The Email Marketing Show

Learn how to create an effective lead magnet email sequence to increase deliverability and subscriber engagement. Discover the importance of a separate Welcome sequence, increasing the perceived value of lead magnets, and the number of emails in a sequence. Also, get insights on creating curiosity and value in a membership area and an interesting subject line of the week.

Are you struggling to build your email list? Do you think you have a traffic problem? Then think again! Because today, Todd Brown explains exactly why list building has absolutely nothing to do with traffic (zero, nil, null) and everything to do with maths and economics. Ready to learn how to fix your traffic problem for good?  If you do nothing else, just pay attention to this. You'll never look at your business the same way again. Honestly! SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:22) Join our FREE Facebook Group.(2:44) Did Todd really work in a bakery?(5:12) You are an investor in your own business.(9:58) Is your traffic too expensive?(13:58) The 'Golden Ratio'.(18:28) The true economical foundation of your business.(20:40) You don't have a traffic problem!(23:09) Decrease costs or increase value?(30:00) It's a game of iteration.(37:23) Subject line of the week with Todd Brown.You are an investor in your own businessThis is probably one of the most important marketing principles you’re going to learn. Ever. It doesn't matter what product you sell, in what marketplace, and at what price point. If you’re an entrepreneur, you are an investor. Because you are investing in the acquisition and development of assets. And these assets are your customers or clients. The day you acquire a new customer (or new buyer), they'll spend a certain amount of money with you in their first transaction, and that's the average value of that new buyer. If they buy from you more than once, that value increases - that's the future value of that asset.There's also a cost (to you) attached to acquiring that customer. Maybe you're paying for social media ads? As a business owner and therefore an investor in your own business, you need to know these two numbers - the cost and the value of acquiring a new buyer. Is your traffic too expensive? So with that cleared up, it's easier to understand that when most entrepreneurs complain they have a 'traffic problem', they're really saying that the traffic to acquire a new buyer is too expensive. If it costs you $100 to run Facebook ads to acquire one buyer who only spends $50 with you, you're losing money. Simply because acquiring that customer is costing you more than what they'll spend with you.But if you get that buyer to spend more with you in their first transaction (and also to buy from you again and again), then you increase the value of that asset to your business. And then you can easily pay for the traffic to acquire them in the first place. So if your traffic is too expensive, you need to increase the value of your asset. And you no longer have a traffic problem! Because you're now able to pay to acquire that customer. It’s a simple mathematical equation!Conversion rates, opt-in rates, upsell rates, and lots of other performance metrics tell you whether a marketing campaign is working. But what they don't tell you is whether that campaign is financially viable. Because as an investor in your own business, something is only viable for you if you're making money back. And in order to know if you do, you need to know the cost and value of each asset. When you're able to manipulate those two numbers, the game becomes easier. And it doesn't matter if you're paying an arm and a leg to get a click, a lead, or a sale. If the asset is worth that amount and more, you're winning. If your customers have a high lifetime value that's more than what you're paying to acquire them, you no longer have a traffic problem!The 'Golden Ratio'We think it’s great that Todd talks about small and micro business owners such as the people we serve (i.e. those who sell courses, memberships, and coaching) as investors. Because it’s important to emotionally detach yourself from the product or service you created. Sure, you want it to be good quality and good value. But if you were 'just a money person’ investing money into your business, you'd only continue to do so if it made financial sense.Todd talks about this concept of the 'Golden Ratio'. For every $1 you spend on Facebook ads (or other traffic sources), you want to make at least $1 in sales revenue. You can replace that $1 with any number, but as long as the two numbers in that equation match, you have your Golden Ratio, which means you're acquiring a new buyer for free.Dan Kennedy once said something along the lines of "the typical marketer or entrepreneur will get a customer to generate a sale. But the savvy direct-response marketer thinks about generating a sale to make a customer. " This may sound like a simple play on words, but, as Todd pointed out, it's very profound! As direct-response marketers, we are running campaigns designed to turn prospects into buyers. The point of all front-end marketing campaigns is to turn cold traffic, visitors, or prospects into new buyers. In other words, the aim of the front end is gaining the maximum number of new buyers - it's not about maximum profit or contribution to the bottom line. You’re trying to acquire the highest number of buyers you possibly can. And if you adhere to the Golden Ratio, you're acquiring buyers for free - no matter what your numbers are. The true economical foundation of your businessMathematically, that would mean you’re making no money. But you’re acquiring buyers. And that’s enormously valuable because the real heart and soul of the business are the subsequent transactions that a customer makes with you.And because of that, the back end (i.e. your email marketing) becomes your primary vehicle to generate further transactions. This is the true economical foundation of your business. You’re acquiring assets (at a cost) that have a future value to you. And then you’re nurturing them by delivering value to them to increase that future value. Your job as a marketer is to acquire as many assets as possible. And your job as a business owner and investor is to make their future value greater than their cost.You don't have a traffic problem!Funnels, lead generation, and list building are maths problems. It’s not about the fact you’re not converting well. You probably are converting! But the numbers are making it impossible for you to win the game. You can never win if the economics don’t work!If you’re paying $5 per click, and all you sell is a $19 eBook, you won't be making any money from this business. Because it would simply be too expensive for you to acquire new buyers. That's not a traffic, source, or marketing problem. Even if you had a crazy high sales conversion rate of 10-15%, you’d still be losing money. You have to either change the price point or your whole business model in order to increase the value of each customer. Or it'll never work. This will never be fixed with better marketing because it's a numbers problem!Decrease costs or increase value? If you feel your traffic is too expensive, you might be tempted to try and reduce the cost per click (and get cheaper traffic). That's certainly one way to go in order to achieve the Golden Ratio. The problem is that the value of traffic is largely determined by the marketplace because it depends on supply and demand. So the bulk of what you pay for traffic is mostly out of your control, and there's only so much you can do to reduce your costs. The second thing you can do (and the easier and smarter option because it gives you longevity) is to work on the value of a buyer. Increasing the value of an asset is easier than reducing the cost to acquire it. Also, getting buyers to spend more with you is much simpler than getting someone to buy from you for the first time. Increasing the average transaction is easier than converting more prospects. So what can you offer your existing customers to increase their average transaction size? As Todd explained, it doesn’t matter whether you only sell high-ticket products to low volumes or low-ticket products to large volumes - there's value in both business models. High-ticket items give you a tremendous advantage because you could have crappy marketing on the front end (and convert below average) and still continue to run your business. And that's because, in that scenario, your back-end campaigns only have to extract a large amount of money from a small number of buyers. As an example, you could potentially grow a large business with a small 1.5% sales conversion - because it's all about the numbers! If a customer you acquired for $100 is worth to you six times more, you don't have to be a tremendous marketer to make that business model work. It's a game of iterationDon't you agree that this conversation is the single most important list-building and audience growth acquisition conversation you could ever have?  People often buy into this idea that you'll come up with a marketing campaign, launch it, and you'll have arrived. Unfortunately, that’s not the game. It’s a game of iteration. You track and test everything, and you improve over time. You shouldn’t think that the day you launch your first campaign, you hit a home run!And we all have fears when launching a campaign. Because no one wants to come across as obnoxious, pushy, sleazy, and slimy. The key is to have the intention to offer your buyers more value. There will always be people out there who love you, tolerate you, or can't stand you at all. And that's okay - your marketing and your business aren't for everyone. You have no control over what other people think about you. But despite how people feel about you and your marketing, it doesn't change who you are or your motivations. Subject line of the week with Todd BrownTodd shared the most jarring subject line he ever received in his life, which is something his once boss sent him a long time ago. Picture the fact that Todd received this email in his office (at the time) with glass doors all around. And the subject line said “naked pics of barry white”. Todd was literally terrified of opening this email in case someone saw what was in it. In the end, he opened it, and the email had absolutely nothing to do with the subject line.But there's a lesson there. The subject line worked because it broke a pattern and was unexpected. Now, don't go using this exact subject line (Todd says), but you get the point, right? So try it out!Useful Episode ResourcesAbout ToddIf you want to connect with Todd, you can find him on his website, where you can also find out more about the E5 Method.Related episodesMaking Yourself Choosable with Belinda Weaver.Lies You’ve Been Told That Are Stopping You From Making Money In Your Business.Mistakes You’re Making With Your Email Marketing Automation Strategy.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how to fix your traffic problem for good) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know! 

Discover the concept of an automated customer journey in email marketing and how it can increase conversions. Find out how to balance content and promotions and tailor marketing approaches. Learn practical examples of automating the customer journey and the benefits of using the SCORE method for email marketing.

Can you use AI for email marketing? Everyone is talking about ChatGPT at the moment. Unless you live under a rock, you'll have seen or heard something about AI or even tried it yourself. So can tools such as ChatGPT help with your email copywriting? Let's dive into all this! SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:48) Join our FREE Facebook Group. (5:55) Should you use AI software like ChatGPT for email?(9:29) Can this new AI software create stories for your emails?(16:04) Where could you use AI for your email marketing?(21:04) What is the best AI email marketing copywriter?(24:25) What are the drawbacks of using AI email marketing software?(26:35) What happens when you combine our powerful email templates with AI?(28:01) Writing your own emails makes you a better marketer.(29:48) Only you can craft better messaging for your marketing.(33:32) Subject line of the week.Should you use AI software like ChatGPT for email? Last year we did a podcast episode about AI called Write Emails Using Artificial Intelligence (AI). But AI is such a hot topic right now that it felt it needed revisiting. Are emails written by AI 'good enough'? The fact they're written by a computer is great, yes. Only a few years ago, the thought of this happening would have been ludicrous. But now these things are possible, and that's amazing. The real question is - if you'd paid an email marketing agency to write an email for you, and you got something along the lines of what you get from an AI tool, would you be happy? The answer is no. Because it's amazing that a computer can take a prompt and write an email for you that not only makes sense but also covers the topic appropriately. But is it as good as what a human could write? Is it as good as what an agency could produce? Or even as good as something that you could write yourself with our teachings and frameworks? No. To borrow an expression from our friend Jon Benson, when you read an email out loud that was written by AI, it's a bit like hearing the radio announcer's voice in your head. You know that tone - it sounds artificial. And humans connect with other humans. They connect with your personality. So as soon as you put AI in the mix, you're taking that humanity away. And that's a big loss. Can this new AI software, such as ChatGPT, create stories for your emails?We’re not saying AI has no place in marketing – it’s actually extremely useful. But can it create the stories we include in our emails? A lot of our approach is based on storytelling because stories are compelling and persuasive. And yes, AI can help you find stories.In fact, Rob did a little experiment and asked ChatGPT to come up with a story that happened to him that day that he could tell his friends down the pub. And when the software started typing about elephants dancing in the streets, Rob had to stop it. The tool was writing a dream. So Rob asked the tool to try again, but this time to make the story believable. It had to be something that could happen in real life, be logical, and follow the laws of physics and nature.In the end, the tool came up with the story about Rob seeing a cat in the street. Initially, the cat seemed a bit shy and cautious. But then Rob found something in his pocket and fed the cat, and the cat became friendlier. All good here. Then Rob asked the tool to relate that story to a lesson about email marketing. And sure enough, the tool came back very quickly saying that the story about the cat was a bit like building relationships with your subscribers. When they first come into your world, they’re going to be cynical and skeptical because they don’t quite know what to make of you. But over time, by delivering value, rewarding them, and treating them well (like Rob did with the cat) you nurture the relationship. And, just like the cat, your subscribers become more trusting.Do you really want to share stories that aren't true? So the tool did it! It created a story that could work. However, if you ask AI to create stories for you, they're not going to be true. This story was realistic, but it didn’t really happen to Rob!And for us, the real superpower of great marketing is that it’s founded in truth. When people come up to us at events and mention things we’ve said or shared, we don’t have to scrap our heads trying to remember. Because what we say isn't made up or fictional - it's real! And we make sure that what we share is always real because we want to build trust. So, as more and more people use tools such as ChatGPT or Jasper, you have a real opportunity to stand out by telling stories that are real. Plus, your individual style is also unique and something that will stand out over anything AI-generated. A piece of software can write your stories for you, but by writing them yourself (and ensuring they're true) you can stand out both through content and style. Where could you use AI for your email marketing?With that said, there are a few places where you could use email marketing. Email subject line AI generator AI could be useful in helping you come up with subject lines. We don’t necessarily recommend that you start doing this. But if you wanted, you could copy and paste your emails into the platform and ask it to generate a few subject line ideas for you.There's a problem with that though. ChatGPT (or other AI tools) haven't studied our Subject Lines That Drive Sales course. And that teaches you a different approach to creating subject lines. For us, it's not about pulling out the benefits of what you're selling - that's what everyone else seems to be doing. And most of the time, AI software is going to come up with benefit-driven, very linear subject lines that won't use the techniques we recommend, such as compound curiosity. But if you were really stuck, you could use AI for this purpose.Email prompt ideas You could also use AI to come up with prompt ideas for the stories you want to share in your emails. To be fair, it might take you longer to work out what prompts to type into the tool to get the story you want than to use one of the story generator shortcuts we created. But it's an option.Or, you could put the bare basics of an idea or your first draft into the tool, and ask it to re-write the story for you in a different style. You may want it casual, fun, and upbeat, for example. If you don't consider yourself a confident writer, this could help. You could also do what Rob did. You could come up with a story, and ask the tool to relate it to a lesson about what you sell. It might not be in your exact style (so you then have to edit it), but the tool could help you build that bridge between the story and the lesson. Transactional emailsAnother option is to have AI software write your transactional emails for you, such as the email that sends out the login information for your course, for example. Those emails are important, but they often fall to the bottom of your priority list because you have other more pressing emails to write - the ones that get you sales! So you could ask an AI tool to re-write some of your more transactional emails in a more interesting and inspiring way, for example. What is the best AI email marketing copywriter? When it comes to choosing the best AI tool to use, we can think of 3 main players in the email copywriting space:ChatGPT,Jasper,and CopyPro.There are definitely others, but these are the main ones. The first thing you want to consider when choosing one is what they’re powered by. And in reality, they're all powered by the same thing but interfaced differently. They all have training and information fed to them, so you want to take that into account. Have they been taught email marketing techniques? We don’t know much about the direct response digital marketing training that ChatGPT has had, for example. But Jasper claims to have read 10% of the Internet. And it also has some frameworks specifically for headline structures, Facebook ads, and blog articles. When it launched, it definitely had a very content-heavy approach (rather than a marketing-heavy one), but it seems more balanced now. If you think about what we do, for example, a Rob-and-Kennedy subject line is very different from what's considered a good subject line in traditional copywriting. We know that our technique works, and that’s not to say others don’t, but AI can’t replicate the way we do things. And that means you'll have different results based on the techniques that are being used, where the inspiration is pulled from, and how it’s worded, structured, or written. What are the drawbacks of using AI email marketing software, like ChatGPT?If you use AI to write your emails, you might find they all sound the same - like they've been written by a radio announcer. When we write our emails, we type as we speak. And that's why this idea of subvocalisation kicks in - when people read our emails, they hear our voices in their heads. And they can't do that if your emails are written by AI email marketing software. Plus, if you're not telling true stories (because you're using AI to generate them), you'll find it harder to create rapport. You may have AI write a story for you today that's all about you being vegan, and in a few weeks, they might start talking about steak! This is an extreme example of two contradicting stories, but it's easily done if you send out stories that aren't true. And let's not forget that what you get out of these tools cannot be the final version of your email. It will need editing, and you'll have to add your own features or spin to it. The prompts will need maneuvering so they feel like you, and the AI-generated stories (while they might be good enough) will need tweaking. Another drawback is that ChatGPT and the other AI tools can't write anything that's strategic. You'll only ever have individual emails - not campaigns of emails that are chained together to build a marketing argument that moves people from point A to point B and creates a desire for what you sell. Even if a tool could write a sequence of emails to help you sell something, they'd be standalone emails in a row, rather than emails that were strategically created to build on each other. What happens when you combine our powerful email templates with AI? Inside our membership The League, we release a lot of email templates and campaigns. So how can you use AI in conjunction with what we teach? As we said earlier, you could use AI to rewrite stories for you. For example, if one of our templates recommends you write a story about something funny that happened when you were a child, you might jot down a vague story and then ask AI to write it in a more interesting way.Or you could ask AI software to articulate something you’re struggling with or find a new way of saying something. For example, on the last day of a launch or promotional campaign, we’ll send out 3 emails. There are reasons why we send those emails, but they also all say that the offer expires today. So you could use AI to come up with 3 interesting ways of telling your subscribers that your offer is closing tonight, for example. Just remember that once you have the ideas, you might need to tweak them and add your personality and style. Writing your own emails makes you a better marketerOverall, we’re not saying you can’t use AI. It definitely has its place, and a lot of people are using AI to help with their marketing, whether it's email marketing, content, or sales pages. AI is worth monitoring, but is it going to become your email marketing solution any time soon? No. And honestly, writing emails ourselves day in and day out has helped us not just to make sales but also to get a better grip on our messaging. Because the truth is that the further away you move from regularly doing something (including talking about your business), the rustier you become.We talk about email marketing all day long, and that’s helped up create frameworks, ideas, analogies, and metaphors. The more emails you write, the more you get to understand and refine your messaging. By sending out emails regularly, you get to see what people resonate the most with. As you pay attention to that, you get to come up with new ways to sell the same thing and appeal to different people. And by doing that regularly, you'll eventually find something that appeals to most people. And that's what you'll roll out more of.Only you can craft better messaging for your email marketingEvery time you write something, it gives you more clarity and understanding about what you do and what it means to others. The more ideas you come up with, the deeper you go into your messaging and come up with angles that are interesting and unique. And when you eventually land on something that gets you a great response and resonates differently with people - it could be a turn of phrase, a way of describing something, or a metaphor - you'll want to capitalise on it. You'll want to take that thing outside of email marketing and also use it in your sales pages, your webinars, your videos, etc.But you can only do that if you get to experiment every single day on how to craft messages for your marketing. This doesn't work if all you're doing is pressing a button and getting AI to write for you. Take Rob, for example - he has to come up with a new way of writing about our membership The League every single day. And because of that, he's more experienced that anyone who's not doing the same in their own business. Check out The LeagueSo use AI for inspiration or to rewrite ideas - it's fun. But The League was created pre-AI so you always know what to say, who to say it to, when to send it, and how to send it without having to ask a computer to do it. Because remember that they don't have context, thinking, or strategy! So go and check out The League.Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “Cancel the flights!”. The sentence was designed to be reminiscent of the tone that a big, busy business executive in a film would assume when talking to their assistant. The email had a story about an event we’re speaking at and promoting, and the message was about getting your tickets for the events right now (and worry about the logistics later). Pretty cool, right?Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesWrite Emails Using Artificial Intelligence (AI)Get Your Emails Opened Using NLP – With Jon Benson.Advanced Psychology: Using Compound Curiosity.FREE list to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about AI for email marketing and how tools such as ChatGPT for email copywriting can help) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player. Not...

How do you connect more deeply with your audience when sending out emails? Rob Marsh and Kira Hug from The Copywriter Club tell us all about the persuasive copywriting techniques that professionals use in order to build and maintain strong relationships with their email readers. And you can start using these techniques too. Straight away! Ready to take notes? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:17) Join our FREE Facebook Group.(2:27) Did Kira really eat a hamster once? (4:31) The importance of using your real voice.(7:36) The persuasion technique called LIKING.(12:41) The persuasiong technique called SIGNIFICANCE. (15:43) When should you add persuasion techniques to your writing?(17:38) Do persuasive techniques only work in email marketing?(18:47) The persuasion technique of ANCHORING.(20:35) Building trust with your audience. (21:45) Subject line of the week with Rob Marsh and Kira Hug.The importance of using your real voiceRob and Kira help people become copywriters or improve their copywriting skills, and a huge part of that is teaching people how to connect with their audience. Because if you’re not establishing a strong connection with your subscribers and are just throwing copy into the wild, people are going to ignore you!So the first thing we all need to do in order for people to feel the emotion coming through their screens when they read our emails is to create a brand voice that reflects the way we talk. That means not polishing yourself to sound like a super sleek marketer. Because who would trust that person? Instead, pull your own voice into the copy. And to do that, you want to almost imagine you're dictating an email to yourself. This also means not worrying too much about misspellings and grammatical mistakes. Because guess what? Most people won't notice. And those who will might reply back to point out an error, which is good for you because it creates engagement. And engagement with your emails tells Gmail and the other platforms that your emails are worth reading and responding to. In other words, you're increasing your credibility as an email sender! And that's why copywriters and marketers sometimes make mistakes on purpose in order to generate that engagement. At the end of the day, if you're delivering value, typos shouldn't matter that much. The persuasion technique called LIKINGRobert Cialdini, in his book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" talks about the technique of liking. You help people liking you through exposure and repeatedly showing up and sharing personal details. This helps people connect with you.For example, we (Rob and Kennedy) do this by sharing personal facts about ourselves at the start of each podcast episode. And people tend to remember those about us. Another example is that Rob Marsh had a lot of responses when he shared about his mother passing away. Of course, it doesn't have to be something as deep as personal as that - the time he shared about giving up Coke Zero worked just as well. Sharing personal details helps you create personal connections, which is vital because people buy from people they like and trust.Evoking nostalgia and using pop cultureWhen it comes to sharing personal details, think about putting boundaries in place that you’re comfortable with so you don't suddenly feel completely vulnerable and exposed to the world. You might not be comfortable sharing something as deep and meaningful as a personal loss, so Kira recommends you think about things that evoke nostalgia. To do that, you can use pop culture. If you mention The Simpsons in an email, for example, people don't need to be super fans to be able to get your reference. For the most part, they'll be aware of the show. And as soon as you start talking about something that everyone knows about, you open a doorway for people to come in quickly and connect with you. And that's very different from sharing a personal story about when you were 10 years old that you might not be too comfortable talking about. It's not even about whether people agree with you or not - all that matters is that they understand the reference. Because that's what helps you build the relationship. And it doesn't even need to be something super significant - it could be something as small as sharing someone's birthday. That is enough to create a connection with someone. So when sharing personal details and stories about yourself, put barriers around the things that are part of your world that you don't want to talk about. You can choose what you talk about and not talk about with your audience. The persuasion technique called SIGNIFICANCEAnother copywriting technique Rob and Kira recommend is significance. This helps the person you’re talking to feel they’re important. So when you create any type of copy, make your audience feel like you understand and empathise with what they're going through.A way to apply this is by using flattery. This works because when you say something good about a person (even when they know you might be insincere or have an ulterior motive) it increases their liking of you. So think about anything you can write in your emails to help your readers feel significant, heard, and important. Because that helps you connect more deeply with your audience.Kennedy did a lot of research around flattery (due to his line of work as a Psychological Mind Reader), and a cool trick anyone can use to go beyond 'bland flattery' is to tell the person why you admire them or you’re paying them a compliment - it makes what you say feel more believable and 'solid'.When should you add copywriting persuasion techniques into your writing?Should these persuasion techniques be embedded in the writing process from the start or can they be sprinkled on at the end? Kira explained that she will often start with some of these persuasion techniques, especially in order to create a pattern interrupt for people. Because we live in a busy world with a lot of messages coming from all directions, we need to constantly think about how we’re going to grab the attention of our readers (and get them to open and read our emails). So sometimes you have to start your emails with these techniques. However, details like flattery or adding specific details around nostalgia or pop culture can be inserted later, unless they’re the very theme of the email, in which case you might want to start from there.The good news is that the more you do it, the more natural this becomes. You start thinking about the person you're writing to and the things you can share. And especially with email (unlike a sales page), you can use these techniques over the course of several emails. You may use more liking in one email and more significance in the next. Over time, using these techniques helps you deepen the connection with your audience. And if you ever notice you're starting to sound like every other business owner or marketer, it's time to pump up your voice so you can better hold people's attention.  Do persuasive copywriting techniques only work with email marketing?Email marketing is brilliant and unique in the way it’s personal. Because even though you may be writing an email and sending it out to many people, it’s a one-to-one type of communication for the person receiving it. So using techniques such as liking, significance, or even anchoring (more on that below) can have a bigger impact when used in email marketing than it does in other types of communication (such as a sales page, for example).So this is a definite advantage that email has over other types of communication. Plus, because it’s constant and regular, and you're present every day, it allows you to build rapport over time. A sales page, on the other hand, is a one-off piece as it's rare that someone comes back to a sales page day after day.The persuasive technique of ANCHORINGAnchoring is the idea of attaching whatever you’re talking about to something else the audience is already familiar with. It’s most commonly talked about in the context of pricing, but it’s broader than that.For example, if you want to make your product seem valuable you anchor it to something that’s perceived as valuable, such as a Rolls Royce. Equally, if you want to position it as something everyone can afford, you can associate it with Walmart. Anchoring allows you to attach your product with ideas that people already have in their heads so the value they associate with the other thing is automatically translated to your product too. It helps you give your offers relative value, and it's a great technique to frame your products and to use in your email marketing. Building trust with your audienceAnd finally, another useful technique is building trust. You always need to understand the stress levels of the audience and 'read the room'. What is someone dealing with in their minds and in their lives while reading your emails? We often talk about relevancy as well. If you write an email to someone who's dealing with conflict in their country, but you completely miss the mark and fail to acknowledge what's going on for them, there's a good chance you'll lose that person, and they won't come back. If you're not mindful about using the right persuasive techniques at the appropriate time you could lose people. So be aware of what's going on in your audience's world so you can build trust with them. Subject line of the week with Rob Marsh and Kira HugThis week we have two subject lines! Rob Marsh’s favourite subject line is "That will be $27,000. Oh, and bring cash", she said. The reason why this worked well is that it sounds like the beginning of a story. There’s an immediate hook here where the reader is wondering what’s happening. Plus, the number catches their attention – it’s a big number, especially coupled with the phrase “bring cash”. Because $27,000 in cash is a lot of notes! The subject line worked because it's intriguing.And Kira’s favourite subject line is “That time I tied up Rob…” We feel this one needs no explanation - it worked because it obviously creates intrigue. No wonder Rob and Kira had a decent open rate on that one, right?Useful Episode ResourcesAbout Rob Marsh and Kira HugIf you want to connect with Rob and Kira, you can find them on their website or their free Facebook group or you can check out their podcast, The Copywriter Club podcast. And if you head over here, you'll find a checklist of 27 different persuasion techniques for you to download and include in your own writing.Related episodesMaking Yourself Choosable with Belinda Weaver.Little Tricks to Write Better Emails That Aren’t Boring.The Therapeutic Benefits of Writing Your Own Emails.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about persuasive copywriting techniques you can use in your email marketing) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know! 

What if your email marketing platform could do more than you think it can? What if there was a super simple way for you to do some things that sound very technical - and something that only big companies with huge budgets could do? Well, we're here to show you 6 amazing things that the best marketing email platforms can do (thanks to a little sprinkle of magic from us). Ready to have your mind blown and your business changed for the better? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:10) Join our FREE Facebook Group. (5:18) Introducing our software - Automate Hero.(7:33) Tracking where your customers are coming from.(12:29) Showing people the right offers.(15:20) Creating urgency for every subscriber.(18:33) Offering hot leads the product they're after.(22:38) Targeting subscribers based on their browsing behaviours.(26:58) Increasing the consumption of your sales videos.(29:00) Want access to these tools? Join our membership The League. (33:27) Subject line of the week.Introducing our software - Automate Hero Automate Hero is a tool we created for our members inside The League that plugs into your existing email marketing platform and adds some technical capabilities that sound complicated but are really really easy to do. So here are the 6 amazing things that our members can do by using Automate Hero. 1. Tracking where your customers are coming fromThis is all about being able to know for sure how someone first came into your world and when and how they first became a customer by buying one of your products or services. Automate Hero gives you the ability to track this inside your email marketing platform. And it doesn't use pixels or cookies. Because we know those things are often inaccurate and not easy to use. Installing Automate Hero takes 10 minutes, and then it'll be up and running forever. But the key here is that you'll be able to track the information with accuracy. So if a podcast listener decides to download one of our lead magnets and then a month later joins our membership via a link in one of our emails, we can track that. Do more of what's working and stop doing what isn't! And this is really powerful because it allows you to accurately review your activity over a period of time and determine what's working in your business. If you relied on the data from the ads reporting platforms, for example, you'd never get anywhere because the numbers often don't even add up! As we always say, knowing what works in your business is key, so you can do more of what's working and stop doing what isn't. This is why, at the end of 2022, we stopped investing in our Instagram strategy. Because when we looked at the data, we realised that less than 1% of our members were coming via that route. So we redirected all that time, money, and effort into strategies that give us a return on investments. And knowing where people originally come from and when they buy is important because the buyer's journey is hardly a linear one. If someone becomes a customer years down the line, we'll still be able to track it!2. Showing people the right offersThe second functionality that Automate Hero allows your marketing email platform to perform is sending people the right offers instead of showing them something they already bought. So imagine someone opts into your lead magnet and is presented with an offer for a product or service they’ve already bought. When that happens, you're not only missing out on an opportunity to direct this person to something they might actually want to buy. But if you're showing them something they already have, they'll also end up disengaging and not paying as much attention.Through our tool Redirect Hero, you can check (in real-time) which products or services a particular subscriber has bought from you by verifying the tags or list against that person inside your email marketing platform. Based on that, you get to send them to different sales pages. And that means you show fewer irrelevant offers to people. It also means that you can dynamically and automatically increase how much someone spends with you, which translates to a more profitable business. 3. Creating urgency for every subscriberWhat do you do when you have an evergreen product or service that is always available to buy? How do you create urgency? Simple. You add countdown timers. Our software Automate Hero allows you to post a countdown timer on any page you host and say there are only X amount of products available at a particular price. And suddenly, whatever you're selling becomes more desirable. People have to jump off the fence and buy now because the offer is soon going away. We use this strategy and tool for our own membership, The League, which is an evergreen product. To create urgency, we use email campaigns with special offers and countdown timers. Because we want everyone who joins our list to have the same opportunities, no matter when they join, each timer is individual and based on whenever a person came into our world.Automate Hero allows us to create an evergreen launch-like urgency that cannot be skipped. And that's because we don't use cookies - there are ways around those! Instead, we use technology that’s built into the email marketing platform through our tool. 4. Offering hot leads the product they're afterThe next capability our suite of tools allows your email marketing platform to perform is to target your most interested customers by putting them in front of an offer for the very product or service they've been looking at. This is the virtual equivalent of a customer walking into a shop and picking up a product and looking at it. You know for a fact that soon enough, a sales assistant will come over and tell you all about the product and help you buy it.In the online world, you need an automated version of that - and this is exactly it. If someone clicks on a link inside one of our emails and looks at our membership The League 3 times in the space of 60 days, but they don't buy, we put them into an email sequence that's specifically designed to sell them our membership. The Tell Me More campaignThe campaign is called Tell Me More and it's made of 6 emails sent out over 6 days. What's so special about this automation? It contains a bribe. And it works and converts, but not because of the bribe. It works and converts because we know that people are at a point where their buying intent is super high. They're very close to making a decision - the time is right for them to buy. So they do. This uses a piece of technology that we call Click Count, which shows how many times someone clicks on a specific offer. Of course, when you're a member of The League and have access to this tool, you can customise it so it works for you. Whatever parameters you set, they must tell you that, based on their online behaviours, this person is red hot - they're about to buy. You just need the equivalent of an in-store sales assistant to help them get over the line. 5. Targeting subscribers based on their browsing behavioursThe fifth functionality we can enable your email marketing platform to do for you is to customise how you follow up with people who've been on your sales pages. When looking at pages, people have different habits - both in terms of browsing and buying behaviours. Someone will look through a page in order while someone else may jump from section to section or scroll up and down. That means you want to be able to target them differently depending on what they've seen on a page. For example, if you know someone has seen the price but not the bonuses, you may want to talk to them differently to someone who's seen the bonuses and not the price. In other words, you'll want to send different sets of emails. For this, we created a tool called Page Hero, which is an invisible piece of code that you place on your page that tracks every single subscriber - where they click, how long they spend on a page, etc. Based on that information, you can decide what emails to send them. If someone’s had your sales page open on their laptop for more than three days, for example, you might want to send them a special offer to make them buy now. That's exactly what countdown timers do – they move people from thinking they’ll buy “someday” to buying “right now”. Pretty cool, right? 6. Increasing the consumption of your sales videosThe last tool we have in our arsenal right now is something that enables you to increase the consumption of your sales videos (or any video). It's called Video Hero and it allows you to tag someone in your marketing email platform based on how many minutes and seconds of a sales video they've watched. This allows you to send people different emails based on how much of your content they've consumed. If they've only watched a few minutes of a video, for example, you can send them an email to remind them to watch it. Or if they've watched most of it but not completed it, your message will be different. All you need to do is to place the video on a page that you host so you can add a little piece of code onto it and get this functionality to work. Easy as pie. Want access to these tools? Join our membership The LeagueThese 6 capabilities may sound difficult (if not impossible!) and technical. But they're not! With Automate Hero, they're super simple. There's absolutely no technical knowledge or coding required - just some copying and pasting! And you can continue to use your existing email marketing platform.  If you want access to the software we created, check out our membership The League. We give you all the campaigns, training, and coaching to help you more than double your sales through email marketing. The Automate Hero suite effectively gives your existing email marketing platform superpowers, and it's dead easy to integrate. Currently, it works with some of the most popular email markeing platform, including Keap, AWeber, ActiveCampaign, Convertkit, Drip, GetResponse, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, MailerLite and more! Plus, we'll be adding more platform intergreations and more exciting functionalities as time goes on. If you're already a member and aren't using Automate Hero, whatcha waiting for? Go and log in right now! Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “A shit start to the day.” where the word 'shit' is replaced by the poop emoji. This email had a story in it about Rob's dog's morning habits. And it worked well because of the emoji, but also because it has a quirky, double meaning to it. It definitely drives curiosity, and it makes perfect sense when you read the whole email. Try it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesTwo Things to Start Collecting So You Know What’s Working in Your Marketing.Best Email Marketing Campaign To Get Your Customers To Buy Again (And Again).How To Audit Your Email Marketing.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about the 6 slightly technical and amazing things that the best marketing email platforms can do) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player. Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know! 

How do you grow your business by turning each and every client into two more? Today we share our proactive referral marketing strategy, which is something that will help you grow your business exponentially. Ready to go through the steps to do this? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:13) Join our FREE Facebook Group. (6:03) Creating a memorable hook.(8:59) Creating more memorable hooks.(12:32) Step One - planting the seeds.(17:43) Step Two - watering the seeds.(20:05) Step Three - asking for the referral.(22:14) Rewarding the referral.(24:09) Sending a gift that doesn't fit in a drawer.(27:30) Offering double-ended incentives.(30:12) Subject line of the week.Creating a memorable hook Having a referral strategy is a great way to grow your business, especially if you work with clients on a one-to-one basis or in small groups. If you have a service-based high-touch business that serves a small number of clients, this referral strategy works like a dream. But we're going to show you how to use this strategy that Kennedy's been using for his entertainment business for over 15 years for a membership, course, or programme as well. The first thing you want to do is to create a memorable hook for your products, services, or brand. For example, for our podcast (The Email Marketing Show) we have a tune that sticks in your head. It's annoying and simple, and that's done on purpose. Because that's the whole point of marketing - you want to create something that people will talk about.Creating more memorable hooksWith our podcast, we didn't stop at the tune. That's why we came up with a secondary memorable hook - Email Marketing Wednesday. It's so obtuse and weird (and purposely a bit crap) that it becomes memorable. It also allows to create some tension and conflict, which is memorable in people's minds. We don't disagree much on our show otherwise. While we might not agree on everything in business and life, there's no tension or friction between us - there's no real drama on the show. So we created some through a memorable hook. Also, at the start of each episode, we read out a fact about each other. And we know that some of these things stick in people's minds because they come up to us at events and tell us they remember! And having something that people remember about your product or your brand helps you create more referrals because it means they have something to tell their friends and family about. Another thing we do on the podcast is to play a game with our guests where one of us has to guess one true fact about our guest. It's something interesting to describe the podcast by, so think about giving people a pre-loaded 'script' to talk about you and your products or services. But memorable hooks aren't the only thing you need. If you want to grow your business exponentially, you need a proactive referral strategy. Your intention here is to turn every gig or client into two more. So how will you do that?  Step One: Planting the seedsThe first stage of Kennedy’s referral marketing technique is all about planting seeds. And you do that as soon as someone gets in touch to enquire about becoming a client. You ask them how they heard about you. And if they say they found you on the internet or via an ad, you act surprised and let them know that actually most of your work comes from customers recommending you to others. That does two things for you. First of all, it plants the seed that people do refer you. That means that once you've worked with this client and you ask them for a referral, you're going to feel less bad for asking them. Plus, they're going to be more open and less guarded about your request because you already informed them that people normally refer you.The second thing you do when you tell someone that most of your work comes from referrals is to give them social proof. If people recommend you, you must be really good! You're having this conversation with someone before they've even worked with you, so by telling them that your existing and previous customers refer you all the time, you're encouraging this client to go ahead and work with you. So don't overlook the importance of asking this question and talking about referrals, but also acting surprised. It helps the conversation stand out, and they're more likely to remember it. Step Two: Water the seedsWhen you're working with this client, make sure you mention referrals again. Did someone actually refer you to this client? Ask them who it was again and tell them you want to make sure you send a little Thank You note or a gift to that person. Right now, you're watering the seeds and reminding this person again that referring you is something that people do all the time. It helps build that belief that you're someone who gets referred again and again. Step Three: Asking for the referralIf you mention referrals before you start working together and then while you're working with them (as per the previous two steps), it's a lot easier for you to ask for that referral at the end of the work. And it'll be more straightforward to get one because you'll have done the groundwork in advance.When you get to this stage, you can even create an automated email sequence that goes out when the work is complete to ask your client for a testimonial and a referral. This helps you amplify the number of people who refer you.Rewarding the referralA step that a lot of people miss out on is rewarding the referral. The reason why this works (psychologically) is that you're giving someone praise for the action of referring you. So you could send the person a gift, for example. Before you do that though, make sure you consider the legality of gifting people within your industry. In some sectors, you'll find there's a price point you need to stay under if you want to send a gift to a client. But broadly speaking, as long as the gift isn't a high-price item that can be misinterpreted as a bribe, you're good to go. Sending a gift that doesn’t fit in a drawerWhen thinking of Thank You gifts, we like to send things that cannot be put in a drawer - we call them un-drawerables. A card, for example, fits in a drawer. And if you send someone a card, it'll be effective there and then - the person receiving it will think it's a nice and thoughtful gesture, but eventually, that card is going to end up in a drawer and out of sight/out of mind.A gift that doesn't fit in a drawer (like a mug, water bottle, or flowers, for example) means people get to show off or are reminded that someone appreciates them. That not only makes them feel good, but it means your brand gets talked about over and over (especially if the person works in an office and people see and ask about the gift!)As long as that gift stays visible and on someone's desk, for example, you're amplifying the emotional response of that person feeling acknowledged and good about the referral. This emotional, positive feedback will encourage them to refer you again and again. Offering double-ended incentivesThe other thing we do where possible and appropriate is offering what we call a double-ended incentive. This is something that rewards both parties – the new customer and the existing one. For example, members of The League who refer others will get 50% off their next month while the new member gets 50% off their first month. This is a generous discount, and of course, if you have a high-ticket service, you might not be able to offer 50%, but maybe you could offer 10% off?Want to join The League? If you want to find out more about creating a consistent stream of sales in your business and build what we call a core email engine to support that, come and join us inside our membership The League. We'll help you get amazing results with your email marketing while building your business and making sales more consistently.Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “we waited.” (purposely all in lower case and with a full stop at the end). The story is about waiting for something, and it has a bit of an ominous feel to it. As it happens with most of our emails, this one was about promoting The League, but we pulled the subject line from that story.Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesBest Email Marketing Campaign To Get Your Customers To Buy Again (And Again).Advanced Psychology: Using Compound Curiosity.7 Email Marketing Things That Shouldn’t Work (But Do).FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about referral marketing) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player. Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know! 

How do you create a sales spike during your launch? Do you rely on making the majority of your sales on the last day? What if we told you there's a way to generate not ONE spike but at least THREE during the launch of your new product or service? Genius copywriter Mara Glazer tells us how.If you have a membership, coaching programme, or course, you're going to want to take notes. Ready?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:14) Join our FREE Facebook Group.(4:05) Does Mara Glazer really hold the record for the most push-ups in her old high school?(6:31) Why you need 'copy choreography'.(8:51) Create a priority notification list. (9:41) Give them an idea of the price but don't tell them what it is. (11:30) Keeping people engaged during the pre-notification period. (12:33) Opening the doors. (16:37) Creating the last sales spike. (18:39) Using the 'micro-membership' concept and the 24-hours special bonus. (24:19) Subject line of the week with Mara Glazer.Why you need 'copy choreography'One of the things that Mara helps people with is launching programmes, memberships, and courses. And if you've ever launched anything, you'll know that most people tend to rely on a big sales spike or boost on the very last day. But if you get really smart and use what Mara calls copy choreography, you can create sales spikes throughout your launch - not just at the last minute. All you need to do is to ensure you have the right components in the right places. In other words, you want to think about the sequencing of events that need to happen (and in what order) to create more than one sales spike throughout your campaign.And that means your first step is to brainstorm the copy choreography before sending out your email campaigns. Makes sense, right?So here's what you do. Create a priority notification listOnce you've planned the sequence of events, you need to think about building anticipation with your audience before the cart opens. One way Mara does this with her clients is by creating a priority notification list that people can sign up for in order to be informed when the doors to the membership or course open for the first time. If you're launching a brand new membership, here you're giving people the chance to join as founding members and be grandfathered in at the best possible price. The key here is to encourage people to sign up for the pre-notification list by offering an awesome sexy bonus. This is how you create the first sales spike. Give an idea of the price but don't tell them what it isAnother great tip from Mara here is to give an indication of what's included in the membership but without giving an exact price. Instead, you can give an idea. For example, you could say that the price of the membership is less than a casual dinner with their best friend. This tells people that the membership is affordable and inexpensive. But the bonus is what will make them go ahead and buy. It's as if you were selling the bonus harder than the product itself by lifting it on a pedestal for the people who sign up for the pre-notification list. Keeping people engaged during the pre-notification periodThe pre-notification list is promoted for about 2-3 weeks. During this time, to keep people engaged and interested, Mara will send out relevant videos that help position the membership through email marketing and social media. Each video sits on its own page with an opt-in underneath to give people the chance to sign up for the pre-notification list if they haven't already. Opening the doorsOnce the doors open, people have three days to join and claim their priority notification bonus. After this time, the bonus disappears, but people can still join. There is, however, a difference in price. If the founding members got to join the membership at the price of $37 per month, for example, once the pre-notification period of three days ends, the bonus disappears and the price goes up to $47. This price then remains available for one week, and people in the email list receive:2 emails a day for the first 5 days;3 emails a day on the sixth day;4 emails on the last day.And with only a handful of hours left to sign up, that's where the copy choreography skills really come into play. Creating the last sales spikeAfter seven days have passed, the cart stays open for another week. But what's really key here is that it's clear that there are 'consequences' for people who didn't take action within a certain window of time. For example, if someone doesn't buy within the first three days, they miss out on the bonus and the founding price. If they don't sign up within the first seven days, they miss out on the early-bird price. Using the 'micro-membership' concept and the 24-hour special bonusAnd after the second week, Mara explains, that's typically the end of the promotion. However, in a recent launch that Mara and her team managed for a client, they extended it a little longer. Out of an email list of 10,000 subscribers, they had signed up 552 members in the first period. They then decided to take a small portion of the membership programme and offer it to everyone who hadn't bought yet. People were offered a snippet of the membership for $7 a month, and through doing this, the client signed another 100 members. This didn't create extra work - the client simply offered a 'micro-membership' for a fraction of the price. And, of course, when you do this, you have an opportunity to upsell to these members. Another strategy that Mara mentioned for creating sales spikes is introducing a 24-hour special bonus. Doing this creates a reason to send that extra email and gives your audience a compelling, solid argument to act now instead of waiting until the end of the promotion. Mara's number one tip in all this is to make sure that what you offer is sexy enough. This is crucial for the success of the whole campaign. Because your offer needs to deliver everything it promises and be packaged and positioned in the sexiest of ways. As we always say, you can spend all the money in the world to promote a turd, but you're still showing people a turd! So make sure your offer is great and truly converts.  Subject line of the week with Mara GlazerOne of Mara’s best-performing subject lines is “I saw this on Facebook and thought of you”. There are a couple of reasons why this works so well, Mara said.First of all, it sounds like something one of your friends might send you. But also, it has intrigue and mystery. The person receiving this wants to know what you saw that made you think of them. And of course, it helps if you start the email with something that you did indeed see on Facebook, and then lead into your message from there. Useful Episode ResourcesAbout MaraYou can get in touch with Mara on her website, where you can find access to some free email templates to send to your list and fill your calendar with sales calls. And of course, you can look at all the ways you can work with Mara and her awesome team.Related episodesBest Email Marketing Campaign To Get Your Customers To Buy Again (And Again).How to Create Urgency For an Evergreen Membership or Course Without Product Launches.Small List Big Launch – With Gemma Bonham-Carter.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your eail marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how to create not one sales spike but THREE during your launch) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know! 

Social media vs email marketing. Is one better than the other? Want to know what we really think about all this? And yes, we might be a bit biased towards email, but there are specific reasons why we keep ditching social media platforms - want to know what they are? Let's find out! (0:32) Join our FREE Facebook Group. (5:10) We don't hate social media!(7:54) Why knowing your numbers matters.(10:36) Find out what your top sources are.(12:15) What is social media really good for?(15:18) Social media vs email marketing in action.(18:15) Don't have time for email marketing? Think again!(20:35) Do email marketing first.(22:53) Subject line of the week.We don't hate social media!We always get accused of being haters of social media. But we're not! We are on social media. Daily! If anything, we love hanging out in our free Facebook group. And we recognise that social media has its place (and its own set of rules) when it comes to making sales and growing your business.Some people may use email marketing to build their lists and tap into an audience, while others use it to nurture their community. Inside the private Facebook group for our membership, The League, for example, we discuss how people use our email marketing campaigns, and we help them refine their work. So we don’t hate social media - we actively use it. We even used to run a Twitter chat, and we've certainly dabbled with Instagram.But the only social media we use now is our Facebook group. And that’s because that allows us to nurture relationships and keep the conversation going. Facebook isn't an outbound platform for us. Instead, it's something that allows people to lean into us. We get to connect with the people who are excited about our work and want to come into our world to learn from us. Why knowing your numbers mattersHaving said that, we keep ditching social media platforms. We stopped our Twitter chat and don't invest in our Instagram as much anymore. And that's because of what the numbers are telling us. We always look at data to see what's working and what isn't. We track everything we do by using UTMs. These are bits of code that we add at the end of every link we share. So when people subscribe to our email list or become customers, we know how they came into our world. Can you say the same about your subscribers or customers? Where are they coming from? If you're a member of The League, we have some training on UTMs and tracking in the Battle Plans area. We even have some specific tools within our Automate Hero software to help our members track their numbers. (And it's all free!)Why does looking at data matter? Because if you know how people come into your world, you can do more of what's working. And if you don't, it means you're running blind. Without tracking, you won't know if you're moving in the right direction and towards your destination. Because you can’t fully rely on gut instinct to do that. You need to know for a fact that what you're doing is working. Find out what your top sources are In our business, we check our numbers every 90 days to identify the top 10-15 traffic sources that brought subscribers into our business. We evaluate our sources based on how much money they brought in, i.e. on how many paying customers they generated.  And a lot of the time, you'll see the 80/20 rule apply here. That means that approximately 80% of the sales come from two or three of your traffic sources. And that tells you where you can zero in so you can focus on what’s helping you grow your business.When we recently looked at our figures, we noticed that barely any of our sales came from Instagram or Twitter – less than 1% of our members originally came from these social media platforms. For us, the truth when it comes to social media vs email marketing is that people who come through our social media channels don't buy from us quickly enough to give us a return on investments. And that meant we had to think about social media differently because our Facebook group and our podcast, for example, work really well for us. What is social media really good for?We think of social media as a way to tap into an existing audience so we can get in front of people and then move some of them onto our email list. Because your email list is where the selling happens.And at the start, we were worried about only having our Facebook group. But then we realised that many businesses that are wildly successful don’t close any sales on social media – not without having an email list as well. Because with email marketing you have full control - you won’t be a victim of the latest algorithmic changes. And those are happening all the time!We believe social media gives you a pool of people you can tap into, but in order to make sales and make your business successful, you need to sell by email. And that’s where the argument between social media vs email marketing happens. Because if you put 10% more of your time into email marketing, you’ll make more sales and have a bigger impact than if you put 10% more of your efforts into any social media channel. This is undeniable. You could have about 100 people on your email list, and make sales from sending them an offer. But you’d need a lot more followers on your social media platforms to make any sales!Social media vs email marketing in action As an example of this, one of our members recently shared with us that he'd decided to only promote his upcoming launch on Instagram. Three days from the launch, he started to get a bit worried though because he found he wouldn't get the reach he needed to get conversions. Eyeballs weren’t landing, the clicks weren’t moving from Instagram to the sales page, and the sales just weren't coming in!  So with only a few days to go, he launched one of our email campaigns (choosing to shorten a 5-day automation to 3 days because he was short on time), and he told us he ended up switching off sales notifications because they were coming in so quickly that they were interrupting his other work!What’s worth noting is that a lot of the people who eventually bought via his email list were probably some of the same ones who also followed him on Instagram. But the big flurry of sales only came in when he switched on the email campaign. This proves that only posting on social media isn’t a good sales generation tactic. And it might be if you have a couple of million followers, but generally speaking, if you have an ordinary-sized audience, social media alone doesn’t move the needle. 100 subscribers on your email list are worth a lot more than 100 followers on any social media platform. Because when it comes to social media vs email marketing, email is always going to convert more. If all we had were social media followers, we wouldn’t even have a business to speak of!Don't have time for email marketing? Think again!We always find it interesting when people tell us they don’t have time to do email marketing. What are they doing instead? And is whatever they’re doing making any sales? Because you could be getting a lot of engagement and comments, but that isn't worth a thing if you're not moving people to your email list so you can make sales. If you're not generating a profit (which is the one job any business has), then wouldn't you be better off diverting any time you're currently investing in other activities into email marketing instead? Because that would make you sales - email is the most direct line to sales. And once you have money lining your pockets, you'll have time to do other things, such as social media. At that point, you'll have a predictable system where you don't have to worry about where the sales are coming in from. And with more sales, you have more time. So focus on the things that make you sales first and then add other activities because by that point you can afford to do that.Do email marketing firstIn other words, if you only have time for just one thing, do email marketing. Because you’ll want to do the thing that makes you sales first. When it comes to how social media and email marketing fit together, you prioritise what makes you money and then use the time you have left to do anything else -  including social media. Because let's not forget that creating social media content can be very time-consuming. Every platform works in a different way, and various types of content won't perform in the same way. But compare that with the time it takes you to write an email. That’s a lot faster, right? And if that makes you sales directly, it’s also a lot more efficient!So if you’re not a member of The League yet, go and check it out. We give you a plan and the most predictable system to turn people into customers – day and night, wherever you are, and whatever you happen to be doing. Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “Making waaaaaay less money?” This one had a great click-through rate because it has that general sense of being contradictory to what people would expect us to talk about.The story was about the fact we had a call with one of our lovely subscribers, and when we asked her how much more money she wanted to make in her business, she told us she was making enough. We pointed out she had the capacity to make more, but she said she said that wasn't her goal. She had other objectives.So the email was about the fact you shouldn’t make assumptions about your audience. We naturally assume that everyone in our world wants to make more money, but some people have other goals. They might just want to master their skill or email marketing, for example, or be interested in different things.Want to know how this might work in your business? Try and come up with some sort of contradictory subject line based on what you do. Say you teach weight loss, for example. A contradictory subject line could be something like “Piling on the pounds!” Try it out. Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow We Used A Facebook Group To Build Our Email List From Scratch.How Facebook Groups and Webinars Make Matthew Harrington a Happy Man.Tricks To Grow Your Email List With Pinterest – With Meagan Williamson.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about social media vs email marketing) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player. Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know! 

Do you run live webinars and promote them through your email marketing? Have you ever thought about switching to automated webinars? Oh, the possibilities...You see - one of our members, Brad Brown, went from running two live webinars a week to an automated one. And here he shared the story of how he made $90k in the process. He not only increased his sales and profits but also smashed his ad spend and freed up his time to grow his business in different ways. What's not to love here? Ready to hear exactly what Brad did (and what you can do in your business)? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:19) Join our FREE Facebook Group.(4:23) When did Brad start using email marketing in his business?(9:11) What were the biggest barriers to email marketing?(10:24) Why did Brad join The League?(12:55) Switching to automated webinars.(18:16) Implementing other email campaigns.(20:34) The ONE action with the most impact.(22:28) What's next for Brad and email marketing? (23:14) Has email marketing taken over Brad's life?(25:26) Subject line of the week.When did Brad start using email marketing in his business?Brad and his business partner run an online coaching business where they help people become the best runners they can be - no matter whether they're new to running or they're professional athletes. When they first started, Brad and his business partner would travel around South Africa helping the organisers of a famous running race, and ten years or so ago, they ended up setting up a business together. Like many, they started with one-on-one coaching, but in order to leverage their time, they eventually built a training platform that connects with all the main running apps and created a community of engaged runners around the world. So when did they start with email marketing? Quite early on. Brad had a lead magnet that he used to grow his email list. From selling digital training plans that would be emailed out to runners, he built an online platform in late 2018 where he's been relying on email regularly and consistently. What were the biggest barriers to email marketing? Brad believes that, at first, he struggled with messaging. They were creating a lot of content (YouTube, podcast, etc.) and that felt a bit like bombarding their audience. They had no real strategy around selling through email marketing, and as a result, they dabbled with different promotions or webinars to find something that worked. Emails would all be live (broadcast and not automated) at that point and mainly around the YouTube videos that were published every week. The barrier was that nothing was selling on an ongoing basis. Why did Brad join The League?Before Brad joined The League, their business was purely event-based, which means they helped people train for events and marathons. But when Covid hit, people stopped training, and that brought the business to a halt. So Brad and his partner started looking at what they could do to grow while people couldn’t train for events.While focusing on the over-50s as a niche, Brad and his partner decided to run a live webinar. That became so successful that over the following two years, they delivered a staggering 60 live webinars, with the aim to accommodate the most time zones possible. And that meant they were up early in the morning and then late at night. The team was burning out. On top of that, they were also spending $45k a month on Facebook ads. And while the ads were generating a return on investment, their model wasn’t sustainable. So they started looking for a way to automate things. It was around that time that Brad heard us being interviewed on a podcast and started following us. He joined our membership with the intention of setting up automated email marketing sequences, so the first thing he did after joining The League was to start building his email engine. And the first thing he did was to implement our Getting To Know You sequence, which is our version of the welcome sequence. Switching to automated webinarsWhen Brad started creating email marketing campaigns, the whole thing was messy. People were getting multiple emails a day, Brad and his business partner were still running live webinars around the clock, and their costs were climbing. In June 2022 Brad finally turned on the Evergreen Webinar sequence, which means he switched to automated webinars. And that completely changed their business. Because people in different time zones could now choose a suitable time to attend the automated webinars, the attendance rate increased. Brad found success in using a warm-up sequence prior to the webinar starting and also in sending out a workbook, with a view to delivering extra value to their audience. When running webinars, there are three distinct actions you're asking people to take. You have to get them to register, attend, and then convert (i.e. buy). While evergreen/automated webinars have a reputation for converting less than live ones, Brad didn't find this to be true. Their webinar format of one hour and forty minutes is also unusual when it comes to widespread marketing advice. But Brad and his partner provide so much value that by simply implementing the tips in the webinar, someone could improve their running. And this builds a lot of trust in their audience, which, in turn, makes Brad's business stand out. When Brad turned on the sequence for automated webinars, he didn’t know how it was going to work. But the results have been amazing, and the business turned over more than $90k as a result of building this automation. Plus, because the attendance rate and the conversion rate have both increased, the business doesn't need as many leads anymore. That means that ad costs have decreased by about 75%! And that translates to more money in their pockets, which is absolutely fantastic!Implementing other email campaignsSince joining our membership, Brad and his business partner have also implemented other email marketing campaigns. They have a core email engine made of 'train carriages' (i.e. various automated campaigns), and this means their revenue is more consistent. As a business, they're not chasing their tail and starting from scratch every month. In fact, with more revenue and more time, they can focus on other things, such as writing a book or planning an online summit. And these are things that couldn't have happened when Brad and his partner were running two webinars a week! In other words, creating automated campaigns means Brad has more time to build the business and work on it rather than in it. And that's made a huge difference. The evergreen webinar sequence (used as a lead generation tool) has also been built into their email engine. So if someone comes to their business via the webinar but doesn't buy, they then receive other campaigns that sell the same product from different angles. Or if people come through a lead magnet, at some point they'll be presented with an offer to attend the webinar.  All in all, doing email marketing this way means that cost per acquisition is down and profitability is up. Plus, they have the bandwidth to expand and do more. Whereas before, growing would have meant more staff and bigger premises - i.e. more costs!The ONE action with the most impactWe ask this question to all the members we interview as case studies. Because we want to know what one action they took that made all the difference.And what Brad recommends that people do is pick someone they trust and follow their advice. There's so much information out there that it's easy to fall into the trap of selecting bits and pieces of advice here and there and trying to piece them together yourself. Don't do that. Because that's when things end up being messy. And that's true of email marketing as well as running, Brad says!That's why when Brad joined The League, he threw himself into the process. He decided to start from scratch with their email marketing and build everything from the ground up. He locked himself in his office for about a month and didn’t come out until he had a coherent and functional system for his email marketing. Now, his subscribers don’t receive emails that aren’t relevant, and Brad’s sales outside of webinars have also increased. They sell a lot more of their membership too, and that’s been awesome!What’s next for Brad and email marketing?The next thing Brad wants to focus on when it comes to email marketing is to figure out why people aren't buying online. In other words, they want to address people's objections down to the various segments of their audience. And, of course, we have a campaign that does just that, which is called The Interrogator.Has email marketing taken over Brad’s life?Brad admits that email marketing took a lot of his time when he first started out because, as a business, they have a lot of sub-niches within their main niche. And that means Brad had been running a lot of parallel campaigns. But now that the engine is up and running, Brad doesn’t even need to think about it. The sales are coming in, and that feeling is something you can’t put money on, Brad says.In other words, Brad (just like a lot of our members) invested early on in the process. And that means that email marketing has now become an asset, and the business is getting returns. Plus, they no longer have to be awake around the clock to run live webinars!If you’re not a member of The League yet, go and check out the details here. We give you all the campaigns and systems to have the kind of results that Brad and our other members are getting in their businesses. So what are you waiting for?Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “Alexa, give me a 25-minute timer”. The story from Rob here was about how he asked Alexa for a timer to do a certain task for a set period of time. And that’s a subject line that gets people to pay attention. Try it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow Facebook Groups and Webinars Make Matthew Harrington a Happy Man.How A League Member Made Over $10k With Just ONE Email Campaign – Case Study With Aidan O’Sullivan.And How Cody Burch Increased Sales by Exactly 1,000% in 1 Month with Just 10 Emails.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how switching to automated webinars improved our member Brad's business) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player. Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!