Lessons

Lesson Info

Software is the Solution

You're going to be fending an email to these people, can't you just do it? And gmail, that's, that's a good question, right? You know when you're communicating with your child soccer team? Yes, you can just do it and gmail, because there's ten names on the west and it's not overwhelming or difficult to dio when it comes to your business, the answer is no, you can't just do this in gmail for one. If you send a mass email of, you know, one hundred, three hundred five hundred names on gmail, gmail will freeze your account for a period of time because they identify that is you being a spammer? You're sending too many e mails at once, so if not set up, gmail has set up a personal email not set up for this sort of math emailing where you're sending I send my email it to seven thousand people every wednesday, I can't do it and gmail so it's not just that, like mechanically it's not set up for that, but it's also not set up for it toe look nice, you know, like, if you I had somebody email me r...

ecently and she was saying, I just can't figure out how to make the email look pretty, how do I put pictures? Above the words or next the words and get my logo and my colors and all of that in there and I'm like you need software, you can do this and your regular email justice it's not gonna work it's not set up for that. Um the other thing is that you can't track what's happening with those e mails, so when you send out an email newsletter using software, email newsletter software, you're able to see the results so you can see who's opening it how many times they've opened it, what they've clicked on, how many times they clicked on each thing and that feedback is really useful and you miss it if you send it through gmail you're missing a lot of data points that you could be looking at so you can't make it pretty you really can't send it to everybody because they'll shut your countdown and you can't see what's happening behind the scenes and there's another reason too, so there's no way for people to unsubscribe, right? So eventually pottery barn teen I'm goingto unsubscribe from your constant deluge okay on guy will be very happy to know that I can just hit the little blue unsubscribed I mean we've all done it right I'm a serial on subscriber so I'm like, I don't want all this stuff and I just unsubscribe and it's gone and you send it through your you know regular email account there's no way for them to unsubscribe and that talk about making people angry there's no better way to make people angry then happened feel like they're stuck on your left then they can't get off okay, so you can't manage this in a spreadsheet you can't manage this on gmail and not only do not want to but it's actually against the law in some ways. So in two thousand three there was a piece of legislation passed called the can spam act oh and it's basically to regulate spammers so that there there will be fewer of them fewer not that is not completely effective but you certainly don't want to be a spammer when it comes teo the law and you also don't want to be person steve that's a spammer much less right obviously you're not going to breaking the law but you don't even want to be perceived this one so you want to be sort of better than better, you know you really want to do it right? So here's what you can't do in an email you can't according to the can spam act, you can't have a misleading subject line so you can't promise something that isn't going to be in there of course you don't want to write your craft based business we're doing this right don't do that you need in a nop doubt option and any of us who have gotten an email we all know that we want that opt out option and you have to have it so email software is going to give you that automatically it's super easy to set that up okay you need a valid reply email so that's part of the can spam act is that when somebody hits reply it actually has to go to a really email address s o is going somewhere and I always reassuring we'll talk about this later too but I was reassured my subscribers it's going through me right it's not going to do not reply at abbey glass and burns outcome it's going to may like stand it if you hit reply it goes right in my inbox just me and I'll right back to you on dh then the other thing that you need is a postal mailing address and this this trips people up right you do you actually have to have a postal mailing address when you create your template in the email software it will have a spot for you to input your email your postal mailing address so what do you do there you can use appeal box if you want to set up undress that's not if you're a home based business and you want to set up an address that's not at your home you can use a p o box you can use your home address you can use somebody else that you know you're has been your sister whatever his office address um if you don't want to use your address but you do need to have an address and people you'll see people try to get around debt, they'll put in a fake address so you'll get you'll get an email from something that's like a total clearly a fake address not really legal to do that you really do need an address yeah, so perhaps is expected we do have a lot of questions that at me in about this sort of legal aspect and let me know if us have questions as well you go ahead and start do you even need a block west granddaughter? Would you just go straight to the newsletter or is it good question? So could you have a newsletter without a blogged? Yes, you definitely could not blocking is not for everyone, it really isn't and the longer had done it the more I realized it is a lot of work to have a blogged it's I always think of my block like an open mouth that needs to be fed and it's just like waiting there like great I mean even right now I'm thinking friday got it like I have to have like I published monday wednesday friday and I'm like, what am I you know, I have to have something there so it's not for everyone it's just not and I do think you can have a really good business without one and one way to do that would be to have a newsletter instead yeah, great question yeah right so I have a question from beth what anders who says I haven't are assessed on my word press blawg and I have over eight hundred people who are signed up to get my blood broad question delivered to them as an email can I migrate those people to my male chimp list or is that illegal? I only have about eighty of those people on my email list that I such a good question, right? So what do you do when you've got our email and now you're ready to shift over on and I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to tend to give you legal advice in my opinion, if somebody has given you their email address, you can shift them overto what? So you're setting them something you're just going to be sending them something slightly different from the recipients perspective it's only just looks a little different it's like oh you reform at it like it doesn't really feel one hundred percent different there's still getting something from you, so I would say that what she could do it to take the lists and just migrated and then merge so you have eight hundred from our ss you have eighty that she's got as like a email really mellis now you have eight hundred eighty on a single list and you go forward from there that's what I did when I switched I had are assessed email I didn't have an email newsletter for many years like the first eight years of blogging and when I just had our assess and when I did shift that's what I did I had like three hundred names on there and I just took him all and I just merged them into male chimp and started like the next week I was like oh, you know I have a new thing yeah yeah what you never want to do is add names to your list when somebody hasn't given you permission so this happened to me very recently actually woman who it has across based business started an email newsletter who very exciting for her on dh she I ended up on the list and I had never signed up and I did email her back and say I'm sorry so glad for you this is terrific it's great move but I'm not sure how I got on the list and she said, oh, well I just added some people from the sewing industry who I thought would enjoy my newsletter to my less to get started and I think you know, I know that is tempting I have listened I've been there when I'm like I want her to sign up, you know? And but you can't you just can't do that what you can do though if then a regular email from gmail or wherever to those people and say, hey guys, listen, I'm so excited I started it a really email newsletter and I'd love to have your support please sign up if you're interested and then give them a link and I think I would have clicked over and find out because I'm always curious I love to see what people are doing and support them but you can't just add names so I don't think she was very happy with me, but I had a feller anyway. Yeah, well, I think that's really important to know because we did have a quest shin from mar curious about if she could just add people and asked them to unsubscribe if they didn't want to be there and I think legally you probably can but I don't think you should yeah, I don't think anyone's going to come after you if you did that but in all honesty like we were talking about being different from pottery barn right? We aren't pottery barn we aren't this massive corporation for most of us we are a team of one we might be a team of three but we are not some huge place we are we're going to do things differently, and we're going to do things better and so that being affiliated with our business is really something that people incorporate is part of their identity as part of sort of what they're supporting in the world. It's not so so even though you could sure, like, take your whole customer base and just stick him in there and make them all on described, you're going to make people talk about making people annoyed like it's sleazy just don't displeasing, yeah, and even if they are your past customers, it's still e you know, I wouldn't do it. I just I exactly like I don't think and if I were one of your customers, I know I wouldn't want that, so I wouldn't do what I don't want. Yeah, that's a really good distinction. One more quick question. Yeah, because I had a couple people ask and vote if you guys didn't realize that even vote on people's questions by clicking on the little blue up arrow on. So the question is about google, and I'm sorry about the mailing address because some people were concerned about putting their personal home email address out there. You mentioned a p o box with the specific question is, could you just put your city and state legal or you do you have to have that as far as I understand, you really need to have a full mailing address which is really it's it is tricky it's something that you know I don't really have great advice about how to handle I see a lot of people just to city and state or the field where it says your street address half but he felt in they fill in something that's clearly fake okay um I can't imagine that that's kosher but that's what people dio yeah I think legally release but do it right ok, so the p o boxes this p o boxes the solution but renting appeal boxes a few hundred dollars a year and when you're a tiny business I know it's expensive, you know? So yeah did you have a question? You sort of a parallel question to the physical postal address? Um for years I have heard from people who think that it's I think it's possible to use popper I'm up tohave like for instance, with my business tireless hearts if I could have tireless, you know, info it tireless hearts or something like that that would then dumped into my personal e mails so that I wouldn't be giving my personal email out oh yeah customers but every time I try to get some person who's more technically savvy than myself to show me their look, I'm not really sure how you do this, you know, like yeah, come here. No overtime, no question is like, you know, you have your regular personal email address that your mom has your friends have, and then you have a business email address, but you can kind of have that just automatically forward. So you don't have to check all these different again. Yes, that is very possible to do and it's often done through your domain so that your domain comes with a certain number of email addresses that you can do and you could do hello at while she naps or whatever. Yes, exactly. And that way people consider tio responded, more professional. Frankly, tio people, I think it looks polished. I don't have one, but it looks polished. Somebody just told me recently, why don't you have them? Like I haven't done yet, but it does look good and I think it's a good idea and it has done through your domain that I know that part, but I don't know I'm not a super technically when it comes to female, but yeah, but you can get it. You can get it set up. It is possible. Yeah, that is because I have mine. I'll dump into my personal account as well when you reply to make sure replying from the right account because I'd really like to a business one and I'll be like crap I applied for my personal and e I don't mind someone getting my personal one but I don't think it looks profession right? So I've got quite a few times doing that yeah that's a good point and be careful okay all right cool. All right, so that's the can spam ac all right, so when you use email software the first thing that you get is caught a double up in and you've all been through this you might not have sort of realized what it wass but a double opt in basically means you visit my sight you see the little box and put your email address you put it in there and you hit subscribe a few minutes later you get an email and it says hey, thanks for signing up can you confirm that you really want to be on my list and you hit the button? Click the link whatever and then it takes you two pages as your subscribed so that's double two times he did it on the site and you did it from your in box that's a double opt in that is the healthiest way to grow a list it is not required by law but it is a healthy way the healthiest way to grow a list because you are making sure that the people on your list want to be on your list. That means when you are sending something to those people, you don't need to feel guilty, they double opted in and when they unsubscribed later and they're like, I don't know how I got this lift, you know, they did do it consciously, they hit it twice. Ok, now there are ways around it within a weber and male champ and other software programs, which allow you to do a single opt in, so they put their address in on your site subscribe, and they're already subscribed. They don't have the double, for example, in a weber they have at sea integration so that every time somebody buy something for your tea shop it, send them an email to say you want to subscribe to my list, they hit it once, and they're subscribed that's a single opt in so there are ways around it with male chimp has papal integration it's the same thing any time somebody uses paypal to pay you? It asked them. They hit once and they're in that's a single opt in, but I think a double opt in is the healthiest way to grow a list. It is the strongest list you can have, and what you don't want to do here is build a hugely inflated list. That builds your ego but not your business so you don't need twenty thousand subscribers if only one thousand of them are opening the email because you're paying once you get above a certain threshold you're paying for every subscriber you're paying in a male champ or a weber one of these companies you don't need the numbers you what you need are the rial folks who love you okay so when you do sign up for email software you'll get that option for the double opt in and that's what you want you're going to give them away to unsubscribe email software is also going to give you a template so the woman who e mailed me and ask me how do I make it pretty easy drag and drop templates don't need to know how to code don't need to know html see affects all that stuff you're gonna drag and drop and upload your photos and stickem right and so you get nice accomplice and you're going to get the analytics so that you can see what's happening what's effective which subject line really entice chur subscribers and all of that good stuff so that's why software sports paying for ok you need software for sure so here are some software options we've mentioned a bunch male chimp is the one I use and the one on moto familiar with I used it only because a lot of the e mails I was getting from companies small businesses like my own seemed to use male champion notice their little logo. Now that you're tuned into newsletters, when you get one and you scroll to the bottom, you'll see a little male chimp logo on some of them, and I like I like that, but businesses I was subscribing to her like the e mails they were sending, so I was like, ok, meltem seems good. The other nice thing about male chimp is it is free up until two thousand subscribers, so in the beginning there, so brilliant in the beginning, when you before you have two thousand subscribers, you can play around and it's totally free, and what I find happens with a lot of businesses, is they? I kind of don't get serious about having a newsletter when they're under that two thousand subscriber threshold. Then when they go over it and mailed from search, charging them twenty five dollars a month and then thirty dollars a month and then I pay mailed from seventy five dollars a month right now, it's nine hundred something a year. Once you end up a starting to pay them, people are like, I got to make the moves to the right like now what it's expected because they got you right, they got your list, I mean, you can export your lists and move it so if down the road you were like, I hate them, I'm moving, you can take your whole list out, get it as ah spreadsheet and just, you know, take it with you wherever you want to go, but once you got that big list and your start paying, I think that kind of gives the kick in the pants sometimes where you're like. All right, I'm going to pay for this, so I'm going to send it more than once every six months, I got to do something to make it work. Um, so tiny letter is owned by male chimp that's, a division of male chimp and it's a little more pared down. Ben male chimp, male chimp has options for businesses that are tiny, like mind two businesses that are massive and everywhere in between so it can be sometimes overwhelming and tiny letter is a little bit sort of less options, but still very nice. I subscribe to a lot of really good, tiny letters so that's something to look into a weber is a little more of a business focused, a software solution. They do have xy integration, which male chimp doesn't offer, but again it's the single opt in so but it's out there. And madden amy's, I would say, with male champion for small craft businesses are the two bigger contenders and the field. Matt mimi is also a good one, a really good one to look into, so you might want to just look at pricing, um, how intuitive it feels to you when you get in to the interface, whether you're immediately frustrated or whether you're, you know, like I in two hours, I could get this going, you know, so you get in there and kind of see what you think. So those are some of the software solutions that I recommend. There are other ones, too. Aa lot of them are for bigger businesses, though. I'm really focused today on businesses like mine that are little on dh can do this in a way that is sustainable over the long term.