Ep 291 | How Genuine Email Marketing Transforms Audience Engagement and Drives Results

We had some technical difficulties at the beginning , but I think we'll work through it and we got some noise in the background , so we'll try to tune that out for you guys . So , tanya , welcome to the show .

I was touring all over the country playing the harp and guitar and lots of crazy Celtic instruments as part of a Celtic band called the Muses . We had the old-fashioned paper mailing list where people actually wrote down their email addresses by hand and I was lucky if I could understand them two days later when I went to input them all into my computer .

And this was just as email service providers was getting started . So I've actually been doing email for a very long time and what I found was the reason to have the email list was to keep people aware of what we were doing , even if we weren't touring in their area .

I could send out an email once a month saying hey , here's the new merchandise , here's the new song we're working on , here's where we'll be in the next month , and if you want us to go , here's where we're planning to go this year . If you want us to meet a venue near you , please suggest one . And it made our touring lives easier because A .

We had people showing up to our shows , which was lovely . We could say we would have some sort of a draw , which for some venues is a requirement .

Now , a lot of the venues we were playing it wasn't so much , but still , it's always a bonus when you can do that , and it meant that we had the support we needed when we were out on the road , people saying things like hey , you're going to be in our area , do you need a place to stay ? It's more than just a way to make money .

It's a community building tool , and that's really how I have always approached email marketing is you are creating a community . You are in service to the people you are emailing . You're not just there to take their money . You're there to build a relationship .

Well , it's almost an expectation . I actually do every so often if I have missed because I've been on vacation or I didn't set it up or something happened , and I'll get three or four emails and say hey , where's your newsletter ? At what's going on ? Are you okay ? Yeah , are you okay ?

And as soon as I started looking at it from your perspective of building community and keeping people informed , it became a lot easier to write and share . It wasn't . I was always looking at it as a revenue stream and it truly wasn't . It's letting people know what you're doing and then having those conversations , because it generates conversations .

People respond to the email or they'll see that I put it out on social , but I think that's a great place to just you said , build community , but I also think it's a base . It's a good leveling point where you actually can start with everybody . It's a good leveling point where you actually can start with everybody .

Everybody gets bombarded with email , but if you provide value in your email , that email is going to be opened to where you're now creating community and moving forward and getting them further down the funnel .

You have an email list to make money , but people are more likely to buy from people they know and trust , and people are more likely to open the emails from people they know and trust and know that they're actually going to get something interesting , they're going to get something of value to them . I email my list twice a week .

I email on Tuesdays and Thursdays . I send a blog post of some sort on Tuesdays and on Thursdays I send some sort of either promotional or response email . So I sent one a while ago talking about the fact that I had just been to my .

I participate in a science fiction convention in Minnesota where I go and I help run the convention , but I love it and I have a really good time , and it refilled my tank . So I sent out what I refer to as a reply to email and just said hey , tell me what refilled your tank . And I got responses .

I got people saying , oh , it was this , or oh , my God , I need that so much . So you are actually creating conversation . So you are actually creating conversation , and not only is that helping build your community , you're getting information from your people about what they want . You're getting information about what ? Have you that email right ?

There would have been the perfect opportunity for you to go all right . I hear from a bunch of you that you're having issues refilling your tank . Here's a really cool meditation for you to use . For me , it was okay . I understand that my people are stressed out and how can I help them , making their lives easier with their email ?

I'm looking at stuff that I can do with that and , to the point of you said earlier , being consistent is really important . When people know , okay , it's Tuesday , it's two o'clock , there should be an email from Tanya in my inbox and they open it . And that's what you want .

And , regardless of what is at the end of that email , what call to action you have and there should always be some sort of call to action in your email , I don't care what other people say .

You want something to get people to do something in response , partially because that's a good community building exercise and partially because you're training them to click on the link in your email , whether they're going to a blog post or a podcast or they're replying .

You want them to be taking that action because when you do actually sell something , then they're going to click on the link in that email to find out where it goes . It's really important . Really do want the whole package . When you're sending an email and I know people say , oh , but it's so hard to write .

That is the number one complaint I get is I don't know what to write . And that's fair , because unless you literally spend your day , all day , writing , which is what I do I spend my day writing email for myself and for my clients . Why would you understand how to do this every single day ?

But it's nowhere near as hard as you think and we can talk about that shortly , as soon as you say what you wanted to say here .

I call it email muscle because really , if you're only sending out every so often and I I know we're going to , I'm going to get into some stats but you get an open rate of three or 5% with a click-through rate of less than half a percent , okay , it's not great .

But if you start consistently sending out , whether it be weekly or twice a week , like you do , or myself twice a month I've learned in about 18 to 24 months that I've been doing that consistently because before it was very inconsistent .

I get an open rate of anywhere between 35 and 40% , but I get a click through rate of between four and 5% , which is excellent . Yeah , and it's because I've started that muscle , that email muscle memory , to where they know it's coming every other week but it's taken me two years . It's close to two years .

I would say it's probably close to two years , but I want to dig into that . But I know where we started late , so I want to be able to ask some other questions . So I got to ask the elephant in the room , question AI . How is that ? Oh my goodness , how does that impact you as a copywriter ?

But then also , can we talk about how AI can potentially help people come up with ideas to write ?

Can't just say to it write me an email , because it won't know what to write , so you still have to give it a lot of information . You need to tell it who you're writing to , why you still have to give it a lot of information .

You need to tell who you're writing to , why you're writing , what you're writing about , and you need to say these are people , this is the problem , the people I'm writing to have . You need to say this is the , what I am selling , how that solves the problem . Blah , blah , blah , blah . And the truth .

No one will ever do as good a job as telling your stories as you will , because they're your stories . That's just the nature . We all are inherently storytellers and we're hardwired to listen to stories because it's how we've communicated for centuries .

There's a whole monomyth from Joseph Campbell which is the arc of Star Wars , and pretty much just about every action , just about every motion picture out there .

But every story has that arc of hero leaves home , hero encounters a difficulty , hero has a mentor and goes into the underworld and fights whatever demon , monster or what have you had , achieves a treasure , comes back out and comes back to their community . That is a standard story pattern and we all have those in our own lives and globally we .

This is a really common thing and the reason it's an every man pattern is because it literally happens to all of us at some point and some way , shape or form , whether it's oh my gosh I had to go argue with my mechanic about how much they were charging me to you know literally the hero descending into the underworld .

It's a very common story , so it's something we're all trained to listen to . You're going to do a better job of telling that story than a computer will , but the computer can help you get that idea and it can help you refine it so that it sounds good .

For people who feel like they can't write and the truth is most of us can write and most of us can write conversationally , which is what people want anyway If you approach your writing to sound what I refer to as professorial sorry you're going to bore people .

If you're conversational , like you and I are having a conversation right now that's going to be more engaging and people are going to be more interested . But AI is a fantastic tool .

In fact , right now I am actually working on a workshop to help people come up with subject lines and writing prompt for their business using AI , because I can come up with great general prompts . I can do that until the cows don't roll , but that's not necessarily applicable to your business .

So what I'm working on is writing prompts that you can use to come up with specific subject lines , and actual writing prompts that you can feed into any AI and it will spit out a list of , say , 10 or 20 or however many you ask for and you can then go oh okay , I have a starting point . I can actually like work on this right now now .

In the meantime , I magnet , which is and that would be the dog I actually have a lead magnet , which is 30 of those random writing prompts that anyone can use , because that is the most common frustration that people like I don't know what to write . I have no idea what to write about .

I am stuck , and that is one of my students called it white screen of death . One of my students called it white screen of death . It's terrifying when you're staring at a blank document , going I have to write something . I have to write something , having a writing prompt to somewhere , to start is so helpful If you can prompt it , like you said .

I use that with my AI prompt , but I also add in tone of voice I like to use educational I'm witty because I've got a dry sense of humor and conversational and then I can refine it . I can refine it from there . I don't think a lot of people understand that you can really .

Ai is unlimited as long as you can be creative up in here in your mind , right ?

Yeah , you know , if you're going to put in as little as possible , you're going to get something that sounds really boring and generic and probably doesn't make any sense and may tell you to glue bees on pizza .

But if you actually give it enough information which is the creativity part on your part anyway , right , yes , then you're going to get something out that you can actually use and you can look at and go okay , that's not quite me , but I can do some careful editing here and make it make sense . So I'm not starting from zero .

I like to use it personally as what I call a messy first draft . It gets some thoughts out there for me and I can go yeah , this is totally irrelevant , it makes no sense , but this makes sense and this I can adapt . And then sometimes I'll even take it and put it through again and say is there anything I missed ? Now that you see what I want .

Is there anything that I missed ? Anything that you think is relevant to the people who I am serving ? And the really important part is and this is something every business needs to focus on your business is not about your product or service . Your business is about the people you serve .

As my mentor , ryan Lebeck , always says , don't fall in love with your product . Fall in love with your product . Fall in love with the problem your product solves , because that's really what it's about . You are serving people .

You are here to help the people who in my email , right , so I help them solve that problem , either by writing those emails , if they want me as a one-on-one client , or by teaching them how to write their own email so that they aren't stuck . They aren't sitting there staring at that white creative desk . I have writing prompts .

I have ways to automate your email to make things easier . My whole point is I'm here to help you make your business better so that you can do a better job of serving your own people , right ? So that's the problem . I'm not all about just selling courses . I'm about serving people .

I know it's about people , I get that You're solving a problem , but how does that play into I want to call it edu man , I'm so sorry about the dog barking how does it play into educating that in your client , the entrepreneur , the small business owner ?

And that way you know that however often you are putting out that email whether it's daily , weekly , bi-weekly , monthly you can just sit down and do it , as opposed to going , oh my God , I have to put an entire day away to write something . Because , again , this is a conversation .

It doesn't need to be that perfectly crafted jewel that many people feel like they have to put out . It's no , this you're being you . You are showing yourself to your audience . So don't feel like , yeah , you're allowed to show some of the math because people want to get to know you .

But the other thing is in terms of I also have courses on how to write in a welcome sequence so that people can properly welcome people to their business . I have a course on how to start an email list . I have a bunch of different courses that I help people and I teach them how to both write and automate emails .

But in terms of AI , the way I'm incorporating that is , I am coming up with ways for people to use AI as a tool to improve their email , because the truth is , humans should never be omitted from the process .

You can't just this part of the writing part is not a set it and forget it thing , and the reason is computers don't know how to human , they just don't . And you want your business to be about humans , so you have to be the human in the business .

So , as great as AI is and as how much as it can help you speed things up , you still need to be involved , and that is going to be in the prompt , that is going to be in the editing and , in some cases , that's going to be in going . All right , this is an idea and I like where it started , but I've got to rewrite this entire thing .

Well , once you have somewhere to start , that makes it much , much easier . So I think that really that I'm a writer , I'm biased , I realize that , but I can always tell when a business has sent out an email . That's entirely AI .

In fact , actually , one of my advanced group , if you will , is a group of people , business owners , and we come together every week and we write our emails together and then we spend half an hour writing the email . That's the whole point . Get it done in half an hour .

We then spent half an hour editing those emails , where I actually look at my students' emails and go , okay , so this is what I think you should change . I can always tell when they've used AI , like that doesn't sound like you , that sounds more like AI . And they're like , yeah , I know , I put it through AI .

I'm like , okay , that's fine , how are you going to fix it ? So it sounds like you , and they always do , and it always sounds great . So AI can get you partway there , but I don't think it can get you all the way there . And , like I said , when it can , then we have larger problems in the world , usually ending up in an apocalyptic movie scenario .

The point is , this is something that you should be able to do quickly and easily and it shouldn't be a stress every week , because when it becomes a stress every week , then you don't want to do it Right , whereas when you get to the point where you just like , as you say , that email muscle when you're okay , I've got it down , I've got my half hour , it's

on my calendar whether you're coming to my group or you're just putting it on your calendar . You've got that time set aside , you just do it . You're kind of like going to the gym Okay , you've got to go to the gym now , whether you like it or not . For me it's always doing the dishes .

I hate the idea of doing the dishes until I'm actually doing the dishes . Not a big deal .

So , for entrepreneurs , small businesses or how about anybody struggling to write , what would be three nuggets you could share with them that could help them potentially get over the hump and be able to start writing consistently ?

That is the easiest thing to write about , Whether it's within your business , because you have a product or service that people ask about , or it's a question about yourself , if you're writing just personally , or a question about something in the world that you deal with .

Answer the questions that you get most commonly , because if you're getting those questions , that's something people want to know about . That's a really easy place to start and it's something you can answer really easily , which is ideal because that gets you writing and frequently that will help stimulate more ideas for other people , which is like .

Number two be yourself . Don't try to put on some weird persona unless you have that weird persona established in the world . I think about people like Mr Beast . It was a social media influencer . He's got a persona . Be you , because that's what people really want . They want to get to know you . They don't want whatever artificial thing .

They want , Ryan , they want to know who you are . They want to know that you have a dog barking in the background . It's all good . And I think the third one is be genuine . Be authentic . Don't hide the dog barking in the background . It happens to all of us who have dogs For me it's cats .

They walk across the street and they show up and it's all good . Everyone gets that . And I think that the other thing is to talk about your own struggle , whatever those may be , because again , that's something people can relate to . That's part of being authentic . Me for a loop , People can go thank God it's not just me and again it makes you more relatable .

It makes people go . Yes , this is someone I want to hear from regularly . It's someone I want to do business with because they get me , they understand they're going through the same things I am . So those are my three nuggets . I hope those help .

When is that happening ? I am looking at probably the beginning to middle of September for that . So stay tuned . Get on the email list . You'll be the first to find out .

Thank you for sharing everything you're doing , but better yet , you're helping entrepreneurs and small business owners truly get over that hurdle , because I wish I knew you were around when I was struggling with it , and it's one of those big things and I'm not trying to digress , but it's almost like making cold calls and you hate doing it .

That's how email marketing was for me , until I actually sat down and found a way to really love it .