Email Is Not Dead with Rob Cairns

[Music]

hey everyone it's just Todd the redneck Guffey snobs copy flight and I am here

with Robert parents from stunning digital marketing

I teased this video on social media yesterday got some curious people

curious and I wanted to talk to him because he was sharing with me yesterday about or maybe a couple days ago about

an email he sent out and what happened it's like man I got it this is really cool so I got to share this and I think

he's got somebody else's going shared as well there's definitely a case study so next time here's somebody say email

marketing is dead tell him about this story so it's a great story Robert sent

an email out early last week for his he does a lot of website care plans for his

clients 12-month plans and he discounted his care plan and was trying to get

people on that or three new or sign up and we're gonna go through some of the

variables because you know if you did what he did on my planet my site my list

it probably wouldn't work but it did work on his we'll talk about those things but in the process he earned

seventeen thousand four and seventy two dollars he had a ninety two percent open rate and so we're gonna talk those are

some really really cool numbers and we're gonna talk about that I'm gonna talk about the variables and we're gonna

talk about the one thing that he did I think anybody can implement to to help

with a service or or a product you're trying to sell so first of all welcome

Robert hey start for having me and thanks everybody I hope you're staying safe you're staying home by the way yeah and all

your okay you're by yourself and you're looking after yourself and your loved ones we all know everybody's having a

tough time so let's just kind of stay together and figure that out we need some good news so I think that

we're gonna talk about the principle you use because like I said if your context

is unique and it wouldn't work for every context but the principle you use can be used by anyone but the the thing that

would I look at the number is the astounding thing means it's 92 percent open rate and I know you keep your list

called you keep it engaged and talk a

little bit about how you do that how you keep people opening because your that's

not enough I mean that's a high open rate but you normally have high open rates anyway normally run somewhere

around 40 to 50 percent which is still high the industry average is somewhere between 5 to 20 so what I do is I do

maintenance on my list so I use mail or light as a platform I'm actually using the paid version of me or light I'm not

on the free version anymore and what I do is I go through my list and the people that haven't engaged

I actually segment off and the reason I do that is Google Believe It or Not

starts to look at emails and say ok these are being opened so they must be

spam so it is actually worth it for the segment not engage people off so I have

an active engaged list of abouts just over 6100 when kovat started it was at

about 5,000 so in the last 8 weeks I've seen an 1100 person jump which is

nothing surprising because people are looking for material to read things to do things like that in terms of

segmenting off I go through my list every month and I take people that haven't opened up emails in the last 30

or 45 days and I put them in a segment and I will send those people nurture

emails and say it if you want to get back on the list click here and they don't get any of the regular emails that's the first thing

the second thing I do is as a rule I generally don't hard-sell or abuse my

list so I typically being a digital marketer hand my list tips on how to do

digital marketing how to do WordPress stuff how did you time management stuff how to run your business

all for free if you want it all it's them and all you have to is read it yeah

Rob puts a lot of really good stuff in his emails does a couple times a week and to your point about segmenting off

on subscribers you're not really responding or opening mail or light actually as a feature where you can

clean as they call it your list and then it automatically does if you don't want to you know segment off the list like

you're doing so and I actually just did that recently so but yeah I get a cup I

get some emails that are kind of curated list Roberts kind of a curated list he's like you know if you're interested about this read this you know but another one

that I get that's very good and I don't mean to detract from what we're talking about but I would be interested in her

open rates as well but Ann Handley who's a veteran rider with a marketing professional professor or professionals

I think what's called she I was just reading that I hadn't read her email in

a while and I was just going through emails last night I was like man it's amazing the stuff she puts in this email

and so if you want to learn to write better I recommend that but Rob has

gotten I mean he you know he has 60 100 people he he actively pairs it down so

he could probably have more on his list he does and he does it's very customer

focused top email so whether you're his customer or just another person in the

field being on his list is very can be very valuable to you so I think that's

important for how he engages I'm sorry I just got to hijack that but anyway so

yeah yeah so you got 60 100 approximately you have you had a 92

percent open rate on the email and we'll talk about that in just a moment and you regularly get somewhere between

4050 open rate pretty well on a regular basis yeah and they think a lot of it

attributes to I don't do a lot of hard selling so I don't do any affiliate

marketing yeah I know people say I'm crazy I just don't do it I've promoted your products at times in my West are

that promoted Kim Doyle's products Kim's gotten sales out I've provided the vendor staff are promoted other people's

stuff and people say you do all of this and I say yeah because I believe in them and it's about relationships for me and

what my list does is build a relationship and I get replies almost everyone I send out saying I really like

this could you focus on this so could you talk about this or could you explain

this and I use that for further articles and and I actually encourage people to

reply to me I asked them I said you want to comment hit reply can you talk about

why people are applying to use it important to you it gives me a gauge on

what my readers want and I think too many people write what they want and not

what the readers want I would tell anybody to go read Simon senex book

called to start with why and or watch this TED talk and go understand that the whole principle because I really believe

you have to give people what they're after not what you're after yeah and I think I understood that

replying and engagement is also good for avoiding the spam filters I mean I could

be wrong about that but I thought I'd understood that it is I so the so the

best tip 2 tips I would give us 1 treat your list with respect to never use the

address do not reply at domain.com I use a live email address effects above it's

called VIP I want them to be feel like that important I like that too by the way I tend to do email at what

our newsletter Adam like really ought to go if I can do one says VIP because I think that's pretty cool yeah and it

goes really well for me and and I just build that Royce ship and some our current customers

summer past customers some are friends some are people in business I've got a

good friend who's a workplace education trainer in the viscacha and I was looking down my West their day and I

must have 40 of his past students on my list and they reach out all the time that's good so I was talking I was in

the wp feedback lounge yesterday and we were talking I the hour I had we were

just kind of shooting the breeze really it was just going from here to here we did eventually get to about pages but I

don't really even know how this topic came up but I said you know there's a you can actually there really a couple

ways you can reach influencers and it may not be true for all of them but a lot of them there is one is social media

it's amazing how no question connect with somebody on social media I mean if you want to connect with simon Sinek you

probably could through Twitter I mean that's just you know there may be somebody who's just got too many followers to do that I get that but I

have like in Hanley and we've had conversations on Twitter people like that Chris Brogan those kind of people

the other thing you can do is and this you're like we're Dex is going this is

coming right back to what you just talked about get on their email list and reply I have gotten so many

conversations and make connections with people just by replying to emails and I

know my cell with my little paltry list I'm ecstatic when somebody replies I'm like oh wow somebody replies and and so

even with somebody who has 60 100 on their list or somebody replies you feel like you you've narrowed the circle a

little bit like here's a person and so I think replying is you know people love

that and so as a person who does email marketing of course you do you mail marketing you know that's that's

important thing to be able to to get reply so I say reply to your list or

getting people reply is a great thing now no question I know I want to touch on that a little bit if I if you don't

mind one of my favorite people in the social media world is a guy by the name of Neal Schaffer he's been around

Neels great and Neil and I have chatted never men unfortunately we've been at

conferences and missed each other and all that stuff he just lost his father last week so shout out to Neil thinking

about you and your family and he had put that in his newsletter and I and I've known the Neil and Twitter and we have a

lot of great conversations and Nielsen influence to some degree I a bit not a

mackerel when he's a big one and I sent him a quick little email saying I saw your newsletter and I was thinking about

you and your family and I'm so sorry and we needed that job and Neil got back to me because he really genuinely

appreciated somebody reaching them and and I do that a lot I mean we know our

friend Jason Resnick res and often when I read read this stuff I'll reach out to

him and say hey Jason haven't chat in a long time but you know and and he's really good

our friend mr. Huff words another one I mean Jim Doyle's another one yeah and

where would we be and what people need to remember is there's only two things

you can control and marketing one's your website and the other is your email list and what I would also say before we get

in the next topic is go into your autoresponder and export that list on a regular basis and the reason I tell

people to do that is if something happens you can move it to another provider very quickly but you do control

your email list and remember that yeah that's a great point and that's like I call that the number one thing to keep

in mind in digital marketing is that you need to own your own real estate which means a website and email list so a

great point I want to get to this email that you wrote early last week and you

were selling a discounted rate of your maintenance plan I guess this is for

people who hadn't already not signed up is that correct it was actually for both so basically

what I did was right now everybody's a little price sensitive them businesses

are struggling and and a pile of people saying to me I'd love to jump on a meeting that's fine

bye even at $780 canadian for some businesses that's really pricey right

now so I get some thinking and I came up with this scheme where I would discount

for any reader of my newsletter or anybody that somebody from my newsletter

forwarded the email to I would give them 30% off and I made that deal for new and

existing customers that's it and I also made it clear that this would expire on

May the 5th so it's still running and I also said I would not offer another 30%

discount again this year or higher because I believe in integrity and I

will do that there's no question so I offered help out and it kind of translated a bit we're on the weekend I

offered some regular customers current customers actually even greater discount

to renew early because they've been with me a long time I offered him a three-day fire sale and that's a whole new

discussion but yeah I just wanted to help some people out it's tough right now so the I said in my little social

media post we've got a little bit of traction there was one thing you did and

you you had different thing in mind and I did but I think there's both sides of the same coin

so talk about the major selling point

for this email there was a couple of things one was the headline headline was

you've been hacked now what that's simple so that got people's attention in the first couple

paragraphs and second paragraph first thing I said is hack attempts are up on my servers by 300% due to the script

kiddies all being at home and having time on their hands so those two pain points and then of course the 30%

discounts so that's another pain point I hit three things how do we protect

themselves there's more targeted attacks and the third one was by the way I

understand you're having a tough time as a business here's the deal right yeah so the headline was pretty concise

and compelling so the headline contained

the biggest pain point right and there you said before we got on the chat that there was something you always like to

say something like it's not if but when you're not we're gonna get hacked it's

not if you're hacked its how you will recover from that hack idea so what I would I'll share with you personally

I've only had one hack problem with my website my personal website that

happened a year and a half ago that was due to a gdpr plug-in that came out with

a million installs and some guy doesn't develop what's called the zero day fog which means they don't have time to

patch it he released the fall into the wild and SiteGround shout out to the

guys oh that site ground thank you put a firewall roll in two hours later and my

personal website got hit between the time of the Act being released and the

firewall wow that's pretty so I had a backup I did a restore and this was a

malicious hack that redirected certain pages to sex aids yeah and that's common

that or pharmacy when I worked for an agency several years ago we would commonly get

I would say commonly we would get some hack sites and so the more server based

team would kind of work on cleaning it up and when they finished clean it up it

was my job to go in there to Google console and basically tell Google we fixed this and there were some steps you

had to do and it used it sometimes it was done by the end of day and sometimes it took a couple weeks it was kind of an

ideal but I so I had seen a number of these I see is usually either pharmaceutical or something and you zip

sex-related so it's kind of an embarrassing deal really you know I'm going to page and it kind of you know

redirects you were somewhere you don't want to go but it's very much pain point and the beam hacked and then

of course as you said not only that we got the increase in attacks and you have

a discounted price for people who may be you know the normal rates out of their

field right now and I wanna I want to give a quick shout out to Cathy's end

for those who don't know Kathy she's the one who produces the think like a hacker podcast for one fence Kathy's also a

facebook friend and what I'll tell you is word fences there's a multitude of products but it's my product in my

security stack and it helps minimize the

hack attempts because the things they do with firewalls and things like that yeah it's it's a definitely a good extra

layer to add to your sides especially if you start having problems and I know sometimes I'll do a website and they're

kind of like why are you installing this and then you get one of those notifications about how many people how

many hacks and blocks and they're like oh okay I see thank you no but but what

I want to focus on in in copywriting circles you know one at one of the my

favorite formulas uses pas cuz it's so easy to remember and so easy to use and

the peace sensor pain pain a stands a

rad state and the a stands for solution so basically what Rob did is put P an a

in the headline in the first sentence and his solution of course came in the

form of here's a discounted service for it so he used pas there but I think

sometimes people are afraid to you know might think it's scary that you're using

a pain point well to be honest maybe they need to be scared a little bit and

it's not you're trying to scare somebody you're trying to give them something unnecessary it's your your touching on a

real legitimate pain point and if you know your customers very well you'll

know what those are and I do recommend do have conversations interviews with them and

actually we were talking about this before he gave them on here our friends Ross Simmons and talia wolf just came out new podcasts and their

second one is exactly about doing interviews surveys with customers and

highly recommend take a listen as she talks about four different questions to ask what you can do in TypePad or our

Google Forms or even in a zoom conversation I I would even suggest

during all this downtime as business owners take the time and email your

customers and say can we jump on a zoom call and and can I record that zoom call and talk about why they like your

business and what they don't dislike about your business and do it now and then you'll be the research if you do a

couple of these every day your research where you will go when the world gets back to the new normal whatever that is

because we don't know you'll be much better off so I I so agree with that farce of him yeah I would take those

four questions she gives and I can't remember them all right now and I'll go back and find them and drop them below

the video but those four questions which just get on the Zen call record it ask

those four questions that she gives us you'll get much more than just how are they doing or what a faint point is

you'll learn you'll get it probably get a testimonial out of it you'll get benefit driven like you'll

know what it is that they really like about your service so I think if you're able to do that with some customers that

would be fantastic for the rest of them if they're willing to fill out a survey you know you could you can make one up

in Google Forms or typepad or whatever your favorite survey product is and do

that I would say if you get on a phone call with five to ten of the your good

customers that would be and ask those four questions that would be fantastic so it would help you it would go a long

way for you to recognize what the pain point is what what it is you're solving for them and by the way and by the way

when you when you reach out those five or ten customers say to them I'll be glad to send you a $20 Amazon gift card

and give them in this sentence to come with you that sounds like a little thing but I've

had companies come to me as a marketer in the last year and say you know if you take the time and fill out the survey

will send you 20 bucks we'll send you 30 bucks and and the advice $30 to get

somebody to engage with you and fill out a service not a lot I still remember the

days of my younger days where you go to these marketing Research Service and they bring everybody in a room and then

hand you a shiny red $50 bill for felt spending an hour with them so offer to

give your best customers a little something I'll send you a bottle of wine I'll do something for you I guarantee if

you do that they're gonna fill those surveys out to help you so make them I got I did one last fall a Content writer

friend of mine got me on and was working

on something I think she just launched it to because anyway yeah she gave me like a what she gave me an option

actually if you're familiar with QQ you you you got a social media sharing you

she gave you know you could get credit for that or liters of $25 gift card Amazon I chose the gift card the Amazon

and I and I saved it and I got $50 worth of gift cards for Christmas from Amazon

so Christmas I had $75 a spin which I bought a lot of books with yeah and so I

was thrilled with that a couple years ago and the bill is these he was a copywriter he was looking to interview

some people who had done some stuff that I had done and he paid me for my time I had never experienced that before so

yeah I agree even if it's just a small saying I like a coffee or like you said

he feels really good and I mean I did one couple months ago I think I told you

about four names cheap the domain register and they were trying to find out pain points around phone calls or

some privacy and they had a panel on a zoom called six people and they paid all those people believe it or not a home

$50 us Visa card for their time any and

they based it on a survey they had done they had a survey they filled out I had

no clue an email me and said we'd like to give you this can you jump on a call sure you give me huh give me money for

yes to tell you want to thank sure I got a give me sick if card just today or

yesterday from my insurance company for doing a wellness check with my donger and I don't think I'd anything much

different to be honest with you but I'm like I'll take the car for its cheap market that's cheap money to get market

research and well when it wasn't Martin uses more health care-related but still I appreciated the sentiment I mean you

know I didn't buy well my yearly wellness check or whatever they called it and they sent me a $50 gift card Visa

gift card and then what was the other one I was gonna say oh if your local -

you'd like it all your customers are local you know you look guys like you mean if customers all over but let's say

you're a business that almost all of your customers are local then like in conwy I might say here is a bag of

cookies from patty cakes which is like I've done it they agreed there BAE likes or here's a bag of coffee from around

Mountain coffee or something like that those are really cool gifts too so and

the other thing that works really well is Starbucks gift cards I've had people those who don't know you can actually

send virtual Starbucks cards and I've had people send them to me now I'm not the Starbucks guy but I will tell you my

wife is to Starbucks gals yeah you give them to her and you you earn brownie points that works okay yeah yeah well

you know Amazon gift cards you know Starbucks Visa gift cards a bag of

coffee bottle wine cookies whatever it's the sentiment and you can get some

really good stuff out of that well appreciate you coming on talking about this email you sent out that really hit

a home run yeah and if we all could you know earn $17,000 like that that would

be awesome but you did have some variables that like 60 100 subscribers engaged list and so forth that it's hard

to replicate forever you know everybody but that shows and some people would consider 60 100 or small this and people

like me we considered a gigantic list smile yeah and in terms of you know like

compared to the Amy Porterfield of the world yes it's a small list but you know and I've heard tar think a copywriter

talk about making money her list and talking about it being small and I think it's somewhere around what yours is and

but that just shows if you have a product that can sell and meet a need and you have a big enough list you can

write the right kind of email and generate some revenue so yeah it takes it takes some practice

and I wasn't really good with that side of the business till three or four years

ago and I I took some training that invoked like how to write headlines and

stuff like that so that helps shout-out to my friend and mentor mr.

paul toby is the CEO of a company called training business frozen tirana and i

took some stuff with paul ii have the utmost respect for Paul and his team and

that kind of reminded me and some of the digital marketing stuff I did there where headlines matter more and I think

they matter more because I think how many times do you jump on Facebook and

he sees somebody commenting on a news article and you know they haven't read

it but they saw the headline and these comments have a hundred posts in you and

you'll sit there and say you didn't read the article did you so headlines matter more he used to be concise articles

mattered more and now it's headlines people tune their headlines very quickly it goes back to the old ogilvy thing

about you know 80% of people read your headline yeah and you know 20 will read

the rest of the nice on that old-school ads from like the 60s but you know Bobby

Copyblogger kind of brought it back to our consciousness when back in nineteen fifteen years ago when he started

talking about how important headlines are and so you know and in headlines have gone through you know kind of a

wave it's kind of it can be kind of quick Vedas and so you know I don't advocate being quick ladies

at top headlines enticing headlines yeah some people will make an enticing

headline that really maybe don't anything to do talking about well that's a big no-no but but you know your

headline was what when my friend autumn would say compelling and concise and so

I think you it looks like you hit the nail on the head and knocked it out of the park or using some good sports

metaphors there it's causing quite - Twitter conversation you know I sort of

hinted at somebody last night and said I'll give you a keys before Todd and I

talk it's about the headline yeah and a good teasing headline and one that

connects to their emotional pain point which i think is very important and so I

I think people underestimate the importance of connecting with a pain

point and just keep working on your headlines like if if you got some time during this downtime take a piece of

paper write some and there's some really good sources out there I mean word stream has talked about headlines in a

digital marketer Ryan Deiss is outfit has put out countless articles on the

headlines tarzan case talked about headlines you've talked about headlines Todd I'm version XL website see Excel

also there is an article I think dozen Justin Blackman he put out a year to go

on copy actors about his experience arrived a hundred thousand or ten thousand headlines and what he learned

and it's just really fascinating to read his story about doing that and what he

learned so he has a lot of good resources I think sumo has had some really good headline as well and and

keep a swipe file and for those who don't know it's Wi-Fi was just a file of ideas and put those headlines in this

white file and keep track of what's working and then you can go and reuse stuff I mean most of us don't reinvent

the world we just reused the world garbage yeah there's a lot of what people will refer to as formulas

headline formulas and some of them work and some of them maybe depending on you know obviously

everybody's context is different so anyway thanks for the chat

thank you I'm talking about that I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and shut this off for the day and just remind

everybody to don't give up don't ever give up and be smooth and be safe