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Using Email for Content Marketing

this segment that's all about email and email marketing and using email to stay in touch email can be used at any of the phases that we've talked about don't get me wrong email is fantastic to stay in touch and for a long period of time there was this thing after that email is dead email is going away that email was so old school and while email does have some old school tendencies it still is incredibly valuable if you know how to use it and again this theme we've been developing for the course has been all about ensuring that you're delivering the right message to the right person at the right time with the right medium and so understanding that email is a medium that we can use it if we use it at the right time in the right in the right place it could be incredibly valuable just like so many of the other tools that we've been talking about now what's the thing that we want to get across here with e mail it's the email as us to maintain personal engagement with your audience so there...

's a personal side of things you can share with people on email because there's an intimacy there's a one on one environment you're inside of their inbox that's unlike any other platform that we've talked about so far on social media a news feed or instagram feed or a pinterest page or bored these aren't things that we own quite as much as we own our inbox our inboxes of personal place even though our facebook news feed is behind you know behind a password protected area our inbox is a very very personal space that's why we're much more apt to unsubscribe from things that we are too maybe on follow people things like that we kind of guard our in box a little bit and because it's such a personal private space when you're invited in it's important to know howto be respectful inside of there but it's also a really valuable opportunity and not one to take lightly we get people's email addresses oftentimes without asking permission if we can really email them about certain things and that's what makes email very inter racine and something that can be done the wrong way it can really put you in harm's way but I mean by that is that to become friends of something on facebook there's a requirement that you ask them to be their friend or vice versa the same with instagram the same with pinterest sing with these other platform to talk about with email though it's just ubiquitous to ask them for their ma dress during the process of booking you and so you have this in madras but if you don't use it properly well you could get yourself into a little bit of trouble it's almost like invading their personal space and I don't want to do that email though is wonderful because I want to talk about email in our in our short time that we have really from the standpoint of that post customer phase I really want to center and that don't get me wrong you can use e mail at any one of the faces that shoot dot at it we use it prior to anybody becoming a customer quite a bit and we have a really really scaled out email um marketing system that we use to deliver awesome content and love on people before they're even customers on dh so if you have downloaded any of the guys are accessing the webinars we've talked about that she thought it has available to you you'll start to get some emails that provide mohr relevant content to you in the coming days is just part of what we do so don't get me wrong I think email can be wonderful any step along the way but for a photographer a professional photographer the area I think it's most useful is using it to stay engaged with customers after you've already fulfilled everything for their contract and that's what we choose to focus on today as as always we don't have enough time with each of these topics segments to dive all the way into them but if we get the concepts down if we know how to you in this case use email to better that contact with your past customers you can learn then how to apply it across the board to all the different phases of your marketing here's the thing with here's the thing with engaging past customers you've already done all the work they're already in love with you and it's really interesting because when a customer when you hand them their album or you hand them their their digital files or whatever it is you do that last thing that you deliver to them when you hand that and you say good bye to them and you don't have a plan to keep them engaged in actual strategy to keep engaged it's like watching your best friend walk out the door for the rest of your life matter fact is even like it's like being in love with someone there's nothing wrong in your relationship it's going wonderfully as a matter of fact the relationship has grown continued to grow and then all of a sudden it's like ok goodbye I'll never see you again why did you say goodbye the person you're in love with you we have no more reason to talk couldn't be further from the truth of course you have reason to hear you're in love with them well it just doesn't seem to be any anything on the road map right now say lovey as what we do with our customers they spend all this time falling in love with us we spend all this time falling in love with them weave given given and given to them and then we had on their last final product and out the door they go we never see them again email is a great way to make sure that doesn't happen again email is a great way you can continue to deliver amazing ways of solving our problems you can continue to stay top of mind you can continue to stay engaged and doesn't have to be the end of love affair there's a second thing and I'm surprised it hasn't come up yet today I'm actually was waiting for it to come up whether in the chat rooms or here in the studio audience there's a lot of talk about this and I think it's a very worthy conversation and it speaks to the power of email email is really the only thing left that you can still own when somebody is on your email list when you own theobald ality to email them when that's a privilege you've been given you still own that but you never know when facebook's gonna change the rules you never know when instagram is going to change the rules you never know when google is going to change the rules about about how they publish your website you don't know if facebook is going to make it impossible for photographers to use it instagram all these platforms email is still a tool that no matter what because it's such a one on one relationship when you have someone's email address and when you respect it and use it properly and it's a one on one relationship via email that is something that nobody can ever take from you and that's why email is still such a powerful platform no matter what people will respond to your e mails if they feel that they one on one relationship they might not respond to every email they might not respond to all the animals but people respond in some way shape or form as long as you continue to maintain a one on one relationship with him via the email so let's go ahead and dive into the email content here and talking about how we're gonna build out on email strategy for you and your business again it can be used at any step along the way but let's really focus on howto continually re engage past customers how to keep them in your system so here the three things we must focus on what we're building a lot of this at this point in the course and in this point in the day kind of sounds like we've heard it before right I mean come on some of this stuff sounds like a repeat it's always good you never know who's tuning in after the fact or who's kind of sweeping in for those who have been in this in this room for the last two days we both know that these three things are necessary pretty much everywhere so it's almost funny is I was reviewing this last night I was like oh my goodness by this time of the day we're going heard this so many times and then jason of course has been reinforcing it as well but they still are very important on email we won't spend too much time talking about wheels just touch on it email it must be engaging again how many emails do you get a day oh my goodness right I mean and from whom you don't know how they got your e mail address sometimes and the value that is an e mail is that you have to catch them is there scrolling through it most wars going through email right now their phones they're using phones is almost like a cooling system they really do they have kind of had studies about this and so they'll get rid of the junk junk before they even get to open up their computer and then they open their computer and that's where they'll do a better filter and so in order for your email to even matter to them already even get to the part where you're having a one on one conversation with him it must be engaging it must kind of answer the question why do I care and why should I care um I and I think we all have a certain level of filters that we use when we look at our e mails but whenever I get an email from a very close personal friend that I haven't heard from in a while I always open the email no matter what I've given the better for the doubt I'm taking for granted that they're not going to send me an email that is gonna waste my time and you want to get to the point where your emails are engaging enough that they feel that way about you we'll talk some more about that as we go but make sure your emails are engaging and don't waste their time consistent again if you just email every six months or a few female three times in a week and then don't email them again that is basically annoying and it's it's somewhat disrespectful of their inbox again you need to treat their inbox almost like hallowed ground it's like it's like a prized possession that you've been invited into you need to respect it consistency consistency is the way that you show that respect it's probably most important e mail across any other platform jason talked about consistency and posting on instagram and pinterest I talked about consistency and blogging since you're actually entering into their inbox you had really better be consistent here and consistent doesn't mean necessarily we talked about blogger lot we talked about instagram a lot I'm not necessarily suggesting you email a lot that's not actually what I'm trying to say there's got to be a strategy behind it but whatever you do do it consistently because you need to respect their inbox respect I mean these people that are in love with you still respect their inbox is if you're going to e mail every week keep that up if you're gonna feel every month keep that up if you're gonna if you're gonna do it every other month keep that up don't create a pattern inconsistency cause it throws those people off you know think about it as if your inbox is your house if your friend drops by every monday at two pm you start to get used to that you start to expect it you start to look forward to it you start to have stuff ready for it you start to wonder what he's gonna come by and talk about your friend drops by every two months you still start to look forward to it maybe it's not every monday or the second monday of the month or whatever but you start to understand it's coming your friend drops by four times in one week and then doesn't show up for the month or doesn't show for two months and then drops by three nights in a row that's a little awkward little hard to plan for it's not the same experience respect their inbox by being consistent with your emails whatever you end up deciding to do valuable we won't spend much time in this make sure whatever you said his value just like we don't block for blog's sake just like we don't post on facebook for facebook sake etcetera etcetera don't just email because you have tio it's important to be consistent but never the sake of not being valuable always provide value don't email someone just because you feel like you need teo always provide value okay let's talk about the open rate now again we'll talk about all the different things that you can do email and the strategies that we can employ I'm going to show you guys a bunch of ideas for what to do when you're dating it's important just look at some of the basics of email first just you haven't understanding about this isn't going to be an email metrics class here why did I choose to cover it now because again before we get all the topics of email I think it's great if we could actually build out what a good email looks like so then is your building out the topics you know exactly how a good email looks the reason people open your e mails is because of the subject title so the subject title is why the opening but I don't know what's in the e mail yet obviously if they know you they're gonna have a more light more higher likelihood of opening email but they're going to open it because of the subject title so here's some tips for subject titles generally speaking short and sweet works best that's funny jason just mentioned a hub spots survey about hashtags and about how generally speaking fewer hashtags better than more hashtags and spot had this research that showed that more hashtags in many cases increased engagement spot also just released a survey that showed that actually a very short subject title or a very long subject title actually worked better so that was a brand new kind of release and it definitely was different generally speaking short and sweet is better get to the point and tell them what you're going to tell them what is going to be in the email that's opening them now that they're opening sorry apparently very very long works well too I've never tested that we don't we haven't tested that she got at it so I can't speak for that but that was a recent hub spot survey released number two is relevant tell him what you're gonna tell him and make sure that they care about it again if I already got married and I get an email that's about ah guide for you know top four tips to do my engagement session location I'm not that's not relevant to me anymore I'm glad you're making guides and that sounds great good for you and you're right maybe I'd be able to share that down the road but that's not something to lead in as a subject line for why you're talking to me it's not relevant now that might be soon that's great to put a p s oven email or some to include a blogger post or something to share with him the way you interact with them in other areas but in an email in terms of what your subject line is going to be you want to be relevant for what they are doing something that speaks more toe where they are at in their life cycle stage and this problem that you're solving for them at their point in time subject long titles are the last thing we typically do it's funny we write the e mail but we don't really think about the title you know I mean the title is kind of like I don't know what to put here do I summarize it do I say hey do I do I be vague do I do all caps you know I mean biocraft capitalized every word or is it like the first word and the rest are not capitalized this kind of dead man's own and that's why it's important that we look at it and we just understand the base how to write a subject line the other thing is to make it actionable again we get how many emails a day make it something that wants to be collect give me a reason open that email again I'm not suggesting is that we beat these people this is not buying you know this is not all the junk spammy stuff that you see out there where they're trying to give you a title that's captivating you enough to open it and then probably not that relevant this's about coming up with a title that makes sense what I really encourage you to do spend some time think about the title don't just jump straight to the body think about the title what am I trying to say why do they care and how can they take action with it what will they do with this e mail again what are we really trying to build we're trying to build on email strategy to stay in contact with all these people that we're in love with we're trying to make sure that we keep that wonderful connection we're going to keep that connection by continuing to give to them we're not just going to email them junk we're not going to just stay in touch with them just because we have a great relationship we're going to continue to provide them value but we must know the constructs of how to get through the junk that gets into their inbox every single day and all of ours let's talk about click rate click rate would be what people do with the email you sent them do they do anything after reading the email now sometimes it makes sense to send somebody email without any link out of it generally speaking by now that you've heard me say that they're always should be a direction that people should go their always should be an action that people should take and so because it's a one on one relationship email can have a situation where you don't have an outbound linker you don't have a reason for bill to do anything with it certainly sometimes there's great opportunity just sharing update or something like that but more often than not you're gonna want them to do something with the email you sent them you don't want them to take action and do something maybe it's for them to download a newest guide that you released for customers they're there in their lifestyle old age maybe it's about you know some other ideas we're talking about an evening you're hosting with a real estate agent you want to know our vp for that there's a lot of different options that you can publish for people that will give them the option to move forward and there's reasons why people take advantage of that the reason people click is when you do these things uh I always say the entire reason but these are things that help get people to click number one is make sure the email is personalized personalized we're gonna go into that little bit more later but personalization is really really important because we want to believe that we're being interacted with one on one to some degree we know we're not but you know what we're open to the fact that you're trying we kind of give you a free pass we know that email software allows you to plug in the first name but even though we know that it still works better when you use our first names we know that there's ways to personalize an email that you khun do with a computer program but yet we still appreciate it it's ok we still appreciate it and we still love it and so personalizing your email is wonderful obviously the best thing to do is to write an individual email to every single person since that's not scalable I don't recommend it because you spend all your days sending emails but you still have to find a way to make sure that when they see that email it doesn't feel like you got sent to one hundred fifty people as you need to personalise it talk about it another way to remember another way we can personalize things is to make sure that we talk about the things we know about them so we know that they were a customer of ours we know they did get married we know that they are at this stage in the life and maybe even segmenting a little bit more so customers who got married last year is one female customers we got married a year to two years ago is another email and then customers who got married two plus years ago and now you can talk to them a little differently the customers got very two plus years ago you can say oh man you know several years you know multiple years in now blah blah blah you can talk them differently you know it's been many years since bob loblaw the customers had just got married that's a totally different conversation wow you guys just got married this year you know blah blah blah there's different ways to talk to so you can personalize it by segmenting a little bit breaking your list up a little bit engaging so again we talked about this with a blogger post and we talked about this we're building out your website guys all of that engagement is so important and engaging is just really important because people must engage with the whole thing so often what do we do if we open the email we read the first two lines and we have this is what it's gonna do for me do I really care if you don't capture the first lines we just we just don't even keep going so you know um ah lot of times what I will do is get an email and if it's a short if I open it it's short email all ri didn't take care of it then but if it's like five paragraphs I'm not just going to delete it but I just like who okay I don't have time to deal with that right now as I sit on it and I sit on it sit on it and I said on I'm known for being terrible returning voicemails I just I actually came out a couple years ago on my voice mail what is it my voicemail message and I said you know what I'm really bad at returning voicemails if you really want to get hold of me you probably text me or email me if you wanna leave a voicemail I will do my best I'm just putting out there I'm terrible at it and there's something about it from when I look at voice mothers like I don't want to deal with this right now that's often times how people look at a long email at the end of the day they're like you know I could be my best friend you called me and I'm still like I don't want to listen to your stupid message right now give me my long lost friend I've heard from in years there's still something about when I look at that message I don't want to with this right now it's be thirty seconds of hell I don't know why I feel that way and you know what there are a lot of people feel that way about emails they could be your best friend but hey look at that email on his five paragraphs and like I don't want to read this right now I already had to read one hundred emails today at work come on so you've got to make sure that you're kind of balance that you're engaging in your email get to the point and make sure again it's actionable so it's actionable even if it's just without outbound like make sure your content is actionable has that action and if you want them to take action tell them you want them to take action our vp here download here you know share this here and if you're just sharing it without any action then you really don't need to pay attention number three because it's not an actionable email p s a t test um so at shoot dot at it we're constantly learning and the reason we're costing learning is because it doesn't matter how many books you read it doesn't matter how many hubs spots surveys you read doesn't matter how many markers you talk to it doesn't matter how many conferences you go teo no matter how many times you sit next to the cm of trip it every time you sit next to boston globe people how many times you talk about with people boz about what they're doing and how they're having success it doesn't matter at the end of the day unless you test it against your demographic and your target audience everything in the book might say to do this and for whatever reason your target market might do this they might want this so test now a be testing is something that we talk about in statistics and marketing economy economics that kind of thing again I went to school for statistics so that's a pretty common thing in my world and yet it's it's something that software can do for you but I also think that you don't really need software to do for you I won't get into the specifics of a be testing how to do it but what I would say is to make sure you're measuring what you're doing and make sure to note okay this email I'm trying this differently instead of linking out with a text link I'm going to try a button I'm gonna make a nice big button this e mail I'm gonna try to make a really long intro to make a long subject titles a short subject title and just measure if you think it had any different impact and slowly start to learn what your audience wants the idea is to give them content in the manner which with they like to engage it and so the more you learn from them the more you're respecting how they prefer to engage that content