We're going to start this episode with a full disclosure, everybody. I am not very good at email marketing. I don't really do it somewhat don't believe in it entirely. And so ultimately today, you're going to learn a lot through me and being the Guinea pig with Tanya Tanya Brody here, and it's going to be phenomenal. But I just want everyone to know full disclosure. I don't do it, and maybe let's see if she can change my mind. So without further ado, Why don't you tell us about yourself, how you got to where you're going, and then Let's dive right on into email marketing.

Tanya Brody:
1:56

Hello. I'm Tanya Brody. I am a full stack direct response copywriter and email marketer. And the answer is yes, toy. You should be doing it.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
2:05

Fair.

Tanya Brody:
2:05

And basically I started out as a, just a copywriter. I learned copywriting. My first job was actually writing a lawyer marketing company for Thompson Reuters. I worked in their lawyer marketing division, writing, websites for small law firms. And most of them didn't do email marketing either, but as I got more into this business and as I learned more about copywriting and learned more about marketing, email marketing, even now, even with all of the privacy issues that Apple is throwing at us is still the highest return on investment you can get of any marketing channel. I have heard figures of up to 4, 400 percent return on investment, which basically means for every dollar you put into your email marketing, you can get 44 back. So there's a reason right there. You're leaving money on the table. And I think that, the reason I love it is I feel like it's a much more direct conversation with people. And you can actually start legitimate conversations with people as opposed to social media, where they're getting distracted by, all of the stuff. You have a little pop ups and, their friends, cat pictures, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, there's a lot to email marketing and obviously we'll get into that, but. The answer is yes, you and every small business, every large business, every business out there should have an email list. And we will obviously get into why during this interview, because believe me, I can go on at length about all of it.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
3:48

Let's get into the emotional part of why I have not really ever done it in my career. Some people say I'm successful. I don't think I'll ever be successful. It's just my mindset. But that being said, I feel as if it's for me, a lot of emails pounded to you all the time. It gets annoying and overbearing. And on top of if I know I'm going to be doing that and they're already getting pounded by someone else, like it's just too much and too often. And then now with email now going into text, it's holy hell people. Just leave me alone. And so I ultimately feel like that's where people could get a bad taste for you. And that's why I have never really done it. But I'm here for you to tell me why I'm wrong.

Tanya Brody:
4:32

Okay. So there are two forms of email marketing. There is what is referred to as outbound, which is where people are reaching out to you. I get those all the time. I get, I've gotten up to six of them a day and they irritate the crap out of me. Hey, I found your profile or I found your business and my product that has absolutely nothing to do with your business would be great for your business. I'm like, Please remove me from your list, just go away. I have no interest in those because they obviously have not taken the time to figure out who I am and what I need or what I want. Those are irritating. I agree. Those drive me nuts. Inbound marketing. Is the process of where people find you, they see a blog post, they hear your podcast, they read an article about you and they're like, Oh, that person's really interesting. Or, Ooh, what they have to offer is really interesting to me. I'm going to go find out about them. And then. To capture them, you offer what's called a lead magnet, or an opt in bribe a freebie, something that they can download, or a coupon, or something like that, that they, that gives them a taste of what you do. So then, that's how you get their email address. They are literally saying, I want to hear from you. I am interested. Yes, pick me. So if they're giving you permission to email them, they want to hear from you. They're interested. And the whole point of that little unsubscribe link at the bottom is so when they say, I'm no longer interested, they can self select. They can go, this isn't my thing and say, all right, I'm done. I'm good. And you can go, okay, thank you for self selecting. Take a quiet moment to mourn them and go on with your life. But. Those people who do want to hear from you may not buy right away. So the reason you want to email them regularly is because you may have made them an offer as soon as they opted in, which believe it or not, I think you should, because you want to help them solve their problem, right? That's what this is all about. So if they don't, maybe they're just not ready yet. Maybe they're still investigating. Maybe they haven't gotten all the information they need on their end to make this decision. Maybe. They don't quite have the money, whatever it is sending those regular emails is of help to them. It's giving them the information they need to make that decision. It's letting them know. Yes, I actually do want this particular thing from this particular person in this particular company because you're building trust. You're building a relationship. You are showing that you have something to give them. And I always approach business in general, but especially my email marketing as being in service. I am not buy my stuff. That's that is irritating. I am, how can I help you? Here's information. I think you will find helpful. What is it that you need? How can tell me what it is that you want. So that I can do a better job of writing blog posts of finding the right podcasts of, of creating products, courses and workshops that will help you because really that's why we're all in business is to serve people. If you come at this as of the aspect of, I'm just here to make money. You're not going to do well. You'll probably make money, but. Will you actually be happy? Will you be satisfied? Will your customers stay? Whereas if you come at it of the aspect of I'm here to serve people, I am here to give people the knowledge they need to succeed in their lives with whatever it is that they are trying to solve, the money's gonna follow. And you'll have happy paying loyal customers who joyfully recommend you to their friends and family, which is the best form of marketing, far better, even than email marketing. Because we all love recommendations, right? So that's really what I aim for when it comes to whether it's my business or my clients businesses is what is it that I can do to serve? So when you come at email marketing from that point of view, You're not sending obnoxious emails, buy my stuff. You're sending, Hey, this is something that I think will help you. Hey, this is information that you need to be able to make a decision, right? So that's a healthier place to come from. The other thing you do is right at the beginning, as soon as you start that relationship in the very first email, you say, here's the cool thing you downloaded. And I recommend that you always send it with an, in an email you send a button. That people can download as opposed to letting them download on your thank you page because that way you're training them that they need to open your emails and you're training all of the I. S. P. S. meaning, Gmail and Apple mail and Yahoo that these people want to hear from you. They'll all go, Oh, okay. They actually opened that email. I need to let these emails through. That's a really good way of defeating the spam filters, for example. So, when you do that, you said in that email, you also put, I will email you X times a week. I email twice a week. Lots of businesses only email once a week. Some businesses email every single day.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
10:15

Yes, they do.

Tanya Brody:
10:15

Yes. He says, but you don't have to, you need to find the cadence. That's right for you and for your subscribers. At one point I was actually sending emails like every weekday. I didn't write on the weekends, but I always sent them on the weekdays and it was actually fun, being able to, it's like I did that in lieu of blog posts. I ended up stopping that just cause I realized I need to make more blog posts cause I just ran out of time.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
10:40

How important is it, when we look at all the factors, really there's three main ones. There's social media, blog, and email marketing are the three, right? Do they, can you, and should they work in a, as combined? Do you need all three? Is it important to have one over the other? Where do you stand within those three?

Tanya Brody:
10:59

They are all very useful. I do all three. I'm not as good at social media as I probably should be. But the joy of social media is it's a place to find people, right? So you you go out there and you promote that blog post that you've just put up, right? At the end of that blog post, you make sure that whatever lead magnet or content upgrade. is available so that those people can opt into your email list. Social media is a wonderful thing, and yes, you can gather a huge crowd there, but what happens when social media blips for a day. We've all seen Facebook outages and everyone's going, Oh my God. Right. Those people are still out there. They don't cease to exist when Facebook goes blip, right? If you have their email address, you then have control over that audience and they have more control over when they hear from you. So if they actually want to hear from you. Every single week, as opposed to, that occasional post that passes them on their feed every two or three weeks, they can join your email list and actually get regular information from you. Here's how I compare social media and. And email marketing. So social media is like being at the club. And trying to have a conversation with someone on the crowded dance floor and there are people thrashing around you and loud pounding music and you're like what did you say? That's not helpful. Email marketing is like someone inviting you into their living room for a cup of tea and a chat. You literally have access to their inbox, which, as you point out, is something we all tend to guard rather jealously. If someone's giving you permission to email them, that's a trust thing right there. And, it's a chance for you to really get to know them and them to get to know you. So it is really like that intimate conversation you can have with someone. Yes. It's via text, meaning you're writing it all, but, and it may not feel like it, but every once in a while you get that response from someone going, I never thought about it that way, or I'm so sorry that happened to you, or I really appreciate your insight. And you're like, I just feel better thinking, cause yes, there's someone on the other end.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
13:31

Yeah. There's actually someone on the other end.

Tanya Brody:
13:33

And even better is when you see that person clicked and then purchased. Because that's the same type of relationship. It's another conversation. They're saying yes, I value what you have to say I want to support you.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
13:48

So we're using me as a guinea pig everybody, right? I'm the guinea pig today. I have a newsletter.

Tanya Brody:
13:53

Okay

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
13:54

That used to go out every week last year And then I did a poll of everybody and they said it's better every other week Which kind of was relaxing but also hurt me at the same time because I like writing So it was like one of those like shocks Okay. A little off topic there. So I have that goes out every other week, obviously I have the podcast and all that stuff. For me, when it becomes like email marketing, what type of what would I be saying and doing? What emails are we talking about? Is it like update a family life? Is it just me spewing about how being a business owner sucks all the time? Like what would be these things, uh, that are more entwined with what we do? That isn't double upping on the newsletter, because does that also count as email marketing?

Tanya Brody:
14:40

So yes, it absolutely does. And if you have an email newsletter that you send every two weeks, you're doing email marketing. Go you, what I actually encourage is a more regular thing. So what I send is every Tuesday, I send out an email that goes to a blog post that I've written. And every Thursday I send out an email that just goes, it's information that just goes to my list. So sometimes it's insights on what I'm doing. Sometimes it's stories related to my life or, the news or all sorts of things. And honestly, the thing that I hear the most often from business owners like yourself is I have no idea what to write. That's the biggest problem is you're, you sit there staring at the white screen of death is one of my students calls it, and you're just, you're stuck. And that's a serious problem. So I actually have a system that I teach all of my students, which is the seven email types. And these are just basically different formulas that you can use to come up with ideas to write about. And then I have a fairly standard, I'm not going to call it a template, more of a a structure that you can use to write a simple email. They do, these do not have to be treatises. I've written emails that are 150 words. I've written emails that are 750 words. It really depends on what you're trying to convey, whether there's something you're sending people to like a blog post, obviously, I don't want to tell people what's in the blog post. I want them to go read the blog post. You want people to go listen to your podcast. But the point is that you're making that regular contact, literally you're reminding people of your existence. You're saying, so you remember when you opted in for that thing? Cause you had that problem. Here's something else you can do to solve that problem. Or here's something that I thought that was really cool. That I think will help you because you're a business owner or because you're, an email marketer yourself or because you're a human being. So the fact of the matter is we're, we think of ourselves as B2B or B2C, business to business or business to consumer, we're all really P2P person to person. So when you remember there's a human on the other end of that, Podcast that email that newsletter that whatever, and they're trying to do their best for you. You want to do well by them. So you're building that reciprocal appreciative relationship.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
17:21

So how many emails is too many emails? You do one a week for let's go service based industry, right? Obviously if you have a product. There can be hot periods of time and not right. Black Friday, g Whiz. Your emails go outta outta control for more of a service-based industry. How often is too often and how little is too little.

Tanya Brody:
17:42

So the answer is, it depends. And the answer is it depends on your audience. If they wanna hear from you, if you are writing, engaging content that they want. You could write to them every day. Here's another really important thing to remember. The, another reason to send emails regularly is not everyone is going to read every single email. My own mother is on my email list cause she's my mom. She's likes to support me, but she doesn't read every single email. We have lives. So the reason that it's worth sending multiple emails, as opposed to just here, go buy my product, or here sign up for my service is because maybe they didn't read that email that week, or, maybe they didn't find out that the last podcast was released, whatever it may be. So we are all human. We deal with things that are on fire on our desks. So the reason you keep sending that email every week, every whatever is to remind people that somewhere in, in that pile of ash, there's that other little Ember for this other little fire that I'm going to need to deal with shortly. And you're over here to help. Right. I think the other thing to really think about in terms of how much is too much, how much is too much for you? How much time do you have to dedicate to writing emails every week? I write emails every day. It's my job. People pay me to do that, right? However, if you have other things that you're doing, if you make guitars, You need to be in the shop making guitars. You don't need to be spending three hours a day writing an email. So you need a fast system to write out an email once a week to show off the latest guitar. And, or to say, Hey, we're going to be, so and so is performing on one of our guitars at X venue or we've got this gorgeous new wood in, and we're taking orders for guitars made with new, this wood or whatever it is, history of Les Paul, whatever it is you want to send out the, but the point being that you need something to write about. And half an hour, right? So if you can do that once a week, you're still staying in touch. If you can do it every day, you're still staying in touch, but email marketing should not, unless you're me and you do this for a living, should not take over your life, and I think that's the other big problem I hear from people is they say, I don't have time. I do not have time. Email writing an email takes so long that I can't, it's like, it takes me forever to figure out what to write. Then I have to actually sit down and write it. And that can be a chore. And then I have to load it into the system. And it's okay, all of this, you should be able to do all of this in under an hour. This is not. You are not writing a novel unless you write a serial novel via email, which I'm sure someone out there in the world is doing you can, instead you're writing a snippet, right? You're writing a slice of life, so take that small piece and share that as opposed to feeling like you have to, you don't have to tackle the entire world. You have to tackle your little tiny corner of it. And you only have to tackle one little tiny aspect of it that day. And so if you're creating an engaging narrative, however, often you email, people are going to open those emails. My email open rate is between 25 and 30%. That's pretty good. The average is 20%. So I'm above average. The more you segment your list, meaning the more you send emails specifically to people who do, will be interested in X. The higher your open rate will be, but my emails, I send out a general broadcast email, and then I send out automations to people who've said, I'm interested in this. And then of course, my email. Open rate goes up because they're genuinely interested,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
21:51

actually interested, right?

Tanya Brody:
21:52

Yeah. So that's, I think that's the big trick is. Figuring out how interested your people are. So it needs to be an agreement between you and them, which is again, why you set that expectation right up front. And if they're like, dude, I want to hear from you more often. Give me more. Then start emailing more. And if they're like, I'm good. Every two weeks is okay. Then you respect that. The other thing you can do is you can offer them options. If you're like, I'm going to email every single day. And there are people who are like, can I just get a digest at the end of the week? You have a system where along with an unsubscribed link, you say need to change your email options. Want to hear from me a little less, click here and then they can choose. I only want to hear from Stoi on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or I only want to hear from Stoi once a week, and then you just respect that. And I bet again, you're, Open rate goes up on those days. Cause you got people who want to hear from you and have said, I want to hear from you this often on those days.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
22:55

So we've gotten through the importance. So now I'm going to do more of it. We've gotten through a little bit of the lead magnet side of things, right? We've gotten through somewhat of what to say. That's a lot of, I use this in my industry a lot too, is it depends, right? Your situation is going to be different than others. So I got some of the content stuff. But what about some person, this is not me because I actually have a list, but what if someone's starting at zero? Maybe they have a lead maggot on their website or something like that But what do I do when I have zero like what where do I begin this whole? Email marketing journey.

Tanya Brody:
23:33

So the simplest way to begin, and this is not a secret. This is something that pretty much every email marketing course out there will tell you is to start with the list of the people, that can be your current customers. That can be your friends and relatives, that can be people who you know who you think would be interested or who might know people who are interested, make a list of 50 to 100 of those people, send them an email saying, Hey, I'm starting this thing, and this is what I plan to do with this thing. If you're interested. You either say click here and that signs them up in your email service provider, or you say, if I don't hear back from you in three days, I'm just going to add you to the list. If you don't want to hear from me later on, you can just click on that up subscribe button. I won't be offended. And you start writing to those people.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
24:37

So why can't I, why can't I just go buy a list or pull a list randomly from somewhere?

Tanya Brody:
24:43

Because how many of those people actually want to hear from you? That's where we get back into those irritating emails, right? Yeah. I actually hate it when people randomly add me to their lists. If I request it, if I say to someone, yes, add me to your list, I'm good with it. But when I suddenly start getting emails from people I haven't signed up for, I unsubscribe right away. I don't need my inbox cluttered up like this. The other thing is how do you know they're even interested in what you have to offer? Email lists. Vendors will tell you that this is a list that is designed for this demographic, but you don't know where those people are in their buying decisions on their buyers journey. As we call it. Are they right at the beginning and they know nothing or are they what we call. Problem aware, knowing they have a problem, but they have no clue how to solve it. Are they solution aware, meaning there's got to be something out there. I'm starting to look, or are they, like ready to buy? You don't know. Cause you haven't nurtured these people. When someone raises their hand and says yes to whatever it is you're doing, they're saying they're interested. All these other people on that list that you could buy. Some of them may stick. Most of them probably won't. And the more people you're sending emails to, the more money that costs you, the more contacts you have in your email service provider list. That's how they charge you. So if you buy a list of a million contacts and you don't sell a blessed thing because none of those people are interested, you're charged that your ESP is going, okay, just. Give us the money. We're good. They don't care. They do care cause it's bad for their gender reputation, but, and I'll get into that for in just a second, what they're interested in making money. So if you're adding to your list, that's great for them because you're paying them more money. But it's not necessarily great for you. Here's why that comes back to your sender refutation. The more people who unsubscribe, mark you as spam and just delete your emails, those ISPs, Gmail, Yahoo mail, Apple mail, they go, this person is sending emails that no one is opening. I don't want to let these emails through to my people's inboxes anymore. And the more ISPs that do that, the worse your sender reputation gets. So the more you are sending out emails that don't get opened. The bigger problem it becomes to you for you, I have gotten, I've met people who have literally not been able to send emails from their regular email address that they just use for everything, including their email marketing. I am one of those, I confess because their center of reputation has gotten so bad, like their mother can't get emails from them. I am serious. So there's that problem. The other problem is. That you the, your ESP, the people who are sending your email. So MailChimp Quantaport, Drip, whoever

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
28:07

you name them.

Tanya Brody:
28:08

Yeah. They get angry when your sender reputation goes down because you're using their server, so they protect their center reputation very jealously. Cause you're not the only person using it. I've also had clients who we've had our accounts shut down because we were sending to all these people and no one was opening the emails. And they're like, you have to trim your email list. You have to clean your list or we're not sending anything else. So there are lots of problems with that. Do I know companies that have done it and done it successfully? Yeah, I do. But it's. You can't just dump everyone in and assume it's going to work. You have to start by introducing yourself and nurturing those people until they actually click on something and go, okay, yeah, I'm interested. Then yes, keep sending them emails regularly. If they don't respond after a while, you've got to let them go.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
29:07

I think it's a very, it's

Tanya Brody:
29:08

actually more expensive and more labor intensive than just building your email list through a lead magnet.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
29:15

Yeah. And I, that's a huge point. It's just a business sense. What you just said, right? Two things. One build organically the right way the first time and second, if you had not done that or you have a large list or clientele based, sometimes it makes sense to, to trim that fat off because it's really causing more issues. So as we're getting to the end of this, talk us through your process and how people can work with you because now they're like, holy shit, I need to do email marketing because that's what I'm doing. Like I'm going through all the different things. Anyways, how can people work with you? What's your process like?

Tanya Brody:
29:50

The first thing I recommend that you do is Go download my lead magnet, which is funny that an email marketer will lead magnet. It, my, my lead magnet is 30 subject lines to keep your subscribers opening and reading every email. And that's exactly what it is. It is a list of 30 subject lines and writing prompts that you can use to write regular emails to your people. That's what I want you to do. I may as well give you the ability to do that, right? Then after that I have various and sundry courses. That I offer one on writing emails using those seven email types, in fact, so that you can always have an idea of what to write. I also have a group I call it the email writing accountability group, very formal, intelligent name that we get together. I have two sessions a week and my students write their emails. That's what they do. They have half an hour. They write their emails. We take another half an hour and we review their emails. So I literally give them feedback right then and there on what they just wrote. We take another 20 minutes. We finished those emails off. They do the edits for whatever it is that, I just recommended that their fellow students recommended and they're done. Their emails are ready to send, right? They can just go and put them in their ESPs and hit send or hit schedule and poof, taken care of. So that is a simple way you can work with me. I do have some space occasionally right now. I have a waiting list for my client work. But honestly, I personally think that every business owner benefits from writing their own emails because your story and your voice better than I do. I can do it and I do it well, but there's only one of me. So I can't take on everyone who wants to work with me. If you're doing it yourself, you're doing some of that nurturing, which means that someone like me can come in for say your sales campaigns, the big launch that you're doing and take care of that, whereas you're doing the original work to really get people in there.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
32:03

One last thing we're going to leave everyone with is I'm going to ask you one question.

Tanya Brody:
32:06

Okay,

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
32:07

should be everyone is to get simple answer. Hopefully I don't know because, I'm not the email marketer. So here we go. What are the best days that my emails should be sent on?

Tanya Brody:
32:20

It depends. Yeah. And it's true. I send on Tuesdays and Thursdays because that's just when I said again, it's an expectations thing. So if you say, I will email you on Tuesdays and Thursdays, people will know to look for your emails on Tuesdays and Thursdays. A lot of people say that Mondays after 10 o'clock is the best time because people have gotten through the slog of all the email that have picked, has gone through on, they've piled up over the weekend, but so they're actually checking every once in a while and they'll see your email. But really what matters is. Your audience, do your look at when, after you have a history of people opening your emails, when do they open them? Your ESP will have a graph. If your people open your emails at two o'clock on Thursday, when you open them, you're sending at the right time. Yeah. They open them on Saturday, maybe you should send on Saturday instead. Maybe they're the weekend crowd, they're done with work and they want to relax and think about whatever it is that you're talking about. If you're a crafter sending out things about quilting people are going to be more likely to open on the weekend. Whereas if you're like me, and you're sending out stuff for business people about email marketing, they're going to open it all during the week.

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
33:42

I told everyone it would be simple and the simple answer is it depends. That's it right there. It

Tanya Brody:
33:48

depends. I

Stoy Hall, CFP®:
33:50

appreciate you so much and for all those listening and I have your email. Yes, more emails are coming. I'm just saying but ultimately what we'll have your lead maggot down in the description as well. I really want everyone to attack this as well. It's going to be my summer projects. It's going to be the next turn of what I do as well. So definitely appreciate you expanding my brain, let alone the listener's brain and driving us to be better business owners by. Doing our own email marketing. And it's not as crazy as it sounds. 30 minutes. Take 30 minutes and get it done.

Tanya Brody:
34:25

Thank you so much for having me, Stoy. This has been an absolute pleasure. And welcome to the email marketers evangelist group. I am so glad you are here because it is really important.

Black Mammoth:
34:37

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