So you started sending more emails to your subscribers and now you're getting 'hate mail'. That's right - some people are replying with complaints and negative feedback. And how do we deal with those? Laura Belgray, the founder of Talking Shrimp® and co-creator of The Copy Cure with Marie Forleo, has been a professional writer for over two decades and has won big awards for her work. In this conversation, she tells us everything we need to know to turn problems into opportunities.Because she is The Queen of turning haters into sales. Want to know how it's done? Let's hear it from Laura. SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:25) Want to get more sales from your email marketing?(3:33) Fancy a 14-day FREE trial with Keap? (4:07) Can Laura hold her own on a skateboard or did she appear in the Sesame Street theme on TV?(6:09) What kind of 'hate' emails does Laura get?(8:25) What to do when you receive emails from 'haters'. (11:29) Let go of the people who aren't interested in buying what you sell!(15:22) How to turn 'hate email' into a piece of content to support your launch.(20:37) How to turn 'hate emails' into evergreen content.(23:35) 'Haters' are like hecklers - they just want significance.(28:34) Subject line of the week with Laura Belgray.Want to get more sales from your email marketing?We put a little something together for you – it's really cool and it's FREE (yes, we're nice like that). If you want to make more sales from your email marketing, you need those clicks on the things that you're selling!So we've got 12 creative ways to help you get more clicks in every email you send. It's a FREE download, and it's called Click Tricks. You can grab it here. The kind of 'hate emails' Laura gets  One thing we have in common with Laura is using stories as a way of communicating with our audiences. Sure, that makes us a little vulnerable because when you share stories and experiences from your own life and people don't like them, their 'hate' can be directed towards you. So what kind of 'hate' are we talking about here? Oh, let's see. Laura was told her emails were lame and totally sucked, for example. Or that she emails too much and she should 'slow her roll'. And even that people are trying to unsubscribe, but there's no link (an absolute lie!)Sometimes these comments are so ridiculous that they're easy to brush off. But sometimes they sting. And Laura admits she's sometimes tempted to write back and be reactive about the situation. But...There's a better way to do things. What to do when you receive emails from hatersThe right thing to do, Laura explains, is to avoid responding straight away. Don't defend yourself - don't waste your time telling people why they're wrong. It’s okay to lose these 'haters' from your list because they're not the people you want!Instead, Laura does something constructive - she will showcase these comments. She’ll take a screenshot, copy the words, put them into an email and social media posts, and she’ll share with her audience. She might admit she was hurt by the negative comments sometimes, but she’ll also talk about why what people say is wrong and share value with her audience in the process. And do you know why her audience loves it when she does this? First of all, people like to see how we handle things we’re afraid of - things that might happen to them too. Because if you're someone who emails often and is good at this, you'll get these sort of emails too. Truth is - the better you are at something, the more people are going to 'hate' you!How sharing 'hate' emails with your audience impacts youIt's also interesting for people in your audience, Laura says, to see how a person they respect handles the process to turn problems into opportunities. And when you admit that negative words have an effect on you, it's relatable and comforting to your audience. Equally, if you show why you're not bothered by these comments, there will be people on your list who can relate to that.When people in your audience see you handle criticism well, they rally around you - they get on your side and defensive on your behalf. If the ‘hater’ is complaining you sell too much, you might have people react by buying! Because they're on your list to buy from you, and they'll prove it to you by buying your products or services. Let go of the people who aren't interested in what you're sellingLaura knows that the more you email, the more you sell. The more you get your message out to people, the more people you'll help or delight. So by emailing more, you're creating such a positive effect that it’s worth the trade-off of losing some 'haters'. Because the more emails you send, the more unsubscribes you're going to get. But, as we always say, unsubscribes are a good way of cleansing your list. The people who leave are people who don't want to hear from you - they aren't interested in what you have to say or sell. So you don't want them on your list! Because if they're not going to buy or even open your emails, they're clogging up your list. Letting them go is a cleansing process for your list. Let's remember that people on your list who don't open your emails affect your deliverability. So let them go! How to turn a 'hate email' into a piece of contentWe asked Laura how she frames the negative comments she receives from her subscribers and turns them into something of value. To answer our question, Laura shared an example of someone who got in touch with her to say she was sending too many emails (we called this guy Bob).She took a screenshot of Bob's email, quoted it into one of her emails and told her audience what she said back to him. She told Bob (and her list) that when it comes to email marketing, more is more - especially if you're launching or selling something. Laura backed this up with a graph that showed that the more emails she sends, the more products she sells. And it’s that frequency of emailing that made her a $1 million yearly income! So she’s going to keep sending emails. And Bob is of course welcome to get off the ride. When the 'haters' reply backDo you know what happened next? Bob actually replied back! He said he'd been schooled by Talking Shrimp and humbly accepted Laura’s rebuttal. Fantastic, right?The best thing is that this happened in the middle of a launch of one of Laura's courses - one that teaches the art of emailing. And this whole thing with Bob was so apt that it helped her sell the course! Because when Laura pointed out that sending more emails generates more money, more people realised they needed the exact product she was selling. This was a perfect example of how Laura made more sales using hate email. But she uses these kind of emails all the time - even when she isn't doing a launch. She uses these emails to make her audience feel better about 'haters' and to educate them on how to handle and process criticism.You are not for everyone!Because it's important we all remember we're not for everyone - no one is. There'll always be someone who wants you to do things differently.But you don't need to change anything.It's like the analogy we like to use of people on your email list being guests who come into your house. When they come to you, they need to abide by your rules. And if they don’t like the décor or the furniture, you’re not going to change it for them! Because this is your house. So you run your list the way you want to run it.How to turn your 'hate emails' into evergreen pieces of content Laura will always re-use 'hate emails', especially if they got a good response. If the emails are time-bound and include copy along the lines of “this happened to me today”, she’ll tweak them to say “last time I launched, this happened to me,” for example. This helps her make the emails more time-sensitive.But emails from haters make for great content, whether they’re during a launch or not. For example, someone once criticised Laura for having a typo in an email. And Laura pointed out that copywriters aren’t copy editors – they make typos. But this doesn't mean they can't be trusted or aren't professional! So Laura created an email with the subject line “the typo that ruined my career”. And of course, the point was that a typo didn't ruin her career!That was a great example of everyday content – not something she'd only share during a launch. Because anything can be turned into a piece of content.'Haters' just want significanceThis conversation with Laura also reminded us of what happens in the stand-up comedy and entertainment worlds with hecklers. Hecklers are people who want a bit of significance.It's the same with email marketing. When Bob got a reply from Laura, he probably had his heart filled. He felt important because he was spotlighted and pointed out in the audience. He got significance.  Of course, that doesn't mean you should reply to everyone. Laura, for example, has a customer service manager who will often take care of these types of emails and reply to people. Laura will sometimes reply to public comments though, like those on a Facebook ad for example, in order to show a public record of her responses. And she might screenshot those exchanges and use them as content.Subject line of the weekA subject line that Laura uses with every launch is “DUDE”. This was an email about getting a testimonial from a guy who's on Laura's list who is also an awesome email marketer - Chris Orzechowski. He emailed Laura a fabulous response to a course he’d bought, telling her how much he made from the first email he wrote after buying the course. Laura showcased this testimonial but also the fact she got an email from a guy. You see, Laura has a lot of women on her list and proportionately fewer men. So getting a testimonial from a guy was exciting – she now calls these testoster-monials. And she thinks having testoster-monials on her sales page makes a huge difference. Because it's all about representation. It's about how as consumers we like to see faces that look like ours - whether it's our race, the colour of our hair, or our gender. So the email talked about the importance of showcasing different kinds of people on your sales pages. Brilliant, right? Useful Episode ResourcesAbout LauraIf you want to connect with Laura, you can find her on her website or on Instagram. You can also grab Laura’s free guide to subject lines here – it’ll give you 33 non-sucky subject lines for emails that always get opened, plus proven templates to write your own.Related episodesWhy You Shouldn’t Worry About Your Unsubscribe Rate. The Surprising Thing That REALLY Impacts Your Email Deliverability.Why You Need to Avoid These Email Marketing Mistakes. 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 to turn problems into opportunities and 'haters' into sales) 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! 

Did you know we started an email marketing agency? If you didn't, you're about to find out why we started one, who it's for, and how it could help you.So if you're curious to find out whether we could take care of your email marketing for you, read on (or click play to listen!)SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:10) Want to get more sales from your email marketing? Grab our FREE download Click Tricks.(3:38) Fancy a 14-day FREE trial with Keap?(4:37) Why we stopped our first email marketing writing agency.(6:55) Do one thing at the time (but not forever).(11:00) It's about delegation - not abdication!(14:10) The minimum viable version of our email marketing agency.(15:47) Why we only work with specific types of businesses.(18:26) Who is our email marketing agency for?(21:21) If you're interested in working with us, check out our application form!(23:22) Subject line of the week.Want to get more sales from your email marketing?We put a little something together for you - it's really cool and it's FREE (yes, we're nice like that). If you want to make more sales from your email marketing, you need those clicks on the things that you're selling! So we've got 12 creative ways to help you get more clicks in every email you send. It's a FREE download, and it's called Click Tricks. You can grab it here. Why we stopped our first email marketing agencyNews flash! We've just started an email marketing agency. But this isn't even the first time we've done this! In fact, we used to have an email marketing agency, but we closed it down. You see, when we first started this business, having an agency was the logical thing to do. So we did. We'd work with clients, plan an effective strategy and implement email marketing campaigns for them. But there was a downside. We wanted to help more people than we had time to. Plus the investment was prohibitive for small businesses and course creators. And those were the very people we wanted to help because we have a background in creating online courses. So to help more people we created our membership, The League. This is where we help course creators, coaches, membership site owners, and other small businesses to do their own email marketing. So we went all-in on the membership and moved away from the email writing agency.Do one thing at the time (but not forever)We very much subscribe to this idea of doing one thing at the time. But that doesn't mean you do just that one thing forever! We love The League, but we also believe that in business you have to take the time to do one thing right and then move on. This is how we get so much done - separately and together - in our businesses. We do one thing, get it up and running quickly, get it refined (that means automated or systemised), and then move on and do the next thing.We like to use the analogy of a circus performer spinning plates. It can look like mayhem at first. But the way they do it is very systemised. They get one plate spinning until it's perfect and then move on to the next one. Once they have all the plates spinning, they just need to give them a little wiggle to keep them going.It's the same for some of the bits of our businesses. We have people in charge of parts of our businesses and will jump on a meeting once a month to check how things are. So here's a key lesson we learnt - get one thing going and do it quickly. If it doesn't work, you can close it down and move on and do something different.So now that we have our membership up and running, and we've systemised that process, we know when to turn up for our deliverables to serve our members, and we're ready to move on to the next thing in our business, which is how to help people who want an affordable way to have their email marketing taken care of for them. Remember it's delegation - not abdication!The fact we're happy with where our membership The League is (at its core) doesn't mean we're leaving it behind! Quite the opposite! We’re constantly working to improve it and add to it. We never take our eyes off it - we'd never abandon it. Delegation or systemisation doesn't mean abdication – you can’t close your eyes and assume a plate is still spinning. Because if you do, sooner or later, you’ll hear the sound of that plate on the floor. And you don’t want that.So when we first started planning out our email marketing writing agency we were super clear about the fact we wanted to deliver good results and a great quality product for our clients. But at the same time, we still wanted to run and serve The League, produce our podcast (The Email Marketing Show), and fulfil our other existing commitments. These were our conditions. The minimum viable version of our email marketing agencySo the first thing we asked ourselves when we started putting our email marketing agency together was to work out what the minimum viable version of it looked like. In the past, we’d been guilty of building huge elaborate processes that took lots of work, time, energy, and efforts to then realise we didn't want to run that business.And the first thing we wanted to make sure of was that we had writers who would create marketing emails and take care of email marketing campaigns for our clients. Thankfully, because we have paying members, students, and customers who are certified in our frameworks, techniques, strategies and processes, we have some incredible writers at our disposal. In other words, we have amazing people who do email marketing day in and day out and love it! So we began building our team of writers to get our fulfillment piece in place in order for us to focus on growing the business rather than working in it. We'll do the discovery and sales calls with prospective and new clients to find out what you want. And then we'll tell you how we do it and sign you up if we seem like a good fit for each other.We only work with specific types of businessesWhen we kicked things off with our email marketing agency, we created a sales page where we ask people to apply for a call. We're selective about who we work with - we want specific clients who want what we deliver, in the way that we deliver it, and in our timeframe. So there's a specific application process people need to get through before they get on a phone call with us. And that's because we don’t want to waste your time if we can't help you.If you head over to our sales page, you'll find a video of us introducing ourselves. We tell you what we do and who the agency is for. We talk about the problems we solve and the way we do it. You'll see that we lay it all out very openly without any mysteries - we’re completely transparent about what we do. And if that sounds like something you want help with, you can go through an application form which asks a few key questions, including what products and services you offer. And we ask that because if someone operates in an area we have no experience in or aren’t sure whether we can’t get results (like real estate, for example), we won’t work with them.What's also key for us in terms of the clients we work with is that they've already proven that their product sells. Because email marketing is going to amplify what they’ve already proven. And if someone doesn't have a proven product yet, 100 times nothing is still nothing! So we want to make sure we're not just taking people's money and not get a result. We want to give clients the best chance of getting the best results from what we do.Who is our email marketing agency for?It’s for anyone who wants to use email marketing in their business but doesn’t have the time, inclination, or patience to learn it and do it themselves. And that's fine! We have things in our business that we don't do ourselves - like social media or paid ads, for example. We choose to outsource these areas and tasks to the experts so we can double down on the things we’re good at. And for us that’s email marketing.So if you don't want to learn email marketing because you want to focus on delivering your product or service, you can still utilise email marketing in your business. And while you double down on the stuff you're good at, our email marketing agency can take care of email for you.  We have a formula that works for certain types of businesses at certain stages. We teach it over and over inside The League and know it works. If you're happy to learn it and implement it yourself, then our membership is the place for you. If not (and you still want results and turn subscribers into paying customers quicker and faster than any other strategy), then our agency can do it for you. We have the formula and the experienced writers, which is why we know we can offer these amazing advantages to our clients.So if you think you’re ready and would like us to take hold of your email marketing, build your email engine, and do your weekly emails, go ahead and fill in our application form. You can find it here.Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line of the week is “I am begging you [First Name]”. The hook of the email was around the fact that your subscribers are never going to beg you to start emailing them! So on their behalf, we are begging you to send emails to them. Because they are interested in hearing from you! But also, this particular email we're referring to was sent out to drive traffic to an episode of our podcast - Product Launch Emails – Success Story with Kay Peacey. In our chat, Kay talks about the resistance she had to emailing subscribers. So we used this story as the hook of our email. And this helped us fix a problem we had in our business. Because we used to send emails to get people to go and listen to episodes of the podcast, but those never performed well. Until we started writing them using the exact frameworks we use for all of our other emails. And this proves our frameworks work! So here’s an extra little lesson for you. Cool, right?Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesProduct Launch Emails – Success Story with Kay Peacey.7 Ideas for Building Your Email List in 2022.Why Email Marketing is at the Top of the Digital Marketing Trends for 2022. 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 why we started an email marketing agency) 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! 

Today we have Sheila FG on the show, who is part of our membership, The League. Sheila helps podcasters and event owners find sponsors for their events. She's been in business for years, but it's only recently that she started creating products for her business and pivoting into coaching and consultancy. This is a fantastic email marketing case study of how Sheila got started and got results by emailing her list. Ready to find out how your business could transform, too? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (3:16) Fancy a 14-day FREE trial with Keap?(6:49) Sheila's email marketing before she joined The League.(10:35) The changes Sheila implemented when she joined The League.(13:04) How Sheila's business has changed since she started email marketing.(14:29) How Sheila feels about her email marketing now.(16:10) The things that made the biggest impact on Sheila's email marketing.(17:51) What's next for Sheila's email marketing? (18:30) Has email marketing become a full-time job for Sheila?(19:58) Can email marketing work for YOU?(21:30) Subject line of the week.Sheila's email marketing before she joined The LeagueLike many people in business, Sheila only started thinking about her email list a bit more seriously when she started selling products. Before that, she wasn't sure what to email her audience about. She didn't have a framework, and, in her own words, she felt awkward. She didn't know what her subscribers would want to receive from her and felt uncomfortable with the idea of only sending promotional emails. Plus, with some big-name digital marketers and speakers on her list, she suffered from Imposter Syndrome too. Why would they want to hear from her? After all, Sheila was only just starting out in the email marketing space while they were seasoned and established.Before joining The League, Sheila would typically put together a sponsorship package and email the event out to her list of sponsors from her Gmail account. She didn't use marketing automation at all, and she found the back-and-forth communication time-consuming and not efficient at all. She'd lose track of conversations, and it felt a lot like 'busy work'.The changes Sheila implemented when she joined The LeagueThe first thing Sheila did when she joined The League was to start sending regular emails. Although her emails don't go out daily yet, she emails frequently. She has a Google Doc where she saves any ideas for email newsletters and enjoys finding topics to talk about that have a business lesson behind them.Another thing Sheila started doing was to include links in her emails - something she’d not done before. She now adds multiple places to her emails where people can interact with her, including in her signature. That way, all the areas of her 'marketing machine' now feed to each other. For example, her email list feeds into her Facebook group and vice-versa. She'll often share a post in her Facebook group encouraging people who aren't on her list to join, so they can receive her daily emails.Sheila also implemented automated email campaigns, and she loves that. Once they're done, she doesn't have to worry about that side of things.  How Sheila’s business has changed since she started email marketingNow, Sheila has people joining her list that she doesn’t recognise – she has no idea where or how they found her. Plus, she gets responses or questions from her subscribers. That's led to actual conversations with people, and it's great for Sheila to know that there's someone out there reading and taking notice.How Sheila feels about her email marketing nowSheila now wants to get more marketing campaigns in place in order for her email marketing to run on autopilot. She also wants to start tagging her subscribers to gain more clarity on who's on her list, what they do, and where they are in their journey with her.Sheila's email marketing may still feel like a work-in-progress, and she admits she has a long way to go. But she feels a lot better about it. She says email marketing is now fun work because she can see results almost immediately - there's a progression there. Now that she's using email campaigns and automation, she can spend more time focusing on growing her business.What had the biggest impact on Sheila's email marketing? Taking action and being consistent is what gave Sheila the biggest results. In particular, she noticed how well her email list and Facebook group work together by sending people from the group onto her list and vice-versa. But also, getting responses from people was a game-changer for Sheila. Out of everything she's learnt and implemented since joining The League, Sheila would advise anyone who's getting started with email marketing to prioritise emailing consistently every day. "The more you do it, the easier it gets," Sheila says. Consistency also helps with generating regular conversations.Adding links to your emails is also important to help you figure out where you get more clicks, Sheila says. That way, you can work out what works for you and build forward momentum, rather than just sending something out into the ether and not knowing whether it’s going to work or not.What’s next for Sheila in her email marketing?Now that she's happy with the work she's done on the product side of her business, Sheila wants to focus more on the sponsorship side. She knows now that she has topics to write about, so she's planning on adding her sponsors' database into her email marketing system. And that will help her become more consistent with her emails.Has email marketing become a full-time job for Sheila? When Sheila first started out, she thought sending out regular emails would take forever. But she soon realised that like we always tend to do with something new, she was overcomplicating things. When she started doing it, it became clear that she could quickly write an email and move on to the next thing. Once you get into it, it's not as overwhelming as you may think! There are so many things we could do or ‘should’ do in business, but it’s important to tackle them one at the time. It’s a bit like watching a person on stage spinning plates. They start with one, and only when that plate is spinning do they add another, and then another, and so on.Email marketing is very much the same. Get something going consistently and then you can add something else to it. All you need to do, from time to time, is to go back and check that the original plate is still spinning and doing what it’s supposed to do for you.Can email marketing work for YOU? It's okay for us and for Sheila to do email marketing, right? But will it work for you? We asked Sheila, and she confessed she had the same fear. At first, she didn't think people would want to hear from her. She felt like she was spamming them. But then she told herself we’re all human.If you can figure out who the people on your list are and what they’re looking to learn, you can sprinkle that into your emails and make them interesting, engaging, and funny. Because regardless of what you’re selling, we’re all human, aren't we?Subject line of the weekSheila’s subject line is “Clear enough for you?” It sounds a little angry and confrontational, but the email was all about the fact that Sheila bought some salad cream in the States, and it had a white sticker stamped on it that said “USA date” to let people know how they should read the 'best before date'.Inspired by that story, Sheila sent an email to her list talking about how everything seems clear to us when we’re inside our business. But is it as clear for the people on the outside? It's always worth remembering that there are things in our business or marketing that aren't clear for our customers, guests, or clients. So how do we combat that?Pretty neat subject line from our Sheila, don't you think? Useful Episode ResourcesAbout SheilaIf you want to connect with Sheila, you can find her on her website – Connected Sponsors.Related episodesProduct Launch Emails – Success Story with Kay Peacey.Using Email Marketing to Build a Profitable Business – a Success Story from a Member of The League. Who should not join The League of email marketing heroes.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 Sheila FG's email marketing case study) 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 improve your email deliverability? What can damage your sender's reputation? How can you make sure your emails land in your subscribers' inboxes?We're Kennedy and Carrie, and we're here to share the truth about all the surprising things that affect your email deliverability so you can have better results.Ready?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:33) Want to carry on with the conversation? Join our FREE Facebook group. (2:21) What is 'email deliverability'? (5:06) The technical things that impact your email deliverability. (7:40) Using too many images. (9:49) More reasons for not using too many images in your emails. (13:55) Having little or no engagement with your emails. (16:26) Using 'spammy' words. (21:00) What can you do to improve your email deliverability? (23:03) Keep your list clean.(24:57) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]What is 'email deliverability'?Let’s say this first - nothing will affect your deliverability like not sending enough emails! You can only improve your email deliverability if you send emails! No one gets them if you don’t send them, right?With that said, when we talk about deliverability, we refer to the ability to get your emails into people’s primary inboxes so they can see them, open them, and click the links inside them to go and buy your products and services.You can put great effort into learning how to write great emails with effective subject lines. But if your emails end up in people’s spam folders or are blocked altogether, you won't get any results with your email marketing. You need to ensure that your emails are delivered. So we're sharing the email best practices for you to bake into your everyday processes to improve your deliverability.For this, we assume the people on your email list have chosen to be there. This means you haven't gone onto the Internet and scraped email addresses or bought an email list illegally. The premise of this advice is that you do the same email marketing we do - i.e. opt-in, permission-based marketing. In other words, someone’s seen a good reason (such as a lead magnet) to join your email list, and they've voluntarily given you their email address and permission to send them emails. Because if not, when people start receiving emails from someone they don't know, they'll be quick to hit the spam button.The technical things that impact your email deliverabilityBefore you start emailing people, there are a few technical parameters you need to set up regardless of how big your list is or what niche you’re in. These are:SPF (Sender Policy Framework).DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail).And DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance).We’re not going into detail, but we suggest you research how to set them up or hire someone to do it for you. All you need to know is that setting these values up helps validate your reputation as a sender to ensure your emails are delivered securely and consistently. These parameters verify you can legitimately send emails from your website. They're measures that exist to protect people, so don't skip this step.If you’re in our Facebook group and have any doubts, come and ask. And if you are inside our programme, The Email Hero Blueprint, we have tech calls where we answer these types of questions.So what else impacts your email deliverability?1. Using too many imagesThings such as using large images or GIFs in your emails might impact your deliverability. But that's if you use them all the time. Think of deliverability as a scoring system. Doing something 'wrong' occasionally doesn't mean your email marketing is doomed! Most of the time, you'll be fine. You won't be immediately blacklisted and put in Gmail jail. Using images or GIFs here and there isn't going to hurt your deliverability if you're otherwise getting good engagement.However, regularly putting lots of massive images in your emails (especially if they’re not compressed and end up being sent as attachments) isn’t great for your deliverability. For the most part, you want your emails to be text and links. And this isn’t just for email deliverability. It’s also (and mainly) because emails that are sent by people don’t have lots of graphics or heavy layouts – that’s what business emails look like. We want to fall into the category of personal relationships here. We want our subscribers to focus on what we mean by the words we use in the emails – not the images.More reasons for not using too many images in your emailsAnother reason not to use too many images is that you don't want people to disconnect from your message because of the images you use. Say you’re telling a story about an awful chair, and you attach a photo of it. Someone who might have the same chair (or happen to like the image of the one you shared) might be offended and not connect with what you're sharing. Instead, you want people to use their imagination and decide for themselves what ‘an awful chair’ looks like. Let the words paint the pictures for you.Also, if you’re an e-commerce business that sells products, for example, you don’t want to put photos in your emails. The goal is for people to click on the links inside your emails, go to your website, see your products, and buy from there. Your emails have the job of getting people to click on your links. And people clicking on your links is a great indicator to Gmail that your emails generate engagement. So don’t give them everything in the email because if you do, they have no reason to click!An exception to that rule (and one we sometimes use) is to put a preview image of a video in an email that tells people that by clicking on a link, they’ll be taken to a page where they can watch a video. In that preview image, we’ll often include something curious like a thumbnail or an animated GIF. But that doesn’t take away from driving the click.Using images can also become a noble obstacle. If you’re waiting to publish an email because you first need to find the perfect image and then resize it etc., you may never send that email. And messy action is better than no action! So reduce friction wherever you can. Tell the story you want to share in the email, and let the sales page do the rest. Every additional thing you put in there can get in the way of people taking action.2. Having little or no engagement with your emailsThe next thing that affects email deliverability is the engagement of your emails. Are people paying attention? Are they opening your emails, clicking on the links, and replying?Opening emails is a good sign to Google – it shows people are there and taking some form of action. But people clicking on the links in your emails is a stronger engagement signal. It tells Google that your subscribers are interested in what you do - your emails must be good!The next best thing is people replying to your emails – that shows a greater level of human engagement. And while it's harder to get people to do this, forwarding your emails is an even better engagement signal. It tells Google that your content must be of great quality.Something we do in our Super Signature at the bottom of our emails is to say something along the lines of “If someone forwarded this to you, make sure you also get the next email”. This plants the seed in the readers’ minds that they can forward your email to someone else if they find it valuable. It's also useful because you're telling people what the next step is - what do you want them to do now? If you want people to forward your emails, tell them. Because inherently people want to be helpful - they just don't know what's useful to you.You can't generate engagement if you’re not emailing consistently or frequently enough. If you only show up out of the blue when you have something to sell, people are going to see through that. So don't be that person! If you haven’t sent emails in a while, don’t overthink it – just jump back in.[thrive_leads id='8822']3. Using ‘spammy’ wordsAnother factor that may negatively impact your deliverability is using words and phrases that are picked up by scam software. A lot of email platforms automatically do spam checks. For example, we use Keap, and certain words and phrases are highlighted as spam. It might surprise you, but “Netflix” is one of them! So it's not just your traditional 'naughty words'. If people mark emails as spam, and those emails have particular words or phrases in them, Gmail starts to pick them up as 'spammy'.However, let’s not forget deliverability works like a scoring system. If you generally have great engagement and a clean list, the occasional 'spammy' word isn’t going to hurt your deliverability. If you have a low spam score, you could, for example, get away with using the word “free” in a subject line with no issues. Think of your email marketing relationship with your audience as a friendship or even a dating relationship. You’re not expected to be perfect all the time! If you make one negative blip here and there, you’ll be forgiven.Also, don't look at email subscribers as data - they are people. You’re emailing humans who have raised their hands and said they wanted to hear from you. If you get marked as spam by the occasional person, don’t focus on that too much. Instead, keep serving the people who showed up and want to hear from you.What can you do to improve your deliverability score?The first thing you can do to improve your deliverability score is to show up more often (i.e. increase the frequency of your emails). Think of your credit score. If you never had credit before, your score won't be good because the banks don't know if you'll pay the money back on time. The same goes for emails. You want Gmail and the other providers to have a track record for you so they can see your past reputation.To do that, you need to build one. If you're not sending a great amount of emails, you’re not giving Gmail and the other platforms enough evidence about what type of sender you are. Gmail will want to know that when you send an email people open and click, reply, or forward, and generally don’t mark you as spam! So don’t be the person who only reaches out when you have a favour to ask (i.e. something to sell). People will be more likely to reach back when you’re showing up consistently.Keep your list cleanAnother thing you can do is to keep your list clean. Remove the people who are repeatedly not engaging with your email list. Before you do that, you can give them the chance to re-engage by putting them through a re-engagement campaign. But if they don't, take them off your list. If every time you send an email, lots of people on your list don’t look at your emails, Gmail interprets this as your emails not being good. And this negatively impacts your sender's reputation. So if someone hasn’t engaged with your emails in 60 days, give them a chance to re-engage. If they don't take it, unsubscribe them. This way, you'll be able to reach those who want to be reached.If you want access to these (and more) strategies to keep your email deliverability high, check out the details of our programme, The Email Hero Blueprint.[thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “Low power kicks”. The email had a good click-through rate, and it was about the fact Kennedy has been training in Muay Thai for about 18 months. The story in the email used the metaphor that in business and life (just like when training), you don't want to be kicking hard the whole time. Sometimes you have to use low-power kicks instead. The metaphor makes the whole thing more interesting. And people get to learn more about you. This helps you build a more three-dimensional picture of a real human being who’s out there doing stuff. So check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesStop Landing In The Spam Folder & Immediately Skyrocket Your Email Deliverability – With Brian Minick.Master Your Metrics – Unleashing The Power Of Email Marketing Analytics.How To Create THE Most Successful Re-Engagement Email Campaign (And Smash Your Sales Targets).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. Here's a 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 the FREE Facebook groupDo you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber? There's a way! Every business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. You'll find a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This content 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 Email Hero Blueprint Want more? Let's say you're a course creator, membership site owner, coach, author, or expert and want to learn about the ethical psychology-based email marketing that turns 60-80% more of your newsletter subscribers into customers (within 60 days). If that's you, then The Email Hero Blueprint is for you.This is hands down the most predictable, plug-and-play way to double your earnings per email subscriber. It allows you to generate a consistent sales flow without launching another product, service, or offer. Best news yet? You won't have to rely on copywriting, slimy persuasion, NLP, or ‘better' subject lines.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about the things that impact your email deliverability) and love the show, we'd 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! What do you really fill your working days with if you don't spend time on email marketing? We'd love to know!

Do you worry about your unsubscribe rate? Do you obsessively log into your email marketing software to check it and then panic over it? If you do, you need to stop that. Your unsubscribe rate is actually a good thing! Want to know why? Let's find out! SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:48) Fancy a 14-day FREE trial with Keap?(4:10) Why you want to build a list of people who want to buy from you.(6:50) Your email marketing should be on your terms.(9:06) When people unsubscribe from your list, they improve your email deliverability.(10:00) Why you should aim to make a profit from your email list as a whole (and not look at individual subscribers).(12:30) Email marketing is about building relationships with people.(13:16) Why you want to keep your email list lean.(14:46) Look at people unsubscribing from your list as the ultimate way of niching down.(16:54) Why you want to create an environment of zero competition.(18:20) Subject line of the week.Build a list of people who want to buy from youWe know getting notifications that say people have unsubscribed from your email list is scary. But it shouldn’t be. Subscribers are not Pokémon – you don't have to collect them all!The truth is when people unsubscribe from your list they're doing you a favour. Because list building isn't about having the biggest list in the world. It’s about having a list of people who want to hear from you and buy from you. If they're not going to buy from you (ever), they might as well not be on your list! You don't need more friends. And you don’t need more people on your list that drag you down.In fact, that unsubscribe link at the end of your emails is useful. It's like a self-cleaning feature. This is your email list cleaning itself and telling you who’s not interested. Your subscribers are telling you that your business isn’t for them. And that's a good thing!Your email marketing should be on your termsBecause your emails are landing in people's email inboxes, it's easy to think you are interfering with their day - that you're being intrusive. But let's turn this around for a minute. Imagine your email marketing is your house, and you’ve invited people in for a cuppa.Effectively, you've put a thing on the internet (a lead magnet) that told people you send an email out as often as you do about the things you want to sell. If people want to receive that email, they’re welcome to come on in and make themselves at home. You’ll even put the kettle on, won’t you?And if at any point they don't like what they see in your house, they can leave. And that’s okay. In case they get so upset they email you to say you’re spamming them, you can always unsubscribe them. So don’t get attached to the idea you have to make their inbox a better place. Because sure, your job is to do good email marketing. And that should make someone’s inbox better for them, but only if they want to be there and they’re interested in what your emails are all about. But remember - this is your house. You invited them. And if they don't like it, they can leave at any point or you can unsubscribe them. So write your emails for you. Send the emails you'd like to receive and then build an audience of people who want those emails. This allows you to focus on serving the needs of the people who want what you have to offer.When people unsubscribe from your list, they improve your email deliverabilityDid you know that email unsubscribes improve your deliverability? That's right. Because instead of doing things that tell Google and the other search engines that your emails aren't very good, the people who don't want your emails just leave.It's when they stay and start doing things like not opening your emails, not clicking your links, or not engaging, for example, that you need to worry. Because that's when your open rates and your click-through rates go down.It’s a bit like having a sad person in the corner of the room at your party - they're bringing the atmosphere down for everyone. But if they leave, the mood of the whole party lifts again.And it's the same for your email deliverability. The minute the people who weren't engaging with your emails leave, your deliverability rate starts to increase. And that's a big win! Aim to make a profit from your email list as a wholeAnother reason why high unsubscribe rates shouldn't worry you is that we shouldn't look at subscribers on our list individually. So if you're running ads, for example, you can calculate your ad spend and the number of subscribers on your list and work out how much it's costing you to acquire one subscriber. And if that person unsubscribes, you now think you've lost that amount. Then you start focusing on the fact that if you emailed less or differently, then people wouldn’t have unsubscribed, and you wouldn't have lost money. But that's the wrong way to look at it! Instead, you want to think about how email marketing works as a bigger picture. So if you're spending $1,000 in ads to get 200 subscribers, for example, you now want to make that $1,000 back with all your subscribers collectively – not looking at them one by one. Don't aim to make every single subscriber on your list profitable. You make a profit from your list as a whole.  For example, we make $12 per subscriber per month. So if we had 200 subscribers, with our business and our setup, we could make $2,400 per month. If you spend $1,000 to acquire 200 subscribers, your job is to make $1,000 (and more) from those 200 subscribers as a whole. Because that's a much better way to see where your profits or losses come from. Email marketing is about building relationships with people Let's face it - people who unsubscribe from your list are not interested in what you have to say or sell right now. There’s no point in having a huge email list that you’re too scared of emailing in case they unsubscribe.The reason why you have email subscribers is so that you can communicate with them and build relationships to a point where they invest in you or buy something from you. So please get over the idea that emailing people is something to be afraid of! Because when you email people you build relationships. And that means that when they're ready to buy from you, they will.  Keep your email list leanAnother advantage of people unsubscribing is that it keeps your email list lean. And that allows you to reduce your email hosting costs. If you’re on a package with your email platform where you get 5,000 subscribers for a certain price, as soon as you go over that number, you’re going to have to upgrade.Because email marketing is such a high return-on-investment activity, the cost of upgrading is not massively prohibitive, but you still want to avoid overspending. And if some people unsubscribe and that allows you to stay under that threshold, you get to keep your costs low. Look at unsubscribing as the ultimate niching downPeople unsubscribing from your email list is the ultimate niching down. A lot of people think that if they send an email and 98% of people don't open it, it means their open rates are bad. Even if you could trust open rates as being true (which you can’t and shouldn’t), a 30% open rate, for example, is not bad at all! But what you need to realise (instead of focusing on open rates) is that not everybody's going to resonate with your style and message, which means that when people unsubscribe you get to niche right down. Every time you send an email, some people will leave. But as they get themselves off the list, you're left with the people who resonate with your style, with the kind of words you use, and with your message. The people who stay are interested in learning more about the thing you talk about, and they're specifically interested in learning about all that from you.Just like us, you’re not for everybody. And by getting rid of the people who are not interested in you or your thing, you get to niche down to the ones who are. And those are the most profitable people to have in your world.The environment of zero competitionOnce you niche down to the people who are interested in what you sell, you get to create what we call an environment of zero competition. You're no longer competing with other people doing what you do, because your people have decided that it's you – your style, your frameworks, your personality, your way – they want to learn from. You’ve created an environment of zero competition where no one can come and sweep them away from you.So if you want more of this – if you want to see more consistent sales from your email marketing, let us hand you our library of email automations and email marketing campaigns, training, and monthly group coaching inside of our amazing community - The League of Email Marketing Heroes. That's our monthly membership, especially designed to help you sell more of your courses, bring in new members to your programmes, and win more coaching clients with psychology-based email marketing.Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line of the week is “Have you got a napkin?” and it worked because it’s a question. When someone asks you a question, your brain subconsciously switches into gear and either wants to answer or wants to know more – what is it all about and why do they want to know, for example?The premise of the email was around the fact we’d heard someone say that your business model should be so simple you could draw it on a napkin. If not, it means your business is too complicated. But if you get into the weeds of your email campaigns and funnels, it can all get quite complex. And our email talked about why it's important to have a good system for building your email marketing automations so you don’t lose track of what they’re doing. And we had just the thing to help people do that. Brilliant, right?Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesWhy You Need to Avoid These Email Marketing Mistakes.How to Email Your Abandoned Email List. Increase Your Email Open-Rates: 13 Email Subject Line Tips to Stand Out in An Overcrowded Inbox. 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 why you shouldn't worry about your unsubscribe rate) 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 want to know why email marketing is right at the top of the digital marketing trends for 2022? Let's face it - if it isn't already, email marketing needs to be the top priority for your business in 2022.Ready to find out why and (most importantly) what you can do to make sure you boost your sales and make more money in 2022? Let's do this! SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (3:46) Our incredible Keap offer!(5:22) Email marketing is the highest ROI marketing activity you can do(9:12) Email is the safest place to build your business.(12:28) Email marketing helps you convert people into paying customers. (16:01) Email marketing has the shortest lead time in turning people into customers.(17:23) There's money in your existing email list.(19:54) Email marketing technology is moving forward - you don't want to miss out!(21:02) How to get results from your email marketing in 2022.(21:50) The price to join The League is going up!(24:02) Subject line of the week.Email marketing is the highest ROI marketing activity you can do That's right. It's as simple as that. Email marketing is the highest ROI (return-on-investment) marketing activity you can do. None of the other marketing strategies out there – social media marketing, video marketing, content marketing, events, speaking, podcasting, or anything in between - will give you a whopping $42 ROI for every $1 you spend. That’s an insane amount! And, according to the experts, that's just an average! When it comes to our business, for every subscriber on our email list we earn $12 per month. To figure this out, we look at the number of people who are on our email list, calculate the amount of income and sales we make, and divide one number by the other. That gives us how much each subscriber is worth to us. We call it Earnings per Subscriber per Month (or EPSPM). And knowing how much we make per subscriber every month tells us how much we can afford to pay in order to get somebody on our email list. But also, it tells us how long we're going to be out of pocket before we break even and then make a profit.So with these kinds of numbers, should you try and skimp on the marketing automation platform you choose for your small business, for example? No! Of course, we all want a great deal - no one wants to pay more than they should. But you also need to find the most effective way to do email marketing. If you're going to shoot for that $1 in, $42 out ROI, you want the best tools for the job. Because not all of the marketing platforms out there have the technology you need. Email is the safest place to build your businessSo that's the financial side of things. But another reason you want to focus on email marketing for your business growth in 2022 is to protect yourself. That's right. Because you just can't rely on social media! There's a lot of turmoil around social media platforms. What if they all disappeared? What if you get kicked out of your social media account? We definitely saw in 2021 how all the biggest social media channels had outages and went down (most of them at the same time). When that happens, that leaves you with no way to communicate with your audience. Of course, your email marketing platform could go down too. But it's likely to get back up quickly because the problems and teams tend to be smaller. Another valid reason to prioritise email marketing is that you own the data - something that's not the case with social media. If you ever had a problem, you could download all your subscribers and send them an email from elsewhere. You can keep a backup of your data because it's yours! Plus, it's safe and it’s protected.Are we saying you should come off all social media? Not at all! Far from it. Definitely use social media to build your audience. But then point your audience to your email list. That's the place where you nurture that audience and sell. And also, don't forget to use your email list to send people back to your social media content. It helps you make it more effective. We post content both via social media (our Facebook group in particular) and via email. And that helps us boost results. But by far, the safest place to build your business is by email.Email marketing helps you convert people into paying customersAnother reason why you should prioritise email marketing in 2022 is that it takes care of conversion for you. Let's explain this with a little analogy. Imagine you have a dinner plate in front of you - that represents your business. And to run it at the scale you want to run it at, you need three things on your plate:Build an audience. You can do that using social media platforms and use those as your discovery channel. You get people who haven't heard of you before to find you. Great.Conversion. Then you want to convert that audience into actual paying customers. Delivery. For us, that means showing up to support our members inside The League of Email Marketing Heroes – our membership. It’s where we deliver our service to our customers.With these three elements on your business plate to look after, there's no wonder you're so busy! But by focusing on email marketing you get to take conversion off your business plate. And the way to do that is by creating a series of email automations and showing up regularly with frequent emails. Once you've taken care of conversion through your email marketing, you can focus more of your time on building an audience and serving your customers. Or you can use that gap on the plate (i.e. that time you've freed up) for you – to do the things you love with the people you love. How about that?Email marketing has the shortest lead time in turning people into customersEmail marketing has the shortest lead time when turning strangers into customers than any other digital marketing strategy. You get a faster return, on average, than with anything else - especially when compared to social media or running ads.  Let’s think about ads for a moment. Whether it's Google ads or social media ads, a lot of people who click on your ad will bounce back without buying at first. You’ll have to re-target them for a while before they buy from you. There's definitely a period of time in between someone sees your ad and buys. And depending on what you sell, this can be weeks, months, or even longer!Whereas with email, on average we turn a new subscriber into a paying customer within 9-15 days. It takes a bit longer for some people, but it’s not weeks or months. That means we get a much faster ROI. And that’s important because the longer you're out of pocket, the more trouble you could get into as a business. We all know you need good cash flow, right?   There is money in your existing email listYou must have heard us say this before, but there's money in your email list. No matter what you sell or how small your existing list is, there's money in there. We know this is true because we see it with people inside The League. We see them take some of the email campaigns we teach our members, run them to the list they already have, and make sales.Yes, the people on your email list are already in your world - they know what you sell and at what price. By emailing them, you’re not telling them something they don’t already know. But if you don't, they’re not just going to suddenly buy. They won't take action just because they're on your list. Not unless you do something. They need to hear from you and from a different angle – one they haven’t heard before. Because at some point the penny will drop, and the desire to buy your product becomes higher than the pain of investing in it. If you have people on your list who haven’t bought from you yet, know that there's money in your list.And isn’t that amazing? That you can use what you already have without having to add more subscribers or do more work on social media? In the space of a few hours, you could boost your sales from your existing list!Email marketing technology is moving forwardAnother reason why email marketing sits at the very top of the digital marketing trends for 2022 is that technology is moving forward. While some people claim that email marketing is dead, others are developing amazing technology, like rich content and email AMP, for example. If you haven’t already, go and check out this interview with Tom Kulzer (CEO of Aweber) to find out more about that.There’s a lot of exciting and powerful stuff going on in the world of email marketing. And if you’re already so busy that you feel you have no time, email marketing is the strategy with the biggest impact on sales and profits without having a huge impact on your time. In fact, focusing on email marketing will eat up less of your time than other activities. Email marketing will make you more money from what you already have without investing additional time into it.Get results from your email marketing in 2022Think about what your business and life would look like right now if you made email a priority at the start of 2021. Would you have achieved everything you wanted by just investing a few hours a week into it? Would you be making more sales? And would you be better at email marketing? You’d probably find it a lot easier by now, too. If you're reading this, you know email marketing is important. And by making it a priority in 2022, you could be answering yes to all those questions in a year's time! So how are you going to get results from your email marketing in 2022? If you want consistent sales from your email marketing, check out the library of trialled and tested email sequences inside our membership, The League. Our campaigns are specifically designed to help you to sell more courses, bring in new members to your programmes, or win you more coaching clients - all while using our psychology-driven marketing. On top of our training videos, we also do a couple of coaching calls every month to answer your questions and apply what we teach specifically to your business.So make sure you check it out now because the price for new members is going up at the end of January 2022. But if you join before then, you'll take advantage of the existing price and keep that for as long as you remain a member. Subject line of the weekWe always talk about subject lines that tread the line between being clickbait-y enough to make people pay attention and read but without making them feel tricked when they do. So this week's subject line is “Can we get on a call?” followed by the phone emoji.The content was around the fact we added a bonus to a deal we were running where we were offering a free group coaching call if you bought the course then. The call would be a chance for us to answer any questions about the training. So that's what the email was about and “Can we get on a call?” was the subject line that went with it. Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesEmail AMP and the future of email marketing with Aweber CEO Tom Kulzer. How to Pick an Email Automation System.Using Email Marketing to Build a Profitable Business – a Success Story from a Member of The League.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 why email marketing is right at the top of the digital marketing trends for 2022) 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 use advertorials in your business? Hang on. Do you even know what advertorials are? Because not many people do (or know what these types of pre-sale pages are called!) So let's hear it from Rachel Mazza, who gives us the ins and outs about advertorials and shares some awesome examples of advertorials you'll want to start using in your business straight away to grow your email list and boost your sales. Shall we get going?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (3:18) Did Rachel 'accidentally' move in with lots of other people? (And did Rob REALLY mess this up?) (5:22) What are advertorials and what are they used for?(7:36) How to use advertorials to warm up your audience. (9:29) How to use advertorials to reach a wider audience.(11:08) Advertorials and content networks. (12:23) What format do advertorials need to be in? (14:25) Do advertorials come across as clickbait-y? (20:29) How long do advertorials need to be? (21:10) How do advertorials impact on your ad spend?(27:53) Subject line of the week with Rachel Mazza.What are advertorials and what are they used for?Advertorials, also known as pre-sale or interstitial pages, are the pages that go between the initial touchpoint where you first interact with the customer and the place where you want them to convert. Conversion here could mean buying your offer or joining your email list - whatever you need it to be. And the role of the advertorial is to warm people up before you ask them to take action.So let's visualise this. A prospective customer may have come across one of your blog posts or a Facebook ad for the first time, for example. Of course, you'll want to send them to your sales pages or your offer. But at this point, you're faced with a cold and skeptical audience (they don't know you yet!) so you need to get them into the right mindset by providing them with value and information before you ask them for something. The advertorial page sits between the first piece of content where the prospect might have come across your business or your content for the first time and the opt-in page where you ask them to join your email list or the sales page where you ask them to buy.All good so far?How do you use advertorials to 'warm up' your audience?In advertorials, you don't want to sell too hard. Because the goal of an advertorial is not to sell – it’s to give someone enough information to take the next step.There are a couple of ways to do this and move them to the next page.You can use anchor text. Let’s say you sell a weight loss product. You might have a line in your article that says, “Jenny lost 30 lbs before Christmas”. And that can become your anchor text, i.e. you add to that phrase the hyperlink to your opt-in page and lead magnet.Or you can use subtle CTA (Call to Action) at the bottom of our hypothetical advertorial example where you say something like, “If you'd also like to get results like Jenny, click here to get our free Seven Day Course”, for example. Just remember not to make it too promotional. When writing advertorial content, you're in a giving mindset - your audience wants to get something useful. And your job is to give them information, entertainment, or something they want to read. Because when it comes to advertorials, they're not interested in buying something - not yet.How to use advertorials to reach a wider audienceWhether you're buying ad space or trying to grow your audience organically, advertorials help you filter through the people who are interested in what you have to offer. Ultimately, these are the prospects who are more likely to convert.But at the same time, using advertorials allows you to cast a wider net. Because now that you have people coming in and showing an interest in your content, you can re-target them. So even if you have someone who doesn't take the next step with you just yet, at least you know they're interested in what you have to say. Maybe it wasn't the right time for them to buy. Or maybe they needed more touchpoints or a different angle - for example, because they're part of a different demographic.Advertorials allow you to test different ideas or angles fairly cheaply. And once you know what resonates with your audience, you can then carry those concepts through your sales pages or landing pages. You are testing ideas before you try and sell to someone. And by the time you do, you already know that these ideas resonate.Advertorials and content networksAdvertorials work with all traffic sources. They're a really effective strategy for paid ads because they allow you to lower your traffic cost while still converting more cold traffic.But you can also use content networks. This is still a type of ad, but you’re paying a company (like Taboola, Outbrain, or Adblade, for example) to place your content on a website where people will see it as sponsored content or featured content.If you think of the majority of the content that you see on websites like Buzzfeed, these are advertorial examples. It's content that's trying to get you to go to someone's opt-in page or sales page. What format do advertorials need to be in? Advertorials can take many forms, including listicles, editorial content, or stories. Advertorials are a form of native advertising, i.e. copy or sales material disguised as content. You can think of them as native ads.For example, the listicles we've all seen on Buzzfeed are advertorials. Each item featured in the article will then have a link to where you can buy the product, for example, or a CTA at the end that drives the readers towards an opt-in page. Listicles work particularly well for e-commerce.But a lot of advertorials look like editorial and educational articles ("How to" content) or even journalistic articles, like a press release or an announcement.Rachel's tip is to use personal stories though. You want to tell the story of someone who's just like your ideal prospect who is having a struggle but then finds a solution. And that solution happens to be yours. And if people want to find out more and take the next step with you, they can check out your offer.Do advertorials come across as clickbait-y? Advertorials are pre-sale pages. When thinking about the 5 stages of awareness (as per the work of Eugene Schwartz), which are: unaware, problem aware, solution aware, product aware, and most aware, advertorials work particularly well for the people at the unaware stage. These are the people who might not know you yet. In fact, they don't even know they have a problem yet -  let alone the fact that there's a solution out there and that you are the person with that solution!So if you write an article with a clickbait-y headline, it'll only come across that way if you're approaching someone at a different level of awareness than you intend. If someone's never heard from you and you expect them to buy, your content may come across as sales-y and off-putting because it's not pitched at the right stage. They'll feel disconnected from that content, especially if they're just browsing or looking for a potential solution to their problem.On the other hand, if you have someone who’s ready to buy (i.e. at the most aware stage), they’re looking for a great deal, so they won’t be put off by sales-y content or headlines. Clickbait-type content is relative – it all depends on the level of awareness a prospect is at, at any given time.Should you create advertorials for different stages of the awareness scale? Most definitely! You can also have more than one advertorial in your funnel. For example, you could bring people from being totally unaware to being problem aware and then solution aware. You can sometimes do that in one article, but you may need multiple articles. The first step is to make your audience realise they have a problem. Then you want them to know there are solutions out there. And this is where you want to give them more information and touchpoints - because they're not ready to buy into your solution just yet.Before-and-after case studies, listicles, and story-based articles are great examples of advertorials because they help you make a personal connection with your audience. But you can also get more creative and use different types of formats, like podcast episodes, videos, or infographics. How long do advertorials need to be?Advertorials need to be consumable, bite-sized, and catchy. You want someone who’s mindlessly scrolling on Facebook, for example, to stop, click, and read. And if they’re the right audience, then something will click – they’ll want to read it in more detail to learn more. The goal of advertorials is to get in front of as many people as you can. And those people are going to be extremely high-quality leads because they've already made several micro commitments before they even get to your opt-in page. They've clicked on your ad, for example, they've read it, and they're still interested. They've taken all these steps and are now ready to give you their email address. Awesome! How do advertorials impact ad spend? With advertorials you get in front of a very wide audience, but the people that filter through are going to be high-quality leads. This is why more and more businesses (now that ad costs are going up) use advertorials as ads. These are often long-form ads or story-based advertorials that look like content. And they normally lead to the company's low-cost, tripwire product.Compared to ads, advertorials allow you to test ideas quickly. With paid ads, conversion costs might be lower but testing is also slower. So if you want to expand your audience, you can create super-cheap awareness ads and test the ideas before you run a full-blown campaign to the advertorial.Ideally, you'll want to write some advertorial-based ads, see which ones get the most engagement, and then take that theme and write a more involved advertorial that you can publish on your website or a third-party website.What budget do you need to leverage advertorials in your business?You can run advertorials without spending any money - you can do it organically, using platforms like medium.com, which has a built-in audience. People are already on the platform looking for content. The key is to make the advertorials interesting for the reader and get out of that selling mindset - a giving mindset is going to be more efficient and effective for you. Or you can guest blog or contribute content to podcasts, for example - these platforms can act as channels for your advertorial.If you decide to spend money on ads, you're going to speed up the conversion process, but you don't have to. You could opt to use content networks to get in front of more people a lot faster. But if you don't have the budget to invest, you can do this organically by posting content on your website and using organic SEO to drive people to those articles or by publishing your content on third-party websites, which gives it a little more credibility.If you decide to use content networks, your spend is linked to the number of impressions your content gets, so you can work with any budget. It's about figuring out what works for that market. If you have a high-converting, proven offer, you might want to invest a lower budget because you know you can break even or make a return on ad spend a lot faster. In a nutshell, content networks allow you to test concepts a lot better because they're placing your advertorial where people are already consuming other content, so you might find this an even better strategy than paid ads.Subject line of the weekRachel’s subject line of the week is “Just checking..."Rachel uses this subject line when people first opt into her list. Eight hours after they've signed up, they receive an email with this subject line, where Rachel asks them to reply to let her know they got her guide.But she also uses it for someone called Dean Jackson, creator of the email marketing strategy called The Nine-Word Email. And it’s just what it says on the tin - an email with 9 words in it. Like, “Hey, are you still interested in losing weight, Rachel?” Rachel tells us it's hard to just stick to 9 words, but it's super effective!Don't you just love this? Useful Episode ResourcesAbout RachelIf you want to connect with Rachel, you can find her on her website, where you can grab her FREE guide with the exact 8 steps Rachel uses to write advertorials.Related episodesBuild Your List using Viral Ads with Dave Rotheroe from Grip Advertising.Facebook Groups Marketing – Content That Makes Sales with Christina Jandali.Courageous Content with Janet Murray.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingWant to write better emails? Come up with better content? Influence and move your readers to click and buy? Well, you can do that with this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books! They 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 groupWe 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 get to 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 by applying 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 examples of advertorials) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review 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. And, you know what? We also get to be discovered by more awesome people like you!

Is 2022 the year you're finally going to focus on building your email list? You might have heard us say this before, but once you've worked out how to maximise the amount of money you're making from your existing list, you need to also grow your list.  So... want some awesome strategies that will help you do that in the coming year? Let's find out what you gotta do!  SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (3:40) Our incredible Keap offer!(5:27) Add links to your Instagram Stories.(7:37) Use the question feature in your Facebook group.(9:04) Offer people products or services that best suit their needs.(12:37) Leverage other people's audiences.(15:42) Add a list-building element to your existing campaigns.(18:28) Become a podcast guest or deliver guest training. (20:55) Get endorsements from people.(23:16) Buy another business.(25:36) Subject line of the week.1. Link to your lead magnet in your Instagram StoriesThis is a new development with Instagram, which historically hasn't been the best out of all the social media channels to help online businesses share links. As you know, you can add a link to your lead magnets or sign-up forms in your bio - perhaps by using a tool like Linktr.ee or by creating your own custom link. But otherwise, links weren't clickable, and that's not great for list building. But now Instagram gives all their users the ability to include a clickable link in your Instagram Stories. And as a result of that, you can get a huge number of extra eyeballs directly to your landing page. So use your Instagram Stories to teach great content, share an idea or lesson, or tell a story. And then send people to check out your lead magnet by just clicking on the link. That's definitely going to boost traffic to your website and help with your email list building. 2. Use the question feature in your Facebook groupAnother great strategy to capture email addresses on social media is to use the question feature in your Facebook group. We do this in our own Facebook group - The Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. You see, when people ask us to join the group, we ask people to give us their email address if they want to get some free resources from us. And when they accept to download the resources, they magically end up on our email list! Amazing, right? When it comes to list-building strategies, this is a great way to start building or growing your list and collect email addresses - because you can pretty much mention your Facebook group everywhere! Plus, Facebook's algorithm gives you some help every now and again by suggesting it to more of their users, too.Offer people products or services that best suit their needsBecause you can ask your target audience and potential customers up to three questions when they request to join your Facebook group, we recommend you use one of the questions to identify which of your products or services will be best suited for that person.For example, in our case, we might want to find out whether someone wants to learn how to do email marketing for their small business or online business (in which case we’ll tell them about our membership, The League, or our course, the Complete Daily Email Strategy), or whether they might want to have our email marketing writing agency write their emails for them. And if that's the case, we tell them about our agency, rather than our membership or courses. Remembe that people are at different stages in their journey, so offer them the products or services that best suit their needs.Once we have people's answers, we then use different custom fields in our email marketing software (Keap) and put our email list subscribers into different series of automations that take them down different routes. This way, people coming into our Facebook group and email list, will get the solution they need as soon as possible.And this is super useful because if we send our email subscribers a series of emails for products that don’t meet their needs, they disengage and unsubscribe. And no one wins. But by identifying someone’s needs as quickly as possible, we make the sale faster and also get to help people with what they truly need.3. Leverage other people's audiencesThe next tip is to build your audience. It's a hard and slow step for everyone, but it’s essential. And one of our favourite ways to do it is to leverage other people's audiences. Do you know of any other business owners who are not your competitors but work in a similar space to you? For us, it’s anyone who sells to course creators, membership site owners, and online businesses. We can team up with them, even if they don’t offer something that we teach.So figure out how to integrate your products and services into other businesses' funnels and get a piece of space on their land - it's a great strategy for lead generation. You could set up an affiliate programme or put up a banner on their thank you pages that points to your lead magnet so you can start growing your list.Of course, you'd have a deal with that business, where they either get a percentage commission of your sales or you pay them a flat amount. And this means you also get to benefit from whatever strategy that business is using to drive traffic to their business. By working to build their audience, you build yours as well. Similarly, you could approach membership site owners who sell to an audience who can benefit from what you do and ask if they would offer special deals on your products. By integrating your products into other people's businesses, you're able to ‘ethically steal’ their audience and direct them across to your stuff.4. Add a list-building element to your existing campaignsAnother strategy we like to use is to add a list-building element to our existing campaigns. Not all our promotions have a list-building element – a quick flash sale of your programmes wouldn’t, for example. But if you’re hosting a webinar or running a challenge, a quiz, or an online summit with lots of different speakers, you might want to add a list building element into your email campaign. For example, if you're hosting a webinar, you could ask your email subscribers to invite friends. This allows you to build trust and authority while giving people a solid outcome, but at the end of it, you’re also making an offer. Quizzes and contests are perfect for list building. And so are summits. You might have 20 different speakers there, and if everyone emails their lists about the summit, you get to increase your email signups. Their audiences get to enter your world too!So think of ways of including a list-building element in campaigns, promotions, and activities that you’re already doing, rather than thinking about these as separate entities. And in case you're interested, we have lots of campaigns (with a list-building element) ready for you to customise and use, inside our membership The League. 5. Become a podcast guest or deliver guest trainingThe next strategy is to become a podcast guest or deliver guest training in order to leverage other people's audiences and build yours really quickly.As you know, we have guests on this show but also appear as guests on other people’s podcasts. But we also do guest training - we get invited to jump into other people’s communities and deliver some training on email marketing. If the audience isn't an exact fit for us, we'll get paid a fee. But if it is (and the room is full of our ideal customers), then we do it for free because we also benefit from the opportunity.Imagine having the chance to give a 30-40 minute presentation to a group of perfectly qualified potential customers! You put that training together once and teach it over and over for different audiences. This is a great type of list-building mechanism because it builds raving fans out of people. They get to see first-hand how you can help them before they’ve given you any money. And of course, because you're invited by the owner of the membership these people are already part of (someone they trust and pay money to), you almost come recommended - and those people will trust you as a result. So find paid communities, memberships, and coaching programmes that are a good fit for you where you could deliver guest training and then pitch your products at the beginning, middle and end of that training.6. Get endorsements from peopleEver heard of endorsed mailings? This was popular years ago, and it's a powerful strategy that has made a comeback. This is where you reach out to someone who has an email list of your perfect customers and suggest they could get even better results if they used the thing you teach. So in our case, we'll approach a specific business, tell them about a great resource we have (free or paid for) and ask them to tell their audience about it. Of course, they'll either get a flat fee depending on how many clicks or subscribers they send our way. You could set up a trackable affiliate link (a business partnership, if you like), and offer them a commission when someone buys from you as a direct result of that endorsement.7. Buy another businessThe last strategy we want to share for building your email list is to acquire a business that already has an email list. We’re not talking about sharing data illegally or doing dodgy practices like swapping lists to get subscribers on your list. None of that!This is about legally and legitimally buying a business that comes with its own email list of subscribers. Where would you find this? You might know someone in your industry who wants to close down their business or is looking to hand it over to someone else to manage while they still retain a percentage of the profits, for whatever reason. If you negotiate a deal to buy that business, there’s no reason why you can’t acquire their email list and start promoting your products to that audience. Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line of the week is “Ever made one of THESE?” This is something we’ve talked about before, and it’s about taking an obscure word that references to something specific and writing that one word in capital letters.This specific email we sent out was talking about customer avatars, which is something we stand firmly against for a few different reasons (very controversially), and it had a good open rate because people were curious about what the email was all about. And that's all because the word 'THESE' was in capital letters. Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesBuild Your List using Viral Ads with Dave Rotheroe from Grip Advertising. How To Grow Your Email List Using Facebook Pages (Without Ads) – Rachel Miller Moolah Style!How to Grow your Email List When You Have Less Than 10k Instagram Followers, Helen Perry spills all.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 building your email list) 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! 

Ever wondered why retention is important in your membership? If you're focusing all your energy on acquiring new members, you want to know what our friend Liz Beadon has to say. Having worked with big brands like Virgin and Samsung, Liz is a retention and loyalty strategist. She works with membership and subscription site owners to help them improve their customer experience and retention rate and to grow their business.If you don't have a retention strategy just yet, you definitely want to know about Liz's framework (it's full of R's!)Ready?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (3:20) Did Liz meet her husband the day she spilled a drink on him at the theatre? (4:53) Why is retention important for your membership?(6:45) How do you know if you have a retention problem? (8:20) Does retention play a part in your onboarding experience?(10:42) Step 1 - Receive. (13:36) Step 2 - Reveal. (16:32) Step 3 - Refer. (20:12) Step 4 - Report. (22:14) Step 5 - Review.(25:30) Subject line of the week with Liz Beadon.Why is retention important for your membership?Running a membership is a great business model - you have lovely members who pay you every month and a regular income.But none of it is possible if you don't nurture your customer relationships. Because when you have a membership site (or any kind of subscription service) retention is key for profitability and revenue.When do you start nurturing loyalty in your membership?If you want to get technical, the process of nurturing loyalty starts with your acquisition methods. You need to make sure you're acquiring the right kind of members.But in terms of nurturing the relationship, this includes everything from the sales process to that first impression when they hit your membership site and see the welcome area. Liz calls it "a bit of an orchestra of experience to deliver that great first touch". We love that.How do you know if you have a retention problem?A lot of membership site owner will mostly focus on the acquisition of new members. But not many know whether they have a high turnover of members. Do you know how many people, month-on-month, leave your membership and cancel their subscription?There are two different ways that you can look at this.Your monthly churn, i.e. what percentage of your members leaves every month.Or (and Liz thinks this is more valuable) your cancellation rate, which is calculated by working out the percentage of people who are still there on month 1, month 2, etc. This gives you a great idea of when you might be seeing an increase in churn and tells you whether you have a retention issue at a specific part of the lifecycle.Of course, if you find you're losing more members than you are acquiring, you probably need to shift gears and focus on your retention strategies.Does retention play a part in your onboarding experience?When people first join it’s important to create a really good experience so they feel they're being guided through a process. However, you want to be careful not to overwhelm your brand new members by sending way too much stuff by email.You want to properly onboard your members to make sure you're delivering a great experience and at the same time flag anyone who might be at risk of churn. And the best time to do this is right at the start. Because one of the most exciting times of someone joining your membership is the day that they subscribe. But that excitement naturally fatigues over time.So when onboarding your members, put the most important content at the start of the lifecycle and ensure you deliver a tangible win for your members within the first 2-3 weeks. Because that's the amount of time you have before someone considers cancelling.Typically, the first month sees a massive cancellation spike, so your first 2-3 weeks are an imperative point of the lifecycle to show the value of your membership. If they don't see value immediately (and either don't use the content or don't understand the membership), they will cancel. This is why thinking about retention in your onboarding process is crucial!Step 1 - ReceiveLiz uses a simple 5-step framework that highlights the checkpoints every membership owner should consider when delivering a best-in-class, memorable onboarding experience.The first step is Receive. This is all about making sure you're warmly welcoming your members through that initial email, where you include all the key information.How much information is too much? Keep it as short as it can be but as long as it needs to be. Call out the key elements of the membership, like login details, weekly calls, learning sections, etc.This is an important step because by reminding your members of the value of your membership, you counteract that buyer's remorse and cognitive dissonance that happens when people realise they’ve just spent money and start worrying they might not get the results they want. By delivering a great first email, you're 'reselling them' the membership, so they don't regret their purchase.And on this note, be super clear on what your membership helps people with. People don’t want a programme that does a million different things. They want to be taken on a linear journey and achieve a tangible result. Step 2 - RevealGet clear on what one thing you want to help your members achieve in the first 2-3 weeks of their membership. That first month is key to ensuring you're not haemorrhaging members so stop people from leaving because they're not getting what they need out of the membership.This is where you identify a quick win - something tangible and measurable - that you can help people get in a short period of time and then hold their hand through that process. You can do this via two or three emails where you point them to right resources and encourage them to get involved in the membership and take action.If you sell a membership that helps people achieve something that's not entirely measurable (like relationships or emotions) think of something your members can do in the first few weeks. It could be helping them ask one person on a date, for example. The aim here is to get your members to acknowledge, from a logical perspective, that they have achieved something tangible as a result of joining your membership.They haven’t reached the ultimate goal just yet. But in a short span of time they’ve got some value. And that's better than thinking three weeks have passed and they’ve done nothing with the membership. So do some customer research and ask your members what they wanted to achieve when they joined the membership. And with that, think about the first step on that journey you can help them take in the first few weeks. Make it super easy and bite-sized because analysis paralysis is a real thing - if you give people too much, they will do nothing.Step 3 - ReferThis is something a lot of memberships don't do. And it's asking new members to refer people who might benefit from the membership. The reason why Liz includes this in the onboarding programmes she helps clients with is because from a revenue perspective, having a referral scheme can be quite lucrative. It's an activity you can set up to run in the background, and it can gain you new members without any additional work.Liz talks about two kinds of referral programmes:You can give people a percentage of the initial sale when they drive a new member into the membership.Or, you can give a number of free months to both your existing member and the new person who joins.By creating a mutual benefit (and specifically through giving the new person something for free), you're making it easier for your existing members to refer people to your membership. Because by offering a freebie to someone they don't feel like they’re selling to their friends!Liz suggests you do this around week 3 and during the onboarding process because at this point members are still quite engaged and excited, and you want to retain them for as long as you can. But of course, you can also pepper in your referral programme throughout the lifecycle. You could even schedule a campaign every few months to send them a nudge. But that first month is a really great opportunity to drive people in.Step 4 - ReportThis is a touchpoint where you email your members at a specific point in the lifecycle - at day 25, for example. You send them an email and ask them how they're finding the membership. And you give them a couple of options (links) to choose from:"Loving it so far".And, "Still getting up to speed”.Depending on what they click, you then tag them and have a follow up email that corresponds to their answer. If they say they're loving it so far, brilliant! If it's a monthly member, that's a great opportunity to upsell to an annual membership. But if they say that they're still getting up to speed, this is an early indicator that someone isn't getting value from the membership yet, and it's a great opportunity for you to take that conversation off of automated and start manually engaging them to ask if there’s anything you can do to help them.What this also helps with is seeing patterns. If you get the same sort of feedback a few times, you start building that in to help people automatically in the future so you can improve the customer experience for everyone.Step 5 - ReviewThis happens around the day 31-32 mark, after they've been charged for their second month. At this point, you want to reach out and ask your members to leave a testimonial of their experience with the membership. You can even ask some additional questions to find out what's going well vs what you need to improve.Keep this super short and simple. The real objective is to get testimonials you can use on your sales pages to drive new members into the membership.Also, what's interesting from a psychology perspective here is that by giving you a testimonial, they’re technically selling your membership to somebody else. But by thinking through the process of what to say and then saying the words out loud, they resell themselves on the membership. Bonus!Subject line of the weekLiz’s favourite subject line comes from an email that was sent when she worked at Virgin. It was part of a cross-Virgin campaign going over 12 different Virgin companies, and the subject line read: “This message has been recalled by Richard Branson”. Liz said that so many people opened that email! And she's looking forward to using something similar in her business one day.Useful Episode ResourcesAbout LizIf you want to connect with Liz, you can find her on her website or on Instagram.Related episodesOnboarding Emails Examples for your Online Course.The Best Cart Abandonment Emails with Chelsea Martinus from Black Girl Boss Collective.6 Lessons We Learned From Launching And Growing Our Membership Site.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingWant to write better emails? Come up with better content? Influence and move your readers to click and buy? Well, you can do that with this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books! They 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 groupWe 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 get to 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 by applying 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 why retention is important in your membership) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review 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. And, you know what? We also get to be discovered by more awesome people like you!

We see people follow bad email practices all the time. And you know what? Doing the stuff we're going to talk about here holds you back from doing better and more effective email marketing and getting the results you want in your business. So are you ready to find out what the top email marketing mistakes you're making (and stop doing these things... yesterday?!)SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (3:10) Our incredible Keap offer!(6:16) Stop worrying about open rates.(7:07) Why open rates are wrong.(8:37) Stop using RE: or FW: in your subject lines.(12:42) Stop making it difficult for people to unsubscribe from your list.(14:16) Stop letting your subscribers down.(16:00) Stop using misleading subject lines.(17:13) Stop adding so many images to your emails.(19:33) Why emails with lots of images have worse delivery.(21:21) Subject line of the week.Stop worrying about open ratesThe first of the email marketing mistakes that a lot of people make is paying too much attention to open rates. Sure, this is a metric that all email marketing platforms share with you, and it's an obvious one to check. But that number is wrong. First of all, you probably assume that your open rate should be higher than it is. You see 34% and think it's rubbish, but actually, that's a really respectable open rate. So it's important to be realistic here. But most importantly, open rates cannot be tracked properly, so they're just plain wrong! Some Android devices are already blocking the ability to track open rates, which means your emails are showing us unopened when they probably aren't. And on Apple, they’re being shown as open even if they aren't.As more and more platforms like Apple iPhone release privacy updates that block that tracking even more strictly, the open rate metric you're looking at gets less reliable by the day. And you can't be improving a wrong number!So let's go with this - open rates don't matter. Because you can't track them and you can't measure them, you can't work on growing them! It's like trying to follow a map with a blindfold on - you can't see the map or your feet! So pleeeeease stop obsessing over open rates. (Oh, and by the way, yes you do want people to open your emails, read them, click on the link, and buy. So stick to the best practices that can help you improve your open rates. But forget about the number!)Stop using RE: or FW: in your subject linesOkay, everyone needs to stop adding a fake RE: or FW: in subject lines to make it look like the email was a reply or it was forwarded when it clearly wasn't. These things are dodgy, scummy, and dishonest. And by far this is one of the biggest and more damaging email marketing mistakes we see people make.You see, stuff like this might trick people into opening your emails, but please can we all stick to doing things that are effective and ethical?Let's remember that you want people to open your emails because they see your name popping into their inbox, they know who you are and are excited to read what you have to say. When our subscribers see emails coming from Rob//Email Marketing Heroes they know it’s going to be a funny, interesting story with a valuable lesson (and an offer) in it.So let's stop trying to build relationships with people based on bullshit. We want to get people excited, show value, and make sales. But we don't want to lie to them and make them feel ripped off. Because trying to trick your audience into thinking they're already in a conversation with you by mimicking a real, transactional email is the kind of stuff that creates resistance around buying stuff online - and specifically from emails. It's because of email marketing mistakes like these that, as marketers, we all have to work harder to make the sale. And if you're doing this because you see everyone else is, please, just STOP. Of course, when it's a genuine response and you've started a real conversation with your subscribers, by all means, carry on. But don't place that RE: or FW: there intentionally to trick people into thinking something that isn't true. Not cool. Stop making it difficult for people to unsubscribeYears ago, you'd see people adding a huge amount of lines between the end of their email and the unsubscribe link that's automatically generated at the bottom of all your emails. And we see that some people are still doing that. Please stop. If you're doing this, it's one of those BIG email marketing mistakes you want to stop making.If people want to unsubscribe from your emails, just make it easy for them. Because if you don't let them go, they're not going to suddenly start liking your emails! They'll only get annoyed. And then they'll hit the spam button. Or reply to you and shout down in the email. So you aren't winning anything by making it difficult for people to unsubscribe from your list.You want to make it hard for somebody to want to leave but make it easy for them to cancel once they're ready to. So put every bit of effort into making your email list an amazing place to be where people never want to unsubscribe. But when they do, just let them go.Stop letting your subscribers downWhen somebody subscribes to your email list, you need to show up with the value you promised. A lot of people tell us that if they sent an email to their list every day their subscribers wouldn’t like it. But if someone has given you their email address to receive your emails and you don’t send them any, you’re letting them down!If someone bought a product from you and you never sent it, that would be a scam! And it's the same thing with emails. Because emails are currency. They don't cost anything financially, but they cost our subscribers' attention, time, focus, and trust. This is what they give away when they give you their email address.So in return, you need to treat their email address with respect and show up and do the thing you said you were going to do. Because if you don't - if you promised a weekly newsletter and keep missing your deadlines - every time you don't do what you said you would - you're losing trust. And subconsciously, that doesn't work well at all when you're trying to sell something! So, can you see this is one of those email marketing mistakes you don't want to be making?Stop using misleading subject linesWe once got an email from someone that said, “My friend died of Covid”. But then the email went on to say the person wasn’t really their friend and they didn’t die. So at that point, as a reader, I feel like I've been hoodwinked. My emotional response is to feel let down by this person.And you don't want that to be your reputation. You want quite the opposite, in fact! You want to surpass people’s expectations and make them think that their experience with us is even better than what they thought it was going to be. Don't trick people and don't let them down. Instead, do amazing offer creation and come up with brilliant ways that are effective and convert. Come up with brilliant products and overdeliver. But never hoodwink people! Stop adding so many images to your emailsAnother thing we’d like people to stop doing is putting so many images in emails. When you add images, a few things happen both from a psychological perspective and from a technical perspective. From a psychological perspective, imagine you've got a new place, and your mum gave you this second-hand ‘awful’, ‘disgusting’ sofa, and you include a photo of it because it's somehow part of the story you're sharing in the email. Now, the problem with that is that once you've used those denigrative words to describe the sofa and then added a picture, anyone with a sofa like that or who likes that sofa feels automatically alienated by your email and by you as a person. You don't want that. So a much better strategy is to paint a picture with your words. That way, the reader gets to imagine what the sofa looks like. You don’t see best-selling fiction authors add photos in their books, do you? Because when we paint the pictures with words, our readers allow themselves to grow that picture in their head. And that's powerful and less alienating. Emails with lots of images have worse deliveryThe other reason why you don't want to use too many images in an email is that you'll get a lower delivery rate. If you do everything else right, and you generally have good delivery and good list hygiene, an image won't hurt. But an email with lots of images will get lower delivery because it’s more difficult to deliver than a cleaner email without images. So with fewer images in your emails, you get better delivery and a better reputation. Occasionally, we do put an image in our emails though. When we're sharing a video, for example, we'll add a screenshot or moving GIF to get more people to click and watch. What we're not doing (and we suggest you don't do either) is to litter the email with photos make it look like the new IKEA catalogue! The goal is to create streamlined emails that people can read quickly and that get good delivery.Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “A really sad phone call.” For us, this subject line treads the line of what's acceptable. Because what we're always looking to do with subject lines is to create something that has enough hype, intrigue, and curiosity. You want it to trigger a knee-jerk reaction that will make people want to open your email and read it. But at the same time, they don’t want to feel let down when they read it. Now the first line in this email was, “Greg was a really lovely guy.” So that's a little preview line that helps get the email opened. Greg was a potential client we spoke to on the phone, and it turned out we couldn't help him with what he was looking for. And we ended up, sadly, turning him down as a client. That’s what the email was about. So aim to grab people’s attention but without making them feel hoodwinked. Got it?Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow Will iOS 15 Change Email Marketing?Increase Your Email Open-Rates: 13 Email Subject Line Tips to Stand Out in An Overcrowded Inbox #2018.How To Get A 60% Email Open Rate – Above Average With Amy Perkins.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.Grab our Keap offerWant to take advantage of a fantastic deal for one of the best email marketing platforms on the planet? As sponsors of this show, Keap are offering all our listeners a smashing deal for 3 months. Get Keap at half price, with no setup fee, and an extra 2,000 contacts by clicking on this link.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about email marketing mistakes you need to stop making) 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!