Episode 361: The Email Revolution with Josh Kropkof

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hemner, your host. On today's episode, we have Josh Krupkoff. So we talk about email marketing on this podcast. I don't know about many of you, but I share in the episode, I didn't even really know that email marketing was a thing until like 2018. And so in this episode, even if you are not one who's ever dived into this idea of email marketing, I think that this will give you an idea to begin to think about how to possibly structure emails and how to even begin to look at email marketing as an asset to your small business and even the value of the list itself. I picked up a lot from this. I enjoyed connecting with Josh afterwards. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Josh Kropkov. Josh, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Yeah, excited to connect with you. So we always start with a background and origin story. I think it's just fascinating to see kind of how people's, uh, their careers and entrepreneurial journeys, etc., just take different twists and turns. Uh, take us back wherever you want to begin and bring us to present day.

For sure. Um, I guess my story for this kind of would be 10 years ago is kind of where it starts, because 10 years ago I was finishing up college in New Jersey where I grew up, and I had gone to school for hospitality and thought I was going to like work in the casinos and hotels in Atlantic City. And I did work there in college, but basically that was not something that I wanted to do my whole life. And I was kind of trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and I ended up in law school. I ended up moving to Florida and attending law school at the University of Miami. And it wasn't really because I wanted to be a lawyer. It was more just like, let me kind of buy some time to figure out like what I want to do. And I was interested in the law and I had people tell me, you know, get into law. So I was like, all right, let me try that. But somehow from there ended up in this world of digital marketing. So that's the interesting part. So Before that, growing up, my brother and I had always been really into entrepreneurial stuff and we always had this idea that like we want to start a business, but we didn't know like when or how that would happen in real life. We just kind of had this goal. And so he went to, he was going to college at Florida State and I went to law school at University of Miami. And during this time sort of fell into the world of digital marketing by mistake and also email marketing. And the reason was because I was on this email newsletter I belong to called Dating Advice Daily. So when I was in college, I was kind of a shy guy. I was kind of a shy kid growing up. And I sort of struggled in college with like, you know, people, you'd go with your friends to these different parties and stuff. And, you know, they'd be like super confident with approaching women and so forth. And I was kind of like that shy guy. Went online to kind of find help with this, like how to get better at this, right? And so I stumbled across this newsletter called Dating Advice Daily, and it was from this guy, uh, named Jason Capital, which is kind of a cool name, uh, and he would send an email every single day, uh, with actionable tips and advice to get better at this area of your life. Um, and it was definitely meant for guys in their like early 20s like I was at the time. Um, and so, uh, what was cool, I had no idea what to expect. I had never signed signed up for an email newsletter before, and so I didn't know what to expect. But the first email from him was like basically rules. Like, here's the rules: you're going to get an email every single day and you have to read it, and I'm going to, you know, give you actionable advice. You have to take action. People on this newsletter, you know, people on this list, we're called Team Capital, and we take action on these things. We don't just sit around and, you know, kind of goof off, but we actually do the thing, and that's how we get the results. And also, I'm going to sell things from time to time. I have different programs and courses and, you know, paid products and memberships that I'm going to sell. And if that bothers you, then please unsubscribe. Don't be on this list. So I was like, whoa, like, I've never seen anything like this before. Long story short, it ended up, you know, being a really awesome thing to be a part of. And, you know, it helped me at that time and it was really cool. But when I was in law school, and sort of trying to figure out, you know, do I want to be a lawyer? What do I want to do? I'm still reading this newsletter every, you know, I still get this, this thing every day and I'm still reading it. It's still relevant. And he sort of pivots to teaching more about how he became a millionaire in just a couple of years with this Dating Advice Daily newsletter. And so he starts to, you know, reveal these things to the the email list about email marketing and about how he actually, you know, used something called copywriting, which I had never heard of at the time. But it's basically like psychological selling. And so he starts revealing this stuff and I just kind of got hooked on like on these ideas. And I was like, this is, this is really cool. And he's, he tells this story about how one weekend he wanted to go to Vegas and see if he could somehow, you know, go to Las Vegas and spend all kinds of money but end up making more money just by sending an email to his list. So basically covering all of his expenses in Vegas. And so he quickly created a program. It was like a 10-video program. It was something you could go through in a day. And he put it on sale for, I think it was $47 to his list. And he sent out an email about it on Friday. Came back on Monday and that email had made him over $50,000. And so he tells us this story. And so at that point, I'm thinking like, what am I doing in law school? And like, how are people making this much money, like online and with an email list? And so he ends up— a year goes by or so, he ends up holding this live event in Las Vegas. This was in, I believe, 20— 2016, where it was a conference of all kinds of people in this digital marketing world who all had email lists and had all grown businesses online. And so my brother and I ended up going to this conference and basically our minds were blown and our lives were changed forever of like, like we kind of decided like we've always wanted to start a business, like maybe it should be something in this field, like something with digital marketing. And then fast forward a little bit. We initially did start a business selling digital products, and that business did not succeed. It kind of, you know, that's a long story I won't get into. But basically in 2016 and 2017, our first attempt failed because we kind of didn't have a real solid foundation for what we were doing. And it was kind of our first stab at it, you know, after I graduated law school and just went right into this. But what we learned through that experience was the power of email marketing and, and we had our own email list at the time and we were able to, to sell things to that list. So what ended up happening is after that business idea failed, we realized that we could take the skill that we were developing over the course of a year and a half with copywriting and email marketing and we could provide it as a service to other businesses that, that needed this, you know, this service. And so from there, we ended up with getting in touch with a mentor, different mentor in the space who was an email copywriter and email marketer for decades, had owned various agencies and sold them and different things like that. And this guy, his name's Mike Becker, basically taught us the business of email marketing and also made us much better at you know, copywriting, digital marketing, all this stuff. And we, we realized at some point along this journey that there was this gap with e-commerce businesses specifically where they were not using the things that we had learned to make email successful. That most e-commerce businesses, and this is still true to this day, even are kind of stuck in, in sort of the, the old like way that email marketing was kind of done in like 2005 and, you know, 2009. Design and stuff where it's just very much looks like a billboard advertisement. And so we realized we could sort of bring this more direct response skill into email marketing for e-commerce businesses. So that's the origin story. I know that was long. I tried to fit a lot in there, but I hope that that was kind of gave you a good idea of how I fell into this world.

That's great. I actually know of— don't know him at all— Jason Capital. So yeah, I've heard his name get thrown around quite a bit. I actually didn't know that that kind of a background to be able to do it. You know, I have to say, I, I don't know when it was. I mean, but it would have been like 2018 maybe was the first time that I even heard like email marketing is a form of marketing. I mean, it wasn't even that long ago. Okay. And so as you were talking, I was like, man, when was the first time? I mean, I I was in business for a while before I even like looked at that. And so when people would refer to your list, I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. And so when, maybe I'll even, I won't answer that. I'm going to let you answer those kinds of things where it's like, I never looked at that as an asset.

Okay.

And it seems like that with increasing security. Controls on with the fight between, let's just say, Apple. I know people have other phones.

Yeah.

Um, but between Apple and Facebook, or Meta, Apple, and, uh, you know, other platforms that are out there that, you know, there's a ton of social media marketing agencies out there, and listen, rightfully so. Okay, for sure. But it seems like that while that had really taken off, email kind of began to slide back down. Yet you're starting to see now people— now that I'm more in this space, people are talking about the value of your list.

Yeah, yeah.

The value of like the blend basically of pulling people from your social network, right? And in doing that, or from your podcast and pulling them into a list that you own. And maybe why don't you take some of that? Because if I was listening to this podcast 6 years ago, I would have been like, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't get the value of it. I've never done email marketing, et cetera. So once you break some of that down.

Sure. Well, it's perfect what you said, what the list that you own, right? The traffic that you own, that is your email list. And that is something really, really important is like everywhere else that you get traffic from online, whether it be organic traffic that you don't control, right? It's kind of like your SEO, your appearances on podcasts and things like that and ways that people find you through social media. You can't exactly control that traffic. Then there's traffic that you do have more control over, which is your paid media, right, where we're buying customers. But then there's the traffic you own, and all that consists of is your email list, SMS, like phone numbers if you do that type of marketing, and direct mail if you do that. Those are true assets of your business. So like when you— if you sell your company one day, you are able to use that in the valuation. They can put a dollar figure on that list if you've treated your email list well and you're able to show show like this is how much each person on this list is worth on average, that factors in, right? So it's really important and a really, I think, you know, cool aspect of email marketing and why it's so cool. But it's funny what you mentioned about 2018 and kind of like not even really thinking about email marketing because that was when our business was founded, this current business, the email agency. And One thing is kind of our name, how we came up with it. At the time, I was, I was totally broke because our first business had failed, like I mentioned, and we were kind of struggling during that period. And my brother was in his last year of college at Florida State, and I kind of lost everything and had to move in with him. And he just had this little studio apartment on campus, and I slept on the floor, and I was there for about 5 months while we built this agency. And when we were looking at different agencies out there, like, that was the thing. We knew what we wanted to do, but I came up with the name The Email Agency because I was like, it's weird. Like, there's so many agencies online now that are doing social media marketing, PPC, SEO, all of that. But like, I don't see any that are like, email is our thing. Like, that's the main thing we do, or that's the only thing we do. So I'm like, let's just call ourselves The Email Agency. And then we came up with the letters. TEA for the email agency. So our logo is a teacup with a T on it. So it's kind of cool. But anyway, that's changed completely now. There's like a million email agencies out there. It's funny, like how fast things change. But, but yeah, I think, you know, what you were mentioning about like sort of the landscape out there with between Apple and between Gmail and all the different, you know, environments, like it's not just social media anymore now. Email is definitely more challenging than it used to be. There's a lot more considerations out there. I was talking to a client earlier today who is having some concerns over some things with, with the way that they're collecting emails because apparently there's some new law going into effect that's only going to be in Washington State and it's going to be like the most strict privacy protections. I don't know a lot about it yet, but it's something I got to look into. But it's a, it's a funny thing, like all of this stuff you know, not a week goes by where there's not some new change in the environment that may affect how we do things. So I think that that's definitely true across all marketing channels at this point. But email is definitely still one of the, if not the most, I guess, free in terms of like you have the most freedom with your email list to market to them the way that you want to. And it's That's why it's so effective. But that's definitely changing a little bit. There's still, you know, challenges to that. But one thing that won't change, I don't know if you've ever heard of Dr. Matthew Dunn, but he's a big guy in the email world. I talked to him. He has a podcast that I was on not too long ago, and he was saying how, like, because of the infrastructure, the way that email works, and he's somebody who worked on like email back in the '80s. So like he was in the original like infrastructure side of it, he was like, it, it can't really be controlled by a single entity. And that's what makes it so cool because it's unlike all these other platforms. Email is really— it was created for everyone. So it really is synonymous with the internet itself. And that's what makes it so cool in terms of, you know, how we're able to get our messages across to people. I've connected with people through email, even cold email that I never would have believed would answer an email. From a stranger, right? So that's, that's another interesting aspect of it. I know I'm, I kind of ramble on to things. So feel free to cut in here. But I hope that sort of answered.

No, it does. Yeah, that's good. So I think it's kind of like I felt— I tried it on, on all of our podcasts to ask questions from a genuine place of curiosity for myself. And I hope that that ends up serving our audience. And so I, as we were talking, I was listening and I was actually going to our operating system and I was looking down and I was looking at our marketing playbook and the email marketing is on there, right? And I was kind of just taking a cursory glance at some of these things and I thought, yeah. They're okay. They're okay. And I think it's like, meaning they're okay as in like, I haven't given it enough thought. Okay.

Yeah.

I haven't, I'm like, yeah, do we have a new lead sequence? New lead sequence means, and maybe you have better language than that. That's just what we call it. But like somebody opts in to something we have, these are the new emails that they get. Okay. So that's one new customer. What's the welcome email that they get when they become a customer to, to us? What's maybe the series of emails that we sent? Okay. What, what are some of the basic general rules? Okay. When it comes to, and maybe let's just start around not a customer, a lead. Okay. A lead. Somebody's just come into my world. Into anybody's world, what are some of the dos and the don'ts that you've seen, right? That actually work. And then I've got some other questions around people that I've heard, Russell Brunson, ClickFunnels, right? And people like that. And they're just like, some of them, they send emails like, send 3 a day. And you're like, dude, if you send 3 a day, I'm opting out of that, you know? And so I think there's like, you get, whether it's around systems and processes like that, that's my forte, that you get conflicting messages. You know what I mean? Like, oh, send them an email a day. And then somebody else says like, no, no, no, you don't, you don't want to do that. You want to send like, send it 3 days a week, right? As an example, they need to be plain text emails. No, no, no, you need to have it to where it captures. It's like all of these conflicting messages. And it's like, I don't know where the heck to go with all of this. And so it's like, well, I don't know, we'll put some together and see if it works.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we can unpack some of that. I think at the— at its most basic, you got to remember what email really is, like what it's for. It is a space for conversation and it is also private, meaning that you're not on, you know, you're not on Instagram, you're not on a social media page where everyone's seeing everything. It is a one-on-one. Space, right? So when I, when I receive an email from someone and, you know, I'm not sure who it is, I'm automatically suspicious of that. Like, why am I getting a cold email, right, from somebody? Now I'm in the industry, so it's a little different. I kind of, you know, I understand, expect it a little bit. But in general, like, you got to think about it as that private space and it is a one-on-one thing. So I think that one of the the problems in email marketing, and this is something that I see a lot more of because I— our agency specifically services e-commerce businesses and sort of these like more product-focused brands where they sort of get caught up in, I guess, the sort of more corporate-style branding of what they're doing, and they forget about the fact that email is a personal channel. And so So what doesn't work as well anymore is emails that look, feel, sound like just another ad, right? People are, you know, consumers in general, all of us in general are way more conscious of marketing. We're way more sophisticated than we were when, you know, the internet was still relatively new. It is the responsibility of the business and the business owner and whoever's in charge of the email marketing to sort of live in the now and kind of bring the program or the, you know, bring the emails up to speed with like the changing sort of tastes of your customer. Right. And what I mean by that is if you send emails that are just constantly hounding people for to buy something, to buy your product, or to take you up on another sale, or to, you know, just show off more of your products and that's all you do. Those people are going to very quickly become desensitized to that marketing. They're, they're not resonating with that message. What you want is, and again, we, we talked a little bit about the value of that asset, your email list. The way that you make that more valuable over time is you keep people engaged. You don't have this attitude of churn and burn, or I've heard this phrase before, buy or die. Like someone signs up to the email list and I'm just going to keep giving them sales, keep pounding them with deals and sales and promotions until they either buy or just get off the list. And really what happens is they don't— usually they don't unsubscribe. They actually are still there. They just don't care anymore and they're not reading your emails. And they— it's better— it would be better if they unsubscribed, but they're not. They're just kind of hurting your, your deliverability, your reputation, because they're there and they don't care about you. They're never interacting with your emails. What's more valuable is if you're sending them things that they open and they have genuine interest to see what you're sending because they, you know, they feel a connection. So how do we do that? Well, the basics of it is, again, remember, it is a conversation. It's a personal place. So I always tell people, you are going to get way more from making the emails actually come from a person. And this is something that's way more like, I think, easy for a business person like you or I to understand. And probably a lot of the people in this audience who have a, you know, similar business to us where maybe it's a service business because we've kind of always looked at it that way where we know that, you know, it's built around us. So we don't have as much of a problem with that. Whereas some of the larger brands or even small brands, but they're like selling physical products and they're kind of trying to seem bigger than they are. They're like, no, I don't want to put a person behind my messaging. Like it's just a brand. And there's nothing wrong with branding and email marketing and having emails that do seem like, okay, this is the brand advertising. It's just that you don't want to only do that. You have to have some kind of a connection there. So the way that you get a connection is you have emails that read as though I'm hearing from a person on the other side, like there's an actual human talking to me. And so there are all kinds of things you can do. So like you mentioned about like a lead or somebody who just opts in, In my world, we call that pre-purchase, right? They've heard of you, they've taken that step to opt in, and now they are raising their hand. They're saying, I want to learn more. How do we convert that first sale, right? So there are things like that pre-purchase, post-purchase, sales cycle abandonment, all of that stuff. These are parts of the customer journey. You definitely want to have email sequences in place to cover that. But I think that at a more fundamental level, you're better served as a business person by thinking of email like a radio show. So radio broadcasts, if you've ever listened to a talk show on the radio, the host will basically get on the air usually the same time every day or certain days of the week, and they will continue the conversation from last time. They'll, you know, welcome you back. They'll talk about, you know, what's, what's going on right now. Right. And there it's very current and they're going to have different conversations. Maybe they're taking callers, right? Maybe they're, you know, talking about a certain news story or if it's sports radio, they're talking about sports team. If it's, you know, political or something, it's going to be focused on that. But the point is you're tuning in and you may not tune in every day, but they're there. They're always there and you know that they are. And so when you tune in, you're hearing from that person and you kind of develop this relationship with the broadcaster. So email actually works the same way. You're there, you're showing up, you're in their inbox. I am, you know, if you mentioned Russell Brunson sending like 3 emails a day and, you know, Grant Cardone, I don't know if if you've heard of him, he's famous for sending— I'm still on his email list. But yeah, sometimes it's crazy. It's like, dude, he sent 10 emails today about something, some webinar or something, right? And I may not pay attention, but it's funny, like, I don't, I don't unsubscribe. And maybe that's because I'm in this world. But, but no, he's, he's very, very successful. I use him a lot as sort of an extreme example. But I think what matters more is that it's like it's not about emailing too much. It's more about consistency because I don't have to read every email from you, but you're, you're showing up. And when I'm ready to, I'm going to, you know, engage. And also the flip side of that is if you barely show up and then I get an email from you and maybe you're only emailing and there are companies that will send an email to their list once a month. And, you know, unfortunately, people forget, like, and you're not thinking about it, but people forget they signed up. They haven't heard from you in a while. They forget who you are. They might not even give you the grace of, you know, 10 seconds to actually look at your email and figure out and remember, oh yeah, that's right. I signed up for this. A lot of times they'll just report you as spam and that's really unfortunate, right? Or they'll just unsubscribe. They're like, why is this guy talking to me? So it's better to be sending more frequently than less, and it's better to be, you know, more consistent. But at a fundamental level, you want to remember the conversation and remember that your job when email marketing is to continue having that conversation.

Mm-hmm. I, I was trying to think through what are some of the people that I get emails from that— so I actually don't do a lot of unsubscribing, but I do filter a lot. So what I mean by that is, you know, in my Gmail accounts, which I have like 7 of across the businesses, but I'll filter them in there. And there's only a few that I, when I set the filter up, that I, because I want my email, my inboxes are clean. You know, I keep, I mean, less than, certainly less than 10, maybe even less than that in my actual inbox. And my bigger point here is to say that there's only a few that make it to where they stay in the inbox. The rest of them, they actually just automatically get filtered into that. So if I wanted to go into those and read them, I could. And I was trying to think for me what makes up the ones that I actually read. And so I was like, well, it's clearly a topic that I'm interested in for sure. I mean, that's, that's one of them. Uh, the second I, that I was thinking through is that for the most part, the emails are interesting to read. Right. Um, so I, I'll give you an example of one that obviously is, has done incredibly well, but, uh, and I'm sure you're super familiar with it, but Morning Brew, right? Morning Brew has done an excellent job. Now, I don't read Morning Brew, and I'll tell you why I don't read it anymore. I still— I didn't unsubscribe from it, but I'm not a big news person. It changes my disposition a little bit on some of those kind of things. And so I really try to stay out of the news as much as possible. So some of that stuff, although they didn't do a terrible job, I was like, ah, it's just not worth me doing that. But I thought they do an excellent job with the way that they have their email. Okay, so I'm getting to a question here, which is that email has a general structure, but it's kind of beautifully designed. Then there's a couple other people I follow, their emails, they're literally plain text. There's no images, there's no pictures. It's just words, right? It's just words on, on the, on the, on the email. So that's what I'm saying. It gets a little confusing. Like, I'm sure you work with some e-commerce brands where it's like, no, there's needs to be visuals that are there. And then there's maybe other times where it's like, nope, we're not doing anything. Here's this information. There's one bit, one link at the bottom. Click the link to buy and that's it. So like that, that's how do you, how do we square those two things up?

Well, it could take a whole podcast to do that, but I'll give you my, my, my best answers to this because, yeah, this is something that, you know, it's very much a part of my business. So One thing about this that I want to say at the start is that no matter what, whether it's an email that is a— has almost no copy in it at all, but it's got a lot of design and imagery, or whether it's the other end of the spectrum, the other extreme where it's like a plain text email or it is a plain text email with some blue hyperlinks in there. Every email is made up of the same stuff. They have the same parts. They need to. They should. Every email has a subject line. Every— that's obvious, right? But let's talk in the email. So every email has a lead or a hook, a body, a close, and a PS. And even if it's a— if it's a design email where you can't as easily identify like where's the close and the PS in this email, but it's still there. So and each part of that email has a purpose. And that's where I think a lot of you know, brands don't really— they kind of get it wrong because they're not thinking about the different parts and kind of what should be there. But so really, you know, we work with, with brands in— I think at this point, the last time that I counted this for our marketing, we were over 100 different niches that we have worked with since 2018. So in the last 5 to 6 years, and niches, meaning they, you know, selling everything from sports gear to furniture to pet food to sex toys. They're like so many different things, right? And so some of them have— they all have different styles. You know, some of them are much more like copy heavy, I'll call it, where others are, you know, really big into design and they all— it all works. I think a challenge that I have faced and continue to work through over all the years of really focusing on e-commerce is to bring these two worlds together, design and branding, and also direct response copywriting, because there is sort of this dichotomy there. And sometimes these are like warring factions in the marketing world, and the design people are worried about how to make the email display correctly in dark mode or on Android devices. And that's what they're debating about. And then people in the copywriting world are debating about things like the USP and the unique mechanism and how to handle objections and tie features to benefits, to pain points and all that stuff. Right. So how do you blend those things?

Yeah.

And that's been my challenge. It's always, you know, and clients and brands can come from either one of those spaces. Because even if they're, you know, a brand that is a little bit more on the copy side, like we work with a men's sexual wellness brand that traditionally has written mostly text emails, but there is stuff that we want to bring into that space that is more design because design absolutely is an important part of email marketing. So I guess all of that is to say that like these things all work. I think the biggest problem people have is sort of like a fixed mindset rigidity when it comes to this stuff where they're like, no, like, you know, all I care about is that my email looks a certain way and that I have this, this font and this style of, of, you know, this color palette and like I don't care about copy or, you know, the second that somebody brings up copy, they immediately are like, no, I don't want long long text in my emails. It's like, well, you know, that's not necessarily what it means. It could be 5 words, but what do the words say, right? So I think that it's important as an industry, email marketing as a whole, for these two sides to come together, realize that, you know, design is important. It's, it's, you know, the look of your email. If, if you, if you're in a business that is, you know, because there are businesses where it's not as important, I will say that. But if you are a business that sells, for example, apparel or, you know, something like that, like I got to see it, right? I have to see it. And you are in a space where your competitors have good-looking emails, so it has to look good. But on the other side, you cannot ignore fundamental marketing principles that have been around for centuries and have been used to convert people. You know, so I think what it comes down to— and when I say convert people, you know, sales— and that's what it comes down to, like, is your email getting not just the click, but is it actually converting a sale or whatever the action is that you want them to take? And the way that you do that is with more fundamental direct response principles. You know, things like having a good hook, things like having a good USP, good product benefit descriptions, things like that. Calls to action, not just, you know, everything always says shop now. you know, that doesn't really work as well as, as we are.

So what was the elements? I want to make sure I get that because I think that that is regardless of, of the business, uh, industry that, that, that we could all take. You, I think you went, I think you maybe called it the email structure or something. You said, I think you said subject line, open, body, close, PS.

Yeah, lead, hook, open, any of those work. Um, but yeah, in the email there's going to be a lead or an opening section, a body, which is going to be the meat of the email, a close, which is usually a call to action, and then a P.S. Now, in literal terms, we don't put a P.S. necessarily in every email, but the P.S. could be sort of that ending, you know, footer space in the email where you have like that, the information that you always have in your, your email template, right? Yeah.

But it's also kind of where I've heard people talk about things called super signatures. Like, oh, by the way, when you're ready, here's 3 ways that we could help you type stuff.

Yeah, that, that, yeah, that works. Um, yeah, definitely that, that can be, and I have, I have stuff like that in my email marketing too.

Okay. So don't be mad at me when I ask this next question. Okay. So I'm just, I'm going to ask it honestly and I'll, okay. So hopefully this is teeing you up. Okay. So Josh, what? There's this new thing. Out. I don't know if you know about it. It's called ChatGPT.

Yeah. Okay.

So why don't— tell me, I want you to tell me, like, if I was going to go build my emails, I want to take them, throw them into ChatGPT and say, like, write these better emails and just use off of that. How has that helped change direct response copywriting for email and even for you guys?

Yeah, I, it's interesting. I have had different experiences over the last, you know, year to 2 years, I guess it's been since ChatGPT has come out. So I think that where people get into trouble with it is to sort of like assume that they don't have to do anything anymore because they can just use ChatGPT. What I have found is is if you have a person giving it the prompts, like you, if you're gonna use ChatGPT to write an email, and we'll stick to just talking about emails, but if you're gonna use it to write an email, you do have to know how to prompt it to do that correctly. And so I've seen people do that totally wrong, and, and then, and that's when you do end up with emails that you kind of realize this was written by AI. And I get that sometimes. Other times maybe it's just a feeling and you don't quite know what's wrong with it, but it doesn't quite resonate the same. Yeah, we do have one of our, you know, email copywriters here in my agency is really loves ChatGPT and working with it. And so he has sort of his own system for certain— I don't want to say emails because he doesn't really use it in the sense of like having it write the whole email, but he, he is good at prompting it to figure out basically topics and positioning for certain items that we're promoting for like the brand that he's working with. So like he'll, he'll know that like this week because like one of, one of the clients that one of our good longtime clients is a company that sells commercial planters, like big planters for like they have planters in Fenway Park and the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, places like that. And so there are consumers on the email list, but a lot of them are actually businesses too. And so this is actually this brand's like busiest time of year. And so one of the things we found is that the list is responding really, really well to any email talking about pool and patio stuff, anything to do with your pool and patio setup, even if it's a hotel or if it's just a person like a consumer at their home. And so what he has been able to use ChatGPT for pretty successfully is basically coming up with new and new and new and new ideas on how to do new topics and new things around pool and patio to position this product a certain way. And so he is what I would call like a master ChatGPT prompt engineer where he knows what to ask it to, to get the ideas that he can then write the copy from. But he also doesn't just have it write the copy for him because like if he does, then he still has to go in and edit it a lot from whatever ChatGPT sent. And that's been my experience too because like I used it recently to write a description for our company in a certain online directory for agencies. And I found that like it still took a really long time and I had to edit the description like like 5 times to get it, and I still am not really happy with it. But I'm not that good at ChatGPT like some people are. So I think my point is like, even if you're going to use that in email marketing, you got to do it the right way. You can't just kind of like write it off and be like, all right, ChatGPT, write me an email to sell this product. Here's the features and the benefits. Here's the offer. The audience is this person, and then have it spit something out. It's like, oh, that's right, let me use that. I mean, you could. It's not going to be that effective, go, um, because it doesn't— it's not going to necessarily hook the same way. ChatGPT, um, may have access to knowledge, you know, hundreds of years of knowledge in direct response, um, but it's still not a direct response copywriter.

Yeah, no, that's good. All right, so this is a simple question and then we'll, we'll wrap up. Do you see email— and maybe the answer is both, honestly— do you see email as a nurturing retention system or as a conversion system, or is it both depending on the business?

Yeah, it's definitely both. Definitely both. You know, they call it part of retention marketing. So like retaining customers, but it's also needed to get that first sale a lot of times. So it is, it's about conversion and nurturing, you know, I'll say engagement. I think one of the best things you can do in that sense, by the way, and this is for everybody listening, that's kind of like thinking about how they might be able to just email their list better. If you're doing it yourself, like, it's really important to ask questions and get replies. And that's something that a lot of companies, a lot of brands don't even do this. Sometimes clients are like surprised when, when we bring this up, they're like, I never thought of that. But it's really important because it's the pulse on your list. It's, it's understanding kind of where they're at. Because your job, like I said earlier, you're having a conversation. You're kind of almost like a radio broadcaster. You got to enter the conversation that's going on in their head. You got to know where they're at. So the best way to do that is ask good questions, read your replies, use that to figure out what your next email is going to be. And it is always great to treat it as a conversation. And that's why I love when I get good replies to my emails. I will send an email out the next day featuring a good reply I got. Hey, you know, John from Lexington, Kentucky answered my question the other day. Here's what he said. And I'll like paste like a little excerpt and then be like, that brings up a good point. And then I'll have my email off of that. So that's a really great way to nurture. And then when it comes to conversions, you absolutely want to talk about their pain points. The reasons why they would buy your products has to be, you know, top of mind. And then, you know, what are the benefits What is the unique selling proposition? What are the reasons why they should buy? Don't just assume that because they signed up to your list, you can just throw a promotion at them and say shop now and it's going to work. It is email marketing. So the blessing and the curse of it is that you can do it really poorly and it'll still work to some extent. But if you want to get really great results with it, you definitely want to use direct response copy in your emails.

I love it. I love it. That's great. Well, Josh, people want to connect with you. Where would you point them to?

So number one to connect with me, I would say my email list. And I made that really simple for people.

If you didn't, if you didn't answer it that way, I was going to be like, what are we even doing here?

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's super simple for anyone listening to this podcast. So like if you're driving or something, you don't have to like worry about it. You'll remember it's just email123.club. Email123.club, and that is where you can join our newsletter, The Email Revolution. And then, you know, if you want to just find out anything else about like my agency, it's simple. Also, theemailagency.com.

Awesome. That's great, man. Cool. Josh, the name of the podcast is Above the Business. For you being a small business owner yourself, What does getting above the business mean to you?

Yeah, you know, you said earlier that I'd be asked this and you know what I was thinking about above the business is kind of taking more of a, I guess, longer timeline view of what you're doing. Friend of mine always, he's really into like studying billionaires and he said that like like, while millionaires and people who have like million-dollar businesses, a lot of times they think long term, but to them that means like 5 years, 10 years down the road. But billionaires think in terms of 50 to 100 year goals. And the reason is because they know that whatever they're building is, it's not about them, it's about the generation after them and their legacy, right? And all these people after them. So I would say above the business for me is that, you know, I have a lot of personal goals. My brother too, of like other businesses that we want to do in our lives. Um, I want to get into real estate at some point, want to do productions at some point, things like that that I'm into. Um, but the email agency is really important, I think, because we are very much a business of our time that is, is doing something, um, while this is becoming like a real strategic communication platform and, and all, and of course marketing. But like, the, um, those who can control or at least have some stake in, uh, you know, marketing channels and, and kind of how, you know, who understand how to, um, use traffic in this way like we talked about at the beginning of the show, um, that's going to be super valuable, you know, hundreds of years from now maybe, or 100 years from now in ways that we can't imagine. So, uh, above the business to me, like I hope that what we're doing here is something that will help people grow their businesses and really have, you know, an impact beyond just right now, but hopefully like an entire economy, you know, for centuries to come, you know, God willing that things go well in the world or well enough that people can thrive. You know, I hope that one day everybody, you know, even just your average person is able to have an email list and use it to, you know, spread their message and maybe make money some way. And that's sort of my long-term vision. So I'd say that that's why we call our newsletter the Email Revolution. And so to me, that's sort of why we're doing this. And I'd say that's my above the business view.

That's great. Awesome. Awesome. What a great answer. Josh, appreciate you coming on, man.

Thank you. Thanks so much, Brad.

I always try to give some tangible takeaways for me personally into this episode. I think a couple things stand out sometimes that they're bigger pictures. I'm gonna give you a bigger picture view of this episode or kind of a takeaway for me and then give you a very tangible one. Number 1, email marketing is something that we do, but I had not given enough thought, and I'm going to be more intentional. I was actually— while we were on the podcast, I was even pulling up some of our email marketing Google documents that we have, and I put it on my to-do list to go through and say, hey, I need to pay attention to this. I need to be more on top of what are we sending out, how are they being structured, etc. And that leads me to my second big key takeaway, which is what is the actual structure of the emails that put together. And the third one is that, yeah, ChatGPT is one thing, but you gotta be really good about what the prompts are of how to prompt ChatGPT. And so is it gonna just, you know, throw out, throw together an email for you? Well, yeah, I can do that. But it's really about having the right structure to the emails and it's saying the things that you want it to say that speak in your voice. And that takes time and, and, and skill to develop even that of how to even prompt ChatGPT, but the first two, how to structure the email, but then also, uh, the, the bigger picture one, which is I need to pay more attention to this. And so that's what I'm going to do. I'll put it on my key takeaway and actually one of my action items. You want to connect with him and go sign up for his email newsletter. In fact, that's actually maybe one of the best ways to, to learn is connect with him, connect with him on LinkedIn, but also join his email newsletter itself. Go to— sorry, team, let me find it. Go to email123.club, email, email123.club. As always, shout out to our podcast sponsors: Club Capital, Coach P Consulting, Today@Pro, and Autopilot Recruiting. I think one of the biggest investments that you can make for you personally is in your own personal development, and then also into your team. We work with two and partner with two of the very best to help you do just that— Coach P Consulting and Autopilot Recruiting. If you've not at least reached out to them to have a call, now's the time to be able to do that. We're in a time of a lot of change. Listen to Coach P's episode that recently came out. Go and reach out to him, have a conversation about how he can help you to give you the the word tracks, the scripts that they're using in their business today, because the things that they were doing even a couple years ago might be a little bit different than what they are today, and you can get inside access to that. You also want to recruit a team, really want to begin to scale your team, or if you're looking to really level up the quality of the people that you have on your team, work with Autopilot Recruiting. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com and Coach P Consulting. .com. Josh and I were actually talking about different softwares, uh, that can do different things. There's so many different ones out there, and there can be a lot of different choices when you're talking about your bonus and your compensation plans and even where to put some of your scripts. If you're an insurance agency owner, TodayApp Pro does an exceptional job. Go to todayapppro.com, todayapppro.com. Get away from the spreadsheets, spreadsheets. Look, I love a good Excel spreadsheet as much as anybody, but they are limited in the things that they can do. They can get lost, they can not be updated, etc. It's going to be a much better experience, plus it's going to be connected to your corporate-approved CRM. TodayAppPro.com. I was talking to a business owner the other day around their financials, and they said, you know, I just, I just can't sometimes seem to find the time to do it. When you work with Club Capital, It'll be prompting you to be able to send in information so that you can stay on your finance, on top of your financials on a regular basis. Book a no-obligation demo. Go to club.capital. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.