You've abandoned your subscribers. You sent them the freebie they signed up for or the product they bought, but you haven't emailed them in ages. They've forgotten about you. So how do you reactivate an email list? How do you go back to emailing your poor abandoned subscribers and keep them engaged and happy? Well, wouldn't we all love the know?!So let's get into it. SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:45) Why you can't just email your subscribers when you need something from them.(4:33) Why you should look at your email marketing from your subscribers' perspective.(5:30) Why you don't want to start bombarding your subscribers out of the blue.(8:48) Why you need to hold your hands up and come clean with your subscribers.(9:32) How to remind your subscribers of who you are and what you sell.(10:12) How to build expectations for what's to come.(13:00) Why you should give your subscribers permission to opt out.(14:30) How to decide on a frequency and stick with it.(16:05) Why the best time to reactivate your email list is now. (17:32) Subject line of the week.Is it time to reactivate your email list? So you've done what a lot of people do.You've neglected your list.The question is... how do you go back in their good books now? And what are some of the dangers of just emailing them out of the blue? Thing is, you can't just email your subscribers when you need something from them - when you have something to sell. It doesn't work like that. If you don't give your subscribers value on a regular basis, they won't be there when you need them. The dangers of emailing your list after a long timeIf you've abandoned your subscribers, fear not! There are ways to reactivate your list. You just need to do it carefully and with a bit of thought. And the first thing we suggest you do, like our friend Kath Pay suggests, is to look at your list from your subscribers' perspective.The first thing you don't want to do, in fact, is to suddenly start bombarding your subscribers. Because when you leave your email list for too long, your subscribers forget who you are. And if they can't remember you, you're the random guy or gal who's emailing them out of the blue because you want something. Not. Cool. So put yourself in the shoes of your subscribers (who, by this point, don't remember you or your business) and think about how you randomly emailing them will look like. They might be upset and frustrated and unsubscribe, right? Clearly, your relationship with that person isn't positive by this point, and you can't sell to someone you don't have a positive relationship with. This definitely affects your reputation as an email marketer.But there's more. It also impacts your deliverability rate. Because if you have a bunch of people who suddenly unsubscribe and report your email as spam on the same day and within hours of each other, then you might have a bit of a problem. So what's the solution? How to reactivate an email list Hold your hands up. Come clean and be honest with your list. Tell them you haven't emailed them for a long time, and that you know that's not very good of you. What you want to do now is to slowly start to re-engage them and bring them back in. Remind them of who you are and what you sell So get in touch and remind them of who you are and of what brought them onto your list in the first place. Did they sign up for a lead magnet? Did they buy something from you? Make sure you mention the product - people are more likely to remember the name of the product or what it did than your name. So remind them of who you are and what you sell. Manage expectationsThe other thing you need to do is to build expectations for what's to come next. Tell people what they can expect from now on and why this is going to benefit them. What will you include in your emails? What value do they offer to your subscribers? People don't care about your emails - they care about what they're going to get out of them. So tell them how often you're going to be emailing them and remind them of the benefits that your emails deliver to them. Inside The League, we share the Terrible Friend Campaign with our members. That teaches you how to seed a piece of content that's to come inside your email, so you can start to build an email campaign that isn't just about re-engagement and re-building and nurturing a relationship. You can weave in your product as well if you do it in the right way and embrace value-driven email marketing.  Give them permission to unsubscribeThat's right. You read that right. Because it's important is to give them a way out. Tell them what's coming next and, in the same breath, give them a chance to opt out. Spammy, bad people don't do that. So that sets you apart as a good guy. A good guy who made a mistake. Because let's face it - it's your fault. You're the one who didn't show up and maintain that relationship with your subscribers.And of course, by telling them exactly where the unsubscribe button is, you'll have fewer people actually taking that option because you've been honest and upfront. And because, hopefully, you've sold them the benefit of sticking around. Don't do it againAnd now you're on your way to fixing things, just don't do it again. If you said you're going to show up, show up!Make email marketing a habit. Because email marketing is the highest ROI activity of businesses of all sizes and stages around the world. And if you create an email habit, you'll find it easier to stick to it.We find it easier to email every day than to email once a week, for example. Because it's just a thing we do every day now - not something we need to remember to do once a week or whenever. So decide when you're going to email your subscribers, tell them, and then show up when you said you would!  The best time to reactivate an email list is nowWe call it Dreaded Dentist. The longer you put off going to the dentist, the worse the issue gets. Reactivating your email list is the same.The best time you could possibly start re-engaging your list was yesterday. Or the day before. Or last month. Whenever it went cold. The second best time to start re-engaging your email list is right now. And the longer you put it off, the worse off you'll be. So start now! Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week is, "Dodo versus toenail". This is a subject line that Kennedy used at the back of a conversation with his partner Emma, where he used the expression "dead as a toenail". To which Emma said, "Don't you mean dead as a dodo?". So which one is it? Toenail or dodo?Anyway, that's the story behind the subject line.But why did the subject line work? Because Kennedy put together two totally unrelated things. Sure, the back story here linked them together. But you had to read the email to find out what it was all about because, at face value, the two concepts were unrelated. And that triggers curiosity. Clever, huh? Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesSubscriber-Centric Email Marketing with Kath Pay, author of Holistic Email Marketing.How Often Should You Email – Emailing More Often.What should I talk about in my emails? Email marketing content ideas you’ll use.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, where 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 how to reactivate 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 and get discovered by more awesome people like you.

Dave Rotheroe generated half a million dollars by mailing people grilled cheese sandwiches in the post. He's now the founder and CEO of Grip Advertising, and today he talks to us about how to build your list with viral ads.We talk about how to be creative, how to split test, and how to make ads that will go viral. You really want to find out what Dave has to say... honestly!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (3:00) Did Dave really tour the world as a punk rock violinist? (And how awesome is that?!)(4:40) Dave's secret sauce to advertising (yes, he cracked by mailing cheese sandwiches!)(6:46) Ads and creativity (and where people get it a bit wrong).(8:52) How to go about being more creative in your ads.(11:34) The imprtance of split testing in your ads (and how to do it).(13:45) How to go about starting a list building ads campaign.(15:48) The 3 different angles you need when creating your ads. (17:34) How to sell free lead magnets through ads.(19:13) How to sell paid lead magnets through ads. (21:36) Subject line of the week with Dave Rotheroe.What's the secret sauce to viral ads?When Dave started a grilled sandwich subscription box, it went globally viral within a week. But Dave knew that virality moves on, just like trends. So he figured the only way to make his business sustainable was to start running ads behind it.But the key thing is... Dave used ads to amplify what was already working - something that had already gone viral on its own accord. And, in his own words, he became obsessed with trying to figure out how stuff goes viral and what makes people share and then applying it to various fields and industries through the awesome work he does.Is creativity important in ads?Creativity is one of those things that's really hard to teach, Dave says. Talking about strategies and best practices is much easier. But at the core of it all, you want to create ads that people want to watch and engage with. Having ads that are built around a funnel - that are targeted specifically to a cold audience and take them through to the consideration phase - is awesome. But if you can come up with a piece of creative ad that strikes a chord with your ideal customer base, then you can see improvements of 10-20x - much more than you could ever achieve with strategies and best practices. So here are some principles that Dave uses when coming up with ads. And we've seen this in action when we started working with Dave - his work massively elevated our campaigns!The principle Dave swears by is to use metaphors to describe what you do and to use characters that people know. This helps you create a bridge between what you do (and something that your audience isn't potentially familiar with) and what they know. So the idea is to create a Trojan Horse where your product is woven throughout a storyline that people can watch. This way it doesn't feel like an ad. It's something people watch, and they feel entertained and endeared by you. And while you're presenting them with a really entertaining ad, you're actually teaching them about who you are and what you do.How cool is that?! Dave's an actual genius!Split testing your adsSo now that you know how to create ads that people want to see in their social media feed, let's talk about split testing. An interesting fact Dave shared is that according to Facebook, 1% of the most successful 1% advertisers on the platform split test their creatives 11 times more than the average advertiser. That's a lot!For example, Dave did some split testing on one of our ads. He used the same video with exactly the same copy, but with different thumbnails. And he found that one outperformed the others by 3x! In other words, the ads were identical (except for the thumbnail), but one was 3 times more profitable and got a higher click-through rate than the others!This shows that you have to find the traction point first. Find an ad that works first and then split test on that. There's no point in split testing an ad that doesn't work!Another thing that's always worth split testing, Dave says, is the hook of your video, i.e. the first 3-5 seconds of it, as that can make a really big difference in how your ads perform.How to use ads for list buildingSo you've decided to use ads to build your list. How do you go about that? Dave suggests you start with a small budget of approximately $20-30 a day. Then you want to create one core ad to encourage people to opt-in for your lead magnet. Then you split test 2 or 3 different hooks and 2 or 3 different graphic headlines. You want your headline to be around 3 to 5 words but no more than 8-10 words - it's just to capture people's attention. And then you test and see what works best! (Nice little bit of rhyming there!)Dave also talked about the different angles he uses with his headlines, the key ones covering the "away from pain" and "towards pleasure" angles. This matters because when it comes to social media advertising, you've got to think about the purpose. Your job in creating an ad is not simply to 'sell a thing'. It's about creating every single element of an ad in a way that fulfills its purpose.So the purpose of the graphic headline is to get people to stop scrolling. Once they stop scrolling, you want them to read the actual text headline on Facebook. And the purpose of the text headline is to get them to read the main copy of the ad. And the purpose of the ad copy is to sell the click-through. The power of the artist is to sell the click-through - it's not to do the heavy lifting and get the person to buy the product. It's about selling the click-through to get them to the next stage in the process. It's all about micro-commitments and giving people breadcrumbs to move them to the next stage, slowly but surely.And that's how we should be thinking about ads!How to sell lead magnets through adsSo we can create ads to ask people to opt-in and download our lead magnets. But do we need to do things differently depending on whether we are giving away a free lead magnet or a paid product?According to Dave, people don't give a lot of value to free products anymore. Because let's face it, a lot of them are rubbish quality, and we all know that's true!But there's hope.You can still promote a free lead magnet through ads, as long as you focus on the problem you solve in the actual words your ideal customers use. When people see that, they automatically think you've got the solution for them. But if you focus on the fact that your lead magnet is free, then you're wasting your time. You're better off going after what's more valuable, which is the problem you solve.When it comes to selling paid products (or self-liquidating offers), Dave believes (and we agree) that you acquire a different and 'better' customer base by asking for some money in return for your lead magnet. People who opt-in for a paid-for product are better-quality customers who are invested in what you sell. They will actually use it and get results, and probably buy more of your products.The key to that is to come up with a product that solves a problem that's big enough for your audience to pay money for. And when you do that, then you build yourself a list of buyers, rather than subscribers who won't engage with your products.Subject line of the week with Dave RotheroeDave's subject line of the week is, "Keep your eyes peeled (graphic content)". Dave sent this at the back of his corrective laser eye surgery. He sent a story-based email to his subscribers, which led to a specific call to action. This email had a 7% open rate, and Dave puts this down to the power of intrigue and negativity.Because yes, the bit 'graphic content' he put in bracket suggested gore content. That, or an actual graphic contained in the email! How you interpret it is completely down to your own personality and preferences. But it worked a treat!Useful Episode ResourcesAbout DaveWant to connect with Dave? You can find him over at Grip. And if you want to get your hands on the eBook that Dave mentioned in the podcast interview, you can find it here.Related episodesYou’ve Got a Lead Magnet, Now What?How To Grow Your Email List – 6 Unusual Lead Magnet Ideas.17 No Cost Ways To Build Your Email List.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 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 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, where 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 how to build your list using viral ads with the awesome Dave Rotheroe from Grip Advertising) 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 get discovered by more awesome people like you.

We all want to do better at email marketing, don't we? But how? Well, the good news is that we all learn skills along the way - in previous jobs and careers, through courses, or even hobbies. And some of these skills can come in very handy when it comes to helping your email marketing efforts. So today we look at the 8 unexpected skills to improve your email marketing. Ready for it? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:07) Honestly, will #EmailMarketingWednesday ever catch on?!(3:20) Why you need to study awesome storytelling.(6:27) How to master offer creation.(9:18) Why you need to structure your emails in campaigns.(12:19) The reason why you need to learn how to write really compelling subject lines.(14:11) Do you know what your audience's hot buttons are?(16:42) Why you need to write as you talk (just like we do).(18:32) The reason why you need to edit your emails.(19:12) How to understand what strategies work in email marketing (and how to model them in your business). (22:36) Subject line of the week.So what are the 8 unexpected skills you need to improve your email marketing? When it comes to awesome email marketing, we think these are the 8 skills you're going to need to master: Storytelling.Offer creation.Creating email campaigns.Writing compelling subject lines.Understanding your audience's 'hot buttons'. Writing as you talk. Editing your emails. Understanding and modeling what others do consistently well. So let's break these down and dig a little deeper into each of these awesome skills. 1. Storytelling in email marketingStorytelling captures and keeps people's attention. It gets people to emotionally engage and has the power to transform people - it gets them to feel, think, and act differently. When all is said at done, at the end of a story, you've taken someone on a journey. A transformative journey. We think that, unfortunately, a lot of email marketing suffers from not going anywhere. But email marketing, just like storytelling, should move people from one place to another.Instinctively, we all like stories. We like telling them and we like hearing them, so how can we weave them into our email marketing? Our tip is to spend time studying good storytelling (from movies, books, TV series, video games etc.). Start to notice what hooks us in, what keeps us engaged, and what makes us binge-watch/read/play. And once you cracked all that, you can use that in your own email marketing and make your subscribers want more and more. Sounds like fun, right?2. Mastering offer creationThe second skill you're going to need to elevate your email marketing is offer creation. At the end of the day, the reason for emailing your subscribers is that you want to sell something - whatever that might be. But what if the thing you sell isn't particularly attractive or appealing to your audience? We think it's really important to study the psychology behind a good offer. What makes something an offer that your audience is going to want to snap your hand off for?You see, your offer is a combination of what you're selling, what it does for your customers, the way it's packaged and delivered, the price, and the angle you use to offer it. All these things make your offer. So it needs to be captivating. It needs to stand out, it needs to be unique, and it needs to tell your customers how it's different from anything they might have tried in the past.So spend some time and attention into figuring out how to create and frame an offer that people really want to buy from you. 3. Creating email campaignsThe third skill you need for your email marketing is the ability to create email campaigns. You want to have a reason to email your subscribers more than once. There's no point in emailing your list every day or every week if you're going to repeat the same thing over and over! It's boring, and it gives people no reason to open your emails.The thing is, those who buy from you on day one won't see your other emails. But the majority of your customers won't buy on day one - that's just how things are. So what are you going to give them on days two, three, four, etc. to help them make a decision to buy from you? You need to build your sale's argument, help them overcome objections, and give them more and more reasons to buy. That's why you need a structure. You need to put your emails into sequences (or campaigns) and say something fresh and interesting every time you send out a new email. We are obsessed with creating innovative email campaign structures that keep people interested. So have a think - what are the different ways you can grab your audience's attention? What content will you create for your email sequence that, email on email, goes above and beyond what you delivered in your previous email?4. Writing compelling subject linesSubject lines help you get your emails opened, so it's really important to write stuff that grabs people's attention and invokes curiosity. You want people to be curious enough to open your emails to find out what you have to say. Invoking curiosity means raising a question in someone's mind, even if this happens on such a subconscious level that they don't even know it's happening. So take a look at the subject lines you receive in your inbox. Keep a swipe file or folder of subject lines for emails you opened, and then start studying subject lines and the language they use. 5. Understanding your audience's 'hot buttons'What do your subscribers really care about? Do they want to make money? Save money? Save time? What is it that they're trying to do? Again, ask yourself the questions and start keeping a record of these things. Because once you understand your audience's hot buttons you can start putting a little bit of pressure in your emails by prodding these buttons.Let your audience know that your product or service is the thing that will help them overcome their problems or achieve their dreams. And don't forget - hot buttons aren't just pain points. It could be anything that your audience wants to achieve or do, so they can be really positive too. You may even notice that certain activities are hot buttons for your subscribers. For example, every time you do a webinar or promote an affiliate course, you notice that your subscribers engage. If that's the case, you've identified a hot button that's specific to your subscribers. Now use it in your emails! 6. Writing as you talkSomething else we think you need to master when it comes to skills to improve your email marketing, is writing as you talk. We do that a lot. And by all standards, you could say that our emails are poorly written. But people read our emails and 'hear our voices' in their heads. You want to build an audience of people who want to hear from you, so write as you talk. If you struggle with this, you can record yourself speaking and then use a transcription service to get the written version of what you said. Whatever you do, don't suddenly turn into someone else when you start typing your emails. Because no one wants that from you!7. Editing your emailsEmail marketing doesn't happen in real-time. We all know that. So why don't people edit their emails more?!  The beauty of email marketing is that you can type something out and then delete it or edit it later. And we really recommend that you learn how to master this skill.In particular, edit the beginning of your emails. Sometimes people take too long to get to the point, and in doing that, they lose the readers' attention. So type it all out but then edit it down - get into the action as soon as you can.  8. Understanding and modeling strategies that work in email marketingThe last skill we think is mega important when it comes to email marketing is noticing what works and modeling that in your business. Start to look at the approaches and strategies that you see other successful business owners apply in their business.  Because if you always try and invent the wheel yourself, you're going to end up making a lot of mistakes and try stuff that won't work.So instead, pay attention to what others are doing well and consistently - you don't want to start doing something just because someone else you follow was testing something out. They might do it once, work out it doesn't work, and never do it again. So pay attention to what you see them do day in and day out and try and implement similar strategies in your own email marketing. Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week is, "You've GOT to stop learning." This was sent out by Kennedy, and the key message of the email is that it's time to stop learning and start doing. But why did it work so well? Because it was an unexpected thing to write in an email, especially coming from someone who sells programmes, memberships, and courses where people do learn. All the time! That subject line was the opposite of what people expected Kennedy to say, and it made people open the email to see what it was all about.You can try something similar by asking your subscribers to stop doing something that's key to your business or something that everybody does. If you sell gardening products, maybe you can say, "You've GOT to stop gardening." Or something like that - you get the idea. Why don't you try it out?Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow To Use Email Subject Lines To Do More Than Get Your Emails Opened.Writing Subject Lines Without Using Formulas.How To Write Email Subject Lines For Sales Emails (That Actually Work).FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingDid you know that the 8 skills to improve your email marketing we talked about today come from books we've read and studied? If 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, where 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 the skills to improve your email marketing - and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes and get discovered by more awesome people like you.

Should you use comedy and jokes in your marketing? Should all brands be funny? Is that the right thing to do? We asked Adam Hunt, who helps brands and businesses do exactly that - be funny. So let's hear it from the man himself - how do you use humour in your marketing?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:15) Does Kennedy really know what a Vespa is?(3:50) Should all brands try and be funny?(4:50) How to find the humour that's right for your brand.(7:00) Why you need to start from the truths that matter to your audience in the context of what you do.(10:06) How to sprinkle humour on top of your message.(12:15) Adam's easy process to find humour in things (and write jokes from them).(15:40) How to be a bigger and bolder version of you. (18:08) Why you shouldn't let the jokes get in the way of the message.(20:40) How to use humour for all the right reasons. (22:34) Subject line of the week with Adam Hunt.How can you find humour that's right for your brand? Should all brands try and be funny? Well, according to Adam, they should be funny in the right way. And what that means is that the right kind of humour for your business comes from brand essence and everything you stand for. Comedy done the right way is relatable content that happens to be funny.But how do we find the type of humour that's right for us?Adam explained that a joke is made of two things that shouldn't fit together but do, thanks to a cleverly placed twist. And the key to the twist is that it needs to be a truth that you're using to bridge the gap between those two things.When you're trying to make jokes that appeal to a specific audience, you need to go after their truth. In other words, what could you say to your audience that will make them go, "That is so true!"Use humour in your marketing by starting from your audience's truthsJokes are clever comparisons. And if you make the right comparison, you'll get the right reaction.So your first job here is to work out what matters to your audience in the context of what you do and how and why that helps them and their world.Adam and his team use a tool call Relatability Matrix, which is a grid that contains a brand's USP and values to start with. But it also looks at key ideas from sales pages and other types of content and at relatable truths for that brand's audience that can be combined with other elements on the grid.We can do this too! Adam's tip is to start by working out what you need to say to your audience in order to achieve your objectives. Then, you can come up with ways to express that in such a way that will move people to the right kind of action.If you tell jokes for the sake of it - if you use humour in your marketing in a way that doesn't serve your brand's purpose - then you're just being funny for the sake of vanity or engagement. And you could actually get the opposite effect of putting people off.How to find humour in things (and write your own jokes)The first step is to find a clever comparison. So start by making a list of relatable truths that you know your audience is going to agree with.Then make another list. It could be things that are going on in the world, or things that are relevant to your business - it doesn't matter what this is.The third step is to go through both lists together and try and connect two of the things you've got on them.You're not trying to be funny here - you're just trying to come up with some basic parallels, similarities, or differences. Once you've done this freewriting exercise, you'll end up with ideas that you can then develop and polish. Add your clever twist in the right place, and you've got your joke.Simple, right?Using humour in your marketing means being a bigger and bolder version of youJokes can be used to reinforce someone's awareness of the pain points they're dealing with. You can use jokes to help your audience focus on their struggles and make them bigger. You want to use jokes sparingly though - to encourage your subscribers to open your emails, for example. But don't overdo it.You don't need to put Michael McIntyre in someone's inbox because that's not you. Just put a bigger and bolder you in their inbox. You do that by starting with the messaging that matters and then layer additional thoughts on top. Come up with a way to explain why something is bigger and bolder with a comparison that can feel like a joke.But don't let the jokes get in the way of your copy. You want people to read, then read some more, and read some more until they're ready to buy. That's your goal. There is such a thing as a joke too many. And you don't want to trivialise your message. Never let a joke get in the way of your message. Instead, let the jokes support the message. The key is to use humour in your marketing for the right reasons. Make the right jokes with the right angle, using the brand's ingredients that speak to your audience, and you'll get something that works for you.Make jokes about the things that unite your audience.Find the truths they all agree on.And remember that comedy in itself isn't offensive - only offensive comedy is offensive! Use humour to bring people together, to show them you share their views, and to make them feel seen.Pretty awesome stuff, don't you think?Subject line of the week with Adam HuntAdam's subject line of the week is "Video for [First Name]".Adam had to reluctantly admit that this works every time - reliably and flawlessly. If you need someone to watch a video, this is the right subject line to use. It drives that curiosity that makes you want to watch this video, just in case the person sending it created this video just for you, and not for everyone else too.Genius, right?Useful Episode ResourcesAbout AdamWant to connect with Adam? You can find him over at White Label Comedy.Related episodesCustomer Archetypes To Inject Personality Into Your Marketing – Nate Wright.What should I talk about in my emails? Email marketing content ideas you’ll use.Write Emails Like A Boss – Even If You Think You’re A Crap Writer.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 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 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, where 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 about how to use humour in your marketing with Adam Hunt 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 get discovered by more awesome people like you.

This week we're telling you all about how to make money from your email list. So if you have a small list (or you think you have a small list), don't despair! We're going to tell you exactly what you can do to make money from that. Because guess what?We were rubbish at growing our list. Most things that email marketing gurus out there teach didn't work for us. But we figured it out, and we continue to make 6 figures from our lists, so buckle up and read (or listen) on. SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:30) So how about this #EmailMarketingWednesday that Kennedy loves so much?(3:33) Is your list really small?(4:29) The things that really matter with your email list (and it's not size!)(5:57) Why there's no point in building a ginormous list with the wrong people on it.(6:55) Why a small list isn't actually such a bad thing after all.(7:58) How we did a rubbish job of growing our own email list (and how we got really good at making money from it).(10:14) Why you should email your subscribers more often.(12:28) Why you should create email campaigns that are designed to sell.(14:59) Why you should regularly clean your list. (17:25) Subject line of the week.Is there such thing as a 'small email list'?We see this all the time. People with lists of 20,000 subscribers who think they've got a small list. And equally, people who only have a few hundred or a few thousand subscribers and worry that their lists are too small to make any money from them. Want the honest truth? It's not the size of your list that matters. It's what you do with it. So the great news is that if you have a small list with only a few hundred people on it, you can still get a really great income from that.Because it's all about the relationship you have with your subscribers.See, we genuinely have no idea how many people are on our list. We don't check that number. And that's because it doesn't do anything for us. You can't pay the bills with email subscribers!The numbers we care about are the ones in our bank balance. We look at how our campaigns perform - how much we make from every subscriber. Because that's what matters!Should you spend time and money growing your list?We come across lots of people who don't have a list or who panic about the size of their email list. And typically these people think they'll need to spend a lot of time, money, and energy building and growing their list.But what they should be doing instead is to first test that they have the right type of people on their email list. You want subscribers you can sell to - people who want the offers you have. People who will buy from you.The truth is that you can build a profitable business with a few hundred or a few thousand subscribers on your email list. But if you waste time building a massive list without first checking that the people you have on your list are the right people for your business, then growing that list might not be profitable at all! The advantages of having a small listWe get that people are nervous when starting out. But then again, isn't it easier to test the waters and try out ideas when you have a smaller list? If you get it a little wrong, you're doing it in front of a smaller audience at least!Having a small list allows you to dial it in and then grow. But focusing on growth without doing any testing isn't the answer!So one thing you can do while your list is really small is to figure out how much each subscriber is worth to you. Because a lot of people don't know that. And that's a key piece of information to help you decide how much to invest in ads or lots of other things in your business. See, when we started out, we didn't have a lot of money to invest in advertising, and we were a bit rubbish at growing our list. We paid for courses and tried to learn from all the email marketing gurus out there, but their methods didn't work for us. So we had to learn from the trenches. And the thing we quickly figured out was how to make the most from what we had. And here's how we did it (and how you can do it too).Email your subscribers more oftenThe first thing you have to do to make the maximum amount of money from your list is to email people more often. That's right. Because that's what allows you to help as many people as possible and deliver as much value as possible. Now, a lot of people tell us they can't possibly email more often because their subscribers are going to hate them and unsubscribe. But...Say you've got a list of 1,000 people and 25% of them see your emails. That's 250 people who've seen one email you sent. If you stop there, that's potentially 250 people who've seen your email this week or this month. But what if you email again tomorrow? Because if you hit a 25% open rate again, that's another 250 people seeing your stuff. And, granted, some of them (shall we say 10%?) will the same people - your super loyal fans. But a lot of people (15%?) will be new. So potentially, that's another 150 people who see your emails.If you carry on like that every day, can you see how things start to really build up? Over the course of a week, if you email 5 or even 7 days, you'll be able to reach a lot more people on your list than if you'd only sent one email that week. And when you have a small list, that really starts to help fast. If you want to put your message in front of more people, emailing more often is the way to do it. Create email campaignsThe second thing we recommend you do if you want to make money from your email list is to build email campaigns, rather than sending individual emails.Single emails don't work.You have to have a series of different emails structured together and designed to make sales. Please stop trying to impress people with your emails - structure them for sales instead! To do that, remember to stay focused on the outcome you want. What's the reason people are on your email list? You want to make sales, for but for them, it's about the value you offer.Regularly clean up your email list and keep it smallThe third thing we recommend you do is to clean your email list regularly. We intentionally keep our list small. As small as we possibly can.We do that through our LOL revival campaign, which helps us segment out the people who are not engaging anymore. We run our subscribers through regular re-engagement campaigns and bring the ones who re-engage back into the fold. But then we send the rest of them their way and delete them. It may sound harsh, but if you pay your email marketing platform per subscriber, by cleaning your list regularly you can pay them less. But also, the delivery of your emails is easier. The people who remain on your list are more engaged, and you feel like you're closer to them. It's a lot easier to maintain a relationship with fewer people and stay connected to them. So keep your list small and clean it out of all the people who aren't going to buy from you. You can definitely make a good living from a small list. The key is to focus on giving people things that are genuinely going to help them solve their problems and give them value they're going to enjoy. Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week is, "Are you cabbage, peas, or carrots?" This is an actual subject line that Kennedy used in one of his emails.  And there's a bit of a story behind that (isn't there always?!). One day Kennedy was on the phone with his sister, and he got so distracted he managed to allow the cabbage, peas, and carrots he was cooking to steam dry and burn. From there, he went into a lesson around how you can be distracted by things.But the subject line worked because it used a few curiosity principles. Kennedy put some unusual stuff in there (cabbages, peas, and carrot), made the email very personal by sharing a story, and then turned it into a question to the audience. And the subject line did very well! Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow To Clean Your Email List – List Hygiene With Steve Wagner.Email List Cleaning: When You Should Delete Your Subscribers.Get Your Emails Delivered (And Avoid The Spam Folder) With Adrian Savage.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 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, where 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 how to make money from 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 and get discovered by more awesome people like you.

Struggling to get results with your email marketing? Tried all the tactics but not getting the sales you want? Then let's hear about holistic email marketing - Kath Pay is here to share all her best-kept secrets...And you'll want to hear them all!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:30) Two lies a truth. Did Kath really get sunburnt from falling asleep in the garden?(4:05) What is customer centricity?(7:14) Why focus on the customer journey?(9:00) How email impacts sales on other channels.(13:04) Why you should name things for what they are!(14:40) How being customer-centric changes how you write your content.(15:40) Why you always need to convert facts into benefits.(17:30) The reason behind the names of our email campaigns.(19:00) How to create an email marketing strategy for your business. (22:25) Subject line of the week with Kath Pay.What is customer-centricity? Kath Pay has 23 years of experience in email marketing and is the author of the fantastic book, "Holistic Email Marketing: A practical philosophy to revolutionise your business and delight your customers." In this mega interesting interview, Kath told us all about customer-centric email marketing. The phrase might sound scary, but all it means is having the customer at the heart of your email programme. Your customer has to be top of mind at all times!When doing email marketing, however, a lot of businesses tend to become very brand-centric - we focus on what we want to say to our customers and on what we want them to do. But according to Kath, we should be flipping things around.Start from the customer. Why are they on your list? What did we promise them when they signed up? What is going to be meaningful to them?As a brand, we have an objective, and that's generally to sell. But our subscribers have one too - they have a reason for being on your list. So how can you deliver on your promise and help them achieve that objective?This thing about goals is like a double-sided coin. On the one side, you have your business goal. On the other side, you have your subscribers' goals. So instead of approaching email marketing with your own agenda and focusing on selling and pushing, walk to the other side of the coin. Grab your customers by the figurative hands and work out how you're going to help them achieve their objective. And by default, you'll achieve yours too.Awesome, right?Why do you need a holistic approach to email marketing?When we run our businesses we tend to focus on the various channels (organic search, PPC, social media, etc.). Then we try and get the channels to talk to each other and connect. But really, the angle we should be considering instead is how to help our customers throughout their journey.Ask yourself - what channels are going to be best at what particular points? Having a holistic approach to email marketing means focusing on the customer journey, not the channels.Kath shared a story about a client who noticed an unexplained dip in sales in one of their channels on a particular day. After further investigation, it turned out the dip was due to an email not being sent out on that day. And that impacted sales in other channels! This proves that email marketing doesn't act in isolation - email pushes conversion in other channels.Customer-centric email marketing in actionReady to switch to customer-centric email marketing? Then the first thing you want to do is to start calling things for what they are. For example, your welcome sequence does a lot more than just welcoming your subscribers. It's also about onboarding and nurturing. So why not refer to your welcome sequence as your 'First Purchase Programme' instead? Because that's your aim, right?Once you're super clear on your aims and your customers' goals, coming up with copy for your emails is a lot easier. Because you are definitely welcoming your customers, but you are also educating them on the solutions that your product and services offer.And when you focus on this, you give your emails a different feel and focus. And ultimately, a better success rate too. Being customer-centric changes how we write things. According to Kath, we should never just talk about facts. Instead, we should be explicit in talking about the benefits we're offering our customers.If you've won an award, for example, (like Kath has) how is that of interest to your customers? How is it going to help them? Your job is to expand on it. You're the director of the customer journey, so spell it all out for them. If you're talking to a client or a prospective client, the fact you've won an award tells them they're in good hands.So share the facts but always convert them into benefits. Have the consumer in your mind at all times. It's a subtle psychological shift, but it puts you in the right frame of mind to write the right type of content for your emails.It's why we have a 'Tell Me More' campaign, which we send out to anyone who clicks three times on the same sales page. And our welcome sequence is called 'Getting to Know You' because it's about us getting to know our subscribers and our subscribers getting to know us. We agonise over the names of our campaigns, but it puts us into the right mindset to nail what the campaign is all about and what is there to do.How to create an email marketing strategy for your businessA lot of people jump straight to tactics - programmes, forms, landing pages, etc. We tend to latch on to them because it's easier to learn how to implement tactics - it sounds less overwhelming than having a strategy. But unless they map back to an overarching, solid, thought-out email marketing strategy, they're not going to be as effective. They just don't work well in isolation!So, to create your email marketing strategy, start with your business goals. What is it that you want to achieve? What is important to you? Then map your marketing objectives to the business goal. From there, define your email marketing objectives - for acquisition, conversion, retention, and win back. Then break down each of these objectives and come up with multiple tactics for each.This way, you're working from the top down, rather than upwards, which is a lot harder and less effective. If you start in the right place (with your objectives) and then work downwards, you'll find that everything leads naturally to the next step. Put it all together and boom! You have a blueprint for success!Subject line of the week with Kath PayKath's subject line of the week comes from a company called Colon Broom, whose strapline is 'Poop Like a Winner, Lose Weight the Easy Way'. We love them already. Don't you?So they sent an email out with the subject line "We have a shit-uation here". It was sent to subscribers who had abandoned carts to let them know that their special offer was going to expire soon.Genius, isn't it?Useful Episode ResourcesAbout KathWant to connect with the awesome Kath Pay? You can find her on her website, where you can also watch her "Email & More: A Q&A with…" series of online Q&A panels. And if you're interested in reading Kath's book, it's called "Holistic Email Marketing: A practical philosophy to revolutionise your business and delight your customers."Related episodesThe Email Marketing Strategy Every Business Should Steal.How To Use Email In Your Content Marketing Strategy.How To Do Better Email Marketing In 2020: Your Questions Answered.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 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 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. Will you embrace holistic email marketing - Kath Pay style?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, where 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 about holistic email marketing with Kath Pay 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 get discovered by more awesome people like you.

When do you segment email subscribers? When exactly is the right time to start? On day one? When you reach your first 2,000 subscribers? Or maybe 20,000? Well, it depends... If you're wondering whether segmenting your list is something you should have on day one or something you should do now or maybe never, tune into this episode to help you make a decision. (2:25) Are you as excited about Email Marketing Wednesday as Kennedy is?(3:40) What does segmenting your list even mean? (5:50) When and how you segment your list depends on what you sell (with examples!) (7:52) List segmentation when you sell products with a broad range.(8:24) What does 'segmenting by interest' mean? (10:12) Three types of segments you need - Segment Number One. (10:49) Three types of segments you need - Segment Number Two. (11:25) Three types of segments you need - Segment Number Three. (12:20) How to segment your subscribers. (14:10) Subject line of the week. What is email segmentation? What even is email segmentation? All it means, effectively, is taking your list and dividing it into parts - or segments - a bit like an orange.So if you have different people on your list with different needs, hopes, desires, and interests, splitting them into segments allows you to give each of these groups the best possible service. Because if they have different needs and interests when it comes to your business, saying the same things in the same order and using the same angle and approach isn't really going to work, is it? If they're the same type of people, by all means, treat them in the same way. But if they're not, then you need to communicate to these people in different ways. And that's where segmentation comes in. When should you start to segment email subscribers?Want to know the truth? Email segmentation freaks a lot of people out. And it's understandable.You're probably wondering whether it's too early or too late for you to get started. Is your list too small? Too big? When is it just right?You see, email segmentation is a very powerful tactic to make sure you're constantly putting the right messaging in front of the right people.If you've ever heard anyone say that you don't need any type of email segmentation until you reach 20,000 subscribers, well, that's a really broad and arbitrary statement to make. Because potentially, you could be in a situation where you have just a handful of subscribers, but they are different types of people with different needs.And if that's the case, then you need segmentation from day one. So the right time to segment your list depends on the type of people you serve and the products or services you offer.  Why you need to segment email subscribers based on their interestsIf you sell a product with a broad range, you might want to segment people based on their interests. Let's say you sell baby gifts and keepsakes. You can segment your subscribers depending on whether they have a boy or a girl or how old their baby is, for example.In this context, interest means more than hobbies. It means knowing who your subscribers are and what they're going to be interested in when it comes to what you sell.So if you offer salsa dancing, you might have products or services tailored to beginners, intermediate, or advanced dancers. There is zero point in telling the beginners about stuff that's really complicated because they're not going to be interested!If that's you - if your business works a bit like that - then you can start segmenting your list on day one. And if you don't, you're potentially doing your audience a disservice. When you think about it, if you try and sell them something that isn't at their level or doesn't match their needs, they won't be interested.In other words, if you tell people about the wrong stuff, you're going to alienate them. But on the other hand, segmenting your list will help you identify people and serve them the best. Three email segments you should have in your listSo here are three segments we think you should have: People who have already bought what you're selling. For example, if someone buys our Complete Daily Email Strategy Course, we don't want them to continue receiving promotional emails about it, so we have a specific segment for people who have already bought that product.Anyone who told you they're not interested in a specific product or service. We add a link to our emails where we ask people to click if they're not interested in a particular product. If they click on the link and choose to proactively tell us they no longer want to hear about something, we don't email them about that anymore! Simple as that. And finally, people who have shown an interest. Inside our membership, The League, we teach and share about a campaign called the Tell Me More campaign. It's an email sequence that kicks off automatically when someone shows significant interest in one of our products. These people are in what's called the 'consideration phase' of the buyer's journey. They've checked your product out but haven't made a decision yet. So it's always worth following up by answering questions, sharing testimonials, and overcoming objections. If you want to find out how you can start segmenting your subscribers today, check out our episode, 6 Techniques To Segment Your Email Subscribers. Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week is "Your free account". We used this subject line for an email we sent out to our existing subscribers to let them know we've created a private area on our website where they can access our free resources, including our Top 10 Books to Power Up Your Email Marketing.Whenever a new subscriber wants to download our free resources, we create a free account for them to access that private area - hence the subject line! And even though we weren't selling anything, the email had a great open rate and click-through rate. Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodes6 Techniques To Segment Your Email Subscribers.Email List Cleaning: When You Should Delete Your Subscribers.Why Is My Email Marketing Not Working?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 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 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, where 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 how to segment email subscribers - 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 and get discovered by more awesome people like you.

Instagram. We all faff around with it. But can you actually leverage your Instagram following to make sales? You certainly can. But only if you're clever about driving people to your email list. So if you want to find out how to use Instagram to successfully grow your email list, Helen Perry spills all the secrets for us today.You just don't want to miss this episode (and Kennedy's mind explosion!).Ready to become Insta famous?Well, we are!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:45) Two lies a truth. Did someone say something about STIs? (4:50) Is Instagram still a place where you can grow an engaged audience? (6:32) Why you can't afford to 'abdicate' on your audience. (9:50) Where and how you should tell your audience on about your email list. (10:48) The type of Instagram content that gets people's attention. (12:28) The mindblowing truth about the Question Sticker. (14:17) How to properly use your link in bio to grow your email list. (15:30) How to create urgency for people to join your email list (and Kennedy's mind explosion!) (17:28) How often you should ask for people's email address on Instagram. (19:22) Subject line of the week - Helen style!Are Instagram and email marketing a match made in sales heaven?With close to 14k Instagram followers, former BBC Radio One Helen Perry helps people build an Instagram following and make money from social media. Because guys, it's really not just about looking lovely and having your ego stroked. It's about selling, right?The great news is that if you have an Instagram audience it's absolutely possible to leverage it to support your business. But, Helen says, you've got to be intentional about what you do and have realistic expectations. Because the platform has its limitations when it comes to how well people are going to get to know, like, and trust you, and how much of your content they're going to see.But the place where you can really get your audience's attention is their inbox. Once people give you their email address, they're more committed to you than someone who just follows you on Instagram. These are the people who will spend money in your business.So drive your Instagram audience to your email list. And keep plugging on and working on this because the minute you start neglecting your Instagram community, your engagement will drop. And you don't want to undo all your hard work, do you? We love that Helen even has a name for this - 'social media abdication'.How to use your Instagram profile to grow your email list, Helen Perry styleFirst thing first, create a great offer for your audience.Simple, right?What does your audience love about what you do? What are they interested in? And what do they want more of?For Helen, it's her weekly newsletter, which she sends out every Friday, packed with tips and inspiration for people who want to build an online profile to promote their business. And because the newsletter goes out every week without a fail, Helen gets the chance to talk about it all the time - to create that sense of urgency that prompts people to join before Friday so they can get all the good stuff in their inbox.Isn't that pretty great?So create a lead magnet or some sort of incentive to encourage people to give you their email address. But remember - it has to be valuable to them!How to drive your Instagram audience to your email listSo how and where do you ask your Instagram audience to give your their email address?The best place to do this, according to Helen, is Instagram Stories. Here's where you can share a few slides about it is that you're offering and talk people through it, rather than making them read lots of text. Be fully transparent about what people are signing up for and invite them to DM you and give you their email address with their permission to add them to your email list.You can also do this with a feature called Question Sticker. And of course, once you reach 10k followers, you unlock the Swipe Up feature, which allows you to send people directly to your email sign-up form. Brilliant!But another obvious and easily accessible place to promote your email list is the link in bio. So use it wisely! Don't just dump your website address in there. Don't make people do the hard work of navigating around your website to find out where they sign up! Instead, change your link in bio often and have your email sign-up form link in there.How often should you ask for people's email addresses on Instagram?Helen says we could probably ask more than we do because at the end of the day only a small proportion of our audience sees the content we share. So ask people to join your email list at least 2 or 3 times a week, and if you're selling things all the time, then every day.But don't forget to alternate that with behind-the-scenes content, storytelling-type content, and news update on what's going on with your business and what you're offering, for example.Oh, and if you want to check out how we'll be implementing Helen's advice, come and follow us on Instagram!Subject line of the week with Helen PerryHelen's subject line of the week is about being the opposite of a perfectionist.That's right. Helen shared the story of when she sent out a really rubbish email telling her audience she was launching a course but didn't give them any of the information they needed to make a decision.In Helen's words, it was a truly useless email. But lots of people replied asking for details and expressing an interest. The next day, Helen sent out a message apologising for her rubbish email and gave people what they needed. She sold more courses at the back of that email than she did with any others.So there you go - honesty for the win. Again! Useful Episode ResourcesAbout HelenWant to find out more about the awesome Helen Perry? Go and connect with her on Instagram (obvs!)Related episodesTwitter for List Building with Madalyn Sklar.17 No Cost Ways To Build Your Email List.How To Grow Your Email List Using Facebook Pages (Without Ads) – Rachel Miller Moolah Style!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 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 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, where 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, which was all about how to grow your email list with Helen Perry, 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 get discovered by more awesome people like you.

How on Earth do you grow an online business? And where does email marketing fit in?This week on the show we talk about the 5 different things you need to do to grow your business. So if you've got this awesome product or service, you put together an offer, you've been telling people about it, but you don't quite manage to sell as many as you thought you were going to sell, this will help you work out which piece of the puzzle you're missing. But there's a bit of a twist at the end...  SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (1:03) What's the deal with Kennedy and tomatoes?(3:12) Where does email fit it in your online business and why are things not working?(5:21) Why you need a platform to grow your business. (8:21) How do you even pick your platform?(8:50) Why you need to start email marketing. Yesterday. (12:30) Why a conversion mechanism is the third piece of the puzzle. (14:17) Have you thought about how you're going to deliver 'the thing'?(16:45) The last piece of the puzzle - the resell phase.(17:44) Why launch a referral affiliate scheme. (20:49) Subject line of the week. 1. Choose a platform to grow your small business onlineThe first thing you're going to need to grow your online business is a platform. This is the place where you find people who could potentially buy from you, engage in your services, or hire you. Your platform is where people are gathering - where they find out about you. It could be your podcast, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, your Facebook group, an event, you being a guest speaker somewhere - you name it. But if you haven't got a platform yet (and you're not leveraging someone else's), then you don't have an audience who will buy your products or services. Take us, for example. We started things off with the podcast and then created a Facebook group that we linked back to the podcast. Now we're also on Twitter and various other channels. But like everyone, we had to start somewhere.So where should you be? Whichever platform you pick for your business is up to you. None of them are better than any others. Just pick the platform that you work best with, get good at it, do it consistently, and build your audience there. Nothing works or doesn't work in and of itself - it's about what people do to make stuff work for them. 2. Start doing email marketingEmail marketing is the next piece of the puzzle. Once you've grabbed your audience's attention, you want them to give your their email address and give you permission to get in touch more often. It's through email that you build a deeper connection with people. Plus, email is the highest return on investment marketing activity you can do as a business. You can sell more stuff with email than anything else you do. And there's no equivalent - unless you count the very expensive messenger bots or SMS marketing. Email marketing is simply more efficient, more effective, deeper, and more personal than any of the other business growth strategies you could ever think of employing. Fact. And let's not forget that email works in a two-way direction. Because you can move people from your original platform onto your email list, but you can also use your email list to send people to more platforms. We do that. People go from our podcast to our email list, and from there we send them to our Facebook group, for example. Another benefit of building an email list is that, unlike with other platforms, you own the data. If you want to switch email providers, you can just download your list and upload it elsewhere. You can also do clever stuff like segmentation, which pretty handy when you want to sell more of your stuff. 3. Build a conversion mechanism to grow your business online presenceThe third piece of the puzzle is your conversion mechanism. How do you actually make the sale? Do you get people on the phone or a Zoom call? Do you convert them from a webinar? Or maybe you send out a proposal? There are lots of different ways to convert. Often, we send people to a sales page with a cool video on it. But you've got to build this three-dimensional relationship with your audience where your email subscribers see you popping up on your Facebook, get to visit your sales page, or join a webinar you're hosting - whatever it might be, it's about having a strong conversion mechanism in place. 4. Deliver your product or service and do it wellSo now you've sold 'the thing', you've got to deliver it, right? And no matter what you sell, you're probably going to deliver your product or service by email. You're going to email someone their login, or the details to book a call with you or send the email that says you've received their order, and their lovely product is now on its way. People want and need delivery to be done right. To be done well. Because we know it, and you know it - there's nothing more frustrating than submitting an order for anything and never getting a confirmation, or even worse, getting an error page and wondering whether you've just thrown your money down the drain. That's not cool. So think about how you deliver your thing. 5. Focus on the re-sell to increase your online salesAnd finally, the last piece of the puzzle is the re-sell phase. We all have to look at how we make more offers, supply more value, and ultimately make more sales from every single customer. If you sell a membership, how do you make your members stick around for years? If you sell an online course or one-off product, can you upsell or cross-sell something else? Another way to do this is by offering referrals. That's right - you can tell your customers how great they are and how you'd love to work with someone just like them. It's as easy as, "Hey, do you know somebody else who could do with my help?" You can even turn your customers into referral affiliate partners and pay them to send you more clients just like them. And guess what? You can do this by email too. In fact, you should! You can use email to grow your audience on more platforms, push them to your conversion mechanism, deliver your product or service, and even encourage them to buy more from you. We may have just given you 5 different elements, but they all have email marketing in common. Email marketing is the one thing that will help you grow your business!Subject line of the week "Kennedy's to-do list. 🖊️"That's it. It's *First Name*, followed by "to-do list", followed by the pen emoji. And we used it for an email that had a list of things you should do to make your email marketing better. It got a massively high open rate and worked really well. Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesThe One Page Digital Marketing Funnel – Simplify To Monetise with Michael Greenberg.Email Marketing for Small Businesses with Steffen Schebesta from SendInBlue.Use Live Streaming to Build Your Email List with StreamYard’s Head of Marketing, Daniel Glickman.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 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 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, where 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 about how to grow your online business and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes and get discovered by more awesome people like you.

Have you ever fallen into the trap of offering your products or services at a discounted price? Hands up - we've done. Guilty. As. Charged. But that stops now. Because the awesome John Hutchison taught us a jaw-dropping way to frame discounts in a completely different way. That's right. Bet you wouldn't even know it's a discount if it smacked you in the face. It's simple. It's mind-boggling. And it works. Care to find out what the magic trick is? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:44) Two lies and a truth. Does John's wife Gail really drink blue cocktails and touch her nose with her tongue? (4:37) The mind-boggling way John uses to frame his discounts. (7:28) The reason why people spend more this way. (11:26) How to ask your subscribers for their physical address. (13:30) How to create gorgeous digital gift cards that will wow your subscribers. (15:54) How to kick off your 3-7 day email campaign. (18:15) How to encourage your subscribers to buy. (19:03) How to give your subscribers social proof. (22:15) The two emails you need to send your subscribers on the last day. (23:30) Subject line of the week - John style!Ditch the discounts and give your subscribers a gift card insteadJohn Hutchison's trialed and tested method is simple. Just don't give your subscribers a discount. Nope. Not at all. Give them a gift card instead.Now, this can be either a physical card, which you can get designed and printed and can send over to your subscribers' physical address. Much like a store card, it's something tangible they can use and keep. It makes you feel connected to the brand, and that's quite powerful. Awesome. Your other option is to create a digital gift card. If you go down this route, make sure your gift card looks sexy and gorgeous! Add your branding to it, put the value on it, and personalise it with the recipient's name. Have a nice image made (you can use a tool called Nifty Images) and send it to your subscribers with a dynamic voucher code and a great subject line. Something like, "Hey, we've got a $20 store card. Open up!"Who should you offer your gift card to? Well, your subscribers, obvs. But is it all of them? Some of them? People who bought from you before? People who haven't made their first purchase yet? Which one is it? John Hutchison advises to segment your subscribers based on value and identify your most recent high-value purchasers.Why? Because these are the people on your list who love to spend. And the more people spend, the more giving them money on a gift card will encourage them to spend. Magic, right? The psychology behind offering a gift cardSo what the trick to get your subscribers to spend money with you? Put money in their hands.And the reason why is simple. Because if they don't spend it, they'll lose it. And who in their right mind wants to flush free money down the toilet?!The other reason why this works so well is that it makes people go and take a look at your website. When you offer a discount, if they didn't intend on buying anything, they still won't! They won't even go to your website.But now that they have free money to spend... well that's a different ball game, isn't it? Now their buyer intent is different - they're heading to your website to see what their money can get them! The loss factor of missing out on a discount versus giving up the chance to spend free money is completely different!The practicalities of sending out physical gift cards [thrive_leads id='8854'] So let's say you've decided to send out physical gift cards. What happens when you don't hold the postal addresses of your subscribers? Most online or service-based businesses don't. John explains you can run a 'requester letter campaign'. You basically tell your subscribers you have this cool thing you want to send them via snail mail and ask them to give you their physical address. And do you know what's super awesome about that? That those people are coming in with an even higher intent because they've literally raised their hand and asked for whatever you're sending them! How to build an email campaign sequence around your gift cardsSo once you've worked out who you're going to send your gift cards to, it's time to build an email campaign around it. John recommends a 3-7 day campaign to create urgency and scarcity.The first thing you need to do is to tell your subscribers why they're getting this reward. Is it because they bought something over the last 7 days? Because they spend a certain amount of money with you over time? Because they made their first purchase with your company? Whatever it is, tell me what they did to earn this reward. In your first email, send them the gift card (if it's digital) and tell them how to redeem it. The next piece of the sequence is to let them know what they can buy with their gift card. If you use segmentation software and know what your customers have been buying or whether they've been looking at a particular product, you can target the email specifically to them. And once you've done that, you move on to giving them social proof. This is where you show them what people just like them bought with their gift cards. Tell them a story! Show them how someone else turned their money into a product or an experience and make sure they can see the benefit they'll get if they use their card. Make sure you build on that scarcity too! Let them know that they'll lose out if they don't use their money by a certain date and time and that they should take advantage before the offer slips away. And last but not least, on the last day of the offer, send two more emails a few hours apart. Let them know how many hours they've got left to spend their money before their chances go up in smoke. Subject line of the week with John HutchisonCan you believe this subject line is getting John an incredible 84% open rate and an 11% reply rate?And the line is (drumroll please!)... "Coming in ice-cold and hoping to help." So why does this work? Quite simply, because it's honest. Useful Episode ResourcesAbout John Want to connect with the amazing John Hutchison? You can find him over at whyemailworks.com.Related episodesHow To Sell Without Price Cutting or Pushing with Mike Montague from Sandler TrainingHow To Nail Your Affiliate Email Promotions – Getting Hyped With Ryan PhillipsJoin 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, where 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 with John Hutchison 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 and get discovered by more awesome people like you.