From Inbox to Website & Back: How Email Marketing Drives Results with Minal Patel
Join host Ellie McBride in a lively YouTube interview as she sits down with Minal Patel, the founder of Marketing by Minal, to delve into the exciting world of email marketing.
Minal will share her expertise on successfully driving traffic to your email list and, more importantly, guiding that traffic back to your website to convert into sales.
With her firm belief that marketing is akin to cooking, Minal brings a fresh perspective to the table. Drawing from her 20+ years of marketing experience, she understands the recipe for success lies in having the right ingredients, tools, and practice. Minal's practical and actionable tips have empowered countless small business owners to find their inner marketer and avoid the dreaded cycle of marketing mishaps.
If you're looking to take your email marketing game to the next level, this interview is a must-watch. Minal will reveal strategies, tactics, and insights that will help you not only grow your email list but also maximize its potential by driving valuable traffic back to your website.
Transcript below!
You can connect with Minal here:
Get Minal's Email Marketing Cheat Sheet here:
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Episode in this series I've been really enjoying chatting through all the pieces that help you unlock website success
0:07
um I am here today with Minal and she is going to talk to us all about her
0:12
specialty which is email marketing and that's just such a key piece in building
0:17
relationships and driving traffic to your website so many people and so
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it's kind of circular right like you get people on your website you're hoping to drive them to your email list so you can build that relationship further and then
0:29
you want to drive them back to your website to take next steps with you right so we're going to be talking all
0:35
about that and thank you so much for joining us do you want to introduce yourself oh you're welcome I'm uh very
0:41
excited so I I don't get often get asked to be a guest some podcasts aren't really uh which is wild because you host
0:47
a load of people so I'm really happy to do this and it's a really nice way to round off the week
0:53
so um thank you for asking me but um yeah so I my business is called marketing by manal and I started it in
1:00
2016 and um my my sort of Big Goal is really just
1:06
to make marketing simple for solo business owners the people that have to run the business do the marketing do the
1:12
account do all of that stuff just to really make it simple and help them understand how to do it in their way in
1:19
the time that they've got and with the money that they have and like you said I specialize in email marketing so before
1:25
I started marketing plan I worked for an email marketing company for four years so um it really kind of I resisted the urge
1:33
in the early days of running my business but it really kind of seemed a natural fit to hone in on one digital tool that
1:40
I've worked with for such a long time yeah totally and what brought you into
1:47
business like just summarize like how did you get here other um sorry I I said email marketing
1:54
company uh I Was Made redundant after being there four years I was the head of
2:00
marketing for the UK and um it was my second time being made redundant and that's much less painful
2:06
than the first time and um it's quite funny because my cousin and I were buying this house that we
2:12
were in now and things weren't going great with that and
2:18
um a week after we got our mortgage offer extended I Was Made redundant so there was a lot
2:25
of um panicking on my part my husband was quite calm about it and he said I think you should
2:31
start your own business because I never see you happier than when you're talking to a small business owner and helping
2:36
them understand how they can do their marketing so I think you should do that and I thought about it and I was like
2:42
okay I'm gonna give this a go so I started the business and moved out at the same time
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um and it was an interesting first few weeks because my husband had a job where he traveled so we moved into this house
2:54
on a Sunday and on Monday said right I'll see you I'm going off to Germany for three days
3:00
so I was unpacking painting setting up websites setting up social media so it
3:05
was quite a war win few months um but things settled and then I started
3:12
getting into what I really wanted to do which um was help small businesses so um
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I was lucky enough to work in a company that targeted small businesses so I already knew the small
3:23
business landscape in the UK and the organizations that I could turn to for
3:28
help but also to say to them well how can I help you how can I give you content can I speak for you can I what
3:35
can I do so um it was quite quite a good first year it was really busy and it
3:41
feels like yesterday but it was nearly seven and a half years ago it's wild hot time flies when you're
3:48
running a business right sure it really does especially as well because you I just it's when you love doing what
3:55
you're doing um and every day is different all my clients are different
4:01
um and it it you know it just makes me happy when they say to me oh my God I
4:08
didn't realize that was gonna work oh my God I never thought of that or wow I would never have thought of doing it
4:13
that way so that's that's you know that's what I'm here for I love that and I think that it's so funny because we
4:19
come at it from very different angles but both of us are in this to make small business more simple for people
4:26
um because it can be something that if you let it it will eat up all of your time all your energy all your money
4:34
like you can let it become a beast or you can get a little help because I
4:39
think a lot the other thing is is well obviously when you're a small business owner you're wearing a lot of hats you
4:45
can't actually wear them all or you won't you'll burn out you will
4:51
that's true so yeah absolutely and I think in the beginning
4:56
uh you don't have a lot of money so you kind of have to do everything but at the point where you feel like you have got
5:03
the resources to Outsource stuff you should start thinking about doing that because you know it just frees up a
5:10
lot of time and you as the business owner the business leader need that time
5:15
really to apply your brain more strategically to like the direction of
5:21
the business and how you want it to grow and what you want it to do and if if you know if you're the person who is also
5:28
doing all the little bits of admin that's never going to happen um so if your ambition is to grow your
5:35
business and grow a team and get bigger um you need to learn how to let go of something yeah I'd say even if you're so
5:42
two things is that I that I think are nuanced there is one is when you're doing when you're first starting up yes
5:48
you are doing everything yourself but that doesn't mean you're doing everything there's things that you're probably setting aside for the future or
5:55
there's things that you know you're not on every single social media channel you're picking a couple you might not
6:02
be doing every marketing thing that you might be later you know I didn't have a
6:07
podcast at the start I am did some blogging I did some networking
6:14
and I let that grow as I've grown and tried new things as I've gone as well so that's one thing is like yes you're
6:20
you're probably not Outsourcing yet and then the other thing is some people never want to grow that massive team
6:27
never want to become an agency and whatever right I have a very small team and I'm happy with it
6:33
um but most the businesses still just meet but I still can scale yes
6:39
by using the right systems the right tools the right um in my world templates quite often
6:46
usually self-created templates but by not Reinventing the wheel all the time those kinds of things so I just want to
6:53
be really clear because I know a lot of my audience is like me I don't want you to feel
6:59
yeah I don't want people to feel like those aren't options for them or that because they've chosen to stay small
7:04
that they can't still grow in other ways and you know it it was my choice at the
7:11
outset I you know people said to me you're going to grow an agency and I thought about all the things that
7:18
I love doing uh with marketing and I thought about all the few jobs that I'd had just before and um
7:26
the one thing I didn't want to do was manage a team because it takes you away from doing all the things that you love doing yeah so right at the outset I
7:33
decided it was only going to be me and it's a great book it's called I might be calling me some it's called a company of
7:38
one it's a really good book to read because you can scale even if you're one
7:44
person you can scale and you have to have those systems and be brave enough to Outsource the things that perhaps
7:51
you're not good at you don't like doing um and you know that frees you up to do
7:56
the things that you love doing and the reason you started your business yeah totally and throughout my business I've
8:01
outsourced various things like I have two virtual assistants that work on a very very
8:06
part-time basis um that do different types of things and then I've also you know appsourced
8:12
bigger projects coaching things like that throughout my business as well that have helped me go from strength to
8:17
strength you know they say that a lot of small businesses don't make it past five years and it's I'd say nine times out of
8:24
ten probably because they haven't asked for enough help yeah and that could be mentors that could be
8:30
actual practical Outsourcing and all sorts of things I'm also not been afraid to ask for help
8:35
like you know find I think what I actively did when I started and I
8:41
think it's because I went from years of working in businesses where I had teams
8:48
to bounce ideas off um one of the first things I did was really try to actively build my network
8:56
um because all of a sudden overnight those people that I used to turn around you know at my desk each time I go what
9:01
do you think of this they disappeared and I needed to find a different way to do that and you know building I call
9:07
them business buddies and a lot of them are for me have gone beyond business bodies and I've consider them friends
9:12
but you know finding those people who um perhaps
9:18
um you know some of them might be a stage ahead of you so that you can benefit from from their experience and
9:25
sort of avoid some of those um pitfalls that they've been through I
9:30
know a lot of people have given me that help and that's why I like to help people that are starting out because
9:35
uh you know it's about um really if you're going to be in that small business world and you want to help
9:41
small businesses you're helping the ones that are ahead of you and perhaps helping them grow but you're helping the ones that are coming behind you as well
9:48
absolutely yeah and I think I've done a lot of that same thing I've built a couple of my own communities I've taken
9:54
part of um being on committees for like lean in circles in Northern Ireland for entrepreneurs I've paid for communities
10:01
to be into so accelerators and paid coaching programs so like finding that Community is so important and and some
10:09
of those places like I you know I still have what chat groups from some paid communities I'm that I paid for ages ago
10:14
and I'm not even in it anymore and I still have ones that I've created like my brunch group that we go to brunch every other month so it is so so
10:21
important to find that place of like and I think also in my business I we
10:27
have a team meeting I have two virtual assistants mostly they're like totally autonomous they often do their own thing they have some tasks assigned to them so
10:33
and that have tutorials set up and they just we don't we barely talk to be honest
10:39
um but we do have a chat once a month where my poor assistants they're so good to me but essentially it's me brain
10:45
dumping at them like it's just like here's everything going on does this make sense how about we try this and it's just it is
10:52
invaluable to get people outside your brain to look at your business absolutely absolutely yeah
10:59
and it and it helps if it's another small business owner because sometimes I do that brain dumping to my husband but
11:05
he doesn't quite get like he'll give me advice but he uh he you know people who
11:11
are not in it don't quite get it so if you can find those business buddies it really is invaluable I agree and I think
11:18
for me it's so funny because my husband is an entrepreneur um well he works part-time he works
11:24
part-time and as an entrepreneur part-time so he kind of has two things going and
11:30
um but he's in like his world of Entrepreneurship and his world of employment is so different because he's a software developer so most of it's SAS
11:36
software as a service so when he starts thinking of things it's all these digital products and all these things
11:41
and I'm like whoa like not my world um very very different all right but we
11:48
are here to talk about evil learning I can talk about the nuances of Entrepreneurship forever and it's all connected of course
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but one of the key things that we're here to talk about is email marketing so can you kind of just go over like basics
12:00
of like if somebody hasn't started email marketing yet what would they do okay well there's a couple of things and
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actually I'll just uh this week published my first LinkedIn newsletter and it was about how to get started
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um but there are a few things that really you need to think about so um first of all choosing your email service
12:18
provider so that's that's the platform that you're going to use to create and send your emails
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um so typically I say you know I I recommend three that I think are good
12:30
for small businesses so it's Constant Contact MailChimp and mailerlite so start a trial with all of them and you
12:39
know use them and create something create an email in them and figure out which one
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you feel most comfortable using um that's easiest for you to set up so
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funny because I actually recommend totally not totally but mostly different ones to you oh okay yeah that's so funny
12:55
because I mean there's there's Merit and all of them they wouldn't exist out there wasn't right but from my perspective I mostly work with service
13:01
based businesses so I would often recommend flodesk it's really user friendly and really really pretty
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um and for me as a designer specifically having really pretty emails feels like
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an extension of my business people can see that I can design a pretty email they can it just goes if everything I do is pretty it matters right yeah yeah
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I do recommend mailerlite as well mailerlite's fantastic
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um and I do often recommend for more product based businesses I would recommend convertkit quite often as well
13:30
okay yeah and they're very good for those Commerce um like automations and things yeah and I
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think they're all I mean they've all got similar functionality
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um are just fine with those three if you're just starting out those three are the ones that kind of
13:50
help complete newbies that happen yeah I feel like every person I know starts in
13:55
MailChimp myself included when I first started my first email email list every client I've ever had they start a
14:01
MailChimp um and then eventually I feel like people graduate from milk
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they will yeah and male I mean male chips easy because when you you when you don't have a lot of money
14:14
you can start on it for free but they'll exactly do that and more on mailerlite so if you really don't have a budget
14:20
made a light actually gives you more email addresses to start free from
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but obviously both of them in the free versions lock certain things down because they want
14:32
you to pay of course but I actually think mailer likes slightly easier to use than MailChimp for its free version I think so too yeah that's why I
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typically but all right but yeah so those are the
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three that kind of small I've seen I think in maybe
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less designery people so that's what I've seen or businesses choose and then
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so once you've done that um you need a strategy and it's not as complicated as it sounds
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um because you can do it all on one page and really what you're doing is create yourself a bit of a blueprint
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um and you'll want to include things like your goals how often you're going to send um what you're going to measure
15:17
so once you've decided that um you'll need a bit of a Content plan as well and you can do that separately
15:24
for your emails or you can have an overall content plan for your marketing um that includes what you're going to
15:30
send in your emails and I think you know if you've got the more you can do integrated marketing
15:36
the better because then you're not trying to generate content for lots of different places you can have you know
15:43
working campaigns that include different marketing channels
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that you're repurposing your longer form pieces and across the way yeah yeah so your YouTube videos your blog your
15:55
newsletter can be pieced up and put it across your socials and things like that but that that plan is important because
16:02
what I found is uh with social media people pick up one of these they take a
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picture and they post it but with email marketing the thing that stops people sending out an email is
16:14
they start thinking about what they want to write at the moment that they sit down in front of their email marketing
16:20
software to create that email and then they get stumped and then they think I'll do it later and later Never
16:26
Comes so having that content plan and you know you can do
16:33
and say it's not difficult people will think oh my God I haven't got enough time but like even like I say to people
16:40
at the minimum email once a month so you're gonna have to find content for 12 newsletters and you can when you sit
16:46
down and think about it you won't find it difficult to find 12
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newsletters worth of content that you can put together and really it doesn't
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have to be long and I recommend three things because I I read some words there's a
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psychological thing about us recognizing patterns and three is the pattern that
17:09
we recognize the most so limit it to three things so you have to find 36 things for the
17:16
year and when you do that it doesn't doesn't really sound very much you don't have to write books either
17:22
yeah so you know and this comes back to linking off to your website because if you're going to share something it will
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come on to more of that later but if we're going to share something like a blog post you don't want to put the whole thing in your email what you want
17:34
to do is put a snippet in entice people and then get them to go to your blog to read the best so yeah absolutely
17:42
so there's so much in that but I know you have resources to help people figure
17:47
out like okay what am I going to talk about how often should I post all those types of things
17:54
um like do you have any advice I have some but I want you to go first if you if you any advice around those things in
18:01
terms of how often send like I know you said a minimum of you know you're looking at 36 but I'm thinking more
18:07
often like what the hell to say right so people yeah so what are you talking about
18:13
well what I'd say is do an audit of all the content that you already have so you
18:19
you've built this beautiful website it's got lots of stuff on it what exactly is that make a list of
18:26
everything that's on there um and you can include things like blog posts FAQs your products your services
18:34
and you can point people to reviews whatever you've got and I would say mix
18:41
that up so generally what I say is that when you um write an email email marketing email
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80 of the time you want to be writing content for your readers and 20 of the
18:55
time you're going to promote yourself because you know if you don't promote yourself you're not going to sell things
19:02
and that's not having a business but no one likes to be sold to all the time so think about what pain points
19:10
your target audience has what what have you posted on social media that worked
19:15
really well that people engaged with and reacted well to how can you repurpose that for your email
19:22
so you're not finding different things to say you're just finding content that you already have or when you decide
19:29
perhaps that you're going to write a bit say you're going to write a big blog post well you want to share that with
19:36
your list but then once and done doesn't have to be it so you can take that blog
19:43
post and turn it into different bits of content that can still be shared with your list so you might take it and turn
19:49
like take the advice and turn it into a Tip Sheet which you sent to your email list you might create little video
19:55
Snippets that you put on YouTube which you then put in your newsletter and send to your email list and it takes it takes
20:03
a lot of time for information to um sort of sync in with people and just
20:09
because they've seen it once doesn't mean they'll remember it and they might not remember it in exactly the same way and you're taking something that's much
20:15
bigger than cutting it down so that people can digest it more easily so I I
20:22
would say that you know don't feel like you're ever going to run out of content and think about generally what when you
20:29
when I say make that content plan [Music] um I tell people to uh really just like
20:37
grab a piece of paper draw 12 boxes that's your 12 months of the year so what have you got coming up in all those
20:44
months where you want to talk about things so perhaps you've got some events coming up maybe you're going to have a
20:49
sale like you're launching a product where do those all fit so once you've got those mapped out then
20:56
you've got some gaps to fill so what are you going to fill them with um so it really just
21:03
draw things out and figure out how you're going to promote the things that you want to promote Plus
21:10
give your audience um the things that they find valuable yeah
21:16
yeah and I think the thing that's interesting is there's no real rule book for how people do this so of course that
21:23
can feel overwhelming um which is why I tend to create my own systems when I end my business because I
21:30
like a plan I love a plan and I actually really struggled recently because I have
21:35
a really loose content plan it pretty much is one and I break all the rules with this really long email a
21:42
month um and then occasionally I'll have emails for like a pop-up offer or sale
21:48
or something that kind of get squeezed in there but I have one major juicy email a month
21:53
um and then I would like like you said there's Snippets in there where I might share a couple most of my recent blog
21:58
posts or you know their blog posts but they're always YouTube videos in the blog post because that's who I am
22:04
um and that kind of thing and then but then I decided last year but it's kind
22:10
of come full circle where it's finally kind of happening now to add not just websites but like systems into my
22:16
business and I was like how do I talk about both like how do I talk about both and I really made that a
22:23
big deal in my head and I was talking to one of my coaches and she just went what if you just like it's about half the
22:28
month talking about systems and half the month talking about websites I was like oh I can do that because in my head I
22:34
was like oh I'm gonna have to figure out like a monthly or quarterly thing and it's gonna be like what if I'm not talking about one enough or the other
22:40
and she's like just split it up I remember this is like
22:45
this newsletter is is to do you know a few things for you and one of those
22:51
things is to help you get people to your website and help you
22:56
find new customers right so it has to be done in a way that is
23:03
good for you um so when I uh decide when I set up my
23:08
business I decided Well I was going to email every week and I was only ever going to talk about one thing
23:14
and that's what I do I email every week and I talk about one thing and what's your one thing
23:21
it depends it depends so this this week Oh you mean each email's one Gmail is one thing yeah so I never put more than
23:27
apart from in uh lockdown I had an I had an email where I said I'm
23:33
really sorry this is going to be long but this is to help you and I had about four or five things in it and people were like this is great thank you so
23:38
much for but it was my decision email every week and it's the focus is one piece of
23:46
content so that might be register for webinar it might be go and read this blog post or it might be I've found this
23:52
really great resource why don't you go and try it um right it's one thing that's designed to help and then every now and again
23:58
it'll be oh um do you remember I've got an email marketing planner that you can buy go
24:05
and buy it or um you know I've got this course or oh I've got space for
24:10
um some coaching clients so if you're if you're in the market for a coach marketing coach so let's talk so it's
24:18
when those sales messages go through it doesn't jar because I've spent so much
24:23
time giving them value and things yeah you're building that relationship with somebody they and I think that's the
24:29
thing so I've got two quick things one is if you're like don't know what you
24:34
want to do with your email there's three things to kind of think about one is what do you have time and energy for to
24:40
be consistent with two is meeting your audience or Community where they're at and kind of so like I would guess your
24:47
community and my community are different and they have different expectations which is fine and the third one is think about the
24:52
email list you were on and that you like like which ones are you hanging out with which ones are you actually opening
24:58
that shows you a lot about what you enjoy to consume and you're probably not
25:04
that different from your audience um so that's that's kind of my thing and
25:10
then the other thing is as I have one of my favorite newsletters that I'm on as a copywriter she's Canadian and she talks
25:18
about lifeism so when she's selling to me half the time it doesn't feel like she's still under me because she's told me some story about her summer plans or
25:26
fall you know her car breaking down or whatever the hell it is but she's told me a story first and then tied the sale
25:31
to that story she's tied the um the actual like okay how does this matter to your business what does the
25:37
story have in your relation and I'm working on that storytelling is probably
25:43
not my greatest strength but I'm getting better um so that's yeah those are probably my
25:49
biggest tips is like selling doesn't have to feel Sicky scary or weird often
25:55
times it's just an invitation it's just I have this thing I think it might be really cool for you if not no worries
26:02
see you next time like exactly and I think you know one of my I always say
26:07
this one of my favorite sayings is if you don't ask you don't get so if you don't ask the sale you're never going to get it
26:13
um and it it really matters in the way that you ask and um this is you know
26:19
another sort of uh kind of contentious about it's not a bone of it's just another thing that
26:25
kind of caused a little bit well a few words between my husband because he has a sales background so when I started I
26:33
thought oh do you know what I'll ask him because I'm not a sales person I always had sales teams
26:40
that went out and did the selling um oh you should do this and you should do that it just didn't feel right for me
26:48
so I found a way that that doesn't make me feel icky that I can still go and say
26:54
hey buy this thing so you have to find the way that is right for you and I've been
27:01
on a couple of sales training courses and all the trainers have always said
27:07
sales is about conversations so have conversations with
27:13
um your email list this is about building relationships so every now and again I will send an email that starts
27:19
with how are you no really how are you if you want to tell me reply to this
27:25
email and I always get replies yeah right because and and I guess like
27:31
sometimes they're like oh thanks for asking and one time a lady wrote me a really long response she's like I'm
27:38
having I'm just having a terrible time and XYZ and do you know what it just made me
27:44
feel so good that you actually asked me how I was so that this is the the relationship
27:52
building part right it's you're sending a communication you're writing it once and you're sending it to lots of people
27:58
but it doesn't have to feel that way it definitely doesn't feel that way so obviously for me sometimes I like I send
28:03
this out to hundreds of people and I know some of them and some of them I don't and sometimes people will reply
28:09
and say I've or I've had people hire me but they've been like I've been on your email list for months or people I think
28:15
what sometimes more weird to me sometimes I know people in my personal life that I find out I've been on my email list just to keep up with what I'm
28:22
doing oh God but um I think that's the thing is it's a
28:27
beautiful thing to be building that relationship and the way that I do it and I'm just going to give people like a breakdown of like my because my once a
28:34
month email I won't lie it's a little bit long but I get incredible open rates people really
28:41
resign with it and I've got it structured because I guess it's because I'm a website person big headings skimmable take what you want exactly not
28:48
you don't have to have it read the whole freaking thing if that's you know so I get a lot of really good feedback for it
28:53
and it starts literally just at the top like what's coming up and a couple of links
28:58
if they if there's a sale coming up or there's a workshop or an event that I'm doing they can just grab that there then
29:04
it's like a little bit about like here's what's going on in my business like and it's the most vulnerable place I am in my business and I think that's what
29:10
resonates with people is I talk about the messy side I'm like I I talk about it all
29:16
then after that I suck a little I have links and this part's static it doesn't change to what's changed with my
29:22
favorite tech tools so it's literally just I used to break it down and like have bullet points but now it's just a link to the like updates section of
29:29
Squarespace Shopify all those places me and my clients love and then I talk
29:35
about like what's going on in my life and that's kind of like and I'm loving I'm reading I'm really frustrated
29:41
there's I have about in my newsletter template I've got about 20 of those prompts and I usually pick like three
29:46
and then to actually fill out and then I get to then I wrap it up
29:53
um oh I also put in a couple of like I said my blog posts in there I wrap it up I have a sign off and
29:59
underneath my sign off is every time there's a testimony a client testimonial and so it's a little bit of everything
30:05
it's my life it's my business it's what's coming up it's what I can buy from me it's my testimonials it's my
30:11
blog so it is a lot like not following the three-person rule um but or the three thing rule but it is
30:18
very very much like I said very well designed very well structured it's not
30:23
overwhelming and people can say oh I'm only looking for what's going on in her life and a blog post real quick and they
30:30
can just opt out of the rest um but I mean you could get even better results by looking at
30:38
who clicks on what and only sending them those things because if they're only interested in those things I probably
30:45
could yeah and then look at what happens with your
30:51
results and see um whether that makes a difference because maybe it could be that you know that'll
30:59
Skyrocket you're open Skyrocket yeah unfortunately flow desk isn't still
31:05
great with that um no so that's my thing is is you can't they've only maybe not
31:12
even quite a year ago added like a section underneath that allows people to select the preferences most people don't do that
31:18
um I found that there's no way to like prompt everybody to sign that to do that really I mean I could do like an email
31:23
that has nothing on it and it'd just be like button um and then there's no
31:30
um I know this for a fact because there's no way to like set trigger a segmentation based on them clicking a
31:35
link in regular emails there's totally a way to do that in work like automations but it's a bit of a drawback so it's a
31:43
choice I've made for having really really pretty emails and really easy to use emails to trade off that
31:49
functionality um so that's definitely something worth considering which is why people who need
31:55
a a lot of automation especially e-commerce where they need that those triggers and those Auto segmentations to
32:02
happen I usually am like pushing people convertkit way yeah it is a choice
32:08
that's the thing about business is there's no there's nothing that's ever going to do everything you want you've
32:15
kind of got to make your choices yep yeah but you're right I would definitely have better
32:20
um if I were just sending some of those things the other thing I do that's probably different than most entrepreneurs is I
32:28
don't write my newsletter digitally actually write it in my journal every
32:35
single month and I find it blows me because I feel like I'm not really writing to them yet
32:40
it feels like a journal entry it's a lot more vulnerable it's a lot more honest and again I get I most my emails get
32:49
between a 40 and 50 open rate um so
32:54
something even though I'm not doing everything that like I'm supposed to do it's working for me
33:00
I'm so listen this is about um finding how to do this your way that
33:06
works for you right I said that right at the top oh yeah you know and
33:13
um I I actually wrote a post on LinkedIn a while ago like last couple of weeks
33:18
ago and I'm I'm not a rule breaker I'm one of those people that gets quiet
33:25
bending rules right but sometimes you have to bend some rules you like you
33:31
know otherwise you never find out whether you could achieve something so
33:37
like what I'm saying you know the advice that I give is what you know best
33:42
practice but if you find something works better for you all power to you and
33:47
carry on with it but you know like keep testing things to see if you can make them better because at the end of the
33:53
day marketing is a little bit like science where you put in a bit of this and putting a bit of that and you're
33:58
like testing to see what works and this um the longer email every month from you
34:05
is obviously working for you so like yeah and I think it's and it's like you're right there's so many ways to go
34:12
about it and for me it's just I'm guessing it's an energetic thing I feel really good with what I'm putting out
34:17
there I have people are also just I think it's again that brutal honesty thing I sort
34:24
of pull so people open it because they feel less alone when business is
34:30
messy when they're reading the mess behind the scenes and my own business sometimes and seeing that I'm still
34:37
going and I'm still growing and I'm still finding my version of success
34:44
so I think that and that's what I'm saying I guess is that you can
34:50
whatever works for you is I guess what we're both saying here yeah yeah think about what you want to say to your people and find a way to say it that's
34:57
going to be a great thing when I start off with that goal what what is it we
35:02
don't every every marketing activity that you do you have a goal what is that
35:07
goal what you know what do you want your email to do
35:12
um and that is going to keep you honest as well in terms of the content that you put in it so you know
35:19
having having that makes it easier for you to know what to what to put in it and what to leave out yeah and when
35:26
you're nurturing those relationships like you said I like that you just say like reply to this email I do that
35:31
sometimes too um what I also sometimes do is I like
35:37
I've done this twice this year I sent out a survey instead of my January newsletter I sent out a survey like what do you want from this and what I found
35:43
is that most people wanted everything I was doing plus one more thing which was they wanted like to see what was going on in my
35:51
community like other people's features essentially and and then so that was interesting I
35:58
also found um that I I did another one at the end a
36:04
couple months ago where it was just like tell me what's happening in your life in business like it was literally just a couple long-form questions to let people
36:10
come to me and then I said and I sort of bribed people to reply right a couple
36:16
people got a voucher for that I raffled off to like
36:21
incentivize people to actually take the time to reply because we're all busy um and then I asked people if I could
36:27
follow up with them and so I had some really nice calls on the back of that with my clients um I knew well gal
36:33
actually that same Canadian copywriter she did a thing in the pandemic for a while that every Friday she just blocked
36:39
off her afternoon and had calendly calls with people and just to get her to know her email
36:44
newsletter and she you know when you really know your people it goes through the rest of your work you're able to
36:50
then craft better offers and better messaging and better all these things right so
36:56
and I'd say as you know but I'd say like your email is your best place your
37:03
website you're going to be getting more cold traffic um than your their networking you're probably only getting like to know a
37:09
couple people that are really a good fit and same with pretty much any other social media you're getting like kind of
37:16
a lukewarm audience your email you those people have chosen to give you a sacred place which is their inbox exactly right
37:22
exactly don't abuse that trust okay I mean asking them what they want is a
37:30
really good thing and like you you know every year I do a survey um and it's a wider survey about what
37:37
small businesses want to know about marketing like for the next year but there is there is a section on there for
37:44
anyone who is on my email list to tell me what they think about my newsletter and what they like and what they feel is
37:52
missing because I want to give them the things that they I'm interested in yeah
37:58
um every quarter I um I've got it's I've got one in a couple weeks time but I do
38:03
a like a mini Mastermind and um the most engaged people on my email
38:09
list and in my Facebook group get an invitation so every quarter I look at the most engaged people on my email list
38:16
and and some people open 100 of my emails yes I've got a couple of those
38:21
too so I'm obviously doing something right and
38:27
um to spend energies on those people again that's another good relationship
38:33
Builder so yeah that sounds amazing I love that idea that you kind of reward the people who are taking the time to
38:39
engage with you with more of your expertise they're getting more of you which they're clearly already super fans which is another thing I wanted to say
38:45
earlier I think my biggest thing that people come up with when they say that they're afraid so like we talked
38:51
about having a Content plan and repurposing and putting things in multiple places I think a lot of times people get afraid of doing that because
38:57
they're afraid of overwhelming Their audience but you're there's no way that one person is seeing every single place
39:04
you're posting an idea or a thought or a content and if they are they're your super fan and they don't care
39:10
true and I think it's also how you package it up you're going to package up your content slightly differently for
39:17
your email than you are on social media um
39:22
and it's also you know when you one of the things that you could do is
39:28
ask your list how they like to consume your content and start delivering it in that way but know that you know if if
39:36
all your use on social media if if you're only using organic social media
39:42
your posts are reaching about one to two percent of your followers right but
39:48
email marketing has a 90 deliverability rate so if you get a good quality list
39:55
that you know enjoys reading what you send like if you you know 100 followers
40:01
on on Facebook versus a hundred people on your email list like the the numbers
40:06
are there right yeah so you don't have to be worried about that
40:12
because it's it's you know people if they really really are your super fans
40:17
they don't mind seeing that information again and you can stagger things so you don't have to have
40:22
you know the same thing on your social network social media and your email and
40:28
all of it at the same time you can stagger it so that it gets seen over a period of time like I say yeah we're
40:34
busy we don't see we don't see we're bombarded with a gajillion messages every day and we don't see everything we
40:40
need reminding yeah the other thing is yeah it's that that like you have to it does take a while we already mentioned
40:46
this earlier you did that it takes a while for people to to process something right so they need to see it a couple
40:52
times but the other thing is I actually usually tell people again for process sake but more because
40:59
I'm a systems person I'm not a marketing person just to clarify for people but for systems sake I tell people to post
41:05
things on their newsletter first so I have somebody that was like I just want to post all my newsletters and my blog is that fine and I said yes if you post
41:12
it to your newsletter first they should be treated like your VIPs like you want to give them the content
41:17
first so I do the same I take a lot of my newsletter content and it does end up on my social media but my newsletter
41:22
people get it first and they get it a little more vulnerable I might tidy it up a little for social media yeah me too
41:30
and I think you know doing that treating your email list as VIPs is really good
41:36
and giving them a you know it's giving them a reason to be on your email list so I know that you know for my list
41:43
they get that Weekly email but that Facebook group is tied into that email so you can't join that group if you're
41:49
not on the list and in that group I share content that doesn't get shared
41:54
anywhere else so you're getting more value and every month I create a Facebook guide of different topics that
42:01
will help them at this point this month we're talking about customer service and how you can do that as a solo business
42:08
owner and you know give really good customer service so they get extra things that and that no one else gets
42:16
they get four webinars a year that are only for them I don't invite anyone else so it's how how can you make your
42:24
subscribers feel like they're in a place where they're being treated like VIPs and it doesn't have to cost a lot of
42:31
money everything that I wore a lot of time all all time everything I've told
42:36
you about is you know it cost me my time but I'm not spending
42:42
money to yeah those things but like you're you're obviously showing up in your group and you're creating a monthly
42:48
resource and then a quarterly resource but like if you're doing that with as I know you
42:54
are like with information you already are pretty good at you're not spending a lot of time creating it
43:00
um that's that's going to be something you're just providing value you're not providing tons and tons and tons of your time and you're not spending any money
43:06
no I'm just pretty cool so yeah so I just think you know treat them as VIPs that that email
43:13
address is a precious piece of information and they've decided to give it to you so but be honorable with it be
43:21
transparent about what you're going to send them and how often you know deliver on that promise
43:27
um I know that uh there are there are a couple of email marketers who say oh should send to your list every day every
43:34
day would you send an email every day well as a solo business owner can you really manage that
43:40
because it has to work for you you'd have to batch it and so like maybe but it's like
43:46
I just even big Brands don't do that most like I'm on email lists for some big Brands and because you know I've
43:53
done the like 10 off in store or whatever and I like the products I've stayed on and I'm not getting their emails every single day if I was I would
44:01
have freaking unsubscribed and honestly small businesses do it's so much better than big Brands I'm on lists for big
44:08
Brands uh one High Street uh chemist shall we call them
44:14
that sell lots of other things um and I have their loyalty card you can probably tell which one that is
44:21
but sometimes I will get three emails in a day from them and I said you know when
44:26
I told them I said you know this is really bad email practice like you shouldn't be sending me this many emails
44:32
a day you should be segmenting they told me I should unsubscribe if I didn't want them
44:39
yeah it's just all right there's so much there's so much I want to say but there's still things I really want to get to in our last few minutes so we've
44:45
talked about about nurturing and building that relationship which is so important but how do you get people on the news that are to begin with so what
44:52
how do you get them to actually join your newsletter okay so the first thing you need to do is create
44:58
what I call your value statement so I've already mentioned it's two parts to it what value are people going to get when
45:06
they sign up so this is the what's in it for me that's in the back of our heads when we're our Ferrari email addresses
45:12
and number two is how often are they going to hear from you right and with those two things it's really good to be
45:19
completely transparent because people want to know what are you going to do with this personal piece of information
45:24
I'm giving you and like what value am I going to get out of it so
45:30
make them feel comfortable about handing over their email address and then like in terms of your website
45:37
you want to you want to ask in all the places that your target audience hangs out so
45:43
you just grab a piece of paper and make a list asking all those places but particularly for your website my tip you
45:50
need to ask people to join your email list on every single page which sounds a bit much
45:58
but there are a couple of reasons for this right so firstly and you'll know you you help people with their websites
46:03
you never know which page a visitor is going to enter your website on right you
46:08
just don't know that and they didn't come to your website to join your email list right and the next
46:16
thing is you don't know when they're going to be ready to join your email list okay so making
46:22
it easy for them is what you want to do so on my website I've got a button that
46:28
lives on the menu the top menu that follows people around as they go to different pages so when they're ready
46:35
they can just click on that button and they go yeah actually I do want to join
46:40
her email list but then I've got sign ups in various other places so I'll I will ask for a sign up in blog posts
46:49
okay um and then I also have a pop-up on my website which I find so annoying on
46:55
other people they're so effective like the conversion rate of a pop-up we all hate them but they're there because they
47:01
effing work right that I am this pop-up comes it
47:08
appears as the visitor is about to leave my website and it's that I call it the
47:13
Colombo moment so anyone is old enough to remember Colombo when Colombo used to
47:18
interview the murder suspect he goes to leave and the murder suspect thinks
47:23
that's it and then he turns around and says oh and another thing
47:28
so that pop-up comes up as the person's done what they want to do they found what they want to find on my website and
47:34
they're about to go and it goes one another thing do you want this this nice tip sheet or do you want this or and
47:40
it's never a sale it's um at the minute I think it's my email marketing cheat sheet but those convert really well for me and
47:48
then people join my email list yeah so you know be transparent about what
47:53
you're going to do with people's information tell them what you're going to send and how often and then honor that
47:59
yeah so on my site I have it really simple which I could I really probably should crank up where how how many
48:06
places and times I asked for their but I have it in the footer and I've got it on a banner because I have a quiz and I
48:12
have that as a banner at the very top of my site so that's on every single page no matter what and then I do have it on
48:18
in a few other places on my site but I really could have it in more um I probably should have it in my top
48:24
navigation like as a place to join well I do I have my quiz also in the top navigation because again that's in a few
48:31
places but I think you're right it's just one of those things you need to ask
48:36
um and those pop-ups are really really effective but you're asked adding value in whatever you're sharing and why they
48:43
should join your notice or a freebie or an opt-in or whatever you want to call it as well and then I don't actually
48:49
personally and this is there's no I probably again I could and probably should but I there's only so much room
48:55
on a website where I say okay I'm going to email you this often etc etc at the top of it but my nurture sequence when
49:02
people join does have that information yeah so the first email says here's Who I Am the second email says here's
49:08
exactly what to expect yeah this is the content you're going to get this is the frequency it's going to get and anytime
49:13
I'm offering something outside of that so maybe I have a sale and I'm sending a lot of emails in a period I always have
49:19
it do you want to opt out of this particular thing that I'm talking about
49:24
um which saves you a lot of unfortunes so like like a couple weeks ago I was
49:29
doing a pop-up offer for the one day website refresh and if somebody didn't want a one day website refresh they could just say ah no I'll just send me
49:36
your newsletters got me interesting enough you know you don't always have space to do that to
49:43
tell people um how often your email and stuff so uh what I've done is that I've got the
49:48
button on my website and what I've done is create a landing page that then tells them everything so it's like well here's
49:55
what you get for signing up it's you're going to get an email every week but there's a private Facebook group and there's this and you can read some
50:01
reviews of people that have um already on my email list you can read a previous newsletter and hear all the other
50:09
benefits that you get for joining you know yeah so just think of ways that
50:16
you want to stop the objection before it happens because quite a lot of the times and it
50:23
happens a lot in shops when you go into big shots and they'll say oh could we add you to our email list
50:29
and I always say no and those people I might have said yes but those people have not been trained
50:35
in how to ask right yeah yep I think that's very very valid and I think I could like you're
50:41
right I could totally create that type of landing page I could tell I could find a way to tell people what they're getting
50:48
um yeah like there's there's so much there I mean I know you like videos so they
50:53
could just the language yeah I think people why they should sign up I mean
50:58
actually there's no there's no hard and fast rule right I know I'm a big fan
51:04
actually of the app video ask and I've taken it off my site for now because I felt like I had a pop-up and I had the
51:10
banner and I had the cookie consent and it was just a lot of things to click but the video ask would be a really great
51:15
way to be able to have that little video like this is who I am this is what I'm about please sign up for my newsletter like that's such an easy and it's
51:21
powered by typeform and it's they've got a really good free plan and it's cool so all right we've talked a lot about all
51:27
these and we've talked a little bit about like how to drive people back to your website so one of those ways is a
51:33
Blog right so if you're having creating content putting a snippet of that into your newsletter driving them back or
51:39
maybe you talked about other forms of things on your website like your frequently asked questions or those
51:45
kinds of things where you could talk a little bit about that in a storytelling way and drive people back to learn more
51:50
to your site and then obviously you'll probably be doing that again with the proper sales
51:56
emails as well like hey I have this offer click hop over to the website to buy it right
52:03
or in my case quite often it's hop over to the website to book a free call with me yeah I mean so think about
52:11
think about you and when you receive an email that's you know for your email
52:17
you're telling people information but you're kind of limiting the choices
52:24
so of what you want them to do and that gets easier like for me because I only
52:30
ever talk about one thing and I've only got I'm only asking them to do one thing right but what is it that you want people to
52:38
do so in in this instance you want them to come back to your website so how are you
52:44
going to do that so it could be you know you could start off an email with you know what we've
52:51
been getting a lot of questions about how we process our orders and how long you waiting
52:57
we've got FAQs on our website that cover this why don't you go and check it out
53:03
all right or if you're a product business uh every month you might have a product
53:09
spotlight so you're talking about one product and you want people to go and buy that
53:16
by talking about that one thing you're giving them less Choice when I um I used to work at Constant Contact that was the
53:22
email marketing company uh when I worked there we um we actually worked with a florist and
53:28
we did a test uh for emails for a sale that she was having and
53:35
um the first email had a choice of three bouquets and the second email had just
53:40
one bouquet and the email that made the most sales was the email that just had one bouquet but they didn't buy that one
53:46
bouquet they bought other things not just that one so when you're limiting people's choices you're giving them less
53:53
decision making to do yeah yeah so people get a lot of emails so
54:00
you want to make sure that if you're doing product Spotlight one product don't talk about everything and then
54:06
when you talk about that product link directly to that sales page you don't want them to go searching for that right
54:12
so it's not the dithering take the decision making process away from them and you're helping them by taking them
54:18
straight to that sales page and then if you're using an image of that product because images are content too
54:25
remember to clink that image to the product page yeah so I know for my
54:31
emails when I check every time I check to see where people have clicked in my emails a hundred
54:37
percent of the time they always click on the image that I think because we're trained to click on images so make those
54:43
work hard for you so that's one way of getting people back to your website but outside of sales What What
54:50
In Your Head what is a conversion it might be a blog post it might be booking an appointment it might be going and you
54:58
know looking at a particular web page blog posts the easiest because that's content that people it's serving a
55:05
purpose for you it's serving a purpose for for your readers right so that blog post is helping to get people back to
55:11
your website but it's helping your readers with something that's educational that you know is there to support them so you know think about
55:18
what that conversion is for you and it's it's when you're a product based business it's it's easy because you're
55:25
spotlighting products you're wanting to sell a service business might find it easier to get someone to their website
55:33
with a piece of educational content and then people generally tend to go oh
55:38
there's a pop-up or all in the middle of this blog post it says if you're interested in this why don't you go and
55:43
check out this other thing so you're encouraging them to go and visit other parts of your website yeah absolutely
55:51
I think that's so so so important is that like defining what it's a conversion and it might not be the same for every email you send but it is so
55:58
important to get that idea um for example in my last when I was doing that one day website refresh
56:04
sequence of emails I was sending out I was obviously tracking the analytics and clicks quite closely and I found that
56:11
there were so many there were storytelling emails there was helpful like here for a website checklist like so many things that I sent out in that
56:18
that were really really helpful and varied um the one that converted the highest by
56:23
a lot was the case studies from the beta pictures of the before and afters and
56:29
the testimonials did so like if you're thinking like what is the one thing I'm going to do social proof social proof
56:37
absolutely and if you've got those like you but don't hide them away share them
56:43
and like that this year because mine are in so many different places they're on Google they're on LinkedIn they're on my
56:50
you know they're all over the place and this year I was just like it's too difficult so I've pulled everything
56:55
together in a Word document so if I if I think oh I'm I'm doing a webinar I want to have a piece of feedback from someone
57:03
that attended a webinar to encourage other people to attend that's that one oh I want to talk about my mentoring
57:09
here's a you know so they're all there and you it's you know don't you've got these things that tell you that you're
57:17
good at what you do so don't hide them yeah I organize all of mine in Asana under a category so website design you
57:24
know I've got them all all in there but yes there's many ways to do it and there's so many things but I feel like
57:30
we could talk about this so much more because email marketing has evolved so much in the last few years
57:36
um Marketing in general has I think the people value authenticity and
57:42
transparency in a way that they didn't necessarily in pre-pandemic um but we are out of time so like
57:49
there's so many things I want to say and I want you I would love to hear your opinions on but mostly I think I want to
57:56
hear now because we're out of time where people can find you and then what cool things you have for them
58:03
um so people can find me website marketingbyminole.com and I shared with
58:09
you earlier I've just created a new email marketing resources page on my website that has a bunch of stuff on
58:15
there from from courses that I've created right through to free resources so um that's a good place to start if
58:23
you are just dipping your toe into email marketing yeah there's a lot of really
58:29
good information on there I was on it earlier so definitely check it out um and yeah
58:35
um your Facebook page as well is just a wealth of information about business in general so I know she's got her private
58:42
Facebook group and don't do go and join her newsletter because there's value in there and in that group as well but
58:49
her just even her Facebook page she interviews loads of other entrepreneurs and there's so much good value there
58:56
um yeah so that's pretty much what I have to say thank you so much for joining and bringing your expertise oh
59:02
thank you for asking me it's been really good fun yeah it has been I love I love how like obviously you're the expert but
59:07
I just love how differently we see and do things and how how valid it all is like I love that they're all the same
59:13
the world would be a boring place very boring place
59:18
well thank you again you're welcome bye everyone bye
