Episode Transcript
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[00:01:15] Hi, welcome to confessions from the home office. We are back. I took a week off last week. We were right in the middle of Hurricane Helene and it just didn't feel right to work on getting a podcast ready and getting it out when everybody in this part of the world is really distracted with all the storm damage and trying to help western North Carolina. I'm located in Greenville, South Carolina. So we did have like trees down and people's homes were damaged and there's still power outages, but it is nothing compared to what happened up in western North Carolina. So that's been our focus for days and will be for a long time trying to help them recover from all of this. So the past couple weeks I've had guests on talking about different things, different careers.
[00:02:04] Everybody was an entrepreneur and so we have that in common. But today I really wanted to get back and talk about something really important when it comes to marketing, and that is email marketing. So I get questions about it all the time. Almost all of my clients do their email marketing through me, which is great. And there's just a lot of different things that I wanted to cover and to answer. A lot of questions that I get frequently when I'm in new business meetings and when I'm onboarding clients and just when I meet people at networking events or I'm talking to somebody, these are some of the questions that they ask. And so just felt like it would be great to go through it and hopefully this episode won't be too, too long. But we have a lot to cover. So the first thing is like, well, who do I email?
[00:02:55] And that's a really good question. You really need to stay in touch with everybody in your network. But I would say your customer database is very important. So if you're a consultant and you just have a couple of clients, I don't know if you would do a regular email to them. If you want to, you can. But if you have thousands, hundreds or thousands of people in a customer database, you need to stay in touch with them. We are bombarded so much all day. I mean, I know I am just with social media, other emails, the tv, video streaming, that it's good to have something pop up in your email and remind you of, hey, this is what they have to offer. Or here's something new that they have to offer. So stay in touch with your customers. Don't go too long without talking to them. We'll talk a little more about how often you should do that in just a few.
[00:03:48] Another group of people that you should email are people who sign up to be on your list. So if you have like a lead magnet through social media, if you have a lead magnet on your website and lead magnet, if you don't know, is like, hey, do you want to know ten tips about email marketing? Give me your name and your email and I'll email it to you. Those are leads. Those are people that are interested. They wanted some information. They were nice enough to give you their email, stay in touch with them. But that's a different type of sequence. That's more of a welcome sequence and you kind of nurture them and get them involved and hopefully they will turn into a customer and then they can go into your customer database.
[00:04:21] Networking events, those are people you should always follow up with. If you get a card from somebody, you should shoot them a quick note within one to two days and just say, hey, you know, nice to meet you. Or if you want to follow up or there was something that you were wanting to get together and talk about, go ahead and make that happen.
[00:04:39] Social Media Legion ads so, you know, Facebook has these really great little legion forms now, and LinkedIn has it too, as Instagram, where instead of just driving people to the website or to a particular page on your website, you can do lead Gen now. So you can follow up with people right away by email. You can have that hooked up into your email system where they get an introductory email when the leads come in referrals. Those are people you should stay in touch with by email and you know, referrals, probably not somebody you would drop in the, to a database where you email them once a week or every two weeks, but you might have a separate segment where you send them something maybe once a quarter or once every two months and just stay in touch. And then another good segment for emailing would be if you have like a private podcast and you put something on your social media, put something on your website for people to get access to that or get access to a certain tips and tricks newsletter, you could do that. So that would be another group that you would email. So really you need to be emailing everybody, but you need to have different segments. And one message does not apply to everybody. So you need to remember that and make sure that you keep everything relevant to, to your audience. So if you're, if it's new leads, you want to talk to them more introduction and things that you have to offer. If it's regular customers, maybe it's about products or specials, discounts, new things that you have that add on to what they already have.
[00:06:21] So then people will say, you know, what do you say to people when you email them? What should I do? And I always say, keep it short.
[00:06:31] So I have clients that want to have long emails and it doesn't work, they end up having a higher unsubscribe rate or they'll find, they'll get feedback that people aren't reading them.
[00:06:42] But here are just a couple tips about what you should put in an email. You need to have a clear subject line, and if you're having trouble with subject lines, get some help from somebody. Or you can pull up one of the million AI tools that are out there and type in and ask, this is what my email is about and I need some subject line suggestions. Be careful with that though, because they have a certain tone and even some of them that say that they learn your tone and style you to make sure that sounds like it comes from you. Because when things start to sound like they're coming from a machine, people start to tune it out. So be careful with that. Sometimes it's good for ideas, but I wouldn't do a copy paste on that.
[00:07:24] It's good to personalize emails. So a lot of the email platforms now will have a place where you can click for the person's first name. So you just need to make sure that the data you import has a first name column and that way you can personalize the email so when things come to me that say, hey, Wendy. Dear Wendy, I do look at those more than just something that's generic, that's just. I know somebody just blasted this out to 10,000 people.
[00:07:49] You need to let them know early why you're emailing them and not have them read this huge, long thing. It drives me nuts. I don't read the ones that just drag on and on. And then one thing at the end, go ahead and let me know what's going on.
[00:08:03] What's the value proposition of this? Why should you read that email? Make sure that's up close to the top. If you have a sale code or some type of coupon, put that up at the top too. Don't make people go dig for it. Address people nuts.
[00:08:16] Your message should be concise. And so I would, if you write something in there, I would go back and see how you can trim it. Everybody has the attention span of a gnat these days, and so the shorter that you can keep things, the better. If people open up an email and they see this big long thesis delete, I don't even look at them.
[00:08:38] Call to action. Tell people what you want them to do. Do you want, want them to go to the website? Do you want them to book a call? Do you want them to click on this product and buy it? Do you want them to sign up for a program?
[00:08:49] Do you want them to request a quote for something? Make sure that you, that you ask for that. And you can ask for that more than once in the email, just so they make sure that they see it. And just make sure that the message that you're sending is relevant. So if you're talking about an add on to a product, you wouldn't send that to people who just signed up to be on your list or you wouldn't sign that. You wouldn't send that to somebody who you just started to network with. So it's important to get your contacts in, even if you just have them in a spreadsheet. But you need to set them up in your email system as different segments and make sure that the right message goes to the right group of people.
[00:09:27] So a few other things is people will ask about timing. So what time of day should I send an email? Should I send it first thing in the morning? Should I send it only Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, when people are really kind of hardcore working? That all depends.
[00:09:45] I don't know if I would send emails out super late at night or 06:00 in the morning, but you can look at analytics on different email platforms and see when people are opening the emails, do they open them like the largest percentage right when they send it out, or is it two or 3 hours later? Or does it seem to be around 04:00 in the afternoon that everybody seems to open your emails? You kind of have to just adjust as you go. Now in the toolflow desk, if you go in and you schedule an email and say best time for morning or best time for afternoon, it always gives like 06:57 a.m. or 01:57 p.m. that's just kind of their standards, but you just have to play with it and see. But I would definitely try to do it during business hours, kind of during core business hours when people are focused on work, focused in front of their computer.
[00:10:38] And as you build a following and people get used to seeing emails from you, they'll go back and open them no matter when they can.
[00:10:45] Another thing to think about is optimizing for mobile versus laptop or desktop. When you get ready to set up an email, if it's not just text, if you've got graphics and links in there, test it and make sure that it looks okay on a phone, that looks okay on a laptop. And you may even want to pull out an iPad and take a look at that, too because it drives me crazy. When I get an email and it's not formatted, it's all over the place. I just hit delete.
[00:11:16] Just make sure. And most of the email tools have an unsubscribe bottom link at the bottom. Make sure that that's visible. People don't want to feel like they don't have a way that they can get out if they don't want to be on the list. And don't be offended if people unsubscribe.
[00:11:30] We have to have thick skin when we're in marketing and you never know why someone unsubscribes. It could have been a mistake. It could be that they're in a bad mood. It could be they don't need to hear from you anymore. It's they already know so much about your business. They don't need to get emails. They're still going to call you. So don't get offended. If it's somebody you know and they hit the unsubscribe button, it is. Okay, just keep going.
[00:11:53] And the last thing about this about kind of with the content with emails is I would make sure that you keep brand consistency so your colors, your fonts, your logos, make sure that when people see it, they know that it's you. I've had clients before that want to just kind of drag stuff in or use something that corporate sent over and it's not quite what they use. And people get confused and wonder have they changed things or what's going on? Are they just using templates? Spend the extra time and make sure that everything's consistent.
[00:12:25] So we talked a little bit about what time of day to send to emails. Let's talk about how often you should send emails. There is not a specific rule with this. You don't want to drive people crazy. Like I get emails from Kate Spade outlet and from loft every day, sometimes twice a day. And it's a little much, but sometimes they have really good deals. So I hold on to those because when they have the really good deals, that's when I buy a.
[00:12:56] If you are e commerce, if you're product specific, you need to be emailing more often than somebody who just provides a service or is just sending out updates more of like a newsletter format.
[00:13:08] I have an e commerce client and I send out about 20 emails a month for them. We have so many that we send out a week and then we're doing specials so many days a month. They have emails that go out every day. So sometimes I'll build up to, you know, about 20 emails a month and we don't see a huge unsubscribe from that because there's deals and different topics and different things that go with different products and that's what their customer base expects.
[00:13:37] Some people send out a weekly, I have a client that wants to send out a weekly update every Tuesday. We release a podcast. They always have some events. They have a new service that's coming out, ways that you can get involved. So they want something to go out every week and the people that support that group expect that. And then I have other clients that want to do something like once or twice a month because they, they don't want to bombard, but also the type of business they have. They don't have to be in front of somebody all the time, but it's enough to stay top of mind with their customers. So I know that sounds vague.
[00:14:10] I really think that if you're getting started with email marketing, I would start with sending out one time a month. That way you're not stressed out about it and worried about having to come up with content every week. And then I would probably build up to twice a month unless you have a product or something that's time sensitive. And if you're really stressed about doing that. Get some help from somebody.
[00:14:31] People can knock these emails out for you all day long and get it done.
[00:14:38] I did want to say about platforms. People ask me about the different platforms. Which one do you use? Or do you just go through your outlook or go through your Gmail? Don't do that if you need to send a one off. Hey, it was great to meet you at this event. Would you like to get together, have coffee? That's fine, but I would recommend if you're sending out blasts to people, the platforms that I use every week, our constant contact mailchimp flow desk. I use a white label version of Go high level for my stuff and then Klaviyo is another one. Klaviyo is higher end cost wise, and has more features and functions. More analytics, you can do more flows. So if somebody does something that it can kick out other emails back to them, it's a little more complicated. Flow desk is really simple. They have really pretty templates. You can see who opened and that gives you some good basic data. Mailchimp's the same way. Mailchimp starts costing money after so many emails that you send, and it gives you good analytics, like how many times somebody opens something. So if you've got somebody that opened your email six times, you might want to get in touch with them or figure out what's going on. Maybe they want to buy from you or they want to learn more. Constant contacts. A lot like Mailchimp, very simple, gives you good data, a lot of these. You can even go back and build lead pages, you can share them to social media.
[00:16:12] It's just a great way to kind of take your message and you can repurpose it places.
[00:16:18] Another tip that I give clients is to do the resend unopens.
[00:16:24] And so you send out an email on Tuesday afternoon and you look at it and the open rates 29%. That's pretty good. I'm good with that after 24 hours, and I usually wait a little bit longer than that, closer to 48. You can click an option in most of these platforms to resend to people who haven't opened it. So you can do a in case you missed it, or hey, take a look with the same subject line, or you can change the subject line if you want. And I've seen open rates go from another 0.6% all the way up to like another 10%. And that really helps with open rate. And then you may start seeing some more clicks and things like that. So don't assume because somebody didn't open it the first time, maybe they're just busy. You send it again and maybe they'll open again, open it the second time.
[00:17:18] So a couple of things that I wanted to mention about things that you shouldn't do, and some of this is from previous clients where I feel like they've made some mistakes with some decisions. And I agreed to carry it out. And then we looked at the data and realized that they shouldn't have done it.
[00:17:37] I had a client who had a huge database of about 10,000 people, and he offered a service that was very, it was a long sales cycle. Like, people might be interested, but they may not buy for another year or so. And he got frustrated that people weren't jumping and jumping but not scheduling to talk to him or taking the next step. And he cut his database down and started only emailing the people who he had added to his database in the last 60 days. And his open rate just crashed because these new people didn't know him yet. They weren't opening. And what happened to all those other people? Those people had not unsubscribed, they had not said go away. And he was always adding new information when he was sending out. He wasn't really saying the same thing over and over again.
[00:18:28] And I feel like people were really reading the newsletter and learning things, and he just decided he was just going to trash most of his database. Don't do that. Your database is gold. If your LinkedIn gets compromised or you get locked out of something, a platform shuts down, your website gets hacked, you still have your email list, so keep it, keep it segmented and keep talking to people. If they're not going away, even if they're not sitting there digesting everything and getting in touch right away, just keep talking to them. You never know what's going to happen. And somebody taking the next step could have been big dollars.
[00:19:11] Another thing is somebody stopping too soon? I've had clients that they send out emails maybe for like six, eight weeks, and they say nothing's working. Well, we're not selling anything that people need tomorrow. We're building awareness, and in these cases, and it takes time. I've had a client who we did email blasts regularly for six months. And then all of a sudden his business started to take off a lot. And people were mentioning these emails that were coming out and they didn't realize some of the things that they could do, and they were glad to see the images and read the stories and those type of things. And so you need to stick with it and see, email is not just, I'm going to send it once. And in my business, change.
[00:19:53] And the last thing is the old format, like big community real estate newsletters, those don't work anymore. So I had a client say that that's what we were going to do. And she wanted the tips and tricks and the recipes and all these things dropped into this newsletter. Like, no one's going to read this. People go out and get this kind of information off social media.
[00:20:20] They might want to get some of the stuff off of your website, but they're not going to read like a six or seven page newsletter. Well, she learned that open rates started dropping. People said some things to her. She was frustrated. I'm like, well, what do you say? You don't want to say I told you so, but you need to keep it concise. You need to make sure you're showing value. You don't need to just fill up space. To fill up space. Say what you need to say and be done. People will appreciate that so much.
[00:20:51] So I really think I was going to share some stats with you. Hold on, let me grab that real quick.
[00:20:57] People always say, like, what are the good stats? What are the things that I need to think of? What are the numbers that I need to know? How do I know I'm successful? So these are kind of just averages across industries. You can go out and search by your industry. Some are going to be higher, some are going to be a little bit lower. But open rates, kind of an average decent open rate is between 15 and 25%.
[00:21:20] If it's higher than 25%, that's considered good.
[00:21:25] The click through rate, clicking through, going to the site, clicking through, booking an appointment average is about 2.5%. Something that's really good is anything over four conversion rates greater than 5% are great.
[00:21:40] If you have a bounce rate over 5%, that's concerning. So a bounce rate is you send something out to 100 people and let's say 90 of them go through and ten of them come back as bad.
[00:21:55] Sometimes the email platforms, after one or two times of that, they could temporarily suspend your account or stop it because they'll think that you're just grabbing names from somebody or your list is old and you haven't scrubbed it. So when things are bounced and you find out that email address doesn't exist anymore or whatever, need to get it out of there. Don't use really, really old data.
[00:22:21] And so anything over 5%, you need to be careful about. Make sure you're keeping your list clean. Unsubscribe rate should stay pretty low. If you're giving, sending out good content and doing what you need to do.
[00:22:35] Under 0.5% is great. Over 1% gets to be kind of concerning. And then the ROI on email, kind of the average is for every dollar spent on email marketing, you should get a return of $42. So that's a good number to think about when you're investing in a program.
[00:22:55] And then I would say those are about the only ones that are shared. The last one I would look at would be engagement time. You know, kind of an average time somebody spends reading an email, ten to 15 seconds. If they spend more than 15 seconds on it, that's good. So just remember, when you're trying to put together all this content, what do you have? Ten to 15 seconds to kind of get your point across? So you gotta, you gotta get in there and do it quickly. So that, that is about it for email. I am happy to always take questions about things. I'm happy to talk to you about metrics, I'm happy to talk to you about different platforms, I'm happy to talk to you about messaging. I'm even happy to look at something that you're sending, and if you've got questions about something or you just want another set of eyes, so let me know. And I'll be back next week with another solo episode, digging into another topic that I get asked about a lot, but you'll have to wait and see what that is. So I hope everybody has a great rest of the week. And this is it for this episode of Confessions from the Home Office. See you soon.
