines. That no matter what, you’re gonna open it. You may not like what you read, but you’re sure shit gonna open it. So, I just think everybody is lazy and not very creative. John McIntyre: Yeah. I mean, there’s an element here where there’s a launch going off right now. I think it’s Ryan Deiss. It should be over by the time this podcast goes live. But there’s – yeah there’s a launch and everyone’s mailing for this product. And what’s funny is a couple of years ago before I sort of gotten into this, I would’ve looked at those emails and saw – why are these emails get – really try to deconstruct them. And now I’ve had, you know I got some experience and spoken to a few guys who’ve got a lot more experience than I have. And looking at a lot of those emails, and they’re really pretty average. Like, they’re not bad emails. But most of them are pretty damn average. They’re not copywriters. And it looks like they just sort of jumped into [16:56] and just sort of bank something out really quickly. It’s made me realize that a lot of these guys, a lot of these products depend on JVs. They don’t depend on good copy. So you’ve really got to be careful – you know a lot of people may get into that thinking where they think “I can just do what the gurus do and I’ll make money.” but no, it’s not as simple as that. If you don’t have those JV relationships, when you can’t do that, you’re gonna have to start to differentiate by having good copy. Matt Trainer: That’s a good point. Yeah. Cause [17:22] a lot of those guys count on their JVs being good copywriters. And, you know, they’re “white copy”. They send is usually crap. I mean, you never see a good copy from any of these launches. It’s worth shit. It’s always that same hype, hype, hype stuff, you know. John McIntyre: Exactly. It’s like they’re just trying to – even like – you get a sales load that’s halfway decent but you give it to, like you know, you got five JV partners who have, you know, they’ve got incredible relationships with their list. It doesn’t matter what their sale’s letter is like. It could be a crappy sales letter because the guy who’s emailing his list has great rapport with that list, they’re just gonna buy it because you told them to buy it. Matt Trainer: Right. Exactly. Yup. John McIntyre: So it’s kinda like, there’s a lot of this like “HOORAH” in the Internet marketing world where its sort of hard to see – until you get behind the scenes, it’s very hard to see how behind the scenes actually works. Matt Trainer: Yep. (laughs) That’s why I’ve been lucky, cause I’ve been behind the scenes at a lot of big businesses, including big corporate America’s top two. And, man you wanna talk about incompetence, jeez. I mean, Internet marketers are one thing, but at least Internet marketers are trying to learn direct response. Man, corporate America, you know, corporate around the world, they’re just terrible with what they do. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah. Matt Trainer: I’ve head some – yeah I do a lot of corporate consulting and I charge a hell of a lot of money for corporate consulting, but 90% of the time plus, I craft one email and have them mail it to some list and they’ll make like ten times back what my consulting fee was. Just because they suck so bad. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Matt Trainer: And then of course they don’t ever fall in love and do what I told them to do so (laughs). Crazy. John McIntyre: It’s kinda funny man. Like, it’s – when you go out like – alright back when I had a job, they teach you to kinda look at the guys who are in these companies. Various corporates to small-time entrepreneurs, that sort of thing. And at times you think they’ve got it all figured out. The business is just perfect. It’s a perfectly oiled machine. Everything just works. And then you kinda get into it and you realize that they’re just as bad as everyone. Like there’s so much stuff that doesn’t happen that should happen. Matt Trainer: (laughs) John McIntyre: It’s really messy. There’s, aaww. Matt Trainer: (chuckles) This is my favorite story to tell about my corporate consulting. So I went in and looked at this company. It’s exactly what your saying and their website is super slick, you know, it’s all Ajax, [RAN – 19:29] and like the big cool stuff whenever you signed up and registered. So I thought I was gonna come in to a very sophisticated company because they obviously had worked on their funnel, you know. But then I got in there and I found out that their entire list, which is like 3 million people or something, was all in a spreadsheet. And they never mailed the list ever. Not once. So I asked them why they never emailed their list. And they – because they were collecting {information} from it, they [19:58] homepage. And they said “Well, if they came to our site and put in their email and then looked at what we had and didn’t buy it, then they don’t want it, right?” John McIntyre: (laughs) Matt Trainer: So what they’re saying is they sent the – so they had them opt in and email them a coupon code or whatever to buy their product and that was it. And if they didn’t buy right then, they figured the customer wasn’t interested. John McIntyre: (laughs) So what did you do then? What had to happen to fix his problem? Matt Trainer: (laughs) Unbelievable. Alright, so I decided I got [to send them the right contact to count with them – 20:26], imported their list, mailed it, and they made like 300 grand in one email. John McIntyre: Nice man. So what happens? Like in that situation, you know, they say that they’ve got a coupon code and they’re like “well people probably just aren’t interested in this” and when you approached that problem, you think “well I gotta write an email for them that’s gonna get them better results” how do you approach that? What sort of email do you write for them? Matt Trainer: That one was real simple. I just wrote – told a little story about – well this site – the company is working with this – there’s an online tutoring company and their main push – so they do everything from Math tutoring to guitar lessons and that kind of thing, so , I just sent them an email that said “Hey we haven’t heard from you in a while and wanted to see if you wanted to check out our services again.” something really, really basic and just told a little bit of a story about how one of our students – one of the students had done well with his guitar lessons, you know, and had impressed his teachers at school, basically. It was really, really short. It was only like, you know, two, three really really short paragraphs and just killed it. Like, eighty-some percent open rate. Yeah. (laughs) John McIntyre: Eighty percent? Matt Trainer: Yeah this is wild. I think it was well over eighty percent. Maybe an eighty five percent. John McIntyre: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just cause [21:41] would never heard from you guys. Matt Trainer: Yeah, they never opened – they never emailed em. Except – well they email them one time after they opted in but that was it. John McIntyre: That’s crazy man. That’s crazy. Makes you wonder how much of this stuff is out there. Your have companies that have these lists, that have these massively underutilized assets. They’re just not doing anything with it. Matt Trainer: Oh, it’s huge. Anybody that’s good at email copy could definitely be trying to get corporate consulting gigs because from all of my experience, I’ve worked with a lot of really big companies and they all have the exact same problem. They have zero clue how to email their lists. They typically think that their supposed to send out these goofy HTML newsletters, you know, and they’re supposed to be all fancy design and all that. But the email and the content sucks and, you know, they’re using some crappy articles that they’ve put in them and it’s terrible. That’s what they think its supposed to be, you know, and I’ve never come across a gig, in the corporate consulting world that they knew what they were doing with this stuff. So it’s a massive opportunity for business for sure. John McIntyre: I mean, so if there’s someone listening to this, I reckon what they’re gonna want to know is number one, how much can you charge with consulting client like that. And number two, how do we even find or get a consulting client like that. Cause it’s almost like you, maybe you can, but my first thought is that it’s a bit hard. You can’t just email the CEO and be like “Hey man, can I write an email for you?” Matt Trainer: What I do, I mean, I have a lot of contacts obviously so I get people seeking out me. But if I was gonna start over, I’d nothing else, no contacts or anything, I’d just go on Linkedin and start writing really creative emails to people. That’s all you gotta do. Tell a cool story in the email and get them to actually take action on email you sent them. And that’s, that’ll be be enough right there. And dude, you can charge a hell of a lot of money. I usually charge ten grand up front plus a percentage of whatever the revenue that comes in from it, so. John McIntyre: If they, if they decide to engage you and you say – so you’re saying they like, alright you send em an email and you get them interested, like, ‘alright let’s do this, give us an email’ and you’re like ‘alright, it’s ten grand plus five percent of the gross profit’ or something like that. Matt Trainer: Yep. Yep. I used to get between ten and fifteen percent gross. John McIntyre: Ten or fifteen perfect of the gross profit, right? That’s before the – Matt Trainer: Yeah. Gross. Gross revenue. John McIntyre: Gross revenue? Matt Trainer: Because, you don’t want to go by profit, cause you don’t have any idea what’s their profit [markness/margins – 23:50], and you gotta dig into their books and see what really profit [23:23]. So it doesn’t – it makes it really complicated to figure that out. John McIntyre: Right, right. One thing I’m always curious about in this situation is you go like you’d say you’re fifteen percent of his gross revenue and they’re like ‘alright we need three-‘, I mean, obviously you – let’s say they did three hundred grand sales,you’re like well in that case, for example, you wanna say ‘alright, well that’s a forty five thousand dollar, you know, commission. Do you, do you email then hire another guy, you know? A friend of mine who does similar stuff to this, and his thing is he calls em up after a month or two after the email’s gone out, says “alright how many sales you make?” And they tell me and it’s all right, cool, let’s you know – forty five thousand dollars. I’ll send you an invoice. You know, cool. Is that how you? I mean, how do you make someone, make sure someone pays you the, whatever the commission? Matt Trainer: I usually setup – I have a little, like one-page contract that I do with them. It’s really short and simple. It’s just an MOU, which is a memorandum of understanding. It’s not any sort of detailed contract or anything, but it lays out those stipulations really short and quick. And they sign up and send me money and if they don’t sign it, then I just don’t do the work, so. I’ve never had an issue. When you’re working with corporate America, you know, they take, sometimes it takes some time to get paid, cause they’re not exactly fast. But I’ve never not been [paid – 25:00], big companies. John McIntyre: Interesting man. And you saying you can do this for, so, one email you sent. You write one email for them and they’ll ten grand plus the commission for em? Matt Trainer: Well that was a unique case. I mean, I ended up doing the whole lot of consulting for them after that. And I still work with that company quite a bit with their SEO and all kinds of things. But that was just the one gig. But you know, I sent them through my own email training and now they have a staff that does email marketing – they still kinda suck, but they’re doing much better than they used to be. John McIntyre: I can imagine man. That’s cool. That’s cool. What are – there any other war stories man? Any other cool stuff that you’ve done like that along those lines of emails and corporate emails and gurus or. Matt Trainer: Oh man, I have a ton of stuff. I’ve got a bunch of dad stories you know. (both laugh) John McIntyre: Gimme one of these bad ones man. It;s probably a cautionary tale, at the very least. Matt Trainer: Yeah, I mean, the one thing that I’ve learned over the years is – especially when you’re getting ready to do a broadcast. Or even when your setting up an autoresponder, an individual email in your sequence, always send the preview email from the system that’s gonna be mailing it. Because, man I’ve seen so many times when it goes out funky, you know? Or you accidentally put some HTML in there when what you’re trying to do is just plain text. And it can cause some serious, serious issues. One really, really horrible example to happen – it’s been a long time ago and Infusionsoft has since fixed their system. But we sent out a broadcast email to out list one time through Infusionsoft, and there was one little character – hidden character that was some goofy HTML code that we couldn’t see. Plain – It’s supposed to be plain text email. What happened was – of course we didn’t send a preview to see what it was cause we figured “oh, it’s just plain text it’s gonna be fine”. So we mail the entire list of about, I don’t know, seven, eight hundred thousand people, and all that was sent in the list was completely blank email, with nothing but an unsubscribe link. John McIntyre: Hahahahah. Matt Trainer: So. Yeah. Horrible. John McIntyre: Horrible. Horrible. Matt Trainer: So, you know, everybody love to [click – 27:00] on stuff on emails, so – massive unsubscribes on the list. Really, really bad. Always send a preview email. Check what it’s gonna look like. John McIntyre: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve had that problem before. I mean, nothing that bad, but sometimes you think the email looks fine, the links are gonna work, that sort of thing. But if you send a test out, sometimes the links are 404 errors because you got an extra character in there so it’s not even gonna work. Stuff like that. Little stuff that’s worth checking. But after you’ve done it for a couple of emails, it’s the sort of thing – I know me anyway, I’m just like ‘alright whatever’ just send it out instead of – it’s difficult to really be that guy who goes sends a test, checks it, clicks on the links, and really reviews it. Especially when you’re like a fast – like an entrepreneur or someone who’s really trying to hustle, they’re usually the sort of person who just wants to get stuff done and throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. And that’s not the sort of person who’s gonna check the email before it goes out. Matt Trainer: Yeah. And I’m typically that guy too, believe me. But man, I’ve just been burned so many with that now, so I’m super paranoid. (laughs) John McIntyre: Yep. Yep. Yep. What else man? We have plenty of time for one more – what’s another big mistake that people have made. Matt Trainer: Another big mistake I see all the time is not putting something in an email to click on. You gotta – I mean I understand some people like to do story-based emails and especially with Andre’s training, you know, lot of people doing serialized emails. And most people do it badly but, at least they’re trying. The biggest thing I see a lot, people trying to say something like “Hey I got this thing coming, wait for tomorrow.” and that’s it. You know. That’s great and all, you can do open loops and build some curiosity but people wanna click on stuff. Give em something to click on. So, I’ve learned that over the years is, man always try to monetize on something. Even if it’s just in the PS and it’s complete – you take a hard right turn on a completely different subject in a PS and give em something to click on. Even if it’s a cool music video or some crazy cat video. Something, you know. Just so you can get them used to clicking on your emails. John McIntyre: Absolutely. And its also – I’ve found with mine – I remember speaking to, I think it was Zach – I think his name was Zack. One of the guys from [29:08] the postmaster. It’s just like a fancy name for the guy who does the deliverability. And he was saying if you can get through you [29:15] or email, you’re pretty much straight into the inbox. In stuff like – so if you can get someone to click a link, all these little engagement triggers as well, so you also – I mean in that person’s brain, if they click a link one day, they’re more likely to click one the next day. But also to Google and Yahoo, and the email providers – people are clicking links in your emails, they’ll think “Well this email must be pretty important. We better make sure that this person keeps getting it and it doesn’t go to spam. Matt Training: Right. Yeah I figured that out a while ago. Since I built this automated bot that just went and opened up all my emails and clicked on em. John McIntyre: (laughs) Really? Matt Trainer: So my delivery will always be good. Yeah well they found out about that and they didn’t like it so. John McIntyre: Who’s they? That’s Google. Matt Trainer: Google and Yahoo. Yeah cause we were doing it in mass, mass volume. I used to be a very large bulk emailer. And I don’t recommend that. It was cool for a little bit. But they didn’t like it. John McIntyre: Interesting man. That’s good. That’s smart. But they didn’t like it huh? That’s negative. Alright we’re right on time. But before we go, if the listener wants to find out more about you, maybe send you an email, maybe buy one of your products, or maybe just join your list, I know you’re a – you sign them on the [NASA – 30:17] subscribing saves kittens – long story, I’ll explain later. Matt Trainer: Yeah, the great thing about that is I never, ever explain later. (laughs) John McIntyre: I remember this conversation for – they do open loops, and I’ve – cause I’ve done this in sales letters or emails. Before you open a loop, you just never close it. So it just – it’s just – I dunnow if that’s – I don’t know if that’s unethical. It’s a bit. It’s a bit. It’s a bit annoying. It’s a bit exasperating. Cause you’re just playing with someone’s brain psychology. But, yeah. (both laughs) Cause people forget about it, you can mention something like classic [30:51] is like, this is a fish and in the next few minutes, I’m gonna show you how this fish will get you laid on anything else – Matt Trainer: I hate it. I hate it. Yeah. I hate – John McIntyre: But even like – you can say something like that and there might be no explanations for the fish later on in the video and the person who’s watching the video probably won’t even know, won’t even remember that there was even a fish. Matt Trainer: Right. Exactly. Yup. John McIntyre: So anyway. So people who do wanna learn more about you man it’s the marketingmoron.com right? Matt Trainer: Yep, themarketingmoron.com. Make sure you put the ‘the’ at the beginning. themarketingmoron John McIntyre: Cause some moron Matt Trainer: Some guy. Yeah. Some other moron is squatting is marketingmoron.com and won’t sell it to me no matter what. I’ve been trying to buy it for ten years. JohnMcIntyre: I got mine. I think I’ve got themcmethod. It’s the same problem. I’m like “man, the mcmethod.” Someone’s like “oh, mcmethod?” No, I’m like “the mcmeth” – “duh mcmethod”. I’ve got a back border in mcmethod.com as well now. So, same kind of deal man. Someone else is sitting on it, and they’re not selling it. So. Matt Trainer: Yup. John McIntyre: Anyway man. Alright Matt thanks for coming on and having a nice casual chat about email marketing. Matt Trainer: Yeah. No problem man. It’s fun. The post Episode #86 – Matt Trainer on How To Make BIG-TIME Money If You Have Email Copywriting Chops appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

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