Episode #148 – Terry Dean On The Freelance Copywriter’s Best “Client-Finding” Friend

David Allan: Hey, everybody. We’re back with another episode and today we have an internet marketer from way back. Somebody I first heard about through Ben Settle and Terry Dean from Florida. How are you.

Terry Dean: I am doing excellent today.

David Allan: Awesome. This is a real privilege actually because I have read a lot of stuff I’ve gone through a few of your courses. And I you know like I said – I came through it – Ben Settle was the first person I heard talking about you and I got into this stuff late as opposed to the rest of you. But. So, bring us up to speed a little bit. I know you started in like the mid 90s or something that’s going to be give us the quick superhero origin story.

Terry Dean: The quickie version as I started back in 1996 I was delivering pizzas for Little Caesars for eight bucks an hour. Heard about the Internet wasn’t a whole lot going on in 96. I heard about it. I said you know what. This is something I think I can do when I bought my first PC ever taught myself to use it. Got online experiment with things like CompuServe and basically within the first few months I got to earning a full time living online which of course I was delivering pizzas for a living so when I say a full time income I don’t think I was earning a doctor the level income I was beating the pizza delivery income in a few months and have discovered one of my biggest secrets was about six months and I discovered just how closely related my income was to my e mail list as my e-mail list grew so did my income they went side by side. So we’re now talking 21 years ago and ever since that day my e-mail list has continued to be the driver of the majority of my profits. Since then I’ve helped thousands of clients and I’ve actually worked with hundreds of people directly one on one in all different types of markets. So that gives me a real broad base experience it’s kind of funny. I really enjoy the one on one work with clients because that means I’m not just in the Internet business field. I get to be in the tennis field in the golf field and selling to chiropractors and all these different markets that I’m helping clients and it gives me a lot of feedback. It gives me a lot of stats across all different markets seeing what’s really working online what’s not working on line.

David Allan: That is awesome. That was a great superhero origin story of the pizza delivery guy. And today we’re going to talk a bit about email marketing and then we’re going to segue into a little bit about continuity products and for you know the majority of our audience being made up of people who are already doing copywriting and who want to jump into copywriting or that kind of thing. Freelancers. Maybe we’ll touch on a few things that you used find clients for your marketing strategies. So let’s start with the email thing because I’m most familiar with the idea of a product called autoresponder alchemy. Maybe it will just jump right into the deep end of the ocean. E-mail still remains the most profitable aspect of – Online Marketing.

Terry Dean: And I would especially say for the for the audience’s listening to that as being copywriters and those who are attracting clients their email list is your That’s basically your little your ocean for bringing in clients – comes from your email list.

David Allan:Right. So if people are getting started or haven’t built up a list is sort of the first few things they should be doing that maybe people are getting wrong because I’ve heard people in the past on their podcast people have gone on now to do very well sounds and almost universally one of the first things they said with their interviews sort of after they became quote unquote successful was I should’ve started my email list earlier. So what should people be doing.

Terry Dean: Well the best day to start your email list was yesterday and the next best day is today. OK. So it. So that that means that you really need a start your email list now. The very first thing I would tell you to think about is exactly who you want to have on your list which is if you’re a copywriter any type of consultant that means I want you to think about your ideal client who is the perfect client for you the A-plus client who pays you on time who would implement whatever you teach Do you know the type of client that when you write for them they actually use the copy you wrote. That’s a good client. And they pay you for it. Well I would go back a few years and I say for years about 10 years ago I did some copywriting for others…actually it is more than 10 years ago maybe 15 years ago I was doing copywriting for clients and it was so annoying to me because I did I had an upfront fee which I always got paid the fee. But then I also had something of a royalty or pay for results and I didn’t I didn’t collect any of that. Like 70 80 percent of the time because they didn’t do anything.

David Allan: And that’s shocking to a lot of people because I have experience being a copywri myself. That’s what I do. I would say mostly sort of moved into more marketing strategy as of late.. But yeah. I remember when I first heard about how – Gary Halbert was the first person I heard talk about that and I thought – that’s brilliant. But then later in that sam eseminar he said your hopes of collecting that are like nil ’cause clients suck , you know, or whatever he said and I’ve experienced that befores and it is a little surprising – but this is a common thing that people who write copy for others experience.

Terry Dean: It definitely is. So I want you start thinking about the client think about the clients that you have right now who are the clients that you want you want more of those clients and start describing them what you know about them where they hang out what they do you know where you best resonate with them. So hopefully if you have clients right now you’ve spoken to some of them on the phone you’ve gotten to know them a little bit you’ve seen what resonated with them. You had discussions maybe they told you some of their stories if you’re writing copy for them you might have written some stories for them and all these pieces I’m just talking about getting to know the audience that you’re going to go after because that’s the first thing you want to do is think about email lists I don’t want to just bring anybody on my list. It might be nice that you know your mother or your brother or your sister want to join your list but they’re not your potential clients so they don’t really count on your list except for the numbers. What I really want are my best clients on my list. And so I’m I think about that first and then I’m going to think about giving away something free. And we talk about it as a lead magnet something that we give away when people join a list. I’ve actually started using different terminology lately and I call it the free preview. That means I want to give away something that is not only free and a value but it’s a bridge to what I am selling and I want you to think about it this way if we go to the ice cream shop they might give us a free scoop of ice cream. OK. So we go through we get the eat the free scoop of ice cream. It’s only good enough to get us hungry for more. That’s all they’re doing. It’s a bridge to what they’re selling. A free preview – your lead magnet – the same thing it’s a bridge to what you’re selling. So if you are a copywriter that means it’s going to have something to do with copy or something to do with conversion or some other little tips about things so. It depends on what of course what you’re offering what you’re doing what you’re selling you’re going to offer something that leads towards what you’re selling and a mistake that I think a lot of people make is this depends on what you’re selling. But if your product or service. If you have like a lower cost version I try to sell it immediately after somebody joins the list. OK so if the only thing you offer is a ten thousand dollar in-person coaching session where we’re probably not going to sell that the first day someone joins your list. I understand that. So take that other side. But if you sell a ebook or you sell an online course or you sell a discovery call maybe you give a free discovery click all your self-discovery call $100 and maybe you do Web site review for someone on the way bringing them into your services. All these types of things you can do things like this immediately. And so the process I like when I set up an email list is I set up OK we’re going to give away something for free and the process that I mean there’s a lot of different things you can give away you can give away a PDF – you can give away a video you can give away at audio you know almost doesn’t matter. Audio is sometimes the easiest because you can have somebody interview you about the methods and now you have an audio to give away a podcast episode could be something that you give away.

David Allan: In fact that’s what I do. On my own website I give away the first month of a 12 month continuity program.

Terry Dean: I give away. Well since I have a print newsletter – I sell a monthly print newsletter I give away an issue in PDF version first from my print newsletter.

David Allan: And that’s what Ben does as well. That’s the model he uses.

Terry Dean: Yes. So that’s a free preview and and what I recommend is you give away the freebie. So we have something of value that should give it away. It’s a bridge and then we immediately go for the offer right after I have a bunch of clients for example. Probably the most tested for paid traffic is we bring someone onto the list so we give away our freebie on a list and then often we’ll either have to download the next page or even better in many cases and have the audio or video on the next page that we’re giving the content from. And then immediately underneath it we have a link over to our first offer. So we’re going for the offer immediately after someone joins the list. Again lower cost I said $10000 a coaching program probably not. You know my monthly mentor club print newsletter. Yes a consultation call it’s a hundred bucks yes you can do that immediately. So you go for the sale immediately. And we that’s your first set up process. And don’t take a long time getting something to give away as I said if you don’t have anything right now to give away do an audio because it’ll be fast to put together the audio. Get that up and start collecting leads and then what you’ll do with those first few emails. I would even tell you to sit down and say hey let’s do an entire autoresponder sequence in the beginning. You mentioned I have a course called autoresponder alchemy but it teaches you know how I like to have especially in the beginning a sequence when somebody joins my list that introduces them to me introduces my products things like that. But since you’re just getting started today on a list I just say get people on lists and start sending an e-mail in the very beginning. Practice one e-mail a day just to practice it.

David Allan: That’s something – the product I just mentioned with Jon McCulloch – when I was first looking around for examples of people doing daily email – you were one of the people.

Terry Dean: Well, see, long term. I actually don’t do a daily mail at the moment because long term what you’re going to do is you’re going to look at the broadcast to do well you’re going to plug those back in as an autoresponder. So you say you don’t have to be there every day.

David Allan: There you go.

Terry Dean: I have clients right now who have autoresponder sequences that go out three to five years. And even my own auto responder sequence I have autoresponders that are programmed out for a very long period of time and then I send usually like new broadcasts like Tuesdays and Thursdays.

David Allan: So that would be multiple times a day that people would be getting stuff?

Terry Dean: A lot of times it’s multiple times per day – A lot of time for clients I’ll tell them to just programs that the autoresponder doesn’t mail out the two days they’re mailing if they’re doing broadcast. You can do multiple times per data. People think you can’t – Actually sending in the right system you can. The first thing. So we’ve got our lead magnet for people on our list – our free preview. Then the next thing we need to do is obviously we need to start getting people on the list for that. Of course we could go into every type of traffic method that you can do. I mean there’s tons of traffic methods but I lean towards starting off with paid methods in the very beginning just because hey I want to get things moving. The easiest one to mention is probably Facebook because you can target just about any market in with Facebook advertising and drive them over to an opt in page.

David Allan: That’s become very popular in the last 10 years – five years – whatever it is…that’s become a very popular model – Facebook advertising.

Terry Dean: Why is my actual favorite advertising at this moment is actually YouTube advertising. With Facebook in second because YouTube seems to get a little bit more qualified leads. So when I read it because people actually search for your subject instead of us interrupting them. But I like Facebook because Facebook is a little easier to start with and you don’t have to start with a video. So it’s a it’s an easier start method and you can pretty much target any audience in Facebook like I was just helping a client recently and we were looking for what we’re going to target we wanted to target female entrepreneurs who were like 40 to 60 who read entrepreneur magazine and were interested in a couple of other things. I’m not going to give his whole market but we matched it up so there’s like two three qualifications for this audience. And you can target just about anything again to hit the ideal client that you want. Starting with Facebook advertising. So we had traffic method. We have our lists we need is now start sending out some emails and I like to give the simplest model for email to start with and you know from my course I actually give a lot of different ways to do things. But the simplest model really just comes back to story. Start off with some type of story some type of hook connection give a tip which I call the moral of the story and then transition into your offer and pretty much although there are so many different ways we could do it you could say 98 99 percent of my email somehow hit that model. Story – tip – transition. That’s the model and then story could be as simple as hey I was watching my little 16 week old puppy was biting me like I just wrote an email recently called “Surviving the land shark” – which is about my puppy biting me. At that time I started at marketing email about my puppy biting me and I talk about the fact that he’s biting me and they call him a land shark. I then talk a little about training dogs . Again, internet marketing list I’m talking about training dogs and how all of a sudden they just seem to get it. See you teach the kid. Teach them that this and they just seem to get it oh you don’t want me to bite you like bite it. It just happens one day that all of a sudden figured it out. So even though the tip comes with all my marketing our online businesses are very much the same way because we will often be doing the work you’re trying to get started you’re trying to build that list. You’re sitting at your very first emails it seems like nothing’s happening that all the sadness like you hit that breakthrough and it’s like there it is. Now we get the momentum and everything starts working for you. And I’ve seen that so many times that it’s just that little in that place the lessons like an inspirational lesson and then I hooked in from there right into my monthly mentor club and offering how each month I’m going to give you guidance to help you push forward and hit that breakthrough point. So it’s just it’s a story tip and then tie in to an offer that’s the basics of doing the e-mails.

David Allan: Yeah, I think for a lot of people – because I have taught – because I didn’t want to write them myself I’m generally lazy so I took money to tech a few clientele what you just talked about. One of the exercises I like to do was to – they would throw topics at me and I would just make a story transition to transition to their products. So they could see you know you really could really take anything. That’s what I was trying to get through to them. I think people think that their stories have to be like you know. So – you’re not Tolkien – you need to just do it. And you don’t want it to be just anything because you want it to be exciting. But like I’m excited because I have a dog. My cousin has dog I’m around dogs constantly. Now I’m interested in what Terry has to say about dogs because he talked a little bit. I mean this is interesting to me…

Terry Dean: The stories could be anything. The way I like to describe it is you can go back to like story through your childhood things like that. And I don’t get people like story starters a bunch of different questions you can ask yourself to start with a lot of childhood things like you know wait where you went to college things you learned in school what’s up there from your parents but you could be as simple as what would you tell your spouse this week or what would what happened today that you tell your spouse, same thing you’re just going to just kind of chatting with people.

David Allan: Then people get to know who you are and – and what you’re – what you’re like.

Terry Dean: Exactly. And they get to know you and that’s where they make a connection with you. They build a relationship with you because you tell those stories. I will get once the way that they’re really good for when you start off. I like keeping things you might tell a story multiple times until you get it the way you really like it. And that’s your origin story where I gave you thequickie quickie version which was $8 an hour Little Caesars. Went to business. I mean I could of course extend that way out and tell you a lot more from the origin story but I really like clients to do an origin story somewhere even in the first week. That’s one of those messages I like to pull from the broadcast and put it in the autoresponder. One of the first week messages of the origin story and why you do what you do.

David Allan: And that’s a very very good tip. I sent an e-mail out. Yesterday. I keep most e-mails I think you may have ideas about this and I’ve even got these ideas from you about keeping them sort of evergreen if you’re going to put them in the responder – autoresponder and not having a time element to them you know the email I sent out talked about the Super Bowl results of the Super Bowl because of course everyone’s talking about it. And I have my own opinions about it. So. And that’s something I used to tie into another event that’s going on. Another event. So you know it’s fun when you get people listen to this – and Terry’s been doing this forever but you just it’s really fun.

Terry Dean: Well I like to say what if you’re not having fun no one else is either. Because if you don’t have fun writing it. No one’s gonna have fun reading it. And I actually think some of the most enjoyable replies I get to my emails are when someone mentions that I made their spit their coffee in the computer or something else that they did just a little joke because I don’t tell a whole lot of jokes there is just I’ll throw something in. I have a little dark sense of humor that pops in once in a while. To the emails – and it is just you’re having fun while you’re writing the emails and that’s all you can think of. Think about just sitting at the table talking to someone your dad at the coffee house you just having a chat with your friends.

David Allan: You know I already had people – Patriots fans on my list e-mailing me. You know after I sent that out.

Terry Dean: The funny thing is you probably have Falcons on your list and they don’t get mad but they could send you something to rib you right.

David Allan: Exactly. OK so people got their lead magnet and they’re going to run some traffic to it starting to get into writing these e-mails. What are some things you’ve done maybe with your emails that maybe aren’t standard – that people maybe haven’t heard before maybe a little outside the box.

Terry Dean: Well the thing is since I’ve been teaching this so long was the thing that I do they probably heard from before because I talked about someone else taught them. I think for example you’ve probably heard this that which isn’t true anymore but people still quote it. A dollar per month per e-mail. OK. I said that at back like 97 – 98 OK. And it was true back then. Right. That’s not true. Now because now I have clients who are you know on the low side. If it were a really big list it’s not a targeted they might be like 10 cents. Other people might be earning 20 bucks a month for e-mail because they’re very targeted in a business to business niche. That’s an example of what they might have what they got probably from who knows where it came to them from. But let’s see. So what am I doing that we do really uniquely that they haven’t heard before. Well they probably heard this but it’s hard to tell what they have or hadn’t heard. One of the emails I like to have early in autoresponder sequence also. Usually within the first week so this is some of this it is an I need your help email. OK. And they probably heard the I need your help strategy which is I do a subject line I need your help and you can do that about every six months or so to your list and I use that exact subject line in all different types list. I need your help. And in this e-mail you simply are going to start up saying hey I want to provide you with the absolute best information I can with my e-mail list. So what is your biggest problem or your biggest challenge with X and you just fill that in with your subject. And all you have to do is hit reply. Hit reply to this email and I read everything that’s sent to me. That’s the email – that’s all you’ve got to send on this and that email is awesome. The reason being is that email people are going to actually reply to it. They’re going to send you all kinds of ideas for your future e-mails. But there’s two other purposes to it too. The first one is is what we talk about people white-listing your email. But one of the best things you can have in most e-mail services is for them to reply to your email. Because now G-mail or whoever we’re talking about sees this person replying to your emails – Hey look. They’re actually responding to this person. That you are much more likely to land in their inbox. So that’s another reason to do it. And the third reason to do it is especially my client who sell higher ticket services. So if we went back to the copywriters again if you’re copywriting and you’re not doing this then you’re crazy. The reason being is because people are gonna respond back to this. And if you have a huge list you can’t really reply back. Personally everybody if you have a small list you should reply back personally everybody even if it’s just to thank them for answering it or to mention that you’re going to do an e-mail in the future. I’ve had a lot of clients. They get those replies back. They start a conversation and they make a lot of high ticket sales just from the dialogue that starts from the e-mail you know. And so that’s the thing is don’t just push them all to the side. Answer them. Reply. Keep your responses short especially if you have a offer that’s $500, $1000 or more on the higher level. It’s going to be worth it to you to have that direct dialogue.

David Allan: If you’re good at selling it’s often easier to sell fact to face than to have to write it…

Terry Dean: You start the email and you go back and forth in the email. You might go onto the phone from there. But I mean it’s people are going to be shocked that you reply.

David Allan: They will be. Just recently I bought something – couple of ebooks – and the owner replied back and said “ I think this particular part would be especially interesting to you” – and hey, I’m talking about it now right? So it had a big impact.

Terry Dean: So I’m sure that if they make another offer that you want you will be one of the first people in line there.

David Allan: So you know you talk a lot about segmentation. Taking those hyper-responsive people and segmenting them – what sort of ideas do you have about that kind of stuff?
Terry Dean: Well I have clients we do a lot of segmentation to their list. We do it more in the autoresponder sequence than we do in the broadcast. A lot of times what we’re doing with because again it comes back to work versus reward. OK so how much work is it to do the to to segment all the lists. And if you actually start with segmentation don’t be thinking about all the different segmentation you can do you’re just go crazy and you’ll never get any of it done. What you need to start is start off your list. Just writing e-mails to the biggest you know best ideal client. In the beginning. OK so gets to get started with this. Don’t even think about segmenting until at least you do it like and I need your help and then you find that some of the audience is different. Like I said Don’t think about it till then. And then once you’ve done something like that where a lot of my clients have used segmentation is we’ll use it near the front end asking near the front end of a list we’ll send an email like and I need your help email but we’ll give them specific responses so like here’s five different things which are these five sentences most accurate for you. OK. You’re most interested we’ll just say for internet marketing field. Well I’m most interested in Facebook traffic why I’m most interested in driving more profits from my email. OK and we give them a list like that. And whichever one they click takes them to an autoresponder sequence that you have prepared specifically for that subject to make an offer for that subject. You can do something like that on the very beginning. And again I’d recommend to you not to do that if you’re a beginner. The reason being is I want you to have all these e-mails when you go do that type of list. I want I would want to have already written all those emails as broadcast and I can easily put together that segment and autoresponder series when I do it.

David Allan: So down the road maybe like six months to a year later when you have enough emails to put those segments together.

Terry Dean: Yes. And so you do that in the beginning of the list. You then segment them off then you segment in the autoresponder – then eventually usually drop them into my all everybody into my broadcast again as well because let’s just be serious. How many people in their business have enough time and energy to write broadcasts for three different lists over a few a few really big companies get a lot of employees do it. Yes. If you’re writing your company you’re writing for your business you’re not doing it. So using the autoresponder sequences we make it easy. So instead of segmenting me off a little bit in a different direction. Let’s talk about where a lot of profits come from for my clients. And it’s funny because I just again I’ve been doing this forever. But I went through and looked at my most successful clients – we’re talking six seven eight figure clients and what we were all doing in common with our email list. And one thing that we all had in common was we all had a continuity program that we promoted heavily. To our email lists and I’ll bet you that a lot of the people that you respect who do email lists also have a continuity program that they promote heavily to their email list.

David Allan: Absolutely, 100% of them actually.

Terry Dean: And there’s a reason for that and I call it the freedom quadrant. OK. And that is first of all with email list. A lot of people have e-mail lists that they don’t use. So I think they would like that first god or they’re not making money. Pretty much any money at all. We have an e-mail list is not working for them. OK. They start learning how to use their e-mail list and they start make it from money. That’s where they move to the next level with plug in a continuity program. OK and they’ll start seeing if they know how to use e-mail. They start using that e-mail to promote a continuity program and they can start seeing a lot more money coming in. Then there’s another aspect of that where they learn how to use the continuity program as well. And what I mean by that is again when I look at my clients numbers – the continuity program the actual fees from the continuity program usually equal to. Half or less of the profits we’re getting from the continuity. And what I mean by that is think about it this way your best subscribers pretty much buy everything that you offer to them. I have. Several subscribers who regularly email me and ask me if there’s anything new that they missed buying. OK. So those are the hyper-responsive people who have chosen your email list when you plug people into a continuity program to the continuity program correctly. That’s going to be magnified version of that. OK. Because then your members are going to buy everything else you offer. And I mean even in consumer markets now this is kind of normal in business to business markets. But I have clients in consumer markets where we’re selling 750 to $2500 little workshops in consumer markets. Things you know things like golf and things of those nature is not just business to business markets I mean we have $15000 coaching programs things like that in the business market but we have all these high ticket services and you’re going to find that in most cases it comes back to the 80:20 rule 80 percent of their buyers of high ticket offers came from members of the continuity.

David Allan: Terry, if people want to get a hold of you and get involved with you. What sorts of things do you have people can get involved with?

David Allan: Well this might surprise you but I’m going to recommend that people join my list over at mymarketingcoach.com/free… mymarketingcoach.com/free and the gift I have for you are seven unique ways to create profitable emails even if you’re not a writer. What that actually teaches you Step-By-Step say it’s a free copy from my paid newsletter that teaches you seven different ways to use stories to write your emails. It also comes with several cheat sheets include putting Sixty-Four story shortcuts which are a whole bunch of questions to help you come up with your stories. Five proven templates for subject lines and it gives you my step by step for writing the emails that I’ve used throughout the years to basically produce millions of dollars online for myself and then tens of millions for the clients. I’ve worked with.

David Allan: Thanks Terry, and for everyone listening we’ll be back with another episode hopefully even half as good as the one Terry just gave because that was amazing and we’ll talk to everybody then. And for people who want to get a hold of me – David Allan – go to makewordspay.com