EU253: How to Get the Most Out of Your Emails

eCommerce Uncensored - Email Marketing | Facebook Ads | Social Media Marketing

On today’s episode, we talk about how to get the most out of your email. Growing brand awareness and creating a connection with your email subscribers is key! All of that starts with email! Sending the right emails, to the right audience, sets your business up for success. Listen in as the guys talk about email strategy, email optimization, and quality engagement!

Text us! Legit … just text us… say hey, ask us a question, tell us your favorite episode, recommend a topic or guest, text us anything! 844 – 643 – 0745. If you text “email” to 844 – 643 – 0745, we will send you a link to apply to get help with your email set up!

This is a direct transcript. Please forgive any grammar or spelling errors.

Jason: We got to stop thinking about trying to convince people who don’t want your shit to buy your shit.

Kevin: It’s ok To send an email that may be wrong, or may maybe controversial with somebody, but you got to see, you gotta send it to see if

Jason: it’s so true. Like would you know what your audience, what they want to see?
It’s so easy just to put it in

Jen: You’re listening to eCommerce Uncensored with Kevin Monell and Jason Caruso

Kevin: Hey everyone. And thank you for joining us on another episode of commerce on censored. My name is Kevin Monell and I’m here with Jason. So before we get started, Jason, I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to talk to everyone about this new kind of, um, thought that I’ve been running through my head after I said, yeah,

Jason: you’ve had a conversation with one of our biggest clients

Kevin: I spoke to who’s, you know, she’s a client, she’s a partner, she’s a friend.
Like I find myself talking to her on a regular basis just about life, actually. So it’s really become like a really great relationship, but we started talking about our podcast and the things that we’re doing and. And what we’re going to do next. Like, what’s the next thing for our podcasts? Like where are we going?
And we started getting into this conversation and that’s actually a conversation that she had with someone she knew. And it was about like her helping her friend, like set up to get the initial setup going of her email. And, you know, we always talk about our email and how it’s still, you know, the number one marketing tool we have and we use Klaviyo obviously.
Um, It can be, I think when, especially an entrepreneur that’s starting a new business or an e-commerce store,

Jason: or even someone just changing the On todays episode we help you optimize your brand awareness with your email list! platform.

Kevin: Yeah. It’s not, it’s not totally, it’s not what they do. Like they don’t know it and they’re trying to like bootstrap their business and it may not be something that they’re comfortable with, you know, that initial setup, getting their Klayvio hooked up to their website or starting a welcome series or getting their abandoned cart, all the things that you and I kind of almost take.
That is just like things that we do on a regular basis. And it got me thinking that, like, you were going

Jason: to say something to me. I mean, I hear this a lot from our, from our listeners. Like I’ll, I, I was, uh, you know, when I was doing that Facebook ads course, a lot of people were saying, I want the email course.
And they’re like, I want, I want I as like, well, what do you want to know? And I, I, I didn’t really like grasp. How difficult this was for people. Cause we kind of do it every day and oftentimes you’re like, where do I start? You know, I’m like, well, what do you mean? Just set up a welcome flow, right? And, uh, you know, integrate it with your website.
It’s just like any other platform. And they’re like, well, I just don’t, I don’t understand how to do that. And you know, I think it’s interesting because Kim, when she first came to us was the same way. Like she needed our help. We were helping her with. With Klaviyo. And now she’s kinda like doing it on her own, like as if like it’s like second nature.
And as you said, she’s helping her friends now do

Kevin: great. All right. So even that, like how many in our agency, world, like how many times have we had like potential client meetings where they’re like, yeah, I have like an email platform, but like, it’s just there, like I send an email once a month or something like that.
So it’s a, it’s a common thing. And it’s just got to me, got me thinking that, like, I think people are. You know, they’re just, they have their email platform. They know that they need it. Your guys are listening us, you know, that you need email because we talk about it all the time, but you’re like, where do I get started?
So I thought we could try this, you know, kind of, um, done for you service that we want to offer out to everybody. And we want to take applications for people who are. Um, you know, submit, you know, a little bit about themselves and what they’re doing, and we have the service that will kind of get you going.
I can basically push you off into the email world and, and to, to do that, all you have to do is text, email E M a I L 2 8 4 4 6 4. 0 7, 4, 5, and we’ll respond back with a link to what a webpage will. You’ll go through a little questionnaire and if things work out, we’ll get, you started. We’ll get, you know, all the pieces in place.
That’ll get you off on the right foot. Yep. And that’s it.

Jason: That’s it. Okay. So what I got email again? Kevin email text, text

Kevin: email 844 – 643 – 0745

Jason: Right. So Kev, where we are. Um, the last few episodes we’ve been talking about this new business that we’ve started and, um, it’s, it’s in the golf niche cause, um, I’m, I’m an avid golfer.
I’m a former PGA teaching professional and um, we’ve, we’ve thought like that. We wanted to create some, we’ve talked about this a lot, like how we want to create. Because we help other businesses. We have business partners who, uh, we team up with in various niches and they do the content and we do the marketing and that’s been really successful for us for the most part.
The biggest problem that we’ve found with that sort of partnership is that we don’t really have control over anything. We’re kind of at the whim of the. And, and the problem, um, the problem with that is that we often don’t have control over how fast or how slow we go. We don’t often have control over what the content is, even though we tell them over and over what we want.
It’s kind of hard for them to grasp what we really want because we’re the marketers and they’re kind of the content creators. So they think more creatively where we think more, uh, money and making money and that kind of thing.

Kevin: So they’re the decision makers. Basically we can give our input and we can tell them what they
should be doing, but they’re basically telling us whether to do it or not.

Jason: They do it the way they want to do it sorta speak. Right. Whereas we don’t have control over that. So we started this, this, this new golf business and, uh, it’s, it’s really like changed the way I think of email. It’s interesting because I, um, you know, I’ve always felt like email, there had to be some persuasion in it.
I’ve always felt like. You can get people to buy things, uh, using, you know, persuasion tactics, but with this new business, right? Cause I’m an avid golfer golfer. I love golf. These people on my list, love golf, right? It’s a real easy thing to target. You know, I target golfers and these golfers are. Right.

Kevin: And your lead magnet is very specific.
You’re not going to, uh, attract someone. Who’s not like a really avid golfer or very interested in golf.

Jason: Right. And it, you know, I’m getting like open rates of like 50% or 60%. I’m getting click-through rates of like 25%, 28%. And. You know, anybody who’s been doing email long enough knows, you know, 10% open rates are PR PR pretty standard.
20% of really good, you know, 1% click through rates, 2% click through rates. That’s that’s about industry standard. That’s about what you can expect then. You know, I I’m getting these big, these big open rates, these big click-through rates. Now granted the list isn’t gigantic. It’s, it’s, it’s still growing.
So like, there is some of that in there, you know, as the, the list sort of gets larger, you’re going to get lower, you know, numbers, but it got me thinking sort of what, like the purpose of email is, right. And like how. To leverage it properly as a business, right? Because as e-commerce business owners, we think of email as like the number one platform for, for making money.
You know, it’s like, it’s like the highest converting. It’s the most predictable. And it is all of those things. But this, this golf business in particular, because I’m doing. It’s just given me a different and I’m doing it and I’m controlling it and I’m the person who’s in charge of what I send and, and those kinds of things.
So it’s just got me thinking about the purpose of it a little bit differently.

Kevin: Now. I think most people. That it’s, you know, it’s a sales tool, right. Obviously it’s going to generate revenue. And, but I think that’s only what people think of it about. Like, I’m going to send an email with an offer in it and it’s going to make me some money instead of thinking of it more of like a, I guess, a communication tool and building a relationship with the person on the other end.
Okay. Yeah.

Jason: And building the relationship in, in a way that may not seem like I never understood that build a relationship. Thing. Like I don’t have a relationship with anybody on my email like that. Um, I’m on their email list. Like

Kevin: what the hell is, I mean, it’s not like being there. I don’t think it’s, you know, it’s not the definition of a personal relationship, but you are essentially building them.
It’s not, and not, I don’t want to say artificial relationship, but it is a sort of a relationship with them, especially when you’re communicating them via stories and things like that.

Jason: See, I think it’s more of a. Seeing people over and over gets you more comfortable that they are real. Right. And the more you see, you know, like I’ll use an example, Dan Henry, right?
He’s, he’s really big in our marketing space and he does high ticket sales and I’ve never bought anything from him. I don’t intend on buying anything from him at this point. But I get his emails. I see him on Facebook. I see him on Instagram. I see what he’s doing. I kinda have a relationship with his persona sorta speak.
Right. Like I kinda trust that he’s a real person. I kinda trust that. Like, you know, he he’s, he knows what he’s doing. So to speak, even though I’m not like a huge fan of him, I definitely feel like. I know he’s

Kevin: like I have, I haven’t bought anything from him either, but I still, I sent you an email from him yesterday, though.
That was interesting, but like, um, I still go to him. Sort of an authority. Like if I want to look up like how his landing pages are, how his web webinar, or if I want to look at an email that he wrote, like, I still look at him towards that. I don’t know if I would buy anything from him, but you do. And we know as marketers, we know that he personally isn’t necessarily on the other end of those emails, you know, it’s his, you know, team or whatever that are most likely sending.
It might be his story, but he’s not sitting behind his computer and writing an email to you every day. Um, but essentially. There, you’re not buying, you’re not always buying just a product you’re buying, you know, that relationship or that person on the other end or that team on the other then, because, you know, I, I feel like brands do that.
Like just people are pillars of my product, but then when you have a relationship behind it, they’re buying into your, what was the word we said before your methodology? Right. So that’s what you’re doing. You’re getting people to buy in to your concepts behind goals. That’s exactly

Jason: what I’m doing actually.
And I’m doing a sort of a, and you don’t have, I know this wasn’t supposed to be just about the golf thing, but it just given me a different perspective on how to communicate an email and what the purpose of it is. And, you know, there’s like three guys that I follow. No, how to write emails in my mind. And none of them, none of them, uh, direct lately sell quote unquote, sell in their emails.
They do have a link to buy something in their emails, but the email is not written as a sale

Kevin: to sell something necessarily.

Jason: Right. So what is. What is the point of all this? So one of our clients that we’ve been talking about, uh, Kim, uh, her emails, they get gigantic open rarer. Yeah.

Kevin: And it shows us that we have we’re speaking to the right people and we’re speaking to them right.
The right way. And the topics that were serving to them are matching up with what they want. Even though the blog emails, we just send blog emails. And like you said, D they don’t have any purpose of necessarily selling. They do sell because they just, it’s another way to put your brand in front of them, you know, like 45% open rates.

Jason: Yeah. And it’s, it’s interesting to me, man, because now that I’m doing this, cause like, you know, when we write emails for people or are we doing emails for our clients, it’s. We’re kind of disconnected a little bit from the business itself. We’re just there to make them money, right? Like, so this we’re with this golf business, you know, uh, it’s kind of.
My, you know, it’s mine. So like, I feel a different sort of connection to it. Right. And I can totally feel what I’m doing to the list in a different way, from a different perspective. Now this is going to be a quote unquote e-commerce business. I mean, it’s going to be, uh, we are going to sell things right.
But I’m definitely feeling like. I am creating this persona or this, this methodology that people are, I’m trying to get people to follow. Right. And it’s, it’s interesting because, um, how these emails are written are not like you would expect, right? Like, And it’s working. It’s crazy like how, when you do this the right way, how it works,

Kevin: right. I think you’re able to. With this specific thing, you’re able to put yourself in the shoes of the person who’s receiving your email. And you’re like, would this person want to see this at this point?
And I think that’s what you have to do. Like that initial engagement that you have with the person on your list. Are they gonna want to see an email with an offer? Are they going to want to see, uh, just an image of the product and a link to the, to the product page or something like that? Or are they going to want to get to know you a little bit more?
And I think you can actually do that. Like. Essentially your audience. And I think a lot of people that are listening for the most part are those types of people. They’ve built a product. You know, there’s obviously some people out there that just have stores of just not necessarily their passion, but I think a lot of times it’s like even the people that we have we’ve had on from shark tank, like almost every single one of them have built a business around their passion.
So they can kind of put themselves in those people’s shoes and be like, how should I communicate with this person initially? How would I want to be communicated from another person on the other.

Jason: Yeah. So what’s interesting about that is because I am in the golf niche and I am, I do know what these people want to see and how to see it.
It makes it really easy to write emails, right. Because w when, when you know, it’s funny because you hear all these things like, oh, you need to know what they, like, you need to know what they think. You need to know the topics that they want to hear. It it’s so true because like, It’s hard to internalize that if you’re not doing it for yourself, but it’s so true, like, would you know what your audience like, like what they want to see?
It’s so easy just to put it in front of them. And it’s you don’t mean like I was listening to Alex Hormoz Z and he’s a, he’s a guy that like, I’ve just discovered recently and he’s 32 years old and he’s done over a hundred million dollars already. He was, he was the biggest, uh, click funnels, funnel guy.
And. You know, he said something like, like yesterday that I read, he’s like, um, you know, scaling is just doing a lot more of the basics. Like people think scaling is like this complex thing where like you’re doing things that you haven’t been doing. It’s, but it’s really just doing more, a lot more of what you’ve been doing, which are the basics.
So it got me thinking about these emails and like, it got me thinking about like the basics, right? What are the basics of email, right? The basics of emails, having people on your email list, who are obsessed with your topic and then putting topics in front of them. That they want to learn about, or they want to read about right.
Just think about that. It’s very basic, but we complicate this thing, right? Like when you have a list of people who are. So engaged with your topic. Now I get it. There are some topics that are easier or some niches that are easier to do this with than others. But when you have a list of people who are, are, uh, passionate about your topic, about your niche, about your products, it’s, it’s just, it’s so much easier to put emails in front of them that they want to read.
And Ben settle says this. He’s like, you know, the trick to email is just putting. Emails in front of your audience that they

Kevin: want to read. Right? It’s an evolution too. Like how long you’ve been. I don’t want to say tinkering around, but starting to scoff business over the last few years, and you’ve been sending emails out, you started to kind of paused a little bit because of other things that were going on.
I think at one point it just kind of clicked. She’d be like, oh my God, people are really liking what I’m saying here. And then you run with that.

Jason: Yeah, man. And it’s like, I feel like when you are part of your niche, you know, the kind of things that they want to read. Right? Like, and I think if you just take that at its simplest form, um, it, it makes things really easy.
And I think we complicate things because we think that it’s. You know, we’re, we’re led to believe by these marketers that like, oh my God, I only, I know this. And like, you like this, so there’s like, there’s this, there’s a secret that you’re missing. You don’t, you don’t get it. Like, and I have that answer for you, right?
Like, so we’re like conditioned to believe that it’s really more difficult than setting up a lead magnet, getting people on your email list and then sending them emails that they want to see. Are they. Right. Like in the golf business, breaking 80 is the holy grail of golf. For those of you who don’t know about golf, the lower, the score, the better.
Right? So anybody who shoots in the seventies, right. And I’m not going to explain what that means, but anybody who shifts in the seventies is considered like an, the top 2% of all golfers, right. People who shoot in the eighties, they’re just a little bit worse. And people shoot in the nineties. They’re a little bit worse than people are shooting.
But breaking 80 is like the holy grail. If you break 80 in golf, like you’re like the cat’s ass right now. I know that because I’m in the niche and those are sort of like the heart strings that my emails pull on. Cause I know that’s what people want. Like they want to feel like when they walk into the clubhouse like that, you know, that.
You’re the man, like people know that they’re scared to play you, you know, like they, and you like instilling that

Kevin: they’re always inviting you to their outings.

Jason: Always inviting you to the, I was like, I get invited. Cause I shoot in the seventies. I get invited. And the funny thing is like, I played terribly an outings always because like, I it’s, I’m not like in my own rhythm, but that’s a whole nother topic, but, um, But yeah, like people ask, they invite me to their, to their outings.
They want me to play with them, you know, those kinds of things. So all those accolades that come with it. And I like, I know that. So I kinda, and I have it’s it’s funny. Cause I was thinking about this yesterday, when you have, when you have a. Group of people who are passionate about a topic and you put emails in front of them about the topic.
They’re passionate about all the things that you hear about these complex systems that you need. You don’t like, like you can do things wrong and people still take the action that you want them to take, because they’re so passionate about.

Kevin: I think people are scared to like what you just said. Like they make it complex, but they also think that they may do something wrong.
Like it’s okay to send an email that may be wrong or may maybe controversial with somebody, but you got to see, you got to send it to see if you don’t send it. You’ll never know. My dog is like being a pain in the ass right now. Why is

Jason: that dog in there? Every time we have a linkage to stay

Kevin: downstairs?
Well, my wife had to go out I guess, to do a workout. So I have to the dog chews on things now that’s its new thing. So now it has to stay close to me. And now my wife probably just got home. So now she wants to go downstairs. Oh, do you want to let her out? Sorry about

Jason: that. No, she’s good. So, okay. So I feel.
I need to bring this home a little bit at home. Bring it home, brother. Okay. So what the idea is, is again, we’ve got to stop thinking about trying to convince people who don’t want your shit to buy your shit. Right? Like that’s number one, I was looking at my emails from the golf business and I got a, my last name is.
For people who unsubscribed. And like, I looked at them and I’m like, awesome. Like, get off my list if you don’t want to be there. Like, I like that. Right. And most people get like, oh my God, people are leaving. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. That’s telling me that you’re just not the right fit for this. Right.
Right. So instead of trying to persuade people, instead of trying to convince them, uh, to buy something that they may not.
It’s better just to give them what they, what they want already give

Kevin: them what they want and just to convince them to buy from you exactly.

Jason: Right. You want, you want to persuade them to buy from you not to buy the product because that’s when you get people returning it that’s when you get people, you know, having, uh, what does that call when you buy something in buyer’s remorse?

Kevin: I mean a person like me, like you don’t have to convince me, like, I’m an, I’m an, I’m an a, I’m a break 90 kind of guy, basically, right? At this point, I want to break eight 90 consistently. You don’t have to convince me that. I want to do that. You just have to convince me to buy from you. You have to convince

Jason: me that my product will allow you to do that.
Right. Or it will and will work for you exactly. Right. And that’s like, that’s like the difference. And, um, it’s interesting because like, I’ve noticed that timing in email is everything. You can send an email to someone like right now and they don’t buy, and then you send it to tomorrow at nine o’clock at night and you kind of catch them at the right time.
And they bought,

Kevin: yeah, it’s crazy. You can even send, you can send a cheaper price the day before and they don’t buy you, send them the next day at a higher price and they buy it’s like totally contradicts itself. Yeah.

Jason: Yeah. So, so I’ve looked at email a little bit differently since I’ve started writing these emails and I’ve looked at it as a way to position myself as the authority.
Right. I bring people into my world. So I’m, I almost tell them in every email what I’m doing today, what the weather is like, what the, what what’s like so that they know it’s not automated. I I’ve been saying. You know, happy Wednesday or whatever. Um, and, uh, so I’m bringing kind of people into my world. And then I’m talking about topics that they want to hear about.
Like, they want to hear about how to break 80. They want to hear about how to hit the ball further. They want to hear about how to be more consistent. They want to hear these things. So all I’m doing is putting emails like that in front of. Like putting emails that they already want to hear about another way to do that is like finding something in your niche.
Like. Is a newsworthy, for example, last night, the president did his state of the union. Well, if I was in politics, my email today would be referencing the state of the union because it’s on everybody’s mind, everybody just watched it and now I’m, I can get huge open rates and I can get, you know, and I’m not saying that open rates are necessarily.
No driver on this, but you can definitely see that you’ll get more engagement when you talk about current,

Kevin: make it topical, you know, and you also, you also mentioned before we got on that, you, when you’re in the car, you listen to the PGA channel on, on, on the radio, just to give you other topics. That’s people similar to you that are probably sitting in their car, listening to the PGA channel, the same kind of thing.

Jason: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I I’ve just looked at email a little bit different. Since, uh, I started writing these and it’s given me just a different perspective and the clarity of what the purposes of email has just changed for me, you know, just doing these myself. And I would encourage anybody who has a business that they’re in the niche for them to write their own emails.
Um, you know, because it’ll give you a different perspective. It’ll, you know, it’ll make you understand, you know, how to speak to people because. Really, all I do in my emails is like I bring up a topic and I kind of agitate that itch. And then like at the end, my product solves that.

Kevin: Exactly. That’s cool. But what if you’re having trouble getting started with email Jason, this is all well and good.

Jason: That’s a whole nother thing. I mean, uh, starting with, uh, you know, integrating it with the website, making sure everything is triggering properly, make sure, uh, you know, everything is set up properly, the tracking, you know, yada yada, yada, that, that stuff is a little bit,

Kevin: yeah, that’s the whole side of the things that we sometimes take for granted, you know, that we just do on a regular basis.
So if you guys need. If you need help getting started, you need to get yourself off the ground. With this email stuff, email, text, email. It’s funny. We’re asking people to text instead of email for an email thing, but text email 844 – 643 – 0745. And we’ll send you a link to apply for this little program that we’re starting out to get you guys going, get you off your feet, get everything set up for you so you can hit the ground running with these.
Yep. So thank you guys so much for listening as always, you can check us out at eCommerce Uncensored.com and we’ll talk to you guys real soon later.

Jason: Later.

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