The Email Marketing Show Email Marketing Heroes

Is email nurturing a big waste of time? Do you really have to keep someone on your list for years and years before they buy anything from you?
The answer is no. 
There's a better way to make sales in your business and use email marketing to your advantage. 
Want to know how?
Let's find out. 
SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 
(0:15) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.
(3:11) Check out our sponsor Poster My Wall.
(3:50) What do we mean by nurturing your email list?
(6:23) What should you actually do to nurture your email list?
(9:11) Our SCORE email engine.
(11:46) Nurturing your list with your daily emails.
(14:02) How you 'keep people warm'. 
(15:07) The 'penny-drop' moment.
(16:52) What you shouldn't do to nurture your list.
(20:01) Subject line of the week.
[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]

What do we mean by nurturing your email list? A lot of people think that the whole idea of email marketing is to get people on your email list and then spend the next 20 years making them think that maybe one day they might buy from you because you’ve been such a lovely person to them for so long. And for those people, this is their entire email marketing strategy.
But that’s not a strategy.
That's hoping, praying, and wishing.
And that's not what nurturing is in our book. Nurturing isn't about turning subscribers into customers via long-term sequences of a million emails that are designed to get people to buy over a number of years. If you do that, you're accepting these people into your world and then effectively putting them 'in the oven'. You're trying to 'keep them warm' until one day they may or may not buy from you. That's not what we mean by nurturing your email list. 
And if you're doing it that way, you are wasting your time. 
What should you actually do to nurture your email list? What you should do instead is to have sales campaigns that are designed for people to buy from you right now. And if they don’t buy, by all means, you carry on with nurturing sequences that 'keep them warm’ but only to glide back into another sales campaign at some other point.
When someone joins our list, they go through our email engine, which is designed to sell. If they get to the end of a sales sequence and don’t buy, they go into our closest thing to long-term nurture, which is our day-to-day emails. But they don’t particularly know or notice that - they'll simply feel like an offer has come to an end because there's no huge difference in how the various emails look and feel. And every 5-8 weeks, we’ll run another sales campaign. 
Most people buy within the first 60 days of joining your listWhen you think about it, the reason why anyone joins an email list is because they have a problem that they want to solve. They want to learn about the thing you teach. And when we looked at the data in our business, it’s no surprise we found that if people don’t buy from us in the first 60 days of joining our email list, their chance of ever buying from us plummets to less than 5%.
And this makes perfect sense. If someone joins your list to learn about how to train their puppy, for example, they need to fix that problem now - not two or six months down the line! If your marketing strategy is based on nurturing these people for 90-180 days (or even longer), you’re missing out on the time during which your subscribers...

Our awesome client Hillary-Marie recently made $16,000 worth of sales with an email marketing campaign she implemented from being part of our membership The League. And you know what's even better? She copied and pasted that campaign, ran it again for a different segment of her list, and made another $16,000!
Want to find out Hillary-Marie's success story?
SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 
(0:18) Join our FREE Facebook Group. 
(3:45) Check out our sponsor Poster My Wall.
(4:25) Who is League member Hillary-Marie?
(7:14) When did email marketing become a part of Hillary-Marie's business?
(9:55) What did Hillary-Marie's email marketing look like before she joined The League?
(13:47) What was the first change Hillary-Marie implemented when she joined The League?
(17:59) What results did Hillary-Marie experience in her business?
(22:55) What ONE action had the most impact on Hillary-Marie's email marketing?
(24:21) What's next for Hillary-Marie and in her business and email marketing?
(26:31) Subject line of the week.
[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]

Who is League member Hillary-Marie?Hillary-Marie (here she is on Instagram) runs a business called iTapOnline - an online tap dance school where she helps teachers and adults around the world unlock the joy of tap dance. Hillary-Marie has a membership that gives people access to all her courses and classes and also runs a certificate 10-week programme for teachers once a year. 
What Hillary-Marie sells is a super affordable B2C proposition. It can be a hobby for some people, but for the teachers who are enrolling in the certificate programme, their participation often comes from a desire to serve the needs of their students while enjoying their own tap dance journey along the way.
Hillary's students are anywhere from absolute beginners to advanced and are often people who don’t have access to a local tap class at their speed or level. So Hillary-Marie tapped (see what we did there?) into the opportunity to segment her two audiences (adult students and teachers) and serve them both simultaneously with the same exact offer.
When did email marketing become part of Hillary-Marie’s business?Hillary-Marie started her membership in 2016, and email marketing was always a part of her journey. From the start, she used email marketing to ask people to buy from her, so she started collecting email addresses straight away. But at that time, she was only reaching out to her audience when she had something free to offer or a product she wanted people to buy. Looking back, Hillary-Marie can see that only getting in touch when she had something to sell wasn't the best approach.
About a year ago Hillary-Marie came to a crossroads in her business. As an artist and a dancer, she had always relied on social media quite heavily. But she came to the realisation that she'd either have to 'sell her soul' to social media (and spend all her time on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.) to churn out as much organic content as possible, or she could invest her time, energy, and money into email marketing instead. And not sell her soul!
Thankfully, email marketing is the route that Hillary-Marie decided to take. And she's glad she did because email has given her an opportunity to share stories in a way that feels honest and genuine, rather than just playing the game of the...

Are you making any of these email marketing copywriting mistakes? Curious to know what we're talking about? If you're keen to improve your email copy, we've got some super-easy tips here for you. Check them out!
SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 
(0:09) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.
(4:30) Check out our sponsor Poster My Wall.
(5:09) Is successful email marketing all about copywriting?
(12:06) Boring subject lines.
(13:01) The wall of text.
(14:58) Beating around the bush.
(16:10) Sounding like you're writing your English coursework.
(17:31) Not using stories or making them too long.
(19:59) Assuming your audience knows your industry the way you do.
(22:20) Doing 'back referencing' the wrong way.
(26:10) Subject line of the week.  
[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]

Is successful email marketing all about copywriting?First thing first, let's get this out of the way...
Do you need to be a great writer/copywriter to be successful at email marketing? In our opinion, no. Because no one likes to receive emails from the slick copywriter (unless that’s what you do). Rather than having perfectly written and polished copy, you want to connect with your audience!
And when you think about it, this is true of sales copy too. Because the minute you say something that doesn't resonate with your readers, you lose them - they'll close the page and be gone forever. With email though, if the person's on your list, you get more attempts than just one to grab and hold their attention.
You don't have to write one big thing with a beginning, a middle, and an end – it’s not a long journey! Email marketing is done in short bursts, so it doesn’t matter if you get lost along the way because you'll get another crack at it tomorrow. 
But there's another reason why email marketing isn't all about the copy. And it's this...
The 3 elements of successful email marketingThere are 3 key elements to email marketing:
The words/copy. The structure.And the strategy.
The copy is what you say in your emails to make people engage with you and feel things. And that only accounts for 20% of the impact an email can have. This is true for any form of communication because it's all to do with the para language, i.e. what runs parallel to the language. In other words, it's about how you say something or the context in which you say it. 
Structure is way more important than copy, and it's about how many emails you send, when you send them, how long you wait in between emails, who you send them to, etc. And strategy is about the hooks and the angles in your emails.
Remember, we're talking about strategy here - not tactics. Tactics are things you do, i.e. individual points of action. A strategy strings together lots of tactics in a specific way - it's where the tactics compound one another. If you have a bunch of tactics that are not compounding the results of each other, then you don't have a strategy.  
So if you’re worrying about the words, don’t. Because you can have the best words in the world, but if the structure and the strategy aren’t there, your email marketing isn’t going to work. Instead, you could use the simplest, dumbest words you want, but if you’re talking about something that’s concise and resonates with people, those emails are going to win every time over perfect words that end up disengaging your audience. In other words, you're better off sending out a well-structured campaign made of 12-20...

Are you thinking of writing a business book? Or maybe you have already? Want to find out how you can promote your book launch with email marketing?
Let's have a bit of a chat about that, shall we?
SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 
(0:18) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.
(4:28) Check out our sponsor Poster My Wall.
(5:08) Should you write a business book?
(10:53) How to use your book to bring in thousands of email subscribers!
(16:35) How to make your business book profitable.
(22:07) Pre-launch business book email ideas.
(24:48) Business book launch email ideas.
(27:10) Create scarcity with special editions.
(30:18) Business book buyer email sequence.
(32:02) Subject line of the week.
[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]

Should you write a business book?A lot of business owners write books these days because we all recognise that some people like to learn by reading a book (while others prefer courses or videos). And it's definitely something that's on our radar for the future too. However, it's not something we're planning to do straight away because the way we teach tends to be very visual.
Having said that, when our clients ask us about writing a book for their business, our first question is always to check where their book fits within their business. Do they want to write a book because it gives them status? Or is it a step towards being noticed by a big brand like Netflix, for example? Is the book something they'll use on their front end so they can capture email addresses and send people through some sort of sales funnel? 
Before you even think of writing a book, you need to know exactly where it fits in your business. And if you decide to go ahead, you definitely want your book to help you with your list building and your sales.
Here's how.
How to use your book to bring in thousands of email subscribers! Something we think is key when writing a book is having the ability to collect the email addresses of your readers. Whether you're going through traditional publishing or the self-publishing route, you want email addresses that you can market to.
A few years ago, Kennedy wrote a book in the magician niche. And in every chapter of the book he included a call to action asking people to opt into his email list. How? Simply by inviting them to grab a free resource related to the topic in that chapter in exchange for their email address. Whether it's diagrams, cheat sheets, or videos (i.e. anything that adds value to your book), use that as an excuse to bring in email subscribers.
This is valuable to you because once people are in your world, you can acquire them as customers. If you self-publish your book on Amazon and collect money from the sales but are none the wiser as to who your readers are, you're missing a trick! Because you can't market them directly. It's only by getting your readers to opt in that more opportunities open up for you.
So make sure that you:
Do the advertising and bring people to your platform.Seed things throughout the book that boomerang people back to you and your world. 
And now, let’s talk about what a book funnel might look like.
How to make your business book profitableA book funnel obviously has the book as its starting point - you want people to come into your world and grab the book as the first thing they do. It can be a paid-for product or it can be free. If it's free, you can ask customers to pay for the cost of shipping and handling. And if you do, be mindful of how you phrase that, as you don’t want the “free + shipping” option to be more expensive

Are you a B2B marketer? Are you struggling to make email marketing work for your business? Let's talk about the five B2B email marketing problems we see all the time. Of course, we won't leave you high and dry. We'll share the reasons why these problems are so common but also give you some practical tips on how to fix them.
Ready to get all the good stuff on this? 
SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 
(0:11) Join our FREE Facebook Group. 
(5:12) Check out our sponsor ZeroBounce. 
(7:00) What do we mean by B2B?
(10:40) Solve the problem of the PERSON working for the business.
(12:13) One - no one is joining your B2B email list.
(15:23) Kennedy's case study.
(19:49) Two - you're getting A LOT of unsubscribes.
(29:38) Three - you're not making enough sales.
(32:51) Four - your subscribers aren't opening your emails.
(38:29) Five - your subscribers aren't clicking on the links in your emails.
(40:25) Subject line of the week.
[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]

What do we mean by B2B?First things first, we have a slightly different philosophy on B2B. We actually think there are two types of B2B marketing - b2b (smaller business to smaller business) and B2B (business to big business).
We make this distinction because we believe that in b2b, the businesses you’re marketing to make decisions just like consumers. Take us, for example. We sell a business solution, but often our customers are people who are spending their own money on their businesses. They spend and invest money like consumers. In fact, some of the people who buy from us have such a small business (or their business is so new) that they’re not even making any money yet! They're investing their own money by putting it into the business.
So the first thing we recommend you do is to evaluate whether you fit in the traditional B2B category. Are you selling to someone who works for a big business (B2B) or are you selling to a small business owner who's currently alone in their venture (b2b)? 
The advice that follows is mainly about B2B. But if you’re a b2b marketer, everything else we talk about on our podcast and blog will apply to you. Focus on this, and we promise it'll change the way you communicate with your audience. It definitely did for us, and it made a huge difference.
Solve the problem of the PERSON working for the company If you consider yourself a B2B marketer, the first thing to remember is that you're still selling to human beings - people who have busy days and lives. They might have short attention spans, but they still have emotions! They have stuff they care about. And when it comes to the work they do, they still want to do a good job and get good results for their boss.
In fact, because they're so busy and pulled in all directions (in their personal and professional lives), they want to get their job done in the easiest way possible. Because that can perhaps relieve some stress and alleviate pressure. And this is where you come in.
So with that in mind, let's look at the 5 major problems we see with B2B marketing and how to fix them. 
Problem One - No one is joining your B2B email listIf people aren't joining your list, it's worth pointing out that the person you're talking to (i.e. the ideal prospect for your list) might be someone who works in a specific department for a big company. You want to get their attention so they join your email list. But getting your emails adds a new layer of distraction to their (already busy) personal and professional lives. In other words, they have a lot going on, and you're coming...

Do you know how many of the email addresses on your list are invalid? What happens when your subscribers mark your emails as spam rather than unsubscribing? How can you improve your sender reputation and your email deliverability? And did you know that you're losing approximately 22% of your subscribers every single year? 
We discuss this (and more!) with Brian Minick from ZeroBounce. And we guarantee you - you want to know what Brian has to say here. So listen or read on, and you can thank us later! 
SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 
(0:12) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks. 
(3:10) Check out our sponsor ZeroBounce. 
(4:58) Did Brian really jump from the side of a cruise ship?
(6:20) What is email validation and why do you want to do it?
(9:44) Why deliverability rates aren't accurate.
(11:43) The truth about disposable email addresses.
(16:08) How to deal with typos.
(19:50) Other reasons why email addresses aren't valid.
(24:33) How to build an email list based on quality and not quantity.
(26:47) Make informed business decisions with ZeroBounce.
(31:40) Subject line of the week.
[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]

What is email validation and why do you want to do it? Having validated over 18 billion email addresses over the years to check if emails to those addresses are deliverable, ZeroBounce did some research back in 2022. And they found that, on average, about 22% of email lists are decaying year on year. This means that next year you won't be able to deliver 22% of the emails you delivered this year.
And part of the reason why is because of job shifts and email addresses getting shut down or abandoned. But there's more, and we're going to go into details with Brian a little later. But for now, let's let that number sink in - it's a terrifying statistic! Sure, if you have more personal accounts on your email list (rather than business ones), you're looking at a slightly slower decay. But that number could be higher if you're B2B. Brian confirmed that ZeroBounce (who are B2B) are seeing their own database reduce by 32% every year!
If you've been following our work for a while, you'll know that our approach to email marketing is based on building a list over time and nurturing those people. We make offers from the start, but not everyone will buy straight away - some people can take a couple of years before they become customers. And if these people aren't even going to be on your list next year, you definitely want to sell to them quickly! You want to turn them into paying customers to keep them in your world. Because when they become customers, they're more likely to get in touch and let you know if they changed their email address, for example.
But let's get into more detail... 
Why deliverability rates aren't accurateWhen your emails aren't getting delivered, you might see your bounce rate increase. However, Email Service Providers (ESPs) don't do a great job of explaining why that is. ZeroBounce, in their analysis, focuses on deliverability. When your emails are delivered, it means they've landed in someone's inbox. ESPs, on the other hand, will consider an email as delivered when it's left their system and has gone somewhere. In reality, it could be in someone's spam folder (blocked by a spam filter) or the Promotions folder. All it means is that the email has been sent.
The reason why ESPs report on 'sent' rather than 'delivered' is that they can't tell the...