Back in Action: A New Focus for Personalizing Your Marketing

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 0:32
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of The all systems go podcast. And I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, and I’m the founder of automation bridge. And I say Welcome back, because many of you who are subscribed and listening in in listening to these episodes as they’re being recorded, you realize that we’ve been on a bit of hiatus, which is not abnormal. At the end of the year, I usually take time to reflect re refocus. Look at areas optimization, review performance and progress with podcasting. And in doing that, we realized one major thing, and that was that in this I hold dearly, is that has process driven as I am as process driven as I am. And as automated focused, I had good processes, I have good automation in place. My systems were lacking a bit, my systems were lacking a bit. And I think that many of you may have may experience this, in the form of a lack of consistency. And when consistency starts to become weighty, it becomes more of a task to be consistent than an actual discipline, then what I’ve learned is that it’s time to revisit the thing that we’re being consistent with, is it worth it? Is it worth it? Is it producing what you desire? And more importantly, do you see do you see impact and consistency and impact, they really go hand in hand, it’s really hard to be consistent with something that you do not feel or see or understand as making an impact. I’ll give you an example. I just finished up coaching my my youngest son’s sixth grade basketball team, first time coaching, playing basketball in my life, but my first time coaching in an organized fashion. And the reason there are many times throughout the season that I wanted to quit, I’ll just be honest with you, there are times I wanted to throw me out as a coach kids out as a player and just blow up the whole team, right. But I was very consistent, didn’t miss a practice didn’t miss a game didn’t do anything. Because I was seeing the impact it was making on the kids. Right? The reason why I’m back recording this podcast, is because after looking at the data, and hearing, listening to my loyal listeners and my new ones, where’s the podcast? Oh, my gosh, I I loved episode XYZ, I realized that impact was being made. So it was my duty, my responsibility to ensure that I have the systems in place that Garner create an environment for consistency to be easily achieved. All right, so I’ve been doing a lot. Listen, everyone, some of this requires a nice hard look in the mirror at self saying, You know what, me? Maybe this isn’t working for me, like me thought it would be kind of Dr. Seuss there, right. And when you have this sober, when you have the ability to have these sober talks with yourself, you are in a better position to come to the realization of the actual change that needs to be made. Instead of just doing the whole thing out the window. You know, they say don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. And I didn’t I didn’t want to do that. And based on everything that I wrote that I had observed, both through the data through listener trends, episodes that people were listening to, and things of that nature, it was without a doubt a necessity to come back come back strong come back consistent in a means where I do not anticipate ever having such an hiatus. Such a hiatus moving forward. Now. Let me say this. I want to start to change the narrative. And this is a little dangerous given the space space that I started March In our journey and and that is the startup space, and there’s this idea of build the boat while it’s shipping, or while you’re while you’re sailing, or to jump in, grow your wings on the way down. And let me be honest, I full heartedly agree with that, to an extent, I believe that the spirit behind that is to say, get in the game, don’t just think, because if all you do is think you’ll never do, and only things in motion get recognized and grow and all I get it. So move. But we cannot bypass planning, I did an episode on this. And it was I was talking about if you want to move quicker, plan faster, I’ll get to I’ll make sure that that’s linked in the in the show notes. But the premise is, the reason why this just do it. Just go MVP, just launch launch launch is big, is to be honest, people have a low priority for planning, and an even lower acumen to do it effectively. So why not just bypass all planning? Because all planning does is get us sitting around twiddling our thumbs that’s all planning ever generated? Let’s skip it. Let’s just go. Right? Well, here’s one thing to be careful of in that mindset is that invert, just go. What happens when your motivation is no longer there? What happens when the thing that you’ve built is inconsistent and all over the place? Right? Are you really going to have the energy to go back revisit that thing? Remember, in a previous podcast I talked about, the price you pay later, is always greater. It’s easier and cheaper to solve the problem sooner. Okay, so the price you pay later is always greater, is easier and cheaper to solve the problem sooner. And that statement comes from effective planning. I’m not saying get stuck in it. But you have to provide yourself with the gift of a framework with with the gift of being able to how do I say, the gift of a framework and being able to truly execute consistently? You deserve that you deserve that first. And if you don’t deserve it, then we don’t. And this is the conversation that I was having with myself, right. So with that being said, the JUST DO IT mantra, for me is incomplete. It’s more of just do the planning, what is the gist, just do the planning, and get good at planning, minimum viable plan to put into place and get moving and then optimize on top of it. I’m talking about a foundational structure that will allow you to not have to revisit it, but optimize on top of it. Okay, and these are a lot of things that you don’t often hear about. But anybody that has been doing something and has fallen off and stop doing that thing you can attest, you’re like, Look, I just I told myself this year, I was going to send an email every week, I told myself I was going to write a blog post every week, the motivation, the desire, it’s there, I promise you it is I know, it is I’ve heard you all, I’ve been that person, you’ve seen it that the podcast was on a hiatus i I was that person. But when it gets hard, you need the system to support you. You need that in place to be able to say, You know what, I don’t feel like it. And your system is is like, that’s okay. Got you. All you need to do is this input, and I’ll take care of the rest. And that’s what I that’s what I spend a lot of the of the end of 2023 doing, and a bit of the beginning of 2024. And I’ll say this, I’ll say this. One of the major decisions that we made, and I’ll detail this to my community members, I don’t want to, you know, put too much out public this was a very intimate decision is I switched podcast hosting platforms. And there’s a whole reason behind it, of course, infused by automation. But I had to come to the grips that the platform that I was using love the software love the founder. He’s been on the podcast before. Love what they’re doing love the ecosystem, but it just wasn’t serving my needs. So migrating all of those episodes over planning For the next year, understanding what episodes will be, what’s the framework for our episode structure? Am I going to be on podcast episodes moving forward? As you see the question, the answer to that question is yes. Right? What capacity, what

Chris 10:14
type of guests do we want, you see what I’m saying I have the the foundation in place to optimize on in terms of content, but I didn’t have the foundation for producing the content in place. So it’s just, it’s just an adjustment and a modification. And you all are going to benefit from it, I am to this, it is now much easier for me to sit down and record these and have a calendar knocked out without having to have too much of my time. pulled in many directions. So and this is just one area of the business. And in doing that, I came up with a theme everyone for this year. And this is the lens. This is the lens that you can view every piece of content moving forward, I’m saying this year is probably going to go beyond. And marketing automation is now a big, a big topic, right, a big, bigger category. And there was a time where marketing automation was that term was very much like artificial intelligence. Right? It, it means it means a lot to everybody. And everybody got to define it however they felt. And marketing automation has kind of become a known category. Everybody is familiar now with hey, I need to automate and automate this isn’t that. And now the focus is on how do I automate artificial intelligence? How do I get robots to complete task and create content? So to see that shift, it’s all about how do you how do they work together? Right? How do you use automation to infuse artificial intelligence and the other way around? So let me saying that some of you are like, wow, the new focus is going to be artificial intelligence and automation, I knew it. Actually. I am a proponent of technology evolving and affording us new ways to do things. I use artificial intelligence. I don’t believe I use it as effective as other people. But I do use it. But there was a more pressing problem, there was a more long lasting, long standing problem, that I felt only right to take up the mantle and take this on. And that is segmentation. And my hopes, here’s my hopes, I’m gonna go to the end and then work my way back. My hopes is that where automation, and artificial intelligence meet really enhances the space of segmentation and HubSpot is showing signs I haven’t been in the app to actually test it out. But it has the founder last year talked about having an AI bi within HubSpot, where you could just tell it and say, Hey, go find all the all of the contacts who have opened an email in the last 30 days, but haven’t done this and have done that. And it will go create the segment for you. Now that that to me, that’s euphoria. But in order to get there, you have to get a good understanding of what it takes to prepare for such a thing. How do I configure my CRM software in a way where I can give it a prompt, and it will go find that information? It’s not going to be magic everyone, you still need to have that data stored in a custom field attack list or whatever the case may be. Because artificial intelligence needs the data to make the decision. Okay. So in in knowing that’s the future, and it could be here sooner than later. Next month, I could be talking about it’s here, everybody. It could be here already. And I’m just in not in the know, because I’m not the most up to date with all things artificial intelligence. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter because everybody is struggling with how to maintain a properly segmented database. And that’s our focus. That’s our focus in our promise. Because this question keeps going unanswered. People are still confused. Do I use LIS tags custom fields? When do I use 1am? I using too many tags. What do I do if I want to use a custom field? Oh, I just migrated platforms. How do I get all that information over? There is definitely a way to do this. There’s a framework to ensure that your contact data, your most important data in your business. So stays organized, and export friendly. Right to make those migrations a lot easier, there is definitely a way. There’s definitely a use case for using lists, tags, custom fields, smart lists all of those things. And I want to be sure that at a minimum by the end of 2024, you see things a lot clearer. When it comes to segmentation, it has been the secret sauce for me. Lead segmented context segmentation, I should say, it’s been my secret sauce since day one. And here’s here’s why I’m saying this is because I didn’t even realize it. I did not even realize it. When I was doing it, I was so focused on achieving this thing called marketing automation, because it was new, just like AI is now everybody was trying to do it by the bolt holes. And now I look back at my career and say, you know, every major success that I’ve had, has relied on the foundation of a properly segmented database. Okay, so I’m going to do my best in the podcast. When we’re sitting down talking to founders of software, Hey, how can we use this to say, how can we use this to better to get information so we can personalize our marketing? And how does it integrate with various CRM software’s that we can create our segments more dynamically? These are the questions I’ll be having moving forward. Now. I’ve got some founders recorded already. We haven’t dug deep into that yet. Because this came from a hiatus and I was like, oh, shoot, I don’t want to rerecord. So you’ll see a couple of them, where it’s just good conversation as we’ve known it to be. But please, please understand moving forward, we’re going to be doubling down, we’re going to be doubling down on the topic of segmentation. And if that’s something that excites you, if that’s something that you’re really looking forward to listen, lock in, make sure if you’re not already, you’re subscribed that you get a notification. Listen, everyone, if you want to just see me talking into a microphone, and video is your thing you like, it’s just more authentic when I can see his face. We’re on YouTube. We’re on YouTube, subscribe there and get a notification for every every new episode. A couple of things that are going to be new this year. Couple of things that are going to be new this year, is I’ll be streaming these podcast episodes live, I’ll be streaming them live, which you want to make sure that you’re connected, whether it’s LinkedIn, in our Facebook group or on YouTube, you’ll want to make sure you’re connected. My high recommendation is that you subscribe on YouTube. So that that that that notification go out every time we go live. And if you miss it live, you’ll just have to wait until whatever future date the actual episode is published. But it’s my gift to you all for making you all wafers for such a time. Is that Yes, the guests will be live, you can ask questions. I can’t promise your questions will be answered live. But here’s one thing I can promise you. If you’re a part of our membership community, those questions will be answered. You’ll see we’ll say hey, signing off on the podcast. And I’ll keep going with our guests and answer any questions that you have. So it’s going to pay to be connected. And if you could show up live, we’d love to have you don’t worry if you can’t show up live at a later date. I usually record these a month two, sometimes three months in advance. You just have to wait. You just have to wait for it to come out like the general population. Gen pop. All right. But but but that’s coming. That’s coming. Another thing. We just relaunched and revamped our membership offering. And the best thing about it is it is a more easy on your end and inclusive approach that allows me to build out a better experience for you to learn segmentation given that that’s the focus, you’ll now you’ll now be able to enroll in our lead segmentation course. And, and and when when that takes place, by the way enroll. I would no I’m not gonna say well, let me say this. There are courses that are available in membership that are only available for enrollment during our live webinars.

Chris 19:32
Okay, so you want to make sure as long as you’re subscribed to the podcast, you’ll always know when I say subscribe, I mean email subscription, you’ve gone to all systems go podcast.com and have subscribe with your email. You will always know you will always be in the know of everything that we’re doing. Okay, so one of those things is webinars. We run these monthly now this year and it’s a series on segmentation is where we talk about a variety of, of areas of segmentation. So at the end of the year, if you’ve attended every webinar for free, by the way, it’s like a masterclass, I’m literally doing a masterclass live. Now, if you can’t make it all of the recordings are in our community membership, which is another reason now on these live webinars is the only time that we open the door to enroll in our leasing mutation course. And when you enroll in that course, you also get access to three other courses, campaigns that converts, which is how to write email, how to build, how to configure email workflows to create engagement, quicker, automating webinars, how to set up automated webinars, what software to use, and how it all works. We’ve got list resurrection, if you haven’t emailed your list in a long time, and you just need to get them active again, got a course for that, and the profit pathway 2.0, which has all everything that you need to build your your first sales funnel online. All of those are included in the membership. By the way, at any point, if you want to go and join, you can automation bridge.com, forward slash membership. But that’s not it in the membership, where we also have automation giveaways. I’m I share a lot everybody. Just recently, just recently, I had a great conversation with one of our certified partners. And we were talking about automating webinars, and just running live webinars do we need to shoot we store the data in a tag or custom field, if you’re running multiple events at the same time, and what we have come up with oh my god, I couldn’t have done it by myself. So this is the kind of environment that you really want to be in. If this is your thing. If if if building out automation, automated workflows for your clients, understanding how to leverage the cutting edge technology and how to bring it all together to better personalize your marketing, it’s all taking place in the membership, along with all of the segmentation training from our focus for the year. Okay, we’ve got community forums, again, automation giveaways, that events that are not posted anywhere else online, you can only attend if you’re a member. So the these, there’s a lot to look forward to this year. There’s a lot to look forward to. I just wanted to touch base with you all, as the first episode from our hiatus. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your continued support. And for those of you who reached out to me and inquired and say, Hey, are we Are you still recording? Is this thing still a go? Is all systems go? Still a go? Thank you. I can’t tell you how much that meant. You all know it, it’s running a business is hard. And sometimes you gain without the systems and structures you can get exhausted and start to question Is it really worth it. But you all kept me in the game. And I appreciate you for it. So my promise to you is that your patience is going to pay off. And it is going to be worth every day every week and every month that you’ve had to wait, I am going to ensure that the best content is at your disposal. All right. So with that being said signing off for this episode, enjoy the future episodes, including myself, we’ve got a heavy rotation, Active Campaign expert, our experts, operations experts, email marketing experts with all of the changes that have taken place. Again, founders digital marketers, we’re going to have quite the lineup this year is going to be live it’ll be recorded and added to the podcast app later. You won’t miss out unless you want to be the first to be in the know make sure you’re connected. All right. I’m excited about all of it. But more than excitement, I’m grateful that all of you continue to entrust me with your ears and your time to listen in. It does not go unnoticed and under appreciated. So until next time, I see you all online Automator responsibly, my friends. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to and it can be found in Apple podcast, Google podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out and while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources says that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly and you can access them all at all systems go podcast.com Thanks again for listening and until next time I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends