11: How to Profit with Email (even with a small list)

Welcome to the Course Creators MBA podcast. I'm your host, Destiny Kopp. And in this podcast we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. And I have a special guest here with me today. Her name is Leslie Cavillo and Leslie is a personal friend of mine. We were actually chatting a few minutes before we started recording and we just talking about all sorts of things and probably mistakes that I've been making in my email list. So I'm sure this is going to be a very interesting conversation. And Leslie has over eight years of online business experience and she knows what it takes to grow an email list, get people engaged, and turn subscribers into customers who buy your products that they rave about to all of their friends. And Leslie, thanks so much for joining us today. I'm so happy to have you and I can't, I can't wait to hear what you have to say.

Yes, I am so excited to be here. And email marketing and strategy as not sexy as it sounds, is one of my favorite things to talk about. I know that social media, Instagram, Pinterest, all those things sound so super sexy because everybody sees them online. You know, they're very image based and they're pretty. But email marketing is so powerful. So therefore it's like I said, it's not super sexy, but when you start making money with it, it kind of is.

Yes, for sure. It is very important for all the course creators who are listening here today. So. But before we get started, and I do have some very specific questions to ask you, but before we get started, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, your journey and how you got to where you know what you're doing today and focusing on email marketing.

Okay, I will. Now my husband always tells me I'm very long winded and I like to tell really long stories. So I'm going to condense this as much as possible. So I found out, going back to Pinterest about blogging through Pinterest when I was a stay at home mom. So I started an online blog and very quickly I had blog posts go mega viral. And when I talk about mega viral, I was hitting a million page views within my first year. And one of those posts that went mega viral was about a DIY fix to my underwire bra. Funny enough. And so of course, once I got bit by that blogging viral bug, I thought, what a great idea. I'm going to launch a product. I have all this traffic, I had this huge social media presence. So, you know, why not why not just launch a product? People are surely going to buy it. Well, Destiny, I was wrong. By the time I got the product developed and I was ready to launch it, all that traffic had come and gone. Even though there was still traffic coming to my site and I had that Facebook page, I had no direct line of contact to the people that were really interested in that solution. They were nowhere to be found. So when I hit go or when I hit launch, on the actual product page, I thought I was gonna be a millionaire overnight. You know, you hear about all those overnight success stories.

Yes, you do.

Well, I just want you to take a guess, because I love asking people to just, you know, tell me how many products they think or how many of my product they think I sold that night. How many do you think I sold on day one?

Well, how many people were on your list at that time?

Well, I didn't have one. That's kind of the subject of the story.

Okay, so it's a little bit of a trick question, I guess, for me. So I'll guess a hundred.

You are so kind. No, I sold one. I sold one that night. So I was going off of traffic to my site, and I was going off of Facebook and, you know, Instagram, Facebook ads. None of that was around at the time because several about, I don't know, like eight years ago, maybe Instagram had just started. I didn't have a presence there. I don't know how old Instagram was, but I had no email list. So I was devastated. I had my mom who had invested in the product. I had my husband who had it. And I just remember sitting on my kid or sitting at my kitchen table with this product everywhere. We were ready to fill orders. Like, I had everybody standing by, and I was just like, what the heck went wrong? So after that, after having kind of like a mini breakdown, I started really researching, like, how to properly launch, like, how to properly gauge interest and engage with people and make sure that a launch would be successful. And that's when I started finding out that the email list was the most important aspect of a successful launch, because you are able to have that direct line of contact with those people who are interested in what you have to offer at any time. So you're not relying on traffic, you're not relying on an algorithm or anything like that. And plus, if I would have had a way to capture all the people, all those millions of people that came to my blog that were interested in the product, if I would have captured them on the email list, then sure, they probably would have been interested in buying, but I didn't do that. So that's when I started on my mission to figure out everything I could about email marketing, but not just about growing a massive list full of people. I wanted to figure out how to make email marketing as profitable as possible. And I learned how to create a system that attracts the right people that are not just there to seek out freebies, but are also going to convert as buyers.

So that's an important point and definitely want to dig into that with you today. The first question though that I have for you, and we talked a little bit about that before we actually started recording, but. And you've worked with clients who have had, you know, 20,000 on their list, you know, maybe even more, 50, 100. But you say that list size does not necessarily guarantee launch success. So can you tell us a little bit more about that and what somebody with, you know, whether your list is small or whether you have a pretty substantial list, what can you do to guarantee a successful launch for your online course?

Yeah, so the number on your list is actually not the most important metric that you need to look at. It's actually the engagement, the quality of your list. So if you have 50,000 people on your email list and they are not opening and engaging with your emails, then that's actually not very valuable to you. That means that people aren't going to buy. If you have a smaller email list and they're all opening or 95% of them are opening your emails and they're very much connected and engaged with you and they're your ideal customers, then you're going to have a much more successful launch than those people with these big lists that nobody's engaging with. Does that make sense?

Yes, it does. So I guess what, let's just say that I have a list and I, you know, have been building it for a while. Maybe it's, you know, a few thousand, let's just use that as an example. But my open rates are definitely lower than what I would like them to be. What would you suggest you do to, you know, kind of build that engagement?

Okay, so a couple of things. So first of all, I'm going to just tell you some of the mistakes people make. You want to make sure that the first thing you do is not focused on growing your list first. You want to set up the systems in place first before you focus on growth. So in my program, we don't even worry about growing our list until we put all the automations in place to Nurture our list first. So we create what I call is the ideal incentive. So we create our freebie first. It's attracting like our best customers, our best audience, and then we're going to nurture them as they come on our list. And you don't want to grow your list until you're able to nurture them right off the bat. Because if you're just putting people into like your little database or your little email pot and you're just letting them sit there with nothing going to them, they're just going to go cold and then it's just a waste of money that you've spent growing that list. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So you get, you, you have this awesome freebie and they sign up for your, your list, your email list. What, in terms of nurturing them, how do, what is, what do you, what are your suggestions on that? How would we go about doing that?

I typically do at least a three or five day nurture sequence. Three is typically, you know, pretty good. It just depends on your audience, on your audience. And you really want to keep your audience in mind when you're creating that. Like for instance, I have one student whose audience are busy moms. And she's saying, you know, I really don't think that my moms are taking the actions I want them to inside of my nurture sequence. And I said, well, you know, tell me a little bit more about what's inside of, you know, one of the emails. And she explained and it turns out that it's just really long, very text heavy. And I said, well, no busy mom is going to read like a 500 word email. So keep the content inside of each one of your nurture sequence emails in relation to the type of audience you have. So if you're targeting busy moms, make sure that they're short and they're able to consume the content quickly. You want to make sure that at least in the first one that you're introducing yourself and telling them what, why they want to follow you, like what, what valuable information you're going to provide. And I really like to be entertaining because you really want to stand out in this crowded online world. Okay. The other two are just again, providing value. You can definitely open a loop at the end of the email and let them know to come back tomorrow because you're going to give them something else. I like to, to give more freebies each day. And again, this is creating brand awareness and really getting them to get to know who you are and why they need to pay attention to you and what value you're going to give to them.

Okay, so we, you know, set up our nursery sequence and let's just say we feel pretty confident with that. What do we do after that?

Okay, so the next step is engaging with them. And I like the rhythm of a weekly newsletter. Now, some people will send five newsletters a week. If you have an indication that that's what your audience wants and you have the bandwidth to do that, go for it. I personally like the rhythm of once or twice a week. It just depends on your goals. But you definitely, in my opinion, once a week, need to stay in front of your audience with a newsletter. And some people get a little antsy. They're like, oh, nobody reads newsletters once a week. But it's just like anything, you have got to stay in front of your audience. Just like on Instagram, just like on Facebook. You need to stay there in order to create awareness to be able to be in front of your audience. Now, everybody is not going to open your email the day it's delivered. They may come back through and read it a day later or two days later, and that's just fine. But I would say stay on a steady rhythm of once a week delivering that high value content with your newsletter to keep your audience engaged. And you'll be surprised if you're writing really great content that's engaging and that's really providing value. And I know I'm saying value again and again and again, but people want entertainment. They want also to be educated and they want value. If you're really doing a good job curating newsletters that provide those things, people will read them and they will respond to them. That's another thing I teach is getting people to engage with your emails, just like you do when you're curating posts for Instagram or Facebook. Like, I'm so about using email to encourage engagement, encourage responses as well.

So what are some things we could do to encourage engagement? Can we get some examples?

Yeah, ask questions. So at the very end of my emails, whatever subject I'm talking about, I will ask the audience or my readers a question. Now, a couple of tips for your newsletter. You don't want to talk to the people on your list like they're a group of people. You want to talk to them like they're one person, like they're your friend. So write to that person just like you're like, I'm talking to you, Destiny. So, hey, you know, I was thinking about you the other day and you know, blah, blah, Blah, blah, blah. And so I just really would like your opinion on this. What, what were you thinking? And blah, blah or what are you thinking about this? And whatever, like pose it just like you would be writing to a friend and people will respond. And here's the thing about responses. You get so much valuable market research information from the replies in your emails. And the difference between replies and emails and then social media responses is that these are private. And so people are a lot more willing to disclose a lot more detailed information through email than they typically will on social media.

All great points. So we've done our nurture segments. Let's just say that we're doing our weekly newsletter. What, when would we be ready to actually sell to them?

Well, I mean, honestly it doesn't take too awful long if you have an engaged, nurtured community. So if you're ready to, if you're wanting to launch, I mean, you can go into a launch, six weeks, eight weeks, anything like that. Now, if you already have a product that you want to embed into your nurture sequence, you can introduce a product in your nurture sequence if you want to, or a service. You can do that up in the nurture sequence or in any of your emails as well. It just depends on which one you're doing. If it's a launch or a nurture or you already have an existing product you can sell either way. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. So in that nurture sequence, would you say it's important to let people know how they could work with us or how we can help them is another way to put it?

Yep, you can absolutely do that. I typically like to, you can weave it in the first email, but you definitely don't want to do like a hard sell in the very first email because it can be a little bit like, okay, wait a second, I don't know you yet. You can definitely like start introducing the fact that you know, like I'll say things like even in this interview where I'm talking about my students, but I've never mentioned like the exact name or go by my course or anything. Does that make sense? Like you can weave in the fact that my coaching clients, so that they're, they're subconsciously learning that you're offering services yet you're not directly hard selling them in that first email, but by the third email you can do book a call or here's the link to my sales page. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. So let me ask you this. How do we know if we have A healthy list. Like, you know, and I'm thinking about my own list of personal, you know, from a personal perspective, I'm wondering is my list healthy or are there some things that I need to do to, you know, help increase engagement or, you know, you know, anything else?

Well, the first thing is you kind of will have this like you'll know if you're not sending anything out on a consistent basis. You pretty much know that your list is suffering. And I don't know if you fall in that category, but I'll work with clients and they'll say, well, I know that my list needs some work. And that's already like, if you're already telling yourself that, then you already know that you have definitely neglected your list. So if you are not keeping up with it consistently, then that's a key indicator. But that's just, that's just you. And that's not even based off of any type of metrics whatsoever. The second indicator is looking at your open rate. So if your open rate, and I don't like giving hard and fast numbers because it's a little bit different for every industry, but you Definitely, you know, 10%, 12%, I mean we really like to try to get our open rates above 20%, 30% is excellent. So we really want those higher open rates. If they're not up there, then that's when you want to do like a re engagement for your cold email email subscribers and then end up deleting the ones that are not re engaging. Another way to tell if your email list is healthy is the amount of people that are responding that are telling you, you know, gosh, I really love your email or that one really moved me today, or gosh, that was so funny the replies and responses you're getting. So the more that people are responding, the better. And also looking at the click through rates, like if you're asking people to take action and they're taking actions, then that's a key indicator that you have a healthy list.

So you talked about looking at the cold subscribers. What do you suggest that we do for that? How often should we review that? If we have a good portion of our list that have been identified as cold, what should we do?

So depending on the size of your list and how fast it's growing will depend on how frequently you need to clean it. So if you're running ads and it's growing pretty rapidly, you typically will want to clean it a lot faster. It might be every month, it might be every two months, but if you're Having a little bit of a slower growth and it's growing organically. Those leads are usually a little bit more qualified. So you can do that more on like a quarterly basis. And it depends on your system, but you can, you can segment out your cold subscribers. And what I like to do is send something of high value to them. It can be a new freebie, it could be an old freebie. It can be just something to pique their interest. What I don't like doing is sending out. Do you still love me? Are you breaking up with me? I hate guilt. Guilt tripping people. Like, I just don't like it. And that's the thing. That's a tactic that a lot of gurus teach. And I'm just, maybe I'm on maybe. I just, I don't know. This is not my thing. I don't know if you've ever heard that one or you've gotten it.

I've actually gotten those type of emails before and that's when I really do hit delete on them. Or unsubscribe, I should say.

I think that's a sure fire to me. It's like, why even send them? Because everybody I've ever talked to says that's the first. That's the best way to get me to unsubscribe. So it's almost like, why not just delete everybody from your cold subscriber list? Because it's like, I don't know anybody that's like, oh sure, let me re engage. I don't get it. So to me it's like, why not do something more authentic? Because if people are really, if the goal here is maybe they were busy and they forgot about you, then maybe we should do something to get them to reengage. So why not do what we did in the beginning and provide them something of value again and remind them of why they signed up with us in the beginning and guilt tripping them to re engage to me seems very counterproductive. Right? Because at the end of the day, what we want is high quality leads. So what I suggest is providing something of value. It doesn't have to be a freebie. It can be a conversation or content within the email that reminds them of why they signed up. A link to an article or to a blog post or to a Facebook Live video that was valuable, reminding them of why they got on the list in the first place and getting them to reengage that way. And typically you send a couple of these out, so usually about three of them, two or Three of them. And if they haven't engaged in any of these, then they're pretty much considered dead. I don't want to. I mean, that's kind of morbid, but you know what I mean? And then you'll go ahead and delete those leads. They've obviously could have been that you were. That you were providing something just for trying to get. Get subscribers in. I've had a lot of people tell me recently, oh, I was. I was just creating these freebies just to grow my list. And I know that I just got a bunch of freebie seekers on here, so really could be that those were just freebie seekers, and now you've got them off their list. It's kind of like a good thing in the end.

So let's talk about that a little bit more, because I think, you know, everybody listening here is probably interested in growing their list. So let's just say that we, you know, put in kind of the foundation that you talked about today. So we feel comfortable with that. We feel strongly with that. And now we need. We're interested in growing our list, and we don't want to grow it with what you said with the freebie seekers. So what would you suggest that we do?

Okay, perfect. So laying the foundation is the most important part, because we. I'm just going back over this because you don't want to spend all this time and money growing the list and then have nothing to serve them because all those leads will go cold. So just reiterating that to make sure that everybody understands that growing the list is important, but only once you have the systems and the consistency ready to go and everything in place. Okay, so now we're ready to grow the list, and we don't want just anybody getting on our email list. And what I see happening so often is that people are like, okay, I'm just gonna create all these random freebies that have nothing to do with my offer, like with my paid thing, with my service, just so I can get people on my list. Because what I hear a lot of people saying is, and this is what I'm figuring out is that so many people think they have to have this list of 10,000 people, because what they're all being told is that your list will convert at 1% when you're ready to launch. Right? And so that would mean 100 people would be buying. This is what I'm thinking that this is why Everybody's thinking that 10,000 is the benchmark. Right? Well, it doesn't work that way. If you're filling your list full of people that are just seeking out freebies or you're putting out out freebies that have nothing to do with the end offer at the end of the day. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

So.

And I actually think 1% is low, so. But me too, me too.

I think it's crazy. I'm like, why would you shoot for 1%? That's just stupid. So instead, we need to figure out what our offer is going to be. And even if you don't have an offer yet, you should know kind of like what it is that you specialize at and what it is that you like a broad idea of what the end game is going to be. Right. And so come up with a high quality freebie that is going to bring people in, that's going to qualify them for that paid thing at the end of your funnel, even if the funnel is not created yet. Okay. And so even if that means that you're only getting three people in, we're going to focus more on building the relationship with them and really understanding what their need is so that we can create that perfect offer for that small amount of people so that we're not converting at 1%, but we're converting at like 10 to 20%. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So let me ask you this, and this is, you know, this is just an interesting question to me because I've kind of tested various things in my business, so I have some thoughts on this. And. But what, what type of lead magnets do you think are working best today in our environment? B2B and maybe even B2C.

Meaning like printables, video?

Yeah, I mean, is it like a masterclass training as a lead magnet? Is it like a roadmap or, you know, checklist, cheat sheet? What are you seeing that's working?

Okay, so I'm going to take a step back and I'm going to tell. I'm going to kind of like frame this a little bit differently. So leading people, cold traffic, just strangers, straight to a freebie is working less and less. Okay. What is working better is building a relationship first through content. So through Facebook lives, through relationships in your Facebook groups, through podcasts like this, through other, through just content in general on IG or Instagram, Instagram stories, and then leading them to any type of high value freebie. Okay, so it's not necessarily what type of freebie is working the best, it's what type of relationship are you and what type of trust are you building first before the freebie that's what's working the best, is creating content and relationships first before shoving freebies in people's faces. Does that help?

Yeah, I love that. And that makes complete sense to me because, I mean, just in my own personal business, I feel like people will, you know, go to your master class or go to your training or download your lead magnet once they know that you can help them. Right. Because them sitting through a training, I mean, that's a lot of their time, and they're not going to invest that unless they really know that it's worth their time. So that's an excellent point that you made.

Yeah. So it's not necessarily like, what type of freebies work. I can tell you one. I'll tell you in a second which one is going outdoor and is not working well. But the majority of freebies, like the method of delivery, audio, video, printable, those all work, but the way in which they're presented is different. Like, no. Like, people are so over being inundated with free stuff. They're sick of. Like, there's just so much of it out there. So it used to be, it was like an email address was currency, and it still is. And people were a little. Were a lot more giving of that currency. First it was just sign up for my newsletter and people were like, okay, sure, here's my email address. Here's that currency exchange. Then it was like, okay, well, now they've upped the Annie. Now you have to give a freebie in order to get the email address. Well, now the ante's up even more. And it's like, now you need to provide me with some valuable free content. Like, you need to build my trust and relationship, be it with some Facebook ad content first. It might be some Facebook Live videos. It may be some. I don't know. Anyways, just like some sort of free content before they're willing to give your free thing a chance. So the ante is raised. Freebies are not going away. It's just people are being a lot more selective about who they're actually going to download freebies from.

Excellent point. Is there any other tip or anything else that you would like to tell the audience about today related to email marketing that we haven't covered?

Yeah. So I did say that there was one freebie that.

Oh, yeah, yeah, you got to tell us that tip.

Okay, so about five years ago, the free printable or the free library was a big thing. And I will say that we are seeing that the libraries are the biggest source of attracting freebie seekers that are not converting to paying customers now. And so we're seeing a lot of people disassembling their free resource libraries and making it so that people have to work harder for getting those downloads. So no longer are those, those people converting. My friend Jennifer Priest gave me a really great quote. She said this is her thing that she tells her clients, once you start organizing your content, that's when people have to start paying for it. So if it's organized in some sort of portal, then that's when people start paying a membership fee for it. And I was like, that's so smart, it's so true. But we are seeing that the membership freebie model is no longer converting very well for people going from subscriber to customer.

So, yeah, you know, I didn't even think about that because that's never really been on my roadmap to provide. But I can see why those type of people that sign up for something like that would never convert or would never buy your online course because kind of, they have already gotten all your content.

Well, they do. They do one or two things. They go in, they download everything because it's super easy to do. It's so organized. Boop, boop, boop. Go in, shoot, download everything. And then they unsubscribe. Or they just have like, you're bringing in people with the mentality of I can get everything I need online for free. Why do I ever need to pay? Regardless of if that fact is true or not? Because we all know that everything that you're teaching for free is not in that free library. But that is the type of mentality, the mindset that we're attracting to that type of library. And I see it again and again and again when I'm serving my clients, subscribers that are offering these freebie libraries. That's the mentality we're attracting.

So note to everybody who's listening here, that is one free giveaway you do not want to put together.

They used to work. They used to work great. And there's a lot of people that have really great success. And again, there's always exceptions to the rule. Because I know somebody will be like, it's working great for me. There is always an exception to the rule. So if it's working great and you're making millions, kudos, great. But we're seeing, and I say we're, because I talk to a lot of other people that do the same thing that I do. We're seeing that for the majority of us, they're not working well, and speaking of, I do have a free breed, free printable library on one of my sites that is coming down because it's not working.

Let me ask you this. I know you have an online course. It's related email marketing you can tell us about in just a second. But what do you. What lead magnet? What? You know, how do people go through that funnel? What's your. What. What is your primary lead magnet?

So I have two right now, and one is a getting. Oh, gosh, now I'm thinking it's the getting started with email marketing. Maybe that's the title or the Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing. That's one of my lead magnets and it's on my homepage and it's, you know, kind of talking about the myths that we talked about today and the foundations. And the other one I also offer through Facebook ads is 25 fast freebie ideas. But within that. But it's also, it's a quick list, but it's also dispelling a lot of myths and getting people over a lot of these mindset beliefs and just going into that really quickly because a lot of times people are like, well, what the heck should I be offering as a freebie? And we won't go into too much detail, but a lot of times I see people offering things that don't make complete sense to what their end offer is. And we really want to make sure that we're making sense to what we're offering at the end. So even if I'm giving A list of 25 fast freebie ideas inside of that freebie, I'm also helping them understand the importance of having an email marketing strategy and helping them understand some of the false falsities or the myths that are out there so that they really want to move into my nurture sequence and start opening those emails. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. So they go to the lead magnet that you just described and then throughout your nurture sequence. Is that when you introduce your free masterclass training and I'm assuming that you have it?

Yeah, I do. I do have a master. I have a free masterclass. So once they go through my nurture sequence and providing value for I think it's five days, I believe it's day six that they get invited to my masterclass. I do think there is also a link within the PDF if they want to join there as well. So. Yeah, that's exactly it. That's exactly how my funnel works.

Okay, perfect. I love that. And Leslie, can you tell people where they can find you if they want to learn more about Emar marketing.

Yes. Yeah. So I'm@leslieclavijo.com and I'm sure that you can put that in the show notes because my last name is.

I definitely will. So everybody knows how to.

But on Facebook, I have a group called the Launch Room, and that is where we learn about profitable email marketing. So that just so I lay this out here. One of the most important things to do is to make sure that your email list is engaged before you launch your course, or else you'll find this is where so many people get frustrated, is that they spend so much time on the building of their course and then they neglect their email list. And then they go to start sending emails and nobody is interested because you've neglected them. You forgot about the relationship there. And so my launch strategy is all based off of keeping that list engaged and nurtured and building those. Those relationships there. So you can find me on Facebook at the Launch room.

Very good. And both of those links, Leslie, I'll make sure that they are included in the show notes so the folks listening here today can find you. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and bye for now.