Email Marketing Strategies That Actually Work feat. Rob and Kennedy of Email Marketing Heroes

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 sale 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 all systems go podcast. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, founder and chief automation Officer of automation breeds the place online to learn about small business, marketing and sales automation, where we focus on turning digital marketing professionals into automation service providers. If you’d like to find out how to become one or find out more about everything that we offer, as well as a lot of valuable resources, free resources that we have for you. Please go to Allsystemsgopodcast.com to access all of those resources. If you’re new to the podcast, make sure that you subscribe and share after you listen to this episode in its entirety at the time of recording this, the All systems go podcast is free to subscribe to, you can find the show on all main podcasting apps like Apple podcast, Google podcast, we’re on YouTube. If you have been listening and just haven’t hit that subscribe button, now is the time while you’re at it. Your five star rating and review will be greatly appreciated. Okay. In this episode, I get to sit down with Rob and Kennedy of email marketing heroes. And you may know them as hosts of a very entertaining podcast called the Email Marketing Show. They’ve had a plethora of SaaS, founders and entrepreneurs on this show. They also are founders of a survey platform that helps you make sales called responsesuite. And this week, they are becoming they are fast becoming recognized as two of the most dynamic speakers in the world, for reshaping the way that we think about email marketing, I have to preface this episode and let you know if you haven’t looked at the time marker. This one went a little longer than the usual podcast. And it’s because I really wanted to give them the floor and explain the power and effectiveness of email marketing still, right now, right today in this society and the way that they’ll be teaching you about it. Trust me, learn it, implement it, it will not change, you’ll be able to use these strategies, time and time again. So enjoy. Enjoy the conversation between Rob Kennedy and myself,

Chris Davis 2:44
Rob and Kennedy, welcome to the podcast. I really, really, really looking forward to speaking with you guys, not just because of your expertise in energy, but to really dispel some of the mess that’s being put out in the marketplace right now around email marketing. How are you guys doing? Great, isn’t it? Thanks for having us. Yes, yeah. So this is a short time coming. It would have been longer if I’d known you guys longer. immediately when I found out about you all. I was like, oh god to have them on the podcast. This would be great. So give our listeners a little bit of insight about you guys’s background and your business.

Rob 3:29
Yeah, so our story’s a little bit strange. I’m Rob By the way, Rob with the red hair offer red offer Rob no more clues. Kennedy is the funny, really funny one. The other one will call him the other one. And I’ve been using this voice for the rest of the episode. So that’ll help. I basically have been a stage hypnotist for the past like 18 years traveling all over the world really lucky to just get up on stage. Whenever I well apart from a pandemic, get up on stage and do a show and hypnotize people and make them do crazy things. And Kennedy is a mind reader folks in the states would know that as a mentalist, that means something different here. Basically, he gets up on stage and makes it look like he can read people’s minds by using psychology and body language and reading people and statistics and human behavior and all that cool stuff. And we met at a magician’s convention like 20 years ago and became friends. And along the way, we both realized that at a young age for me straight out of school, and for Kennedy, straight out of university, we had accidentally started a business as an entertainer. You don’t just like stick an ad in the Yellow Pages and then wait for the phone to ring. You have to learn about accounts and marketing and branding and positioning and how do I price myself higher than the other guy but still get the work and that kind of thing. And we were just quite lucky that we just went at it. I think probably out of naivety more than skill, like we just had a go and thought well, it’s probably easier than that, then it then it feels like it should be. And we very quickly both realize independently that we are both introverts. We hide it very well, but we’re both introverts. And so we hated the idea of picking up the phone and calling people and we’ve Are we quickly found in email? And again, without telling each other, we were like closet email marketers. We were like, doing this email marketing thing building lists and using it to get gigs and turn gigs into repeat gigs. And like, it was it was all going really well. And then one day, we had a conversation, I was like, dude, I’ve been using this thing, this email marketing thing, yet people put their email address in and then when you email them, you can like say hi, first name and merge their first name in and that was like witchcraft. That’s 1520 years ago. wizardry. Yeah. And Kennedy was like, I’ve been doing the same thing. Anyway, from that point on, we just both became hooked with the power of what email could do before long other entertainers. Were asking us, how are you doing this email thing, we started teaching them how to do it separately, Kennedy working with magicians, and comedians and singers, I was just teaching other hypnotists. And then eventually, that led to us saying, you know what, there’s all kinds of businesses, from people who make and sell jewelry at home to coaches and consultants and that kind of thing. And everything in between, should be using the power of email. And eventually, a couple of years ago, we came together and founders, email marketing heroes.

Chris Davis 6:06
Love it. Love the story. I have to say it’s, it’s it’s so interesting how you stumbled you stumbled upon it without knowing what it was, right? Totally.

Kennedy 6:20
Totally. We were like how it was, it was I was like, evading having to do the work. It was like, we ended up doing this thing, because we didn’t want to do something else. How many times have we all done that? Like, how many of us if we’re entrepreneurs, like doing this thing, just like the only reason I want to be successful is so I can avoid ever have a guy having to get a job? I mean, if I can do that, then that’s my definition of success.

Chris Davis 6:42
Yes, so so there comes a point in time where you guys realize, wait a minute, this is like a thing. I think digital marketers are using this thing that we’ve been doing, and they’re like, making money. How did you guys continue to let me say, stay authentic? in the sea of digital marketers that are selling? This is how you do email marketing and and do it this way? And don’t do that? How did you it? Was it because you guys had this prior success with it? Or what what went into that just staying true and authentic to Hey, look, this is how it works. This is how we’re doing it.

Kennedy 7:20
I think one of the things that gets us into into trouble maybe maybe is, is the fact that we are just not willing to compromise on the fact that we will not sell the dream, there will be people who we absolutely know will make multiple, multiple times the amount of sales and profit than we will. But were not willing to sell out to saying, hey, email marketing, it’s a thing that you wake up one day, you do it one day, and then it’s automated passive income forever. I’m sorry, if you’ve got a digital program, if you’ve got a course, a membership, if you’re doing any of this stuff, it’s not passive income. It does take work, like Rob and I have been doing email marketing for like 18 years each year. And we’re still working on email marketing, every single week. It’s not passive income. So I think the big thing that we’re just not willing to do is sell the dream. So we’ve got this membership called the league, right. And every single month, we host two group coaching calls, to help people out with what they’re working on that email marketing for that particular business. And one of the things that we tell people over and over again, is, this is not going to get like this is not going to disappear. This is not going to be something you’re gonna set and forget, ever. This is a skill for life. This is a thing that we’re going to help you through today. And you’re going to have a different problem in a year time and a year’s time, because that’s the reality of the situation. So we believe in being a brutally brutally honest, and one of the ways we do that is we tell people about the failures. Absolutely. Like if you think for a second that every new email campaign we create, because we need new ways of promoting our products all the time. So we need brand new email campaigns all the time. So but guess what, they don’t all work. And actually, we have this thing, where we’ll go live into our free Facebook group, which we call the Email Marketing Show community. And we’ll go live into that Facebook group. And we’ll show people here’s a really awesome email campaign that does not work. And we’ll tell them why theoretically, it should work. And here’s all the wonderful effort we put in, in all these great things. And then we’ll show them the numbers just being terrible. And the reason we do that is one, it’s really important to really know that there is a point at which science meets art. And that is you can have the best sales copywriter, the best email campaigns from us the best anything and it could still not work because at some point, the science meets art and it has have to be nuanced. And we want to show people like, we’re in the same place like we’re not above anybody. You’re the email marketing hero, not us. And then of course, that’s when we talk about if you want the campaigns that actually do work that people join the program, of course, but But for us, it’s just about being really real. And being not afraid to say, we screw this up sometimes. And not not that often.

Chris Davis 10:22
Yeah, yeah. So it sounds like you guys have collective experience brought together and have these proven frameworks, proven sequences for for email marketing. I want to touch on a couple of those real quick, but first, I want to I want, I want to give you guys the floor to answer the question. Why is email not dead in 2021? As we record this right now, post pandemic, maybe going into another one? crossfading in the next track, aren’t we? Yeah, right.

Rob 10:57
Yeah, I mean, it’s such a great question. And because obviously, everyone with something else to sell has, at some point turned up and said, Oh, emails dead, you should do messenger bots, or emails dead, you should do SMS marketing. And the truth is, well, first of all, nothing yet has managed to match email, in terms of its ability to deliver a return on investment, even if it’s done badly than anything else. So that’s just a fact. And that’s not us saying that it’s much cleverer people with much more detailed information than we do that globally. Email Marketing is still the number one return on investment activity for the businesses that do it based on the money that they invest to get subscribers and build everything, and the time that they invest actually send emails. But I think what it requires and this is really the the movement we’re trying to bring about is, we need to stop seeing email as being this thing that you just use to bark sales offers at your list all the time, and instead, see it as content channel. Because ultimately, all we do on the internet is we make pretty pictures, and we type things and we click on stuff. And that’s it. And so if you can make a pretty picture or table, put some content into a thing and stick it on Instagram, you could take the same content, the caption from underneath, rewrite it in a slightly different way. And that content would be just as valuable delivered by email. So if we actually just stopped thinking about it as being a different thing, what most people do with email marketing, is actually email sales. What they do is they go right, we’re going to do a special offer on this course this week, we’ve got to tell everyone about it. So they bombard their list for a week about this thing. And it’s 90% off until Tuesday, Because I said so. And then Tuesday comes and the cook, the launch is over, and they go right, that’s good. We can pop the list back in the box again. And we’ll get them back out the next time we need to sell them something. And so

Kennedy 12:37
like, you know, what do you want to mark? How do you know what a market has got something for sale? Because you’re receiving emails from?

Rob 12:44
Exactly right. So instead, if we think about email as just being a content channel that you can really easily sell through. And that’s not to say you can’t sell at people every day, because we sell in like 95% of our emails, I would guess. But the purpose of the email isn’t to make a sale. And that sounds mad. The purpose of the email is to show up, deliver a bit of value and be in somebody’s inbox so that if they are ready to buy, then the link is there and they can do it really quickly. And they’re never going to go Oh, what was the name of those guys who tgw marketing what I need to learn email marketing, where do I get that from? Like our subscribers know what the only place they’re going to get it from because we’re in their inbox 365 days of the year, even on Christmas Day, and we made a sale on Christmas day as it happens. And so the way that we see is instead of seeing it as like a like a firing sales propaganda at your audience, instead show up and help them everyday they opted into your newsletter for a reason they downloaded that white paper for a reason. So now turn up og, og algo. Lea, that’s not a word I just made up, turn it regularly, there’s often and regularly in one go that’s really ugly, I’ll go and deliver as much content as you can but in in in the way that we do it. And and Pete when people want to buy your there.

Chris Davis 13:55
I love it. I think the key there is treating your email, like a just any other channel you will publish to. And and being a it really then puts you in an advantage because you’re able to deliver straight to your audience. They exact thing. They don’t have to sift and sort through all of these other images and videos and everything else. So I love that mindset shift. I’m 100% in agreement with you. I tell people all the time, the day email dies, is when you can go to a school and they don’t give you an email address, you can get a job and they don’t give you an email address and you can sign up for software without an email address. When those three things happen. I will say okay, email maybe on the way out but it is a primary means of communication as you become a professional in the world. So there is no reason for anybody to believe in any capacity that is going anywhere. So now let’s let’s get into the good stuff and talk about how you guys Use it strategically, listeners, you should already be piecing it together that their approach to email marketing is totally different. I mean, Rob with you just saying it, treat it like a channel, like a, like our true marketing channel. That should have shifted a lot of people’s brain because it’s just like what you said most people just think of it as a sales channel. Hey, when I have something to sale, let me put, let me put a drip sequence in here. Later. Oh is not, right. Let’s throw those words out there. And then they send these emails, nothing works. And then the list lays dormant for years, sometimes they get an idea of something else to sell. And they’re like, oh, I’ve got like 1000 people on my email list. No, you don’t, you’ve got zero do not believe that is actually good to represent who’s opening your email. So when the most common term we hear is the welcome sequence or the drip sequence. Walk us through what you guys call it and how you approach it?

Kennedy 16:03
Shall we have a thing that we call the getting to know you sequence and that’s the first sequence when somebody first joins your email list. So as soon as someone joins your email list, yeah, the first thing you gonna send them is the thing you’ve promised them. So make sure you do that first, if they opt in for a lead magnet. In fact, later on remind me dude, and I’ll I’ll share with you what our number one performing lead magnet is. And it’s the fastest to create lead magnet you’ll ever create. And we cannot beat it right now. We are trying so hard to beat and we can’t and it’ll really surprise you. But remind me I will share that with you later. But in during the episode, I don’t mean off the episode, we will share it during the during the episode me right? So.

Kennedy 16:46
So when somebody joins your email list, the first thing you want to do is deliver what you’ve promised them. So if you’ve so one of our lead magnets, is a is a book list, for example. So we say hey, do you want the list of the Top 10 books that will help you improve your email marketing that are not all email marketing books, if you do, give us your email address great people put your email address in what happens next. And think of it literally, from the subscribers perspective, stop saying words like and then I’m going to do this to them. And then I’m going to put them through that. And then I’m going to do that to them. You have to do anything to them. That person’s a real person. Think about what they’re gonna see, when we’re sitting every single week working on our email marketing, were talking about what will they see next. And now they’re going to go to there. And then if they click that, what’s going to happen? So start seeing as a journey, as if you’re planning the route around a theme park? Like, what is it they’re seeing? Okay, so the next thing we’ve got to do is you’ve got to deliver the thing. So your first email has to be, here’s the link on our list. It’s a Google document of the 10 emails out of the 10 books, which are not email marketing books, that will really help you improve your email marketing. Here’s the link to it. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. They’ve got to see that first. Otherwise, it’s really icky. Like, what the heck else would you be sending them because that’s all they want. So seven, seven, the next we’re going to take them through a series of four days. And we’re going to email them every single day, for four days. And each of those emails is what we call our getting to know you sequence. And the point of getting to know your sequence is that they get to know you and you get to know them. And that’s why it’s not called us getting to know us telling you all about our sequence or anything like that. Also getting to know you as a song from the musical the King and I am Robin, I are both musical theater fans. So that’s why it’s called getting to know you from that that song with Julie Andrews. So, so the point of that sequence is each day, you’re going to do a few different things, the first email and like getting to know your sequence, you’re going to tell them how to connect with you on other channels. The the the consumption of email on mobile devices is massively growing, though more people are reading either email on the go on their mobile device, but but you can’t email somebody 10 times a day, or you can’t even email somebody five times a day, I think five times a day is too much. Whereas if I email you once a day, and you’re expecting that and they’re good emails, and we’ll talk about that in a minute, then that’s fine. Then if I if you also say two tweets from me, and you see an Instagram post, I’m use and you’re in our free email marketing, email marketing, SEO community Facebook group, and you see a post in that you’ve heard from me five different ways and we call this becoming 3d. Rather than just being that person who they get emails off your the person they see popping up with quirky things and on their Facebook and on their Instagram. So that first email is what we call the buffet card. It’s like when you first get on on a train or a plane. And if somebody comes down and they’re like, hey, do you want to fund her and do you want to an Oreo and pack of Oreos or whatever. So it’s that it’s that idea? Like you’re like Hey, welcome to my world. This is the expectation, I’m going to email you this often. And here’s some other places we can connect. And that’s why we list out. If you’re on Facebook, join the Facebook group, if you’re on Twitter and come and join us onto it. And we do that the other emails are there. So they get to know who you are and your expertise, your authority, why should they listen to you? Why is it important to them. And also, during that sequence, you want to get to know them, you want to ask them questions, we link to them, we link them to a survey, we happen to own a survey platform as well called response suite. But But the point of that is that you email people with a survey which says, Let me get to know you a bit so I can make sure I can serve you the best. Yes, you also want to show some vulnerability. And this is something we don’t see enough in people’s welcome sequences. This is where the getting to know you sequence really takes on really advanced psychological turn. And that is, yes, you’re an expert, of course, you’re gonna say you’re an expert. It’s your email list, you can type these emails and all this stuff. But when you show them the ability, this is what happens. Instead of people feeling like you’re shouting at them through their email, and they’re leaving back receiving all this information from you. When you show vulnerability, what happens is what’s happening right now, as I’m speaking, and that is,

Kennedy 21:23
they lean in, they lean in when you when you show that you’re not perfect. And I can tell you now Rob and I are not perfect, especially not rob. But we’re definitely not we’re definitely not perfect. So we’ll talk about the fact that we are terrible at social media. And we’ll talk about it we talk about the stuff they’re not we’re not very good at. And of course, we want to talk about the stuff that we’re really, really good at. So make sure that initial sequence, we call it getting to know your sequence, as as four days long, really sets up all those principles. And that means what you’re doing, and the whole purpose of the getting to know sequences, it does not sell anything, what it does, is it creates the conditions in the minds of your subscribers that allow them to buy when you do sell something. Right. It’s a bit like when you do somebody a few favors. So you know, later on when you move house, and you’re like really nice to the neighbors, because you know, at some point, you’re going to need some inside information on that neighborhood. And you’re going to ask that neighbor, because you’ve already done them some favors like, oh, we’re going to be moving in, tomorrow’s gonna be a really big truck pulling up to the driveway. Sorry about that, because you’re being nice. And that’s going to pay off in dividends later. So you want to the other thing you want to do and getting to know your sequence is you want to train people to click Yes, not enough people train their subscribers to click in their emails. That’s the behavior we want the people to have in an email. So if you are sending any emails that don’t have an ability to click, you are training your people out of clicking, we’re always training a behavior. And if we’re not training people to do the thing we want them to do, we are training them to not do the thing we want them to do psychologically speaking. So make sure every single email, hey, click here to join the Facebook group. And then the next email, click here to tell me how many email subscribers you’ve got the next year, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Chris Davis 23:18
Yeah, and and if you put it in context, Kennedy, if you think about it, on the front end, right, your marketing is doing a good job with your messaging, to make sure that you’re attracting the right person, right? I’ve got Magnetic Messaging, somebody comes and says, Hey, I do you want to learn about email marketing, I do want to learn how to be successful. So they opt in for your lead magnet, and then immediately they get what they asked for. So you may good on your promise, you’re not a liar. You know, you’re not trying to deceive anybody. But then it’s like this. It’s like dating, right? It’s just like, hey, like, let me tell you a little bit about me. You tell me about you. And let me tell you about this time where I, I dove in for a kiss a little too soon. I misread the situation. I thought it was like, Come Kiss me. And actually, they were just trying to tell me I had a booger in my nose. And it was so embarrassing, like disarms them. And they’re like, oh, it humanizes you. Right? It’s building an actual relationship. And I love that. One thing, I’ll just let all the listeners know this. You’re not going to get everything from Robin Kennedy on this podcast. They’re too smart, and it’s too much, but just know everything that they’re telling you to do. There’s a method to it. So even though when when Kennedy says, Hey, you can send an email you don’t have to sell, there are still ways for you to click on things and potentially take action in the program that they teach. So I think that nowadays more than anything, especially especially when people are looking for that human connection, they Want to know where we’re not in the days where people would go to a store, buy stuff, and then not inquire about the values of the person who owns the store what, what nonprofits and society, support those companies, where this is the day and age we’re in. People want to know who there’ll be potentially buy from and doing business with. So I love how you use that, in the welcome sequence, let you set a word daily. And sup, for some reason, I heard I felt some of my listeners cringe, like a daily, you can email somebody every day, what are you talking about? How and why can you email people daily and expect them to actually enjoy that experience?

Kennedy 25:52
Well, what before Rob tells you how to do it, I want to tell you when not to do it, right, there’s a really important time to not email people every single day. And that is, if your emails suck. If you’ve got terrible emails, people don’t want more of them, right. So that’s a really good time to not email people every single day. But you can absolutely do it. And it’s one of the most profitable things that we do in our business.

Rob 26:21
I think what we probably need to do is again, just, first of all kind of reframe how we see email in our own mind. And the reason that most people like we run ads for our program, the complete daily email strategy, and we quite quite regularly get somebody commenting on our ads saying for if somebody emailed me every day, I would unsubscribe in a heartbeat. And I think that’s really indicative of the kind of emails they’re receiving. Because the truth is, if I think about my inbox, and most of the people I’ve been subscribed to, if they started emailing me every day, with the kind of emails they’re currently sending me, I would probably unsubscribe as well. And you listening to this can probably relate to that. So totally get it. But for me, the way that we see is we see actually, let’s think about again, if we go back to thinking of email as this content channel, that means that emails can be valuable, that means the emails themselves can be valuable. That means that even if somebody isn’t ready to buy from us right, now, they can still open the email and benefit from it. In fact, if we took the call to action out of our emails, we weren’t offering anything, that email would still have a purpose. And that’s what most emails don’t. Most people, if they weren’t selling you anything, there’s no reason for them to send the email, then there’s no reason for you to open or read the email either. So if we now think about the email itself, regardless of the pitch has to stack up and has to be valuable, then that becomes a different thing. So if I said to you, do you want me to email you every single day? And suddenly my stuff? You would probably say no. If I said to you, how would you like an email every day, with a little hint, tip story, strategy or idea that will help you with your email marketing? Let’s think about the most boring industry in the world. accountancy, right, let’s imagine and sorry if there’s any accountants listening, right, but our accountant grim, he sends out enormous emails about once a month, maybe slightly higher during the pandemic. But generally speaking, once a month with this enormous email that’s like 52, subheadings, all the way down. Nobody’s ever made it to the bottom of this email alive. It’s enormous, takes him ages to write nobody’s reading it that’s serving nobody at all. But instead, if grandma Karen was to email us every single day with a short, sharp hint, story, tip, inspiration or idea to help us get better at managing our small business finances, I would read that everyday with my breakfast or my cup of tea, I would just open it. We’ve even jokingly come up with a name for it, we’re gonna call it the daily digit. It’s not a good name, but it isn’t him. So if you now think about this, instead of being a Would you like me to email you every day and sell you my stuff? and change that to? Would you like an email? And this is our wording? Feel free to Nick it? Would you like to receive an email from me every day with a short, sharp hint, story, tip idea or a bit of inspiration to help you with whatever it is that you do.

Rob 28:55
Every day? Everybody wants that? Why wouldn’t you want that. And at any point, if you want to you can unsubscribe, and that’s totally fine as well, if suddenly, email marketing isn’t your priority right now, which spoiler alert, it should be. But let’s imagine it’s not your priority. Right now you’re focused on your webinar or something else, feel free to unsubscribe and combat there, that’s totally fine. We’re not looking to build the biggest list in the world subscribers on Pokemon. We’re not trying to collect them all. All we’re trying to do is collect a really good core tribe of people who right now want to hear from us. And that’s a ruling tribe of people, some people will come out of it as other people come into it. And that’s totally fine as well. You don’t need the biggest list in the world when you focus on it like that. And so what we do is every day, we send an email out to our list. And between us we do this for for businesses for brands. So that’s for daily emails every day, just for the two of us do them ourselves. They take like less than 10 minutes each. And basically what we’re looking to do is to say, Okay, great, what can I tell somebody about something that’s gone on in my life or in our business or in my world that will deepen a relationship, build a stronger connection with them? How do I pull a lesson out of that, that applies to in our case, email marketing, and then how can I mention at the end by the way, if you Want if you want further help to do this properly, come and join the league come and buy our daily email thing come and listen to the podcast. And so that’s kind of our strategy literally every day I just go Okay, what’s what’s happened to me today? That’s weird, okay, and I’ve just bought a new doorbell and I’ve put it on my front door and nobody uses it. Everybody knocks on the door. Stupid story, but it’s it’s mildly interesting. I bought a new mattress. And I expected it to come in a big mattress shaped box with two men carrying it like sort of like a comedy thing like the circus. But it wasn’t it was a bit one man with a little box because they vacuum packed mattresses nowadays. And I didn’t know that. So like stupid stuff. That’s got nothing to do with email marketing. And then out of that, we pull some kind of weird story. So for example, when I wrote an email about the fact I just ordered a doorbell, it basically said, when I moved into this house, we didn’t have a doorbell. I’ve lived here for through two years without having a doorbell, I bought a fancy doorbell. And because I like gadgets, I bought a fancy one, I fitted well put it on the wall, I say for today, I put it on the wall, and nobody uses it. Because the postman and everyone who comes here, the window cleaner, they all know we don’t have a doorbell, so they just knock. So there’s loads of lessons, I can pull that off that I can talk about the fact that people get into a routine and they get into habits. And it takes a lot to shift those habits, and then relate that to getting people to open and click your emails, we can talk about the fact that sometimes you go all out and get the fancy gadgets like the the new fancy marketing fad that everyone’s talking about. And when you get it, it’s actually pointing this, nobody likes it and it doesn’t work. But when you stick to the good stuff like email, the good stuff that’s always worked, that still works. So you can you basically look into create stuff, and we get replies literally every single day to our emails. Like when I talked, I sent two emails about buying a mattress to our email marketing list. And we got two replies from people say from different people saying, Oh, I’m looking to buy a new mattress, which mattress did you get? And so what we’ve done is we’ve built a connection that’s deeper than Robin Kennedy teach you about email marketing, we’ve built a connection, I sent an email about the fact I took up running at the start of the year. And I’m not I’m not naturally built to be a runner, I look stupid, but I took up running. And so one of us who runs I look stupid. Just looks more stupid. One of our subscribers replied and said, Hey, I sell these high vis running vests on Amazon, what’s your address, I’ll send you some, like they end up sending us gifts we got we’ve had like two gifts from Australia in the last year. So like, they build a really deep connection that way and people care. And they’re not opening your emails to see what you’ve got to sell. They’re opening your emails because they want to find out what stuff is happening in your life these days. And that’s fine.

Kennedy 32:24
But but but Rob surely emailing every day, people looking to report as a spam surely we’re gonna end up in the spam folder. Really?

Rob 32:36
What do you think when you like we get this all the time? And you would? I’m glad you said that. Sir. You would think that that’s, that’s what happened. You need to learn to do impressions, right? And then you can ask a question using Chris’s voice. And then like,

Kennedy 32:48
oh, that’ll be amazing to imagine me, Chris, like, I don’t even try. Because he’s like, you just sound so cool. And like, Yeah, man. And I’m like, Huh.

Rob 32:58
Anyway, enough dodging the question, you would think wynia you would think that it would get you into the spam folder? And it doesn’t for two reasons. One of them’s a psychological reasons, what reason and one of them is a technological reason. Which one should we do first?

Kennedy 33:10
We could actually talk about the psychology First, if you want. Go for it. How about that. So if the reason people report you as spam is usually because of relevance. They don’t think what you’re saying in those emails is relevant to them. And the reason that happens is one they’ve changed. So they’re not doing what they’re doing anymore. They think it’s not relevant to them anymore. So one of our members of the league, he teaches people how to care for and grow bonsai trees, okay? We have people who do all kinds of crazy things, of course, so but it’s with email marketing, so that’s fine. If you no longer want if you throw your bonsai tree in the bin, because the noise idea, and that means you want to unsubscribe from his list because you no longer relevant to him, fine. That’s a good reason. But the biggest reason that people report you as spam, psychologically speaking, is because they forgotten who you are. If you email once a month, I will guarantee you most people who subscribe to you and haven’t heard from you for 30 days, have no idea who you are. When your name lands in their inbox. How many times have you received someone’s email, you’re like, Who is that and you immediately are angry when you go into that email. So it doesn’t take you long to bypass all the fancy sales messages they spent all day coming up with and whacking that unsubscribe button and going Yes, it’s dirty, rotten spam, of course, because they’ve forgotten who you want. So the really good thing about showing up every single day is they cannot forget who you are. They know exactly who you are, because they’ve been there. And not only that, but they’re getting a deeper relationship with you. If they’re hearing stories about you and your world, like the fact that I now know that Rob recently got a mattress and he really loves painting. penguins. And he cried when he went to Edinburgh Zoo and it was a little penguin parade, like we’re getting a deeper relationship, which means we’ll be coming in a relationship with that person. Do we report the people who are in relationship with a spam? No, we don’t. So that’s a psychological reasons. And then let’s look at the tech reasons why email and more regularly actually reduces your spam.

Rob 35:25
So what we’ve got to think about is think about sending emails as as in mass broadcasts and automations, you know, email marketing, think of that a little bit like your credit score. So people like Experian are obviously tracking people’s credit score globally, based on how much money you borrow. And a lot of people who’ve never taken on any debt whatsoever. And I mean, they’ve never had a credit card, they rent not buy, like they’ve never had any form of debt whatsoever. Think initially, sometimes, oh, I’ve probably got a really good credit score, because hey, I’ve never been in debt. But actually, you’re quite high risk, because you’ve got no evidence in the in the global system to prove that actually, you’re responsible, and that you’ll only borrow what you can afford and all that stuff. And so it’s actually a good idea, even if you don’t want to use it to have a little credit card that you just pay for your shopping on and then you pay it off at the end of the month, just purely to build a maintain a credit score, not having a credit score in the first place, it’s quite hard to get one and get it good and get it going. But you’ve got to take some action to make that happen and borrow some money. And it’s kind of the same with email, if you just send emails every now and then. So like maybe you do a week long launch promotion now. And then you do it again, in four or five months time. What happens is, you take your list, let’s just for the second number sets, 1000 people, and you email those 1000 people, and some of them will open it, some of them won’t. Some of them will report you as spam. For the reasons Kennedy mentioned, they don’t really remember who you are, you’re not giving Gmail and Yahoo and Verizon, all those people, you’re not giving them a lot of evidence that you’re good that you’re reliable, that you’re a worthwhile sender that you’re not spamming people, they’re not, they’re not building up a lot of data. And then the next time around six months later, four months later, three months later, a month later, you send it again, and a whole bunch of people have forgotten who you are by this point. So the engagements really low, people are not opening it, there’s a bunch of people reporting your spam, because they’ve forgotten like Kennedy said, Well, now actually, you’re just gathering really bad data, that’s like missing all your payments on your credit card, I skip my mortgage this month, like that’s building up a really bad picture of your email delivery. So our friend and our customer of a member of the league, Adrian savage has this amazing piece of software called deliverability, defender, and, and deliverability dashboard, and it like plugs into some email marketing platforms. And it monitors the data to see how you’re doing. Our score is 100 out of 100. Like it’s literally it shows it a bit like experience little credit score thing, a little dial, and ours is 100 out of 100. And we email every single day. And I actually just recently I found out that Adrian said we were the only people in the system, only customers or use the system who’ve like maintained 100 out of 100 for more than 90 days, that was recently. So emailing more often helps you to build a better picture in the eyes of the email recipients like Gmail, that you’re actually a worthwhile and good sender.

Chris Davis 37:58
Yeah, this is good. Um, Adrian was just on the podcast, and he broke down deliverability and blew everybody’s mind. Yeah, he’s and you know what, as I’m thinking, as I’m listening to you all, and I’m being objective, making sure I’m critical to myself, and just what I’ve received as the truth. I can’t count how many times I’ve come across somebody whose content I enjoyed consuming, and there was enough of it. Like, I, if it’s on YouTube, it’s just like, I can consume all of the videos in like a day. And now I’m like, at a deficit, like, when are they gonna put something else out? In one? Right? So yeah, it just clicked. When you’re saying this, I think that the case is going to be more often that people don’t male enough, again, making sure that you’ve got the right audience and you know, you’re setting your framing what you’re going to be sending them on your landing page, and all of that, you know, assuming all of that’s in place, but I think we were run into the case where people sin, less emails more than send too many, right, like, default, to not sending enough and, and I’m looking at myself, you know, when a critical is, and I think people probably want to hear more from me. Because

Kennedy 39:16
the reason people are on your email list, they’re on your email list because they’ve got a problem, or they’ve got an interest, and they believe you’ve got valuable information to give them about that thing. Yeah. And you’re only email them once every seven days about something they really care about. That’s naughty. Don’t do that. You know, tell them about it every day, like every day, every week, we send you seven tips, seven ideas, seven bits of inspiration to improve your email marketing. That’s better than not sending you one tip.

Chris Davis 39:47
That’s true. Yes. And there’s all life is always teaching you something. Hmm, right. Like Kennedy. Before we started recording, we talked about how you’re committing the car. No sin of podcaster mics, but it works. And it sounds good for you your voice. Now many applications in marketing. Right? So we’re always sourced with these stories and experiences around us. And I just think something about technology. And it’s something about like social media and all that, that puts people in this mindset, like, everybody’s going to read this, everybody in the world is going to see it. So it’s got to be good, I’ve got to capitalize, and then they start being inauthentic and they start trying to do stuff. And it’s just like, no, literally just tell a story.

Kennedy 40:38
Well, here’s the other thing. And maybe Rob can give you the numbers on this, if you can remember them, I don’t remember off the top my head, but let’s say, for most people, like 40% would be a really good open rate on your emails, right. And then we could talk about the impact of iOS 15, on open rate reporting, maybe another time, because that’s going away. And we can talk about that maybe sometime. But anyway, um, but 40% would be considered to be a really good open rate for most people. So if I send you an email, this week, I do my weekly email, and I get 40%, I’m going to be dancing, I’m gonna be so happy about my 40% open rate. But if I send you two emails this week, and they both get 40% open rate, there’s a good chance that not all of those will be the same people. Some of them will be your diehard fans will open every single email, but some of those people will not be, let’s say there’s just a 10% difference, like 10% of the people who are open on day two, or different people who opened on day one, guess what my open rate for that week was now 50% 50% of my audience and my list now saw the content of my email, then do that a third day. That means now 60% of I’ve got a 60, who doesn’t want a 60% open rate, who doesn’t want more of that email subscribers, seeing the content of that emails. And if you follow it really simple strategy, what what Rob showed shared before, to come up with the content and not coming up with an idea of being perfect. I write my emails, I get up at 530 in the morning, because I am that person. And I get up at 530 in the morning. And while my kettles boiling to bake my first cup of tea of the day, I stand at my kitchen bench. And I write out my first email my first email of the day. And I do it before the kettle boils. I do before I pour on my first cup of tea, which is like four or four and a half minutes, something like that. All you do is follow the formula Rob just shared, and we’ll just go through it again. It’s really simple. It’s come up with a story about something has happened in your life. The question we often ask, we have a whole bunch of methods for coming up with a bottomless refillable number of stories and things for content that we teach in our complete email strategy. But here’s one of them that you can just go and use forever. And if this one, ask yourself, what’s the least boring thing that happened in the last 24 hours? If you just answer that question, don’t ask yourself what’s the most exciting because your brain will go? Nothing exciting ever happens to me? Because we’re all like doubters, aren’t we? So don’t ask that. Ask yourself this psychologically stacked question which is very carefully constructed by us, which is, what’s the least boring thing that happened last 24 hours? answer that question, start writing the story. When we write the story, we have no idea how it relates to what we teach, or how we’re going to segue into the offer. Once you’ve written it, you will know how it then relates on some level to what it is you teach. So then tell them hey, this is just like when you’re doing email marketing, and you’re blah, blah, blah, whatever the lesson is, whenever the moral of the story is, and then you segue into your offer, which is going to be like, if you want to make this faster or easier, I use our template or use our framework or whatever it happens to be. Then join our program, go and join the league or buy the program or join the group. And also your call to action does not always need to be selling something it could be come and join our free Facebook group or watch my new YouTube video or for us it’s listen to this week’s brand new episode of the Email Marketing Show podcast or we use the same formula story lesson offer, whether we’re selling something or when not, I want to just close it where I was saying that with one little four. And that is if the only reason someone receives an email from you is when you’re selling something, there is zero reason for them to open your emails, unless they’re planning on buying from you anyway, which means it doesn’t matter what the content of your email is, because they were already opening it to find out what you’re selling. So it’s pointless email selling doesn’t work. Right. This is why people are getting underwhelmed and frustrated with our results, which is why we’re changing it and giving people these these abilities to to change it. Instead, if there’s value in the emails, which is what Rob was saying. There is a reason to open your emails every day. Even if I’m not thinking about buying right now. And because of that, they get to get emotionally engaged in the story, because that’s what stories do the emotionally engaged people, whereas lists of instructions or those features and benefits of what you do can’t, and then they get to find out how it relates to what you do. I hadn’t thought of that. Oh, guess what, they’re now starting to go along a buying journey. Yeah, a buying journey that would never have seen if they hadn’t opened your email, because you’re only telling them to buy things. And now you’re telling them exactly how to go and buy it.

Rob 45:31
Interesting thing just on this, like, I’m subscribed to our email marketing heroes list with my like a test email address, just so I can see everything and all of that. And just the day before yesterday, I logged in just to I wanted to go back and find some of my favorite subject lines, and favorite emails and stuff. And as I opened up that folder, they’re all in a folder in this test email address. And in the last, like, I know, two years since we started this brand, I’ve said 900 emails to that list. But I can tell you over 900, but I can tell you that those that’s not 900 tips, it’s not 900 email marketing ideas, it’s not 900, amazing, groundbreaking, mind shattering email marketing strategies. It’s actually probably like, we’ve got a list of I don’t know, maybe 100. Things that we would say over and over again, like are called Maxim’s they’re things like email more often deliver value, so they never email, you know, almost every email, US campaigns and automations, alongside broadcasts, like all kinds of core philosophies, many of which we’ve covered in this episode. But then I can say those, even if I only had five, I could say those things and never run out of content. Because I’m not emailing about the content. I’m emailing about the funny thing. The postman said this week, or the funny thing that happened when I tried to eat my cereal and realized I hadn’t washed cutlery, I’m talking about the stuff, and then relating it to the thing. What’s amazing about that is we’ve all been listening to podcasts like this or been at the seminars or been reading books. And you know, when you have that moment, where you read something, and suddenly the penny drops, suddenly you as a as a consumer of content, suddenly get it, we’ve all had those moments, those moments of clarity, what we’re looking to do is to keep telling our stories and giving them ideas until the penny drops for them and they go out. That’s how it works. Because that’s what that’s the moment they’re going to go. That’s why I need to go and join the league. That’s why I need to book a coaching call. That’s why I need to do this. That’s why I need to do that. Because you can’t just say, by the way, you should email every day, and here’s why it’s a good thing, and then never mention it again, I’ll probably send 200 emails about why emailing more often is important. Because eventually somebody will hear the story that makes them realize it’s true.

Chris Davis 47:29
Yeah, it’s just an opportunity, right to put it in the context relative to what they need to hear to make the decision. What connection right. Kennedy, you mentioned in the beginning, towards the beginning that there was a lead magnet that you can’t outperform, it just keeps crushing it.

Kennedy 47:49
Yeah, and this is gonna be fast. Yeah, this is gonna be the fastest lead magnet you ever create. So we have we’ve got low different lead magnets, we’ve got like, a quiz, we’ve got a, we’ve got a four day email, flash sale automation, campaign looking download, we’ve got our 10 books that you can that will improve your email marketing, all this great stuff. And the one that just smashes all of them to pieces, is this. Would you like a tip or trick delivered to you by email every single day that will improve your email marketing? It’s a non lead magnet, it’s literally do you want the emails, and it outperforms for two reasons. One, it makes perfect sense and is different. Secondly, when people sign up for that, and you email them every single day, they really like it. And if you don’t, they’re really angry.

Rob 48:53
Yeah. Interestingly, it’s also the most logical Avenue just thought of this. But it’s the most logical lead magnet in the world to ask for somebody for their email address. Like if you want somebody to download a free report, you realize you could just put the link to the PDF right there on your website, right? Yeah, link and download it without any interference at all. It’s the most logical reason for anyone to give you their email address, and it rolls out all the problems of all I only wanted the free report. And so now they keep emailing me about stuff that’s solved by the getting a new sequence anyway, but it removes all of that. Do you want to receive an email from us every day? put your email address in down below. Okay, I’ll put my email address down below. I reckon we haven’t done the numbers on it. But I reckon that one subscriber who’s given you their email address in order to get your emails is probably worth five or 10 subscribers who’ve just put their email address in to get a free report and you’re going to email them as well. I can say it’s such a different mindset.

Kennedy 49:46
And the good news is you don’t have to create a lead magnet, everybody right now could go and do this. And you don’t even need to log into Canva Yeah.

Chris Davis 49:58
You know, you guys have literally if If everybody was listening in, and you all see that I’ve given them the floor, we’re going a little longer, but I need you all to get this. If you are just taking notes, you have you have been given a framework and easy framework to write emails. Kennedy already told you what time he writes his emails. Okay, so maybe maybe you’re a night owl, whatever the case is. 15 minutes write the story you he already shared where to get the story from. And now they’ve given you the key of how to create the non lead magnet that will outperform every lead magnet you already have. In one podcast. This is the most valuable podcast on the planet, isn’t it? Right? I really hope and it does not matter. I hear you. I hear some of you listeners. Oh, well, that works for so and so not in my industry. Yes, your industry. If you have a mouth, and you talk about what you do, this will work for you, period. So with that being said, I there’s so so much more so many more questions that I have for you. And I’m sure our listeners could continue to listen on. But where can they get connected? You’ve mentioned a few resources, some courses have a Facebook group, where’s the best place for people to connect with you to to get integrated and find out more?

Kennedy 51:22
There’s two things. I’ll tell you the first one, and then Rob’s gonna tell you about our second best performing lead magnet and how you can get that right. That’s one is if you want to come and talk about these ideas. Because right now, as you said, Man, like everyone’s thinking, How do I do this in my industry? Because nobody else is doing it? By the way, that’s a really good reason to do it if nobody else is doing it yet, right? So anyway, let’s book the trend. So if you come and come over to Facebook, search for the Email Marketing Show community, and on the way into that, you’ll be given the opportunity. So you’ll join the Facebook group, you can ask your questions, and we’re in there all day. I mean, far too much. We should really do some work at some point. But yeah, we’re already in there. And on the way in the group if you’d like to, and it is optional, you can give us your email address to receive our daily emails, you’ll see our getting to know your sequence, you’ll see our daily emails, you’ll see all the stuff that we could talk about perhaps in a future episode, you’ll see all happening. If that’s your bag. The other way you could do it is we’ve got some resources

Rob 52:20
we have indeed. So if you’d like some lead magnets, if you’d like to go and put your email address in for a thing you can download, we have one of those as well. So we’ve got a whole bunch of cool stuff that you can get. We’ve got our book list top 10 books to help you with your email marketing, they’re not email marketing books, mostly. We’ve got our 4d email flash sale campaign, literally take these four emails, fill in the blanks and send them to your list you’ll make a bunch of sales you’re just will. So take that and and give it a go. If you want to grab all of those, you can get them at emailmarketingheroes.com/free I think I’m not gonna get any now I think it’s free. Yeah, forward slash free. That’s what I would go. Yes. Love it. Love. It was so smooth. More than right. Because we don’t know reason people email marketing heroes.com slash where it’s currently not there. But it will be somebody who’s gonna die retype email marketing heroes.com forward slash, I’m looking at Kennedy, I think it’s free.

Chris Davis 53:19
Said, literally, literally, if you guys made that page, it’d be hilarious how it converts. Thank you. Thank you for those resources. You guys. Thanks for coming on. And just being an open book. You guys didn’t hold back. I could tell you you have the heart to just give freely. I hope the listeners listen to this multiple times. Because there’s a lot. There’s a lot in this one. So thank you for for sharing that. I really appreciate you guys. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Yes, yes. So listeners, make sure you go in the show notes. We’ll have all the all of the links for you. Robin Kennedy, I will see you guys online. So yeah, cheers, man. Thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it reshaped how you’re looking at email marketing. And I hope you really did take notes on this framework. And once you to put it into place, put it in a place and just see what it does for you and your audience. So many of you so many of you have a list that’s just sitting there. You don’t know what to do because you’re waiting on something to sale. You’re waiting to figure out what to do. How about that? How about just write up four emails based on the framework that Robin Kennedy gave you in this episode, and just see how it performs. Right? If you found value in today’s episode, make sure you share it with somebody. And this is the time that you subscribe if you have not subscribed and leave your five star rating and review. You need to be thinking as you’re listening to this, these podcasts, please don’t be selfish. Think about somebody beyond you. Who is that person who sent you emails that were just terrible, right? Who was that person that wants to that when you talk to them. They have such insight on their business. And you’re like, you know what, you really need to bottle that, that that insight into little micro content pieces that you send out via email, share this episode with them. Here at automation bridge. We’re dedicated to training digital marketing professionals to become automation service providers. Those are people. These are professionals who navigate the marketing technology space as well as the marketing strategy, space, merge them together to deploy automated marketing and sales systems. for small business owners. They need it too many small business owners are navigating they’re trying to do this the right way. But they just can’t figure out how to make automation work for them. That’s what we’re here for. And we’ve made it easy for you to get access to everything that you need. Go to one one website okay visit all systems go podcast calm. To get access not only to the latest episodes, you can check out our amplify my automation packages, which is geared to put marketing, automated marketing and sale systems in your business. Over the next six months. We have a free Facebook group you can join, you can request our refer someone to be a guest on the podcast, and any resource or training that we’ve ever mentioned on the podcast. One URL to remember gets you access to all of it. And that’s all systemsgopodcast.com Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. And until next time, I’ll see you online. automate responsibly, my friends