How To “Get Jiggy” & “Fly” With Your Email Newsletters with Liz Wilcox

All right, we are here with the Fresh Princess of Email. I found that on your Instagram and I'm like, I got to lead with this. Liz Wilcox, thank you so much for joining me, uh, on today's episode.

Oh my gosh, thank you so much for calling me the Fresh Princess. It's so fun.

I— leading into this, I always do research and, and look at, at how my guests are presented online, and I was excited to, to to do this and have the camera come on because, you know, you are a huge fan of '90s pop culture. And you could tell with the hat, the shirt you showed me before, the mug you just took water from had NSYNC on it.

It did. Excellent. He's good, guys. He's good. That's right.

Um, but today I want to talk about email, right? I mean, email marketing, that is really your, your, your center of focus, uh, in your business. And you know, we all know that email is probably like, you know, the really the only kind of list, I guess, or medium out there that you actually own, right? I mean, so much is done on social media and you don't own that. Things change and we know that things can go awry with that. But email, building your list, they keep saying build your list, build your list. While that's great, a lot of people listening to this podcast think, well, What's next? Like, yeah, you can say you need to write these newsletters, you need to write these emails, but how do you do it? Liz, what do you find is the biggest struggle people have when it comes to this?

Yeah, I think we just overthink it, right? It feels so heavy, email marketing. Like, oh yeah, for every dollar you spend, you can expect to get $40 in return. And that feels really heavy. With social media, oh, just throw something out there because I know I got to post and feed the algorithm. But email is so different. It's consent-based, right? I opt into Shaun's email. Now he's expected to provide value, right? To deliver on that promise. So it's much heavier than, oh yeah, sure, I'll give you a follow. I liked that reel. It was funny. You know, Fresh Princess, haha, cool, right? It's a little heavier. So I find the biggest mistake people are making is to feel like they have to be so perfect in the email because of that, oh my gosh, they consented, this has got to bring value, right? On top of the fact that, you know, like, go to your phone right now, look at how many unread emails you have. Everybody does it badly, right? Like, you don't hate email, you just hate badly written emails. So it's, it's that feeling of, I don't want to be another person that, you know, clogs up their inbox, right?

Absolutely. And I mean, you said it, said it so well there that people just don't hate email, they hate bad email. And there's so many times where, you know, I get emails from people, a lot of times I don't even know how I got into their list. But it just doesn't stand out to me. But there are some that really do stand out. What is your secret or advice to to getting email that people will actually love?

Yeah, so I call this the email staircase. It's just, you know, first you have a follower, right? Like, build your list, build your list. You get those followers on your list and then you turn them into a friend. Now I'm not talking about a friend where you share all your dirty laundry and you have to tell these grandiose stories to, but a friend. And we can talk about that in a second. And then once you have a list full of friends, You can basically just ask them, hey, I created this, do you want it? And turn them into customers. And you're not gonna fail here because you have a list full of friends. You're only creating products or writing sales pages in a way where you know you're speaking to the right ideal person. So as far as, you know, how the heck do I build a friendship? There's only 3 things. I'm gonna pull 'em up on the screen. So you need to watch the video of this. So you really only need 3 things. And this is, this is for real life too. So if you struggle with friendships, listen up. Number 1, you have to show that you are invested, right? If Shaun and I met today and 6 months from now I'm like, hey man, I've got this big launch, will you help me? He'll be like, oh, I kind of remember you were that weird '90s chick. Like, but we're not friends, right? So once somebody gets on your list, just show that you're invested. Even sharing something like, I just listened to this, you know, 25 minutes of this Fresh Princess who taught me how to write better emails. Moving forward, you know, I hope not to clog up your inbox. That shows you're invested. Even if you're B2C, my first business actually, I was an RV travel blogger and I was, my list was 70% men in their 60s, but I was still sharing that behind the scenes, still talking about how many hours I was working on the business, what I was investing in, how long it took me to get the blog post stuff that I had written because I wanted them to see like, hey, I'm invested here, this is serious for me, this is a real business. So that when I would offer them things, you know, it was much easier for them to invest back into me, even if that just meant, hey, please read this, or, you know, click on this, hit reply and tell me if you like it, you know, things like that. Because I was so invested in them, they, uh, you know, invested back into me. Number 2, share in a relatable way. So spoiler alert, this is actually really simple. Shaun and I, you know, we've been following each other online and we got on the, you know, we got on Zencastr, suddenly we're off to the races already because he found something relatable in me and vice versa. Humans want to connect with other humans. So even if you're, you know, at the time of my travel blog, I was 20-something and I was talking to men in their 60s. We found things to relate to each other about, right? We had this mutual interest. So this is actually the simplest one. And then number 3, stay top of mind. And this is the part where people usually turn off the podcast. They say, oh, I can't do this because you do have to be consistent with email. The same as, you know, if we followed each other on Instagram today, I don't, you know, I see your first couple posts and then you don't post for 6 months. I'm gonna forget who you are when you post again. I'm likely to unfollow, right? It's the same with email marketing, but you don't have to email every day or even email every week. Think about your ideal person and how much they need to hear from you in order to remember who you are and in order to, you know, feel like you're relatable and see that you are invested in the business and in their success.

Absolutely. Great, great advice. Now, how important is it to, you know, when somebody initially subscribes, that window of opportunity in the first couple of days to really indoctrinate them, as some people would say? But what does that initial phase look like, or should there be one, right, in your opinion?

Yeah, it's the most important thing. Welcoming them, setting expectations, sharing a little bit of personality, vision, and values. Is really going to, at the beginning, is going to make up if you miss a week or if, you know, you share too many emails about X. If you can set the stage properly, it's okay to make mistakes as you go. I know email can be one of those things that, ugh, it's the last thing on your to-do list. It feels complicated. But if you can get the welcome sequence right, like that is everything. So inside the welcome sequence, you just got to do 3 things. So share a little bit of personality, right? You know, right off the bat, Shaun told you this girl loves the '90s, right? You know, you know that right off the bat. So what's a little piece of your personality that you want to inject into your brand? Put that in the welcome sequence. Number 2, your vision. Shaun, have you ever seen the movie Forrest Gump? Oh, yes. Yeah, right. We all have, right? Tom Hanks is an American hero. But you know the scene when he's jogging in the middle of the desert and there's, you know, there's like dozens, if not 100 people following him blindly. And he turns around, he says, well, I think I'll go home now. You remember that scene, right? Oh, yes. That is not real life. Those people had no idea where Forrest was going. That's not how email works. It works the opposite. People have to know your vision. They have to know, you know, why we're running through the desert or where we're even going. Uh, you know, people don't blindly follow leaders. They need to know the vision. So in the welcome sequence, sharing exactly what you want for your potential client, student, member, whatever you call them, is very important. So for me, You know, I'd liken it to walking across, you know, Liz Wilcox University or graduating from Liz Wilcox University. What is the degree I'm handing you? That's the vision. For me, it's make money with email, hands down. Simple as that. If you follow me, that's what we're going to learn how to do, right? And so right in the welcome sequence, I actually combine the personality and vision in one sentence. And this is the part where if you're doing the dishes or you're driving or something, this is the part, the ding, ding, ding, please remember. It's a very simple sentence. You can say, as much as I love the '90s, I love the idea of you making money even more. You making money with email even more. You write, as much as I love X, sprinkle in that personality piece, I love the idea of Y, the vision, even more. Suddenly, boom, you're off to the races. They know, okay, this person's kind of fun, the '90s, whatever. Like, you know, I'm a '70s baby, but okay, I get it, right? You get a little piece of Liz and then the vision, make money with email. Yes, that's exactly what I need. Or if it's not, oh, I'm not ready yet, they'll unsubscribe and that's okay too. Then that— oh, go ahead.

No, no, I mean, you're, you're touching on some very valuable points there. And the thought that came to mind when you said about like sharing your vision, you know, I know a lot of people when they do this and they're starting to build their list, they say, you know, sign up for my newsletter. And that's what, that's what you see on their website. My newsletter, my newsletter. And that's about as far as it gets. What's your take on giving that newsletter its own brand, its own identity?

Yeah, I love that idea. I think most people and most businesses they're not going to just sign up for a newsletter. Having some sort of, you know, lead magnet, freebie, whatever you want to call it, usually performs better. People want something. But if you do have that, you know, big vision of I'm going to help you X, right? Like you have that really strong elevator pitch, so to speak, you can just say, you know, join my newsletter for tips on XYZ to help you make more money with email marketing, you know, with a '90s twist, whatever. Just as long as it's kind of branded in that way where it's— this is a thing, you know, with a capital T, then people are likely to sign up. Also having a name for the people for your newsletter, like mine, I think I say something like in my welcome sequence, you know, welcome to the inbox crew, something like that. So it makes them feel like this is community-based. You're not the only one, you know, writing email or, you know, receiving these emails. Making it a community thing is a great, great tip. I'm so glad you brought that up, Shaun.

Yeah. And I've seen and I've done this with a couple of clients where, you know, either the, you know, there's a lead magnet that is the initial piece that people are attracted to. And then from there, the conversation goes into that consistency. Continuity piece of email nurtures and sales after the fact. But I've also done it where the actual email subscription was the asset they wanted, right? So it could have been like, you know, the, you know, the Saturday morning, you know, throwdown or something, or the Saturday morning. And you knew that every Saturday morning you were going to get delivered X, right? And you're using the method of the email delivery as that lead source that people wanted, right?

Yeah, I love that. It gives it an exclusivity, right? So, you know, Saturday morning— what did you say, showdown or something? I'm picturing it's like a wrestling fan's membership or newsletter. I love that. Yeah, it just gives this feeling like I'm part of something, I'm getting something of value, versus, you know, join my newsletter, right? It's like, okay, well, I have enough email. Why should I? But you know, Saturday morning showdown, that sounds interesting. Okay, let me sign up. I don't do anything on Saturday mornings. I could use a little XYZ.

Absolutely. And I think the term newsletter implies it's not about them. It's about me as the person trying to tell you all about me. Whereas, you know, when you're doing it properly, you're then delivering value to the, the subscriber, right? So the newsletter doesn't imply that, I don't think.

Yeah, I, I would tend to agree unless you're in a very corporate background talking to very corporate people that are using, you know, their job's email address, right? And they need the newsletter in order to, you know, expand their knowledge to get a raise. Then yeah, you might want to, you know, name your newsletter something else or put even something in front of it that appeals to that ideal subscriber.

Absolutely. Now, you mentioned earlier on about your blog, The Virtual Campground, how you built that, you grew that, you sold it. Now, the idea of selling through email, that's what you help people do, is convert those subscribers into paying customers. I'd like you to talk a bit about that as to how, how you go about that or how somebody even starts to think about how do I do that aside from just like Oh, let's just blast an offer to the list.

Yeah. So it really starts in that welcome sequence. One of your emails in the welcome sequence should set the expectation that this newsletter, this email channel is a marketing channel. I'm going to offer you XYZ. And so in the welcome sequence itself, I usually, it's usually a whole email where I share expectations the same way Shaun Whynacht with every episode, you know, he's introducing the guest, he's telling you what you're going to talk about, you can see show notes that set the expectation for how the episode is going to go. You do that with email marketing and suddenly it makes, uh, it makes converting those men in their 60s super simple, right? Um, and I want to note that the virtual campground, those were people that didn't even know what online digital products were, and that's what I was selling. So if you set that expectation right at the beginning, I'm gonna offer you free and paid products, free and paid services, free and paid resources, whatever word you want to use, suddenly it flips the switch from, oh, I joined Saturday Morning Showdown, or, uh, you know, I got this freebie, to, oh, this is a business, they're gonna offer me not just free, you know, email stuff, like I'm actually going to get valuable resources. Right? This is, this is a real business.

Now you've been doing this, this, the email, you know, coaching and helping people kind of build their, their email list and conversion stuff for about 5 years now. What made you get into this? Like what was the passion 5 years ago that was like, this is where I want to go? I always find that intriguing.

Yeah, this is a really fun story. So, you know, a lot of email marketers and copywriters, they started under someone. They were working for an agency or some large influencer, seeing the behind the scenes. As Shaun already said, I started with the RV travel blog and I'd listen to podcasts like this and everybody and their mother would say, oh, I wish I would have taken my email list more seriously. Right. And Mama didn't raise no fool. I said, okay, that's the thing I'm going to figure out. If I have nothing else, you know, I was traveling the country, I was living in 200 square feet, I had a toddler. If you've ever met a toddler, they really don't care about you building your business, right? And so email really was a thing where I figured out how to do it efficiently and how to, you know, turn those people into friends and set those expectations and, you know, sell digital products, etc. And so one day I finally decided, okay, I'm going to do the digital course. Everybody and their mother says build a course. Okay, I've tried smaller products. I've run a digital summit. This is the year. So I sent out an email. I said, hey, I'm thinking of creating a resource on RV maintenance. Are you interested? I had 141 people click. So a few months later, finally got the course, you know, ready and raring to go. I did a traditional Monday through Friday thing. At the end of the cart closing, I had made 141 sales. So yeah, um, that, that is very abnormal. Usually it converts between 1 and maybe 10% if you're like really, really good. And so once I started talking about it, and I actually went to a conference and I was telling people about it, and they were full of copywriters, they said, no, you didn't do that. I said, okay, well here's the receipts. And once I realized just how exceptional that was and just how many people weren't seeing the results that I was seeing, that's when I knew I needed to sell the blog and go all in teaching the email staircase, teaching how to, you know, how to invest, how to share in a relatable way, how to keep staying top of mind because it came so naturally to me that I couldn't understand why my friends were struggling so much. So I was like, fine. I'll just do it for you. Like, come follow me. I'm selling this other business. And it's just been so awesome ever since.

Awesome. And I mean, if, if your branding is any kind of mention to like the quality of the work that you do, and I'm sure it is because I mean, I, I come across a lot of copywriters and it's a lot of vanilla out there. But what you're, what you're doing is like, you know, the comedy, your passion for comedy, which was one of the items that was on your your intake form speaks to me. Like, I love comedy. I love, you know, I love the '90s. Like, everything that your brand does is attractive to me as a business owner. So you have that kind of attractive factor for a certain niche audience. It's there. But if anybody, like, wants to learn more about what you could do for them, I know you have an offer. You've got a, like, it says a 4-part welcome sequence freebie. But you also have a kind of a Netflix type idea of email marketing that people can sign up for and buy. Talk a little bit about that.

Oh yeah, wow, thank you so much. Usually I just pitch the freebie. Shaun's awesome, we need to give him 5 stars on Apple. Go, you know, pause, give him a review. This guy is the man. So yeah, what I mentioned earlier about, let me just do it for you, let me show you the way. After about a year of, you know, building my list and trying to convince people, yes, email. I just realized kind of like at the beginning we talked about email feeling so emotional and so heavy. I just realized that a lot of people believe that email marketing is this knot they're never gonna untangle, right? They just gotta cut it out, right? And just try other facets. So I created email marketing membership, #SEO, and it's a $9 a month subscription like Netflix used to be. And every single week I write a newsletter template for you to take and make your own. Now, given what Shaun just said, oh, she's very '90s themed, et cetera, like these templates are not Liz Wilcox. They can be used for many different businesses. I have a podiatrist in there, I have a nun, I have a plumber, you know, and then I have the typical online and course creators, et cetera. So it's really a plethora of people. But what it is, it's kind of like a Mad Libs thing where, you know, you can copy and paste into your email service provider and, you know, insert, you know, fill in the blank type of thing. And then it also comes with a video walkthrough and two examples. So the walkthrough is, I know no one's going to do anything unless they know why. Like, we like to think we grow out of that, but we really don't. We always need to know why. So the video walkthrough shares with you the marketing behind this email and what it's going to do following that email staircase, how it's going to help you climb that. And then the examples show you how it could be used depending on your business, your personality, your capability, and your confidence with your emails. So it's been really fun. I've been growing it at the time of this recording, 19 months, and I have about 2,100 members. So if email is something that you struggle with, if you're listening and you're like, yeah, but I don't know what this would look like, highly recommend joining. It's $9 a month. You can get in, check it out for yourself and cancel anytime.

Well, is it by the end of this you will have 2,100 or 2,901?

Boom.

I'm signing up.

I love that. That's great.

So just lastly, what website address can people go to to find out all this information?

Yeah, so obviously I'm an email marketer. I would love for you to join my list. If you're not ready to commit to that $9, if you're— but you want to see what that welcome sequence would look like, what newsletters that are, you know, driven to make friends and create customers would look like, you can go to LizWilcox.com. In the top right-hand corner, you can't miss it, there's a hot pink button. Just click that. You're gonna get an entire welcome sequence already written for you, again, fill-in-the-blank style. You're gonna get 3 newsletter examples to show you how to get people to click, to show you how to get people to reply, and to show you how to get people to buy. And if that's not enough, you also get 52 subject lines all for free. LizWilcox.com, hot pink button.

Awesome. Liz, this has been fantastic. I'm looking forward to seeing what I get when I sign up. And I'll put all this information in the show notes. Thank you so much for, for bringing your '90s flair to the air with us.

Awesome. Thank you so much. I can't wait to see what everybody does with email.