Discover the power of storytelling in email marketing, including its ability to connect with subscribers, convey important lessons, and evoke emotions. Learn how to find inspiration in everyday life and avoid common mistakes when storytelling through email. Also, get tips on starting with action, keeping things simple, and using stories selectively.

Did you just launch a new membership, course, or programme? Was it a successful launch? Or did you not hit your targets? You're probably looking at the sales and revenue you made, but what about all the other metrics? You could have a traffic problem, an issue with your offer, or perhaps with your conversion. But how do you find out?Our guest Melissa Litchfield tells us exactly what metrics we need to look at and what they all mean.Ready to find out?Let's go!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:13) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.(3:20) Did Melissa really cry for one hour when one of her favourite Nemo slippers got covered in vomit?(5:39) How can you tell if your launch was successful?(8:08) What's hiding behind your numbers?(9:41) What metrics help you decide whether your webinar was successful?(14:39) What about your email metrics?(17:33) Remove friction and make buying from you easy!(20:44) Ask for one action at the time.(22:00) Should you focus on your email list growth?(28:10) Subject line of the week with Melissa Litchfield.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]How can you tell if your launch was successful? Our friend Melissa helps people with launches, and more often than not, her clients will tell her they had a 'failed launch' because they only made a certain amount of sales. They’re looking at the end result, i.e. the revenue or how many students or members they brought into their program. But that's not all there is to it!And that's why Melissa asks a lot of questions about what went on during the launch. For example, how many people showed up live at your webinar? How many dropped off within the first 5 minutes? If a lot of people do, then you might have a 'hook' issue. How many people stayed until the end of the webinar, and how many spots of your program did you sell live?When you're making sales on a live webinar, it means you're hitting your audience's pain points and helping them see that you've got the perfect solution for them. But if you find you didn't sell a lot of spots, then maybe you need to re-work your pitch.And if your webinar was absolutely perfect, great! But what about your email metrics? What are your open rates and click-through rates like? Did enough people open your emails? And did at least 2% of them click through to the offer page? It's only when you're able to look at several steps within your funnel and your email sequence that you can fully nail down what you need to tweak or fix to have a more successful launch next time.What's hiding behind your numbers?If you feel you didn't make enough sales because you didn't have enough people on your webinar, how many people had registered? If that number's less than 100, maybe you have a traffic issue. And that means you need a bigger pool of people signing up for your free event.Often, Melissa finds, you'll have multiple things happening within your sales funnel, so it's important you don't just look at the end result and the money that was generated. You've probably spent a lot of time preparing for a launch, and if it doesn't go the way you'd hoped, it doesn't mean you've wasted your efforts. You might have a messaging problem on your sales page, for example. You just need to know what needs tweaking so you can improve your funnel and make more sales in your next launch.What metrics help you decide whether your webinar was successful?One of the first things Melissa asks her clients when checking whether they had a successful launch is how many people were registered for the webinar or other 'hype event', such as a masterclass or a challenge. Once you know that, you can start diving into the metrics of the live event. For example:What was the engagement rate?How many people showed up for the event?How much did you make per person? I.e. what were your 'earnings per registrant'? You can work this out by dividing how much you made in your launch by the number of people who registered for your webinar. And how many people dropped off within the first 5 minutes?One thing worth pointing out, Melissa says, is that metrics do change when her clients automate their webinars and make them evergreen after having a couple of successful launches. In Melissa's experience, running traffic to a recorded webinar can create different results. What about your email metrics?When it comes to evaluating email metrics, open rates and click-through rates are important. For a live successful launch, the typical click-through rate on a sale email is between 2-6%. But you may need to lower your expectations for automated webinars, where the excitement and engagement aren't as high because there's no active set time after which the cart is closing.Your click-through rate gives you an indication of how strong your offer is, but there are other things to look at. For example, what's your call to action? Are you giving people something for free to download? Or is it a paid offer? And if so, is it clear that they have to pay? If you don't make that clear, you might have a high click-through rate but also a high abandonment rate because people decide not to go through and buy.Often, increasing your click-through rate can be as easy as sending super engaging storytelling-type emails that speak to your audience. Make sure people resonate with your message and show them not only that you have the perfect solution for them, but also that you've helped others in the same situation (social proof). Remove friction and make buying from you easy! Webinars or challenges typically have multiple steps that we push people through. And the truth is that there is potential for people to drop off at every step of the process. But this also means you also have an opportunity to optimise your funnel.A few years ago, for example, we hosted a 5-day challenge in a Facebook group. Without thinking too much about it, we introduced a small step between people registering for the challenge and them getting into the Facebook group. And while that didn't seem like a big deal, it crippled the number of people who actually got into the challenge!So don't do what we did. Instead, make it super simple for people to register and implement a one-click registration process, especially if you’re driving existing subscribers to a new challenge or webinar. And for your new subscribers, think of creating some sort of video on a Thank You page where people can just click on a button and join your Facebook group. Let them know that the content they’re looking for is to be hosted in a separate group, and all they have to do is click and join.A piece of software that Melissa recommends using for this is called URLgenius. Instead of sending people to a separate browser where they'd be asked to sign into their Facebook account (which could be a barrier), you can create a link that opens their Facebook app. So think of anything you can do to remove barriers, reduce friction, and make it as easy as possible for someone to go from registrant to challenger. Because every time you add a step, you're potentially creating friction and causing people to leave the process. [thrive_leads id='8822']Ask for one action at a timeWe always ask our subscribers to take a lot of action, don't we? We might want them to join a Facebook group, take a survey to find out what they’re currently struggling with, whitelist our email address so our emails don’t go into spam, etc. So do these things one by one to avoid putting people off. When you're giving people something for free, for example (such as a download that people can consume whenever it's convenient to them) it's a less 'taxing' demand on their time than asking them to register for a 60-minute live webinar that they need to attend at a specific date and time. And while there’s an intent to consume the content and eventually buy, there are only so many things that people can process at any one time.So when you're asking your subscribers to do something, remember that everyone else is also doing email marketing. People are being asked to do things from all over the place! Your job is to reduce friction so people take the action you want. So if you need someone to register for a webinar but also want them to fill in a survey because that’s part of your process, make sure that one thing leads to the next, rather than them all being asked at once.  Should you focus on your email list growth?So when you're evaluating whether you had a successful launch, take a step back. Don't just focus on the end number - look at where the bottleneck is. Are there any issues or steps you can optimise?Melissa finds that often her clients don't have a big enough pool of people in their audience – there simply aren’t enough registrants to make the sales that you want to make. And that means you have a traffic problem, rather than a conversion rate problem. Plus, in order to fully evaluate a situation, you need data. Sometimes it comes down to the numbers at the top of the funnel. And it's only when you get to the bottom of the funnel that the percentages and the data come in.In simplistic terms, if you want 100 people watching your webinar or joining your challenge, and you have a 10% conversion rate, you'll need at least 1k people to see your sales page. And in order to get 1k impressions on your page, you may want 10k people to see your ad. So reverse engineer the process based on the targets you want to hit.And often, in order to hit your sales targets, you'll have to first grow your list. If your audience stays the same with every launch, then you're missing an opportunity. So focus on that during the nurture phase, while you prepare for your launch. [thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekA subject line that has worked well for Melissa is “Why I’m not joining another mastermind this year.” Why did people open her email? Because we all like gossip or intel! Melissa didn’t actually give the answer in the email, so she received some responses from people who wanted to know. Plus, the subject line is around a controversial topic because everyone seems to be joining masterminds, so why wouldn't she? Check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesAbout MelissaMelissa and her agency specialise in helping course creators launch and skyrocket their course revenue with paid traffic and sales funnels. If you want to get in touch with Melissa and find out more about her digital advertising agency, head over to her website or check out her Instagram or TikTok for some great tips. Related episodesSmall List Big Launch – With Gemma Bonham-Carter.How to Create 3 Big Sales Spikes During Your Launch with Mara Glazer.The Most Perfect Way To Launch & Promote Your Business Book With Email Marketing.FREE list to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how to achieve your most successful launch EVER so you can hit your sales targets) 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!

Are you a membership site owner who worries about how to keep your members interested and engaged so they never leave? Then you're about to find out exactly what membership retention strategies you can use to retain your members month after month.We know you've worked really hard to get those people in, and we all feel sad when our members decide to cancel. So let's find out what you can do to stop people from ever wanting to leave and how your email marketing can help with that.Let's go!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:21) Join our FREE Facebook Group.(4:05) Why retaining members can feel like an uphill battle.(8:00) Create an awesome onboarding sequence.(10:51) Set the right expectations with your marketing.(13:11) Create a level of community within your membership.(15:18) How does email marketing help with retention in your membership?(16:38) Don't stop with the marketing and offer an upgrade.(22:20) How often should you email your members?(25:02) Should you send your members a round-up newsletter?(29:24) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]Why retaining members can feel like an uphill battleIf you have a membership, you’ll see the number of active subscribers go up and down all the time, and that's normal. But when you see people starting to leave, naturally, you want to stop that from happening. So you start looking for strategies for retention. When we started our membership, The League, we definitely made the mistake of focusing on retention too soon and too quickly.Why? Because retention strategies (if employed too soon and before you have a good number of members) are small needle movers. Sure, you can always think of things to do to help your members stay, but the maximum amount of money you'll ever be able to make if you only focus on retention is whatever those existing members are worth to you every month.But if you focus on gaining more members instead, then there’s no ceiling to how much you can make. There's certainly one on retaining members, but there's no ceiling on growth. And that’s why you have a membership in the first place, right? Because it’s scalable. You'll have more gains by focusing on growth, so you need to work on acquisition first, and then you start looking at membership retention strategies. Remember - selling is the bigger lever you have to grow your business. But also, the more data you have (and you’ll have more data when you acquire more members), the more you’ll know what’s working and what you need to tweak as a result.What are some best practices for retaining members? 1. Create an awesome onboarding sequenceIf you find that people are joining your membership and immediately asking for a refund or cancelling after seeing the content, then you need to address that first. This isn't a retention problem - it's an onboarding problem. Because as soon as people join, you want them to enjoy themselves and find what they’re supposed to find.So the first thing we recommend you do is to create the best onboarding sequence you can. You want people to have a good experience and not feel overwhelmed by all the content you have. What's the first thing you want them to do? Let them know by creating an email sequence that orientates them, welcomes them, and resells your membership. If you want to find out more, head over to the episode, How To Create A Member Onboarding Sequence That Your Members Will Love. And, as we said before, remember that when people first join your membership, they’re not members yet. They might still leave within the first month or so - by cancelling and asking for a refund. So you still have to get them over the psychological hurdle of going from being a new customer to being a member. And a great onboarding sequence will help with that. 2. Set the right expectations with your marketingThe next thing you need to do is to ensure that you set the right expectations with your marketing. For example, we could sell our membership by promising people they would turn into billionaires by tomorrow. And that might drive up our front-end conversions, but it would really damage our retention because that's not how email marketing works! So that's not what we should promise (and we don't) because if people joined based on that promise, they would cancel and ask for refunds very quickly. So we do the opposite. We tell people the truth - email marketing isn’t a quick fix! But we are also clear on what can happen 3, 6, or 12 months down the line if people join and choose to do the work. So before someone's even made the decision to join (pre-sale) we're using our emails and our sales pages to set the right expectations. We tell them they're going to want to do email marketing for a long time and ask them to hang around.3. Create a level of community within your membershipWe'll caveat this one by saying that creating a community might help with your retention, but if it's not your style, it's not the be-all-end-all. We've all heard the saying that people join your membership for the outcome and then 'stay for the community'. But that’s a very broad and sweeping statement. Maybe community isn't your strongest point or what your membership is all about! Maybe you run a results-driven membership instead, and that's okay.So if community is your bag, by all means, create one. But also be mindful of the fact that people want to get results. And if they don’t, they’ll probably leave, despite how good the community is. Let's also remember that the world is changing – human beings have changed. We are more impatient and have lower attention spans than ever. We want to get results right now.People won't keep paying you without getting any results just because they don’t want to lose their friends! With social media, everyone’s connected in multiple platforms and ways, so no one really loses a community when they leave a membership. So if you want, create one. But it’s not all going to hang on that.How does email marketing help retention in your membership? One of the things we love about email is that it gives you a consistent way to show people the value of your membership even if they haven't logged in for a while. Email marketing will help you resell your membership. Because it allows you to keep in touch with your members regularly in a bunch of different ways.It could be to let them know that something new has landed and invite them to go and take a look. Or it could be a weekly roundup (something we do on a Saturday and that we'll dive into a bit more later). With email, you can direct people to specific content and things happening inside the membership so they get engaged with it and think that the membership is and continues to be valuable. It’s a weird trick that the mind does - even if you don't look at the content or use it regularly, you know you have it there for when you need it.Don't stop with the marketing!Also, remember that one of the reasons that got people excited to join your membership in the first place is the marketing you did – the promise of what’s inside. So don’t turn it off. Even if some people aren't consuming the content and doing the work, don’t stop with the marketing.And one of the ways we do that is by talking about member wins. We share our members’ stories to keep our existing members motivated if they haven’t got quite as far as others yet. And if some people haven’t logged in or haven't had the chance to do the work yet, it shows them what’s possible. It might even get them excited and motivated to get back on the wagon.So keep reminding people that your membership works. And even if someone decides to leave because they’re not making the time to take action, at least you know they’re not leaving because your solution doesn’t work. That way you won’t create any bad press for yourself. Show your members' wins and remind others that when they take action, your solution works. In turn, that motivates them to go and get results, which is what you (and they) want.Offer an upgradeAnother thing we like to do is to offer some kind of upgrade from the membership. When people buy from you again (because they've just upgraded to something else or have bought an additional thing), they feel renewed excitement and passion. For example, can you offer an annual plan to your pay-monthly members? Or can you invite people to upgrade to a different level of membership, or to join a mastermind or some sort of accelerator level?These are good membership retention strategies because they allow you to recharge and reinvigorate your members’ passion for what you teach. And that’s important because people don't necessarily choose to keep paying you every month – it’s more that you take the money from them. And that's different because it's something passive - something that happens because they didn't make the active decision to cancel.But when they’re actively buying from you again, they feel excitement. Think about it – you don’t feel excited when you see your monthly bill and all the subscriptions that come out of your account! But if you get an opportunity to buy something new or upgrade to something better, then you’ll feel good about it again.And this also helps people further cement their identity as members because they’re investing more in order to be in your upgraded offer. They're taking your membership to the next level, and they know it.[thrive_leads id='8822']How often should you email your members?We see both ends of the spectrum here – people who email all the time and people who never email because they’re too worried about their members leaving. When it comes to our business, we’ve definitely done too much emailing but never too little. And now we’ve settled on two emails a week once people have gone through our onboarding sequence.Our members get an email on the day of a live session most Wednesdays and then our round-up email every Saturday. That’s where we tell everyone what’s new and what’s coming up in a very strict, newsletter-type format. Both those emails are very formulaic and based on a template that gets sent out automatically every week. We do that to invite people to pay attention.And if there’s anything else going on (like a quarterly members award event, for example), we’ll email them separately and send that email in addition to our regular ones.Should you send your members a round-up newsletter? The roundup email is one of the membership retention strategies we use, and we suggest that, if you send one out, you think of it that way. We review the format of ours every 6-8 weeks to try and understand how we can use it more strategically. Because the newsletter has to serve you as a business – not just serve the members.So what can you include in your round-up email?Your latest piece of content or training. Give people a reason to log in and go and see what's new. Celebrate wins and talk about what people achieve by being members. Show growth because people like to be part of something that's growing (who wants to be in something that's dwindling away?) When people are committed, they feel good and enthusiastic.Let your members know that they can refer your membership to others by thanking those who have done so already.Obviously, always give people the option to opt out (and only from this email, rather than all your communication) because not everyone wants to receive the round-up email every week.Check out our email marketing retention strategies inside The LeagueSo there are two different ways you can use email marketing to increase retention in your membership:Pre-sales, with the marketing you do to get the right people in. Remember that it's often better to have a slightly lower conversion rate upfront than to have lots of people joining and then leaving really quickly.And on the flip side of that, once people are members, use email to make them stick around. How do you make them identify as members to the point that it'd feel like their lives would be a bit empty if they were to leave your membership?If you want to find out more about this, have a look at the campaigns inside our membership The League. You can check out our onboarding automation, look at the membership retention strategies we have in there, and grab the campaigns for them. It's as easy as that![thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is something we’ve mentioned before because it’s a classic, and it’s “Kennedy’s vacuum cleaner is a dick”.Continuing our trend of having subject lines that break the mold, the story was that Kennedy got himself a new cleaning robot. But it looks like the thing has a bit of a personality of its own (or a personality disorder, if you ask Kennedy). So that was the unusual story that prompted the subject line. Check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesEverything You Need To Know About Our Membership The League (THE Behind The Scenes!)Why Retention is Important for your Membership, with Liz Beadon.What Emails Should You Send Your Paying Members? with Mike and Callie from Membership Geeks.FREE list to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about membership retention strategies with email) 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!

Are your subscribers not interacting with your emails? Are they not clicking on your links and buying from you? Is it time to launch a re-engagement email campaign? What does that even do anyway? Let's find out, shall we? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:15) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.(4:00) Have you been neglecting your email list?(7:03) Collect some data before you launch a re-engagement campaign.(7:36) Focus on clicks - not open rates!(10:05) Are people disengaged from your list? (11:15) What to include in your re-engagement email campaign.(13:30) Why you should get rid of those who don't engage.(15:22) Don't be afraid of deleting subscribers from your list!(16:32) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]Have you been neglecting your email list? A lot of people who start working with us admit they've been neglecting their email list for a while. This happens a lot, to a lot of marketers, and for a lot of different reasons.But the good news is that we've got a campaign for that exact scenario. It's called The Terrible Friend, and it works like this: you show up and tell your subscribers that you've been a terrible friend. Because you know that people on your list get value from the topic you teach, but you've still gone and ignored them. So you tell them that the plan going forward is to email them regularly. You'll email on specific days of the week (ideally every day) with valuable information.And the important bit about this campaign is that you give them a blatant way of saying no. If they’ve moved on and are no longer interested in your solution, you give them the option to click on a link and remove themselves from your email list (i.e. to opt out). Because chances are that if you haven't emailed in a while, some people have forgotten who you are.And that makes sense. If you haven't emailed anyone for ages, launching this campaign gives you the opportunity to step things up and start emailing regularly again. So be humble and admit it's you who didn't get in touch. People will relate and connect with the human element of this mistake.Collect some data before you launch a re-engagement campaignIf you haven't emailed your list in a while, you haven't really been in a position for your subscribers to disengage. So before you launch a re-engagement email campaign, you want to send some emails and collect some data. We recommend you gather at least one month of data from the emails you send (especially if you email daily) as this will give you a good indication of where people are after you’ve ignored them for ages. You do this to find out whether people are opening your emails and clicking on your links.Focus on clicks - not open rates!When you look at your data, focus on clicks rather than open rates. Because Apple and Android are blocking what they’re allowing to be reported back to the email marketing platforms. For example, Apple might mark all of your emails as open while Android may make it look like none of your emails were delivered. Technology is always changing, and you can't rely on open rates - not on a contact-by-contact basis.But by looking at clicks, you can decide to re-engage the people who haven't been engaging and delete those who are no longer interested. There's one downside to clicks though. Some larger corporations use phishing protection antivirus systems to make sure the email lists their employees sign up to are safe. This piece of software clicks on the links in your emails and checks where the page goes. So to you, it looks like a click from a human being, but it's not. Having said that, there's a way around this. We use a bit of technology inside our Automate Hero suite of tools (included for free in our membership The League) that lets us know that a real person was on our website for a bunch of seconds. And we know that’s a human being because a bot would click on the link and come back out in about one second. But if someone stays on the page for 8-9 seconds, we know they're an actual person. We call this ‘proof of life’ because it tells us that there's a real individual behind the email address. And if they click on our links, it's likely they still want to keep hearing from us. Are people disengaged from your list?Once you start emailing regularly again, you want to check that people are clicking on the links inside your emails. And to do that, you need to include links that people can actually click on! As a side note, let's not forget that when people click on the unsubscribe link in your emails, that's still a click. And it counts towards your engagement, rather than it being logged as spam. If people aren't clicking on your emails, you need to decide what disengagement means to you. You can set your own parameters (something that makes sense in your business), but for us (because we email every day) if someone hasn't clicked on a link in any 60-day period, we consider that person on the verge of disengagement. And that’s when we start approaching with a re-engagement email campaign.What to include in your re-engagement email campaign?Our re-engagement email campaign should not sound like you're a needy boyfriend/girlfriend telling people they've not been paying attention to you. Instead, you want to give them a chance to re-engage, rather than inviting them to leave if they're no longer interested. (Don't do that just yet).Our re-engagement email campaign, which we call the LOL Revival Campaign, is broken down into 3 phrases, which are designed to get people to click and engage with our content. L is for learn.O is for opinion.L is for loss.In the first phase (learn) we tell people about a cool thing they can go and have a look at. And then in the second phase (opinion), we point them to something we’d like their opinion on. In other words, during these phases, we use different psychological hot buttons and triggers for people to start engaging with our emails again.It's only after those two phases that we go into the loss phase, where we tell them we noticed they’ve not been paying attention for a while. Here's where you give them a polite opportunity to either opt back in and let you know they’re still interested or to tell you that you’re not for them anymore.And that’s okay – because you don’t want to hold people hostage! There’s no point in having people on your email list that you're too scared to email in case they unsubscribe. Those you want on your list are the ones you feel you can email every day. Because if that's not the case, then you've got the wrong subscribers on your email list!What’s really nice about having a re-engagement email campaign is that you can run them live and then automate them. We don’t run our campaigns live anymore.[thrive_leads id='8822']Why you should get rid of those who don't engageRe-engagement is a fundamental activity in your email marketing. Every time you send an email Gmail and the other service providers check how many people engage. If the percentage of people who don’t engage is high, Gmail and the likes are going to get the idea that your emails aren’t valuable. So they’re going to demote you from the Primary inbox and send you to the Promotions folder. And from there to the Spam folder until you potentially get blacklisted.And that’s also true if people enter the wrong email address when they register or if they’re no longer using that email address (and you’re getting bounces). There’s also a scenario where you may have spam traps on your list. These are email addresses that were once real but are no longer valid and are used by service providers to identify senders who don't follow email best practices.In a nutshell, not having an engaged email list damages your reputation as a sender. And the result is that the people who want to receive your emails won't get them. If your reputation is bad or you’ve been blacklisted, when someone tries to sign up for your email list because they want your lead magnet, they won’t get it! Because you haven't proved that you’re a good sender.This means that your subscribers won't get your marketing. But also, potentially, your customers won't get their login details for your programme!Don't be afraid of deleting subscribers from your list!So make sure you have a re-engagement email campaign set up in your business. If people don't engage with you in X amount of days, give them a good chance to click on your links again and let you know they're still around. And if they don't, either stop emailing those people or (better still) remove them from your list. That might sound a bit scary, but by doing that, you’ll immediately see an increase in your email deliverability. More people receiving your emails means more people open them, click on links, and buy - because they are actually seeing your marketing! You'll have a cleaner list and you'll be able to send love to it regularly. Trust us when we say this is a powerful way to increase your sales and your revenue.[thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “Unfair advantage (today’s training)” and it was for an email that was sent in the build-up to a webinar. We were telling people we wanted to share with them an unfair advantage that we have in our business. So check it out! Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow To Increase Your Open Rates (They’re Wrong But…)What to do if you have a high unsubscribe rate.6 Things You Didn’t Know Your Email Marketing Platform Could Do.FREE list to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how to create a successful re-engagement email campaign) 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!

Is email nurturing a big waste of time? Do you really have to keep someone on your list for years and years before they buy anything from you?The answer is no. There's a better way to make sales in your business and use email marketing to your advantage. Want to know how?Let's find out. SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:15) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.(3:11) Check out our sponsor Poster My Wall.(3:50) What do we mean by nurturing your email list?(6:23) What should you actually do to nurture your email list?(9:11) Our SCORE email engine.(11:46) Nurturing your list with your daily emails.(14:02) How you 'keep people warm'. (15:07) The 'penny-drop' moment.(16:52) What you shouldn't do to nurture your list.(20:01) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]What do we mean by nurturing your email list? A lot of people think that the whole idea of email marketing is to get people on your email list and then spend the next 20 years making them think that maybe one day they might buy from you because you’ve been such a lovely person to them for so long. And for those people, this is their entire email marketing strategy.But that’s not a strategy.That's hoping, praying, and wishing.And that's not what nurturing is in our book. Nurturing isn't about turning subscribers into customers via long-term sequences of a million emails that are designed to get people to buy over a number of years. If you do that, you're accepting these people into your world and then effectively putting them 'in the oven'. You're trying to 'keep them warm' until one day they may or may not buy from you. That's not what we mean by nurturing your email list. And if you're doing it that way, you are wasting your time. What should you actually do to nurture your email list? What you should do instead is to have sales campaigns that are designed for people to buy from you right now. And if they don’t buy, by all means, you carry on with nurturing sequences that 'keep them warm’ but only to glide back into another sales campaign at some other point.When someone joins our list, they go through our email engine, which is designed to sell. If they get to the end of a sales sequence and don’t buy, they go into our closest thing to long-term nurture, which is our day-to-day emails. But they don’t particularly know or notice that - they'll simply feel like an offer has come to an end because there's no huge difference in how the various emails look and feel. And every 5-8 weeks, we’ll run another sales campaign. Most people buy within the first 60 days of joining your listWhen you think about it, the reason why anyone joins an email list is because they have a problem that they want to solve. They want to learn about the thing you teach. And when we looked at the data in our business, it’s no surprise we found that if people don’t buy from us in the first 60 days of joining our email list, their chance of ever buying from us plummets to less than 5%.And this makes perfect sense. If someone joins your list to learn about how to train their puppy, for example, they need to fix that problem now - not two or six months down the line! If your marketing strategy is based on nurturing these people for 90-180 days (or even longer), you’re missing out on the time during which your subscribers need to solve their problems. So you have to tell them about your core product or service right now and give them a chance to buy. Our SCORE email engineThis is what we do with our SCORE email engine, which is a bunch of 5 different email campaigns, where each campaign is made up of several emails (between 6 and 25). Every subscriber on our list goes through it in the first 60 days of joining.Each campaign represents a different phase of our SCORE engine, which means it appeals to a different type of buyer or subscriber. So here are the 5 campaigns making up the SCORE acronym/engine:S for Sales. The first campaign appeals to your more urgent buyers – they want to solve their problem right now. That's why we kick off our chain of campaigns with a sales-led one.C for Content. Then we move to a content-led campaign. We lead with education but turn that into an offer. It’s not content for content’s sake - it's not distracting people or adding more overload.O for Objection-handling. This is specifically created to address the objections that people have to buying. For example, it could be that they don’t believe the product or service will work for them or that they don't have what it takes to get results. R for Risk reversal or Risk removal. This is where we reduce or remove the risk of buying. Because sometimes people think that the risk of investing is way higher than their ability to get the results they need.E for Engagement. And finally, the last campaign is designed to generate engagement. By this point (and by the end of the 60 days), we've given someone plenty of opportunities to buy. Because everyone who joins our list - no matter when they join or what's going on in our business or personal lives at the time - goes through that same sequence of campaigns. And if they haven’t bought by the first 60 days it's because the timing isn’t right for them.[thrive_leads id='8822']Nurturing your list with your daily emailsAfter the initial 60 days of someone joining our email list, we launch into our long-term nurture activity of daily emails. If you’re familiar with our work, you’ll know that for anyone who is not emailing every day, we recommend you increase the frequency of your emails to daily. That’s what we do. Every day, we send out an email to our list to continue to build a relationship with our subscribers – to nurture the person and the relationship. The job of these emails is to ‘keep people warm’. Our daily emails not only help us make sales - we get sales every week thanks to our Super Signature and our calls to action. But they also serve us in keeping in touch with people until we're ready for our next big promotion. Show up in between promotionsFor example, every year in June we run our Inbox event. And because we only host it once a year, we can only talk about it in the two weeks leading up to the event. But outside of that, we need to do something to nurture our subscribers. Because if we don’t, by the time we’re ready to promote the event, they won’t be paying attention. And that’s where 'keeping them warm' comes into play - it's about checking in with people regularly through our daily emails.In a nutshell, here's how it works. People come into our business, go through a whole email engine, and a lot of them buy from us within the first 60 days. But whether they do or don’t, they go into this nurturing phase where we send them daily emails. And when we have something coming up (like an event, a challenge, a summit, or a webinar) we turn up in their inbox with an offer, and they're still paying attention because we've kept them warm with our daily emails.  This way, we get the best of both worlds. We get sales very fast (which is what any business needs to do to survive), and then we’re able to take all those subscribers and customers and maintain that relationship through our daily emails.How you 'keep people warm'So what can you share in your daily emails to nurture your email list? We keep our list warm by using storytelling and giving them insight into our day-to-day lives. There are always random things that happen to you in a day that people can learn and benefit from. That's why we always start our podcast episodes by sharing a random fact about ourselves, for example. It's memorable, and people care and pay attention to what we talk about.Your day-to-day emails will also address the timing issue. If someone's not bought from you yet because the timing wasn't right, it means that their focus, attention, and priority were on something else. And there’s only a certain amount of marketing that can fix that. If what you sell isn’t a priority for someone right now, then all you can do is keep showing up. You want to be there for them by giving them interesting insights and titbits until it's time for them to buy.The 'penny-drop' momentWhat you're looking for (and the reason why someone eventually buys) is the 'penny-drop' moment. With everything we do in our business, we are constantly teaching the same thing from different angles. We are continually saying the same things over and over again until there's a penny-drop moment when someone suddenly gets it, and they’re ready to buy.Our job is to keep explaining the same concepts by using different analogies, stories, metaphors, lessons, hooks, etc. And when the right one hits, suddenly that person is fully on board and ready to buy. They know that what you sell is for them.What you shouldn't do to nurture your listSo make sure you don’t make the common mistakes that a lot of people make with this idea of long-term nurture. You shouldn't have the view that when people join your email list you then have to nurture them for years to come. The nurturing happens after you've put your best foot forward and given your subscribers the opportunity to buy.Definitely don't miss out on nurturing relationships with your day-to-day emails. Because those will help you make sales and address the timing issue. Keep telling people how you help and always give them the opportunity to buy. You need a clear call to action in all your emails and ensure you constantly train your subscribers to click on the links in them. If you don’t, you’re training people out of doing anything.Also, don't make the mistake of droning on and being boring! Always share new, fresh ways of explaining what you do and the transformation you offer. Everyone wants a slightly differently nuanced transformation, and until they hear the right words - the ones that fit that gap in their mind that they’re trying to fill - they won’t take any action.Nurturing 'done right' helps you sell!Remember - long-term nurturing is about showing up so people know who you are when they’re hunting around for the person who solves a particular problem. That’s why you want to be in their inbox regularly. Nurturing is what happens to keep on top of people’s minds - it's about saying the same things in new ways, but only after you’ve given them the best opportunity to buy through your main SCORE email engine. This is how sales-driven email marketing is done - you should try it![thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “Sneak a peek (at the slides)”. The email was about the fact we had a webinar coming up, and whenever we do, we grab a screenshot of an interesting slide of the presentation we will be sharing, throw it into an email, and then give people a little sneak peek of what we’re working on. People love to look at that stuff, so check it out!  Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesUse THIS Free-Trial Email Sequence To Turn Your Subscribers Into Paying Customers.How To Create A Lead Magnet Email Sequence That Gets Your Subscribers To LOVE You.WTF Is An Automated Customer Journey? Use the SCORE Method.FREE list to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about email nurturing and how to do it properly) 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!

Our awesome client Hillary-Marie recently made $16,000 worth of sales with an email marketing campaign she implemented from being part of our membership The League. And you know what's even better? She copied and pasted that campaign, ran it again for a different segment of her list, and made another $16,000!Want to find out Hillary-Marie's success story?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:18) Join our FREE Facebook Group. (3:45) Check out our sponsor Poster My Wall.(4:25) Who is League member Hillary-Marie?(7:14) When did email marketing become a part of Hillary-Marie's business?(9:55) What did Hillary-Marie's email marketing look like before she joined The League?(13:47) What was the first change Hillary-Marie implemented when she joined The League?(17:59) What results did Hillary-Marie experience in her business?(22:55) What ONE action had the most impact on Hillary-Marie's email marketing?(24:21) What's next for Hillary-Marie and in her business and email marketing?(26:31) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]Who is League member Hillary-Marie?Hillary-Marie (here she is on Instagram) runs a business called iTapOnline - an online tap dance school where she helps teachers and adults around the world unlock the joy of tap dance. Hillary-Marie has a membership that gives people access to all her courses and classes and also runs a certificate 10-week programme for teachers once a year. What Hillary-Marie sells is a super affordable B2C proposition. It can be a hobby for some people, but for the teachers who are enrolling in the certificate programme, their participation often comes from a desire to serve the needs of their students while enjoying their own tap dance journey along the way.Hillary's students are anywhere from absolute beginners to advanced and are often people who don’t have access to a local tap class at their speed or level. So Hillary-Marie tapped (see what we did there?) into the opportunity to segment her two audiences (adult students and teachers) and serve them both simultaneously with the same exact offer.When did email marketing become part of Hillary-Marie’s business?Hillary-Marie started her membership in 2016, and email marketing was always a part of her journey. From the start, she used email marketing to ask people to buy from her, so she started collecting email addresses straight away. But at that time, she was only reaching out to her audience when she had something free to offer or a product she wanted people to buy. Looking back, Hillary-Marie can see that only getting in touch when she had something to sell wasn't the best approach.About a year ago Hillary-Marie came to a crossroads in her business. As an artist and a dancer, she had always relied on social media quite heavily. But she came to the realisation that she'd either have to 'sell her soul' to social media (and spend all her time on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.) to churn out as much organic content as possible, or she could invest her time, energy, and money into email marketing instead. And not sell her soul!Thankfully, email marketing is the route that Hillary-Marie decided to take. And she's glad she did because email has given her an opportunity to share stories in a way that feels honest and genuine, rather than just playing the game of the algorithm in social media.What was Hillary-Marie’s biggest barrier to doing email marketing?Hillary-Marie can see now that she tried to make email marketing more complicated than it needed to be. When she joined The League, she started sending out our daily 'snowball' emails. But (contrary to our advice to write and send the emails daily), she decided to write and schedule 30 emails at a time. That was not the easiest option. And we're all glad to report that Hillary-Marie switched to our way of thinking and now writes and sends her emails live on a daily basis.In hindsight, she knows now that she was trying to make things more systemised and complicated than they needed to be. And while there’s definitely a place for systems, software, integration, and segmentation, she didn’t need all of that to get started.What did Hillary-Marie’s email marketing look like before she joined The League?Before joining The League, Hillary-Marie was following the product launch formula for her certificate programme once a year. So she'd create a lot of pre-launch content and send that out via email with multiple videos. It involved a lot of content creation that didn’t yield great results. And because this was only done once a year, there was a lot of pressure on this process – Hillary-Marie felt she couldn’t really mess this up!Hillary-Marie also hosts a podcast, and back then she was using email marketing to ask people to check out her latest podcast episode. Or, whenever she created a free lead magnet, she’d email her list to let them know so they wouldn’t miss out on the free goodness. But she wasn't even promoting her membership - she only had a very soft ask in her emails (i.e. to head over to the podcast). Hillary-Marie felt that people on her list already knew what she did, so if they were choosing not to buy it was because they didn't want to participate. And she knows now that's not necessarily the case! In a nutshell, Hillary-Marie was sending out a lot of broadcasting emails and only using automation for onboarding her students. She knew about systems and automated campaigns but wasn’t using them for marketing purposes. Not yet, anyway!Before she started working with us, Hillary-Marie was sending out emails once a week and didn’t have any real feelings about her email marketing. She just knew it wasn't successful because it wasn’t bringing in sales and results. It simply wasn't working for her. What was the first change Hillary-Marie implemented when she joined The League?When she found us, Hillary-Marie started sending out daily snowball emails, but she recognises now that she overcomplicated the process unnecessarily. She decided to batch-write her emails and have someone in her team send them out. And, naturally, she got a lot of pushback on that. Because they didn’t think there was value in sending emails every day. But Hillary-Marie went ahead and put her foot down – convinced that daily emails would make a difference to her business and determined to give it a go.And she did see a change! Not only her business didn’t go under, but she also started making more money! People didn’t unsubscribe from her list, and she didn’t start getting nasty responses from those who didn't want to hear from her. In fact, her open rate, her click rate, and her sales increased! And Hillary-Marie got to a point where she felt quite pleased with her email marketing. It’s no coincidence that she now has a strong emotional connection to it!Thanks to the daily emails alone, Hillary-Marie was able to increase the clients signed up to her membership from 120-130 to over 250. She simply achieved this by contacting people and telling them she had something they might be interested in.Looking back, Hillary-Marie thinks it was very ignorant of her to think that her audience would know about her products and that if they chose not to participate it was because they weren’t interested. That’s just not how it works – you can have people on your list who aren’t aware of what you have to sell. People simply aren't listening quite as much as you think they are, which is why daily emails are beneficial. [thrive_leads id='8822']What results did Hillary-Marie experience in her business? After implementing the daily emails, Hillary-Marie started building her email engine and using our campaigns. She decided, as a priority, to focus on people who were already on her list but hadn't bought from her yet. And she did that because every year she offers 50 spots on her certification programme, and she wanted to fill the cohort. Her approach was something that unfortunately a lot of people find terrifying and shy away from - i.e. selling harder to their existing list. And that's exactly what the people on her list needed from her. It's great to see this principle in action with Hillary-Marie because it's exactly what we teach. Businesses build and grow over time (especially if you sell a membership), but there's something to be said about complementing that growth with big spikes in income. Making $16k over a few days... twice!When she implemented our sales campaigns Hillary-Marie made $16,000 in sales over the course of a few days. And she achieved this because she wasn’t afraid of selling. She knew that the people on her list had joined it because they’d seen something they were interested in. So she thought it was time to let them know exactly what they could buy, and perhaps those who weren't interested in the membership would want to join the certification programme.Hillary-Marie achieved these amazing results by implementing our Paparazzi flash sale campaign - a super easy one. It's relatively short with simple and not long-winded emails. Over a few days, she got a 3% conversion rate from people who had never purchased from her before.The icing on the cake is that Hillary-Marie took that same exact campaign and duplicated it to send to her Level Two programme for previous graduates and made another $16k in sales with just some minor alterations to her emails. Isn't this mindblowing?!What ONE action had the most impact on Hillary-Marie's email marketing?The one action Hillary-Marie would recommend people take is to email your list to let them know what you have to offer. She adds that it's important to do that in a way where you’re curating a specific campaign and an experience via email to help them decide that what you sell is truly the best thing that's out there for them. Because otherwise they just don't know!"Don't just send any email," Hillary-Marie says. But curate a campaign experience and put people through it in a way that’s mindful and thoughtful. So you can convert easily.What's next for Hillary-Marie in her business and email marketing?Because her certification programme is converting so well, Hillary-Marie wants to start launching it twice a year. In her words, she ‘eats our campaigns for breakfast’ because she’s always looking for the next campaign she can automate and add to her email engine. While she continues to dedicate herself to the automation of her email engine, doing two launches a year will be Hillary-Marie's main focus going forward. Does Hillary-Marie feel like email marketing has taken over her life?While email marketing does take some time and work upfront to implement campaigns, that's an investment of a couple of hours to build an asset that can be reused in her business and that will continue to serve her for time to come. She knows she can do it once, invest the time, and then enjoy the benefits of that later. And that's a win in our eyes! [thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “When I get high…” This subject line works because there's an obvious assumption that people make when they read it. But if they know your personality (and people on our list know Rob's), they'll also know that there's got to be another meaning to those words.So the subject line throws them off-piste a little. It's only when they read the email that they find out it was about being on a plane up in the air. It works because it generates intrigue and curiosity, so check it out! Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesEverything You Need To Know About Our Membership The League (THE Behind The Scenes!)How A League Member Made Over $10k With Just ONE Email Campaign – Case Study With Aidan O’Sullivan.Tell Me You’re A Member Of The League Without Telling Me You’re A Member Of The League.FREE list to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how our client Hillary-Marie made $16k worth of sales with an email marketing campaign... twice!) 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!

Are you making any of these email marketing copywriting mistakes? Curious to know what we're talking about? If you're keen to improve your email copy, we've got some super-easy tips here for you. Check them out!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:09) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.(4:30) Check out our sponsor Poster My Wall.(5:09) Is successful email marketing all about copywriting?(12:06) Boring subject lines.(13:01) The wall of text.(14:58) Beating around the bush.(16:10) Sounding like you're writing your English coursework.(17:31) Not using stories or making them too long.(19:59) Assuming your audience knows your industry the way you do.(22:20) Doing 'back referencing' the wrong way.(26:10) Subject line of the week.  [podcast_subscribe id="7224"]Is successful email marketing all about copywriting?First thing first, let's get this out of the way...Do you need to be a great writer/copywriter to be successful at email marketing? In our opinion, no. Because no one likes to receive emails from the slick copywriter (unless that’s what you do). Rather than having perfectly written and polished copy, you want to connect with your audience!And when you think about it, this is true of sales copy too. Because the minute you say something that doesn't resonate with your readers, you lose them - they'll close the page and be gone forever. With email though, if the person's on your list, you get more attempts than just one to grab and hold their attention.You don't have to write one big thing with a beginning, a middle, and an end – it’s not a long journey! Email marketing is done in short bursts, so it doesn’t matter if you get lost along the way because you'll get another crack at it tomorrow. But there's another reason why email marketing isn't all about the copy. And it's this...The 3 elements of successful email marketingThere are 3 key elements to email marketing:The words/copy. The structure.And the strategy.The copy is what you say in your emails to make people engage with you and feel things. And that only accounts for 20% of the impact an email can have. This is true for any form of communication because it's all to do with the para language, i.e. what runs parallel to the language. In other words, it's about how you say something or the context in which you say it. Structure is way more important than copy, and it's about how many emails you send, when you send them, how long you wait in between emails, who you send them to, etc. And strategy is about the hooks and the angles in your emails.Remember, we're talking about strategy here - not tactics. Tactics are things you do, i.e. individual points of action. A strategy strings together lots of tactics in a specific way - it's where the tactics compound one another. If you have a bunch of tactics that are not compounding the results of each other, then you don't have a strategy.  So if you’re worrying about the words, don’t. Because you can have the best words in the world, but if the structure and the strategy aren’t there, your email marketing isn’t going to work. Instead, you could use the simplest, dumbest words you want, but if you’re talking about something that’s concise and resonates with people, those emails are going to win every time over perfect words that end up disengaging your audience. In other words, you're better off sending out a well-structured campaign made of 12-20 fairly average emails compared with one flawlessly-written email based on good-practice copywriting.Common mistakes in email marketing copywritingHaving said that words only account for 20% of your email marketing, you want to get that right! So here are some common mistakes we see people make in their email marketing copy (and how to fix them).  The snooze-fest and writing boring subject linesIf you’re writing subject lines based on formulas (i.e. which look and sound formulaic), then stop! Because everyone’s seen them and is using them. We have specific training to help you write subject lines that make sales, and we can teach you how to come up with original, innovative, provocative, and attention-grabbing subject lines.The best tip we can give you is to look at your emails (once you've written them) and then tease out your own unique subject lines that display your personality and use compound curiosity.The wall of text (More white space, please!)White space on emails is a great thing. Think about it - when you're sending 'real' emails (i.e. transactional emails back and forth with someone), you don’t do a lot of interesting stuff with the format. Generally, you just take it from left to right and all the way across. You write and hit send.With email marketing though, while you want to try and create the feel, the personality, and the personal nature of a real transactional email, you want to keep short sentences. The emails Rob sends out, for example, are often made of one-sentence paragraphs (or, rarely two). Because a big wall of text is always hard to read, especially on a mobile phone. So use one/two sentence paragraphs and include lots of white space. You can even write a short sentence on one line, add a few dots, and pick up (starting with the dots) on the next line. It makes it a lot easier to chew, and it means people can consume your emails one little bit at a time.Beating around the bushAre you going on and on and on in your emails? Then just get straight to the point because you want to make one point per email! And if you don't have a clear strategy of what that is, your emails will go round in circles. The benefit of making one point per email is that it gives you a great excuse to send more emails - because you have more things to say, right? So if today’s email is about social proof, then you’re not allowed to talk about the discount! Make today's email about social proof and nothing else. This helps you create clarity and allows the reader to lock into that one thought, which can now grow in their heads. Sounding like you’re writing your English coursework Email marketing is not the same thing as writing essays - you don't need your emails to sound clever or intelligent. Instead, you want them to sound simple and accessible, regardless of who your audience is. Your emails need to read as something that anyone can access, understand, and get value from. You’re not trying to impress anyone or score points.The only purpose of your emails is to drive sales, and a lot of the time, when people think they can't do email marketing because they're not good writers, it's because they think the writing has to be impressive, intellectual, and intelligent.And that’s not true. You just have to sound like you. So if you have an amazing use of the language and that’s you, then great. But if you talk very casually in real life, that’s what you want to translate in your emails.[thrive_leads id='8822']Not using stories or making them too longAre you just telling facts in your emails? Then please don't. Because you're going to connect a lot more deeply with your audience if you use some storytelling. Of course, not every email needs to be a story. But weave in some stories. The good news is that this is easy enough to do because you can turn anything into a story! When you use stories though, make sure they're not too long. Don't include details that aren't important - cut them out. The quickest way to do that is by starting in the action - with the big moment. You can chop off a lot of the context, which you can then build in by implication.For example, if you say “I remember the day I got married,” you don’t necessarily need to specify that it was in a church (unless the church is relevant to the story). Instead, let people fill in the gaps. Let them imagine and picture where the wedding might have happened because a lot of the story can be implied. Assuming your audience knows your industry like you do Don't assume your audience knows what you do and don't use jargon. For example, if we send out an email saying we're going to teach people how to improve their EPSPM, a lot of people won’t know what we’re talking about! So we'd have to break it down and explain that EPSPM refers to the Earnings per Subscriber per Month, and it's how much you earn for every subscriber you have on your list.Why is this important? Because when someone reads anything they don’t understand, it’s like they’re trying to read with their eyes half closed! Make it easy for people – don’t assume they know anything about your industry and don’t get technical. At the same time, don’t get condescending, and ensure that what you're talking about is super clear.Doing 'back referencing' the wrong way'Back referencing' is about referring to an email you’ve previously sent that people may have not seen. Nobody gets 100% open rates, so if you send an email today and refer back to something you sent in the past, and the person hasn't seen it, you'll lose their interest. Because when someone doesn't understand the context, they don't feel part of the 'in crowd' - they don't know what's going on. And as an email marketer, you definitely don’t want people on your list to feel like that.The only time we use back referencing in our emails is when we know for sure that someone’s read that email because they’ve engaged with the content. For example, we have campaigns where we ask people to watch a video, and because we track all of that, we know when they've seen it and how much of it they've watched. So in those cases, we can confidently refer back to the video in further emails down the line.Or, let's say you're sending out a series of emails about signing up for a webinar. If you know someone hasn't registered, you can say you've noticed they haven't registered yet and they've perhaps missed the emails you sent out over the last week or so. This is a good way to leverage the 'back referencing' technique. The previous emails you've sent (in this case about registration) give you an excuse to send today's email. Don't worry too much about spelling and grammar!So when it comes to writing emails, don’t worry too much about your spelling and grammar. Sure, try to get it right. But if you don’t, it’s fine! You probably know that Kennedy is dyslexic, and he tells people from the start that if they sign up for his list, they'll probably find typos. And if they're offended by those, it’s probably best they don’t register.Just remember that the structure and the strategy are more important than the copywriting – the way the emails link together is more impactful for your engagement and sales. But if you want to make your copy better, do pay attention to these mistakes.[thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “Something magical.” It talks about the fact that we used to go to magic conventions a lot. And as you can see, this subject line has nothing to do with selling the benefits of a particular product. In fact, the goal of this subject line isn't to be clever or enticing. It's more about differentiating today's email from tomorrow's. If someone's on our list, they like receiving our emails. They know our general approach and the structure and strategy of our email marketing. And that means that sending out subject lines like these is still appealing to them. So check it out!  Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesAdvanced Psychology: Using Compound Curiosity.Mindblowing Techniques To Connect More Deeply With Your Email Readers With Rob Marsh & Kira Hug.Why You Need to Avoid These Email Marketing Mistakes.  FREE list to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about the biggest mistakes you’re making with your email marketing copywriting) 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!

Are you thinking of writing a business book? Or maybe you have already? Want to find out how you can promote your book launch with email marketing?Let's have a bit of a chat about that, shall we?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:18) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.(4:28) Check out our sponsor Poster My Wall.(5:08) Should you write a business book?(10:53) How to use your book to bring in thousands of email subscribers!(16:35) How to make your business book profitable.(22:07) Pre-launch business book email ideas.(24:48) Business book launch email ideas.(27:10) Create scarcity with special editions.(30:18) Business book buyer email sequence.(32:02) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]Should you write a business book?A lot of business owners write books these days because we all recognise that some people like to learn by reading a book (while others prefer courses or videos). And it's definitely something that's on our radar for the future too. However, it's not something we're planning to do straight away because the way we teach tends to be very visual.Having said that, when our clients ask us about writing a book for their business, our first question is always to check where their book fits within their business. Do they want to write a book because it gives them status? Or is it a step towards being noticed by a big brand like Netflix, for example? Is the book something they'll use on their front end so they can capture email addresses and send people through some sort of sales funnel? Before you even think of writing a book, you need to know exactly where it fits in your business. And if you decide to go ahead, you definitely want your book to help you with your list building and your sales.Here's how.How to use your book to bring in thousands of email subscribers! Something we think is key when writing a book is having the ability to collect the email addresses of your readers. Whether you're going through traditional publishing or the self-publishing route, you want email addresses that you can market to.A few years ago, Kennedy wrote a book in the magician niche. And in every chapter of the book he included a call to action asking people to opt into his email list. How? Simply by inviting them to grab a free resource related to the topic in that chapter in exchange for their email address. Whether it's diagrams, cheat sheets, or videos (i.e. anything that adds value to your book), use that as an excuse to bring in email subscribers.This is valuable to you because once people are in your world, you can acquire them as customers. If you self-publish your book on Amazon and collect money from the sales but are none the wiser as to who your readers are, you're missing a trick! Because you can't market them directly. It's only by getting your readers to opt in that more opportunities open up for you.So make sure that you:Do the advertising and bring people to your platform.Seed things throughout the book that boomerang people back to you and your world. And now, let’s talk about what a book funnel might look like.How to make your business book profitableA book funnel obviously has the book as its starting point - you want people to come into your world and grab the book as the first thing they do. It can be a paid-for product or it can be free. If it's free, you can ask customers to pay for the cost of shipping and handling. And if you do, be mindful of how you phrase that, as you don’t want the “free + shipping” option to be more expensive than buying the book on Amazon! So definitely play with the economics of it.You can then have a bumper offer on the shopping cart where, just before they buy, you’re offering the customer to buy something else together with the book for an extra, say, $17-27. This could be the audiobook, an additional chapter, or a digital workbook with exercises, for example. It’s something extra that’s complimentary to the book, rather than content you’ve taken out of it. So, again, be careful of how you frame that and make sure that whatever your bumper offer is, it’s not a physical product that’s going to cost you more to produce or send out.Use one-click upsell offersAnother thing you can do is to have a one-click upsell on the next page. This is where you may be offering a course version of the book for $97, for example. Or you could even present a more expensive upsell, such as an implementation session for, say, $297, or a trial to your membership if you have one.Another thing we've seen that we think works really well is to present a webinar registration form that offers an implementation session related to the content of the book. The idea is that people print off some worksheets and come to the webinar to learn how to apply the teachings of the book to their specific situation. Pre-launch business book email ideas Before you launch your book, you can build some excitement in advance and get people interested in it. Definitely start by letting people know that you're writing a book. When the time is right, you can tell them you've written a chapter, for example, and ask them to opt in with their email address to read it. Mind you, this doesn't have to be the introduction or the first chapter - in fact, it's probably more interesting if you intrigue them by giving them one of the middle chapters of the book. Or you could do a "Help me choose" pre-launch exercise, where you invite your audience to choose one of the titles or the book cover designs that you have shortlisted. By asking people to vote, you're getting them involved.Kennedy, for example, when he was promoting his book, took a screenshot of the Contents page so people could see in advance what topics the book would cover. The trick here is to choose chapter titles that are fun and enticing, so you can get people excited about getting the whole thing. [thrive_leads id='8822']Business book launch email ideas Our book launch campaign opens with the announcement of the fact that the book has finally arrived. For example, if you're launching a physical book, the day your shipment of copies arrives is exciting and interesting. So make sure you bring people along for the journey with you. Make them excited (as excited as you are) about the fact you’ve published a physical book.Another thing you can do is to let everyone know that the people who pre-ordered the book are now getting their copy. And that makes everyone else who hasn't bought one yet feel like they're missing out!Ask people to take photos with the bookAlso, ask people to take photos of themselves with the book once they receive it and then share them both on social media and in your emails. Kennedy did this by sending out a physical note with the book and asking people to email in their photos - offering a prize for whoever took their photo in the most unusual place. And these photos aren't just perfect for your emails, but they're also great for social media posts and ads. So don't miss out on this opportunity!As for adding these photos to your emails, we always say that images in emails aren't necessary. But this is a scenario where using photos is a good thing. It shows that real people all over the world are buying it, and it's undeniable - you're saying that people are buying this book, and you're proving it. You can also do this via testimonials, so ask people to send theirs in as soon as they've read the book. Create scarcity with special editionsOr, you can create some scarcity in your launch campaign by selling some sort of special or limited edition and letting people know how many of those are left so they want to hurry up and buy. We have a tool for that called Scarcity Hero that's included for free in our membership The League.Kennedy, with his book, sold 100 collector's edition copies (hardback with a dust jacket), which were significantly more expensive. Remember that you don’t have to re-invent stuff all the time - simply dressing your book up differently allows you to present it differently.Business book buyer email sequence At this point, you have a bunch of people who are about to buy your book or have bought your book. So what are you going to follow up with? You put them in your SCORE email engine to ascend them and move them to the next piece in your sales funnel. Because your book is usually the front end, you want to start moving them into the back end of your business by selling them your other offers. Make sure you do this straight away because this is the point where they're most interested in learning about this topic or developing this area from you. A business book offers opportunities for email list growth and can act as a front-end piece that allows you to ascend people to your more expensive offers. With all that said, we're not telling you to drop everything and go and write a book right now. If it's already on your radar, then go ahead and use some of these strategies. But don't derail everything you've been thinking about doing in order to go and write a book - you don't need to have one at all costs. But if you do, all these tips will be super helpful!  [thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line was “You, me, Kennedy and 2,000 people” and it had to do with our Inbox live event, where we had over 2,000 people registered. So the email is basically saying “Let’s get together with the both of us and 2,000 other people.” It’s intriguing, right? So check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow We Used A Facebook Group To Build Our Email List From Scratch.Stop Wasting So Much On List Building by Using Traffic Loops.Viral List Growth Using Giveaways With Derek Videll.FREE list to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how to support and promote your book launch with email marketing) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.  Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!

Are you a B2B marketer? Are you struggling to make email marketing work for your business? Let's talk about the five B2B email marketing problems we see all the time. Of course, we won't leave you high and dry. We'll share the reasons why these problems are so common but also give you some practical tips on how to fix them.Ready to get all the good stuff on this? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:11) Join our FREE Facebook Group. (5:12) Check out our sponsor ZeroBounce. (7:00) What do we mean by B2B?(10:40) Solve the problem of the PERSON working for the business.(12:13) One - no one is joining your B2B email list.(15:23) Kennedy's case study.(19:49) Two - you're getting A LOT of unsubscribes.(29:38) Three - you're not making enough sales.(32:51) Four - your subscribers aren't opening your emails.(38:29) Five - your subscribers aren't clicking on the links in your emails.(40:25) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]What do we mean by B2B?First things first, we have a slightly different philosophy on B2B. We actually think there are two types of B2B marketing - b2b (smaller business to smaller business) and B2B (business to big business).We make this distinction because we believe that in b2b, the businesses you’re marketing to make decisions just like consumers. Take us, for example. We sell a business solution, but often our customers are people who are spending their own money on their businesses. They spend and invest money like consumers. In fact, some of the people who buy from us have such a small business (or their business is so new) that they’re not even making any money yet! They're investing their own money by putting it into the business.So the first thing we recommend you do is to evaluate whether you fit in the traditional B2B category. Are you selling to someone who works for a big business (B2B) or are you selling to a small business owner who's currently alone in their venture (b2b)? The advice that follows is mainly about B2B. But if you’re a b2b marketer, everything else we talk about on our podcast and blog will apply to you. Focus on this, and we promise it'll change the way you communicate with your audience. It definitely did for us, and it made a huge difference.Solve the problem of the PERSON working for the company If you consider yourself a B2B marketer, the first thing to remember is that you're still selling to human beings - people who have busy days and lives. They might have short attention spans, but they still have emotions! They have stuff they care about. And when it comes to the work they do, they still want to do a good job and get good results for their boss.In fact, because they're so busy and pulled in all directions (in their personal and professional lives), they want to get their job done in the easiest way possible. Because that can perhaps relieve some stress and alleviate pressure. And this is where you come in.So with that in mind, let's look at the 5 major problems we see with B2B marketing and how to fix them. Problem One - No one is joining your B2B email listIf people aren't joining your list, it's worth pointing out that the person you're talking to (i.e. the ideal prospect for your list) might be someone who works in a specific department for a big company. You want to get their attention so they join your email list. But getting your emails adds a new layer of distraction to their (already busy) personal and professional lives. In other words, they have a lot going on, and you're coming along asking them to join your list. Put yourself in their shoes. Why would they want to do that? You must present them with a really exciting reason for them to want to give you their work email address, which is already bombarded with a lot of other stuff.If the reason why they should join your list isn't interesting enough, then you're fighting a losing battle. So you need the most compelling positioning and messaging to get someone to pay attention and then join your list. Simply asking a person who works in a big company to join your newsletter isn't going to cut it! However you position your lead magnet, quiz, newsletter, or whatever you're offering, needs to be more compelling than you think. You can't grab people's attention with something dull and bland - they simply won't care! Kennedy's case study When Kennedy first started working as an entertainer, he was selling to big corporations with multiple locations and over 200 staff. Typically, the ideal subscriber for his list would be someone working for the CEO of the company - someone with the job to organise a big sales or marketing conference, for example. Kennedy was aware that this job might not be that person's main focus - it was just something they were tasked with. So what would be helpful for that person? What might they need or want? Perhaps a lead magnet along the lines of “Six ways to get the most value from the next entertainer you hire for your conference.” Why? Because that’s the problem that the person is trying to solve! They want to organise an event as smoothly and easily as possible. They want to do a good job. So in order to grab someone’s attention, focus on the problem that the person is trying to solve. The reason for opting into your B2B email list doesn’t need to solve the business’s problem. It has to solve the problem that the individual within the business is facing.Problem Two - You're getting A LOT of unsubscribersIf you’re seeing a lot of people unsubscribe from your list, one of the ways of fixing this is to have a lead magnet on a topic that’s a lot wider than buying your product or service. If your lead magnet is too specific, once people download it, they won't have a reason to hang around. But if you’re helpful in your email marketing and focus on solving the emotional problems that your subscribers are experiencing in their lives, you can be helpful above and beyond what you do.Keep people in your worldUltimately, you want to drive people to work with you. But the truth is that someone might not be ready to buy right now. For whatever reason, they're not prepared to solve their problem. But that's not to say they won't be down the line. So you do need them to stay on your list. And people are more likely to stay if you're generally helpful, rather than making your emails all about you. Another issue is that people move jobs and businesses. So ideally, what you want is for someone to give you their personal email address. That way, no matter where they go and work, they take you (and your helpful advice) with them. And this gives you more longevity in your relationship with that person. You want people to continue to know who you are and why they should read your emails regardless of whether they change jobs.How do you do that?Give great advice.Make your emails about them and not about you.  Help people to solve their problems and nudge them in the right direction with your emails, regardless of whether they end up buying from you.Use our approach to email marketing, i.e. share hints, tips, stories, ideas, and things that connect with the human in the business.These things will keep people subscribed to your email list because they'll know that they can go to the office (or log into their work email address) and look forward to what you're going to say. What if people don't remember who you are? If you think that people are unsubscribing from your list because they don't remember who you are, make sure you include your first name and your brand in the sender. People might remember the brand more than your name (in fact, they might not even know your name to start with), but they also want to know that the emails come from a real human being! So create a personal connection - it makes it more unlikely for people to unsubscribe from your list. Another reason why people might forget who you are and unsubscribe is that you don’t email often enough. In order to be remembered, you need to email often. If you’re not showing up regularly, people will simply forget who you are. And if you can’t remember who someone is when you receive their email, you’ll automatically assume it’s unsolicited spam. So, increase the frequency of your emails to at least a few times a week, so people can’t forget who you are. Unsubscribes aren't a bad thing! Generally speaking, unsubscribes are not a problem if increasing the frequency of your emails is part of your business model. But you need to be careful that unsubscribes don’t come from the fact that your emails aren’t good enough! You can either have high retention or high churn, and both models work.We take the approach of high churn with our list (and clean it regularly and quite aggressively) because we want to keep it the leanest it can be. As much as possible, the only people we want on our list are hyper-fans.So when someone joins our email list, we send them our Get to Know You sequence (which is our Welcome sequence). At the back of that, people will either decide to stay (and typically stay for a while), or they’ll immediately go. And that’s fine by us because it means we’re left with a small but super profitable list of active people who buy. It’s more profitable, it's easier to manage, and it makes our deliverability higher. The hygiene of that list is much easier to maintain. Watch out for surges of unsubscribersWhile unsubscribes aren’t a bad thing, you want to avoid sudden surges of unsubscribes. If you send something out, and suddenly a lot of people unsubscribe (and that’s not a typical pattern for you), then you want to figure out what caused it.But if you have a consistently high unsubscribe rate, it's not a huge problem if that’s by design, and your marketing and sales are making up for that. Keep your list clean by making sure that people either buy from you and stay on your list or if they're going to just grab your lead magnet and not buy, let them go. You're not for them, and they're not for you.What you don't want to do is to cling to every single person on your list. Because you're probably spending money to acquire subscribers, and if some of them go, that's fine. Focus on nurturing those who stay and on turning them into hyper fans so they'll buy from you. In the long run, the amount they spend with you will more than cover the cost of the people who unsubscribe.Both models (high retention and high churn) are valid and can be hugely successful. You just need to pick your path and make sure it’s profitable for you. As long as you’re getting results and hitting the income, sales, and profit target you set for yourself, carry on with what you’re doing. But don’t get too hung up on regular unsubscribes.Problem Three - You’re not making enough salesWhat happens if you’re not making enough sales in your business from your email marketing? We believe that if you’re not making sales in the first 60 days of someone being on your email list, the chance of them ever buying from you plummets down to less than 5%. That’s what we’ve seen in our business and a few others too.And it makes sense. Because when someone joins your email list, they have a problem they want to solve. And if they haven’t decided to solve it with you within the first couple of months of being in your world, it means they’ve probably found the solution somewhere else or that problem isn't that important to them. The way to fix this is to make sure that when someone joins your email list, you have a bunch of email campaigns, automations, and systems in place to give them the best chance of buying from you within the first 60 days. Or, if you have a longer selling cycle, then account for that. Break that cycle down into key checkpoints to give yourself a better chance to hit your sales target at every milestone. And always remember that your job as a marketer is to get your emails opened but also to drive clicks, engagement, and sales. [thrive_leads id='8822']Problem Four - Your subscribers aren't opening your emailsPeople often look at B2B marketing as this weird animal where you have to be super professional and use very benefit-drive subject lines. It’s easy to think that you can’t inject the same personality that you would in a B2C email. But that's simply not true because you’re talking to a human within a business!So while you have to be professional to an extent (depending on what business you’re talking to) you can still have personality and use curiosity-driven subject lines. This is even more important in B2B because people's inboxes are full of random cold outreach emails from other marketers who are trying to get them to pay attention. And often, they use benefit-driven subject lines with no personality at all.It's worth pointing out that a strong subject line isn’t what you write for the headline of a sales page (i.e. very benefit- and outcome-driven). You want to write subject lines that get people to open your emails to see what's inside. And they do that because the minute they see your subject line they feel something. They’re either confused, bewildered, interested, intrigued, or whatever. The point is that they’re feeling an emotion. And those emotions are more useful to you in terms of open rates and (down the line) sales.Use curiosity-driven subject linesSo remember that you’re talking to a human within the business – not to the business entity. And as professional as they might be, they’re still people who can’t help but open an email with a curiosity-driven subject line because being curious is at the core of human nature – no matter who you are or what you do. So talk about things that are going to intrigue your audience – and not necessarily benefit them.If you're not sure about this, split test. Grab two subject lines (for the same email) and send them to different sections of your email list. Then see which one performs better in terms of open rates. That way, you can start noticing patterns in your business and see what type of subject lines your audience tends to open more. What’s common about these subject lines? Do they all use humour? Are they all very short?We find that the compound curiosity approach we use always outperforms benefit-driven subject lines. But by all means, test it out in your business and find out what works for you.Problem Five - Your subscribers are not clicking the links in your emailsAnd last but not least, let’s talk about the links in your emails not getting clicked. When that happens, it means people can’t see your sales page or your appointment booking page. And a likely reason why this might be happening is that the call to action in your emails isn’t clear enough – or there isn’t one at all! We see that a lot, especially in the B2B world.Remember that even in B2B you still have to ask people to go and do something. It could be to book an appointment, a demo, a free call, book a free trial, etc. But it needs to be something. And you also need to make sure that your call to action stands out. Because if it’s buried in the middle of paragraphs or at the very end of your email, you might find that people become 'link blind' – they simply don’t see it.We have a FREE resource on this called Click Tricks. It’s a free PDF with 12 different ways to dress up and present the links in our emails. You can use it to make sure your calls to action stand out and are compelling and exciting.  [thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “We are ranked 18,281,928!!” And the email was about the fact that Rob saw a tourist attraction that claimed to be one of the top 25 Wonders of The World. But aren’t there only 7 Wonders of The World? We can’t just make that list longer to make sure that everyone’s included – it loses its meaning!So this subject line worked because it looks like a big proclamation of fame or achievement. But instead, it’s a weird backward flip on what people would expect. So check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesAdvanced Psychology: Using Compound Curiosity.WTF Is An Automated Customer Journey? Use the SCORE Method.Why You Shouldn’t Worry About Your Unsubscribe Rate.FREE list to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to...

Do you know how many of the email addresses on your list are invalid? What happens when your subscribers mark your emails as spam rather than unsubscribing? How can you improve your sender reputation and your email deliverability? And did you know that you're losing approximately 22% of your subscribers every single year? We discuss this (and more!) with Brian Minick from ZeroBounce. And we guarantee you - you want to know what Brian has to say here. So listen or read on, and you can thank us later! SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:12) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks. (3:10) Check out our sponsor ZeroBounce. (4:58) Did Brian really jump from the side of a cruise ship?(6:20) What is email validation and why do you want to do it?(9:44) Why deliverability rates aren't accurate.(11:43) The truth about disposable email addresses.(16:08) How to deal with typos.(19:50) Other reasons why email addresses aren't valid.(24:33) How to build an email list based on quality and not quantity.(26:47) Make informed business decisions with ZeroBounce.(31:40) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]What is email validation and why do you want to do it? Having validated over 18 billion email addresses over the years to check if emails to those addresses are deliverable, ZeroBounce did some research back in 2022. And they found that, on average, about 22% of email lists are decaying year on year. This means that next year you won't be able to deliver 22% of the emails you delivered this year.And part of the reason why is because of job shifts and email addresses getting shut down or abandoned. But there's more, and we're going to go into details with Brian a little later. But for now, let's let that number sink in - it's a terrifying statistic! Sure, if you have more personal accounts on your email list (rather than business ones), you're looking at a slightly slower decay. But that number could be higher if you're B2B. Brian confirmed that ZeroBounce (who are B2B) are seeing their own database reduce by 32% every year!If you've been following our work for a while, you'll know that our approach to email marketing is based on building a list over time and nurturing those people. We make offers from the start, but not everyone will buy straight away - some people can take a couple of years before they become customers. And if these people aren't even going to be on your list next year, you definitely want to sell to them quickly! You want to turn them into paying customers to keep them in your world. Because when they become customers, they're more likely to get in touch and let you know if they changed their email address, for example.But let's get into more detail... Why deliverability rates aren't accurateWhen your emails aren't getting delivered, you might see your bounce rate increase. However, Email Service Providers (ESPs) don't do a great job of explaining why that is. ZeroBounce, in their analysis, focuses on deliverability. When your emails are delivered, it means they've landed in someone's inbox. ESPs, on the other hand, will consider an email as delivered when it's left their system and has gone somewhere. In reality, it could be in someone's spam folder (blocked by a spam filter) or the Promotions folder. All it means is that the email has been sent.The reason why ESPs report on 'sent' rather than 'delivered' is that they can't tell the difference! But also, this way, they show you a great-looking number. What you really want to know though, is whether your emails end up in the subscriber's actual inbox. But what are some of the other reasons for email list decay? The truth about disposable email addresses A lot of websites out there let people create disposable email addresses - these are valid email addresses that give you access to an inbox and allow you to send and receive emails. People typically use them to get past gated content that requires an email address (like a lead magnet or a coupon) but without using their real email address. These are anonymous.But once the person has grabbed the piece of content they wanted, they leave that website, and they're gone. That email address is no longer a marketable contact. So if you send emails to that address, they'll either bounce or go unread. It's a completely useless contact because it's just like a 'burner email address' with a one-time use. The good news for us marketers is that disposable email addresses can be detected. So, as a business, you can make some decisions. If you're a charity that accepts donations from anonymous people, then this use case works for you. It’s a valid and safe scenario for accepting disposable email addresses onto your list. But otherwise, if the emails are bouncing, and you're never getting engagement, you're building a list of vapour!From a marketer’s point of view, these email addresses are a waste of space because these people won't ever buy anything from you. Plus, because the emails aren't being received, disposable email addresses are hurting your deliverability and reputation as a sender. And in the long run, this affects your ability to reach the people with legitimate email addresses who want to receive your marketing and buy from you. So it's important that you know this technology exists, and you take measures to rule these people out. How to deal with typosAnother issue that affects the decay of your email list is... typos. These are incredibly common. And a lot of people accidentally type the wrong username or domain when filling in opt-in forms. Simple errors can be detected and corrected, but that's not always possible. ZeroBounce has technology that allows the user (in real-time) to detect the error and have the chance to correct it. When a potential typo is identified, the user is presented with an additional screen where a suggestion is made about the correct email address. The user can then confirm and proceed or deny and correct the typo. This is a seamless experience that works with a message that appears on the screen on the page that immediately follows the sign-in form. And this is great news for us email marketers! It means we're not sending emails to the wrong address. And in turn, that means the emails won't bounce and hurt your deliverability. [thrive_leads id='8822']Other reasons why email addresses aren't validOther issues affecting list decay are spam traps and 'complainers' or 'abusers'. These are people who mark your emails as spam rather than unsubscribing. And when that happens, it negatively impacts your reputation in terms of how the email servers perceive you as a sender. If enough people are marking you as spam, you’ll potentially end up being blacklisted, and the rest of your emails might go straight into people’s spam folders.This is because email providers take feedback from their customers. And if a lot of users consider you spam, the email servers make decisions about your domain, your IP address, etc. Their job is to put content in front of their users that they actually want. So if enough people are considering you spam, they won't want to send your content to others.Of course, as an email marketer, you can't predict this behaviour - you don't know that specific subscribers will decide to mark you as spam rather than using the unsubscribe link you provide at the bottom of your emails. So what can you do? First thing first, make sure your unsubscribe links are clear and visible - don't hide them!But also, don't consider unsubscribes as something negative. The truth is when someone unsubscribes from your list, they're opening the email and clicking on a link. This is considered engagement, and it helps you build a good sender reputation. ZeroBounce can detect 'complainers'Because ZeroBounce works with a lot of sending partners, they receive data feeds that allow them to detect 'complainers' who tend to mark emails as spam rather than unsubscribe. They have a record of 5 million 'complainers', so if someone is known to ZeroBounce (and you're one of their clients) they're able to give you a heads up before you even accept someone like that on your list. Once you have access to data and statistics (and know, for example, that a certain email address is associated with someone who's 10 or more times more likely to report you as spam), you can decide whether to accept specific email addresses or not. Unfortunately, these are the types of issues that you can't deal with on your own as a business - you need the data. And ZeroBounce has access to it!How to build an email list based on quality and not quantitySo if you already have an email list, how do you find out how many of those email addresses are problematic? Brian explains it’s about quality and not quantity. Quantity is easy – anyone can add email addresses to their lists. But you want to focus on quality instead. Whatever the size of your list, what matters is that certain rates (such as bounce rates or complaint rates) stay low. It's a percentage game - stats matter for you and for the ESPs. If you've acquired your email list over time, ZeroBounce can analyse your entire email list to give you an idea of how many email addresses are undeliverable or risky. Once you get past this step, you can clean it, upload it, or send it through the ESP (depending on which one you’re using, ZeroBounce might have an integration with them) and let them run the analysis. It's a quick and easy job for ZeroBounce - they take about 45 minutes to run the data on a list of 100k email addresses and can give you information on each one. That allows you to effectively validate your list.  Make informed business decisions with ZeroBounceHistorically, ZeroBounce finds that 57% of people's email addresses are considered valid and safe to send. That leaves 43% of addresses that aren’t necessarily ‘bad’, but they need looking into in order to understand why the report highlighted them. If certain categories of email addresses are coming up for you, you have some important business decisions to make.If you have invalid email addresses, for example, you'll want to get rid of them. Because you really don't want those people in your CRM or ESP, especially if you're paying per contact! And with regards to other categories of 'bad' email addresses, you can benefit from the experience of ZeroBounce - they'll help you make decisions specific to your business. If you’re still in the early days of your list-building activity, knowing about the quality of your contacts will help you build a good sender reputation from the start. Because at the end of the day, your subject line, your content, or your offer can be great, but if your emails don't get delivered, no one will see them! So if you're a podcast listener and want to give ZeroBounce a test drive, Brian is offering 1,000 FREE validations. And if your list is smaller than that, even better! Now's the best time to be proactive and start looking at your data because doing the cleanup at a later date is going to be a lot harder. So check it out! [thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “trapped in the airport.” The email was about our 36-hour journey home from Austin back in June. We drew a parallel between the intricacies of marking sure people don’t slip through the cracks in the airport and ensuring subscribers haven't slipped through the cracks of your email automation.It’s a curiosity-driven hook that leads from the storytelling in the subject line, which also starts with a lowercase - and that's curiosity-invoking in itself. It comes across as if the email was potentially rushed because you are (indeed) “trapped in an airport”. So check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodes6 Things You Didn’t Know Your Email Marketing Platform Could Do.Warning: 6 Lies Your Email Marketing Platform Is Telling You.The Surprising Thing That REALLY Impacts Your Email Deliverability.FREE list to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how to stop landing in the spam folder and improving your email deliverability) 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!