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0:23

Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.

0:26

I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In

0:28

this podcast, we have conversations with

0:30

marketing professionals who share the strategies,

0:33

tactics, and mindset you

0:35

can use to improve the effectiveness of

0:37

your marketing activities and grow

0:39

your business. Hey, Matt. Welcome to The

0:41

Virtual CMO Podcast in our Masterclass

0:44

series on building out a strategic marketing

0:46

plan for your business. I'm really glad you

0:48

could join us again today. It's great to see you.

0:50

Thanks, Eric. It's great. To be on a show.

0:52

Yeah. You know, this is a, this is kind of a fun

0:55

exercise that we're doing, going through the steps

0:57

to really build out a strategic marketing

0:59

plan. And as

1:01

part of that this is now step number 12.

1:03

We just did an episode where we talked about

1:06

communications and PR strategy,

1:09

we've talked about building social media.

1:11

We've talked about the importance of automation,

1:13

tools, analytics, CRM, a

1:16

lot of great topic areas here. But

1:18

I'm really looking forward to drilling into this a

1:20

little bit more with you today because

1:23

what we really want to talk about is how

1:25

to leverage email and

1:27

how to build lists so that you can communicate

1:30

with your clients. You know, comms and

1:32

PR strategy is one thing, that's a very intentional

1:34

outreach, but when you can

1:36

build a list of customers and reach out to

1:38

them with meaningful communications, I think

1:40

that's so important for businesses. So just

1:43

by way of introduction, if you could

1:45

tell the audience a little bit about yourself

1:47

and Hook SEO and a little bit about

1:49

what you guys do there.

1:51

Sure, so I want to managing partners

1:53

of Hook SEO Digital Marketing.

1:56

We are a remote digital marketing

1:58

firm based out of Hillsborough,

2:00

Oregon. But we also have

2:02

employees and people in Costa

2:04

Rica as well as Canada. We have clients in

2:06

about 10 States in the United States as well.

2:09

Am we have

2:11

kind of a unique system that

2:13

we use that's very similar to an approach

2:15

that you would get with like keeping a lawyer on

2:17

retainer. We're

2:20

basically a marketing team on retainer,

2:22

and a business can come to us and

2:25

have us take the place of,

2:27

instead of hiring a marketing team or to

2:29

augment a marketing team, they already have.

2:32

And we can. Do

2:35

done for you marketing to the

2:37

point where they have to make no decisions

2:39

whatsoever. And we do 100% of

2:41

the decisions creating the content

2:44

advertising and everything or, you know, there's

2:46

some combination in there were maybe

2:48

there's an approval process. SAS or something like

2:50

that, depending upon the company. And from

2:52

there we try to figure out

2:54

how we can get the most ROI for

2:56

the least money. So we try

2:59

to get the most bang for the buck.

3:01

I think that's great. That's definitely a model that I think we're

3:03

going to see a lot more of as people engage

3:05

with agencies and freelancers and

3:07

companies to help them execute pieces of their

3:09

marketing strategy, so that's

3:11

great. And we'll get a chance to talk a little bit more about

3:13

that towards the end of the show. But

3:15

what I really wanted to drill into with you first

3:18

is, you know, let's just talk about this whole

3:20

topic of email. I think some people

3:22

would argue that email

3:24

is dead and they couldn't be more

3:27

incorrect, right? Email is still very much

3:29

alive and a significant part

3:31

of email or a marketing activities.

3:34

Especially since the beginning of the pandemic.

3:37

So some industries have seen

3:39

as much as a 450%

3:41

increase in their email,

3:43

open rates. And

3:45

and including things like subscriber growth

3:48

and. Just what happened was everybody got

3:50

stuck in their house. And then

3:52

every company in the world decided they were going to make

3:54

a COVID-policy and send it to everyone, even

3:56

if you'd never heard of them. But then after

3:58

that people actually wanted to hear from the brands

4:01

that they were interested in. Right. So,

4:03

you know, you started to see places like food

4:05

carts. Restaurants and retail stores

4:08

going back to email and saying, this

4:10

is how we can keep you safe. This is how you didn't get,

4:12

take out. This is how you can do curbside pickup.

4:15

You know, that kind of thing? And then

4:17

because people were interacting

4:20

with emails so much more it became a much

4:22

more vibrant and active channel again.

4:25

And that has not slowed at all. It's

4:27

just getting more and more use

4:30

now.

4:31

You know, I have found

4:34

that my open rates are a lot higher just

4:36

in my own inbox. And I think it's because

4:39

we're working remotely, you know, there's

4:41

more time to sort of explore the email

4:43

communications that are coming in. But

4:46

you know, there is still this vast

4:48

at. chasm, if you will,

4:50

between emails that you want to open

4:53

and read and the ones that you just can't

4:55

click, you know, the trash bin icon

4:57

soon enough. You think that

4:59

people would have mastered email marketing

5:02

by now, it's been a lot round for a

5:04

long time. Why does.

5:05

been like a quarter of a century.

5:07

Yeah. And there are still so many emails

5:10

that are terrible.

5:11

They are, the internet is full of trash.

5:14

And people send it out all the time.

5:17

And it's weird, you know, because there's some companies

5:19

and stuff that are generally pretty

5:21

good at communicating with their clients. And

5:23

then they go to do email marketing and they put on

5:25

this, like, dunce cap. And they're

5:27

just like, buy my stuff. It's like the only

5:29

thing that they say. That's

5:32

not what you want to hear from most brands, right?

5:35

I mean, there's some exceptions, right?

5:37

Like if I sign a sign up to a list that says,

5:39

sign up to find out what we have sales,

5:42

and then they send me when they have sales. That's fine. Because

5:44

that's what I asked for. But if they

5:46

say sign up and we'll

5:48

give you like tips and tricks

5:51

to do with hiking and camping and then the only

5:53

thing they ever sent me is 20% off hiking boots

5:55

then I don't care.

5:56

Yeah, that's exactly right. I think, you know,

5:58

it gets down to the same topic that we've discussed

6:00

many times on here, which is you want to always

6:02

be providing value and you want to be transparent

6:05

with why somebody would sign up and

6:07

what they're going to get for it. And that

6:09

really is the first element of this, right? In

6:11

order to have email marketing campaigns,

6:14

you have to have names and email addresses.

6:17

And one of the things that companies often

6:19

stumble upon is they don't have

6:21

a good process in place for collecting

6:24

email addresses. So let's start

6:26

there, how do you advise companies

6:28

to begin to build their lists?

6:32

Well, the first thing you can do is you can take all

6:34

the emails that you have of your existing clients.

6:37

And I wouldn't just put

6:39

them onto a list. What I would

6:41

do is I would take it depending

6:44

upon how many you have take sections

6:46

of groups, of those customers.

6:48

And send them an email and tell them

6:50

what your email like

6:53

whether it's weekly or monthly, whatever it is, tell

6:55

him what you're going to send them. And how often

6:58

you're going to send it to them. And ask

7:00

them if they want to be on that list and give them

7:02

a button that they can click to go subscribe

7:04

to your new list. Right. And

7:07

you don't have to call it a list. You can call it a email

7:09

club or something like that. And

7:12

now you're giving them the option to get on your list.

7:14

So say you have a thousand customers, you send that out

7:16

to all thousand customers. You know, if you

7:18

have pretty good rapport with your customers and stuff,

7:20

you could probably get 20, 25% of those people

7:22

that joined a new lists. So now you've got an

7:25

email subscriber list of 250.

7:28

And then you need to make sure when you

7:30

have any kind of communication

7:32

with your client, especially if it's online,

7:34

like a electronic shopping cart, e-commerce

7:37

online, ordering online booking

7:40

system, something like that. You want

7:42

to have the box already checked

7:45

that says, tell me about,

7:47

and then the description of what your newsletter is going to be about.

7:49

So example my newsletter that I send out

7:51

every week. Is interesting

7:54

stories and tips about marketing.

7:56

So somebody wants stories and

7:58

tips about marketing. Put that in

8:00

a place where the box checked for

8:03

them. When they check out

8:05

a figure like a course or something from us. And

8:08

if you are in a country where you have something

8:10

like GDPR, then you want to make sure

8:12

that the box is unchecked and that they have to

8:14

actively check it to get on the list

8:16

because that's the law. California is getting there too,

8:19

but That's a good way to get people on the

8:21

list. If you have an in-person store,

8:23

you can have a sign up, right. And then the

8:25

next thing you'd want to talk about is something like lead magnets,

8:28

which is where you're offering them something

8:30

in exchange for them signing up.

8:32

So that's a great example of what you do

8:34

with your existing customer base to now really

8:36

take them from being customers to putting them sort of

8:38

back on a marketing list. So now

8:41

what you're talking about with lead magnets,

8:43

He's really saying, Okay. these are people that

8:45

are probably coming to my website, they're

8:47

browsing around, but I don't really know who

8:49

they are yet. So how can I get them

8:51

to give me that email address so that

8:53

I can start to market to

8:55

them further?

8:57

Great. So there's two good

8:59

ways to do that. And. One

9:01

of them is kind of a magic trick that nobody knows.

9:04

That's very recent technology-wise and I'll get

9:06

to that in a minute. But the other one

9:08

is you want to have something

9:10

that, that is going to be instantly

9:13

delivered to them when they sign up. It

9:15

needs to be something good enough that someone would

9:17

pay money for it, right? Like it should be,

9:19

somebody would give you a buck or two for this information.

9:22

That's valuable enough for them to trade their

9:24

email address for it. And you

9:27

want it to have like a quick win,

9:29

right? So, it's really gonna depend

9:32

on what your business is, but let's

9:34

say, I don't know, you're a locksmith

9:37

or something like that, then. What

9:39

you would want to do is have something like

9:41

here's three things you can try before you call

9:43

a locksmith. Right. And

9:46

so let's say instant, it's a quick, when you sign

9:48

them up for the newsletter or whatever, right? But

9:51

there's also a magic trick and I call it a magic trick

9:53

because it works like magic and it is a piece of software

9:55

called GetEmails. And

9:59

if somebody comes to your website

10:01

under the can

10:03

spam act that actually

10:06

counts as them giving you consent

10:08

to email them, to contact them. And

10:10

this software, will figure

10:12

out who they are and take their

10:14

email and put it on your list.

10:16

Oh, you're kidding

10:17

With, without you asking them for the

10:19

email. Now it's fairly

10:21

invasive, obviously. You wouldn't

10:23

want to use it in most cases, but

10:25

this software does exist. So, and it's probably

10:27

got about 25 to 40%. accuracy.

10:31

That's really interesting. I didn't even know that existed.

10:33

So I learned something new myself today. So

10:36

I love this idea of you're going

10:38

to give them something of value

10:40

in order for them to sign

10:42

up for whatever it is, whether it be

10:45

a newsletter. I've seen this work very

10:47

effectively for online

10:49

retailers, they'll say, sign up for

10:51

our list, we'll give you 15%,

10:53

25% off your first purchase,

10:55

something like that. So you're getting a discount code

10:57

in exchange for giving up your email

11:00

address.

11:01

Those were good too.

11:02

Yeah, or a white paper.

11:04

But like you said, it has to be something of significant,

11:06

something that you're willing to pay a buck or two for,

11:09

even though you're not paying it, you are in

11:11

a sense by surrendering your email address.

11:13

So I like that. So all

11:15

of these different lead magnets. What about just

11:18

saying subscribe to my blog

11:20

or subscribe to this.

11:22

Do you think that is an effective enough offer

11:25

to get people, to give their email address?

11:27

Yeah, I get notified when my next video

11:29

comes out, get notified when I new article

11:31

comes out. If they're a fan of your stuff, they will

11:33

sign up to get that notification. When you talk about

11:36

stuff, like if it's more of a B2B situation,

11:38

like when you talk about a white paper. I

11:40

wouldn't have somebody sign up to get my white

11:42

paper, because if they're getting the white paper, they're

11:45

trying to get information to figure out if they're making a

11:47

decision to buy your product.

11:48

Yeah, great point.

11:49

So what you should do though. Is

11:52

anybody who goes to the page.

11:55

Where you have the downloads for the white papers

11:57

for specific types of products. You

11:59

should be using some lead tracking

12:02

company, lead tracking software, and

12:04

there's a number of ones that do it. And

12:06

what they do is they will reverse engineer

12:09

the IP address to figure out which company

12:12

it was that came to that page on

12:14

your website, and then you can have your sales

12:16

rep contact that company and say, Hey,

12:18

I know I saw somebody there was looking

12:20

at a white paper for our blah-blah-blah

12:22

widget. Do you want to connect me with the right person

12:24

to talk to and I can get them any information they need.

12:27

Yeah. You know we had an episode on marketing automation

12:30

technology, and there are so many things

12:32

that you can tell just by having, you know, Pixels

12:35

and things installed on your website to

12:37

be able to see who's coming there, even if they don't leave

12:39

a an email address, you can still

12:41

see the company domains that are poking around

12:43

your website. And there's a lot of

12:45

intelligence that's out there. What do you

12:47

think about pop-up boxes? So

12:49

when somebody is has an exit intent

12:52

or they scroll down halfway, you see a lot

12:54

of websites that are using pop-up boxes

12:56

to try to get people's email addresses. What

12:58

do you think about those?

13:00

I think on an e-commerce site

13:02

or something where you're saying subscribe

13:04

to get notified. I think it's fine. I

13:07

think most other sites. You're probably

13:09

better off just having a button, so

13:12

there's a couple of different ways you can do that. The worst

13:14

thing that you can do, which was what everybody

13:16

does is that the bottom of their website

13:18

in the footer, they have a box that says subscribe

13:21

to our newsletter and it says email and submit,

13:24

and nobody wants your newsletter, right? What

13:26

they want is whatever the offer

13:28

that you're going to make to them to tell that you're going to send

13:31

them things about you should be able to describe

13:33

that in a way that they want to sign up for that

13:35

thing, and you can put that in a block

13:37

on your website or a bar at the top

13:39

or something like that. That's persistent. That doesn't

13:42

have a pot that gets in the way of

13:44

what they're trying to look for because not everybody's come

13:46

to your website is looking to sign up, right?

13:48

A lot of them are there to look for something different.

13:50

And if you're popping up something, getting in the

13:52

way of them, trying to get that done, it's

13:55

super annoying, especially the sites. And

13:57

you know what it's like, right. You go to a website.

14:00

For a large multinational corporation.

14:03

And then there's a pop-up that comes up for something

14:05

you don't care. Cause you just click it. Cause you're trying to find

14:07

something like your account number or log in or something.

14:10

And then the email Bob. Sign

14:12

up for our email thing pops up and then the survey thing

14:14

pops up and like, you can't even get anything

14:16

done, right? You give up by the time you've

14:19

clicked out. And do you agree to the cookies

14:21

and whatever, right? Like just let me

14:23

go find my account number. So you

14:25

want to keep that stuff to a minimum.

14:27

It can be very invasive. That's true.

14:29

And I have read some statistics that say like

14:32

when people are coming into a blog post

14:34

that having that pop-up on exit

14:36

intent or something is a fairly decent

14:38

way to collect names. Because if you just have

14:40

a static panel, like you said, at the bottom of your

14:42

blog or something, the chances are very

14:44

small that somebody is actually going to sign up for that.

14:47

But sometimes if you prompt them, they will.

14:49

Well, it works pretty well. Is having it in

14:52

the blog, like, like halfway or

14:54

three quarters way through the article. And

14:56

they're reading and they're like, Oh, I like this article I'll

14:58

type in my email address, hit submit, and then they'll

15:00

read the rest. But when they hit

15:02

submit, don't take them away from the rest

15:04

of the article.

15:05

Right, right.

15:06

They want to read the rest. They

15:08

just signed up for it.

15:10

Well, I think that actually brings up another good point

15:12

in that sometimes the forms

15:14

that businesses ask you to fill

15:17

out, just to sign up for a marketing

15:19

list, they want way too much information.

15:21

The key is you really

15:23

don't need anything, but an email address to get

15:25

started.

15:27

Yeah, I kinda like to go name and email.

15:29

And so there is. In

15:32

some instances, you may

15:34

get a lot of people on your list that you don't

15:36

want. When you know, if you

15:38

have kind of a two-sided industry like

15:40

a good example would be property management. If

15:43

you are trying to get signups from people

15:45

who want to rent their properties.

15:48

Instead of people who are renters.

15:51

Then you've tried to put information in that

15:53

weeds out renters.

15:55

Makes sense

15:55

So you can do that for certain things, but for

15:58

the most part, you know, yeah. Name and email

16:00

is fine.

16:00

Yeah. And sometimes it can just be first name. Every

16:03

field that you add is another point of resistance,

16:05

which will further like key people from

16:07

doing it because certainly there are many people,

16:10

I see it on my own email lists that you can

16:12

tell the email that they're giving you is their

16:14

spam email list. Right? It's not their main

16:16

email address. It's the one that they use to collect

16:19

all the marketing information. Okay, so

16:21

now we've collected some names. We've got some

16:23

lists. Now comes the hard

16:25

part, right? We've got to compose a compelling

16:28

message. So we've already created

16:30

our brand story and some of our marketing

16:32

messages, but how do you recommend

16:35

people structure an email campaign

16:38

so that it's not

16:40

just a single message that's going out,

16:42

but it's a series. You know, we talk a lot about the buyer's

16:44

journey, sending the right message at the right

16:46

time. But how do you advise clients

16:49

to start crafting sort of an email

16:51

strategy, now that they've got names in a list?

16:54

Well, once you're creating your list. An

16:56

extra step that you should be doing. Unless

16:59

you're creating from scratch is you should be tagging

17:02

those emails or separating them

17:04

onto different lists. So, yeah, cause you don't

17:06

want to send the same. Message to your

17:08

existing clients. That you

17:10

would be sending to someone who's maybe a

17:12

prospect. And it may not matter if you have a smaller

17:15

company but as you get bigger and you're going to have

17:17

bigger lists. Then you're going to want

17:19

to have your lists either segmented

17:21

with tags, where a tag could be something like

17:23

client versus prospect or

17:26

you know, some they you could have, if you

17:28

have multiple lead magnets, you could say

17:30

tag them with the one that they downloaded it

17:32

from. And then once you have

17:34

your list segmented, or you have them on

17:37

separate lists that you want to craft

17:39

an email. That is

17:41

along the lines, at least in the same

17:44

neighborhood is what you told them. You were going

17:46

to send them. And of course,

17:48

that's going to be different for everybody because you want

17:50

to have a compelling reason for your list,

17:53

but there are millions of ways.

17:55

To send people interesting.

17:58

Personable emails

18:00

where you're building a relationship

18:02

and building a rapport with them and making them want

18:04

to keep hearing from you. And

18:06

there are a million other ways to throw

18:08

that trust in the garbage and send them a bunch

18:11

of crap that they don't want. And

18:13

unfortunately the sending crap is

18:15

what seems to happen most of the time. Because

18:17

a lot of times, email marketing is an afterthought.

18:20

It's they don't have a plan. They

18:22

don't have a content calendar. They

18:25

don't have You know, any kind of creative

18:27

writing or anything involved in it, and

18:30

there's no copywriting involved a lot of times.

18:32

And what you really want to do

18:35

is be crafting. The

18:37

messages that your clients,

18:39

what they want to hear from you,

18:41

not what you want to tell them. Does

18:44

that make sense?

18:45

It's so true and you

18:48

know there are a lot of different tools that you can

18:50

do this. You know you can do it from your marketing

18:52

automation tool, which I would recommend because

18:54

then you get all the tracking and the analytics

18:56

that are around that. And it's like

18:58

many things in marketing. It's about experimentation.

19:01

It's about seeing what works and what doesn't

19:03

and trying different things. Doing AB

19:05

testing and seeing what works.

19:07

You know, I get emails from some very reputable

19:10

companies that are text-based

19:12

they know images, that's just all texts.

19:14

I get others that are very rich with images.

19:17

I don't really know which one works

19:19

the best. That's what you have to experiment

19:21

with. You have to try different things and see what your

19:23

particular audience responds

19:25

to. The best. There is no sort of

19:28

magic formula that says if you put

19:30

your email in this form or in this format,

19:32

it'll magically work.

19:34

Right. My email

19:36

lists that I get the most response from,

19:39

I send texts, emails that have the

19:41

odd animated GIF in between them. Where

19:43

I tell a story that is anywhere from

19:45

half a page two, sometimes three

19:47

or four pages long, and

19:50

then it wraps around to have

19:52

some kind of moral

19:54

or marketing message or business

19:57

information. But the story relates

19:59

to the message and then people

20:01

I don't know how many times I've heard it. They lived there like

20:03

how long can your email B and

20:06

the truth is it can't be too long. It can only be

20:08

too boring. right? So if you can

20:10

only write three sentences and make it compelling,

20:12

then you should have a three-sentence email. Right?

20:15

But if you can write, you know, a short

20:17

story or an informational piece

20:19

or something. You know, you don't want to go crazy,

20:21

write a whole book, but you know,

20:23

there's no game play there that says

20:26

like game plan that says it has to be

20:28

this long. Right? Another

20:30

thing when you're talking about kind

20:32

of split testing and stuff. It's

20:36

easy to test formats with your

20:38

audience when they're when your audience is fairly

20:40

small. And

20:44

I would say the way to know

20:46

that you're on the right track is when people

20:49

respond to your marketing email.

20:51

And nothing makes your

20:53

client feel like you don't

20:56

give a crap about the more that when you send

20:58

them an email marketer, like a marketing email

21:00

that says do not [email protected].

21:04

Right because that's not conversation, then that's

21:06

just somebody yelling at you with a megaphone. Right.

21:09

And. I would say

21:12

I mean, I have a list that I send my marketing

21:14

tips list is, you know, it's under a

21:16

thousand people and I get anywhere

21:18

from three to eight responses every week

21:21

of people telling me that they liked the story

21:23

or whatever it is. Right. And

21:25

that list generates thousands of dollars in his business

21:27

for us. And then I've worked with companies. I

21:29

was a contractor working with a

21:31

marketing agency for a nationwide

21:34

furniture company. That had more than

21:36

a million people on their list. And.

21:39

After, like I took over

21:41

for someone who had like left

21:43

or something, I don't know what happened to them, but anyway, it was

21:45

like emergency. I need somebody to send an email

21:47

to a million people right now. I'm your guy.

21:50

So I go down, I started doing this

21:52

several years ago, but. After we kind of got the ball

21:54

rolling again. The next strategy

21:56

that we implemented was separating

21:59

their list into smaller

22:01

chunks. So we would send an email

22:03

to about 10,000. And

22:06

then we would send an email to another

22:08

10,000 with a different headline, whichever

22:11

one got the most sales or responses

22:13

we would run with that headline. And then we would

22:15

run a new one with a different photo and

22:17

we'd split test the toe photo to another 10

22:20

or 20,000 people. And we would do

22:22

that two or three times. We had iterate through

22:24

until we got the best email and then we would send

22:26

it to the other 900,000 people.

22:30

That was the way that we could get the biggest response

22:33

through split testing. And we could do all of that split

22:35

testing and one day.

22:37

And I think, you know you've mentioned a couple of really important

22:39

things here, the first thing that you mentioned a

22:41

few minutes ago, as you segmented

22:43

your list and figuring out what content that you want

22:46

to send is make sure that what you're sending

22:48

is appropriate to the person

22:50

you're sending it to. A great example

22:52

would be, you know, I sign

22:54

up to a few clothing retailers,

22:57

they send me emails, there's nothing that

22:59

drives me crazy more than getting

23:01

an email from a company that I follow with

23:04

women's clothes. While I'm a man I'm

23:06

not buying any women's clothes, so don't

23:08

send me advertisements for women's

23:10

clothes. That's a pretty basic distinction,

23:13

and it's a way that you can actually really

23:15

offend people. I hate it when somebody

23:17

sends me an email as a prospect

23:20

when I'm a customer. Don't you realize

23:22

that I'm a customer? So you really do have

23:24

to be careful with how you send emails

23:27

out to people. I think another mistake that

23:29

companies can make is either

23:31

just spamming everybody, buying email

23:34

lists of people that don't know who you are,

23:36

and then spamming them. I think what

23:38

often gets missed is that if you

23:40

start sending out too many emails and

23:42

people start unsubscribing in mass

23:44

to your email, You can get blacklisted

23:47

by a number of email service providers

23:49

so that none of your emails actually get through,

23:52

you do have to be really careful, and

23:54

I think that's, you mentioned the the laws over

23:56

in Europe now and probably coming to California.

23:59

A lot of that is because people were

24:01

being spammed with unsolicited emails.

24:03

So you do have to be careful in what you're doing.

24:05

Now. I wouldn't say

24:07

you can't buy a list. I'm

24:10

not a huge fan of it. And there's a lot

24:12

of reasons for that. One of them is

24:14

there's a lot of Trojan horse emails in those

24:16

and what those are is MailChimp

24:19

and constant contact. And other companies create

24:22

emails to put on those lists

24:24

so that when you upload that list that you bought

24:26

into their system, they can detect that you bought it.

24:29

And then can just straight up block you. The

24:32

other thing is tons of those email addresses

24:34

are going to be crap. So you

24:36

pay by the amount of emails,

24:39

either the amount of subscribers you

24:41

have or by the amount of emails you send

24:43

or both, depending upon the provider. So

24:46

if you have an email list

24:48

and 30% of the addresses are no good,

24:50

30% of your money's wasted. Right.

24:53

However, there is a way to clean those lists.

24:55

So you can use a list, cleaning service

24:58

to clean that list, get it down to.

25:00

Kind of a manageable amount of real addresses.

25:03

And there's a number of ways to clean a list.

25:06

And then you can break that into small pieces

25:08

and send small chunks of subscribers

25:10

out so that your spam percentage

25:12

is not too high. So you don't get blacklisted. And

25:15

that's kind of an advanced topic. You can always hit

25:17

me up with a message or something. If somebody wants to know more

25:20

about that.

25:21

No, I think it's good. Yeah, it definitely is more on

25:23

the advanced side, but it's important to know.

25:25

And I would add the other thing is

25:27

that at some point, if you're emailing

25:30

a customer, I think Gmail even does

25:32

this now. It'll say, well, you know,

25:34

such and such as sent you 15 emails

25:36

and you haven't opened any of them. Do you want to block

25:38

them? And I think HubSpot's rule,

25:41

I think is 11. I it's either 11

25:43

or 13 emails if nobody open those

25:45

emails, you know, they'll come and

25:47

flag them as being an inactive contact,

25:49

I believe. Yeah, so you do

25:52

at some point, you just have to

25:54

say I'm going to stop now. Maybe you can

25:56

revisit it a year or something, but don't

25:58

keep sending emails to customers who clearly

26:01

aren't interested.

26:02

So there's a process you should use.

26:05

To clean up your list and the number one

26:07

part of that process is making it easy for

26:09

people to unsubscribe. Cause you don't

26:11

want them on your list if they don't want to be on the list. Cause

26:13

they're not going to buy from you anyway. So you

26:16

might as well get them off your list and start paying for them. And

26:19

then the second thing that you should do

26:21

is you should be able to segment

26:23

your list by people who haven't

26:26

opened any of your emails in say the

26:28

last six months or 12 months, or whatever, that

26:30

time figure that you want to use this. And

26:33

what you want to do is take anybody. Who

26:36

hasn't opened one and say, let's say your

26:38

time period is six months, anybody, six

26:40

months in one day or longer. Since the last

26:43

time they opened one of your emails. You

26:45

export them out of your mail

26:48

program. And you just keep a copy

26:50

of those and you will use those later

26:52

for what's called a win-back campaign. So

26:55

you keep emailing your regular people, and then you

26:57

take this chunk of people who don't open your

26:59

emails in the last six months or more. You

27:01

make a new list with those people. And

27:04

you send them straight

27:06

text email with no images, no

27:08

pictures, no nothing, no fancy language.

27:11

And you just send them a couple emails, something

27:13

to the effect of, you know, I'll give you

27:15

an example. So. A

27:17

friend of mine runs a auto. Business.

27:19

He's like, an auto broker car broker.

27:22

So he did a win-back campaign with

27:24

his people and said I have some fabulous

27:26

pictures. We shot of this new ADI

27:28

in the Moonlight. And if you'd like

27:30

to see them click here and they put a link on

27:32

it. And he sent that out. And

27:35

within a month he had a guy

27:37

emailed them back and said that he saw the photos,

27:39

asked him why he hadn't gotten an email in the last,

27:42

like six to 12 months from them. And he was like,

27:44

I didn't even, I thought you took me off

27:46

your list. And he bought a $35,000

27:49

used car from him, right? And

27:51

that's somebody who you normally would have deleted

27:53

because they're not a contact anymore,

27:55

but what happens is the

27:58

delivery, the deliverability

28:00

of the emails can go down to a point

28:02

where somebody emails are just constantly

28:04

getting put into this spam folder.

28:06

So they're not even seeing them. Even if they

28:08

do still want to get them. And

28:11

the ways to get around that is to sometimes

28:14

send emails, very similar

28:16

to what a person would send another person. And

28:19

normally people send emails back and forth.

28:21

It's just straight text or

28:24

it's like no buttons, no

28:26

like fancy language or anything in it. Right.

28:29

Or maybe just a few photos.

28:31

It also, if you send an email with no links

28:33

in it at all, That can really help

28:35

get you out of the spam box and back at the inbox,

28:38

at least temporarily. So somebody can

28:40

start seeing those again.

28:44

Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back

28:46

to the podcast. But first, are you

28:48

ready to grow, scale, and take

28:50

your marketing to the next level? If so,

28:52

The Five Echelon Group's Virtual

28:55

CMO onsulting service may be

28:57

a great fit for you. We can help build

28:59

a strategic marketing plan for your business

29:01

and manage its execution, step-by-step.

29:04

We'll focus on areas like how to attract more

29:06

leads. How to create compelling messaging

29:09

that resonates with your ideal customers.

29:12

How to strategically package and position

29:14

your products and services. How to increase

29:16

lead conversion, improve your margins,

29:19

and scale your business. To find

29:21

out more about our consulting offerings and

29:23

schedule a consultation, go to

29:25

fiveechelon.com and

29:27

click on Services. Now back

29:29

to the podcast. You

29:32

know as we're going through this, you know, some of

29:35

our listeners may say, well, you know this is complicated,

29:37

you're talking about different campaigns, list segmentation,

29:40

and there is a lot of complexity to it.

29:42

And that's one of the benefits of having a marketing

29:45

automation tool, especially when you can get workflows

29:47

and things involved, because then

29:50

you can create these campaigns, you can

29:52

create these automated emails and

29:54

when you add these people

29:57

to a list. It just triggers an event which

29:59

starts sending them emails on a regular basis,

30:02

and that is definitely an advanced topic,

30:04

which is more than we'll cover here today.

30:06

But the point is that email is still

30:09

a very valid marketing

30:11

communications tool, and if you do it right,

30:13

you can see some pretty big success with it.

30:16

Yeah. And another thing that you could do when you have a well-

30:18

segmented list. As you can upload

30:20

those lists into your advertising. All

30:23

right? So you can make an audience in Facebook

30:25

and Instagram or LinkedIn or Pinterest

30:27

or Twitter or Google, right? Out

30:29

of your audience of say active subscribers,

30:33

and you send a different

30:35

marketing message to them on Facebook, than

30:37

you would to somebody who's never heard of you. And

30:39

then, you know, And people

30:41

just like they have people where they're sending emails

30:44

to that are inactive subscribers, or

30:46

they're sending prospect emails to clients.

30:48

They do the same thing with the retargeting ads on

30:50

Facebook. I don't know how many times I've signed

30:52

up for something or bought something, and then they're still

30:55

sending me prospect emails for the next is. There

30:57

are advertisements, retargeting

31:00

advertisements for three months. What a waste of money,

31:02

It is a waste of money, right? You've already bought.

31:04

put in to it. It's like a two button thing,

31:06

right? You just have, you have an audience of

31:08

clients, right? And you just say

31:10

exclude the client list and that you

31:13

look, there you go, people I've saved you thousands.

31:16

Now there's a lot of mistakes that are made and

31:18

some of it can be very complicated especially

31:20

in larger organizations with a lot of products,

31:23

it can be tough. But if especially if you're a smaller

31:25

business, this is manageable because your list

31:27

probably aren't that big. But when

31:30

you get to a point where somebody identified

31:32

themselves to you and you've got the ability

31:34

to market to them, especially if they've showed

31:36

some kind of interest. Email can be

31:38

a fantastic tool for

31:40

reaching and moving that buyer

31:42

throughout the buyer's journey. And I know

31:45

that you've even put together a little course.

31:47

They're at a Hook SEO, right? That helps

31:49

people with email marketing.

31:51

Yes. We have a course called Inbox Mastery.

31:54

Which I like to say, it's like getting your master's

31:56

degree in email marketing. Cause

31:59

it's not quite as hard as an actual master's degree,

32:01

but. You know, walk you through the basics,

32:03

and if you are more of

32:05

kind of an intermediate email marketer

32:08

and has a lot of more complicated things

32:10

in there that we've explained well, And

32:12

it'll swap file. So email

32:14

types that you can use for different types of industries

32:17

that you could just take them a reword them. It'll tell you how

32:19

often to send what you should send

32:22

when you should send it. And

32:24

I think the best part, which I've never seen

32:26

in another email marketing course, which kind of gave us

32:28

the idea is that actually

32:30

can teach you which software

32:32

you should use to send emails

32:34

with. Rather than what

32:36

most people do is they use whatever their

32:39

company was already using or whatever

32:41

their buddy told them they should use. But

32:43

that's not always the right tool for the job, right.

32:45

No, that's right. Having the right tool for the job can

32:48

make all the difference. You know, Matt,

32:50

if you would just run through where people

32:52

can find you online working, they can find

32:54

Hook SEO and how they could get access

32:56

to the course.

32:58

Sure we're at hookSEO.com.

33:01

And there is a training button at the top

33:03

that you can click, There's also at the top, there's

33:05

a button to sign up if you want to join my

33:08

email list and see how we do it. And

33:10

we also have about eight or nine other free

33:12

courses on there under our training tab as well

33:15

for other topics. And you

33:17

can always hit me up on LinkedIn. And

33:19

I'm Matt Ross. One I believe

33:21

is my tag on LinkedIn. And

33:24

you can tell I got the same spiky hair on

33:26

LinkedIn.

33:26

That's the dead giveaway.

33:28

that is that's the giveaway. If I have my

33:30

hair flat people don't recognize me for some

33:32

reason. But are you good to go

33:34

on the podcast? Digital Marketing Masters,

33:36

which is my logo on my shirt. And

33:40

you can listen to Eric's episode, which just

33:42

came out two days ago.

33:43

Yeah. I was very fortunate to be a guest on Matt

33:46

show, it's a great podcast. I'd encourage everybody

33:48

to check that out on Apple podcasts or

33:50

wherever you happen to listen to podcasts.

33:53

It's a good show. And I do appreciate you having me on as

33:55

a guest as well. I think this has been

33:57

very useful information. I will make sure

33:59

that we have all of those links in the show notes

34:01

so that people can can find it.

34:03

Matt, I really appreciate your time today and the value

34:05

that you shared here with the audience on list building

34:08

and email marketing.

34:10

Well, thanks for having me on, and I hope this helps everybody

34:12

kind of read the internet, have more of the garbage

34:15

email that's getting sent out there.

34:17

Absolutely. Let's hope

34:19

so. Thanks again, Matt.

34:21

Thanks.

34:21

Thank you for joining us on this episode of The

34:23

Virtual CMO podcast. For more

34:26

episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast

34:30

to subscribe through your podcast player of

34:32

choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent

34:34

lead flow and a highly effective marketing

34:37

strategy, visit fiveechelon.com

34:39

to learn more about our Virtual CMO

34:42

consulting services.