Building (or Reviving) Your Email List Before the 4th Quarter

Good morning, happy Monday. Today, um, we're gonna talk a little bit about email, and I don't want you to freak out when I say email, um, but we're gonna talk a little bit about what we can do to revive email if you've let it go cold, or build email if you've kind of put that on the back burner lately. So we're gonna— I'm gonna give you some strategies for both ways. Um, so let me know in the chat if you are here this morning. Happy Monday, everybody. It's It's a great little rainy Monday here this morning in Wichita Falls, Texas. Also, I want you to text me the word Monday to my texting app if you would like to get the text on Monday mornings before I go live. All you have to do is text the word Monday to 940-204-0023. I'll just send you a quick reminder, a little information about the topic I'm talking about just for you to jump on and join me on Mondays. And I just want to say I appreciate you. I appreciate you joining me for your little Monday morning pep talk. We've got one today. I love to give you a little bit of action items to help propel you forward and also give you a little pep talk to help get you unstuck and set you up for a great week. All right. I'm going to come over here in the chat and say hi to everybody this morning, and then we're going to dig right in. Okay. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about why I chose this topic today. Good morning, Shawna. Good to see you. So right now I'm streaming on YouTube. I'm also streaming on Facebook. So I see you. Good morning, Beth. The team is here. I believe Allison's here with me today. Good morning, Antoinette. Hey, Sue. Good morning, Julia. Myra's here. Good morning. Hey, Nikki. Good morning, Michonne. Good to see you. Hey, Lisa. Amanda, good to see you. I've been watching, I've been watching you all over Instagram. I just want you to know that. And I'm going to tell you this. I'm going to just give you this. I'll just single you out today, girl. You are doing all the things and you are doing them beautifully. And I see you. And this is just the beginning for you. Okay. Good morning, Cameron. Good morning, Sierra. Good morning, Meredith. Good morning, everybody. Okay, let's talk email. Give me just— let's give ourselves a rating today. Okay. Just rate yourself 1 to 5, 1 being I got nothing, 5 being I'm all over it. As far as sending emails for the last 3 months, 1, nada, 5, I am all over it. Just give me a little bit of— give me a rating. I want you to rate yourself. How, how good are you for the last 90 days as far as sending emails go? 1 to 5. Here's where we're gonna talk about this today. There's a couple things that really sparked this topic for me this week. The first one is we are doing a huge migration over from Kajabi email to Kit for Launch Your Box. And I'm just gonna ask a favor. I don't ask favors of you guys very often, but I'm gonna ask a favor. If you have received an email from me and if you don't see it, go look for it. Can you go click on, can you go open it? Can you click on something? I need my open rate and my click rate as we are kind of warming up this new email. If you see emails from me this week, please open them. Please click on a link in there. We need to show Kit that we're legit and that we have good engagement so that we can get eventually all of our emails over there. We have, um, an 80,000-person email list for Launch Your Box. Um, when we went to go scrub the list, um, I'm losing about 19,000 of those, which hurts my heart. But if they're not opening, they're not opening, right? Um, and I need to let them go, especially as we migrate to the new system, because I need Kit to know that our content is good content and we should not be in spam folders. So do me a favor, any emails you see from me over the next couple of weeks, can you just open them? Can you click on a link? Just please, please do that for me so that I can get, we can get our migration of all of our emails over to KITT before my launch next month. That's really the, that's really the major thing that's happening right now. And then something else sparked this conversation. One of my mastermind students mentioned in our Voxer chat last week, she's like, hey, I've not done a really good job for the summer emailing. How do I revive my list? And so I gave her some, I gave her some tips and I thought this might be a good thing to talk about because we need to get our list warmed up before we hit the holiday season. Okay, there's confusion here and I'm gonna, I'm gonna clear it out for you. I use Klaviyo for my e-commerce business. I use Kajabi for my membership. Okay. And we're switching from Kajabi to Kit, formerly known as ConvertKit, because Kajabi open rates are horrible, like less than 20% most of the time. And so we have been wanting to switch for years and my open rates keep getting worse and worse on Kajabi. And so we are switching over to ConvertKit and we're doing that to be able to track. We selected ConvertKit because it can track your journey with me. Klaviyo is e-commerce based and I don't, we don't sell stuff other than our digital products. So this is why We're just talking about Launch Your Box, not talking about Framed. Still on Klaviyo, still love it. Have a 57% open rate over there. It's going strong. We're not changing any of that. This is for the membership. So that's what we're switching. Okay. I don't want anybody to go jump ship over to Kit because you heard me say that. Stay on Klaviyo. That's what we're doing. Okay. All right. So Tracy was asking me how to revive her list, and I thought, okay, this is great. It's time. We're getting ready to go into fourth quarter, which is huge shopping holiday season for us. We know, we've talked about it a lot lately, that it can really make or break our year. And there's things that we can do right now that can set us up for just an even better Q4 now that now that, um, I just saw a comment and it— do you guys do that? I saw a comment, um, said, I just signed up for Kajabi. I'm gonna pause and I'm gonna come back here. I love Kajabi. I'm not leaving Kajabi, okay? Just so you know, it's just their email. They're an all-in-one platform, and sometimes when you get an all-in-one platform They're okay in a lot of areas, but they're not great in, in all areas. So that's why we choose things like Klaviyo, because they focus on email marketing. That is their thing. That's what they do. They're not trying to do all the things. Okay. So that's why Kajabi is great. I have used it for 5 years. I will continue using it. All of your training is housed on Kajabi. I'm just switching to a more in-depth email platform. I need to be able to track your journey. I need to be able to track conversions. I need to be able to know where you came in to my world. I need more, um, sophisticated analytics over there. There's nothing wrong with Kajabi. Okay, back to email. Now, if you've been neglecting your list, it's time to warm them up now before we get into Q4 and then we just start hitting them with a bunch of emails because then there's a problem in your inbox too. It's going to put it in spam. If you've been neglecting your list all summer and then you start emailing them in September, October nonstop, it's going to automatically go to spam. We've got to warm them back up. So let's talk about how to warm, how to reengage a neglected list. Okay, so first one, hey, I've missed you. Let's do a hey, I've missed you, a short, simple, friendly, human-style email. I've missed you. Here's what's going on in the shop. Just give them an update. Okay, next one would be, let's give them like a personal update. Hey, your inbox has been a little quiet. It's because I've been doing this, this, and this all summer. Give a little update on life, business, family, summer. Let's re-engage with them. Let's reconnect with people. Okay, so let's give them a little personal update from the summer. That's a great way to engage your list. Number 3 would be give them something valuable. Hey, I've got a discount. For you, back to school discount. I've got a checklist for you. I've got a sneak peek for you. What can we do to get them to open that email? We've got to give them something of value. So number 3 would give them something of value, whether that's a freebie, whether that's a sneak peek, whether that's a discount, whether that's a how-to tip or tutorial, whatever you want to do. And then my tip number 4 for how to reengage a neglected list would be invite them to reply. Okay, so you can send an email, maybe it's a this or that, or maybe it's a color palette. Invite them to reply to your email. We're getting ready to work on fall, what color palette do you like best, A or B? Hit reply, let me know. You don't need to tally these, you don't need to do anything, but that reply gets you higher deliverability. The more people that hit reply and say A or B, pink or blue, orange or turquoise, whatever that may be, is going to really warm up the engagement. It's gonna help keep you out of the spam folder later. So 4 ways to go ahead and reengage your list if you've been neglecting it. Hey, I missed you. Short, friendly, human email. Number 2, a longer, more in-depth personal update. What you did for the summer, what's going on with business, what's happening with family. Like I just sent my weekly newsletter, routes are framed and I got my kid off to college, got him moved into his new apartment. Like, what's happening? Okay, number 3, give them something of value. And number 4, invite them to reply. Okay, so let's work on that. That's how we're going to re-engage a list. Now let's reverse this. What if we've not done a very good job about growing our list? There's a saying that if you're not growing, you're dying. And it's true. If you're not growing your business, your business is dying. If you're not growing your email list, your email list is dying. One of the things that I think has been so fun to see, um, in July we did the Let's Launch together as a group, and a lot of the success stories are coming from people that have been running ads for the first time because they're getting in front of new people. We have to have new people on our email list constantly, and if you're not actively growing your list, it is dying by the minute. So we've got to figure out a way that we can continue growing our email list, and I've got a couple, um, quick actionable things that you can do here too. And really grow and re-engage. We can do both of these things simultaneously because it's going to set ourselves up for the best Q4 that we can have. I still get a majority of my sales through ads and emails. Right now I'm having huge game day sales for August, better than I've ever had before, and that is I have ads running for them and I've got follow-ups in emails every couple of days. It's driving sales. If you're not using your email list you're leaving money on the table. I did an interview with Klaviyo one time and I called my email list my ATM. Klaviyo's my ATM. I go in, I type in some codes, outspits money. I go in and I type in some email, outspits sales. Okay, we have to continue to work through this. This is one of the most cost-effective ways that we can drive sales, not only right now, but in the future. So let's talk about ways that we can build our list. Maybe we've neglected building the list over the summer or even for the whole year. We still have time to build it. Okay, so let's talk about a seasonal freebie or a lead magnet. My seasonal wallpapers get the cheapest clicks ever. They get the cheapest opt-ins ever. So when I'm talking about a wallpaper, I'm talking about that thing on your phone that I have a picture on there right now. But that, that wallpaper that's on the background of your phone, I get the cheapest opt-ins for a free wallpaper and they love the seasonal things. It's like trading it out, trading out your handbag or putting new earrings on and it's like an accessory for your phone and everybody has a phone. So maybe it's a fall related how-to, maybe it's a fall related checklist, something seasonal. Let's get a freebie going that ties into your product in some way. My wallpapers are the designs on my t-shirts. That's how it ties in to my product. Number 2, we can give out some early access to upcoming launches. I'm talking about this in the Q4 Strategy Day pretty heavily, but You can set up a waitlist for to give people early access to your holiday promotions. Number 3, list is dead. Let's throw a giveaway up. Back to school giveaway, fall giveaway. Right now is the perfect time to grow our social media and our email list with a giveaway. You could also do a collab with someone in this group. Hey, let's do a giveaway together. We'll share an opt-in. We don't have the same product, but we have the same customer. Let's do a collab giveaway. Okay. And then there's that thing that just works in the background all the time, and that's your pop-up on your website. Raise your hand if you've got a pop-up on your website right now. If I went to your website right now, would I get a pop-up? A simple pop-up. Give them something they want in exchange for their email. We have to keep building your list. If you ask yourself right now, Sarah, what am I actively doing today to build my list? If you're doing nothing, your list is not growing. Let's get on it. My goal every year is to double my email list. Every year I need to double that list to continue to find new customers, to continue to find new subscribers, and continue to grow my business. I need to double that list to stay the same sometimes because we're going to lose subscribers every month. It's part of the business. If you're not actively growing your following and growing your list and then coming behind it and engaging in that list, you're leaving money on the table. You're probably struggling if you're not growing your list right now. You're probably struggling if you're not consistently sending emails right now. It's a big part of your marketing channel. It's your marketing strategy that you're missing if you are neglecting email, and we still have time to get on it before the biggest shopping season happens. Don't just do it for this week. Continue. This is something we have to actively do every week in our business all year long. This holiday season can be your best yet. You can make sales today by sending an email. We neglect it because we think it's one more thing to do. It is one more thing to do, but your marketing is the most important thing that you do in your business. Hear me say this, write this on a Post-it stick it on your computer. Marketing is your number one job as a small business owner, and a lot of times we treat it as number 5, 6, or 7 on the list. You might be sitting there thinking right now, my number one job is to go pack and ship. It is not. You have to keep the pipeline of orders going all the time. Marketing is your number one job. Packing and shipping is after that. So if you're not treating it as your number one job as a small business owner, we gotta shift our priorities. Without marketing, you don't have a business. Without marketing, you don't have customers. Without marketing, you don't have sales. So I need you to understand how important this is. And we have lots of marketing channels that we need to work on, and email's one of them, but email's one of the most important. So I need you to put this on your plan this week to build some momentum going into the fall season. Grow our list, re-engage our list. It is that important. All right, I know y'all can do this. And once you start to see it come back— and it may not come back to you on the first email you send out, you have to be so consistent you get sick of it. I have to keep sending emails so consistently even if nobody's buying. I have to show up live so consistently even if no one's there. I have to post every day even if nobody likes it. You have to be so consistent in your marketing that you're bored with it. And if you're bored with it, that you're doing a great job. You have to make the decision to keep going when you're not getting results. And that's really hard sometimes, but it's not going to change if you give up on it. You're not going to fix your email strategy if you don't do it. You have to get so incredibly consistent with it, and it's going to come, but you've got to start and you got to keep going even when you don't want to. All right, that's your Monday momentum today. Email is super important, and marketing is your number one job. Let's go.