today I'm super excited because this is probably my most enjoyable and fun. And then episode I actually, I can't stop laughing or smiling, you know, year to year right now because I was doing some like background stalking on this. And I'm like, just yeah, she has so much to offer. She is the Fresh Prince of email marketing. Like, just by that I can already tell. We're gonna have so much fun. Louise Wilcox is a friggin has a frickin mission to help more business package up their magic
and sell through email. She is also the queen, the queen of the walking 90s Pop Culture encyclopedia. So I actually have some questions in mind that I already have for Liz, I'm going to bring her out so that she can share that with you. Morning Liz!
Hey, Michelle, I am so excited. T hanks for bringing the hype. I actually I love that you are so excited. I also want to bring the energy up backstage, Michelle and I were talking about you know, when you talk about email marketing, it's normally not this like fun thing. And so I was telling her like, I always want people to walk away like feeling like, okay, I can do this. It doesn't have to be hard. In fact, it might even be a little fun. So I
love that you're so excited. I'd love to you know if you are catching the replay if you're watching live, you know, say hello, tell me where you're coming from if you have an email list, you know, even catching the replay. I watch this back later. I'm happy to answer any questions you guys have in the aftermath. I cannot wait to get started. Thank you so much.
Me neither. Well. Question number one. I already have a question. What brand what band? Which van was formed first Backstreet Boy or insync.
Backstreet Boys were formed several years before insync.
That was my first question. And my next question is Liz, for you, you hit that right. Tell us more about how you got started in email marketing.
Oh, darn. I thought we were gonna talk about Backstreet Boys versus seeing I was like getting ready for my playground days, you know, in the cafeteria. You know, the insync fans on one side, the Backstreet Boys, you got to pick aside you can't like
both right. But anyway, I'm Liz Wilcox, like Michelle said, I am dubbed the fresh Princess of email marketing, because I just like to give a fresh tank or fresh take on email, I don't want you to think about email, like, Oh, I got to build this big funnel, I have to set up this giant automation. I just want you to know that email can be fun, it can be fresh, and it can be simple and it can make
you money. So how did I get started out unlike a lot of other email marketers, I actually started off building my own business. I wasn't some kind of copywriter or web designer where I, you know, worked for larger brands, I actually started out as an itty bitty little website, I had an RV caravan travel blog. And I you know, I watched podcasts like this, you know, I attended
webinars, things like that. And every, every single person that was on the stage, quote, unquote, would always say, you know, oh, I wish I would have taken my email marketing more seriously. Or I noticed any sort of trend, whether they were teaching Instagram, Facebook groups, whatever. The main goal of all of these were to funnel people onto an email list. So I'm nothing if not efficient, Mama didn't raise no fool. I said, Okay, I'm gonna go really
hard in email marketing. So I started building my list right away. I knew I wanted my blog to be a business. It wasn't just some online diary where I was going to, you know, share my travels, I wanted to make money, I wanted to, you know, elevate my current status, you know, move beyond my current circumstances. So within six months, I had created my very first product, and it made $7,000. In the first 90 days, it got picked up by an international sponsor, I took
that momentum. I kept building I created a digital summit with some partners. I created. I think it was something like a dozen digital products in three years. And the culmination of all of that, that big blog was, I realized that I really needed to create a digital course. And so I asked my people, would you be interested in a resource on RV maintenance? That was the number one question I got on my email list. I had 141 People say yes, Liz would definitely be
interested. And I did a traditional Monday through Friday. Hey, this is my program. It's open now. And on cart close day, I made 141 sales. So word started getting I know, Michelle, I'm so glad you came back and let and if you can't see me, you're just watching the podcast, her jaw drops, she came back on the screen. If you don't know, if you're like the beginner of the beginner, that is a crazy conversion, that average conversion rate is 1%, 5% is like really, really good.
And then if you're doing some kind of event or challenge, you might convert at 10% or a little higher. So 100% is really unheard of. And so I word started getting around about that I started telling my story. Oh, yeah, da da da. And you know, people's jaws would drop their eyes would get big. How did you do that. And that's when I realized I was really kind of playing small with the RV travel blog, I needed to just sell it and I needed to, you know, share my email wisdom with the world.
And that's what I'm doing here today with you.
I,my jaws dropped because I know, I started out, I didn't stop just like yourself. I do started out as a content marketer, I actually had to learn it while building my coaching my own coaching business. So it's every pieces of information and conference in less than that we learn to evolve into this place of oh, I'm going to do email marketing. And so I totally resonate with that. And then I know how valuable having your email lists
can be. And I think one of the one of the drawbacks well hold back for a lot of coaches that I talked to, is the word marketing. When we think about email marketing, our idea is that the moment we talk about marketing, it's about selling it's about selling something that we need to promote in the email. What's your take on that?
Yeah, so for me, I wasn't just like, Michelle, I was not a marketer, I was literally just a lady in an RV. When I started out, I didn't even have the internet on my phone. I lived in a campground, I had to go out to like libraries and home improvement stores, you know, and sit out in the parking lot and write my blog posts and everything. But how I was so successful with all those products, it wasn't about like, Oh, I just learned a ton of
strategy. It was more about leaning into, you know, relationships, and really knowing the people on my email list. When I created my first digital product, the one that made $7,000. And I had no idea what to create, I was all over the place. I had this RV travel site, but I wasn't traveling. And so I just asked my list, hey, why the heck do you follow me, I know I want this to be a
business. And I was very upfront, like, hey, I want this to be a business, but I don't know what the heck I'm doing. Right. And that might not be your style. But you can take and make that your own. You know, people's like when you're really just upfront about stuff, right? They need that authenticity, especially on the internet, where you don't know who you can trust when you can just lean into yourself and be honest, that's when people start to
build that trust factor. So anyway, people said, Hey, Liz, you know, you're really funny, or you can tell a good story. So what was my first digital product? It was a collection of funny stories. And, you know, I never would have come up with that idea on my own. It was only when I asked people why they were following me what my unique position in the market was that I was able to come up with my
program. So if you're a coach, and you're like, everything looks the same or my market is saturated, I don't know how to stand out. If you can pinpoint you know, if you have even the smallest of followings, I think I had, you know, less than 300 people on my email list at that time. Even if you've only got 50, if you can ask those 50 people, Hey, I've only got 50 people paying attention to me,
and I don't even know why. And you know, you can open up those relationships and they will tell you, Oh, I really liked the way you reframed my mind around this or I love the analogy you give about that, you know, depending on what kind of coaching you do, right? That is going to help you lean into those best parts of yourself. You know, market those parts in your program like Hey,
I know people love it. When I talk about X. I'm going really deep into X in this group program or on our one on one consults, whatever, right and so instead of focusing on like, "Oh, I'm not a marketer, I don't know this. I didn't go to college for that." If you can just focus on opening up relationships, making friends with your new followers, which we've all done before we've all met strangers, become friends, you know, we all went to kindergarten, right? Something
like that. You know, when you frame it like that, suddenly, things start to click. And you're not you're not marketing, you're not trying to close this sale you're just creating relationships.
Beautifully said and I think initially I didn't, I started out with just 200 subscriber, and those are the people like my family, my friends, they're my close friend. So I imported everyone that I know from my contacts or my Gmail contacts into my business email. And so initially, I was really struggling. I know this is true for a lot of coaches too, out there is that, number one, we don't have a big list, we don't have a large audience who
subscribers. And number two is most of the subscribers that we have on our list are friends and family. What are some of the tips that you might be able to share to like, overcome that barrier of this is my someone I know they're not gonna buy from me?
Yeah, so if you have an email list full of people that it was just like, hey, I'm doing this thing, will you join my list? Well, that's totally fine that that starts to build momentum, right, we need baby steps, I always say baby steps are the best steps. So it's totally fine, if that's you, right. But you want to start, you know, pruning the list, right? Think of it as a tree, you know, we got to cut off the dead leaves that are never going
to buy, right. And so you start emailing consistently people, some people will naturally just drop off, right? Some people will just stick around because they love seeing what you do.
And those people, if they do stick around, just practicing putting in the work of, Hey, these are my offers, hey, I'm going to consistently email, they're going to share your stuff, you can even ask, you know, PS, even if you're not on my list for the right reasons, like if you could share this with someone, you know, like, if you're a fitness coach, right?
You know, if you are feeling healthy right now, but you know, a friend really wants to get motivated in this area, you know, send them this freebie, right? Create some sort of opt in, where people can share. The beauty of having a small list is you can be very upfront, you can be more direct, you can feel a little more comfortable being yourself because you know, like, oh, it's mostly just my friends right now. So I can say things like, please, you know, please help me get to the next level.
Can you share this? Can you think of anyone who would actually make sense for this, you can get into the DMS, even you know, get out of email, you know, get on Facebook, Instagram, hey, I know you're on my email list. I don't know if you actually need this stuff. But if you can think of anyone I just created X, you know, I'm really looking to get out there with it. Does that make sense?
Yes, it does. And I think it speaks a lot of to the authenticity that you were talking about earlier, just be upfront about it, be transparent about it. And and sometimes we signed up to things that we may not even realize why we signed up in the first place. So just kind of reengage them in terms of what was your motivation? When you first signed up with me? Or when you first join my list? What did you like about
me? And that yeah, help us to to paint the picture of how do we how do we approach them in the future?
Yeah, I'd love to say one more thing about that, as far as just being upfront. What Michelle said is totally right. And the next thing I want you to know is, again, when you have that small list, you have an opportunity to actually have those one on one conversations. So email appears to be one to many, right, I sent one email out to 50 people, but when you can be up front and say like, Hey, I'm actually just at the
baby stages of things. There's only 50 people, it would really mean a lot to me for you to hit reply. And and actually answer this question. And of course, at first and ask only yes or no questions or very simple answers, like they have to know the answer in the forefront of their mind immediately. Or they're not going to like really engage, right? They're just on your email list. They're not your friends yet. You don't have a relationship with them yet,
probably. Or they're just friends that you know, are only semi interested because they know you, right? But when you can, you can literally say like, Hey, I just started this email list, or I just committed to this email list. If you don't want to get that transparent, right? It's up to you and your preference. But say it would really mean a lot to me to hit for you to hit reply and let me know. And be explicit, always say hit reply and let me know are, you know, hit, you know,
click that reply button. You know, whatever. You have to be very explicit. So when they read that they're quite literally psychologically picturing themselves hitting the Reply button, right? We have to be that explicit. We have to write in that like this. grade level, and we need to be asking those yes or no questions like, again, if you're a fitness coach, you know, do you currently work out every single week? Immediately? I know the answer to that. Right? It's either yes or no.
Right. And so asking questions like that, and getting building in, speaking of fitness, doing the reps, you're not going to see results at first, you know, unless you are a real like dynamite, knockout type of writer, you know, this is going to take a while it's going to be a slow game, the same as when you first set up your Instagram, or Facebook, it's like, oh, my gosh, this is taking slow, it's gonna, it's gonna take a slow
time. But if you just keep asking those questions, you keep expecting replies, eventually, you will get them. And then you will know these people, and you will be able to create programs, write sales pages, get on a sales call, and know what these people need and be able to offer it to them.
I think one of the things that that came out for me, as you're describing, you know, how how to engage them into conversation and inviting them wanting to hit the reply and have a conversation with us. How how much of the language that we bring in, because I when I think of email marketing, I think of serious like, wording as to Oh, sign up now, here's a program are launching this, this is what you need, how much of that are we bringing into the email marketing? And how serious do I want to be?
It's up to your personality, right? Like, of course, Michelle and I are different people. You know, we have similar styles in some ways, but of course, we're different, the way she would write something is not the way I would rent something. So as far as emails go, and really any any kind of writing that you do for your brand, whether it's on social media, email, you know, even in person networking, you always want to lead with three things. Number one, your
personality, right? If you're watching this, or even if you hear me, you can, you can hear some of that personality. I have rainbow glasses, I'm literally wearing a Will Smith shirt. If we went full screen, you'd see a sink in the background. You know, those are bits of my personality that I'm bringing forth, and that people either immediately connect to or immediately don't, which is totally fine. I know. It's scary, especially at the beginning, like oh, well, I just
want to help anyone. It's like, if you you know, if you try to talk to everyone you talk to no one right? Like I I hate that saying but it's so true, right? It's only you can knit you have to niche down at first and then you can branch out later. if that makes sense. So you want to leave with your personality. You want to lead with your vision, right? You can get a million followers, but they're all going to leave tomorrow if they don't know where they're
going. Right. The word followers, I think it's so perfect, right? You have to have a vision. This is not like, you know, we've all seen Forrest Gump where he just starts running. And he's got all these followers that are just following him, even though they don't know where they're going. And he just stops. He's like, Well, I think I'll go home now. And people were like, What the heck? You know, that's not that's a movie Forrest Gump is
not a real person. That's not how a following is actually built you they have to know where they are going. Right. And so share that vision think of like, you know, I'm graduating
from Michelle University. What did I learn you know, what is my degree in if you're graduating from Liz Wilcox University, my vision for you that degree is you're making money with email, you know that right off the bat, in my email sequence like I say as much as I love the 90s I love the idea of you making money with email more suddenly, you know, a little bit of my personality, right? The 90s And you, you know exactly where you're going with me I'm going to teach you how to make money
with email right? And then that third piece is values. So there's a reason why you know, giant companies like Coca Cola and Nike etc. Now have social justice campaigns or you know, are posting at the time of this recording yesterday was International Women's Day, they're posting things like that they want you to know that it's in their value system. Um you know, that they they care about women they care about this or
that or the other right? And now I'm not telling you to, you know, spew all your political beliefs onto your followers definitely don't do that. Right. Um, but there are certain values that you just have at your core that you should share with people in order to attract the right people. So for me, one of my core values in my in my life and in my business, especially, is affordability. I grew up very
poor. I started my business, I didn't have any money and I really You know, I had to Google I had to stay up late at night, I had to ask friends who were taking programs, what they were learning. You know, I really, you know, I had, it was very scrappy. And so when I price my products, I think about that person. And I think about, you know, when I did purchase
things, how scary it was. And I always tell people, like, I never want you to purchase something, and then be scared, you know, you're not going to have emergency money, or you're not going to be able to, you know, get your kid that thing that they really need for school. And so for me, that's a very deep core value. So as a coach, you have to think about, you know, what is the why behind the why, of what I'm doing, right? Like, oh, yeah, I want to
help X people. But why, okay, but why you know, those real core values, the things that drive you in your life, your people want to know about, because they're going to really resonate with that. Just this week, at the time of this recording, I bought my dream car. And it's a 1989 Ford Bronco. And, you know, I shared with my list, like, email was the reason for this, I can't believe that my life has changed
so much. There was a time in my life, where, you know, I was working at a gas station, and I thought, well, I guess this is it. But there was something deep inside me that said, No, Liz, you've got to figure something else out. And that's part of my core value. And, you know, sharing that with people sharing that story, sharing that value set that connects with the right people. Of course, the right people were emailing me back. Oh, my gosh, yes, I've been there. I don't want to give up.
Yeah, one of my core values is, you know, tenacity, right, that don't give up even when you have the wrong circumstances. And so that's what I was displaying in that story. And that's what I was getting back. Now. I know those people are my, the right people for my programs, my know, my one on ones, my membership, all that right does is this making sense?
Total makes
perfect sense. And, and I can tell you, I'm sitting here nodding my head, because every piece of information that you do share every story that you just told it resonate with me so much, because I think, you know, a lot of times, I didn't come from a background of business, and I came from a background of starting this on my own, I know nothing about marketing, I don't know anything about business, and just being to, to be able to figure out like how to build that relationship with others
that will lead into a revenue or profit. That was a big lesson I had to learn. And I know for a fact that there's a lot of coaches in my group, who also resonate with that same message where we we didn't started out something, someone who's big, whose name is big and huge, already have a large following, we're doing all these tiny baby steps and that baby steps is really under the core value of what we believe in. And so that why it just be so much and so loud and clear to me. So
beautiful. I knew there's a reason why we connected.
Yeah, I'm so grateful we connected to and especially as coaches, no matter what your industry is, if I if I'm, if I'm your client, if I'm picking a coach, I need to know that person, I need to feel very safe and secure, in order to actually open up and make change, right. And what I love about email, bringing it back, bringing it full circle here is that you can truly be yourself and another person can be themselves. You can get as many people on
Instagram as you want. You can have a million followers, but the way someone is going to email you the way you're going to speak in email can be so much more intimate, right? It's not this public forum where other people can read. So when you start to ask those yes or no questions, you get those responses and people start to open up you start to open up
that relationship. You can have real conversations in email where you really get to know people and you can really create the perfect program the perfect one on one for people because you've been spending so much, you know, for lack of a better term, intimate time with them in the inbox right? First on Facebook groups, Instagram, DMS, things like that. There's just something about email that makes it you know, you have this ability to open up and people open up to you in some beautiful
ways. I've seen it. I've been emailing for over five years now and I I've shared some really awesome stuff some really Open stuff like, you know, sharing yesterday about, you know, hey, I used to work in a gas and I was like, This is it for me. And I had a lot of replies where it was like, wow, that one line
really hit home. You know, and sharing stories where they would never do that on Instagram, they never, you know, write this, you know, three, four paragraph story on Facebook, but suddenly, you know, we are sitting there together. This is a shared experience. If I if I told them, I had something to help them, right, like, Oh, hey, actually have a one on one coaching thing done da da da da da think it could really help you because you just told me X, do you think that person will buy? Yeah,
probably. And they also trust me because I opened up first, it wasn't them just opening up to me. So that's what I really want coaches to know about email is, you know, when you work in such an intimate space, you should work in an intimate space. And that's email.
Yeah. I love the idea of describing email as a community. It's a community that you're creating for your audience. I'm curious, Liz, what are some of the ways that you you work with clients?
Yeah, so actually, um, I used to be a copywriter. And so I, I did the copywriting services to fund kind of this email thing to do more podcast interviews like this. So my main thing now is I I've retired client work, I don't write emails for people anymore. But you can do console calls, I have console calls, where we go through I call them digital get downs, which is an instinct song, if you. So it's always
fun. When we get on the call, we talk about where you're at right now with email, what's you know, one or two struggles and where you want to go. And we make a plan for that we either do live editing, or we create a blueprint, something like that. It's really, really fun. And then also, I have an email marketing membership. If you're like, Liz, how the heck does all of this work, I actually just write an email for you every single week, it's delivered
straight to your inbox. So you can just get those emails out the door, I do a video training with every single one, it's usually three to five minutes. So you can really start to understand how email works, how you can take the template that I wrote, and make it your own, no matter what industry or no matter what tone you are. And then of course, if you just want to get started, right now, you can just get my free swipes, you
can go to Liz Wilcox, calm. In the top right hand corner, there's a hot pink button, you can't miss it. And it says free email swipes, you're going to get an entire welcome sequence to see what I mean about leading with personality, vision, and values. You're going to get three newsletter examples to see how you continue that conversation with prospects. And then you're going to get 52 subject lines, so you never have to think of an email from scratch. I've already done it
for you. So you get all of that for free. Just right there at Lizwilcox.com.
I think I'm gonna I'm gonna need to get that myself. Because I know I'm constantly like writing writing emails and reaching out the audience. But any, any templates would help. And so there's the website, everyone. Before I let you go, I know, I know. You have another calls that's coming up. And I'm so glad I was able to grab you here. Are there any final thoughts or tips that you would like to share with the audience?
Yeah, so as you go, you know, exploring more about email marketing, maybe you sign up for my list, fingers crossed, or you you know, you listen to more podcasts or anything. What I want you to do is something that I do and how I filter everything that I do in my business, I just want you to ask yourself two questions. Number one, what would this look like if it was easy? And number two, what would this look like if it was fun?
Because as you learn more about email marketing, I know it's gonna seem complicated, but the methods that I've created and the way that I write my emails and build my entire business is through the lens of those two questions. And I know no matter what you do next, whether it's email marketing, building a social media following create crafting your offer, if you ask yourself those two questions, you you won't turn you won't steer yourself or your potential clients wrong.
I love those question. What does it look like if it's easy? And also, what does it look like when you have fun?
Mhm.
Yeah. I love those. One more. One last question before I let you go.
Sure.
What activity did Pinky and the Brain that to genetically wise mice participate in every night?
They tried to take over the world. Right? Oh, good.
And the reason why I'm asking this is because I know that email marketing is really something that's very valuable for us business owners for anybody. It's really the foundation of building that relationship. How do you invite people to come and have a have a conversation with you? That's really important. I love everything that you have share. Someone else in the audience is taking over the world.
Yeah, you already know. Yeah, that's so funny, that's so funny, and it's of your personality. Right? You might not love the 90s. But see how you know that person? Hasn't comment commented on the thing the whole time, but they were
like, dang, and I know that. So don't be afraid to inject pieces of your personality that might not seem like they go with right like, what does pinky in the brain have to do with email marketing, nothing, but suddenly we've got somebody engaged and now we're off to the races starting that conversation. So that was, that was a perfect example. Thank you, Michelle, so much for having me. I can't wait to see what everyone does with email.