17: Top Three Tips to Get your Next Email Read

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. I have Marisa Corcoran. And Marisa is a copywriter and messaging strategist that helps coaches and creatives craft compelling copy that attracts clients, makes money and creates a massive movement online. She's also the creator of the wildly popular Copy Chat masterclass series, bringing together 20 plus experts in copywriting, business coaching and online marketing. When not click clacking on her laptop, you'll find Marisa analyzing a Real Housewives episode like its government policy and consuming an inappropriate amounts of Nutrageous Reset. Thanks so much for joining with joining me today. I'm so happy that you're here and look forward to our conversation.

Oh, well, thank you so much for having me, Destiny. What an introduction. You know, a lot of times when people read my bio, they don't read the last part. And I really applaud you for reading it because it's my, I think it's my favorite part. I think it's where you get a hint of my personality, which is all like, what copy and messaging is about. And I find that people will, like, sometimes skip it. And so I'm so glad that you read it.

Well, I actually read it because, well, one of the reasons why I wanted to bring it up is I have to ask you a question about Housewives. I know we're both from the Atlanta area. Is that the one you watch or do you watch them all?

I watch them. All my favorites are Real Housewives of New York is my favorite because that's where I lived for so long. And then Real Housewives of New Jersey because I'm Italian. So it felt like very much often, sometimes similar to some things that I grew up with. But I like, I dabble in all of them. But mostly like, I'm an expert on New York, New Jersey and Beverly Hills.

So I like the OC One because that was kind of the first one out there and I've been following them for, you know, so many years. I actually don't really watch Real Housewives that much anymore. But the OC One I definitely watch and then the Atlanta one I've kind of been watching here and there. But mostly, you know, some of the stuff they show. Right. I'm familiar with it. One of the clubs that one of the, you know, she's not on it anymore, but she used to be on it. She was you know, they live in our. The club that we at that we're members of, I should say, in the neighborhood. All of that's kind of like. It's kind of neat seeing some of that stuff on the tv, so.

Oh, yeah, definitely. In New York, you know, whenever they show stuff of Real Housewives of New York, I'm like, oh, my gosh, I've been there. Or, you know, did I. You know, And I've seen some of them in person. Like, I went to Bethenny Frankel's talk show when she had a talk show, and that day, Luann was a guest on her talk show. So it was like the ultimate Real Housewives experience. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. That would be an amazing, amazing experience.

Yeah, it was.

All right, so today we are talking all about email, and you're going to give us some top tips to get your next email.

Email read.

And I will say that from my own personal perspective, I love email marketing. I absolutely love, love email marketing. But I struggle writing those weekly emails. So I'm very excited about our conversation today, also from a personal perspective. But I know a lot of the course creators out there listening to this. They also struggle with writing those weekly emails and maybe even the sales emails in their sales funnel. So why don't we, before we get started, actually, I forgot, so shame on me. I do want you to tell us a little bit more about your journey and how you got to where you are today and why you, you know, why you're so passionate about email and also copywriting and messaging.

Oh, that's a great question. Yeah. So I was an actor for a very long time in my life, and I got my MFA in acting from Harvard University. And when I came back from Harvard, I had an agent now, and I didn't want to go back to waiting tables and kind of babysitting, so I fell into writing. To make a very long story super short, I fell into writing because a friend of mine recommended me for a project, and I had a writing background, and, you know, acting gives you a lot of that creativity. And so I kind of dove into it, and my first client that she gave to me had asked me if I could write a JV packet for her. And I remember having no clue what that was, and I said, you know, sure. Would you just send me some examples of ones that you like? And that's how I learned how to write a JV packet, which is a joint venture packet, which is essentially like an affiliate packet, and that's how I learned how to do it. Was just looking at other examples and swipe copy and templates. And so I realized I really liked writing more than I liked acting. So I kind of dove into being a copywriter. And what I've really found is that all the things I learned as an actor make me an excellent copywriter to help people. Because it's all about storytelling. It's all about being vulnerable. It's all about, you know, on stage, you always want to make your partner look really good. And it's always like, what are you trying to get from the other actor on stage? What's your intention? And that translates into, you know, your call to action. So it really helps me explain to my students and my clients. I always use acting references in my programs and working with my clients to help them understand for copy. So, yeah, I went from being an actor to running my own business.

Well, that is very impressive. And I really like what you said about. And this really resonated with me when you said, when you're an actor, it's all about making your partner look good. And I think that's what copywriters do. Right. They're making their clients look good. So that really resonated with me. Mm. So tell us a little bit about, you know, why do you think email is still the queen of online marketing? You know, we hear so many stories that email is dead. Email's going away, you know, messenger, boss, or where it's at. Can you tell us a little bit about why do you think email is still the queen of what we need to focus on from an online perspective?

Yeah, I think, you know, overall, I think that there is a way to pick the things that you are passionate about and go full throttle with them, you know, So I think a lot of times people are like, oh, email is queen. Or, you know, Instagram is where it's at. And I think for everybody listening, like, you have to decide where you want to invest your energy and go full out with it. So for me, it's my email list, number one. My Facebook group is huge for me and Instagram, because I love Instagram. Those are kinds of where I put my focus. And, like, if you went to my Facebook business page, you wouldn't see, like, that much there. It's just not where I'm focused. But if you're in my group, there's tons of stuff going on in the group. So I think it's important for people overall to realize that they have to go for what they feel passionate about. And here's why. Email should definitely be on that list or you should consider it because it's still the number one as we kind of referenced way to convert clients. So this is a, I don't know where this is from, but I was reading about this because I was teaching it in a class of mine in a report last year that for every dollar you spend in email marketing, you get an ROI of $44. So that's like 4400% return on investment. So you just can't beat what can happen when you send out an email. And in terms of like, deliverability, more people are seeing your email. They're, they're, you know, if you do it right, they're excited to see you in your inbox. And it's, it's really where you can take people from reader to, to a client. And I always say, like, if all my stuff went away, if I had my email list, like, I would still be okay. Like, I could still come out of the rubble and figure it out. And I think where people go wrong is that they get overwhelmed by all the, all the things that you have to do to write a good email. And so then they just don't. They're kind of wish, they're kind of wishy washy or they're being so general and then they're not getting those responses, so they turn around and say, okay, well, email is dead, if that makes sense.

Yeah. So definitely you can't beat that ROI. I mean, 4400%. I mean, that's, that's so great.

No, you can't. Yeah, you can't beat it. And you know, for email, a lot of times, like, you know, up until I can't remember the exact number, but 2,000 subscribers or more or something like that on certain of the email things like ConvertKit, Mailchimp, like it's free to use those platforms, so you can't deny, as opposed to what it would cost you to go do Facebook ads, you know, so if you're using email correctly, it can really have, you know, a return on investment. I just did an entire launch for my group program completely using my email and my Facebook group, and I had a $40,000 launch.

Well, you're gonna have to tell us about that. So I'm definitely not gonna let you get away without commenting on that. So only used your email and your Facebook group.

Swear to God, I didn't. And I didn't even do webinars or anything. I just did like, I did like what a webinar would be, but I did it inside my Facebook group. So I did a series of Facebook lives. Well, I'm always in my Facebook group every week doing lives, Mondays and Wednesdays. So I'm always giving, coming from that place of generosity. So it's easy to kind of slip into that place of like, hey, I'm going to be talking about my. Whatever topic I'm talking about tonight. And I'm also going to mention a really cool opportunity. So I planned that out and started to do those Facebook lives for about two weeks or so that were devoted to the course. And then I sent out emails to accompany it. I did calls with people. So when you went to the sales page, it was to book a call with me. And yeah, that's how I did it.

So how big is your Facebook group?

So my Facebook group has just under 900 people.

Okay. So it's relatively small for those.

No, it's not that big. But where. What I'm doing that I think is important for people to hear is I'm showing up in that group like, I'm really giving. And I think that's what happens when we spread ourselves so thin, where we go, oh, we need to post on our Facebook, we need to post here, we need to post on Twitter, we need to post here. We need to do this. You're not able to, like, give of yourself. So for me, my energy, like I said, it goes into my email, it goes into my Facebook group, and Instagram because I love doing it. Like, I do my Instagram myself. I love doing it. But my Facebook group, like, I'm giving my all in there. I'm in there Mondays and Wednesdays doing lives. I'm in there every day writing a post to get engagement. I do these things where I say, hey, ask me. I kind of learned this from a mentor and friend of mine named Sarah Dan, who would do this thing where she'd say in her Facebook group, ask me anything for 20 minutes or whatever. So I started doing my own little twist on it of, like, pick my brain for 10 minutes. I acknowledge new members every week. I do a wins at the end of the week. I know people's names. I call them out on the lives. I speak to them. Like, if you were on the live, I'd be like, hey, Destiny, how are you? So I'm really creating, like, one of my people in the group described it as, like, they feel like they're in my living room with me, which I think is really cool.

Well, thank you for sharing that. No, that wasn't necessarily something you came to talk to us about. But I know a lot, of course, creators here, when they go out to do a launch, you know, they think, oh, I got to do this big old launch. I got to do a webinar challenge or whatever. I got to spend all this Facebook ads. But you just did this launch. I think you said $40,000 on it. You just did it using your email list and your Facebook group. So thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Yeah, you're welcome.

So what are some of the mistakes that you see business owners making with their email?

Oh, well, the email kind of goes back to what we were saying, is that people are. So here's the number one thing I see is that a lot of business owners are very general in their email. Very general. So they're sending out an email that isn't specific. Specific in terms of using story and being, like, really vulnerable with their list. Now, this doesn't mean that you need to tell your always say, like, in the beginning of Elizabeth Gilbert's like, Eat, Pray, Love, where she was, like, crying on the bathroom floor. Like, it doesn't need to be that. But there's slices. As an actor, we used to talk about slices of life. Like, in the scene, what slice of life were you seeing? You were seeing a scene open up, and somebody was in their kitchen, like, making dinner, or somebody was on a walk, or somebody was at work. So it's like, those are the stories that really resonate with people. So when you can open up an email and you see, like, a story from somebody, that's way more interesting than just starting off with, like, very general, where it can feel sometimes, like, almost preachy, or it can feel like, hey, got a question for you. You know, it can feel a little bit. It starts to feel salesy, even if you don't mean it that way. So that's the number one thing that I see a lot, and I think the way to change that is to dive into storytelling as much as you can, to use story to connect with your readers.

So this is something that I would say that I struggle with. So I'm going to dig into this a little bit, if you don't mind.

Let's do it.

Storytelling. And I get the concept right, but I don't feel like anything in my life is very interesting.

Although it is destiny.

It is. It is.

It's the thing. Okay, so this is where. And I get this because people have made it feel like we have to have some sort of, like, you know, rags to riches or whatever the crazy story is to Be interesting, not true. The things that people relate to the most are your everyday things. So, for example, I sent out an email a few weeks ago. I wanted to start segmenting just parts of my list because I've had an influx of a lot of people, and I wanted to make sure that people were getting the right emails that really pertained to them. So to get people to kind of just click this button to segment themselves, instead of just saying, hey, I want you to segment yourself, I told this story. The email opens up about how every day I get email for this woman named Natalie Cruz who used to live in my house before me, and how every day, even though we've told the postman she doesn't live here anymore, we get email from her, and we get mail from her over and over again. I spent every Saturday morning separating Natalie Cruz's mail, and then, if it's important, figuring out how to send it to her. My husband and I have been doing this for a year, and I said, like, you know, and now I switch it to the readers. I say, do you ever feel like this with your email box? You're constantly going through your inbox to figure out what's worth your time to read or what's one big old pile of Natalie Cruz that you just need to, like, delete or save for later or something. And I said, you know, I don't ever want to be that in your email inbox. So all you have to do is click one of these boxes below, and it'll put you into the correct, you know, segment. And then from that point on, you know, we just decluttered your email in one quick search step, you know, because I don't want to be your next Natalie Cruz. So instead of just asking them to, you know, click on a box, I told a story that people could connect with, and I got tons of responses of people that were like, oh, my gosh, the same thing happens to me. Or, you know, thank you for saying that, or, you know, this was so easy for me to do. You made me laugh. And it creates connection as opposed to just saying, hey, I'm segmenting my list. Can you click one of these boxes?

So I love that. And I guess the story that I have to go along with that is I'm getting mail from four different people who lived different times, moving into my house.

So.

And to even make matters worse, we get mail from people all over Alpharetta that have different. That has similar street names, I should say to ours. So ours is point at the end, and theirs Is oaks or street or circle or something. So I'm getting mail from everybody.

So, yeah, there's something in there about, like, you know, how, you know, it can feel like you're pulled in all these different directions. And is it your responsibility to, like, you know, make sure these people get their, you know, get all their stuff, and then there is a connection that you could make. You know, do you feel like you're always, you know, if you're running a course that you have to, like, or. The reason why you should run a course is because when you have individual clients, that's what you're doing all day. You're kind of like, you know, babysitting. And wouldn't it be great to not have to do that anymore? Like, there's so many ways that you could connect these kinds of slices of life in your own life to the reader, I promise you.

So I think I might have some stories there. So I got to go back to my very boring life and see if I can pull some of those out.

Yes, the more boring, the better. You know, like, how interesting it's. Natalie Cruz. Like, it's not that interesting story, but it goes. And I try to do that a lot. You know, I've told stories about a big email that people loved. I told a story about my grandfather and I making milkshakes when we were kid. When I was a kid, we used to make these banana milkshakes when my grandmother would go away. And I talked about how it was my, you know, what's your banana milkshake business model? Because I talk about how the reason I started my business was to give me more freedom so that I could go home and be with my grandfather, who'll be 97 this year. So in the summer, I get to go home for two weeks, and I work from home and I stay with him. So that's what the email was all about.

Well, that's a great, great message, too, about your grandfather.

Yeah. So you have these same stories, I promise.

I know. I got a really. I think we, all of us who are listening to this really got to go back and kind of analyze our life and figure out, you know, this. This would be interesting to somebody to hear this.

Yes.

So go ahead.

I'm sorry. Oh, no, no, you're okay. The only other thing I would say about that is for people to know is make a list of it. You know, if you're. If you're. If you're on a walk or something, just take the notes in your phone. Just create some story prompts for yourself. You know, just say like that time I got someone else's mail that time I waited a long time in the Starbucks line. Oh, that thing that happened at Target last week. So you can remind yourself, just start noting the story prompts.

So do you recommend people do that right when it happens and say, oh, this might be something I could talk about?

Yes, I do that a lot with my husband where I'll go, oh, I'm using this for an email. But like the Natalie Cruz thing, I didn't, I was just looking around the house, I was like, oh, I got to write this email about the segmentation. I got to get this done. And I literally looked over on my, on our console and you walk in the house and there was this pile of mail for Natalie Cruz and I was like, ding, ding, that's the connection. So I think it's a mix of just making that list for yourself like whenever it comes to you.

So as soon as we get off the call here, I'm definitely going to start that on my phone and I think this is a great tip. I'd never even thought about that before.

Oh great, I'm glad.

So another question I have for you and even my inboxes and quite frankly I have a lot of different emails that I use for opt ins and get people get on people's list of people I want to follow and just learn more about. So it's getting pretty crowded quite frankly and I'm sure my emails, when they go out to folks they're going out to very quick crowded inboxes. So can you tell us how we can make our email stand out? So when somebody gets our email they're like, oh yes, that is something I want to open and read your subject line.

Okay, your subject line is number one. So right like it, we can write a really great email but if the subject line isn't, isn't compelling, then you know, it's kind of a, you know, we've wasted our time. So here's what you can do with your subject lines. I would say my favorite tip about subject lines or it's kind of twofold is number one, always think about like the benefit to the person who's coming through your inbox, like what does your ideal reader want to know about? So for me when I'm sitting down, I know people want to know about, you know, their copy. So I always try to make it about, you know, relating it back to cop to copywriting, to you know, getting your next email read to, you know, to Having a successful launch, like all those things, and making sure those kinds of keywords are in my subject line. The other thing I would say is to take a look at the COVID of magazines. Magazines were made like Cosmo. Cosmo is the best for this. Cosmo, Women's Health. If you're a guy listening, this also applies Golf diet. I'm not saying a man can't read Cosmo. Totally go for it. But, you know, Golf Digest, Runner's World, all these magazines, the COVID is meant to get you to open it, right? So what I like to do with my clients and my students is to have them go and look at a bunch of COVID of magazines, take that copy. Now, you're not copying it, you know, 100% because it wouldn't make sense for your business, but you're using it to kind of influence to create your own subject line. So if there was a Cosmo tip that said something like, and obviously, okay, Cosmo is going to be about a lot, about love. So this is just one that I use. It was like, you know, like sex tips so hot or something. So I changed it to be like, you know, subject line tips so hot. So you can change it to what your business for, what your niche is. So I do this with Cosmo, with Women's Health. I'll literally just look at whatever magazine I get that month and I'll make a Google. I have a running Google Doc of subject lines that I just switch for myself. And then when I'm ready to write an email, I go back and I look and I see which one could I take and tweak or whatever. And also medium.com is great too. The titles of their articles are really meant to get you to click. So sometimes I take a lot of those and I switch them for subject lines as well.

So I'm thinking I need to go subscribe to some magazines too.

Yes, yes. But you can also just Google. You can Google right now. You could Google, Google Cosmo covers or Women's Health covers. And you just go to images. And when you come up and Google on images, it'll just take you to covers and then you can just look and see. I do this a lot for clients. I'll say, you know, and looking at other. And then take note of the subject lines that you open and why do you open that email and look at the subject line and say, what about this is the reason I open this? And how could I swipe this? Let this inspire me for my business.

And I like the tip that you have about just creating a Google Docs and just keeping track of everything there. So when you have that email that you need to find that subject line for, you can just go back to it and pull it and figure out where you needed to modify it.

Yes. It makes it so much easier than in the moment where you're like, oh my God, I have to come up with this great subject line. It's the same thing we just said for the story prompts. You know, I have a folder that that's what this is for. And in there there's a Google Doc for story prompts and in there there's a Google Doc that's for subject lines.

Nice. Well, any, anything else that you want to mention for the course creators here?

Oh, sure. When it comes to email, the other thing I would say is having a clear call to action in that email. So if you've done a good job, you've done a great subject line, you've told a story that connects, you have a nice transition sentence that says, you know, like we said the Natalie Cruz email. So I told that little story and I said, do you ever feel like your email inbox? And I've switched it to them. Now I've gone into what the teaching of the email is about. And then we want to make the call to action super clear. So we have to decide what do you want this email to do? Do you want them to respond to the email? Do you want them to go read a blog? Do you want them to come over to your Facebook? Do you want them to comment? So right at the top of your Google Doc or wherever you're writing an email, put what you want that call to action to be at the top say I want them. We used to do this in acting where we'd say, what's our intention for the scene? I want him. I want. If I'm in my scene with Destiny, I want Destiny to swallow this bitter pill to admit that I'm right by the end of this scene. That's my goal. So when you're doing the email you write at the top, I want my call to action to be for them to comment, for them to respond, for them to click to the sales page and then, you know, as you're writing the email to make sure that that call to action is super clear. Don't be wishy washy. Tell them, you know, reply back and tell me one thing what your takeaway is. Click over here to see the rest of this on the blog. Like be super clear with your call to Actions. And you'll start to see more of the things that you. That you want.

So let me ask you a question on that. Yeah, I definitely agree about the call to action. But would. Should we have more than one call to actions in there, or would that confuse them? Or do you recommend just one call to action?

One call to action. One. That's a great, awesome, excellent, amazing question. One call to action. Because what happens is I had someone come to me one time and was like, I'm sending out these emails and nobody's responding. Can you take a look? So I took a look at it and right away it was like, there were so many call to actions. It was like, check out my recipes, but then come over to my Facebook group. But don't forget to read this blog. And it was like, very overwhelming. So one call to action. One call to action.

Is there a recommended link that you have for emails with people's short attention spans? Or do you think long is fine.

For the length of an email?

For the length of an email. Correct.

It's such a great question. I mean, it really honestly depends. You know, obviously, you know, the great, greatest copywriter ever, Laura Belgray, always talks about, you know, no one unsubscribed because your email was too short. You know, so she always says this. But I do believe there's power in if you are doing it right and you're telling a story. I find my emails are long and I'm not. It's not. It's not doing me a disservice. So I think focusing on first getting connected with people, you can. You can go back and cut stuff and worry about the length later.

Okay, so just basically say what you need to say. Don't make it too wordy, but just say what you need to say and people will read it.

Yes. And because when I tell people, you know, a certain. I don't ever want to discourage people because, you know, what we forget is that writing is a creative process. Like, yes, there's a marketing to it, of course, but it's a creative process. So I always want to encourage people to just start writing it. You can always go back and cut stuff out. I do that all the time. I go back and cut stuff out. But give yourself the opportunity to actually write it first without censoring the length or anything like that.

Thank you so much. Marisa, can you tell people where they can find you, especially where they can find you in your Facebook group? I think everybody needs to join.

Yeah. Yeah, that's the best place to go. You can find out everything else from there. So it's called the copychat Facebook group. So it's the Copy C O P Y chat C H A t the copychat Facebook group. So come on over there. And yeah, like I said, I do weekly. I do lives on Monday nights and Wednesday nights. We have, you know, lots of constant communication in there and me giving tips and I do interviews with some some of my great, you know, friends and colleagues come in and do interviews and stuff. So it's a really great space to be part of.

Well, thanks so much for joining us, course creators. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. Would love it if you could rate and review on itunes or your favorite podcast platform. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.