AWeber Interview - Starting an email campaign

Hi everyone, this is Justin Premick at AWeber. I'm sitting down with customer Ramit Sethi of iwillteachytoberich.com and the new York Times best seller of the same name. And we're going to talk about email marketing. So once you did start adding email in, how did you decide what was going to be in those emails? How did you start deciding? Okay, I've got all this great content on my blog, but it's taking me 12 to 15 hours to write one of those posts. And now I've got people signing up for email that want to hear from me right after they sign up. And then maybe periodically down the road, what am I going to say to them?

Honestly, I didn't think about it very much and what I did was I just got them on the list. And then every so often I would send a newsletter. And it was a horrible strategy. But the thing was I was too busy doing other stuff. I didn't realize the value of it. So every four to eight weeks I would write a newsletter. Pretty long one. And the problem was I would. People would like it. You know, I'd send out links and stuff, but then a number of them would unsubscribe because they hadn't heard from me in six weeks. They wouldn't even remember who I was. I didn't even have any autoresponder set up at all. So I was kind of like, this email list is growing. Like I have 15,000 people, 20,000 people, but I'm doing nothing. I don't understand, you know? Yeah, I get a lot of clicks, right. But there must be more I can do. And I finally buckled down and said I gotta build an autoresponder because every day. Here's the reason I built an autoresponder. I have really good content in my archives, but if it's not on page one, it's effectively lost.

Exactly.

So most of my readers are by definition new. Right. Every day I get thousands of new people to come to my blog and they will never see my old archive content. And I need a way to expose them to that because it's some of my best stuff.

Sure.

So email is the way that I'm using to do that. So they sign up, they give their name and email, and they're now in an autoresponder funnel where they will get a free chapter from my book on day one and they'll get cool content. I've written videos, audio interviews, and it's not salesy at all. In fact, I'M working on the autoresponder funnel. We haven't even put one sales thing in it yet. And it's just cool content that will help them get to know who I am and what my philosophy is.

So you're really using it not so much for a direct sales tool, yet more of a, you know, trust builder and a contact point to keep. To keep you at the front of their mind?

Yep, absolutely.

Very cool. And you know how, you know, if you don't mind telling us, that's. Or, you know, if you don't want to tell us, that's fine. You know, how long have you built out your autoresponder sequence? I mean, is it three or four messages? Like, is it over, like, three weeks?

Yeah. So I actually surveyed my readers and said, how often do you want to hear from me?

It's a smart idea.

What I actually did first, the first question was, how many of you want to get content from me regularly if it's really good and valuable? And when I surveyed my readers, because, remember, they were not used to me emailing them too often. So I said, hey, if I release really good content via email, would you be interested? 98.9% of them said yes. And this is a list of over 30,000 people.

But that's why they signed up, right? They want to hear from you.

Yeah. And they like what they've been reading, but they kind of want more if it's high quality. Right. So then I asked them, how often do you want to hear from me? Every few months, Every few weeks? Every few days. And overwhelmingly, it was every few days, if it's good. And then I asked them, qualitatively, what kind of stuff do you want me to write about? Do you want. And then I offer them some options. Question, do you want case studies? Do you want free book chapters? Do you want product recommendations? And I then took that info and sent it back to them and said, here's what you guys told me. So they were already primed to expect good stuff, and they knew what other people wanted as well. So it's part of the community. Right. Because it's all them. It's not just one person. So now I send messages every few days. And my funnel right now is about 10, but it will be over 100 when I'm done. It's going to be a very large funnel. Because I will teach youh Be Rich is not just about money. There's stuff about careers, there's stuff about negotiating. I always talk about negotiating like an Indian. Okay. There's you know, saving, there's earning, there's tons of stuff. What I will also do, I've released a couple products. So I've got, you know, the book, and I've got a bunch of other stuff. Those. I'm gonna put those people into sub funnels. If you're interested in a career, career stuff, for example, you just want to hear about that, right?