The Email Marketing Show Email Marketing Heroes

Are you thinking of running your own online summit? Are you wondering about how to promote a virtual event with email marketing?
Today we're sharing the lessons we've learned from running our own two-day online event - Inbox. This is the third year we hosted our signature email marketing conference, which is a totally free online event with multiple speakers and a ton of value.
Want to know all about it so you can find out exactly what email campaigns you can run to make your next online event a super profitable one?
Then let's go!
SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
(5:03) Why the online online virtual summit business model works.
(6:49) Why we choose to run Inbox on Zoom.
(8:00) Agree with the speakers when they're going to promote the event.
(9:53) Find sponsors for your event.
(10:56) Promote your event with email marketing.
(12:39) The registration sequence and the engagement sequence.
(16:06) The sequence you run during the event and the post-event sequence.
(20:07) How to handle the price hikes.
(25:51) Check out our Virtual Summit email campaign workshop.
(29:06) Subject line of the week.


Why the online virtual summit business model worksOur Inbox email marketing conference is now online, which means people can attend from all over the world. But when we first ran the event in 2020 it wasn't meant to be free or online. We'd planned an in-person conference in Newcastle for $500 per ticket.


But then the pandemic hit, and we had to move the event online. We've basically changed the business model so that instead of having people pay for a ticket, they pay for the recordings of all the sessions (we call this All Access Pass).


Plus, because all the speakers also promote the event to their audiences (and earn a percentage of the sales), an online event like this is a great list-building exercise. We absolutely fell in love with this business model, and to this date, our conference Inbox creates the biggest influx of brand new subscribers to our list each year.


Why we choose to run Inbox on Zoom One of the things we learned is that although there are different platforms designed to host virtual events (and those are absolutely brilliant) sometimes tech barriers stop people from attending. So we decided to host our event on Zoom, and we have no intention of ever changing that.


Because running a virtual summit is a list-building exercise, you want lots of attendees! So it's probably not the right time to try out fancy platforms that people aren't familiar with because there can be a lot of resistance to those. Whereas with Zoom, pretty much everyone knows how to use it, so if you remove the tech resistance you'll have more people registering and attending the event.


Agree with the speakers when they're going to promote the event Another thing we learned is that not all businesses treat email marketing as a priority in their business. So while we know in advance what we're going to promote and when, a lot of businesses might not.


During the first year of running Inbox, we asked all speakers to promote the event to their list, but we didn't specify any timelines for them. And that meant that we got very little (if any) promotion at all from some of the speakers.


So what we do now is to ask the speakers to specify in advance what dates they're going to promote the event. We ask them to create a schedule, put it in their calendars, and commit to it. So if you're organising an online event, don’t be afraid of letting your speakers know that it works as a collective. If all the speakers promote the conference to their list, then you’re getting in front of all of their audiences. But if they don't, then you don't get as much exposure - you all have to do the promotion.


Find sponsors for your eventAnother tip we can give you is to try and find companies that are happy to pay to get in front of your audience (because they're...

How do you know if you're unique enough? What makes you stand out? How do you market yourself so that your ideal customers choose you and not your competitors?
These are some of the questions we answer today with the help of our awesome guest Belinda Weaver. Belinda is a copywriter who helps people who are learning to be copywriters to up their game. And today she talks to us about how to make yourself choosable.
Yep - that's a word. And you sure want to find out all about it!
SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
(0:10) Want to get more sales from your email marketing? Grab our Click Tricks.
(3:50) Did Belinda really have a pet peacock called Cocker?
(5:10) Do you really need a USP to stand out from the crowd?
(7:20) No USP? No problem!
(8:45) How do you make yourself more choosable?
(10:00) Lean into the combination of ingredients that makes you unique.
(13:06) Tell people what it's like to work with you.
(16:44) Share your passion and why you got started.
(18:52) Be yourself and don't be afraid of feedback.
(23:02) Subject line of the week with Belinda Weaver.


Want to get more sales from your email marketing?We put a little something together for you. It's really cool and it's FREE (yes, it's cool and free – we're nice like that). If you want to make more sales from your email marketing, you need more clicks on the things that you're selling!


That's why we're giving you 12 creative ways to help you get more clicks in every email you send. It's a FREE download, and it's called Click Tricks. You can grab it https://emailmarketingheroes.com/tricks/ (here).


Do you really need a USP to stand out from the crowd? As business owners, we all worry about the idea of standing out. Why should people choose you? Do we worry too much about this? Is this a valid concern? Our friend and awesome copywriter Belinda Weaver shared with us that having a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is indeed Marketing 101. We're told to come up with our USP and our differentiator and to have a great elevator pitch that explains what we do, who we do it for, and what makes us different.


These kinds of things are drummed into us. And Belinda calls this the unicorn fallacy. It's this idea that in order to be successful, you have to be unique and different. But when she first started out as a copywriter, Belinda didn’t know what made her unique yet. So instead of trying to focus too much on that, she decided to become as good as she could be and then figure out what made her unique. And she thinks a lot of business owners should do the same.


As a copywriter, Belinda always asks her clients what makes them unique. And funnily enough, she never expects a great answer because she doesn’t have a great one herself! In fact, at first, she thought there was nothing in particular that made her unique. But she kept showing up, earning an income, and making progress. And at some point, she realised that maybe she didn’t have to be different in order to be successful.


No USP? No problem!Is anything ever unique anyway? Even if you invented something brand new, is it going to be unique for long? According to Belinda, having a USP isn’t completely irrelevant. We probably all have something that’s uniquely and brilliantly us, but if the USP becomes a gimmick that holds us back from what's important, then it’s not useful.


If we get paralysed in trying to find our USP and don’t do the things we could be doing to get more business, then there's no point in finding a USP in the first place! We sometimes get so worried about what makes us different, unique, special, or rockstar-worthy that we do nothing. And that's not cool.


How do you make yourself more choosable? Making yourself choosable isn't just about standing out from your competitors. Yes, there are people who do the same thing as you, but there are often different solutions to similar problems -...

What do you do if you have a high unsubscribe rate? What is a high unsubscribe rate, and does it even matter? Or should we simply focus on addressing any spikes in unsubscribers instead?
We hear so many people telling us they put in a lot of work to build their list just to see their subscribers leave pretty quickly. And we know it's easy to feel bad about it, but if you find yourself in this situation, fear not! There's quite a bit you can do about it.
Ready to find out?
SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
(4:48) Unsubscribers aren't a bad thing!
(6:55) Why you can't just rely on your lead magnet.
(8:41) How to make sure people want to hear from you.
(12:48) Why use a Welcome sequence.
(14:39) Why monitor your unsubscribe rate.
(18:31) What to check when you have a high unsubscribe rate.
(21:41) Have you made any changes to your email marketing?
(22:51) Why always include offers in your emails.
(25:15) Build a list of subscribers, not hostages!
(26:53) Subject line of the week.


Unsubscribers aren't a bad thing!Here are a few things to think about when it comes to unsubscribe rates - the impact they have on your technical email deliverability, your relationship with your list, and your business. Because broadly speaking, unsubscribers aren't a bad thing, especially when it comes to your emails getting delivered.
Just for a second, imagine you have a massive mansion. You decide to have a housewarming party, and instead of just inviting your friends, you tell everyone who lives within 100 miles of your new place. So they all come, but the thing is – you don’t want most of these people there. In fact, you probably want them to leave! Because ultimately, you only want to hang around the people you actually like. And the same goes for your business. You want to build a list of people you like and who like you.


Why you can't just rely on your lead magnetHigh unsubscribe rates are typical of the way we build our lists. And they're definitely part of the course when we use lead magnets. If you’re running ads or employing any other quick-win list-building strategies, you need to come to terms with the fact that a lot of people don’t want to be on your list - they just want your lead magnet.
So they’ll opt in for the thing, get it, and then quickly unsubscribe because they don't care much about hearing from you. But one way of fixing this is to make sure you have a long-term nurture sequence.
For example, if you join our list because you’ve listened to a few podcast episodes or have been in our Facebook group for a while, you’ve been nurtured into our world. That means you are subconsciously and psychologically committed to remaining on our list because we've built a relationship with you over time. It’s a totally different experience from someone you've never heard of before who signs up to a lead magnet.


How to make sure people want to hear from youA good solution to help with this is asking people to join your email list because they want to hear from you however many times you email them every week. That way, your emails become the thing people are signing up for. And that should reduce your unsubscribe rate. Plus, it means that people are expecting emails from you. It's not just you suddenly sending them sales emails after they downloaded your lead magnet.
You see, we also lose a good number of subscribers quite early on in our email journey. But this isn’t something unique to email marketing - it happens everywhere. Think about networking events or work meetings, for example. There aren’t that many people that you meet that you find interesting enough to keep in touch with or want to see again. And even out of those people, only a smaller percentage become meaningful to you.
What this means is that you want to build a list of people who are good, responsive, and ideal subscribers. As we always say, you have to kiss a lot of frogs! You need to accept you'll have a...

Why did we wait three years to create a brand? Shouldn't that be the first thing you do when you start a business? Probably not! It's not what we did, and there are valid reasons for that. Because for years, we proved again and again that we could sell our product - even if it was ugly.
Want to know what this is all about?


Let's find out!


SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
(5:33) Why we finally decided to create a brand.
(9:29) Why you should NOT create a brand as soon as you start your business.
(11:10) How we started Email Marketing Heroes.
(14:58) Focus on your offer first.
(19:57) Fix what doesn't work before making it pretty.
(21:26) The four things you need to focus on to make your business work.
(23:40) Launching 'ugly' businesses.
(27:47) Creating our brand - why now?
(29:39) Why create a brand for our products and audience.
(33:25) Subject line of the week.


Why we finally decided to create a brandYou may have noticed that a couple of months ago we finally decided to create a brand - we overhauled our entire branding. Our colours and fonts look different, and we've even had our first professional photo shoot together. Why? Because our previous branding looked significantly uglier than it does now.


Over the years of being in business, we've definitely seen people around us producing graphics that looked way better than ours did. But the problem is that neither of us has an eye for things like that. We’re good at communication, but we’re not designers.


When we first launched our business, branding wasn't our priority. We just wanted to get off the starting blocks - not to create a brand that looked nice. So when we launched https://emailmarketingheroes.com/ (Email Marketing Heroes) all we had was a logo.


We ran a contest, and the person who submitted the best logo also came on board to work with us. She's an amazing designer, but she's not a branding expert. And as a result, over the last few years, we’ve been producing graphics that looked inconsistent. They were nice in isolation but didn’t fit with anything else. All the different elements of our business had a different vibe, and we felt our branding was disjointed and was getting worse with time.


Why you should NOT create a brand as soon as you start your businessUnfortunately, over the years we've also seen businesses with amazing branding go out of business. Why? Because they focused on the things that looked good or what they found naturally interesting, enjoyable, and easy for them - rather than what needed to be done to run a business and to keep it going.


Because we all have to make sales. We have to show up and give value to people. And we need to put out offers that are so interesting and valuable that people are willing to invest in them, so we can stay in business and help more people.


And there’s one really uncomfortable piece of advice we find ourselves dishing out a lot to our clients, which is to stop doing the thing you’re doing because it’s the wrong activity for you to be doing in your business right now. Your problem above and beyond anything else is to figure out how to make money. Once you have that nailed, then you can build around it.


How we started Email Marketing HeroesWhen we started our business, we wanted to find out whether people would pay us to teach them email marketing and buy our campaigns. When we launched our membership https://get.emailmarketingheroes.com/league/ (The League), we didn’t know if people wanted a new email campaign every month - and that's one of our core propositions.


But figuring all of this out was our first aim - our aim then was not to create a brand. Could we build a thriving business based on something people want? Are our offers good enough? It’s not just what we sell and how. If Rob and Kennedy (the hypnotist and mind reader who teach a psychological approach to email marketing) sell email campaigns that you can swipe and...

Can giveaways help you grow your list? What prize should you choose for your contest and how do you make it go viral? Who do giveaways work best for, and how do you even run them? Ready to find out why giveaways are important for your email list growth and your business?
Then let's hear it from the awesome Derek Videll!
SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
(0:13) Want to get more sales from your email marketing? Grab our Click Tricks.
(3:24) Does Derek really have uncontrollable sneezing fits when he chews mint gum?
(5:19) Why are giveaways a good strategy to use for new businesses?
(6:40) Should new businesses run paid ads to their offers?
(8:44) Why picking the right prize will help you find the right audience.
(13:00) Testing your audience and finding your target market.
(14:14) Do giveaways work for B2B?
(16:22) What are the key ingredients to running a viral giveaway?
(21:07) How do you make the giveaway go viral?
(23:40) Subject line of the week with Derek Videll.


Want to get more sales from your email marketing?We put a little something together for you. It's really cool and it's FREE (yes, it's cool and free – we're nice like that). If you want to make more sales from your email marketing, you need more clicks on the things that you're selling!


That's why we're giving you 12 creative ways to help you get more clicks in every email you send. It's a FREE download, and it's called Click Tricks. You can grab it https://emailmarketingheroes.com/tricks/ (here).


Why are giveaways a good strategy to use for new businesses? Our awesome guest Derek told us that giveaways work better for beginners and new businesses. Why? Because while viral contests can also work for intermediate and advanced businesses, they are a much simpler and more effective way of building your list when you're starting out than other strategies are, such as organic social media posting.


For example, if you're a business owner who's been trying to grow organically on Instagram by posting reels, you might have experienced limited success. Reels can be difficult to do, and not everyone likes to create them. Plus, even if your reels go viral and you gain some followers from them, this strategy still doesn't give you much control over your business. Sure, you may end up with a few thousand followers, but you'll have no consistent sales revenue.


Should new businesses run paid ads for their offers? Paid social media ads are a more ambitious route than organic content sharing, but a lot of new businesses aren't yet experienced at selling their offer. They might have not narrowed down their target market or fully established their branding and website. Or their email marketing might not be fully set up yet. But all these components are necessary if you want your paid ads to bring in sales.


The truth is that running paid social media ads directly to your offers rarely works. You might make a few sales, gain some followers, or even collect some email addresses, but the cost per acquisition tends to be very high, and in that case, your rates are probably very unprofitable.


And that's fully understandable because a lot of new business owners who have started a passion project don't necessarily have the marketing background or copywriting skills they need to make the sales they want to make. So they end up burning money on paid ads, which isn't ideal.


But there's a better way to do things! And (you guessed it) - it's giveaways!


What prize should you give away in your viral contest? When you run viral contests, your marketing or copywriting skills don't have to be excellent. You just need to pick a prize that people want to win. So the first thing to consider is what you'll be giving away.


It can't be something untargeted or generic like an Amazon gift card or a MacBook. Because that will only give you random followers who then...

Are you going on holiday or taking some time off from your business? What will you do with your email marketing? Will you stop your emails? Or will you keep them going? What are your options? This is what we're sharing today - how to do your email marketing while you're on holiday, whether you’re physically leaving and going somewhere or simply switching off from your business for some well-deserved time off.
Ready to find out what your options are to keep your email marketing going during the holidays?


SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
(4:51) Option 1 - Stop sending emails (don't do this!)
(10:08) Option 2 - Schedule your emails in advance.
(12:59) Option 3 - Run a campaign.
(15:02) The importance of having customer support while you're away.
(17:27) Option 4 - Send your emails while you're on holiday.
(20:56) The importance of having an Email Engine.
(22:44) Let your holiday inspire your emails.
(24:51) Always capture new ideas for your email marketing.
(30:54) Take advantage of these helpful resources inside The League.
(32:04) Subject line of the week.


Option 1 – Stop sending emails (don’t do this!)The first option you have (and - spoiler alert - this is something we don't advise you to do) is to stop sending emails. You simply disappear for however long you're away or taking time off.


This is definitely an option you have, but just because you're taking some well-deserved time off, it doesn't mean you don't have to continue showing up. In fact, you don't want to stop sending emails. Because that means losing momentum and traction.


Why you need to keep showing up for your subscribersRemember that one of the things you’re doing by sending regular emails to your subscribers is to build and reinforce a habit. If you know that someone sends you an email every day of the week, you expect that. Or if you publish a podcast episode every week and suddenly stop, chances are people will stop listening.


The same goes with your emails – you stop sending them, and your subscribers will stop reading them. When you drop your frequency, from a technical point of you, you mess with the algorithm. But people also stop paying attention to you.


And from a psychological perspective, the minute you stop doing something, you find it harder to get back to it. So stopping your emails is bad for everything! It's bad from a tech point of view in terms of your deliverability, it’s bad for engagement, and it's bad for your audience because it gives them a chance to disconnect and forget who you are. And last but not least it's bad for you! Because once you've stopped, it's harder to get back into it.


So, yes - you absolutely deserve time off. But you also have a responsibility towards your subscribers and customers to show up and deliver value. It’s part of the promise you made to your subscribers. So what other options you have to ensure you can keep showing up even when you're on holiday?


Option 2 – Schedule your emails in advanceAnother option you have is to prepare in advance and write and schedule your emails. So let's say you're going to be away for 16 days - you'll want to have all your emails written and scheduled in advance a couple of days before that. And potentially, you'll also want emails scheduled for a few days after you return to give yourself a chance to get back into the swing of things.


This means you batch-create the emails in advance for the duration of your trip (plus a few days before and after). And this is great because it means that as long as you spend some time preparing and planning in advance, you can take as much time away from your business as you want.


The only thing to bear in mind if you're going to batch-write your emails is that you don't want them to all sound the same. We have a resource called Batch It Crazy inside our membership https://get.emailmarketingheroes.com/league/ (The League) that helps you do exactly...