#115: No More “Newsletters!” Do This Instead…

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You are going to get way more people giving you their emails if you don't call it a newsletter, specifically when it comes to lead generators and using that on your website. Don't just say sign up for our newsletter because you're not actually saying what value they get when they sign up. They just go, oh, I don't want another newsletter.

Of course you might have a newsletter that you're kind of trying to figure out how to utilize lies and how to make better. Well, in this week's conversation and coaching session with Brad Alexander, He's a story brand certified guide. That's exactly what you're gonna get.

Hello, hero maker. Welcome to the Marketing Made simple podcast, powered by StoryBrand and brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, where we believe your marketing should be easy. And it should. I AM your host, Dr. J.J. peterson, and I am joined by my co host, April Sunshine Hawkins. Hi, April.

Hey, JJ and hey, hero maker.

April, last week we talked about nurture emails and how nurture emails are really great for continuing to build on old friendships. And I just want you to know, you're one of my old friends.

Oh, jj, you're one of my old friends.

Well, not old. I mean, you're not old.

Right?

We're both a little older than we used to be. Like, so not old old, but we're middle.

Middle aged friends.

Middle aged friends. Am I a middle aged? We are definitely. I am later aged.

I turn 48 this year, and whatever happens in my brain whenever I'm about to turn a new age, like when I'm 47, I start thinking I'm turning. I am 48. Like, before I turn 48. And then once I start thinking I'm 48, I start thinking I'm 49. And. And just a month ago, I was talking to somebody in front of Jamie and I said, I can't believe I turned 50 this summer. He goes, you're not turning 50.

You'Re turning 48. And I was like, am I? But I really genuinely thought I was, like, turning 50 this summer. So I have a few years. So we are older.

Yes, but older friends.

But we're older friends. There we go, there we go.

There we go.

We have been friends for a long time, and I love our friendship. So thank you for being an old friend and thank you for nurturing our friendship.

Oh, my gosh. And hero maker, thank you for being a friend of ours as well.

We are. We have so many old friends listening to this podcast.

That's right.

Older. Well, younger friends. You know what I mean? You get it, you get it, you get it. So anyway, nurture emails. Am I right? King and queen of transitions here?

Well, jj, yes. A lot of people, they have an older friend that they might have in their marketing repertoire, and that is the newsletter. How many companies, whenever you talk to them about emails, they're like, we have a newsletter. Yeah, it's a lot of them.

Yeah, A lot of them have newsletters and that's one of the ways they think that they can get people signed up on their email list is through newsletters. Now, we will say when it comes to creating lead generators, so getting people to sign up for a newsletter, what do we always say?

No one wants to sign up for your newsletter.

You are going to get way more emails. People giving you their emails. If you don't call it a newsletter, the content may be fantastic and you may be getting emails, but specifically when it comes to lead generators and using that on your website, don't just say sign up for our newsletter because you're not actually saying what value they get when they sign up. They just go, oh, I don't want another newsletter. So you actually want to create newsletters that have value.

That's right. And of course, you might be following up with a newsletter every single month or every single week, just depending on your cadence. But what we really call those are nurture emails. That's really what you're doing. And it doesn't have to follow this exact same newslettery type format that maybe you're used to, where you've got it kind of chocked full of a bunch of information that's really all about you and not very much about your customer. And so I'm really excited today because of course last week we talked with Brad Alexander. He's a story brand certified guide who worked with a company specifically to create a nurture email campaign. Campaign that worked. And so you've got to go check out last week's episode if you haven't. But this week we're having him back on to coach an entrepreneur, Shelby Lacert. And her big thing is, well, I've got a newsletter, but like, how do I do this nurture email campaign thing? And so what you're going to get, listener, is you're basically going to be coached alongside Shelby, right? Just like you're in that same exact seat as her, you might have a newsletter that you're kind of trying to figure out how to to utilize and how to make better. Well, in this week's conversation and coaching session with Brad, that's exactly what you're going to get. So let's jump right into it.

Shelby, we are so excited that you are joining us today. Give us a little insight into who you are, where you are in the world and what you do for your business.

Sure. Hi, guys. I'm so excited to be here. I am a travel advisor with Living with the Magic vacations and I specialize in Disney destinations. So think planning travel and planning your special family vacation for Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruises, and then adventures by Disney. So that's what I do. I love planning sort of multi generation trips. So think like your kids, you, your parents, aunts, uncles, cousins. The bigger the trip, the better.

Ooh, the bigger the trip, the better. I like that. That sounds like a little niche for you. I love that. Okay, Shelby. Well, we are both so blessed today because we have Brad Alexander with us and he is one of our story brand certified guides. Of course, he's a marketing expert and he's here specifically to talk to you and coach you about your email strategy. So give both Brad and I a little bit of context and of course our hero maker too, who's listening right now, a little bit of context about what you've done with your email marketing, where you're currently at, and what your major questions or pain points are right now.

Yeah, so I'm pretty fresh to this job. I just started at the end of February, so I'm really working on my email list and getting that set up. I've had a number of lead generators, so my struggle is once that lead generator is out, one, connecting with the right client. But then two, once I have them and I have their email, what do I do with them? I send a weekly sort of newsletter that's chock full of sort of my tips. And then, you know, any breaking news that Disney has. And in my lead generators I'll send out a few emails. But I think that there's a huge gap missing which is beyond the newsletter. Like, what am I telling people? How am I communicating my service to them? And so that is hopefully what I'm hoping you all can help me with today.

Absolutely. Well, just first of all, kudos to you for already having an email list. And I'm not joking. I say this, I'll work with solopreneurs, and I work with some $25 million companies and none of them ever have an email list set up. They're like, ah, I don't really know. And I'm like, oh my gosh, just start. It's not hard. And so the fact that you've already started, you're ahead of the game. And that's the common question because you're like, I want to connect with right people. I want to obviously build my business, but I also want to keep people interested and engaged with what we're doing. Disney trips aren't something that every. It's not like shoes that people buy, like, every day. Right. It's. It's not something that somebody's going to just turn around and every day somebody's buying one. And so it takes a little bit of a different thought process. And how do I email them? What do I talk to them about? I mean, if I were you two, I'd be in the same place. It's just like, yeah, what do I need to talk to them about? Now you were connected with a bigger company, right. That gives you stuff to email people, or at least information. Like, they have social media stuff and so you're not having to do everything right.

Correct. They are incredible. Living with the Magic vacations as a company. I am an independent contractor for them. And they're incredible in the sense that they give me content to put out. They give me social media captions and pictures and all of that. It's sort of taking either their information and putting it in a system and in my voice that works best for my customers or if whatever it is that they're giving me, I don't think makes sense. It's sort of tweaking it or coming up with a new way to my customers.

You say you're already sending out some stuff right now, like a newsletter with tips and tricks. Like, what is that stuff? Like, what. What is. Like, give me an example of how often are you sending them. Is it called a newsletter? Is it the same format every time?

So it's called your weekly pixie dust delivery. It's every Tuesday morning. It follows the same format in the sense that I have a quote from Walt Disney and then I have a tip. A tip could be anything from like, hey, guests under three don't need a park ticket, so that's a savings right there. Or did you know you could get grocery delivery to your hotel? Anything that's like, a little bit more specific. You would definitely have to research it. Not just something that you can easily find on the Disney website. And then I'll have two sections that are a little bit interchanging. It's either breaking news, which is, you know, Disney announced a holiday party that goes on sale next week. Contact me if you want to attend. Or it's something that's going on in my personal life that relates to either, like, the business or Disney. So it's like, I have booked a trip with my friends on a Disney cruise, and I'm looking forward to it. I kind of change it up as I honestly just have content.

Yeah. Okay. What I try to help people think through as Far as what kinds of things to email people is trying to answer questions people already have or that you already get about anything and everything that has to do with what you offer. Even mentioned. Like, you'll get questions and hesitations like, I want to book a trip, but I don't know when, or, you know, I'm not sure about this, or how do I pull this off? Like, what would be some of those questions that you already did? Somebody, Even when you're working with somebody to book a trip, like, what are the questions? Literally, just tell me, what are they asking you?

Yeah, I mean, I think you hit it. Like, when's the best time to go? Is always a question. A lot of times it's like, hey, we've been thinking about a trip, dot, dot. It's like, we haven't even gotten past the thinking of a trip. So where do I say, how much is this going to cost me? When do I. How do I even do this? Like, some people are just so overwhelmed by it, they don't even know where to go after I've been thinking about a trip. And so that's what I think I need to focus on. But I'm sort of stuck in, like, it feels like there's so much I could focus on that I'm just like, here's your newsletter. And that's all.

Yeah. And then I'll see you later.

Yeah.

Right. Well, I'm going to tell you that is where you need to focus on and where you can feel relief is that you don't have to answer every question in one email. And like, I would say you try to get a list. And I tell people commonly, I would say if you can get to, like, at least one email a month that's new, that you're writing like this and build it into your system, that's a starting point. And you can still keep doing the other things you're doing so you don't have to think about it every week, but just start. Okay, I'm going to do one email a month. Like, make the title of the email the question.

Right. Okay.

And that's the subject line of the email. How much does a typical Disney trip cost for a family of five? That's the subject line. And then you answer it. What's the best time of year to go to Disney? And then that's the subject line of it. What you have going for you is that you are in a business where you're trying to get people to pay you to help plan their Disney trip. Right. They're going to be like, I just want Shelby to do this all for me so that we can just go. But, you know, there's these gaps that they have of getting going because there's these confusing, foggy elements of how this works out. And you honestly are helping them is you're filling in the cracks, you're blowing away the fog. You're walking into the dark room and just turning on the light. And so you get to demonstrate your expertise. You get to show you have empathy for what they do. Other questions I would have then that maybe you can think through, and I'm just literally going to ask you to answer them. Like, is there a seasonal aspect to when people book with Disney? When do they typically book this stuff?

Yeah, so I always recommend six months out. It kind of depends on the person. There are people who book a month out. I would never recommend that. But yeah, I would say the sweet spot is six months out. And generally that's when most people start to think, okay, it's December, I want to start planning my summer vacation. I should start looking into it.

Why six months out?

Honestly, you just get better options in terms of hotel room availability and resort availability. You get better options in terms of when you're booking that far out. Disney has a system in which you have to book 60 days in advance for things like character breakfast and experiences at the Bibbidi Bobbidi boutique and sort of all those extras that you want to do. You have to reserve those 60 days in advance or else you're just simply not going to get them. So if you start your booking three months in advance, by the time you get through the booking of the hotel and all that, you're right at that 60 day mark and you're like, wait, I haven't even thought about this. So you're a little bit behind the eight ball. So if you start six months in advance, you have time to think. And what does my kid want to do? What do I want to do? How do I want to structure our day? So when you get to that 60 day point, you know, we have a conversation, we talk about your options. You tell me, okay, this all sounds great. Let's do X, Y and Z. I go, I book. And you don't have to think about it or worry about it.

You just wrote an email.

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And now back to the show. What do you do when you have grandparents who are willing to foot the bill? And we've got four family units that have, you know, a span of 12 kids and you're trying to get them all to coordinate together because if that's your niche, then that is the email that you're really trying to write rather than the family of five. These are the scenarios. So, yeah. Do you have a solution for that?

Sure, yeah. So I actually just booked a trip for 18 people. It consisted of grandparents all the way to a one year old. And I would say you need to be going for a week and you need to build in rest. So you all need to come together as a group and say, we're going to buy the park Hopper pass because that gives us flexibility and we are going to decide on the things that we as a group want to do. So it's, for example, really important for all of us to be at this character dinner together on Tuesday, But Wednesday, we're going to do that as a day where we're all going to go to Magic Kingdom in the morning, but we're probably not going to all want to ride the same rides because the one year old isn't going to ride the same ride that the 17 year old wants to ride. So you're structuring your days by parks and by key elements that you as a family want to do. But then within that, allowing for flexibility to say, we're gonna go our separate ways in the park, but we'll meet up back at the hotel. Or I have a one year old, so I'm gonna leave midday and, you know, go back to the hotel for a little nap and pool time and everybody else is gonna go to Hollywood Studios in the afternoon.

Shelby, you're so well Spoken that. Now I'm thinking, Brad, couldn't she just do a quick video instead of having to even type it all out?

Yeah. And then you can Transcribe it, have ChatGPT give you a summary, put it below it.

Yeah.

You know, but yeah, just talk it out and walk through it.

Would you put that video in the email?

Yeah. Or yeah. Link to it or. Yeah, absolutely. Here you go. Here's. I talked through this in five minutes and kind of here's how it works.

All right. So, Shelby, do you have another just burning question that you want to ask of Brad?

Sure. I would say if you are in my position, you're new, you're trying to sort of grow your business. I'm on the boat of like email marketing. I bought in. I agree with it. What is your biggest advice from going from zero to however many emails? If I wanted to go from 0 to 100 or whatever, sort of. What's your biggest advice in that?

Yeah, that's great. I think that the secret to that is going to be in making the stuff you email helpful and shareable so that it can be forwarded to somebody and you could even put that at the bottom of all your emails. Hey, you got a friend that's thinking about this. Feel free to forward to this to them or reply to me and I'll be answered. Ask questions like, it's just kind of part. It makes it making the emails seem like they're from you and not from some business. Like you're in the business, but it's from Shelby. It's not from whatever your business name specifically is, besides the major corporation. You get what I'm saying? And so that helps because it keeps people in your inbox and it keeps them trusting you. And especially if you do things like you just did, that's basically what you did is what in the business speak is a case study. Note call it a case study was like, here's how I helped a family of 18 navigate all the complexities to get Disney World and have fun. And then you're just walking through the process and then like love to do the same for you. If you got a trip coming up, give me a talk. Let's talk and we can figure out how that can work. That's one way. So keeping the people on your list is one way to do it. The other way is just, you know, and I know you've worked through this in some other ways, but like any sort of little checklist resource planning thing, like, I know you have some. But like, if there's other versions or new things or like park specifics, just other ways that somebody may want to give you their email address is going to be obviously helpful. And then the other part just, I mean, it's not email marketing, it's just networking that will get them on your email list is like, as you are talking to people about this stuff, ask them if you can put them. Hey, can I send emails about this stuff? Every about a week or so. Can I add you? Would you like to get them? It's just helpful stuff about planning Disney trips. You'd be surprised at how many people you can add to your list just by asking them because you know them as opposed to waiting them for them to magically come to your website. They'll say, yeah, sure, okay. And then, you know, they'll unsubscribe if they don't want them. The other couple things I had listed out just for tips and ideas as far as what to write is just getting park specific scenarios like that. Hey, how to get 25 people through animal Kingdom without hating the day. Right. And kind of picking them specifically and just walk through some scenarios. Here's how I did it. Without naming names for this family. Here's what we did. Success stories. And again, even cruises and destinations. If you know people. Hey, have you ever thought about a Disney cruise but have no idea what that entails? Here's the difference. Here's what that looks like. Hey, have you ever thought about a Disney destination? Here's the first two I would suggest starting with, like, give people some specific things to think through. So as they're, again, you're just trying to turn on the lights in the dark places of their brain, answering questions they're already asking, and then make it an email.

So, Shelby, I'm curious, what are your top two action items that you're taking from this conversation? Now that the juices are flowing and. And the pixie dust has stirred up, what are you going to do from here?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing was turning on the lights for people. So for me, it's making the subject of your email the question that I feel like is getting in people's ways and then just answering that, like, that's so obvious and so easy and simple because I do it all the time. I just haven't thought about formatting it that way, if you will. So that's the first thing. And then I think the second thing you were saying a lot, like how I took X number of people and made their perfect day. Or here's how 25 people like you said went through Animal Kingdom and didn't hate their life. So, like, being really, really specific. Because when I think about it, like, those are the emails that I click on too when I'm going through my inbox. So translating it and being really specific about a scenario. And like, here was the scenario and here's how I can help.

Yes. Okay. Well, Shelby, we are excited for you to sprinkle more pixie dust out in email land so that more huge, gigantic families can go have their Disney dreams come true. And thank you, Brad, of course, for being our storybrand certified guide who brought about all of these great ideas for Shelby, of course, and for all of our listeners out there. And Shelby, if our hero maker out there listening right now is going, oh, I have a family of 18 that I need to plan a Disney trip for. Where can they go and find you?

Sure, it could be family of 18, it could be family of two, but you could shoot me an email, Shelby L. At living with themagic.com or you can go on our website living with themagic.com. there's a little button that says request quote. You just click on that button, you can fill in all of your information under preferred travel agent. Just hit my name, Shelby, and then it'll come right to me and I can help.

Amazing. We're just really grateful for you, Brad, and excited for you, Shelby. Keep us posted on your success. Okay, thank you.

I will.

Okay, Hero maker, now you have permission to create nurture email sequences that actually offer value. Not just newsletters, which probably were great before, but actual value to your customers that continues to nurture your relationship with them so ultimately they buy your products. And if you are feeling stuck trying to figure out how to apply the story brand framework into your marketing, you can hire a story brand certified guide like Brad Alexander. Just go to marketingmadesimple.com to hire a guide that will show you how to clarify your message and create marketing that works. All right, hero Maker, it's time to apply everything you learned with this week's actionable step. A practical step from today's conversation you can immediately use to shape your marketing and clarify your message. When it comes to nurture emails, you want to be consistent about connecting with your customers. You want to send them out on a weekly or monthly or some kind of regular cadence that keeps you in your customer's email inbox. It continues to nurture your relationship. Last week we talked about how if you already have a blog or you already have content that you've created. It is really easy to turn those into nurture emails and and send them out on a regular basis, especially if you have like a podcast that you're announcing every week or events that's easy. For some other companies, it actually may be a little bit more difficult because you're trying to think of how can I stay connected with my customer by offering tips on a weekly basis. That's a lot of writing. And if you are still feeling stuck trying to figure out how to apply the story brand framework into your marketing and specifically creating consistent nurture emails, this is one of the easiest things for you to outsource. You can hire a story brand certified guide like Brad Alexander to create regular nurture emails that will go out and keep you connected to your customers. Just go to marketingmadesimple.com to hire a guide that will show you how to clarify your message and create marketing that works well. Hero Maker, it's time to apply everything you learned with this week's Actionable step. A practical step from today's conversation you can immediately use to shape your marketing and and clarify your message. If you are stuck trying to figure out what content to create for your nurture emails, ask yourself what questions are people asking about my product or service? When it came to Shelby, the questions were, when should I start planning for my vacation? What's it like to plan for a family of 18? When she sat down and just answered those questions, she had the content to create nurture emails. When it comes to storybrand, one of the questions we get all the time is will it work for me? People ask, will it work for nonprofits? Will it work for real estate agents? So one of the campaigns that we created to send out to continue to nurture our customers was just answering those types of questions. Here are some tips for nonprofits to clarify your message. Here are some tips for real estate agents to clarify your message. We are giving them value while also answering the questions that they have about our product or service. So when you pause and just say what questions are people asking about my product or service? And then sit down and write out the answers to those, you now have a basis for some nurture emails that you can send out to people. And just like Shelby, if you are better on video and you have a great personality, film yourself answering those questions and send those out in email so you don't even have to write the email. That is your actionable step for today. Ask yourself what are the questions people are asking and then answer those questions and send them out in nurture emails. When you answer these questions, what you're doing is you're creating content that you can send out to your customer that will continue to nurture your relationship with them. Because you're offering value. You're offering answers to their questions, and ultimately, you're helping them solve their own problems. And that makes them the hero of their story. And that's what makes you a great guide. That's what makes you a hero maker. That's all for this week's episode of Marketing Made Simple. Thank you so much for listening and believing, like us, that your marketing should be easy and it should work. Follow Marketing Made simple wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you found this episode valuable, please rate and review the show, letting us know how these tips are clarifying your message and growing your business. We'll see you next week.