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Speaker 1: If you actually ask people to do something and communicate the value of why they should they’ll do it.

Speaker 2: Hey podcast listener you’re about to discover insider tips, tricks and secrets to making more sales and converting more prospects into customers with email marketing. For more information about the email marketing podcast or the Autoresponder Guy, go to dropdeadcopy.com/podcast.

Hey everybody it’s John McIntyre here the order respond to gain. It’s time for episode five of the email marketing podcast where we talk about the top tips, tricks and secrets for making more sales and growing your revenue with email marketing. It’s episode five and today I’ll be talking to Colin Nederkoorn, the CEO of a small company called Customer.io. Customer.io helps online business better connect with their customers by using the data they have about them. Things like what products customers have purchased and what pages they’ve visited on the site and more. It’s very valuable stuff.

Now, in this episode you’ll find out why relevance is the name of the game in 2013 when it comes to email marketing, and how to start writing better emails, because if you’re listening to this podcast there’s a good chance hat whatever you’re sending right isn’t working; otherwise you wouldn’t be listening to it so stay tuned for that. To get the show notes for the email marketing podcast go to dropdeadcopy.com/ep5. Now before we get into hat let’s talk news.

The email marketing podcast has four new iTunes reviews and I’m going to read you one of them right now.Ryan McLean from Australia says I’ve been waiting for a podcast like his for years. I’ve got good traffic, a sizable list, but no one has been teaching me how to market effectively to my list. Five stars, because this is a stellar new specific content that will grow my business and yours. Good audio quality and even better content. Thank you Ryan for that. Ryan’s website you can check that out at cashflowinvestor.com.au.

Now if you and shutter fame, and yes if you put your link in the iTunes review I will read it out on the show, and everyone’s getting here. So first listen to these episodes, second if you enjoyed it go to dropdeadcopy.com, click on the iTunes ink, add your review in iTunes and I’m going to read out one five star review each week on the show and your’s could be next. I’m going to read out your link so hundreds, thousands are going to hear your website. Enough of that let’s go talk to Colin Nederkoorn, the CEO of Customer.i.o.

It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy. I’m here with Colin Nederkoorn, the founder of Customer.io, a special app that software as a service company can use to send their customers emails based on how they use their apps. How are you doing today Colin?

Speaker 3: I’m doing really well John, thanks.

Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on. Now let’s start with just a little quick background on who are you and what do you do?

Speaker 3: Cool; so I’m the CEO of Customer.io, we’re a really, really small email company, and we’re about three people now in New York and we–as you said we help online businesses better connect with their customers by using the data that they have about them. The things they purchase, the pages they visit, you can use that information to send them more targeting emails so they’re ore relevant and more timely. Ideally, you can build better relationships with those people through the emails that you send. Because you’re sending them the right emails at the right time.

Speaker 2: So the basic idea is just to get real specific. If someone signs up and say they visit–say they haven’t visited their profile page yet and you want them to set up a profile you can set up an automatic email to go out three days after they sign up and say you have’t set up your profile. Here’s a link, go and set it up, put a photo in it; that type of thing right?

Speaker 3: Exactly, and a lot of times what you see when people are doing this in an unsophisticated or dumb way is they’ll still send that email three days later, but there will be five things they want you to do. You may or not may not have done them, and they just blindly send the email regardless of what you’ve done on the site.

Speaker 2: Just like a random–like you might have already done all those things or you might not have. It sounds like hit or miss.

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 2: That’s interesting. What’s–I guess in a nutshell what’s the big message or the big idea behind Customer.io; what’s it all about?

Speaker 3: I think we’re all about sending your customers or your prospective customers better emails, and building relationships with people over time. Ideally, through that you’ll get more people from free to pay. If you’re a business that has–that’s like an ecommerce store you’ll get more people buying again. One of our customers ran a think where they have–their product is ideal for gifts so people either buy it for themselves or they buy it as a gift, and they use Customer.io to target the people who had purchased as a gift, and they offer them–Why don’t you buy this for yourself now. They did the inverse of that; people who had bought it for themselves they said why don’t you go and buy this as a gift, and they got a great conversion from that. It was around he holidays last year and a bunch of people ended up buying who hadn’t visited the site in three months, four months, but they ended up buying that product as a gift for someone or for themselves.

Speaker 2: It sounds like one of the–to me one of the most important things that’s going on here is this issue of targeting and relevancy. The average person like you said if they drew this in a bad way or in a very amateur, unsophisticated way they’re going to send out an email with five different actions on it that the user or customer may or may not have done, because they haven’t the software to figure that stuff out. But if they use say a software like Customer.io or something else they’re going to be able to send extremely specific emails which is just going to increase the conversion rate, because it’s going to match exactly who that person is rather than just throwing stuff out there and hoping that it’s relevant. You know that it’s 100 percent relevant, and that’s really an–I think that’s a really important that for email and all kind of marketing is that the more relevancy that you can with someone the better conversion rate is going to be.

Speaker 3: I think the–I did a survey really, really early on in my list and I asked people what’s your biggest fear with writing emails, and it’s–people said a bunch of different things, but a lot of it just distilled down into that word relevance, and people are concerned about not being relevant to the recipient. That generally happens if you’re doing a big blast to your entire list asking for something, but you’re really trying to reach very specific people. You know that most of the people aren’t going to find the content relevant, so yeah I think we want to help businesses use he data that they have to write more relevant emails.

Speaker 2: That’s like–If you think about it, you have 10,000 people on a list, if you send these email blasts that some people call them you’re going to have 9000 or even 900,900 people who just don’t even care about what’s in that email, because there’s just no targeting to it. What we can do with this is send 100 people out of those 10,000 the same email, but it’s all relevant to exactly what they did based on the software.

Speaker 3: Exactly.

Speaker 2: When it come to- where do people get–when people get caught up, when people sign up to Customer.io emailing support with questions on how to do their emails. What are some of the big problems that you see pop up again and again?

Speaker 3: Usually–I think there’s very specific problems, but in general the thing that burns people–most people early on when they start writing emails for their job is that they don’t read them from the point of view of the recipient. They write the email in terms of what the business goals are; so they’ll say we go–go and do this thing, but there’s no value in the person doing it. The emails read as though you’re just tell me something that I should do, but you don’t give me the incentive for me to do it, you don’t communicate the value to me as the reader. A lot of the don’t do this stuff rules break down into how can I make this email more usable for the recipient, and that can be stuff like their from address. If you’re–let’s say you’re the marketing person at a company and the person signs up on your list, but they’ve never received an email from you and they don’t recognize your name. You should put your company name in the from address and/or the subject line so that they know that they can immediately see that’s the company I just signed up with. There’s really subtle things like that make the emails you send a lot easier for someone to consume and understand and get value from. People often make those mistakes initially from–I think it’s a lack of knowledge and experience, and also empathy for the recipient.

Speaker 2: With the–from that do you find that putting a–do you find that a company name in there works better than a personal name or both?

Speaker 3: The strategy that we use and the one that I personally like is your first name from some company name? For you I think that if people recognize John McIntyre in their inbox that’s perfectly fine, and hopefully they don’t know too many John McIntyre’s and you’re going to stand out to them. I think the other approach you could take is you could be John the auto responder guy and that’s your from address. I’d say the downside with that is if you really–if your’e the sole business owner and you’re trying to build a strong personal relationship with someone having the company name in there still–in the back of their mind they’re like this is some business email. So sticking to the personal stuff if it’s just you and you’re really trying to establish a personal relationship I think that’s good, but otherwise if they’re really signing up with a company, not with you, then having the company name Colin from Customer.io or John from Drop Dead Copy.

Speaker 2: You just touched on something a couple of minutes ago about–this is a very basic thing when it comes to copywriting is the reason why I copy. I can’t remember who coined that phrase, but the idea is that if you’re emailing someone and you’e saying go to our site, login and do this, take this action. You’re going to tell them why, and they’re going to think why the hell am I going to go do that, so what. It’s–this is a really easy way to think about it for anyone listening is that when they’re writing email they can sit down and when they figure out whatever action they want to–someone to take or what they want them to do. To go buy something or click on something or sign up or whatever. Then just say here are five reasons why you want to do it. Triggers that whole what’s in it for me thing.

Speaker 3: I think the other thing, the other mistake people make is they put they action as the first thing in the email. Then they try to put all of the reasons why underneath, and I think if you know the AIDA structure; action–attention, interest, desire action, you don’t want to put the action before you’ve built up the desire to take it. So giving them all of the reasons why they want to do that thing before you ask them to do it generally yields better success. But I think it stems from people thinking about it’s got to be above the fold, I think that’s why people put it as the first thing in the first link or the first button or whatever in the email. But a lot of times I’ll see emails that have 10 things they want you to do and it’s all above the fold, and I suggest to people that they don’t do that.

Speaker 2: Right. I had a–a couple of months ago I had a blogpost on dropdeadcopy and it was basically why you should put your opt in above the fold. Because we have this traditional marketing adviser it has to go above the fold, but whats more important is that we’ve been talking about empathy and really being relevant. To be relevant you can’t just throw someone in action and say do this, you’ve got to meet them where they’re at in the current mindset, and then lead them towards that action.

Speaker 3: I think that’s exactly right.

Speaker 2: You mentioned before we started recording that you had some great ideas on how to do content for email. I think a lot of people struggle when they think about I’m going to write an auto responder or I’m going to write email’s my business, but I don’t know what to write about. Where do–obviously if you want to help someone do something figure out the action, you’re going to write down the reasons why they should do it, But if you just want to keep building that relationship with people what sort of content do you think that people should be sending their customers and subscriber?

Speaker 3: Yeah we actually–we have it pretty easy because we’re an email product so the content that I create is about how to write emails. So we have a pretty easy way to do that, but I’ve talked with businesses who they do things like online photo printing or they–actually here’s an example for you. Let’s say you’re a wedding photographer, I think a lot of decisions like hiring a wedding photographer are decisions that are–that you only make once, and you generally look around or you take a personal recommendation. The opportunity for content is getting advice on how to make that decision. So if I’m a wedding photographer the first thing I would want to do is set up an auto responder course about ow to pick a wedding photographer. What are the things that I need to look for before deciding to pay someone. What are the price ranges I should expect, basically educating me about how to make the better decision, which if you’re selling your services that builds trust, which s phenomenal. It also educates your customer so that they’re going to actually be a better customer for you and they won’t have to ask you all of these really basic questions; they’ll have that understanding. But I think the key thing is whether or not the go with you or not they’ll–anyone else whose facing that decision in the future they’ll recommend your course to them, and you’ll probably get some referral business that way. So I think any business where there’s a decision that someone has to make and t’s a high regret decision or it’s a decision that they make without fully understanding it; doing a course that educates them about the things that they need to know is a really, really easy win. The trap that most people fall into is when you’re a business owner you’re an expert and you assume that there’s nothing that your customers don’t know. Most of the ti me they know nothing and you can write content to educate them about the business. Even if it’s stuff that they know a little bit or they’ve heard before, hearing things that you already know and agree with is really reassuring. I think creating content around your business that educates people and helps them make a better buying decision is the easiest win for you.

Speaker 2: That’s really good advice. I was reading something recently about content for emails and it often varies depending on the business with–just like an information business you don’t want to give away too much information, because then they’re not going to buy that product. They used to say when selling supplements you can tell them all day about the ingredients and the benefits and all that, because no on is going to go out and make their own supplement like that. I love this idea. Joe Polish talks abouit it in I love Marketing this consumer buying guide. They sign up to your thing and you basically educate them on how to buy, and that’s relevant pretty much anywhere. When you mention any kind of buying business area that’s going to help people. I thought an interesting question is I’m sure that you’ve got a whole bunch of customers and a whole bunch f stats on email. Do you have any interesting takeaways or anything interesting that you’ve learned from having all this data?

Speaker 3: I think anecdotally most people do it pretty poorly, and part of that is the tools that exist out there. Hopefully, we’re going to change that over time, and we’re already changing that. I think that the other thing is there are a bunch of really easy wins, and there’s not a lot of information out there about what those easy wins are. I’m trying to…so one of the things I’m trying to do is observe to see what the best companies do and share that information with our customers. One of the things that I caught onto really quickly after seeing a few companies do it is if you’re a SAS product, and primarily like a B to B software as a service company one of the most effective emails that you can send is something like 30 minutes after someone signs up a really short personal message from the CEO that says hi, I’m Colin I’m the CEO of Customer.io. Thanks so much for signing up. I just wanted to reach out to see if you needed any help, thanks. Surprisingly, this email is phenomenal, because if someone actually does need help they reply to that and they ask for it. So they’ve had 30 minutes in the product and maybe they got stuck or maybe they abandoned it and never got started, but you’e reached out to them 30 minutes in and they know that even if they’re like this is automatic they at least think you care enough to have set up that automatic email. They now have an email to respond to rather than having to search for a support address on your website or another way to contact you. So we’ve recommended this–we do this and we recommend it to a ton of our customers, and I think we were getting a 15-25 percent response rate on it where people actually reply to the email. Other folks have reported to me 25 percent and higher of the people who get the email response to it.

Speaker 2: Do you ever find that it’s hard to deal with this emails if they’re going–the CEO’s tend to be pretty busy. I’m sure you’re busy; who do you deal with these support request to your own email address?

Speaker 3: We actually–I set up Colin.n at customer.io which goes to our customer support app, and I handle them in there. Or if I’m in a meeting or really busy and there’s something urgent then someone else on the team will apologize that I’m not answering and then do the reply.

Speaker 2: I guess it’s like saving and split up there.

Speaker 3: The way you scale that in my mind and I’m hopefully going to be trying this soon is rather than the email coming from me it comes from someone on our support team like the director of customer happiness or something like that.

Speaker 2: That being an easy win do you have any other examples of easy wins that businesses can have?

Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the reaching out towards the end of a free trial to encourage people to buy. A lot of ti mes during a free trial situation it might be 30 days or something like people don’t reach out during that time. They assume that the person just wants to be left alone during a free trial. But having a series of emails that map to that, and then asking for the sale right at the end or towards the end, probably in the last five days asking people to put down a credit card and upgrade the product is a great way to get people to do that. Surprisingly, if you actually ask people to do something and communicate the value of why they should they’ll do it. Not everyone will do it, but enough people will do it.

Speaker 2: Right, that’s really cool. So we’re just coming up to time right now so let’s finish up. Is Customer.io is it just for software as a service company or is this for anyone or who specifically is Customer.io for?

Speaker 3: Right now we’re very focused on businesses where someone creates an account; so they sign up for a product or a service online and they’re creating an account. They’ve got a user name and password, we’re pretty focused on those types of business. That said, you can–we’re building our product on top of an API and we want to have it like a really, really sophisticated mailing platform. So we have people who don’t have products who are just dealing with people where they have the email address. We have people like that using the product, but it’s–I’d say if you’re a little more technical then give us a shot. But otherwise if you really want an out of the box product that will do it for you, we’re probably not that yet.

Speaker 2: So that’s all at Customer.io; that’s your website correct?

Speaker 3: Yeah and the thing that I would encourage folks here to do is to sign up for our weekly newsletter which is at–If you just go to Customer.io and click on the big link at the top that says write better emails or I think it’s–yeah it’s write better emails then you can sign up for the list and you’ll get one hopefully really valuable email from me every week.

Speaker 2: Good, I’ll have a link to all this stuff down in the show notes for anyone who’s looking for that. So before we sign off do you have any final words of wisdom?

Speaker 3: Let’s see if I can dig something up. I think my final word of wisdom is when people decide to buy from you they make that decision in lines not dots; so if you just send them one email don’t expect them to buy off of that or if they just have one interaction with you. I think you’ve really got to think about how do you build a relationship with them, what are the touch points they have with your business so that they feel comfortable enough to buy. There’s this thing in sales where it’s really like in order to sell a product you’ve got to follow up with people, and the sales people that are really successful are the ones that are persistent. I think you can do that in a lower touch, non-naggy way with email and marketing, but I think the key is you’ve got to know that you’re giving people value and try to create that line. Not a bunch of dots that are all over the place.

Speaker 2: I love that idea. I feel like we could continue talking about this for hours so how about we wrap it up here. Thank you for coming on, Colin. This has been super helpful.

Speaker 3: Thank, John I’ll talk to you soon.

Speaker 2: Hey everybody thanks for listening. If you want to discover more insider tips, tricks and secrets bout driving sales with email marketing sign up for daily email tips from the order responding guide. Go to dropdeadcopy.com/podcasts. Sign up, confirm your email address and I’ll send you daily emails on how to recruit your email marketing and make more sales via email. You’ll find out why open rates don’t matter, and the seven letter word that underlies all effective marketing and much more.

Speaker 1: You’re not doing anyone any favors by hiding your product if you can truly help them. In fact I’ve said this a lot, it is your moral and ethical obligation to tell people that your product at least exists everywhere.
John: Hey, Podcast listener. You’re about to discover insider tips, tricks, and secrets to making more sales and converting more prospects into customers with e-mail marketing.
For more information about the e-mail marketing Podcast or the Auto Responding Guy go to dropdeadcopy.com/podcast.
Hey everybody, it’s John McIntyre here, the Auto Responder guy and it’s time for Episode 3 of the e-mail marketing podcast; where we talk about the top tips, tricks and secrets for making more sales and growing your revenue with e-mail marketing. It’s Episode 3 and today I’ll be talking to Ben Settle. A guy who believes daily e-mail is the only way to do e-mail marketing.
We’re going to get to that in just a moment. To get the show notes for this episode of the e-mail marketing podcast go to dropdeadcopy.com/ep3. Before we get started I need a favor. First thing I want you to do is listen to this episode, hear from Ben Settle and find out why he preaches daily e-mails and why he believes it is the best way that you or I can increase our sales in our business.
After you’ve listened to the episode; go to dropdeadcopy.com/podcast. Click on the review link. It will take you to the e-mail marketing podcast page in iTunes automatically like magic where you can leave a review. If you leave a review I’ll make you famous. I’ll read your review in this over enthusiastic radio voice and I’ll turn you into a rock star. Who knows? You might even get some groupies from it. Let’s go talk to Ben Settle.
It’s John McIntyre here, the Auto Responder Guy. I’m here with Ben Settle who calls himself an e-mail specialist. He’s another e-mail marketing guy. He has a newsletter over at bensettle.com, which I’m on and you should be on too. Ben how are you doing today?
Ben: Doing great John. It’s good to talk to you again.
John: Yes, I’ve always loved this kind of stuff. Let’s start. Tell people a little about who are you and what do you do?
Ben: I primarily sell things online with e-mail. I do this in a few different sites, niches, that sort of thing. I also teach e-mail. My main thing these days is a newsletter, a print newsletter that shows people how to sell with e-mail. That’s mostly what I’m focusing on these days. I used to do direct response copywriting for clients. I don’t do that anymore. I find that it’s far more profitable to be your own client.
John: I totally agree man. Clients are great and you make some money. There’s always a new headache when you turn them to Skype calls, follow up and manage the relationship and all these different things like that. Versus just send a few e-mails.
Ben: You don’t have to get anything approved. You’re your own client. You don’t have to convince them. When I was doing client work it seemed like I wrote more e-mails persuading clients to do something than actual e-mails to sell their product. There you go.
John: I can see that happening. Let’s talk about what’s the Ben Settle way of doing e-mail?
Ben: The way I; that’s hard to pin down in one thing. I guess if I had to sum it up the Ben Settle way of doing e-mail is to go out there every day and have fun with your e-mail; whatever you’re selling. Now Matt, when I say fun that doesn’t mean necessarily slapstick happy. I mean some people sell products that are serious, that’s fine. What I mean is you’re enjoying yourself. They’re enjoying reading your e-mails. You’re selling something people really want, something they need. They’re happy to pay you for it because you’re selling it to them in a way where they like to buy. That is really the basics of my system when you do it. That’s what happens.
John: I’ve been on your list for a month or two now since we spoke last time. I’ve been loving the e-mails. They’re very different to what I’m used to from a lot of other guys in that the first thing; let’s talk about that.
You send daily e-mails, Monday to Friday I think. Every single day there is an e-mail. What’s the deal with that? Do people get pissed off? How do you get away with sending people daily e-mails when I think you’re the only person aside from John who’s another I’ve spoken to who sends daily. No one else does it.
Ben: Actually, I’m lazy. I should be sending one seven days a week and not just five. In fact, what I really, technically if I was more motivated; I would send two e-mails a day seven days a week. I’m not that motivated. No one ever gets mad. In fact, I cannot remember the last time somebody complained. Because, and this is the key; because I bring them into my list in a way that’s its very clear that I’m sending daily tips.
They see it at the opt-in. They see in when they opt-in. They get a welcome e-mail, it says it there. They’re seeing it in the daily e-mails itself I’ll often say these are daily e-mails. They’re seeing it, only someone who is completely illiterate could not know they’re daily. If they complain, they have no one blame but themselves.
I’m being completely up front. I think that’s a big thing for people to do. Be completely up front with your readers. Let them know exactly how often. If you’re not doing daily, if you’re doing three a week, one a week, two a day, whatever; let them know up front. You’re not going to scare … the good people you want are not going to be scared of that. People who are in to whatever you sell who have that problem that need a solution; chances are they’re on 20 other lists too. They want to hear from you.
John: To give you a little bit of motivation, why, obviously it’s going to increase sales. Why do you think that daily e-mails are so great? Why put the time in to actually create, write daily e-mails? What’s the big benefit?
Ben: There are a lot of reasons. One big reason is; I’ll give you two big reasons. One is procrastination. People will procrastinate. People will have decided to buy it three weeks ago. Today’s e-mail finally pushed them over the edge and they buy it. People will tell me this. This isn’t like this is my theory or anything. I hear this all the time. Ben, you bastard, you got me. I hear stuff like that. You got me today. I had to buy. I get that a lot or variations of that a lot. That’s one reason.
Another reason is they build on each other. If people are hearing from you every day or five days a week; all those e-mails start building on each other. You become the leader in that niche whatever you’re in or you become a leader at it. You’re someone who is demonstrating your competency and your knowledge and your skill level in whatever it is you sell. You’re the one they know, like and trust after awhile. You become their trusted friend.
If you do it right you’re not sitting there blatantly pitching every day. Again, you’re making it valuable, you’re making it worth their time to read it and you’re making yourself stand out from everyone else. You can only do that if it’s daily. You really can’t do that on a weekly or monthly or whatever e-mail.
John: I think everyone is hearing that and going, “Well, I need to do daily.” The argument and biggest objection is they’re going to be like I’m way too lazy. It takes way too much time. How the hell, I’m already busy enough. How can I send a daily e-mail? What’s the solution there?
Ben; Here’s the solution to that. How’s that saying go? Is it time expands to fit work or something. Whatever it is, you don’t have to put three hours in to every e-mail. I would say set a timer for 20 minutes and give yourself 20 minutes to write an e-mail. It’s oh God, I can’t do that. Yes you can because it doesn’t have to be long. It can be a paragraph. It really doesn’t matter. You don’t want to write regularly. The more you do it, the faster and easier it gets anyway. The first several times, I’m not going to lie to you. It can be hard, especially if you don’t like writing.
This is what I always give my customers. This thing I call a 30-day challenge. I lay out; write this kind of e-mail Monday. Write this one on Tuesday. I do that for that very reason so they get used to it. By the end of it they see their sales going up and that will motivate them. Let’s face it, if you’re going … if your sales dramatically go up or double or something; that’s pretty good motivation to write an e-mail every day.
John: Absolutely. What I’ve been finding because I’ve been doing this lately for my stuff is that once you get into the swing of things you can do an e-mail in 10 minutes or 15 minutes. If you start with an idea, it’s really, really fast.
Ben: It really is. Everybody wants to make it … you don’t have to spell everything perfectly. I not saying you can butcher every word. It’s doesn’t have to be perfect. It should sound like you’re writing an e-mail to a family member or friend with something interesting they want to hear. It may not be perfectly formatted. It may not have perfect, whatever language you’re speaking, English. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It can just get it out there and commute it. It’s better to be a good communicator than a good writer when it comes to e-mail.
John: Ok, I know that you do many info product business stuff. Is this worse sending daily e-mails? Is that applicable to any business like software businesses, brick and mortar service type businesses? Is it for everyone?
Ben: I have yet to see a business where writing daily e-mails would not work. I will give you an example. There’s this guy I know, a very good guy I’ve known for a couple years. He wrote this article about e-mailing frequency; frequency of e-mail. It was a great article right up until the point where he said, seasonal businesses obviously don’t need to do this very often or frequently; the pool guy or whatever.
I wrote an e-mail about that; a rebuttal. I said no, he’s wrong about that. The pool guy can write e-mails during the winter when everybody’s not even using their pool. He could be making deals with other local businesses. Writing a community e-mail telling people about other things related to their homes or what other businesses are up too and things like that. Then when it comes time to hire a pool guy he’s the only one they’re going to hire. He could have his own little ad co-op if he wanted where he could charge other businesses money to advertise in his daily e-mail. Everybody could do this. I cannot think of one single instance where you couldn’t do this.
John: It seems like this is a pretty good place to talk about the terms of what sort of content do you sell them. You talk about in your products that it’s got to be entertaining. This pool guy can’t send an e-mail every day that’s just talking about a pool. He’s got to turn that; make it entertaining so that people will open that e-mail. Maybe it’s winter. Maybe they’re not buying a pool or swimming during the winter. If it’s entertaining then they’re going to enjoy that relationship between this guy. He might point out fun stuff. He might have joke one day. He’ll have a funny story another day. It’s all related back to pools. It’s not bad.
Ben: He could even be selling, pre-selling his services for the next year. Hey, I’m going to start a list now, a waiting list. I’m so booked up with people who want to hire me. I’m starting a waiting list early this year. He got start a sub list of people. Then, guess who he e-mails when the first season starts with a hard offer; that sub list. If nothing else he could be building a sub list all winter while talking about pool related stuff or home improvement related stuff. You could go so many different directions with that, it doesn’t really matter.
John: I like to think about when their on his list he has their attention. These people care about pools but they also care about having fun. If they have a pool they’re going to be having fun. They’re probably into fitness and health because they have a pool. There are a series of things this prospect is going to be interested in.
Ben: That’s true.
John: You can write content about that kind of stuff.
Ben: He could write an e-mail about how to hold your breath for 10 minutes. All this stuff, anything that comes to mind; you’re right. He could be talking about swimming; how to get stronger if you swim a certain way. He could go to town on that kind of stuff. Then he’s staying in their awareness and then when pool cleaning season comes they’re not even going to think of anyone else. He’s going to be the only choice to clean their pool. He will be backed up; he will be so backed up he would have to hire other people to do it. He would probably have to expand to other areas.
John: You talk a lot about a soft teaching and hard teaching. In the case of the pool guy or other hard businesses like brick and mortar businesses like that is he can talk about what makes the pools he makes so good. He can throw out the specific tiles that go into them or the concrete; the sort of water and chemicals that they use or a supplement person can talk about all the ingredients. No one, their customers and prospects aren’t going to go and make their own supplement in their kitchen.
Ben: Right, they’re not going to make their own fish oil.
John: Right, but for you, you have an info business so you’ve got to be careful not to give away what’s in the product while also providing values. This is a whole soft teaching, hard teaching thing. How do you do that?
Ben; First I also recommend even other businesses go with the soft teaching. People are getting bogged down with content these days. You know what I mean? You’ve got to make it …. My opinion is you focus more on having fun than on hard content. To answer your question, with an information thing, there’s so many ways to go about this. My general rule of thumb is except in very rare circumstances I never give away anything in the product. I can talk about anything as long as it’s not in my product.
You can talk about strategy but your product is probably tactical. You could talk strategy all day long. A guy can talk about, for example; I’m selling an e-mail newsletter about how to do e-mail. I can about, all day long about not worrying about e-mail deliverability and open rates. I did this recently. I wrote an e-mail about don’t obsess over your e-mail deliverability. That’s interesting information for someone because most people are; they’re oh my God. The truth is there’s not much you can do about it. There’s some things you can do, but that’s an e-mail; its soft teachings.
It’s what you would find in an article as opposed to a technical manual. A technical manual is going to give you all the details of how to do something, but an article like a magazine; they give you tips but they’re not hard life changing things. They’re not your best stuff. A lot of it is common sense. Some of it is inspirational. There’s a lot to be said for writing e-mails that are inspirational. I think everybody likes to read them. I like to read them. They inspire people to want to take action about whatever problem is you’re solving. That’s a great example of doing soft teaching; just inspire people. Tell inspiring stories about people who used your product or people who have had the product that you’re solving. That’s a great way to do it.
Talk about symptoms if you’re selling a health product. You can go to town talking about symptoms. Man, you’re going to have people glued to your e-mails if you do that. Somebody has hemorrhoids or something and you wrote a book about how to get rid of hemorrhoids. You can’t talk enough about that topic. They will read everything you say and they will buy it from you if you do it daily.
John: That’s really good. One thing I know you do is you sell in every single e-mail. You might be teaching, but you’re selling in every e-mail. How do you get away with that without being a blatant pitch guy, or hype guru, or all that kind of stuff?
Ben: You know what, that’s a good question. A lot of time I’ll get critique. People in my news letter; they send me e-mails for critique. This is especially for affiliate marketers. They don’t know any other way what to hype and come out guns blazing. You can do that once in a while and you should if you have a launch going on or a new product that’s fine. You’ve got to connect with people.
Here’s the way I look at it. If you pretend you’re writing to friend or family members who have the problem that your product solves. You’re not going to come out and say hey I got this new thing. No, you’re going to say hey, I heard that you have this problem. I know about this other guy who had this problem and he was telling me this, that and the other. I have something for that.
You’re connecting with them by having a conversation with them in the e-mail. You’re still being valuable. You’re still being interesting. You can still talk about potential solutions and that sort of thing. There are all kinds of ways to do this. You’re not being blatant. You’re going to sell. You’re going to put your link in there. You’re not doing anyone any favors by hiding your product if it can truly help them.
In fact, I’ve said this a lot. It is your moral and ethical obligation to tell people that your product at least exists every day if they have a problem that you can solve. That’s the way I look at it. If you really care about your market you’re going to want them to at least know about what you have. You don’t have to be obnoxious about it. You shouldn’t be obnoxious about it. You should at least let them know it’s there.
John: I think that’s a really good point because people get in a huff about this. They think content … content marketing is all the rage right now, especially online. Everyone is raving about it. If you’re not selling and you have a product that genuinely helps people and you don’t tell them about it, then if their problem persists in a weird kind of way you’re responsible for it.
Ben: Yes, if you have the cure for somebody, I know we’re not supposed to use the word cures here in America to describe things. If you have a solution that you know in your heart is going to help somebody, every day I know my newsletter can help. I know I’ve seen it; I completely believe in it. People who subscribe to it have told me it’s increased their income immeasurably. Some people are like it saved their fricking … from being able to pay the mortgage and stuff. How can I not tell everyone? I’m not saying they have to buy it. I’m saying here it is. It’s up to them.
I don’t have this …, I’m contrary in this, and I don’t do a lot of ass kissing. I don’t butter up; I don’t sit there and kiss the customer’s butt. I give them an opportunity to buy it. I don’t push what I have on them. That’s the thing; just because you’re putting the link in there every day doesn’t mean you’re pushing it. I don’t think you should be pushy. I think you should be helpful. I think you should be interesting. Then I think you should say, hey if you have this problem or you want this benefit check out this link I have. They can either go or don’t and you don’t care either way. It’s up to them.
John: The typical format that I’ve seen in your e-mails and I’ve seen a lot of other people do is you start off with; well actually not many people do it at all. You start off with, the opening is you have the hook which is the subject line and the first line or two. It’s like the Aida outline. Get their attention, make them interested with a short story that’s somehow relevant and that can sag into your product somehow. Then at the end all you’re doing is saying if you want to learn more check out the product.
Ben: Yes that’s basically what I do every day. You see it every day. Some days are more aggressive than others. That’s all part of being unpredictable and fun. They don’t know what they’re going to get from you tomorrow. They don’t know what John McIntyre is going to send them tomorrow. He doesn’t even know yet. He hasn’t started writing the e-mail. You keep it fresh and interesting. You might think man, you know what? I have a pretty good hook here. I just described that problem pretty good. I had this cool testimonial. I’m going to push this a little harder today.
Other days you might be you know I’m not really feeling it too much; it’s a nice, fun interesting e-mail. I’m soft to it. You do it every day.
John: It seems like the aggressive thing is the fact that there’s a link in every e-mail. What people need to understand is that it’s not about; you’re not going in there with your guns blazing ripping off benefits, benefits, benefits. It’s more having a bit of small talk or something with someone. Then you say, I’ve got this product over here, here’s the link. Go check it out if you’re interested.
Ben: That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. I am not … I’m big on having, if you really believe in what you have then you have to believe that you’re doing the world a favor by offering what you have. I don’t mean that in an arrogant way. I know that comes off kind of arrogant but it’s true. If you have the cure for cancer aren’t you going to be pretty confident about when …? You’re not out pushing it on anybody. You’re going to say here it is and they can take it or not.
I’m not equating what I sell to a cure for cancer. I’m just saying that’s the attitude and the posture to have.
John: Absolutely. We’re just coming up to time right now. Before we finish what are the top one to three big wins that someone listening to this could walk away and implement them and get some good results in their business.
Ben: First of all, start writing every day. This is the big thing. You can’t get around it. Just start doing it and don’t edit yourself, just write. Don’t worry if it’s perfect. Don’t worry what anyone’s going to think. It doesn’t matter because you can always come back tomorrow and do something different. That’s the beauty of e-mails; a very forgiving medium.
The other thing they can do is start putting a link to what they have to offer in every e-mail. Even if you have to do it passively, get over this fear of selling. Get over a fear of doing something by doing it. You will find that some people get mad but they were never your prospect in the first place. Let them go. You shouldn’t want them on your list anyway. You’re doing them a favor and they’re doing you a favor by doing that.
The third tip, a good third tip would be to have fun with it. If you’re not having fun writing it, they’re probably not going to have fun reading it. They’re going to get bored with it. You cannot bore people. This is the big thing. You make sure, if you’re not enjoying writing about a certain topic, throw that one out and write about something else. Trust me, people can sense it if you’re boring. People will not be bored in e-mail or any kind of advertising. Especially e-mail where they have 500 other e-mails coming at the same time.
John: Hell yes. This has been super valuable. I’m sure everyone has gotten tons of ideas from this. Before we sign off, tell people where they can find you and any of your products; that kind of thing.
Ben: The best way to find me would be go to bensettle.com. If you opt in and you don’t have too, you can just bypass that opt in and go to my 800 or 900 pages of content on there and 12 or 13 hours of audio content. If you opt in to the list I will send you a PDF version of the first issue of my e-mail player’s newsletter, which is an offline newsletter. I’ll send you the PDF and the first issue. You asked me for three ways, well there are 24 ways in that one issue to profit immediately. You could apply any one of these 24 things or any two or three of them in the next few days. If you have a web spot ready at lease you should see some good results.
John: Thank you. Thanks for coming on here. See you again soon.
Ben: All right. Thank you very much.
John: Hey everybody. Thanks for listening. If you want to discover more insider tips and secrets about driving sales with e-mail marketing sign up at daily e-mail tips from the Auto Responder Guy. Go to dropdeadcopy.com/podcast. Sign up, confirm your e-mail address and I’ll send you daily e-mails on how to improve your e-mail market and make more sales via e-mail. You’ll find out why open rates go up and the seven little words that underlies all effective marketing and much more.

Kyle: Information and content is great, but you’re only going to keep people interested in your content for a couple of minutes at most.

John: Hey podcast listener. You’re about to discover insider tips, tricks, and secrets for making more sales and converting more prospects into customers with email marketing. For more information about the email marketing podcast or the Autoresponder Guy, go to dropdeadcopy.com/podcast.

Hey everybody. It’s John McIntyre here, The Autoresponder Guy, and it’s time for episode two of the email marketing podcast where we talk about the top tips, tricks, and secrets for making more sales and growing your revenue with email marketing. It’s episode two, the second episode, and today I’ll be talking to Kyle Tully, a copywriter, consultant, and internet marketer, about the most important thing in email marketing. Here’s a hint: It’s not about writing emails. More about that in just a moment. To get the show notes for this episode of the email marketing podcast, go to dropdeadcopy.com/ep2.

I want to make you a deal. This is the second episode of the EMP, that’s the email marketing podcast, and of course I need some reviews. In exchange for a review, I’ll make you famous by reading out your review on next week’s episode. Here’s how it’s going to work: Step one, listen to this episode. Step two, go to dropdeadcopy.com/podcast and click on the review link. It will take you the EMP page in iTunes where you can leave a review and become famous. Simple, fun, and like I said you’re going to be famous. You’re going to be a rock star. Anyway, it’s time to get started. Let’s go talk to Kyle Tully.

It’s John McIntyre here, The Autoresponder Guy. I’m here with Kyle Tully, a copywriter, consultant, and internet marketer. Kyle is the creator of Consulting Tycoon, a product that teaches people how to start there own six figure internet marketing consulting business. They get flooded with clients and make money than most doctors. I have been on his list for awhile. I have purchased one of his products before, and he is doing some really great stuff. Kyle, how are you doing today?

Kyle: I’m really good, mate. Thanks for the intro. I love it.

John: No worries, man. Let’s start off as we always do and tell us a bit about who is Kyle Tully, and what does he do?

Kyle: Yeah, sure. I mean you kind of said it first. I’m best known as a copywriter and a consultant, and over the past couple of years I’ve been building up my Consulting Tycoon business basically teaching other people how I get my clients, how I structure the whole business, how I manage clients, and all that kind of stuff, and that’s really been my focus for the last couple of years just teaching other people how to do what it is I do, and email marketing has certainly been a really big part of that.

John: Fantastic. You do range of things, and we’ll get into that in a moment, but we were just talking before we hit record about how you believe that before you start sending emails half the battle happens before that. Let’s start there, and tell us a bit about how do you email marketing, and what’s the most important thing?

Kyle: Sure. I think one of the mistakes a lot of people make, and it especially goes from my niche being a consultant and marketing to regular business owners, the mistake people make is they’re only getting name and email addresses of people. As I said to you before, I kind of view it like buying real estate. You make your money when you buy not necessarily when you sell. With an email list, you make your money off the list when you’re building that list, the data you get from the list. I’m really big on capturing full leads. Name, email, address, phone number, Skype contact number, mailing address, all that kind of stuff, and then even deeper than that getting survey information and some much deeper sort of psychographic and demographic type of data out of that list, and I think that’s where a huge opportunity is, especially with a lot of the new software that’s available these days. There’s a ton of stuff we can do completely automated, and that’s really half the battle. Sending out automated emails is fantastic. Being a great email copywriter is a massive leg up, but the other half of it is kind of the technical and functional aspect of how you build the list and how you set that side of it up.

John: Do you find that when you ask for information your conversion rate goes down?

Kyle: Yeah, it does. Obviously, if you ask for a name, email address, son’s birth date, grandmother’s maiden name, all that kind of stuff, conversion rates will go down, and the flipside of that is that the value of that list goes up. the funny thing is, for example if you collect name and email address plus postal address, even if you have no plans of ever sending a letter to that person or a postcard or any kind of direct mail or using that data at all, the simple fact that they gave it to you will make them a lot more valuable to you over the course of a lifetime. I’ve seen that happen in at least three or four little businesses I’ve been involved.

The other part of that is doing a multistep process. Stage one might be just asking for name and email or sometimes just email, and then the thank you page for that will be a second survey form where they can enter postal address, and then the next form might some survey data like what’s the biggest challenge in your business or what’s you current revenue, those kind of questions. We build it out like that so that everyone’s going to enter their name and email address just like they would on regular forms. The people who are more interested and more qualified and want to find out more are going to give you their postal address and so on. It naturally starts to segment people based on how interested they are and really makes knowing who to follow up with first and who to spend the most time and effort on much, much clearer. Whereas if you’ve just name and email address, everyone’s in the same bucket. You’ve kind of just got to go with brut force and try and figure out who’s going to buy based on just sending as many emails of possible kind of thing.

John: You’re suggesting that people collect data like the postcodes and the address and those things even if they’re not going to use them?

Kyle: Yeah. I’ve seen it so many times where I’ve had the best intentions and I’ve meant to send direct mail in various business things, and we just never got around to it. however, when we look at the data a year later, the people who gave us their postal address have bought anywhere from two to 10 time more products than those who just gave name and email. My best guess is simply that they were more qualified. They were more interested. If they’re willing to give me their postal address, they probably trust me and like me a bit more than other people, believing me, and all that kind of stuff. It’s really valuable information to get out even if you have no plans to do anything fancy with it. Although, there is a ton of money in all that fancy stuff.

John: I know you work with small businesses and things like that. Is this type of strategy, do you it’s applicable to everyone across the board, or is it only for businesses that are selling hard goods and products or something like that.

Kyle: No. I think it certainly can be used for just about any type of business. It’s like everything where you’ve got to have an actual strategy in mind. You’ve got to sort of have a point to what you’re doing and everything. I can’t really think of business where you couldn’t utilize this type of strategy.

John: Tell me about what’s the best data to collect. There’s probably tons of different things you can do, but if you had to 80/20 it and pick the top few things, aside from name and email, what would they be and why?

Kyle: Great question. I think the first one has got to be direct mail, like postal address, simply because it allows you to send direct mail. It allows you to segment based on different areas and everything like that, and if you are doing direct mail and marketing that has a higher cost, you’ll quickly find out that certain postcodes and suburbs and even whole states just don’t buy anywhere near as much as other states, and so you can, for example, cut your costs very quickly just by not sending direct mail to certain states and postcodes that you’ve proven not to work. That’s definitely the first thing I would look at. After you’ve got name and email address, start to get postal addresses, and then from there, if you’re doing any kind of phone followup, obviously a phone number is really handy. If you are doing SMS marketing it gives you a lot of other avenues like that.

I said the next thing is going to unique for every business, and that’s the survey type of data, and that really comes down to figuring out what other criteria in my business? Who are my ideal clients? What do they have in common, and what questions can I ask of people to help identify who our ideal clients are?

I was just modeling someone else’s biz the other day, and they sell, basically, vending machines. It’s a vending machine business opportunity, and one of their survey questions on their survey form is what liquid assets do you have available to you, and the options go from everything from like $3,000 up to a million dollars or more. That’s obviously one of their big criteria is how much money you’ve got to invest, and obviously the people who say a million dollars are more are going to get routed to their best salespeople. They’re going to get the most attention. They’re probably going to get the most in terms of followup in terms of trying to get them as a client because they are going to be worth the most over the long haul. The key is to figure out what data would be most valuable for you to get from your prospects, and then go about actively trying to collect it.

John: How would go about finding that data? How do you figure that stuff out.

Kyle: I guess one way is, if you’ve got an existing business, is to look at your current ideal clients and figure out what do they have in common. For my consulting business, for example, I found almost every single one of my best clients were in the $2-10 million gross sales range. We found anything below that and they were just too messy. They didn’t have sales systems in place. They didn’t have sales teams. It was just too chaotic. Anything above that, and there were too many levels of management and bureaucracy and all that kind of stuff. $2-10 million gross revenue was one of my big criteria.

Whether they were spending money on marketing was another big criteria. How many employees? If they had about two to 10 employees seemed to be the sweet spot. They’re the things I figured out, and that’s part of what I’ve taught my Consulting Tycoons students as well as to look for things, and you can certainly ask those type of questions at various stages in your process.

John: That’s really good. You mentioned doing surveys before you ask them what the most painful problem in their business is. Do you a set of go-to questions that you use when you’re surveying prospects or customers about that type of thing?

Kyle: Yeah. My absolute favorite one is very similar to what you just said. It’s what’s the biggest challenge in your business right now? I’ve asked that question so many times in so many different contexts. You can ask if your selling weight loss, what’s your biggest challenge in losing weight right now. That type of a question, it gets you such good data because we’re in the business of solving problems. almost any business you’re in, your really in the business of solving people’s problems and the marketing of that, and so that question really gets to the heart of what it is that people are struggling with and gives you really great insights into how you can help them. That’s certainly my big go-to question.

John: What sort of answers do you get to that type of question? Give me some examples.

Kyle: Yeah, sure. It’s really funny. You’ll get answers everything from one word or two words, getting clients or productivity type of things, to like three hundred, four hundred word kind of mini essays about people’s failed business experience and how they invested $50,000 in the stock market and lost it all and have been email marketing for three years and haven’t made a cent. That’s paraphrased from one I got just last week. Obviously, the people who write the most in there, they’re generally the most qualified because they’ve got the biggest pain. They’re sharing it with you. They’re seeing you as an outlet and as someone who can potentially help them. You get a really big range of answers, and I find them all useful in one way or another, but some of them certainly highlight who the people with the bigger problems and pains really are.

John: Right. I have some amazing results doing that with email. Someone signs up to the list, and you probably just got this email because you just signed up, and it comes out, and it will ask you a couple of questions. I have done this in a bunch of different markets where it says what is your ideal transformation, and what is the biggest fear you have in relation to that? Then they talk about their goal they want to lose 50 pounds, and then they tell you why they feel they can’t because they’re afraid of it. They’re afraid of success, or vegetables or disgusting, or whatever the case is, and you’re absolutely right. Some people will give you these huge responses that show they’re really desperate for a solution, and then what happens is that there is so much info in these responses that you can go and create endless content to help them solve those problems.

Kyle: That’s exactly what I do. Every survey I get, whether I’m using that data directly or not, it always come back as email fodder, and I get this pretty much every single week. someone will respond, and their response is something along the lines of I can’t believe how much you’re talking directly to me, how closely everything you’re talking about matches my experience, and it’s because I’m just feeding back to the market what they’re telling me. They tell me their biggest problem is X, I write an email about how the biggest problem in the market is X, and they’re like, wow, how do you know this stuff kind of thing. It’s like, you guys told me what the problems are. I’m just repeating it.

John: Right. It’s amazing. I got that whole email thing from, I think, Clay Collins and then Andre Chaperon. They both do versions of it. After doing that, it made me realize that great copy is about understanding the customer. If you’re going to do a ton of research, you’re going to have great copy even if you’re not a copywriter. I’ve heard things where Ramit Sethi does 50-60 percent of his time on research, same thing with Eugene Schwartz, and I think this is what people really need to understand, that good emails and good company and good sales letters, it’s really just really good research and that’s it.

Kyle: Yeah, it’s funny you say that. I’m doing a persuasive writing program at the moment, and we’re into the third week, and we haven’t mentioned copywriting or any kind of tactics of even copywriting strategies. It’s all been gathering research. It’s been figuring out who our ideal clients are. It’s been going into forums and doing surveys and figuring out the language they use. It’s going into looking at our USP and the features and advantages and benefits and transformation our products and services provide because that is copywriting. I think there are a lot of great copywriting courses out there, but unless you’re planning to be like an A-player ninja copywriter, I think a lot of them do more harm than good because they break things down into so many different layers and categories and put so many different names on things that it’s a full-time job just to try and learn what copywriting is.

Seriously, it does people’s head in, and if you take more than one copywriting course, you’ll find that at least half the course contradicts the other one, and people have come to me and they’re like, “Man, I’ve tried to learn copywriting for the past three years, and I just can’t do it.” The real secret, like you said, is just doing that research and knowing your prospects, knowing them better than they know themselves, and you can do that because when you ask 10 people or 100 people what’s your biggest problem, why haven’t you solved it right now, and what would your ideal solution look like, and you can compile them into a customer avatar of the average of all that stuff. you’re now communicating to people 80% to exactly what their current situation is and the 20% that they couldn’t quite articulate for themselves, and that’s what copywriting is, and Andre, I think, has said this himself that he hasn’t taken a single copywriting course. yet, he is one of the best email copywriters I’ve seen out there, and it’s simply because he knows, and I’ve mostly seen he’s working the internet marketing niche, and he knows that market so well because he’s surveyed them, and he’s been in the market, and he was one of them kind of thing. That’s all copywriting is, is being able to empathize with people and talk on their level. That’s 80% or 90% of it right there.

John: Right. Right, and it’s funny when people finally understand it, it’s like oh that’s really simple. All I got to do is go out and do some surveys, and then I’m going to have a good email or a good sales letter.

Kyle: Yeah, and that’s why we’ve got all these copywriting formulas and structures and everything, and a lot of the time they’re more confusing than helpful, but once you’ve got all these surveys done and you’ve literally copied and pasted people’s pains and frustrations from an Amazon review or from a blog or from a forum or whatever and you look through all these stuff and then start to hang it off one of these AIDA type formulas, it all starts to make sense because you’re not trying to just make up words. You’re not trying to be a copywriter and use a technique or use a tactic or anything. You’re just repeating to the market what they said they’re problems, what would get their attention, and what they would be interested in. I get frustrated with people because it should be so easy, and everyone’s trying to complicate it to be something that it really isn’t.

John: Yeah, totally. After they’re signed up, you’ve done the survey, you’ve collected the address and all that things, what do you start sending them via email? What’s your advice there?

Kyle: The first thing to be would actually send emails. It sounds silly, but man, when I first got my Aweber account, it was probably six months before I even started building a list and probably another six months before I started mailing that list. I’ve heard of people who have been paying $300 a month for software and still haven’t sent a single email to their list. The very first thing is just start sending anything. It almost doesn’t matter what it is. You’re probably not going to send out great stuff right from the start because it takes practice to get good. Just start sending anything. That would be my very first piece of advice.

The second piece of advice is start repeating back to the market what you’ve learned from your research like we’ve just been talking about. My favorite strategy at the moment is basically just telling my story, either talking about stuff that happened to me in terms of how I got to where I am now or stuff that happened to me today and just drawing analogies and metaphors about my everyday life and turning that into a business lesson and having the email linked to my sales letter, and that works like crazy. It’s just so powerful; it’s not funny.

John: It’s funny you mentioned that. That’s what Ben Settle does. That’s what another guy, John McCulloch does and Jay white, all of them. It’s all about their stories. You pick up anything, anything that happened today, and then if you’re creative enough, you can kind of turn it into like a parable or like Aesop’s Fables, like a litter story that ties into something, and then it’s here’s the reason you should by my product, and it sounds simple, but it’s so easy and so powerful.

Kyle: That’s it. I’ve been talking about this a lot in my course at the moment, the fact that information and content is great, but you’re only going to keep people interested in your content a couple of minutes at most in most cases. What people are drawn to are other people. We’ve been passing on information via stories for 100s, if not 1,000s, of years, and it is literally hardwired into us to pay attention when people tell a story to bond with people when they story. It flies under the sales radar a lot of the time. Even when people kind of know you’re selling in your emails, they give you a lot of leeway when you’re telling a story because it’s interesting and it’s fascinating, and people generally aren’t going to buy from you unless they kind of like you, unless they trust you, and stories let you do that. I did this early on. I tried to teach in my emails, and I gave great content, and I couldn’t sell a single thing by doing that because the wrong people were interested. The buyers got bored because they’d heard all the content before. The time sucking vampires who just wanted to get every piece of information out of your brain loved it, but they just wouldn’t buy a thing, and the moment I started switching over to a more story-based approach, like Ben does, like Matt Furey does, sales absolute skyrocketed. The better buyers are much more interested, and the freebee seekers get off your list a lot quicker, which is fantastic.

John: Reminds me of content marketing is all the rage lately with everybody just saying content and put out great blog posts and great emails and teach and teach and teach. I think Ben says it really well when he says that teachers in our society, none of them are rich.

Kyle: Exactly.

John: I think that says it all. It’s like teachers, they teach, but they don’t sell, and if you want to be rich, you have to learn how to sell, and that’s where all this story stuff comes in.

Kyle: Yeah. You can get content any way. You go onto Google you type your problem. You type what you’re looking for. You can find 1,000 people who are teaching it. teaching is something, unless you’ve got something just so amazing that no one else has it or it’s such a breakthrough idea that it kind of differentiates, unless you have that, you’re just sounding like anyone else. If you’re talking about email marketing, and you’re talking about autoresponders and what the steps are, that’s really a tough sell, but if you wrap that in a story, that’s going to connect you with people. Even if they don’t really care about the actual technical thing of what you’re talking about, the fact that you wrapped it in a story will keep them interested and, most importantly, get them opening your next email as well because that’s also the battle. It’s not just about getting one email open and read. It’s about keeping people engaged and interested and reading your emails and buying from them consistently.

John: Absolutely right. There is one last thing I want to ask, and we’ll have to wrap it up in a minute and that is like when I send things, I’m copywriter too, so when I write an email, there are times when I don’t know what to write, basically writer’s block, and I’m sitting there, and I’m staring at the cursor, and I write a sentence. Then, I delete it. Then, I write another one, and I delete it, and it’s really, really hard going, and I think a lot of people have this problem. They’re all excited about these ideas. They go and take a course like Autoresponder Madness or something like that, and then they sit down, and they can’t execute. How do you help your consultants that you train? How do help them get back those roadblocks, writer’s block?

Kyle: There are two kind of level to my answer. The first one is a lot of that sort of writer’s block and not knowing what to write, in my experience, a lot of it comes down to the fact that you haven’t done enough research. You haven’t done the research to the point where you know the market better than they do. You’ve got ideas spilling out of your head. It’s not about you don’t know what to write, it’s about choosing which thing to write. That’s often the biggest thing is that if you haven’t done the research, you’re not going to know what to write, and you’re going to stare at the blank page, and a lot of that also comes with practice, writing everyday, making writing a habit. Like I said before, you’re not going to write a great email the very first time you sit down to write one. Unless you’re naturally gifted and you just haven’t figured it out yet, it’s not going to happen. Most people, it takes practice. I look back at emails I used to write, and I’m embarrassed. I look back at emails I wrote a month ago, and I’m like, man, I can’t believe I sent that, but it probably got me a bunch of sales, and it worked. That’s the first part of my answer.

The second part is there’s nothing wrong with swiping. Don’t go and steal someone else’s exact email, but go and look what 10 other people are doing and get an idea of the structure they’ve used, and take that same structure, but just use your own story, and use your own introduction, but be very strict in terms of following the structure. I’ve swiped sales letters and emails and lots of other things from people and showed it to the copywriter who I swiped, and they haven’t picked that I swiped their stuff because I only swiped the structure. If you kind of break a sales letter or an email down, there are only so many effective structures out there, and so once you have changed all the actual words, there’s not too much to actually show that you swiped any one particular piece. I try to teach that to my students. I teach them how to swipe, and people still get caught up on trying to be too creative and trying to do everything themselves, and that will come in time once you’ve gotten to a point where you’ve been writing emails for awhile, you’ll get to the point where you can just sit down and write an email, and you’ll have this structure sort of naturally come out. You’ll kind of know what to say. You’ll know how the flow goes. Frankly, I just feel like I’m getting into that point in the last couple of months. At the start, there is nothing wrong with swiping a structure and swiping the template of what someone else has done, and that will give you a massive leg up.

John: That’s great advice. Fantastic, Kyle. Thank you. Thanks for coming on the show, on the Email Marketing Podcast. Before we go, give yourself a plug and tell everyone where they can find you and where they can buy your stuff.

Kyle: Check out consultingtycoon.com. You can see I write a daily email there, my Daily Secrets Club. I do a weekly video sort of podcasty-type thing as well, and you can check out all the different products and services I’ve got on there, but get on my list of emails. You’ll learn a lot from the meeting if you don’t decide to buy anything.

John: Fantastic. I’ll have links to your site down in the show notes there. Thanks again.

Kyle: My pleasure, mate. Thanks for having. Me.

John: Hey everybody. Thanks for listening. If you want to discover more insider tips, tricks, and secrets about driving sales in email marketing, sign up for daily email tips from The Autoresponder Guy. Go to dropdeadcopy.com/podcast. Sign up, confirm your email address, and I’ll send you daily emails on how to improve your email marketing and make more sales via email. You’ll find out why open rates don’t matter and the seven letter word that underlies all effective marketing and much more.

John: It’s like second base on the first e-mail and work your way up to the crescendo.
Dane: Yes.
John: Hey, podcast listener. You’re about to discover insider tips, tricks, and secrets to making more sales and converting more prospects into customers with e-mail marketing. For more information about the e-mail marketing podcast, go to dropdeadcopy.com/podcast. Hey, everybody, it’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy, and it’s time for the first e-mail marketing podcast where we talk about the top tips, tricks, and secrets for making more sales and growing your revenue with e-mail marketing. It’s episode one, the first episode, and today we’ll be talking to Dane Maxwell, the creator of Deepfoundation.IO about how he used e-mail marketing to triple his business. To get the show notes for this episode of the e-mail marketing podcast, go to dropdeadcopy.com/ep1; but first, I want to make you a deal. This is the first episode, like I said, and I new reviews. Now in exchange for a review, I’ll make you famous by reading out your review on next week’s episode, okay?
Step one, listen to the episode. Step two, go to dropdeadcopy.com/podcast. Click on the review link. It will take you to the e-mail marketing podcast page and I-tunes where you can leave a review. Simple fun, and you’ll be famous and read it out in a sexy enthusiastic voice, okay? Anyway, now it’s time to get started. Let’s talk to Dane Maxwell. It’s John McIntyre here, the auto respondent guy. I’m here with Dane Maxwell, the creator of the Foundation.IO, a company that helps entrepreneurs start successful software companies by thoroughly understanding what the marketplace wants and marketplace problems. Dane, how are you doing today, man?
Dane: Good, John.
John: Good to have you here.
Dane: Thank you.
John: Real quick, tell us a bit about who you are. Who is Dane Maxwell?
Dane: Small town guy from Iowa. Actually, my town’s a half a million people, and it doesn’t really feel like a small town. I was born and raised in Iowa and scammed for 12 grand about 60 days out of college. I was flipping web sites back in the day, and the fourth web site I flipped, I made 12 grand on, or the third one I made 12 grand altogether, and I spent every dollar on a fourth web site for 12 grand, and I got totally fucked on it. That’s the exact word I felt. I had like $123.00 to my name, and I couldn’t get hired anywhere. I tried getting jobs at Principle and tried getting jobs at … Principle’s a big financial company here. No one wanted to hire me. Thank God they didn’t because I always kind of wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I was forced into a situation where I had my back against the wall. I was in my parent’s basement, and I started a software company without any idea of what to build, with a $123.00 to my name, and without any idea how to code.
Long story short, I built a recruiting platform for a real estate industry, and I had the brokers pay for the development of that software so that they could get that software free for life, and then I just turned around and sold it to all the brokers and made a nice amount of money. I hired a developer, and I didn’t even come up with the idea. I just asked the brokers, what are you struggling with? What do you need? They were like, wow! We’d really like to have recruiting web sites. I said, cool. We’ll do that. Can you pay for the development? Yes. That simple framework is what is driving the entire success of the foundation and six or seven other products I’ve built.
What I’m kind of excited about is seeing how the foundation could be applied to businesses that aren’t necessarily software too, but that’s who I am and what’s going on.
John: Okay, so the foundation is a group that teaches basically people how to start software companies, and now it sounds like you’re about to start teaching people just how do you apply the same principles to creating any sort of business.
Dane: Yes. We’re really passionate about … we want to create a million new entrepreneurs with that first customer, their first paying customer in the next five years, and we’re really interested in that, but what’s more important is the personal transformation that occurs inside someone when that happens. There’s a number of limiting beliefs, a number of doubting thoughts, a number of emotions that are spinning in a would be or starting entrepreneur. Most entrepreneurs think they need an idea so they just wait for the idea to get started, then they never do, and they’re 50 and they haven’t pursued their dreams. We really specialize in helping entrepreneurs start from nothing.
John: Okay. Fantastic. I know you use e-mail marketing in the foundation, and I know you use it a lot in some of your other businesses because we’ve talked about this stuff before. Tell us, where does e-mail marketing fit into the picture at the foundation?
Dane: It fits into the picture in all my businesses. It’s like the center of the business.
John: Okay. I think you mentioned this before with e-mail marketing being one of the highest leverage points everywhere, that it’s … as far as investment goes, you get the highest return on your investment when you focus on e-mail marketing.
Dane: Easily.
John: Okay. Why is that, do you think, and what are you doing to get such a high return from e-mail marketing?
Dane: Why is it? Why do you think it is?
John: I think e-mail allows you to get a much more intimate connection with people, and I think as the world gets busier and we’re just covered by an onslaught of content, there’s so much noise around that we need better ways of filtering it out; and for a lot of people, they just stop consuming a lot of stuff, and the e-mail inbox becomes kind of a sacred zone. If you can get into their inbox, you’re in the sacred zone, and you’re going to get their attention.
Dane: That’s absolutely true. It’s interesting. The average business owner is like, I’ve got to figure out how to get my name out there. I’ve got to get the name out there. I’ve got to get the word out about my business. The direct response marketer, they don’t really think like that. They’re not like, I’ve got to get my name out there. The direct response marketer is like, I’ve got to get people’s names into me. That’s one of the things we teach in the foundation. You don’t get your name out there. The first thing that people do in business is, all right. I’ve got my business set up. I’ve got to get my name out there. No. You focus on getting people’s names into you. How that looks practically speaking if you’re a realtor; they’re like, oh, I’m going to get billboards, and I’m going to get an ad in the newspaper. All those things would help, but the highest leverage is getting people’s names into you. Let’s just say as a realtor you become the official realtor for dog lovers. You specialize in dogs in fenced in backyards in friendly dog neighborhoods and things like that, so you’re branding that everywhere, and then you go … so you do have some name out there stuff, but you go to dog salons, doggie daycares, and you start creating a relationship with them, and you ask if you could get a list of their customers, then do a promotion. Now you’ve got all these customers from all these doggie places doing a promotion for a realtor, and you’ve got all these names in your database.
Even marketing is really that same thing. You’ve just got these names that you’re marketing to. You focus on getting people’s names into you, and that also applies to web sites. I love trying to figure out how to capture e-mail addresses off web sites, especially in software as a service. We had the old paperless … I’ll go back to the foundation in a second, but software as a service capturing e-mail addresses is really fun because we like to say, enter your e-mail address in the box, and we’ll send you a pricing sheet. The person enters the e-mail address, and we send them a double confirm opt in e-mail, and the double confirm opt in e-mail when they click on that, the thank you page is the pricing page. Now we have a double confirmed opt in lead looking at our pricing, and we just follow up until they become a paying customer.
John: Do you find that causes like instead of having the pricing on the front end, do you find that lowers your conversion rate or increases it?
Dane: I think it depends on the market. For us, definitely increased because we get … we don’t have … my CEO’s not at … the CEO of that company, that runs without me now, which is beautiful, but the CEO of that company is not as aggressive as me, so he doesn’t have the e-mail capture there anymore because we have a registration so you can register for the product, and he wants to drive registration as opposed to pricing requests. I would prefer both, but I’ll let him run it the way he wants. It’s okay. He’s doing very well with it. Back when we had it, we’d get 10 to 15 pricing requests a day as opposed to 15 people that want to see price and then we’d follow up with them again. Yes, when people are looking for transaction management software, they’re looking at five different options at once, so if I can capture their e-mail address and look at … and get pricing, and then I start talking about the competition and other options; you’re probably looking at other options and this and this, so let me tell you why this is different. They’re like, oh crap, I didn’t consider this. It’s just a really powerful way to … I love capturing e-mails.
The other thing that we did is, you know we have the links up top on the Home, the tour page, the about page, and everything else. I had had an e-mail capture there above the full … I had a video on the left and an opt in on the right. The opt in on the right said, take a private guided tour; enter your e-mail address. When they enter their e-mail address, it just forwards them to the tour page. The tour link is right up top anyway, and I had a 10% opt in right there.
John: That’s awesome. Once they get the pricing … once they sign up and they double confirm their e-mail and they’re on the pricing page, what are you sending them after that to cause them to buy? How do you come up with these ideas? What’s working for you?
Dane: Lots of fun stuff, man. This is exciting stuff. I like sending a one or two line e-mail that’s like, hey, I saw your request at pricing. How are you currently managing your transactions? Then they might reply and be like … I think it’s really important to get a reply on the first e-mail. I think it improves your sender score or something like that. The first e-mail … the goal of the e-mails for me is to get replies more so than clicks because every time … if you send out an e-mail and you get a bunch of replies, and that’s a communication; it’s a conversation in the e-mail, so the e-mail services out there are like, oh, yeah, e-mail is a back and forth dialogue. It’s not a one way broadcast, so when you get these replies, I think it improves something; so the first e-mail, we always try and get a reply. Actually, we could probably do a better job at the foundation, but we do have this whole list of like, hey, so you registered at the foundation. Tell us what’s your one thing you’re working on? What’s one thing you want in your life, and what do you think is stopping you? We get lots of cool replies from that.
The Paperless Pipeline product, paperlesspipeline.com when they request pricing back in the day when I was running it, it would be like, how do you currently manage your transactions? They would be like, oh, we’re using this competitor product, or we currently haven’t used anything. Now that I know those two things, I can sell them a whole heck of a lot easier.
John: I think it’s a really interesting point there. It sounds like you’re taking the replies. You’re asking a question first of all to elicit these underlying problems and pain points, and then you’re taking what they say and using it to build out the copy and the message and the marketing of the business. Then what happens is you’re resonating with the target market far more than any of your competitors can because they’re probably not sending these e-mails and asking the questions.
Dane: Yes. I remember getting into e-mail marketing and wondering what in the world do I send in e-mail? That’s a really big block for a lot of people. What e-mails can I send? You can send a three, four line e-mail that’s just a question that you want them to answer. It doesn’t have to be long value add content. I send testimonials, like sending one … if you have a product … if you have a list of people that haven’t purchased, take one testimonial that you have that’s good, and blast it out to the list with an offer to purchase, and you’ll get sales, like that’s amazing. If people saw the Paperless Pipeline list and they haven’t bought yet, every week, they get a testimonial from some raving customer. People will read testimonials in e-mail a lot differently than they read testimonials on a web site.
John: I was reading through your copywriting check list today. I mean, there was some e-mail stuff, and you say that. Why do you think that’s the case that it works better in e-mail and not on a sales letter?
Dane: I had this broker e-mail … okay. The biggest testimonial on the whole page back in the day was from Rob Campbell, and I had a broker e-mail Rob Campbell and ask him, hey, are you really happy with the product? Tell me, are you happy with the product? The testimonial on the side is like he’s thrilled with the product, like the parade the products for Rob Campbell because I asked him what his pain point was, like hey, Rob, what do you need? He was like, I really need this software; so I built it for him. This is now … this business, I got an offer for like three million dollars to sell it, this year or last year, and I declined it. This whole business was started from nothing by just asking the customer. That’s what we teach in the foundation, which is mind blowing fun to do. This guy’s on the home page, and he’s gotten a testimonial on a broker; Google searches his name, finds his e-mail address, e-mails him, and he says, hey Rob, how are you feeling about Paperless Pipeline? He copy/pasted the testimonial from the web site back in the e-mail. The guy was like, oh cool, so you meant everything you said. He was like, yeah, of course I did. I don’t know what it is, but people … I think they get to a testimonial on a web site and oh, this is where they’re going to try to sell me, but in the e-mail, their guard’s down, so it’s like that intimate sacred space. That’s probably what it is. People’s guard’s down in e-mail.
John: Yes. Totally. I totally agree. You reminded me there’s that, I think it’s an e-mail, from Dean Jackson on Marketing Monday; the nine word e-mail. I think it’s like a question where you say are you still looking for a real estate broker in California? That’s what you say. There’s no hey. There’s no signing off or anything like that. That’s all that’s in the e-mail, and the amount of people that reply to e-mails like that is astonishing.
Dane: That’s awesome. I love Dean Jackson.
John: What about the prospecting e-mail that you guys do with the foundation because I know they come in, and they’re learning a bit about how to isolate problems in the marketplace. How do you … what are you teaching people about? How do they get responses when they’re contacting business owners to search out their problems?
Dane: Oh, we do our cold e-mail blasts to different business owners.
John: That sounds so spammy, but it’s not, is it?
Dane: No because we do it one at a time. You send … you look up a person’s e-mail address. You go to their web site and go, hey, I saw your web site; I saw this. It’s a one off e-mail. If you send 100 e-mails, you should get about 20 to maybe 50 that open it; could really fine tune this down, and the e-mail subject line is, strange question, question mark, and it really peaks interest. Then the e-mail’s like, in a nutshell, what’s the most painful problem you have in your business? Maybe I can find it. It’s funny, the e-mails are getting pretty popular, so I’m getting people e-mailing me.
John: With the same thing?
Dane: Yes. They’ll e-mail me, let me just … Amir Khella is the creator of Keynotopia, and he sent it out. He got the strange question. He sent it out, and he got 2000 replies. Okay, so strange question. Hi Dane, this is Amir from Keynotopia. I hope you’re having an awesome week. I’m currently doing some research and would love to ask you a quick question. What are the biggest challenges you face on a day to day basis? Your challenges don’t have to be related to prototyping or design. As long as they are pain points or frustrations that you deal with every day, I’d love to learn them even if it’s only one or two sentences. Thanks. Amir. P.S. I’m happy to share my findings and insights with you once I am done with this research.
John: He sent that to you?
Dane: Yes.
John: Is he in the foundation?
Dane: No, but he teaches inside the foundation. He teaches user interface inside the foundation, so we have the best UI guy in the world. We’re going to Vegas here in … today actually, we fly out. We’re celebrating all the successful students of the foundation. There’s 35 to 40 people that are going to be there in Vegas that we’re going to be all celebrating together their success in the foundation. It’s the end of the program, and Amir’s coming. We hired Amir to design the user interface for the next generation of the foundation.
John: Wow! You’ve got 35 people. I think last time … how many did you have last time compared to this time?
Dane: Five or less; five successful people at the end of it.
John: How are they doing now? I’m curious.
Dane: The ones from the very first year?
John: Yes.
Dane: The first year, we had 88 total people sign up. Thirty-three people left at the end, and I think three really legitimate software companies coming out of that. The other 27 people decided they didn’t want to do software, so they own e-commerce stores or they travel around the world and do freelance SEO work with the mindset stuff they learned in the foundation, but the other 27 people, I didn’t get a single refund because that customer, they were so happy. Some people launched interview series businesses. It’s weird. Once your mind’s unlocked, that kind of software’s pretty cool, but actually, I think I want to do this thing over here. I’d say we had three people out of 88, which is 4% or 3%. This year, it’s more like double and triple that, somewhere between 10 and 15% success rate because we’re getting better at teaching. We’re getting a lot better at teaching. We’re the best. No one can … no one’s better than us at teaching this stuff because we dive into the deep inner game of limiting belief work, the mindset stuff, the chatter that goes on inside your head; we help clear that out of the way so you can actually move forward uninhibited. I’d say our success rate is 10 to 15% this time, and I plan on our success rate being 20 to 30% next time because the interactive learning environment that we’re going to be building for this next foundation is going to be like nothing information marketing has ever seen.
John: I love it, man. It’s so freaking awesome.
Dane: What makes you say that?
John: I just … I’ve been following you … I followed you through the last one, and it’s just interesting to watch how you guys execute, how you pull it off, man. It’s inspiring.
Dane: It’s exhausting.
John: (Laughs) I’m sure it is, man. I’m sure it is.
Dane: I wouldn’t change it for the world.
John: All right, man. Tell me about the common mistakes that people make in the foundation when it comes to e-mail.
Dane: Not following up on their e-mails, Not being consistent and not following up and then not being clear and to the point. If you use Dean Jackson’s e-mail, are you looking for a real estate broker in XYZ city, that’s really what the agents want to know, but if you give agents access to their e-mail; let’s just say, okay, agents, you’re going to send an e-mail to your list, they’re going to … 100 agents, 97 or 98, probably 99, maybe even 100 because agents are awful at business at marketing. They aren’t any more awful than the average business owner. I would say 90% of entrepreneurs, that’s if we called a realtor an entrepreneur, don’t really know what they’re doing. It’s not their fault. They’re just misinformed. I’d say to those agents if they had a list of 2000 people and they’re supposed to send an e-mail to their list, the women are going to send cute recipes, and they’ll be like, oh by the way, think of me if you still need any real estate services, or an update on how many homes they’ve sold, or none of the things which is what they really want to know. They want to know if people want to buy or sell a home, so just e-mail that one question. A lot of times when the students are hey, Dane, I’m not getting a good response rate on my e-mail, I look at it, and it’s just you can feel the nervousness in the e-mail that they’ve written. One of the things we do is we send a lot of LinkedIn messages, and that works really well. What they do is they lose sight of what it is they want. I’d say the goal of the first e-mail is not to get what you want. It’s to get a reply. When I’m advising people, I’m like, well, get this reply. Wait, but I actually want this thing over here, which is like a phone call. Get them to reply back and forth first and then ask for a phone call because it’s really weird. Does that make sense?
John: Yes, man. It’s like a sequential thing. You get them to jump through one hoop, and then you get them to jump through the next hoop rather than going for the big hoop the first time.
Dane: Yes. I sold a real estate broker … I blast out an e-mail about a product, and he replies back, I love this product. It was like the broker round table product, which is just a monthly interview series of brokers, and I was like, oh cool. I replied to him, hey, have you seen … oh, no. I said, hey, have you seen Paperless Pipeline? How are you managing your transactions? The one line e-mail, and he’s like, oh yeah, I’ve seen it, but we use Relay. I replied back to him, well, are you happy with Relay? He’s like, not really. That’s what he sends back. I say, well, what are you unhappy about? He’s like, well, I don’t like the broker review of files, and I don’t like how tedious it is to upload files into the system. I shot a video of a minute and a half, and I said, hey Ryan, check out this. Look how easy it is to review files here. Look how easy it is to upload files, and I sent him that. I said, hey, check this video out. I made it just for you. He watches it, and he’s like, whoa. What about security? I sent him a link about security. He said, what about pricing? I sent him a link about pricing. That took me … that conversation took less than ten minutes, and it was back and forth five, six, seven, eight e-mails, and I could have never included that all in one e-mail to sell him that.
John: You did it one by one, didn’t you? This wasn’t an automated follow up.
Dane: No. This guy wasn’t automated follow up at all, but he became an awesome, awesome customer, and you can do these things on a much bigger, much bigger scale like we do as well. I’m not talking about just … don’t think about like, oh God, I can’t do that one on one. First off, if you’re a starting entrepreneur and you’re starting off, this is really inspiring and empowering, so you can just send e-mails, but if you have a bigger list, like our list is now 15 to 16 or 17,000, and we do these kinds of interactions all the time. We’ll get 500 to 1000 replies, and we’ll just look at a few of them and see if we’re on the right track with what we were thinking or whatever and move on. I say consider your e-mail. What is it that you want? Write the whole e-mail out that you want, and then the last line of the e-mail should typically be at the top.
John: What do you mean the last line of the e-mail? Like whatever question you would ask at the end for the setup, that’s the first thing you say?
Dane: Typically, people get to the point at the end of their e-mails. It’s actually the same in just human conversation. People talk for five minutes. At the end, they make their point, and all they really needed to say was they just needed to say the thing at the end. Were you going to say something?
John: No.
Dane: Okay. What happens in e-mail is we have people in the foundation; they write their e-mail, and they ask me to critique it. Typically, what I do is I take the last few lines and put it up at the top because it’s like, hey, I’m doing this research project. I’m XYZ. I’ve got these credentials, dah, dah, dah, dah. By the way, would you be open to a phone call some time? Take that question; hey, would you be open to a phone call some time? Below that, I’m working on a research project. I have these credentials, dah, dah, dah, dah; but you get to the point right at the top of the e-mail. Write the end however you want to write it, and then just reverse it. That works really well.
John: Right. That reminds me of advice; I think it’s from Elements of Style from that old kind of how to write book. The main point is write less; basically, whatever you’re writing, cut it in half. Say the same thing just with less words, so brevity. I think that’s so important in e-mail, like we were talking before, there’s so much information and just shit flying everywhere right now that people appreciate when you get to the point a lot faster than the average person.
Dane: I would say my favorite e-mail responder is Terry Marshall; opt in for Terry Marshall.
John: I’ll check that out. All right, man. I think we’re right on 20 minutes or maybe just a couple minutes over now, so it’s time to wrap it up. Thanks for coming on, man. Before we go, give yourself a plug. Where can people find you? Then we’ll say goodbye.
Dane: Thefoundation.com.
John: Dot com or is it IO?
Dane: We just bought the dot com.
John: Okay. Nice. Sweet.
Dane: Yes. Our next foundation class is coming up October. We hired Amir. He’s 20 grand. We’re doing a deep dive with him for three days to talk about all the places that members got stuck last year. We found members had a lot of trouble selling, so we did a lot of limiting belief and reversal work there. We’re bringing Amir on to design a user interface to really just kind of meet a customer where they’re at emotionally when it comes to selling so they can be best supported through that and know how to do it without all the angst and anxiety they typically experience. My favorite part about the foundation is it’s like an ethically legit business opportunity. It’s really awesome. It’s kind of spiritually based in that you’re going to be doing deep internal work on the internal game of entrepreneurship. We do a case study there on Sam Ovens, a guy from New Zealand who built a company out of a garage, starting from nothing. He had nothing. Now he’s got a very successful business called Snapinspect.com. You’ll learn about that case study … he was interviewed on Mixergy, and he became one of the top watched Mixergy top commented interviews of all time because the foundation stuff was just so inspiring, so if you want to listen to that case study or you just want to see a little bit more about … get a vibe for about you feel about the foundation, just go to thefoundation.com
John: Awesome. I’ll have links to that down in the show notes for this episode, so yes, cool, man. Thanks for coming on.
Dane: Yes. Thanks, John. Hopefully, you can make the e-mail marketing space a much more fun space to be in because I would compare it to hot chicks get really tired of all these douchey guys hitting on them all the time. I think a lot of people are really tired of douchey bad e-mails.
John: It’s kind of like everyone’s trying to sleep with their optins on the first date, man.
Dane: Yes. Don’t go for what you want on the first e-mail. Go for that later.
John: Just go for like second base on the first e-mail, and work your way up to the crescendo.
Dane: Yes.
John: (Laughs) All right, man. Thanks again, and we’ll talk soon.
Dane: Yes. See you.
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