Hey everyone, I’m live here and I’m a minute late again. I’ve been freaking terrible about that this week. I’ve been having technology issues all freaking day long and this is no different. My software disconnected itself from Facebook, this Ecamm Live thing, it just disconnected so I had to go into the settings. I’m late, but I’m here. And let’s talk about mailing lists. Let me get everything pulled up soI can see what’s going on.
Anybody that gets here, always say hi. Even when you’re watching the replay, let me know you’re here and let me know if you like this or if you think I’m a giant idiot and you would rather be seeing other things. Let me know. Por favor. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you guys in this group, I’m taking, not Spanish lessons, but what’s that? The Rosetta Stone. I got Rosetta Stone as a Christmas gift and I’m learning how to speak Spanish just because I really want to, so random Spanish words might pop up in here too. I’m not gonna apologize for that because it’s awesome. Okay, I’m here. Oh wait, I was going to get it pulled up over here tooI can see stuff easier.
Also, I don’t have Moscato today. I know this call is called Moscato and mailing lists, but I don’t have any Moscato. I didn’t get any. I failed. It’s going to be McAllister’s sweet tea and mailing lists. It’s still an m, it’s not booze, but hopefully you can forgive me this one time. Please. Okay, let’s talk mailing lists. First thing on my list is why do you need a mailing list? Let’s back up and even say what is a mailing list first. When I say mailing list, all I’m talking about is your email list. Some people call it newsletters. That’s a really boring word. And you shouldn’t call it a newsletter just because everyone will think you’re boring and we don’t want boring brands. But some kind of email distribution list where you reach out and talk to people who sign up because they like you. That’s a mailing list.
Why do you need a mailing list? I talked about this a little bit last last week. I just wanted to dive into it way deeper today. You need one, basically, because that is the only means of communication with your audience that you actually own. Unless you have a brick and mortar business, which if you do awesome, you have other ways. This group though is for service based entrepreneurs, so a lot of us service based entrepreneurs are all online or you don’t have an actual location. Your mailing list is really the only means of communication that you really own. We have all these other really cool tools available to us, on the Internet. Instagram and Facebook and stuff like this where I have easy access to all of my audience to share whatever I want to share.
But I have no control over these platforms. If Facebook decided to shut down tomorrow or Instagram shut down or Pinterest shut down, I would have no way to talk to you. I would have no way to not only, provide this value and provide free content, but I also wouldn’t have a way to sell anything, to make money in my business if I didn’t have a mailing list. That should be our ultimate goal with lead generation is to get them onto that mailing list and we still want to provide value on our mailing list. We don’t want to use it just to push, push, push offers all the time because nobody wants that. But that is the place for that. That’s where you have the most luck making sales is in that email list. We’ll dig into that stuff a little bit more later. But that’s basically why you need it. Because it is the only one that you actually own. It’s the only one that you have any control over. And basically you can do whatever the eff you want with your mailing list. If you want to send out funny cartoons or if you want to send out a bunch of offers or whatever it is, you can do that in your mailing list. Whereas, in other people’s Facebook groups, if you’re focused on that, and you have to follow their rules of what you’re allowed to say and what you’re not allowed to say. And signing up, whoah, I just got myself all confused. Basically, you have to follow their rules. If they don’t want you to promote or if they get offended if you say shit or whatever it is, you can do whatever you want in your own email list.
That’s also a benefit, at least for me, because I don’t following other people’s rules. I like to make my own rules and make other people listen to them, but I don’t like following them. That’s me. That’s my Maverick-y side coming out. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s the brand archetype. It’s not my primary one, but it’s there. It’s definitely there. What even is a mailing list? Oh, that was number two on the list. Sorry. I wrote my list backwards I guess. What even is a mailing list? It’s a list of people that you own. It originated before the Internet was even a thing, or I guess not before, yeah before the Internet was a thing, you would go into a store and you sign up on the piece of paper and they’ll mail you coupons or whatever in the mail. And now sometimes you go into stores and you sign up or whatever to get on their email list and I’ll send you stuff. It’s the exact same concept. It’s just getting those people online.
You hear a lot of people also talk about funnels. if you don’t know what a funnel is, that’s a whole separate conversation that we can do another Q and A call on, but basically it’s exactly what it sounds like. A funnel. You start with all of these people up here and you get them to sign up. Whoa, I’m off center. You get them to sign up for something and then they go to the next step in your system, which would be your email list or more of a personal connection, then you get them to buy something smaller say yes to a smaller offer and they’re down here. And they come out, hopefully, at the bottom with your high level offer, your one-on-one, whatever it is, whatever your main thing is that you’re trying to sell. Basically you use it to filter out people to get to that that ideal client. That very top of that funnel is going to be to get them onto your email list.
What do you need to have set up is the next question. What do you need to have set up to make that happen? This is the techie stuff. And I won’t go too deep into it because everybody uses different systems so it would be pointless. I can tell you what I use though. Basically, you need some kind of email management system. You might hear it called a CRM, which just stands for customer relationship management.
Basically, it’s just where all of the email addresses live. Because what you don’t want to happen, is to not have something like that set up and then you’re trying to email out everybody stuff from your Gmail account. A CRM just takes all of those email addresses and puts them in an organized place. MailChimp is the one that I started with because you can do a ton of stuff with MailChimp for free. I have since upgraded to ActiveCampaign, is what I use now, because it has more advanced features. Once you have those email addresses in there, you can use the advanced features and tags and groups or segments – depending on what system you use, they might call it different things – but it’s basically just a way to further organize your contacts. For mine, I think most people in here came from taking that brand archetype quiz.
So for mine, you take the quiz and then you get a tag as whatever your archetype is. I’m the Creator – I’m on my own email list because I like to make sure everything’s going out right – I’m tagged as a creator. And then if there’s anything else along the way that I want to keep track of, like did I…
Thank you Tamera! I actually tried something new with my hair today. I’ve been, I hate. hate. hate. fixing my hair, I hate it. I’ve been playing with different curling methods to make it look decent without spending a whole bunch of time. I’ve been trying it with my straightener the last few weeks and that doesn’t work as well. This was a curling iron but super fast method, so I’m glad it looks okay.
Anyway, sidetrack, where was I? Oh, tags. When you’re using, and this might be basic level for some people, but I know a lot of people in this group are just brand new, starting out and don’t have an email list yet so I’m going to get a little bit basic, but I’ll also get a little more advanced later on. Hopefully I don’t bore you with some of the basic stuff, but basically you can tag those people to keep track of where they are in their journey with your brand. Like I said, they’ll start off, they join my list, and I have them tagged as whatever their archetype is. And it’s really cool just to know where they came from, but I can also use that information later on down the road if I want to send out very targeted campaigns. If I have a new offer or a new program that I want to sell, I can write specific email sequences that will appeal to those different archetypes. My sage people are going to be very fact driven and data driven and logical. Whereas my magician people are going to want to see the overall transformation of the thing. And I can target what emails I’m sending to which people based on those tags. Anytime you can put tags or groups or segments or whatever it’s called in your system to figure out where people are in their journey, it’s only going to help you.
Other things that you can tag them for: if they sign up for a free call, or if they sign up for a lower end offer, those type of people are obviously more likely to buy something, a higher end offer from you, because they already have experience with you. They already know you a little bit better. And you can target them differently than you would someone who just found out you existed last week.
You need to have some kind of email system in place. You can’t do any of that stuff just from emailing people from your Gmail account, unfortunately. There’s probably ways that you could, like dumping people into folders, but ain’t nobody got time for that. Just get – if you’re worried about budget, get MailChimp because it’s super easy and free. I like ActiveCampaign. Convert Kit is also a really good one. I think they changed their name. It’s Siva or Sena or something different now, but that’s also a really good one.
What is this wizardry? What do you mean Kristy? Tamera, I may have missed it, but what are using for email marketing? Yeah, I use ActiveCampaign and I love it. It’s awesome. I started out using MailChimp, when I first started because it was free and then I switched over to ActiveCampaign because it has more detailed tagging features and segmenting. And you can do like, if they do this, then this, a lot more easily than you can in MailChimp and it’s much more automated and awesome. And I like it. But I know Convert Kit is also really good too and a lot of people use that. Or there’s the higher level stuff, Infusionsoft and Ontraport, those are more all in one solutions to your entire marketing backend of your business. Depending on what level, which level you’re at in your business, that might be a different option. But if you’re just starting out and you want an email list, I would say start with MailChimp or if you have the budget, ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit because they’re awesome. Fo’ sho. That’s the first thing that you need.
The next thing that you need is a website of some kind. It doesn’t have to be a full on website if you don’t have your website developed yet, but some kind of lead page or something. You have to give them somewhere to opt into the email list, right?
For everybody that’s just joining, because I saw a couple of people just jumped on, we’re on the question, what do you need to have set up, the techie stuff, in order to have an email list? The first thing was a CRM system, some kind of email management system. The second thing is some kind of website or landing page or some kind of place for them to go to sign up to get onto the mailing list. When I first started out – my website is on WordPress. And I love WordPress because I have designer OCD and I want to control every single little pixel of what everything looks like. But Squarespace is also really good. And I actually, when I first started on WordPress, I use just regular pages. I was just created a landing page for opting into my email list. And that’s totally a hundred percent awesome. That is the cheapest, easiest way to do it.
But I have since since switched over to Leadpages and I really, really like it because it’s really easy. And it gives you further detailed analytics, so when people land at it, what the conversion rate is on the page. And you can still do all of this stuff that I’m talking about, basically all of these tools, they’re really fancy, they’re really awesome for automation and efficiency. So you can do everything I’m talking about without paying for these tools. If you’re just joining, don’t think you have to go out and spend a whole bunch of money to get an email a set up because you absolutely don’t. And I’ll recap at the end. I’ll tell you at the end what I do and how much it costs and if you want to not spend any money, the way that I would recommend to do it, too. Which is the way that when I started doing it, so don’t think you have to spend a bunch of money.
But I use Leadpages because it gives me a lot of analytics and details about conversion rates and how well my stuff is converting. And all that means, for anybody that’s new is that when somebody lands on that page and I want them to sign up for my email list, it’s going to tell me how many people landed and looked at it and actually signed up versus how many people were like, eh, I don’t want this. And then they left. That’ll tell me how good the copy is that’s on the website or if I need to make any changes to try to get people to sign up more. Obviously, we want more people to sign up, right? That’s the advantage of having some kind of lead page, but you need some kind of something on a website, a place for them to sign up for it.
And then the third thing that you need, so first was a CRM, second was some kind of web place for them to opt-in. Third thing you need is a bribe. Some kind of incentive for them to sign up. You don’t want to just say, hey, sign up for my newsletter and hope that they do it. Because I think unfortunately those days on the Internet are gone. People are flooded with emails all day, every day and they want to know that if they are giving you their email address that they’re going to be getting something valuable out of it and they’re going to get something that they want from you. It’s a great way to start that relationship off with you providing as much value as possible, right? You need some kind of freebie basically.
The main one that I use is the quiz. I think everybody knows what the quiz is that I’m talking about. I will say that took me a fuck ton of time. That quiz took me months to build. It doesn’t have to be anything that elaborate at first. It can be something very, very simple. As long as it’s valuable, though. You don’t want to just give crap because it’s fast and easy. You want to keep in mind that this is somebody’s first impression of you. When you’re talking about mailing lists, or anything in your business, always, always keep in mind where they are on that customer journey, right? If they’re just signing up to your email list, this is your chance to make that first impression and blow them out of the freaking water. That doesn’t mean that it has to be super complicated or take a bunch of time, but it does need to be something valuable.
I always like to tell everybody, give your very, very best content. The best freaking stuff you have. That’s what you need to give away for your freebie because that’s what’s gonna make people see how valuable your stuff is and what you have to offer. A lot of people, the questions that I get the most are, isn’t that isn’t that bad? They’re worried about giving away all of my secrets or whatever it is for free. And there definitely is a line about how much stuff you want to share without paying, but at the same time, I could sit here right now and tell you every single thing that I do for my clients, every single thing and exactly how to do it. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be able to do it. You know? Think about your offers or whatever it is that you’re selling like that.
I’m trying to think of an example. Megan, Megan Naasz is in here, and we set up her freebie. Hers was a checklist of what you need to do for the IRS. Hers was basically a checklist. She’s a CPA for online entrepreneurs, not just online. She’s a CPA for entrepreneurs. And her freebie was a checklist that went through every single thing that she does for her clients. By giving that away, that doesn’t subtract from her value as a business. You know what I mean? Tell me if that makes sense. Or if I’m just rambling. But that’s the way that I always like to go – is give your very best stuff. And it is not going to, in any way, take away from the value of what you have to offer one on one. Just because you’re telling them exactly what to do and exactly how to do it does not mean that they can do it the same way without you. Give you a very, very best stuff.
So that’s what you need to have to set up. You need to have an email system, a CRM of some kind, a website, some place landing page, something for them to opt in, and then some kind of incentive for them to actually sign up. Cool? I’ll pause there for a second and go back and do a little recap, but let me know if you have any questions so far, if I’m making sense or if there’s anything further that you have questions about the you want me to answer. And I’ll read my questions that I already have here.
Oh no! Kristy, don’t let it, your head doesn’t need to explode! Kristy says, does MailChimp have tags and targeted emails? You can. It’s called something different, but yes. And that’s where those advanced features come in. I’ll tell you how I set it up when I used MailChimp. It was a little bit more complicated. And it’s kind of just learning the different software and learning what it does. And MailChimp is another really great one because there are so many free tutorials out there and there are so many resources available to help you figure it out. There are, it’s not called tags in MailChimp, but it’s essentially the same thing. I want to say it’s groups is what it was in MailChimp, you can put them in groups.
The very first way I set up my quiz was you take the quiz, there’s 12 different results you can get. The 12 different archetypes. And I had a separate list for each different archetype. That was a giant pain in the ass. If you can keep yourself to one list, that’s gonna make you sane, or that’s going to keep you sane. When I realized how big of a pain that was – and why it was a pain was because when I went to go email something to every single person, I would have to send it 12 different times. Or make a copy of it and send it to each list. We don’t want to have to do that. I’m like 90% sure they were called the groups. So then I set it up again with MailChimp where you take the quiz, you’re added to one list, and then you’re put into one of 12 different groups. And that’s essentially the same thing as the tags that I was talking about before.
So you could still then filter that list by, I only want to send these targeted emails to this specific group. I didn’t mean to make your head explode! Hopefully it made sense, but this stuff, these are a little more advanced strategies. If you’re just starting out and you’re just just building your email list, I would not even try to think about sending different emails to different targeted groups right now. Just get your email list set up and start building those relationships and mailing consistently and then start adding on those other things. It’s like the stair steps. Start down here. It is super easy to get overwhelmed with all of this stuff. That’s why I want to try to break it down, this is what to do first. And then here’s all these other options you can do.
Because just me as a person, I like to know what I’m working towards. I was actually just talking about this at yoga today or yesterday, how certain teachers will tell you, okay do this and just leave it there, you know? But the ones that I really like are the ones that say, okay, do this. If that’s as far as you can get, that’s cool, but here’s what we’re working towards. Just so you can have all of the facts. That’s my sagey side of my brain coming out right there, I want to know everything. So don’t let yourself get overwhelmed. You don’t need to be overwhelmed with this process. I promise. There are so many resources available to help you with this stuff. But those are possibilities and that is stuff that you can be thinking about later on down the road. Hopefully that makes sense.
Tamera, what did you use to create your quiz? My quiz is a, crap, what’s it called? It’s a WordPress plugin. It’s Thrive. It’s part of Thrive. I think it’s just called Thrive Quiz Builder and it’s a WordPress plugin. How it works is, you go in and you set up a little landing page for your quiz with a little start button, and then you go through and you build your quiz. It looks like this big funnel type screen, and you put in your first question, they can answer one of these things. If they answer this way, then it branches off to this question. And then over here. That one was a little more in depth and lets you put in a lot more options.
Note: Switched to Interact in 12/2018 because it has much better tracking and analytics when running Facebook ads to the quiz. No regrets, though.
There are tons of other quiz softwares. Softwares? That doesn’t sound grammatically correct. There are tons of different options for software for the quizzes. I think there’s one called like, I think it’s called Interact or something that I also know is really good. The reason that I picked the one that I did, is because I wanted a one time fee for the WordPress plugin. I think it was $67 and I can make as many quizzes as I want on my website, whereas a lot of the other ones, you have to pay monthly. And I just, I don’t like paying monthly for anything, honestly. It’s just annoying more than anything. So that’s why I picked that one and it works great. It gives you really detailed analytics and I can keep track of lots of different stuff in there. So I like it.
I know that some people want to give more than one option. A lot of the other archetype quizzes out there, will give you your top four archetypes and I went back and forth on a few different ones because of that. But I ended up landing with, I only wanted to give one result because that’s going to be the primary archetype. And then, really, it’s not as accurate. Most other archetype quizzes do give your top three or four, but I feel like those other ones just aren’t as accurate, so I just left it with that one. But the one that I use doesn’t let you have more than one result, so there’s that.
Tamera, I really bothers me when people say you have to hire them to know their secrets. I love when people give massive value because people don’t struggle with knowledge, they struggle with action. Exactly. People struggle with taking action on actually applying the stuff. So true.
And what are you drinking? I’m supposed to be drinking Moscato but I’m not. I didn’t feel like it, honestly. That’s really the only reason. I just didn’t feel drinking wine today. I’m going to a concert later tonight and I figured I was going to drink beer at the concert. I didn’t really want to start drinking wine at five and then go to a concert later so I have McAllister’s tea today. Yeah, sorry. I know it’s supposed to be booze. It’s on the graphic and everything, but I just wasn’t feeling it.
Okay. Hey LaMorla! Kristy says I’m tech impaired! It’s tricky. All of these different software platforms are tricky for sure. And you can easily get overwhelmed in any of them. I always try to pick the ones that have the best customer support, one, and the best tutorial type stuff. All of the different software platforms that I use are crazy awesome at customer service and giving you the tools that you need to figure it out yourself before you even have to go to customer service. MailChimp is great at that ActiveCampaign is great. Dubsado, which is not at all what we’re talking about today, but anybody that sends out contracts or anything or needs to keep track of leads towards the bottom of your funnel, like if you’re doing a discovery call or a strategy session and you want to keep track of where they are in that journey and then send out contracts and proposals and all of that stuff, Dubsado is the best thing ever. And they have the best customer service of any freaking company I’ve ever seen. Just throw that in there. Random bonus. Dubsado. Check it out.
Tamera, I think my third is sage because that’s me too. Yeah, mine’s creator and then maverick and sage. Which is honestly a really weird combination. But I’m weird. If anybody knows anything about the Myers Briggs, I’m the INTJ, which is one of the rarest. I think INFJ is the most rare. But then INTJ. I’m weird, you know.
Did you build your site with Thrive? No. I built my site, I have, crap, what’s it called? I think it’s called The7. The and number seven is the WordPress template that I use to build my website. Or theme. It’s called a theme, not a template. And I buy all of those from Envato Market. I’m just telling everything today. And I use that same template, The7. It’s the one I used to build my site, and it’s the same exact one I use to build every single site for all of my clients because it is far and away my favorite one. It’s the easiest to use. It has all kinds of cool bonus features. And you can customize it literally any way that you want to. You can make it look however you want, completely different than mine and it’s still awesome. That’s what I use. There is a Thrive landing page builder and website builder. I haven’t used it other than within the Thrive Quiz Builder. It looks the same. The interface is the same, but I haven’t used it to build an entire website, no. Hopefully that answers that. Hopefully that’s what you were asking.
Note: I have since switched over to Divi for my site and all of my client websites because it is INSANELY easier to maintain if you have no knowledge or desire to learn the back end of your website. Divi is the best visual builder for WordPress I’ve ever used. Love it. You can get access to my exact templates and courses here if you need help!
Tamera, I’m an ENFJ. Yeah, I can see that. I love trying to guess people’s personality types, the Myers Briggs and the archetypes. I love meeting people or I love people who – one of my friends, Kristy, I don’t think she’s on here today – she’s usually on here. But she’s always like, I got this one, but I just don’t really see it. And then when she’s talking I like to point out, oh, that thing you just said right there? She’s the hero and she’s like, I really didn’t think I was the hero, but every time we’re talking about her business, she’s says things and I’m like, Yup, hero right there. It’s coming out. I see it. I’m a nerd. I love guessing people’s personality types.
We got all your secrets. I’ll tell you all my secrets. I’m good with that.
Okay, we’ve covered, so far, for everyone that’s just joined, so far, we’ve covered why you need a mailing list. What even is a mailing list, and what you need to have set up, all the techie stuff to make it happen. What’s next?
What kinds of things should you send in your emails? Once they’re on your list, what do you do with them? Obviously this is going to vary depending on what your business is, obviously. I always just like to tell people send valuable stuff, send out value. A lot of Facebook groups give the rule of 80% value, 20% promotion. And that’s a pretty good rule to live by, you know? But again, it’s your list. You can make the rules, you can do it however you want.
I’m on a few lists where it’s 80% sales pitches and 20% value, but it works for them because their offers are so good and so valuable. Really it depends on your business. And I’m not gonna try to say you should do this or you should do this. But overall, even if you are making an offer, you want to make it valuable. Because what you don’t want to happen is you put all this time and energy and maybe even money, if you’re running ads, to get people onto your email list. And then once they’re on there, you annoy the piss out of them and they end up unsubscribing. That doesn’t help you at all, right? You do want to keep them on your list. And this comes back, too, keep in mind where they are in their journey and that’s where those tags and lists and stuff come in.
For my list, anybody that has opted into mine, you sign up for the quiz, you take the quiz and then you get entered into a nurture sequence. Which, I don’t know if that’s a question on here, but I’ll talk about those a little bit more, too. Basically like a “get to know me” type, get to know me and get more value and learn about this whole thing, you know? When I send out my regular emails, I try to send them weekly, and when I send those out, I don’t send them to those brand new people who don’t know who I am yet. Because we want to give them the information they need for where they are in their journey.
A lot of times, I think I talked about this a little bit before, most of my cold leads – people who have no idea who I am and just find me – most of them come from Pinterest because I run an ad, a promoted pin, on Pinterest to my quiz. They come from there, and I talked about this a little bit last week, you have to know the state of mind that your potential clients are in when they’re opting in. People on Pinterest are usually in that dreaming state. They’re not ready to take action right now. They’re in the state of mind where I’m just going through Pinterest and I’m looking at all of these cool healthy recipes that I’m going to make some day and all of these awesome business ideas that I’m going to implement some day, you know? Knowing where they come from then helps me know what to send them on the list. Because I know that information, I’ve set up my nurture sequence, is what I call it, in a way that I’m sending them information to try to hopefully get them over into this, “this is really important and this is really cool. It’s really fun. Let’s take action on it now.” The emails that I send out on my regular email lists are much more action oriented and like, here’s this, here’s how to apply this, here’s how to do this, so I have to move them into that state of mind before I start just dumping stuff on them because they’re not going to think it’s helpful if they don’t know what I’m talking about. Does that make any sense at all? Can I get a heart or a yes or something if I’m making any sense at all?
Basically what I’m trying to say is just keep in mind where they are in your journey and that will help what to send them. And then just send them valuable things. Maybe we can do a different Q and A call to on just general content creation.
Thank you, Tamera! Thank you for the hearts! And Tanya!
Just general content creation. I think that might be really helpful on how to know what to say. But basically the foundational piece is just understand where they are in their journey and what they need right then. I give them time to get through that whole nurture sequence and really find out what I’m about and the types of information that I share before I just start dumping stuff on them that might not apply. I’ll let them get through the nurture sequence and find out all of this information and then add them into my regular email newsletters. So that’s that.
What’s next? What should I send? I just did that. How often should you send your emails? This is another one. Whoa my mouse is like, oh it’s because my, sorry. My mouse was like doing the right click thing. It’s because I had my microphone set on the control key, makes it right click. Anyway, how often should you send your emails? This varies based on your business, honestly. The key is to be consistent, whatever that means for you. Whether that’s once a week, once a month, three times a week. It depends on your type of business, but it’s about setting up those expectations and then sticking with them. There’s this one girl, that I signed up for her email list a long time ago, and she had the best nurture sequence. It was really engaging. And to this day, I think it’s been like two years, to this day, I I know that she sends out emails Friday mornings. Every single Friday morning, I’m like, oooh, I know there’s going to be an email from Whitney in there I got to go check it out. Because it’s always good.
Being consistent and setting up those expectations so your people know what to expect from you, that’s part of branding. Everybody talks about the colors and the design and all of this stuff, but just how you show up and how you communicate and interact with your audience, that is part of your brand. It’s about letting them know what to expect from you and how to engage with you and get what they need from you, that’s part of your brand. Whatever consistent looks like for you, awesome. And it’s just going to take some time to play with it, honestly. I would say, if you’re just starting, start small. Because like I said at the beginning, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed with all this stuff. So don’t go into it with, oh, I’m going to email my list three times a week. You’ll burn yourself out so quick and you won’t have any fun at all.
That was one of the things that I was really surprised about. I’ve never considered myself a writer by any means, but when I started doing this, I was like, wow, I actually have a lot of fun writing the emails and writing stuff that’s engaging and hopefully super valuable. Make sure that you’re consistent, but you’re not going to burn yourself out because you want to keep going, right? We don’t want to just do it for a little while and then quit. Start small if you need to, but whatever consistent looks like for you is how often you should send. Consistently.
Legal compliance and that stuff. Really, the different laws there, and anybody that’s been in online business for a while probably got overwhelmed with all of this stuff, hearing about it. About the GDPR stuff? It’s like general data protection, something, I don’t remember the R. It’s basically, in the EU, European Union, how data gets managed. Where all of the laws surrounding email lists and email marketing come from are from people not wanting to be spammed and people not wanting to have their information sold online. I think just knowing where they come from and why they exist makes them a little bit easier to follow and understand. Basically, you have to have some kind of disclaimer that says, I will protect your information. I’m not going to sell it to somebody else and let them email stuff to you.
Or if you are going to do that, which I wouldn’t recommend, but if you are going to sell their information to someone else, you have to let them know. You have to tell them what you’re doing. If you start paying attention, when you opt into stuff, you’ll notice, usually right under the little box that says, we won’t spam you, we won’t sell sell your information, and blah, blah, blah. Or it might just say, you’re signing up and you’re agreeing to our privacy policy.
That’s another thing. We talked about the website stuff earlier. You have to have some kind of website landing page. You also need to have a privacy policy if you’re going to collect email addresses. Again, this is nothing that has to be super complicated or fancy. It’s great, best practice obviously to have an attorney review it. I’m not an attorney, I’m not going to try to pretend like I know what to tell you to put in there.
But if you can’t afford an attorney yet, there are – one will be appointed, sorry, I just SVU popped into my head! If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Sorry, it won’t be appointed to you for GDPR. Sorry. But there are lots of free templates online that you can find and basically it just says, kind of what I said a second ago, there’s a section in there on how we use your data and what we use it for. If you’re using it to target them on Facebook, like run an ad on Facebook, and you’re targeting them that way, you would just need to tell them in there. It’s nothing super scary, or it’s nothing to be scared of, but it is something that you have to have. And you obviously if you can afford an attorney to do it for you, do that. If not, there’s tons of free and cheap stuff online that you can do to get them.
The only other thing with the GDPR part that has changed. The part that changed recently, was you have to say exactly what they’re signing up for. With mine, if they’re signing up for the quiz – before I just had it where “sign up, give me your email address, and I’ll send you this pdf about your brand archetype” – well, what’s actually happening though is, yes, I will send them that, but it also adds them to my email list, right? I send them emails after that, also. And that’s all that changed. You have to say that. So at the end of my quiz now, I would say here, “give me your email address and I will add you to my mailing list. As a bonus gift, you’ll get your freebie” Whatever. I mean you can word it however you want.
Basically all of the compliance laws and all of that stuff that’s, yes, it’s annoying, but it is important. And it’s really only there so it forces you to be transparent and tell people what you’re doing, which is just good business practice anyway, you know? It’s annoying to get it all set up. It’s extra steps. If you’re going to hire an attorney, it’s extra money, but it’s good business practice to just do that stuff anyway and be transparent and not try to deceive people. That’s the purpose of it. It doesn’t have to be anything scary or complicated, but you do have to do it. If you’re going to collect email addresses, you have to be compliant with the GDPR laws, and there’s also the CAN-SPAM, something with the Canadian anti-spam laws. I forget exactly what it’s called. That’s part of the privacy policy and stuff, too. Again, it’s the same purpose. I’m not going to spam you. I’m not going to sell your stuff. Nothing crazy. Okay, enough with that.
Common problems and how to avoid them. I think I’ve covered most of everything I wanted to cover with that part already, so if anybody has any specific questions or problems that you have had that you want me to talk about, now’s the time to put them in. Or if you’re watching the replay, go ahead and put them in on the replay too and I’ll come back and answer them. But basically, don’t send out crap. Is the main, common problem that I see is, I just want to sell you something so I’m just gonna send you all these emails all the time trying to sell you things and not actually help you in any way. That’s the biggest problem. And I unsubscribe from a lot of those.
The best way to overcome that, or to not let yourself get there, is to just start off on the right foot and set those expectations right up front. Having a really strong, really good, valuable opt in / freebie / lead magnet / whatever, all those words mean the same thing, having a really strong one of those sets the tone for your entire relationship moving forward. My quiz, I ain’t scared to brag. My quiz kicks ass. My quiz is awesome. It is so much value. It is so much more information than you get in any of the other quizzes that I’ve seen out there. There’s tons of other brand archetype quizzes, but I haven’t seen any that go as deep as what mine does for free.
I get emails daily about, Oh my gosh, this quiz is awesome, it’s so valuable, it’s so helpful. And that’s what you want. That should be your goal. Just setting up that relationship right off the bat with “I am a person who has a shitload of value to give.” So have a really strong freebie and then follow it up with some kind of, I said I was going to go back to this, so I’ll go back to it now. Some kind of nurture sequence or welcome sequence or whatever you want to call it, a series of emails after that they sign up to let them get to know who you are and how you present information and give them a chance to get to know you.
I think mine has seven emails? Yeah, no six. Mine has six emails, my follow up sequence. You get your initial download from the quiz, then it’s a part one through five, and then one follow up email after that. And then after that, they just go on to my regular list and they get the emails, the weekly emails with everybody else. But again, it’s about understanding where they are on that journey and the purpose of – my purpose to help them get where I need them to be so that my other emails are helpful – hopefully that made sense. I’m just screwed up that sentence pretty bad, but you know what I mean I think. Hopefully.
So that’s my common problems. That’s what I got today for Moscato and mailing lists minus the Moscato. McAllister’s tea and mailing lists. Maybe I’ll just change that on that video. Now’s the time if you have any more questions. Hopefully this has been helpful for you. Hopefully it’s made email lists less scary, at least a little bit. But really, you need to have one. You need to have one. There’s not a lot of stuff in my business strategist, coaching, world that I say, you should do this, you need to do this, I don’t say that very often. Because it really, it depends on your business and what your goals are. But this is one of the things that you should have. If you’re going to have a business, especially an online business, you should have an email list. You need to have one. I’ll say it. I ain’t scared to say that one.
Because, if you came in late, I talked about this at the beginning. It was the first thing I talked about, so go back and watch it, but your email list is the only thing that you own. It’s the only thing that is yours. Facebook can be shut down tomorrow. So can Instagram. So can Pinterest. And what would happen to your business if they all shut down and you didn’t have an email list? You would have no way to communicate with your audience, right? And you get to make the rules on your email list. You can say and do and sell and offer whatever the eff you want. And nobody can say anything about it. If they don’t like it, they can just hit unsubscribe and move on with their life and no harm to you, right?
Let me know if you have any questions before I hop off and put your questions in on the replay, too. What do we got over here? Tamera says, yes it does. Ass kicking quiz. I’m glad someone agrees. I’m not just up here bragging for nothing. But like I said, I’m pretty confident with that one. I get emails almost daily from people that have just taken it and they’re like, oh my gosh this is so cool! Pretty confident saying that that one is as good.
Tanya said I was late, but looking forward to the replay. Yeah, watch the replay! You already have your set up in MailChimp I believe, right Tanya? But hopefully there’s some helpful information in there still about what you can be working towards if you already have it all set up. If nobody has any more questions then I’m going to hop off of here and my friend Samantha is going to be here in like 10 minutes so we can go to our concert tonight. Pretty excited. Everybody have a good night. If you have questions, put them in the replay box and I’ll come back and answer. All right. Bye everyone!
HECK YES YOU ARE, BABY