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The Email Marketing Show

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Oct 27, 2021 • 26min

Onboarding Emails Examples for your Online Course

This week on the podcast we're talking about onboarding emails examples. Are you a course creator? Do you have an onboarding sequence? Or is it just one of those things that get pushed to the side at the end of a busy launch? Well, if you want to find out exactly how to use your onboarding emails to wow your customers, turn them into fans, and make more sales, we've got your back! SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (3:23) What are onboarding emails?(4:30) Use onboarding emails to show the value of your product.(5:52) How to counteract buyer's remorse.(8:52) How onboarding emails help you build trust with your customers.(10:16) A sneak peak into our own onboarding emails.(13:00) How to use onboarding emails to hightlight the most foundational pieces of your course.(16:45) How to use the onboarding sequence to set the expectation there's more to learn from you.(18:43) How to make sure your onboarding sequence reflects the style and framework of your other emails.(20:44) Don't confuse your onboarding sequence with your welcome sequence. (23:12) Subject line of the week.What are onboarding emails?Onboarding emails are those emails you send to someone who's bought your online course or product. Why are we talking about onboarding email examples today? Because we know what it's like to launch something new. There's so much work that goes into it that often the part that follows the sale gets overlooked and forgotten. But onboarding emails are important. And you want to be doing a little more than just thanking your customer for buying the product and giving them the username and password to access it. So here are a few things that your onboarding emails can help you do. Show the value of your productThe very first thing onboarding emails allow you to do is to encourage your customers to look at the value of the product they bought from you. With these emails, you want to prompt people to take action and consume the content you've painstakingly put together. Because of course, you want them to get the results you promised them, right?  Counteract buyer's remorseAnother reason why onboarding emails matter is because they help you counteract buyer's remorse. I'm sure this has happened to you - you bought a product or downloaded a lead magnet, and when you did you felt excited.But then at some point remorse kicks in. You worry that for some reason you've made a bad decision and wasted your time or your money. Maybe you shouldn't have bought the thing in the first place. You've been there and felt like that, right?So this is where your onboardg email sequence comes in. You've got to use your onboarding emails to get your customers excited about their purchase. Why? Because this is your chance to reassure them they made a good decision, and sell them your product once again. You can do this by talking about the transformation they'll experience and the results they'll finally achieve. You can show them testimonials and case studies of people just like them. Because this helps you reinforce your subconscious reputation with that buyer and helps them see how they’re now closer to the outcome they want. Your job is to show them they made a great decision!Build trust with your customersAnother reason why we swear by onboarding emails (and we want to share some onboarding emails examples with you) is that they help your customers build trust with you and your business. By sending out emails after they bought from you, you show your customers you want them to succeed. A lot of business owners will sell something and then move on to the next thing. And there’s nothing wrong with that inherently, but it’s also important to make your customers looked after.Show them that you're not just about getting their money and leaving them to themselves. You put together the best content in this course and now you want them to use it and get the results. Because let’s face it – when people buy online courses, a lot of the accountability is on them. If they don't consume the content and implement the strategies you teach them, they won't get results. But you can (and should) definitely still play a part in this process by encouraging them to use your product. Some onboarding emails examplesFor example, when people join our membership, The League, we send them a detailed email showing them how to access it. We don’t just give them the URL, username, and password - we also include an animated GIF of where they go and click into the Members area. Because even if people haven’t accessed the content yet, we still want them to feel like they've already received value from it. Similarly, if you opt-in for one of our free lead magnets, we send you an email with the username and password with an animated GIF that shows the screen recording of a user accessing the resource. We do this because we want people to be able to access the content we promised them and do it easily. This is a critical piece of your relationship with your customer. They’ve given you their email address or their money, so don't make it difficult for them! Highlight the most foundational pieces of content Your onboarding emails will also help you highlight what you think is important for your customers to know right now and explain what it will do for them. When you sold them the course, you sold them the benefits and the transformation, so now you want to give them clarity on what to do. Now they have the course, you can be more granular and detailed in your explanations. You can pull out the particular lessons you think are important. Now you get to sell to them from the inside. Before you could only say what the course looked like and what it would do for them without giving away too much. But now you can be more specific. And it's important you do this because you can't leave your students to decide what parts of the course are the most foundational - they're not qualified to do that. They might go for the shiny parts that seem the most interesting and resonate with them the most right now, but that might be different for everyone. So it's up to you, as the course creator, to point to what's important. And don't forget to explain why. Because psychologically, anytime you communicate something, you have to give them the reasons why, or what you say will never resonate with them.Set the expectation that there’s more to learn from youYour onboarding sequence should also help you set the expectation with your customers that you can teach them more - there's more to learn here! Because let's face it - you want your onboarding sequence to serve the customer. But it needs to serve your business as well. So start sowing the seeds and talk about other courses you have. Because while you're telling them that what they have is really good, you also want them to know they don't have the full picture just yet.Make sure your onboarding emails reflect your styleAnother thing to bear in mind when it comes to looking at onboarding emails examples is that you want to maintain the same energy and style from the emails you sent to your list before they bought your product. You don't want to suddenly turn into this person who just emails them robotically about going to page 12 of your workbook, do you? In fact, you want the opposite. You want to make your subscribers feel excited about what they just bought. Your emails should be so good that if you were selling something new, they would go and buy it straight away!If you use our Daily Email Strategy from the Complete Daily Email Strategy course, you'll be familiar with our framework of Story, Lesson, and Offer. You tell a story, you make a lesson out of it, and then you make an offer. You can follow this same framework in your onboarding emails. Except that now they bought your course, you tell the story, make a lesson out of it, and then the call to action is not to buy, but to go and access your course. So make sure that people who buy from you receive the same style of emails as part of their onboarding experience. Don’t confuse your onboarding sequence with your welcome sequenceNow, there's one last point worth making. And that's that each of your products and lead magnets needs its own onboarding sequence – we’ll call it a consumption sequence. And it's not a welcome sequence! Different onboarding emails examples have something in common - they invite your customers to go and consume your content. Your onboarding or consumption sequence is a separate automated campaign. You might be familiar with our Getting to Know You Sequence, which is the welcome campaign we teach inside The League. Your new subscribers only go through it once when they first come into your email marketing platform. The onboarding sequence, on the other hand, is something a customer goes through for each one of your products. So that's how it's different from your welcome sequence.Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line of the week is “Boring for two hours?” Now, regardless of what the content was, the reason this worked so well is that no one wants to be boring. Or anything that’s negative, for that matter. The subject line would have worked with any other word that has a negative connotation - simply because people don't want to be associated with anything negative.But also, adding a number in the subject line helps. That’s because numbers give specificity. And the fact it was asked as a question makes it even more engaging. Remember this - any time you turn a statement into a question it triggers ambiguity and curiosity in people. And often that drives open rates up. So there you go! Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow to amplify email campaigns, Clate Mask from Keap spills the beans.Testimonials – how to write and collect them automatically to bring in more sales with Monica Snyder.Writing The Perfect Welcome Email – Saying Hello With Gavin Bell.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 giving you onboarding emails examples for your online course) 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! 
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Oct 20, 2021 • 31min

7 Sales Elements to Give You More Reasons To Email During Your Launch

You've got an offer ready and have emailed your subscribers. Once. Maybe twice. Sure, you'd like to email them a bit more. That would help with your sales, right? But you just don't know what to email about! So here are 7 sales elements that will give you more reasons to email during your launch and help you create spikes in your sales. Ready to have your mind absolutely blown by these strategies?Let's go! SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:31) Why you should email your audience more than once or twice during a launch.(4:04) Give your audience a guided tour of your sales page through your emails (and learn about the pretend electoral campaign between Paddington Bear and Rupert The Bear).(11:48) Introduce a countdown timer to create urgency (but not right at the start).(14:08) Add a bonus (or more).(16:34) Combine the bonus and the countdown timer.  (17:47) Use your testimonials in your emails.(20:20) Don't introduce payment plans or down sell options at the start of your launch. (22:38) Help your customers remove overwhelm and make informed decisions.(25:03) Handle objections. (28:05) Subject line of the week.Why you should email your audience more than once or twice during a launchFirst thing first, how many times do your normally email your list when you launch a new product or service? The day you open the cart and then the day you close it? What happens in between? Can we just agree that two emails aren't really gonna cut it?When you’re promoting a new offer, you need to email your list more than once or twice. But how exactly can you keep talking about this thing you’re launching?Use your emails to give your audience a guided tour of your sales pageYou see, the key is to have a plan. And your plan should be all about NOT putting everything you have to say about your launch on your sales page. Hold some things back from your sales page so you have a list of valid reasons to email your list. Because during your launch, you want to use your emails to drip out pieces of your offer – email by email.This doesn't mean you're going to strip down your offer and turn it into something weak and mediocre that no one wants. Your offer needs to be amazing from day one! You're just holding off on announcing some of the stuff that most people announce at the start and breaking down the information that lives on your sales page  and giving your subscribers a guided tour of it. Your emails are the place where you pick one element of your sales page and talk about it. Why? So that you can walk people through stuff they might have missed and make them pay attention to it.By announcing new things throughout your launch, you create extra surges and spikes in your sales. Because we all know how it goes - launches are made of peaks and troughs. The peaks are the beginning and at the end. You make sales on your first day and then again on the last day before the cart closes. But in between? That's when you have your troughs. So you want to create some momentum - have an excuse to email your subscribers, give them more reasons to buy, and generate more peaks during your launch. Here are 7 things (in no particular order) that will help you do just that. Hold off introducing a countdown timerA lot of people add a countdown timer to their sales page right at the start of their promotion. We suggest you don’t do that. Why?First of all, because if you don’t put the timer on the sales page right away, it gives you a great reason to email your list later on and let them know when your cart closes.But also, a countdown timer is a mechanism to create urgency - and a very effective one at that. So don't waste it! Because you won't create any urgency if you set your timer waaaay in the future. If you tell everyone that your offer expires in 2 weeks, they have no reason to take notice now. It’s only when the hours, minutes and seconds are literally ticking that they’ll pay attention and buy. So use it wisely because this is one of the reasons to email your list during your launch.  Add a bonus (or more)Another strategy you can use is to take something you'd ordinarily include in your offer (like an additional piece of training or a worksheet, etc.) and add it as a bonus rather than including it from the start. As the days go by, you offer all these additional features as bonuses via email with a really effective subject line. Why does this work? Because it helps you draw attention to this bonus you just added and encourage someone to buy. Effectively, you're selling your bonuses in your emails. And if you position them well, some people will buy the product because of that bonus. Just make sure it's clear that everyone who has already bought gets your bonuses too - the last thing you want is loads of emails and admin from people asking you if they're included in the offer. Combine the bonus and the countdown timerWhen it comes to bonuses, you might introduce some at the start of your launch and others as you carry on with your promotion. So a strategy you can use is to add a countdown timer that will remove one of your bonuses. Pick your sexiest bonus – a mastermind or a live call, for example - and add a countdown to it. Give it a clear deadline and create some urgency around it. You want to position this as a fast action bonus – something that’s available to anyone who buys today or in the next two hours, for example. Why? It helps you create an additional surge. And, of course, make sure you then make this bonus go away when you say you will.Use your testimonials in your emailsAnother thing you want to do during your launch is to turn your testimonials into case studies. What’s the difference between the two? A testimonial is one of your customers saying they bought one of your products, and it was great. A case study goes further than that – it says that your customer was struggling with a particular problem, then they bought your fabulous course, and now their life is completely transformed. Think of the case study as the movie documentary of your customer’s life, whereas a testimonial is your customer telling you about their adventure with you.Now, it’s great to have testimonials. And a lot of people add loads to their sales pages. But your customers won't read them all, which means testimonials don't have the impact they’re meant to have. So how do you get your subscribers to pay attention?You email them.You pull out a few really good testimonials and turn them into case studies - expand on them in your emails and show people how others like them had the same problem, worked with you, and got great results. Don’t introduce payment plans or down-sell offers from the startAnother thing you might want to do at some point during your launch is to introduce payment plans or down-sell offers. Just don't do it at the start - because this will be one of the reasons to email your list during your launch. So do this after a few days and once you've had a good number of sales and are in a good cash flow position. A few days in, you can then email your subscribers and tell them about how they can pay in installments or buy a cheaper version of your product that has less live support, for example. The key is to introduce these later so you have a good reason to email your subscribers. Help your customers remove overwhelm and make an informed decisionOne of the reasons why you want to be able to email your subscribers more than once during your launch is that you want to mop up all the people who are on the fence about buying. And one of the things that get in the way and stops people from buying is confusion, especially if you sell different packages or levels of your product. Because sometimes your prospective customers look at all the options and aren’t sure about which one to go for, and they'll buy neither!So use your emails to talk about the features and advantages of your higher-end offer, explain the different packages and what they do, who they're for, and what the advantages of buying each of them are. This is about making sure people have the information they need to make a decision. Because when we sell or market anything, our job is to help people make informed decisions. Be the person that helps your subscribers get rid of overwhelm.Handle objectionsThe last thing we want to point out to help you find more reasons to email your list during your launch is something we're really passionate about. We talk about this a lot because it really works - and it's handling objections.Whenever we come up with an offer, we write down a whole bunch of objections and address them in our emails.  Just bear in mind you don’t want to handle objections by raising them. Don’t put thoughts in people’s minds – if someone is already on the fence about buying and you raise an objection in their mind, you’re only going to move them further away from that fence - and not in the right direction! When handling objections, you want to be compelling people and propelling them forward.So how do you do this exactly? We do it through Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), where we position every single thing really positively. So rather than asking the question, “What if you can’t make the live calls?” the FAQ will be worded as, “Will there be a recording of the calls?” and we'll explain how this is a really good thing because it allows people all over the world and from different time zones to access the calls. It’s a subtle difference, but it matters. So use your emails to handle objections. Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “how the sausage gets made”. Of course, this is funny to us because it's got the word sausage in it, and we think the word is hilarious because we're 12-year-olds.But jokes aside, it’s an expression, right? It’s a saying people are familiar with, and we like nothing more than to use common expressions and give them a bit of a twist. This was all about the idea of seeing behind the scenes of things, but you could the words to it to make it work for your individual business. Why does it work so well? Because it draws people in and triggers their curiosity. Awesome, right?Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesAdd This Unusual Step to Your Checklist for Product Launch to Make More Sales After The Cart Closes with Marley Jaxx.The Psychology Of A Successful Email Launch – Being Desirable With Abraham Kallon. How to Say ‘No’ to Extending An Expired Offer.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about the 7 elements that will give you more reasons to email during your launch) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know! 
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Oct 13, 2021 • 23min

How to Get Out of a Sales Slump

Have you ever experienced a slump in sales? We know we have. But we've also learnt to read the signs so we know when one's about to happen. And we've come up with a few strategies to get ourselves out of it. So here's what we're talking about today - exactly what to look out for to spot when sales are about to slow down and how to get out of a sales slump. Ready to find out what you've gotta do?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:26) Why you need to keep an eye on the sales data in your business.(4:36) What is your EPSPM and why does it matters? (Warning: there's singing!)(7:16) Focus on making more money from your existing list.(7:57) What to do when you have a seasonal slump in sales.(10:05) All big businesses change their shop window - why shouldn't you?(12:07) How to prevent 'banner blindness'.(12:50) What to do to avoid a slump in sales. (15:24) What indicators to watch to predict a slump in sales.(18:23) How to use challenges to get out of a slump in sales.(21:14) Subject line of the week. Why do you need to keep an eye on the sales data in your business?It happens to the best of us. You put out a product, and it's not just selling as much as you feel it should. Or maybe it did sell for a while, but now... not so much. So what do you do? The first thing to do is to check the data and see what it's telling you. Is there actually a problem? You might find that yes, things are a bit quiet. But maybe you know that's because you have a very seasonal business and things are always a little quiet for you at this time of year - it's a known trend in your business. And if you find that you're making more money this month than you were last month or the one before, then great. You're winning! And definitely doing something right, so now it's a matter of working out what that is so you can make more of it. But what exactly are the metrics you should keep an eye on? What's your EPSPM and why does it matter?We go on and on about this one. But it's important. Your EPSPM (bit of a mouthful, yes) is your Earnings Per Subscriber Per Month. And it's quite self-explanatory, really. It tells you how much money you're currently making for each of the subscribers on your list.How to work it out? Look at how much you made in the last month, for example, and divide your sales by the number of subscribers you had on your list. If you made $1,000 and you have 1,000 subscribers on your list, each subscriber is earning you $1. That's the figure you want to look at - once you know that, you can easily see whether that goes up or down month on month. And you know why this is a fundamental metric in your business? Because while a lot of people are focused on growing their list, if you double your list but your EPSPM doesn't go up or, worse, goes down, then having more people on your list isn't a good thing! Because you're earning less, not more.So if this month you're making $1 per subscriber and next month you double your list from 1,000 to 2,000 people, but you're still making $1,000, you've reduced the effectiveness of your email marketing because your EPSPM is now $0.50 and not $1.Focus on making more money from your listSo here's a quick tip. Focus on making more money from the list you have rather than growing your list further. As we've said many times before, this is the exact reason why we got good at email marketing. Because we couldn't afford to build our email list by investing in ads. And we couldn't afford to upset people to the point they'd unsubscribe from our list either! So we had to really focus on how to earn more for each subscriber.So our tip to you is to track this metric (the EPSPM) and make sure it's not going down as your list grows. Worst case scenario, you want it to stay the same. But ideally, you want that number to grow as your list grows. What do you do when you have a slump in sales?So let's say you are tracking your EPSPM, and it is indeed going down. It's time to change things up. Because most of the time the reason why there are slumps in sales is that your audience has stopped listening to what you're saying. They feel they heard your message and know what it is. And if you have people like that in your audience who haven't bought from you yet, then it's time for you to start thinking about a different way of saying what you need to say. In other words, you need a new shop window. Think about physical shops on the high street. They do this - they change their windows regularly and multiple times a year. Big companies with an online presence do the same by refreshing the look and feel of their website or changing their logos. Even Google does this, often displaying different graphics or animations to celebrate and commemorate historic events, occasions, or anniversaries. As a user and a consumer, things like that help you pay attention and build a deeper relationship with the brand. And if the big names do it, why shouldn't small business owners like us do the same? How to prevent 'banner blindness'We often talk about this idea of banner blindness or ad blindness which has to do with the fact that if you have the same stuff on your website or the same copy in your ads all the time, people just become blind to it. If you don't change your 'shop window', people become blind to your general messaging. For example, we love the Complete Daily Email strategy - our approach to sending an email every day and having it make sales all the time. But our main product is our membership - The League. Most of the time we just send emails about The League, and that just works a treat. But every now and then, when we feel there's a slump in open rates, click-through rates, or sales rates, the only way to fix that is to do something different - to veer off. To zag instead of zigging.Sometimes you have to stop talking about the thing you've been talking about and talk about something different instead. For example, instead of sending people to your sales page every day, you could start sending them to a free video first. And then you could re-target the people who watched that video with email. It's all about changing the shop window and the way to do that is by thinking about the different ways you can put an offer together. How else can you present the thing that you want to sell? Could you, for example, put together a bundle, run a webinar, do a live event, run a challenge, or a week of live streams? Whatever you do, think about a different window dressing for the same shop. How to predict a slump in salesWhy get caught unprepared though? What if you could see the sales slump coming and could do something about it before you get in that situation? You could start watching out for the indicators that might suggest a slump is coming. If you're selling stuff by email, you might be able to see a slow decline in the number of people opening your emails and then clicking on your links. So your click-through rate is something to keep an eye on. Because if you see that going down it means that, for whatever reason, your messaging isn't convincing your audience. So this is where you need to act and think about what to do differently. Change things up - talk about something different so that what you're saying becomes different and interesting again.How to use challenges to get out of a slump in salesOne of our favourite ways to drive people to something unique and different is to use a 5-day challenge. They work really well, but you need to get people to participate and convert. We spent a couple of years coming up with a way to run challenges that work. We perfected it and refined it until we got it completely nailed. And we created something called the Dual Reality Challenge.It's a really cool automated way to have these challenges run for you via email. You can build them and run them as often as you want. You just drop your subscribers in and get people to register, participate, and then buy from your business. So if you want to grab that, here's the link. It will give you an instant way to change up the shop window in your business and start selling more of your stuff with challenges.Oh, there's some small print stuff. You can grab this and have every single email and every bit of influence in the psychology that we build into our email campaigns. But this is only available for 5 of 6 days from the date this episode goes live on the 13th October 2021. So if you're listening or reading in the future, this offer will have expired, and the only way to get this campaign will be to join our membership, The League. Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week is "Leave me alone." This was done as part of a split test against another subject line, and "Leave me alone" was the winner. Why? Because it's an interesting contradiction, bearing in mind we are the email marketers bombarding with emails - not the other way round!The whole premise of this email was about the fact most people get really annoyed by SMS text message marketing. This email was prompted by a particular situation when Rob got fed up with a marketing text message, and he went on to talk about the right way to use SMS marketing along with your email marketing. Quite interesting, right?Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow to turn data into amazing outcomes – learn about Measuring Marketing with Chris Mercer.How to amplify email marketing campaigns with SMS messages, Clate Mask from keap. 17 No Cost Ways To Build Your Email List.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 get out of a sales slump) 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! 
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Oct 6, 2021 • 33min

Courageous Content with Janet Murray

Janet Murray is the Queen of Courageous Content. This week she's back on the show as our first returning guest - talking about how to come up with content ideas to promote your products and services. So, are you ready to find out how to create courageous content, with the amazing Janet Murray?Grab pen and paper (or whatever you make notes on) and get ready for this. There's some awesome stuff in this episode that you just don't want to miss!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:13) How Rob REALLY feels about Email Marketing Wednesday! (3:00) Did Janet think her car had been stolen (but something else really happened)? (5:18) How does Janet create so much epic content so easily? (7:38) Always start with what you're selling - your products or services. (9:00) How to look at the bigger picture first and then break it down. (11:56) Why you should always start with the end in mind. (13:10) Janet's framework for courageous content creation. (20:36) How to use awareness days to come up with courageous content ideas. (27:12) What percentage of our content should be sales content? (30:10) Subject line of the week with Janet Murray.How does Janet create so much content so easily? Creating tonnes of amazing content is what Janet does best. It's what she's known for. But how does she do it so well and so easily?Well, first of all, Janet says she enjoys it - she loves creating content. And that's got to make a difference, right? But she's also so good at this because she has a background in journalism. And when you're a journalist, she says, you can't just say you have no good ideas for a piece. It just doesn't work like that! So in her previous career, Janet came up with processes and systems to ensure that she'd always have content ideas to pick from. Isn't that clever?So what are some of these amazing strategies that Janet uses to come up with courageous content?Always start with what you're sellingThe first thing that Janet recommends (and something a lot of business owners don't do) is to start with what you're selling. So every year Janet works out what she's going to be selling over the upcoming year. She calls this 'overhead planning', and she teaches her clients this exact method too. Except that some of them struggle with this. And when they do, Janet says, it's because they have a business problem, rather than a content problem. Why? Because, quite simply, if you're a business owner and don't know what you're selling in the next 3-6 months or over the next year, do you really have a business? (Something to ponder here!)Thinking about what you're going to be selling in the short to medium term allows you to look at the bigger picture - at the 'wide shot view' of your business. And once you have that, you can then break that down into quarters, then months, then weeks. This is where planning your content becomes a lot easier to do. It's also less overwhelming than doing what Janet calls 'linear planning', where you look at the month ahead to work out what you're going to share on a daily basis. Overhead planning also gives you plenty of time to get organised to ensure you're able to create the right type of content.Isn't that super cool? For us, it's a bit like when we try and teach our members to write email subject lines. A lot of people focus on trying to come up with interesting and engaging subject lines before they've even worked out what the point of the email is going to be. Starting with the end in mind is a lot easier. Once you know what the email is all about, writing the subject line is a walk in the park!A 4-step framework for courageous content, with Janet MurrayAccording to Janet, a lot of entrepreneurs create too much content, which is part of what makes the process so overwhelming. This is why Janet thinks it helps to have a structure, and on this note, she's created a framework based on 4 different types of content:Educational content. This is content that helps your clients solve a problem and answers their questions.Inspiring content. As the name suggests, this is all about sharing stories or anecdotes that will encourage your audience to take some sort of action.Community content. Something that people do really well on their own personal social media accounts is building relationships with others. But sometimes people forget to do that on their business pages! You can't just jump in and ask for the sale all the time - it's about creating content that helps you build relationships with people first.News and trends. The final type of content is all about news and trends that relate to your industry, niche, or product and service. Janet recommends you regularly check the media for interesting pieces that relate to your industry that you may be able to share or interpret for your audience.So if you were to create just 4 pieces of content a week (one for each type), Janet says, that would be more than enough content over the course of a month and then a year. You'd find it less overwhelming and much easier to do because you'd be following a structure. Using a framework like Janet's might also help you become more consistent with your content, rather than yo yo all year round by posting frequently for a few weeks and then disappearing for months, for example.Of course, in order to do this, you also need to know your audience, what they're interested in, and what they need help with. You'll also find different people on different platforms, so it helps to do a bit of experimentation and testing. But once you have a structure to work with, you can then bend the rules to suit your audience and your business.How to use awareness days to come up with courageous content ideasJanet is amazing at using awareness days to create awesome content ideas, but a lot of people don't do it the right way, Janet says. If every other business decides to ask their audience about their favourite type of sausage on Sausage Day, it can get boring very quickly, especially if the topic isn't even relevant to your business, right? So how can you stand out from the crowd and use awareness days to create courageous content?The key, Janet says, is to use awareness days as jumping-off points to produce content that relates to your business. Always add a business angle to it. If the awareness day has to do with sleep, for example, we could talk about how to 'wake up' your email list. Or it could be about asking what skills people can do in their sleep. It doesn't have to be exactly about sleep. Consider awareness days as prompts that you need to think about creatively, and it'll make things more fun for you as a content creator and for your audience too.What percentage of your content should be sales content?We asked Janet what her take is on sales content, and she told us content should be 100% related to your products or services. Every piece of content you create should be leading towards the products you want to sell. A lot of Janet's content, for example, is about educating people on why they might need a content planner (because she sells one!). She won't just constantly ask people to buy her planner, obviously, but months in advance she'll share educational content about why people might need it. Or she'll ask her audience for feedback about her artwork, for example.Every piece of content needs to have a call to action to help you move that relationship with your audience further. That doesn't mean creating 'salesy' content every time. It's about producing deliberate content that moves your audience towards taking a specific action.Subject line of the week with Janet MurrayIn Janet's experience, any subject line that has a poo emoji tends to get better open rates. But also more unsubscribers! (Would you be offended by the poo emoji? We're definitely not!)But one of Janet's better subject lines is "you might regret this". And it's something she uses fairly regularly when she's about to close the cart for a launch, for example. Can you believe she's had people accusing her of bullying with that subject line? But that's the key to why it works. And no, not because it's bullying, but it because it triggers strong emotions in people, and it's one that always tends to do well for Janet. Interesting stuff, right?Useful Episode ResourcesAbout JanetIf you enjoyed this episode aboput courageous content with Janet Murray and would like to connect with Janet, head over to her website (where you can buy her Courageous Content Planner), Instagram, or tune into her new podcast.Related episodesEmail Content That Hits A Nerve – Journalism Hacks From Janet Murray.What should I talk about in my emails? Email marketing content ideas you’ll use.How To Plan 3 Months Of Email Content In An Afternoon.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 creating courageous content, with Janet Murray) 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!
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Sep 29, 2021 • 25min

Using Email Marketing to Build a Profitable Business - with Gisele St Hilaire a Member of The League

In today's episode, we do something a little bit different and share a success story from one of the members of The League - Gisele St. Hilaire. Gisele is a certified FeldenkraisⓇ practitioner and Assistant Trainer and the founder of Sunyata Movement Studio Inc. In other words, she helps people overcome pain and injury! Isn't that awesome? But what's even more awesome is that Gisele has been using email marketing to build a profitable business. And in today's chat, she tells us exactly how!We talk about how Gisele was using email marketing before joining our membership, what amazing results she's been getting since, how much she spends weekly on her email marketing, and more of this kind of incredible stuff.Ready to see what you could do, too?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:59) How Gisele used email marketing before joining The League.(5:35) Gisele's biggest barrier to email marketing. (8:10) A look into Gisele's systems and automations.(9:09) How Gisele cleaned up her list.(12:48) How Gisele increased Earnings Per Subscriber Per Month (EPSPM). (14:45) How email marketing has changed for Gisele's business since she joined The League.(18:20) The activity that had the most impact on Gisele's email marketing.(19:37) What's next when it comes to Gisele's email marketing?(20:42) How much time does email marketing really take? (23:46) Subject line of the week.How Gisele used email marketing before joining The LeagueGisele explained that most of her work used to be hands-on with clients. She offers a service called Functional Integration, which happens face-to-face. But she teaches Awareness Through Movement classes, where she verbally guides people through lessons. When her clients started asking her for the chance to re-watch her sessions again and again through a recording, she saw an opportunity to package her workshops into online products.So how does email marketing fit in? Gisele had given it a go a few years ago. But, to her own admission, she wasn't leveraging her list as much as she could have been. Her biggest barrier was the fact she'd email her list only when she had something to sell. So she wasn't emailing very often, and when she was, she was asking for a sale.Before joining our membership, Gisele had a trickle of new people regularly joining her list. She had a freebie in the shape of a lead magnet, and that had helped her build a list of about 1,000 subscribers. She'd email them 3-5 times in the lead up to a sale and then go quiet for about 3 months. In other words, her email marketing was driven by the things she wanted to sell at the time, rather than on where her subscribers were in their journey with her or what problem they were trying to fix. But Gisele wasn't sure how to meet them where they were. And, like many other business owners who are new to email marketing, she was afraid to email her list more often.Sound familiar?A look into Gisele's systems and automationWe asked Gisele a bit more about her systems, and she told us she's using ConvertKit as her email marketing platform. At the start, she was just broadcasting. But over time she got more sophisticated and started embracing automation to create an onboarding sequence and then a welcome sequence. And because she sells a handful of small products as well as providing free content, those sequences consist of 2-4 emails.And that's when things start to get interesting...How Gisele cleaned up her listYou see, one of the first things we encourage our members to do is to give their list a bit of a clean-up. We help our members do that through a specific campaign, which Gisele eventually used, but she also did something pretty amazing to clean up her list.And here it goes...Gisele decided to email her subscribers to let them know she'd be emailing them 3 times a week going forward. Why 3 times a week? Because she was scared of completely obliterating her list had she started sending out emails more frequently. But also, 3 times a week felt like something she could be consistent with in the long run.So in those initial emails, Gisele gave people the option to opt-out. But she also explained, very transparently, what people could do with her emails. They could read and delete or they could store and get back to them whenever they wanted. In the space of about 3-4 months, about 300 people unsubscribed.But something else also happened. A lot of people actually started to reply back to her, i.e. engage with her emails! So after she gave the option for people to leave if they wanted to, she ran our Cold Subscriber Campaign, and that's where she found the cold subscribers who hadn't engaged for three months and actively removed those people from her list. By that point, that only cut her list by a further 30-40 subscribers.So over time and by emailing more often, Gisele gave the opportunity to those less-interested subscribers to leave quietly through the back door. Her list shrunk by about 300 people, but it also became more engaged.And that's a good thing because...How Gisele's increased her Earning Per Subscriber Per Month (EPSPM) One of the metrics we encourage our members to look at is the Earnings per Subscriber per Month (or EPSPM). And that's pretty much what it says on the tin. It's how much money you earn every month for every subscriber that's on your list.Before joining The League, Gisele was making a mega respectable $1.30 per subscriber. But after cleaning up her list and implementing some of the strategies we teach, Gisele is now making an amazing $4.10 per subscriber! Isn't she awesome?!How email marketing has changed for Gisele's business since she joined The LeagueGisele tells us she feels way better about her email marketing now. Her customers aren't leaving her list (despite her emailing more regularly and often), and they're more engaged. But also, Gisele can tell she's getting better at the whole thing. Admitting she struggles with the writing side of things, she can see how she's improving and getting quicker at composing her emails as time goes on.Gisele also talked about running another one of our campaigns - the Time Lord campaign - to promote one of her standalone online products. The campaign runs over 5 days, and Gisele was hoping to get 10 sales at $79 per product. Do you know what happened? She sold 6 on day one and by day 5 she'd sold a total of 40! Plus, she also received lots of lovely comments and even some great testimonials without even having to ask for them!So let's re-cap what Gisele did right. She took her list and tidied it up first - making it smaller and narrowing it down to those people who were super engaged. She then started running campaigns and getting email marketing right by setting up processes to build a profitable business. Now Gisele is in a position to start focusing on building her list because she knows that if she was to drive hundreds or even thousands more subscribers through that her list, it's proven to work. She's tested the system, made it work, and now she's ready to add to that list.Just. Brilliant.The activity that had the most impact on Gisele's email marketingHands down, the one thing Gisele started doing that had the most impact on her email marketing, she says, is producing video. It's not always Gisele speaking on camera though - she also produces slideshows. But embracing video has been key for her - a huge step up that proved really beneficial.What's next when it comes to Gisele's email marketing? Gisele told us two things are on her to-do list when it comes to her email marketing. The first thing she wants to do is to grow her list. In the past, Gisele hadn't been comfortable with social media or putting money behind ads. But that's all about to change because she's now super confident that growing her list is going to work for her business.The second thing Gisele wants to do is to set up the right campaigns to feed into what we call The Master Controller, or her main product. And in Gisele's case, that's the membership she's launching. So she has a few email campaigns she's excited to set up and write. Cool beans!How much time does email marketing really take?  To reassure anyone who thinks they don't have time to do email marketing because they have a business to run, we asked Gisele whether embracing email marketing has taken over her life. And her answer is that it's becoming a more and more natural part of running her business. It's the one thing she now knows she's not going to give up because she can see how foundational and essential email is. Nothing is going to beat it.Gisele admits that creating and setting up campaigns took a bit of time, initially. But it's an asset that she now has in her business and can go back and improve on at any time. Writing emails can take Gisele anything between 15 minutes and half an hour, and for her, that happens 3 times a week. She then spends another couple of hours a week learning and creating campaigns and envisages needing to spend 3-4 hours a month on getting to where she wants to be, over the next couple of months. But after that, she reckons one hour a week will be plenty. And isn't that music to your ears?Subject line of the week We hope you enjoyed Gisele's story and how she is using email marketing to build a profitable business. But let's now move on to this week's subject line of the week, which is is "Kennedy's fired". And it's one we sent out recently during one of our events. It has to do with the fact that Kennedy dropped the ball and forgot to upgrade our Zoom account, so we had people kicked out of the event because we didn't have enough space for all our participants. Oh, dear.Why did the subject line work though? Because it implies there's been some sort of dispute between us. The truth is that we've been friends for over 18 years, so something like this is unlikely to really affect us. But creating comedic tension with your subject lines definitely works. Try it out!Useful Episode ResourcesAbout GiseleIf you enjoyed Gisele's story on how she's using email marketing to build a profitable business and would like to connect with her, you can find her on her website Sunyata Movement Studio.Related episodesHow to create and sell courses online that people actually want.Write Emails Like A Boss – Even If You Think You’re A Crap Writer.Who should not join The League of email marketing heroes.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 using email marketing to build a profitable business with the lovely Gisele St. Hilaire) 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.
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Sep 22, 2021 • 39min

*SPECIAL 100TH EPISODE: A Week in The Life at Email Marketing Heroes (Behind The Scenes with Rob & Kennedy)

We have reached 100 episodes of The Email Marketing Show! Whoop! To celebrate we (Rob and Kennedy) have recorded a very special behind-the-scenes episode - a week in the life here at Email Marketing Heroes. We talk about what we do on Sundays (Kennedy), Mondays, and Wednesdays, how we build our campaigns, how we write our daily emails... and how Kennedy puts his underpants on in the morning. You really don't want to miss this one... SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (3:15) The team at Email Marketing Heroes. (7:06) Should you make time for email marketing?(9:20) A Sunday in the life of Email Marketing Heroes. (11:08) A Monday in the life of Email Marketing Heroes.(18:15) Email Marketing Wednesday!!!(20:54) What about our daily emails?(25:58) Batching, batching, batching.(31:42) Email marketing is the one activity that will grow your business!(35:15) Did Rob and Kennedy really record this whole episode naked? (36:40) Subject line of the week. The team at Email Marketing HeroesIf you're new to the show, welcome. We are Rob and Kennedy, we run The Email Marketing Show and an awesome membership called The League of Email Marketing Heroes. Rob and Kennedy (and some of our staff) are based in the North East of England and have a remote team with members from all over the world, including India and Columbia. We are currently making mid-6 figures a year and might even be able to hit a million soon. But we don't say this to brag (honestly!) For us, how much we make is a measurement of how many people we can spread the word to about this really good email marketing stuff!Should you make time for email marketing?  As we take you behind the scenes of our working week, you'll see just how much time we spend on email marketing. And you might think: "Of course you guys spend time on email marketing. You teach the stuff!" And you'd be right in thinking that.But the real reason why we spend a lot of time on email marketing is because our business would dry up if we didn't. You see, 90% of our sales come from email marketing, so we couldn't afford not to do it. It's not a question of having time for us - in fact, we don't have time not to do it.And in our opinion, neither do you! As Rob always says, if you're not spending time on email marketing, what else are you spending it on? Are we all inventing stuff that we could be doing in order to feel like we're being productive and getting loads done? Does what you do every day really move the needle in your business? Our tip is to focus on the activities that make you sales - and that's always going to be email. With email, you can make sales now but also setting up sales for the future. And that's how your business is going to grow. So focus on building systems in your business that will make you sales both now and in the future.And with that out of the way, let's look into our week...A Sunday in the life of Email Marketing HeroesBelieve it or not, our working week starts on a Sunday, which is when Kennedy will spend a couple of hours looking at our social media channels, including our Instagram, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators Facebook Group, and our Facebook page and, in one sitting, plan the content we are going to be sharing. Kennedy will typically record around 6 videos and create a whole bunch of graphics or brief them to our awesome designer Parul. And the reason why he chooses to do it on a Sunday is that during the week we are focused on supporting our staff on Slack. On a Sunday, the team is off, so Kennedy can get in his creative zone. Plus, he finds that weekends are the best times to come up with new ideas!A Monday in the life of Email Marketing HeroesMonday marks the official start of the week here at Email Marketing Heroes. Our staff check in every morning and check out every single evening, depending on what time zone they are in the world and how many hours they work. If we have something specific or an idea we want to discuss, we (Rob and Kennedy) typically get together for a call on a Monday to talk strategy. The cool thing is - we're completely flexible with this. We value flexibility and freedom to be able to do the things we want when we want and wherever we want. But if we need a call, we'll make that happen. Otherwise, we'll just keep an eye on whatever is coming around the corner to avoid anything ever becoming urgent or critical.A Wednesday in the life of Email Marketing HeroesHang on a sec. What about Tuesday? Well, we actually don't do much work in this business on a Tuesday - or a Thursday or Friday for that matter! We can make exceptions, of course, so if there's a meeting we've been trying to make happen that can only take place on one of those days, we'll go ahead with it. But we have our own take on meetings - we'll only book one if there's a specific purpose to it. Wednesday on the other hand is a very important day... because it's Email Marketing Wednesday!!! And that's when - on the first Wednesday of every month - we record this podcast. We are able to attract some really big-name people in the world of online digital marketing, and when we let our guests know we only record one day a month, we've hardly ever had any pushbacks. But we definitely intensify our work on a Wednesday. We also do content creation, live events inside our membership, The League, and record training. We dedicate Wednesdays to email marketing because this allows us to think about it all day - about all the different email marketing strategies we can share with other people and how to best reach out and teach them. It's definitely an intense experience. But once all the podcast episodes are recorded, for example, we can pass on the activities to other members of our team to carry with their own separate tasks and make things happen simultaneously without us getting involved. What about our daily emails? This is where we truly live in the moment every single day, for the most part. As most of you know, we send an email every single day to our list - 365 days a year. There are obviously some other emails that get sent to people to our members or our customers, but in terms of our general list, the email we send daily are written live, in the moment. Or sometimes, they were written into our email marketing platform up to a maximum of 4 hours before, if we're doing a split test. Rob writes most of the emails, and on a Friday, he might want to write the Saturday and Sunday emails too, if he wants to take the days off. But not always. Because it typically only takes a whole of 10 minutes to get the email written and queued up and sent, so not long at all!Our email campaignsThe only exception to that is that every 4-6 weeks we run a new campaign that replaces our daily emails. And those emails are usually pre-written. There's no chance we'd do an email campaign live - those have a lot of moving parts, and you might risk sending the wrong emails to the wrong segments and confusing people. So running an automation and then testing it is a lot more secure. Every 6-8 weeks we come up with a new way of promoting our membership, The League, which is our main product. We try and promote it from different angles because not everyone buys it for the same reasons. And we teach our members to do the same exact thing with their email marketing and products. You'll get better results from running different campaigns every 4-6 weeks to stimulate people in new and interesting ways.When we're coming up with a new campaign, the process normally starts on a Monday when we might have a strategy call and plan the campaign out. We go through the idea and talk about ways of making it more interesting and appealing to people who haven't engaged in the past. Sometimes we get to the end of that call and realise it wasn't a good idea at all, so we throw it out. Sometimes we'll have a great idea, but it doesn't quite work as we expected. But sometimes we have great ideas that actually work. And those are the campaigns that end up making it into The League to be shared with our members. Writing our email campaigns and testingWhenever we start a new campaign, we first write all the emails in a Google Doc. At that point, we don't worry about the technology. We can both work on the document and share comments and suggestions in real-time, which works super well if you're collaborating with others. When we're happy with our final copy, we upload the emails onto our email marketing platform and then ask our designer Parul to create the graphics for that particular promotion. We like to get things done simultaneously where we can, so we can just get the work done faster.And then there's a really important step you don't want to miss here - testing. You want to go through and click on every link to make sure it's going where it's supposed to. Drop the price of your product to 50p/50 cents or £1/$1 and buy it - go through the process and see what it's like for your customers. (Just don't forget to put the price back up before you go live!) Create various email addresses and see what the experience is like for someone who goes through a certain path vs a subscriber who chooses a different route.  Bathing, batching, batching!You probably noticed that batching tasks is a big part of what we do. Even when we're running a new email campaign, for example, we'll split the tasks up. We never work on things in sequence. Take our Time Lord campaign, for example. It runs over the course of 5 days and includes several videos. The last thing you want to do is to record these videos separately and having to set up your equipment 5 different times on 5 different days! That's just not efficient and forces your brain to switch gears. What you want to do instead is to stay in the same creative zone. The same goes with writing your emails - you want to do all that in one sitting. Email marketing is the one activity that will grow your business!We spend 70% of our time doing email marketing because that's the way to turn more subscribers into customers and more customers into repeat customers than doing anything else.There's only so much you can post on social media before you start diluting the reach of your own message. So you're better off focusing on how to make your one post a day better, for example - make it more engaging so you can serve your business better. But looking at your email marketing and spending time figuring out new angles to turn people into customers will help you grow your business. Email is the one activity that will drive growth in your business, so if you're not going to make the time to do it (or have someone else do it for you), you won't be able to grow your business in the way you want.  Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week is "Sideways underpants". This was written by Kennedy, and it was all about the fact he got himself some fancy Ted Baker underpants, only to find out that they put the tag on the side, rather than the back. And that got Kennedy all flustered and confused when getting dressed in the morning.The lesson in that? Why make things complicated for your customers? When you create products and services, don't make life difficult for them. Build on their beliefs, what they already know, and what they're already doing. And if this isn't proof that you can find email ideas absolutely everywhere, we don't know what is! Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesWriting email every day vs batch writing in one go. How To Plan 3 Months Of Email Content In An Afternoon. How Often Should You Email – Emailing More Often.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 (and an insight into our week, here at The Email Marketing Heroes) 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! 
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Sep 15, 2021 • 25min

Is Email Marketing Dead?

Is email marketing dead? We hear this quite a bit. And it's understandable. People might be thinking email marketing dead, dying, or at least limping. We've got all these social media platforms, Messenger marketing, SMS, push notifications in apps all fighting for attention. So where does email fit it? Well, let's find out - shall we?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:55) People don't open emails because most emails are shit. (4:26) It's not about the words you use in your emails - it's about the intention behind them.(6:02) Why you should switch the focus of your emails. (11:15) Email marketing and algorithms.(13:13) Social media cannot replace email! (16:53) Value-led email marketing isn't dead! (17:43) Email is just another content channel. (20:04) Nothing can replace the emotional impact and relationship building you can achieve via email. (21:42) The faster you can master email marketing, the faster you can supercharge your business. (23:10) Subject line of the week. People don't open emails because most emails are shitThat's right. Let's not beat around the bush. It's the truth, and you know it. Most emails are shit.As a consumer, you may have signed up to someone's list only to receive their emails once in a while. And then when you do get them, they're all about selling you something. So there's no reason for you to actually open those emails - not if you're not interested in buying that product or service anyway. And not if you're not interested right now. And while we're on the topic, let's be clear about something. You don't have to be an amazing writer to be able to create emails that aren't shit. It's not about how your emails are written. It's about the purpose, the use, and the intent behind the emails you send. If you send an email every day that is a variation of, "Here's why you should buy this thing," you can't expect great results. Because there's no intent behind your emails other than asking people to buy from you. It's not about the words - it's about the intention behind themYou see, we strongly believe that your emails should never be transactional - not even your transaction emails! But the words don't matter - it's the intention behind your emails that matters. Let's bring this to life with an example from a brick-and-mortar shop. You know when you walk into a shop and find yourself looking around, browsing the shelves, and someone comes up to you and asks, "Can I help you?" They're not using the actual words, but they're trying to sell you something. More often than not, you'll say, "No, thanks" just for someone else in a different part of the store to approach you again! Now, let's look at someone who doesn't do that. Apple. Whether you're an Apple fan or not, you can't deny that the shopping experience is different there. What Apple figured out (and that's something most brands haven't!) is that creating an enjoyable environment where customers can spend some time engaging with their gadgets without anyone bothering them makes people want to do just that - go in, check out their cool stuff, and buy it! And that happens without anyone hovering by your side asking if they can help! This is a great way to think about your email marketing too. People don't open your emails to read a variation of, "Hey, can I sell you something?" They open your emails to check out the cool stuff that's inside. And that's the value that's packed in your emails. If there's no value in your emails, there's no reason for your subscribers to open them! The old way of doing email marketing has been dead for years. But value-led email marketing is your biggest opportunity to stand out in people's inboxes. Switch the focus of your emailsWait. Does this mean you can't sell stuff in your emails?Of course not!You can sell stuff in 100% of your emails! But that can't be the only purpose of them. There has to be an offer in there for people who want to take what you said and do something more with it. Your email has to have value.And we're lucky that our customers and subscribers tell us this all the time! We have people who take the time out of their day to tell us how happy they are that our emails land in their (and we quote) 'crowded inbox'!How cool would that be for your business if you were to send out emails that your customers and subscribers want to talk about publicly? Compliment on social media?Awesome, right? Well, it happens to us. And not because we're not selling in our emails. But simply because we switched the focus and the highlight of our content. Let's talk about email marketing and algorithmsWe all know that social media platforms use algorithms. We don't need to understand how they work, technically. But in a nutshell, all social media platforms use algorithms to decide what content and features they want to promote and prioritise. So when Facebook wanted to promote Facebook lives, we'd all get notifications as soon as someone we vaguely followed started a Facebook live. And that means that if you're not out there on social media producing the type of content their algorithms like, you're potentially not going to reach a lot of people. But email marketing is different. And what you really need to focus on is to make sure you have a clean list and aren't doing things that are considered spam. Sure, algorithms play a part in email marketing too, but as long as you're not doing crappy emails, then you are going to land under people's noses! Social media cannot replace email!If email marketing is dead, are we all going to forget about emails and only use social media then? Well, hang on. Let's not forget that social media rely on you having an email address. Because in order for you to create an account on any social media platform, you need an email address. And that social media platform is going to use that email address to keep in touch with you and invite you to check out more of their content. Because that's exactly what happens when a friend tags you in a photo on Facebook, and you get an email to say exactly that! So actually, even the big players - the huge social media platforms - rely on email. And you should do the same - be everywhere you're going to be online but use every opportunity you get to grow your email list.Do you speak on stage? Great. Invite people to join your email list.Do you do the most awesome Facebook lives? Fantastic. Invite people to join your email list.Do you host the best podcast show? Brilliant. Invite people to join your email list.Take your audience - your followers, your customers, your listeners, your subscribers - and move them around your infrastructure. Move your people from social media to email and vice versa. Become 3D - surround your audience in the marketplace by being everywhere. Value-lead email marketing isn't deadIf you're taking one thing away from this episode let it be this - value-led email marketing isn't dead. If you do email marketing in the content-driven way we teach, you'll stand out from everyone else. So many more people are going to love your emails that you will make more sales! The key thing is to move away from emailing when you want to sell to emailing so that when your subscribers are ready to buy, you're right there in front of them. Email is just another content channelWe've said this before, but you've got to think about things from your customers' perspectives. Most people check their emails on their phones. The mobile usage of email is increasing, so just see this as another channel of content, snuggled in there between TikTok and Instagram. Think about it. If you can share some words on Facebook, why can't you share them in an email? It's just content on the internet. Whether it pops up in an email or a tweet, what's the difference? If anything, you've got so much more space and freedom to articulate your thoughts in an email because you don't have that annoying character limitation. Email isn't inherently annoying - it can be incredibly useful sometimes. So focus on making your emails good - so good that people want to get them in their inbox. Nothing can replace the emotional impact and relationship building you can achieve via emailYou know, the truth is, there are so many other content channels you can use. Just listen to any of the marketing experts out there - they'll have a method to teach you to help you become great at Facebook lives, Facebook groups, TikTok, Pinterest - you name it! You can build your audience and your business on any of those platforms and in any of those ways.But email is unique. There's nothing like it. Because SMS is irritating if you receive too many of them. Plus they have a character limit too, and it's not practical or easy to read and digest stuff on an SMS - you just can't build much of a relationship with an SMS. Then there's Messenger, but with people trying to spend less and less time on social media, that's also not a good place to be. The truth is that there's nothing that replaces the emotional impact and relationship building you can achieve by delivering content through email. If you want to make sales, it's still an essential bit for your business.So the faster you start mastering and enjoying email marketing, the faster you're going to be able to supercharge the other elements of your business. Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week is "Why we stopped being sexy". First of all, it's a lie, isn't it? We were never sexy to start with! Haha. (Feel free to contradict us, here, by the way).But it worked because it has a bit of a provocative word in it. You're not going to get anything from your bank that has the word 'sexy' in it, are you? That gets your attention. And if you follow our work at all, you know we don't take ourselves too seriously - we like to mess about and have self-deprecating humour. But the interesting thing about this email is that we split tested two different email opt-ins - one was about receiving a shiny lead magnet, and the other one was about receiving our emails daily. And guess what? The one that was just about getting our emails every day got us a 59% increase in subscribers! How cool is that? If anything, that just proves (once again) that email marketing isn't dead! Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodes7 Ways To Give Subscriber Value In Your Marketing Emails (So People Love Receiving Them).How To Grow Your Email List Using Facebook Pages (Without Ads) – Rachel Miller Moolah Style!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 (and finally have the answer to the question, "Is email marketing dead?") 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.
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Sep 8, 2021 • 29min

How to turn data into amazing outcomes - learn about Measuring Marketing with Chris Mercer

Do you want to learn how to turn some super simple data into amazing insights and even better outcomes? Today's episode teaches you everything you need to know about measuring marketing with Chris Mercer. If just hearing the mention of Google Analytics makes you break up in hives, this episode is for you. Because you might not see yourself as a number person, but you can still absolutely gather data that will help you make better decisions in your business.Ready for all the juicy stuff?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:44) Does Chris Mercer really want to open a guitar shop when he retires?(4:51) Measuring marketing - why every business should start doing it.(5:50) What you should be tracking when it comes to email marketing.(6:41) Why digital marketers should start using Google Analytics.(7:21) How you can start using Google Analytics (even if you're not a number person!)(13:00) Why you should start using UTM parameters right now.(16:29) Recommended tools to build UTMs. (18:10) How time-consuming is measuring marketing?(22:21) How big does your email list need to be for you to start measuring marketing? (25:53) Subject line of the week with Chris Mercer.Measuring marketing - why every business should start doing itAre you one of those people who run their business on a wing and a prayer, hoping it will all work out? Are you trying (and struggling) to figure it all out as you go?We know that a lot of people use email marketing because it's a fantastic channel. But do you tap into the functionality offered by your email provider and measure the results of your email marketing campaigns? A lot of people don't.And that's not just in terms of sales but also in terms of the customer journey and how you're moving people through a conversation that eventually leads your subscribers to buy your products. If you don't do this - like many others - it's probably because you don't know you should and you don't know you can.And that's about to change. Because if you're a business owner, you absolutely can and should measure your customer journey.What should you be tracking when it comes to email marketing?The top two pieces of information every business should be measuring, Mercer says, are open rates and click-through rates. Open rates matter because they tell you how interesting your email might be for your marketplace. While click-through rates tell you how efficient your emails are at getting people to take the next step you want them to take.But once you've got your subscribers off their email app and onto your web page, the data from your email provider isn't enough anymore. You need tools like Google Analytics to help you tell another part of the story. What happens now that your subscriber is on your website?So let's say you had 100 people who opened your email. Ten of them clicked through the link, but only one bought from you. What happened to the other nine? Google Analytics can provide the information you need to close that gap.Should digital marketers start using Google Analytics? A lot of people think of Google Analytics as something confusing and overwhelming they can't make any sense of. So the first thing that needs to happen is a mindset change - you need to shift the way you look at it.Mercer explained this with an easy example. Let's imagine you've walked into a shoe shop. The sales assistant will walk up to you, ask you questions, direct you to the right product for your needs, and possibly even try and upsell you. That's a completely natural conversation that would be happening in this scenario and interaction.Let's now move back to the online world. The way that your customers interact with your web pages is the equivalent of the conversation that would take place in a physical store with an actual person. But unless you intentionally try and check what happens in that interaction (with a tool like Google Analytics) you have no idea of what would take place in that conversation.The greatest mindset shift is to realise that that you may be selling online, but that conversation is still there. Measuring marketing is how digital marketers listen to the interaction between their customers and their website. And you should absolutely do this because you'd never ignore a customer in the brick-and-mortar world, would you?How to make sense of Google AnalyticsOnce you set up Google Analytics, you get access to a lot of data. But this information is not stitched together - it's not in any organised shape or form. It's the equivalent of you picking up a storybook where a bunch of pages has been ripped up. You can totally still read the book because the fact it's missing pages doesn't mean you've suddenly lost the ability to read! But it won't make much sense as a story.The same happens with Google Analytics. Setting it up gives you access to lots of data, but that information isn't joined together and utilised properly. Investing the time to do it (i.e. embracing measuring marketing) allows you to respond to that information. So you can, for example, adjust email subject lines or change body copy to try and move the conversation the way we want it to go. And once you decide to start working with Google Analytics, you will see impressive results quite quickly.Why you should start using UTMsA tactic Mercer recommends you use is UTM parameters. So when you have UTM parameters set up and someone clicks on one of your emails, you can identify where that traffic came from, what type of traffic it was, and what the purpose of it was. So, as an example, you can use UTM code through your email provider and start looking at your customer journey. Because UTMs help you understand which path the person who clicked on a particular link came from and the route they took.You can look at information such as what the purpose of the email was. Was it to make someone aware of the product? Was it to engage them? Or to help them close and buy? Once you can pinpoint what emails are generating the type of actions you're interested in, you'll also know what works and what doesn't and be able to change things as a result. Recommended tools to build UTMsGoogle has its own UTM builder, which is a nice and neat browser extension. But Mercer also recommended two different tools to build UTMs. One is utm.io. The other one is the free UTM Builder that Mercer offers as part of his Traffic Tracking Toolkit on his website measuringmarketing.io, together with an eBook and a video to help you set it all up.How time-consuming is it to set your business up for measuring marketing?Setting Google Analytics up and getting started with UTMs and measuring marketing doesn't need to take long. Sure, Google Analytics can be complicated in terms of the data you can access through the tool. But, Mercer says, you can start things up and always improve at a later date.Setting up UTMs with your email provider will take minutes, and the payoff in terms of visibility into your customer journey is incredible, so there's no real excuse not to do it!After all, you can only read data at a later date if you've been collecting it in the first place. And once you get started and have measuring marketing set up, you can then focus on doing more of what works. In other words, stop trying to pull up the troughs and focus on the peaks instead!How big does your list need to be for you to be able to start with measuring marketing?Mercer says that the truth is in the trend and the power is in the pattern. If you're looking for a pattern or a trend, then 100 people on your list is a good number to get started because you can judge pretty quickly if an email is working or not.Of course, the more that number grows, the more you can rely on trends becoming more stable - the bigger the sample, the better. But that doesn't mean you can't embrace measuring marketing when your list is still on the small side. As long as you can see a consistent pattern over time, you're doing measuring marketing. Subject line of the week with Chris Mercer Mercer recently changed a measurement marketing certification they were offering to partners. So he sent out an email with the subject line: "Your certification..."This worked well for Mercer's business for a particular campaign in the context of changing the messaging around the certification. The subject line was successful because it made the recipients wonder what the content was all about - it used curiosity as a hook. It got a huge open rate and the format worked really well. Pretty cool stuff!Useful Episode ResourcesAbout MercerDid you enjoy this episode about measuring markeing with Chris Mercer? If you want to connect with the amazing Mercer, head over to his website measuringmarketing.io. Chris has a free membership called Toolbox membership that offers a lot of free tools to help you improve your marketing. Head over to measuringmarketing.io/emailmarketingshow/ to gain access to a range of tools to measure your traffic throughout the customer journey, guides and frameworks to improve your measurement system, and a free library of templates, scripts, resources, and awesome toolkits.And if you're a member of The League don't forget to go and check out the battle plan that Mercer did for us called Using Google Analytics to Measure your Email Tracking.Related episodesHow To Track Your Email Sales – UTM Tracking With Tatiana Belim.Increase Your Email Open-Rates: 13 Email Subject Line Tips to Stand Out in An Overcrowded Inbox #2018.Email AMP and the future of email marketing with Aweber CEO Tom Kulzer.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 measuring marketing with Chris Mercer) 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.
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Sep 1, 2021 • 32min

How to create and sell courses online that people actually want

There's nothing worse than spending time and energy into creating an online course and then finding out that nobody actually wants to buy it, right? We've been there and done that. So here are our best tips to help you create and sell courses online. The trick? You want to be sure that people in your audience will actually go out of their way to pay you money for the course you put together. Ready to find out how to do this thing? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (5:06) Why you need to create a course about something you're passionate about. (7:44) Why you need to have an audience before you start selling a course. (9:55) Why you need to pay attention to the questions your audience asks you.(11:48) The difference between "problem aware" courses and "solution aware" courses. (15:15) Why you should always tell your audience about the price of your online course.(18:02) Why you need to get people involved into the creation of your course. (19:48) Why you need to ask questions and run surveys.(23:57) Why you're NOT your target market. (26:12) Why the value isn't in the quantity. (28:36) Subject line of the week. Why you need to create a course about something you're passionate about (but also think about profitability!)So you've created this online course and put it on the internet. You think everyone in your audience has seen it because of course people see 100% of our content online, don't they? (Or do they?!)But no one bought it. Why? Well, maybe you've created a course that nobody wants. Or maybe you just don't know how to get people interested in buying it. And you know what? We don't want this for you. We want you to be able to create and sell courses online like a pro. So how exactly are you going to do that? We all love sharing stuff we're passionate about, don't we? That's why we get excited about the stuff we teach. But just because we're passionate about the topic of a course we created, it doesn't mean we're going to easily sell that thing. The process of creating the course takes a lot of time and effort. But the key is to construct an offer and a sales process that will make people buy your course.Your passion will help you through all the hard work you need to do to bring your course into the world. But make sure you also strike the right balance between what you're passionate about and what's profitable. Why you need to have an audience before you create and sell courses onlineIt's really hard to create a course and sell it at scale if you don't already have some people who might be interested in buying it. Ideally, you want some kind of audience already in place that will pay attention to what you sell. So build an audience first. You can start on social media, but make sure you then move them onto your email list.And if you're worried about not having a product to sell to your list just yet, you can be an affiliate for someone else. Or you can simply point your subscribers to your flagship content. This could be your podcast, your blog posts, your YouTube channel, or the content in your Facebook group - whatever it might be. But first things first, build a list of people who are your perfect customers. Why you need to pay attention to the questions your audience asks youOnce you've got an audience, you need to pay attention to the questions they ask you. Because those will give you insight into the minds of your customers and fuel the content of your online course. And that's much better (in our opinion) than focusing on customer avatars! Because it's less about the car your people drive, the newspaper they read, or the cereal they eat in the morning, than it is about their mindset. What matters is where your customers are at. Are they ready to buy this thing you're selling?So pay attention to the trends amongst the people who become your best customers. Those are the ones who buy your products and give you the least hassle. Focus on their mindset and the belief they hold. And then start crafting your courses to serve those particular kinds of markets. Create and sell courses online for people who are "problem aware" vs "solution aware" Another decision you need to make when you want to create and sell courses online is whether your course will address the problem that your ideal clients have or the solution that you offer. Some of your customers will be more "problem aware" while others will be "solution aware". Here's the difference with an example. Some of the members in our membership, The League, want to sell more courses online, for example. That's a problem they have - they have a thing they want to sell and want to find a way to sell more of it. These people are "problem aware". But we also help people who have figured out that the best way to sell more of their stuff is through email marketing. These members are "solution aware".In the same way, you'll have people in your audience who are "problem aware" and others who are "solution aware". And you'll want to create different types of courses for them, which you'll also market differently.  This is why we don't believe in customer avatars. Because knowing how to address the people in your audience who are "problem aware" vs the ones who are "solution aware" is much more important than what age bracket or demographic they're in. So instead of focusing on customer avatars, focus on the mindset of your ideal clients. Why you should tell your audience about the price of our courseAnother thing we suggest you do when you start to create and sell courses online is to reach out to your audience - either via social media or email - and tell them you're putting together a course. You also want to tell them the price of the course and ask if they want the link to it. Here's your formula: "I'm putting together a course about this thing. It's going to be this price. Who would like the link?"Telling your audience about the price is important because you want anyone who responds to your post or email to know there's a price for whatever you're offering - it's not free! And you don't want to attract people who are mildly or passively interested in your course. You want to attract people who will go out of their way to pay for the information you're offering.At this point, you haven't created the course yet. And if you don't get any replies (or not enough to make it worth your while), then guess what? You've just discovered there isn't enough interest in that course. But at least you haven't wasted any time, effort, and energy in creating something that wouldn't have sold well for you. Why you need to get people excited about your courseSo you told your audience about your course, you told them how much it's going to be, and you sent out the link to it. Now it's time to create some involvement and excitement by getting people to express their choices and "vote" on things like the name, the cover, the graphic, etc. Why? Because you want to make people emotionally involved in the process. This gives them a buy-in into the creation and the genesis of the whole course, and it's going to work wonders for you. We did the same to come up with a name for our membership, The League. We opened it up to our audience and asked for ideas. And yes, it meant we handed over some creative control, but we also got some fantastic suggestions and made our audience feel involved in the process from the very beginning.Why you need to ask questions and run surveysWe are big believers in running surveys. Because they help you find out what your audience's biggest and most frustrating problems are, what their objections are, and what they're trying to overcome. Asking people about them and their experiences is another thing that makes them emotionally buy into the process of discovery and creation of the course.Plus, when you pay attention to the things your audience says and the language they use, you'll know what content to create for your course. You know when you're walking down the street, and you hear someone shout your name? It might not be you they're after, but you automatically pay attention. This is the same thing. When your ideal clients hear you using the exact words and phrases they use to talk about their problems, their subconscious brain sits up and pays attention. And when you speak your customers' language, you're able to create a course with a name, a hook, and an offer that will make your audience sit up and pay attention. Why you need to check what ads people are runningAnother strategy that might come in handy before you go ahead and create your course is to check what adverts other people are already running on Facebook. You can see the Facebook Ads Library here as part of Facebook's transparency policy.Doing this bit of research gives you an idea of who's running which ads and what kind of things are popular. So think of competitors or someone who's in your space and look at what ads they're running. Pay particular attention to what wording they're using to make sure there's an opportunity and an audience out there for the course you're about to create. Why you're not your target marketOne of the things we've been guilty of in the past is to fall into the trap of thinking that we are our own target market. But we're not. Even if you used to be in the position of the people you're now selling to, you are not anymore. You are not your target market.The minute you become the course creator, you're no longer in the same place you were before. We say this a lot - you are not typical. So when thinking about the topic or content of your course don't pay too much attention to what you want or what you used to want because the world changes fast, and you're just not you're target market  anymore. Why the value isn't in the quantityAnd last but not least, another thing to bear in mind when you create and sell courses online is that the value of your course isn't in the length or quantity of your content. Because people want to get rid of their 'pain' - of their problem - as quickly as possible and with the least amount of effort. And they'll actually pay more for that privilege because we're all busy and happy to pay a premium to solve our problems in less time. Here's something worth remembering - the quantity of something isn't the value. The transformation is the value. Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week is, "Invite! (Short notice)" and it's something we sent out to tell our subscribers about a last-minute webinar we were running. You see, normally, we'd start promoting a webinar 3 to 5 days in advance. But in this case, it was super short notice. So we wanted to get as many people as possible onto it. So with this subject line, we used the word "invite". We do a variation of this every time we run an event and might use words like "invitation" or "RSVP" in the subject line. But what this subject line also did very well was creating some sort of urgency. A lot of good subject lines are about generating curiosity, but the words "short notice" triggered urgency too. And while the amount of people who signed up for this webinar isn't the most we've ever had, the rate of registrants to attendees was the highest. This means that the majority of people who registered actually attended. And that's great! Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesBottomless Email Content To Promote Your Courses And Programs.How To Sell Without Price Cutting or Pushing with Mike Montague from Sandler Training.Add This Unusual Step to Your Checklist for Product Launch to Make More Sales After The Cart Closes with Marley Jaxx.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 create and sell courses online) 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. 
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Aug 25, 2021 • 25min

How to amplify email campaigns, Clate Mask from Keap spills the beans

We all want to increase the open rates in our email campaigns. But how do we do it? How do you make your subscribers drop what they're doing to go and read your email and yours only? If only, right? Well, it's possible. And today we find out how to amplify email campaigns - Clate Mask style. So, are you ready to have your mind completely blown by what Clate, CEO and co-founder of the amazing software company Keap has to share with us? Then listen on or read on (whatever takes your fancy)!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:45) Is there really another Clate Mask at Keap?(4:57) Why omnichannel marketing works.(7:26) Can solopreneurs embrace omnichannel marketing?(8:50) How to use a specific channel to amplify your email campaigns.(11:19) How a simple text message can prompt your subscribers to check your emails.(12:03) How creating an 'environment of zero competition' increases your open rates.(15:30) The powerful pshychology behind sending a text message to your subscribers. (17:45) How to get your subscribers' mobile number. (20:57) Subject line of the week with Clate Mask. (23:36) Bonus! Why Infusionsoft is now called Keap.Why omnichannel marketing worksIt's been called 'integrated marketing' or 'multi-channel marketing'. Today we're referring to it as 'omnichannel marketing', and it's something that Clate Mask's company Keap has been a pioneer of. But whatever you want to call it, it's this idea of having multiple touchpoints with your audience - to surround people with your messages.Back when Clate Mask started Keap (then called Infusionsoft), the mediums were email, phone call, direct mail, and even fax - would you believe it?! Keap is what enables businesses across the world to communicate with customers in multiple ways.And you know what happens to businesses that choose this omnichannel approach to get in touch with their customers? Their open rates increase. Multi-channel marketing is simply more effective, but as a business owner, you have to be disciplined. In Clate's words, "you can't be lazy". You've got to be serious about it and keen to orchestrate your messages and your campaigns. As we always say, just because someone is on your email list, it doesn't mean they see everything you send out - people are busy, and inboxes are cluttered. But the good news is that (as long as you're active there) they also see your business on social media, they might listen to your podcast if you have one, or interact with you in your Facebook group. If you embrace the approach of surrounding your customers in the market and then apply it to structured email campaigns with specific goals of moving prospects to customers and existing customers to repeat customers, this method becomes really powerful.Does omnichannel marketing work for solopreneurs? The short answer is YES!It's easy to think that if you want to message your customers in many different ways, you need a big machine. And only big businesses have big operations, right? Well, not quite. Because Clate has seen a lot of marketers use omnichannel marketing to their advantage as one-person companies or solopreneurs. So the good news is that you can, too!But what you do need to have, Clate says, is an understanding of how effective this approach can be. Otherwise, you'll fall into the trap of thinking the work is repetitive and just a duplication of what you've already been doing. The most common mistake we make as business owners is to think that we've told our subscribers something once, and everybody got the message. It just doesn't work that way. And savvy marketers know otherwise. Of course, bigger companies have bigger resources and are more likely to adopt a multi-channel approach for their marketing, but nothing stops you from embracing this if you're a solopreneur.How to use a particular channel to amplify email campaigns (Clate Mask style)So let's say you have a new offer. Or you're launching a course or a membership. You've got something to promote, and you've decided to put some real effort behind your next email marketing campaign. How do you go about it?Here's the simple answer. Combine text and emails. Keap has recently introduced text messaging (both in broadcast form or by one-to-one), and they've seen how effective it is to use text messages as a separate step in email marketing campaigns. Know how? By following up one of your emails with a quick text message that says, "Hey, just wanted to let you know that I dropped an email in your inbox with some really important stuff. You want to make sure you get that, so check it out right away." The key is to keep it short and use a personal, conversational tone because that's what people are used to and expect when we receive text messages, right?How a simple text message can prompt your subscribers to check your emailsThe simple step of following your email with a text message amplifies and heightens the importance of the email you just sent. Because, Clate explains, it's not about using the text message as a repetition of the content that's in your email. That's actually a common mistake that marketers make.It's not even about the idea of sending two messages instead of one. When it comes to multi-channel marketing, there's no such thing as one plus one equals two, Clate says. It's one plus one equals three if ever there was that! (Powerful, right??!) Because by adding another medium, you amplify the message of your primary communication.And of course, your subscribers know you didn't personally send the message - they know it's probably part of an automation. But their conditioned response as human beings after receiving your text is to go and check their inbox. And not for any email. They're going to check their inbox and look for your email.How creating an 'environment of zero competition' increases your open ratesAnd as if by magic, you have successfully created what we loviongly call the 'environment of zero competition'. Your email is not competing for attention in someone's inbox anymore. You're asking your subscriber to look for your name in their inbox. And the effect of that is huge! It dramatically increase open rates.Smart communicators and marketers realise that being able to send a text message isn't about repeating the content of the email you just sent. It's about either prompting them to go and open that email. Clever, right? The powerful psychology behind sending a text message to your subscribersIf you've been following us at all, you know we're all about the psychology of email. And getting a text from someone to say, "Hey, check out my email" triggers an unconscious response to go and do just that. But there's also something else at play here. You're asking your subscriber to take action, and you're getting an extra level of commitment when they do.This is clever because you're not bombarding your audience. You're asking your subscribers to do something for you. They're now in what we call 'an active state' - they're no longer just scrolling through emails to decide what to delete. They're looking for one in particular - yours. And that's a really important psychological factor.So the thing to remember here is that text message isn't about selling.  In fact, you shouldn't sell in that text message at all! Because people are used to a very personal, very short piece of content that's asking them to take some sort of action. Most people don't want to receive long text messages. And that's what you should be aiming for too.So you put all your meaty content into your email and make the text message reminder just that - personal, short, and direct. Get out of their lives quickly because that's what they expect from that medium. And it will still beautifully serve the purpose to elevate the importance of your message and amplify email campaigns (Clate Mask promises!)How to get your subscribers' mobile numbers So how do we get our subscribers' mobile numbers? How easy is it to do?Clate's tip is to create a two-step opt-in. Design your email capture forms by asking for the email address on the first screen and then get additional information in the second one, including first name, last name, and their mobile number. The proven psychology behind it is that it's much easier to input the phone number once they've already shared their email address, rather than having to do it all at once. It's a bit like saying, "Ok, we need your email address. But if you want, you can also give us this..."Hope you all wrote that down. We certainly did!Subject line of the week with Clate Mask Clate's subject line is just genius, and it's this: "Help my kids see Shamu".The idea behind this is that Clate's company had big quarterly sales goals they wanted to hit, and Clate had promised his family that if the company hit their goal, he'd take his kids to SeaWorld in San Diego. Of course, the children were rooting and cheering for Dad's company. But with a few days to go, they were still a bit short. So Clate sent this email out. He wrote a very open and transparent email about his kids, their ages, and what he'd hope to accomplish in his family vacation. He explained the trip would only happen if the company hit its sales targets. And then he flipped things around to explain why this was important to his audience, too - because he was now making this crazy sepcial offer at the end of the quarter in order to hit their sales goals. And it was a smash hit! Not only they blew away their goals in the last few days, but they also had lots of people reply and ask about their vacation and taking a personal interest in his family.Why did it work so well? Because it was a personal and transparent email. It was about something that mattered to Clate and his family. And when you connect to people on a personal level you get to establish real connections with your audience.Super cool, right??Useful Episode ResourcesAbout ClateIf you want to connect with Clate Mask, check out Keap.com.Related episodesSubscriber-Centric Email Marketing with Kath Pay, author of Holistic Email Marketing.The Big Question – Should You Sell In Every Email?How To Use Email In Your Content Marketing Strategy.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingToday we told you all about how to amplify email campaigns (Clate Mask style). Now, do you want to find out how 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 amplify email campaigns - Clate Mask style) 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.

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