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Case Study #1: Abby Glassenberg Design

All right so I want to look a little bit about my newsletter so we're going tio a little case study we're going to do three case studies all together we'll start with mine that's me in my studio so the bed it's over here see the dresser you see the present that's my dresser ok, so yeah that's me in my studio and here is my newsletter so past issues you were asking about archives there up there and this is a web view of it so you can click that when you look at it in the email though I don't think that past issues is there so I should fix that okay? Right up top you have a little area that this is done in male champ you can put the date here you know and some people I don't even notice that and they leave it and it auto fills from male champion said something like put the date here and then they send it out it looks kind of embarrassing so you want to make sure you're just noticing these little bits so I have instead of during the date I have a handmade newsletter just for you that's wh...

at I put there on and then this is a little link here so you can view it in your browser which is nice for people who want to share it so it opens on the web and then they can share that link with people okay and then here I have my banner and my name and then this yellow bar just sort of delineate that we're going to get started with the content on and those are all my funds and my colors s so you know right away that it comes from me now my newsletter is not professionally designed I would love to get it professionally designed and have like their male chimp experts and if you go on male chimp side there's an experts page and there's a whole lot of people who that's what they do they designed male chimp newsletters love to hire somebody to do that that would be a future business goal for me but right now this is what I've done just on my own um alive so then I have here when a coach this little scroll bar here school down so that when says one company multiple businesses this is a block post I wrote that week um and here is a little exert saying I've got two businesses and they both live on my site one is business to business and one is um actual products for customers was it a good decision to do it that way should have separated them? I'm not sure and then I talked tio a few different people who are in a similar situation is myself I'd have made different choices and that was my block post for one of the block three black post they published that week and you were asking about like death had not read more on the web site I wrote here's what they told me you have a nice long area to click okay uh if you only had dot dot dot and that was the only clickable spot I think it's small for fingers okay and then I have a little line below um mine is all very linear you can and male chimps that things up so there's columns kind of like a newspaper but I think its target the type gets really small from mobile so I like it linear ok, so now I have another one. This is a second block post from that week I wrote about a new site that sewing machine company is using to promote their sewing machines. I wasn't sure how it works so I did some research and I wrote a little post explaining it and then I say so what is the sewing party get the whole scoop and you can click and then I got lots of comments on that post from it. Did you have a question? Yeah, so when the newsletter that you email yeah let's say for the song party example when someone opens their email they see just the sewing party they're being all right then he followed you see there's like a white line here the white back here is a grayish where my cursor is now, then this way, so what they're seeing on their well on on their email program is just what's in this white area, and if they click over to the web, they're seeing this gray to depending on how big their window is in their browser. But really, the newsletter is just this vertical column here, and it formats automatically for mobile versus desktop male chimp does that so it's mobile optimized for you and so all of the things you know, the question about which way you should go, the sewing project all of that is in one email. Yeah, and so it in each of those sections you have to want to nome or or here's what they said, and it directs you to two year block if you don't have a blogged where you directing people to go? Okay, so if you don't have a blogger, you probably haven't written articles this week, so you wouldn't even include this part, right? Because I wrote part of what I deliver is the's log articles, so I want people to read them is part of my goal, and so I'm giving them. Excerpts of that if you don't have a block and that's not what you've done this week, you can skip this part and instead use a different type of content so below this we're going to get into what's below this is some other types of content and this may not be part of your newsletter if you don't have a blogger because there's nothing tio some people to or let's say you used to have a block and now you don't but the archives are still there and those are really just articles and you can still drive people to those there older articles that are still there ok, so you don't have to have a blogger definitely not. This is my business, and so I have a blogger and I sent people to this, but if you don't have this sort of content to send people to, then no, then we get down to this. This is what you could do in that. So here I have a section this is in every newsletter it's called did you see this? And this could be your lead sack action if you wanted instead on guy have categories so my categories are sewing and making blogging and social media, business podcast videos and other needs stuff okay, so what are these things? These are links tio neat things happening on the web this week that relate to my why so the first one design your own fabric on spoon flower and use it to make yourself a pair of espadrilles so cool. So this is a link tio somebody who has done that, they have designed fabric and then they created a tutorial making aspect rolls with it, which I think is a pretty cool thing to dio so I put it under selling in a gang. This is about sizing for women's clothing and how it's totally arbitrary uh, here's somebody who is doing a quote swap that looked super fun people might want to take part in the deadlines coming up you need instagram account if you want to do that. Ah here's group in ferguson, missouri, who is doing some making yard doing some yarn things together, knitting together and it's got kind of ah sort of social statement involved social just the statement involved that I thought was interesting that week here's something about blogging and social media so giving us a hints about how to use I f t t um and then some business things there's some conferences coming up one of them I'm going to be a skin it speaker in so I want people to register, um, bed bath and beyond bought a little tiny business why did they do that? I don't know, I'm asking people to think about that uh you know, and then a cult market is going to be getting any website I want people to know about that. So then I have other fun stuff here's a podcast newsletter that I recommend um this guy spent his week a month replying to all the p r e mails he ever got with I love q how tempting would that be? Just saying I love you to everybody, which is hilarious uh, this person made his grandmother her casket because she asked him to and it's a beautiful video showing how he did it on then I'm going to be listening to this I run on the mornings and this is what I'm listening to on my run this podcast. So those are my recommendations from the week uh, if you grew up with my recommendation, she'll like my newsletter that's exclusive content that doesn't get posted elsewhere featured products and you can see that banner looks just like, did you see this? The similar banner from abby glassberg design. So this is a book I sell from specialty supplies and a pattern and there's no, I won't say anything more about them, but if you click hm they take you to that product and the day I send it out, lots of people buy that exact products because they're like, um and then this is a news a new thing I have here you can sponsor an episode of the podcast people totally do that. Yes, evernote or how you how you keep talking about how do you keep track of this on di dio I used pocket so pocket is great. Um pocket is a free web tool there's a paid service which I haven't upgraded to just use the free version and it gives you a little extension on your browser and it also gives you an email address and you can and it's like ad at pocket dot com or smith on basically what you do is you send articles and links there and they just wait for you um because I am super busy and I never have time to read a lot of things. So here I am this is me at night it's like five thirty at night. I have three kids to doing homework ones drawing four pots on the stove I make get on twitter. This is like this is every friday every week that evening sonic sitting here scrolling through twitter and see like an interesting headline ok, that looks cool like a tutorial about making us patrols oh, but there's no way I'm reading that right now so what I do is I click the link and opens on the phone and I just uh, email it, you see mel it's myself, which was a nightmare, so now I don't do that email at the pocket. And then on tuesday is when I make my newsletter, I sit and open pocket and I read everything, and then I pick a lot of those headlines or total click bait to man, I send myself, like, I'll feel like forty things and awake there, and I'm just so disappointing, like all of these are just click bait, so I end of really sifting through and then finding only the good stuff, but yeah, that's the key for sure, but ever know, people love ever know. I mean, everybody uses different tools, but I think you definitely if you're going to do a curated list, the link, you need a tool. Yeah, the other cool thing about pocket that I just recently started to use this well is that you can put tags so you can you can start to tag things and, you know, that way you can go in sort I mean, searchable and it's searchable. Awesome. So when I was putting together this presentation for you sample, I saved a lot of different articles about email marketing. Because I wanted to do research and learn more about it and those who are not things I was going including my newsletter necessarily there were just really things for me so you send them to pocket that I just search newsletter and then all it just all the noise those come out when I'm like trying to research so when I research articles and things that are you know not going to be in the curated list of links in the newsletter butter for something else I just still from them tall pocket um I love love love pocket yeah I noticed up of the top one of the photographs there yes, like it's not may or may not be one that you've taken though stopped photo yes like this one exactly like the one from this presentation as well. So there are a couple of really great stock photo companies where they have full permission great you full permission to use their photo and anyway they're photos in any way that you want including things that you may potentially profit from so one of them are death to stock photo which their whole mission there why is to get people to not use corny stock photos this great? Why? So they have a premium services well or free service and it's an email newsletter? They send you an email every three weeks with ten new photos taken by professional photographers that you are free to use in any way you like and in fact the cover of the book that you got as part of our stripy ng for this or paying for this class is a death to stock for I mean I just used in the all time and use them for everything and the other one is called unspool ash a similar service a little bit of a different aesthetic but what I do is when they come I saved them all into my eye photo unlike mac and then when I need an image I just look through I photo and I'm like that one exemplifies what I'm trying to say here is like two businesses under one umbrella can I just tell you something? No recently somebody told me that they thought that that image was gloomy they were pretty critical of my image because it was killing me so what? Here's what I'm saying to you is that the more you do the more there is for people to critique and it's just part of it and part of having an online business is there's anonymity so they're not saying it directly to your face there saying it to screen and they don't really believe you exist so it's like you're just going to be you had to be tough to bear the brunt of that because it really you know like I wrote that post at eleven o'clock saturday night because I was the only time that I had I made that image in like four minutes because that was it like I only had time to do that and then to say you know someone says is gloomy gloomy migrate but like you know so that's what I'm saying ok so let's just go down to the very end here so you can just sort of see the end part of my newsletter we saw this we saw the featured products sponsor podcast ok so here I have that little editorial that you can see it's really little so I have an image of myself I do think that that humanizes things a little bit to have your head sean like a casual head shot I think it's nice that there is a human being behind here I do think it helps alleviate a little bit of the vitriol that can come back to you like angry e mails but like you know she's sitting in her office and she wrote this to me like you know, maybe I should you know not the sl anyway I do think it's nice to see your face not everybody is comfortable with that but I think it's nice and then I just you know, I last week I had installed a pop up on my website and I was asking people of my papa plus annoying so I got a lot of e mails I'm asking about that. So people telling me about my pop up and I was like, thank you for the feedback on and then and then I was telling them, this is just about coming to creative lives that are still trying to decide what to wear to creative live. And then I I always say, wishing you were creative and productive day, which fits with my y and then my name I made myself a little signature, which I think is nice because it feels like a letter. And then I have my ps and I said it was my birthday and I had bought a necklace made by meghan allman also another person in this conference this week. And I love it. And so some right little recommendations somethingto by if you want to buy something fun and then I have I think this is nice. I added this. I saw it on somebody else is the letter, and I really liked that separate in mind. Do you know someone who might like this newsletter? Forward it to them? They can subscribe right here, and that link will take them to this subscribe. Um, sometimes people feel like weird about sharing content, like forgetting. For example, if you buy a pdf sewing pattern which is my customer base is like a big no no about forgetting that document because you paid for it and it was nine dollars and you can't afford it to somebody because then you're sharing illegally so it's like sharing music you know, illegally on the online and so there's like a big no no and so to get over that feeling about my from my customer base just like totally okay afford this though like go ahead and for it it I don't know if people do but but you can and then I have my social media links um down at the bottom and on my actual email is my address a swell which doesn't show up on here but it does on my really email um and then you can unsubscribe right here her a front describing so uh that is what mine looks like and it looks this is a recipe it looks like this every single week just with different content you always know when it's going to come you always know what time what day and what it's gonna look like maybe you hate some parts of it you skip those parts one problem that had recently something to think about I've had people on subscribe and say they'll fill in a little white a joint subscribing they'll say, well, I read your block online and so I don't need your newsletter because it's the same it's the same content and what I think is happening is they don't understand don't realize that there's more that there's this so they're just seeing you know when you open your email you can see like a little preview and they're just seeing that and they're not opening it to know there's more and the real meat of it is this the review the recommendations and so they're missing that so something to think about right you're always complete this stuff nothing works perfectly so that's something for me tito consider down the road like maybe I should move this up or shifted around or just highlight maybe a table of contents like what else is below would help I don't know sending an introductory thing to people do you say anything about it in there that you're getting unique content? Maybe I could update that I do I honestly haven't looked at mine in a lot of time but I do send through an auto responder on male champ which right now you could only get on male chimp once you're in the paid level of male trump but when you subscribed to my newsletter you do get a little, uh welcome and it shows you around and sets expectations but maybe there I could emphasize you know there is this curated list of length so be sure to look to go down and get it all yeah that's a good idea yeah so you know this thing these things can always be tweaks and I just I think that that's important to realize like you don't have to have the solution on day one and even if it's working well I could always work better and the wonderful thing about the web but you can always fix stuff you know you can always go back and added it and change it and make it better it's not print where that's it you know, so I love that about its flexible um great. So are there any sort of thoughts or questions or ideas about content? You have ideas about what you might put in your own email newsletter now that you've thought about content a little bit? So I actually noticed a couple of weeks ago that you have a signature in yours and it made me think that where I'm trying tio develop a relationship and I have a really unique signature that it would be a great thing to add to mine yeah and that would be an authentic signature my signature I made through some sort of online signature maker that's not actually my signature my handwriting is not nearly that good I don't draw my days that way either, but I think a real signature would be even better so yeah, I can I think it humanizes and it makes it feel like a real letter you know in people's response when they when I reply to their replies they're always like oh I'm so surprised you answered like they thought I had seven people standing behind me yes people are always very pride they're very surprised that she right back aa lot I mean not always but they're very surprised that it's really you writing back and it means something to them teo and they're often is an assumption that there's a lot of people behind that's when it's really just you and I think that's where there's a misunderstanding around like that a lot of that criticism comes from them thinking that there's a whole staff of people there and it's really just you and so when you can kind of break down that barrier be like I'm doing my best I'm going to fix it you know? But it's really just me here that can help to go a long way toward sympathy you know? The other thing is I had not thought of curating the length and I do post a lot of stuff using buffer to facebook because I don't really want to interact there so I post articles instead but such a small fraction of people are actually seeing those articles that I could be using them that's a good point in both places right right and I also liked what you said earlier about needing links to share and using e mails as a way to get those so we all need links to share on facebook on twitter, you know things to share, good, relevant content to share with our fans and subscribing to a bunch of really good email newsletters. Khun give you those lengths as well, yeah, so yes, actually, from, like, the opposite side of of what you guys were just discussing with, you know, people being surprised, that it's just you, yeah, I'm always surprised when someone points out to me that it doesn't have to just be me, you know, that I could ask, you know, four friends who may a bike related things to provide a short blurb or a commentary that I could include in the newsletter like, oh, I would have to do absolutely everything way, really wanna be, how did call you? And you can have, like regulars, if you don't, if you're going to run out of connections over time, you know, you can always be like, you know, this is this person's irregular, but it drives contents, there's their drives traffic to their site as well. So, like on fungus splitter, he will say, like, this is the person he's a musician, this is side and he's recommending that you listen to the song and here's what he says and he's like has a little quote about the song and why I picked it s so that's a win win win I mean it all yeah and you don't have to come up with all that content yourself totally nice to collaborate with every with other people and cross promote you know it has it works falls so yeah one more question on you talked about I think it's great that you are acknowledging what people are writing you in terms of here's what I heard from you we did have a question about the pop ups when did you hear from people the baba when we talk about list building in the next session we're going to talk about someone building techniques and pop ups there's one of them on dh so right it's controversial pop ups um uh I will say the short answer is that if they're polites people are ok with them and polite means that they don't cover the entire page so you are on a site for two seconds and then the whole pages blacked out and all you can see us this pop up if it's not that if it slides thin and it's small that's part of being played and then if it is easily closed it's a clear x that you can hit and it goes away and it goes way permanently doesn't reappear that's nice is planus on dh people also liked it if it doesn't come back and if it's smart, so if it has cookies and remembers that you've been there and you've seen it already, they would especially like it because it advertises for my newsletter to sign up for my newsletter if they're already subscribers, if it wouldn't show them, I have yet to find a way to make that happen. So male chimp doesn't have a super smart pop up where it's like, I remember your email address and your cookie, and therefore I won't show it to you. They don't have that yet, but maybe they will down the road. But yes, oh, so being smart and discreet and easily closed are things that people like, but we'll talk that pop up effectiveness later on that's great and I think probably looking at your own reactions to what you feel when you see different town a cz well, all of this is really measuring your own feelings and noticing them and tracking them and then implementing things that you would want right, putting yourself in the shoes of the subscriber.