153: Streamline Your Online Business: Email Marketing Automation Tips from Jenna Carelli

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And my special guest today is Jenna Corelli. Jenna is an ActiveCampaign certified consultant and she's the founder and CEO of Email Marketing Automations and she's just one of 43 Active Campaign certified consultants in the United States. And Jenna, I am super excited to jump into this topic with you and we're going to be talking all about email marketing, but most importantly how email marketing can save you time if it's done right. And I know that you have all the goods for us, so we're going to jump right in. But before we get into all the questions I have for you, can you tell the good audience just a little bit more about you and how you help people?

Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I got started in business back in 2015. I was working in the corporate world as a paralegal, so I was working for attorneys and wanting out. But it wasn't until I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter. And that gave me the force that I actually needed. The reason that I needed to find something for myself that I could call my own so that I could be home with her when she was born. And that is where I developed a business. I was in the fitness and wellness industry. At the time. And I ended up building a digital marketing agency for wellness professionals. I ran that agency for several years. We worked with a bunch of different platforms, not just email, but website building and tech and copywriting. And I had a big team that was working with me. And it was through that practice that we identified the common denominator among our clients. Success was in email marketing. And specifically the automation component of email marketing allowed me to be a mom, to be a good friend, to still have a personal life outside of my business and really fit my business into my personal life. So I really held onto the automation portion of email marketing and eventually niched down my audience to just email marketers in general. And so that's how I got so passionate about automation in general and email marketing. And now we serve our clientele of email marketers to help give them back time in their personal life as well as their business, save them money, not only help them make more money through the power of automation, but have their systems and tools really work for them instead of spending their costs and expenses hiring and hiring and hiring human beings to do these administrative tasks that our systems that we're already paying for can do for us.

And I love what you said that email marketing can give you back time, especially with the automations, but it can also help you make money. So two great combinations, right? Yes. Yes. For folks who are, they haven't really gotten started in email marketing, what would you say to them? Do you think it's important? And how would you suggest they get started?

Yeah, and one of the key phrases that I, I use all the time, especially when I was just starting out, was free to paid. Free to paid. If you don't currently have an email marketing platform, what you're doing is you're collecting names and you're collecting email addresses and you're collecting data, whatever that is for your business, a phone number, whatever information is beneficial, you, you're collecting it within a spreadsheet and that's okay to start, right? But at some point your business is going to grow to the point where you need to, you need a database to store that information that doesn't require your manual upkeep. So the next best step is finding an email marketing platform that will work for you and also fit into your current budget and your current expenses that you want to be at in your business. There are plenty VMO marketing platforms out there. I recommend looking at the functionality of each platform, comparing, contrasting. Does this platform grow with me as my business grows? But I find it to be extremely Beneficial to get started with an email marketing platform as soon as you can, just because it does help you store data. And whether you're emailing right away or starting a newsletter, that doesn't matter, you're going to want to reference that data to analyze and optimize and grow your business in different aspects outside of email marketing. So it will be beneficial to you.

So let's delve into that a little bit more. You keep talking, you talk about this database or somebody who's not familiar with like an email marketing database. Exactly. What is in it? What can we capture there? And, and then we'll kind of delve into how we start setting it up a little bit later. Yeah.

So it depends on your business and what do you find? Let, let's think about your capture. So maybe you have a website or you have a landing page where you ask somebody for their email address. That's the bare minimum that an email marketing platform needs in order to capture information. It's an email. It's an email address. You might also find a first name and a last name is beneficial because you want to personalize the content upon delivery. So you want to, you know, say hello, first name. But you might be in an industry where you're working with parents and they have teens that you're working with or categorical interests, subject interests. If you're a blogger, then you have different categories of content that you put out and you might find it beneficial to have a toggle or a dropdown selection upon that capture. So, so that you can really personalize the content that you're sending the person who's opting in. So email address is really all the email marketing platform needs for you to get started, but then you want to start strategizing. What other information could I begin collecting from my audience that will help me build a personal relationship faster and will help them feel the quality of the relationship that I'm building with them and not have them feeling like just another number or just another contact on your database.

So what you're talking about there is segmentation and really kind of honing in on the specific content that individual would want. Let's break this down a little bit further. Let's say that somebody comes to your website, they sign up for whatever lead magnet that you have. So maybe they enter the first name, they enter their email address, they get added to your email marketing system. How would you suggest somebody, you know, they're just starting out in this, just learning this. How would you suggest that they start doing that segmentation how would you set that up for a client? Yeah.

So let's first talk about segmentation. What is it? Most of us understand what it is to craft an email or to create an email campaign. So instead of sending the same email to an entire list of contacts, segmentation allows you to choose to send your email to a segment of that list based on certain criteria. So segmentation gives you total control over who gets your email campaigns and it allows them to have a personalized customer experience. So if we're talking about an opt in from a lead magnet, you're utilizing the automation component of your email marketing system, which is like an engine to your car. But with email marketing, the automation allows you to build a set of actions for a contact to go through at their own pace. So if they're downloading a lead magnet, then you know, the building blocks of an automation is generally first let's send an email. That's the most common step within an automation. They download the lead magnet. They, they then receive an email delivering the lead magnet. One thing, a little pro tip that I always like to throw out there is do not deliver the lead magnet on a redirect immediately from the download. When they click that submit button or download button from your website, have them redirect to a thank you page reminding them to go check their inbox to get their download or the lead magnet that they opted in from. What that does is it helps boost your deliverability, the domain health, and it sends them right to their inbox to open your email and it tells your email marketing platform that this contact wants emails from you. So it is a little tip to help get your email in the inbox instead of a promotional or a spam folder first. Then once they're in that automation, after the email sends, you can utilize your email marketing platform to add a tag. Maybe they came from Instagram and you want your database to know that this is an initial lead that came from Instagram versus an initial lead that came from your website. Down the road, you might put more marketing efforts towards Instagram versus your website if you find that you're getting more leads on a given month from that social platform. So the building blocks of an automation are not just sending an email. You can add tags, you can add wait periods or wait delays, you can update certain contact fields. If somebody enters their first name, they can adjust that if they want to be called by a nickname when you email them, you can give them the opportunity, opportunity to really personalize their experience with you. You can also send notifications internally to yourself or to team members based on actions. When somebody opens an email, clicks an email, there's so many options to personalize the experience that the contact has with you and your company as a whole when you utilize the power of automation.

And you gave us a lot of great information there. And I love the tip that you mentioned where you know somebody's delivering a lead magnet on that thank you page. Don't have them downloaded there, send them back to your email. That was a great tip. I love how you did that. So let's say that we're a little bit further along and we've been doing this for a while and we feel like our, you know, this is probably me out there. I can put me in this category. I feel like my email marketing system's a little bit of a mess right now because I've been doing this for a while. I have a lot of automations, a lot of sequences, a lot of tags. How, how can people keep this simple and keep it so you know it.

Can grow with their business?

Yeah. If your email marketing platforms allows you to label certain automations, then you can filter wherever your automations live. You can filter by webinar. So all of these automations are related to a webinar. All these automations are related to engagement and data collection. All of these automations are related to lead magnets or opt ins. That's a great option. Second option or in addition to naming conventions, when you are creating tags and when you are titling your automation, we always like to utilize all caps the action. So let's say we're talking about downloading a lead magnet in all caps. The automation title would be Download colon lead magnet or Download colon. The name of the lead magnet for each and every lead magnet that you ever, ever put out there. That way at a glance, without having to dig into the automation and open it up and sift through it, you can, you can see what's going on. Same thing with a tag. So maybe the trigger for the automation is downloaded lead magnet. The title of the automation is Download lead magnet. The trigger tag is downloaded lead magnet. Very clear. Right. So if we can look at how we name our lists, how we name our automations, how we name our custom fields, how we name our forms and everything inside of the email marketing database. If it's related and clear with a descriptor, if you're, if your platform allows you to add a descriptor then anybody can jump into the platform and understand what's going on. Now we do email marketing for A lot of different customers and clients of ours and they have this issue where they, they need different people within the company to, to be jumping in and understanding what's going on. We utilize a tool called airtable and you might be familiar with airtable and a second tool called skyvia S K Y V I A Skyvia. If it integrates with your email marketing platform, it will pull out all of the information inside of your email marketing platform into a spreadsheet. So to say that you can connect the dots to. Right. So we're, we, we basically build a table, a database that says this list is connected to this automation is connected to this tag. When this form is filled out, it redirects to this thank you page and it's just all there in one place as an overarching database for anybody to look at. It really depends on the individual and whether they like to be inside the email marketing platform, working within the platform itself. Or maybe the CEO of the company that you're working for would rather look at a pie chart or would rather just see a spreadsheet with tables. So you want to understand who's consuming the information first and then try and build naming conventions and a database that is going to work for everybody within the company.

And I think what you said there is so important is developing what your naming convention is going to be and I think in using that right throughout everything that you're doing, whether it's a lead magnet or webinar you're doing or you know, I do a lot of summits and free bundles and that sort of thing. So I love that. Jenna, any last minute tips here for the audience?

Yeah, I think the more you practice building automations, the more you practice analyzing the data that's coming into your email marketing platform and testing it yourself, opting into things yourself to see what happens on the back end and then you know, after every five people that come through your automation, optimize that automation, are they opening, are they not opening? Create different pathways for people who open and don't open to remind them to go download their thing that they came to download. More you practice building them, the better you're going to get automation to work for you and for your contacts. So the benefits are endless. Right? Outside of giving you and or your administrative team of release from time consuming tasks and processes, that's probably the biggest benefit we see. But outside of that it allows your business to grow in other areas and I want you to not get caught up in the tech aspect and the time aspect of setting it up because you can just set up an automation to deliver an email and then put an arbitrary wait 100 years time period after that email delivers and not touch the automation again. The biggest mistake I think we see is people think they need to set up this elaborate automation, strategize it for months before we can turn it active. And that's just not the case. You're going to be building it and building and building upon it with every single contact who drops into the automation. So don't be afraid to test, retest and optimize as you go and just get started.

Right? I mean, I think that's the message that you have for all of us today. And Jenna, can you let folks know where they can find you? And I believe you have a free gift from for them also.

Yes. So my company is Email Marketing Automations with an S and you can find our website at www.emailmarketing automations.com and if you go to email marketing automations.com Instagram we have a couple options for you. A free trial to our recommended email marketing platform. You can subscribe to our newsletter which every Monday we send out email marketing tips. In general, it doesn't matter what email marketing platform you're working with. We help give you pro tips on how to better utilize the platform that you're currently paying for. And we have a free tool to help you identify whether your domain is healthy. That's your website. So Our email marketing Automations.com is our domain and it has a lot to do with your email marketing, whether it's healthy or not. So we have a tool to help you identify that.

And Jenna, thank you so much for joining me today. I love talk chatting with you and just learning a little bit more about email Marketing Automations myself.

Thank you for having me. I had a lot of fun and I always love helping move the needle forward for other business owners.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, we'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcast or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.