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Episode Description
Ep. 104 – In this episode, Chris brings on special guest, Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons. Josh is a marketing technology lifecycle marketer who discovered marketing automation about six years ago and fell in love with the way that it intersects the puzzle of tech and the puzzle of humans. They discuss how Josh took those puzzle pieces and implemented them to generate massive lead generation results. Tune in for the do’s, the don’ts, and the exact process to produce big results with email marketing automation.
- [3:53] About Josh and how he got into marketing automation over 6 years ago
- [4:57] How email marketing differs in different countries
- [8:55] How Josh recently grew an email list from zero to 340,000 in 5 months with a 70% double opt in rate and a 99% inbox placement rate
- [11:35] The importance of knowing and targeting your specific audience
- [15:09] Josh’s strategy for really getting to know your ideal customer avatar
- [19:00] Why being nimble and flexible in your marketing strategy is important
- [20:09] The pros and cons of having a double opt-in vs. single opt-in
- [27:24] The core fundamental piece that makes for successful email marketing
- [30:04] What inbox placement is and how Josh has achieved a 99% rate with it
- [34:42] “Can you deliver value beyond pitching your product?”
- [35:50] Josh’s take on the looming email update that that Apple has announced
- [45:01] How to become an Automation Service Provider™
Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the all systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sell systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis
Chris Davis 0:31
Welcome to the our systems go podcast. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, the founder and chief automation Officer of automation bridge, where we focus on turning digital marketing professionals into automation service providers by teaching them marketing and sales automation. And if you’d like to become one our find out if you should become one, an automation service provider that is we’ve got a new quiz a brief brief quiz that takes less than two minutes. And it will tell you exactly that. You can find that at automationbridge.com/ASP if you’re new to the podcast, make sure you listen to this episode in its entirety. So you know the value the the gem of knowledge that you will be receiving every Thursday when we release a new episode. At the time of recording. The all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to. And you can find the show on all main podcasting apps like Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, you can even subscribe on YouTube. So once you’ve listened to this episode in its entirety, make sure that you subscribe for those of you who are listeners and just haven’t subscribed yet. For whatever reason. What are you waiting for? Now is the time now is the time. Um, while you’re at it. A five star rating and review is greatly appreciated. It helps vet the all systems go podcast as the podcast to listen to, to subscribe to, to get the exclusive and specialized knowledge on marketing automation. So you can leave a review in any of those podcasting apps or if you would like for us to post a review for you. You can go to automation bridge.com forward slash review. In this episode, I interviewed Josh Metcalf Parsons, JMP is what, what he’s called. And he’s a marketing technology life cycle marketer who’s been playing the game of customer experience for a while he discovered marketing automation about six years ago, totally fell in love with the way that it intersects the puzzle of tech in the puzzle of humans. So we get to talk about how Josh took those puzzle pieces and implemented them to generate high results, big results with email marketing. So this is a another episode that’s going to break it down and help you understand the do’s the don’ts, the exact process to generate results with automating with automating your email marketing. Enjoy the show. Josh, welcome to the podcast man. Glad to have you on how are you doing?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 3:12
I’m doing good, Chris. I’m doing good. It’s it’s a pleasure to be here, man. I’m excited to hang out.
Chris Davis 3:17
Yes, yeah. You know what, it’s always great to have marketers on all systems go podcast cause we can literally nerd out about marketing. And specifically today. It’s like a great case study. I feel like the case study that we’re about to go through every business would want these numbers. Right? Every business would like if I could just get that level of performance from my marketing. So I’m looking forward to it. But before I get ahead of myself, introduce yourself to the audience. Tell us about yourself, your background and your business.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 3:53
Yeah, that’d be I’d be happy to so my name’s Josh, everyone calls me JMP, a nickname that has been sticking with me for about 10 years now about as long as I’ve been in the marketing automation game, started a small business in Western Australia, learned it there, got introduced to Infusionsoft and, and really fell in love with the whole concept and philosophy of marketing automation. And, you know, from there, I’ve just been lucky to move and go to places which have a mission that I’m aligned with and to do the, I like to say like do the work, doing the work of marketing automation, doing the work of customer experience. And I find myself now with the room to a company that’s a part of the African Leadership Group and we’re focused on increasing employment across the continent of Africa. You know, champion entrepreneurship on the continent of Africa and Sunday are working with them doing marketing automation.
Chris Davis 4:57
Wow, man that then that’s a noble cause. And it seems like a big vision like, really? You know, really? What? Just I’m interested, quick tangent, but what types of marketing are involved with that? Are you and does email marketing look different in other countries? With respect to how it takes place here in the US or even in Australia?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 5:22
Yeah, it’s, it’s very different. It’s surprisingly different. And, you know, when I, when I got to Africa, and we started this project a couple of years ago, we weren’t sure what to expect. But a lot of people had said, digital marketing is not a thing on the continent. Yeah. And they said, Oh, you’re gonna, you’re gonna struggle. And we got started. And, you know, we were seeing numbers that we couldn’t believe, like, open rates in the 40s 50%. You know, click rates that were just off the charts. And it, I don’t know, if there’s a digital marketing Renaissance happening on the continent of Africa at the moment, there’s been this sort of tipping point there, but people are very responsive to it. And the other thing is, like, is not just, you know, how is it different there? It’s different, but it’s also very much the same. Because wherever you I, I’m looking for ways there to just communicate with the people there that we need to communicate with, in a way that works for them. So yeah, a good example of that is, we use a lot of WhatsApp there. Because, you know, WhatsApp, we know WhatsApp is big. We know it’s powerful. But in Africa, particularly, data, mobile data is very expensive, like, like, unbelievably expensive. But a lot of the mobile data providers have partnerships with WhatsApp, so WhatsApp is free, doesn’t count to your data use. I see. I see. So if you can tap into WhatsApp, and you can contact your your prospects or your leads through WhatsApp, you’re getting to them in a way that there isn’t a price tag associated with them accessing your content. And so we’ve had to adapt to that and learn how to market on the continent. When things that I had never thought about, like, well, how much does it cost in data per image? That’s in my email? Yeah, yeah. But that’s the thing. That’s, that’s, uh, you know, that’s affecting my email rates.
Chris Davis 7:36
Yeah. Yeah. Man, I love it. It does, it speaks to the ever evolving nature of marketing. Right, like I find, and we’ve got, we’ve got something special at the end that really dive into this. But I find that the marketers that complain the most are the most laziest. They’re the ones that have, they’ve got one way of success, and they don’t want anything to change. It’s like, this is my proven path. And any mature marketer knows, listen, use what you can while you can, but expect it to change or expect an opportunity to come that requires something different, like, you’ve got to be nimble, you’ve got to be able to make those adjustments on the fly, and go with, you know, wherever the will say, wherever the marketing wind blows, whichever direction it goes. So what I wanted to, I want to shift real quick, and jump into the case study today that really caught my eye and I just loved reading it. So I think I know I’m gonna enjoy even more just hearing you talk about it, but it was you were talking about how you max it grew list, and maximize its deliverability. And you increase the placement rates. So I’m going to read it, I’m going to read it, everybody just how it came into me. So you all can be excited. And then Josh is gonna jump into it. He says how he maximized deliverability deliverability. He recently grew a list from zero to 340,000 in five months with a 70% double opt in rate and a 99% inbox placement rate. So huge, huge numbers there. Walk us through what what was the context in which you will start at that lead generation? What was the context? What was the type of business what was the offering and what was the strategy that you used?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 9:35
Yes. So for us, that lead generation number. A lot of that was driven by social a lot of that was driven by, like smart targeting, good segmentation. And it was around a product that was a software engineering program, specifically targeted at young Under or unemployed, African youth who are looking for that next opportunity, and a way to get into that future proof career. So, undeniably, we’re at this this nexus point in the world, where things like software engineering represent massive opportunity for us. You know, we’re in a remote first world now, where, you know, the, the African talent, we talked about this brain drain, or it’s like, the, some of the best African talent is leaving the continent. And now we’re in a place with remote first where that doesn’t have to happen. They can stay there, and they can access that global opportunity. So that lead generation was a beautiful combination of, of circumstance, and targeting. And having an offer that was that was really compelling for people, and spending the time dialing it in, you know, we went with classic old school, long form landing page, you know, it just just kept on going. And, and we paid attention to it, you know, we let it do its thing. And we optimize, you know, had some great partners there with, you know, with the team helping us with the Facebook ad buy that kind of stuff, you know, obviously credit credit to those guys, but I think it was just that combination, man. It was that combination of things.
Chris Davis 11:35
Yeah, and it can’t be overlooked. I recorded a podcast and it talked about like the traps of targeting the wrong audience, right? Like it. People come out in marketing and think, oh, my gosh, everybody can use this. Like it, you could have easily went and said, it’s software, wait a minute, not just an Africa, the world, everybody needs. Right. And as you open up to everybody, you would have seen your numbers just astronomically tank, because you’ve got to be niched, in the sense where one of the things that you said is I was aware of where we were at as a society. It’s, this is remote. And you were also aware of what was going on specific to that demographic, that geographic location, wait a minute, I’ve got brain drain people are leaving, but this shift in the society has provided an opportunity where they don’t have to leave. So you had to be in tune with the fact that they were leaving, and why to even know that this would be an appealing opportunity. And I think those are things, the reason why I’m highlighting them is because I think business owners, and then people who have like shiny object syndrome, and they just look at the number 340,000 They skip over all those details. But all of those details help you better inform your ads team on exactly who to put the offer in front of.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 13:04
Exactly and, and I know the listeners are like, man get to the into the details, how did you do it, but I’m gonna keep I’m gonna throw another tangent in there, which is you can be an amazing marketer. You can know all the automation platforms, you can know all the tactics and the tools, you’ve got to know your customer. There you go, that’s the thing man, like, learn who your customer is, understand where they’re at, understand where they’re, you know, where they’re getting your message marketing is just that combination of message and mechanics. And so you got to know the customer, all of the shiny object marketing tactic new thing. Just know your customer. Know who your customers that’s how you market to them.
Chris Davis 13:55
Yeah, it you know, it’s the fundamentals of marketing, right? Know your customer and make them like you. Right? Know your customer, be known by your customer and make them like, like if you do these things, consistently, they will work better than any tactic, any trick any software, like anything that you can try to do to quit and to get a quick result. And I think that a lot of business owners and marketers need to understand that the second you say I’m ready to start generating leads, you’re also saying I am a researcher, right? I am going to research who my customer is not today, every day because I’m always collecting data based on what they say. Because we can never our messaging can never be perfect. Life is too dynamic. So are your audience of today. You know something happens in their in their environment and your environment, whatever the case is, it gives you new stuff to talk about. Right in new angles, copy is all about angle. goes right? Oh, we’ve got 10 different angles. Let’s try these and see which one sticks for this particular audience, but you have to, right you have to know your customer. And for for our listeners who are like, okay, know your customer, but how? How do I know my customer? What are some of the strategies that you use? Josh, in your your market research in your avatar definition?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 15:27
For us, Chris, it’s it’s a case of, you know, when I say know the customer, and use that term avatar, we lean really heavily on the idea of like, the best avatar is a real customer. So we went out and we had some assumptions, we had some beliefs, we knew that we were targeting a particular age demographic, we knew we were targeting a particular employment demographic, we had some core fundamentals things. And as soon as that ball got rolling, we immediately said, Well, now let’s talk to them. And we would literally we would email people, we would say, hey, 50 of you just come talk to us for an hour, we just want to get to know you. And we just kept doing that. kept doing that kept doing that kept getting to know them better, and better and better. And, and humanizing each one of those numbers, each one of those turning point 1000s, like know who that person is as much as possible, and then talk to them. And, and it was constant adapting constant conversations with the customer, constant adjustment. And the more you do that, the more you dial it, it
Chris Davis 16:47
absolutely is like you, you, it’s okay to start with the assumptions don’t finish there. Right? don’t end there. And with knowing how do I go from assumption to knowing, talk, use your mouth and talk. And I think that again, it becomes a lost art and almost like, oh, no, I’m a digital marketer. I don’t talk to people, I build landing pages and sales pages that do all my talking. It’s like, you know what, this is the equivalent to just old school traditional guerilla marketing, knocking on doors, handing out flyers, get on the phone with your customer, always. Josh, I’ve always done it, and I still do it. You know, if I have somebody that goes through one of my courses, or one of my programs, and I see it, you know, cuz I track everything, right? And I see something that’s interesting, whether it be positive or negative, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ll send them hey, can we jump on a quick call and talk about that. And then I get on a call, I have some assumptions. I have some data, but let me let you fill in the gaps and really frame this story and talk to them. And you’ll be shocked, you’ll be shocked at the kind of information that people give you. And the amount of assumptions that you continue to make. Right, like in the absence of knowing assumptions are always present. They’re just there waiting, Hey, you don’t know anything? Take me. I’m an assumption. Our company, we get real comfortable with that, until we challenge it. And I think that that’s a perfect answer for knowing your customer. Talk to him. I can’t, you know, one could say the marketer in you never turns off, because I feel like I’m always collecting data, right? I’m always crafting conversations in a way where I can learn something sometimes from my own business. And sometimes I’m just exploring, like, I wonder what a stay at home dad that drops his son off at the bus stop every day? What are some of his pains? Right? What are some of his aspirations and dreams like I’m just curious, maybe becomes a future avatar, maybe I have a product that I run across or a business that I can refer. So I feel like my marketer hat is always on. And also I wanted to go back real quick before we we get into like the double opt in rate and everything. to something you said prior to his, you use WhatsApp, you realized that there was a different channel, a different means of communication that was more effective, reaching your audience. So while, email is not dead email continues to be the most profitable channel for marketing online. You still cannot ignore channels that may work better for your audience and what you’re doing, you know, so I’m glad to see that WhatsApp is actually there’s more and more integrations coming out for WhatsApp. And I think that it’s this international acknowledgement that hey, look, everybody’s not in America. Everybody’s not in you know, UK or Australia where email is common. There are India. You know, I know a lot of people in India I know a lot of people in Asia. Just a various continents and countries across the world that use whatsapp as the primary means of communication. So again, being able to be nimble and make that adjustment. So now you’ve got a niche market, you’ve got a product specifically for them, you’ve got on the phone, you talk to the customer, got more information to feed to the ads team, hey, look, this is who we need to target, right? They’re targeting they’re coming in leads are pouring in. You’ve got double opt in, walk us through the decision to do double opt in and not and not do single opt in.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 20:31
Yeah, and I’ll tell you a funny story about a little snippet about that WhatsApp strategy. We were like, We got to use WhatsApp. We were like, ah, yeah, WhatsApp integrations. It’s going to take us a bit of time to get this thing going, but we got to use it. So we just had a guy with a WhatsApp account. That was our WhatsApp automation strategy. His name was Felix. And it was like, we put that number out there. We were like, hey, you need support via WhatsApp. Text. Felix. Take care.
Chris Davis 21:00
I love it. I love that. So So scrappy Josh, so scrappy man. I love it. Yeah. Why the
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 21:07
decision to go double opt in rather than single opt in? We knew the speed with which that we wanted to grow this list. And we had some some real lofty targets. And yeah, we looked at those those targets, and we understood the trap of Port deliverability. Yeah. And and we were real fortunate to be at a place where we worse, you know, a lot of people would be intimidated by starting from zero, come into a company zero. That was a blessing for us. Because we had a chance to start from zero and build, build it from the ground up with that kind of intentionality. Yeah, so a lot of it was we need to keep that deliverability up, we need to keep that placement right up. We know how effective double opt in is, we know the impact that it has. And Honest, honest answer as well, I, I can’t help but chase a challenge. And and somebody said to me, Well, you know, it’s really hard to get double opt in on the continent of Africa. They just the consumer doesn’t do it. And I went well, that sounds like a challenge to me. Be honest, honestly, the honest answer is we knew we knew how important it was going to be. And, and so much of marketing automation in general, is flexing that muscle growing that muscle to throw your brain into the future of your customers experience into the future of your business and go, what’s going to happen? What do we need to happen? What’s the outcome we’re driving towards? What are the you think about the data strategy that goes with marketing automation? What are the questions we’re gonna want today? Answer in six or 12 months time? Yeah. And what are we doing today to set ourselves up for that? Yeah, we knew that with double opt in. It’s like, we know that this could be a thing if we don’t address it today. So let’s make sure we address it right away. And then we put the system in place to do that.
Chris Davis 23:27
I love it, man. The so I’m gonna play immature marketers devil’s advocate. Okay. I’m gonna say, but Josh, what about all those people who put in their email? And then click the link? Are you just going to throw them away? You’re losing leads?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 23:46
Well, if someone gave you their email, and then didn’t open the first email and didn’t click the link, yeah. Firstly, take a beat to think about the value of that person because they are that value of that lead, I should say, as a person, of course, they have value but their value to you as a lead and a prospect. Then opening that first email, I’m not saying throw him out. But consider that in the makeup of the audience that you have, because you’re paying for those contests. There it is that there’s a price tag there. And then we didn’t throw them out. We you know, we we could market to people who weren’t double opted it. You know? Yep. Yeah. Because they had still given us their email address. They had to request it that marketing. Right, right. And we were making the point to, to follow up to chase that that double opt in status. Yep. And to get that to the biggest percentage that we possibly could. And then we very carefully segmented those audiences. Yeah, because the the non double opt in there The trap, you know, yes, there that trap is thrown with other risk. And then the long game for us on that was get the double opt in right up front. And then pay really close attention to your engagement, right? And yes. And I say like, well, we didn’t throw out those those people who didn’t open that first email didn’t click on that first link. We were merciless, with throwing away people who weren’t engaged. Like we would we would cut through on that one. Yeah. Because that that’s, that’s where it makes a difference.
Chris Davis 25:37
Yeah. And I think you have to be, again, and one of the previous episodes, I talked about people’s aversion to saying no, right? They just, they don’t want to say no, especially in marketing is it’s like, no means money’s flying away. It’s like, no, that’s, that’s not what it means. No means I know exactly what I need to do to generate what I want. And I’m not gonna waste anybody else’s time, or resources, if you’re not conducive to that. So I think, um, you know, when you look at double opt in, there’s no way there’s no way I would run any level of campaign, any level of lead generation without some gating, right? That’s what double opt in is, right? It’s like, it’s your early so you’ve got your first segmentation point is lead generation, and perhaps you’re asking more than just name and email, and you could segment there, right. preferable as early as possible. But then second is, Listen, let’s see if if they are who they say they are. I want this thing. Well, if you want it, click the link in show me that you want it. I here’s the thing, just as much as people talk about email is Dan, and people aren’t checking email anymore. If it’s something I want, as a marketer, Josh, if it’s something that I want, not only am I going to put my email address in, I’m going to my email to click the link. Yep, I really want it
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 27:01
100%. Man. And if it’s something you still want, you’re gonna keep reading those emails. I don’t know how many years I’ve been subscribed to the hustle. But I read their email every day. Every day of the week, I read that email. Right? And yes, if I didn’t want it, I would stop reading it. Yeah, yeah. Your customers will tell you.
Chris Davis 27:24
It’s part of it. I think the challenge is this. It’s not about and I had Rob and Kennedy on the podcast, and they talked about emailing daily, right. And you talk about all these different strategies with email, and just marketing in general, when you boil it down to its core fundamentals, it’s the consistent delivery of value. If it’s valuable, I’m going to read it, I’m going to open it, everything may not be valuable to me. So maybe three out of five, three out of five emails, maybe three of them pertain to me and two, don’t, that’s fine. I’m still I’m not going to unsubscribe, just because two didn’t appeal to me, right? Like, I’m still gonna be opening, I’m still going to be engaging. So when people get distraught, oh, emails not working, or XYZ, I think you really have to check the value. Right? Check the value of what you’re sending. And it goes back to your point, Rob? Josh,
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 28:28
i’ll take the compliment.
Chris Davis 28:31
Right? It goes back to your point saying, talk to your customer. Yeah, talk some way. It’s not. Let me say this. It’s almost like people think that a conversation or fit for now is always true or a fit for later. We never know the duration, or the expiration of that fit of the validity of what that customer said, we can just take it for now. But we’ve got to always check in to see hey, did some change. Hey, wait a minute, you know, there’s some change. So for you, it’s sounding like super targeted, super segmented on the front end, then we’ve got the security of the double opt in, that is allowing us another layer of segmentation, not just saying hey, since you didn’t click the link throwing you away, they had other other opportunities to engage. But if they didn’t engage, then they’re off. Now, we’ve got a super high opt in rate for 340,000 leads 70% double opt in is great. By the way listeners take that okay. If you are listening like I was, what why is it so low? No. 70% is not low 340,000 contacts opted in. That’s the result of the 70%. So let’s that’s a great opt in that’s a great double opt in rate. And so would you say that that is what led that double opt in and then segmenting the Engage from non engaged? Is that what led to your 99% inbox? placement rate, or was there some other things that you guys did?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 30:04
Well, firstly, I think it might be worth explaining for a moment what that concept of the inbox placement rate is? Because it is it’s one of those hidden metrics that a lot of marketers or maybe I shouldn’t say a lot, a decent chunk of marketers they they don’t talk about. Because it’s not front and center. It’s not on your dashboards. And yeah, so inbox placement rate is the percentage of the emails that you send, that are landing in your customers inbox. Yep. So they are getting the they are getting there they are getting the chance to be opened. Everyone thinks about open right. inbox placement, right, will dictate your open rate. Because people aren’t getting your email if Gmail has decided that your emails are no good. Because that’s their job. Their job is to create a great inbox experience for their customers. Yeah, if they decide that your emails are not a great experience for their customers, hey, they got customers to look after. So you got to get your emails into the inbox. That’s what your inbox placement rate is. Yep. And the double opt in big part of it. Yeah, careful segmentation, a big part of it. merciless, cutting of the unengaged. Everybody, we will run in like a 30. Day on Engage. Cut. Yeah, most people run 90 or 60 rule and 30 days done. And the reason we ran 30 days, is because of something that you said too, which was just an avalanche of Value. Like we were not afraid to email people. Yeah, yeah. And we always made sure we were emailing people. And we had we built in these sort of loops and cycles. And we were working on a single conversion event. We had one program that we were driving to driving people to start our application. So it’s not like we were cycling people through different products. We had the one thing we were driving to, and if they expressed to us through their behavior, and and it’s what people don’t do that tells you the most. Yeah, if they told us that they weren’t ready to apply for the thing today was like, Cool. Hey, you gave us your email. You said you were interested in this thing. You didn’t apply? Well, what? What can I draw from that? You’re interested, but you’re not ready yet. But I’m not going to stop emailing me. Let me help you along this journey. And, and the journey is, people need to know what they need to know, to believe what they need to believe, to do what they need to do. So where are they in that cycle? So that again, they need to know what they need to know, to believe what they need to believe, to do what they need to do. So if they don’t do what they need to do, what don’t they believe? Or what don’t they know? And how do you help move them to the next step?
Chris Davis 33:09
Yeah, there’s big man. So
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 33:12
we just we focused on delivering that value, we’ve focused on delivering that engagement, we focused on helping to lift them to that place. And we experimented. One of the things that was one of our standout series. We call it the video games of life started out as this two page article that a member of our team put together she’s she’s a budding young, you know, entrepreneurial marketer, she’s just discovering that passion, that fire for it. She wrote this thing up about video games as an analogy, for, you know, the struggle of life of moving through those early, late teens, early 20s. He and we were like, this should be five emails. And then it became 14 emails with videos and audio versions of the emails. And nowhere in it doesn’t sell anything. But it hit a note for our customer that they resonated with that resonated with her, we put her name on it. And that became a pillar of, of the strategy of engaging the customer at a time when they weren’t ready to be sold to. Yeah, we wouldn’t have found that if we hadn’t tried.
Chris Davis 34:43
Love it. Love it. It’s it’s, the question is, can you deliver value beyond pitching your product? Right? Like is all of your value tied to you trying to ask somebody to give you money as long as it’s pitching the product? Hey, let’s run this email sync sequence. Let’s run this campaign. But these are Hey, what about other value? What about more indirect value? What does that look like? Then it’s like, oh, let’s send a newsletter. Like, no, no, no, let’s not just go with like this templated approach. What other value? Can you sing? How? How well, do you know who you’re emailing? Right? So um, so by the way, listeners, if you weren’t taking notes, I think you missed, maybe we need to do a better job with explaining how powerful everything that Josh just mentioned was, but these are the keys. I’m telling you, you can replicate everything that Josh said, in your business in your clients business. I guarantee these steps will produce high rates, they’ll produce really high rates of success in email. But in closing, I would, I did not want to not mentioned this, Josh. Okay. Now, as of right now, as of recording this podcast, Apple’s Armageddon, part two is on its way they first they came after Facebook’s pixel and said, Hey, we’re allowing our iPhone users to opt out of this. And I just saw a graphic that said, like 97% of iPhone users have chosen to opt out of Facebook tracking, right. So it’s the thing Okay, got it. Now, they’re like, Well, we’re gonna take our privacy and security to the next level, and we’re gonna stop tracking opens. How about that? And you hear so many people? Well, if email wasn’t dead, it’s dead now. Oh, no, you won’t be able to engagement, kiss it goodbye. In your experience, just from where you’re sitting right now. This is pre Armageddon, Apple Armageddon, part two, right? What would you say to somebody who is subscribing to the the mindset of worry, fear and frustration with the the looming update that that Apple has?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 37:00
Well, Chris, the first thing I would probably ask them is, take a look how many people are using Apple Mail on your list? Because I don’t know about you, man. But it is a small percentage of mine. Right? So that’s, that’s, that’s the first thing I would say just to settle some nerves a little bit right. Now, that aside, I don’t know how many times I’ve been told email is dead. Right? Like, something is killing email every other week. And right, you adapt man. Like, you adapt and you change. People aren’t going to stop reading your emails. Just because because you don’t know that a small segment of them open the email, people aren’t going to stop reading your emails. And like I mentioned up the top, you know, you adapt, and sometimes you don’t realize that you have to adapt, and it catches you by surprise. I never, I never thought that I would be doing the maths on the file size of an image in an email, because of the cost of mobile data for my contacts was so high that I was putting a price tag on every email I was sending. Yeah, yeah. But when you find that out, you adapt. And you keep going. And that’s what email is not dead. Because people still want to communicate. People still want things that will help them people still want to feel understood. People still want to feel like you know, to them. And if you’ve got a thing that is of value to people. They’re gonna, they’re gonna respond, and, and look for different tactics. Hey, if you’re, if you’re asking yourself, Well, cool, Josh. But if you can’t track with perfect accuracy, your email open rates, which by the way, none of us can, even right now, you can’t track them perfectly, you know. But if you can’t do that, how you going to make sure that you keep your deliverability up. Right, find other ways, make sure you send emails that people reply to one of the best things that we did write emails that people respond to. Hmm, because deliverability loves that. So you do something else? Yeah.
Chris Davis 39:24
And, you know, I’ll add to it I didn’t think of until you said what you said. But, you know, I used to work in corporate and we had Microsoft Outlook. And there was nothing getting through Outlook, like the firewalls that they had in place. I mean, I couldn’t render any at the time I was trying to opt in to Pat Flynn’s blog because I’m trying to learn this online marketing stuff and I could not get anything if if it did come through. It was all stripped and you couldn’t follow like what initially was supposed to be. So I would read All of my emails on my phone, you know, I’ve just had my mobile, read my emails there. But to your point, the adaption happens, the adaptation happens on both sides. As a user, I’m going to adapt and be like, Okay, well, I don’t like this experience, in this mail browse, I can’t get the value that I’m looking for. So the user will adapt. And then the, the you the owner, the business owner, should adapt. And we’re always adapting. And what are we adapting for? Because it’s this, this ever revolution around value? We’re just trying to how do I get closer to value? Okay, I want the value. So I just need to change my position. So as the creator and deliver a value, that’s where we spend most of our time. Let me just make sure when I say something, when I send something, when I do something, it’s a value. Because that that is what will cause my user to adapt income, find that value, whatever they need to do on their end, you know?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 41:02
Exactly. And if you’re, if you’re spending energy worrying about Apple killing email, take that energy. Spend it writing a really cool email. Huh? Write some killer content? That’s what I would say.
Chris Davis 41:16
Yeah, absolutely. Man, and you can’t, you know, when you focus on 100%, you’re focusing on the wrong number. Right? Nothing is ever 100% No, nobody has a list that everybody that opted in open something. Don’t so so just get 100% out of your mind. Focus on the people who are giving you energy who are engaging with you don’t get so mad. Only 40% of people are opening my emails, keep marketing to those 40%. Like, what? What are you doing? Right? Don’t look at that. 60% and get distraught you have 40% of people that are saying, Yes, keep sending what you’re sending. I’m going to read it, you know, so this was great. Josh, man, again, it’s always good to have marketers Come on. And, and especially talking about email marketing, I love talking about the topics. So if people want to find out more about you stay connected with you follow you support, what you’re doing, what’s the best, where’s the best place they can go to find you.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 42:23
I tell you what, Chris, I am. I’m very lucky to be working in and with a company where I am doing the work to doing that good work. And the unfortunate side effect of that is I don’t really have a lot of presence that I’m putting out there. I tell you what people get they want to search me on on LinkedIn. Go right ahead. I’ll I’ll happily share that link that.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 42:49
But yeah, I think what I would tell people in this slot is go write a Go Go today, write a cool email, even if it’s just for you.
Chris Davis 43:03
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s really important. And extremely valuable, man. So appreciate it. Josh, we’ll put the link to your LinkedIn below. And again, if you guys want to catch up with Josh, see what he’s up to the company that he’s working with all of that to be in his LinkedIn profile. So Josh again, man, thanks for coming on to the podcast.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 43:24
Thanks very much. Chris. Pleasure. Yep. See you online man. So
Chris Davis 43:28
thank you for listening to this episode of The all systems go podcast. And I want you to think about that email marketer in your life that needed to hear this. And I’m not talking about the beginner, I’m talking about the marketer that’s maybe perhaps been marketing for a while, because it is so refreshing to hear some of the fundamentals. Some of the the most complex thing is getting results with email marketing, and to hear it broken down into some of the more common marketing elements of get people to like you to know you. send them emails, the right segment, pay attention to your audience, know your audience. All of these things are important before you hit send. So it was refreshing to hear Josh, talk about it, Joshua, talk about it. And even more so beyond just the United States. I’m in the US. So domestic email marketing is the thing. But these same principles apply when you leave this country. And it was great to see that as a reminder, so make sure you share this, share this with that that person that you know is sending email that you know is doing email marketing. And if you found value in today’s episode and are not subscribed, this is the time to subscribe and share the podcast. While you’re at it. Leave that five star rating and review in iTunes, in Apple podcast, Google podcast, wherever you get your podcasts This greatly appreciate it. Here at automation bridge, we’re dedicated to training digital marketing professionals to become automation service providers. Those are digital marketers that understand how to build automated marketing and sales systems for small businesses who are in dire need of a systematic, consistent way of executing their marketing and sales. These digital marketers we call automation service providers understand that marketing strategy must be married with the proper technology to build the exact automated system for your business. And that’s what we specialize in training. That’s who we specialize in creating. And what we’ve done. What we’ve done is we’ve made it easy for you to get access to any and everything that you need. If you go to all systems go podcast.com You’ll get access to the latest episodes, our amplify my automation package. This is our our proprietary curriculum on how to put automated marketing and sales systems in your business over the next six months. Our free Facebook group, you can request or refer someone to be a guest for the podcast and any resource or training mentioned on the podcast. One URL to remember gets you access to it all in that’s allsystemsgopodcast.com Thank you for the time for taking the time to listen to this episode. And until next time, I see you online, automate responsibility friends
Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the all systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sell systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis
Chris Davis 0:31
Welcome to the our systems go podcast. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, the founder and chief automation Officer of automation bridge, where we focus on turning digital marketing professionals into automation service providers by teaching them marketing and sales automation. And if you’d like to become one our find out if you should become one, an automation service provider that is we’ve got a new quiz a brief brief quiz that takes less than two minutes. And it will tell you exactly that. You can find that at automationbridge.com/ASP if you’re new to the podcast, make sure you listen to this episode in its entirety. So you know the value the the gem of knowledge that you will be receiving every Thursday when we release a new episode. At the time of recording. The all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to. And you can find the show on all main podcasting apps like Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, you can even subscribe on YouTube. So once you’ve listened to this episode in its entirety, make sure that you subscribe for those of you who are listeners and just haven’t subscribed yet. For whatever reason. What are you waiting for? Now is the time now is the time. Um, while you’re at it. A five star rating and review is greatly appreciated. It helps vet the all systems go podcast as the podcast to listen to, to subscribe to, to get the exclusive and specialized knowledge on marketing automation. So you can leave a review in any of those podcasting apps or if you would like for us to post a review for you. You can go to automation bridge.com forward slash review. In this episode, I interviewed Josh Metcalf Parsons, JMP is what, what he’s called. And he’s a marketing technology life cycle marketer who’s been playing the game of customer experience for a while he discovered marketing automation about six years ago, totally fell in love with the way that it intersects the puzzle of tech in the puzzle of humans. So we get to talk about how Josh took those puzzle pieces and implemented them to generate high results, big results with email marketing. So this is a another episode that’s going to break it down and help you understand the do’s the don’ts, the exact process to generate results with automating with automating your email marketing. Enjoy the show. Josh, welcome to the podcast man. Glad to have you on how are you doing?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 3:12
I’m doing good, Chris. I’m doing good. It’s it’s a pleasure to be here, man. I’m excited to hang out.
Chris Davis 3:17
Yes, yeah. You know what, it’s always great to have marketers on all systems go podcast cause we can literally nerd out about marketing. And specifically today. It’s like a great case study. I feel like the case study that we’re about to go through every business would want these numbers. Right? Every business would like if I could just get that level of performance from my marketing. So I’m looking forward to it. But before I get ahead of myself, introduce yourself to the audience. Tell us about yourself, your background and your business.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 3:53
Yeah, that’d be I’d be happy to so my name’s Josh, everyone calls me JMP, a nickname that has been sticking with me for about 10 years now about as long as I’ve been in the marketing automation game, started a small business in Western Australia, learned it there, got introduced to Infusionsoft and, and really fell in love with the whole concept and philosophy of marketing automation. And, you know, from there, I’ve just been lucky to move and go to places which have a mission that I’m aligned with and to do the, I like to say like do the work, doing the work of marketing automation, doing the work of customer experience. And I find myself now with the room to a company that’s a part of the African Leadership Group and we’re focused on increasing employment across the continent of Africa. You know, champion entrepreneurship on the continent of Africa and Sunday are working with them doing marketing automation.
Chris Davis 4:57
Wow, man that then that’s a noble cause. And it seems like a big vision like, really? You know, really? What? Just I’m interested, quick tangent, but what types of marketing are involved with that? Are you and does email marketing look different in other countries? With respect to how it takes place here in the US or even in Australia?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 5:22
Yeah, it’s, it’s very different. It’s surprisingly different. And, you know, when I, when I got to Africa, and we started this project a couple of years ago, we weren’t sure what to expect. But a lot of people had said, digital marketing is not a thing on the continent. Yeah. And they said, Oh, you’re gonna, you’re gonna struggle. And we got started. And, you know, we were seeing numbers that we couldn’t believe, like, open rates in the 40s 50%. You know, click rates that were just off the charts. And it, I don’t know, if there’s a digital marketing Renaissance happening on the continent of Africa at the moment, there’s been this sort of tipping point there, but people are very responsive to it. And the other thing is, like, is not just, you know, how is it different there? It’s different, but it’s also very much the same. Because wherever you I, I’m looking for ways there to just communicate with the people there that we need to communicate with, in a way that works for them. So yeah, a good example of that is, we use a lot of WhatsApp there. Because, you know, WhatsApp, we know WhatsApp is big. We know it’s powerful. But in Africa, particularly, data, mobile data is very expensive, like, like, unbelievably expensive. But a lot of the mobile data providers have partnerships with WhatsApp, so WhatsApp is free, doesn’t count to your data use. I see. I see. So if you can tap into WhatsApp, and you can contact your your prospects or your leads through WhatsApp, you’re getting to them in a way that there isn’t a price tag associated with them accessing your content. And so we’ve had to adapt to that and learn how to market on the continent. When things that I had never thought about, like, well, how much does it cost in data per image? That’s in my email? Yeah, yeah. But that’s the thing. That’s, that’s, uh, you know, that’s affecting my email rates.
Chris Davis 7:36
Yeah. Yeah. Man, I love it. It does, it speaks to the ever evolving nature of marketing. Right, like I find, and we’ve got, we’ve got something special at the end that really dive into this. But I find that the marketers that complain the most are the most laziest. They’re the ones that have, they’ve got one way of success, and they don’t want anything to change. It’s like, this is my proven path. And any mature marketer knows, listen, use what you can while you can, but expect it to change or expect an opportunity to come that requires something different, like, you’ve got to be nimble, you’ve got to be able to make those adjustments on the fly, and go with, you know, wherever the will say, wherever the marketing wind blows, whichever direction it goes. So what I wanted to, I want to shift real quick, and jump into the case study today that really caught my eye and I just loved reading it. So I think I know I’m gonna enjoy even more just hearing you talk about it, but it was you were talking about how you max it grew list, and maximize its deliverability. And you increase the placement rates. So I’m going to read it, I’m going to read it, everybody just how it came into me. So you all can be excited. And then Josh is gonna jump into it. He says how he maximized deliverability deliverability. He recently grew a list from zero to 340,000 in five months with a 70% double opt in rate and a 99% inbox placement rate. So huge, huge numbers there. Walk us through what what was the context in which you will start at that lead generation? What was the context? What was the type of business what was the offering and what was the strategy that you used?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 9:35
Yes. So for us, that lead generation number. A lot of that was driven by social a lot of that was driven by, like smart targeting, good segmentation. And it was around a product that was a software engineering program, specifically targeted at young Under or unemployed, African youth who are looking for that next opportunity, and a way to get into that future proof career. So, undeniably, we’re at this this nexus point in the world, where things like software engineering represent massive opportunity for us. You know, we’re in a remote first world now, where, you know, the, the African talent, we talked about this brain drain, or it’s like, the, some of the best African talent is leaving the continent. And now we’re in a place with remote first where that doesn’t have to happen. They can stay there, and they can access that global opportunity. So that lead generation was a beautiful combination of, of circumstance, and targeting. And having an offer that was that was really compelling for people, and spending the time dialing it in, you know, we went with classic old school, long form landing page, you know, it just just kept on going. And, and we paid attention to it, you know, we let it do its thing. And we optimize, you know, had some great partners there with, you know, with the team helping us with the Facebook ad buy that kind of stuff, you know, obviously credit credit to those guys, but I think it was just that combination, man. It was that combination of things.
Chris Davis 11:35
Yeah, and it can’t be overlooked. I recorded a podcast and it talked about like the traps of targeting the wrong audience, right? Like it. People come out in marketing and think, oh, my gosh, everybody can use this. Like it, you could have easily went and said, it’s software, wait a minute, not just an Africa, the world, everybody needs. Right. And as you open up to everybody, you would have seen your numbers just astronomically tank, because you’ve got to be niched, in the sense where one of the things that you said is I was aware of where we were at as a society. It’s, this is remote. And you were also aware of what was going on specific to that demographic, that geographic location, wait a minute, I’ve got brain drain people are leaving, but this shift in the society has provided an opportunity where they don’t have to leave. So you had to be in tune with the fact that they were leaving, and why to even know that this would be an appealing opportunity. And I think those are things, the reason why I’m highlighting them is because I think business owners, and then people who have like shiny object syndrome, and they just look at the number 340,000 They skip over all those details. But all of those details help you better inform your ads team on exactly who to put the offer in front of.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 13:04
Exactly and, and I know the listeners are like, man get to the into the details, how did you do it, but I’m gonna keep I’m gonna throw another tangent in there, which is you can be an amazing marketer. You can know all the automation platforms, you can know all the tactics and the tools, you’ve got to know your customer. There you go, that’s the thing man, like, learn who your customer is, understand where they’re at, understand where they’re, you know, where they’re getting your message marketing is just that combination of message and mechanics. And so you got to know the customer, all of the shiny object marketing tactic new thing. Just know your customer. Know who your customers that’s how you market to them.
Chris Davis 13:55
Yeah, it you know, it’s the fundamentals of marketing, right? Know your customer and make them like you. Right? Know your customer, be known by your customer and make them like, like if you do these things, consistently, they will work better than any tactic, any trick any software, like anything that you can try to do to quit and to get a quick result. And I think that a lot of business owners and marketers need to understand that the second you say I’m ready to start generating leads, you’re also saying I am a researcher, right? I am going to research who my customer is not today, every day because I’m always collecting data based on what they say. Because we can never our messaging can never be perfect. Life is too dynamic. So are your audience of today. You know something happens in their in their environment and your environment, whatever the case is, it gives you new stuff to talk about. Right in new angles, copy is all about angle. goes right? Oh, we’ve got 10 different angles. Let’s try these and see which one sticks for this particular audience, but you have to, right you have to know your customer. And for for our listeners who are like, okay, know your customer, but how? How do I know my customer? What are some of the strategies that you use? Josh, in your your market research in your avatar definition?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 15:27
For us, Chris, it’s it’s a case of, you know, when I say know the customer, and use that term avatar, we lean really heavily on the idea of like, the best avatar is a real customer. So we went out and we had some assumptions, we had some beliefs, we knew that we were targeting a particular age demographic, we knew we were targeting a particular employment demographic, we had some core fundamentals things. And as soon as that ball got rolling, we immediately said, Well, now let’s talk to them. And we would literally we would email people, we would say, hey, 50 of you just come talk to us for an hour, we just want to get to know you. And we just kept doing that. kept doing that kept doing that kept getting to know them better, and better and better. And, and humanizing each one of those numbers, each one of those turning point 1000s, like know who that person is as much as possible, and then talk to them. And, and it was constant adapting constant conversations with the customer, constant adjustment. And the more you do that, the more you dial it, it
Chris Davis 16:47
absolutely is like you, you, it’s okay to start with the assumptions don’t finish there. Right? don’t end there. And with knowing how do I go from assumption to knowing, talk, use your mouth and talk. And I think that again, it becomes a lost art and almost like, oh, no, I’m a digital marketer. I don’t talk to people, I build landing pages and sales pages that do all my talking. It’s like, you know what, this is the equivalent to just old school traditional guerilla marketing, knocking on doors, handing out flyers, get on the phone with your customer, always. Josh, I’ve always done it, and I still do it. You know, if I have somebody that goes through one of my courses, or one of my programs, and I see it, you know, cuz I track everything, right? And I see something that’s interesting, whether it be positive or negative, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ll send them hey, can we jump on a quick call and talk about that. And then I get on a call, I have some assumptions. I have some data, but let me let you fill in the gaps and really frame this story and talk to them. And you’ll be shocked, you’ll be shocked at the kind of information that people give you. And the amount of assumptions that you continue to make. Right, like in the absence of knowing assumptions are always present. They’re just there waiting, Hey, you don’t know anything? Take me. I’m an assumption. Our company, we get real comfortable with that, until we challenge it. And I think that that’s a perfect answer for knowing your customer. Talk to him. I can’t, you know, one could say the marketer in you never turns off, because I feel like I’m always collecting data, right? I’m always crafting conversations in a way where I can learn something sometimes from my own business. And sometimes I’m just exploring, like, I wonder what a stay at home dad that drops his son off at the bus stop every day? What are some of his pains? Right? What are some of his aspirations and dreams like I’m just curious, maybe becomes a future avatar, maybe I have a product that I run across or a business that I can refer. So I feel like my marketer hat is always on. And also I wanted to go back real quick before we we get into like the double opt in rate and everything. to something you said prior to his, you use WhatsApp, you realized that there was a different channel, a different means of communication that was more effective, reaching your audience. So while, email is not dead email continues to be the most profitable channel for marketing online. You still cannot ignore channels that may work better for your audience and what you’re doing, you know, so I’m glad to see that WhatsApp is actually there’s more and more integrations coming out for WhatsApp. And I think that it’s this international acknowledgement that hey, look, everybody’s not in America. Everybody’s not in you know, UK or Australia where email is common. There are India. You know, I know a lot of people in India I know a lot of people in Asia. Just a various continents and countries across the world that use whatsapp as the primary means of communication. So again, being able to be nimble and make that adjustment. So now you’ve got a niche market, you’ve got a product specifically for them, you’ve got on the phone, you talk to the customer, got more information to feed to the ads team, hey, look, this is who we need to target, right? They’re targeting they’re coming in leads are pouring in. You’ve got double opt in, walk us through the decision to do double opt in and not and not do single opt in.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 20:31
Yeah, and I’ll tell you a funny story about a little snippet about that WhatsApp strategy. We were like, We got to use WhatsApp. We were like, ah, yeah, WhatsApp integrations. It’s going to take us a bit of time to get this thing going, but we got to use it. So we just had a guy with a WhatsApp account. That was our WhatsApp automation strategy. His name was Felix. And it was like, we put that number out there. We were like, hey, you need support via WhatsApp. Text. Felix. Take care.
Chris Davis 21:00
I love it. I love that. So So scrappy Josh, so scrappy man. I love it. Yeah. Why the
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 21:07
decision to go double opt in rather than single opt in? We knew the speed with which that we wanted to grow this list. And we had some some real lofty targets. And yeah, we looked at those those targets, and we understood the trap of Port deliverability. Yeah. And and we were real fortunate to be at a place where we worse, you know, a lot of people would be intimidated by starting from zero, come into a company zero. That was a blessing for us. Because we had a chance to start from zero and build, build it from the ground up with that kind of intentionality. Yeah, so a lot of it was we need to keep that deliverability up, we need to keep that placement right up. We know how effective double opt in is, we know the impact that it has. And Honest, honest answer as well, I, I can’t help but chase a challenge. And and somebody said to me, Well, you know, it’s really hard to get double opt in on the continent of Africa. They just the consumer doesn’t do it. And I went well, that sounds like a challenge to me. Be honest, honestly, the honest answer is we knew we knew how important it was going to be. And, and so much of marketing automation in general, is flexing that muscle growing that muscle to throw your brain into the future of your customers experience into the future of your business and go, what’s going to happen? What do we need to happen? What’s the outcome we’re driving towards? What are the you think about the data strategy that goes with marketing automation? What are the questions we’re gonna want today? Answer in six or 12 months time? Yeah. And what are we doing today to set ourselves up for that? Yeah, we knew that with double opt in. It’s like, we know that this could be a thing if we don’t address it today. So let’s make sure we address it right away. And then we put the system in place to do that.
Chris Davis 23:27
I love it, man. The so I’m gonna play immature marketers devil’s advocate. Okay. I’m gonna say, but Josh, what about all those people who put in their email? And then click the link? Are you just going to throw them away? You’re losing leads?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 23:46
Well, if someone gave you their email, and then didn’t open the first email and didn’t click the link, yeah. Firstly, take a beat to think about the value of that person because they are that value of that lead, I should say, as a person, of course, they have value but their value to you as a lead and a prospect. Then opening that first email, I’m not saying throw him out. But consider that in the makeup of the audience that you have, because you’re paying for those contests. There it is that there’s a price tag there. And then we didn’t throw them out. We you know, we we could market to people who weren’t double opted it. You know? Yep. Yeah. Because they had still given us their email address. They had to request it that marketing. Right, right. And we were making the point to, to follow up to chase that that double opt in status. Yep. And to get that to the biggest percentage that we possibly could. And then we very carefully segmented those audiences. Yeah, because the the non double opt in there The trap, you know, yes, there that trap is thrown with other risk. And then the long game for us on that was get the double opt in right up front. And then pay really close attention to your engagement, right? And yes. And I say like, well, we didn’t throw out those those people who didn’t open that first email didn’t click on that first link. We were merciless, with throwing away people who weren’t engaged. Like we would we would cut through on that one. Yeah. Because that that’s, that’s where it makes a difference.
Chris Davis 25:37
Yeah. And I think you have to be, again, and one of the previous episodes, I talked about people’s aversion to saying no, right? They just, they don’t want to say no, especially in marketing is it’s like, no means money’s flying away. It’s like, no, that’s, that’s not what it means. No means I know exactly what I need to do to generate what I want. And I’m not gonna waste anybody else’s time, or resources, if you’re not conducive to that. So I think, um, you know, when you look at double opt in, there’s no way there’s no way I would run any level of campaign, any level of lead generation without some gating, right? That’s what double opt in is, right? It’s like, it’s your early so you’ve got your first segmentation point is lead generation, and perhaps you’re asking more than just name and email, and you could segment there, right. preferable as early as possible. But then second is, Listen, let’s see if if they are who they say they are. I want this thing. Well, if you want it, click the link in show me that you want it. I here’s the thing, just as much as people talk about email is Dan, and people aren’t checking email anymore. If it’s something I want, as a marketer, Josh, if it’s something that I want, not only am I going to put my email address in, I’m going to my email to click the link. Yep, I really want it
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 27:01
100%. Man. And if it’s something you still want, you’re gonna keep reading those emails. I don’t know how many years I’ve been subscribed to the hustle. But I read their email every day. Every day of the week, I read that email. Right? And yes, if I didn’t want it, I would stop reading it. Yeah, yeah. Your customers will tell you.
Chris Davis 27:24
It’s part of it. I think the challenge is this. It’s not about and I had Rob and Kennedy on the podcast, and they talked about emailing daily, right. And you talk about all these different strategies with email, and just marketing in general, when you boil it down to its core fundamentals, it’s the consistent delivery of value. If it’s valuable, I’m going to read it, I’m going to open it, everything may not be valuable to me. So maybe three out of five, three out of five emails, maybe three of them pertain to me and two, don’t, that’s fine. I’m still I’m not going to unsubscribe, just because two didn’t appeal to me, right? Like, I’m still gonna be opening, I’m still going to be engaging. So when people get distraught, oh, emails not working, or XYZ, I think you really have to check the value. Right? Check the value of what you’re sending. And it goes back to your point, Rob? Josh,
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 28:28
i’ll take the compliment.
Chris Davis 28:31
Right? It goes back to your point saying, talk to your customer. Yeah, talk some way. It’s not. Let me say this. It’s almost like people think that a conversation or fit for now is always true or a fit for later. We never know the duration, or the expiration of that fit of the validity of what that customer said, we can just take it for now. But we’ve got to always check in to see hey, did some change. Hey, wait a minute, you know, there’s some change. So for you, it’s sounding like super targeted, super segmented on the front end, then we’ve got the security of the double opt in, that is allowing us another layer of segmentation, not just saying hey, since you didn’t click the link throwing you away, they had other other opportunities to engage. But if they didn’t engage, then they’re off. Now, we’ve got a super high opt in rate for 340,000 leads 70% double opt in is great. By the way listeners take that okay. If you are listening like I was, what why is it so low? No. 70% is not low 340,000 contacts opted in. That’s the result of the 70%. So let’s that’s a great opt in that’s a great double opt in rate. And so would you say that that is what led that double opt in and then segmenting the Engage from non engaged? Is that what led to your 99% inbox? placement rate, or was there some other things that you guys did?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 30:04
Well, firstly, I think it might be worth explaining for a moment what that concept of the inbox placement rate is? Because it is it’s one of those hidden metrics that a lot of marketers or maybe I shouldn’t say a lot, a decent chunk of marketers they they don’t talk about. Because it’s not front and center. It’s not on your dashboards. And yeah, so inbox placement rate is the percentage of the emails that you send, that are landing in your customers inbox. Yep. So they are getting the they are getting there they are getting the chance to be opened. Everyone thinks about open right. inbox placement, right, will dictate your open rate. Because people aren’t getting your email if Gmail has decided that your emails are no good. Because that’s their job. Their job is to create a great inbox experience for their customers. Yeah, if they decide that your emails are not a great experience for their customers, hey, they got customers to look after. So you got to get your emails into the inbox. That’s what your inbox placement rate is. Yep. And the double opt in big part of it. Yeah, careful segmentation, a big part of it. merciless, cutting of the unengaged. Everybody, we will run in like a 30. Day on Engage. Cut. Yeah, most people run 90 or 60 rule and 30 days done. And the reason we ran 30 days, is because of something that you said too, which was just an avalanche of Value. Like we were not afraid to email people. Yeah, yeah. And we always made sure we were emailing people. And we had we built in these sort of loops and cycles. And we were working on a single conversion event. We had one program that we were driving to driving people to start our application. So it’s not like we were cycling people through different products. We had the one thing we were driving to, and if they expressed to us through their behavior, and and it’s what people don’t do that tells you the most. Yeah, if they told us that they weren’t ready to apply for the thing today was like, Cool. Hey, you gave us your email. You said you were interested in this thing. You didn’t apply? Well, what? What can I draw from that? You’re interested, but you’re not ready yet. But I’m not going to stop emailing me. Let me help you along this journey. And, and the journey is, people need to know what they need to know, to believe what they need to believe, to do what they need to do. So where are they in that cycle? So that again, they need to know what they need to know, to believe what they need to believe, to do what they need to do. So if they don’t do what they need to do, what don’t they believe? Or what don’t they know? And how do you help move them to the next step?
Chris Davis 33:09
Yeah, there’s big man. So
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 33:12
we just we focused on delivering that value, we’ve focused on delivering that engagement, we focused on helping to lift them to that place. And we experimented. One of the things that was one of our standout series. We call it the video games of life started out as this two page article that a member of our team put together she’s she’s a budding young, you know, entrepreneurial marketer, she’s just discovering that passion, that fire for it. She wrote this thing up about video games as an analogy, for, you know, the struggle of life of moving through those early, late teens, early 20s. He and we were like, this should be five emails. And then it became 14 emails with videos and audio versions of the emails. And nowhere in it doesn’t sell anything. But it hit a note for our customer that they resonated with that resonated with her, we put her name on it. And that became a pillar of, of the strategy of engaging the customer at a time when they weren’t ready to be sold to. Yeah, we wouldn’t have found that if we hadn’t tried.
Chris Davis 34:43
Love it. Love it. It’s it’s, the question is, can you deliver value beyond pitching your product? Right? Like is all of your value tied to you trying to ask somebody to give you money as long as it’s pitching the product? Hey, let’s run this email sync sequence. Let’s run this campaign. But these are Hey, what about other value? What about more indirect value? What does that look like? Then it’s like, oh, let’s send a newsletter. Like, no, no, no, let’s not just go with like this templated approach. What other value? Can you sing? How? How well, do you know who you’re emailing? Right? So um, so by the way, listeners, if you weren’t taking notes, I think you missed, maybe we need to do a better job with explaining how powerful everything that Josh just mentioned was, but these are the keys. I’m telling you, you can replicate everything that Josh said, in your business in your clients business. I guarantee these steps will produce high rates, they’ll produce really high rates of success in email. But in closing, I would, I did not want to not mentioned this, Josh. Okay. Now, as of right now, as of recording this podcast, Apple’s Armageddon, part two is on its way they first they came after Facebook’s pixel and said, Hey, we’re allowing our iPhone users to opt out of this. And I just saw a graphic that said, like 97% of iPhone users have chosen to opt out of Facebook tracking, right. So it’s the thing Okay, got it. Now, they’re like, Well, we’re gonna take our privacy and security to the next level, and we’re gonna stop tracking opens. How about that? And you hear so many people? Well, if email wasn’t dead, it’s dead now. Oh, no, you won’t be able to engagement, kiss it goodbye. In your experience, just from where you’re sitting right now. This is pre Armageddon, Apple Armageddon, part two, right? What would you say to somebody who is subscribing to the the mindset of worry, fear and frustration with the the looming update that that Apple has?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 37:00
Well, Chris, the first thing I would probably ask them is, take a look how many people are using Apple Mail on your list? Because I don’t know about you, man. But it is a small percentage of mine. Right? So that’s, that’s, that’s the first thing I would say just to settle some nerves a little bit right. Now, that aside, I don’t know how many times I’ve been told email is dead. Right? Like, something is killing email every other week. And right, you adapt man. Like, you adapt and you change. People aren’t going to stop reading your emails. Just because because you don’t know that a small segment of them open the email, people aren’t going to stop reading your emails. And like I mentioned up the top, you know, you adapt, and sometimes you don’t realize that you have to adapt, and it catches you by surprise. I never, I never thought that I would be doing the maths on the file size of an image in an email, because of the cost of mobile data for my contacts was so high that I was putting a price tag on every email I was sending. Yeah, yeah. But when you find that out, you adapt. And you keep going. And that’s what email is not dead. Because people still want to communicate. People still want things that will help them people still want to feel understood. People still want to feel like you know, to them. And if you’ve got a thing that is of value to people. They’re gonna, they’re gonna respond, and, and look for different tactics. Hey, if you’re, if you’re asking yourself, Well, cool, Josh. But if you can’t track with perfect accuracy, your email open rates, which by the way, none of us can, even right now, you can’t track them perfectly, you know. But if you can’t do that, how you going to make sure that you keep your deliverability up. Right, find other ways, make sure you send emails that people reply to one of the best things that we did write emails that people respond to. Hmm, because deliverability loves that. So you do something else? Yeah.
Chris Davis 39:24
And, you know, I’ll add to it I didn’t think of until you said what you said. But, you know, I used to work in corporate and we had Microsoft Outlook. And there was nothing getting through Outlook, like the firewalls that they had in place. I mean, I couldn’t render any at the time I was trying to opt in to Pat Flynn’s blog because I’m trying to learn this online marketing stuff and I could not get anything if if it did come through. It was all stripped and you couldn’t follow like what initially was supposed to be. So I would read All of my emails on my phone, you know, I’ve just had my mobile, read my emails there. But to your point, the adaption happens, the adaptation happens on both sides. As a user, I’m going to adapt and be like, Okay, well, I don’t like this experience, in this mail browse, I can’t get the value that I’m looking for. So the user will adapt. And then the, the you the owner, the business owner, should adapt. And we’re always adapting. And what are we adapting for? Because it’s this, this ever revolution around value? We’re just trying to how do I get closer to value? Okay, I want the value. So I just need to change my position. So as the creator and deliver a value, that’s where we spend most of our time. Let me just make sure when I say something, when I send something, when I do something, it’s a value. Because that that is what will cause my user to adapt income, find that value, whatever they need to do on their end, you know?
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 41:02
Exactly. And if you’re, if you’re spending energy worrying about Apple killing email, take that energy. Spend it writing a really cool email. Huh? Write some killer content? That’s what I would say.
Chris Davis 41:16
Yeah, absolutely. Man, and you can’t, you know, when you focus on 100%, you’re focusing on the wrong number. Right? Nothing is ever 100% No, nobody has a list that everybody that opted in open something. Don’t so so just get 100% out of your mind. Focus on the people who are giving you energy who are engaging with you don’t get so mad. Only 40% of people are opening my emails, keep marketing to those 40%. Like, what? What are you doing? Right? Don’t look at that. 60% and get distraught you have 40% of people that are saying, Yes, keep sending what you’re sending. I’m going to read it, you know, so this was great. Josh, man, again, it’s always good to have marketers Come on. And, and especially talking about email marketing, I love talking about the topics. So if people want to find out more about you stay connected with you follow you support, what you’re doing, what’s the best, where’s the best place they can go to find you.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 42:23
I tell you what, Chris, I am. I’m very lucky to be working in and with a company where I am doing the work to doing that good work. And the unfortunate side effect of that is I don’t really have a lot of presence that I’m putting out there. I tell you what people get they want to search me on on LinkedIn. Go right ahead. I’ll I’ll happily share that link that.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 42:49
But yeah, I think what I would tell people in this slot is go write a Go Go today, write a cool email, even if it’s just for you.
Chris Davis 43:03
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s really important. And extremely valuable, man. So appreciate it. Josh, we’ll put the link to your LinkedIn below. And again, if you guys want to catch up with Josh, see what he’s up to the company that he’s working with all of that to be in his LinkedIn profile. So Josh again, man, thanks for coming on to the podcast.
Joshua Metcalfe-Parsons 43:24
Thanks very much. Chris. Pleasure. Yep. See you online man. So
Chris Davis 43:28
thank you for listening to this episode of The all systems go podcast. And I want you to think about that email marketer in your life that needed to hear this. And I’m not talking about the beginner, I’m talking about the marketer that’s maybe perhaps been marketing for a while, because it is so refreshing to hear some of the fundamentals. Some of the the most complex thing is getting results with email marketing, and to hear it broken down into some of the more common marketing elements of get people to like you to know you. send them emails, the right segment, pay attention to your audience, know your audience. All of these things are important before you hit send. So it was refreshing to hear Josh, talk about it, Joshua, talk about it. And even more so beyond just the United States. I’m in the US. So domestic email marketing is the thing. But these same principles apply when you leave this country. And it was great to see that as a reminder, so make sure you share this, share this with that that person that you know is sending email that you know is doing email marketing. And if you found value in today’s episode and are not subscribed, this is the time to subscribe and share the podcast. While you’re at it. Leave that five star rating and review in iTunes, in Apple podcast, Google podcast, wherever you get your podcasts This greatly appreciate it. Here at automation bridge, we’re dedicated to training digital marketing professionals to become automation service providers. Those are digital marketers that understand how to build automated marketing and sales systems for small businesses who are in dire need of a systematic, consistent way of executing their marketing and sales. These digital marketers we call automation service providers understand that marketing strategy must be married with the proper technology to build the exact automated system for your business. And that’s what we specialize in training. That’s who we specialize in creating. And what we’ve done. What we’ve done is we’ve made it easy for you to get access to any and everything that you need. If you go to all systems go podcast.com You’ll get access to the latest episodes, our amplify my automation package. This is our our proprietary curriculum on how to put automated marketing and sales systems in your business over the next six months. Our free Facebook group, you can request or refer someone to be a guest for the podcast and any resource or training mentioned on the podcast. One URL to remember gets you access to it all in that’s allsystemsgopodcast.com Thank you for the time for taking the time to listen to this episode. And until next time, I see you online, automate responsibility friends
Today’s Guest
JMP is a marketing technology/lifecycle marketer who’s been playing the game of customer experience for a while now. He discovered marketing automation ~6 years ago and fell totally in love with the way it intersects the puzzle of tech and the puzzle of humans.
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Chris L. Davis
Chris is an Electrical Engineer turned entrepreneur who is the Founder of Automation Bridge, an international speaker and facilitator, and startup consultant