043. Improve your Email Marketing Game with Meredith Goins

Welcome. I am marketing expert and business coach Melissa Kellogg Lueck. And this is the Doing Business Like a Woman podcast, where we are exploring and teaching you how women are reinventing the way business is done and money is made to help you create greater impact and financial freedom one business at a time. Okay. Well, hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. I say us because I have a really special guest with me, and her name is Meredith Goins, and she is an email list manager and copywriter for coaches and online business owners. So I can't wait to get to talk to her and get to know her a little bit more and also hear her story. And we're going to talk about email marketing and which I know is going to be a huge, huge hit with all of you, because that's something that I hear about a lot from clients and from women that I talk to. We talk a lot about email marketing. So I'm so happy to have you here today, Meredith. Thank you so much for joining me. And just introduce yourself briefly and tell us your story, like how you came to this entrepreneurial journey, because you don't come from an entrepreneurial background. So tell me all about it.

Yes, thanks. Thanks for having me. Very, very excited to be here. Yes. No, I do. Well, I kind of do. And I kind of don't have an entrepreneurial background. So I. I was just telling you that I was a teacher for 10 years, so copywriting is kind of like a second career for me. But I guess there's a part of my life before even teaching that I sometimes forget about. And I owned my own bridal shop, brick and mortar bridal store. And so that lasted just a few years. And it was. It was fun while it lasted, I guess. And then. And then I went into teaching, which is what I went to. You know, it's what I went through to college to do and got my degree in and all that other stuff. So taught for about 10 years. And then I think, you know, I. I really think that Covid was the. The impetus for my leaving teaching. It just. I was a music teacher and trying to teach music over the computer was. It just. It literally killed, like, my soul, so. Oh, I imagine. Yeah. And that on top of a lot of other, you know, issues going on these days with. When it comes to being a teacher and all this other stuff. I love teaching. I still love teaching. I just did not. I got to the point where I did not love being a teacher anymore. So, like, many of you out there, probably started, you know, Googling, you know, I wanted, I wanted to stay home. I wanted to be home. I wanted to work from my laptop and not be underneath anybody anymore. I wanted, wanted to be my own boss. And eventually came upon copywriting. And more than anything else that I had come across, copywriting made a lot of sense to me. It made a lot of sense to me as you know, it just seemed to, to work with my brain and I didn't even know it existed. There was this whole world out there that I did not even know it existed with the digital marketing and all this other stuff and I just couldn't soak it up fast enough. I was just learning and learning and learning and all this other stuff, you know, took a couple of copywriting courses, all this other things, started getting some clients and started to realize that most of my clients were asking me to do emails, email sequences and that sort of thing. So also most of my clients were in the coaching industry. And so I started writing emails that were very story based and you know, this sort of thing and I loved it. I loved it. And so I eventually just kind of honed in, niched down into email copywriting, then then got into the analytics, the strategy portion of everything and actually became certified as an email list manager which basically focuses on everything from copy all the way through like a full on email marketing strategy. And I really liked that because when I was just doing the copy it was me just filling out a, you know, I would just write it in a Google Doc and I'd send it to somebody. And so, you know, there was, there was so much performance wise that I was not able to control. And now that, now that I'm able to do a lot more inside the email service providers and follow up and make sure that the copy that I'm writing is able to go as far as it should, you know, make sure the emails are getting delivered, make sure that the segmentation is correct, make sure that all the triggers are set up correctly. That way I, you know, it's just a much better way for me to help my clients and making sure that their email marketing does what it's supposed to do. Yeah, I love that.

That's so fun. So I love that you started off as like an entrepreneur, right, with your bridal shop and then you went into teaching and now you're consulting. Well, you are consulting, but also copywriting and setting up email strategy. So how have you brought the bridal shop experience and the teaching experience into what you're doing now? Like how does it all come together for you?

Well, first I think that the, the first two, you know, the, the bridal shop and definitely the teaching, I had to learn very quickly how to, well, to be. I had to, to be able to speak to lots of different audiences. You know, I had to. Yeah, I couldn't play favorites as a teacher. You know, I couldn't, I couldn't say, well, I'm only going to teach the kids that I like or that I'm, I can only, I'm only going to teach the kids who aren't getting on my nerves today or anything like that. Yeah, I had to learn how to reach everybody. And granted that can be exhausting. Can be exhausting because you feel like you're having to be everything for all people. But it did, it definitely taught me that if, if something isn't working over here, it really taught me to the importance of analyzing why something's not working so that I can start to fix it. You know, because I was a firm believer that if, if my students, to a certain degree, if an entire classroom full of students doesn't understand something that I'm trying to say, I need to change what I'm doing. I need to change what I'm doing and I need to try and read the gaps between what I'm doing and what they are hearing and try to bridge that gap. So a lot of, lot of just on the spot analysis going on there, I suppose.

Yeah. And so we talked a little bit before we started recording about how you see email marketing and how it's being used and how coaches and online business owners are using it and thinking about it and kind of what the gaps are that you see there. Like, where's the bridge that you're building there?

Yeah. And as I was saying, I think that a big part of the gap is a lack of discussing email marketing in a very strategic and easy, easily digestible way. I don't think that it's any surprise that the email marketing game is male dominated, you know, and to, to be honest, I think women's, you know, the way that men explain things aren't. They don't, it doesn't always translate well. And so I know a lot of times that, you know, I just wish that I could rephrase some things that I hear. It's like, I know what you're trying to say, but I wish you would just word it like. And so a lot of what I hear and see about email marketing, they're not saying wrong information. It's just not presented in a way that I feel is easy to Take and do something with, if that makes sense. So, yeah, absolutely.

So talk about kind of your philosophy, how you are teaching your. Because you're basically teaching your clients and then helping them to implement.

Right, right. Well, that is one, one angle. I, I, you know, do strategic calls where I basically try, like you said, kind of teach them. Here's what you need to be doing with your email marketing strategy. Or they could just hand it all over to me and I'm just like, I've got it, I'll take care of it. You know, that sort of thing. So a little, little bit of both. It depends on what, what the needs are and what their comfort, what their comfort level is. But yeah, as far as the strategy behind it, I do think of it as almost like creating a curriculum, lesson plan. You know, when, when you're a teacher, you got to go in with the whole year in mind. And I think that's, that's where a lot of people kind of get, they get a little bit stuck with their email marketing because they don't have the big picture in mind. It's almost like they're just trying to keep their heads above all the time.

Yeah, I totally see that. It's like we all know we should be email market, you know, emailing our audience or having an audience and emailing them. So then we do it and we're like, okay, now I've checked it off.

But. Right.

There's so much more to it than just that.

Right. And it just keeps coming back. It keeps coming back and then you're, you're in the same position like every day, every week. And so, yeah, that's, that's where it can really help is to have a much bigger, bigger picture in mind. And it was a few months back I started really thinking about, gosh, there's, there's so many similarities between forming a lesson plan and coming up with a good email marketing strategy. You know, like for example, the most important part when it comes to school and having a good teaching experience, education, you could be Robin Williams from Dead Poets Society. It doesn't matter if there's nobody in the classroom. If you don't have any students there to listen, it doesn't matter what you say. So in email marketing, you could have the best written email in the world, but if it's going to spam, if the, if they're not getting delivered, then what's the point? Yeah, and that's just, you know, so that's, that's where, when it comes to my strategy, that's where you start, you got to make sure that the emails are getting delivered. And I try and teach the, my clients how to tell if they're going to promotions and if they're going to spam. And we can get into that too, if you want.

Yeah, yeah, because I know that's a big issue. Like, exactly. Like, how do I know who's reading? How do I stop things from going to spam? Like, what is the whole purpose? Right. Like we get in this mindset, like the algorithm or the Google or whatever is out to get us, out to sink us. So, like, how do we, you know, overcome these things?

So.

Yeah, yeah, so maybe talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, sure. So the, the first thing you got to do is figure out where your emails are going. And just because one goes to Primary Inbox. And of course that's just Gmail, but we talk about it a lot because Gmail accounts For like over 50% of all email users, so might as well talk about it. And. But just because one email goes to Primary Inbox doesn't mean the next one will. It's, it's very, it's very dodgy like that. It's very sketchy like that. But if one goes to spam, you know, chances are that they're going to keep going to spam. So what you want to do is you want to, if you have your own Gmail account of any type, send a test email from your email service provider, send a test one to that, to that Gmail account and see where it goes. Oh, interesting. Just see where it goes. And that's really important. Every email that you send out, if you can send a test one first and if it goes to, to promotions or if it goes to spam, then, you know, you need to fix something before you send it.

Okay, and then what are the top things that we look for to fix.

The. I'm trying to remember order. Order of importance. But yeah, a lot of people think that it's promotional language. It's not necessarily that you gotta, you know, change the promotional language or things like that, but it could be something. Sometimes, sometimes you spend a lot of time testing and figuring out, tweaking, and maybe there was a sentence in there that you have no idea why it sent it to promotion. So it can be frustrating. Yeah, it can be frustrating. However, there are a few things that you can check out. If your open rates are getting low, if they're getting below, say like 15% on a regular basis. Okay, that's, that's when the algorithm will Say nobody wants to see this, so we're just going to send it over to promotions or we're going to send it to spam. So you got to raise your open rates and kind of trick the algorithm into thinking everybody wants to see this, everybody wants to see this, and it's going to start pushing over into a primary. Also, you don't want to have too many images, too many, you know, you know, too many large images. It can't take up too much space. You can test different things, like different subject lines. You can test the text that you're using for your hyperlinks, that sort of thing. If you have tons and tons of links in there, it'll probably go to promotions. So, yeah, there's, there's no one answer. So the best thing to do is to test it. And yes, you got a little bit. Check your open rates.

Yeah, yeah, so talk about that a little bit. What do you consider to be good open rates or open rates that we'd like to see?

Um, it's lower.

Percent would be great, but.

Right. Yeah, it's lower than, than you would think. Like, some people think just because they have like lower than 50% that that's not good. It's, it's actually very good. Anything above, like, especially for a really large list, anything above 20% is, is, is good. Um, now we're, for those, we're talking about the daily or weekly broadcast emails. I'm not talking about your welcome sequence. The welcome sequence. The welcome sequence, by nature is going to have a very large open rate. Yeah.

So these are just the weekly nurture or whatever. The periodic nurture.

Exactly.

Newsletters, things like that. So I would love to hear your thoughts on how often to email, because my clients ask me this all the time. And I always get pushback because I'm always like, you know, once a week you need to be keeping in touch. And I get a lot of pushback on that, so.

I bet you do. I completely agree. If not, I, I would possibly say more often, if possible. I, I, but I totally agree. It should be at least once a week. And funny enough, that would be the next step in the, the whole lesson plan thing. Okay, so you get, you get the butts in the seats. Now you got to make sure that you are showing up. Because my own children have had experiences where they had a teacher who was absent so much that, I mean, they, they learned nothing. You know, they learned nothing. And so you got to show up, you got to show up for, for your subscribers. You got to always Be front and center. Yeah, because I, you, you might remember what the percentage is, but it's very high percentage of people that aren't ready to buy right away. So you gotta, you gotta be there in their minds for when they are, when they are ready to buy. And I think a lot of people, the two main reasons that people don't want to email very often are they don't know what to write about or they're scared of being a nuisance. There's.

I don't want to bother people.

Right. They're scared of unsubscribers. They don't want to bother people. And I get that. I really do. There's nothing worse than opening things up and seeing that a bunch of people unsubscribed or something. But, you know, I, I just always say, don't worry about those people. They're not your people. Let them go. Let them go. And then fill your space with people who are ready to hear from you. So, yeah.

Yeah, I love that because the more. Yeah. We see those unsubscribed numbers and we get horrified.

Right.

Or clients get horrified. And I'm always like, let's celebrate it. Because then for me it's like, oh, I know. I'm actually saying something that repels people.

Oh, that's also true. Yes, that is true.

Like the people that aren't going to resonate with me or my message or the work that I do, it's fine that they aren't on the list. Like I want. Yeah, the, the right people to be on the list.

Exactly. Yeah. And if, if, if they're, if they're going to unsubscribe, they probably weren't going to buy to begin with. So you might as well get rid of the dead weight and keep your list healthy and keep your open rates higher because otherwise they would just be sitting there bringing down your open rates and everything else. So.

So in terms of increasing. So this is a question I get a lot is, okay, my open rate isn't what I would like it to be. How do I increase that? Like, what can I do about that?

Several different things. One, the, the first thing most people think about is subject line. Because obviously the subject line, um, you want to grab their attention just like any other good marketing headline and something, you know, something curiosity driven could, could do that. Something, you know, anything, anything that really makes them want to open. You know, if, if you're giving away the story with the subject line and they already know what you're going to talk about. They're probably not going to open it. You know, Also make sure that you're using something in the pre header text to act as almost like a subheading to further engage their curiosity and make them want to open it up. You can use personalization in the subject line. I'm not against using emojis in the subject line if the audience is right for that. And sometimes you just want them really super short. Yeah. Because if you're looking at the big list of emails on your computer and you see one on your screen that's like super duper short, just like one word and then no pre header at all, it kind of draws your attention to that one. And you know, that's. That's half the battle right there. As far as other things you could do is segmentation. So this part is usually a little bit further down the strategy funnel. But it's important to, at some point, especially if your list is very large, not to send every email to the entire list. The larger your list is, the more segmented it should be because the more different types of audience that you're going to have. Um, you got people, maybe even you have people that opted in from different points and they want to hear about different stuff. So you want to take use of that. And you know, those couple of things will take you really far with getting your open rates up.

So another thing like list size. Talk to me about list size. When you talk about, if you're, you know, when your list is small, you don't need to segment. When it's larger, you should segment. Like, what do you think of as list size? Because everyone I talk to always is like, oh, my list is so small. I know. And I'm like, okay, well, how many people are on it? 5,000.

I'm like, I don't think that's small.

But because we see influencers on the Internet that have like 10,000 followers or something, so we automatically, or, you know, I think we always like downplay and think about our own audience is not enough. Right, Right.

Or if you hear someone say, oh, I only make 500,000 a year or something like.

Right.

Oh, dear. Well, actually, I might, I might take back a little bit of what I said. I think even smaller lists could be segmented. It's just not quite as important just because you probably have a better handle on a more uniform makeup of your audience. So, you know, all of that probably are much more in tune to the people in your audience. And so your open rates are going to be a little bit higher. I don't know. I mean, I think pretty much anything under 5,000 would maybe be considered small to, to me, anything from 5, from 5,000 to like, I don't know, 75,000 is maybe like. Okay, maybe 5 to 55 to 50,000 is. I know that's a huge number, but that's like mid range. And then anything beyond that to me is large. But that's just me. That's just me. My opinion, somebody else who works with different kinds of lists might say completely different numbers and that's fine, whatever.

Yeah. So it's all relative. And I feel like the important thing is, is that we're showing up for our audience. Right. Like you said before, and thinking that those are all. Because I feel like sometimes we get.

Caught up in those numbers and we.

Think about they're just a number or they're just a blob. This audience is just a blob out there.

You are exactly right. Yes. Yeah. And there's so much focus out there on growing a list.

Mm.

You see so much more on how to grow a list than you do on how to keep. How to keep a list. That's a great point. And how to run, run your list well, because honestly, I don't care if you have a hundred people on there, you can make it profitable. You just gotta, you just gotta have a good big picture strategy going. It doesn't have to be complex.

Yeah. But yeah, I love that point because it's like there's all this focus on growing your list, which basically is founded in that my list isn't big enough. Right. Like it's not enough.

Well, and what I don't, what I don't like about it is that they are putting for someone to only focus on growing list. I got to get more numbers. I got to get more numbers and then I'll start to make money. That's just a numbers game. And it's usually if that's where all of their focus is, they got all these other holes throughout the rest of their strategy that's leaking money. So it's, it's like you're constantly trying to fill a bucket that's leaking, you know, and hoping, hoping and praying that it's gonna, that it's going to convert well, when in reality, you know, keeping taking care of the people that you have already doesn't cost money. Growing a list does cost a little bit of money usually, you know, ads and all this other stuff. But, you know, so.

Yeah, I love that. So talk a little bit about that. Like how do you advise your clients in that to keep. And, you know, because really, that is where your profitability is. Like you said, it's like, if you serve them really well, it's going to pay you back.

Exactly, Exactly. Yeah. And are you tired of the teaching analogy yet?

No, I love it.

I think it's great. It's time for the next step on that. Yeah, no, I love it. So, you know, there is a saying that. So students don't learn from teachers they don't like. And as much as. As much as I. I'll be honest, I used to tell my students that I'm not there to be their friend and all this other stuff, you know, that y' all got enough friends, you don't need another. Yeah, but there is a lot of truth in that. You know, if I didn't try to make a personal connection, then. Then those students, they're not going to give a crap what I have to say, and they're not gonna want to work for me. And I hope. I hope everyone's getting the anal. Learning is the same thing as your audience buying. You know, that's the correlation.

Right.

So I'm sorry.

And learning. Your audience is learning. They're growing their trust. You know, you're nurturing that relationship.

Yeah. Right. And so that's. That's. That's how you. That's how you take care of them, is. Is you make it relevant. Don't. Don't only show up when you want them to buy something. Make it a. Make it a relationship, make it a. You know, keep things relevant to what they are dealing with, what they're thinking about. That's where segmentation can come into play. And, you know, yeah, you keep your list happy and it will pay you back tenfold. So.

Yeah. So talk about. Because I also see, obviously, I work a lot with women, and I think a lot of us, as women, we are givers, right? We want to give, give, give, but then we feel kind of slimy about putting the offers in or, you know, we're like, how many sales emails should I have? Sales emails? Should I make offers? Do I just give? Like, what is your. What are your thoughts around using your emails to also make offers and sell?

Yeah, and I understand that. I do think that as women, we. We have a harder time, you know, trying to. Trying to basically say to somebody, hey, you should buy my. Whatever. So, I mean, I. I don't think that every call to action in an email should necessarily be, you know, to buy something or to go to a Sales page or something like that. Personally, I appreciate emails because I'm on a lot of coaches lists. I just, I sign up for everybody's stuff. Everybody's stuff. If y' all out there, if you want to send me like your lead magnet, I'll probably sign up for it. So I appreciate emails that literally aren't even talking about selling. They just wanted to share something of their day and that's it. But so that brings me, that makes me trust them. It makes me feel like I'm not just a number. But I also. So I think there's three, three different kinds of, you know, emails you got. The kind that aren't really spelling at all is just building a relationship on the other end of spectrum. You got, you know, here's my launch, here's my stuff, come and get it, you know, very, very hard sell type of thing. And then I think the majority should be kind of in the middle, which is marketing in a way that doesn't feel like marketing. And that's where a lot of times the story based email marketing comes into play. You start out with talking about a story and then you eventually talk, turn that into what you want to be talking about with your audience. And then, and then here's this link if you want to sign up, you know, that sort of thing. Did that answer your question?

Yeah, I think so. And so what is that? So what I hear you saying is I'm not going to offer you like a ratio because there's a lot of like email marketing gurus out there that'll be like, it's got to be 80, 20 or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, I don't know, I'm, I'm just not a fan of cookie cutter statements in general.

Yeah, just kind of the feel. And obviously you have to know your audience and the relationship that you want to have with them and kind of let that lead. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah, I think so. I think, I think that the, you know, you always want to put your audience's needs first and then granted, if, if what you have to offer is truly helpful to them, then you want them to be able to, to get that. And I think that's a lot of times what we, I think especially as women tend to forget about is that yes, my, my product, my service is helpful to these people. It's not, it's not slimy to try and sell something to somebody that could really help them, you know, yes, they got to pay for it. But, you know, so yeah, and I.

Do talk to my Clients a lot about that. Like making that shift. Like you're not getting something from them, from your clients, you're giving them something that they want and they want to appreciate you with, you know, pieces of paper with presidents faces on them. That's right. Works.

Yeah. And this doesn't have much to do with email, but I have noticed so much from the day one of getting into online marketing that women tend to have so much lower prices. They underprice themselves. Unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. And these women that I see that have services that, that are so much. Have so much more value than. I feel like I'm picking on men here, but whatever. Than this guy over here who is charging five times the amount and probably doesn't really give much value in return. So it's, it's. It's frustrating, you know. So. Yeah.

So what would your message be to those women? Because, I mean, coming from education, I know teachers are not notoriously under, you know, they're notoriously underpaid, and they're notoriously over givers in a lot of ways, like buying supplies for their classroom, spending time outside of classroom time, serving clients and helping families and all those things.

So.

I know. So you kind of seeing that on both sides, Right, Right.

I'm a true believer that the reason that teachers get such low respect is that it's a historically female profession and there's a certain amount that we, as givers, we think, well, I should just be paying for that myself or I should be, um, showing up as early as possible and staying late as possible without extra pay, you know, that sort of thing. So now I'm thinking about teaching and I can't remember what your actual question was.

Like, what, what is the message that. Or how do you. What would you say to women that.

Yes.

Are undercharging or about how much they should be charging or need to be.

Asking for their services. I think that that's when it helps to have a second pair of eyes on, on your business. Someone probably such as yourself to come in and, you know, it's. It's hard for us to, I think, just flip that switch ourselves. Yeah. Got to have a little bit of help. Got to have a second pair of eyes. Got to have somebody who can look at us and say, you are worth so much more. You are worth so much more. Um, and, you know, just need, need, need your cheerleading section.

Yeah, totally. I totally agree with that. Because it is hard for us to see our own value a lot of times. Right?

Yes.

And so to have someone Come in and say, listen, this is how valuable you are.

And the, the more women who are able to raise their prices, the better it is for all of us, you know, because we'll, we'll see that and we'll connect more with that and, you know, we'll say, well, it worked for her, so it can work for me and all of that. Yeah.

Okay. So raise your prices, ladies.

Yeah. Ask for what you're worth.

And if you're not sure, you come ask us.

That's right. Yeah.

I love it. Well, this has been such a great conversation. Oh, one other question that I had for you. Oh, two other questions. First one is, so if I'm a small business person, a woman with a small business, I'm a coach online business. I have. I know I'm supposed to have this email list. So I've gone out, I've got some, you know, I started building my list. I'm sending out my email every now and then. Like, what is my next couple good steps? How can I start making, you know, using this strategy that you're talking about and use this asset that I now have in my business to grow.

Right. So, yeah, the, the small, simple steps that would work for everybody. So you have a list and you're already using it. First thing is you have please have a welcome email, if not a full sequence. I said I have sign up for everybody's lead magnets that I see. I'm like, I'm addicted to lead magnets. And it's so sad when I don't get anything right away. You know, I'll sign up for something and maybe the PDF pops up, but I don't get a welcome email. And it makes me very sad. So, yes, set up. At least if all you can do is set up one welcome email, then just do that. It doesn't have to be the best written thing in the world. Just have something. Something that keeps them excited to hear from you. Even better if it can turn into a four to six long email sequence. But again, just focus on the small steps first. You know, just one. One email to begin with.

Yeah. And so let me just pause you for a moment because there may be some people listening that don't even know what that sequence might mean. So what we're talking about is if someone subscribes to your email list on your website, or maybe they subscribe or ask for you to send them your freebie. Right. And so you're going to deliver or, you know, you're going to have this. Have them sign up for your email list. And then instead of just like waiting until your next regular email, whenever that is, you want to have an email that's automatically generated right when they sign up that says, thank you, you know, welcome. This is what you can expect. Here is the, you know, freebie that she requested or whatever and just get that relationship started.

Yes. Yeah. And I think the, the main purpose of that initial welcome email is to humble bragging, you know, so you got to, you got to be like, simultaneously, oh, I'm so happy that you're here and saying you just made a very great decision by signing up for my list or by signing up for this lead magnet. So, yeah, pretty much every email service provider out there has a way to set that up so that it gets sent out automatically. And so after that, as you said, you know, the, the important part is to keep showing up. Force yourself to do it every week. And then once you do it every week, then maybe you can start to do it twice a week. You know, it. Consistency is more important than frequency, in my opinion. So just whatever, whatever you can start out with. And again, just, just start writing. Just start writing. The way that I go about sometimes writing emails, especially if I don't know if it's, you know, if I feel like I am having a hard time figuring out what to write, I'll just start writing and then, you know, just like brain dump, complete brain dump. And then I'll walk away for just a little while and I come back to it after I've had some time to let it kind of sit and ruminate and all this other stuff. And then I start to kind of put together an actual, you know, email. I'll take this out and I'll fix that sentence and all this other stuff. So just as, you know, I think a lot of times we, we think we have to have the perfect email before we send anything. No, just send something. Just send something. You know, something's better than nothing. Something's better than nothing. Past that past B welcome sequence and making sure that the, that you're showing up regularly. Well, we, we did talk about making sure that you are getting in their primary inbox. So I guess that really should be step number one. Primary inbox. Step number one, have a welcome email. Step number two, show up regularly. Step number three, and if, if you can go beyond that, that's when you start getting into a little bit of keeping it relevant, segmentation and then having some other sequences in place as well, such as an abandoned cart sequence when people might go to Your sales page. And if they click away from your sales page, maybe you get them and send them an automatic email that says, hey, I saw that you were looking at my sales page. Did you want to sign up for this? And you know, all sorts of stuff. So. But those are a little bit further down the line.

Yeah. And then talk to me a little bit about how you can kind of get that conversation going with your audience. Because it's one thing to just be sending out an email. And that's like we said, that's a great first step. Right. To get in that consistent rhythm of showing up for your audience. But my philosophy behind marketing is that it's all about creating relationship with another human. Right?

Right.

And so talk to me about how you think about that and how you do that through email.

Kind of like a lot of other marketing, you, you go into it thinking that you're talking to one person and even better if that person is on a friendship level. So, you know, don't have like this formal greeting as if you're emailing like a corporate, you know, you know, big corporate boss or something like that. Very friendly. Don't use words like you all or hey, everyone or something like that. No, you're talking to one person because that's the beauty of email marketing. It can feel very one on one, you know, you know, you see like an Instagram story and, or they, they go on live on Instagram and the first thing they say is, hey, everybody. Well, we know to expect that. We know to expect. We know we're not the only ones listening. But an email, I want, I want to feel like I'm the only person that you're talking to. So I think, I think word choices like that go really far. And if you have done your research as far as your audience pain points and your audience needs an audience language, then you can do a pretty good job on speaking directly to them in every single email. Just as a, as a friend, as a friend who is going to sit down, imagine that you have a, have somebody that is a friend of yours. You sit down for coffee and they ask your advice, what are you going to tell them? And then you just write that out. Sometimes I'll tell people to literally if there's, if they're better at speaking, which a lot of coaches are, talk, record yourself talking and then, and then write it out, you know. So yeah, that's a great idea.

The, all the, like Google Docs and Microsoft Word, they all have voice to text feature, so you can just talk to your Google Doc and it'll type it out for you.

Right, right. You want to proofread it, but yes. Yeah, so. And then also, you know, just like the other copywriting rules, make it skimmable. Don't assume that they're going to read every single word. Make it scammable. If there's certain things that you need to bold, underline, you know, that sort of thing to really draw their attention to those specific points, then, yes, use that stuff. Awesome. I love it.

So good. And so what do, what do you advise for your clients to do in terms of getting engagement from their email list? Like, is it good to be, like, asking for people to reply to you or.

It is, actually. And that can be a good way to get out of spam is to send out an email that is called a reply email where you ask just a very basic question. Tell me what you're struggling with, with your, with your relationships right now. Tell me your biggest problem with your relationships right now or, you know, anything, anything related to your industry and in your niche. Ask them to reply. And not all of them will, but the more people that reply, if you've been going to spam, that can be a good way to kick yourself out. To get yourself out of spam is to raise that positive engagement. So, yeah, and of course, that deepens the relationship for their, for the subscribers and too. Awesome. Cool.

Okay, well, this has been awesome. Thank you so much. So is there anything that comes to mind that you. That I didn't ask or that you would like to share?

I don't think so. I feel like I talked a whole lot and that's kind of not like me. I talk. I don't usually talk that much.

Like, I'm used to writing. What is this talking?

I'm used to writing. I swear, there are days that I swear I don't talk, like, at all. And I get to the end of the day and I feel like my voice doesn't even want to work, you know, so. So I don't know, I must be a little bit hyper or something. I love it. That's been awesome.

Thank you so much for being here. And I know this is going to be so helpful for the audience. Now, how can we keep in touch with you, learn about your work? Do you have a freebie?

Actually, I do not right now.

Yeah, that.

That reminds me of something else. But yeah, I may in the future. I'm not sure my website is meredithgowins.com and. Or you could find me on Instagram if I'm on social media, it's usually on Instagram and it's at Meredith Copywriting.

Oh, nice. Okay, well, we will catch up with you there. I'm sure you put out a lot of fantastic stuff. Actually, I've been watching your stories and stuff and. Yeah, so check her out.

She does a lot of really great.

Stuff on Instagram and if you didn't catch the website and all that, we're going to have that in the show notes. But yeah. Meredith, thank you so much for being here. It's been great to get to meet you and thanks for being a listener of the podcast.

Yeah. Oh, I will say, actually, I guess I do have a freebie. It's just not like one of those pop ups on my website. I do offer free strategy calls, you know, so that I basically go over, you know, I promise that for everyone to get value out of it, you'll get some value out of it. I. I want to show up and show you for your specific business, for your specific audience, a couple of things that you could be doing that would move the needle for you. So I love that.

Perfect. Yeah. Everybody gotten signed up for that? Because that would be so helpful because I know it's such a mysterious, you know, email marketing seems so mysterious.

It does. You're right. You're right. Awesome.

Well, thank you for being here and I look forward to seeing you on Instagram.

All right. Thanks, Melissa.

You're welcome. This has been great. If you like this podcast, then you have got to sign up for my free on demand video training grow youw sales.com doing what you love. Where I teach you in depth my simple process that you can implement right away to harness your mindset and your skills to grow your sales to whatever level you want. So go grab that now. The link is in the show notes and I'll see you next time.