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Email Marketing: Biggest Mistakes

Go to the source people who leverage quiet power go to the source, they talk to people where they're at, and the best place that you could do that in mass is by email. Yes, I am always going to get better results when I go, and I talk directly to one of you, right? I can have a sales conversation with any of you individually, and I'm going to get phenomenal results. You could get phenomenal results, that's also going to the source, but the other way you can go to the source is by going to people's first place on the internet, you're familiar with the concept of first place, second place, third place starbucks wants to be the third place for everybody, right? That when I used to work for borders, we used to want to be the third place for everyone. Your first place is home, your second places work your third places where you'd rather be when you're not at home or work. Okay, so you have the opportunity as a marketer, as a sales person, as an idea person to enter people's first place on t...

he internet that's email what do yu dio on the internet first probably check email, even though you probably know you productivity wise, you shouldn't. All right go to the source get people where their ad how me not only do you check her e mail every day how many times a day do you check her e mail okay, so we clearly all need to get this group of productivity class to um but you can absolutely find people where they're spending the most time online right in their in box that's the power of email marketing gas tiffany so I tonight I just might ha ha and I think you'll confirm this is that I blogger also and itin teo because I'm afraid of email all my good stuff goes on the block but like what this is telling me is that it it's backwards like all my really good stuff should be on email on the block can them feed into getting people to sign up for may email us yes oh this is great! I'm so glad you brought this up because I wasn't going to talk about this and we need to talk about this email marketing is a content delivery channel just like facebook just like twitter would you ever put a new block post up and not posted on facebook or twitter? So why don't you send it out by a e mail? Well, I actually like people can subscribe to my blogged via e mail and I try to really push that and so what it's done is help me make sure my block poster like super tight like I always say, is it worth sending an email after someone to put this block post up? But I have some people on my list who who were just getting like my newsletter and not getting the blogged s so let's unpack that a newsletter, a newsletter the old fashioned kind that looks like this header body sidebar stuff to click on cool links uh, how long do you think it would take to consume all of that content? Fourteen seconds it's you know, I like to read this stuff to click on for your business, your side about me cool length I found this stuff on the internet this week. This is a waste of time. The waste of time you were putting this together. How long does this take you to dio I hear forty five minutes I hear ours and I hear people tell me that don't send e mail more often because it takes too long to put their newsletter together bull hockey this is a waste of time. This is a waste of time don't do this. Stop this now send out your block post wait let's, look at what that looks like I'm going for visual visual effects here how long does that take to consume? And the only thing that you've consumed is something you actually want to read the other thing is not only a waste of your time, but it's a waste of your readers time. And if you get stuck with a reputation for wasting your readers time, you're wasting that forty three hundred percent r a y this converts this makes people happy. So I would suggest getting rid of the newsletter and making sure that every piece of content you write and post on your blogged is email a ball that's worthy of email. So I write one block post a week and that block post goes out via email every single week. Except when I'm feeling lazy. Just not often you might be surprised to hear uh, so and this is what it looks like. Header, block, post called action it's. Very simple. You copy and paste from your word press you pasted in to the beautiful editor's that we have now you make it look prettier. Maybe you change. You might change a couple things because maybe, you know better. Who's on your email list, then who's reading your blogged. Maybe make something a little more specific. Maybe you would just the call to action at the bottom. Maybe they called action on your blogged is click here to get my free guide where they're going to give you their email address in your email that call the action is hey my new programme is coming up hop over here to find out the information on how to join us for the tele class or get on the list to get this product first that could be your call to action by a female but this is much less the waist of your people's time it's much more what they want to receive from you if you're an information marketer ifyou're a content marketer this is what works and it also takes no time no extra time to prepare terra moneymaking millennials brings up an interesting point saying that they try to customize their email to explain why you need to head back over to my blawg toe listen is that the right that's also a really, really great way to do it so in that case you're looking at more like intro and then called action where the called action is the blogger post that's also fantastic especially if your website is really well optimized for sales if you've got things on your blogged things on your website that people can buy or things that they might want to check out that's a really great way to do it it's just just like I was talking about lulu lemon training certain behaviors it's a great way to train behaviors from my press, my preference and it is only my preference is delivering a whole block post because I feel like my people my people are readers sometimes they need to sit on something a little bit longer and so if they're going to sit on it because it's lengthy or because it requires some thinking I feel like I want them to have it all right away because then it's just a unready email it's not an unready email that also requires a click that make sense so that's me for my style and my audience your style and your audience might dictate something different but I really really, really want everyone to focus on boiling this down. Teo it's most simple level sasha well, I followed your advice to do that about a year ago and it's true the flow of it is just easier because it's a simple process and I think it's the simplest the most sophisticated email marketers seemed to say that oh it should look really simple like a friend's email so it's just sort of throwing in the text and making the link is clickable it's possible? Yeah yeah because you don't even need the header and all this this kind of garbage you don't need the colors you don't need the fancy fonts, you going absolutely send it in a simple email would wouldn't really recommend a plain text email anymore that was kind of a thing for a while sending plain text emails I still think you want a rich text html email it's just that you can delete the header just hit delete you can turn the background white just go in and design the template to make it white and then just have you know your father be regular old aerial make your lines a little on the short side and now you've got a super simple thing to look at that just your content is front and center and we're all content marketers you know some of our our makers are going to be more visual content marketers and of course a postcard just like what megan was talking about with anthropology a postcard email is one of the most effective maker style emails product style emails but for an information marketer words rule or words with a click to a video like that's what I was sending out the last week while we were preparing for this right? I was going to say this is the problem and here's the problem I'm addressing in this video click here to access the video right whitney so I have had a block for six plus years I have on ly ever marketed the email sign up to receive the block posts when they're published, so the only thing that these people have ever gotten is a one hundred percent copy of a block post it's gone up and it's the full tax, huh? Now that I'm hearing how important it is for me to be marketing to my list I want to start writing emails to them but these are people that expressly chose to sign up for this list because they thought it was going to be getting them block posts now I feel like I'm going to be doing something different I'm starting to wonder should I create a different lest and how does my message to them I know that you signed up for my block post but I'm going to start selling to you now okay? You don't have to message to them like that you definitely don't need to start a second list what people signed up for is to hear from you bottom line people signed up to hear from you um we know they're signing up to receive log posts we know you've never sold to them before but the thing about what is it? Sixty six percent of people would prefer to receive commercial communications via email were used to email being a commercial platform so just because you haven't been sending emails that air commercial in nature doesn't mean they they're not expecting it now that's not to say that you may not get a few complaints that you may not get someone subscribes you may get some people hitting the spam button when technically they shouldn't be but by and large, by and large, you are overthinking it, which is what we tend to do with email marketing, right? We think about worst case scenario instead of best case scenario and truly the best case scenario in your worst case scenario are not that bad because the people who I don't want to hear your sales pitch who aren't interested in you creating something, you know, more compelling marketing or more obvious marketing are people who are never gonna buy from you. They're probably people who would never recommend you for a speaking gig there people who are not going to talk about you to their boss because they probably don't know that you're actually in business for yourself, so let them unsubscribe. That's, what it's there for I had the same issue is and I know there are people who are just there for my writing, and I have the desire to just send my writing, too, because I don't always want to sell right? So it's like with these schedules is like, oh my god, I'm never going to send them just something that I want to write because there'll be so many e mails that are leading up tio the thing, so I mean there's, I guess one of my resistance is to email marketing, even though I do it is the sense that it's obvious like, oh, you're saying some interesting content, but then there's some link at the end, which is sort of a bargain that is struck with the consumer and they get that and they're smart, but sometimes, you know, I just want to share what I'm thinking or sure I do that all the time tonight dio I d'oh, it's just weird, though it's a little weird. The majority of the emails I send most of the time, they don't even have a call to action. Sometimes they have a little very passive box at the bottom that says, hey, did you know, kick start loves you get everything that I've ever created and it's just here and it's like thirty nine dollars a month, and maybe you should think about that, but the block post isn't related to it. It's not leading into that called action it's. Just a little thing that lives on the bottom of of my plane might like my main emails, so I'm actively launching maybe three times a year on dh. I realized that, you know, obviously my businesses mature, it's, sustainable, and you may be launching more often than that, but when it really comes down to it, if you were to look at a calendar and look at the amount of time that you're actually going to be launching or actively marketing actively selling and then compare that with the amount of time that you could just send whatever willy nilly it's I mean it's hardly a comparison ideally, whitney, did you have something else? I just wanted to say that I think that my emails have come across very differently than I would make an email newsletter, for instance, because my block posts are largely not self promotional, they're largely what I'm thinking right now, here's a life experience I just had and it's never at the end turn around. Teo, don't you wish this was you or anything of that nature? I've just never done that that's not to say that I shouldn't start now, but I think that it will be jarring to people who start to receive e mails where I'm clearly trying to get something back from them when I have never over six years and some seven hundred fifty block posts ever asked anything off them, right? So one thing I want to reframe for you is that you're not trying to get something from them you have created an offer that your truck that you are presenting to them so that you could be of service to them all right there happens to be a price tag related to that, but hey that's, how it works right you have given of yourself over seven hundred and fifty blogged posts there's no problem with asking for an exchange now summary yeah actually there is a need for clarification around some of the numbers here why did ninety one percent of consumers check their email daily but there's on ly a thirty to forty percent open raked you talk about the open re yeah have you talked about open right people don't open all their email how much email do you open? I'd be lucky if I opened thirty first I think that it's why that happens one thing to keep in mind is that it's not thirty there's it's not that it's on ly third of a percent of your list that's on ly ever opening your email there is different people different open different things right? So you read a headline and it's going to feel relevant two one thirty to forty percent of your audience then you're going to write a headline that feels relevant to a different thirty to forty percent of your audience I would say and this is a go this is a complete guesstimate and not actually based on real data, so please don't hold me to this but I would say that probably about I was in a sixty percent of your list depending on how old and how big it isthe opens maybe one out of every three e mails you send so if that gives you an idea of how many times you need to message something, I mean that's one way you can extrapolate out that data that's how many times need to message something to make sure people are actually seeing at the majority of your audience are actually seeing it so yeah, the same reason you don't open every email is this same reason you haven't open rate of thirty to forty percent if you have an open rate of thirty, forty percent, you're doing really really well that's great goal depending on your list sides the smaller your list ideally, the more people open it that's not always true but it's generally true, the bigger your list, the smaller your open rates go down. I mean, I even know the statistics I have for male chimp on my list is that industry averages about fifteen percent. I get twice that that's really, really good for the size of body size list I have and for how old that list iss s o I know we've been sharing a lot, but this one more opportunity to share here what keeps you from emailing your audience? Maur often insure that on twitter you can share it in the chat room used at terra until your terror alive and will be able to see it then what keeps you from emailing your audience maur often we addressed a big one, which is both time and kind of annoyance with format what are a couple others just like rapid fire? Atsuko unsubscribed unsubs christ is a great great example when people unsubscribed from your list, it could be demoralizing and so then you don't want that to happen again and so you don't send an e mail here's the thing and this is actually a fact the more often you send email, the less people unsubscribe, it's, true it's true dan zarella did the math on that or did the research on that more often you send email, the less people unsubscribe because they're expecting your email. What happens is that people get a sign up for your list and then it takes two weeks or three weeks to hear from you. Do you remember what you did on the internet two or three weeks ago? Because I sure don't. And so then I hear from this crazy atsuko person in my in box, and I'm like, I don't know anyone named asuka. Well, I do, but most people don't know who is this crazy atsuko person that must be spam there are e mails that I get from you maker's especially right now because I used to write a blogger in the hand made space and so I know that back in the day I was signing up from to get e mails from makers well my maker people I know you are notorious for not sending out e mails and so now I get e mails from makers from product designers who have not sent and sent an email in two years since I've been active in that space and I'm like I did not sign up for this and I'm sure that's true of some of them because there are people who do that when they shouldn't but I am also sure that I forgot that I said I'd done for a whole bunch of them but I will once I unsubscribed from all of that unless I remember unless it's a product that's relevant to me and I remember who that person was or why I signed up for that list so absolutely I understand that and the data proves you wrong yes actually this is a personal question but I have a block to and what I ended up doing was when you subscribe for my list I put it on an auto responders sequins so that you get at least a a voice in a conversation for seven days and then it will go on to the weekly what are your thoughts about how to get your audience going so that they're hearing from you um because I found that that was actually pretty pretty successful yeah, absolutely so we're going to talk specifically about that in the next segment but I want to say that auto responders are great way tio build engagement with your audience right off the bat, email, email subscribers are most engaged in, like about the first three months they're on your list. After that three month mark engagement drops off radically, so if you can create an auto respond er that gets people up to speed in that first week to two weeks, three weeks, you're gonna be in a much better position to make them an offer or to just keep them on your list to begin with, because people will also unsubscribe heavily in that period as well. And so if they don't see why you're there, if they feel like they're not part of the conversation, if they feel like they haven't been welcomed into your community, then you're going to lose them in that period a swell. So yes, absolutely, I think auto responders are a great way to go with that, and we're going to actually apply our launch plans to an auto responders siri's in the next segment. Yeah, just one or two more reasons why we don't email are less more often, sasha well, if I want to say something that's different from the launch schedule, that's like in the category of like this is just something I feel like sharing that isn't strategic and I'm like no you know don't because that takes up space that needs to be used for strategic emailing yeah so it's kind of second guess yourself about your business purposes with email maybe yeah and I feel like, oh, I have to focus on the funnel sort of emails that air leading somewhere versus just sort of what I genuinely feel like sharing yeah, I think the thing with email is don't overthink it and if you're genuinely moved to share something to your list you're going to be better served by genuinely sharing something to your list then by sticking to the pattern or sticking to the formula okay, so go where the spirit moves you just because terrorist says you should do challenge, expand, analyze, deliver and it should go out over this period of time or whatever doesn't mean that if the spirit moves you shouldn't send it out yeah did I see one more hand? Tiffany well for me and now now I have realized this is a mistake but it's that I have not been inactive selling cycle for a long time because I was a maternity leave and ramp and now I'm ramping back up and so I haven't been emailing cause I haven't had anything to sell but really I should have been emailing this whole time because I don't just email when I have something to sell a e mail all the time in that way when it's time to announce something it's not a big deal and learn afraid of my e mails right exactly exactly so as I'm e mailing all the time weekend week out most of the time it's not that active selling period it's not an act of marketing period and then when I start an active marketing period, what I'm doing is planting the seed of an idea planning this seed of my key insight essentially and um it doesn't come across as oh she's starting to market something now it comes across as oh that's a really cool idea I hope she keeps working on that right? And then I do keep working on that and then I do it zamora and I build anticipation and I build the expectancy around the launch and then I announce something and sure I'm you know I'm sneak peking and previewing things and mentioning stuff along in there and I'm sure a lot of people know what I'm doing tio and I'm not saying this is crazy voodoo magic, right? But the same time you do kind of yu get t sneak in there in a really positive way you can't it's exciting as someone who gets your emails I like it when you do that because I'm like ooh what's she working on jack's right because I want to hear from you yeah yes yes and I'm setting the stage first something new a new idea a new key insight a new product whatever it might be just a new round of something yeah absolutely all right let's move on from here and talk about it well yes why is email marketing the most important part of the sales cycle? I think you guys could answer that for me at this point right email marketing is the most important part of the sale cycle because it's the only place you can be absolutely sure people are going to see it the only place you can be sure people are absolutely going to see your messaging you can't be sure they're going to see it on facebook you can't be sure they're going to see it on twitter you can be sure they're going to see the sign on the corner or the sign in your window email marketing is how you make sure you're getting in touch with people if you're not connecting with them you're not going to sell to them you're essentially selling to an empty room email marketing is how you're sure there are people in the seats when you're delivering your pitch okay? Yes jessica is there anything we should know or do differently because the gmail filter thing here that they're people who don't see it because it's in the promotional tab yes oh I am not an expert on the ins and outs of that stuff I could tell you though from my perspective that I have seen maybe a percentage or to drop in open rates since that feature rolled out last year, but I haven't seen seen it become a problem. One thing that I do do is try and tie social media into what is my more important messaging that happens on the block and an email so that I do think people are looking out for my emails mohr looking out for a new block post mawr because they've seen these ideas in social media it's not a perfect fix but creating a much more a consistent, coherent conversation I think is going to help people go looking for stuff what one behavior just anecdotally that I've heard about the gmail promotions tab is that people are actually engaging mohr with commercial male they may not see it is quickly they may not open everything, but they know that when they're entering their promotions tab that the emails they're our promotional emails which just means they're in the mindset of thinking about purchasing something or thinking about a product thinking about an opportunity right? So really that can only play in your favour sure it stinks that perhaps less people are going to see your email or open your email but truthfully for just for my own experience I haven't seen uh much of a drop it all drummer can you discuss of the segmenting oven email list because actually carol s says that she's on your list but she didn't actually here about the e mails from this week she was assuming that maybe she wasn't on the right list how does how does that work segmenting and talking having certain conversations with certain parts of your list or not yeah so I can't speak teo why she wouldn't have gotten these emails unless they're going to spam which is always the possibility especially as your list gets older and bigger this is just the nature of the thing unfortunately but I think the general the general discussion we could have though is if you do have a segment at list minted list some people do and maybe you can explain what that is yeah eso the visuals might help here I've got it why not use it? So for instance on my list I do have multiple list so for instance there is a list that is the interest list for ten thousand feet okay but my main list is just the terra gentilly blogged list and these are the people that get basically all of the messages that I put out within this the segmentation that I have is interest based so if I do a webinar it's hella class I will take I will create a separate list first and invite people to that separate list that's just the way you have to do in a mail champ it's going to be different and other in other places but what I do is create a separate list just so that list might be on let's say I'm doing a tele class on blogging I haven't done that in forever but you never know so blogging so I invite people to this blogging list when this event is over I take these people who signed up for this and I move them over here but I create a hidden segment on my list that says these people are interested in blogging okay or I have another hidden segment that is for all the kickstart labs members so that they don't get so that I can unsee those people if I'm sending out a message that says hey joined kickstart labs right or so that I and so that I can also send them their weekly member update and so that they still get my block post because obviously my block post a relevant to them too it's just much easier to manage it this way especially in something like male chip in some of the you know maur automated robust systems like entre port or infusion soft this is a little bit more built in in male chimp you have to be kind of savvy but it's all there it's such a excuse me it's such a great system so in general, the emails that I send out on a weekly basis or like this week where was literally four times this week, I want you to watch gosh darn it, I was sent out to the whole tara gentilly blogged list. I also send out an email to the ten thousand feet this list that says, hey, if you're thinking about doing ten thousand feet, you really should tune in for it at least a little bit of creative live because I want you to make sure that you dig my style, right? If you're not going to follow this, if you don't like me, if this isn't doing it for you, but you really shouldn't side up for ten thousand feet, right? So this is so yeah, that's that's kind of how I do it. Yeah, and so I just I mean, I have maybe six or eight different segments of different times people have come for me come to me from different places sometimes that would do like ajay vso, like there was a webinar did with and some boy love. And so that was on digital merchandising, like thinking about how you convince zhu aly represent you're positioning essentially or, you know, yeah, you're positioning and your target market, and so I've got like an and some oil off top. Tag here. And so all those people, if I sent if I had an idea that was really targeted to that group to that interest, I could segment them out there's other different ways you can do this. But this is a it's, a great way to do it. But yet great. But then many others did come here from your list fresh start the business bar they all found out about it. And, uh, carol s actually found out about it through creative live. So that's how she was here because she's been here before so it's so it's all cross and like you said, social media and actually enhancing the message? Well as a little full proof. Yeah, full pre through proof, you know? Not exactly exactly. Yeah, but I just want to reiterate again, social media is a great way to enhance stur sales message. It is not a substitute for e mail marketing. Email marketing has no substitute you khun tweet that used terror alive email marketing has no substitute. Ok, there is no substitute for email marketing in your business let's look at the three biggest mistakes that email marketers make some of these we've already covered the first one being they don't maintain a warm list and we've talked about tiffany's list having kind of gone cold while she's you know, been playing mom it's important when you have twins that you pay attention to your children, especially when they're just out of the womb, so I'll forgive her for having let her list cool down a little bit, but maintaining a warm list is super important, sending out your regular blogged posts where a son at least sending out some of your regular block post is a great way to maintain a warm list. It doesn't have to be your work, which is the most important thing people think email marketing equals extra work in my business, it shouldn't. It should be something that's integrated into your regular activities, so if you're blogging, if you're facebooking, if you're twittering, email marketing is not an extra thing on your to do list it is one of those things. Maybe the way you're using facebook is really the way you should be using email marketing, and you can just switch the two out. But most likely what I run into time and time again is that your blog's should just your block post should really just being b being sent out by email, either in the full text of them or with a sneak creek sneak peek like that alright that's, how you maintain a warm list another mistake that email marketers make is that they don't build urgency or expectation during a sales cycle. They don't build urgency or expectation during a sales cycle. We mentioned this earlier when I talk about talked aboutthe launch misfire ark where people make an announcement they release a product and then it putters and so there's no there's, no urgency there's no expectation people aren't ready to buy they don't feel like their decision making time is being respected whether they know that or not that's essentially what's happened on dh so they don't buy they don't buy another thing that happens is that people will put out launch content the right block post or they'll write emails ahead of a product release, but they won't be consistent they won't have a singular focused message and so they don't actually build urgency. People might hear about the product a few times, but they don't understand how that product applies to them. They don't see it as part of a the bigger picture for themselves, their lives or their businesses then third, a biggest email mistake email marketing mistake is that people don't follow up people don't follow up most of your sales will come in the follow up and follow up actually is a twofold kind of thing not only do you want to follow up after you've released a product or after you've announced that something is for sale we also want to follow up after the cart closes. I know that launches thinking about releasing products can be exhausting, and so what happens is you send that last chance email you close the cart, you take the product off the shelf, whatever it is and then you you're exhausted so you don't send out to your list for weeks or months at a time you are losing out on the goodwill of your audience, you're losing out on trust you're losing out on authority and most importantly, you're losing out on additional sales because most businesses, especially businesses that have been around for a year or more, have more than one offer. And you better believe that if you spent six weeks or three weeks preparing your audience to buy one thing, they may not be interested in that thing, but they might be interested in something else, and so you can actually create kind of a follow up um set of messages that lead people to making a different buying decision and that can be extremely powerful. For example, when I launched ten thousand feet next month, there will be a follow up in late september that then leads people to the place of wanting to sign up for kickstart labs because probably if you didn't sign up for ten thousand feet might be too big of an investment of time or energy might very well be too big of an investment financially, but kickstart labs is something where it costs less, takes less time, takes less energy. Okay, I might not get all the same results, but that might be a great trade off for you where you're at right now. But I'm gonna miss out on all the goodwill and all of the excitement and all the anticipation that I created during that lunch. If I don't also follow up going back to the idea of following up after you announce a new product or after you announce it old product, most sales happen or at least fifty percent of sales happen in the last forty eight hours before the bonus goes away, the price goes up, free shipping ends, the cart closes, whatever fifty percent of sales. That means that if you don't send out that, follow a female, if you just don't want to bother people anymore, you're losing half of your sales and not only that, but you are losing out on half of the people that you could be helping half how would you like to have two times the response to your next lunch? Follow up.