Email marketing is Dead - With Brian Cassingena

G' day guys. We have got a heavy hitter on the podcast today. Brian Castingena is the world's number one email resurrection specialist and the secret weapon behind a number of world class experts including Adskills.com's Justin Brook and Mindvalley's Vishen Lakhiani, as well as self help gurus Marisa Peer and Bob Proctor. Now you may not have heard of some of these people, maybe you have, but let me tell you, Brian is a gun. His marketing campaigns have generated at least $35 million over the past few years and he's only ever taken on a very small number of clients. He's a 15 year veteran of high converting campaigns and Brian spends his time working on projects. He loves living an international lifestyle with his wife and he's an international speaker, a published author, a consultant and a high conversion specialist. Brian is dedicated to boosting the sales and profits of smart companies everywhere. And I am so thrilled that he was gracious enough to spend not just one but two episodes with us to help the video production industry understand how we can use some of these marketing techniques in a more intelligent way. It's a two part episode. This week we're going to be talking about email marketing and how email marketing still has a very powerful place and a very strong influence to play in marketing and how you as video production business owners can implement that and use it to your advantage. So here's the episode. It's so good to have Brian. I'm afraid my microphone is distorting a little bit. I've been having a few technical issues here with my setup, so forgive some of the distortion on my mic, but the content is great and we're so gracious of Brian to spend time with us.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

Giddy. Brian, how are you, mate?

Good, good. Great to hear from you. Appreciate you having me on.

Not at all. Well, I think we first met, I think in Bintan island at Ben Simkins Mastermind about was it nearly two years ago, which was a couple days ago. Yeah, a great few days. You've just written a new book and it's a book that's very close to my heart because as someone who built my business through email marketing.

You know, we're now in a situation where people seem to be neglecting email or, you know, saying that email's dead and great stat in your book that said 24 trillion emails were sent in 2017 and there are 3.8 billion email users worldwide. And what struck me when I read that was everyone is so caught up in the kind of the new fad of social media, trying to get likes and shares and engagement, yet you've got this ready made way into someone's inbox. Take me through email from your perspective.

It's a great distinction that you've made there because like you said, you used to do a lot of email marketing and you built up your business that way. People tend to discount that because what they come along and they see is that they see all the sexy media of social media. They, they see people posting on Facebook and Instagram and all that stuff.

It's the way that a lot of people want to do business now on social media alone. And they want to build those audience, they want to build a Facebook group and they want to get clicks on Instagram or what have you. And that's all well and good. It's relevant for part of business that everyone should look at in some way, but it can't be the core of your business. And here's the reason why people often forget about this too.

The fact is that if you have a email list, then you actually own that as like a, as a web property, as an asset for your business. But it doesn't matter if you have a billion likes on Facebook or a billion followers on Instagram. You know.

Mark Zuckerberg is the person who owns that, not you. So that can be taken away at any time. I've got a friend who is pretty outspoken on Facebook and he keeps getting banned, so he's losing that avenue for marketing. There's stories of Facebook groups being closed down even when they've got thousands of members. And the principle to bear in mind is the fact that you do not own that media. It can be taken away from you at any point. But when you get people onto your email list, that is an asset that you can leverage in your business moving forward for as long as you can maintain that asset. That's the important part to remember.

And I think the other thing that's in your book is you talk about marketing ecosystems. So oftentimes, like filmmakers particularly, they're very tactic driven. You know, they either do a bit of marketing because they're quiet, some of them do email, but they're very kind of, dare I say, reluctant because they don't want to feel like they're bothering anyone or there's an emotional reaction to email because they're like, well, I don't like getting emails and I don't want to be spammy and I don't want to be that guy. But you don't need to be, do you? You can, you can be cool with email. Tell stories.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, telling stories is a huge part of it. And if you're.

Willing to tell a few stories in email, you can actually do the exact opposite of what people perceive email marketing to be. Because it's like people have an email list and they want to send out an email, but they think to themselves, I don't want to bother these people, I don't want to.

Disturb them, I don't want to add to the clutter in their inbox. And there is clutter, of course, which we'll cover later on. But the fact is that when you do email, well, like the way we're going to discuss today.

It'S not only.

A good part of their inbox, it can be quite valuable to them as well. That's the.

Number one thing that you can probably remember when you're doing email marketing is to make sure that you're, you're being valuable. We've all seen these people and we've got on their lists where they just send, you know.

Offer after offer, whatever affiliate product they happen to be promoting that week. And, and those lists being on that list is not fun. Nobody ever woke up in the morning and said, gee, I want, I want to get some offers with some affiliate offers programs and stuff. But when you can provide some real value to the people on your email list, that's when you'll be welcomed into their inbox.

It's a great point. And one of the things that ties nicely into the market that I'm in and we're in is there's a real challenge around video production companies, often not specializing, very reluctant to niche. And in chapter 19 of your book you talk about targeting small groups of highly qualified red hot prospects as opposed to targeting the general population, which I feel is what a lot of video producers do. They'll be like, well, you, all sorts of video. And we don't want to niche down too much because we're scared we'll lose out and work. But actually the opposite happens, doesn't it?

Yeah, because when you try to appeal to everybody, then you end up appealing to nobody. I mean, you.

Look at just about any industry now, there's niches within niches. I mean, look at LEGO sets now. You know, I was always a huge LEGO builder when I was a kid, and sadly, you know, I don't have any of the old ones that I used to have. But I can remember unpacking all the stuff and unpacking a huge mess.

And, you know, playing with it for hours and my brother and sisters and what are the other relatives we had, and, and that was just sort of very. All generic and Lego. The company suffered for a while because of that, but now what they do is very smart. Whoever's working on the marketing there is very good because now they've got Lego and all the different niches, like they've got the Star Wars Legos and there's even a LEGO Movie, and there's all different sorts of Legos that you can, that you can get based on what you like in popular fictions. So that's where they've niched down very well. So that if you're a Star wars fan, you'll get every LEGO set, which is to do with Star wars, and there's plenty for you to buy. So that's a great example of niching down within a wide product range.

One of the objections that, that I often hear, and actually in your funnel influence course, which I'm also going through, you talk about this, addressing objections in copy so that you're calling the elephant in the room out and then giving a solution. So one of the objections I hear from video production companies is, look, you know, I hear that you can't really get into people's emails, inboxes, you know, Google and all these places just like ban you and think it's spam. How do you overcome that? What's the process for helping the market that listens to this podcast understand that there are ways around that that are completely above board. What is the solution?

Yeah, it's a really good question. Because.

Doing email marketing, if you do things wrong, if you do things the wrong way, you can easily get banned for that sort of stuff.

There's a number of things that anybody can do, and some of them are counterintuitive. Like one of the biggest things that people can do. And you talked about, you mentioned a marketing ecosystem earlier. This is all part of it is actually to mail more often. And counterintuitively, the more that you send email, the less likely you are to get banned and the less likely you are to get, you know, spam complaints. Because the fact is that, you know, everyone who opens Gmail, they've got a big fat spam button right at the top of the thing where, where you know, they can. They can report you in a second. So. But to avoid that, the best thing to do is actually demand more often. And here's the reason why. Because when you.

Become a part of a conversation with them and it's ongoing, that's a lot better than if you just show up in their inbox suddenly one day unannounced. Like if you become part of the. Part of the scenery. If they grow accustomed to your emails coming into their inbox, you know, that's when you can start to build a relationship. Whereas if you just mail.

Once every so often, like, my rule of thumb is that if you don't mail your email list for about seven days, then they've gone pretty cold, they've pretty much forgotten about you, and they've moved on to other things. And then suddenly your email arrives in their inbox and it's jarring. Don't expect it. They honestly can't remember how they got on this email list. That's one of the biggest things that anyone can remember. They need to.

Build up that relationship and maintain it so that they don't forget that. That you're going to be sending emails. Because if I email you two weeks later and I've forgotten, how do I remember signing up for this? You and I wouldn't hit spam, but for most cases, but a lot of people do. So the more you email, the better off it is.

And of course, one of the challenges that often times people will say to me is like, oh, I don't want to email my clients too often. But of course you invite them to opt into your list. You don't just automatically send emails to your clients every day. What you do is you. What would you do? What would you suggest that you build a landing page and invite them in? I mean, I guess it's all about telling a story and enticing them to want what you're offering.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I'm just thinking about how your industry would do this. There's different ways to.

Promote a landing page to them, where they might opt in for some kind of information on what you do. Because here's the reality and here's the principle behind it.

Whenever we're seriously considering something and we want to make a purchase, especially a sizable one, you know, we want as much information as we can about that. You know, we don't want to just read a couple of paragraphs and text and we're sold. We're going to spend 10 grand. You know, we need to understand a lot more about. About what you do as a service provider. And that's. That's where these emails come in. Building up that relationship. It all comes back to building up the relationship with. With the person on the other end of that email.

That's fantastic. I love it. Now, there's something you talk about in your book called the Unpopular Secret of Great Copywriting. And I wanted to kind of expand on that because I don't believe it's just copywriting where this exists. But you talk about picking up the phone and getting over yourself to ask your clients or your prospects what their biggest fears, frustrations, wants, needs, and desires are. Why do you think people are so reluctant to get on the phone and just have conversations? Because I find that in our industry, particularly, people are terrified to get on the phone. They'd rather kind of send an email, ironically.

Yeah, true.

And the emails can work, but especially you do them the way we're talking about. But the phone is so much more powerful. I mean, for me, I think it comes down to that, number one fear that people have of speaking in public. It's kind of closely related to picking up and calling someone on the phone, even if they're a previous customer. You don't want to face that rejection. I mean, I equate it to the fear of public speaking being the number one fear of people. Death is number two. So if you're at a funeral, the old joke goes, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy. So.

It'S a fear of rejection that people.

Are often afraid to pick up the phone. Maybe they're an introvert and they don't want to like me and they don't want to speak to clients. But some of my most powerful breakthroughs have come when I've got on the phone and talk to people who actually.

Have bought my products or just anyone who's in my target market, because there's nothing like. I mean, one of the principles I teach is to get the best kind of clients and to do networking property is to be at events and network with people and meet the people that you see online all the time. Meet them face to face. And if you can't go and meet a person face to face, you know, picking up the phone is the next best step.

You talk about business is boring in your book.

What do you mean by that?

Well.

It'S like.

A ride at the carnival. You know.

The most popular rides are always the things like roller coasters and anything where everyone's flying around the Air screaming.

That's the excitement a lot of people crave. But when you're running a business.

Having a roller coaster of income and revenues is not quite so much fun.

When I say business is boring.

It'S said kind of facetiously because I enjoy running my business and being an entrepreneur. But boring means it's reliable and predictable.

When you're a freelancer, as many people listening to this probably are, you're probably accustomed to feast and famine cycles where, you know, you land a big job for 25k and then that lasts you for a month or two.

And then you kind of realize that you need to land another job at some point. So that's when you start your marketing again. But the way to even that out is to make sure the pipeline is always full so that you've always got deal flow coming in. Ideally, you're turning away more deals than what you do. And email marketing, good email marketing is a way to really do that effectively.

Do you think because artists are creative and filmmakers are artists in many ways, is that where some challenges lie? Because I often see people trying to be too creative in the ecosystem. The filmmakers for some reason struggle with you Give them some instructions that are like steps one to five. Do these exactly. And they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll embellish, they'll flourish, they'll start doing the wrong. Is that a danger in marketing?

It is because.

You know, I was kind of, when I was, I've been doing marketing for, about online marketing for about more than 15 years now and, and it took me a while to really get to a place where I didn't have to work at a job anymore because, you know, I was trying to do all that creative stuff. I wanted to reinvent the wheel. I wanted to be the guy who, you know, came up with some awesome new method where had I just followed the, followed the instructions on the packet, you know, I would have, I would have probably done, got to where I am a lot sooner. And you know, I definitely agree that they're artists and they're very creative and that's a great thing, it's an asset. But you've got to use it in the right way. You know.

You'Ve got to be selective of where your creativity goes to when it comes to, you know, how to write an email and how to put together an email sequence or a funnel and how to, you know, how to do a video that is a sales video, stuff like that.

The structure of that has been proven and you don't Want to mess with that? There's no point.

In many presentations, for example, saying the price and then going on to.

Try and show your proof and testimonials after that. You've got it the wrong way around. So.

It'S dangerous to mess with those sorts of formats. But when it comes to fresh ideas, like I just saw today, there was a dentist in the US who created a created ad for his root canal services, which is like based on the whole.

Star Wars Episode 4.

You know, he's mixed in different footage of him and that movie to create a really creative ad for his dentistry. And that's an interesting way to be creative in advertising. But again, just like he's been selective about it, his theme was that Star wars movie, but he had the structured right of, you know.

The way to write the script and the way to do the marketing. The formats and structures, they all need to stay the same. So that's where you are selectively creative.

Now you talk about the age of the Facebook expert in your book.

And the dangers of not investing in the right skills and advice and how you should invest wisely, because I'm sure you're the same as I in the beginning. You try and do things cheap, you try and do things free if you can.

Yeah.

And I think we fundamentally all have a scarcity mindset that we have to overcome. Is that what. Is that where you're going with that?

Yeah, we have that sort of.

You know, in deep, deep within, you know.

Where all our. All our stuff comes from. You know.

I guess it's true that, you know.

The very successful people, millionaires, don't they look to, you know, not spend more money than possible and make sure that costs are not out of control. So it's a good instinct to have.

But really, you've got to look at these things as an investment. You know.

If you buy a book and you make. If you buy a book for $10 and you make $1,000 from using one of the principles, then that was the best $10 that you've ever spent. So that's where you've got to invest in information courses like you did, that you continue to do, you know, mentors and coaches. You know, I mean, the thing about.

Filmmakers and everything is that they're quite often willing to invest thousands and thousands in all the best equipment. You know, cameras that.

The top of the range microphones and lighting and.

Rigs and everything like that.

But when it comes to marketing information, we often, you know, kind of default to that, that free option because. Because there's so much of it available online for free, but that doesn't mean it's good information.

We did a survey recently, and there's about 75 people took the survey. And out of that survey, almost everyone had spent in excess of $30,000 on equipment, and less than 5% had spent more than $10,000 on educating themselves.

Yeah.

The other thing that I thought picked up from your book was that this idea of the Facebook expert, where I see a lot of Facebook groups and there's a couple of big ones in the filmmaking world that look at the commercial side of being a videographer, and what I'll see is someone will have a question, they'll throw it into the group, and they'll suddenly have 47 opinions. And what's really fascinating, and I'm sure this is the same in every industry, is that we as humans would rather go to random strangers in a Facebook group, ask advice, and then have to sift through that advice than invest the $10 and the two hours to read a book. And I think there's a statistic that you brought up that I think the industry standard for anyone doing any kind of online education is an 8% finish rate. Why do you think that is? Why do you think people are so reluctant to do the necessary work to get the results? Because this ties nicely back into the fact that business is boring. It's like, I like the analogy, that business is just a series of repetitive tasks done consistently to create an outcome.

Yeah, it is. And.

That'S kind of why, you know.

We do all these things. Because the thing about getting all these different opinions from Facebook groups and all myriad of other sources is that we're always looking for something fresh. It's the bright shiny object syndrome. The thing that we did yesterday that worked, that's old hat now. That's boring. We already did that. We want to move on to the next thing. Especially if you're a creative person, especially if you're an artist, you don't want to do the same thing as what you did yesterday. But the reality is that when it comes to running your business, running a profitable business, that is actually where the money comes from. Doing. Doing the thing today that worked yesterday, doing the thing that. That, you know, works. You know, doing that. Day in and day out, we go looking in these. On the social media platforms and other people who may or may not be experts because we want to. We want to find something new, and we want to find something that we want to learn, something that we didn't know before and we want new is sexy. I mean, this is a way to position a product or service. Is that it's new. Because if I say I'm writing a book about all the old marketing techniques that have been working over the last hundred years.

No one's going to buy that. But if I present it in a different way, it's still the same strategies and tactics that have worked for, you know, well, thousands of years, really.

But I just positioned it. I showed it in a new light. Then that's, that's why it's successful. Because, because people are out there looking for something new. That's, that's the motivation behind us, you know, going out to all these different places and trying to find something new.

I love that. Well, I want to finish this episode by just quoting something from your book, which is imperfect action beats meditation any day. I see this with creators all the time. They are obsessed with perfection and perfection is crippling.

Yeah, yeah. It was the great, the late, great copywriter, Gary How, I think who said motion beats meditation any day. So. And what we both mean is like, you know, just what you said, you know, just doing something even if it's not perfect. You know, that's the path to success. Whether just. The problem many people have is they.

Are smart enough to buy all the books and courses, but.

They don't take the extra step of actually doing something about it. That's the key.

Great place to finish this episode, but I do want to get you back next week because I want to talk about quiz funnels. So, Brian, thank you very much. We'll see you next week. Week.

Thank you. See you then.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator podcast with your host, Den Lenny. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessaccelerator.com to learn more about how the accelerator program can can help you today. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review.