Crazy, STUPID Marketing: All About Email

Sam. Hey, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Crazy Stupid Marketing Show. The show where we talk about all the crazy, stupid stuff people do in marketing and how you cannot do that, but instead do smart, meaningful things with your marketing efforts. And as always, we have a show theme and in which unfortunately there are many crazy, stupid things that are happening and we bring you amazing experts that can help you not do crazy, stupid things. And today we're talking about email, friends. And I feel like, I don't know this, maybe this makes me sound old, but when I was in grade seven, we had a like computer class project to create an email account and send an email. So email has been a thing for a while, right? This is, this is not new. I would think most businesses at this point, very minimally are using email for a business perspective, right? We're, we're communicating by email, sending internal emails and things like that, presenting emails to clients. But also we are using email for marketing. And alas, there are things that email is good at at marketing and there's things that email is not good at when it comes to marketing. So we're going to talk about all of those things today. Well, as many as we have time to in our allotted time for today. Although I feel like more and more at the end of every show, I'm like, we need a follow up episode on this. We needed a follow up episode on this. And there can only be so many crazy, stupid marketing shows, my friends, unfortunately. And so if you are joining us live and specifically if you have questions about email, I am going to encourage you to put those questions into the chat. I don't know if it's everybody, but like my video is frozen. Do I look frozen?

Yeah, I'm seeing you frozen, Tracy.

I am. Okay, I'm going to just stop my camera and see if that resets us here. Oh, no, that's fine. The same face. Same face.

Okay, I can see your audio at least.

Yes, we can hear me. I'm going to try to come back. I'm very frozen. And this is a funny face I'm making. Okay, I'm going to turn my camera off for a few minutes. And this is what happens with live shows, friends. You never quite know what you're going to get, but you can look at Dylan's lovely face. And while I'm trying to figure out the tech stuff on the back end, I'll let Dylan introduce himself and tell us a little bit more about you and why email has become your jam.

Amazing. Thank you, Tracy. Good luck. With the frozen camera there. I'm glad it was you and not me on the first time around. Thank you for having me on the show. My name is Dylan Bridger. I do. I'm a email marketing specialist. I've been pretty much doing entirely email marketing services for clients for the past three and a half years. And I've been kind of a student and practitioner of marketing more broadly for a lot longer than that in various capacities over the past ten years or so. And the reason why. The reason why email. Most of the clients I work with are usually in the sort of coaching course, seller space. That's not all I work with. I work with other people in the e commerce space as well. But the reason I chose really email over everything else is because with all my experience across companies, like, email was always the. Always the one of the main revenue drivers of a business. And it was, oh, it seems like we've lost Tracy. So I assume she's going to tune back in and if not, I'll just. There she is. Okay. So, yeah, essentially it's the. It's a big revenue driver for businesses. And what's great about email is that you own it. Unlike where you need to pay for advertising, where you need to. You're. You're more vulnerable to ad costs rising or, you know, organic social media reach declining. And I kind of, to be honest, I sort of stumbled into email over the years. I've done a lot of different things of, you know, everything from SEO to content writing, paid advertising. And I converged on email just because I found it had the biggest impact on companies. I worked with their business. So it seemed like a, you know, a natural fit for me to focus on where. Where I could have the biggest impact. And that's what I do today.

All right, so I am here.

Awesome, you're back.

I don't know that this camera, and every time I press the like camera button, it, like, mutes me. So I have no idea what is going on from a technical perspective. So this will be more of a podcast version this episode, and you can feel free to share, keep sharing your camera or if it's more comfortable for you, can also turn it off. I think most of our people end up listening and not necessarily watching anyway, so I will leave that up to you. But we are not here to talk about technical difficulties. We're here to talk about email. So in your intro, Dylan, you mentioned that when you were looking at all these different things, email was the thing that could have the biggest impact. So can you tell us a little bit more about what that impact looks like for people.

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean there's a lot of, there's a lot of kind of like soft benefits that are legitimate benefits, albeit maybe less compelling to some listeners just based on, based on client conversations I've had. But you know, on the sort of like I would say probably top of the heap would be generating like direct response revenue or leads straight from your list. So if you have a database of a lot of prospects or existing customers who you would like to reach to either cross sell them, upsell them or even just like check. Well, we'll speak to that in a second the checking in on them. But so like in terms of pure like commercial, like, like growing, growing the company, it's a, almost, it's like almost a free way to reach people that have raised their hand to hear from you. So it's a, it's a really good, it's a really good audience that you own. So you know, when I talk about impact, it's usually because of what my clients are after. It's usually you know, getting, generating revenue from, from the written word through sending an email, pointing them to your website and getting that conversion. And because it's like email is less noisy, like I shouldn't say less noisy but when someone's reading your email, they're for, if you can capture their attention then you sort of have their full attention for a split second. Whereas on social media if they're just like you know, essentially doom scrolling down the feed, they're less likely unless you have a really compelling hook to, to sort of stop and hear you out and then off to the next one. So it's just a really good, it's a really good place to actually drive sales and generate leads. But then also beyond that is it's, it's a really good place to, to like differentiate yourself and some of the more abstract, hard to measure but, but critically important aspects of marketing so like allowing people to get to know you whether, whether you are like a one person brand or whether you are a, a big company, you can really, you can really have kind of a conversation with the people on your list and over time they'll be more likely to know like and trust you and potentially become again ultimately all roads sort of lead to, to that conversion event or that next thing. And it's also good for just like following up on, on past customers. Like it's a really, really inexpensive and effective way to reach out to people who you've already done business with. To make sure they're succeeding and you know, to potentially solicit referrals and stuff like that. So hopefully that sort of answers your question.

Yes, and it's very unfortunate because you can't see me nodding my head, but. Okay, so you talked about tutor. There's like three things that came up for me in that that I'd like to kind of break down a little bit more. So the first of all is the list. So I imagine that a lot of the success comes down to the quality of the list and the purpose for which the list was created. And so, I mean, I come from the days where it was very common to buy a list for things. I think people still sell lists for things. But can you tell us a little bit more about what needs to go into the list creation in order for the rest of the funnel farther down to actually work?

Yeah, great, great question, Tracy. And just to, just to make sure, I'm just going to say something and I understand that you understand the difference, but just to make sure that everyone. Because sometimes the email marketing as a term, people can sometimes mistake it for cold email, which I'm not suggesting you were, but it just reminded me, your comment that when I'm talking about email marketing just for the listeners to make sure everyone's on the same page, like I'm referring to, indeed, like referring when someone opts into your email list and then you communicate to them which is a, which although they both have the word email in them, is a very different beast and from my perspective than cold email, which is when like kind of like soliciting someone that doesn't know you and asking for them to respond. So, so basically everything I'm going to be talking about, importantly, the context will be for opted in email marketing and not cold email. Just I say that only to avoid any, any potential confusion. So with that caveat out of the way, your question was regarding to. Yeah, how do we actually curate and build that list? So, you know, there's, there's a lot of kind of tactics I could go into, but I think fundamentally you want to be very, you want to be as intentional and strategic up front and on a continuous basis as possible to think who are you ultimately trying to serve and, and how, and how can you attract that type of person onto your list? So, you know, I, I would say that, you know, best case scenario and, and with my clients, like, the best results that I'm able to deliver is if the, the, the email list just so happens to be a list of customers. So People who have already bought like I, I have a, an E commerce client and like people who have already bought one product and then we can go back and introduce a whole array of the rest of their catalog to these people who have already demonstrated by virtue of being on this list that they are, you know, known buyers of this type of product. That's what, that's probably like the, the North Star ideal list makeup. But obviously getting, getting customers is expensive. So what you might instead do is have something like a, what's called like a lead magnet or maybe like a, a webinar or something like this or even just like having a newsletter opt in page which, which is quite popular I think today where people come in and they give you their email address in exchange for some sort of free product essentially. Whether that's you know, a newsletter, whether that's a downloadable resource and then from there you can, you can drip email to them over time. And what you'll find is that inevitably people will unsubscribe and churn from that list. And that's fine, that's healthy, that's, that's how it should be going, you know, within certain parameters. And then you know that over, over time you just want to keep adding more and more people. And you could find that if, if you have a list and you try to promote something and, and no one is buying it and then you do some surveys and people say they're not buying it because it's too expensive or they don't have a need or, or this, that and the other, that could be a symptom like usually the first place and it's, it's the hardest and the, the hardest to uproot easily. But the, the makeup of your list has like you said, has a profound impact on how well your email. So if you're trying to sell for example a really expensive product, meanwhile you have people that opted in for like a 99 cent ebook or something. The chances that they'll make that large leap is lower than if for example, you had a list of people that bought say a $2,000 product and now you want to sell them like a $10,000 product. So hope that answers the question.

Yeah, absolutely. And what you hint to with that example too is that the like underlying strategy behind the email, right, it's not just about distributing an email or distributing X amount of emails, but it's in that if we know these people have bought this thing and our goal with this is to convert them into a higher level wire to upsell them or to, I mean, it could be a variety of different things, but that we have very good clarity on what we are hoping people will do through our actions so that we can measure whether or not our actions are doing something meaningful.

Exactly. And, and you really hit the nail on the head. I think that, you know, I'm sure we might dive into this shortly, but if, if there's one thing I could say that I've learned is that really like being super intentional about thinking about what's likely going to work. And honestly, like, it can, it's, it can kind of be common sense at a certain point. It's like what is likely to resonate with this type of person. I'm after that, that is, that kind of work, in my opinion, is higher leverage than like the actual how well you can string a sentence in an email. Because, you know, it's ultimately we're trying to attract people, we're trying to speak directly kind of one person to one person. So it's really helpful. As you're, as you're thinking about email is what I'll often do is I'll, I will literally try to think of the one ideal customer that ideally that I currently have. So like, if I'm drafting an email, you know, I'm writing to the, to the, to the, to the best case scenario customer that I currently have in the hopes that what I'm writing will attract more such customers. And I find that that mental frame can sometimes simplify that process. Whereas if you just, if you just see an email list of 10,000, 20,000, 100,000 people, you might have a vague idea of who you're writing to. But it really helps to get super duper, duper specific specific. And that makes your, that makes the, the results a lot more effective, I've found.

And so while we're talking about the specificity here, what kind of information have you seen be most successful when we're getting that specific? Is it because I know that usually the default is to focus on like demographics in terms of age, household income, and things of that nature. Is that what you see, see is the most helpful or are there other framings that you've seen most helpful in terms of getting specific?

Yeah, that. Great question. So I would say two things are very top of mind for me right now, today, in 2024, last year, even the year before, I might have been, I might have given you a slightly different answer, and I might give you a slightly different answer next year and the year beyond. But what I've found this Year, particularly in the sort of macroeconomic environment that we're in today. Two things I've found that I'm paying a lot of attention to. The first is like, the emotional appeal. Like, what is. And to be clear, like this, this point I think will never, never go out of style. But like, is it make more. Like, for example, is it make more money? Is it save more time? Is it be envied by peers around you? Is it to feel more confident about yourself? What is the fundamental, like, human drive within the person on the receiving end of your emails that you, you essentially want to convey or you want to evoke? Because I've found that once you, like, once you find essentially a winning emotional appeal, you can often get away with more or less rinsing, repeating the same appeal in different ways from different angles over and over again, and seeing pretty similar and consistent results. So step one, I think is, and that's kind of more on the psychographics level than the demographics. You know, what, what is, what's important to that person and what will, what would convey an emotion, what will generate an emotional response in them? That's, that's the first thing. And the second thing, which I think is perhaps a tiny bit more relevant right now than it was a couple years ago, is, is objections. So why would not, why would someone not buy your product and why are they not buying it? And what can you say or demonstrate that will cause them to, to perhaps reconsider or see that from a different perspective? And this is particularly relevant now, I find, because I have noticed a slight. And this, this could be just me. So take like, you know, take this with an appropriate grain of salt. But I've noticed with some industries, some lists, a small dip in responsiveness, like in conversion rate this year versus even as recently as last year. Why? I'm not sure. I have some speculation. But what I found effective in that kind of environment is instead of focusing on how great your product is and why they should buy, focus on, you know, why aren't they buying and how can we help them overcome what's blocking them to get them to consider it a worthwhile endeavor. So those are two specific, like, psychographic things that have been very effective exercises from a strategic level this year in my experience.

Nice. And I think this piece about objections is also interesting because earlier in the conversation you mentioned that email can be used to like, collect data, market research on clients, or just list members in general. So when you are doing work in that objections arena, is that something that you recommend actually Pulling directly out of the list or are there some assumptions that are safe to make? I mean, I think we know what generally happens with assumptions, but I'd love to get your perspective on how. How do we get a good identification of what those objections are. Is this a partnership with sales, like anything you see that allows us to get good, good data?

Yeah, that's an important question. My take on this is I've gotten some of the most compelling results by just examining like I should caveat this with the fact that many of the clients I'll work for will tend to be kind of relatively smaller teams that because, and because they sell courses, they can, they're perhaps a bit more nimble than some companies may have the luxury of doing this with. But even if it's a massive enterprise, I would argue you can still dig into some of these. You just might need to get a bit creative. But I think that a great source of insights is either like whether it's sales call logs, if it's kind of like a B2B sort of a thing, if not even like live chat conversations that might exist on the website. Because essentially what you know, if you look at like live chat or if someone's like selling through chat, what it really is is someone is saying, hey, I have this objection. And if you notice a ton of that same objection coming over and over again, and one objection, that's always the first question people ask, for example, then there's a good chance you might want to get ahead of that and lead with that or present that and kind of get over that sooner than later. So I think essentially to answer your question, like I would say yeah, look at, look at like sale, look at sales. I find just like one on one conversations honestly with your market is, can sometimes be more insightful than these massive data dumps that, that you might find. If you have the luxury of a ton of data, you know that that's great, you could survey, you could survey your email list. I just did that recently where sent a survey that essentially we looked at all the people that clicked over to the sales page but who didn't buy and, and kind of just said like, you know, we're not, not trying to sell you anything but just wondering like why didn't you buy and click here, there or the other place and then from there we can use that to, to get some ideas. But the challenge with survey data like that, and I mean I'm not an expert in this particular domain, but in my experience the challenge with survey answers like that Is that sometimes people say one thing, but they might actually mean something else. They might say it's too expensive, but what they actually mean is that they don't understand why they need it or. You know what I mean. So I think you sometimes just chatting one on one casually with either your existing or prospective customers can be more enlightening than a lot of marketing departments like to give it credit for.

Yeah, and I always, I love that conversation coming from marketing because I feel like there's less pressure in a conversation with marketing than a conversation with sales specifically when it comes to objections. Feel like people, I mean, if, if people are going to lie, people are going to lie. But I feel like there's more comfort with them from a marketing perspective than from a sales perspective. Because I think people assume that if I tell you why I object, then you're a salesperson, you're going to come right back at me with your, like, objection handling. Right. And, but I also know, like, and one of the things, because I've done a lot of market research and my, my education is in market research. And generally the people who complete market research are outliers. They're not the average consumer. So they're people who either, like, really love what you do or people who are like, really angry about something that you did. And so sometimes getting that, like, general consensus of what an average consumer experience is is difficult through market research, mostly just because that group of people are less likely to do your research. Which is also why it's really great to have conversations. Right. Have, have, just have a conversation with a person. And this also plays into why I believe that marketers should have a face on social media instead of always be hiding behind the scenes. But that's a conversation for a different, different day. Okay, so we talked a lot about the list, the quality of the list and how we're constructing that. And now let's talk about the conversion component, because I think you're right, Dylan. I think the goal of most email programs is to create conversion, I would say corporately. Very few of the marketing programs I have seen create conversion. So what, what is that gap? What, what do you see is missing in a lot of the email programs that are not actually generating revenue?

Yeah. So, I mean, there's kind of one conversation which is like. Yeah, so I'll. So I think your question was essentially what, what differentiates like a, a email campaign or, or, or approach that's going, likely going to convert and one that's likely not going to convert. Right. Is that essentially the Question?

Yes.

Yeah, so I mean I, I could speak for hours on that in itself, but I'll just, I'll, I'll start with some of the, the fundamentals. I think first and foremost like having, having that product list match is, is really key which, which like unfortunately is not a very easy thing to, to replace. And like this is kind of a, this is not something I invented. This is sort of like a direct response marketing sort of truism of like you know, that, that that match will have a bigger impact than just any of the writing you might do to send to that list. And I mean if you, if you think about it logically, it sort of makes sense. Like if you have a room full of people and let's call out your email list and you hold up something like a product that you have for sale that everyone in that room likely wants, then you could probably, you probably wouldn't have to shout all that loud or say anything overly clever to get some people to want to come down and grab it from you. Whereas on the other hand if you're holding something up that's, that's not as desirable and you know, nothing you really say is going to probably move that very quickly if, if they don't fundamentally want it. So I think just being, being let's just assume that those foundations are in place. A solid list and a product that that list wants. Assuming that's in place then. And that's really the most important. And in my opinion that's where most people fall short. I would say that the key thing is having some sort of relationship that is not entirely product centric. So instead of it just being all about your product, all about your promotion, it really helps if you can do things that, or say things and share information that's actually relevant to your reader, even if they never want to buy from you ever. That, that's one sort of sort of tip I've learned. So in the case, and that's especially the case if you're selling something like information products or coaching or services or anything like that, any non physical product. Because with physical products you kind of just roughly describe them and that might be enough as a pitch. But even then in the context of E commerce, like with physical products, I've found that if you can kind of get even just some sort of relationship or rapport, a bit of personality in the email approach that tends to, that's tended to convert a little higher with my data versus just, you know, your standard email that ends up in the promo tab that no One really reads. So that's one thing, kind of like having that relationship. Another thing, again, that's really top of mind for me this year. And this could be a function of it being for some reason more high converting today or it could be a function of me just not giving enough credit in the past, I'm not sure. But having some reason to act now versus later, I think can, can really make a difference. And there is a balancing act here. And when I say this, it's sometimes controversial because there is kind of this idea that among some people I've spoken with over the past couple years, this idea of like people not really wanting to like sell overly hard to their list and not wanting to be pushy and all that stuff. And, and I get it. And that's, you know, that's my baseline approach is as well. But the truth is, is that a lot of people on your list today, they might very well want to buy your product. They might have it in their mind that they will buy your product. They might have no reason not to buy the product other than the fact that they are just going on with their day to day and they never make time for it. So the antidote to that problem, or at least one antidote to that problem is simply giving a deadline. So, you know, buy before this date and you don't need to beat them over the head with it. But it could even be like, if you buy before this date, I'll throw in this extra thing for free or buy before this date and I'll give you a discount, whatever, whatever that might be. But I think that I, I have definitely at least this year learned that I have under. Given, not given enough credit to the power, like the conversion lifting power of a deadline. Those are some things. There's a lot more, but I'll park there for a quick second and let you chime in.

Yeah. Okay, so I love that you did bring up the act now. And the thing that I always found interesting is there's kind of, I see probably too many people who fall into like not making a call to action, right? Like if we're going to send someone an email, ask them to do something, right. And so if we, I mean I had a really great friend of mine who did this amazing newsletter for years, right. And like really good open rates, really like everyone would like read it and everything. But he did not have call to action on it. And I'm like, like, what do you want people to do? Do you want people to book a call? He's a Consultant. Right, so you want people to book a, a call? Do you want people to go to your website? Do you want like, what do you want people to do because of this? And it like he was doing such a good job of generating all of that, all that activity, all that value, but not taking it to the next step. Then there's also the people on the other side who create the like false sense of urgency. Right? Like you need to buy this before 11:59 today, otherwise you'll never solve your problems ever. And I'm not a huge fan of that, like the, the fake urgency. But how can we actually ask ourselves questions about what could, what, what could we ask someone to do today that will add value to them if they act today? That it will add value to them. And I think that's a different way to frame that. The urgency is like, we actually want to help people, right? So if we want to help people, sometimes they need to make a decision to do a thing. And so let's ask them to do that 100%. Yeah.

Yeah, I completely agree. There's, yeah, there's levels to like how you approach this. And like, I think fundamentally it's like some things, yeah, it's like as long as you're fundamentally always looking out for the person on the other side of, you know, the mailbox or whatever, I think you can't go super wrong, you know, so that comes down to everything you write to them, the offers you make, the way that you frame those offers, you know, always look for the, that always to have that long term perspective. And as much as that's like a bit of a platitude or a cliche, like, it's, it's. I think that's really crucial, especially in the email channel, because it is a long term game.

Okay. I want to talk about something you haven't specifically touched on, but I want to talk about templates because I think for a very long time people are just like, oh, I'll just like sign up for this email service provider. I'll use the templates that they have. Most of the templates have like content in them and these people know email better than me. So I should just follow the template and that will be my answer. Although I feel like that mindset is in direct competition to what you just talked about, which was like knowing why you're doing it and how you help the people who you're talking to on your list. And so I would love to hear what are some common limitations you see when people are too heavily dependent on a template. And also, what are some ways that people can use templates so that they're not starting from scratch, but that it's still going to accomplish what they're trying to accomplish?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a really interesting question. So I would say, like, the limitations of using a template are there's a few of them. One, if you and anyone or, you know, even worse, you and multiple people in your same market are using these same templates, then you know that, that subconsciously if, if not consciously sends a signal to, you know, to the keen, to the keen buyers on the other end in your market that you're just like everyone else. You're just like your. Your competitors, if you will. And you know, being different in marketing is, you know, I would argue, even better than being better. So if you want to, if you want to stand out, then that's a pretty, a pretty dangerous way to go about that because it's literally the. It runs the risk of being the opposite of standing out and blending in with others that are using the same templates. And let's assume that even if, even if we assume that you're the only one that just so happens to be using these templates like they're a magic cheat code that you got access to somehow. One, one potential risk, frankly, it kind of depends what you're selling. Like, I'm going to be honest, there's probably some markets where you could get away with it full stop. Now, if, if you're in a space that's like heavily dependent on, but, but a better way to do it would be to inject a little bit of your personality into it so that people, especially if you're selling something like coaching or services or something where you're selling ultimately you or the relationship with you, then it's really important to make sure that your personality is integrated. Which templates may or may not be versatile enough to accomplish. Now, one, one sort of pro of using, I'll call it a template, but I think it probably more appropriately is like in the sort of like hardcore copywriting world is called like controls, which is essentially like existing, existing copy that has, that has been proven to perform well. Sometimes you can actually, I think it's always good to keep an eye on what has proven to work, whether it's internal data in your own company or whether it's market data from, you know, a competitor that you have sound reason to believe is doing quite well with their email program. If you have access to those. I think it's in fact I encourage you to look at, you know, you don't need a. You shouldn't copy or plagiarize or anything like that, but you should look at what you know. Again, what is the main emotional appeal that they're hitting on and how might you either borrow that or tap into a different appeal that maybe they haven't thought of? What is the. What objections are they handling? Because it's. You can essentially kind of like use some of these as, as market research on your behalf, in a sense. Right. So I think templates are good in terms of, like, if, if smart marketers and being able to discern that is. Is a bit of an art, but if you know for a fact something is working, then I think it's you. I would encourage you not to reinvent the wheel, but just make sure that if within some sort of like template, like context, just make an effort to add your own personality or at least your own differentiators so that you're not just sounding like everyone else. It's actually the first time I've had that question asked and I don't. Clearly, I don't have a very sound or firm answer on it, but that's, that's probably the best I could come up with.

Oh, well, I would say that sounded very sound and firm to me until you added that little bit.

Okay, thanks.

Well, and, and I think this is the thing, right? Like there's. I always say this about, like competitive analysis, right. It's not bad for you to know what your competitors are doing. In fact, it's very good for you to know what your competitors are doing doing. But when all your, the intention behind doing that research is for you to exactly copy what they're doing, then you, you don't have an opportunity to differentiate in the market. And we're inevitably now getting towards a competition towards price as the only differentiator. And then the only way to win that battle is have to the lowest price. And now we're in a race to the bottom and it's just not something I recommend. And so I think this is the thing about templates, and I've heard this said lots of times by people who create templates, right, that the templates are not meant to be made copy and paste. Right? Like, they're not meant for you to just take it and use it in its pure template mode. It is based on you using it as a starting point because it's easier to start from something than it is to start from nothing. But as you mentioned, Dylan, there's Some things you have to bring to the project. Right. Just using someone else's template doesn't have any you in it. So what you are you bringing, is that your personality? Is that your benefits? How do you incorporate that? How does your personality talk about your benefits versus how does your competitor's personality talk about their benefits? Right. And, and I mean, to me, this is the whole, the branding part of the exercise. But like, how would you. Even if the, even if you have a template that's like, this is a welcome email, like a client welcome email. Right. I mean, I think it's a, a nice best practice to send a welcome email to new clients so you can have a template for that. But what would you say? What do your clients need to know? What, how. Is, how does this reflect you? And I'm a big proponent of using that phraseology when we look at all of our marketing efforts is how does this look like us? Does it look like us? Does it feel like us? If someone met one of our sales reps at a trade show and then got this email, would it feel consistent? What does it look and feel like to be us as a brand? And a lot of times we get caught up in things like email, subject line testing and things of that nature, which are again, recommended and like, quite easy to do. And, but like, is that then distracting us from. I mean, like, based on your conversation about product list match, right. Which again, I would guess actually very. People who have an unproductive email list probably don't have. It's that probably the product list match so scenario. But like, if we're not thinking about that, but we're trying to optimize subject lines, then like, can we even possibly optimize subject lines because we don't have a product list match?

Well, yeah, it's like mistaking the forest for the trees or whatever. Right, right.

And so, and I think this is a point, and this is one of the things I love to do with these conversations is help people to understand what are those foundational conversations that, that allow these things to work. And it's not necessarily like your email service provider or your, like you said, I'm thinking, I don't know why I'm thinking of this example. But like, if you're in a room full of bow hunters and you hold up the new bow, then they'll probably be interested at least in learning what's the, what are the new features? What does it do that mine doesn't do? But if you hold up fuzzy slippers, then no one is going to care. Although, I don't know, maybe bow hunters like to relax and have fuzzy slippers too. I don't know that much about it, but like, when we think about it from these types of visualizations, I think everybody gets it. Right. Like, yeah, if I'm in a, if I'm in a room of vegetarians, I'm not going to go around offering them steak.

Right, Exactly.

It's just not something you would do. And so I think it's a great opportunity for people to look at their email list and how they've collected that list to date and look at like, am I offering steak to vegetarians? And if so, one, do I even have any vegetarian options? It would make more sense for me to offer the vegetarian options to the vegetarians or, well, shoot, I now have the wrong people on my list. But now on an ongoing basis, I can collect the right people on my list because I know I'm trying to sell people steak. So how can I collect a list of people who love steak?

That's very eloquently put, Tracy. And I, I absolutely agree with you. Just encapsulated really well what I was, what I was going after. And that's exactly it. Awesome.

Okay, so let's talk about, let's assume we've done all these things really well and we have our conversion that's happening over here. One of the other things you also mentioned was emailing with current clients and how has the ability to nurture an ongoing relationship. So in a world where people are getting a lot of emails and it's pretty easy to ignore an email, especially if you feel like you've done the thing. Right. Like I bought the thing and now I'm gonna ignore this email because I don't need it anymore. What are some of your thoughts and tips in terms of how do you actually engage, nurture, and actively nurture people through the email channel?

Yeah, so, so essentially, if it comes down to. So we're assuming that we're, we're kind of zeroing out on the, on the customers segment and, and our intention is not to cross sell or upsell them.

I mean, okay, so here, here's how I like to look at it personally, is that how can we help the customers? Right? So customers have bought a thing. How can we help them? Sometimes that might be like in education or training. Sometimes that might be in an upsell or cross sell. I don't like to necessarily like be. I don't want to be afraid of cross sells and upsells. Plus I Think, I mean most of us marketers know, right? Like it's easier to keep a client than it is to get a new one. So if we can just get a current client to buy more. I mean I think about my relationship with Starbucks, right? It's like not that difficult for Starbucks to get me to buy another Starbucks, right? Even their whole like marketing program, even if they send me an email promoting something I'm not going to buy it reminds me of Starbucks. And then I'm like oh maybe I want my thing, I get a Starbucks. So like I, I don't want to necessarily. And I think if you think it's helpful for us to like frame it as two different things, direct nurture and then like upsell, cross sell, we can talk about it that, like that. But I think, I think there's benefit for, to like individual brands or individual people who are listening today just to kind of self identify what does it look like for us to be continually helpful and build that into the nurture strategy?

Yeah, for, for sure that and that's a good point, Tracy. So I think yeah it like for your existing customer list like and, and the reason I asked that to be clear is that I usually start the, like when crafting each email I usually start with what is the outcome is it? And you know, so, so in the case and, and that's just the way I, I, I do it. So you know, one of those, one of those outcomes could be for example like a, a really good use case for your existing customer list is do you have any, for example, let's say you're a YouTuber or let's say you're even someone who publishes content on LinkedIn or wherever it may be or blog posts. One really low hanging fruit, easy thing you could do that doubles as being really actually relatively easy to execute is sharing those resources as they pop up. Assuming of course they're even tangentially related to what that customer is likely going to be interested in. So that's one way you can really nurture and then you know, that could look like hey, just publish this video. Check it out here. It could literally be as simple as that. Other things is like if maybe you're actually going to craft some, some like custom copy or content for the email and you send that allows them to essentially just talk about more things, more, more potential problems and, and things that they want to know about. And then you can choose whether you just send that as a pure kind of goodwill or nurture email or maybe you'll send that and then have a little, you know, like P.S. if you're interested. And then whether it's cross sell or upsell or maybe even promote some sort of affiliate product that might be relevant to them, that's kind of a way you could go about that. Maybe it's if, if a lot of your customers are asking the same questions over and over about, about anything really, you can answer those questions in the, in the, in the email channel. That's a great way. Another way is just to, you know, just because someone has bought the product doesn't, especially if we're talking about courses and informational products, it doesn't mean they've used the product. So there's a certain element too of like it would be a, it would definitely be a false assumption to say person has bought the product. So I'm assuming they've so much as opened the product right. You know, like so especially in the early phases after the sale, it could even be something as simple as like just checking in to see if you like to see what you thought and if you had any questions about the product, just you know, stuff like that. So I mean there's frankly a lot of the things that you can ultimately send to your prospect list in my opinion could just as easily be sent to your existing customer list with you know, with some exceptions and nuances there. But that, but it just depends on kind of what that next I guess phase if any in their user journey might be versus the, the non buyers segment of your list.

Right. And this brought up another question for me Dylan, because I think this is probably more likely from a nurture perspective but the opportunity for like conversation because I think a lot of email nowadays is kind of just like being pushed out from a one directional promotional tactic. But email by nature is bi directional so someone can respond and ask you a question or request a follow up or any of those things. So in terms of the programs you do or if, I don't know, maybe there's like different industries where this makes more sense. How is that? Do you see people turning on the like direct response mechanism or do you. In general we see people using the assumption that this is a one way mechanism.

Yeah. So I definitely encourage and have used to great effect the the reply feature especially I would say if you happen to sell anything like a little bit higher ticket like, say like and that's a very subjective term but let's say anything higher than say a thousand, like a thousand, five thousand plus dollars where it's a little bit more of a considered decision than say like a $99e book or something like that. If for those kind of things I found reply is one of the best ways to get to drive a conversion and also just actually from a market research perspective. So another and another way is when you're surveying you can ask like you know, hit reply if you have any feedback and that will sometimes give you that qualitative feedback that you're. You're probably is even more useful than, than the click based feedback. So those are two. So yeah, so selling essentially like higher ticket things and getting survey answers. Another great use case for, for the reply mechanism that I personally use and I set up with a lot of my clients is in, in the first welcome email if someone just like say opts into your newsletter you can, you can solicit a reply which kind of does like two things. One, it, it gives you an opportunity to start that conversation and then two, it, there's some, there's some common consensus. I'm not, I'm not super well versed in the technicals to be able to confirm this with an absolute certainty, but I've heard that when someone replies initially it signals to the likes of Gmail that you're a legitimate sender, they want to hear from you and it might allow you to land in the primary inbox in the future. So that's kind of like a bit of a bonus aspect of that. Now of course the one caveat I would put onto all of these is that if you're going to have a reply based program like that, make sure you have the internal infrastructure to reply back or else I would say don't do it because so many times I've replied to people's newsletter specifically when they asked for a reply on a certain thing and then they don't reply. And it kind of, I don't know, maybe it's just me, but it gives me sometimes I understand people are busy but it can sometimes kind of backfire in my opinion in terms of the perception of the brand.

Yeah, I think that's a really great call out is that, I mean I say this about market research all the time. Like don't do it if you don't plan on using the information information that you get from it because people just know then that they've given you the information and you haven't done anything with it. So I think that's a really important call out and whether or not you know that that's going to be a marketing resource that replies or a sales resource that replies or if this is something that's being outsourced. Like if your email is being outsourced, then do you have to reply as an internal, like as the individual coach or things like that nature. So I think that's a really important call out and I probably will just keep coming up with more questions, but I do think this is one we definitely want to cover. Is, is the concept that you mentioned of being like a safe sender. So most people, I would guess at this point and also because of the price point of email service providers, are using an email service provider to distribute emails en masse. I know like historically when we were looking at email, like anything more than like 200 emails a day was plagued as spam and all of these things. So do you have some, some tips from a safe sending point of view that you would share with the peeps?

Yeah, I'll share a couple things with, with the important caveat that I'm, I'm not a technical expert on, on that component of it. So if you have a really dire situation, I really encourage you to seek like a deliverability expert's opinion. But from my, from my understanding, there's a few things that I've, I know to be sort of best practice. One is, one is to focus on your engaged users. So you might have 10,000, for example, people on your, in your database, but in reality only about 1000, 2000, 3000 of them are engaged. Which, the definition of that, you know, varies from person to person. But a common sort of one that I'll use and I've heard is best practice to focus on is like 90 day engaged. So someone who has opened or clicked say in the past 90 days. And that's kind of a dynamic segment because I find, yeah, if I, when I, when I focus on the 90 day engaged, it'll, it'll produce the lion's share of opens, clicks and sales and then everyone sort of beyond that, say like a year or two ago who haven't engaged it might just be landing in their junk folder. And I think that, I think that can create a negative feedback loop. So if in doubt, focus on a more engaged segment. That's, that's one tip I would say. And I think like this kind of plays into everything we've talked about already, but I think kind of at a, at a content strategy perspective, like make an effort from day one to legitimately be useful when you're, when you're sending your emails, even if it's a sales email. So you know, sometimes I talk about Trying to have like a, like a sliver of value. Like so, like one little teeny, teeny glimpse of something that's useful. Even if they don't act on your email, that's one way to be able to just create positive momentum with your list because they'll be more likely to open because there's a selfish best interest for them to want to continue opening. So that's, that's something I would say. And there's a ton of, like, there's a ton of information online in terms of like DMARC and all these best practices that I won't get into here. But there's kind of like some, some fundamental infrastructural things that, you know, if you Google, like how to, how to set up my domain correctly for email sending, that would be definitely advised as well. But that's, those are a couple tips off the top of my head.

Yeah. Okay. I have one more question.

Yeah, please.

Again, I probably, probably have lots more questions, but so you mentioned being useful with the email and it makes me think of a couple of people that I have. Like, I get their email newsletters and the reason why I open their email newsletter is because I already know that they are useful as a person or as a brand. So like, as, from a brand perspective, I will use Lego as an example. I'm a huge Lego fan. When I get an email from the VIP Lego club, like, I will open it, I'm going to see what's in it. Maybe I'll click it, maybe I won't. But like, I, I've invested enough in the brand to choose to open the email. And so how, how much of that is needed in order for an email to be useful? Like, from your experience, what other kind of, is there, Are there other marketing efforts or branding efforts or things that are being done simultaneously that actually make it more likely for someone to open an email? Or can the email list kind of live on its own as a silo to like, build that?

Yeah, interesting question. So I, I, I think I understood it correctly, so I'll answer it based on what I understood. And if not, you can just, you can just point me in the right direction. So the email channel, I think can, can live in a little bit of a vacuum in terms of the existing list as you have it today. Like, there's a version of the world where you could spend two years, build up an email list, turn off all your acquisition of new leads onto the email list, and hit up that email list for, you know, until everyone unsubscribes or whatever else may be that that wouldn't be advised. You should constantly be growing your list. But at the same time, I think if, I think what your question was getting at is like, if you're producing content more more broadly, like not necessarily just for the email channel, but if you're like doing things as a company, if you're, it really helps if you kind of have a personal brand or at least if you are like, yeah, if you're sending them sort of as yourself as like the face of the brand to the email list, that can help a lot. But I think, I think fundamentally is like, I think it can be as simple as, as long as you have something that the person on the other end would like to read. And the reason the, the actual appeal of that can be different. You know, for some brands, maybe that's entertainment factor. For some brands, maybe that's educational. For other brand, you know, there's a lot of different things there. But I think fundamentally, like every single market has its own, I guess, quirks and just being empathetic to those and sending things that they're like that are likely going to resonate with that, whatever that looks like for you. I think, I think if you respect that fundamental, then you can't go super wrong. Does that. Was I getting at your, your question at all there or did I misinterpret it?

Yeah, no, I think that, I think that's great. And I think even in your outline of like, you could collect this and then you could turn it off and then you could like nurture it. This is what I tell people about like LinkedIn connections as well, right? Like I'm at 12,000 LinkedIn connections. There's more than enough clients than I ever need that are already connected to my 12,000 LinkedIn connections. Right. Theoretically, I don't need anymore. There is that benefit of growing your brand awareness and all of those things which it plays into the other pieces of, of marketing. But I also think like, even from the context of the list building and saying like there's, if we're collecting that email somewhere, there's something that has created value for somebody to give us their email, right? So it's either a lead magnet or a webinar or something that we have that has generated enough value for someone to say, that has enough value for me to exchange my email for it. So there's information there. And if there is information there, then that is also something that can be used in the conversation building of the like, if we Call it just the email ecosystem. If we say like once we've got your name we can kind of have this self sufficient email vacuum also I just like to say vacuum but like have it you using, using that knowledge from other pieces of the puzzle to make sure that everything is connected and I think to the assumption that very rarely is any one person only interacting with one channel of your brand. Right. Like they are, they saw your TV ad and then they got your email. Right. Like just to go back to the LEGO example, watch like I watch LEGO Masters and then I think Will Arnett is funny and then that reflects on the LEGO brand and then I get the emails and then I like it. Or like even this was like things that are interesting that we don't always think about either is that like so my husband and son have gotten really big into F1 this year. Lego just built a Lego McLaren that the McLaren Professional F1 driver drove. And there's a video of it online and stuff and they promoted it through their, even like the videos on their email list. So I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so amazing. We have to watch it. And now I actually have it like saved in my email so my son and I can like go back and watch it. It's like those types of things where I, I even think you may not necessarily know when you do that the type of resonance that it's going to have with people. But paying attention to the things that have resonance and them, incorporating them into the ongoing strategy, I think it's just at the end of the day, email is a piece of the puzzle and it can be a very productive piece of the puzzle. I think Dylan and I have both seen it be a very not productive piece of the puzzle, which is why we're here it more productive but that there is an opportunity for it to be very productive. So let's, let's make sure we bring that intention with us when we're creating a marketing program.

Yeah. And Tracy, I sort of see what you, what you're saying now. Yeah. It's like there's, there's top of mind awareness that email can drive, as can social, as can paid advertising, as can anything else. And, and like you said like these, these channels all kind of work in harmony. And I think, I think like you said, yeah, there's it all, it's all, it's different touch points and I've seen this actually like with my own personal email list. I've had like, I've sent it, I've published something on Twitter, say, or X. And then someone replies to the email I sent a few days ago and they say, oh, I just saw your thing on X. Like, great email, thanks for sending it. So you could see these anecdotally, these instances of exactly what you just described. And so that, that tells you that this is definitely happening. So there's, there's some things you can't measure. As much as I, as much as many of us marketers like to try to measure everything, there are some things that you need to accept that you can't measure, but that there is inherent value, at least to some extent, for brands.

And I think even just in that example. Right. And I think for, for all of us, I always say, I think people know more about marketing than they give themselves credit for, because we have all been consuming marketing now for the majority, majority of our lives. Like most of the people who are alive now, advertising has been a thing for the majority of their life. And so we know what it's like to consume email, we know what it's like to consume digital ads. We know what it's like to consume those things. And we can use that information to build the relationships that we would desire to have. So if we want to have a specific desired relationship with our customers through email, let's go and create that. Right. We use a base template, but like, that template won't necessarily ensure that you're going to accomplish that. So let's get that clarity and let's go build something that will accomplish that, that we can see in the numbers.

Yep. I love it. Totally agree.

Awesome. Dylan, thank you so much for sharing all of your amazing email insights with us today. If there are people in the chat who, who are actually who are not in the chat, but who are listening, because you guys weren't in the chat today. Except for Omar who says, hi, guys. Hello, Omar. But where's the best place for people to find you if they would like some more information?

Yeah, absolutely. The, the best place to find me is I'm on LinkedIn and on Dylan Bridger. I'm on Twitter or X at Dylan Underscore Bridger. Or if you want to check me out@dylan bridger.com is a. There's a little bit of information about my services there and, you know, if you're interested, you can book a call with me there. Yeah, just reach out to me, find me somewhere and I'll do my best to get back to you as quickly as possible.

Awesome. And Dylan is tagged in the LinkedIn post associated with this live and so you can just clicky click on his name and it'll take you right to his profile. And if you're going to connect, let him know that you saw him on the show so he'll know a little bit of the background that you have coming into the conversation. And as I say at the end of every episode, if email is something that is top of mind for you right now, especially making your email as productive as possible, please don't let this be the last conversation that you participate in in that arena. Let it be the first of many. And connect with Dylan, connect with me, connect with Omar who is also in the ch chat and all. You see, this is why it's beneficial for you guys to be in the chat because then you can see who else is in the conversation and then you can continue the conversation. Alas, we will save that for next time, but that's why you should get into the comments, my friends. And with that we will be back next week with another crazy stupid marketing show about something else which I don't know off the top of my head. So you'll have to stay tuned. Dylan, thank you so much for all your wonderful knowledge sharing today. Omar, thank you for joining us in the conversation. And until next time, everybody, permission to do you.